The Besties - The Besties podcast: Best of 2016

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

Yes, it's true, we've returned for yet another round of nobody's favorite video game podcast, The Besties. Join your hosts Justin McElroy, Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick and Griffin McElroy as they pick the year's best game with a methodology that ranges from "non-sensical" to "utterly, destructively haphazard." Please enjoy this year's edition before The Besties are once again enveloped by fog and trapped in oblivion for 12 calendar months. 0:07 -- Honorable Mentions 0:24 -- Round 1 Hyper Light Drifter Overwatch Superhot Battlefield 1 0:53 -- Round 2 Pokemon Go Dishonored 2 Watchdogs 2 Stardew Valley 1:53 -- Round 3 Forza Horizon 3 DOOM Dark Souls 3 The Witness 2:31 -- Round 4 Fire Emblem Fates Quadrilateral Cowboy Inside Titanfall 2 Theme song by Ian Dorsch Download MP3 Subscribe? Sure, you can subscribe. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Oh my god. That was so tight. It's like we have not forgotten the ways of podcast accounting. I think we actually got better. Maybe even got a little better. I was just thinking that. I was so glad you said that.

You know, distance makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. Were you guys saving up your counting skills over the course of the last year? That's, yeah. Trev and I actually kind of rehearsed a little bit over the weekend we did tilda swinton uh took me into her dojo it's not gonna count good Hello everybody and welcome to Besties, a sort of like a fashion, sports, lifestyle, trend trend video game uh all-encompassing experience this week though we're focusing on video games and you know what they're not it's not come a long way since pac-man it's not just pac-man anymore um oh i have missed this uh my name is justin mackaroy oh no we fucked it up though i'm I'm Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. Oh, I know the best game of the week, also.

My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Rose Roach, and I know the best game of the week. Guys, we found Bob Dylan. Let's get him to the Nobel Peace Prize. It should be the best game of the year, though, because this is our annual spectacular our annual up ending of a podcast trash can that we just put all over your feed and we just do some real scattershot adjudication of some video games um no for real though where

are we gonna where do we put this do we're the internet no i know but i feel like it like i don't know that this podcast feed even exists anymore i think we're gonna have to like mail people sd cards with the podcast on it i have like i maybe like 200 usb drives that i've been given by ea and ubisoft oh yeah and they come in different funny shapes like one's like a gun and the other one's like a gun and we can just send those to people in the mail like a space shapes like one's like a gun and the other one's like a gun and we can just send those to people in the mail like a space gun like one's a space gun but one's like a earth bullet gun yeah i could see that not being the best thing to put in the mail no maybe not um so what are we doing here why did you bring us here justin well i've gathered you

here to discuss the games of the year it's been a humdinger of a year in every conceivable metric, but it's actually been a good year for games. I think. Games were doing okay. Yeah. It was in every, every other way. It was a bum dinger.

I'm going to say, but games were all right. And thank you. Slum dinger. Thank you games for being a fun, like Island that we can sort of jack our brains boy we really are getting to that like i don't know man i died because i jacked into virtual reality to escape from the world and i didn't eat for six days like we're getting we are getting there huh getting

there huh it's getting there in a lot of ways like the tech and also just the world i just knocked over something i don't even know what the fuck that was um do you think it's do you think it's good that that's our only respite from the horrible world around us listen we're not gonna do this no this is not what besties is about we're not gonna get on you know what 2016 did its best okay it let us down but it tried damn it it was its first time being a year and it fucked up bad but but like, PoeBuddy's nerfect. PoeBuddy's nerfect. So let's just hang in there together. David Bowie can't die twice, so 2017 is going to be better, okay?

I think we, let's talk about honorable mentions, because we're going to do our usual dumb way of talking about video games where we do four rounds of the best our favorite games yeah but like what were some of that and i don't even here here's an idea what if honorable mentions i mean let's talk mostly about games so like it could extend it to other things that you found solace in other other things that you just really really dug into this year and please turn off the fucking cell phones yeah that'd be good so i've got one for honorable mention you ready yeah banana tea a what now banana tea banana i'm sorry what

banana tea it's a kind of tea made from bananas oh i think you're talking about like a shirt no i thought it was like a company that sells funny shirts on the internet this is tea i don't know if you guys are aware. You know, you can take NyQuil if you want. You can take, if you're having trouble, Sleeps. Yeah. You know, Ambien, variety of things. Little do you know, the real answer is right down your grocery's aisle, bananas.

So, Russ, you've been doing this fun thing lately where you've been dying. Because I don't know exactly what malaise you've been struck with but do you want to know you've had an eye i can tell you you've had an eye patch on and that's been crazy yeah i've had shingles for the last two weeks holy shit which is 100 the worst uh disease that i've ever managed to adopt for myself. Yeah. It is horrendous. I'm not going to get too graphic. Please don't. Here's what I'm going to say. Which side of your body is it on, Russ? It's right just over

and around my eye. My right eye. Oh, God. So imagine if you will, you know Ruffles potato chips? Sour cream, if you will. And we're done. That's going to do it for the show forever. Did you put on a VR headset at a con?

I put on all of the VR headsets, but only after I developed it. So you better watch out. Emphasis on the I. Typhoid Russ over here. You don't catch it that way. The varicella zoster virus stays in your body. You do one medical history podcast

with your doctor wife and all of a sudden you got a PhD in shingles. No, I mean, no, actually we did our episode this week about chickenpox and shingles so I can make fun of Russ on the episode. Lovely. Hey Russ, did you know that that pain can last the rest of your life in some cases?

Trust me, I spent the last two weeks googling all of this shit, so I'm well aware of how horrifying it is. Hey. Thankfully, the pain has mostly subsided. For now. Speaking of VR shingles. You know why it's called shingles? Oh, my God, please, no. Did you know this?

I had a good segue. It comes from the Latin singulus for girdle. Okay. Because it usually wraps around a part. Not your eye. Why did you do it so bad? Nobody gets it on their eye. Bad job.

Hey, speaking of VR shingles, one of my honorable mentions, just narrowly missed my top four, because that's the arbitrary number that we do things here at Besties, was Job Simulator. So for fun for the vibe super fun um and this this was in my top four but it got just bumped off just before we started uh but i did want to talk about it because holy shit like for for me um there was and i'm we're going to

talk about this i'm sure a lot because i do think it was a good year for games but i don't know that there was that much stuff that just like knocked me out i don't know that there's that much stuff that like i i've talked about this fucking every year that we've done this like i love games that like um have are are important to me and i know will be and continue to be important to me they're like games that are somehow unforgettable to a degree and games that i know i will go back and play and games that earn nostalgia um and i don't know that there were that many games that did that for me this year but like the concept of vr for a good and i'm not i haven't used mine in a while so um i don't necessarily think that it's great for a week it wasn't even a week it was it was a good i mean there was a good like good long weekend four or five months there where i would just like pop in and see what was going on uh because to me like

it was exciting and it still is exciting it just needs like more software support um i had almost the exact same experience griffin and i actually want to make a quick honorable mention do you want to talk about job simulator i just i just wanted to say Job Simulator. There was one day where we were all in New York having a group polygon meeting. And we had some beers and we were playing Job Simulator. And I was doing the cooking one. And people sitting on the couch watching me play started to shout out cocktail orders. Which I would then make by exploding an egg into like a fucking flower pot and then using like a teacup as the top of like the shaker and like mixing it up and just like that game is

so madcap and it is fucking like the perfect uh i think it's the perfect first game to play in vr because in terms of like interaction uh that that game fucking has it and it is it is just it is the funniest game released this this year even without doing like dumb dumb shit which like is all you want to do in vr is like throw things at the robots and you know do all kinds of stupid shit uh it even without that layer of like user made dumbness like that game is just like every every inch of it uh is is hysterical so i wanted to bring that up as an honorable mention because it's super it was so it's super approachable which i liked like super like as you said easy

to get into i definitely agree i think it's like if you play vr this should be the first game you play in vr yes it doesn't make you nauseous the graphics are like welcoming and simple but you still like get the vibe like whoa i'm in this carport or whatever and and everything everything works like in that cooking right in the cooking one for example like uh like you can cook anything basically any way and you get stuff like you rip down the uh order sheet off the uh off that that wheel and you have like the piece of paper with the customer's order on it and you think like i wonder what happens if I put this on the griddle. It catches fucking fire.

And then you scoop the ashes of it into the blender and make a smoothie out of the ashes. You can do everything. Every interaction you can imagine is available in that game. It is amazing. Totally agree. I wanted to call out a uh i i vr experience uh sort of the main one i think that exemplifies it the best is uh space pirate simulator um it which is one of the vr games that i think like best

it's sort of like the dream of vr as a a a sort of immersive action kind of thing, which didn't seem like the best application for it at first. But Space Private Simulator has like, you're using both the controllers as pistols. You can switch the kind of pistol you're using on the fly and you're just surrounded by incoming alien ships. And it's really fun and cool and also like a really good way of like getting active um especially

once it gets a little uh more intense every every i had like uh like one or two nights where i had my friends over after i got the vibe set up and we played a bunch of stuff we played uh the audio surf game which i liked a lot we played budget cuts demo which is probably my favorite thing i've ever played on vibe but it's not like a full thing yet um but the thing everybody talked about and the thing this was months ago and it's the thing like oh we got to get over and play some more vibes so we can check out that space pirate sim like that is the game that everybody wants to play more of uh hollow point is the same way where it's like a very immersive it's just like a bow and arrow shooting at targets and the targets are shooting back and it's great it's really it's really good and really active i'm i'm curious as long as we're talking about vr

do you guys think that it's i mean there was this huge crush of vr hype um when it was coming out and i think that like in a lot of ways the base experience of playing in vr really lived up to it but for me i'm sort of in the same boat as griffin honestly the vibe for me is such a unless you have like a dedicated computer and room for that computer um to keep it just sort of like ready to go at a moment's notice it is like a big ask i generally like hook it up if i know somebody's coming over who hasn't checked it out yet like that and that's it i don't think the issue is software. You guys were talking about like lack of software.

I don't for me, that's not really the issue with VR. The issue is if I'm coming home at the end of the day, I want to relax. And VR is the opposite of that. Yeah, I don't think it's just relaxing in the sense of of um it not being uh a peaceful experience to be in vr like i do find it stressful most of the time but also just getting it set up um which is not that much work but i mean there's already that difference in friction between uh you know powering on a console versus turning on your pc and you know every so often having to fuss with all the technical stuff but then adding that extra layer of making sure the vibe is working

and like y'all said having a room ready and then getting placement in that room like i don't know i i don't have like the biggest office uh for for this but like it's larger than any space i ever had in new york in the fact that it is the bare minimum of a vive usable space and that even when i'm in it i'm kind of worried i'm going to break a tv it just it takes a lot for me to like want to put a headset on it also seems hard because of the way people are sort of intermittently um using it it seems like it's hard for a game to like discovery becomes an issue because i feel like nobody has enough vibes or or riffs set up at any given time for a game to build like a real sort of like yeah if you haven't used it in a while and there's a game you've never heard of are you gonna like go through the 15 minutes to like plug everything in and and i'm

i'm coming from the like i i really enjoyed the time i spent with the vibe but i'm also coming from an extremely privileged point of having the steam press account where like a lot of these experiences aren't great and even the ones that are really uh good are typically fairly it's still pretty anemic it's just like cool that they pull off what they pull off in these vr environments um i don't want to pay fucking 40 for that like i don't yeah i just i just don't that's the reason honestly why i didn't invest in the playstation vr i had one pre-ordered for uh for months i put in the pre-order basically as soon as it went up um and i read the reviews and it sounds neat, but like, I don't,

I don't want to spend fucking, you know, a bunch of money playing battle tanks or rigs or whatever. Like, cause I, they may be good, but I don't, I don't necessarily want to spend a bunch of money on these experiences that

are, I can think of maybe one or two like job simulator, definitely worth the money. Uh, wind lands. I really dug. Um, uh, but like, yeah, it's, it's a a lot to ask it's a lot to ask for like these unproven experiences well there's a lot of experiences

too like there's a a forgotten realms game on there that's a sword and sorcery kind of deal and once you get past the novelty of like oh this is how you did like a sword and shield that's cool i'm swinging a sword wow check me out everybody hey honey come in here i got look at me i'm swinging a sword okay hold on what this is what i'm this is the same once you get past all that yeah you realize the game itself is like the most base like sure it seems like a game that like like if checks wanted to release a licensed sequel to its game like it seems like something kind of captain crunch demo disc that comes in the box it's like crunch raiders or something it's like the most basic yeah the stuff that like gives me hope for it though is stuff like uh windlands which i was just googling them

apparently they're in a spot of trouble because somebody made like a tutorial video about how to program grappling hook stuff like that and they filed it a dcma request according to uh the like hundreds of negative steam reviews uh uh the the thing that gives me hope is like games like that where you just have a huge beautiful world to explore i played the wind lands demo on the fucking dk2 uh before before i got my hands on the vibe like a lot like i beat it multiple times just because like it was cool to be in the the big worlds and games like rec room where you have like these big worlds to explore but also uh like a social air like that shit does like,

does me so right. And like a snow crash, like way Justin and I weirdly enough spent a lot of time playing second life this year. And, uh, a version of that, that is good. And also on VR, like I'm going to play that a lot. I think, I think I'm probably going to get very, very into that. Like there there's still something to be said for yes it can be a pain to set it up and there's some issues with the hardware still and the it's a lot to ask from a price perspective both

for software and hardware but there is something we said like it's to be plug into like a virtual world and have it just fucking work yeah is spectacular I don't I don't want to spend too much time talking about VR I do want to virtual world and have it just fucking work. Yeah. Yeah. It's spectacular. I don't, I don't want to spend too much time talking about VR.

I do want to ask you Griffin one question before we move on. Have you considered, given that we're about a month out, have you considered exclusively having your child raised within VR? I've thought about it, like doing a little bit of fun pot. Cause Justin already blew it. He missed his window.

Yeah. She's seen the outside. Yeah. I just don't want my baby to get shingles that's it that's fair yeah it's a huge issue very unsafe any other honorable mentions fresh take plant yes yeah i wanted to mention real quick uh cod infinite warfare which is like a you know has fine multiplayer and fine zombies the campaign is pretty excellent from a writing standpoint like surprisingly so they brought in some naughty dog people and wrote like an actual story with actual characters i love that we need story get the story ones anybody look for somebody with glasses get either the telltale ones or the naughty dog ones. Get somebody with a goatee in here to write a story.

They didn't have to, is what I would say. Do you know the phone number for BioWare? Anyone? It doesn't seem to have helped their sales much because it seems like the interest in sales for Infinite Warfare have been pretty anemic in comparison to normal. But it is a really excellent story, and I did want to give them props for putting that effort in.

I may have to get there eventually. If you decide to play this, here's a pro tip from me. Put it on the easiest setting possible. In sprint, like don't even shoot at anything. Just sprint. For the first 15 to 20 minutes, because it's miserable. Yeah, the beginning is not great. Yeah, it's real bad um it's really

really bad and then it gets like pretty solid uh but yeah it straight up literally sprint past the opening of the game uh crisp do you have any hot hms yeah i'm gonna say steep only because it's not out yet so i feel oh yeah i feel bad that it's not here. There's a few of those, right? Like Final Fantasy XV, we're recording this. It is November 21st when we're recording this. So there's just some stuff that we... What is it? The little dog dragon game?

Oh, yeah. Last Guardian. Shit. Yeah, Last Guardian. Much like the real video game awards which are going off the complete list. Seep, the beta has been, been i guess going a few different times throughout the past month and it's great i mean i i love uh ssx and i what i love best about those

games is like not being competitive and just ambling down a mountain yeah and they essentially made that into a game they made a giant mountain and i don't know if you like it's like very nitty-gritty but ubisoft has this whole idea where they're gonna stop making story and missions in video games which we'll see what um yeah they talk wait yeah this is for real uh it's on polygon.com okay interesting yeah um but they've talked about how like with assassin's creed especially the next one they want to get away from traditional story and basically create a world, and then the players create anecdotes within it. And Steep is actually the first example of that

in that there's very little game. That just means they couldn't find any Naughty Dog guys. We couldn't get the telltale. The phone was busy. Now we're stuck with anecdotes um but you like you basically are able to create missions super super easily and then just picking other people's stuff it's smart i don't know that i don't want to make it i don't want to play you don't have to be like a million people will make things for you and then in theory they'll only the good stuff

i think it's just because I want to finish a game. I just want to finish it. Let me know when it's over, please. You're part of the old guard. There aren't people like you anymore. I also want to say that Pokemon Sun and Moon is in my honorable mentions, and it's just because I haven't played that much of it. It only came out, I got it like a few days early, so i haven't had it that long but not only that i

did this uh nuzlocke video series for pokemon y that i kind of had to burn through in the last like month or so to prep for the month of december when i'll be out and so i'm just so poke burned out right now and i started and pokemon sun and moon i think it's actually has a pretty slow start and it's also like here's how pokeballs work it's like fuck dude yeah come on um but i've really i've really liked what i've played so far i just haven't really spent too much time with it i i put in like six hours before my eyes stopped working oh no and it seemed um yeah it's it was cool to like be in a environment that was like not i guess a normal like it was a hawaiian inspired yeah the world's

very big and like there's it's uh there's a lot of like uh detail to them it's not like here's a town with a single fucking house in it um uh there's the and the aesthetic is super on point and there's some really nice quality of life uh upgrades and it also shakes out of the like there's eight gyms you have to get through format. Now there's four. Well, no. And then there's, like, a bunch of little trials that mix up the gameplay a bit that are cool. It's the same fucking game. Let's face it. Okay, that's fine.

I see the words Mini Metro on here. Who put that? I put that on there. It just got released on iPad and iPhone. It is a really good mobile game. I didn't know that. What is it? I thought it was just on Steam.

