Noclip Games of 2023: Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Marvel's Midnight Suns

[Music] Hello friends and welcome back to no clips Game of the Year Extravaganza It's the final one it's the final podcast thank you I was hoping one of you I also believe it's episode 157 say of the podcast thank you all so much uh for joining us uh our battle pass holders to get a shout out in the middle during the intermission uh but I am happy to be joined by uh three people who are the opposite of battle pass holders they actually take money out of no clip to make content instead of paying for content to be see it's it's it's a beautiful symmetry it's like a Rhymes H Jeremy Jane Jesse graia and Frank Howley we have three fantastic people who are not me here to talk about games and we have three fantastic video games to talk about today we're going to talk about Ballers Gate 3 Midnight Suns and Allan Wake 2 but before we do that gentlemen shall we get down to the good business of trying to get some awards for these previous winners what do you think yeah let's do it now it's good way to warm up to when we have to do it later that's a good point like just get get the get the juices flowing H if you are new to the podcast you should not listen to this as the first podcast that would be insane um but if you have done and you're determined to stick with it uh we have picked our 10 plus one favorite games of 2023 we have uh talked about them on the past the first of our four game of year podcasts we picked them and and in the past three we have taken a selection of them and talked them up a bunch and then given them their own Awards Slayers x1d Zay Lofton Lifetime Achievement Award Final Fantasy 16 won best AMV Resident Evil 4 remake won Master of remaking uh in homebody won uh oh no it doesn't have it one yet sorry bomb Rush cyber Funk won best Dreamcast game wink or thumbs up Dave the diver got the hidden depth award and we are still waiting to give Awards to homebody Blasphemous 2 and typ cast although we have keyboard warrior in as a uh sort of stand in over there have any you guys been struck with any uh any inspiration for any of these ones overnight first of all uh I think I got one for homebody okay what you got um okay so I'm going to say this I feel like the first impulse the first reaction is probably going to be oh that's too specific and personal to you and therefore a bad superlative Jeremy's favorite game it's it's the Jeremy Jane annual game of the no okay it's uh let me let me say it I'm just going to say it and then I will explain the the layers to it okay uh the closest to home award okay that's good actually that is multiple reasons is it is is a game that takes place in a spooky house it is a game about agoraphobia it is a game about a lot of mental health issues that uh like I personally struggle with OCD it's a game largely about OCD but uh you know I don't think it's too specific to me because I think you know there the game is also about depression anxiety uh alienation from people getting older the things that come with that and uh I think that this is a game that does a lot of horror things it's a great survival horror game it's a great puzzle game but I think the thing that really makes it special is the way that it handles its themes and the way that its themes are pervasive in its gameplay elements and so I think that closest to home is you know it has layers to it but I think it hits on what's special about this game it works too cuz in your house you have an electric lock that's uh you have to use a pipe dream puzzle to open so it's actually it's multip so many layers this actually this game takes place in my house I figured as much made sense yeah yeah I mean that I think that works well you know we've all talked about our various mental health uh sort of uh you know over the years uh weight we've carried and stuff so I think it does apply to probably everyone here in some respect I imagine um yeah and and and and yeah I I think that it's uh I don't know like I think that's the reason why it's on this list right is that it's not just a puzzle horror game right it's it's the fact that it sort of weaves in a lot of this stuff which feels very um personal it's not like you're it's not like it's weaving in a narrative that's interesting but is not maybe for you like there's something about this that feels like it's made for people who have anxiety or aop phobia or OCD or things like that you know um yeah as opposed to you know any other game which may or may not get this type of name on their reward yeah I like that what do you guys think yeah no I I have no issue with that name sounds good I like Jeremy's reasoning for it we need the Frank howy seal of approval no I again I wish I had played more of it but it being about OCD it also being a survival horror game within a house it's a it's a very fitting award so yeah I I approve you're going to like this game Frank play this game over the holidays if you I just wish there was like guns in it or Monster you know I just need or I can just put like a gif overlay of guns going off I I should try it cuz the art style alone was very cool just put the like wienstein bottom part of the screen just taped out to the bottom of your monitor are you wearing a ICP Christmas sh by the way no it's that's uh in gcw there's a tag team called Insane Clown busy Violet J teamed up with eie and ell catch to to form I wow that's unbelievable dude I I need to get into wrestling I'm doing the wrong hobby over here I was wrong about what the shirt was but it was even better that's like only in only in the world of frankal does that happen I love that the word busy was cut off by the bottom of the frame as well IDE I just assumed I saw a y and insane CL what yeah there you go Merry Christmas to Violent Jay and uh shy to dope is that it yeah yeah there we go I wasn't sure if it was Scotty too hottie grandmas said which one is that Rafiki part of the ICP Riki yeah Rafiki Rafiki whatever we'll get to stink faces later I had one for Blasphemous 2 let's hear it um I'm not sure if it necessarily entirely works but I like the feel of it um Catholic guilty treasure oh I like that yeah it's like the idea is so good it's like a it's like a little it takes a little brain power to understand the cleverness of it but I think it's you got to find the word breaks inside of the words and then like yeah Catholic guilt e treasure instead of pleasure like oh it's sorry I I meant pleasure the problem there is I have a giant bomb show called guilty treasures and I got it confused I meant Catholic guilty pleasure is better yeah Catholic do we what do we think of that yes I'd like treasure more no well that's pleas iess an argument that it is a it's not a guilty pleasure it's just a good game like I don't I don't not like it in any way but um yeah I don't know I think it's a I think it's it kind of works the Catholic part seems like it's one of the main reasons why I like this game is just how it feels close to some part of me in that way so it's either that or we go with Metroid politan Museum of Art and I think Catholic guilty pleasure is better their vot sort of they their vot coming at the problem from other sides of the the the the river you know what I mean um yeah that's a good show uh okay then that's everything with tycast locked in so do we have any I saw I was trying to see I thought I saw one on the YouTube comments there was a good YouTube or Discord comment of someone using the phrase Alpha bullet hell which is like clever but that feels more like a marketing term than an award but Alpha bullet hell is still a good I I I I like that word it's a good description but it might be a good award is the only problem is good though that's some good word Play We Love word Play It's All About it's just a word play award really really yeah I've been struggling to think of one for this um I still think typer Elite is very funny but it's it's just it's just a dumb joke it's not really a good award name uh yeah I don't know I've been struggling so much with this one because the things that I like about it are so I don't know hard to to describe in a piffy little idiom you know what I mean it's just like it's fun it's frenetic it's arcadey it transforms my keyboard into a control ER in a very unique way it's like maybe I don't know there's something very unique about the control scheme that I feel like is praiseworthy but I don't know if that's the thing that I gets to the superlative maybe you could get tactile in there because the keyboards the the tactile bump if you get a mechanical keyboard a little bit of tactics to your positioning and like where you're going and your path and everything if we can tacti is a long word to try and get in is there any idioms or t the only I keep thinking of tactical nuke tactile nuke but that doesn't make any sense what is what are phrases that have the word tactical in them what about um what if you take the keyboard out and just have key like key because then key works as keyboard but key key I feel like there's a million one different things that key could be yeah I had the idea I don't think it really fits but I had the idea es schemi keystroke because this game overloads my brain so much I just think it's in bad taste what's es schemi it's a type of stroke oh right there you go okay can we call it the subo hematoma like subal key atoma let's go with that one why why do I love that so much oh man yeah it's this is a really that's so funny because I actually earlier was like sub deral like hematoma how do I make a joke for that for typ cast so you're just coming in with the stroke jokes on your own yeah well done happy holidays folks happy holidays um all right I don't yeah will we come back to it again or is there any I got no juice for that right now we'll come back to tcast tcast is perhaps on theme is a difficult one to find the right word for it um okay let's jump into our three games from today then uh let's just jump head first into bers Gate 3 arguably you know you know Game of the Year by most Outlets I feel like couple of people picked Zelda yeah most of us stopped playing Zelda after a couple of hours we didn't like it so we're a little bit different maybe in that case but uh gr generally broadly accepted as a fantastic um contribution to the world of video games a great achievement uh real new sort of Benchmark for role-playing games and interactivity and not just that but you know presentation and story and um characterization and all that sort of stuff um those folks over at laran have been banging down the RPG drawer for a long time and really uh busted through with balers G 3 so fair play to them and congratulations on all their many awards I'm sure this will be the one that they are the most excited about uh so who wants to take off uh car B 3 has anyone so I should mention first of all we had a chat before this we are going to work incredibly hard to not spoil anything we're not going to talk about story stuff for any three of these games we're going to keep it as vague as possible if we need to get in any way specific about stuff we're going to keep it bers g 3 to the First Act and in Allen wake 2 to the first opening couple of hours but we'll even Endeavor in that respect to try and not do too much of that um but uh first of all I just I'm just out of interest I'm still I played a bunch over the weekend still in chapter one I this game is so long oh my god um have any of you guys completed it or or gotten into the longer chapter further chapters uh I'm getting close uh I have been i' I've been struggling with act three um not from a difficulty perspective it's just the the again I'm going to talk around spoilers very very delicately just say you're having difficulty with act three just say you hate it just say it's bad makes I have specific things but yeah you're right at at the I don't want to risk spoiling anything for anyone but I'm I'm having trou it's not like a gameplay difficulty thing I'm having difficulties completing it for other reasons cool so you're there anyone else going further than that or I'm in the middle of act two that's about it cool Frank what about you and still at still in act one cool yeah one is long Act One Frank did a lot of gameplay in act one so he's played a lot of act one for for uh for us um Okay who wants to take the take this one up then Jeremy do you want to talk about I feel like if you're fur this we should start off with you yeah for sure so um Divinity original sin 2 one of Lan's previous games was one of my favorite RPGs of all time I loved this game so much that before I had uh the no clip editing PC in my home I played Divinity original sin 2 on nvidia's GeForce game stream serving service on my uh my shitty MacBook I streamed the entire game I think I played 150 hours on like a on a server Farm in Las Vegas on my shitty laptop um I absolutely love what laran does I think they they create brilliant worlds I think their systems are unbelievable and balers Gate 3 is you know I I it's very like there have been a maybe a dozen games since I was a child where I was so excited about them that I was having internal conflict of like should I look at previews so I can like look at the menu while I'm waiting in the restaurant foyer or do I just like going totally blind uh so B Gate 3 I've been looking forward to for a long time um and it is uh almost certainly my favorite game of this year uh it is an incredibly Den dense massive RPG World it creates like for me what Lan does with open worlds is kind of the um it's like the antidote for what I don't like about open World Games typically which is that larryan games are they're open worlds but they're so incredibly dense that they every step you take you'll like find a treasure chest that's cursed and then there's like a goblin inside of it you'll trip over it and then you'll be like oh well that was crazy that was 30 minutes of my life and you walk two feet down the road and there's like a witch being like why are you come inside like it's just constant uh and and I love that like it doesn't I think if you I've said this before about Divinity original sin 2 but if you zoom out on one of Lan's worlds I think their Maps probably look smaller than they feel like I think they probably look almost like like board gamish or game game boorish um but I think the the density and the level of care and design that goes into every square inch of them feels like it just feels m massive I think there's a there's a big difference between an open world that is like spatially massive and one that is experientially massive uh and I think Ballers Gate 3 is like a a game that inside of my mind is like an entire world um and yeah just the the level of freedom of player choice of like Divergent choice of of ways of player expression uh I I imagine you could play this game this game that is like 80 100 hours depending on your play style I think you could play this game a dozen times and keep seeing things in it uh and it's it's just unbelievable it's one of those games where like I feel like when you're playing it it almost behooves you to watch someone else playing it too because I feel like I had to disconnect from the way I automatically play games like if you give there's so much interesting [ __ ] you can do that if you don't really stop and think about it you're not going to do any of it you're just going to go oh I'll use my magic Missile or I'll position my person here or do that it's all the like oh the developer thought of that moments which are like I know that's become a bit of a meme on YouTube and it's like oh the developer thought of that and it's like the most obvious thing ever like this game is the whole like you know just the ability to like use spells to have you know talk to animals or or or do things with like interact with the physics of the world or do any or like look into people's minds or whatever like you think like oh that's one that's the thing I'll be able to do one time for this one reason or in this one spell but then it it actually creates this sort of like you know ever expanding you know Rubicon of of things that you can do and and then people have combined them in the most like absolutely insane way some of them are like very like lore and reality breaking but in a way that bers g lar and are just like sure like yeah if you want to you know figure out a way to get your Archer to be higher than everyone all the time we will let you do that you know what I mean we'll we won't do a thing so um it's it's it's it's a game that I feel like I have to be like I have to wear like you know the like I have to put on a I have to be in like have a have a shower and put on the right clothes and like it's you know you go to a movie in the theater because you want to see it in the theater and it's because you want to really enjoy and pay attention and I feel like that's the case for B's G I can't be too tired to play it I need to like really soak it in it's like Danny's special video game time um and like I don't know I feel like those games are few and far between more and more and this is yeah I kind of don't want to play it because I don't want to waste it you know what I mean I'm trying to it's like a good wine I have put away you know totally what do you guys think yeah no that's a that's a good way of putting it it's the kind of game that you have to devote a lot of time and energy to cuz like choices that you're making throughout it rely on your ability both to to understand what's going on and to pay attention and to like remember characters remember scenarios and I think role play like if you're not considering what your character would or wouldn't do in certain scenarios you don't get as much out of it if you're always like oh like this this Quest I'll take this because whatever like you can still enjoy it and have fun with it and and the way that they've designed things there's probably a choice you can make somewhere down the line that will result in your character still making a choice that you know feels appropriate to them if you've made your own character and you're not playing one of the origin characters um but it's just because there's so many options because there's so many things because there's so much to do and so places to go and it it it really does feel like and I mean I've only played so much D and D I mean I played it for like two years with the same group uh which is you know Far Cry from what most people get out of playing actual Dungeons and Dragons um but what I feel like when I'm playing it is I have a really good dungeon master sitting there with me and they are very good improvisers obviously this is not how the game works like it's not like you know the the Sven or whoever from laran is sitting there going like oh yeah okay he did this let's let's add this character like but but it feels that way it feels like someone is like watching my computer and going like oh okay they talk to this rat let's make it oh it's been 20 hours bring the rap back like that that's just a Rand that's not something that happen uh but or maybe it does who's to say but it's just it's one those exactly who's May given that everything happens in this game who knows and if not they might be patching it in now EXA yeah Frank what's been your experience act one I'm so curious to hear you talk about you got great gameplay no thank you so balers Gate 3 I was very intimidated to play it cuz like it's a hardcore RPG at least from my perspective like like even I tried playing D and D for a year and it was very Advanced like can trips and all this like super level two spells level one spells having a rest to reset it's like I just want to play a again you know um but playing it my experience is it felt like playing World of Warcraft back when I was like like vanilla wow when it first came out where it's like this is a whole new type of game for me but I want I'm getting my ass kicked and I'm dying a lot but I want to learn I want to learn like very early on in the game there was like a dungeon where I set off traps and I spent such a long time like dragging my my friend my party and like Reviving trying to get out and then I looked up a guy and it's like oh you just had to turn off this switch over here but the idea that I had such a thrilling like Indiana Jones Adventure it's like oh that's that was just my choice and my naivity allowed this incredible thing and like I've tried to get better with certain games where it's like no no no the less you prep going into it the better it is and like see and like even when I was doing gameplay I would do an encounter it's like I bet there's another way of doing it I would reload the save and go into complete different direction and like every outcome is fascinating it's so well written like you know like I throughout the podcast I'm always like oh yeah I started playing this and I started skipping cut scenes B Gate 3 the writing is so Charming I mean we haven't even broken into the individual characters but like it's the thing where it's like oh I want to know each person's backstory I want to know their character per their their their perks how they interact with one another every scenario the the the open world element of like as Jeremy said like you walk and you have this incredible encounter and then a few feet later there's another incredible encounter and it's like I don't know it doesn't feel like anything is filly everything is so clever everything is so Charming it's such a Charming game um and uh yeah I think I put maybe 15 to 20 hours into it and and like as Danny said you got to be the right mindset I I I approach this game kind of like how I would play Persona games which is like I need a full two hour block of time set aside to like acclimate get in the zone and then like rest and and like like a plane take down and and and depart like um so yeah it's it's it's very it's it's marvelous because uh I I generally had a great time playing it it's a game I'm still eager to get into when I have like the peace of mind for it but but talking to all my friends like I haven't even touched like I had friends raving about