Deciding The Greatest Video Game Sequel of ALL TIME - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast – March 11, 2026

Deciding The Greatest Video Game Sequel of ALL TIME

Main Theme / Purpose

In this lively, debate-filled episode, hosts Blessing Adeoye Jr. and Snowbike Mike (with contributions from Barrett) launch a March Madness–style bracket to settle the burning question: What is the greatest video game sequel of all time? Their field: only “number twos”—the second mainline game in a franchise—competing across eras and genres. The hosts set strict eligibility rules, crowdsource their nominees, respect Metacritic for seeding, and—most importantly—poll their live audience for every contentious decision. Strong opinions, debates about legacy, and playful trash talk ensue as they whittle 32 sequels down to a single champion.

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Key Sections

1. Setting Up the “Greatest Sequel” Bracket (02:12–14:10)

• Hosts Introduce the Premise

  • Blessing and Mike, post–GDC exhaustion, hype up their annual March bracket, this time for “best video game sequel (second in series).”
  • Strict “number two” rule: No God of War Ragnarok, Tears of the Kingdom, or similar, even if they're beloved, as those stand on the shoulders of too many prior entries.
  • Polls across Kinda Funny socials, Reddit, and Patreon determined the field.
    • “Don’t get mad at me, get mad at yourselves.” — Blessing, 11:35

• Eligibility Controversy

  • Red Dead Redemption 2 is allowed, despite Red Dead Revolver being first in name only.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 makes the cut (“Solid” series is treated as distinct from the earlier “Metal Gear”).
    • “Nobody even knows what Red Dead Revolver is anyway.” – Blessing, 08:32

• Seeding & Bracket Structure

  • 32 games, divided into eras: Modern (2014+), HD (2008–2013), Memory Card (2001–2007), and Classics (pre-2001).
  • Seeding based on Metacritic scores.

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2. Ground Rules & Criteria (14:28–18:08)

• Blessing and Mike pick winners, with ties decided by the Twitch chat (or Barrett if chat ties).
• Criteria: Did the sequel improve upon the original? Leave a lasting impact? Was it more fun? Did it push the franchise forward?
  • “The best video game sequels are sequels that innovate the franchise.” — Blessing, 17:30
• Audience must vote, but hosts are required to state their opinions.

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3. Opening Rounds—Modern & Memory Card Brackets

Modern Bracket Starting Lineup (18:14–36:17)

• Early upsets and tough calls:

  • Red Dead Redemption 2 vs. Nier: Automata

    • Blessing: Easy “Nier: Automata.” Mike: “Red Dead 2, one of the greatest sandboxes ever.”
    • Chat decides: Red Dead Redemption 2 advances. 115–85 (24:11)
    • “Horse testicles don’t live up to what Nier: Automata was doing narratively.” — Blessing, 21:31

  • Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 vs. Dark Souls 2

    • Both hosts pick Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, echoing prevailing community sentiment (“the most hated Souls game” loses), 29:56

  • The Last of Us Part II vs. Titanfall 2

    • Mike (joking): “One made me hate myself, one made me hate EA.” (30:10)
    • Hosts admit Titanfall 2 is special but side with Last of Us Part II for its ambition.
    • “Games that make people hate it sometimes—that’s art.” — Blessing, 33:35
    • Audience: Last of Us Part II wins, 118–109 (33:28)

  • Alan Wake 2 vs. Hades 2

    • Hosts are “Hades 2 guys” for innovation & improved gameplay, despite chat showing love for Alan Wake.

Memory Card Bracket Highlights (36:45–47:40)

• Half-Life 2 vs. NBA Street Vol. 2

  • NBA Street Vol. 2 wins host hearts (“If you don’t vote for NBA Street Vol. 2, you don’t know ball.” – Mike, 39:32)
  • "The game breaker, the three Michael Jordans—come on!" — both hosts

• Smash Melee vs. Soul Calibur II

  • Chat overwhelmingly picks Melee, acknowledging its enduring competitive scene.

• God of War 2 vs. Sly 2

  • God of War 2 advances without drama.

• Kingdom Hearts 2 vs. Halo 2

  • Mike rides hard for Halo 2: "Might be the greatest sequel of all time." (45:20)
  • Both hosts agree—Halo 2's multiplayer impact is historic.

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4. Classic & HD Brackets (55:08–61:47+)

• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 vs. Diablo 2

  • Mike: "The correct answer is Diablo 2 here." (61:59)
  • Blessing makes the case for Tony Hawk’s cultural legacy.
  • Audience gives it to Diablo 2, 123–73.

• Street Fighter 2 vs. Age of Empires 2

  • Both hosts agree: these games defined their genres.
  • Chat favors Street Fighter 2: “Fighting games are fighting games because of Street Fighter 2.” — Blessing, 66:16

• Pokemon Gold/Silver vs. Silent Hill 2

  • Easy pick for both: "If Gen 2 were bad, Pokémon as a franchise might not have survived." — Blessing

• Resident Evil 2 vs. Metal Gear Solid 2

  • Despite love for RE2 (especially the remake), hosts agree on Metal Gear Solid 2.
  • “When you loop it into how prophetic it is... it’s somehow become even better of a video game.” — Blessing, 74:14

• Mass Effect 2 vs. Batman: Arkham City

  • Close, much love for Arkham, but Mass Effect 2 considered the quintessential sequel.
  • "Mass Effect 2 might go down as the GOAT of all sequels here." — Mike, 81:01

• Portal 2 vs. Uncharted 2

  • Portal 2 called "a perfect game" by Barrett (82:47); both hosts side with Portal 2.

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5. Quarterfinals & Semifinals—Heated Debate Intensifies

• Smash Melee vs. NBA Street Vol. 2

  • Blessing wavers: “If I had Melee as a kid, I’d probably pick it.”
  • Chat: overwhelming for Melee.

• Halo 2 keeps cruising, beating out God of War 2 and then Melee.

• Diablo 2 vs. Street Fighter 2

  • "Legitimizes and crystallizes an entire genre; it almost isn't fair for SF2 to compete." — Blessing, 87:33
  • Audience: Diablo 2 advances in a tight one, 98–88.

• Pokémon Silver/Gold ousts Diablo 2 (128–84, 96:13), surprising even Mike and Blessing.

• Red Dead Redemption 2 vs. The Last of Us Part II

  • “I think this is where Last of Us gets penalized for being controversial.” — Blessing, 90:00
  • Chat: Red Dead 2 wins handily.

• Portal 2 vs. Mass Effect 2

  • Hosts both vote Portal 2 (“perfect game” argument tips the scale), despite chat (130–87) picking Mass Effect 2.

---

6. Finals

Final Four

• Red Dead Redemption 2 vs. Portal 2

  • Both vote Portal 2 (“It’s easy.”)

• Halo 2 vs. Pokémon Gold/Silver

  • Both vote Halo 2, citing culture-shifting online impact.

The Grand Finale: Halo 2 vs. Portal 2 (98:16–102:15)

• Arguments:
  • Portal 2: "Somehow made all the best things from Portal 1 even better: puzzles, writing, characters, settings, co-op… It's the perfect game sequel."
  • Halo 2: “The best sequel—improved multiplayer, battle rifle, dual-wielding. Built modern online gaming. The golden age of split-screen and Xbox Live.” — Mike, 100:28
  • Barrett: “Can’t argue against Halo 2’s multiplayer or cultural moment.”
• Final audience poll: Halo 2 wins (exact numbers not given), applause all around.

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7. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “If you don’t vote for NBA Street Vol. 2, you don’t know ball.” — Mike, 39:32
• “Games that make people hate it sometimes—that’s art.” — Blessing, 33:35
• “Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like the most expensive indie game ever made.” — Blessing referencing an old review take, 23:45
• “Portal 2 is just a perfect video game.” — Barrett, 82:47
• “Halo 2 might be the greatest sequel of all time … the world of video game is going to change forever.” — Mike, 45:20

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8. Notable Community Involvement

• Hosts frequently address superchats sharing bracket snubs (e.g., Ms. Pac-Man, Team Fortress 2, Little Big Planet 2, Borderlands 2) and their own heartbreak ("Look back at yourselves, you picked these!" — Blessing).
• Chat tie-breakers matter; some upsets were razor-thin.

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9. Closing & Reflections (104:34–end)

• Hosts marvel at the depth in “number two” sequels, express regret over snubs and tough cuts.
• Final recap: Halo 2 named the greatest video game sequel of all time (among #2s), via Kinda Funny’s community-driven approach.

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Timestamps for Big Segments

• [02:12] Show officially begins—blessing intros, banter
• [06:05] The ground rules: what counts as a “sequel”
• [07:12] Controversies: God of War Ragnarok, Red Dead 2, Metal Gear Solid 2 eligibility
• [09:07] Reading the 32-sequel field
• [11:35] “Don’t get mad at me…” poll explanation
• [14:28] Choosing favorites, ground rules, how to break ties
• [18:14] Bracket matchups begin
• [24:11] Red Dead Redemption 2 vs. Nier results
• [29:56] Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 vs. Dark Souls 2 resolved
• [33:28] The Last of Us Part II vs. Titanfall 2 resolved
• [36:45] Memory Card bracket kicks in
• [39:32] “You don’t know ball!”—NBA Street Vol. 2 hype
• [45:20] Halo 2 praised as "possibly the greatest sequel"
• [61:59] Tony Hawk 2 vs. Diablo 2—cultural versus technical impact
• [66:16] Street Fighter 2 as genre-defining
• [81:01] Mass Effect 2 as “GOAT” candidate
• [82:47] “Portal 2 is a perfect game.”
• [87:33] Street Fighter 2 gets almost-unfair advantage for legacy
• [96:13] Pokémon Gold/Silver upsets Diablo 2 on audience poll
• [98:16] Finals: Portal 2 vs. Halo 2
• [102:15] Halo 2 named champion

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Takeaways

• The “second game” is often where a franchise is made—a theme that recurs as hosts debate evolution, risks, and legacy.
• Audience participation shaped surprising outcomes—Pokémon over Diablo, Red Dead over Last of Us II, Halo 2 over Portal 2.
• The episode is raucous, nostalgia-fueled, reverent about genre history, occasionally irreverent about beloved franchises, and deeply participatory. Listeners feel part of the tournament.
• Ultimate Winner: Halo 2 — community consensus and host respect for its impact on multiplayer and gaming at large.

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For listeners who missed the episode:

You'll get the bracket, the drama of close calls (Portal 2 vs. Mass Effect 2!), and a taste of why certain sequels stand as cultural or mechanical milestones. Even if your favorite was snubbed, you’ll leave with fresh appreciation for how video games evolve and why “the second one” is so often the charm.

Transcript

[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, March 11, 2026. I'm one of your host Blessing AD OA Junior. Joining me is the master of hype Snow. Mike. Mike.

[Mike]

Good morning. Big blessings. Has any.

[Blessing]

Oh, that's crazy.

[Mike]

Well, you know what? Bless. I was going to tell you. You're killing it. It's been a long week. I'm feeling it. Just so you know, I had a long night last night and so I wanted to check in with you halfway through GDC week. How are we feeling?

[Barrett]

Feeling good.

[Blessing]

It was real tough yesterday. Yesterday I Was feeling it because I went to the mix, had two glasses of wine at the mix while socializing with everybody and then went to volleyball afterwards. 9, 915 game for volleyball.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

Did that.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Came back home, collapsed, came back home, was just tired yesterday. Of course GDC is still going. We had events, we were going to stop. I hit a point toward the end of the day, at the end of the work day where I was like, I could stay out, I could keep hanging out with friends or I could go home and recharge and take back the night Wednesday night.

[Mike]

Oh, bless. What'd you do?

[Blessing]

I went home last night. I went home last night. I went home and you know what I did? I streamed some of that ghost of Yote legends out. Oh, and it's hidden already. Already. We're so back.

[Mike]

Gamescast plays tomorrow. You and Roger sitting down with it. I'm very, I'm a little frustrated and mad that it wasn't committed to full four players. Yeah, I definitely get that. It's like, hey, it's two players and then we bring in four for the big ones. But like I do wish it was like, hey, one through four players. Here we go.

[Blessing]

I, I agree with that. I think it does break up the pace a bit because like I can't just hang out with all these people. And now it's like, well now we have to matchmake the whole. It's a whole thing.

[Mike]

But can you not match make with four or is it just like no matter what you're always doing then you rando 4.

[Blessing]

No, I'm pretty sure you can matchmaker. You can invite or you can invite four, but it's like you just can't do four for like a regular. But you can do survival. Oh, and survival players. I'm not sure but I imagine so. Somebody checked. Somebody check me on that.

[Mike]

Some gibroni said, mike, it's only Wednesday. Blessing got his rest day. Today's my rest day.

[Blessing]

Today's your rest.

[Mike]

So I've been going hard all weekend long, which has been great.

[Blessing]

It's only Wednesday.

[Barrett]

We did a six hour live stream

[Mike]

on Monday showing off Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I had the late nights them bless. I had a nice late night on Tuesday but then guess what? Came home. Yeah, played more overwatch.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Comp.

[Blessing]

Come on.

[Mike]

Three or four dialed in right now. Yeah, I'm seeing. Well, I'm also watching one piece on the second monitor so I'm not all the way down.

[Blessing]

You're playing Ranko watching one, but I'm watching.

[Mike]

They're in log town, bro. Home of the. Home of the marines. Dude, it's pretty lit.

[Barrett]

Action one.

[Mike]

It's pretty lit, bro. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing]

Tonight is that. I'm going crazy, though. Just so you know.

[Mike]

I love that.

[Blessing]

I'm taking back the night. I gotta watch the one piece live action.

[Mike]

Bless. You're gonna love it and appreciate it because you. You've been working on your fitness and your bod this season. The team, all of the one piece gas worked on their bods.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Because they said we're gonna wear less clothing and hot bots left and right, bro. They dialed in.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And you know what else is dialed in this show today?

[Blessing]

Yes.

[Mike]

You really put together one killer bracket. You and the audience came together. You came up with a fun idea. I'll tell you what, I'm a little concerned. Feelings are going to get hurt today.

[Blessing]

I need everybody. This is what I need.

[Mike]

Act cool.

[Blessing]

Live chat, YouTube comments, Spotify comments, blue sky. Not you, Twitter. You go crazy. No matter what, we all need to come together. We got to hold hands and go, hey, we got to be mature about this for fun.

[Barrett]

Absolutely not.

[Blessing]

We're having fun here. Yeah. We're debating no fun. We are. Feelings are going to get hurt. In fact, everybody's feelings are going to get hurt except for one game.

[Mike]

One game.

[Blessing]

And you know what's fun about this is that I don't know what game. I don't know what game is going to win this. I'm not too hard about it.

[Mike]

I have some heavy, like big dogs in the race. But yeah, any game can win this.

[Blessing]

Any game can win this.

[Mike]

And I'm going to pull the Twitch chat every single game.

[Blessing]

Then this is what I will have

[Mike]

a hold of the twitch chat every time.

[Blessing]

We're going to explain this, right? Because of course, if you're watching live, you can be part of the show by super chatting in YouTube.com kind of funny games. Shout out Patreon producers Karl Jacobs, Omega, Buster and Delaney. The song twining for now. Let's begin with topic of the show top. We are doing a March madness bracket. I was looking forward to this. I was like, the month of March is coming up and I look forward to march. You know why? Because theoretically, I want to make a bracket happen. It doesn't always happen, but I wanted it to make it happen. I wanted to make it happen this year.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing]

Because last time me and you did a bracket. I think it was a fantastic piece of content.

