Greg and Mike's Top 10 Games of 2025 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Greg and Mike's Top 10 Games of 2025 (Jan 15, 2026)

Overview

Greg Miller and Snowbike Mike team up for a one-on-one deep dive into their personal top 10 games of 2025. Amid the usual Kinda Funny banter, the duo discuss their Game of the Year methodology, philosophies on personal taste vs. consensus, the state of the Kinda Funny Fantasy Critic league, standout releases (blockbusters, indies, and sleepers alike), and the ways modern multiplayer and open world fatigue impacted their selections. The tone is enthusiastic, candid, sometimes self-deprecating, and always deeply personal, revealing both their individual playstyles and the camaraderie of the Kinda Funny crew.

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Segment Breakdown

Kinda Funny Fantasy Critic League Recap

[01:04–07:41]

• Mike recounts his bold Fantasy Critic draft strategy, filling all five of his available slots immediately and spending all but $1 of his budget. He’s proud:

  “When you know you got it, you got it. You just gotta believe…” – Mike [01:47]

• Mike’s picks included Ghost of Yote Legends, the next Diablo IV expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnights, At Fate’s End, and Fable (which was heavily contested).

  “I’ve been dying to talk about this and I love talking about it with you, Greg." – Mike [01:37]

• There’s discussion about the risks of spending big early ("What happens if two games don’t come out?” – Greg [06:13]) and the psychology of trade negotiations.

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Kinda Funny GOTY Voting & Philosophy

[08:38–14:34]

• Claire Obscure: Expedition 33 wins Kinda Funny’s overall GOTY.

• Each host’s personal top 10 is blind-submitted, revealed, then debated. Mike and Greg note how few of their own picks made the consensus list (Mike: 4/10; Greg: 5/10) and discuss whether that’s a point of pride or alienation.

• Both emphasize personal resonance over critical consensus:

  “I want it to be my games that I enjoyed, and I’ll bring it to the table and maybe we can find some common ground.” – Mike [11:32]
  “Otherwise why aren’t we just ranking by Metacritic?” – Greg [12:15]

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The Top 10 Games Lists

Presented alternatingly, with discussion for each. For brevity, repeated or lower-ranked titles are summarized together; higher profile/unique picks are in detail.

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10th Place Picks

[14:34–20:03]

Mike #10: Schedule 1

• Indie co-op drug empire simulator from Tyler’s Video Game Studio (Australia).

  “Nothing’s cooler than selling drugs with your friends in Schedule 1.” – Mike [14:36]

• Praises the “friend slop” genre: affordable, bite-sized, chaotic multiplayer games that thrived post-pandemic.
• Highlights the magic of small studios scaling up after viral hits.

Greg #10: Donkey Kong Bonanza

• Switch 2 launch title; praised for family bonding, “whimsy,” and colorful destructible open-world gameplay.
• Personal story of playing with his son and friend’s family:

  “I got to bring this home and have me and him jump into it…” [20:07]

• Critiques Nintendo’s tendency toward strong gameplay loops but shallow narratives.

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9th Place Picks

[26:33–29:38]

Mike #9: Battlefield 6

• The franchise’s “big comeback” with support from Criterion, DICE, Ripple Effect, Motive.
• High quality at launch, great audio, solid server performance.
• Beat out COD 2025, but Arc Raiders was the surprise winner among shooters this year.

Greg #9: Lumines Arise

• A “classic Greg pick”—new entry in his all-time favorite puzzle series.
• “It’s here because I love Lumines… I think Lumines is better [than Tetris] for the aesthetics, music, style.” [29:38]
• Recognizes it as a known quantity but never tiring.

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8th Place Picks

[33:21–40:27]

Mike #8: Arc Raiders

• Embark’s PvEvP extraction shooter—the “Helldivers of this year.”
• Praised for its friendly/casual approach, proximity chat, “found the perfect balance” for both competitive and casual players.

  “Never would I have thought this… for the audience to go, ‘we want more of this!’” [34:26]

Greg #8: Ghost of Yote: Atsu’s Tale of Revenge

• Sucker Punch’s anticipated sequel to Ghost of Tsushima.
• “It just improved on everything Sushima did… better map, better gameplay, looks better.” [37:55]
• High score, but did not have enough to pull Greg through post-credits—“frictionless” in a year he wanted more challenge or difference.

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7th Place Picks

[45:51–46:04]

• Mike: Skate (discussed in Greg’s #2; see below).
• Greg: Dispatch (discussed in Mike’s #3; see below).

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6th Place Picks

[46:14–54:15]

Mike #6: Sniper Elite Resistance

• The “Dark Souls style” PvP-invasion shooter, where enemies can invade your campaign.
• Mike becomes addicted to hunting players:

  “The only thing I want to do is invade your run.” [49:12]

• Relished the “thrill of the hunt,” drawing parallels to Fall Guys and Arc Raiders.

Greg #6: Monster Hunter Wilds

• “Still stand by my 9.5/10…” but notes launch was “so easy”—the series’ modern blockbuster nature made it less sticky.
• Multiplay quirks and lack of challenge kept it from being a higher standout.

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5th Place Picks

[57:36–64:03]

Mike #5: Baby Steps

• Bennett Foddy’s mountain climbing “manbreaker.”

  “I love these uber-challenging, moment of disaster games… where one false move and you lose all your progress.” [58:21]

• Enjoyed both the absurdist humor and the precise, tactile movement mechanics.

Greg #5: The Outer Worlds 2

• High expectations (“I had it as front-runner for my game of the year”), and despite a “saggy overarching story,” loved replay value and roleplaying nuances.
• Praises Obsidian for iterative RPG design and hopes for RPGs to go “smaller, but deeper in choices.” [68:44]

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4th Place Picks

[71:12–77:03]

Mike #4: Elden Ring Night Rain

• FromSoft’s surprising foray into a PvE/PvP battle royale mode.
• “It is an experience that is so Snowbike Mike… the challenge of Dark Souls put in a giant open world and made into a battle royale.” [71:17]
• Credits streamlined class/build choices, rewarding map evolution, and boss design.

Greg #4: …And Roger

• Narrative indie, “Florence-like mechanics.”

  “It’s the reason I love video games… puts me in someone else’s shoes, experiencing something I hope I never will.” [77:03]

• Blew up in the Kinda Funny office thanks to word-of-mouth.

  “This is a game you should play knowing as little as possible.” [78:18]

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3rd Place Picks

[79:29–86:01]

Mike #3: Dispatch
Greg #7: Dispatch

• Ad Hoc Studios’ superhero narrative adventure, praised for its blend of the Telltale formula with more streamlined, non-tedious structure.
• “They created characters that stood out… that I wanted to connect with.” – Mike [80:26]
• “I would say did the impossible… it just crushed it.” – Greg [81:56]
• Highlights decision-making, replay value, and standout voice acting (incl. Aaron Paul), with a killer soundtrack.

Greg #3: Hell is Us

• Rogue Factor’s obtuse, Souls-lite adventure.
• Celebrated for its “masterclass in level design” and mature, challenging themes.
• "It gave us such an interesting world to explore and so little guidance, but not none… right at the threshold of acceptable obtuseness.” [86:01]
• Greg champions it as the “IP sleeper” people should check out most.

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2nd Place Picks

[91:44–99:06]

Mike #2: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2

• Warhorse’s medieval RPG. Mike emphasizes slow, methodical progress (“crawl of a game”) but found depth, immersion, and memorable choices.
• Critiques initial overwhelming systems but credits dense side content, meaningful consequences, and emotional storytelling.

Greg #2: Skate
Mike #7: Skate

• The controversial, always-online EA live service returns, but both argue that the feeling of skating eclipses its business model sins.
• “I can’t get over how much fun Skate is to play… I just wanted to skate.” – Greg [99:04]
• “At the end of the day…I can’t look you in the eye and say that’s not fun to play, because it’s a blast.” – Mike [104:57]
• Both acknowledge its uncertain future but believe it defined their play in 2025.