doing Co-op stuff rolling different characters like there's so much to do I can't even imagine how far deep did any guys do the co-op stuff actually I have no touch I don't tend to do that I know Jeremy you did with divinity didn't you yeah yeah yeah I played it through solo and then I got through maybe like a third of it with some friends and then it uh it's hard you know as with d and d groups it's it's the true D and D experience it's possible to keep a group together yeah yeah I played a little bit of the co-op with uh with my fiance and it was a lot of fun uh I think like if you're going to play at Co-op you kind of have to play it with somebody not have to but I feel like you'll get a very unique experience if you play it with someone who knows nothing about Dungeons and Dragons and preferably somebody who doesn't play a lot of RPGs um because Cassie's way of doing it was I thought very funny and enjoyable uh it's hard for us to sit down and play it because it is like you know we both have to have that mindset of like it's time to down and play Dungeons and Dragons for three hours um but when we did get to play it the the bit of the earlier part of the game that we did play um a lot of the scenarios I play games very efficiently I like know what I want to do with my characters I know where I want to go and what I want to spend my time on and usually it's everything especially in a game like this but Cassie's like no we're going over here no we're going over here let's do this it's like we're at the grocery store and she's telling me what we're gonna buy it's great she has the cart I just push it um but in Dungeons and Dragons and in this game in balers gate it's it's just like okay this character wants you know what are we choosing between these two things and I'm like I don't want to do that cuz but she's like let's do the stupid thing and we do it and it's like it's I would never have picked that because I don't want my character to go down that route but she does and so I saw a totally different version of the game than I ever would have seen if I had played and I did play a lot further on my own and I feel like I didn't get a funny experience I felt like I got the kind of experience I wanted but it wasn't like a shot like whoa like that could happen kind of play through that that's kind of what I get into I guess with the you know my may vary I guess with who you're playing with but I that's the issue of playing solo as well I think with a game like this is that you just your sort of gravity is always pulling you back towards things you would do and it's almost like a game where you need to get your first playthrough out of the way so then you can just kind of do your chaos run or whatever um outside of the one of the things that I think I'm most impressed with balers gate is the combat like I I i' it's a it's a combat system that is like you know like D and D itself just like incredibly comp complex but like and there are loads of ways to do complex battle systems be it in role playing stuff or uh you know isometric games or like you know 4X games is a great example stuff like that uh but this is so incredibly intuitive weirdly intuitive like visually it communicates everything like so much of what it needs to like for there isn't that much of a UI in this game and even when you enter combat it's not like the UI like goes okay here we go we're going you know the battle [ __ ] deck separates from the rest the section separates from the rest of the Enterprise and you're Sly like okay we're we're into battle mode it's like no it's like other stuff comes up but like you're still intuiting things like sight lines and you know which characters are are in danger or what spells are on what cool down or whatever and then the fact that you can have characters who are not in the fight yet is what and it works so effortless effortlessly is insane like I the amount of fights where I was having where you know you intentionally have someone off to the side doing nothing and then they come in like they're in real time just running around finding their way back back behind somebody to flank them or you know or lay traps or or do something like be there or even just distract people like it it totally changes the rule set in a way that I was like [ __ ] like I have to think about these encounters completely differently like do I go in with one person and just bait all these people and or you know what's what's the crazy thing I can do here that I haven't thought of can I like become one of them or can I like do something to their head to influence them or all these things that you know usually when you're playing a lot of these games you're just getting through them you know did you do much of that character party separation stuff outside of combat because you can do that while you're talking to characters as well yeah I guess I it did come up a couple of times um and I think I was always get I think there was so many different layer there's so many things in balers Gate 3 that I just haven't touched yet because I still feel like I'm getting used to the the systems that I'm playing with you know what I mean like if there's so like especially in the Spells as well like that's a whole other thing where like you know you you level up a character and then there's there's all these things and you're like Jesus that one there looks fun but it also I I don't think I'll remember I have it you know I'll just it'll it'll has a cantrip that'll sit on my cantrip belt for months and Mon and I'll never see it and one day I'll look at and go oh yeah I forgot I had that thing um I should play that sometime um so similarly with that I was like oh if I was a seasoned player of these games or like a D and D master I would probably do more of that um but uh yeah I'm also like fairly early in the game comparatively so maybe I'll be maybe after a couple of hours I'll be excited to do it but yeah it just feels like there's so many parts of the game that feel special you know that it's hard to do any of it Without Really sitting down there in your in a tuxedo and playing it properly you know just and what a wonderful feeling because it's like I feel like we had this more growing up and maybe that's just a byproduct of growing up is that everything's new to a certain extent but also just the rate of change in game design and Technology was so insane when many of us were teenagers in in our early 20s that like you know it's it's hard to it's you know I remember to for my first year of college when San Andreas and World of Warcraft came out you're like what the [ __ ] like just completely you know and uh halflife 2 was that year as well and Counter-Strike Source was that Year and God knows what else like it's just like and you had those moments where you're like oh this is something I need to like relish and I feel like I don't get that as much anymore I get the opposite thing which is like oh this is a game that's been out for a while and you didn't realize it was amazing until now because the community is to like Dwarf Fortress or stuff like that you know what I mean like there's lots of games like that where I eventually get around to and I'm like oh yeah that is really cool whereas Ballers gate is one of these games where like everyone at the same time is like waiting for Santa to come down to chimy and hand this thing you know and and and it was it was as good and better as what people thought it was better what people thought I think yeah um yeah I the the combat stuff I feel like ties directly into what you're saying which is that like there this this experience is it's not only special but it's so multifaceted and multi-layered that uh I did this in divin original sin too but I feel like balers Gate 3 really amplifies it where when I'm approaching a situation whether it's a you know a a dialog tree or like a combat situation uh I find myself Saving right before and completing it and if it's a satisfactory thing I'll I'll save it but then I'll save scum back to the previous save and just see what different outcomes are uh like not not add infin item not so I'm going to like ruin all future playthroughs but like if there was another choice that I almost went for I'll go back and experiment with it the combat stuff uh I it's it's like figuring out ways that the I I talked about this with the the outer worlds one of the things that I really liked about that game was uh there was a few moments in that game cuz that game like didn't super land for me but the few moments where it felt really special where where it just was like oh yeah go do this thing or just like walk in guns of Blaze and figure it out on the way and I love when RPGs do that like that's that's what feels like role playing to me is if the game it gives me a bunch of options and it's like or I mean if you're a crazy person you could just f the goblin encampment with explosive barrels and commit an act of Terror um and so there was like there was one combat encounter that I won't talk about in any detail but there the the space of it was a very narrow Corridor that opened up into a larger Space full of enemies and I just kept getting they kept doing like AOE spells in the corridor so all my guys would group up and just get immediately stuck there and slowed and like damage over time and just like confused it just horrifying so uh what I found out was that I could use dimension door to get to the rafters in that room oh that's awesome so I would warp at the start of the combat like even before they saw me in the combat trigger I'd run in and have two people dimension door up to the rafters and then they were just like raining fireballs and arrows down from the rafters in that room the whole time and I did that combat encounter probably at least like eight times before I did that and it was it was like it's this little bit of lightning that goes off in your head where you're like oh man there's like I wonder how many other styles of like ridiculous approaches out of this that I'm not even conceiving of um yeah it just feels like the depth with all these systems are unbelievable and endless also that dice roll animation just can't be beat it's just the best it's so juicy just like it feels we it feels heavy just like yeah it's like yeah put that pegle straight into my in my veins um is there anything else anyone wants to talk about anything about like art Direction is amazing like the game looks fantastic you know the animation the dialogue stuff characters I guess it's hard to talk about characters like getting too spoilery but any other stuff like that people want to talk about uh I do want to mention that I think this is probably the best immersive Sim that I played this year uh I I think like it's easy for me to look at this and say it solved a problem I had with Dungeons and Dragons because playing Five the version of dungeon dragons that I played uh I hate combat I hate combat dungeon dragons it sucks so bad it's so boring I don't want it to happen like and and to do all the cool stuff you got to like coax your DM and like you know the coolest thing about combat in Boulders gate is when you're um interacting with the environment while fighting like oh there's a hanging chandelier with like a fire cauldron in it like I'll I'll shoot the rope and then it'll fall down and hit everybody that stuff's great that's my favorite part of this game is when you get to interact with the environment and do stuff with that and like there's a puddle of water I'm going to shock that boom everyone's shocked in the puddle of water uh Dungeons and Dragons like when you're playing it you kind of have to ask your DM to like let you do a cool thing like can there be a fire chandelier here and they're like depends on your DM I think you know it depends you know them that yeah but you do you kind of have to you know I feel like there's less play with that kind of thing you get like it depends a lot on yeah how invested everyone is in in designing the map and everything uh and that's no knock on on Dungeons and Dragons or the people who play it or the DMS who don't maybe necessarily think about that stuff but I really appreciate that in this game because of the way it's designed because it's a video game because there's so many visual elements it solves that problem of D and for me um while still retaining my favorite part of it which is the role playing aspect and really elevating it in a fun way obviously Stripped Away parts from Dungeons and Dragons they can't get as uh improv as you would in that game but so there's trade-offs in that way but I feel like it's a good balance the immersive Sim part of it for me is the way that you can handle situations and handle problems in ways that don't feel intuitive necessarily like or or do and feel like they shouldn't be like there will be scenarios where you're fighting an enemy that you know you can't beat but there's an environmental hazard that can hurt them and kill them and do a lot of damage so you just like bring them over to the and then you've dealt with this thing that you definitely shouldn't be able to beat at any point at the level that you're at I was like that's so cool I don't think I've played an RPG a crpg and RPG in the last couple years where that's been a thing that you could do where the game is like okay yeah that's fine you youve totally solved that problem here you go yeah I watched a bunch of oh sorry you can go first no I was just about to say it's it's a lever it's funny I wouldn't have ever I feel like it's saced to call a crpg an immersive Sim because it feels like you're like lowering it down like on the scale of interactivity immersive Sim is like high on in the first person genre but but you're right like it's right yeah that's yeah to totally that's that's more but that's yeah and that's one foot in sort of the crpg world as well but you're right it's coming from that yeah they have a shared you know vocabulary there and it's that interact ability or interactivity and it's not to me it's not just that s sort of like systemic interactivity that's the obvious stuff that is like the inter it's the it's the stuff that you don't realize you can do that then when you get into it you're like like traits with certain enemies like racial traits with certain enemies or um combinations of spells that you wouldn't have thought of you know what I mean and they're sort of like they're coaxing you with some of that environmental stuff and and and other things like that into like thinking that way but you're right it's like trying to I feel like there's a whole world of possibilities that I'm not doing half the time and that can be both fun and sort of mildly like uh you know choice paralysis e or something you know yeah I I feel the same way I watched uh a few friends Stream parts of the game to me that I had already played myself just because I was curious how they were playing them um and the thing that struck me and I think this is to Jesse's point about the immersive Sim thing is that you would think when someone did a different approach that I was like oh whoa that's like a that's a far superior approach to this that it would be exclusively tied to skill level that these would be people who are like really good at this type of game but uh people who are like totally crpg naive or like don't play larryan games we doing things just intuitively based on their gut feeling that I never would have thought of that were totally viable strategies or even better strategies than me who put like 250 hours into Divinity original sin 2 and I I think that that's like that's an impressive feed of game design is to have such a breadth of options but but in a way that are like they're not all immediately apparent to every player it's kind of like what Jesse was saying about the um the environmental stuff is like the problem with d and d is that in order to know that you can drop the fire chandelier your DM has to be like oh and there's a fire chandelier above the whole Battlefield and then it's it's obvious to you because it's there's hanging a hat on the theast perception to the ceiling or something you yeah exactly or if you do cast perception in any environment you know he'll be like yeah there's like a big red Barrel I wonder what that's for it says explosives on the side yeah there's a powder keg there but I don't know what so but um there I just watched so many friends play so many scenarios in so many different ways and uh and and so many of the things that they did I was like I never would have thought I wish I had thought of that even as like a veteran of these types of games yeah and I wonder how much they're messing with the you know I can't even use the term AI in games anymore it feels wrong to use it now it just feels like a term that's lost all meaning but the uh you know the the the mobs or whatever like I wonder how much like directing is going on there where they're like doing things to encourage you to do things you know like encourage you to spread out across the map or encourage you to you know take a certain strategy or use a certain spell or giving you time to get people back up or you know I just don't trust laran not to be that amazing you know to be to be doing that as well um yeah it's a it's a really wonderful game it's one of those like oh they were they were making this game for 20 years kind of games yeah and I've not been playing all I know you have Jeremy playing a bunch of them um I took down some of the words that got mentioned uh layered special interactive I do think the idea of calling it best immersive Sim might be very funny and appropriate and you know it's not I'm not sorry I wasn't criticizing saying that like it's just that like in the it's like it's like my old man gamer brain is the problem there where it's like I have not thought about other games outside of one's War inspector might have touched right or touched somebody who worked on them um I don't know maybe he's touched some people at laran have no idea we have to call up have to look up the war inspector who did war inspector touch rec.com website exactly um the yeah so I don't yeah any other any other what what things about balers gate are the ones that it's just [ __ ] perfect isn't it I I it's so good I I have before I praise it I do have to say one thing that God I would pay I would pay a $100 for this game again on top of the amount I paid if they would add one feature okay uh a fast fa God a fast forward in combat is so necessary as you progress into the game there are some combat encounters that take so [ __ ] long a million turns every turn kind of thing a million and I I found myself like it'll be the AI turn and I'll I'll all tab for 10 minutes and go do something else and and the problem with that is then I don't have the information of what they did during their turn but I can't be [ __ ] bothered to watch especially with like like I said like part of the joy is reloading and trying a new you know like you're one thir through a combat encounter and you're like oh I could have shot the chandelier up there I didn't even notice it and you restart it you're like now I have to watch the robot cast all his Buffs again and now I you know like it's it's just it's it's too much and this game is so brilliant it's the one thing that is like really really gets under I would also like to ask for midnight Suns to have that but we can get to that in a second I guess yeah yeah just like a skip combat thing um but the to to what's special about this game I think that one thing I didn't mention is that um in the the romanceable NPCs the level of depth to that go that that goes to was unbelievable to me uh not only in the way that there were necessary story events that popped up that then were like oh but you romanced this character now they have something unique to say about it because they're like your partner and they're invested in this story beat but also like totally unnecessary non-plot related like little I won't spoil this because it's so beautiful but there's like a side thing that has nothing to do with the story that you can do with your romanceable partner if if you have one and it's it's just it's literally just to Deep your relationship with them and just like explore your Dynamic with them and I it just I think the thing that feels it youing with your with your cousin there too and then you kiss your cousin who what game are you playing no he's just there he's third Wheeling okay um I I feel like the thing that makes this game special is that it is so expansive uh and so like so expansive in the broad range of possibilities of actions that you can take at any possible moment and different paths that you can take that it feels like like often times when you're playing a video game with open Choice what that really means is like oh do you do the good are you the good guy or the bad guy do you go left do you go right and to me this yeah yeah exactly exactly and this game to me feels like it is like it's dissolving the boundaries between the obvious paths it feels like there are so many paths to take that it it starts to become like realer to me because it feels like I can express myself in a way that is not like bin or like there's three obvious choices it feels almost infinite so what do we want to what do we want what award do we want to give this almost infinite gaming experience I mean it does tie into immersive Sim but I feel like it's like I feel like that to me communicates like uh lighting the oil on the floor on fire and I'm trying to think of like right is there a narrative version of of the word immersive the phrase immers of sim I'll I'll also just mention that I think it's funny to call it best immersive Sim as well because if anything no clip has made too many documentaries about immersive Sims and we love immersive Sims and the problem with immersive Sims is that nobody [ __ ] buys immersive Sims but balers Gate 3 that's how we save the genre the most popular game of the year at imers s exactly exactly if we [ __ ] change the script on this one and we say Hey you know why that game was great well obviously it was because it was an immersive Sim you know