Yeah, it's been on steam for a while but it just got released on mobile and it is just like so choice is it like doomsday clicker because that's all i care about right now no it's nothing like a stupid clicking game it takes 50 hours to do stuff god give me some money it's not it's it's a really great uh strategy game where you're basically building out a you done justin when you click on what do you what do you click on now you click on subway stations and and connect subway stations to other subway stations and then you make your own procedurally generated uh subway map across the cities of the world great okay it uses really cool art design and uh audio design oh it's the music is by uh

disaster piece yeah yeah also this is the year that russ and i got really into sim city build it on my phone oh my god yeah that game came out a year and a half ago yeah and for whatever reason i picked it up and then i knew justin would be addicted to it so i got him addicted to it and now we play that it's really it's actually very good i know it's miserable and but and you have to russ literally had to send me a guide of how to have fun with but like once he taught and it turns out the answer is like grinding more than the game wants you to because if you go too fast you ruin it for yourself oh yeah fuck it's fun guys uh also my honorable mentions is uncharted 4 i just realized it's not on any of our lists

oh that was okay great game is it game. I thought it was really good. There was other stuff I liked more. It was just too... I think it was too long. It was just too much. I wanted it to be over several times and it just wasn't. Also, story is the past. Anecdotes are the future.

That's a good point. There weren't enough anecdotes. I just wanted them to say, here's a hundred vines. What do you think the story is? You figured it out. Okay, I'm cutting this off. I'm moving us

into the first round of battle. Should we go through and introduce our titles individually? Griffin, McElroy, you go first. I mean, I don't think

we need to, like, set it all up. No, we should just do one. Do Griffins, and we'll talk about it. I'll start with mine because there's almost a good transition here because it also has a fucking excellent soundtrack of the year

scored by Disasterpiece. Guys, sometimes Disasterpiece has a Spotify channel. I'll just get on that and just go buck wild. He is the best dude in the fucking game right now. Yeah, he's very good. So, yeah yeah my game is hyper light drifter uh hyper light drifter is a uh a top-down action sort of rpg that is very very very punishing yeah um it is uh it has this pixelized aesthetic that is unlike anything I've ever seen in a game.

It has this really sharp sort of neon aesthetic. And the control scheme is actually fairly limited. You have a dash dodge button. You have a sword that you can attack with. And you have a sword that you can attack with and you have a a shoot button and you can find uh and upgrade different uh guns throughout the game uh there are hidden collectibles hidden all over that you can pick up and then purchase new skills but like ultimately the skill set is is is pretty limited like you dash around and you dodge enemy attacks and you shoot at enemies

and you use your sword to take them out um you only have like a sort of going in line with that very minimalist aesthetic uh you only have i think like five hit points uh and it is very easy to just like get hit a couple of times by enemies and then you're dead. So it is very much a game about going into a room and trying to find the right pattern to get through that room, which means you're going to die a lot. Like any given battle, if it gets too crazy, you might die a dozen or so times. or so times in but on that 13th time you are going to pull off this fucking awesome ballet of shooting and dodging and like reflecting enemies attacks with like the perfect timed uh sword swing uh like every every inch of the game i like the only thing i can think of and i think it even does it better than hotline Miami. Did it in that same way?

Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, it does feel a lot like Hotline Miami in the sense that you're constantly repeating the same room. But there's a little bit, I think it's even slicker than Hotline Miami because Hotline Miami, like you grab a gun and you shoot it and it runs out of ammo

and you throw it at a guy to knock him out and run up and kick. But at the same time, like you're only doing three things, but you're doing them like in really fucking, really hip sequence. Like Hyper Light Drifter does that also but i think it i think it does it better um not only that it has some of the hardest ass boss fights in a game released this year um and i i so we're

gonna talk about uh somebody has Souls, on here later. And usually I rely on that franchise for like, fuck yeah, I beat that boss I've been trying to get for so long. And I got that more from Hyper Light Drifter than I did from Dark Souls 3. There's one boss in particular, which if you've played the game, you'll remember, is like this bird wizard guy that is just nonstop. is like this bird wizard guy that is just nonstop. Like, you have to be perfect, perfect for like two minutes, two straight minutes of perfect inputs and dodges and attacks and counters. And like, it took me a good 50 tries to take him down.

And when I did, like, that's probably my most satisfying moment of playing a video game this year. So, like, I just, I think it is just a perfect game. Like, it is, the design and aesthetic and music. Yeah, it also looks super gorgeous. We haven't really gone into the visuals, but graphically, very, very pretty. Very, very pretty. And the music, like, is perfect. And then, like, while you play it the the whole time you feel like just this awesome badass and also it has this weird overwhelming sense of like um uh like kind of

sadness that goes through the whole thing like the whole time you are like your character is stopping and like falling to their knees and like coughing up blood. And it's like the storyline is very abstract and very open to interpretation. But the whole time there's this sense of like dread that kind of overwhelms all things, which is like also kind of a unique thing. Kind of reminded me of the tone of like Sword and Sworcery. Yes. Yeah, yeah, sure. So also I think they just updated it

and correct me if i'm wrong but i think it also has co-op now which i could see being really fun um i've already gone back and started replaying it because there's uh some new games plus options but my favorite shit now is the speedrun community game for that game is uh insane because one of the techniques that you pick up is like skiing uh where you dash and you have to chain your dash but to chain it like you have to hit the dash button in perfect sequence like right after and so there's people who are speed running it trying to keep this perfect chain of dashes going throughout the whole game uh and it is like nuts to watch that shit um so yeah that's hyper light drifter i've seen i i know there was a

lot of criticism of the game that it was like uh too punishing to the point of being fairly exclusive and i totally get that but like um i i i'm i'm into that i i really am into that if it's fair and well designed and i think hyper light drifter absolutely is next up rush first wow we're not going to talk about it nobody else want no i just spent 10 minutes if we average this speed it's going to be a five hour long podcast and i'd sooner die people love that who else that's all i want to know i'd rather yeah i played i played it i only spent about an hour with it but i really enjoyed what i played i did about the same and i i wish i had the stomach for that level of difficulty but well chris why don't you come over we'll get it we'll get on ps4 or something we'll I did about the same, and I wish I had the stomach for that level of difficulty.

Well, Chris, why don't you come over? We'll get on PS4 or something. We'll co-op it. That'd be good, because then you can just do it for it. It's kind of like when I first played Spelunky with Prashik, and he just killed me and carried me through. No, I carried his corpse through to hell. That was pretty good. That wasn't fun.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I played it. I really liked everything about it but the the i hear that anymore and like i i want i don't have as much free time as i used to and i want to try to play as much as i can and i see something like that it's just like okay sure that's gonna have to be one that that falls by the wayside but see i would rather have i would rather have that or it's a game where i know there's going to be parts I have to bang my head against over. And I don't know that any of these made my, I don't think so.

Uh, over a fucking open world game where it's like, it's a, no, it's an endless experience. Go run to this house. It looks like the other houses, but this one's got a bone in it.

Like I would, I would much rather have a game that like can be finished. But will you have the stomach to finish it it's i think what justin's yeah sure we can do these kinds of comparisons though let's at least introduce the titles in this round and then yeah we'll compare and contrast rest fresh take you want to go next because you're next on this list sure i did this randomly so my game for this round is overwatch man what a good fucking game that is a wicked game i feel bad for everything for this round is Overwatch. Man, what a good fucking game. That is a wicked game right there. I feel bad for everything in this

round. I know. Because that that's a big one. It's weird, you know, Overwatch reminds me, oh, not, maybe it's not weird because it's the same company, but Overwatch reminds me a lot when Hearthstone came out, which is to say, you have this company, Blizzard, that comes in and is like, oh, you guys have been doing

you know, cooperative, team-based shooters for a little while. How's that working for you? Let's just blow this whole genre up. We can do it way, way better than you ever did. Yeah. And just, like, drop a nu-based, cooperative, class-based game where you battle against another team using different classes. So you'll have the turret-building guy or the shield-wielding guy

and basically synergize with other players and use each other's skills to sort of give you an edge over the other team. I don't like a lot of team-based games, and I don't't i don't play them a lot um the difference with overwatch and the thing that's so interesting is like i had buddies uh who played overwatch a lot and i kind of just got back into it to play with them and i thought like well this is gonna be great i'll just be a drag on the team forever the really interesting thing about overwatch is because the characters are so sort of different if you can get smart about a character or two and and figure out some things that work you can be like you can help your team yeah right away especially there's healer classes which i love and i wish every game had because like when your skills aren't very good like it's really nice to be able to prop up the

people who know what they're doing as just like your job my job is to help this person who seems to know what they're doing and that's really cool and a really cool way to sort of like get your feet wet and then eventually you get bored with it you're like okay i'm gonna try shooting somebody but like that's it and and it's not just like there's a turret building guy like i'm not great at aiming like in a one-on-one with most people i'm gonna lose because i don't have you know the reflexes or the i've never just i'm just not very good but i can build a turret in a really annoying place that i know will be devastating yeah um and really help the team so many games like talk about like you're gonna you can play this game and you'll be good at it even if you're not a shooter guy because

there's other stuff you can do it's like okay well let's check it out and you hop in and it's like this one there's this one guy that builds a turret and there's one guy that drops med packs okay all right and that's fucking it like overwatch is the first game that actually follows through with that because there's not just like the medic there's the medic that you don't even need to point a fucking heel gun at somebody you just produce dubstep you just that heals them there's the there's like you you don't have to be good at overwatch to be good at overwatch you just have to be good at reinhardt right like you just have to you just have to if you can't aim for shit um that's fine you just have to know what your hero does and play that

hero and that's it that's it and it's a shooter where like half of the characters do not require you to be good at shooting which is that's the the big thing is like it's so often that like, yeah, as you said, there's only one or two that are like support classes here. It's basically like half. And granted, like there are experts and stuff like that that will totally crush you into oblivion. But the fact that I can hop on with my friends that are like prestige level 10 and still be an asset it's like a huge huge thing yeah i mean there's a healer who's sort of uh who can go into a room with their super ability like the first time you play if your entire team gets wiped out and you're near them you can use that super ability and bring your entire team back and win

the game that's like that's devastating to come back from, yeah. I've been getting into Ana lately because I haven't played so much recently. I only just picked it back up because I got it on PS4 where I was, like, level 2 or something like that. And, like, Ana is a sniper who shoots harm bullets at enemies and healing bullets at friends. It's harm bullets at enemies and healing bullets at friends. And like, there's this dichotomy to everything she does like that. That is like,

it's so fucking genius. It's so smart. It's even smart in the way it does unlocks because unlocks in this game are stupid and dumb. No, I, I, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense because like,

I don't feel bad about not like the fun in overwatch really is its own reward and i think that like that takes a lot of confidence to say like you're not playing this to like like a lot of times if if i'm playing titanfall eventually for example and we'll talk about this later but like i would apply this to a lot of first-person shooters with with unlockable tiers of gear eventually i'm just like well at least i can can level up this gun while I'm playing. We're not going to win this match, whatever. I'll just focus on trying to do this dumb thing to unlock this one weapon or whatever.

With Overwatch, there's really no reward other than winning the game. So there's no reason to think about other stuff other than I'm going to win this match. That has to be its own reward. And that's an act of confidence. be its own reward and that's a confidence i kind of disagree because i feel like the reason the reason i fell off is just like um that i think it just misses the mark on on the progression loop because i think it could

even have the progression loop it has now but i feel like leveling up takes way too fucking long like i'm playing now on ps4 and i mostly played on pc where i had a bunch of cool stuff unlocked but ps4 was all where all my friends are playing so i was like i'll hop in and it's like it shouldn't take me like six or seven matches yeah to to unlock level fucking seven and then get four you know fucking sprays that i'm right like that's that's the issue with the progression right now and i and i said this in the review that 90% of the stuff you get in the boxes is kind of trash and you don't really want it. Like sprays and voice lines.

Oh, boy. It's a major problem. Like, say what you will about Call of Duty, no one does rewarding the player better for playing the game better than Call of Duty. You have dozens of gun camos and emblems and stuff to work like you're constantly constantly being rewarded with stuff and overwatch awesome game much better game than call of duty has been in the last few years but there is not that draw to be

like i want to play one more game because leveling up for me is not enough of an encouragement because the things you get from leveling up are just not that good yeah i mean i would i would throw a wrench in that with call of duty to say that my biggest beef with call of duty each year is some you know teenagers who have all the time in the world hop on and they rank up and they get better weapons and the idea that like you are immediately put at a disadvantage when you start playing a game is the least appealing but i think i was really just talking about cosmetics yeah i think the rewards in overwatch are great i'm just saying the way they hand them out is not is not good but i also think it is a testament to overwatch that like the that progression loop is basically

the only reason why i have played shooters over the past like three or four years. It is why I got so deep into destiny. Um, and it's why like, I think I even said on this podcast, like if I'm going to play a shooter, I want to play the one where I can like go trick or treating and shoot enemies and get candy for that. I can use on masks that I can wear over the next few years.

Like, um, it is a testament to overwatch that it does a bad job by that, but I still like want to fucking play it all. I want to move that, but I still want to fucking play it all the time. I want to move on, but I do want to just circle back around to the honorable mentions and say that Destiny is still a very fucking good video game. And the new expansion is a reason to play Destiny, which is all I need from an expansion. It's not a great reason to play Destiny. It's not a great reason to play Destiny.

It's an okay reason to play Destiny. It's a fucking great game. There's never been a better time to get into Destiny. Some of the enemies are red this time. They glow. They glow. Oh, God. No, there is a Mad Max style, like, amazing tank.

Yeah, the raid is good. Just make raids. The raid is very good. Just keep making raids. I'd be totally cool with them spending two years making a raid. Institute matching and raids. That's the only one from Destiny 2. Anyway, I want to talk about my game.

Super hot. Super hot. Super hot. Super hot. Griffin talked earlier about new experiences in games. And I would go to the mat for the mechanic of super hot which is so genius that it basically carries the entire game and it's just this and it's it's one of those things that's easier to see in action than actually try but it's basically this time slows to a crawl unless you are moving so like it's sort of the best i can describe is like if

if a bullet ballet sort of like john woo style thing what you don't think about is the speed at which the person has to be thinking in order to pull off this the stuff in those and what this does is instead of slowing down the action, it slows down the things between the action to let you actually like think through a situation that you by all rights should not be able to think through. So you like have the time to, oh, there's something on the ground that I could grab. There's a, there's a gun coming at me. I could grab that and throw it at a person and then turn around.'m going to shoot the guy behind me and then i'm going to catch his gun in midair and then shoot the guy behind me it's really really real and it's so simplistic graphically uh although it does that

it definitely like it that belies a a definite like perspective on its aesthetics and it is trying to get something across to those but it never lets it get in the way of this like core experience which is when it works is so thrilling and so sort of exciting it makes you feel like what it must be like to be a speed runner who knows a game inside and out except it sort of gives you a leg up into that that sort of that insight without actually you know investing the time that that's basically like you are john wick sure yeah you have the reflexes of john wick and you compare that to like we're going to talk about it later obviously because it's going to be i think very high up on our list doom doom you do amazing things and you're you feel like a god and it feels

cool and super but if there was a camera in the corner of the room looking down at you you'd look like a dumbass yeah you'd essentially like you'd be bouncing around like an idiot shooting rockets missing half your shots feeling like a dumbass and super hot even though it's taking place at a very slow pace when you're not moving effectively the actions that you are making are so precise and so badass that like it really like it makes you feel like john wick and you also you mentioned the simplistic aesthetic that is true but it also has the best death animations of any game which is to say they just go they just shatter yeah that is good shit justin did you get to play it in vr i have not so is that i i

honestly have not played i just read uh one of our writers addy uh it says it's the best thing in vr damn which it i i feels like it was designed for it from the beginning because so much of the story is about like i it's not a spoiler to say what happens to you in vr is it i don't think it's like i believe it's early in the game but there's a moment where you essentially uh fast forward 15 seconds uh kill yourself while you're playing the game in vr which felt like it was like oh this is what the game was made for yeah and then they shipped it ahead of time because oculus touch got bumped however many months um and there's like all of this vr language in it so i i just got the touch controllers i'm i'm super excited to replay this game because it's on vive as well as it just rift uh i'm not sure i'm my or is it just Rift? I'm not sure. My guess is it would be on Vive unless Oculus paid for

some timed exclusive stuff but it feels great with a mouse and keyboard or controller but it really does feel like it was designed for VR especially because since you move so slowly it feels like an answer to that kind of problem with

so many other like Twitch shooters when you throw them in vr it's so rare anymore that i'm sad when a game ends a lot of times i'm like oh cool i've had that experience i want to move on like super hot is the first one where i thought like i could play another like twice as long of this and still be way way way deep i felt that about so many like indie games like this this year i I was like, oh man, I wish this was fucking 15 hours longer. And I played a lot of games this year

and I was like, wow, I wish this was 15 hours shorter. I wish I could have taken 15 hours off this game and added it to fucking Quadrilateral Cowboy. Chris Plant, Battle, let's hear about your game. Talking about big games. I spoiled the first half of it now you

get to reveal the thrilling battle born battle oh my gosh that's sad um battlefield one uh i i love uh flashy blockbuster shooters and i think this one was the best one of the year uh it's battlefield but in world war one and the story actually works and the multiplayer works basically they were like hey let's make a Battlefield game but it works when you buy it which was a real it's a fun proposition

yeah it's a great idea and I think what I really dig about it too is I just can't compete in the twitchy shooters anymore and everything about it is slower um it feels like the early battlefield games and that means like because it's world war one the planes like kind of sputter across the sky and you actually have a chance to aim uh this is the best plane it's the best like flight this franchise has has ever like they're on some crimson sky

shit like i love it feels great the flying chapter of the campaign was like my favorite flight this franchise has ever had. Like, they're on some Crimson Sky shit. Like, I love. Yeah, it feels great. The flying chapter of the campaign was, like, my favorite. Also, I am sure it drove lots of people crazy. I think Arthur called it out in y'all's review, but it is so generous to snipers, and I never really loved that class that much, and I totally fell head over heels for playing sniper uh in battlefield one from the beginning i mean even without a fancy scope you just feel like a hot shot who uses rinky dink rifles to pick people off from hundreds of yards away um and it adds

like a novel thing of being able to adjust your range on even elementary rifles. It just feels like there's so many tiny details in every moment that feels so fresh. And I mean, fresh mentioned Infinite Warfare, and it was really a struggle for me to go back to that game after playing Battlefield where it feels like I'm in these giant realistic spaces where i'm like always having to figure out what is and isn't cover i'm you know hiding in one building knowing that it'll be torn down and i'm using all these vehicles for different purposes at different scenarios and then to go back to cod which is like static walls inside it feels like generic paintball.