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1st Place Picks

[108:21–116:37]

Mike #1: Claire Obscure: Expedition 33

• Kinda Funny's consensus Game of the Year.
• “A turn-based game… stood head and shoulders above the rest… I can’t say enough good things about this game.”
• Highlighted storytelling, the addition of parry mechanics to turn-based combat, emotional character arcs, music, world, and the surprise of a third act.

Greg #1: Octopath Traveler 0

• The surprise “game I didn’t expect to love so much.”
• Unlike prior games, the custom protagonist hooked him with immediate ownership and a richer narrative.
• “Three games in one,” memorable cast, snappy combat, delivered exactly what Greg needed in a year of turn-based fatigue.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

● "[Regarding forming a list] The only way to do it… otherwise why aren’t we just ranking by Metacritic?" – Greg [12:15] ● “When you know you got it, you got it. And you just gotta believe in yourself and you gotta go do it.” – Mike [01:47] ● "The champ is feeling stupid. And I pointed out and I called my shots." – Mike [01:21] ● "Schedule 1 found a perfect mix between [job/life sims and friend slop]… something so indie video game-esque." – Mike [14:51] ● “I think Battlefield won back a lot of gamers on the Call of Duty versus Battlefield side. But… Arc Raiders came out on top.” – Mike [29:38] ● “This isn't doing what I want. Stalker 2… if you gave me [its] shooting mechanics with this kind of stuff, I think I'd be more in.” – Mike [91:08] ● “And Roger—you guys have talked about it so much that you've gotten even me, the ball and gun guy, excited and interested to play this game.” – Mike [78:18] ● “Both acknowledge [Skate’s] uncertain future but believe it defined their play in 2025.” ● “Expedition 33… emotional, heartbreaking, it was everything. And so, to end the year and say, yeah, Expedition 33 was my number one, I'm just—I'm happy to smile and say, yeah, that was it.” – Mike [112:24] ● “Octopath Traveler 0 was on another level this year. I'm so glad I had the time to play it all November long… I love it.” – Greg [113:08]

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Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with both hosts expressing gratitude for the diversity and quality of 2025’s releases, and looking ahead to analyzing next year’s presumptive classics. The podcast closes on a note of celebration for “playing what you love,” skepticism about games-as-service futures, and deep appreciation for compelling narrative experiences—personal definitions of greatness over consensus.

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Timestamps for Top Game Reveals

• [14:34] #10
• [26:33] #9
• [33:21] #8
• [45:51] #7
• [46:14] #6
• [57:36] #5
• [71:12] #4
• [79:29] #3
• [91:44] #2
• [108:21] #1

Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. [e-mail] Kinda funny this episode is brought to you by Factor. Make healthier eating easy with factor. Head to FactorMeals.com kinda funny 50 off and use the code kindafunny50OFF to get 50% off your first factor box. Plus free breakfast for one year. Offer only valid for New Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Kinda Funny Gamescast for Wednesday, January 14, 2026. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside master of hype and more importantly, the kind of funny fantasy critic 2025 champion, Snowbike Mike. I'm sorry, this is a one on one podcast, Barrett. See you right now.

[B]

Thank you, Greg. You know, made big money moves.

[A]

Big Money moves week one kind of funny.com league. Throw it up, Barrett. You want to be part of this podcast? So bad bear, throw it up.

[B]

Because when the champ is feeling good, the champ is feeling good.

[A]

Was the champ feeling good or crazy?

[B]

Just like Babe Ruth champs feeling stupid. And I pointed out and I called my shots.

[A]

You didn't call one shot. You called five additional shots. We drafted our five games. Yeah. Other people came in, picked maybe one, maybe two games. You filled your entire team and left your bank with $1.

[B]

I've been dying to talk about this and I love talking about it with you, Greg. Of the best evil parents in the background. Two champs. The champs. Okay, now here's the deal, Greg.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When you know you got it, you got it. And you just got to believe in yourself and you got to go do it. And so there I was with all week, so excited we finished the draft and I'm thinking, oh, I left a couple on the table. Yeah, I got to get after some of these games. And so I went back and forth and there I was going, what's best for the content? And Roger looked at me, goes, mike, don't you dare select five. It'll be very bad for the content. I said, Roger, yeah, don't worry about it.

[A]

Don't worry about me.

[B]

I have an idea.

[A]

That's Roger's biggest problem. Keep his fucking nose in his own business like that.

[B]

Back up, Roger. I got a plan here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And as I started going down the list, I started to get more and more excited. It started with Ghost of Yote Legends.

[A]

Yep, right there. I'm getting that at a steal.

[B]

I'm like, oh, man, like we didn't pick that on the initial draft. I think I should jump at this, right? Blessing brought it up earlier in the week, and I was like, is he thinking about it?

[A]

Is he putting the thought in my head to put the thought in my head? To put it in his head? To put it in your head.

[B]

And then I start thinking to myself, I'm like, all right, well, like, what else? And I dance over with Arc Knights Enfield. I think, maybe I want Arc Knights Enfield. Maybe I want Warhammer. I'm dancing with these games. What about an unannounced God of War game? I'm dancing with these things. I said, no, Mike, stick to what you know. And I go, guess what? Diablo 4 is about to have another expansion. Last year's got 83. Yeah, this year is going to be better than last year. I'm getting 85 plus on this.

[A]

85 plus.

[B]

85 plus on the Diablo 4 expansion. Two new character classes we of course know coming in. This is it. Okay, get ready. Then I go to myself, I say, you know what, Mike? World of Warcraft Midnight's coming out. What happened last year? 83. I said, I know. World of Warcraft Midnight's delivered 85. That's another easy one on the board, right? So now I'm. I'm collecting.

[A]

If I didn't know you better, like, have you been at Blizzard over Brick? Did you go to Blizzard?

[B]

This man is collecting Infinity Stones in the Gauntlet. Like, I'm goddamn Thanos. Ghost of Yote Legends. A lot of people said, mike, that's not even going to get reviewed. Ghost of Tsushima Legends was so big that this will get reviewed. People are excited for this. There's a conversation about this. This is now in the conversation. This is now in the Zeitgeist. If Ghost of Sushima Legends was so big, you think you'd have more reviews. And so then I collect the stones. I got three now.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

I say to myself, man, what if I steal an Andy pick? What if I do some Nandy that's good for content? The people that made Spirit fairer coming out with a game called At Fate's End. I'll steal that from Andy because he picked it last year. Stole that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then I said, man, I really messed up not choosing Fable. And then two days later, Xbox goes, oh, snap, we forgot to announce Fables in the Xbox Direct.

[A]

Barrett, while you're here, can you get. Because I know I bid on Fable. Did anyone else bid on Fable?

[B]

Oh, yeah, four of you did.

[A]

Okay, okay, okay, okay. Once Once it was confirmed that they were like that bullish, that it's part of this. Oh yeah. What? Yeah. Paris tried to for 50.

[B]

Blessing went with three or 15.

[A]

I think I went 15. 15? Yeah, 15.

[B]

So they announced Fable. I start itching. I go, God, man, now I need it. And so I played the dance the whole time, Greg. And we'll bring up the dollar to finish this, right? Cuz there I was adding up what I got. 40, 30. Okay. I'm at 70. With the other ones. I'm at like 75. I said, well, Greg's going to think about Diablo. He loves Diablo. I got to go a little more.

[A]

83 didn't do enough for me.

[B]

I was ready.

[A]

Born got me 83. That's not enough.

[B]

I was ready for you to go in there. So I had up my dia. I'm worried that Andy, you know, I lost last year.

[A]

So I was like, I probably shouldn't pick the same kind of things I'm thinking.