[Mike]

I remember that. I remember that.

[Blessing]

That was fun. I love doing brackets on the show.

[Mike]

You got to celebrate March Madness.

[Blessing]

You got to celebrate March Madness. Of course, if you're watching live, you can celebrate March Madness by super chatting in. Let us know what your picks are for this bracket as we make our way through it. Yeah, I'll explain the bracket first, and then we'll get into ground rules.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

The bracket that we're doing, we are deciding the best video game sequel. That is the best. That is the number two in the series. It's the second game in the series. We'll get into it. Because I made. I think I made only one exception. There was a lot of conversations happening.

[Mike]

Oh.

[Blessing]

About what's eligible or not. I brought up God of War, Ragnarok. I brought up Tears of the Kingdom, and then I decided those aren't going to make the bracket, even though those are some of my favorite games ever. But I think those games are very much possible because of everything that came before it.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing]

That's why I was like, we can't do God of War, Ragnarok, even though it's a sequel. Yeah. I can't do Tears of the Kingdom because there's been a billion Zelda games we built up toward this.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

What's up, Barrett? Oh, Bear. Say it.

[Barrett]

But Tears of the Kingdom direct sequel to.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Breath of the Wild. But it's Breath of the Wild possible without all the Zelda games that came before it. That's my thing is, like, I think number two in the series. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like that gives those games such a leg up. I like that people are booing me in chat. You can boo me. Yeah, you can boo me. I try to make this as fair as possible. You know what I mean? Because, like, I think those games have such a leg up because we had a billion games to get here that. Yeah, like, sure, those games are sequels to the games that came before them, but I. We need to have some restriction or else everything is eligible. That's where I'm at.

[Mike]

I love it. I love it. Bless.

[Blessing]

That's where I'm at.

[Mike]

You're the commish. Bless.

[Blessing]

I'm the comm.

[Mike]

You're the commish. Bless.

[Blessing]

I made a couple of exceptions.

[Mike]

Set the rules.

[Blessing]

Red Dead Redemption 2.

[Mike]

Red de Redemption, too.

[Blessing]

I mean, we couldn't have got there

[Barrett]

with everything that came without everything that

[Mike]

came before the third, but it's the second.

[Blessing]

I mean. Okay, should I put Red Dead Redemption 1 on this list then? Because we all agree that that would be stupid, Right. If I put red Dead Redemption 1 on this list, like Chad. Do you want me to do that for the best sequels? No, you don't. So I made that call. We're doing red Dead Redemption 2 because nobody even knows what Red Dead Revolver is anyway.

[Mike]

They don't remember that.

[Blessing]

What was the other?

[Mike]

They're riding you for metal gear solid 2.

[Blessing]

I mean, do y' all think that's crazy? I'll delete it from the list.

[Mike]

I don't think so at all.

[Blessing]

I look at Solid as different from Metal Gear, but, like, if we could have the conversation right now, we can

[Mike]

set the tone right now.

[Barrett]

Should we read out for people what's on there right now?

[Blessing]

Yes, let's read out for the people, especially the audio listeners who are listening right now. So we have 32 games here. Starting, starting off. I'm gonna read this, by the way they're listed. I have four different brackets here. But starting off on the modern side, we have Red Dead Redemption 2, Nier Automata, Kingdom Come, Deliverance 2, Dark Souls 2. I'll read the verses, actually. Right. So Red Dead 2 is facing off against Nier Automata, Kingdom Come, Deliverance 2 is facing off against Dark Souls 2 in the first round. The last was part two is facing off against Titanfall 2. Alan Wake 2 is facing off against Hades 2.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

That's the first part of the bracket.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Moving down to the HD bracket. Mass Effect 2 facing off against Saints Row 2. Assassin's Creed 2 is facing off against Batman. Arkham City. Portal 2 is facing off against Dead Space 2. Infamous 2 is facing off against Uncharted 2. Moving up to the memory card part. A memory card being. I have, like, specific things here.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

So memory card is around 2001 to 2000.

[Mike]

Oh, I thought you were just making up fun names.

[Blessing]

No. So these are based on era and

[Mike]

so interesting you grouped them up on air.

[Blessing]

I grouped them up based on era. So modern is 2014 and after HD is 08 to 2013. I try to like have these be generational, but it's not super clean for reasons. And then the memory card era, that's like PS2 GameCube. Right? That's 2001 to 2007. And then I have the classics. That's 2001. And before you will notice that it gets a little bit weird with those two. We picked the games and then I divided them. And so like the 2001 games get a bit split between both. I was doing my best chat. So moving on, the memory card bracket has Half Life 2 versus NBA Street Volume 2, Soul Calibur 2 versus Smash, Melee, God of War 2 versus Sly 2, Kingdom Hearts 2 versus Halo 2. And then moving down to the classics, we got Tony hawk Pro Skater 2 versus Diablo 2, Age of Empires 2 versus Street Fighter 2, Pokemon Gold and Silver versus Silent Hill 2, and Resident Evil 2 versus Metal Gear Solid 2.

[Mike]

That's a lot of great twos.

[Blessing]

A lot of great twos. You might be asking, how were these games chosen? Don't get mad at me. Get mad at yourselves. Oh, throw it back at him. Don't get mad at me. Get back. Get mad at yourselves. Because I put up a poll last week asking everybody. I put it on socials, I put it on Patreon. I think people reposted it onto Reddit. I asked, hey, I'm working on a games cast. Tommy, what is the best video game sequels? I pulled the most popular answers.

[Mike]

That's crazy. You did it to them like that.

[Blessing]

These were the most popular answers.

[Mike]

So chat.

[Barrett]

When you want to cry about Silksong being. Not being here, that's on you.

[Blessing]

That's on you.

[Barrett]

Marvel versus Capcom 2 not being here.

[Mike]

That's on you. That's crazy. You did it to him like that.

[Blessing]

That's on you. And so that's how I. That's how we compiled most of the games. We then had a few that was like kind of tiebreakers. And so me and Mike had to like choose the last few to make it onto the list just based off of our own tastes. And then if you're wondering, seating, because these are seated placements here, seating is based off of Metacritic score. So I made this as medical as possible. All right? I pulled from you, the audience, I pulled from a quote unquote, objective source of Metacritic to do the seating. So what I'm saying is that don't get mad at me. Be mad at yourselves. Are there any questions as we. As we're making our way through?

[Mike]

No, I think you stated that very well.

[Barrett]

Bless.

[Mike]

Very excited also.

[Barrett]

Bless. I just want to let you know all my complaints before we're just ripping you. You know, I don't really care now. It's just a fun.

[Blessing]

We can have the conversation right now because MGS2 sounds like it's a controversial one.

[Mike]

Do we replace any problem with it?

[Blessing]

I don't have a problem with it either.

[Mike]

I love, as many people know, I love Metal Gear Solid two.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

I love talking about it. I love thinking about it. I'll go. I'll go to war for metal gear solid 2.

[Blessing]

So will I But I just want to make sure. I just want to make sure we're fair. I just want to make sure. Because, like, it's one of those.

[Barrett]

Like, I get it, because there's Metal Gear, right?

[Blessing]

But, like, who.

[Barrett]

Who really went back and played those Metal Gear games? Are we gonna be.

[Mike]

Are we gonna be.

[Blessing]

I mean, all these. You know, I'm sure Jeff Gertzman played it. I love Jeff Gertzman. But, like, I. Here's another thing I'll shout out, right? Is when I put up the poll, I said, second in the franchise. Like, even the second game in a franchise really what I meant to type out. And for some reason, I thought I deleted it and re did it, but it. It went up as franchise. I meant to say second in a series. Yeah, I wasn't trying to be that strict about it. Tears of the Kingdom and God of War Ragnarok just felt like there's so much story that builds into, like, God of War 2018. You need those other God of War games to get to God of war 18, right? So, like, I feel like Ragnarok, for me, isn't. It's a sequel, but it's not for the. What we're talking about here. Tears of the Kingdom, different, but similar sort of thing. Metal gear solid 2 feels like such a direct sequel. Like, it feels like such a. Like, it feels like a different thing. It feels like almost like a different series than the original Metal Gear games is what I'm trying to say. But if we're mad about it, I can switch it, but it sounds like we're good.

[Mike]

Plus, I think the people are good with it.

[Blessing]

You think the people are good?

[Mike]

I. Here's.

[Blessing]

The people are here to have fun.

[Mike]

Let me tell you a little secret about this.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

It won't go far. Oh, won't go far. Okay. There's a lot. A lot of heat on this bracket, and I'm promising you metal gear style 2 is not going far.

[Blessing]

So let's talk about it. Mike, some ground rules I want to establish. All right, so it's me and you deciding the winners of each of these. However, if me and you disagree, we're going to put it up to the

[Mike]

audience, and I'm going to pull them regardless every single time. Because I do want to hear you're

[Blessing]

going to pull them regardless every time.

[Mike]

I will pull them on the Twitch Chat exclusively. So if you're on YouTube, jump over to Twitch, because I'm only doing one poll.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

But I do want to just hear their voices. Right? We'll read their chat comments. You can super chat on YouTube to get involved in the conversation. But I want to see where they're vibing.

[Barrett]

I'm feeling if they tie, can I be the final vote?

[Blessing]

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the live audience will break me and Mike's ties. If the audience ties, it'll go to Barrett. And I know y' all motherfuckers don't want it to go to Barrett. I know y' all don't want it to go to Barrett. And so make up your mind all the way a few more things, right? This is a ground rule. I'm putting. I'm. I'm giving you Mike ground rule. All right? Don't just have the audience pick it every time because I know you.

[Mike]

No, no, I know you.

[Blessing]

You're gonna be like, ah, I don't know.

[Mike]

I want you to have the audience

[Blessing]

pick it, and you're gonna go the other way.

[Mike]

Here's what I did.

[Blessing]

I need you to have an opinion for my homework.

[Mike]

I picked my favorites. So I didn't. I don't want to say. I studied up on every single one. I went down each kind of like verses, and I picked one. I was like, this is my game that I ride for. So I'm going to kind of bring the insights, the vibes for certain games on this list.

[Blessing]

Okay?

[Mike]

And I'm gonna ride for them.

[Blessing]

You know what's funny? I've not thought about this at all. I put together the record.

[Mike]

My dude, you don't. You look really good in that jacket today too.

[Blessing]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Mike]

I gotta stop looking over at that jacket's dope.

[Blessing]

I got a new necklace, too. I've been trying to like up my style, you know?

[Mike]

Your steez is up, bro. Your steez is up. You meet the guy, the door guy at that event? Yeah, the event.

[Blessing]

That's my guy you're best friends with. We're leaving the event we're at yesterday. Mike's like, you say, what's up to my guy? And I look back. It is the security guard, my model influencer.

[Mike]

100,000 on Instagram. No shot in a doja cat music video on a pilot for a TV show, hoping to get picked up on Amazon Prime. Guys got game. Get this. I go to follow him on Instagram. Who's following him? Michael Hyam and Lisa Wallen. And he goes, oh, yeah, I just met them in the morning session. I go, those are my people. That's so shout out to Alonzo. Man, that guy's going places.

[Blessing]

Damn I didn't know all that. You should have told me that yesterday. I would have been like. I would adapt him up.

[Mike]

You would have been dying of laughter, man.

[Blessing]

Okay, last thing before we get into this.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

What are you judging for? What's your criteria of what makes it?

[Mike]

I mean, there's just so much bless. Right. Like, did you improve upon the first one? Did you leave a lasting impact in gaming culture? Right. Like, was the game just better and more fun to play? Is it memorable Poll. Right. Was it a flop? Was it the. Were people talking about it? Maybe they were mad that it wasn't as good as the first one. Right. It's all going into my pot. And I guess, like, at the end of the day, I'm going for the best sequel. To me, was the one that left the le. The most lasting impression on me going, that was so good as the second game of this series. That was the one.

[Blessing]

Yeah. I love.

[Mike]

I'm looking for.

[Blessing]

I think I'm right there with you,

[Mike]

because there's a couple on here where you look at and you go, that's the one.

[Blessing]

I. For me, it really is. How well do you function as a sequel? How well do you continue the story of the last game? And when I say story, I. I mean narrative, but not just narrative. Right. How well do you continue the legacy of the first game? How well do you up the legacy of that previous game? How well do you improve on the mechanics? How well do you push things forward from where we're at in the first game? For me, a video game sequel. The best video game sequels are sequels that reinvent. Not even reinvent. Innovate the franchise. You know what I mean? I'm talking about, like, the Assassin's Creed twos, where it's like, damn, y' all push this forward, though. That's what I'm looking for.

[Mike]

Yeah, I like that. Bless. I think we all feel pretty good about this.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Let's get into it now. Where do you want to start? We got four brackets here. Modern HD memory card, and class.

[Mike]

I mean, I feel like you always stop or start on top left. Right? Like, you just kind of read the paper like that, and you just go top left.

[Blessing]

So top left, we have our number one seed, Red Dead Redemption 2, versus our number eight seed, Nier Automata. And Mike, I'm going to tell you,

[Mike]

Paul is out that this

[Blessing]

is easy for me. Without question.

[Mike]

Wow.

[Blessing]

Without question.

[Mike]

Really?

[Blessing]

I'm going near Automata.

[Mike]

What?

[Blessing]

Without question.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

Without question.

[Mike]

I feel like you're wrong on that one. Because I'm going. Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the greatest sandboxes of all time. One of the most fun and gripping narratives of all time. Riding along with the crew, Dutch's crew. Right.

[Blessing]

And like, have you talked to me? Riding on your automata you want to talk about.

[Mike]

Well, that's what we're going to talk about.

[Blessing]

It's like, let's talk about it.

[Mike]

Riding the high off of Westworld, of course. Red Dead Redemption one, We don't really talk about Red Dead Revolver unless you're a super old head on that. But like the idea of where Rockstar was, the GTA lineage building into Red Dead Redemption 2, the ultimate Western cowboy sandbox.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

That you could play, do anything in horse testicles. Feels like it's the ultimate sequel.

[Blessing]

Listen, I appreciate a horse testicle here and there.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

But I don't. For me, horse testicles don't live up to what Nier Automata was doing narratively as a video game. Okay. It is a story that only works as a video game. You know, we talk a lot about the different endings and you know, you go back into the game and you get to experience a different perspective by changing character perspectives and all that stuff. Like they tell a story that is so interesting, so moving and you know, I think so deep when it comes to what it wants to say about the human experience and what makes us human, what makes us emotional, what makes us feel our emotions. What like, you know, the different, I guess, different ways to present humanity. Like, it is a very philosophical game. It is a game that I think is an interesting mirror actually to red Dead Redemption 2. Because I don't disagree with you on the redemption. I know how much people love the story there. And I think red Dead Redemption 2 is such a good example of what you can do with like a cinematic, almost like blockbuster western style story. And I think that's so special that red Dead Redemption 2 does that. And I think it's the perfect mirror to like when you then take that to a. To a Japanese action RPG that is about androids beating the out of like robots and. But like they take it and they tell a story that is so serious and so grounded, is so interesting. It has so many layers to it. Near Automata is a special game for that. And then we go further and talk about the gameplay, talk about how we talk about platinum games and how well they do hack and slash. But in your Automata they mix that up with like shooting up style gameplay to make for a really interesting back and forth where you're hacking, you're slashing, but you're also doing third person shooting. But then if you're playing his 9s, you can then transform into like his little shoot him up mode to hack enemies and shit. It was doing pragmata before Pragmata.