Yeah. One of the things that I think first person shooters like campaigns have to do nowadays is have these like big set pieces that, that feel really unique and, and like stuff you're not going to come across in like a multiplayer type situation. But like battlefield one has a couple where it's, you assume you're about to watch a cut scene because there's like no way that i'm about to get onto a blimp that is destroying itself and like

fight my way through a collapsing blimp that's not gonna happen right or the fucking bird little oh yeah yeah for sure like yeah all right there's no way you're gonna make me be a carrier pigeon right no no no you're the carrier pigeon too i like they so totally figured it out in terms of their single player campaigns have always been weak everybody's always loved their multiplayer uh for being big and being having these destructive environments and having all these vehicles and they finally just figured out like oh just do that for single player. Just giant maps, and each mini campaign is its own emphasis on a vehicle that you're going to use in multiplayer.

You feel better trained when you do hop in multiplayer, and it hits all those same strong notes that for whatever reason, the campaigns just refuse to acknowledge in the past. The mini campaigns is brilliant, by the way. What a brilliant, smart way of- It's funny because they basically are admitting, like,

yeah, we can't make a compelling story about one character for 10 hours. Well, that's a huge ask, right? Oh, 100%. But I don't even think of it like a cop-out, because by doing this, they were able to, like, showcase the different theaters of war.

They were able to showcase, like, different stories of, you know what what it was like to fight in those different theaters uh each one was based around like different gameplay mechanics like yeah it was really smart to get you invested in for the multiplayer to get trained up right it matched multiplayer gameplay which they haven't done well campaign battlefield campaigns have been universally bad until this one yeah and fine the big one the big reason they're usually bad is because the gameplay is like stupid and does not match the gameplay of multiplayer and here in addition to being like good story and like good writing and stuff like that and visually amazing you're doing the things that you will be doing in

multiplayer with the level of like same controls same accuracy required stuff like that so suddenly in multiplayer i mean it's easier obviously the campaign but still you feel trained up it also had great it also had some of the tightest stealth mechanics of any game i played this year and i say that playing dishonored 2 right now like it had some it actually had some really like i found it totally doable to sneak through the missions that you had to like i found it totally doable to sneak through the missions that you had to like that you had the option to sneak through using a fairly limited like tool set but like the the feedback that you get and the the like way that the ui handles stealth like it was good i i want to hit one mission really quick before we like decide on

this but there is that there's a mission where you are going through i think it's you're somewhere in france and it's the under the cover of night you're going up into these windmills climbing to the top oh yeah grabbing a sniper rifle and picking off a few people then moving to the next area climbing the windmill doing that and on the third windmill or so and i'm sure this happens to everybody because they've designed it for this to work you fire the weapon it alerts the guards and a tank or a mortar weapon turns and aims and fires directly into your station in the windmill and brings it down on top of you and it was such a great moment of playing with your expectations of again static architecture in these types of games where it's like oh well i go up

here and like they shoot at me and i have the advantage not like oh any building i'm in is fragile and could be used to essentially kill me no that's what i think that's what i call a battlefield moment the thing i would say the only thing that i found frustrating for the multiplayer even though i think it is well designed, is this move. And this is consistent across almost all games, except for maybe Titanfall, which has moved in the other direction. This move towards more players equals better. I think Battlefield multiplayer gameplay has gotten worse the more players they've added to it, personally. Because you get the impression that your level of impact

is pretty minimal in comparison to the overall map so if you're one of 32 players on your team the level that you can like turn the tide of battle is pretty limited whereas if you were one of 12 uh your squad would made up like a third of the entire team so you could really make a difference that's why i played rush almost exclusively yeah like it felt like rush is more focused yeah better but i miss conquest is like by far my favorite mode because it allows you that level of freedom but you would just run into these moments where it's like oh here's 16 people at this base and 16 people at this base and it's just like very fresh all right boyos round one what's the winner i mean it's overwatch right uh yeah yeah i i mean i think we all really like these other than overwatch i i like uh

i think they're all really good yeah like they're good yeah they're all really interesting i i just think that like overwatch is sort of undeniable It is, it is the best game in its genre and it's, it's, it is masterfully made and that's kind of hard to, and we should also say like everything that we're deciding here is actually very scientific and 100% accurate and right. So if you happen to disagree, it turns out you're actually wrong.

We should also put down our blanket. Um, this is not polygons game of the year. No, it isn't. That's a separate thing. It's really no one's game of the year yeah hopefully this is self-evident at this point uh round two who wants to start this time because i don't um i'll start i'll start oh go ahead bros okay you have my round two game oh jesus i caught a lot of shit for adding this yeah i wonder why shingles is that what you said you i caught a lot of shingles in my eye ruffles potato chips in my eye for picking this

game uh and that game is pokemon go i support you i think i support the shingles are you kidding me yeah this is a fantastic okay so here's here's what i'm going to say about pokemon go as a game if you were playing this game without the pokemon franchise i'm gonna i'm gonna assume you're doing air quotes every time you say game go on with just as an experience that you're playing on your phone um it's not a very good game it's okay it's it's not very good um but there is there's something to be said for and the way i remember like the memorable moments in my life of playing video games are these memories that I have of playing that game and what that game caused me to feel and do while I was playing it. whether it's running around Bryant Park because there's a rash of Growlithe appearing, whether it's having a minor spat with my wife and then us making up and going out and catching a Chansey

in the middle of Forest Hills, Queens. There are like these moments that you have, like the fact that I could walk into a park and I realize you guys, all three of you live in the sticks. So Pokemon Go is not unfortunately playable where you guys all three of you live in the sticks so pokemon go is not unfortunately playable where you guys live uh even though you live in austin texas which is quote a city it really just was not really designed to work super well in anything apart from like new york or

london or san francisco but the level at which our society was changed by Pokemon Go for a month, it wasn't long, it was a month, is it was by far the most impactful game, I would say, of the last 30 years in terms of how much it changed the way society worked for a brief period of time. In a bad way, right?

Yeah, it's like it was in a bad way. It's like how 14th century Europe was affected by the bubonic plague. It wasn't in a great way, but I think in a fascinating way and in a way that brought people together, which is, I think, a really good thing. Russ mentioned this game in terms of its societal impact, and I feel like that makes it a fair metric by which to judge it I personally think that what Pokemon Go represents

is a bad thing for society since he is saying it that way I'm going to address it that way it's bad I watched, and this is not to to to cast shade on anybody because god knows i've i've done some unhealthy things uh regarding my phone but like we were in boston to do a live show there and i watched my brothers my dear brothers and my beloved sister in law like walk past places where like america was founded basically yeah to like get a clefairy and it's

like i i appreciate that it got some people out of their houses the fact that you need pokemon get you out of your house kind of depresses me a little bit and i realize how jack thompson i'm saying i'm sounding so please but like when you're out in the world the world's great like i don't feel like it's healthy to have this added layer of like but what if there was pokemon there aren't so like that please like look at the shit that is real and around you like please it's so rare for anybody to be outside their house like can we just try but it's a it's a yeah i want to hop on that because that i think that's like bad. Like, like you talk about like walking around Boston, right?

Like people walk around Boston all day, every day, ignoring that stuff. And like, this was, they live there. No, but I'm saying,

yeah, but if you go to Boston, like, come on, like, no, it's not like you're walking around and being like, oh,

and then let's take five minutes to really ponder on, on this piece of the founding of our nation. It's just as an example, they weren't talking to people. They weren't interacting with the world around them. They were like, dude, I just got a Raichu. Did you get that Raichu? Yeah, I got that Raichu. Tight.

I had a totally opposite experience in that, like, when I was in New York for work and I was playing this game, there were so many historical things. I had no idea about areas that i lived for 10 years and then on top of that i talked to so many people i i was yelling at new york times employees while i was taking over their gym it's disingenuous to say that this was an anti-social experience it was the opposite and that was like that was the cool thing that it pulled off my beef is not like that it it distracts you from the real world or whatever because i i god i walked around parts of austin i've never been to before and it was just to play this game and you can say like oh well you weren't looking at this that's fine i wasn't

looking at the stuff maybe i wasn't stopping to smell the bushes but like i was in places i've never been before and it was because of this game my beef is that it could have been fucking incredible it could have been a fucking incredible game imagine pokemon go had been fun if it had been fucking pokemon in any other sense like if it no don't you cannot you can't i tried to beat one gym and i did it and i was like this fucking this gameplay fucking sucks if i had four moves that i could customize and then go out and do battle with these pokemon that i catch i would play this game for the rest of my life. It would be my game of the year hands down. But it's not.

It fucking sucks. Okay. So I fully acknowledge the game, especially the gym stuff, is like really not good. But I would say that the simplicity of the rest of the game is why it became the thing that it became. Which is to say it did not require you to know anything about pokemon you there was like a very minimal amount of anything like you just need to know oh i have enough pokeballs to throw pokeballs at clefairy this is not a one for one comparison but it reminds me so much of wii sports in that way and that like yeah yeah

wii sports could have been a great bowling and tennis game but it worked for what it was and it became like a thing because of its simplicity and because of its gimmick and it like just completely consumed society we sports was hands down a better designed game because so it doesn't quite work i think game god go ahead i'm just i'm just grousing i i i i can't like sit here and say oh i didn't i this game's stupid because i played it like i did i did play it but i'll never forget the first time i finally hit the level that you needed to be to challenge a gym and i finally had a pokemon uh that the the leveling mechanic is also straight dookie yeah it's um the fact that you like sit there and have to like destroy pidgeys to get candy is like some straight up like year one vanilla

destiny bullshit and it's still in and it's still there it's still the only way to do it but i'll remember like i did it i put in the work because i wanted to get to that next gameplay layer and i'll never forget the first time i played a gym, and I was like, this is seriously it? This is it? Yeah. Like, this is, it was so heartbreaking. The weirdest thing about it is how easy it would be for it to be like normal Pokemon.

It's like Pokemon, the basics of a Pokemon game essentially are like a graphing calculator strategy game. It's a rock, paper, scissors, scissors, two, scissors, three, scissors. Like, there's 18 different types of instruments and which one's better against the other? There's obviously more complexity than that but like not a whole lot more not more than there was

for this and I would argue that the way that they handle battles in this game is actually more complex because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing you gotta hold down to use the super power. Tell me that. Tell me fucking anything. I want to apologize for my grouchiness earlier. I think fuck i'm doing you gotta hold down to use the superpower tell me that tell me fucking anything i i want to apologize for my grouchiness earlier i think i was just but heard that everybody finally got into geocaching yeah that was the other thing i was thinking they were getting talking about

fake pokemon uh instead of uh like real buttons like real like an eraser like at least at the end of geocaching sometimes you get an eraser. Sure. Justin, do you want to talk about Stabby Stabby? Oh, yeah. Dishonored 2, I'm playing currently. Full disclosure, I have not completed this video game. It was released fairly recently. But I'm most of the way through it.

It's really good. Yeah. it's really good and it's and it's really it's it's really like interesting because i've never been one who's like crazy about stealth games i've always found it really frustrating to have something go sloppily and not just like redo it and try to do it perfectly like i've always been frustrated by the moment in metal gear games where you're stealthing for 20 minutes and then you know right at the most inopportune moment you get seen and the whole thing like collapses around you snake um yeah snake snake but uh in dishonored it's really different because when you when things collapse around you if you're ready for it like the game can morph

into a different sort of experience and it's like it's it's okay with that like you're it feels it doesn't feel like you're betraying the core concept of the game it just feels like that you're you're you have to evolve uh the way you play um one of the things that's like really, I'll give a good example of Dishonored. One of the things that's really interesting about that for me is like, you can grab people to choke them out. But when you do, if there's somebody else that has spotted you

and you're trying to get through the game without being killed. Can you just pretend like you're just hugging them? No, they will kill the person you're holding to get to you yeah so it's like you have to weigh like well i don't know like i don't think i can choke this person out before the person comes to kill them and i'm really trying to avoid people getting killed here because it affects another invaluable thing it adds is you can uh parry enemies with like ary enemies with good block timing. And in a lot of games, you do that,

and then you can execute an instant kill. In Dishonored 2, you can execute a choking grab from that. So if you get spotted, your options are no longer shoot them with a sleep dart or use some power to knock them out or run away. You can fight them and you have a non- And return back to stealth you have a non-lethal option in melee combat which is something that it was sorely missing in dishonored one it feels like metal gear in that way i think metal gear kind of had what the last one uh

whatever it was five yeah had like that level of like versatility as well um i've full disclosure so i i was i love the first dishonored and i love stealth games it's probably my favorite genre and i was dying dying to play this game and it literally came out when my eyes started failing and i was like struggling to like squint through the disease to see what was going on anyway i spent yesterday as my eyes started to return to somewhat humanity uh i spent like probably a half hour just playing the tutorial and like the opening cut scene and what i want to just say is and this was consistent with the last game but this one it seems even more so holy shit the art design in this game is so nobody's doing anything like it

yeah and you can finally see it in this version like i think the last one looked muddy like it was great art design that was looked like yeah i think it was limited by the technology the last one and this is like oh we're gonna go nuts we're gonna have like carved flower pillars yeah that throne room again i've only played the first half hour but that throne room is like a feat and then the robots that they've designed like oh my god yeah and the and the the other thing that's so interesting about dishonored that i i don't think any game can touch uh is the versatility you have with which you can approach different uh challenges different problems i mean like you you there's a wall of light you have to get past so maybe you uh you know stride right through and tear crap up and kill

everybody that's an option maybe or like there's a windmill back away from a little bit that has a tank in it but if you pull the tank somebody's going to notice and they're going to come investigate it so maybe you want to take it that way also there's a gate a tiny grate that you can like transform into a rat and go through they have this great uh if you're playing as um emily you can play as either emily or corvo uh from the first game uh emily and i haven't played as corvo so i don't i don't know how his abilities have evolved but uh emily has this great thing where you basically turn into uh the darkness from the darkness the best way i can describe it you're just like

a shadow that's crawling on the ground and making terrifying noises and like you can uh uh take people out silently that way by like pulling them down and just like taking over their conscious or whatever but you can also use that to get into tight spots and small places you couldn't go before and and the level of with which they have expected you to do this and constructed these things that you may not even notice. There's one segment I just played yesterday in a level that has this great mechanic that is bizarrely in another game we're going to talk about,

and I don't think we should talk about it in either one. But there was a great moment where these guards were in a room and they were having a conversation about where to hide a silver ingot that they had stolen. And you could basically use that as an opportunity, like, because they were distracted by that, that world was happening and it felt like you were really in it. So you could wait until they were done hiding the ingot and they'd take off. you were really in it so you could wait until they were done hiding the ingot and they they take off or the barks like that are crazy like good where you're just like going down a street and you see this guard around the corner and you hear him think like was it just a kiss or did it mean something more like talk like giving that much character to just like bags of blood that you're gonna it is almost a problem for me with the uh

the mounds and mounds and mounds of text throughout the world uh and that i i i just consume all of it and i want to play the game um and i feel like i can't sometimes because i do this yeah i have to read through everything i do want to i want to have like one small and this is a totally unfair complaint um but do you remember in that uh how assassin's creed used to have that thing where it would rate you after a mission yeah and be like oh you're bad and you back well okay cool the game's not fun um it the there's a little bit of that in Dishonored for me with the whole are you playing chaos versus good or whatever peaceful because I feel like I can't you talk about how like oh well once things go sour you can just start like wrecking shit and it can be fun in a different way which is how I love uh modern stealth games but I I feel so pressured to play it in the true stealth grapple way.

Like, I keep thinking, oh, well, that's how the game is designed, so I should play towards that. And I'm having to cut that out of my head and just let myself, like, have fun. And I just wish that wasn't there. I think the logic of it, I think the reason it's there, the reason it's telling you that is because unlike a lot of games where, like, yes, you can do either stealth or you can do action, the impact, at least in the first game, again, I've only spent an hour or so with this new one, but at least in the first game, the impact of going non-lethal versus lethal had a lot of gameplay and story impact. Yeah. Where like the final mission was completely different.

That's true here as well. Right. So what I'm saying is I think you need to have an indicator, especially to players that like aren't super nerds that played the first one or read about the game a ton to tell them, hey, things are getting worse and worse. And how that's sort of why that's happening. Yeah. I think it's... Like, telling people, oh, you just killed a ton of people, now things are really bad, and the story has changed.

See, I don't feel like it forces you into what I, I guess what, for me, what I'm saying is, like, when something breaks bad for me, it's really easy and dishonored to peel out of a situation and let it chill out, then figure out how you're going to approach it in a more stealthy way like it doesn't need to turn into a bloodbath for the situation to evolve like it doesn't take a lot for these guys to forget that a living shadow just stood up in front of them and tried to stab them and didn't yeah they forget that pretty quickly um i have i have a couple of issues with the game my first being that um i think it's just as elegant as the first one but i feel like

uh the enemies for some reason in this game can have magic eyes that can see through fucking space and time like i've been spotted by enemies from a hundred yards away and like it kicked off a chase and it wasn't like i ran up and tried to shoot their buddy with a pistol it was like i was in the opposite end of a courtyard and they i i just feel like that that that i i've gotten spotted what difficulty you on uh just normal normal difficulty yeah okay um and i all my main problem with the game is i feel like the the um upgrade economy of the game is a little bit off. I feel like I'm near the end. I think I'm on the last mission.