[B]

I'm like, man, Andy might pick at fate's end. I gotta up my fates. And nobody thinks about World of Warcraft but me here. I got that right.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

So now I'm starting to do the dance. Well, Blessing might go for Ghost of yote. Let's put 30 on it. Nobody will do that. Right now I'm messing with the, the pick order because I'm worried about getting my picks. Then I get the fable. Start off at 20. I go, that's not enough. Start off at 30. I go, I don't know. Get the 40. Now I'm doing the mental math. I'm like, well, you're at 80 at this point, Mike. You might as well go to 90. Like you'll save $10 and if you go crazy then you'll just, you'll pick whatever, right? And so then I get to it. I put 60 down. I started doing some mental math. I'm like, you're at 97. Good job, Mike. Then the pigs come through. It's like you had 99. I messed it up. But it's even better because I'm calling my shots so confidently. Yeah, that I have a dollar left. Keep it a buck.

[A]

But what happens when two of these games don't come out? You drop one, you get another game for a dollar and then you what you're.

[B]

I'm happy to report that I'm famously known for winning this league with two giant zeros on the board.

[A]

So wrong there.

[B]

Anything is possible here. The, the track record shows that you can have two Zeros and still win.

[A]

Yeah. And like record does show that that is.

[B]

I'm good. You can spin this narrative, Mike, but we all know that you wanted to set and forget this entire year so that you wouldn't have to be reminded over and over again that Roger and his team name, Barrett is my best friend. My best friend.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And we still have trades and I could work a good trade. Meaning that like just letting you know there's trades out there. Trades are on the table.

[A]

Meaning that he will have the 26. We're watching Xbox Direct. All right. And I want we should have a conversation live because if maybe I'll. I can give you some money for Fable. I can get you back on the board. If you don't like what you see out of Fable.

[B]

I'm letting you know at any point I could work a trade with somebody.

[A]

I can throw that. Throwing it live on air right now.

[B]

We should have a trade deadline for

[A]

the year wheeling deal with Tuesday or what Thursday? No, I'm just saying for. Because I just feel.

[B]

I feel the already in November, Roger

[A]

and Mike going back and forth of like, what can we trade each other

[B]

to guarantee one of us wins? We'll find out. Yeah. I've been dying to talk about fantasy Critic. Thank you so much, Greg. It's so much fun. And this is a good kickstart to the year. Of course, Mike fills up his team. We got jokes, we got some fun.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then we'll see Xbox Dev Direct, maybe some spring showcases into summer. Yeah, we got some good fantasy critic content coming our way.

[A]

We sure do. But before we look fully ahead to next this year. Not next year, this year we need to look back at 2025. So welcome to the Gamescast. Of course, each and every weekday we run you through the biggest topics in video games. Live, Twitch TV, kind of YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple, Spotify to get the membership alongside patreon.com kinda funny. And of course YouTube.com kindafunnygames if you're watching live, you need to be part of the show with your top 10 games from 2025 or your criticism of Mike and Greg's topic.

[B]

We've seen it.

[A]

I can't imagine anybody would have anything to say about ours because it's a perfect list for both of us. Remember, of course, we couldn't do this without our patreon producers on patreon.com kindafunny so thank you, Delaney the Psalm twining, Carl Jacobs and Omega Buster. For now, let's begin with topic of the show, Tots.

[B]

Tots. Tots.

[A]

Tots.

[B]

Tots.

[A]

Tots. Tots. Of course, earlier this week on Monday, we crowned Kinda Funny's top 10 games of the year. But more importantly, game of the year.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Round of applause to the one, the only, Claire Obscure, Expedition 33. The way we do that, of course, is we rank personal top 10s, submit them blindly to Barrett, Barrett orders them, and then, as you know, on Monday, they were all revealed to us one by one, the point totals. Then after that, in the wake of it, we like to go through and do these games cast with smaller crews to talk about our games one game at a time, starting at 10, going to our number one. Sadly, Tim Getty's child hasn't arrived yet. Yeah, so Tim still is in the office. And yesterday on the Gamescast, Tim just laid out this decree that now I got to follow that when we go through, we say, all right, number 10, I had game blank. You say, and I. And I go, did you have that higher? And if it's higher, we wait and we talk at the same time. When it pops up on your.

[B]

Oh, hey, I brought that rule last year.

[A]

I hate him, Tim.

[B]

And shout out to remap radio, because that's how they do their. I thought that was a fun idea since the baby might be a little bit late too. Watch out for that baby. February 3rd. I might get that.

[A]

The baby pool is upcoming.

[B]

Quickly says that baby might be late.

[A]

So then, Michael, I want you to kick me off with your number 10. What was your 10th pick and why

[B]

to get there, Greg, just to kick us off, I'm so excited to sit on this podcast with you and talk about our top 10.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

Because of course, as you know, I get really excited when we host the big production. Bear goes all out for the kind of funny top tens, but I always smile and giggle. It's known here that, like, not many of my games ever make it. And I sat with how many you have this time out of 10 not making the board.

[A]

Oh, so only four out of 10.

[B]

Only four.

[A]

I mean, for me, it was five out of 10, too. That made the list.

[B]

So you and I, we talk about.

[A]

And not a big.

[B]

I forgot to talk about this four game of the year. Not a big direct differentiator between all of us. I think most of us had six and then Bless had seven and then,

[A]

yeah, you two are the lowest with five and four.

[B]

And so it wasn't like a huge difference.

[A]

But let's turn the narrative around then. You know man bless. What a mainstream gamer.

[B]

Mainstream?

[A]

Oh, it's popular. I like it. I'm going to the gym today. Free weights, like, so good.

[B]

Now. His haircut looks on point. He's killing me. It's right. Honestly, not your lowest year, though, Mike. And your lowest year was only two games. And so I'm happy to report that, like, this year, 2025 for me, and I think a lot of people out there was a great year of gaming. So many good titles, so many titles, so many different genres that have been touched and so much fun to get into.

[A]

So talk to me about this before we even weighed in. Yeah, not your lowest year. You've had two before. You had four before. Does that ever get in your head? Does that play tricks on you of saying, man, am I not in line with kind of funny or just gaming in general? Or do you take it as a badge of pride that you're playing things that others aren't, connecting with them in a different way?

[B]

The first year, it hurt me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because of course, it just got brought on the team. You know, you kind of. You're so. You're the odd duck out and you don't get to talk much during the podcast. Everybody's in chat, just going, what's up with Mike? What's up with Mike? And it's one of those of, like, at first I was a little hurt, like, oh, did I do something wrong? But actually, you know, Greg Miller, I don't know if you remember, but you pulled me aside. He said, no, Mike, I've asked you for your top 10. I want to know what you enjoyed the most. And that's one that sat with me. Right. Of like, when I think of Snowbike, Mike's top 10 that I'm bringing to bear, it is the games that I enjoyed throughout the year. Right. You don't have to mix and match with anyone else. I want it to be my games that I enjoyed, and I'll bring it to the table and maybe we can find some common ground. Maybe we can. You can put me onto a game I've never heard of. Maybe I can put you onto a game you never heard.

[A]

And that's again, what I kicked off game that you're talking about. Right. Where Blessing caught me off guard in the week prior, asking me about it. And I was having a conversation. What I like about it is that, like, the way kind of funny does it, isn't us trying to walk in and say, kind of funny as a entity has picked this as the game. No. We all Walk in with our individual top 10 and our own reasoning for why they're on there. And I think even when I have an oddball choice on there or way too high of a choice and people are like, they get it because they've heard me talk about it, they know how much it means to me and blah, blah, blah. And again, for me personally, that's the only way to do it. Otherwise, why aren't we just ranking by Metacritic or since we're not on Metacritic, going to a spreadsheet, looking at every review we did, saying rank by score and then we go over the top 10 of that. That's. That's not fun. This is what we're talking about when you talk about art and what you pull out of it. And my list is the same way. I talked a lot about it on the show a little bit. But like, you know, my back half my 10 through five. Yeah. Are really, or maybe six are games that I gave high scores to and really enjoyed, but they just didn't stick with me. They didn't have that sticking power. When I look at like a game, I might for a fact, there's games I gave lower scores that are higher than the nines and nine fives I gave. And it's not to say I was wrong. It's to say that in terms of what my year was defined, this at least to me defined it more than a high score game.