immersive Sims are the the hot new [ __ ] like everyone should make you know the way everyone's like will people make games like balers Gat like nobody's gonna make a game like balers gay because Larry are like making these like RPGs that are so but you know what people really liked a lot of immersive Sim juice you know by Design three coming to a16z games check it out January 2024 uh well we've referenced that show way too many times in this one episode already we've hit our limit um they'll pay out now because we did that um imers but if we call it best immersive Sim then it's like exactly yeah we changed the narrative yeah it broke the curse it's like when the r won they broke the curse of the Bambino that was like a hundredy year curse where they couldn't win the World Series it's the why can't I remember the guy with the sock it's the killing it's the Kur chilling of video games although it's the Kurt chilling of RPGs that would be kingdoms of Amal or Reckoning though say he made a video ever yeah exactly yeah yeah this is okay it's like the immersive immersive Sim cursebreaker award or something it's like imersive Sim something call always call it best immersive Sim or just best immersive Sim cuz then because then we're just doing then they were we're we're doing it we're not say it would be yeah it is yeah first we we did best of ver in here we go how I will say there's also something funny about this game being so superlative and then we give it like a very grounding award like it's not you know because we could say like oh my God this game is best RPG ever or it's you know it might be but if we just say like oh yeah it's a really good immersive Sim it's like calling it like best you know uh virtual date game or whatever best you know best dream dating Sim dat dating Sim exactly best dating Sim or something that funny too do we feel all right about for the moment yeah yeah I think it's pretty solid yeah I think maybe we Circle back to it and toss the ball around a little bit later but that sounds pretty good I'll take the green off of it on our little document here um Marvel's midnight Suns or midnight Suns or whatever it's called um this is a game Jesse suggested and it kind of crept in as our number 11 because this game technically came out last year but it came out mid December and God knows any game that came out in mid December or really early December at this stage uh is sort of in uh the you know no man's land of game of the years so uh bringing it over here seems like the right thing to do it's also a game that people have really liked it's also a game that seemed to not sell particularly well and a lot of people at Fair access including Jake Solomon have left the studio uh since it's released I don't know if it's necessarily connected or anything but um it seems a game that unfortunately maybe didn't do as well as uh as the game design sort of deserved as maybe a strong word to use in the world of you know the free market but H certainly there's a lot of love for this game and and and uh yeah it's it's cool to talk about it for sure so Jesse H so who else has played this by the way I've played a bunch of it Frank has jery I played a few hours yeah you played a few hours cool Jesse let's go with you first because you were the one who played it last year we're was talking it up last year um what is it about Marvel's midnight Suns you think is uh special worthy of it getting on this list yeah I mean so last year Frank holey our own Frank holey was the one who was uh most excited for this I remember gigabrain noclip enjoyers may remember me saying uh I'm not excited for that game it looked dumb as hell who wants cards in a Marvel game and then I played Marvel snap and then I played this what a fool I was what a fool I was uh Marvel's midnight Suns is for those who uh have no idea is a Persona style uh card battler I cannot believe in like tactics game it's the weirdest mixup of genre and and aesthetic and property that I think I've seen in a very long time like there's no reason that this is a card battler tactics game from the people who made XCOM that just doesn't feel right to say uh but it is and then it's also a game about it's it's mildly a dating Sim with it's so strange uh basically it feels like a sort of there was an ERA in the PlayStation 2 where you could just make a Marvel game about [ __ ] anything like and they were just handing the the licenses out like candy at Halloween and it and and just weird stuff came at like not even Marvel kind of any game like licenses for video games would just like do whatever you want and for that you got a lot of crap you got a lot of 2D Platformers but then you also got sometimes you got really weird things where you're like why did someone make this and it was usually because they made a game it didn't sell or they got halfway through development ran out of money and then convinced somebody oh if we get if we make it a wolverine one of them then maybe people will buy it and they crammed it together and this kind of feels like one of those games it feels like it came out of like a different era of development or something yeah no that that's exactly what it feels like I I do wonder if there's some interview they've done where they're like I swear we weren't making you know insert this XCOM for mobile and then they were like what if we gave you a billion dollars or Not Enough from the sounds of it uh like so this game is half you're playing as a new character who's been inserted into the world of the Marvel Universe in what is effectively uh a giant old church where you're hanging around with some of the biggest characters in the Marvel Cinematic at least world uh Iron Man Captain America Wolverine Scarlet Witch shows up for a little bit the Hulk sometimes like just characters that are are so in the uh current culture so huge you get to just hang out with them and like get a drink but not their uh Hollywood versions yeah which I I think is kind of like the Avengers game Crystal Dynamics made I think it's a problem maybe so I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that Marvel's Midnight Sun uh with the character specifically achieves two things one it is making a game that is not trying to be a Marvel Cinematic Universe Style game I understand that if it's quippy Marvel has always been quippy the comics have always been quippy that has not stopped it's never changed maybe they got a little less like funny quippy and got really like sad and emo quippy in the late 9s but they've always been quippy so they've they've achieved that here I feel like and the other half of it is that while they're not using the faces and the and the representations and the Really the styles of the characters from the movies um they're using a a lot of the best voice actors for video game versions of these characters and cartoon versions of these characters that people really love Steve Bloom is Wolverine to me I don't really like he is the bub guy like I don't see anyone else playing that character the guy who plays um Captain America is the person who voices uh BJ blaskovich in uh the new Wolfenstein games like oh really yeah which I mean he's basically Captain America right I mean if you think about it uh so like they have and I could keep going but I'm not going to waste much but it's they have a lot of really good performances and versions of these characters well written versions of these characters and the new characters in the Marvel not in the Marvel Cannon but like that we never really see like magic uh and Nik minoru and like Doctor Strange is I feel like a really good version of Doctor Strange uh compared to the one that you get from Benedict Cumberbatch like so I just I really appreciate the versions of these characters that they bring to it obviously if you don't care about Marvel there's there's the end of that who cares that's where I'm at I is that no go ahead yeah yeah I think that's where I'm at is the is the and it was the question I had beforehand was like can I play this game if I do not care about these and I don't and I've tried over the years to and I like comic books and graphic novels I've never cared about superhero stuff only only anti-s superhero stuff like you know your obvious stuff like Watchmen and things like that where it's clearly like trying to you know it's not it's not saying you like anime and you only watch gibl movies it's like do I yeah yeah exactly you know you've seen acuro once or whatever I think it's so to me I was like can I enjoy this game without any of that [ __ ] and the answer is like kind of um I really like the game the combat in this game I like all that sort of stuff I like picking the missions I like preparing for the missions I like upgrading the people so the way this game works is that you are you going off on missions you're in this castle and there's all this like extra bits Persona Styles I got the vi I haven't played much Persona games but I got the vibe that it was that type of thing where you're spending time with people if certain amount of time during the day they go to bed after you've done things so you know you've only got a certain amount you can do um and then in that in that area there's like things like there are groups you can hang out with or there are you know even just things you can find around the that little open world area around the what is it church or whatever Mansion or whatever it is you get it's got like X-Men Vibes of like where all the kids get taught kind of thing um and then each room has like in XCOM sort of fashion you have all these different rooms that have um different uh you know you can upgrade here or you can train here or you can get you know do research here and all that sort of stuff all that stuff is played out in third person so you're carrying you're controlling a character who's walking around that world which if you're coming at this as a fair axis fan is a little bit jarring at the start you're like oh it's not just like XCOM it's not menu based it's like I'm walking around um which means some of it can feel a little fetch questy at time especially in the opening hours where you're they're doing a lot of tutorial iing which is kind of NE necessary I guess um but then the combat it has all that interesting interactivity that I was talking about balers gate to a certain extent you know it's obviously not that deep or anything but there is loads of like the combinations of um different cards you can use for Powers the interactivity within the world it's like a simpler chess board than what you get in Boulders gate but it's a lot of like lateral thinking how you're going to combine uh players how you're going to kind of in a XCOM way how you're going to like work with where the enemies end up being on the next turn like where they are on the game board space kind of um there's a lot of like thinking there and I enjoyed all that I enjoyed the you know getting preparing for the fights and picking my crew based on who I thought I was going to fight or interesting combinations and then the fights themselves were were really cool as well but I cannot tell you how many cut scenes I skipped I'm so sorry like just and it's it's not it's just I don't give a [ __ ] I just that type of dialogue and that type of stuff has never appealed to me and it's not the game's fault it's just not for me no totally fair I am a self-proclaimed Marvel hater uh so I was very very very skeptical going into this but on the other hand Jesse and I have the same brain and he can always predict how I'll feel about a game with like 98% accuracy at least uh and the gameplay of this game is re is really really fun I was actually having a blast in spite of myself because throughout the combat you also get the quips and so there was like there was the devil and the angel on my shoulder where like the the devil's like oh it's pretty fun you could like throw the Rock at the guy like oh yeah I want to throw the Rock at the guy and then Doctor Strange like Doctor Strange does a move and then he's like put a wrinkle in my cape and I'm like just shut the [ __ ] up and just let me play the game I in fact I think here's a here's maybe they do this later Jesse you can tell me if if I'm accurately predicting a character Dynamic that will emerge but I think this game would jump up two letter grades for me if blade was constantly bullying everyone when they quipped so like if if Tony Stark was like what you don't recognize me and blade would be like no one [ __ ] recognizes you man shut up like I would just I would love if blade was just like the cter if he was my avatar blade too blade was good fun too blade is cool yeah I mean blade is a great character and like yeah I should make a video game about just him aive Sim I think actually be the person to lead it I feel like yeah uh but I like I I've despite the fact that I don't have any attachment to these characters there was a moment where like I was playing with blade and there you know I got a card that was like this is the blade ability and he like uses his guns and like this is like the blade blood ability and it does this and I was like oh that's pretty cool that's actually pretty cool and like it won me over in some respects that I did not expect uh and yeah it's just like the battle system is really good it's a mechanically it's a very fun game and I think if the theme was literally anything else I would probably play this entire game yeah that's I feel similar and that's not a knock against that I think it deserves to be on this list um I think a personal taste thing I want to be very clear Personal Taste and I want to say the same thing it is I know that I knew coming into this that I that I didn't there are parts of that I wasn't going to probably like unless they stepped out of the way and they largely don't but the game is so good that it didn't stop me from playing it and I also don't think that those things are handled badly if I was into that like if this was if this was the exact same game and it was said in like the halflife universe or like I don't know and what else do I like sports if this was Formula 1 or if this was football or if this was you know lots of other stuff I I I would have liked it and in a way I'm Max for shopping card that's so sick exactly yeah I can't wait yeah got late break into this move um yeah and like there were moments like that like blade I found very funny um and some of the some of the people I don't know who the [ __ ] they are there was like younger kids like some of them were good f magic and Nico yeah join yeah there was a club I joined with them which was very funny I thought it was there was a there were some parts that definitely made me smirk and laugh but not enough to have me you know constantly running through that teleport was a bit boring I was like you just [ __ ] let me get into the mission but then magic says he portal bad Russian that's the thing exactly it just forces me to engage with the game's lore which is you know I feel bad for all the writers and stuff who did great work on this who I'm sure Marvel fans really enjoyed it it's just not my it's just not my C but um yeah um yeah super great uh the combat stuff the they're just so good at making those games like and I wonder like how much budget they had for this they probably squeezed a lot out of the stone on this one um just because they're I just imagine the team size of fair AIS and the type of subset they're working here where it's like a strategy game for Marvel fans I just imagine they probably didn't get a huge budget um but I think they the game looks good and runs well and has a lot of different there's a lot of different environments you know what I mean like that you go through at least at the start um and uh yeah it doesn't feel cheap or anything it feels like very polished too yeah except for the faces they don't look like like where's Scarlett Johansson why why can't yeah that's probably a voice acting issue more than you got to because then you got to pay them to do the you know you got to pay for the pay for voices yeah that cost like 10 times more than the budget of the game to get all those people right I I the thing that it was reminding me of is that and I we're sort of noticing Marvel have a bit of a like a downturn in 2023 just across the board with the movies of a lot of them have tanked um the this game seems to have not done amazingly well even the Avengers Crystal Dynamics game I think there was I mean there's lots of reasons for that as well the sort of life service element to it the everything else that that was a game that felt like it was closer to what to the being an Avengers movie but didn't have the Avengers that was more kind of egregious I guess um but I am starting to wonder if like actually the entire point of those movies than why they were not the entire point but a large part of why that stuff was popular was because it had actors that everyone liked and knew and you were watching the movie after movie after movie and then the final the big finale was all of the movies you'd watched for years it was The Ultimate Game of Thrones with meets Breaking Bad Meets arrest of development meets The Sopranos ending and then once that happened nobody gave a [ __ ] it was like great the thing happened cool anyway let's watch something else now it's been yeah so I wonder if we're like you know there was so much of that was actually the mainstream popularity I mean not like hardcore comic book people but like the sort of like oh this 8 billion doll franchise stuff was more to do with that than it was to do with um any rewarding depth or anything and this game might have got caught in the crossfire I have no I don't know but yeah I mean this is definitely more of a hardcore Marvel fan kind of thing I mean the people who worked on it from what I've seen and I think Jake Solomon has talked about in the past like real Marvel big Marvel heads like they don't just watch the movies they don't just like I like when Tony Stark is Robert Downey Jr like they like the character and they like like the lore and the world and all the weird stuff so this is definitely a game for people who are Marvel fans like capital F fans Not MCU fans not like I kind of like them sometimes I read one when I was a kid um so I think yeah it kind of is sitting in that middle point of like it is the end of the era endgame happened even I was like and I only watched them sort of like out of obligation at a certain point I stopped caring about them after uh Age of Ultron but like once they got to that that was kind of the end of the story there was nothing more to tell it was it where we go from here how do you get bigger than the conclusion of of any game like so but then this is coming out and it's like it doesn't appeal to those people it appeals to a subset of people who are a fan of a thing that like a lot of people don't read Comics anyway and then you also have to like a card battler game like the weirdest cross-section of people the vent diagram for this game had to be incredibly small uh somehow I fell in it and for whatever reason thought I wouldn't um so luckily it was a perfect thing for me I do really like this gameplay system and I hope far axis gets to do something with this multi-layered very deep system of gameplay and interactions between card attributes that you can apply to them you can have this perfect way of playing that you want maybe you want Iron Man to be the kind of character who hits multiple targets or you want him to be the kind of character who hits one target really hard uh and then you want like these characters are support characters or maybe they're not like there's so many options you can have for each character their card sets how they interact with the other characters you bring along with them and then there's quests that like you have to use these cards you have to bring this character and then you got to like play around that I just there's so much to it that I yeah you guys are half joking but I really would like to see what is the Star Wars version of this game what is the DC version of this game like it sucks to attach properties onto things well no I think DC could you had me and you lost me me and you lost okay sorry I'll say a weird thing again instead of a thing that I like uh I don't know [ __ ] give me The Robots version of the game you could plug plug Harry Potter into this very easily totally please don't let me kill Nazis with cards no no you got to be one of the Nazis who uses a card if you're doing a World War II yeah I mean then it's like Hitler Youth Mansion is why you're in sure you know no I want the opposite also I I had a realization about about like Marvel's flavor of dialogue from playing this game um and what I realized is I've always thought that I hated quippy dialogue and I do don't get me wrong but what I realized is I think this I think I discovered a rule uh if you I think it depends on whether or not I think the character is cool if they're allowed to Blade gets away with it CU because exactly because if like a doofy little kid in spandex is like this day just keeps getting better and he's being ironic because things are getting worse I'm like shut up dude but if Bruce Willis says it and he's in the vents and he's stepping on glass and shooting people in di he's like State keeps getting better I'm like oh that's awesome so I think I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the writing and I think it has everything to do with how cool I think the character is somebody is one of my favorite things about blade we're just talking about blade this whole time one of my thing about blade is that blade has like his moves are obviously a lot of them are like you know bleed and damage over time right and he has so he has like one you get your heroic up to a certain level and you can do all those badass moves which I really like that system because like it's a very good like oh I'm [ __ ] I've really my team is at its end but I just got my heroic all the way up to like whatever six or something and now I'm going to get Miss Marvel to just blast everyone's pieces with one this one card but one of