And for about half the game now, I saved up like 20 runes because I reached, I'm playing as Emily and I reached a point where like there were no more upgrades that suited my play style even a little bit. And so I put all my runes into the bone charm crafting, which is a new thing in this game

where you can make these passive upgrades for yourself. I think that system's kind of unsatisfying because almost every bone charm I find is like, you can kill people and eat their bones to get more mana. It's like, well, I'm not going to do that. And so you can break them down to build new ones, but you can only build new ones using the traits of the ones that you broke down. So it's like, that system's not especially great. And it basically culminated in me saving up like 25 runes i'm on the last mission i was like well i might as well spend them and so i put them all into bone crafting and like it unlocks a perk where you can put traits on multiple runes and like stack them so now i have this trait where

like every time i shoot somebody with a sleep dart i can recover it off their corpse so that makes the game pretty trivial like that that stuff is just like it's cool that they give you this much um freedom but like i just i still don't think they nailed it i still don't think they crushed it like there there are some things that i want to be able to do with these powers that like i don't think the game necessarily lets lets me do um and i and and i think that might just be a complaint that works with the playing through stealthy because I think there's a lot of badass upgrades

for if you want to go through and set up these beautiful chain reaction kills. I just don't think you have that many options when it comes to that. Yeah, it's weird because on the one hand, it's encouraging you with the stuff you guys were talking about to play in either a lethal or non-lethal kind of way. But from a mechanical perspective,

it doesn't seem to be rewarding you in that way. Like there's like most of the powers are not something that like I want to use in a non-lethal, stealthy kind of playthrough. I don't need to... For instance, you can make a duplicate of yourself that will run around and distract people. That's fine,

except I don't really want everybody to... I want the guards to be where the guards are supposed to be, and I don't want everybody on high alert roaming around. Almost everything you get, you get new special crossbow bolts, and it's like, this one will make them run away in fear like i don't want to fucking do that shoot them with this one and it won't knock them out but it'll blind them for a second okay but

they're gonna be super pissed off when that's over with yeah i mean it's true that doesn't necessarily match your play style but having seen i don't know if you guys have watched these youtube videos oh dude yeah insane i've never seen like playthrough you're talking about speed runs earlier these crazy insane complex speedruns are the first Dishonored, and they use all of these tools in, like, really interesting ways. So I kind of, even though it doesn't match

my normal gameplay play style, I like that they're in there because it opens the floodgates for, like, these crazy, like, skill players. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, I've been doing the same stuff with Emily now for five or six missions, which is, like, Spider-Man's laying up to a high point, skill players yeah i'm just saying like i've been doing the same stuff with emily now for

five or six missions which is like yeah spider-man's laying up to the high point domino some people together shoot one of them with a sleep dart or jump down and knock them out with an instant ko repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat um and i like i still like it it's still fun to do i just i wish i wish there was just a just a little bit more yeah it'd be cool if there was like um like similar to Doom where it encouraged you to do different things with different powers. Yeah.

To like unlock stuff would be like a neat addition. Anyway, we should move on. Chris, you want to go or should I? Sure, I'll go. And we can save something real nice for the end. I'm dying to hear about this because I would... I know I haven't played this at all. Justin, I actually was planning on literally

just selling this to you because I feel like this is a game for you in a lot of ways. So my game is Watch Dogs 2, which might surprise you because Watch Dogs 1 was awful. Big poopy. It was real bad. Watch Dogs 2 is a puzzle game in an open world. Is pretty much the best way I can describe it.

Talking Cat, starring Kevin Spacey. So, yeah, what they did was they had two ideas. They said, okay, we can make a traditional open world game that's like GTA with generic shooting. But if people want to play it as as a puzzle game they can so all the missions you have you have a rc little uh car and it can hop and make noise and do all sorts of other hacking things and you have a flying drone that has similar capabilities and you go to the location and at first i was terrible because you are essentially made of glass and i went in and played it like gta and just got wrecked um and then i talked to uh my pal

andrew webster and he said don't never go into buildings don't even enter like the premises uh just stay outside and use your little car and your little plane and see what you can pull off and what i realized was they essentially built these places as these giant stealth puzzles uh that you can crack by using these two different tools and some of them i mean are just outright explicitly puzzles like uh if you try to hack this there's one mission that's a giant data center down by where the giant stadium is. Side note, the version of San Francisco is really, really, really pretty. And, like, kind of feels recognizable enough if you've been to San Francisco a few times. It's pretty close.

Yeah. It's not exactly like street for street or anything. It's surprisingly close. It's much better than the original Watch Dogs version of Chicago that had a port. But you could break in and go into this, like, goofy tech campus, or you can fly up your drone, hack through a window, and then the entire exterior of the building becomes a wire puzzle that you are essentially adjusting and moving

the pieces by hacking them to solve this puzzle that is built onto the side of the building um it's just really smart and charming um the other thing i'll say and this is where i think you'll get on board hoops is they just ripped off saints row outright in terms of the script and the characters i mean yeah it is they clearly took saints row three and four and said okay what works here from just having interesting uh characters that are likable to uh kind of this like socially progressive kick uh in terms of what they're trying to say with the characters to long very long conversations about aliens versus predator and like the the tiniest details of what makes that franchise work and not work um

it's just really really it's a really likable game and uh griffin talked about like how he prepares you know this finite experience where you know that you can blast through it my favorite games these days are these worlds where i just like being there they just bring me joy being in that space and this is it's the opposite of gta and like it just doesn't feel all that cynical it yeah i want to ask how much because i feel like i've seen some stuff uh nick posted some video or somebody posted some video of like taking a selfie with some people in the background and the people in the background like give you the feeling like hey fuck you man and i saw that and i got worried that it was just like more of this like yeah i mean super

shitty like everybody in this world is a fucking vapid piece of shit man get it like yeah thanks banksy yeah i get i get it i haven't got a whole lot of that i mean there's don't get me wrong like the missions are still goofy like there's a martin squarerelly mission there's all they're clearly trying to lampoon silicon valley culture but it comes it just isn't so aggressively mean and like entitled almost as as gta there's not a mission where you fucking kill the founder of Facebook with a foam bomb? No, there's nothing like that. I will say the one really weird thing is you are this, like, goofy hacktivist, and then you have the ability to just pull out normal guns and just wholesale murder people. And it did require, like, a cognitive disconnect of, okay. Is there ever a moment where they're like and here's a gun

um no you just have one from the beginning i mean you have a stun gun i think phil mentioned it in y'all's review but it would have been so great if they just said okay all the bullets are stun bullets they're the exact same guns but because there's like not blood or anything right um but you can't you can't carry that through when like you can make a car explode or something like like yeah that's the only thing that the explosions would be like the catch but they even sell a stun explosion they actually have that that's in the game like there there is a stun gun grenade launcher so like let me ask you plant uh again this is another game that i wanted to

play and then my eyes gave out so i played an hour last night just to sort of like introduce myself how much of the game is mr robot to a t i mean mr robot was also like ripping off a million other things i don't know you're right i wouldn't be too generous to mr robot um i a little bit it's just it i would say it's nothing like mr robot and that like it has a soul and is fun sure um yes like it just doesn't live in like oh i'm and i'm an addict um yeah i i the other thing i would say is i was talking to megan about this and she was like i i couldn't really get into it because i played it like gta i did a couple missions and then i wanted to amble around the world and there wasn't that much and it is a game where the entire point is your capabilities like your these superpowers that you get essentially as a hacker and not having those makes the game suffer so like you do have to commit to unlocking

different things um before the game really starts to kick into gear but i think the first missions are enjoyable enough and it like it hands out the points that you need to buy those things like i mean halloween candy like you are rarely for want um i i died in that tutorial um stealth sequence in the beginning and i couldn't tell it was because I could barely see or I was just really bad. I died like 12 times. I died, and then I had to replay it

because I switched my PlayStation 4 to PS4 Pro and lost my save files. But when I did that, when I went back the second time, I just think I had an idea of how to play that like the version of stealth like i said it doesn't play the same way as dishonored or like even what uh what is it middle gear 5 it has its own feel stealth wise and once i kind of like clicked with it it started to be really enjoyable yeah um yeah it is is it my favorite game of the year no but is it like one of the better open world games this year yeah i think so by far um i'd like to talk about my actual game of the

year uh which is i don't think gonna win the besties so i think i'm on a nice streak for this it could in the vein of in the vein of undertale i would like to uh present for the vein of Undertale, I would like to present, for the approval of the Midnight Society, Stardew Valley is my favorite game that was released this year. It is a game in the style of a few Life Sim games, but I think the core inspiration here is Harvest Moon. moon um and the reason why uh stardew valley is so special uh is well i mean it's a fucking exceptionally made game but also um it was made mostly by a a single person uh eric barone uh who operates under the title uh the developer named concerned apeedApe. Um, and this, this person took a look at this genre of games that, uh, the, the Harvest Moon series has gotten progressively worse and worse and worse,

uh, uh, which is something that he has said. And I agree with, uh, because I still buy those things. Uh, I bought the last couple on 3DS and they're just getting worse and worse.

Um, and so he took a look at this genre and said like well this sucks uh i bet i could do it better and then went out and made like hands down the best game that this admittedly pretty niche genre has has ever seen by a fucking country mile like it is a harvest moon game without these um like abstract mechanics that you have to like read three different you have to cross reference three different game facts guides to understand like soil health uh and stuff like that uh it is a a really good looking game it is a well-written game which is something that it has a hands and, and, uh, you know,

heads and shoulders above, above any other game in this series. Um, and it, it's also just like a really, really deep game that, uh, you know,

it has all that harvest moon, like customization and, uh, farming. And it has the, this like ironclad progression loop of raising some crops and then selling those crops to get new things for your enormous farm that you can customize.

But it also incorporates some more modern advances. There's sort of RPG mechanics where you have skills that also level up that unlocks new things. uh also level up that unlocks uh new things um it's also just like it is the most chill game released this year um and like this is my type of genre like the life sim genre like i love games like animal crossing uh new leaf which i am now also playing again because it has that amiibo update which hi honorable mention um it is a game that you can just kind of like get into and just like it's just nice and it's just chill and while it is being nice and chill it is also like really really compelling because today i'm gonna play it and i'm gonna like go

mining and get some ore to upgrade my axe that i can use to finish clearing out my farm like to this is this is i know it's not everybody's cup of tea it is exactly my cup of tea like games games like this are my favorite games games that you can just kind of get lost in um and sort of make your make your mark uh on the world and like stardew valley is is it's the best harvest moon game and it's one of the best like life sim games just just ever made it's also like it's an incredible feat that one guy and they also he also just released a uh an update uh to the game that adds like a bunch of different farm layouts and new quests and a bunch of new buildings and a bunch of new like uh animals and recipes and like all kinds of new stuff like just this one guy took a look at this genre said this genre sucks now and then like made the best thing that this genre has ever ever ever

seen and to me that is like that is spectacular that is like you know what's weird to me is that like i i agree with everything you said like totally 100 the the biggest reason that i have not played as much stardew valley as i've wanted to play is 100% the platform. Yeah. Which is to say this sort of game is the opposite of the PC gaming experience to me. Yeah. I want to be sitting in a quiet library chair. Yeah, sure.

Like in a handheld. And this isn't his fault. Like I'm not looking for him to launch on his own of whatever video it's one dude like that going through different cert processes is is insane although it was published by uh chucklefish who also did oh god what was the star like star terraria space terraria terraria no no no it was the one i know what you're talking about the space one fuck that game is so good i also spent a lot of time playing it. That's another game that I would love what they're doing, but I would love to not play it on a PC where I'm

hunkered over a laptop. It is coming to consoles. It's coming to PS4 and Xbox One, I think. So at least on PS4 we'll get that remote play. But if I had this on 3DS, you'd never see me again. Griffin, NX launch title. I mean, that'd be hot that'd be hot you'd

lose your mind um because i because i agree with you like i i am actually going to definitely purchase this game again when it comes out on ps4 and play it on you know remote play while i've got the baby asleep in the nursery like you you know that's going to be my shit um uh yeah that that that experience on a three i mean god that's why i spent 200 hours playing animal crossing new leaf is just because i could anywhere yeah i i if i could i i played a pretty good chunk of stardew valley and the place where it sort of bumped for me and i i'm not sure uh there's probably other people who who are in the same boat although like looking at feedback from people i don't seem to be but like you were talking about what a chill experience it is and on a certain level i totally get that um but for me so many of the systems were sort of so obtuse that i spent a lot of time feeling like i wasn't making the best use of

whatever i had going on because there was just so much to sort of absorb. Yeah. Yeah, I remember we did a video together where I kind of had to walk you through the loops of the game because there is like a time element to each day and there are seasons. And when the seasons change, like if you have crops you haven't harvested, like, yeah, there's a little bit of stress to the game. I concede that. I feel like I don't know what a good solution for this would be,

but I had to spend a lot of time while I was playing it referring to different guides and stuff like that just to figure out what I was doing and how I should be using my time efficiently with the game. And maybe that goes back to the sort of player I am. I don't feel like I, like I don't want to waste time doing the wrong thing and discover 20 hours later that like I,

I messed something up or like I, I could have been making better use of it. Have you played, have you played harvest moon games before? Oh God, no. Okay. See,

that's the, I feel like there was an institutional knowledge that this game may be expected of you because like it's the same loops and it's the same priorities. I mean, there's definitely more stuff. It's not like this is just a clone. But you kind of know if you've played those games,

like, okay, well, I need to upgrade my watering can so I don't waste as much energy. It's like if you've never been on Guts before, you wouldn't necessarily know how to climb the aggro crag. I mean, you wouldn't know what the aggro crag is yeah right you could assume based on the name but you wouldn't know for sure you played a bunch of star view valley right yeah i i enjoyed it i i i mean honestly i'm looking at the the list of games that we have here and it's probably my winner um the only the only gripe i had was that uh i just can't make time for it

like it and i think that's because the platform yeah i i think i think it is partly the platform i also i this is such a stupid thing to say it's too good like um some games are like um hard drugs for me and it was one of those games that I think Steffi was out of town when I started playing it. And I did one of those full weekend binges. And then realized like, oh, this connects to some deep part of me. And Harvest Moon was my favorite game on SNs when i was a kid fuck yeah and i think it was like not only is this like the best version of harvest moon but it has like some nostalgic grip on my heart um that if i let myself i could like it's like you said this would be my

only jam um and i think i i made it to i guess i went through two full seasons and then which is nothing compared to like a hardcore sturdy valley player but i i kind of hit that point of like okay i know this is i really really like this i need to like make time to play other things yeah which i guess is only a compliment sure but yeah this is this is my game of the year, and I guess that's the end of this round, and it is... The only other thing I would vote for, I think, is Dishonored 2, and I just...

I fucking loved Stardew Valley a lot more than that. Yeah, Stardew Valley's mine. I would give it... Yeah, I don't... I would give it to Stardew Valley. I'm fine with that. Should we stop here? Wow, Griffin has already bolded the Stardew valley it doesn't matter your vote basically might as well not exist this isn't a

voting show we don't vote on this show it's about it's about conversations it's about people growing it's actually never ever ever been about that no i just didn't i don't know i i wish i wish that i didn't i wish that also co-op is coming to the game in an update next year like co-op harvest moon like fuck yes i i will i i will uh sort of side i'm i'm not gonna fight starting to rally here but um i will sort of side with plant in one regard a lot of the people who i saw were um who were really really into this game were talking about play hours in terms of like hundreds like yeah these terrifying like i would get these terrifying updates from dan reich and it's like it's called sim city build it

that's that's dookie time like i don't need to be productive but like i see that and like anymore i'm like whoa okay well i you know what maybe destiny maybe i'm actually good yeah exactly that's he's fucking fun though like that seems really good yeah it's good and fun but like but honestly griffin this is not bullshit if i could i don't know if I believe this. If I can wave a wand and never have played Destiny, I might do it. Like, I might actually do it. Because, like, I'm too deep now to get out. And it is a very, like, fun video game. Like, a very fun and good video game.

There's lots of fun video games that don't make me want to die. there's lots of fun video games that don't make me want to die. And there's a lot of times where like, I, I was in like, I was in therapy for generalized anxiety disorder pretty consistently throughout most of 2015 in dealing with how to be a new father. And there was a lot of times where like, I, I had spent so much time playing destiny and not caring for my own mental health that I felt like if I could just tell my therapist, well, I should probably play less Destiny. And she would be like, well, I guess we're done. I guess I'll just charge you half for this one because you figured it out on your own.

Yeah, you did this one on your own. You saw that is the problem. I feel like I'm really stressed that I don't have enough time. If she could just say like, well, stop playing so much fucking Destiny, maybe. Yeah, I'm noticing your day is totally accounted for, except for these 90% of the hours. 90% of my waking hours is just trying to get a fucking Fatebringer to drop. Have you been exercising and meditating like we talked about? Like, no, I'm just so busy.

But I couldn't just finish the sentence. I'm so busy, but i just want to get through one raid run and get all the monitors because i feel like that would really fix it all for me all right well let's take a break right here i think that we've done let's i'm tired i know griffy biffy i hate talking i hate talking about vibio games. It's exhausting. Overwatch is our round one winner. Stardew Valley is our round two winner. They will compete in Mortal Kombat.

Our round three winner. Mortal Kombat. There wasn't a new one of those this year, was there? No. Nah. I don't feel like there was. Guys, I want to mention, you know, we haven't done this for a year. It's been quite a while.

And even though we take a year off between these recordings, even though we've taken that long break, it so happens that I've been getting a visitor every single week. Oh, fuck. Hey, hold on. Wait, hold on. Okay, that was me putting my fucking seatbelt on. I've been getting a visitor to my apartment

every single week really just wanting to like shoot the shit and spread you know his his thoughts to the world and i keep having to like turn them away at the door and be like dude this is like we only do this once a year like you don't have an outlet for it and i personally would rather you know i don't mind sitting and chilling with the guy, but he needs a platform. May I ask a question before? Sure. Is this visitor making use of the entirety of the 30-foot ceiling ceilings that you installed in your house? You know, they're not quite there, and maybe that's why he doesn't stick around for super long.

You know, it's really, we're about 25. I keep i keep trying to like get a contractor in here to do some work but i gotta say if it is our height enhanced friend i am psyched to hear it because some of russ's friends much like some of like the older john hughes movies, you watch them nowadays, and there's some ideas that nowadays we find kind of challenging. Yeah. There are some ideas that we find a bit hateful and challenging, and I'm not sure it would hold up to 2016's great. Wait.

Do you mean that five kids from different backgrounds could spend an entire Saturday together? Just saying, but constantly saying gay slurs at each other. Oh, that part. Yeah. No, no no this one uh you know he he's actually here he came as per use uh every single week he comes right at the same time and he came as per use so if you guys don't mind if he just pops on for a little bit and

i mean i do mind hey yo it's me new york giraffe hi new york giraffe have you been listening to me? This is so strange You sound just like Russ And not like New York Giraffe used to sound I heard Griffin I heard you didn't find me super offensive No If I were to rank

Russ's friends I think Ghost of Milton Bradley Would almost certainly be number one yeah that guy's pretty racist uh and then i don't know man there are a few others but yeah it's almost like a refreshing spring breeze when you come around yeah what can i say i'm i'm like a yellow spotted uh magical tree of justice over here i've always said those exact words about you how has your year been it's so here's what I wanted to come up and say, and I've been waiting a year to say this. Everyone's been saying, hey, 2016, not such a good year, right?