[B]

I enjoy how we do it. I also love like not many of us talk to each other about our list, right? It's not like Mike and Roger in the corner giggling, going, I got this, this, that right. Like we have some.

[A]

But do maybe two of the best opinions and games talk to each other about where they're putting some games maybe remind each other about Monster Hunter and then getting hung out to dry.

[B]

Oh, that one we forgot about. You gu even do that secretly. You just did that live on a podcast.

[A]

And then, and then after that conversation, I went to Andy.

[B]

I was like, hey, we need to make last minute assets.

[A]

Make a skate graphic.

[B]

Make a skate graphic is right. And so yeah, it's a fun one of like we all come and it's cool to have the big list. But also it's exciting that we've now carved out part of the week of like, hey, let's sit down and talk about it. Which I'm really excited about. And one final one is like you talk about that six through 10. There are so many games this year that I loved and I had trouble yeah putting down there Are a lot of titles that I would love to have on my list that didn't make the list. Right. When we talk 10, I probably got 20, 25 that I would love to just, like, highlight. But we're gonna talk about the top 10, Greg, and I'm excited about it.

[A]

I like that a lot. Okay, so number 10, what was your pick?

[B]

Let me take you to number 10. A hit game for me, a special one shared with friends. Because nothing's cooler than selling drugs with your friends in Schedule 1. Schedule 1.

[A]

I did not have it higher. Go ahead.

[B]

Okay, Schedule one from TV GS Tyler's video game studio based in Australia. One kid now with some other people, it looks like. It seems like, what a special one, right? In a world that we live in, for me in particular of the French slop genre, the life sim genre, where you all of a sudden work your 9 to 5 and then punching again from 5 to 9. With the secondary video game job sims, Schedule 1 found a perfect mix between the two of them, right? Of like having the job sim sewed down from starting in a small hotel room with one pot, some soil and a seed, and then growing your empire of drugs into a barn and beyond, and then mixing that with the friend slap genre of you and four friends running around and doing this together, right? Like, this is a game that is up there with the gas station sims, the power wash sims that I could zone out and be all by myself and start running my own little micro drug business and smile and laugh and then at the same time now invite my friends and just get overwhelmed and giggle at Chris Ankle won't let me in the grow house because he's dialed it in so well. Jd, Neil and Washburn are out selling the drugs. I just sit there and like, kind of water the plants, occasionally put in seeds and just kind of laugh and run in circles. But this Tyler, Tyler's video game studio created a really fun, like, mini open world, acute dumb art style that is like, so indie video game esque. With these characters from a Rick and Morty cartoon. It feels like that it just made this perfect blend. And the idea of starting out with weed and then getting crack cocaine and being able to blend different ingredients with those to make your own strands and profit from them and also test them out. Like, nothing's more fun than going up to Susie out the basketball court that I've laced with banana and like, you know, blue rhino pills. And all of a sudden her head is giant. She's running around in circles and you just giggling, laughing like this one was awesome. I know it sold really well as well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

There is a, there's a genre here on Steam that is like really blowing up from peak RV there yet repo that is finding it.

[A]

I think we've talked about it, but it's always in passing or something like that. You bring up friend slop, which some people take offense to, but you understand we're talking about, we're talking about a peak. I think even they call it that for Magro Crab, yada yada yada. But why is this a genre we saw rise up in 2025? What is the draw? Why is this so successful? Then we turn to the mega triple A companies when we talk about their multiplayer games, we can't get to work.

[B]

Why me personally, why I think we're seeing this really succeed is price point. The games themselves and the idea of having these fun multiplayer experiences. Right. Like there's this market on Steam and like I've growing up as an Xbox kid, I always looked over at the PC thing going, man, I wish I could play that game. And they just never really came over. Yeah, we're starting to see those now. Really get the consoles. But there's this weird market of like a five to twenty dollar game that you know you and your friends are probably gonna play for one night to maybe 20 and then you'll never play it again. But they just come out and they're just, just perfect enough, but also janky enough. Yeah, where you have that fun experience.

[A]

This is where these independent developers come in, these small devs, this one man team that puts out a great ide, this crazy success, is able to grow the business just like in the video game, grow their own scale up the team, make something special.

[B]

And it's like that idea of like when it first comes out, it's always usually in early access. It's super buggy and it's the very bare bones. But if you were to play schedule one day, one and then probably play it now, you would see, oh wow. That money made such an influx for Tyler in his little video game studio in Sydney, Australia where he's hired three or four people. I bet now the game is bigger than it's ever been and it runs better and it is more fun. It's like there's this ride that you go on and everyone has their different lines or ability that they play where it's like, yeah, I played that three days. Oh no, I want my money's worth, I got to play it all. Yeah, you know what I don't do early access. I'll come back to it. And so yeah, I think and this

[A]

is the conversation with those low price points that I see you do all the time, it's easy to be. I'll buy it for you, I'll toss the game at you for $5. I remember the opposite of that with me and Poe where it'd be like if I wanted to play something with Poe, it's like, oh man, am I ready to put a 60 risk on a game for my non gamer friend that I don't even know if he's going to commit to or have the time and time differences.

[B]

How many times have you had? That aside, I think there's like coming out of COVID where we're all so lonely and I mean multiplayer games have always been their own genre and always been big. But like there was this Covid, everyone's off work, you're with together with your friends. You have found this like new flow of your life of like, hey, we have a routine where we're spending a lot of time in discord calls, we're hanging out together. Then we started to get out of COVID We're like friends are now going back to work. You're going back to work. And it's not quite the same, but we still hold on to those moments and I think we find some a lot with these friend slob games back. So yeah, I wanted to highlight schedule one for number 10, Greg Miller. I'm excited. What's your number 10?

[A]

My number 10. Is Donkey Kong Bonanza on your list at all?

[B]

Didn't make the list.

[A]