the things I love blade has like one of his moves is like he can attack three people and it's like click click click as long as they're close to each other and he goes he does like a whole blade thing and if there's a box he'll jump over the box and do it and Cha Cha Cha and then another one is he just shoots a guy like he just and but he takes out his guns in like this very like elaborate way and like the world map we should explain is like basically nothing they're in these you're fighting in sort of open areas for the long long longest time and there's like objects in the room you can like hide behind the bit but like it's not like XCOM where like you know you can get they can walk around you and it's you're not you're not doing a lot of like defense like that like you would in XCOM where like cover is the most important thing in the world basically so he's just like two squares away from somebody and he gets his guns and he does this real elaborate like [ __ ] like gunata thing and it just shoots somebody it's just like I love how silly that all looks it's a good time blade rocks is the I think the bottom line for me is that he has an amazing line and it's like it's something that happens if you get into the character stuff if you so don't I guess but like there's character stuff in that that it's really fun one line he says and it's just I think about it all the time uh obviously Blade vampire Hunter he says it multiple times throughout the game my concern as always is vampires and he says that like multiple that rocks cuz it's blade yeah and he's like else that would be so dumb and it's awesome cuz it's blade he's a cool character I really really like blade yeah you must feel weird killing people who aren't V Empires that must be different it's all right it's F yeah leave all my silver bullets at home um midnight Suns I didn't take down any names for this I got to take down some words for this what do we like about this we like it's we like the combat it's a genre [ __ ] genre mashup genre it's doing a lot definitely sounds like it deserves the most for its combat uh and the way that it adds like depth to the cards the the deck and how you play them and it's like respect the swing like it's a big swing it's it's a real it's what is it about this game that makes it the fact that I enjoyed it despite its IP or two I say the if I was [ __ ] on it for that you know I know that's why I've been shying away from that cuz if I was going to give it an award it would be like the I can't believe I like this award because it's so it's so good it like wins me so good mechanically that I was like this is like un the UND ibly good game award uh but that's just me undeniably good wins you over yeah it's a good use case for that though for like good game design can get over just about anything yeah you know what I mean like hey Frank did you like this game at all yeah when I when I broke my elbow in like may I needed a game I could play with one hand and this was a game I bought like during a holiday sale but just like never had the time for and uh yeah for like week or two weeks where I was just on pain medicine and like couldn't do anything I like got so hooked on this game and like one of the defining features of it is like the flow of it is so good where it's like you have these battles maybe they're like 20 minutes to an hour if you're doing Story Mission and like when you're in those battles it's satisfying like building up the combos like there's a ability if you kill someone with a quick card you get your card turned back and it's became a game of like how long can I keep killing people until I I lose my turn and I got I like I like tweaked my set so hard to where I could do fullon missions without ever giving up my turn and that's fun and then you finish the mission and then it's like all right level up these abilities level up these cards level up my heroes turn in the because there's a bunch of like background things like hero Ops where you send a a a character out to do a mission and like in two days he brings back more cards what whatever these like you know things are but uh it immediately wanted you to go back into the do the next mission it was so addicting to where then I stopped doing the story and started just grinding all the side stuff it's it's so good and like yeah I would say like half the roster I love like I love Wolverine I love blade I didn't know who the hell magic was and and like she ended up being the coolest character she was cute but she she had a bunch of gathering abilities and AOE things so she was so fun and also like I think the only character I didn't like playing as was Doctor Strange but every other character like even Captain Marvel or what all these other characters no matter what dynamic his story missions will force you to play as as random groups every grouping was super fun so like yeah and again like I like like comic books but like I don't care so much about the Marvel stuff like I love image I love other stuff but like yeah that the IP does yeah as we kind of said the IP does not matter the game itself is so good and it's just like yeah okay sure it's the superhost stuff but like yeah regardless it's it's just it's very satisfying it's very fun and it it is very addicting the idea of Frank blasted on oxycodone playing this game is probably the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life I love that I love that so much and I don't I I only need to explain cuz I laughed when you said I broke my arm and I was on pain pills and then I laughed in an opportune moment it's because the idea of you [ __ ] up on pain pills playing this game is like it just brings me joy I was so cranky and miserable but it was it was like you know what I can I can hang with this and I was playing it like eight hours a day and you like rubbing your face being like this game is [ __ ] fun man like just sorry all right I'm moving on yeah yeah um yeah like surprisingly good combination or or is there like a combination that like you you think wouldn't could go work work well together but it does the peanut butter and pickles award give it that yes yeah exactly like the sweet and sour award sweet and sour or sweet and salty or yeah sweet and yeah sweet and sour yeah or like um no I was going to say like the like team team attack or something like when they people group up but that doesn't really it's like it's not quite that it's but there are different elements that are combining in a surprising way I think like a combination like is there a candy where you get like 15 different flavors in it so you're kind of like the Everlasting Gob stop what's that jelly bean bag you get where there's one bad one or a bunch of bad like Jelly Bellies oh yeah yeah yeah the Jelly Belly award the jelly they're like Bo what if something's bad but has good parts or just or just the variety that's in there it's like it's the let's go back to it let's go back to in the second half we'll take a quick five minute break uh us here over here it'll just be a short one for you uh and we'll be back in a minute see you thank you for listening to this podcast and thank you to your incredible battle pass patrons who have been with us some of them for a long time some of them new try and see if you can tell which is which thanks to our good friends Harry Flanigan Battle Royale games Arno Richard Matson James Brown Jason Drury Mark roas Ryan Cobb tuer Morgan Crimson cyclist Sven Hoster Tim Robinson farest puit Eric Hamilton Schneider camet Alex scarp wouldn't it be weird if that was the first time he was on here and I did that for no reason that' be weird Alex sharp Alex guche George Dakotas Jacob goder toir tiev and ryson thank you all so much for your support without them none of this would be possible they also secretly told us which games to get on the list so if you don't like any of our games we put on here blame them it was mostly talker Morgan okay bye it's about to get Allan woke up in here that's a b Saga Anderson more like Saga can't get a manderson got him wow got him we're coming in on that that's how we're coming in off the break that was really good all right yeah we're we're in the flow Let's uh let's keep going hello everyone and welcome back to the final chapter of our game of the year podcast as you can tell we're getting quite mad over here it's all falling apart uh just like our good friend Alan Wake which we'll talk about now Alan Wake 2 the sequel nobody knew they wanted I think everyone wanted a new remedy game but I don't know if any of us really wanted another Alan Wake and I like Alan Wake was fine when it came out in 2006 six is it that long ago no maybe it was 11 I thought it was like 13 or something I'm I'm in denial about how old I am Jesse yeah good point 2010 okay we're in the middle also before we get started rest in peace James mcaffrey today a voice actor for Max Payne and Alex Casey oh right and we two yeah passed away today like five hours ago as of recording or well we found out five hours ago as a recording there you go yeah it's probably two weeks ago when you're listening to this so um uh there you go well max pain and considering there is a connection there remedy working on some type of Max pain um uh uh project at the moment with surely Rockstar with both hands on their shoulders on that one since they own the IP Alan Wake 2 a uh game that you know perhaps wasn't much of a surprise that it ended up being so well received and so good considering remedy's recent uh turn of form with control and everything um uh the sort of Remedy Cinematic Universe all coming into power at this very moment uh Alan Wake 2 who's played the most Alan Wake 2 not that having played the most is the most think Jesse and I have both completed it Frank how much have you played I I finished I think all the Saga stuff but didn't get too far in the Allen wake stuff that'll happen with the Allen wake stuff like Allan sleep uh yeah we'll try not to yeah I play I played a good bit not not I played a lot right at the start um and then uh I have not played I've probably definitely played the least of everyone here I would say I'm less than halfway at this stage um we'll try not to be I mean it's a hard game to spoil because it's so [ __ ] weird but it's like we'll try and and be as a um as possible about what happens in this game um uh but yeah it's uh mechanically there's there's certainly a lot to talk about um who wants to go first then Jeremy you did on the last one Jesse do you want to Le the the sure way on this although you did with midnight Suns as well but let's go for it I'll toss the co I'll toss the lens cap can I take it Jesse give it to Frank he wants it give it to Frank oh Frank no Frank you go go I think I'm the biggest remedy fan boy here I love remedy like even starting from Max pay uh I even played through Quantum break at launch on a shitty xbx one sorry uh that original console sucks but doesn't matter how good your Xbox one is that game ain't great no no uh I absolutely control was the game like the the game of the year whenever that came out like that control was the game where like I just took days off of whatever I was doing and like you know I'm just going to play this game and I I binged it in like three days absolutely loved it um I really liked Allen wake one even when it came out I love that it is tingling with Stephen King uh and noish influence and um yeah when Allan Wake 2 got announced I was like cool new remedy game I'm super in and then I started playing Allen wake 2 and I was a little like ah this I don't it's not 100% cck like this is cool and I know it's cool but like doesn't feel that fun what's what's going on here and like it was a game I had to acclimate to and like I'm eager to hear all of Jeremy Jeremy's takes on it but like the thing I absolutely respect in Marvel is like I mean I guess the term is like trans media storytelling how much it kind of like immortality how much it Blends so much so many genres of art into one single medium of video games because there's so much liveaction stuff clearly like writing is like just such a huge part of it but even like the radio voice acting element of it also there's commercials and like there's so much material in this game that it's like something where it's like okay I can't quickly dismiss this I got to like get into it and then when I came back to it like a week later I like slowed down and was like okay actually let me actually like comb through and look at all the details pick up all the newspapers and read it and then I started playing it like at a much slower pace and started appreciate it more um because yeah at first I think I was just coming off a Resident Evil 4 remake so it's like yeah let's go let's blast people it's like oh wait wait I am like getting so lost so confused and um even over the weekend like throughout this whole insane month for me I took a Saturday off to be like I'm just gonna lay stay in my bed and play video games and I think I played like a solid four to five hours of Allen wake too and as I said I kind of like solely focus on the Saga stuff and that I really enjoyed whereas the Allan Wake portion kind of again I'm not someone who I I do not enjoy puzzles in video games and that's one that's very very silent hilles puzzles very like oh what the hell oh I really got I mean there's also puzzles in this game where I had to get out pieces of paper to write down so I appreciate that like oh this is like this is this is this is Art articulate this is Advanced um but still the fact that there's a remedy game that people are hyped on that people are jumped stoked on uh I'm I'm I'm always going to be a champion for this company and I also adore or Sam Lake like it's a whole massive team that works on this but I love that also Sam Lake himself is in the video game um as Sam Lake he's yeah as a as a as a I so I ended up watching the xfiles a bunch after starting this game because he's basically like there's like a molder and Scully version of them I feel like is the Saga stuff where it starts off um and yeah he's very he's very good as the uh the cop in that stuff um yeah I feel uh yeah just all that stuff like there is such a it's very funny because like Max Payne one was like clearly a detective Noir that he wanted that they wanted to make that they made as a video game but in many ways could so easily have been a movie and and at that stage even like that game was even doing stuff like all of the cutscenes were the comic book pages in Max one and then you levels like the dream sequence that were non- combat and this stuff was like pretty Advanced for was 2001 I believe max pay was um and then the fall of Max pay similar type of thing but like as they've clearly been in the sort of like trans media mixed media multimedia space for a while like Quantum break was you know sort of a very commercialized version of that but it was still impressive that there was this video game and this TV show that were running at the same time um that you could like play as you watched it was just like who the [ __ ] does this but like they clearly have such a great um desire for that and I think as a result what you got was kind of a a game at least I think Quantum break was maybe the sort of the low point of this scurve or something where you got a game that wasn't a great game or a media aspect of it that wasn't a great version of that you know what I mean it was like fine like even Max Spain like even the comic book pages and that were kind of even for the time we like it's really cool that they're doing that but it's like you know they're not great they're like it's cool whatever you know and as they've gotten over the years they've just gotten better at all this [ __ ] and now Ma Allan Wake 2 is just like everything's well produced like the the the film stuff is well produced The two types of game that are in this game are well produced the radio stuff's well produced the graphics look good the it runs really well the combat's good it's just like they got now they're good now they not they weren't bad before but now they're they've such competency across the board in terms of this stuff that it's it's just great it's just so fun to be a able to play a game that is made by people who have been in many ways similar to laran on on RPGs just like chipping away at the same piece of marble for years and years and now they're just experts at at a at a weird subgenre that they largely invented themselves you know like that's why we just call these things remedy games that's why people are playing Allan Wake 2 off the back of control you know it's just there shouldn't be a connective tissue I there kind of is in the grander themes of the game and whatnot and they've alluded to all that stuff but it's because people remedy make a very specific type of thing and people really like it that's weird yeah uh yeah uh I let me start with the Positive there are a lot of things I really liked about this game I think that uh or my so when I nominated this game I had played about eight hours of it my total playr was probably in the low 20s by the time I finish it's hard to keep track because when you reload it your play time resets um you did warn us you said the latter half of this game might suck and then Jesse also kind of whispered it in your ear that maybe you won't like the ending of this game so I'm very interested where this is going so earlier when I said Jesse and I are aligned 98% of the time that was foreshadowing because no I think Jesse accurately predicted that uh this game would lose me by the end uh okay I there there are parts of this game especially the Saga chapters and especially the first half of this game where I was like wow this is like my exact words last time were that this is kind of like if you continue to evolve from Resident Evil 4 and you continue push survival horror forward and attack forward and all these things it it evolves and Blossoms into Allen Weg 2 I no longer think that is true I the the combat feels unbelievable it like it is truly very very fun and the the few moments where it lets you like go guns of Blazing on stuff I think were some of the most fun I ever had uh conversely some of the moments that are really slow where you're just walking around uh just looking at stuff there's very early in the game uh by the lake there's just a house and it's just filled with like little glimpses of things that are vaguely paranormal related and it just walking around like reading notes and looking at [ __ ] and being creeped out and hearing diagetic noises I was I was fully in in fact I was like remedy make an X Files game and I'll play it I'll pay you a thousand dolls for it uh however um I uh God I'm just I don't I don't I want to talk about this game honestly and I want to share my real opinion I just don't like hate on things for like I'm not trying to hate on things for the sake of hating on things I'm being very sincere when I say these things I think for a game about writing I am shocked how much the story like fell apart for me and was like so unsatisfying so like frustrating and like self-sabotaging it felt like again I'm sorry I have to be honest about this I feel like so happy to be uh right and also sad to be right about something before to be right it is aame that is so concerned with and again I love all of the the multimedia stuff I think that stuff is brilliant and executed perfectly and it's like Pitch Perfect it's like some of the side stuff is silly which is a nice break from the internally serious stuff in the main story uh not always selfs serious but like in a good way usually uh but I feel like this is a game whose story is so concerned with themes and with ideas and with reference and with kind of Vibes that uh it feels to me like there isn't really a story worth telling at the core of this game and it hurts me to say that because early on I was so invested and they set up so many interesting opportunities and I was like I cannot wait to see the payoff on all these things and I feel like there was not satisfying payoff on maybe a single thing that I was excited about um and right and to the extent that there are moments where the story pulls a does a like writing faux paw and the story will reference the fact that it is a writing faux PA and I just think that self-awareness of bad writing does not absolve the fact that it is bad writing if you do a bad writing thing then you're like isn't that because like he's a bad writer you're the writer Alan Wake can be a bad writer but you're writing the story that Alan wi's bad writing is in and that story should be good like you I I just was so like baffled by some of the choices later in this game and it just felt like I was watching like a a like a like a where building a Cinematic Universe Victory lap where they're like get it cuz that's that and get it cuz that's that and I'm like you can do all of that but if you are not telling a story at the core of it that is a good story when you strip away all of the metatext when you strip away all the reference and the Cinematic Universe stuff that story at the core of it needs to be the focus and that to me this this game was like a uh like a like a big Hollow chocolate ball you get for Easter and you're like wow that's so much chocolate and you bite into it and it's just air inside right I yeah I feel like the um God it's uh sorry I actually lost my point there Jesse did you have something to say no I'm just laughing I just feel bad I feel bad cuz Allan Wake 2 and i' I try to bite my tongue a little bit when it comes to talking about this game cuz I know so many people love it especially in the no Cliff Community there's so many people who are super vocal about it I know I'm sorry I'm sorry everybody it sucks it sucks because like I know I know what people like about this I know what I liked about it I know you uh it sounds like the Allen wig sections aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea I really like those parts I like how weird they get I like the uh boor stuff that you can do with it there's like a mind Palace thing going on in this game um I like what they use with that