Everyone's worried. It's a miserable, miserable year. They're worried about the future. They're worried about, I don't know, science, stuff like that. I wanted to say 2016. Sorry, they're worried about science? 2016, I wanted to say they're sorry they're worried about science 2016 i wanted to say great year uh-huh oh no bud and here's number one reason great year for 2016 oh no global warming great okay okay so this is a new spin so this is a new fun spin on the globally bad thing of global warming.

Is it bad? Is it? Or is it possible the trees were getting too tall? Interesting. You never thought about that, did you? A weirdly nihilistic turn from the New York giraffe. Is it so weird? Now, I'm pretty tall, as you know.

Yeah. But trees were getting much taller. I'm pretty tall, as you know. Yeah. But trees were getting much taller. So you're saying the big GW comes and shows some of those trees whose boss withers up some of the big boys, and all of a sudden now who's the tallest in the land? Precisely.

It's me, NYG. Exactly. That's a very giraffe-centric view of this really bad thing that's happening. May I ask a question? And I don't want to be rude here. I don't want to reach past, you know, my place, but who did you vote for in New York Giraffe? Oh, God.

Well, you know, I was more of a Gary Johnson guy myself. To be honest, he really spoke to me and his platforms about freedom and tree height. I mean, he also has a very long and elegant neck. Yes.

I know you like that, you dirty bird. I also like the fact that there's less competition for the trees in terms of eating them because all the other animals are dying. So it's great. Okay. Is this your only reason why? Because we also lost Bowie and Prince and everyone cool. Nobody cool is left? Sure.

But you know who wouldn't be cool and you know who would have died this year were it not for Global Warning? It's New York Giraffe. So who do you care more about? You care more about Bowie? I'm sorry. I don't have any family. How would you have died? Bowie?

Or your friendly giraffe who talks to you every day? No, no, no. I would strangle you with my hands today to get an extra hour of David Bowie on this earth. I would strangle you for an extra hour of David Bowie B-side demos. That is offensive to me. I do want to mention one more thing, though.

The interesting thing is both of you could strangle him at the same time. I think it's going to take all three of us. Six powerful hands. You need 16 people to strangle me if you really wanted to. You'd have to get a gaggle. That's what they say about you. The other thing I wanted to say, people are worried about 2017, right? Yeah, it's going to be pretty rough, too, it seems like.

It's going to be great, and here's why. Everyone's saying net neutrality is going down, and I love it. Why? You know who's not neutral about the net? Me. Have you ever tried to get a giraffe out of a net? Oh, God. Okay.

Ever? It sucks. Oh. New York giraffe, the way you think is awful this is just who i am this is i'm a giraffe i know that that's that's why i don't that's why i don't get like crazy to see like i'm not crazy to see you it's because you think it's because i speak the truth no you're dropping truth bombs your brain is just bad and i have one more I have one more New York based question I've been out of New York for

a while now is it about the MetroCup prices that have gotten too high what do they think they're doing over here it's about that hit Broadway show Hamilton did you get a chance to see it no I can't fit. I tried to get in. Richard Rodgers is a huge, it's a very tall

theater. You definitely didn't have any experience. It's tall, but I don't want to mention anything, but I'm pretty wide as well, by the way. P.S. Kind of wide. This is a part of you that we've never heard about. Well, I'm like horse ride. Have you seen a horse? Do you think a horse could fit in a normal Broadway theater seat? No.

I take up like half of the subway car. What do you want? Right? Also, people complain if they're sitting behind me. They're like, put your hat down. And I'm like, I'm not wearing a hat. It's just my neck. I'm sorry.

They think that the nub of your spine is your head and that the rest is a hat? They think it's one of those tall, like, you know, the cat in the hat hats. They think that's what I'm wearing. Or like a jamiroquai. A jamiroquai. A jamiroquai hat. Yes, precisely. Got it.

Mr. Giraffe, are we done? I don't know. Are we done with the earth? I think I'm... I want giraffes to be extinct. What? Now, that's weird. That is one good thing about, yeah.

About this whole thing. I mean, I'm all for fewer giraffes, so I don't have to worry about more competition in the trees for apples and such. But all of them? That includes me, Griffin. Don't get me wrong. It's a broad approach to getting rid of you it's like if i could just get rid of you and all the other drafts are cool that's fine i'm saying the inverse would also be

acceptable also i should point out that it's good for us to dislike you because if we liked you a whole bunch uh 2016 would kill you and we can't have that that's oh god you know what i think new york giraffe might be the most influential and important artist of our time and we can't have that that's oh god you know what i think new york giraffe might be the most influential and important artist of our time and i don't know i don't know what i do without him here uh he's got a bright future i mean he's already got like a really um excellent discography and i just i'm i'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the future and i hope nothing bad happens to him hey what are you doing to me okay this is oh no the shingles are covering his every extremity and he's dying he caught shingles

from russ my eyes it's spreading i got the spots all down my neck last year last year i'm pretty sure we threw him out of a fucking window and he survived that so i wasn't that high for me i basically just stepped down okay well thanks for coming by if you guys need a tiebreaker let me know oh fuck hey i have a fun i have a fun halftime activity real quick before we get back into it coloring what game this is what game are you guys most like if you had looked at this list at the beginning of the year what game are you most surprised is not on it doesn't have to be biggest disappointment but like what game are you did you yeah going into 2016 was that quantum break quantum break i was so pumped for quantum break i absolutely loved alan wake i pretty much

dig all of the games that that studio remedy has made and quantum break just did not land for me um it just like story-wise it's lame and it just wasn't there for me it was a okay game it wasn't a bad game but it was just like pretty it just didn't live up to my expectations for what they're capable of. You're saying like January 1st, 2016, if we looked at a list of upcoming releases and tried to figure out what our top games were going to be, like what we're surprised. I mean, No Man's Sky, right? Oh, yeah, sure. Big one. Wow.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I don't know that I've ever been so. Is it weird that I wasn't as disappointed as the entire earth was with no man's sky maybe because i'm like a realist and i knew what video games are capable of i mean that it goes so far beyond that for me like i i i am also fairly jaded in that regard but this this this was a whole new this is a whole new thing like saying your game has multiplayer in it and then it doesn't and you can and and believe me i know about the i've heard i've heard all about the nuance and i respect the nuance no there's no multiplayer you're right

that was but that that's that's that's fucking unforgivable yeah preposterous. Yeah, you can hook up with other players, explore the galaxy. You fucking can't, and you can't say that. That's wild. I still kind of feel bad for those casts, not to dismiss anything, but it seems like they, not to dismiss the actions,

but it really does seem like they were making something of a smaller scale, and Sony latched onto it and needed it to be a bigger scale than they could deliver ah that would be my get a plant you usually have good insight in this shit what do you yeah i i mean i've been following that studio from when they were just you know a couple of guys who wanted to make a sonic light game after after they left Criterion. Yeah. And they're super nice guys. They bet the house a number of times. I think Sean put up his mortgage when they were making Joe Danger

to be able to fund the studio, and then their office got flooded. They've gone through, obviously, a ton. I think the issue that I can grok from the whole sony sony situation was my guess is they expected an actual marketing team to do their job um and like to guide them through the pr waters or swamps uh and i don't think sony did that i think they did like an extreme disservice in terms of like sony telling them to pitch a game that wasn't there i don't know if i fully buy that just because they were out there pushing the game at the uh video game awards before the sony deal yeah um and and i think like i think from the beginning

i mean either they were showing a significantly more powerful version of the game when they first showed it, or they showed a fabricated vertical slice, which is standard in the industry. If you want to talk about games that lie, look at any of the original Bioshock Infinite video gameplay demos. They're straight up not the game. And are clearly, in retrospect, CG in large part part where they explicitly said they weren't so like this is an industry protocol i think where they got really uh taken through the mud for a for i think fair reason at times uh is because they just didn't have the resources like like i said this happens with other studios it just never is allowed to spin out of control because and i think they never would have launched at 60 dollars if sony didn't come in like if they

just like self-published essentially i think it would have been a 20 or 30 dollar game i didn't i didn't i didn't even think it was that i didn't think it was a bad game i played a long time i played a long time and i thought it was cool i wasn't bothered by the like... I mean, I didn't love the fact that it was a game where you were constantly feeding meters. It was like you had, like, seven discrete poisons coursing through your body that you had to constantly be fighting. Yeah, every single time you jumped, it was like, well, that sets me back three hours.

Go eat a fucking flower. I also do think it's not a great game. Like, I mean, I defend it. a it's it's not a great game like i i mean i i am i defend it i can defend it to some uh respects especially in terms of like people piling on them and like threatening them i think that's terrible no the reaction was fucking yeah the most ridiculous thing but you i you said you're like multiplayer in the game and there wasn't like to an extent i can't yeah i just think like there the the weird thing that happened was it announced itself and then like all of these open world manage like like you said meter

management simulations came out ahead of it and i think often did a better job um and and that's what's the weirdest thing to me is like it came out and not only was it not really what it proposed to be, but it wasn't especially good or better than what was already available. Yeah, I mean, it's not rocket science. It seems to me that they didn't. They it was built backwards. That's what it feels like. What it feels like to me is they didn't get a core gameplay loop that was fun and work. Yeah, they just had a screensaver essentially.

And they built. Some of that shit was so cool like i found some planets that i thought were like really really rad and that knowledge of like i'm the only person who's ever been on this planet it was cool every time but then that planet had the same five fucking buildings on it like yeah i i i was it's a unique experiment they wanted to see if they could make that sort of thing fun and they they didn't i mean it just it just wasn't fun, and it seems like, I mean, it's experimental, and it's weird because I want to celebrate that kind of thing. You know what? Let's talk about a different game because we could get it. I think enough ink has been wasted on No Man's Sky. I'll tell you, mine that I am surprised about not being on the list is Mirror's Edge.

Oh, yeah. Mirror's Edge. The subtitle to which escapes me. What was the list is uh mirror's edge oh yeah the mirror's edge tile to which escapes me like what was the catalyst catalyst um mirror's edge is the only game i had to oh you go ahead and talk about mine sorry i just wanted to say i was going to review mirror's edge and then literally had to drop the review five minutes in because i got nauseous um it wasn't shingles related no no not that time the the uh no it's just like i i really dug the first mirror's edge it was so neat and such a cool concept and i felt like they were it really reminded me of the first assassin's creed in that like okay this isn't fun but, or this isn't great or perfect, but I can see definitely the bones of something really interesting are here.

And I'm glad I didn't review it because it would be really hard to put my finger on, but the second Mirror's Edge game, it just didn't have a flow. Yeah, well, I know what it was. I think you can put your finger on it very simply, is that everyone wanted open world, and open world was bad for that game i i will go a step further and say do you remember that game brink yes yes like it was like the really mediocre uh shooter that bethesda put out and you could like splash damage yeah and you could like slide in it like that was like the thing or human years i just mirror's edge slide yeah and i i think what like happened with things like brink

and mirror's edge is what people really loved about it was the locomotion that like oh you can climb and slide and vault and you can do it all in first person when that hadn't been around and the takeaway for some people was oh what people love is this wacky story about hijinks and the pseudo-future and parkour, and what really people just wanted was, hey, can you add slide to my shooter? Because I like sliding. I like climbing.

And I think what happened was they went back and made a game all about these mechanics that now are in most shooters, and it turns out the game was not that super exciting i mean i mean i think it i think you could put it simply mirror's edge was a game where you tried to find these fucking perfect lines on what were essentially tracks yeah and catalyst drops that that's exactly what i thought well okay that's why i think it didn't work as

well but yeah that was a big disappointment for me. Chris, did you say one? You have something you were bummed out by? No, I think we hit the bummers. I mostly, overall, I enjoyed everything. Even the things like No Man's Sky, I'm still like, they were interesting experiments, even if I didn't enjoy them. I do think it cost a lot i also think there is this like i don't know i hate to do the whole like

you made a gajillion dollars like yeah sure you made a gajillion dollars um but yeah i can't imagine what it'd be like just have the internet turned on you like well i can but not to that degree um been there yeah um but yeah i i'm i'm happy to talk about the stuff i liked but maybe this is a chance to kick off to that yeah let's get to round three uh well chris plant since yours is boring do you want to start and let's get it out of the way what do i have on the list it's not in front of me oh god your pick is stupid car game no oh wait wait wait here i answer this honestly okay i'm gonna it's a very simple question is it did i play forza horizon did you play forza horizon 3 didn't play it no okay i i have it and played it a bit i bought it actually on your recommendation and how much did you play uh i played about

i don't know four or five hours i i i like it and i i dig what they did and i think it's a really well-made game i just i'm gonna stop buying forza games because i i just don't dig it like i just don't dig the feel of it and that that's, like, that's it. Do you not like racing games? I love racing games. That's hard to believe. No, I do, I do. What's a racing game that you like?

I mean, any Criterion game, I'm a fan of. I mean, there is a dichotomy of racing games, and it is arcade side and sim side, and I think Forza Horizon probably leans a little bit closer it is arcade side and sim side and i think forza horizon probably leans a little bit closer to the arcade side than it's like super heavy sim predecessors but like i just i just don't like the feel of it i want to fucking drift sideways i complain like you all outrun like i want to i want to do that shit and it doesn't feel like forza horizon is is that for me you fish tail a lot

in forza horizon i fuck up a lot and i'm just not i'm just not very good at it and then when i am good at it i feel like i'm going like 15 miles an hour in a fucking shopping cart because i'm having to be like so careful with and i get that that's cool like i get that that level of like tuning and finesse is like something that folks are digging and that's not me talking down like it's just like i honest to god think if you like racing games like there there is a difference between arcade style racing games and sim style racing games and i just don't i don't have the palette for for sim i think that's fair i don't think it's sim like at all i think it feels straight up like any burnout game but i i mean it's like obviously it's a feel thing there's no way to tell what other people notice about it i think if anything

it has a level of control that even the criterion games lacked so like i when i do the uh drifting on sideways i feel like i can do it within like an inch of another car and not worry about wrecking um and not you can do that in like paradise you can level it definitely feels very magnetized like the computer's giving you a a lot of wiggle room um which is again maybe that's that's probably the the difference between arcade and sim is like how much is the computer going to help you out i didn't mean to step all over you when you were introducing it because i think there's also a lot of like the world is fucking rad the um multiplayer like drive guitar integration is really fucking smart

the soundtrack is probably the like licensed soundtrack of the year for games um yeah i didn't mean to step all over you i i because i do actually why do you think it's amazing chris plan um i don't know man it's hard after he gets like shredded first um i i i think it has a feel that is joyful and i feel like next to nothing i play in video games has a feel that is uh not about either killing things or profoundly cynical yeah um like that watchdogs 2 i think is like a memorable experience because you don't have to shoot everyone in the face with a normal rifle and like it's cynical but like doesn't make you also want to like throw the disc out the window it speaks to just kind of the place that we're at i

mean again that battlefield one is another game that is like i held up earlier and even that is still i think like gets away with a lot because it's like better than the worst well it's also one of the most like anti-war war games i've played in a long time yeah while also being a war game um i uh i i i didn't play forza horizon or forza horizon 2 so i didn't really know what to expect from Forza Horizon 3. And that first mission where you have a race with a jeep that is suspended by a helicopter while, like, fucking churches placed in the background,

like, I was pretty into that. Why does the jeep... Why not just have a race with a helicopter? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cool. Why does the Jeep... Why not just have a race with the helicopter? Why is the Jeep even involved? Exactly. When's that Assassin's Creed movie coming out? In like three weeks, man. That could be a Christmas thing.

Did you finish Forza Horizon? Was there a finish? I think also my problem also stems from, like, I just don't like open world games as much anymore. Like, did you, did you, is there a finish to the game? Is there even a story? I don't even know. Yeah, vaguely. It's like that typical

every sports game since SSX. Hey, you're new in town. You gonna fix up your car for us? Yeah, like, oh, there's a festival, and, like, you wanna have a festival. whole point i mean honestly like i like i said i i have been playing just cause 2 since it came out because i can fly around a tropical island and it is pretty and a stress reliever it is like my mental squishy ball um and this is like the exact same Like, there are crazy beautiful skies.

The water is blue. You can drive around sand dunes and have no expectations of doing anything remotely close to a goal. I mean, like, have I beaten the game? No. I've unlocked all the spaces, essentially. Sure. But mostly I just, like— I had actually a hard time. That was another reason I kind of bailed is I had a hard time understanding, like, how the loops of that game worked.

Like, I hit a point where I needed more fans, but I didn't. I'd finished all the events. And it took me a while to realize, like, oh, you actually have to go and find Drivatars and race against them to get those fans. Yeah. I mean, if you win the races it should be fine did you try tweeting obnoxious things as well yeah that's the other trick I did that what is it that is like a big mission in game another thing that appeared in watchdogs this idea of like likes and we've got all the followers now it's in Pokemon Sun and moon yeah yeah weird um that seems like a really negative ambition to give you talk about i want to i want to get back into forza horizon 3 because i did i

did like what i played i i think it's honestly also laziness because i realized i'm gonna have to learn how to play those games like when you i still have this friction where i'm following the drive line and it turns red it's like slow down it's like are you sure i think i know and then i eat shit just because it doesn't feel right to like no i want to slam on the brakes and whip my my big fat car ass around this curtain oh no i died i died oh yeah i died i died here whoopsie where's my boost meter freshick what did you bring um oh man i've got the game that could could take the title gentlemen and that game is doom from bethesda and id software now which one is that this is the one uh that came out in 2016 it's the one where you rip hearts out of demons

uh frequently um it's also the one that i had zero expectations for and i think everyone did everyone went into this game well yeah a 60 year development cycle will do that for a game well they expected mega dog shit and they expected a lot i mean forget 60 years like they canceled they fully canceled a game uh how many years was the first version of doom in development god a few 30 years actually and it was 37 years yeah 37 years so they worked on it for a while and then they ditched it and then they made this game in like two and a half years or something like that and it's weird because i think these sorts of games need to be very infrequent which is to say like my tolerance for like this like crazy insane quasi mindless shooting needs to is really like one or two games a year at maximum um but this game nails this feeling of, like,

you are a supercharged, on-crystal-meth gun god that runs into a room and just, like, rips heads off, rips arms off, uses rockets and switches to a chaingun and switches to, like, a lock-on heavy assault rifle in a second. And it's just this, I mean, it, it feels like how your memory remembers the original doom,

but it's in truth, way more interesting and way faster. And there's way more going on. Um, they just like nailed it. Now I want to mention there is a whole entire mode of doom that is total and complete dog shit. There is no question that the multiplayer in this game is fucking awful.