Okay, there you go. Great Donkey Kong Bonanza I think such a stellar Switch 2 game. And for me as somebody who didn't love Mario Kart World, that first true Switch 2 game. First you switch to experience, right. I was playing my Pokemon a lot there, you know, of course Violet I. If you don't know, I am the Pokemon fan. It kind of funny voice of a new generation. And so I put obscene hours into that on the Switch too once I got it. But Donkey Kong Bonanza was that first like, okay, it's the launch of a new game. Midnight launches whenever the codes. There's a party at the Nintendo Stor, yada yada yada. To be part of that zeitgeist on a system I was excited for. And on top of that it was one Ben was so excited for, if you remember. So I got to bring this home and have me and him jump into it. It was when Poe and Jack Poe, my best friend from childhood and his son, who Jack at the time was 12. Maybe this is 13th birthday. I forget. He was celebrating with us in. In San Francisco and we played with Ben. We then played when Ben went to bed. And the next day, you know, I took them down to Union Square to show them the Nintendo store. And Jack did the. Dad, it's my birthday. Can I get a Switch? And I was like, I'll buy Donkey Kong Po if you buy the system. When we did it and Jack came home and tore it apart. It was like such a fun family bonding experience outside of the game. I'm not even talking yet about what the game was, but I think it was such for me. Even though I knew a great encapsulation of what we talk about when it's like. And the game award for family game of the Year. I was like, all the Nintendo category, which can be insulting. It can sound insulting. But when I. We got to live the zeitgeist of this with my nephew, my son, you know, my best friend. And we all were playing and passing the controller and doing crazy shit. And like, then you get into what you're doing in the game and how whimsical this is and how much fun this is. And again, the destruction and the discoverability. You know, I did that. I didn't start it until we had launched codes. Tim was the one who reviewed it, right? Was that right or was it. Yeah, it was Tim, right? And I remember him sitting down for the let's play where I did the first hour of it or whatever, and discovering the smash and seeing the bananas hidden and then seeing the map and get. I was like, oh my God. Like, this is a Nintendo game that's checking all of those boxes I have in my head for my Ubisoft games and my Platinums that I like to go get of. Go find all of these things. An everlasting gobstopper of content. And that led to a, I would say month of really being all about Donkey Kong Bonanza. And it was this really interesting thing because there to this day on my Switch are two save files. There's my save file and Ben save file. Because I'd be playing with Ben and I didn't want him fucking up what I was doing. But then I also didn't want to go too far. So we did this whole thing where I did this. I played however many hours of Donkey Kong bananas. And then when Ben was really into. I'm like, we gotta start over for your own save. I did that again. So I still haven't rolled credits on Donkey Kong Bananas. And that's why we find it here in the 10. This 10 slot for me. Because on break I had a hit list of things I needed to go finish for game of the year just for my own sanity. And when Donkey Kong Bonanza came up in the rotation and I jumped back in, I was disoriented and it was the what am I doing? Not obviously, I smash get bananas. But where was I in the narrative? But where am I drawing? And I just couldn't get the momentum back that I had back then. And I think for me again, it speaks to what I've. How I've described Nintendo games, I think for a long time, if not pretty much my entire career, is that I think Nintendo makes great toys. And I don't mean that as an insult to what they make. They make great toys which are jump in, smash the shit out of it, get a cool power up yet. But as someone who is so I need a narrative backbone. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? I feel like for so many Nintendo games, that's their failing for me where it is just like the fucking bad guys suck this into the thing. And so I'm doing the thing and it's like that's not enough for me to be like, ah, I can't get enough. I can't get enough. But I don't want to discount the time I had with it, you know, if we weren't working these jobs and reviewing things non stop, I'm sure I would have kept on with Donkey Kong and rolled credits and done whatever. But it stays on the switch, right? As something that I know I can hop into on a plane ride anytime and just go smash some bananas and maybe find that wild hair that grabs me and pulls me back in. But for me, in terms of a year this stacked with experiences I couldn't get enough of, this is gameplay I couldn't get enough of. But the surrounding tissue for it didn't pull me out and through the way I wanted it to.

[B]

I like that. Yeah, Donkey Kong didn't make my list, but of course it's one of the 25 I could name off that I loved this year. Yeah, it was that gameplay like you said, right? That world that they created, that whimsy. There's something special about Nintendo games and it makes me song. When you bring up your son and the family and playing with Jack and poets like, you know, Nintendo was that for a lot of kids out there. For me with the N64. Right. Like, that's Rampage World Tour, where me and my little brother were. The crazy Rampage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Lizzy, what up?

[B]

It's so special. And yeah, Donkey Kong, like, as a Donkey Kong 64 kid, like Barrett. And bless, this one was really cool of like, man, we get a Donkey Kong and it's open world and he's smashing, going wherever he wants.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's not just the 2D plane jumping up and down. I loved it. And I had so much fun. I liked, I mean, all the bright, beautiful colors, the crazy character designs. I liked the bad guys. Like, yeah. It felt ripped right out of the Super Mario World. The Super Mario, of course, man. They did a great job with Donkey Kong. And yeah, it was a system seller. You know, I think hitting me with Mario Karts and Donkey Kong, it was like a really easy one of like, yeah, I have to have this switch for sure. That definitely is it. And so, yeah, I fell off similar to you. One day I'll go back. Did you ever play a lot of co op? Because I don't have someone. No.

[A]

That was.

[B]

What was that? Like, garbage.

[A]

It's the. It's the. I mean, it's the whatever insulting little brother mode. Partner mode. What? I mean, like, Ben was so excited to play co op with me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And when we jumped in, he discovered what it was. He was immediately like, like, I want to be Donkey Kong again. And then. And then this is how bad, you know, he knows it is. He didn't ask me to do it. He wasn't like, do you want to be Paulina? I was like, I don't want to be Paulina.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

Like, that conversation. Never had it because he had no fun with it. So we never had to worry about it.

[B]

I mean, they also added the roguelike mode. Right. We had blessed.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Stream of it. But, like, it is impressive. Like a couple of my games here, it's like, man, they really hit you with the content this year. It wasn't like, here's the game. You'll wait for DLC or more content later on. A lot of the games on my top 10 and Donkey Kong, it's like, hey, here's the game. A couple months later, we're already hitting you with more content. Let's keep you involved, keep you in there. I love that.

[A]

Hit me with number nine, Mike.

[B]

Number nine for me. Battlefield 6. Do you have it higher?

[A]

I do not.

[B]

I had a feeling. Number nine for me. Battlefield 6. Coming from, of course, Battlefield Studios. If you forgot this was EA bringing everyone together to finally make another Battlefield that would hit the top charts and actually stay. So you have criterion in that one. Dice, ripple effect and motive, all under one umbrella with Vince Sampella. Yeah, RIP my guy right there. But yeah, brought them all together to hopefully make Battlefield relevant again. After about 10 years of being a couple of misses since probably Battlefield 1 5, I forget the number. When they went back to World War

[A]

II, that was one. That was one.

[B]

One was the big one. Then they missed a couple times after that. But. But man, oh man, from the jump, going out to LA to participate in the Battlefield creator event and then having the demos out with your friends before launch and then launch, battlefield delivered. Battlefield 6 came back and made a big splash. And I'm so happy to say that because I had a lot of concern following Battlefield 2042. I didn't think this team could do it. There was just so many moments and proven factors that it's like they can't deliver it at launch. Maybe six months down the line, three months after they work out the bugs and server issues, people will say, oh, Battlefield's back. Like, it's really good. Well, you missed the window. We're here for the first three weeks. That's when everybody wants to play it. And then we can ride later on as it gets better and better. But if it sucks at launch, I'm not coming back to it.

[A]

There's two that's most gamers.

[B]

Yeah, play. And so for Battlefield to launch and like actually be strong on the server side, very lacking in bugs and like, not have giant issues. Like, Battlefield 24. 2 was huge and all the maps are awesome. I think they launched like 10 to 12 maps. Shortly after that, they launched their own battle royale with Red Sec. Like, yeah, they delivered. And I brought it up before with the game awards. Like the audio design in this and all Battlefield games is something special. The audio design is so good that it is screaming in your ears 247 and making your ears bleed. Like, it is something that is unmatched in all these games. I know we had the write in of like, I'm so bored of Call of Duty and Battlefield getting awards of like, yeah, you made guns sound better. But it's like if you put on your headphones and play Battlefield 6, there's nothing like it. Having people screaming around you, a jet fighter screaming above your head, people gunshots,

[A]

footsteps, the Nick doing some dumb voice.

[B]

All of it is amazing. And so, yeah, to have Battlefield 6 like finally come out and deliver on Such a good scale. I'm so happy and like Nobody beats the 32 on 32 all out warfare like they do.

[A]

So somebody from the sidelines who just talks about games on games daily and wouldn't it doesn't play games like Battlefield. Talk to me a bit about this this year, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Fight. Because Call of Duty, I know underperformed, under impressed. Did Battlefield, you think win back gamers here? Some gamers, some good will.

[B]

I think Battlefield won back a lot of gamers on the Call of Duty versus Battlefield side. But there was a big three and we talked about that leading up with me and the boys throughout a couple of games casting games daily, there was a kind of unknown question mark and that was Arc Raiders, right? Like there was a third game in this that actually rose above the rest and came out on top. Right. It was Call of Duty versus Battlefield. But then we started talking about Arc Raiders, a game that had some great showings during the summertime. Finally got a release date in October against the big two and really came out on top. At the end of the day, I think when you look at and probably ask gamers, they're going to say positive things about Battlefield. They will say that Call of Duty underperformed, it did not deliver and they didn't. And then on top of that, it's like you look at our creators, it's like that game is still on top. That game changed the mindsets of many and really opened up the Extraction shooter to a a whole new audience that is on now. Console and PC people are excited to play it. Embark Studios, that team figured it out. Just.