[Mike]

Okay. I mean that's a lot of positives going in there.

[Blessing]

Bless.

[Mike]

But what about GTA as a cowboy? Shooting your revolver off the off horseback, the cinematic camera on your horseback, the bit to do anything in this giant western world lifestyle. Sitting down and playing poker, running off and trying to rob a railroad car while it's driving by you, you and your crew hunting, going back to camp, talking and getting involved with the crew. And what's going off, getting ready for your next mission where maybe you're going to go down the countryside road to one giant mansion, maybe light that thing on fire and ride off with your crew. I mean, yeah, nothing. I mean, Red Dead is the ultimate cowboy simulator, right? When I think of a wild, wild west movie, what I want to do, it's everything. Blessed. It has it all.

[Blessing]

But is it fun, Mike? Is it, is it fun though, Mike?

[Mike]

Of course it's fun.

[Blessing]

I want to keep coming back.

[Mike]

Of course. Bless.

[Blessing]

I don't know man.

[Mike]

It's an interesting one of like when you talk with people of Red Dead 2 and like truly when we put all the the bracket bs, right? Like how people vibe with Red Dead and like what they vibe with, do they like it at all?

[Blessing]

Right?

[Mike]

And it's interesting being in these walls. It's not the highest like people vibing with that game, right? But like for me, I am a GTA kid through and through. I love the mechanics, the feel of gta, the gameplay of gta. So it's like putting that in the wild west world. I'm already in sold, right. I have no problems playing that, being involved in that. I know the mission structure, how they build out the story, the length of the game. It's like for me it was the cities and the towns and how they built those out and how good it looked, right. And being really immersed in this western world and like this was it. I loved this one.

[Blessing]

I love that I. We can go back and forth on this all day and we're going to have probably have more time to talk about at least one of these games. But one thing I want to shout out for Red Dead, one thing I want to shout out to for Near Automata. Near Automata, one of the best soundtracks of all time. That's the top five video game soundtrack. Maybe top three. Possibly top one, if I think about it. Red Dead Redemption 2. I remember in the conversation about it during review time for that game where somebody mentioned that this Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like the most expensive indie game ever made. Which I know sounds insane because it's the most triple A game, one of the most triple A games ever made. But they say that to say that it is so focused into what it presents as the cowboy fantasy that, like, circumvents AAA design in some ways to make sure that it gives you the most. Not accurate, but I guess like the most immersive cowboy experience possible. Like that is a cowboy video game. You know, what do they call it? Like, play testing? Not play testing, but you. Focus testing. That's the word I'm looking for. Focus testing. Like the established AAA mechanics that games have figured out years over years over years.

[Barrett]

We want to make the game that

[Blessing]

we want to make. We're gonna make the game that we want to make. And I think there's something that is special about that. When I look at red Dead Redemption 2, even though for me, as I got halfway through that game, I just felt myself being like, I don't care.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

As much as I'd like to care about what's happening here.

[Barrett]

Well, the chat disagrees with you, Bless. Because Red Dead 2 has been voted in.

[Blessing]

There we go.

[Mike]

115 to 85. So I do want to give a big.

[Blessing]

There you go.

[Mike]

To Near. I was going to say near really showed up. So there's an audience out there that believes in there.

[Blessing]

I mean, of course, 42% of people that voted for Near.

[Mike]

Our audience in the live chat is very split of, like, a lot of people saying, Red Dead Redemption 2 Boring. Too boring after X amount hours. And I always found the Rockstar games of like, you make your own fun. Right. Like, you are in charge of having that Grand Theft Auto you summon in the tank or the helicopter. You get weird.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Red Dead. I'm off on the horse. I go make my own adventure. Right. And so, yeah, it's an interesting way of how people approach this one.

[Blessing]

Yeah. And I reject people because my Chad and I think most people will have the feeling of like, oh, that's your attention span or whatever. Right. I fully reject that.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

You know, I mean, I think there is a lot of legitimate criticism for how you approach game design and how you make game design interesting for the player and create a gameplay loop that makes people want to keep coming back. But also, like, I respect that. I respect if you want to take the fantasy, the cowboy fantasy part and have that be more of the thing you focus on at the detriment of the other thing. But I also have the freedom to be like, I don't like that. I think that's not great.

[Mike]

Do we also add in Red Dead Online? Right? Like, do you start to add in like what that created with GTA online now into Red Dead Online of like making that third world where friends can go and meet up and live out

[Blessing]

that online still run?

[Mike]

Yeah, I believe so.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

I don't know why I thought they, they stopped updating it. Is that what it was?

[Mike]

I don't know. I. I don't think I haven't heard still play that.

[Blessing]

I haven't heard people bring up attention or I bring up a very small

[Mike]

audience compared to gta. I think like you have to be Die Hard. Die Hard to play Red Dead online for sure. But like, I mean also pretty wild that they did that. Yeah, I mean kind of. You knew they were gonna. But still pretty sick.

[Blessing]

Let's move on to our second matchup. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 versus Dark Souls 2.

[Barrett]

And really quick, Mike.

[Mike]

Oh, we should have put near over Red Dead just to get the chat to go crazy in the YouTube comments right off the rip, Dallas.

[Blessing]

But I want us to be genuine because I knew you're gonna go Red Dead there and I knew the audience

[Barrett]

is gonna Red Dead really quick with these polls. Mike. Let's do two minutes for, for the poll length.

[Mike]

You. You don't think we're going to talk about each one of these for about five minutes?

[Barrett]

Well, I don't want to get to like if every conversation, like if some conversations get to like two or three minutes.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Barrett]

I don't want us to like have

[Blessing]

to wait on the do 2 minutes cuz I don't think this one's going to be two minutes. What can you come to learn? Ste versus Dark Souls 2.

[Mike]

Blessing. I'm on both sides of the fence for this one and I got arguments for both.

[Blessing]

Give it to me.

[Mike]

You tell me really quick while I write this up. What, what do you got?

[Blessing]

I. I mean obviously I've not played. Well, I say obviously I've not played Dark Souls 2. I just finished Dark Souls 1 at the beginning of the year. I played a little bit of Kingdom come deliverance 2. I know the reputation of Dark Souls 2. If I had to.

[Mike]

The most hated Dark Souls game of the series.

[Blessing]

If I'm shooting from the hip, I'm actually gonna say Kingdom Come Deliverance, too.

[Mike]

I love that.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And that's why I'm on both sides of the fence, because I'm gonna make arguments for both. But of course, I'll start with my favorite souls game of the series, because Dark Souls 2 was my first. And usually you hold on to your first a little bit higher than the rest of them. But it is funny because Dark Souls 2 is the most hated out of the Souls Born experience. But then when people try to play it, they open up their heart and start to believe. They start to see the highest Metacritic souls like Game 91 on Metacritic. I think that might have changed over time, but still the highest one, I believe at the time being three DLCs. Memorable moments. Majula and the Emerald Herald. Majula. Best Dark Souls Hub area. The Emerald Herald. Best maiden, for sure.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

This was so much fun. Bless. I wish more people would open up their hearts and play Dark Souls 2. I have such fond memories for it and the DLCs. Three packed DLCs, big DLCs. And of course, everyone remembers the Ivory Frozen or the Ivory King, which is all about the frozen tundra. You, you. If you played it, you know it. And bless. I want you to one day get to this.

[Blessing]

Oh, I will.

[Mike]

Because it is frustrating. It is banging your head against the wall. Why? Why? Why? But it's also so much fun. And I think more people, if they gave that a try, they would love that. All right, here's the flip side. Kingdom come. Deliverance 2 is the ultimate RPG. Yeah. It is so deep. It is so much fun. Hans and Henry story all the way through. That is just so good. It's like 40 to 80 hours. Make your own adventure. A hundred plus hours. Awesome rpg. This was one what last year, it came out and swept the world by storm. The first one, sleeper hit, people loved. Second one, this was like, put this name on the map. It's for real, right? And it's like so much fun. It's very in depth. It is a make your own adventure. Live in this world, get lost in this world, spend as much time as you want. I. I described it as like, you crawl for so many hours of this game. It's a snail's pace. And you look up and you're like, how am I still on this one mission? And then you go, it doesn't matter. The world is so beautiful. The music is so great. I'm so lost in this narrative, in this story that I'm doing right now that I don't care where I am or what time it is. All I want to do is stay in this.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And it's so good. Bless.

[Blessing]

What's your pick?

[Mike]

Kingdom Come Deliverance.

[Blessing]

It's Kingdom Come Deliverance too. Like, you know, obviously I'm more of a Dark Souls person than I am a Kingdom Come Deliverance person. But if we're talking about the best sequel. I know the way people talk about Dark Souls 2 as a sequel versus the way people talk about King Gun Deliverance as a sequel. Right. This is the battle of the Twos. It has to be King of Deliverance too.

[Mike]

Battle of the Twos.

[Blessing]

The battle of the twos.

[Mike]

All right. Give it, give it. Take all. Shucks.

[Blessing]

What did the audience say?

[Mike]

They said Kingdom Come Deliverance too.

[Blessing]

Nice. What was the the vote?

[Mike]

I'm Deliverance too. By a lot.

[Blessing]

By a lot.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

There you go.

[Mike]

100 like 40.

[Blessing]

Wow. Our next matchup. The last was part two versus Titanfall two.

[Mike]

One made me hate myself and one made me hate EA.

[Blessing]

That's good. I like that.

[Mike]

Thank you. I thought.

[Blessing]

I like that one.

[Mike]

Yeah. I mean the last of us two all about dread. Just a gut wrenching story right off the rip and one of those of like kind of hard to get through but really, really good.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

On the flip side, Titanfall 2. Wow. What an all timer. And a special game that was sorely missed back then because it was sandwiched between two gigantic video games and kind of got its lunch eaten. And unfortunately a lot of people didn't come back to it until late and kind of missed that moment of this is the launch. This is when it should be ultimately big. But it was just in between so many games.

[Barrett]

They buried one of the best modern shooters of our time.

[Mike]

Course between Call of Duty and Battlefield right in the middle of them. We. You couldn't breed. There were so many games to play. And we talk about the three big shooters. We always kind of talk about like the fall and having all these shooters. That moment right there will go down. His history of like that game was never going to come up and get an audience because it was just sandwiched between two massive already well known super titles. Coming hot off of an Xbox exclusivity with Titanfall 1.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Now adding a campaign that is a sleeper hit. Time this duration time.

[Blessing]

No dilation.

[Mike]

Well, that's a. That's a future.

[Blessing]

Oh, they don't even. They don't even know that reference yet.

[Mike]

That's a future spoiler joke for a kind of funny show that you're going to die laughing at.

[Blessing]

But like so funny.

[Mike]

This one is Special. It's really, really good.

[Blessing]

The Timefall 2 is one of the best firstperson shooter campaigns I've ever played.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

The cause and effect. Is that the name of the mission?

[Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing]

Uhhuh. Yeah. The one where you're jumping between timelines. Super cool.

[Barrett]

So good.

[Blessing]

One of the coolest first person shooter levels I've ever played. And like the ending and getting a certain weapon and like wall running and doing all this, like Titanfall 2 is one that I think people often look back at so fondly and I think people always have those feelings when it comes up of like, man, I. With Titanfall 2, like, I think it's one of those.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

However, I don't think it stands the chance against Last Was too. I think Last, Us too was such a clue and I'm like, I'm somebody who has my own critiques of Last Was too. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. But I think Last of Us Too is just. It's just such a good game. Like it. It goes for more. It has a gameplay loop and game game clean mechanics that play together so well. When we're talking about the combat and how, you know, we often compare to Hotline Miami as how. As far as how it flows and as far as how like, well animated and like you're in it for that combat and then you want to talk about the story and how daring is the word. I would say how daring it is and how like, it'll work for some people, might not work for other people, might make other people hate the video game. But I like games that make people hate it sometimes.

[Mike]

You know, this was our closest poll and I will say that.

[Blessing]

Which is which. What's your choice?

[Mike]

My vote would go to Titanfall 2.

[Blessing]

Okay. My vote.

[Mike]

I think the right vote is Last of us to. Yeah. My vote of like, what game I like more and what's my favorite sequel.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Barrett]

Titanfall 2, especially as a follow up to the first Titanfall, which is like an Xbox exclusive, just multiplayer. And then like them totally like pivoting and like making something so memorable.

[Mike]

Now here's the deal. The audience. Titanfall 248 with 109. Yeah. Votes. Last of Us part two, 118 votes with 52.

[Blessing]

That's crazy.

[Mike]

There is a good close.

[Barrett]

There is a good length of time where Titanfall 2 was.

[Blessing]

Was.

[Barrett]

Was leading.

[Mike]

That's crazy.

[Blessing]

Good for Titanfall too.

[Mike]

There's.

[Blessing]

But like last month too is also just a controversial one where not everybody's gonna agree on that game, but it's a really good. But that's art, you know?

[Mike]

Really good game.

[Blessing]

Next matchup. Oh, Alan Wake 2 versus the Hades 2.

[Mike]

I mean, I'm a Hades 2 guy.

[Blessing]

I'm a Hades 2 guy.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Oh, both of you.

[Mike]

I'm a Hades.

[Blessing]

Here's what I'll say about Allen way too. I love Allen way too. I love Allen way too. It insists upon itself, though, Barrett. What do you mean it insists upon itself?

[Barrett]

Expand by that.

[Blessing]

What the do you mean it insist upon itself? It insists upon itself. You know, it is what it is. You watch the Family Guy episode, whatever he said. I mean, you know, I. I think it's cool. I didn't love Alan way too. As much as the world loved Alan Wake 2. And I don't even have, like, a legitimate. Like, this is why I think it just didn't vibe with me like, that.

[Mike]

You like going into the mind palace.

[Blessing]

No, like, I thought it was cool. Everything about Alan Wake two for me is more conceptually cool than it is ex. Executionally cool.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Which is a word I made up, but you get what I mean, right? Like, playing Alan Wake 2, I was kind of like, all right, cool. It's like a weird Resident Evil style thing. And, like, they're trying to go for more narratively, and I think a lot of it is the way they're pulling

[Barrett]

in, like, the first game with Control and then Quantum Break. Like, Alan Wake 2 is doing this whole, like, universe, and the way they present it all is, like, so rad.

[Blessing]

Yeah. But I think control presents it. Control presents it in a cooler way. I love Control way more than I love Alan. Wait, too. Okay, I know that's a hot take. I know that's a hot. And I like. I don't mean to be hot take. Ish. It's just my genuine opinion. Hades 2, though.

[Mike]

Hades 2.

[Blessing]

What does that do?

[Barrett]

That's my question.

[Blessing]

I think it improves on Hades 1 exponentially. Like, if you remember, Hades 1 was a game that I also really liked but wasn't. Like, that wasn't my game of the year. That was a game that I was like, oh, yeah, this is a damn good game. But I didn't feel like I was on the level of everybody else with how much they loved it. Hades 2 got me there. Hades 2 added the. The second route that, like, I think goes crazy, like, both visually in terms of music and audio. But then you want to talk about the weapons and, like, the different abilities and how they improved upon systems, like the cast system, which I did not like in the first Game. But in the second game, like once I locked in on actually pressing the circle button. Let me tell you, the hex in this game, pretty good.