And it's weird because that's what they led with. That's what they've expanded to. Like their first expansion was that. Well, it's cheap to expand multiplayer. Like that's why they've done that. That's the cheap, like you just add a map or whatever. Yeah, the multiplayer is fucking heinous. And what I wouldn't give for

this game to have like co-op in the campaign i don't know if they've they haven't added that right i don't know i don't think they have um but even though an entire mode of this game is dog shit the campaign and the fun of the campaign so outweighs that that i really just like absolutely adore this game i play doom the when i play doom it's on a sunday morning with like i'm sipping an orange juice kicking back and like really really painting a fucking picture for me right now i feel the same way that plant feels when he's like unwinding with forza playing doom, there's something. And I, and I play on like easy difficulty cause I don't want to worry about anything like that. And I just have,

it's just like really soothing. And I've got a game. It reminded me of a lot. Um, well, two things, Tony Hawk pro skater, but also specifically the club.

Yeah. No one played the club, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're're both the club was the shooter version of tony hawk's pro skater but the whole idea is for it to be enjoyable you have to do chains and the idea of making your health tied to melee so having to get into it is it's really awesome it's it's a really that that needle is so fucking hard to thread of remaking this like iconic classic experience and i'm not being like uh hyperbolic or gross pre when i say

iconic like it is it is iconic it's a fucking icon like it established a lot of things um to add to that and modernize that without losing the the this the stuff that did make it iconic without tipping too far in either direction and like this game walks the line fucking perfectly yeah it's amazing um it's it's it's really outstanding it would have been hard to do if they hadn't like scrapped it uh 37 years in to to you know start completely from from scratch or close to from scratch uh and crank it out in two and a half years but considering it had the dev cycle that it did and and still turn out this yeah like remarkable is it's also amazing that it came out of the studio that made rage which was like the total opposite of this like slow time ago well and also

i think with rage they tried to say they tried to, well, it's Doom, but with all these different RPG hooks and an explorable open world. And they were like, well, let's not do that in Doom. Like, that didn't work so much. Also, the team that made this and the team that made Rage. Yeah, there was a significant turnover. Yeah, there was a significant turnover. It's an interesting way of approaching a remake that Bethesda, I think, is so smart about, specifically with Doom. I think you can extend some of the same compliments to Wolfenstein, but I don't think that Wolfenstein was about – I think Wolfenstein was more about finding a relevant place for an IP more than it was trying to recapture what that game was about initially

and and but like with doom the thing that's so smart about is like there's two really two different ways you can approach a remake and you can recapture the way the original felt or you can recapture the way the original made people feel and i think that with doom the really smart thing they did was not it was not to try to create something that felt like the original doom. They try to create something that would recreate the feeling of playing doom back then. And like what so much time has passed, especially in the,

in the, in just the scope of, you know, video game evolution, so much time has passed. And like our literacy and the way we play games has changed so much that like a doom that just felt like the old doom would have been disastrous because that's not what games are like now. And we're in our our fluency and the way we interact with them has changed.

I just think it's such a smart way of of approaching it. And I was shocked to that that I enjoyed it as much as I did. I rarely feel compelled to get better at shooters. I mainly just kind of want to get through and see what's going on um but like it makes it so rewarding to get better yeah you want you want to you know find find the ways to improve yourself uh and and it makes really and i fucking did like i this isn't my type of game not even a little bit and never ever ever has been uh but like i got better at it it and i didn't i thought it was going to be like too uh punishing and like

insular but like no by the time i reached like the halfway point of the campaign like i was fucking murdering it uh yeah that was so satisfying it's so good also about throwing you into a situation where your initial response is well i'm dead and you just have to make the decision and it's also no i'm actually gonna not die i'm actually gonna kill everybody it's so smart about adding one thing at a time one gun at a time one new enemy at a time it a new you know ability well okay here's a trial to like help you do this same thing over and over again these 15 second tight ass loops until you are the master of that it is a beautifully designed game just a mario formula point uh about the feel versus the look or you know how you remember a

game playing versus not and the what it reminded me of is the original DuckTales. I loved DuckTales on the NES. Do you remember? It fucking rocked. No, this is a good comparison. I know exactly what you're talking about. You went to the moon. You bounced around on your cane. It was fucking amazing.

And then, I think a year or two ago, Capcom went and re-released the original DuckTales and didn't touch the gameplay at all. And it made me want to jump off a fucking cliff. and didn't touch the gameplay at all, and it made me want to jump off a fucking cliff. Now you compare that to what I think is the equivalent of Doom, which is really Shovel Knight. So Shovel Knight took how you remember playing the original DuckTales,

modernized it enough that it wasn't a fucking miserable slog, and made it super duper fun, but still kept that original spirit. That's how Doom feels, 100%. God, Shovel Knight was such a good fucking game. That's what I'm saying, man. Let's bring it back for this year. What are those guys working on? What's Yacht Club on? I don't know.

It's got to be more Shovel Knight, right? I feel like they're working on something. SK2, baby. Speaking of sequels, fine. I want to talk about Dark Souls 3. I am very surprised it is not Griffin that is taking Dark Souls 3. We'll talk about dark souls three i am very surprised it is not griffin that is taking dark souls three to the now we'll talk about it okay um i i am not somebody who like i avoided the dark souls thing for a long time and then i eventually this is really weird but i went through this weird one week period where i got really obsessed with the idea of Dark Souls more than just like – I wasn't playing it.

I was just like obsessed with the idea of playing it. I got really into like – okay, I decided I'm actually just going to like try this thing that I have. And I didn't beat it because I got to the end of Anor Londo and I just fucking couldn't with those two guys. And you wrote a song about it. And I wrote a song about it. And I wrote a song about it. It was haunting. But, like, I really love so much about Dark Souls. And Dark Souls 2 fixes so much about that game.

And I feel like Dark Souls 3 is a really worthwhile evolution of that. And it was really weird for me to see the reaction to Dark Souls 3. really weird for me to see the reaction to dark souls three, because for me, for the type of game that I was looking for, like the, uh, an expansive world and, uh,

a story that is inscrutable basically, and really interesting enemies and powers and ways of using those abilities. And, and, and, and I, and I get that it is like, obviously not as punishing as as previous games

but for me i i i really i really dug it i really dug dark souls 3 um a lot i um my my beef with it is mechanically it's the best game it's it's the best dark Souls game. The weapon styles was, like, fucking great. Really, really, really cool stuff. Do you think it's better than Bloodborne in terms of mechanics? Well, no. Bloodborne's the best game FromSoftware's ever made, fucking hands down. And if anything, this game suffers having followed Bloodborne. Yeah.

Because while I think mechanically it nails it, I think it is the least obtuse game that they've ever made. This game came out in april um i don't fucking remember anything about it i just don't like i there's a fight against a big skeleton i remember that like i i can tell you everything about dark souls one i can tell you a lot of stuff not everything about dark souls two i can tell you fuck i could recite the plot of bloodborne for you right now yeah i don't i this game came out in april of this year i don't remember anything about it and i think it's just one i don't think it had that much that many like outstanding moments right like uh the first time that a monster transformed is into a big black inky dragon like that was pretty crazy justin and i inky dragon. That was pretty crazy. Justin and I were playing Monster Factory.

That was my first exposure to the game was playing Monster Factory. And that first bossy fight transforms into this big inky T-Rex. Like, oh, that was pretty cool. And there's a big skeleton fight. I, honest to God, can't think of a single moment without having to wonder, like, wait, was that in Dark Souls 1 or 2? Which is the other problem. It's like, there's this swamp level. There's a bunch of fucking castles there's a bunch of old ass cat

well and it's not even a coincidence like they intentionally made it as like a greatest hits of dark souls one and two yeah and like and i think that is at a fault it was fun to play it because the mechanics were so good but i i half of the reason i play dark souls is because the rpg progression loops are tight as fuck but the other half is like those moments the memorable things that ornstein and smog of of anor londo like uh the the the abyssal dragon like that is the reason why i do that and i there's not that much memorable stuff from dark souls three. I feel like, and not only that,

like some of the bosses I beat by myself the first time that I faced off against them. And some of them, some of them were very tough, but like a lot of the bosses, I would just walk in and just first time get them. Um, yeah, it was definitely a lot easier.

Yeah. So like, I, I, I, I'm not even coming at it from like, Oh, it's too easy. Dark souls would be punishing. It's just like, there. Yeah. So, like, I'm not even coming at it from, like, oh, it's too easy.

Dark Souls should be punishing. It's just, like, there's a spark that other games have had. Bloodborne had them every level. Had some cool, cool shit in it. The aesthetic was, like, dope as fuck. The story was good. It was. It was.

I love the story. It took some work, but it was good. I just don't work but it was good i just don't i don't remember i'm thinking about it and the only reason if i were to summarize it the reason it's not on my list and it will be on my top 10 right like i had a good time playing it but we're bringing four games to this yeah i just don't remember it i just don't remember much about it do you think though i i would posit this do you think that part of that is we've gotten a lot of Souls games in the past few years? They're coming out really fast. Yeah, for sure.

I think that's a big part of it. It definitely suffered from being released so close to Bloodborne. I would also say that people tear these games apart a lot quicker than they used to. Basically, by the time it made it here, the entire game was laid bare for you to find out whatever. It loses a lot of the mystery, I think, because there wasn't that thing of people rabidly all discovering it together because it was released in Japan first. Yeah, I agree with that and i think i think namco bandai definitely has them on a like pretty fucking tight tight schedule i guess we're off that though right like they they're saying that well they have a new i think they're working on a

new quote new ip but it'll still be like soulsie that's fine with me because that's what blood that's what bloodborne was and bloodborne is one of my favorite games ever made. Yeah, I think what you, like, the importance of, like, you can praise the RPG mechanics and the boss fights, whatever. I think what sells Dark Souls for me is 100% the environments. And, like, what progresses me, what gets me excited is, like, I'm walking into a new area, and it looks, like, fucking bonkers crazy. to a new area and it looks like fucking bonkers crazy and uh because of this game being like yeah a retread or a greatest hits of dark souls one and two um there just weren't there was like one i think dragon's peak was like a pretty standout environment that looked like really cool and had a really cool boss fight in it but that was pretty much it everything else just felt like familiar places that i've been to before so that one boss fight that you did with sigfried the onion knight man oh yeah like fight the giant like that was pretty

against when i think about it when i sit here i really think about it like the the fight against the storm king like that was pretty cool the dragon fight is cool where you slam down on the dragon oh yeah That was it. But that's, like, I have to sit here and really be like, oh, yeah, there was that. I mean, I played through the game three times, the platinum bit. So maybe it's just because I'm a crazy person. Wow, really? You're a broken person.

Plant, tell me your game, Plant. He already did? Not Plant, then. It's Griffin. Griffin Mac. Griffin Romain. Do you want to talk about my game, Plant? Griffin Andrew McElroy.

My game for round three is The Witness. A J-blow joint, and it's full of pussies, and you're on an island. And you solve the pussies, and you get light beams. That pretty much boils it down. That was six years of his life boiled down. Yeah, he did a TED Talk he's like lots of puzzies light beams light beams i don't know how to talk about the witness because it's it it's a game where you walk around this huge just lovely island and you solve puzzles on a grid a billion times

yeah um and that's like that's like it but the the the the nuance of the game is like impossible to describe because then if i try to go in more granular detail it's like well some of the puzzies um they have black and white dots and you can't put those in the same area but sometimes you do if there's a triangle like um it's it's so it's it's really really difficult to talk about in specific terms. That game, though, has a sense of discovery that I don't know that I've ever seen in a game before. I think you haven't seen it in a puzzle game before. I think the way I think of it is sort of like,

picture a Mario game where you're introduced. We were talking about Doom earlier, where mechanics are slowly introduced to you and same thing with mario that's like the classic mario design it's like first you get jump and then you get a cape and then you can fly and yoshi and whatever and this is basically the puzzle game version of that which is you're introduced to a mechanic you're slowly introduced to another mechanic you go to another side of the island a totally new mechanic is introduced and then you go to the center and both of those mechanics are melded together only some of the mechanics are like well this is gonna whenever you see this

it contradicts the other mechanic yeah like this game is constantly suspending these ideas in your mind like a fucking like baby's mobile that has to like balance out and you have by the time you reach the end of the game 14 discrete rules are interacting and you have to you have to keep it all straight and like if i say that if i say that i probably just said that and some people who haven't played witness are like well that sounds terrible bye but the masterful thing about this game is that you can handle it yeah you can you can handle it because the game like lovingly walks you through those different mechanics now sometimes it doesn't there's certainly walls where it's like you reach a new area and you hit a grid and it's covered in

fucking like lucky charms and you're like i don't i don't know i don't know what avs and so you just start fucking around with it but there's almost always a series of like four or five panels where there's like a grid, like a one by one or a one by two grid. And it shows you the rule. And then the next one's a two by two grid. And it shows you, okay, but here's what the rule really means. And those panels are like, those tutorials, if you want to call them that are so fucking elegant and so good and when you when you figure it out like you feel like the the

the king of genius town it does sort of feel like the design doc was really like someone went into a mental facility and peeked into like a padded room and john blow was in there and on napkins out of his blood he had written like all the puzzles out and just spread them all on the walls yeah and for some reason like his like crazy brain i mean obviously other people worked on it but his crazy brain was able to work in this like insanely logical um very like thoughtful educational way to lead someone down a path of mental acceptance. Yeah, just the rules-based puzzles, right? Like these two colors have to be in their own section, but also you have to make it in the shape of this tetromino.

Those are wild. When you start getting into the, okay, follow these rules, but there's also these environmental requirements. There's like a bird chirp that only happens. You can't touch any shadows. Yeah. And yeah, you have to draw it in the shape of the waveform of a bird chirp.

The shit is so wild. And you sit there for two minutes just looking at it like, I have no idea. There's nothing on this fucking grid. And then you figure it out like that that it it it is so satisfying to conquer these rules and then once you figure it out like each each section of the island i think there's like 13 or so um each kind of having their own sort of special rule set or like environmental puzzle solving you have to do. There's like two moments in it. And the first is like, oh, now I get it.

And then the rest is like trying to use what you just learned to take down an increasingly complex series of puzzles. And then you get up to like the one-off things things where you solve puzzles to climb a tower, and then once you reach the top of the tower, you look down, and the fucking hedge maze you just walked through is also a fucking puzzle. It's so good. I could not. I dreamed about this game. I could not. It grabbed me and would not let me go. I played through like furiously over the course of like four days

and it's a pretty long ass game uh and i i got all of the all those lasers i solved all the puzzies um it it it grabbed me in a way that like only deep ass rpgs like skyrim i i have done it's grabbed me in a way that like world of warcraft did in its heyday like this this game like got me good the only the only knock i would say against it and i actually put this in my review um the moments that you aren't the moments that you aren't uh actually unearthing a new mechanic it can get a little bit frustrating when when you've got the mechanics and you understand what you have to do, but you're just sort of like grinding on a puzzle. That can get a little,

that there was a lot of times where I was like, okay, I know what I'm supposed to do. I just like, don't wanna like, I really, I can't do this again, please.

And it's like, especially there are some that are chains of like eight or nine puzzles of the same theme and idea that don't necessarily introduce anything new there was a few moments like that where i i kind of uh uh felt a little frustrated with it um but it's i think it's a fascinating really worthwhile cool like meditation it's a really interesting meditation on a single mechanic yeah there's one there's one mechanic in the i mean really yeah there's one mechanic in the game and it's a really interesting meditation on a single mechanic yeah there's one there's one mechanic in the i mean really yeah there's one mechanic in the game and it's like it can feel a little show offy i think but but i think it's a really useful sort of thought experiment that like i'm going to

take one mechanic and one of the most simple mechanics you can and i'm going to build an entire like not just game but like vocabulary yeah sure like when i was playing this it was before release so there were no there was no way to like cheat uh or get a help or a walk even now it's not easy to cheat because it's like what the fuck do you google well and the problem is if you do it once you like your your spell is broken yeah yeah because if you do it once, like your spell is broken. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you do it once, you're not going to have that knowledge for the next time.