[A]

I think we're going to talk about Arc Raiders soon enough so we can put a pin in that conversation. I'll tell you my number nine. My number nine was Luminous Arise. I feel like on my list of games this is the most boring choice for Greg. Okay everyone, if you have so many people, I've been following you since I was in junior high. I remember you from beyond that. You know how much I love Luminous because on day one when I got hired at IGN and I showed up, I was like, man, I love my PSP and I love Luminous. I've had it forever. And this is the thing. And these are my high scores and this is what I so throughout my 19 year career, next in March, I have reviewed so many Luminous and talked about so many Luminous and I can tell you why I like ones and why I don't like this. And da da da da. Luminous Arise is once again Luminous. An Amazing match four little block that comes down in square puzzle game. That is, I think the best. I. I know so many people love Tetris. I love Tetris. I think Luminous is better and I enjoy it more, both for the aesthetics, the music, the style of it. I think even watching Luminous Arise or a Luminous base game, so many people, oh, it's like Tetris effect. And it's like, well, yes, because they made so many luminescences before they did Tetris effect. That was like Tetris effect was them Lumina luminescing Tetris. And so luminesce arises luminescence strictly as Tetra. It's a whole thing. But like, it's Luminous. It's great music, it's great block matching. Burst mode is their new thing. Better visuals, better quality. You can play it in VR if you want to. More online functionality. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Like, it's a. It's here because I love Luminous. I think if, you know, it's one of those. When we talk about this list and how you rank games and so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah. For me, this is one. Like, if Luminous was brand new, this would be so much higher on things. But it's such a known quantity. And again, this back five, I feel like I talk a lot. I will be talking a lot about known quantities and why then it didn't wow me enough to. When I think back to 2025, these are the games. These ones in the back, like, oh, yeah, they were great. They were awesome. Luminous is great. But knock on wood. Every new Luminous will be the best Luminous and I will always be like that. You should go play that Luminous rather than. Oh, no, no. You need to pick up Evita and you need to play Electronic Sift Symphony.

[B]

I just love that. It's a great reminder, right? Like, you are the Luminous guy. In my life, I've never even heard of that game before you bringing it up, right? And then like, I have my close friend Washburn who loves this, like, Wash. He's like, this game is amazing. And I'm like, only you and Greg talk about this game in my little circle. Like, I don't know many people playing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But then you put me onto this. It's like, oh, it is amazing. Like, I would spend more time in this, right? Yeah, I sucked a Tetris effect. So, like, maybe I'll be cool with this one. I don't know.

[A]

You know, give it a shot, Mikey. I'll try Instead, they'll move on to tell me, what is your number eight?

[B]

Number eight Arc Raider. There it is. From Embark Studios. Of course, you know them from the finals. This team is cooking and they are cooking with gasoline right now. And they have really found a couple of hits. I think the finals did so well at bringing in this fun team arena shooter mixed with the awesome levolution and destructible environments that you wanted to see. But it wasn't quite set the world on fire. It was, hey, bring a name to this studio. Hey, let's steal a couple players. Let's get people excited. But it wasn't what Arc Raiders became. And Arc Raiders is the take over the world. Everyone's talking about this. It feels like the helldivers of this year. And I'm really blown away that I'm saying that. Because Helldivers, known as a PvE game. I think you and your friends really loved that game because there was no stress of Mike in the sweaties coming out and all of a sudden you're

[A]

getting, hey, Jabroni, how you doing? We're not gonna hurt you. We're gonna hurt him. We're gonna kill him. We're gonna kill. Right?

[B]

But like then all of a sudden for Embark to be like, we're gonna make an extraction shooter, a PvE VP situation and the world is gonna take to this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Never would I have thought this. I had so much doubts with extraction shooters after me and Nick played a number of them. They're fun, they're exciting. But I didn't think that the general audience, the mass audience would go, we're in on this tenfold and we want more of it. Right. And so to have marathon come out and say, hey, after playing all these play tests, turns out we don't like what we're doing here. Bungie. Like, let's hold up. And Embark being like, we found something and people are really vibing with the art style the world that we have with Speranza and the top side with these kind of like very desert esque maps, meeting these very like white clean robots. Like people are vibing with this right now and they want more.

[A]

You know, when I think of like gaming moments here, kind of funny, like you have those, you know, things that are like, oh my God, they delayed gta, yada yada. I'll never forget when it was like day two of the marathon beta or whatever it was and you got. Nick was very vocal of like, ah, cool. But could we play our creators is the arc rate of bait and I Was like, I, I at that point, our creators was so nebulous. It's an extraction shooter. It hadn't. I had no real. I was like, wait, what? You want to play that rather than this like. Or it was a concord. It doesn't even. Whatever they were. You were choosing the AAA big one or I'm sorry, you were choosing Arc Raiders over the triple A big one. And I was like, what? Like, what's going on? What is this game? And then for it to drop. Arc Raiders is one of my sob stories of the year of, like, how much I enjoyed playing that with you all. But my multiple weeks of that release weren't available for me to do the Helldivers thing of cool. I'm off of every other content and I'm going to go and do that. I was reviewing whatever I was reviewing, so jumping in and playing with you, I had so much fun. And then going home in soloing, I enjoyed, but I didn't enjoy as much. And so then it became, well, this is the one I'm going to go stream with y'. All. But I only got in there a few times with it, which sucked. But it's like, it is on my short list on the other side of the 11 to 15.

[B]

Thank you, Tim.

[A]

Thank you, Tim.

[B]

Yeah, there is something there that I know you would have loved with your division days where they found a perfect mix for people who might not want to sweat and be super PvE competitive gamers. Be like, hey, there's a casual, fun side to this, which is the division. You're gonna hop in with three friends, we're gonna give you some basic missions to get you out and exploring the world. You're gonna loot some rubbish. It's fine. And you're gonna shoot some robot arc and like, you're gonna have a good time, but there will always be the looming threat and there will always be the thing in the back of your mind for as casual as you are of like, like, what if I took that fight? What if they came to me, am I ready for this? Right? And it's like that perfect balance that they found with proximity chat as well of like, people being so excited to be on comms and be like, what up, dude? I'm. We're fighting the arc. Come join us. Or I'm. I'm totally cool. Like, don't kill me. I got a free loadout. Like, there's this just mix that they found that made it so much fun to jump into. You jump into Escape from Tarkov. Like me And Nick, there's no fun to be.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Like there's none of this. And so I'm so glad that the world enjoyed it, got onto it. And it feels like Helldivers. Right. I'll bring up Burt Peanut. Right. Like, people are yelling goop. At their partners and their partners just like Helldivers. Like, well, he's fighting for supremacy. I don't know. They're strengthening the globe.

[A]

I don't know what happened.

[B]

He was like, I gotta go get the goop.

[A]

All right. Sure. All right. Go get the goop. I guess that's what you gotta do.

[B]

But yeah, I love Arc Raiders. I had to put it on the list, you know, I. I can't wait to play more and it's just a great time. Greg, what do you have as number eight?