[Mike]

Once you got dialed in.

[Blessing]

Once you got it dialed in, you know, pretty good. I might have underrated at first. Yeah. No Haiti suit has had me way more locked in. I think the gameplay is way better in that game. The. We're both saying Hades too, officially.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

The chat's riding Fallon wake too, with. With Barrett over there.

[Blessing]

Yeah, that's what I expected.

[Mike]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Blessing]

Oh, yeah. I think it's really good. I Only two is such a beloved.

[Mike]

Very good.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

I like Hades too.

[Blessing]

I like Hades too.

[Mike]

I like.

[Blessing]

This is our. We. We're.

[Mike]

I like Hades. Do you come after.

[Blessing]

You are the decide.

[Barrett]

You are the very first round of deciders here. And it's just. It's unfortunate that, you know, like, sometimes you guys are gonna get it wrong, you know, and this is how that's

[Mike]

how it's going to go sometimes.

[Blessing]

That's how it goes. I should have shouted out the seating, by the way, because, of course, going back a few rounds, Dark Souls 2 was our fourth seed. Kingdom Come was our fifth seed. Last is Part 2 was our third seed. Titanfall 2 was our sixth seed. And then Hades 2, our second seed. When we're talking about Metacritic wars, Alan Wade II was our seventh seed. And those are our picks for the first round of the modern bracket. Now, do you want to stick on the left side or do you want to hop over to the more retro side?

[Mike]

A lot of fun ones over here. Let's go over to memory card.

[Blessing]

All right, we're going to go memory card again. These are games that released from about 01 to. I want to say, like, oh, 8ish. Oh, seven. Oh, seven. And again, this isn't perfect. Some of the 01 games had to come down to the classics, but the most recent O1 game still made it into the memory card stuff. So starting off with our first matchup, here we have Half Life two versus NBA Street Volume two.

[Mike]

Mike, shut it down. Bless. You know what to say.

[Blessing]

You know, I mean, you know it.

[Mike]

You and I both know what we're going to say.

[Blessing]

Am I going to say it or are you going to say it?

[Mike]

NBA Street Volume 2.

[Blessing]

It's NBA Street Volume 2, baby.

[Mike]

Sorry about that. Iconic sound.

[Blessing]

Come on.

[Mike]

Memorable characters.

[Blessing]

The game breaker.

[Mike]

Fantastic basketball arenas. The game breaker. Of course. You know that. Be a legend going on. Recruiting players.

[Blessing]

Oh, my God.

[Mike]

Three different Michael Jordans.

[Blessing]

Three different Michael Jordan. Three different Eras.

[Mike]

Three different eras of Michael Jordan. You put on all three Michael Jordans on the one team.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You can't do that in any other video game.

[Blessing]

You can't do that in Half Life 2.

[Mike]

He didn't have appeared half the video games that were being made at the time. How did they get him?

[Blessing]

And you can say that because you also played Half Life.

[Mike]

I played Half Life two and I'm actually a Half Life one over Half Life two guy. Oh, really? I know that's a crazy take. Yeah. But I actually enjoyed my time with Half Life one more than Half Life two. But Half Life two, a very good video game. I'm really waiting for it to get that Nvidia remix. Remember we did a fun stream with it. They have a demo out about it, but I can't wait to see them like kind of remaster remix that with all the Nvidia bells and whistles. It will look really good and play well. But Half Life two, very good.

[Blessing]

Right.

[Mike]

Like, oh my God. Continuing Gordon Freeman's story onto that.

[Blessing]

Right.

[Mike]

And like where we're going, what they're doing with that. I can't wait to play Alex and see that.

[Blessing]

I want to play Alex too.

[Mike]

Roger keeps telling me that Half Life 3 is real and I like, don't believe him. But like one day, you know, crazy music in Half Life as well. Yeah, but I'm talking about NBA street having some good music. Half Life two and Half Life have some insane music. I don't know who thought of the music in this game. But you'll just pause me like, what is going on here? Yeah, it's just bang.

[Blessing]

I got a mad respect for Half Life because I am somebody. I like the Valve games. I'm more. I'm more of a portal person. I've tried both. I've streamed quite a bit of Black Mesa actually. I've tried Half Life one back in the day, didn't get through it. Tried Half Life 2 back in the day, didn't get all the way through it. Played a bit of Black Mesa, did a full few hours stream on it. And like, I think I have more respect for those games than I have like the actual again, enjoyment factor. One day I want to get through them all because I know they're. Those are video game history. I know the impact of Half Life 2. When you want to talk about the source engine and what that brought as far as like the physics systems that are really cool and like the gravity gun and what that does. I got all the respect in the world. For Half Life 2. I would never shade Half Life 2.

[Mike]

Yeah. However, I'm going to shade it so hard because I'm going to say this right now.

[Blessing]

No.

[Mike]

If you don't vote for NBA Street Volume 2, you don't know ball. Okay, I agree. Okay. It's the deal.

[Barrett]

Percent of as much as you love don't know.

[Mike]

Here's the deal. NBA Street Volume two might be one of the greatest games of all time.

[Blessing]

I mean, it might be. It is.

[Mike]

It's the goat.

[Blessing]

It's the goat, man.

[Mike]

Game breaker. Do you remember Game Breaker? You build up the bar off of doing this was at the moment that the world of basketball and just people in general. We're riding the high off of MBR and one basketball. We're talking young LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, big Diesel. Everybody wanted to go out, grab a basketball and do the hot sauce. Okay. We wanted to do skip to my Lou. I wanted to go half amazing off the. I'm throwing basketballs off my father.

[Blessing]

I'm pretty sure I got detention one time for the off the easy.

[Mike]

Throwing a basketball off my father's forehead. You can't do that to people.

[Blessing]

And because of NBA Street Volume 2, the amount of times during PE where I'm like doing the thing where I am throwing the ball off the backboard, hopping and trying to score off of that like, oh, come on.

[Mike]

They got the guy.

[Blessing]

Culturally important game.

[Mike]

What? Who's the dj? Who's the MC that's always talking? Dj.

[Blessing]

DJ Cucumber slice. Bob Garcia.

[Mike]

Talking over the game. Yeah, your ankle breaking. Building up the game breaker bar. Doing all these awesome moves. You're comboing them into alley oops. Where one of your players would go off the back, go do a backdoor cut, go up from the air. You'd throw an alley, fill up the game breaker bar. It's like, oh, what does the game breaker bar do? Gives you an extra point and takes points from your opponents. So when you need it the most, you know you got it.

[Blessing]

Like somebody in chat says, I missed Tim. Tim would agree with us, by the way. Just so you know.

[Barrett]

Yeah, Tim would. 100%.

[Blessing]

Come on guys, let's move on. We're going to talk about Mason Street Volume two more later. Let's move on to our next matchup. Soul caliber 2 versus smash melee.

[Mike]

Bless. This is one of the ones that I'll stay out of. But I do vote for Smash Melee. I don't know, honestly, I'm not a soul.

[Blessing]

I really, I should say Half Life two. Was our number one seed. NBA street two was our number eight seed. Smash, man, they number four. Soul Cobber two number five seed. I don't. No. If. Now, if I'm going off of personal, what I played more what it is Soul Caliber too. So I think I'm gonna lean. So caliber 2. I smash melee. If you remember I talked about this before, I didn't grow up with a Gamecube. I went N64 and then went to PS2 and then came back to Nintendo with the Nintendo WWII.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing]

But Smash 64 is, like, one of my favorite. It's like that's. That was a pivotal experience for me. Smash 64 is what got me into fighting games. I know people will say it's a platform fighter, whatever, Right? Funny Enough, Soul Caliber 2 is the game that got me more into traditional fighting game. So they're like two sides of a very similar coin to me. I think Soul Caliber 2 might be a better game, but I don't even know if I can say that. Smash Melee, man. Smash Melee is like. That's the holy grail for Smash. That's the one that people are always trying to chase as far as, like. No, this is the one. I don't think Soul calibur 2 has been surpassed in the Soul Collar franchise.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

I know a lot of people argue the same for Smash Melee, but I think in other ways, Smash Melee has been surpassed. When you want to talk about, like, the amount of content, amount of modes, the. Of course, Smash ultimate goes crazy.

[Mike]

Every character known to man.

[Blessing]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Eileen. Eileen, Soul Caliber, too.

[Mike]

Okay, well, guess what? The audience doesn't lean with you. They lean with me.

[Blessing]

All right? I'm not mad at either of these.

[Mike]

Honestly, the audience goes crazy with smash melee 128 to 42.

[Blessing]

Okay, well, that's insane.

[Mike]

Well, I mean, like, that.

[Blessing]

That spread.

[Mike]

We don't have the biggest fighting game audience here.

[Blessing]

Yeah, you know what? That's fair. They don't.

[Mike]

And also, like, so Caliber too. That's a long time ago. Melee still like. Like you said.

[Blessing]

That's true.

[Mike]

Just in this world, people still think about Melee.

[Blessing]

That's a good point.

[Mike]

Still talk about it. You still watch Melee.

[Blessing]

Our next matchup, God of War 2 versus Sly 2. God of War being our number three seed. Sly 2 being our number six seed.

[Mike]

Well, we don't have Roger here to ride for Sly. Should we call it surprisingly goes crazy for Sly. It's God of War, too.

[Blessing]

Yeah, I would say God of War, too.

[Mike]

That.

[Blessing]

I just don't have that much of a.

[Mike]

This God of War trilogy coming back out is gonna be a real special piece that's a special time in history. God of War games with early Kratos, the Blades of Chaos, and those whipping out on your screen and pulling people towards you, going towards them, spinning in circles. That was like some crazy gaming back in 2000.

[Barrett]

And this one, you had, like, the big sword as well. Yeah. This is also the. You go to the fates and you have to fight the fates to go back in time and screw over Zeus and all that. Like, it was such a great lead into God of War 3, which I don't know if I would put down as like, an official bullet point of why. Why it's a good sequel, but it's such a great follow up to the first one and expanding more on this character.

[Blessing]

All right, so God of War 2 makes it through our next matchup. Our final matchup of the memory card bracket. Kingdom Hearts 2 versus Halo 2.

[Mike]

I see what you did, that. You tried to hurt me.

[Blessing]

Mike, take it. Hey, that's not me.

[Mike]

You're trying to hurt me here.

[Blessing]

That was our number two.

[Mike]

You're trying to hurt me.

[Blessing]

This is the way the seating. The seating lands.

[Mike]

This is crazy.

[Blessing]

I didn't do this.

[Mike]

This hurts me.

[Blessing]

Mike, take it away.

[Mike]

Okay, well, I mean, I. I ride for Halo 2. Halo 2 is my favorite game of all time. Halo 2 is a. A better sequel than the first. Right. Improving upon the narrative and driving that story forward with Master Chief and Cortana, of course, the Covenant, the Flood, what's going on in the world. Right. And then on top of that, multiplayer really improved. Right. Riding the back off of early Internet days. Xbox Live, the first generation of like, oh, we're really plugging in. We are on microphones. We're making Xbox Live accounts. We are playing as, like, a online community. It started with Halo 2.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And that is like a big freaking deal. This, in all honesty, a lot of great sequels here. Halo 2, when you add up, like, the things and the culture of gaming that kind of happened here, might be the greatest sequel of all time. Because it was right at the moment of, like, the world of video game is going to change forever.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

We are going to change everything but Man Kingdom hearts, too.

[Blessing]

Man Kingdom Hearts.

[Mike]

Man Kingdom Hearts to really change my life.

[Blessing]

Come on. You got Roxas, you got the ice cream. You got Mickey Mouse doing flips.

[Mike]

And he was doing flips. And Goofy took a boulder to the forehead.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

He had to pick him up. Him and Donald you know what I mean? The introduction of organization 13 in a big way. You had to remember all their crazy names, like Dioxis and, you know, Nefertiti. It was crazy.

[Blessing]

Ain't no shot. It was a Nefertiti. I don't even know if Diocese is that kid that sounds like a Pokemon.

[Mike]

I mean, it's Halo 2 for me.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Kingdom Hearts 2. Where? Isn't there a chain of Memories in the middle of this? I don't know.

[Blessing]

Oh, you know, I mean, where do we stand on. Well, I guess you're right. I didn't think about that. But I guess that's a weird one, right? Like, I feel like we'll still have to say Kingdom Hearts 2 as the sequel.

[Mike]

I. I like. I. I would still.

[Blessing]

I did not even consider Chain of Memories. I think most people writing in didn't even think of Chain of Memories. Either way, I think I'm gonna say

[Mike]

Halo Station 13, Tron World. Returning back to a lot of old worlds and catching up with them. Like Aladdin, Little Mermaid. You went back to Beauty and the Beast. You were there with.

[Barrett]

Is this the first one with pirates?

[Mike]

Halloween. Halloween Town. Pirates was added to this. That's a big deal. Especially in 2000s, pirates took over the world.

[Blessing]

The gummy ship in this one.

[Mike]

The gummy ship is in this one. You build your own gummy ship in between worlds.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Then I'm going Halo, too.

[Mike]

You didn't like the gummy shit?

[Blessing]

No, I don't mind it. I love Kingdom Hearts 1. I played Kingdom Hearts 2. I played a portion of Kingdom Hearts 2 as an adult, and I just couldn't. It wasn't vibing with me. I think, though, I lost my childlike sense of whimsy and wonder.

[Mike]

This game has the whimsy and the wonder. This game also has killer music.

[Blessing]

Oh, of course it does.

[Mike]

Sanctuary.

[Blessing]

Sanctuary. Yeah. No, I listen to Kingdom Hearts music. Even though I did. Even though I'm not like.

[Mike]

But not as good, as simple, as clean, no, nothing. And I'm gonna go on wax and say that.

[Blessing]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike]

No, I'm afraid to say that.

[Blessing]

That's the correct.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Wait until. Yeah.

[Mike]

I think people like Sanctuary a lot.

[Blessing]

I mean, all the music's great. As a kid, I heard that in a commercial, and I was like, this is the best song of all time. I didn't. I didn't even play the game yet.

[Mike]

But you know what? Who else has good music?

[Blessing]

Halo 2. You know that. You know what you want to say?

[Mike]

Halo 2 has lockout, too. And I'll 1v1 any person in the chat, any day of the week, one on one in lockout, shoddy snipes. It's over.

[Blessing]

Are you saying Halo 2?

[Mike]

Yeah, I'm going.

[Blessing]

He's going Halo 2. I'm also going to go Halo 2. I don't have like the biggest horse in the race win this race for either. But culturally and as far as like the impact of Halo 2, it's something that you feel no matter what. You know, I remember going over to my friend's house and like him having Halo 2 and him whooping my ass in Halo 2 and being like, damn, dude, this is different. Like I had a PS2, he had an Xbox or whatever. And I was like, damn, this is crazy. And to see, well, I was gonna say to see where Halo's at now, not necessarily the best place, but to see that is it is a franchise that still means so much to people. Right? Like, I don't know, I think Halo 2 is for sure the the pick here. And that is it for our memory card first round part of the bracket. Before we move on, let me tell you about patreon.com kinda funny and YouTube.com kinda funny games where you can go and get the Kinda Funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

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[Blessing]

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[Mike]

I have created the most advanced AI Soldier. The wait is over.