But I actually, what I ended up doing was on a couple that I got really stuck on and, you know, had to plow through for review. I actually like would draw, I would send screenshots in the Polygon lounge room. Remember that? And like it would take me 15 minutes to explain the language of what was happening but then we have like really into helping you crack those nuts we have really smart people who aren't editorial on the polygon staff like really smart coders and really smart like people whose brains work this way like this is what they're built for that would like help me to to muscle my way through some of the the tougher puzzles but like it's it's great like it's also the most beautiful

game it's gorgeous it's chill as hell yeah um let's let's let's vote because we spent a long time on this round um this this one's actually kind of tough for me because like i i i recognize doom's a good game like a great game um it but it's not like the genre i like and i feel that way about forza horizon 3 like uh i for me i i liked i think i like the witness the most out of all these but i think i'm probably gonna get we instill that you can't vote for the the thing that you put up uh yeah if we do that and then dark souls 3 is the second most game i enjoyed out of these i i you know what i i wasn't thinking about it until i like put myself back in the headspace i really love the witness like i like i really i really like the witness a lot and it's the kind of thing

where like i i think is worth sort of celebrating i mean i i don't know i thought doom was great too but the witness is like it seems like a really special thing to me and i and i and i felt it was doom was like more fun probably but i felt things in The Witness that I don't feel while I play video games anymore. Like a sense of discovery and satisfaction that like most games like just don't, just don't give me. I'm going to go with Dark Souls. I didn't talk to The Witness because I found it insufferable and I couldn't pass an hour and a half i think i've never felt more like i could actually feel the designer somebody already said this but like literally looming behind me um it just felt so i'm sorry it felt very smug how much better would the witness have been though i do want to say this just super quick because the

image is in my head and i have to get it out into the world how good would the how much better would the witness have been if every time you solved a puzzle and another one appeared in front of you an fmv jonathan blow dressed as a wizard popped up from the bottom of the screen and said oh a puzzle i mean that's essentially what we got with the fmv like there are fms in the game those are great those are so good oh my gosh he's back uh i i remember playing this like a year and a half or two years before it came out in a hotel room in new york city and in that hotel room was me sitting at a laptop and jonathan blow sitting across from me in a chair staring at me for an hour and a half and it was the most intimidating the worst i did a demo of

antechamber i think that was alexander bruce yeah uh did that one that game is it fucking rules but it's like it's like it's a 3d puzzle platformer where you have a gun that draws different shapes of cubes but they each have their own rule and you basically have to like design circuitry and sometimes you'll leave a room and it'll disappear behind you and it's all these like impossible shapes fucking demoing that with this guy like what do you think you need to do like oh man he was really he was really nice about he's a great guy but like that demo is demoing games like this makes you feel like i don't know the king of dumb town

yeah yeah what's gonna win that i don't uh what's gonna win this round okay so if i can't vote for doom i think you can vote for Doom. I mean, you brought it. I mean, you're right. Doom would be my pick. Here's what I say. If folks are going to vote for Dark Souls 3, I don't want Dark Souls 3 to win this round

because I also think Doom was a... Yeah, I really could switch between Doom and Dark Souls. I just don't think Dark Souls... I think Dark Souls was a very fun game. I loved playing it, but I don't think it was special in many ways. Doom, I think, is a very special experience. So that is my pitch for Doom.

I could also let The Witness go on. If the three of you love The Witness, I don't want to be holding it up for any arbitrary reason. The Witness made me nauseous. I also recognize that Doom is a really, really well-made like i'm torn between a really well made game in a genre i like and a really well made game in a genre that i don't typically get into but it did actually for the first time kind of get me into that genre a bit i don't know i don't know doom russ you're saying doom i'm saying the witness justin you're saying the witness i'm chris you're saying a doom okay gentlemen i've got someone perfect for this

you don't get to have another personality that breaks top i heard you guys needed some help with the tie and we can't what are the two games what do we got let me say this let me make an argument up here i will you are i will i can kick you from the call like please don't do this don't do this thing hey here's the side you know that's fine with me i don't need to be the type you really is trying to make this is the best conciliatory argument in the in favor of time plant hated the witness none of us hated doom yeah but that's not i i think i hated the witness probably for the reasons that it's good i i don't want to i don't want it to be that like

i hated the witness because i think i brought baggage with it like i i i i i don't know if that's a good reason to like not include the witness i can at least recognize the value of the witness as a game i'm not saying that like my opinion is very different than the quality of the game i would say so no man's sky is what you're saying well okay so my uncle was in that game he was on one of the planets i'm gonna i'm gonna say the witness we're gonna have plenty of other big flashy games i think battling in the final round so okay i'm going away then also just want to go ahead and get out and say this is not polygons game of the year uh just really want to just another yeah i gave the witness an eight like um round four round four oh hachi machi really saved some of the stinkers for round

four huh gang did we no it's pretty good. I can start round four. Go for it. I brought Fire Emblem Fates. I'll do it quick. It was... I still like playing games on 3DS and Vita, but that's done. More than any other platform.

It's just how I like to play games is like on the go or sitting on the couch doing something else and i don't think there were a ton of great games for that platform there were not this year what's that no there definitely were not yeah um but fire emblem fates was like a really early really really really high point um it had you know all the good stuff that fire emblem games have it had the specter of permadeath hanging over you it had the um support system uh it it uh you know had really great and like a really remarkable amount of writing um for for all of its like really colorful cast of characters. The core gameplay of that game is still tight as hell.

Yeah, it fixed one of the issues that I think we've always mentioned whenever we bring up Fire Emblem, that whole idea of durability on weapons. Yep, yep. It is less... Yeah, we talked about that when Fire Emblem Awakening, another game I really, really loved, came out, but I constantly felt like i was using my stuff wrong and that that is uh more or less gone here um i i think the

the big thing to talk about here like it's a really really well-made game for me it's probably the most i've enjoyed a fire emblem game uh and srpgs are like my jam um i think the big thing to talk about is the division between three different games and not even from a financial standpoint but from the prospect of you do you want to play this game three times uh because i reviewed the game and i really adored it uh and i played through um shit i can't remember not not conquest the other beginnings or something i can't remember the one where i teamed up with the red red people the red haired people the asian people or the european people yeah i mean that was that that was the divide um and then there's a third one uh that is revelations i think why can't I remember? Anyway, so I played through it the first time

and played through one of the campaigns. And it's cool because whichever, like, you're choosing between your adopted family or your birth family, and once you start playing through with the faction that you've decided on, the game doesn't really compromise. Like, you're gonna kill some of your other family and it adds these

moments of um tension that like i don't think the this series has like gotten me into before like the tension of these games doesn't come from the story it comes from the uh turn by turn like god i really don't want this person to die in this fight because then i'll lose him forever um this game also added some of that tension to the actual story of the game and it was really cool so i finished that first campaign i was like all right great awesome now i'm gonna try and get through the second campaign where i go with the other half of the family and so i turned the difficulty down a little bit so i could like plow through it and i did i finished that second campaign and then there's that third campaign where it's like if you want to find

out the real truth of the game you got to play through this campaign and at that point i had beaten the game two campaigns which are lengthy fairly lengthy affairs uh within the course of like a month and a half and i haven't done it just can't i just like i love it great game i don't want to beat it three fucking times and that's not even taking in the like price idea of it which i'm not too turned off by because it's not like this is um the differences are pretty stark between the different versions of the game it's not just like sun and moon where it's like oh it's different times a day and there's different pokemon like it's a different story the missions have different mechanics there's a lot of different stuff there's different classes um and you didn't have to rebuy i think it was 20 dollars to add another campaign

or something like that it wasn't like i just i just like i don't want to i don't want to play this i don't want to play this game i don't want to play three campaigns of this game back to back to back maybe some someday some year i'll get back into it and finally take on the final truth but it's it's hard to feel like i didn't get the whole story yeah so i i played through all three of them holy shit yeah i spent no joke i've checked like the play times i spent 100 hours playing this fireball game damn i'm glad we hired you back yes you should not be left to your end devices um and i played it it probably took me about three months to do it. And by the end, it was definitely really hard to, like, get up to do the third campaign. And the third campaign is probably the weakest of the three, which is a real shame. Oh, really?

Yeah, it's not super great. That sucks because the whole time the game is like, if you really want to know the truth of what happens. Well, but you said it before. The story is not really what propels you through these. It's more about the gameplay. And the gameplay of the third one, they just do some, like, really cheesy, like, gimmicky mechanics in the third one that I didn't really like. And the story is kind of, it's like, oh, there's, like, a demon third guy that's, like, fucking shit up. And it just didn't stand out for me as a game.

I mean, obviously, I played 100 hours of it. I fucking loved it. I thought it was so good i i i want to point out one thing in the game that like almost got it almost made it and if it had made it i'd still be playing this game today um it had this castle system where you could customize and upgrade different parts of this castle and then you could uh invite other players in. It was an asynchronous multiplayer mode where other people could try to raid your castle. And so you'd set up defenses. Yeah, it was sort of like Clash of Clans.

Kind of, yeah. And it was almost deep enough. If it had been just a little bit deeper, if there were more layers of customization, I feel like it was not that hard to break through an enemy's line and conquer their castle it was so close to being this like really polished really cool asynchronous multiplayer

mode with rewards that carried over into the full game like so close and if they're talking about doing this the the ios versions of this and animal crossing both of which will be terrible but like if it was just that but a little bit more refined, like a Clash of Clans Fire Emblem game, that would be fucking incredible. And this game laid the groundwork for that, and I'm really hopeful

that they do more with it, because a asynchronous multiplayer Fire Emblem game is like, ooh, boy, it could be something really spectacular. The other thing I want to mention is tonally, and this is of the true for most fire and boom games but this one in particular it's a very sweet game like the way it's written the characters are like very sweet um insofar as like they're very kind and like kind of thoughtful to each other yeah and there's one like side story in particular that involves like one of your kids from another realm, whatever, neither here nor there.

But like he, for his own reasons, likes wearing women's clothes. And the whole storyline starts out with like his brutish like knight of a father is like, what the fuck's he doing? Like, you know, he's disrespectful and whatever. And by the end of the storyline, it's like, well, I accept him for who he is. And that's like a really weird, sweet, nice moral that actually carries through to almost all the storylines in the game. So I really like that. Who else has stuff?

I mean, everybody does. Do you want to do yours? Yeah. Mine is Quadrilateral Cowboy. I'm noticing this year I'm really clinging to in a year that was like full of a lot of games that i thought were really well executed but not particularly like fresh or fascinating quadrilateral Cowboy is a very different sort of game. And it is basically, if you didn't play it, I don't want to call it like a hacking game because that doesn't really cover it. No, it's a coding puzzle platform. It's a coding puzzle game. You have a set of tools,

mainly led by your deck, which is your, you know, your laptop that you can use to break into these facilities and usually try to steal something or take something or, you know, reprogram something or whatever. You have a lot of different tools, like a little video monitor that you can use in conjunction with this Weevil, which is a little drone, with this uh weevil which is a little drone basically that you can program to to do certain things and and and when i say program the the wild thing about this game is i literally mean write lines of code and run them and see if uh you know it solves it solves the puzzle and then tweak them um and the the things that are most interesting to me about quadrilateral cowboy is the extent to which it forces you to do this stuff with very little in the way of

shortcuts. You, you know, you can tap I think it's the up arrow to, to repeat commands that you've done before, which makes it a little smoother, but like by and large, you're typing the commands in and it's up to you to do every line of it and like there's little

stuff like um your video monitor is something that and and all your tools are like this is something that physically exists in the world so if you want to um uh watch your monitor uh where your your weevil is to to watch what your weevil is doing you literally have to like put it at the right angle so you can see it while you're coding into your while you're coding right so you can see it sort of in your periphery uh and you can uh and like if you leave that behind in a room that you have to go get it like if you forgot it like a lot of times i would get to like the the last thing and realize like ah crap i left my video monitor back yeah i'm gonna have to walk back

and go get my video monitor and and and while it should seem like an annoyance the really interesting thing about quadrilateral cowboy is it makes you do these things so many times that by the end of it i really felt like i was of it, I really felt like I was doing it. Like I really felt like I was writing lines of code without referring to like the instructions or whatever. I was just like, I had these lines of code in my head and I was just pounding them out. And it is such a cool experience and it takes a little while to get there. But like, it's so smart in the way that it makes this world seem very real and tactile and and it really made me feel a way that i haven't um with other games and it's a feeling

of like really well-earned expertise yeah i mean expertise in a game that like shouldn't have worked i mean like we talk about no man's sky sort of like calling a shot and saying like i don't know maybe this will be fun and it it wasn't but quadrilateral couple is just as much of a called shot like i don't know i'm gonna this uh maybe a game where you code something maybe i can make that fun and and they absolutely they absolutely play that expertise that's the fucking coolest thing like the swag shit of setting your your deck down at the start of a level and then entering in 15 lines of code like uh select this first door uh turn off alarm for three seconds wait three seconds uh open door like the the being able to build a chain of commands and then adding in pauses

uh you can do that and basically set it up so that you hit enter and then you walk to that door and you wait for your code to open it up and you walk through it and then you wait for your code to do the next thing like it's this feeling of doing a fucking bank heist where you have set this chain of events into motion and just pray to god that you gave yourself enough time in the actual wait lines of the programming like it is the fucking coolest feeling ever it's even fun when you fail because it's like every time that i fuck something up it a lot of times i would like okay yeah that's on i did forget to program that door to reopen so i guess i am just stuck here all right that's on me that's my phone

i guess i did program that gun backwards all right guess i put it upside down like there's a lot of it's got a sense of silliness that is uh and and fun of experimentation um that i think is really worthwhile plant did you play it um i i did not i played a demo or not a demo i played a version of it for igf i feel like two times in the past three years um so i've played like the evolution of it but didn't get time to play the final version i get the thing that i was curious about i mean obviously i've like watched most of it now was uh did you get around to playing any of the mods justin no no i've heard the mod scene around it is nuts um just because like because it is this like just playpen of tools built around coding and all these different objects

that people have come up with really bizarre and interesting things it's interesting like yeah that you you do have so many options because there are like digital solutions to things in the world. Like there's a way to hack, you know, whatever you need to be open, open, but there's also physical environmental solutions. Like you get a gun and you can program coordinates in your computer where you

want that gun to aim and then tell it to wait and then tell it to fire. And you can use that to hit a button to get that button to open a door. And so like, sometimes that shit you have to do, um, like there's so many different, there's so many different ways to tackle any individual level. Um,

and, and yeah, I do want to check out. I didn't even know there was a mod scene for this game. Like people are making new levels and shit. Yeah. I mean, from what I understand,

they're creating all sorts of weird things. Oh man, I gotta get back into it. Check that out. Uh uh i didn't really get a chance to play it but you should everybody videos of it it's a hard it's a hard sell like the only thing i would say that would get people interested is like that moment where you set up the fucking heist in code ahead of time and then walk your way in the real world through the results of your programming is the slickest like oceans 11 shit yeah that sounds ever done in a game i don't i i would worry that i would feel too dumb to like figure that out yeah running running towards a grid of

lasers because you are short on time and just praying that your code makes it disappear before you hit them and then it does a millisecond before you go through the door like it's fucking yeah that's amazing that's very cool uh chris or russ who wants to go next i'll grab mine so we can save titan uh whatever russ brought for the attack on titan uh yeah um oh shit i think attack on titan that game fucking rule yeah i need to try that um i'm bringing it i'm taking out um no no it's too late no i'm bringing it i'm bringing it quadrilateral no way out attack on titan is a spider-man game where you have a sword and you fight giant babies it's a fucking great game let me just say honorable mention i should have

mentioned that attack on titan is fucking so kick-ass and weird griffin played it and he and it was good that you could not believe how fun it was it was like it was we were playing it a lot when we were doing the mabim bam show and so like we'd come home from the shoot and we'd be fucking so stressed out like well nothing funny today and then we would just like spider-man cut up babies and it was awesome defense force it looked like very weird earth defense forcey yeah dude that's not that far off but like yeah if it but yeah it's very silly and very every time you kill a titan by cutting its delicious neck back neck meat open it gives you a ranking and it's like amazing subjugation it's always a subjugation. It fucking rules. It's satisfactory subjugation. And the mechanics are like, the swing mechanics are great.

They're really, really good. You can fly across the board. This is a great transition to body horror, which I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about a little game called Inside. How much of, more than any other game this year, people were so up their butts about spoilers for this game so i don't know how to talk about i don't know okay how about i think we should be able to talk about everything in this game uh okay it's also been how many months

has it been it's been a while it's been a while it's on playstation and uh xbox now i believe people are okay if they want to skip ahead they can there's a there's a twist if you haven't played the game and you don't want to be spoiled seriously skip ahead 15 minutes because it's it is it's the most spoilable moment of a game this year i think yeah um so it's from the people who did oh dang what was it called limbo limbo yeah and uh once again you are uh a little boy wandering through a very bleak world solving environmental puzzles and kind of i guess understanding the story through uh these different places and it's like i don't know we'll get right into the spoiler but for me it's like kafka meets akira like it's it's just as like

it starts out as like a kind of normal-ish looking world that you are like, I don't know, you're on the lam and the government's out to get you. And as it goes on, it just becomes increasingly abstract and fantastic things. Well, there is a pig butt alien in like the first three minutes. Yeah, I guess what I mean is like the environments themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it plays it like pretty close to the best as weird as that is to say. the first three minutes yeah i i guess what i mean is like the environments themselves yeah like it plays it like pretty close to the best as weird as that is to say and then like it goes into like german expressionism where like the shadows are longer than they should be um things just kind

of go off infinitely into the distance there are you're walking through factories but the factories seem to have been built for no other point than to process the meat of children um by the end bodies are floating upwards that are like hanging from this rafters it gets it gets really really grim um but of course what i liked about it was the puzzles felt for the most part not repetitive and um like actual environmental puzzles like yeah it wasn't like so many bad environmental puzzle games are like well you do a little bit of platforming and then you get to the next place and then it's a puzzle and you solve that well i thought had like a lot of like pushing box puzzles yeah that this didn't necessarily rely on and for the most part this game has like oh i am in water and i need to get out what can i find at the bottom of the

this lake that i can loose from a small cave that will float up to the top and then i can use that or it it's it feels like you're using the environment as you would if you were actually trying to escape yeah um versus like oh well a giant puzzle designer decided that he would interrupt a normal world with 10 more puzzles um but the ending is so good um and that is the point in which you uh essentially turn into a giant ball of uh naked appendages you uh you're a body ball you're a giant ball of naked appendages. You're a body ball. You're a body ball. You're a ball of appendages.

And then you steamroll through the rest of this giant, I don't know, like evil factory place. And all the workers are like bureaucrats that are like working at their desk yeah this body ball just like rolls through the door we're in the middle of a meeting um and i love it because i i mean i think this is like a very classic video game thing of okay here's your reward you did a great job and now you're gonna be you know some weird power fantasy and it 100 gives that to you but at the same time is like oh life as you know, some weird power fantasy. And it 100% gives that to you, but at the same time is like, oh, life as you know it is gone. You are literally nothing more than a mass of skin.

Whatever victory you're getting out of this is ultimately undercut by the fact that you are, like, a mouthless monster that will surely, like, bake in the sun the second it escapes and die. Yeah, I was like the bit so many people were talking about we're talking about this game best game ending of the year maybe of all time and it was it was something like when i finished the game i feel like i didn't love it as much as everybody else because when i finished the game i was like well that was something like it was it was definitely like weird as fuck and it made me feel not good

like yeah i felt like the like a lot of people like so fucking funny i was super bummed out uh by the ending yeah it's because like i didn't like a kid dies and like get it yeah like yeah i guess i guess i get it like it's definitely it's very dark and it made me feel some stuff. I mean, it's dark. It's, it's, I think the ending is meant to be obviously darkly dark in the sense that, yeah, he's dead or transformed or whatever the fuck. But obviously this organization that was doing this gets basically ripped out from the inside.