[A]

Number eight for me. I have Ghost of Yote, of course. Atsu's Tale of Revenge. What a great, gorgeous, amazing game. I'm pretty sure I gave this A9 on our review scale when we were out there. And I don't regret it whatsoever. Like, I had so much fun with this game. I thought it is the benefit and then the knock that it is, it just improved on everything Sushima did, which I think is so dismissive and throws away years of hard work from Sucker Punch. But it also is a credit to how much we loved Ghost of Tsushima. And here we are with a better map, a better thing. Gameplay is better. Like, it looks better, which is already beautiful. Like you go down the list of everything they did here. I thought it was such a. You jumped into this game and you were in it like, you know what I mean? You jumped in and you were immediately locked into Atsu Story. You're thrown right into the action. Here we go. The tale of a revenge begins. And the way they flash you back to get you caught up on the story was so well done. I did not, because I'm an idiot. Expect the twists and turns the story took. Like, I thought I was getting a very direct, hey, this is what it's going to be. So when things happen, I was like, oh, I'm a for not even thinking that through. I didn't think. And blah, blah, blah, no spoilers. I thought it just delivered on a game we had wanted for so long. The sequel to Ghost. Right. But again, it ends up in this back half because I feel this half of games is kind of described as I talked about in the top 10 for me is frictionless. That's the thing we get, we throw around. And I Think that makes for a great blockbuster, that makes for a great entertainment property when I'm going through and doing it. But then when I get to the end of the year and I'm like, what games resonated with me? It is the struggle. It is the this thing that I rubbed up against that made the experience better or did something for me in a way that this one didn't. And, you know, again, for me and how fast the world moves for us in this job and the amount of games to review and yada, yada, yada, I found it telling, too. I think that I never even thought about doubling back to platinum. This. Like, I finished it and I was done. Like, my story was done and I was. I was on to the next one. Because even though the side stories are more thought out and there's better characterization, it still is that now that friend slop stolen it. It is that open world slop that I do enjoy. And I coined that before friend slop, if you remember, that I enjoy. But I didn't need more of. Again, it was that I'm at the buffet and there's so much to do. But I know there is these more curated experiences or different experiences that are going to give me a different vibe this year that I want to go chase and experience.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, this was something special. This one I quickly put down. It falls victim again to just like me not turning on my PlayStation all that often. But, like, this was a game that did capture me. Like you said, right off the bat, you get hit with that story and you're in. You're like, okay, like, I'm in for this. And then immediately you are greeted by that giant mountain in the middle of the map and you go, wow, this is beautiful. Right? Like, I'm all in on this. And I thought I would really be into it. I enjoyed the open world. I like, as Roger put it, things kind of came to me.

[A]

It felt, yeah, the game comes.

[B]

I really liked.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I started really feeling vibing with the characters, but I found myself not turning it on, not going back to it. And I don't know if that's open world fatigue like this game should be. For me, as someone who's always been yelling, I want Assassin's Creed, but with Samurai, right? And when they finally do that, they make shadows. It's like, I never touch these. I'm done now. So there's this weird. There's this weird world right now for me of like, this open world fatigue that I'm just not vibing With. But I know there's a game, right? There's something out there, whether it be the Witcher or a Fallout. There's something that's like, oh, no, I'll drop everything and get lost in that world. I just haven't found the one yet.

[A]

And I wonder too, you know, you bring up Fallout. I think that's a game we talk so much about on content. And granted, I'm the one saying it, but I've heard other people say it too, of like, you know, your favorite Fallout or the most special Fallout is your first Fallout, because it is that you come out of the vault or you walk into New Vegas and like, holy shit, I can go anywhere. I can do anything. And then everything after that's trying to chase that high. And I think that's the thing here where again, Ghost of Sushima was so good. And like, maybe you don't like the pacing, maybe this, that the other. But like, to walk into that world and be in feudal Japan and be a samurai slash ninja is like, oh, my God. So to do it again here is like, awesome. But I know what this is. It's a known quantity.

[B]

We now talk about you enjoying this game. Are you interested at all with Legends?

[A]

No, I mean, I'm.

[B]

Would you and I play that? You know what I mean?

[A]

I'm interested in. Hey, it's out tomorrow. We're gonna put you on the stream. Sure. Let's fucking rock it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But the. I do not see a world where I'd go home that night, be like, yeah, let's go. Because it's just not classes and the mystical world. And like, I think, you know, you bring up division in comparison to arc raiders. And that is one of the things of. It was so close to the division, but it wasn't.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Where arc raiders alone. You know, I, I, I complete. And I come back with the tin can and it's like, okay. And the the guy. And it's that thing of like, I don't feel the progression. And then even when I did, it was like, all right, now I'm gonna go lose this gun. If I take out, it's always the thing. I don't take my good shit out. And I can either not take my good shit out because I'm alone, or I cannot take my good shit out. Cause I know we're gonna flip on somebody. It's like, what's the point? So it's like division. I always. Whether I was playing with a group, one other person by myself, I always feel that I'm getting better. I'm getting a cooler thing. I'm leveling up. I'm doing a thing. Whereas to have that washed away in our creators and then to a degree with however they're going to run. Sushima Legends. I'm sorry, Yote Legends just is not my vibe. That's not the multiplayer experience I'm looking for.

[B]

We giggled a little bit, but we do need to talk about Assassin's Creed. Right? It's like, you have loved a lot of Assassin's Creed games. We finally get Shadows, right, Which is the dream for a lot of Assassin's Creed OG players. Right? Going to the setting. Did you try that all? Did you?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You pulled it all for it.

[A]

Pulled over for you? No, no, no. Pulled. No. I forget how many hours I put in. We talked about it in the reviews and the conversations around it or whatever, but it was the traditional thing. I'm talking about earlier on with that narrative backbone, where it was just like, it starts in a very interesting place, I thought. But I then immediately didn't feel like we were getting pulled through enough breadcrumbs for me to be like, oh, I need to engage and keep going. And I'm never. I'm never trying to think of there's a. What's the exception to the rule? But I'm gonna say I'm never a fan of the dual protagonist.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I play a video game. I want to be in somebody's shoes. I want to be making these choices, these decisions, and seeing it from their perspective. Right. Like, I think something like last of us throwing me into Ellie's shoes. I'm talking about number one at the end was a smart call. And I guess last was part two, giving me the two things. But even that, I think that's a different vibe than you can be Yosuke or you can be. What was her name? Barrett. Now. Now you can be either one of them. Right? And it's like. Like, okay, but I don't want to. And it's like that thing where I think Yosuke's story is more interesting, but I don't like his gameplay as much as I like her. Like, Yasuke. Yasuke. I think Yosuke. Sorry, Yasuke. Put him in there and do that. Yeah. It just didn't work for me.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It'll be interesting. I really liked Assassin's Creed Mirage. I know me and Barrett talked about that of, like, kind of return to form a little bit smaller, compact experience. But, like, there's just something about that Assassin's Creed Parkour mixed with the stealth gameplay that I'll always hold dear to my heart and love. And it's like. Like I am. It's. I'm like, I wonder why I didn't jump at this and try it the way it is. Maybe I got put off when it went from Origins to Odyssey and Valhalla, where it's like, we're gonna make these so massive that you'll never get through it unless this is your game. Like, and it's like, maybe that's why I kind of hid from it. But there was something about Mirage lately that. Or recently that I was like, I liked that. Give me more of that.

[A]

I think, you know, part of it is to compare it to these two assassins or, well, you know what I mean? Assassin's Creed, right? It is also what you're talking about, the story coming to you and meeting you and telling you a story, I think that goes so far, rather than the. All right, cool. What can I do? Where do I want to go? Even the way Yotei presented its cards, its characters, its map, I thought was so, oh, I'm here. I'm doing this as atsu. Mike, what's your number seven?

[B]

My number seven? Skate. Greg, do you have higher?

[A]

Believe it or not, I have it higher. Everybody, so we don't have to talk

[B]

about skate right now, why don't you take me to your number seven?

[A]

I'll go to my number seven. Dispatch. Mike, do you have it higher?

[B]

I have it higher. Greg,

[A]

we jump back to six.

[B]

Seven for you. Yeah, you and I, little seven switch.

[A]

Okay, number six.

[B]

I know you don't have for sure Sniper Elite resistance.

[A]

Oh, you'd be. No.