I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit more but I just and it's at exactly the point that Jeremy started to fall off on it I just like I stopped liking it and it started doing more things that I didn't enjoy but what I did like about it was so just like monumentally good the kind of thing that I wish video games and Jeremy said this I wish video games did more of the stuff that Allan Wake 2 does well like that's why I think I like it so much like watch like like well without getting into specifics I like the mixed media stuff I like that it goes all in on presenting these stories and these moments in ways that video games just don't do and visuals and storytelling and and in a way that I um remedy is really the only person doing it like the the mixed media live action stuff using those cut scenes telling the story in that way and and what it offers to the world and and sometimes there are moments where I can't tell if I'm looking at live action or not sometimes I think it's the graphics because they've gotten so good at presenting their visuals in a way that is so appealing visually it's beautiful the way that they handle Grays is something that I don't think a lot of video games have done the Shades of Gray in a foggy Forest as you're walking through the streets of a dilapitated town that's falling apart in front of your eyes both literally and metaphorically there are very few video games that can capture that vibe that Essence that feeling in a way that I think alen wi 2 does and then it does like the most [ __ ] thing I've ever seen and I'm like what was the point of the last five hours like why were we doing any of that it's just so funny it sounds like it both it won both of you over with certain things like the story or the presentation or the whatever and then those same things lost you like they just cha like not the same things it's it's if anything it's the parts of it that you know those those elements bought us and sold us on the idea and then the things that they've been holding on to to like develop like Jeremy said like there's so many things they set up and then they just don't deal with and then they deal with the things that it's like yeah I either already knew that or like didn't care so like why are we spending so much time on that I feel like the amount of plot information that is conveyed in this game is like a fortune cookie I feel like there's so little inform I feel like like balers gate for example is such a great Counterpoint because there are there the story rhythms of balder's gate is it it sets up this big long Arc that you know you're going to be following for like a hundred hours but then it continually breadcrumbs you with these like one two five 10 hour intervals of story that then they deliver towards something they pay you off on it and I constantly feel like I was just waiting for Alan Wake to start uh start paying off on on questions that had asked and okay I need to ask you the ultimate question about this then because and this came up a bit with homebody right and this is the problem when you're making lynchy and [ __ ] is that to some people that that there's almost like a there's a blurriness here where you can hide or people may try to hide behind bad writing by saying it's Lynch and or try to be like oh you just have to interpret it or like oh I didn't have all my answer you know like what is molland drive or didn't have all my answers at the end of Twin Peaks or whatever it is and you're like oh that's you know you're supposed to think about it and all that sort of stuff and to a certain extent I think remedy have always had a bit of this like I don't think that the stories in their games I think they're always interesting I don't know if they always land and Allan Wake the first game in particular I always thought it was funny that that game seemed to be about a really like I don't know if he was a bad writer or if he was just took his work too seriously I think he took his work way more seriously than anyone who would read his books did but I never quite knew where remedy were on that you know what I mean I never knew if they thought that this was good or if they I used to find it funny he was dying all the time because I just I kind of thought of him as a character that was like in the game when I would lose he would die I always thought it was funny because I thought oh my God this guy who kind of sucks is having a bad time I don't think I was ever on Alan wake's side during Alan Wake and I don't think I I'm in this one either so where do you land with where do you feel about that I guess is that like the problem with this type of stuff is that oftentimes it's not really about the story it's telling it's about this other story and you're supposed to interpret it and Y yada y I don't have the verbiage to be able to explain how lynchy and storytelling works but you know what I mean like no I know exactly what you're saying I like I you know I I wrote like 30 page thesis papers on Lynch movies in film school I love that type of story like that's that is my [ __ ] uh I feel like the the thing that sets apart a story like that and give it doesn't necessarily need to have like a a literal payoff where at the end the narrator comes out and is like you see this is why it all makes sense but what it needs to have is it needs like silent Silent Hill 2 is a great example where at the end not everything is neatly tied up in a bow but it it punches you in the right way where you you feel it on an emotional level and Silent Hill too also has multiple endings uh and I I feel like no matter what ending you get experience has a some tootal uh metaphorical thematic emotional impact that is kind of the narrative payoff for it is is your your feelings about this story and where it leaves you at the end and and there also like there is very literal plot information at points in Silent Hill too that is conveyed to it like pokes through the miasma the The Fog if you will uh since he gives are so foggy uh and it gives you literal information and it it like it feels to me like that is that is lacking here and the the funny thing is this is kind of related to the storytelling Alan week to is that the the moments where I wanted to spend time in this world where like like a for example there's like a little cafe and there's like someone on stage doing like a little show to two people in the cafe really early on in the game in watery and it's just this little Side Story uh it's not even a story it's just like a little setpiece moment off to the side you can totally miss it uh I was streaming to my girlfriend she's like I can't believe I didn't see this it's so missable and I stood there for 10 minutes just like listening to the whole song going around looking around and stuff it's to me it's like um like in a rockstar game it has that but it's so much less tailored where like you can go and see people doing things but each thing is so it's there's so much game that it feels more duded to me where there like I'm not the person up on stage isn't a person I recognize and understand and have empathy with whereas this is so small scale and so micro that it felt like lived in like I was discovering this thing that was just happening however I was free to leave at any time conversely there are a million points at which this game forces you to sit and listen to people talk and there is nothing happening on the screen it's just like here's a person's face here's a person's face from a different angle and I was like it's so ironic that the moments where I want to sit and listen to things I'm free to go and the moments where I'm bored out of my skull I'm like forced to sit here uh and it it feels to me like the most interesting things about this world are not the story at the core of it and I guess that that's just like at some point you can't like pay off on the little side details in a way that is like a bombastic ending to the game and like it just didn't I don't know it just like the things I liked about this game were kind of like all of the secondary and tertiary side things and the world and the feel of it and investigating little side things but none of those were the things that it followed through on or paid off on it's just I feel like my experience of of Jeremy's experience of Allan Wake during these Game of the Year podcasts is the same experience that Jamie and or Jeremy who the [ __ ] is Jamie j Jeremy and Jesse had of Allan Wake too yeah like in the first podcast it like it was you were saying it could be your favorite game of the year it could have been this this this and it was and a lot a lot of it was probably because of like I'm yeah like a bad story or an unsatisfying A satisfying story can Elevate everything right even with the marvelous stuff we're talking about midnight Suns right satisfying right Marvel stuff wasn't satisfying to me or you but if it was something that we were personally uh subjectively that we enjoyed that we it would have elevated it right obviously that's a lot of what's going on in Wake to is like it's a really well-made game and then obviously all this stuff sort of elevates it but if it comes this is like the the [ __ ] monkey paw finger curling where like if it comes down then it takes it all down with it almost you know totally yeah there was sorry go ahead I was well I was going to suggested was is this on the list like well I okay so I was thinking a lot about this last night because I finished this game yesterday which also usually for me is like a premacy over recency thing usually when I finish a game the day prior it's like oh I like this too much I need to like reel it in and this is you hate it too much I don't know dude I like the the if I had to give this I have more things there are more things to address before we give this an award but at this moment like the gut feeling I have is that this is like the glimpses of a brighter future award because there are there are moments in this game where I was like oh wow this is this this type of game I can't believe this type of game exists the answer is no this is not that type of game and that was incredibly disappointing to me there there are moments where I thought I was playing a different game and I think that's the game I liked is the sad and true answer uh okay I do have to address I've been talking a lot about like storytelling I have to address one totally separate thing which is that like is this thing you like or don't like it's a thing I don't like I think the we got to say something nice eventually I've I've listen I got notes here and 90% of them are not positive and I've burned through all the good all right uh I think that the Allen W the puzzles in the Allen wake sections to me are they they feel I don't know I I don't want to say poorly designed but that is what felt what it felt like to me playing it there were a lot of moments where you hit a wall and the game expects you to just know intuitively to backtrack and I feel like that it is a tough thing when the game is using nonukan spaces and using dream logic uh and fear where sometimes you don't want to go back where you were because it was scary I would get to a dead end and I would just walk around and that there's also like there's a reality changing uh I don't it's the yeah we don't yeah we don't need to get into the mechanics but there's like things where you can change environments basically and it feels to me like most of what I did during the Allen WG sections was look around an environment until I realize there was nowhere to go and just say do I backtrack or do I just like cycle through all of the possible options look yeah you're doing the adventure game thing of like I'll just put the mouse everywhere and click everywhere 100% I was just looking for doors that didn't exist and then after 20 minutes I'd be like I guess I just go back where I came from and then something had inexplicably changed and I was like I don't what as the player how am I what is the what is the breadcrumb that is given to me to like know to do that or to like feel satisfied and being like I have to go back because there there are other games like half life Alex I want to talk about the specific part but there are specific moments in that game where you leave it environment to a safer position and you're like oh thank God I'm out of there and then the heel turn comes and the game's like uh guess what [ __ ] you're going back in and it's unbelievably satisfying this game never did that Alan Wick did not do that it would force me to just ex walk around mashing X on every door until I realiz nothing would open and then I just be like I guess I'll just go back and go back where I just came I guess Jesse Frank okay Alan Wake is it's been round two with Jeremy Alan Wake is now sitting in the corner it's got lots of bruises on its face Frank you're the cut man Jesse you've got the uh the you've got the you got to clean the mouth garden and what you know shout some words of inspiration into alen wake 2's face what what do we have positive to say about this game that apparently is one of our top 10 I like that it's super I like that it's super bold and weird and I want more games to be [ __ ] up and divisive and then it's it has a massive budget and everything is like yeah [ __ ] I would I would rather play way more games like alen w 2 than anything by Ubisoft I like I don't know just just [ __ ] like that P you're you're I did order it I already ordered it it it's 40 it was already for sale 40 bucks off so I order gaming baby he got he got his tub of blue paint he's ready he's jumping in I mean if I was to say anything positive about it uh it would be that it ended no I'm just kidding that's so mean that's so I'm joking it's it's really here's the thing s you're you're his manager man you're train rubing my shoulders give him a punch over there get him Jeremy uh he's got money on the other guy with the left uh you know no I think Alan Wake to I think when it's I said it's when it's doing things well it's doing them better than anyone else is doing and it's doing things that no one else is doing Jeremy complimented it for the same reason when you're playing the early parts of it when you're enjoying the world that they've created when you're walking through uh bright Springs or whatever bright Falls uh night Springs is the show brif Falls is the area um and like you're going through the world and they have these like realized places it feels like people live there it feels like they're not real people and it feels like a lot of them are just kind of existing but like they're there and it feels like a like a city I feel like I'm in a place and then when it's doing the weird stuff and with Alan wake's half of the game it really is the kind of thing that I don't think a lot of games are doing it's it has moments where I'm like who did they make this for there's no way they made this for a regular audience like why are they it's amazing I love it I'm sure there are tons of people who loved it obviously there are but so it feels like a game that has this huge epic literally and figuratively budget this AAA budget that it shouldn't have and it's spending it on things that don't matter to regular people who don't get involved in game worlds like this it has commercials that you're supposed to sit there and watch it has radio ads and like you know talk radio bits that like who's gonna sit there and listen to that live action things like who's gonna sit there and watch that and it turns out it's like most people who really like this game love that part of it that's like a lot of people's favorite parts of the game is Just experiencing we're not litigating off what other people like I'm one of those people I'm the other people it you I'm just saying it too so what is it you like what parts of the games that you enjoy all the things I just mentioned and I'm just saying other people because I'm just trying to make it clear that it's not just me I'm aware of a lot of people who who share the opinion I I just I really enjoyed those parts of the game I think when you are seeing those things hearing those things when I saw and heard those things when I sat down and watched 10 minute long things that you could like Jeremy said you could just completely ignore I was absolutely flabbergasted that they were allowed to and succeeded in doing these things in this game and I love those parts I really really enjoy them yeah I the weirdness the sort of Allan Wake puzzly all that sort of stuff uh like the production value that type of stuff right like the yeah the stuff that that wasn't like a necessary part of the that wasn't like oh okay go to this Quest the world that you got to inhabit and and the things in it that you got to see and experience yeah I think that it's it's such a that is one of that is probably my favorite thing about this game is that it feels the tone or the vibe or it feels to me like they're the the feel like we about Silent Hill in the previous episode when we talked about Allan Wake and how if a game just wants you to walk around looking at [ __ ] it needs to it needs to have such a level of confidence in itself and it needs to like fill out the world with sufficiently interesting and fully realized things that it feels like there is a world there to explore and I feel like what this game is doing early on is that like as you progress to the story and you're like oh like go to the sheriff station and then like meet SE Ando down in the basement I felt like I wanted to walk around the sheriff station and look at things I felt like I wanted to walk around the local in and like check all the rooms and stuff because this world felt like it was a world worth exploring and it felt like there was a confidence in the vision of this game that they they early on especially in the game I feel like this fell off later is that uh the game had confidence in itself to let the player Go free and confidence that if you were going to go into these weird little corners and weird little like hotel rooms and stuff there was little touches and a lot of this is aesthetic and not so interactive I guess the thing I'm confusing about is that you can like this game is incredibly linear not early on though that's I think that that's the thing that changes for me you're saying not early on early on in the game I think when you're in yeah yeah so to my point I like I know it is like you can't go and do loads of [ __ ] you can't go into every all these other buildings like they give you the impression that you can it's a really good like single play it's like half lifee or any of these games where it feels like there's a broader World they done a good job of like making it feel like there is a broader world around you but you're you're on a you're on a golden Power path for that whole all those already sections I agree I think that what it did early on was create the illusion that it was going to be the illusion of 100% in those in those localized environments where you can explore because you're right like you can't go into the random apartment the rooms are gorgeous they all that detail and all that stuff I it felt to me like those that I guess that's what I'm saying is that like those localized Pockets where it felt more fully realized to me it was communicating to me that this was a certain type of game that then it did not go on to payoff on it felt like you I mean like I I guess a lot of what I'm saying is that like this game is very good at at spectacle uh and I think that the the spectacle was hiding that like those those those pockets of depth and detail were more localized than it initially seemed and I think that ties into the original Allen wake uh Allan Wake one because Allen wake one was a game that had like a notoriously difficult development if I recall correctly and what happened was that there was like this open world more like survival kind of thing and they had to triage the game and cut a bunch of that [ __ ] out and make it more linear to finally releasee it this could also be the byproduct of the fact that you've not played many of these new red mini games cuz all these games are super linear I would actually argue that control is weirdly the one that steps out of that because it's more of a Metroid Vania thing whereas like Quantum break Allan Wake 2 like even the max pay games like all these games are very golden pathy yeah yeah it's not it's not a criticism of them I'm saying like I never got the impression earlier on in this game that this is going to be something that'll let you do anything except what they were going to what they wanted you to do next for sure but I feel like my na around that is actually of of like utility here because what it allows us is insight into as I began to play this game not having a pre-baked preconceived notion of what a remedy game is I saw the potential for a game that really intrigued and yeah that's what I'm saying I think you came in with X you didn't have you had no expectations of what this thing was so then you had your own expectations spoiled on you because you were thought it was something else whereas somebody who's played other remedy games likely wouldn't have had that because it's not that far outside of the way that they make those games you know what I mean yeah with weirdly enough I I find and I have not completed it or gotten further but if you guys are saying that the early parts are the more open parts then the early open parts of this game are way more more constrained than even control was and that's a game that at least for big chunks of it does lead you down a pretty deterministic golden path at least in terms of the quest design if not the world the world is weirdly Metroid Vania esque in a sort of a light way which there other games are uh I think I can like tie together what I was trying to express by saying that there there was a version of Alan Wake one that didn't get made that was more of an open world go do your thing and there's like survival stuff and they had to triage that into a more linear experience a more golden path driven experience and I think when they made Allen wake 2 instead of revisiting the idea of a more