So that's sort of the, sure. Yes. Which is where the title, I don't know about that, but that's the upside of it. But no, I like, know about that, but that's the upside of it. But, no, I like, I have a harder time, like, I guess it shouldn't be, not all art has to end the same way.

And not all art has to leave you with, like, the same feeling. And I completely get that but like there was something about inside that like i have a i played limbo before i had a kid and i played inside after i had a kid and it is a lot harder for me to handle like the watching a kid die repeatedly and then like even that which is like i can get past when the ending is that sort of like grim um it's really it was really hard for we should we should point out that like after you escape the facility this ball tumbles down a mountain and then dies does it die do we know that it dies it sits i mean it's just chilling in the sun it's unclear yeah okay i mean he got outside like that's great but like the i i it just felt so grim to me um and it's

hard because you can't i mean like you can't advertise like how something will make you feel at the end of it like that's that's not a a good solution but for me it was just like it felt like a gut punch and i didn't really under like and and it bummed me the fuck out and it's like well thanks i guess it was powerful right enjoy my 15 that's a successful piece of art that it successfully like made me feel that way and it's a good game and it had some really great puzzles in it. I would say that I think that it is pulling from an entire history of fiction about children.

I don't think it's like it's Grimm's Fairy Tales. I completely understand as a parent, especially with death animations for a character are which also harkens back to like the good old days of eric chahi fucking hearted darkness getting fucking vored by a hundred discreet gobble monsters like yeah there's some

rough stuff yeah i think what's also interesting is the idea that like that bothers you but the literally the countless other video games that we've named in which characters die in horrific ways sure don't i mean it care characters but not kids sure but like that i mean that is like that that seems like a troubling statement on video games like or on just yeah no video games are terrible like we're all on agreement like they're all bad like yeah i won't let my kids play video games ever. They're a nightmare. Your kid will play football.

That makes sense. Yeah, she'll play football. There's got to be other things. But I guess it's not fair. I'm not saying I'm leveling a fair criticism. It's just like, man, I didn't need that. That's kind of how I felt is you know what i mean like if i click an article on vox that's gonna bum me out at least i know i'm like here we go like here

we go let's do it like what about the art of this game made you think like uh getting of this game is the most depressing fucking shit too i'm not kidding i already spent my money dog i saw tweets from people who were like fucking hysterical ending because it's so you're a big silly moth. Yeah, I guess so. Like, yeah,

I guess. Sure. I mean, it is, but don't get, don't get me wrong. I think it is funny, intentionally funny in a few moments.

There's one moment where like the guys pressed up against the glass and you like mow through them and crush them on the ground. It's meant to be funny. There's a puzzle in that final sequence. One of the very few puzzles in that sequence. Where you're in this enclosed space with one other dude. And you're this giant body monster and you're horrifying. And the other dude is trying to get away from you.

And he has to type in his key code onto the door to like get away from you. But if you get too close from him, he'll run into a corner and you can't. So you need to wait for him to like type in his key code before running over him like that's meant to be funny it's fucked up there's no question it's fucked up but it was meant to also be like look at how fucking outlandish this is yeah sure so i wouldn't want to take that away from them yeah i i mean i completely completely understand where you're coming from justin i i think for the reasons you don't didn't enjoy it are the reasons that i found it worthwhile because i feel like there is a homogeneity to homogeneity i don't know to to so many so many, so many games that come out, especially puzzle games, and having something that felt grim

and like, I guess, Tim Burton-esque would be like the generous. It has stakes to it. Like, what puzzle game have you played that has stakes to it? Yeah, and I will say that it handles like grim materials in a pretty elegant way. It's not like a fucking like spurts of blood

while fucking Hot Topic music plays in the background. Yeah, and it has some sweet moments. There are like some affecting bits in there too. Yeah. Well, we gotta move on. Let's hit that final one. This is gonna be a fucking like four hour long episode of this show.

Yeah, it's stupid. Okay, last game uh titanfall 2 um titanfall 2 i came out really late um i didn't play it at launch i played it uh after i played call of duty after i played battlefield and i kind of went in with pretty low expectations i liked the first Titanfall, but obviously there wasn't a lot of meat to that game. And why I really like Titanfall 2 is I think there's a lot of shooters, Battlefield, Call of Duty, pretty much all of the big shooters these days feel pretty close to similar. Even Overwatch, to a certain extent, feels sort of similar in the way you move around the world and the way you shoot at guys stuff like that Titanfall makes you feel like a fucking god whether you're in your Titan or not

like movement and like exploring this world that Titanfall or the movement mechanics that they've added in Titanfall and really refined from the first game feels fucking amazing like the feel of like wall running, wall running again, dropping down and punching a guy 50 feet feels fucking spectacular.

And just, I mean, there, there are a number of things. I also think the, like the way they've done multiplayer, I talked about it before the, like the smaller,

um, uh, player counts really works in their favor. Um, it just, I, you know, I think they made a good game the first time around and this is like the smaller um uh player counts really works in their favor um it just i you know i think they made a good game the first time around and this is like the total refinement of what they were trying to do um i really really dug it they also made a valve campaign yeah the campaign is just a half-life follow-up campaign that's like that's the craziest just i've ever heard in my entire life. Yeah, I know. And it's just a half-life game.

Like, fuck off. Yeah, it's crazy. This game that didn't even have a campaign. Where have these people been? What were those guys doing the first time? They made Modern Warfare 1, which had an excellent campaign as well. So it's not like they're not capable of this. It uses such smart like there are so many like interesting ideas that are playing out in that campaign more so than like

like it really utilizes the future setting in a way that like i feel like um the call of duty games haven't where which is to say like it it is not just better, cooler guns or better, cooler locomotion, but it, like, feels like a futuristic world. Now, I haven't played Infinite Warfare, to be fair, so it may make better use of that. But I just thought. Infinite Warfare is, it's interesting you mention it. Because Infinite Warfare, I think, is the most grounded version of that future. grounded version of that future like if you were in space but you only had like ussr technology in space that's what infinite warfare feels like it feels like very grounded whereas uh titanfall feels like they just leaned in the direction of like this is fucking future yeah there is a level

just to give an example so we're not just like bloviating there there's and there's a lot of really interesting ideas but there's a level where you're in basically a place where houses are being fabricated and they're and it's an assembly line where like the floor is being put on and the furniture is being put on and these things are being constructed around you and you're making your way through this facility and you are like like for example you'll be standing on the floor of a half-finished house and then the house has to turn on its side so they can attach another part and you're turning with it so you have to like okay well now that's the floor so i have to figure out you know how i can brace myself and and throughout the level you're having to traverse these like half constructed houses is what the the basically the entirety of the level is it's so cool what's so smart about that level is talking i mean we

talked about building on ideas and training you for what's next it starts out with a tiny room and then it's a house and by the end of that level you're on entire blocks of a neighborhood that are being turned vertical so like you're literally climbing a block of a neighborhood as if it was aiming directly up and having to reorient yourself and use the wall run against what is essentially the ground um there's just so many smart ways that it builds on its ideas um i i just wanted to hop on the comparison to call of duty though because i find it really interesting that you know the same studio in theory infinity ward came out with a call of duty this year and i think you can see just the two different ways uh the ideas of that of modern warfare have gone and that call

of duty i do think it's a perfectly fine game but the thing that always bums me out about the series is mechanic wise it doesn't really trust you to like make the fun like it puts you in a fighter pilot and then you hit hold a button and it does everything for you and then you're back in another place where you hide behind cover and do the same thing and it has like one core mechanic that it's honed and you do it over and over and over every single game with very very tiny variation while so much of what makes titanfall 2 special is it is throwing mechanics at you and giving you so many options of how you use them and basically saying like get out of cover go out there use these tools

and like you'll figure it out and it'll be enjoyable for you we trust that the game is good enough that you will enjoy experimenting with these things um and that's i think the same goes for doom i think like the shooters that are really standing out now they have this added hook where they like expect you to actually go out and create the pleasure versus just oh well this is shooting and that's the game the game is shooting and we do it well yeah i mean obviously they're making games that allow for that um you know it's not just random where it's a you know a sandbox and you can do whatever you want they you know the the wall running and the and the movement and all

the tools that they give you in titanfall allow for that level of fun for sure i do have to knock titanfall i my one complaint about titanfall is and i get it i i completely understand this game is merciless about finding ways to separate you from your crazy giant missile robot like half the levels this fool's like well that tunnel's too small best of luck buddy there's one level where the motherfucker just gets picked up by a magnet is like well bye they're taking it's in the fabrication the house fabrication level this big crane's like hey it's got me in this crane i don't know what to do your arms are missiles like just get out like don't make me come for you dog i'm uh i only just got dishonored like uh or sorry uh a titanfall uh to a couple days ago and so i'm like now i'm just now

playing it and i just finished dishonored 2 last night um and it is the most refreshing going i got the no kill trophy and dishonored 2 is all psyched it is the most refreshing opposite yeah of that game where it's like yahoo i'm on a fucking roller coaster and and that's the thing it's like you're not a slow and and there's i I love Dishonored, and I love that pace of that game, too. But, yeah, totally. As a palate cleanser, 100%. Yeah. Man, I'm excited to go back and play Dishonored 2 again, though, and just murk, just create crazy murder traps, deception-style murder houses. Yeah, let's do this vote.

Let's vote. Oh, boy, this is actually a tough round. Are we doing let's say for the first like your first vote shouldn't be for your own just to see where we're at yeah okay uh and i would vote inside i would vote shit i don't know i i feel like i should abstain this round just because i haven't played that much tit Titanfall 2 and I really like what I've played, but I think if I'm not voting for Fire Emblem, I'd do Quadrilateral Cowboy. I'm doing Titanfall 2.

I'd vote Titanfall 2 if I wasn't voting. I'm okay with that pick. Yeah, I'm cool with Titanfall 2. So just looking at the top four here, it looks like Russ got two and I got two. Yeah, but Justin and Chris try a little bit harder next year maybe just you don't even need to be in that was a result of me like i'd wait you guys jumped on it quicker than i did uh so maybe some of the four i brought weren't my four yeah also i will say that the game that may very well win this was a game that i gave you griffin it was my original

pick um i don't usually i think we usually do like another round yeah we're not gonna do that i think we should just do it from these top four and well yeah let's let's see where votes are so just as a reminder of what the top four are so round one winner was Overwatch. Round two winner was Stardew Valley. Round three was The Witness. And round four was Titanfall. Damn. That's a good, man. You know what? It was a good fucking year.

I'd be proud for any of these to win. I don't want to undercut this, but I think we can probably take a shortcut here. Okay. Uh-huh. And this is not my favorite game of the year but it's like looking at like a consensus probably overwatch right that's something that we're all gonna be able to get okay is it the besties choice though that's the that's the thing that's the polygon game of the year of the games that are on this list overwatch is not the most fun i've had this year

no playing a game just isn't i'd agree i i've had more fun with titanfall 2 i will also say my personal game of the year i said this earlier on is stardew valley and that is in this list so like i i would be disingenuous if i said my pick was anything else so let's let's vote what is your pick out of these four let's go around and see where we're at after that uh minus stardew valley i'm stardew valley uh mine's the witness you purposely just torpedoed it you're gonna give it to stardew valley i just started stardew valley didn't hit with me and and i like titanfall 2 a lot so probably titanfall 2 what the fuck just happened he figured out the the math no i didn't think overwatch is not my favorite of the four I'm just saying like I didn't really like Stardew Valley that much

and Plant didn't play a ton of it. The Witness barely scraped by in its round. Titanfall 2, Griffin hasn't played. Don't forget its round success.

Just go by you. Yeah, also I'm saying that like I'm saying that because it's like apparently there aren't super strong feelings about it. But don't worry

about everybody else. Just say what your vote is. Yeah, what's your fucking don't think about we're already in the election i don't like anything that much okay i'm fine with whatever i just want to move on with my life gary johnson of these four what was your favorite of these four what did you like what did you like but what will be next year when you think back on 2016 which of these four games will you think back on the most fondly? The Witness. And Russ? Probably Titanfall 2.

Okay, so it looks like Stardew Valley with two votes is the winner this year. Thank you all for listening to the besties. Let me just say one thing before we lock it in. There is something to be said for letting Titanfall 2 win, because Arthur gave it a 7. I would prefer Titanfall 2, I mean, if we're narrowing it down to two options, apparently. You did already vote for The Witness. Yeah, but could we give it to The Last of Us? It's not an up and down vote. I would switch to Titanfall 2.

Okay, it's 2v2, Stardew Valley, Titanfall 2. Does anyone want to change their votes? No. No. Justin? Plant, you played two, like, you said he bailed on Stardew Valley. No, no, no, no, you said he played two seasons of Stardew Valley is like a good 30 hours. That's a long

ass time. Okay. Justin, you don't want to change your vote? No, I don't want to change my vote. And I don't want to change my vote, so there's really only one. No, God, Russ, I swear to God, I'll hang up on the fucking Slack call. That would only be a tie. We're not doing this again. We're gonna sit here, I swear to God, I'll hang up on the fucking Slack. That would not be a tie. We're going to sit here for five minutes and we're going to talk this through until we fucking figure it out like four adults. You know what?

I'll switch to Stardew Valley. Here we go. Just play it. If it keeps New York Draft off the channel. Just play it. Are you sure you like Stardew Valley that much? That's three, Russ. I'm sorry, bud.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing about it timefall 2 is a fantastic game it really is but what if i didn't give the award to it that's a good here's also seriously all seriousness i think i think stardew valley is a really special game even if you take away, if you don't even look at, like, how fucking fun of a game it is, I think it's worth rewarding a single, more or less a single person. Although I recognize that's not how games got made. There are other people involved. But a person who looked at a genre and said, well, this genre has gotten worse and worse for the past decade.

And then single, like, almost single-handedly fucking made the best version of that game like ever so you're voting for the witness you're voting for the witness is that what you i was about to say like come on also like if we're gonna give that big besties bomb that starting valley would stand to benefit but i'm actually looking over the sales and i realized um you know what no i'm still gonna go with stardew i'm sorry i'm i'm actually looking over the sales and i realized um you know what no i'm still gonna go with stardew i'm sorry i'm i'm fine with that stardew valley is a great game and and i love it so uh yeah i have no problem with that i'm good with that i feel good about it oh man we did it now let's now let's do our favorite section where we talk about whether or not we think people are

going to be upset so just to go through the years i think this is our third or is it our fourth because previous games of the year include our besties games of the year again not a polygon product um uh zelda one zelda uh link link or link between worlds yeah beat out uh dishonored one right dishonored one oh wow was there another one um what was last year i'm gonna google bessie's game of the year the winner of last year was i think it was decided by the fucking new york giraffe so i think it was too we don't even decide it we didn't even decide it we didn't even decide it we didn't even mention what the game of the year what i have to listen to the fucking episode hold on where would we have put it like we're gonna write a recap post yeah that seems like a big spoiler i hope someone is hearing this i don't know wow yeah i we're just gonna hear griffin getting angry at new york drive replay

um like undertale yeah well there's me fucking talking about oh no that ain't it absolutely bloodborne oh bloodborne was it bloodborne i think it was bloodborne i think that sounds right because you kind of put us in a hostage scenario between undertale and bloodborne yeah i think that's what it was yeah okay i think it was bloodborne i'm not sure that's a good one i have no problem with mean, I have no problem with the games that we've selected over the years. I think we've done a great job. The thing that you can say about,

I know I wasn't pushing Stardew that hard, but the thing that you can really, proof of success there, that game, it was so sort of under the radar that we didn't even have a review of it until almost everybody was talking about all of a sudden like that game did not have like a marketing camera or anything it was literally just like word of mouth and also just like to be to be honest and to be and to be kind

of serious for a bit this year fucking sucked and that and joking aside like it was a very uh i i it's been a while since i've had an anxiety-free day in 2016 um and like a lot of there's been this thread of us talking about these games like chris talked about it with um forza we've talked about it with a few other games it it has the games that i've gravitated to more this year are the games that are like sweet sweet or like mentally good for me soothing um games that are not hyper cynical uh or like super duper shooty even though i recognize that there, I, and I get this way, certainly like it can be cathartic and that can be a, a method of like, uh,

developing a, an, an inner peace. And I kind of love the idea of like the most chill ass game, the game that I would actually like dive into when I'm feeling, when I'm feeling hyphy. Uh, I like the idea of that winning the game,

winning our award for this fucking miserable year. Yeah. If only we could live in the Stardew Valley. If only I could live, and now they've got different farm layouts. Been hearing a lot about that lately, about the new farm layouts. There's new farm

layouts. There's one where there's ore right there in your farm. You can go mine it. You don't even have to go to the mine. So that's going to do it for us. Do we want to, real quick before it wraps up, do we want to guess the likelihood of us coming back next year? It'll happen.

Who knows? Who knows where we'll be? It's a long year. Yeah, we'll be, yeah, we'll fucking do it. I do like, we do me and nick do cool games inc now and sometimes we gravitate towards actually talking about real video games and i'll be like oh we can't do this um it is actually not it is nice to like sit down and fucking talk about this stuff let's start doing this every week oh god no please let's i think

people would really enjoy that i'll edit it it'll be fun i think we would really groove on i don't think you can even say that juice if plant do you want to you want to keep doing like you you don't work for polygon anymore but like you want to keep just doing this show though you want to just do it every week you're gonna wake up tomorrow with the biggest regret hangover yeah but like think about that listen when you just want to do it again listen we don't have to get grants permission we just do it that is a good point um uh listen no audience we'll see you when we see you who knows in december of 2017 that is when we'll see you um yeah anyway so that's gonna do it for this year on the besties sorry we didn't talk about fashion or sports that much this time but um that that's the end of the show i would tell uh you to like and subscribe i don't even know if we have an rss feed and i don't really give a shit i don't know if those two things are

even things you can do this is an annual christmas gift that we give to you our beloved and and i guess uh you know holiday time gift for all your uh celebrations your thanksgivings or what have you so i hope you enjoyed it and that's gonna do it for us um make sure you join us again next why do you sound so sad because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games yeah Yeah Besties