[Blessing]

Tron Ares now streaming on Disney plus. We are looking for something, Something you've discovered. Give me something to believe, and some of us will stop at nothing to get it ready. The countdown is complete.

[Mike]

There's no going back. Dark Directive is clear. Hang on.

[Blessing]

Tron Aries now streaming on Disney Plus. Rated PG 13. And we're back. I want to blaze through some of these super chats that are coming in because let me tell you, people have a lot to say. I want to start off with Science Dog official who says, important reminder that these are their opinions. Lol. And, you know, I like that. I like that. You know, reset the tone. Reset the room.

[Mike]

Remember, this is Snowbike Mike talking to you. Okay, this is my vote.

[Blessing]

We're all friends. We're all friends in a basement talking video games right now. I might disagree, but. But we'll come back together and still have fun. Jacob Young writes in and says, I agree with the other super chat. Little Big Planet 2 should be here. Of course, the super chat right before that Skull King that says a little bit Big Planet 2 is the only right answer.

[Mike]

But remember, look back at yourselves.

[Blessing]

Look back at yourselves.

[Mike]

Because we put out the poll and we said you. Yep. Vote. You pick this.

[Blessing]

What came was I pissed off. There was a game. You know what I'm pissed off about, actually? Ms. Pac Man. I feel like Ms. Pac man should have been.

[Mike]

Should have made no Borderlands too.

[Blessing]

Yeah, like some people wrote in with it. It was like in the final list but like yeah, I wasn't able. Wasn't able to make it. Brian Matz says top of each bracket for me. Hades 2, AC2 I seen. I think that's Assassin's Creed Soul Caliber 2. Diablo 2 Diablo 2 is my number one of all time.

[Mike]

I I'm gonna talk about it.

[Blessing]

Shoot you in chat. I don't like that name. Says no Team Fortress 2 should be illegal. Look back at yourself, point the finger and say I did this.

[Mike]

Yep.

[Blessing]

Mara writes in and says hey y' all had a heart attack two weeks ago and just wanted to say thank you for keeping me company while I was st in the hospital for five days. Love you guys. Also, the correct answer is Mass Effect too. Mar already here. I hope you're doing better and thank you for listening and watching.

[Mike]

Yeah, we're thinking about you. Take care of yourself.

[Blessing]

Mason Graves says on a 15 minute work break so won't be able to watch live. But Halo 2 is the clear winner here. Science Dog official says motion to do worst sequels bracket two. Dove May Cry two takes top spot. I like that idea.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

Jameson Peters writes in and says AW2. Oh Alan Wake 2 won't win but man what a game. Rock on old gods of Asgard. Mimo or memo writes in and says love you Mike. Bless. And Barrett been having the worst weeks of my life. So thank you for all for making me feel normal while watching. Thank you so much for watching.

[Mike]

I hope you're yeah, thanks for watching, homie.

[Blessing]

Not Calvin Perez writes in and says Ms. Pac man is my personal pick. Its development is one of the craziest stories in gaming. A sequel so good most people think of it as think of its gameplay as what Pac man always was. And then lastly JVC writes and says even my mom knows the correct answer is Street Fighter 2.

[Mike]

Yeah. Oscar wrote in, says Mike is still mad about that Demix. Oh, that's not his name.

[Blessing]

Dix is D E M Y X.

[Mike]

Say it again.

[Blessing]

Bless dmix Daryl.

[Mike]

Now it feels like Dynamax or something like that. What you never forget bro. Cuz he be yelling water at you and he just throws water balls at you. Most frustrating fight in video games Kingdom Hearts.

[Blessing]

Actually I'm. I'm not gonna say anything about Kingdom.

[Mike]

Don't say, don't say don't hurt him. Don't hurt him.

[Blessing]

It's like Taylor Swift where like I don't know and I say That I like Taylor Swift music, actually. Sometimes. But sometimes I don't. But I get scared to say it.

[Mike]

Dance, water dance says yes, you will remember. Dance, water, dance for the rest of your life. If you play that game, and I'm sure as a child, if it broke you, you never went back. But if you. If you triumphed, you'll never forget. Took me about 36 hours to beat that guy. Dark Souls boss.

[Blessing]

Mike, do you want to go HD or do you want to go classic?

[Mike]

Take me back to the left. Let's go back to the left.

[Blessing]

All right, first matchup. Mass Effect 2 versus Saints Row 2. We can save time here. I love Saints or 2 as much or I love Saints Row as much as the next guy.

[Mike]

They had to get the Saints back. They disbanded. They had to bring them back. They had to take over Stillwater.

[Blessing]

Mike, we could save time here.

[Mike]

I know it's massive. Mass Effect 2 is the Goats.

[Blessing]

Shout out Saints Row 2, though.

[Mike]

Shout out to Saints or 2. I love somebody was like somebody wrote the Jack said. Who even played the Saints Row games. Sir, I played every Saints Row game.

[Blessing]

Oh, I love. I played Central 3 and 4.

[Mike]

Loved Saints, Saints Row 1 back in the day. I still ride hard for.

[Blessing]

See, I don't know anybody that played the first one.

[Mike]

Oh, it's blessed. It was so good. And it was just one of those of like, Saints Row was the over the top little brother. That GTA wasn't right. GTA was all about being like the mean streets. Yeah, this is what we're doing. This one was like, here's a dildo bat. Go do something dumb.

[Blessing]

And you're like, and I'll swing in.

[Mike]

I love all of this. Right? That true crime. I was playing a lot of true crime. Any crackdown, any open world. Gta like your boy Snow Mike. Mike was playing all of them? Yeah, it's the best.

[Blessing]

All right, we move on to Assassin's Creed 2 versus Batman, Arkham City. Oh, this actually, no. I was gonna say this one's tough one for me, but it actually isn't. Although I might have the wrong answer. My answer is Batman, Arkham City, But I think. I think the cultural answer would be Assassin's Creed. But I gotta go. I like Batman Arkham City more. Why.

[Barrett]

Why do you say the cultural answer is Assassin's Creed?

[Blessing]

I think because I.

[Barrett]

To me personally, who loves both of these series, I think both of these games have, like, roughly the same weight, really.

[Blessing]

I think Assassin's Creed, like, the impact of Assassin's Creed 2 feels bigger. I think that's how we get the popularization of, like, the Ubisoft game.

[Mike]

You know, it was the moment.

[Blessing]

It was the moment. Right. Open world games got to have a tower, open world.

[Mike]

Like, got to synchronize on every single tall tower there is.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Open up more of the map.

[Blessing]

Like, I think this changed the trajectory

[Mike]

of Ubisoft and what it did with, like, stealth games mixed with parkour, where you still felt like you were agile and nimble and you were everywhere and you were also doing the fun fighting combats. But the moment that you were, like, jumping down from the top of a building and stealth killing somebody on top of them was, like, very, very cool. Right. Like, I still think about Assassin's Creed all the time, and I might lean Batman here, But Assassin's Creed 2 and that moment for Ubisoft and what that franchise did and became.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Was really special bat back then.

[Blessing]

It was a big jump.

[Barrett]

And I would say, like, I think what we think of when it comes to the open world Ubisoft games, I don't think. Personally, I don't think they get there until Brotherhood. But two was a step in that right direction of, like, kind of fixing things up from one. But I think Batman, Arkham City, and what that does as a sequel, like, taking a left turn from small Metroidvania to, like, kind of this. Not big open world, but, like, kind of this, like. Like, bigger map that feels a bit linked to the past with, like, a dungeon design and world design along with just, like, blowing up how many characters you get. Because Arkham Asylum felt so constrained. And then they just go all out with Arkham City, which I. I think was fantastic.

[Blessing]

Yeah. So we're all going Batman here.

[Mike]

I'm putting the poll out just for fun, but, yeah, I am. Yes. As Barrett said, Batman 2 is a better game. Is right.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Like, the sequel and what they built upon and how they expanded it is so much better, and it is so good.

[Blessing]

I'm sure it'll be a conversation later down the road. I just like Batman. I just like that world more. I like the gameplay more. It feels a bit more smooth. You know, it goes down smoother for me. Batman, Arkham City. This is, like, such a fun world to exist in. Weirdly enough, I like Asylum more, which might come into play later on in the bracket. We'll see. But, like, you know what?

[Mike]

I'm taking my vote back. Back. I'm going Assassin's Creed.

[Blessing]

Whoa.

[Mike]

I'm gonna let the chat vote because I have to ride For Assassin, I have to let the chat.

[Blessing]

I knew he was gonna do this.

[Mike]

The Assassin's Creed game is just so good. And the moment that it changed, nobody was doing parkour like that. Nobody was doing movement like that. I was doing the gameplay like that. Like Ubisoft had it. It was so much fun.

[Barrett]

And I think, like Batman Arkham City was the one is the game that I think everybody thinks of now when it comes to that. That iconic combat, that free flow combat that we think of that isn't just press Y and parry and automatically kill. Which when you go back to AC2, you're like, oh, man, this combat is not nearly as engaging.

[Blessing]

You think about the amount of games that come after Batman Arkham that are like a shadow of Mordor and where that. The amount of combat systems that are like, all right, do those combos hit that Y to to even like a spider. I know Spider man takes so much from Spider Man 2 from back in the day. You know, I'm not saying that that Batman Arkham like, invented everything, but I do think that Insomniac Spider man is a better game because Batman Arkham existed.

[Mike]

And now you know why I did this, right? Bless.

[Blessing]

Why?

[Mike]

Because I went to the chat and I already knew what they voted for. They voted for Batman.

[Blessing]

Okay. I was gonna be pissed off at you, Battle Mikey.

[Mike]

Just so you know, I did that because I knew the chat was voting for Batman.

[Blessing]

Anyway, so annoying.

[Barrett]

Spoilers for both of these games that have been out for 15 years. Plus, right? Like at two ending with who is Desmond? Right, like who is Desmond? With Etsio and like all this stuff. Great moment.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Barrett]

Batman, Arkham City killed the Joker. And that ending of that game was still like, I think about the first time playing it and still having, like, my jaw on the floor of so good. The bold direction that they went.

[Blessing]

I like that. All right, our next match up here, Portal 2 versus Dead Space 2. For me, this is the one where we can save time.

[Mike]

We can save a lot of time.

[Blessing]

Portal two is our number three seed. Dead Space two being our number six seed.

[Mike]

Lovey. Dead Space.

[Blessing]

Love you. Yeah, love you. Dead space is Portal two.

[Mike]

Portal to my port. Two's a heavy, heavy favorite here.

[Blessing]

Portal two is like, for me, the only thing that can go up against Mass Effect 2 in this bracket.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

So we can save time there. Shout out Dead space too, you know, but come on. Next matchup, infamous 2 versus uncharted 2.

[Mike]

I'm excited to hear what you think.

[Blessing]

I'm Uncharted too.

[Mike]

I'M Uncharted, too. Yeah.

[Blessing]

Infamous being our number seven slot. Uncharted 2 being our number two slot. Uncharted 2. I mean, my ranking of Uncharted probably gets weird because I would go the modern Uncharteds before I go like the original trilogy, but out of the original trilogy, Uncharted 2 just had the sauce, bro. Uncharted, the train seat, the train scene alone. And Uncharted 2 is enough for me. We also got Chloe, like, come on. It's a good game.

[Mike]

It's a good.

[Barrett]

The video game love of my life.

[Blessing]

The video game love of my life.

[Mike]

I love Uncharted to death. It is some of my favorite games. It's. It's the best.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Infant Fuel, though, also great game. I love the infamous series of games,

[Mike]

but I think I was a prototype guy on Xbox. I was playing Prototype. Yeah. That's what. That's what we got. That's what we got.

[Blessing]

Those are good, right? No.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Barrett]

They.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

All right, let's work our way over to the classics with our first matchup. Tony Hawk 2 versus Diablo 2.

[Mike]

I mean, there's a clear and correct answer.

[Blessing]

Tony Hawk 2 being the number one seed. Diablo being the number eight seed. Yeah.

[Barrett]

Tony Hawk 2 is the clear.

[Mike]

The correct answer is Diablo 2 here. Diablo 2 is. Make the game here. I'm gonna make.

[Blessing]

Just make the poll.

[Mike]

I'm gonna make the poll.

[Blessing]

Just make the poll.

[Mike]

Give me your.

[Blessing]

Don't piss me off, Mike.

[Mike]

Give me your reason on Tony Hawk 2.

[Blessing]

No, don't say it like that. Oh, you don't say it like that. That. No. Tony hawk Pro Skater 2 is a classic. Tony Hawk Pro Skater, the series. One of the best arcade series of video games. One of the best extreme sports series. The best extreme extreme sports game series. What's better than Tony Hawk?

[Mike]

You're gonna put tricky down like that.

[Blessing]

Yes.

[Mike]

I love skates down like that.

[Barrett]

Yes.

[Blessing]

SSX is a strong number two.

[Mike]

You put Tony Hawk over skate.

[Blessing]

Yes. Skate strong number three over tricky. Yes. Oh, yeah. Tony Hawk is a classic Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk paved the way for both of these. Both of those things. And funny enough, very different ways. When you think about it, right. When you want to talk about bringing arcade, extreme sports to the mix and, like, how Tony Hawk really, you know, innovated with how they turned those tricks into this point system and the combo system and how it established all that and how important that is and how much SSX took from that.

[Mike]

That.

[Blessing]

Then you want to talk about skate culture and how much Tony Hawk Pro Skater Brought to skate culture and popularizing that to gamers and having that on a broader stage. Right. Even how it brought in the music and the culture and like all these things, it was able to condense it all into a CD with Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Like, that's how we get skate later. Right? Skate wouldn't be skate. Neither of these games would be what they're what they are without Tony Hawk. Pro Skater and Pro Skater 2 was a step up for the franchise.

[Mike]

It's crazy how much I ride for Tony Hawk and then I become literally the Toy Story meme where I have. But I have Woody in my hand. That's Tony Hawk. I don't want to play with skates and I just drop Tony Hawk forever. Never. No respect, no love for what Woody and Tony Hawk gave me back in the day.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

I only think about Buzz. But then I look at Diablo 2.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And I think about the deep, rich action RPG that is the icon of Blizzard Diablo 1. Fantastic game. Diablo 2 improves on every single thing that Diablo 1 did and went even further. Okay. I'm talking about iconic characters that you can choose from. Up to six, I believe. Killer expansion pack as well with Lord of Destruction. But this is the action RPG. There's a reason why they brought back Diablo 2 resurrected.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Because there's millions of people that play this game.

[Blessing]

They put Rahul Kohli in the game like last.

[Mike]

They put Coley in the game. Beginning of online infrastructure once again. Wow. Diablo Halo kind of at the forefront of that for me of like, these are the games that you're going to share memories with your friends with. Right. But going all the way through Helen back to defeat Diablo. Every. At the end of every act, having one major boss. The gear and loot system. Right. You think of the Resident Evil slot backpack. But Diablo is where the slot backpack really is at. Right. And then on top of that, that all of the min maxing, every single stat being something that you have to Fran Marabella iii get into a deep spreadsheet and start to think about. Then you start slotting in different gems to increase all of those weapons and do even more damage and abilities. This is the ultimate sequel. It's Diablo 2.

[Blessing]

I respect it. Like, honestly, as I was going off about Tony Hawk, I forgot we even talk about Diablo. Yeah. I forgot what it was. I forgot what we. What it was even going up against. Because you got me fired up when you brought in SSX and Skate.

[Mike]

Of course.