open world they leaned super hard into the golden path thing that they've been doing with these other remedy games from what I gather and to me Allen wake 2 was a game that what I think would have benefit and it's a totally different type of game and there's like a million reasons that like you don't make this type of game it's probably a much harder game to make right the game they made the way they in that way it's a different game but I I the there there are games like Mna Falls where you're misser of Halls is a shitty game don't let me I'm not saying it's a better game but a game where you're in a town it is an environment and they just say all right go off and figure it out I I think Alan Wake too if if the I think it would have enhanced all of the mechanics I think pin board where you're putting up Clues and stuff I think that would have been much more meaningful as opposed to just a perun thing where it's like I've collected them and I'm going to put them in the obvious spots now uh I didn't feel like I was being a detective likely I don't want to litigate against this game against some hypothetical one that we we would have enjoyed playing more like like there there was I guess what I want to get to on the meat of this is that that this game got put on this list because a lot of you liked it and now it sounds like there's a lot of negativity and I don't want to talk about extern journalistic reasons as to why that might be the case aside from the fact I I get to why you're saying with the this was a version of the game I thought I was getting and ultimately it fell short of those expectations and that was disappointing to me that's completely valid but what I'm saying is like does the game still get on the list then if you guys are saying that like Frank died it yeah he's happy he's he's hopped up on whatever [ __ ] oxycodone or whatever he gave him was that this game or no that was Midnight Sun he's he's just hanging out he's he's enjoying it it got me I stopped playing and started watching xile so I'm sure I'm the best person to talk about it um but do you still think it like because it sounds like most of what you guys are walking away from is kind of disappointment yeah maybe I think in a in a if I'm being totally honest I think that there were not that many games this year that I connected with uh and I think that in light of that this this this the elements of this experience that I valued I think are still laudatory and like worth highlighting and praising uh as a whole I I I don't know I feel I have very mixed feelings about this game the things that I like are worth praising but the things that I dislike they're very very strong how would both of you feel about giving the first half of Alan Wake an award B we two sorry um I mean that's funny uh but I I think you've got to give it to the whole thing right it's like it's the things that I liked about it persisted throughout the whole game it's just that the things that I didn't like about it got worse as time went on uh and became a bigger more glaring problem like Jeremy has said the smaller spaces like yeah you're right control is a video game that by and large is a lot broader it has a lot more spaces a lot more biomes than Alan Wake has like Jeremy's saying when you go into a room and control the best thing you're going to see is like a a a binder and like a piece of paper on a desk here like you'll see a woman knocking on a door and then go into a a different room and read a note about how hard her life has been with her partner and like stuff like that that doesn't matter but builds up this world creates this space gives you all this this depth and this Rich texture to a world that ultimately doesn't have any by the end of it to me and I guess to Jeremy like it feels like it does and then by the end of it you're like ah did it did it even matter like why were we doing all of this why did I care about this world so much if clearly the game was like ah who gives a [ __ ] like it ah it just it's so frustrating but again like as time goes on even at the points where I was having the least fun playing out in Wake 2 when I stopped doing the things that weren't fun and I started to engage with the things that I did enjoy when I watched the commercials when I read the the the notes when I read random things in the world when I sat and watched two NPCs have a conversation about things that don't matter but like did to the world I cared about it again it's the same reason I liked Final Fantasy 16 because I love when worlds are presenting themselves in this way where they care about what they're talking about where they believe in themselves and when the world and its characters feel fully realized that's what I think Alan Wake 2 succeeds in it's just it doesn't stick The Landing all the way is the only thing okay it's it's funny because it's like it's not dissimilar from the problem we have midnight Suns we're trying to come up with a name for that where like there's a lot well at least for me and Jeremy that's the case where it's and I and I I I feel like me and Jeremy sounds like we're both on the side of we don't necessarily want to color our the entire game with the obvious subjectivity of the fact that we just don't like Marvel [ __ ] it feels unfair a little bit in that respect whereas this feels a bit more like no this is what the game this is The Game's fault this is the game and and you guys are In fairness you you guys are singing from the same hbook you know this is not this is this feels like something that is May perhaps not Universal but like but seems like it's it's it's you're you're you're saying the same thing and that that there must be something to that for sure um so I don't know why do you what do you it's like the wheat and the chaff you got it all I think it's it's something about like the the details of this world and the confidence in its Vision I think that those are the things that intoxicated me and pulled me in and got me invested because like I said in a game where you're just especially Parts where you're just walking around looking at [ __ ] like if you don't believe in the if they don't believe in the vision of the game you'll never believe in it and if you don't believe in it you'll never be immersed and care about going around and just like reading notes and stuff so I think that like the yeah it's it's something about like the the the like the care that went into World building elements is what it feels like is is where this shines I mean the multimedia stuff is also praiseworthy it's just it's to me that felt like uh you know frosting on the cake not like a layer of the cake yeah I mean it's the confidence that comes through in that stuff to me like the the belief in its ability to to pull off what other properties have already done the things that Inspire them I mean this game wears its Inspirations on its sleeve half the time so the fact that they approached these things that are so beloved and did it in a way that clearly people who like those things really like what alen w 2 is doing I think speaks to their their skill as creatives for sure but yeah I it's hard to give an award for this cuz like I it's it's hard to what do we give it the the most realized world that ended up I know not feeling the most realized like it's like the just like something in every corner it's but it's funny because the corners are the best part of the game so it's like I don't know let's just give it the herald of light award let's just do that well for me like coffee is such a huge thing of this game even even on Sam L's Twitter like there's even a coffee world but the the thing that came to mind is boldest Flavor o oh that's pretty good actually that's not bad bold is the perfect word like take it or leave it it is like a flavor that alienated me but it had a bad aftertaste but like initially like a [ __ ] black coffee yeah right I like what they're serving here yeah and it is the they it gets to the point that like you know from what you guys are saying about other remedy games it sounds like they have a very particular I mean max pain one is the only remedy game I've ever played other than this so can't really you Haven even played Max Bain 2 no a It's So Dope that's so I love that game yeah so I think Bas flavor is really good FL taste after taste acquired taste we're not but we're not saying acquired taste either cuz this is not this is not a it's like unique taste is yeah it's boldest flavor I really like boldest Flavor Bold Flavor is pretty good yeah um or like a something blend like bold like a special special Boulders gate special bold is blend o blend blend yeah blend yeah it's like a blend is there a weird type of like coffee that people like what's the coffee from like and whatever no like a monkey that eats I think it's monkey oh is that guano yeah luak shits out coffee beans and then they make them into coffee right what if we give this game the award for the [ __ ] a monkey [ __ ] this out that's that's this game also known as cevette coffee is Prim partially of digested coffee cherries eaten and defecated by the Asian Palm seet all right we're getting off track here sorry um cop that's what I was thinking of yeah the only problem with bold this flavor is that I wouldn't necessarily know it was a coffee reference no I know but that's okay if it's not a coffee reference because it's like Allen W 2 isn't a game about coffee it just has coffee in it like it's just a good poll that Frank pulled for the connection give it a good title um B yeah like let's put let's put let's put it there for the moment we'll we'll we'll come back to it that is pretty good though you're right yeah yeah I don't think we're GNA get Frank how is like that [ __ ] ninja corner just he's just quiet in the background and he comes out with the [ __ ] kill shot he's like the intern that's a weird thing to say cuz you obviously not the intern here I I guess I would be uh but you're like the intern at the the marketing meeting who's just like anyone have any good ideas and you're like this one and it's like oh [ __ ] give this guy a raise hell yeah why don't we call it Myspace that's stupid we're calling it something else Facebook should we go back to the other ones then it's getting an award we're saying but it's a qualified award maybe in some way boldest flavor feels like a sort of I like bold's Flavor cuz you can interpret that in a couple of different ways actually you can dislike a bold Flavor as well it's true could we lock it in yeah yeah I love it I think it's pretty good all right good job everyone boldest flavor that's that's yeah that's that's dope nice one and thanks for fighting your Corners I wanted to push you guys a little bit there it was it was it was interesting to hear the the the um uh it was it was crazy how the Deep R got into that both of you guys were like sympatico with what you didn't like I wasn't expecting that at all and what you did like as well weirdly enough you were both kind of saying the same thing um I'm actually kind of more interested to play it now as well after you both talk about Flavor you got to go down saga's path there's like a okay awesome D when she does the got him [ __ ] got him dude just [ __ ] with me now um the uh okay so we got bolders flavor locked in so we have three left to do two of them have temporary names and one of them is uh open for discussion let's go to balers Gate 3 for a moment how do we feel about best immersive Sim in the cold day of light light of day if you will it's it's funny and fitting I wonder if we can do better it misses the The Narrative aspect of balers gate which is I would say its best element personally yeah it's like a it's like this like the fact that it is so uh not multifaceted what's the word I'm looking for that it can go it's it's like a it's like a hiking trail that has a million diversions on it like in my mind it is like a infinitely it's like indra's web in Hindu mythology it's just like this infinitely complex web of possibilities a reference as you guys are familiar with indra's web of course it's like Charlotte is there is there a pig in that one that makes friends with a spider of Charlotte's Web um there's yeah it's just like I don't know it's like a it's just so complex paralysis the video game there there there's an album by anamon Gucci called endless fantasy and like not to I just like that that's such a good springboard though but fantasy role playing game endless fantasy that's pretty good and it also expresses the opposite of Final Fantasy isn't it yeah endless fantasy why the joke no cuz I've a lot I I have a lot of friends who have done multiple playthroughs of this game and then they also want to do co-op playthroughs like there's so many different ways of doing it like I will say also something that's very funny with this game is like there's a mission where you're supposed to save like a and the oh whatever all right we're cut that all right believe it whatever well I I can make an argument for not believing that because there are a a ton of we're believing it let's move on right H Frank do you want to make that point again without yeah very early on the game there's like a story there's a mission you do and like I I was just playing it I didn't realize the consequence was so significant that when I told friends are like wait you did that like and I was like I don't what I don't know and apparently my playthrough is so unique because I'm the only one who's doing it this way and it's like oh I didn't even know that so uh there's yeah like Jeremy said there's so many different paths or Avenues you can do yeah we've we've already given Dave the diver the hidden depth award we got to another one that kind of sounds like you're going down that road as well um yeah this is a tough one it's I'm just trying to think of like like visual metaphors for for something with a ton of different paths or like tunnels running like a dungeon like some sort of dungeon yeah with a dragon maybe there's dragons in there D stuff with like with with dice rolls just like probability chance like endless odds like there's so many yeah yeah okay we've got we've got that one we also have midnight Suns which we have zero anything for at the moment and then we also have typ cast we have we have keyboard Warrior which I'm not mad about no it's not great MAV speaking teaches shooting is I was going to for for midnight getting closer to something I'd like but I still don't think that's very good either this this isn't signify like the gameplay element but with midnight Suns I was thinking Marvel's swan song because it really is like here was the last good thing from this Empire I don't know that's thewell Marvel that's a very 20 23 thing to say I think we're probably gonna get a lot more Marvel stuff next year it might last a test of time I do like trying to get Marvel in there though like a marvelous tactic or some super like that um the only good Marvel thing it's a Marvel that Marvel lasted this long oh yeah there you go uh sorry I don't mean to hate on Marvel I feel like the guy who hated spaghetti I don't even like it that much and it was like 1981 and it was like finally were done with all this Clintwood [ __ ] Cowboys weren't really like that at all they love coffee like Alan Wake oh man well I mean like the base of it the war is it we is it like best game of 20 the best Miss game of last year like whatever the way you want to say but it's like that is what that award is or why it's even nominated it was like it was the best game from the previous year I don't know how to tighten that but best best Miss game best last year's best overlooked G there it's tough for me to weigh in on this one because for me the thing that stands out is that I I liked it that I liked it in spite of well what did you like about it in spite of the fact marel a good how about we go there yeah no it's like uh it's it's it's so it's so rare that I play a uh a tactical RPG or tactical game or whatever you want to like a new combat system that feels like a clever new combat system that it's not XCOM it's not balers gate it's like doing its own creating a new niche in uh in like tactics RPG combat that I thought was very unique and interesting it's like inventing a new micro genre there was a game like F that came out was an indie game uh and I'm I'm stealing this from a a colleague of mine Henry um video games are bad is their YouTube channel um when we were playing it we were all kind of talking about it in in a Discord and we were like oh this reminds me of this indie game uh fights in tight spaces was the name of the game it's it's like a slightly grid based card action game it looks very similar to to midnight Suns I'm I don't know if there inspiration there but it looks very similar uh and he referred to it as uh in fight spaces and I was like that's funny that's a funny ha but of course you have to know the endie game for it to work but just i' just remember the mechanic how similar that is but you're right it is a it is a very unique uh gameplay system and the the way the cards play into things yeah how do you uh can we make like a like a poker joke like a good hand this is like a royal flush because it's Marvel more you guys talk the more I'm like just give it best imersive Sim I don't know if that's that's bal's gate oh what you oh sorry you guys talking about midnight timecast oh midnight Suns oh [ __ ] okay [ __ ] it's all right you've got balers gate on the brain trying to figure out fun I actually was no I have typ cast I'm trying I got keystroke in my M and now now I'm trying to think of like keystroke yourself stroke stroke your's an award stroke an award that's that's where I want to go yeah that's where you want to go he's turna go it that's where I'm I'm feeling chaos it's no leave the leave it on leave it patreon make you watch midnight SS okay yeah I I feel like midnight Suns has to be it it has to be about the mechanics because I feel like that's the thing that I don't know I mean Jesse this is this is your pick so I don't want to like Trump over it I was just thinking that like as as a group if we're working on a title together it's like the thing that we all have in common that we think was very about it the the other total copout one for this is what I sort of the was the original this gets on the list which is we say it's 2022 best game of 2023 yeah or 233 is best game of 2022 I mean I guess that's it's fine it just it's definitely a cop out yeah definitely I don't feel like coming up with an award but I think that's the reason it's on here so it's I think it's okay to that that's that's the reason I have thing oh okay yeah I feel like the only problem with that good game for many reasons I think the problem with that is that every year we'll run into the problem where any game released in December will only ever be able to be praised for being from the prior year not necessarily if it's good and it gets its own thing not midnight year just this year if we're stuck the midnight Suns award we're stuck with this or we're not sure yeah where where where it's qualified in some way boldis flavor totally killed that off though that was like yeah that was great that that did it that like made it iner like any of the like heat that was on on it the good and the bad it was like yep that works um so I don't know yeah I just had one on the tip of my a mixed hand is there any card thing about having good cards and bad cards play the cards you got just lost it oh my God I just had one and I lost it no oh man that sucks that was it that was it too it was really good one it was the one yeah give it no when to fold them cuz forx that's just sad no when to fold them oh God I'm sorry apologies to the team of foris f what I was going to say it's not as good as I it's never as good when you but I was going to say uh the the because it's tactical and it's about like positional awareness is the major defining factor of the combat for me I was thinking the he's right behind me is any award cuz that's really funny it doesn't really explain the mechanics but I do like that it's not it's not as good as I thought it was going to be but it's pretty fun is that a reference I'm not picking up on it's like the it's like the archetypal like quippy line where someone's like the [ __ ] guy showed up what an idiot oh he's right behind me isn't he such a Marvel there something funny yeah there is something like best Marvel game of the year there just no one car about Spider-Man 2 but midnight Suns Spider-Man it is also the underground Marvel game of the year that is true I for some reason all in in my head is there cuz it's like it's card based it's like you don't know if it's going to be good or bad and also this game has so much [ __ ] in it like there's so much like stuff like especially in the non-c combat house stuff whatever that's called AB is it called an Abby Chau Abby Abby makes sense that makes more sense yeah because we're we're dodging between church and school and house Abby AB the mid yeah exactly the F diagram let's give the Catholic guilty pleasure award let's give it the Dear Abby award uh Dear Abby yeah I do like Allin or like uh full deck playing with a full deck or something full deck oh full deck not yeah full deck stacking the cards stacking the deck stuff like that cuz you do kind of pick your deck is there a Marvel hero who's a shark no there is someone who uses cards okay which is what I thought you going to ask his name Gambit Gambit yeah wait why the sharkk okay yeah yeah right oh Cardman my favorite hero uh it's my favorite guy in South Park yeah stupid I love that thank you sh not a South Park [ __ ] card game writes itself I know yeah there you go i' play that how about that be a better theme for this game in my estim Park op on this yeah yeah um yeah playing with a full deck all in I'm trying to just think of card phrases I'm literally on a card terminology website check we're all just scrolling I know this is what great it's this fun podcast don't you enjoy this audio there's nowhere for us to run because this is the last one exactly this is when it gets this is when the rubber hits the road