[Blessing]

But I do want to acknowledge that. Yeah, of course. Diablo. Diablo is Diablo.

[Mike]

Yeah. Right.

[Blessing]

Like, that is the action rpg.

[Mike]

It's crazy because here's the deal. We might be split, but the audience goes 123 to 73. What do they say for Diablo 2?

[Blessing]

Wow.

[Mike]

And I look at Diablo 2 in this lineup less, and I think you better get a hold of it because Diablo 2 might run away with this.

[Blessing]

Diablo 2 better not lay a finger on Street Fighter 2.

[Mike]

I just need you to know, Diablo

[Blessing]

2 better not lay a flag. Knowing our audience, Fighter 2, knowing our audience, a lot of y' all are old heads, so y' all should know what Street Fighter 2 does.

[Mike]

Oh, let's start the conversation. Age of Empires 2.

[Blessing]

Age of Empire 2 versus Ultimate RTS guys.

[Mike]

The ultimate world civilization battle arena here.

[Blessing]

We need to back up and consider the fact that Street Fighter 2, with what that game did, could win this entire bracket. Fighting games are fighting games because of Street Fighter 2, guys. Street Fighter 2 changed the game. Local player, what it did for that, the Super Nintendo, what were playing. People playing multiplayer on the Super Nintendo Street Fighter. Well, you're going Age of Empires.

[Mike]

Oh, of course.

[Blessing]

Oh, yeah. Put the poll up. Put the pole.

[Mike]

The ultimate rts. This is my favorite game. This is one of my favorite games of all time. I love. I love this. This is rich, deep history, right? Mixed with. Now you can build out your civilization. You will go to war against other civilizations. Your goal is to build the ultimate town. Resource management unit management. This is the rts. This is like Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires. I mean, Mike stood this test.

[Blessing]

Actually, you know what? This is so fun because this is the same exact argument for Street Fighter 2.

[Mike]

Of course. Right?

[Blessing]

This is the fighting game.

[Mike]

Yeah, right.

[Blessing]

Mortal Kombat, Tekken. Like any. Any fighting game that you can list

[Mike]

off of comes from that.

[Blessing]

Oh, old Street Fighter 2. Everything. Street Fighter 2 put fighting games on the map in such a bigger and better way.

[Mike]

This is a wild one. Bless.

[Blessing]

This is.

[Mike]

I agree with you.

[Blessing]

My prediction. I'm not even looking. I don't. I haven't had the. The polls up. I imagine people might go, Age of Empires.

[Mike]

Here's what the audience, they still playing Street Fighter 2. Well, here's the catch. We're talking about best sequels. It doesn't matter if you're still playing that right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blessing]

I was gonna say, like, they play the Street Fighter. That's the thing is they do play older Street Fighter games.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

But like, I think they go back to third strike because people are still

[Mike]

playing Age of Empire stuff.

[Blessing]

2.

[Mike]

It's a good argument in a big way.

[Blessing]

It's a good argument.

[Mike]

They're still ride or die for age of Empires 2. I think the problem is, is, like, Street Fighter continues to advance, and now you're playing the newest ones, and that's

[Blessing]

the one you were playing. Street Fighter.

[Mike]

We got to rewind. We got to remember this is the best sequel. Did it improve upon the first? Did it leave a lasting impact? Was it more fun to play? What are all the criteria? They bring it into a sequel.

[Blessing]

Is there a way we can bring up gameplay? Street Fighter 1, if you want to talk about what it did to improve on the first three, Street Fighter 1 1. You wouldn't even recognize Street Fighter 1. You'd be like, what is that game? Street Fighter 2 is where Street Fighter really starts.

[Mike]

It's a tight vote. Yeah, it's a tight vote. It's a tight vote.

[Blessing]

Is it over yet?

[Mike]

It is over. 60 of the audience did vote Street Fighter.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

This is the most voted on one. There's 155 to 104. So the old heads are here in both categories.

[Blessing]

You had me worried, Mike.

[Mike]

I do love that this is what

[Blessing]

Street Fighter 1 looks like.

[Mike]

And then look at Street Fighter 2. Now.

[Blessing]

Now look, Street Fighter 2. You're gonna look at that and go, go. Oh, that's Street Fighter. Yeah, that's what I know. Street Fighter.

[Mike]

This is. This is probably the biggest part of the bracket where you look back and you go, man, video games are special.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And, like, these are two incredibly special sequences. These are two games that left a huge lasting impact not only on their own franchise, but this is Street Fighter 2.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

Right.

[Mike]

Combined.

[Blessing]

You know, man, this brings me. This brings me back to. I mean, I know it's. I say his name every single podcast, but this brings me back to being at Addison's house.

[Mike]

Addison.

[Blessing]

Because Addison was the one with the Super Nintendo. And I remember him busting out Street Fighter 2 and being like, let's play some of this. And me being like, whoa, Holy cow. This is cool, man. I'm excited to keep going. This is such a fantastic matchup for.

[Mike]

This is a great match.

[Blessing]

This is very much just fighting games versus rts.

[Mike]

I know. The two small communities had to fight each other.

[Blessing]

Next matchup, Pokemon Gold and Silver versus Silent Hill two.

[Mike]

Oh, damn. Okay, well, I didn't get into Silent Hill 2 until the remake, so unfortunately, you don't have my vote here on that one, because I'm a Pokemon kid through and through.

[Blessing]

I mean, should we just say Pokemon? Because. Yeah, Pokemon I have such more of a reverence for Pokemon gold and silver. And like Silent Hill 2. I know even more from the. I. I didn't have any Silent Hill people in my life was the problem.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

And so, yeah, I just don't have, like, the strong frame of reference.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

For Silent Hill 2. I know what it did. I know how much people love it. But I feel like Pokemon is also a safer pick, just in general.

[Mike]

More Pokemon added. New world.

[Blessing]

New world.

[Barrett]

The ending.

[Blessing]

The ending. And where they go.

[Mike]

The reveal.

[Blessing]

The reveal. Did you love that you played through Pokemon?

[Mike]

Me and Nick. Yeah, we played through that one. We got to the first.

[Blessing]

Was that the first time.

[Mike]

End of it. Yeah, that was our first time.

[Blessing]

Interesting. How far. And you.

[Mike]

We got to the reveal.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

So he knows. He now knows what's next.

[Blessing]

Oh, okay.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. We broke it into two parts for Nick because we knew we'd kill him if we kept going.

[Blessing]

Sorry, are we both going Pokemon?

[Mike]

Yeah, of course.

[Blessing]

All right. Pokemon.

[Mike]

I mean, look at where Pokemon is today.

[Blessing]

I mean. Yeah, it's the biggest entertainment IP of all time.

[Mike]

You know what I mean? And that's built off the back of a solid sequel that people wanted to continue with.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

They fuck up the sequel, maybe Pokemon's in a different place.

[Blessing]

It's a really good point, actually.

[Mike]

You know, when you think about it.

[Blessing]

When you think about it, that's a really good point. If Pokemon gen 2 up, we live in a different world now.

[Mike]

Is this technically a sequel or Pokemon Yellow?

[Blessing]

No.

[Mike]

Where do we put Pokemon Yellow?

[Blessing]

I mean, it's a weird thing.

[Mike]

Where is. Because then we get one Yellow released before or after this?

[Blessing]

Before this.

[Mike]

Yeah. Because I remember Yellow.

[Blessing]

But we get in a weird place because, really, the first two Pokemon games are Pokemon Green and Red. So, like, then you have to talk about Pokemon Blue. It's just a. It's a remake, as somebody says. I look at it as the definitive version game. Game of the Year edition.

[Mike]

That's a good question. Yellow.

[Blessing]

It's the game of the year.

[Mike]

The Game of the Year version right there. This Game of the Year.

[Blessing]

Next matchup. We got in our last round one matchup. Resident Evil 2 versus Metal Gear Solid 2.

[Mike]

I mean, people already know my vote.

[Blessing]

Oh, that. We just. We can make this easy.

[Mike]

I like. Well, Resident Evil 2.

[Blessing]

I mean, shout out Resident Evil 2. I. The sucky thing is that, like, my. My Resident Evil 2 is the modern.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing]

Resident Evil 2. Which, like, if we're comparing those. I'm still going Metal Gear Solid two. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that, Mike. Oh, yeah.

[Mike]

It's like, if I got to go with the modern one, maybe I feel a little bit different.

[Blessing]

No, you don't. Do you think so?

[Mike]

It's so good.

[Blessing]

I'll talk through it.

[Mike]

I mean, I just love the puzzles. I love. I say it time and time again. Capcom's Capcom is masters at level design and the ultimate escape room horror maze. And it is so much fun to go to different areas on the map, or RPD in particular for two, and find new unlockable areas. Find pieces that then unlock other areas that you're going to eventually walk back to. And having that mystery solved, it's so good. And then the horror, the tension, right. Getting introduced to Leon on his first day. Claire Redfield, right. Looking for her brother. They both show up. It's like, oh, now we're going to share two stories, but the same story, but both have different things going on, but they're also going to use the same kind of mazes at the same time. Time. I like it. I like it a lot less.

[Blessing]

I mean, I'm right there with you. RE2, I think, is a legendary game. RE2, the remake, especially, like, I. It's tough for me with this round because I. Re 2, I didn't really care. I. I didn't care about Resident Evil until The remake of RE2 is the way I'll put it. Yeah. And so, yeah, when I played that in 2019, that was like a. Like, oh, this is a game right here. Like, they. That was one of my games of the year. The. The year that it came out, for all the reasons that you. That you laid out. But, yeah, RE two, classic. I just wasn't. That wasn't me. I wasn't playing that.

[Mike]

The chat's going crazy far too, but it is tight on the flip side. Metal Gear Solid two.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

The big ultimate swerve, right? You're back with Kojima. The ultimate entry, the ultimate intro of that video game is Snake jumping off that rainy bridge. Remember Barrett? Lightning crackles down, and he's on the side of the ship, and he's. He's going all around. He gets up on the ship and everything goes down. Oh, my God. Who's this Olga lady? She's pregnant. Oh, she got shot. And you're like, oh, what's happening? And then you wake up. You ain't stink no more. That was crazy. Blast.

[Barrett]

It was crazy.

[Mike]

That was crazy.

[Barrett]

I also think about the vampire fight and how much I hated that fight.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Barry really didn't like the poorly that

[Barrett]

that boss fight was designed. I think about a lot of those moments. But MGS2 also does have a lot of the. The fun as well.

[Blessing]

I mean MGS2 also just has like really cool shit that it talks about in its narrative that I think is cool. That weirdly age pretty well when you want to talk about when it gets to the ending. And it talks about essentially like the. In the information and how dangerous the freedom of information can be when you get into like fake information and how you can deceive people and the game rounding out in this way where it's like riding as the character riding. You kind of have to be like like what's real. When you loop that in into how prophetic it is in terms of like a lot of the main issues we still face today. Especially with AI becoming before. Before AI became a bigger topic. That was already prophetic when you're talking about fake news and information. Now with AI me solid 2 has somehow become even better of a video game.

[Barrett]

I will say a lot of other science fiction writing was. Was doing a lot of similar stuff at the time.

[Blessing]

So. But like video games, you know what I mean? Like I feel like MGS2 as far as what the kind of story being told in a video game. In an action game game. I like in a cinematic action game.

[Mike]

Yeah. I like the crew. Fat man on the rollerblades.

[Blessing]

Girl fight.

[Mike]

Yep. What was the girl's name? I loved her.

[Blessing]

Which one?

[Mike]

With the big fortune. Fortune. What a cool name. Yeah, they had a cool crew. And then Liquid Snake with a giant Doc Op shoulders and stuff.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

That was crazy.

[Blessing]

Super cool.

[Mike]

Metal Gear Ray.

[Blessing]

I mean it's on you. Do you have a decision? Oh, you.

[Barrett]

You reminded me of the Metal Gear Ray fight.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Hated that. Sabir did not like playing MGs.

[Mike]

I mean. I mean that's why it was such

[Barrett]

a breath of fresh air. To play three. You'd be like, oh my God. They designed like so much for exiles.

[Mike]

Thank you. I'm a Metal Gear Solid two. Everyone knows it goes two for me.

[Blessing]

Yeah, you love two is the top one.

[Mike]

I've ride for two.

[Blessing]

Just because you watched it.

[Mike]

I watched it and I was so in. I can't wait for my turn to play these games one day. I had to put. I had to leave poor Bear behind. I had to play five. You didn't play.

[Barrett]

We had an agreement that we to take a break and then come back. And then you said you.

[Mike]

You don't take joints and not continue. You know what I Mean, you can't.

[Barrett]

At the time, we did not know who we were dealing with for sure.

[Mike]

Put down one puff. So good.

[Blessing]

I go with MJ2, obviously, but. And it's not even like I'm. I try my hardest to talk about Re 2 with respect because I know it's. It's people's favorite game of all time, but, like, I. I can't speak to something that I just didn't experience. I know. Chess hurt my feelings. Feelings. Yeah. Somebody chat said it's because you're young. And I'm like, I can't control my age. I'm sorry that my parents had me

[Mike]

in 1994 and he's playing old games. You gotta give bless. You gotta give Bless them. Final Fantasy 10.

[Blessing]

I try. You know what it is, but yeah. Where you going?

[Mike]

Metal Gear's how to.

[Blessing]

Come on. We already knew.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

We already knew.

[Mike]

It's my favorite. It's my favorite game.

[Blessing]

That's our last round.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Or that's our last Face off of the first round, I should say. While we're here, I want to shout out because we of course have super chats coming in. Mike is still. You read this one already. Actually, Mike is still mad about that D Mix boss fight in KH2. And then science Dog says my biggest video game hot take is that I don't like Arkham City and didn't think it was that special

[Mike]

city.

[Blessing]

That is a hot take.

[Barrett]

It's crazy.

[Mike]

That's crazy.

[Barrett]

Remember where you can play as Catwoman in the open world?

[Mike]

That was cool. That was cool.

[Blessing]

All right.

[Mike]

Really good game.

[Blessing]

We're on to the second round. Let's go back to the top left.

[Mike]

Now we kind of tear it up. Now we. Now we get a little bit deeper.

[Blessing]

For let's start with Red Dead Redemption 2 versus Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

[Mike]

I'm excited to see where you win because you went with near on this one.

[Blessing]

It's like between these two.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

I would go Red Dead 2.

[Mike]

I would go Red Dead 2 as well. I really like Kingdom Come Deliverance, too. I think that RPG and that world that they created is really something special. I think it is a world that you can live in and enjoy. But for me, like, Red Dead Redemption two, from one to that is a bigger jump than two from one to two in Kingdom Come Deliverance too.

[Blessing]

Yeah, I agree.

[Mike]

I'm going with you.

[Blessing]

I think this is any. It's funny because I think this is an easier conversation than the first round because Red Dead 2 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 are more comparable games.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

Their games are doing very similar things as far as being almost like these simulate simulated worlds. Right. We want to immerse you all the way. And so like, we're gonna have. Have mechanics and systems that are both deep and might not even be the most player friendly. But we're doing that because we want you to be fully in on this experience. We're doing something unique here.

[Mike]

Right.

[Blessing]

Both these games are doing that. I just think from what I played of both, and of course I played way more red Dead Redemption 2 than I did Kingdom Deliverance too. But even for what I played Red Dead 2, it's like, damn. Like Red Dead 2, I think does it better for the parts that I played. But I can't say that definitively obviously.