yeah full de full deck full deck award full full hand hot hand hot hand yeah suit what about suit cards have suits and yes yes yes yes Jeremy so smart you're right yeah something like that something something with suit tiest suit o tightest suits yeah there you go give it who's got the tightest suits in the game suit makes us sound like sex pack we're GNA you just didn't do the dating Sim stuff that's your problem you don't know yeah you're right actually yeah H like birthday suits birthday suit yeah it's like uh oh God there's no like good phras you just say like the suit is just a descriptor there's no like phrases follow suit uh sounds like an insult uh I do like the suit though they get super I know [ __ ] we're so close it's like we found the the path like the path that leads straight to the castle then it stops right at the castle like right at the edge of the castle it's stopping you're like [ __ ] so yeah it's uh [ __ ] let's keep going with this we're we're hitting we're hitting veins there you just got to bash against the wall until something happens you know oh apparently there's a apparently there's a thing in apparently it's not a good way to start this because I feel like idioms and phrases need to be well known for these to work as Awards but there's something called a hero call which is a call made with a speculative hand in the hopes that your opponent is bluffing that'd be so good if I had ever heard of that in my entire life right now yeah yeah it doesn't work yeah doesn't work we don't know suit oh what about a joker like a joker card he's not that's DC though so it literally does not work you know what you guys not liking Marvel actually I think runs that around to making it work that is pretty if you give it an award for something from the wrong property almost makes Jokers are wild award Joker card yeah Joker what about like the Wild Card award because this is like a weird game kind ofs to us yeah that's not great but it's better it's better than the follow suit award the follow suit award okay we're almost there almost there come on I can feel it's just around the corner I know that's the thing the only people who know how how good we get at this are the listeners who can check how much is left on podast true there's like three hours left of this episode yeah exactly they're the ones who know uh pocket rockets man there's a bunch of really weird related yeah they are well yeah pre flop oh boy there you go speaking of horny pre flop right now probe quarter flop probe is here as well quarter flop the Posh it's a great Tool song tool for 15 minutes we get through one Tool song If we talk about it for 15 minutes um suit suit I really like suit cuz Marvel characters they're wearing suits I appreciate the attempt to put the thing you hate in the award it's like literally just cannot suited up suited suit suit Zoot Suit Riot was that a goo was that a goo Shu R zsu Riot is an old song by a band with a very provocative name the Cherry poop and daddies oh oh Lord oh dear lord yeah wow [ __ ] 1880s say it's the like like licensed game of the year like it's the only game on this list that is a licensed property or an IP and they actually kill it most like you know the oh you're right I get what you're saying you are right yeah yeah like the intellectual property game of the year I don't know but it's like yeah there something there about it's it's it's a licensed game and more more often than not we were talking earlier about like the weird PS2 games it's like okay most of these games are kind of crappy sometimes they're great but oh this one's surprisingly good so I surprisingly good license is is there something about like IP okay suits suits have sleeves and if you have a card up your sleeve that's a thing in cards is there anything there something about sleeves that anything suit up your sleev suit up your okay let's park that for a second and walk over to our good friend tycast oh yeah one more time is there anything here we have hidden dep complex leaderboard deceptively deep frenetic Hidden Gem underappreciated words per minute the stroke of Genius award oh that's pretty good key if you want to make it a pun or word play yeah you can do keystroke of Genius key stroke of Genius is it a gen is it a stroke of Genius is this game ABS it's pretty good yeah you could you could argue I think it's it's a it's a very tight idea uh and it's doing one thing incredibly well um like a singular stroke genius but also and you got your stroke joke there's a stroke joke in there too so everyone wins there you go we got it finally we got it in yeah genius is pretty good stroke of Genius yeah the other thing I was trying to think of is uh like words per minute and APM is like a thing in RTS games like your a actions per minutes yeah um but I don't know I feel like that's a stretch because it's not really words per minute because you're not it's that makes it sound like a typing game which I I don't want to mislead people into thinking this is a typing game you have been very consistent on it's not because I would never play a typing game I'm I'm above that for losers Buster I'm not buster buster ass typing guy man Jeremy you a Buster Buster why you always typing for I [ __ ] I God the more I see typer Elite the more I like it but I don't think it which one yeah Ty oh typer I thought typer Elite was sounds like you're throwing like keyboard key cap at like Hitler's nuts like that's that's the whole game yeah that's awesome that's awesome you don't want to do that wanted that's what I wanted you to picture if I had a time machine I would go back in time and I would throw the letter Zed at at Hitler's nuts I swear smash Hitler's nuts with a keyb me oh boy yeah stru a genius is stru a genius is pretty good I think it's we'd have to stick a w at the end yeah true I like I like typer Elite more in my guts but it doesn't it's not it doesn't make sense okay let's see stroke a genius there we'll come back to it ball is gate three it's got best immersive Sim so far it's just like the it's like the holy [ __ ] this is an entire world award like it's so it's just it's a it's so Grand and full of possibility most immersive Sim award the most immersive Civil War give it the most the most immersive and there's also the most game there most most Sim yeah most immersive that is true it is very immersive yeah and then that does kind of have to make the immersive Sim joke yeah it's half that's the problem it's kind of like it's telling nothing then it's doing neither it's like it feels too sincere if we just call it most immersive yeah like in a weird way this game is kind of like a hard game to give an award that isn't just game of the year you know what I mean everything else feels I mean it won that and the nine other things of the game awards so I get what you're saying right give it best ongoing game best best community support why not what do you call it when you roll a perfect 20 like AAL perfect that 20 there about it being like ex exceptional like they you know like if if this game was a dice roll they they got a 20 out of 20 it's [ __ ] it's incredible like I don't know where to go from there natural 20 I feel like it's not necessarily in the spirit of these Awards to be so superlative like best AMV for Final Fantasy 16 you know what I mean there's a certain deserves there's a certain you know wink that's happening with a lot of these yeah agreed man the problem with a lot of RPG terms is that they're so hamy that you're like it's like the it's the level up the genre is it's so like it's so like gamer language like you're trying to name your YouTube channel that's what it sounds like yeah like no clip or something yeah it's really popped into my head on a run it sucks how good it is I got [ __ ] it sucks how good it well that was it I was done then cuz like gone through 58,000 terrible ideas on various runs and then one night I was I remember literally I remember the [ __ ] house I was outside when it happened I went oh that's it got it great don't forget that we're good that's awesome stop we I'm bad at do on that I um yeah what do we have what are let me open the dock here we got balers gay 3 Midnight Suns and tycast balers gay 3 the words we have in there are layered special int active immersive Sim it's so good relationships possibilities open open choice choice fantasy the fantasy open Choice possibility it's so good award interative brought to you by nbis uh it's it's possibility I think gets to the heart of what is so good about this game in my uh estimation like an immersive Sim if you yeah yeah it has a lot of possibility space yeah like an immers it's like the end possibility award or something it's like something that that if it was clever if I was smarter it would be that but clever what did Frank say earlier endless refc song also think is endless fantasy yeah endless fantasy it does feel like that they they just feel too sincere I know not it need a little a little so hard yeah it's it's just nothing it was the problem it was the worry I had with balers gay3 coming into this is that we'd end up trying to give it like this really like austere award which is like like boring in my head and like you know like when the game awards are like I you know a big site does like I feel like it it like carries the waight whereas like we're we're we're not me we're not trying to be that you know what I mean we're trying not trying to be this this Hub of Excellence or anything we're just calling it The endless we're just giving it the endless fantasy award we're not giving it like the only game you need to play award you know up like it's not best RPG like we're giving it an award for being the best at the thing it is we're just saying it has this feeling of endless fantasy or something in that room I know I I particularly hate that award name it sounds so lame to me andless fantasy I don't know it's like the the the I wish Shadow heart was real award yeah there you go baby or or La if you're a freak just came out and said my girl the digital girlfriend award or boyfriend I'm be sure they sell pillows you know they can we build that can I get a carlac pillow and build it can I do thatch I mean you could have before this too late I'm ordering it now on the Pod where's my phone uh all right typ cast stroke a genius award we lock it in boy I don't think we're the other thing I think it's as close as we're going to get because the other thing that's hard about this is that the name of the game is a is like a word play on it's like typ casting you know what I mean because it's cast you're casting spells it's typ casting it's typing oh yeah I never even picked up on that yeah that's we doing more sense we're doing a word play about a word play game like typ cast would be a great name for the award like the overly typ cast award yeah the problem is all of these are word Play It's kind of the whole thing no I know unless you just call it it might be funny to call it best typing game because Jeremy has lamented it is not best keyboard game damn worst game to play on a controller all right well they just Ste okay yeah so it's on Steam now yeah no that's hour too that's the worst game to play on a control genius okay that's that's what I'm doing I'm hot I'm just jumping from one to one day midnight Suns marvelous yeah see there you go of Ip F marvelous use of Ip is not bad because I except it except we we feel the complete oppos you don't you just don't care about the IP I think as someone who does know about it I think it's a perfectly good and you even said this we used to make games like this where you'd like give a developer an IP and they'd make something dumb and weird this is super dumb and weird there's no way in hell Kevin feige was gonna sign off on you get to date blade there was no way he was gonna let you do that and and this is the game we got it's super weird I think if we can't come up with something I personally would be okay with that I think that's actually really funny and it works oh it's it's a bit it's a bit lame that's the game what do you mean it's marel Marvel is lame it's lame as hell true Marvel is lame it's true marvelously lame award Marvel there go that one what are like oh man I'm going to look at Marvel quips sunsetting that that just happened for uh that just happened so stupid Oh my God that just Happ if you're in there then who's flying the plane award oh my God that's so funny I actually kind of I kind of I feel like that would be so mean to the writers cuz I feel like they have they haven't done that I feel like it's it's it's definitely better than that stuff definitely I have no problem with the writing this game it's just not for me yeah well this is awkward we've got company I don't know why that's so funny we've got company we' got company I feel like they say prct well this is awkward that's how I felt when I liked this game so much like guilty pleasure almost if we didn't give cathic guil pleasure does that Marvel Marvel let's give it the I Can't Believe It's Not ex marter yeah yeah Marvel hater guilty pleasure award too many guilty pleasure Awards out here that's good though I'll write it down just because it means it's it's it's kind of getting to the core of what me and Jeremy think of it anyway yeah I don't think it I don't think it applies to everyone though so or it doesn't apply to Jesse so that's not not fair fine um uh [ __ ] man yeah these are tough ones that's why they're the last ones left it is we've been putting them off for four podcasts that's why we're three the Peter Quill Memorial cringe oneliner award the Peter Quill Dance Off Award of 2023 like it's better than I expected surprisingly good exceeds expectations surprise what's what's the poker version of that when someone surprises you oh uh the like I don't know it's like when you get a card on the river and hold them but there's no I don't know if there's a phrase for that yeah like a I bet there is this it's probably one that no one knows there a phrase for taking a drink of water while you're playing poker there has to be a word for that is there I don't know I'm just see yeah but we thought there might be that's my point yeah like I don't know probably is what what what was it we said before then it was you said what surprised yeah like just being surprised when someone has a good play we were talking about Allin earlier too I feel like there's something there that's a very marely thing for everyone to be all in all in yeah no never mind I was GNA say something dumb as if everything else I've said has been brilliant this absolutely saying something don't put yourself down Jeremy you're you're leg Legend and a beauty what are we saying here you're a beauty that's for all for the fans man man it's hard because the thing you like is is how much it doesn't suck we can always just give it the award in January you have two weeks to think it over you know we can't with the podcast recorded today and I am not going to be thinking about this over Christmas break Frank's like I gotta be somewhere [ __ ] you gotta gotta wrap this up um we have to do it okay we gotta we got let's pick one to do it right now let's and we're not going to walk away until we have it and we are giving ourselves a timer I'm going to write a timer do a timer for three minutes and we're going to look at typ cast because it was the long one we've had the longest for so we got three minutes typ cast and if we don't have it we're going with stroke of Genius award go is stroke of Genius not fine stroke of Genius is that if we don't find something better in three minutes we go stroke genius I think um yeah keeper Warrior was funny but not as good as frog genius something about an arcade I keep picturing an arcade cabinet that has a keyboard instead of like normal buttons and joysticks and that's a funny image but I don't know if there's a way to vertually express it oh yeah you know I mean it's kind of like with the Dreamcast and typing of the Dead yeah yeah it's like that which is yeah uh keyboard it's like I was like something with peripheral vision peripheral cuz like I always think of key controller peripherals I was going to say peripheral yeah peripheral peripheral peripheral vision is not bad actually because it has the game has vision and it turns your keyboard into a peripheral it's a new I don't know it's it's a little bit hard to it's kind of game that's just always in the corner of your eye just you're never quite looking I guess I guess you're right doesn't sound that it's open to interpretation a bit too much isn't it yeah keyboard score score is a big part of it score is like a score leader boards is there something peripheral Euphoria key keer board keyboard leader board keyboard leader boardboard get get Sydney Sweeney on the award lebard keyboard we'll just hand the GO Keyboard leader board I like most eye watering because my eyes water playing this game but it's not the it sounds like we're just raising the visuals um which also I they're totally fine but it's not you know yeah it's what it's not what's good about the game but it is also good yeah uh one minute 30 seconds okay all right pressure's on pressure cooking pressure cooker reward pressure cooker reward stroke yeah Different Strokes Different Strokes Strokes stroke stroke yourself take good you take the bad you take the both have phrases contain stroke um uh boy Grand stroke stroke of Genius we already have that that's what we have I don't know if for I I can't think of anything strog Genius Feels better than everything that's popping into my head yeah two-stroke cycle let's wait for the alarm to finish we' got how much is left 40 seconds we got 40 seconds anyone has any late minute zingers pop them but sunstroke sun stroke boy I feel like there's a jerk off one that it's not going to be you don't have to problem but it's right there Master stroke that's pretty good actually I think stroke a genius communicates the better thing the same thing better though yeah I do like Master being in there though because it's funny I like it because it gets my master you're using your hand yeah five four three stroke a genius it's got to be stroke a genius stroke a genius all right stroke a genius award congratulations to typ cast that means we have now finally officially finished all of the games on the first day of this podcast so the first one so we got our answer it eventually we did it eventually um okay walers gate three we'll do three minutes starting so the game's got a lot of magic and it's it's magical like every time I play it I feel like a wizard put it together like you have to get magic in there somewhere right yeah magic like yeah feels like magic award or something silly like that spellbinding spell binding spell like that that would have been good for typ cast holy [ __ ] is it better thaning spell binding oh my God spell give it the spell binding award spelling going in is it do you think so spell binding okay stroke of Genius I we just like how that word play works I don't know like the only word you're spelling is fever but like cuz they act WD I'm pausing I'm pausing balers Cas give me a second we're never leaving never leaving Boulder's Gate we're resetting balers gate okay so spellbinding or stroker genius that's a good point we gotta fure if you worried about the word play though with with an award like this spell binding and type cast is like you couldn't come up with a more one-word funny haha joke but you seem like you were worried about the word play like they're being too much of it then spellbind is is the game spellbinding yes I mean I think so I because like the thing that I think yeah it's like you like I forget my body exists in the world when I'm playing this game and I'm pouring tears out of my eyes it like sucks being so like I didn't like it that much yeah or like I like spell binding is also open to interpretation so like I would interpret spell binding as something that is you know like almost beyond our human abilities to feel a thing you know what I mean it feels like so otherly or it feels a bit super it does feel like more narrative related like spell Bing feels like a narrative or an immersive world that's pulling you in I see that oh yeah yeah emotive yeah yeah I hear what you're saying yeah what I like about stroka genius when you because you said that one as well I think it was Jessie yeah yeah was it Jesse sorry Jesse um what I like about it is that it is a genius idea like it is a very that was one of the things we talked about at the start was that it was like one of those like oh I wish I came up with that things I think Jeremy said that yeah I I think cius I think Jesse de was Cog genius I think that's the one okay spellbinding was good though thanks good last second Frank pull as prug Jesus okay here we go right we're back on balers gate start three minutes back on balers G something spell binding magic you guys were magic Mana is what magic runs on it's like unlimited Mana or like there's Mana of the Gods dark magic magic mushroom magic mushroom award Magic Johnson okay I'm just I'm just on a magic pH don't go down the Magic Johnson route any further just leave stop there mag Magic Flute is here as well Magic Flute uh could do music there's bars like it's a kind of like the perfect song or I don't know I I everything I want to say is like infinite possibility yeah everything is almost too nice to say about this game or like endlessly replayable that just sound like dry superlatives not like cheeky little jokes for the boys most gameplay oh boy um [Music] refined um what are we at well two minutes it might actually be the biggest game cuz how many gigabytes is it to it's like is way more than Call of Duty biggest game is pretty fun the most immersive Sim maybe biggest most or biggest the most It's just tough cuz yeah it's it is a culmination of so many things that are things that are good about it are so dry to praise cuz you're just like oh it's like it is the perfect game awards game it's cumulative it's like endlessly repayable it's like everyone has like a unique experience that's kind of something about it it's um immeasurable I don't know man endless that's