[Mike]

But don't forget what happened at in Samir. Don't forget what happened in Samin. Oh yeah, that's Kingdom Come Deliverance too.

[Blessing]

Okay.

[Mike]

Really up.

[Blessing]

Damn. Yeah, tell me about that later. Next one. The last was two versus Hades two. This is a hard one for me, actually. Believe it or not, The Last of

[Mike]

Us 2 Haze 2 is just more of the same Hades 1, which is a fantastic, incredible video game. The Last of Us two does feel like it takes a little more leaps and bounds in the sequel category to me.

[Blessing]

Yeah. As a sequel, I think what Lastest2 does as a sequel specifically, again, way more daring. Way more like way. Feels like way more of a jump. I think you're right in that in that regard. Granted, I can make the argument that like, for Hades too, or for Hades one even, like, how. How much are you gonna do to that game visually to like, make it feel like a jump? There's only so much you can do to Hades and I think they did everything they could. I think they did everything they could could to Hades too, to make it feel like. Like the jump that it already is. But like, I think last was had way more room. You know, you had different. Different console generation. You're talking about something that released end of PS3 versus end of PS4. You're talking about something that like, has more time to work with as far as like, you know, making it even an even longer story to like, try and do all the different things you want to do there.

[Barrett]

It.

[Blessing]

It feels evolved, but also it doesn't. It didn't rest on its laurels. It feels evolved, but still like we want to say something and we want to like, like put off. Put off people what we're doing. It works.

[Mike]

I. Yeah, Last of Us too Yeah,

[Blessing]

I think I'm going agree with that. This is a tough one for me though. We then work our way. Let's work our way down to.

[Mike]

Let's going straight down. Yeah, let's go straight down it up at this point.

[Blessing]

Mass Effect 2 versus Batman Arkham. Oh,

[Mike]

Mass Effect 2 is a better sequel.

[Blessing]

Yeah, I'm gonna see Mass Effect 2.

[Mike]

They're very close. It's like bear brought up with like Asylum to city and then jumped at it made right. And everything that's going on. Very similar to Mass Effect 1. Into two of what was being proved upon, what was reworked, what was tweaked what. What they did. But like, Mass Effect 2 might go down as the goat of all sequels here.

[Blessing]

I could see that.

[Mike]

So, yeah.

[Blessing]

Next up, Portal 2 versus Uncharted 2.

[Mike]

Portal 2.

[Blessing]

Portal 2. Come on. I love Uncharted 2.

[Barrett]

Pregnant paws scared me for a second, boys.

[Mike]

I really had to think about it. I really. Because like now. Now I'm kind of getting into. Now I'm getting a little bit more of like dropping the mic. Loves this game into like. Okay, what is the better sequel? Did it improve upon the first ones? Right? What was Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2? Like with that jump. What was Portal 1 to Portal 2 like on that jump? Right? And you start thinking a little bit more about like, what was the level design? What did they improve upon? What were the things that I didn't like in the first one that I needed them to do? What were the standout moments? What was the impact act? Unfortunately, Uncharted 2, you're going up against Portal 2.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Really hard to get argue against Portal

[Blessing]

2 and I know plenty. I'm curious on what the audience will say. I know audience is still on the last was too like audience voted. 68 voted for last was too. If we put in a poll there, I think audience might go Uncharted too. But also PlayStation audience, you know what I mean? Like a lot of our. A lot of our fans, I think they go Portal come from beyond. But like Portal I think is just way more interesting of a sequel. It's more. I mean, obviously like when Portal 1 is so contained, you have much more room to expand. And they expanded in such smart ways. Right. They still made. They still carried the spirit of portal in Portal 2 and like made better the things that mattered. Hey, this is a funnier game. We have a bit more dialogue between GLaDOS and some characters that they introduced surrounding that. We have moments that are unexpected. We have better puzzles. A few More mechanics that are actually pretty fun and engaging when you want to talk about the goo. Different settings that you're able to explore a little bit.

[Mike]

Like, did they add co op in this one?

[Barrett]

Yeah, this was the co op.

[Mike]

Co op's a big deal.

[Blessing]

Yeah. The more I talk through it. Portal 2.

[Barrett]

I think Portal 2 still to this day might be one of the few games I would call a perfect game. And I think every aspect that it does to follow up Portal 1, I think is a masterpiece in how to follow up a already incredible game.

[Mike]

Well, I'm happy to say that the audience has followed suit. They are full.

[Blessing]

Oh, that's surprising.

[Mike]

93 to 34. They're running away with that. Shout out.

[Barrett]

J.K. simmons.

[Blessing]

Next up, NBA Street Volume 2 versus Smash Melee.

[Mike]

Now we get. Here's these next two, these next three. Okay. All of this is going to be a big conversation, man.

[Blessing]

If I lived in a different timeline where I had a GameCube growing up, I think I probably would ride for Smash Melee, which makes me want to pick Smash Melee. Okay. But like I just. NBA Street Volume two, Volume two.

[Barrett]

Bless.

[Blessing]

Is it be Street Volume.

[Mike]

I'm not worried about it at all. I know where I stand. It's NBA Street Volume 2 now. This is me. Now I'm going back to. Mike loves this game as opposed to what's better.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

It's NBA Street. But like, think about what they added last.

[Blessing]

Hold on, hold on. I might have to revert, man.

[Mike]

Okay, take a moment.

[Blessing]

I'm somebody who loves Smash as a franchise.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

And if you ask me, like my top 10. Top, top. Let's say top 20 video games.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

Smash is on the list with a bullet. And I could choose three different Smashes.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

I would choose and I. I could put smash 64 on there.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

I could put Smash Brawl on there. I could put Smash ultimate on there if I. My top 20 video games of all time. People say Melee is the best one. Mike, I gotta go Melee. I can't disrespect me.

[Mike]

I like that you go Melee.

[Blessing]

It's only because I didn't spend that much time.

[Mike]

I'm talking about the best sequel.

[Barrett]

Yeah.

[Mike]

What did they improve upon? Right. Pickup games. Just straight up, up three on three. NBA Hoops. Right. NBA Challenge. The mode where you get assigned a team and then you battle against other teams and unlock NBA characters and new arenas.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay. You love that. Be a Legend where you created a character, went on tour with Stretch and the crew. I was Spider. I'll never forget that. I still remember his name Spider, to this day.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And adding points up, up. Getting your rep up. Bless.

[Blessing]

It's cool stuff.

[Mike]

It's.

[Blessing]

Well, like, they, they put Mewtwo in it, you know, they put Mewtwo in Smash.

[Mike]

Right. Put the poll up.

[Barrett]

I, I I r. Chat went overwhelmingly melee.

[Mike]

Good for them.

[Blessing]

Yeah, that's. I had to think about it for a second because I just love, I, I love Smash so much. And like, I wish if there was a thing I could revert about my childhood, I would have, I would have had Melee in my life because I, I remember Melee being a legend to me. Right. Again, I played so much 64. 4 and then the GameCube comes out and I start hearing Melee. I start hearing people talk about Melee and being like, man, if I could play one game, I would want that one. But I just never had the chance to as a kid.

[Mike]

All that stuff from N64 that you loved was just like, improved upon and Legend in the gamecube.

[Blessing]

In Legend, all of the Mario games,

[Mike]

like, you just think of, like, Mario Kart as well. Yeah, I, I hold double dash pretty high. It's a special game to me, and it's like one of those where it's like, oh, so cool. I wish I was over there.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Let's move on to our next matchup. God of War 2 versus Halo 2.

[Mike]

Yeah. I mean, this is easy.

[Blessing]

This is easy.

[Mike]

Taylor, too.

[Blessing]

I'm gonna say Halo 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]

We might have a good conversation on this next one, but, like, Halo 2 is a pretty good front runner to be in that final four, for sure.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Obviously I played through God of War 2, Halo 2. I only played at, like, friends houses and stuff, but I think, yeah, for me, it's an, I think the, when you talk about the cultural conversation and like, impact. Halo. Yeah, it's just, it's Halo 2. It's hard for me to make the God of War argument.

[Mike]

This one you're going to have to put to the poll right away.

[Blessing]

Oh, Diablo 2 versus Street Fighter 2. Yeah, just make the poll.

[Mike]

Just put the poll.

[Blessing]

Let's make the poll. You guys, you, you guys know what we're saying?

[Mike]

It's Diablo 2 for the action RPG for me.

[Blessing]

Yeah. It's for the fighting game for me, man.

[Mike]

I mean, it's unbelievable. It's, it's crazy because. Yeah, yeah, Street Fighter, like you said, Bless. Like, everything that it mattered to the fighting genre, where it was at the time. It's probably, very, probably bigger than Diablo 2. But Diablo 2 on the PC is going to be pretty special here.

[Blessing]

Yeah. I mean Street Fighter 2 I think is just one of the most important video games of all time. When you want to talk about when you trace the. The history of video games, like Street Fighter 2 is in the conversation with the Marios and the like the Doomsday, right? Like the, the Pac mans, the Pongs. Like Street Fighter 2 is there in that conversation, right. I think it ascends beyond what we're talking about as far as like what makes it almost isn't fair this game to be on this list because it's a C. It's a fantastic sequel, of course. And it does everything to like push the. The franchise forward, but it also legitimizes and crystallizes a genre in the process.

[Mike]

That's the problem because you can say all that for Diablo Loaf. Like that's the craziest. I mean, and that's all for Diablo.

[Blessing]

I can't say Diablo, cuz you're right. Yeah. They're the same game.

[Mike]

Creating it locked down the genre. Right. It added all these new characters, classes, abilities. It added so many acts to it. It had an insane online presence as well. Like still to this day now has been remastered and still played by millions. Like it's crazy.

[Blessing]

And I, you know, I lost the chat. People in chat were going crazy. There was one person that said in a bigger genre and I would argue that like I think y' all underra fighting games and how big of a genre fighting games are.

[Mike]

I think fighting games is a huge genre. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blessing]

But I'm talking specifically to like chat in the audience, right? Where it's like no, we, not we. Because I'm of course younger. Right? But like folks went to arcades. Actually it. We went to arcades. I wasn't there for Street Fighter. I was there for Soul Caliber. But people went to arcades and played fighting games together, right? Like when you think about that experience of like oh my group of friends, like we. We're going to casually like go into the arcade at the mall or whatever, right? Like you were playing, playing fighting games. We were playing Street Fighter.

[Mike]

And like that is this close.

[Blessing]

This close.

[Mike]

This close. Bless.

[Blessing]

What is it?

[Mike]

88 to 98 for Diablo 2.

[Blessing]

Damn.

[Mike]

There's a PC audience out there. There's some PC gamers out there.

[Blessing]

Y' all don't know ball. It's okay.

[Mike]

You don't know ball?

[Blessing]

You know ball, but it's okay.

[Mike]

Well now the question is okay, do we know Ball?

[Blessing]

Pokemon Gen 2 versus Metal Gear Solid 2.

[Mike]

Pokemon Gen 2.

[Blessing]

Pokemon Gen 2.

[Mike]

Pokemon gen 2.

[Blessing]

All right. Yep. Now we're down to the top eight. Let's go back to Red Dead 2. Versus the last was two. This might be a poll maker right here. We might just automatically make the poll. I'm going. I'm going. Last was too. But I don't. I don't think it's a. I think this is a tough one.

[Mike]

I'm going Red Dead 2.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Off of the Se. When we talk sequel. Right. And I look at both of the ones before it and then look at sequel. Last of Us 2 did so much and improved so much, but, man, you think about Red Dead 1 to Red Dead to that jump. A lot of time difference, of course, but, like, going Red Dead too.

[Blessing]

Yeah. I see this going either way. Honestly, I'm not mad if Red Dead 2 wins.

[Mike]

Running away with it. Red Dead 2 is running away 48 right now for Red Dead 2.

[Blessing]

All right.

[Mike]

And we're halfway through the poll right there, so I think that's going to climb. We'll see if there's any crazy change.

[Blessing]

I think this is where last was kind of gets penalized for being a bit controversial and not just, like, in, like, the ways, because I. I think it's controversial in, like, ways that are unfair to it, but also in ways that are fair to it. Like, I don't love everything. Everything about. I think narratively, it's like, it. It's. It's telling the story about the cycles of violence, and it really goes for it in certain ways. But certain ways, I'm kind of just like, ah, you're doing a bit too much. It's the same with that. I say Alan Wake insists upon itself. I think this game also insists upon itself. In fact, this game probably.

[Barrett]

You're never allowed to say that.

[Blessing]

Phra. I think Last was to. Insists upon itself more than any other video game.

[Barrett]

Wow.

[Blessing]

And I could. I. I think Last was two is a bit pretentious, is what I'll say.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Barrett]

I mean, I. I've said more than this on a video essay that a lot of people loved last year. It's a mess of a game.

[Blessing]

Yeah. But I still love it. Like, I still. I still really dig Last was too.

[Barrett]

And then also, I don't really have a horse because I also think Red Dead 2 is, like, way too long and just very overbearing and like, oh, my God, just fucking end the story, please.

[Blessing]

Yes. Like, we get it.

[Mike]

Please.

[Blessing]

We get it. Killing each other's.

[Barrett]

Oh, my God, there's an epilogue.

[Blessing]

That's another 10 hours. Oh, God. There's more violence. Oh, we're going to fight some more. Oh, all the blood. Oh, we're going to make it extra violent. So you really feel the fact that revenge is bad.

[Mike]

Revenge.

[Blessing]

I love the game, though.

[Mike]

This one. Put the poll up.

[Blessing]

I mean, it's Portal 2 versus Mass Effect 2. I'm going Portal 2.

[Mike]

It's Portal 2 for me. But I do want to.

[Blessing]

That surprises me. I thought you were going to go Mass Effect.

[Mike]

Oh, I love Portal 2. I. I love everything that Portal 2 did with Portal 1. Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 1. To Mass Effect 2. Better sequel. Man, that's a tough.

[Blessing]

You understand that the audience is going to hate us for going Portal 2 over Mass Effect 2.

[Mike]

I bet the audience votes Portal 2.

[Blessing]

I don't know. I'm curious to see the poll.

[Mike]

I promise you they're gonna vote because

[Blessing]

I think Mass Effect 2 is, like, for most. Not most people, but, like, I think if we were to put it all to a vote, I think Mass Effect 2 would get the most votes as far as what wins this entire bracket. Bracket.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing]

You know what I mean?

[Mike]

This might be one of the closer ones. We'll see.

[Barrett]

But are you guys both locking in Portal?

[Blessing]

Yeah, Well, I am. I assume Mike is.

[Mike]

I'm like. I'm so mixed. This is probably the hardest one for me because both are so good. Both are the definitive sequels.

[Blessing]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike]

But, like, when I look at the list, I'm like, those are the two that I circle and I go, okay, we're gonna talk a lot about these two.

[Blessing]

For me, it's what Barrett says where I think Portal 2 is just a perfect video game game. I think Mass Effect 2 is a. Is such a jump from Mass Effect 1. And obviously jump. Mass Effect 2 resonates with people so strongly. I think Mass Effect 2 is a prime example of what RPGs can do. When you think about characters, story, the lore, decision making. Right. Like, that is the prototypical rpg. And it's like, the most beautiful example of it, where people ride from aspect to andy has his N7 sticker on his car. Right? Like that. That's. But here's what I'll say, is that people have Aperture Laboratories merch as well. Like, it. Like, you want to talk about a game that, you know, crosses over into just pop culture and, like, you know, has a thing there that people just identify with. As far as story tone, writing, it sounds like I'm talking about two at the same time. But I am talking about Portal 2. Like Portal 2 has such funny writing. People will quote the lemons bit off of that. They love Cave, John Johnson. They love Glados Wheatley. Like ah, such. It's just such an entertaining and well made video game. What does audience say?