just another endless immeasurable unquantifiable IM measure measurable yeah there you go immense are we really gonna give this the best immersive Sim I love it I think that's great but it's very funny most immens of sim that it's so clumsy try to do the same thing menim Sim oh God that's so bad I kind of love it yeah yeah it's really terrible it is really terrible it be the a dude I mean why is this one so hard it's just everything is so sincere yeah straightforward I don't mind endless fantasy it does feel like that there's really no word to describe it endless fantasy is honestly kind of my favorite I know Danny hates it but it might be the best one we might have to democracy you here and and go with endless fantasy or are you going to dictator us what are you going to do no I dictate I feel like everyone could have a it oh my God I'll get you the bicycle why do why do people always talk about the bad Communists why can't we just talk you know two seconds one second there we go true dude okay so what so best the mer of sim is what's there but you guys like endless fantasy endless fantasy endless fantasy it's not like a it's it's not like a word play like there's no like clever like second layer to it but I feel like because all all but in spite of that I think that that is the thing that is great about this game it's like it's everyone has a different experience you can replay the game and have a different experience comparing notes with people and how different the Divergence of their playthroughs are is like this the the scope of the possibilities in this game is the thing that I feel like deserves praise uh what my my only feeling is that like everyone knows already why this game is right and and I feel like us trying to explain it in like our own P py way just comes across as lame so I agree that's why I I immediately went for the let's just be silly with this one although it's also sort of like it does apply like you know in a way I mean it came from Jesse making that observation I thought that was like a an interesting thing to to sort of noodle into a bit I was going to say if we're playing with a Spirit of the game is each of us should all role play our own award and each person has gives it its own award cuz that's how everyone's play style everyone has their own character their own experience so it's good point yeah okay do you want to do if everyone came up with their own award for this okay mine's mine's best immersive Sim Jeremy what do you want can I can I go last does Jesse want endless fantasy I mean I I pitched best of ver of sim so I kind of want that fair see now happening see see I've divide and God being dictator right now I knew it my award is still the I wish Shadow heart was my girlfriend award or no I wish Shadow heart was real award no that's good cuz that's the most Frank Howley award I could possibly imagine I there's a part of me that wants to give it something like very dumb like the second life award because it's like that you're living a whole you're living a whole life in this game second life might have something to say I know exactly that's why it's so that's why it amuses me so so um well let the audience vote on this one and then and then we'll if they have if they have a better one yeah I'm okay I'm okay with there being four like that's sure it's so good it wins fourward [ __ ] rules we don't have any rules yeah exactly you got four Awards and it got like like seven at the exactly we're basically doing our own version of the kees right now it works true so you're endless fantasy so who's is anyone picking endless [ __ ] fantasy now now no one's picking endless fantasy I mean collect if I can give it the shadow heart award that's what I'm giving yeah but if I can't I have it down I have I have Shadow heart down and fantasy is currently off the board because no one's picked it waiting for one of you to pick it I FAS is it's the most descriptive but I don't it's like a it's like a car that will never break down but it's like a bright yellow and I don't want to drive it around you know what I mean it's your dad's Camaro in the garage that's why I didn't want to name it that it's reliable but do we love it do you guys have your own ones you want to I throw in there I got nothing for this one CU everything is just so it's just like the endless Poss Limitless endless everything's being too nice yeah I I really like best of ver of sim just because that's what I liked about it the most okay okay well then it's not a [ __ ] dictatorship anymore Danny youed me you got me you radicalized I didn't use like [ __ ] I didn't use like Jedi Mind fair to me I saw you w your hand I'm just playing I'm just playing I I was doing the opposite I was trying to open it up and then suddenly in the co light of day everyone realized that they didn't really want to call it that yeah best imersive Sim yeah there was a way to infuse the the Limitless possibility into that but I don't think there is immersive sim a lot of options yeah yeah most immersive Sim most being not that it's most immersive that there is the most of it is what more my is there a word that we have that doesn't require that clarification I think most immersive Sim might be the one because it has the secondary meaning of being that there there is the most most game I feel like if you change that word out it is you lose the double meaning of it so if you so oh so the double meaning is good like the most it is the most immersive Sim and it has the most immersive I think if we lose most immersive Sim if we lose either element I think if we take most out you lose the like infinite possibility element of it and if you lose immersive Sim then we're just like it's the grandest adventure award which was the problem we had with Elden ring last year yeah right yes you're right it was God you're right it was so mer of same the fact that most can be interpreted in the other ways is sort of evocative of the fact that this game is just sort of like fractal and you can do [ __ ] it's just it is all things to all people most immersive Sim I think that's fun I think that's like two Awards in one it's great yeah okay we locked in most mer locked in okay last one we have is midnight Suns I'm gonna put five minutes on the board for this because right now we have did squat five minutes on the board does anyone need to be anywhere in 10 minutes by the way it's almost coming up on an hour you're okay I'm good hopefully we'll get this done 10 the bathroom maybe uh mid night SS uh luck of the draw yeah it draws you in draws you in draws I'm trying to think of superhero phrases now and then it can work backwards into cards you know what I mean I'm gonna go with what I like about this game what do I like about this I like that it wasn't bad tactical tactical strategy the texture to it there's so much going on what about that no one cared who I was until I put on the suit award and it's suit cuz cards I like that I actually God we' we' [ __ ] reached the end of our sanity love I love wordy Awards though I'm a wordy award isn't that DC again what isn't that DC again isn't that a bane line oh is that oh is that that was the mask that before I put on the mask no um that's what I was that's but that works with what I said earlier of you guys not giving a [ __ ] about property so much you give it the wrong proper modeling the IP is pretty funny actually what I don't like about it is that it could be interpreted as that nobody cares about Fair access games until they put on the Marvel suit and I would say the opposite is true on yeah it kind of communicates the wrong message here damn is there an XCOM X like something ryes were Comm yeah there's also like X-Men's or House of X yeah wait how do I never made that connection is X-Men Marvel Wolverine in itver in the are yeah okay X-Men XCOM XCOM Deadly Alliance yeah XCOM game titles there you go there you go yeah right XCOM Enemy Unknown XCOM is there a what would you what did you guys call that Enemy Unknown was called something else over here there's tff in the Deep there's Enemy Unknown there was UFO defense you guys called Enemy Unknown in America you guys the bureau X-Men Declassified let's call it what's the most recognizable ex cuz I'm trying to think it needs to communicate like if we said XCOM Terror from the deep people would be like what the hell it's got be Enemy Unknown right I think so too yeah but what about X-Men what's the X-Men's most infamous subtitles I always think of like X-Men versus Street Fighter Marvel versus Marvel versus XCOM versus Marvel good yeah yeah Marvel versus ccom Marvel versus Avengers versus XC Marvel versus XCOM oh that's funny it's just so obvious like it's like that's the [ __ ] I'm sure there's been a preview for the game Marv sh his fist guys loser cuz it is Marvel versus XCOM it is or yeah in that suit yeah [ __ ] Professor XC Xavier desperate I don't know I'm the Jugger I'm the Juggernaut [ __ ] what's the X what's the X-Men school called yeah yeah yeah house house of X Xavier school for gifted young Xavier school for the gifted or something School of the gifted Xavier school for gifted youngsters or ex Manion technically I guess why don't we just call it this game was cool even though I hate Marvel and then throw the thumbs up the end yeah oh boy that W only really works for you so good uh so I can't believe it's so good you'll forget I Can't Believe It's Not Mar I Can't Believe It's Not XCOM I can't believe can't believe it's Marvel Marvel I can't believe Can't Believe It's Not Marvel h like God Jesus the [ __ ] there only how much is left on this is what 55 65 seconds but it's not like anything happens after time we literally have no we don't even have a safety blanket name here yeah safety net safety blanket what oh man oh my God I'm just looking up like Marvel com we're gonna get it it's gonna be it's GNA be it's going to be good when it happens it's going to be so anyone who listen to the podcast at this point they're they're invested I think they'd rather see push through and succeed and have a few minutes of silence you're with us if you're with us now you're here to theend the rid or die ogs are here you have sunk cost fallacy like you have never had it in your life you are you are here whether you like it or not um God like it could be a reference to like in Infinity war or endgame like those titles are so recognizable that if we could find something that pays like alludes to them maybe that would be yeah that's a seed more than an idea I'm going back to Gambit because Gambit's the card guy in the Marvel Universe does he say anything supped to use Gambit somewhere in the title it is a game that is hard to explain why it's good why you'd like it there's a lot going on maybe for you I knew Genius Like Me not for me the smart brain man not for me Professor Xavier yeah I'm not I'm not going to B yet I don't think oh man suit Powers suit Powers just call it suit Powers suit Powers oh that's where my brain is now it's just turned into [ __ ] J wait what's the uh what's the Marvel side is it what if the Marvel side Series where they do like weird that is one of them okay is there like something with that like what if like what if the game was good what if XCOM was I don't know I don't know man that's I don't know if that's an award name but that is funny I like that idea no but the just the what if might be a good yeah seed because I associate that with Marvel and I don't even know marvel it's complicated it's compated it's kind of a quip as well it's complicated good point boy 2023 is best game of 202 it's just sitting there it's it really is just sitting there yeah is lurking there what about okay what about uh mutants I guess that's specific to X-Men but I was going to say like this game is kind of a like a a mutant it like a merges it's not like quite what you'd expect from a Marvel game it's not quite what you'd expect from a strategy game yeah it's like yeah mutation it's true xxcom do you remember the world outside of these game of the I'm Sor we were talking about it in the break we we're so excited to play something other than these Game of the Year games like as soon as this ends great games yeah these really good games that we all liked I can't wait to end this call and go install something else shout out to vampire survivors who sent us those DLC codes thank you to the puppet for sending us those codes exactly yeah yeah thank he's back there right yeah over there's he's gonna get packed up yeah and getting out of the studio in the next couple of days um man it's a shame it's not really good on Steam deck or something cuz oh that's yeah it runs okay on Steam dech um I see probably work 30 FPS haven't tried i g to say the the team the team deck award it's heroes team team deck that's that is pretty good team deck oh team deck the team deck deck te that sounds like like your or nephew are like can I borrow your team deck I borrow your team deck when you could pronounce it you can borrow it [Music] oh you can have it when you say it right don't disrespects XCOM X Marvel versus X is pretty funny if we got nothing I'm I'm okay with that Marvel versus X it's just it's just too it's too much like the lead on a like I'm G okay I'm going to look up game spots foreview bet that's it I bet that's it and that's probably the [ __ ] lead when you see none of them you have to use it yeah that's the rule let's just steal say XCOM going to do it let's see what it is let's see what it is XCOM oh my God they went with XCOM Superhero Squad it was right there I don't get that one who wrote this Jordan R Jordan R who I think does a lot of theirs yeah but they gave alen Wick two a 10 out of 10 so what a what a not that reviewer but Gamespot did the the the uh frequency at which 10 out of 10 are coming out of Gamespot since I left has not been has not been unnoticed got to get back there and be a hater forget it they need haters like exactly I need yeah if there was one thing I was good at we were good at it was it was hating on other people hope hopefully mostly managements hopefully hopefully was kind of like the blade of games spot you know your concern was always 10 out of 10 [ __ ] oh boy how did they not do what did you say Marvel versus xcum I'm got to that is pretty good yeah there must be a preview you guys like was blade does blade have any good quotes that you could turn into an a war some [ __ ] always trying to ice skate upill yeah yeah yeah the game that succeeded at ice skating uphill blade that's that's got to be for arcane's blade we can't blow that one now yeah we're gonna have to you know Marvel versus XCOM I didn't say Marvel blast Ultra this guy keeps saying blast Ultra whisper like yeah like a siren's call it's toasted boy I not bad Marvel God Sony's or xcom's IGN Jesus IGN's first preview no it's not XCOM but a surprisingly endear enduring superhero RPG it was right there Marvel I'm gonna type in Marvel versus XCOM and see if anything telling you you don't find it you got first think of all the hits yeah that's so true think about how many other people will Google that phrase and they'll find us Stan Le that was nobody written this down see that's why we have to do it Frank is obvious though this yeah Jesus Christ literally I type in Marvel versus XCOM am I typing versus wrong well how would you do versus V okay wait if you put if you put it in quotes there's one if you put Marvel versus xot yes one it's that [ __ ] int Min PC review yeah that's it and it's and they and you know why it's there SEO because in their [ __ ] metadata they accidentally put their in Marvel versus XCOM 2 hell yeah it was a type like they they got brain wronged they meant to write in Marvel versus the other person who came up with this was someone who had like a a brain lapse as they were typing that's that's how great we are XCOM this is like you invented the light bulb and you're like how is nobody else invented this it's it's it's that movie where the guy accidentally invented the Beatles music yeah yeah yesterday I think it's called yeah yeah where he's like have you not heard of The Beatles everyone's like no and he's like what what the [ __ ] like what you honor about and he's like oh I'm going to become famous because I going to pretend i r those songs I don't know Marvel versus XCOM is growing on me I just want to it's Marvel versus X just do it okay the reason why I think it might work this is me justifying something I hate okay this is me my my this is me like with my I'm disappointed in my child but I'm going to I'm going to to make life easier I'm going to create a narrative in which I am okay I'm not talking about my Act ual child this is a fictitious this is what I'm doing Marvel versus X I think it maybe works because the thing that we have been talking about that is the point of contention is how we feel about how the game plays and how we feel about the IP that's good and it that's where the tension is and how how we feel about it is actually different right Jesse has a different opinion than I have a different opinion to Jeremy so in a way the whole point the whole thing about this game just justifying my addiction here is that the the the interesting thing about is this game good why this game is good is that there is a conflict between the IP and the gameplay so in a way Marvel versus XCOM there you go Works Frank you [ __ ] did it bastard are you justifying it or explaining why it's the best yeah it sounds like it's a little bit of a l yeah yeah I guess I'm the only one that needed to go through that you guys were all on board this game would have gotten more sales if that was the tagline Marvel it's Marvel versus X yeah Marvel if named it that Marvel versus XCOM oh my God fighting game fans would have played it way better name way better name Marvel versus X I guess we have to call it the Marvel vers XCOM award we have do we have to do award we kind of do it's not even like a superlative it's just like don't care an award but yeah the verses explains the contention I love it face but like it's not it's with the people coming up with the award for the game yeah it's fine I like it it's funny I'm so annoyed I'm just I'm just so disappointed with video game journalism right now that's where I'm at I can't believe that's why people support this this is we're we're filling in all the G that's why we're gonna do some [ __ ] with no clip crew next year because that's the [ __ ] Mar versus XCOM that's we got a video right there if we upload a video called Marvel versus XCOM oh my God find gaps and we fill them up content where the did you just come up with a crew name for us called The Gap fillers some you said I can't believe no one has that's amazing it's and it's like it's like half 4% of yeah that's I'm not I'm not sure I is also in Tony Hawk the Gap my business card if I have danwar Gap filler not sure it sounds like you do tile work all right doesn't the wet worker what does it Jeremy all right all right we're done we've done it there are 11 games here and they all have Awards they've all got great Awards and now we're going to read out the awards but start to finish Slayers X sorry Frank what's the full name of that game again Slayer X terminal aftermath Vengeance of the Slayer thank you it has the Zane Lofton Lifetime Achievement Award Final Fantasy 16 has best AMV Resident Evil 4 remake has master of remaking typ cast has the stroke of Genius award homebody has closest to home award nice work there Jeremy blastus 2 has Catholic guilty pleasure bomb Rush cyber Funk has best Dreamcast game thumbs up emoji uh Dave the diver has the hidden depth award Wald dis G 3 has most immersive Sim says Marvel versus XCOM award it's too late now stop it don't that I'm going to set you back all to edit viewer only and Alan Wake 2 has boldest flavor nice work Lads we did it these are good these are good these are I think we're more unanimously satisfied with these than last year I feel like we're getting better at this the the more we move on um yeah that's it it was funny we could have called signal got the survival horor we could just used that again I had that had that thought cuz we got to figure out who gets next year's Marvel versus XCOM Suicide Squad kill the Justice League yeah they yeah is that wait is that is that not next year I know it's not I can't got delayed or something yeah yeah it's the late till next year February okay well there you go all right that's it we did it we're free the magic shackles have come off for another year we are now free to roam the world as we see fit and um thank you all as ever for playing all these video games we seem to get good coverage this time as well played a bunch of them H congratulations to all of our winners uh I also actually want to mention our honorable mentions before we go um fantastic games in their own right but just did not make the cut Melina high-fi Rush cocoon Street Fighter 6 jant chance of sonar Teran Neil lies of p and dredge they almost all made it in uh but uh did not make the cut in the end uh but yes if you are looking for games to play over the holiday break or anytime next year 2024 uh we cannot recommend these games highly enough and that's it thank you very much for listening to our podcast thank you very much for supporting no clip over the past year and all the previous years before that next year is going to be very exciting over in these parts we're trying a lot of uh stuff you've seen before a lot of new stuff um new documentaries Big Stuff uh maybe some new podcast stuff you'll have to keep your eye ears and to the ground if you are a patron there'll be a patron video going up on Christmas day where I talk a little bit about the year that went by and mostly looking forward to what's going on in 2024 um so if you're all interested go support the show and uh uh go watch that video all right shall we say bye-bye Lads bye-bye Lads we did it bye-bye Lads all right take care everyone bye-bye see you next year [Music] bye [Music]

Channel: Noclip Podcasts

Views: 6,130

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Id: KmOWuK1VMFM

Length: 171min 59sec (10319 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 24 2023