[Mike]

The audience did vote 130 to 87 on Mass Effect 2. Yeah, but Mike's voters Portal 2.

[Blessing]

Our vote is Portal 2.

[Mike]

So we vote Portal 2. But audience, you were right. Bless. They were going to vote Mass Effect 2.

[Blessing]

Yeah. I think Mass Effect 2 would be the winner of this bracket if we. If we put everything up to audience vote. I think Mass Effect 2 wins this bracket.

[Mike]

Okay. Okay.

[Blessing]

But we have to have some balls, Mike. Me and you.

[Mike]

You. I mean, I got some balls on this one. I have to go up against you.

[Blessing]

Smash Melee versus Halo 2.

[Mike]

Halo 2.

[Blessing]

I'm going to go Halo 2.

[Mike]

I love you.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You're the best. Yep.

[Blessing]

I can't argue against it.

[Mike]

It's Halo 2 split screen co op.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Online co op. You and your friend could jump into all the online matches together. You didn't even need an Xbox Live account. You were just blessing out of Y Junior one. Right. And we all could play at all the same matches. Nothing changed. It didn't hold us back from anything that you don't do that now. We can't do that in 2026. Which is crazy to say. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy that we went so far away from something that was just so welcoming and like able to just accommodate anything that you had going on in your living room. You got four friends, all four of you have played. You got two friends, two of you are playing. You're all by yourself. You're playing. You can't do that with like 80% of the games that we currently play in 2026. 6. Yeah.

[Blessing]

The impact is so strong for Halo too. You know, like it for me, it's another Street Fighter conversation. Speaking of Diablo 2. Oh, wait, I forgot. Street Fighter got knocked out. But Diablo 2 vs Pokemon Gen 2. I was ready to read Speed Fighter.

[Mike]

Oh my God.

[Blessing]

I mean, put me down for Pokemon Gen 2.

[Mike]

No, it's Diablo 2 for me. You have to put this, Put it,

[Blessing]

put it to the poll.

[Mike]

What did Pokemon Gen 2 really add? They already had the battle system. Okay. Pokemon new. New. Pokemon new region.

[Blessing]

Yeah. Color.

[Barrett]

But see the Bringing it back. You know, we talk about Shadow Moses and going back to Shadow Moses. Going back to Kanto. Are you kidding me?

[Blessing]

But like, arguably people I would Pokemon Gold is probably the best generation. I would imagine that if you're like, ask Pokemon fans, what is the best Pokemon game games? Actually, they might say Heart, Gold, Soul Silver, but that would still be Gold Silver. You know, I think there's something about this specific generation and how uniquely it served what it did as a sequel to the originals. Right. Like, Pokemon doesn't hit like that now. Like, hit like the way Pokemon Gold and Silver did. When you talk about going back to Kanto, when you talk about looping back around to this thing.

[Mike]

But what is the ultimate sequel? What bettered the franchise? Pokemon was already great. Yeah, Pokemon was good.

[Blessing]

Yeah.

[Mike]

It didn't make a massive jump. I would say Diablo 2 made a massive leap in forward jump from Diablo 1, but the audience says, no Snowbike Mike.

[Blessing]

Really?

[Mike]

It's Pokemon Gold and silver.

[Barrett]

No way.

[Mike]

128 to 84. So there's still a large group that is like, hey, we see Diablo 2, we understand it.

[Blessing]

I think, no joke. I thought the audience would have said Diablo.

[Mike]

I thought, thought. I thought they might have been with me on this one. Just because I'm. I'm going off of the sequel here. Right. And it's like, I think there's just so much that goes into the systems and what they built with Diablo 2 off of Diablo 1. Right. When I think of Pokemon and that jump, I don't see a big leap like that one.

[Blessing]

Yeah. But I feel like that's. Then you're. We're penalizing Pokemon for starting off great. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like in order to

[Mike]

have that kind of looks, of course

[Blessing]

the first one has to kind of miss a little.

[Barrett]

Great, but not perfect. You know, there's still a lot of things that felt like missteps, Especially, like, how old that game game feels compared to even going up to Gen 2. And all of the balancing chat's also talking about shinies and all this stuff and just having like a really fun new generation of Pokemon. I. I wouldn't count that out as a bullet point there.

[Mike]

I mean, these are all tough ones, right? We voted for these to keep moving forward because they're so good. And now we get down.

[Blessing]

Now we're down to the final four. On the left side, we have Red Dead Redemption 2 from the. From the modern category, facing off against Portal 2 from the HD category. And then on the right side, we have Halo 22 from the memory card category, facing off against Pokemon Gen 2 from the classics, Red Dead 2 versus Portal 2. Mike. Portal 2, come on. It's easy. It's easy.

[Mike]

Portal 2. I wrote for Red Dead this whole entire time and it was deserved. It's a fantastic sequel. It's an awesome game. No matter how you feel about it. It is a great sequel. But Portal 2 is the best sequel out of the two of them.

[Blessing]

So then let's talk about Halo 2 versus Pokemon. Gen 2.

[Mike]

Halo 2.

[Blessing]

We putting it up.

[Mike]

Think about it.

[Blessing]

Bless. Yeah, I think I gotta say Halo 2.

[Mike]

Halo 2.

[Blessing]

I unfortunately have to say Halo 2.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

I just know. I just. I. I know what Halo 2 brought to the culture.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Yeah. I just can't argue against it. However, the finals, Portal 2 versus Halo 2. And I will argue against it. Portal 2 was my pick. Pick.

[Mike]

I go with Halo too. So we'll have a fun conversation and we will let the chat decide. Just like we let you decide the whole entire poll. You picked all of these games with a couple added in from me and bless. But we wanted to see what was the best sequel.

[Blessing]

Was the best sequel.

[Barrett]

Putting up a poll for two minutes

[Mike]

here, our 2026 March Madness bracket in the video game world. What was the best sequel? 36 games. Yeah. 32 games whittled down to two.

[Blessing]

Yes.

[Mike]

Portal 2 versus Hades 2. Tell me your Portal 2.

[Blessing]

Portal 2 versus Halo 2. You can't. This man, this guy doesn't know his own game. Come on, guys. Come on. That's my argument right there. No Portal 2. I mean, for the criteria that we set forth with what makes a good sequel, what makes the best sequel? I think everything you talk about, Diablo, I totally understand. I know I kind of went against it. When I talk about, like, well, we're. Are we penalizing because the first game wasn't amazing or whatever? Portal 1 had an amazing video game game. Everything that made Portal 1 special, it was this unique mechanic that people immediately got and people loved writing. That was. That was awesome and fun and quick. A weird kind of vibe of like, what's going on in this world. The cake is alive. The memability of it. And Glados being such a great villain, You. You take that formula, you transition it into Portal 2, and somehow they made every single one of those things better. They made the puzzle solving better. Right. They kept the core mechanic. They didn't really change the way portals work.

[Mike]

I was going to say. I mean, that's a conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blessing]

They were like, like, we have something here. Let's continue to expand upon it and create the things, make the things around it even better. And so you have the traditional Portal game in that first half. But then you add in things like the different color goo. It'll make you go fast or make you hop back, hop high and do all these different things. We add an additional setting so you can go even deeper into Aperture Laboratories. Learn the history of what's going on here. Introduce Cave Johnson as the voice. Voice of God that's speaking to you. Right. Have Wheatley as an additional thing, an additional villain. That is really fun and voice. I forget the voice of him, but the voice is really funny. Portal 2 just found every single way to make a. A, you know, fan favorite game. Even heightened in all of its different elements to the point where again, I talk about Aperture Laboratories and how that is a wearable brand. Now tell me about Halo 2

[Mike]

Blessing. Halo 2 is a better sequel than Portal 2. It improves upon so much. And I'll start off with of course, the story story where Mr. Master Chief had to hand the Covenant their bomb back. Yeah, that was a special moment. On the flip side. Bless you think of Halo, you think of the iconic Halo pistol. But you know what you think about more? The battle rifle. The br. The ultimate br. And that's where it began right there. The idea of online matchmaking and multiplayer at its core. Everything that it added with the dual SMGs, all of the maps have totally been improved and are so much better than the first ones. Like this is the ultimate sequel. Halo 2 from multiplayer to single player is better than the first one. It just has too much going on for it. The time. 2004, whatever. 2003 to 2005 with the online infrastructure now being built, everybody direct connecting with Ethernet, then playing online, building out the Xbox Live infrastructure and then being on that voice chat, you talking with others, ranked gameplay and ranked modes where you'd be leveling up and going down. It's the best.

[Barrett]

I. I can't argue anything against what Mike brings up.

[Mike]

The.

[Barrett]

The only thing I can think of, energy sword. The end of Halo 2 was like a lot left to be desired. Right. You had to wait until it was a frustrating kind of cliffhanger.

[Blessing]

And let me tell you about the ending the of Portal 2.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Spoilers. You go to the moon. That was such a. Oh, man. Space. I will never forget that moment.

[Mike]

Yep. Chat brings UP eSports. The Ogre 2 Twins. Right. Our guy out there was. She's in there. I mean, well, she. I mean it's just.

[Barrett]

Well, neither of you have to filibuster anymore.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Barrett]

Chat decided.

[Blessing]

Oh God, I'm scared. Chad, tell me what they say it was Halo 2. All right. I expected this. This, of course I want to shake your hand.

[Mike]

Oh, yeah, come on.

[Blessing]

We did.

[Mike]

I mean, this was fun together.

[Blessing]

This was fun.

[Mike]

And it was very difficult because when we, when we made the fun dumb idea, I knew there was some good ones. I didn't know there was 32 good ones. And there's more that we could have delivered.

[Blessing]

When I started thinking through sequels, I was like, damn.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing]

Like, there are so many great sequels. And that's honestly one of the reasons why, like, I wanted to keep it to sequels that are the second in the series. Like, I didn't want to bring in the tears. I didn't want to bring in a God of Warrant because I think there is something special about the conversations we had had there. Only there's only one game in this series. How do you level up on that one game? How did he push forward? And only, only the course of one video game. And I think this is really special. When you look at. When you look at the journey that we took across, I think there's some

[Mike]

great polls that you brought up Street Fighter 2 and appreciating, that was a really fun conversation. Right. I bring up Diablo 2 and Age of Empires 2. That was fun to look back, right. Like, we're missing out on the Resident Evil 2 talk from maybe like a Tim or a Britney. But like, that was a fun one to look back on and remember we didn't really talk about Dead Space 2 because Portal 2 ran away from that. But like that series, that franchise number two there, Titanfall 2 was great to look back on that game. Just so quickly forgotten. That was unfortunate.

[Blessing]

I want to shout out some of the picks that were like the outside looking ins that didn't make it to the final thing, but had to be more of a discussion between Mike, me and Mike Balers. Gate 2 was a contender there. Bayonetta 2 was a contender. But I don't think either of us have played Bayonetta 2 that much. But I know that that one' a contender for people. Dishonored2.

[Mike]

Didn't that on our list? Yeah, we talking about.

[Barrett]

Oh, wait, that was like.

[Blessing]

Yeah, that was almost there. It didn't fully make it divinity. Original Sin 2 was another one. Fable 2 as well. Gears of War 2 Knack 2 was on as well.

[Mike]

We left out a lot. There was a lot. There was a lot of games.

[Blessing]

Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door. I had on the short list, I had Rocket League. You had to talk me down for Rocket League.

[Mike]

I did talk him down from Rocket League.

[Blessing]

Yeah, I almost had Rocket League on there because of the super battle cars with whatever the thing was called. But like, I think one of either you or Greg was like, well, is it a sequel really, or is it just a follow up kind of thing? I had Sonic the Hedgehog too on there as well, but I didn't, I didn't force it on there. I was thinking about it, but I was like, I'm not gonna do that.

[Mike]

It been fun.

[Blessing]

Close out with a couple of super chats here. Chris Doer writes in and says, wait, is this list. Wait, wait, is this a list of Greg's least favorite games? That's up. You shouldn't do that.

[Mike]

That's really funny.

[Blessing]

That's a man with great taste. Loyal freak. Says last was two puts belt to RDR2's ass. Red Dead Redemption 2 is overrated. I feel like Red Dead Redemption 2 and last was two. Get like a lot of hate from two very different crowds of people. And you know, it's okay. We all have our different opinions. It's okay to have opinions on video games. That's what we do for a job.

[Barrett]

What if I dislike both?

[Blessing]

Then like, you know, you just have the best video game taste of all time. Well, you said two very different people.

[Barrett]

I'm literally one one person Blessing.

[Blessing]

Am I Two different people. And then we have one from Matt, Matt Caladana who says Diablo 2 is one of the deepest, most complicated and replayable sequels. What other game had an update 20 years later?

[Mike]

Crazy. It's a special one. I mean, there was, there was nothing but special games on that list. Yeah, Mike, it'll be fun to see the comments. Comments are going to go crazy on this one.

[Blessing]

I don't know if I can read.

[Mike]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna read them and I'm excited to see. I, I mean, we already see it live in the chat right now of what people love and how mad they are. It's, it's.

[Blessing]

Oh, they're seeing so, man. But tell me the funniest ones. Read them and tell me the funniest.

[Mike]

Okay. Well, well, well.

[Blessing]

This brings us to the end of this episode of kind of Funny Games Cast. Mike, thank you so much for joining me on this episode.

[Mike]

Of course. Thank you. Bless. Another fun one. GDC week, full and in effect. Yep. Which Wednesday we got some great content throughout the rest of the week. Tomorrow you host a big games cast with special guests.

[Blessing]

Yeah. A fully packed desk if I remember correctly. It'll be me, Imran Paris, And Stella.

[Mike]

Yep.

[Blessing]

And I, I don't know what we talking about out game of the year so far, I think.

[Mike]

Okay. Okay. Nice.

[Blessing]

I, I, that's the latest idea I've had.

[Mike]

I like that.

[Blessing]

I'm scared. We Greg was like, oh, let's do a hot takes episode. Yeah. I'll be honest, I was kind of scared of the idea of letting them go crazy with hot takes. Really? Honestly, not even them. I just feel like we've been doing a lot of hot takes.

[Mike]

You've been doing a lot of hot takes. But like, but I feel hot takes work. I like the hot takes after the presentations. I think they work well.

[Barrett]

Right.

[Mike]

Like, hey, you get involved with the conversation, tell us what you like. But it would be interesting to hear three other people that we don't get to spend a lot of time with. Hear their thoughts as well. It would be fun. Fun.

[Blessing]

I mean, Chad, let me know, like holler at me if you want to hear them do the hot takes. We can do the hot takes because I feel like we do give, we do give very thoughtful hot takes. We don't go all the way hot. Like, even on our hot take episode. I think we're all very much like, no, these are just my thought out opinions.

[Mike]

Exactly. I had to avoid it because I was like, I don't have any hot takes.

[Blessing]

Bless me and you.

[Mike]

They call me lukewarm Mike, Me and you.

[Blessing]

No hot Takes.

[Mike]

Never had any hot takes.

[Blessing]

Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.