[B]

Coming from Rebellion Studios. Of course this is that. How many Sniper Elite games are there? 10, maybe 12. I don't know. But, man, oh, man, did I fall in love with this one. I mean, you could ask me about the story, I wouldn't be able to tell you a single thing that happened in the story, but I could tell you that somehow I shot people. Shot the out of people. So much fun because they found this perfect blend. And I know this is kind of my first sniper lead. I've played other ones, but, like, this is the one where I really gave myself to. And they found this perfect blend of, like, Hitman, open world sandbox gameplay mixed with, like, sniper duels. And it just spoke to me at a time, I think, early in the year when it might have been a little bit lighter on releases where I could just get lost and fall in love with this right? I loved being dropped into these little sandboxes and say, hey, you can go any which way, you can snipe any person, go get these objectives done. And I was enjoying missions one through four. But then all of a sudden a new gameplay mechanic was introduced and that was the Invade system. And that's where I fell in love. The idea that someone similar to a Dark Souls experience that I always love, someone can come into my game and thou be the threat, right? Like I still have all of the PvE, all of the AI are still coming after me, but now there's an even bigger threat and that's humans, right? That is, that's man coming after me. And I loved that, right? Of like you are watching, you're looking, you're looking for glints, you're looking for movement, you're trying to identify where that bad person is that's looking to stop your run. Because if they do stop you, you have to rewind all the way to the checkpoint so that progress that you made gets halted. And I loved that thrill of the fight of, oh, like now I got to be really mindful of how I'm playing the AI. They're maybe not as difficult as I need them to be. I can just kind of walk through them. Now I have to worry about someone. And those first couple of fights got me so deep where then I started looking into the system, I was like, well, I want to do that. And I just became the nemesis at all times. I would invade other people's gameplays and they would put you in any level that anyone was on. So you would go from a range of mission one to eight or ten. And wherever you would go, you would just, your goal is simple. Go find them, kill them, stop their run. Yeah, I fell in love with that. I got addicted to that. Where they even had a progress bar of how many kills you got. And I was looking to earn all the little season pass rewards on that kill bar. I was gonna get 50 and get the super one. But like there was something where it's like I got so in tuned with the gameplay that every map that you dropped me into, I would know exactly where I was, where you should be in the map on that progress and how I can find you. Yeah, and I loved that I would be dropped in the map number three on the big dam. I might be up on the top side of the dam. That means you are directly across from me, diagonally across the dam over at that little cabin, picking up a cell phone. And that means I'm coming to find you. And I loved that.

[A]

We have a question from CEO Junior, AKA Tim junior From Kind of funny dot com. Barrett corner, Barrett, parentheses, Evil.

[B]

Mike, do you ever with Deathloop? I never with death loop. You would have loved the. Okay, like, that is the same thing with the death loop stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where you invade and you just hunt someone down in the middle of them

[A]

trying to get their, like, perfect run.

[B]

Oh, that's awesome. Because, yeah, I fell in love with this where it's like, I am now the only thing I want to do is invade your run. And, like, you know, it's a little bit of snow. Mike. Mike. You know, toxicity of, like, I get just immediately when I hit that sniper on you. And, like, we get the awesome Mortal Kombat X ray vision. And I giggle and laugh as the game goes. You're being kicked out of their match. Like, you go find a new match, right? I giggle. I think to myself, man, I'm having flashbacks of me on fall guys just slime up on the Twinkies, grabbing jelly beans, going, you're not making it. I love it so much. And I think, yeah, this year with arc Raiders, of course, Battlefield. But, like, like, there was something this year about, like, the toxicity and gaming that you brought, the thrill of the hunt. I loved it. Right? And, like, I love that, like, when we play our creators, everybody's like, I'm out here for the loot. Like, I'm out here for a good time. Like, we're gonna do this. It's like, no, you're bringing the loot to me. Okay. I'm gonna take your loot. That's my goal every time. And just like in Sniper Elite, it's like, I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna stop your run, make you go to the checkpoint and do it all over again. Yeah, I'm gonna be that pounding force in the back of your head that's going, why am I playing this game? And that's Mike.

[A]

That's Mike, everybody.

[B]

I love this.

[A]

Doesn't that sound like fun?

[B]

Greg, give me your number six.

[A]

Number six for me was Monster Hunter Wilds, of course. You and me playing this, streaming it, being all about it at launch. And I kept saying, don't forget about it for game of the year because I was having such a good time on the games cast. I gave it a 9.5 out of 10. I thought it was so good, and I still do. So why is it so back on number six on my list? We're back to the frictionless part where this is a Monster Hunter that at launch was so easy. And even the monsters they put in after launch in the beginning, because I didn't come back for all of them were so easy. That this is one of those games that it's entire narrative through the year I think means more here at Game of the Year rather than what I thought at launch. I still think it's a great game. I still encourage you to go play it. I think you and your friends would jump in and have a lot of fun with it. But again, we're back to the fact that I think it is a blockbuster film there, you know, there was a lot of sizzle that I really enjoyed playing a lot of cool monsters, all these different things. But Monster Hunter World, a game that I put, I think in the review, I talk about 150 hours, 160, 135, whatever. It was like obscene hours into it was about I am grinding these fucking guys out the gate to get the thing to take on that I got, you know, I mean to go get the bigger monster, to go do the biggest thing, yada, yada yada. And this one, it was early on like, oh, okay, I've done. I've climbed mountain. And then it was like they would drop a new thing and I would go in and do it or do the. The weeklies. And I was, I still have it bookmarked on my tab of what are they doing, what are they dropping, what's the item to go get. But it just all became such a content mill that I didn't need to think about that I wasn't doing it. And then I. I know they've put in harder stuff and yada yada yada to it, but it's like back to what we're talking about. We're playing so many things and doing so many things that to get me to go back with a player base that's gone down so much that there isn't this excitement of the office. You're not playing it. Joey's not playing it. Like, my friends moved on, the people I would play these games with. So I have this amazing honeymoon period with it that I still stand by and still love. And I can't not put it on my list for some reason. But the idea of booting up Monster Hunter and jumping back in right now, it's like, well, what's going on and why should I do it? And they, you know, I'd be turning it on for the seasonal events. I would make you stream the seasonal events. Right. Run through and do the thing. And it was like, okay, cool, I did it. I got the thing. I built the new outfit. But what am I doing? Why? So it's here because I love this game so much this year, but it's also this weird, heartbreaking one of just like, okay, this could have been so much more. This could have really been the thing, I think.

[B]

Yeah, it's so fun. I'm so happy you put it on your list because we talked about it all year long. Don't forget Monster Hunter because it was so special. And I love hearing you talk about it because I've told you before, my Monster Hunter is so different. Right. I played with sad boy Sean a long time ago, who introduced me to Monster Hunter at the first time and was like, okay, well, now we grind. And I immediately said, no, yeah, I'm not doing that shot. I'm not gonna grind this velociraptor for a pair of gloves. That takes hours on hours. Like, yeah, I am a one and done Monster Hunter fan of like. Like, I love the world. I love the cinematics. I love seeing the big monsters, I love fighting the monsters. And then I am wrapped up and done. I cannot do the grind. And this time around, I was really impressed. I loved the cinematics. I thought looked beautiful. I thought they took a step in the right direction with multiplayer. It wasn't perfect.

[A]

And that was the other thing. Yeah, we're working, you know, you, me and Joey playing in there and we have to individually go do the story missions and come back. It's like, this sucks.

[B]

Why is it like, it's like you're getting close. It's like from software where it's like, you're getting closer. Like, good job, but, like, you're still not there. And then even stepping out of my comfort zone and like, putting down the dual blades and like, stepping into a different weapon where, like, those weapon systems are very tough to learn and then even harder to master. But to say, hey, this time around, I'm finally going to try a different weapon and, like, I'm gonna actually spend time learning it and trying it and, like, understanding it, it's just so much fun because, yeah, it's one of those of playing so many monster hunters and just always grabbing the same weapon, knowing I know how to use this, this is it. To be like, I'm gonna try something different. That was a really fun experience this year.

[A]

Well, we turn our eyes to number five on the list. But first we turn our eyes to the kind of funny membership patreon.com kind of funny YouTube.com kind of funny games Apple, Spotify. You can pick up the Kind of Funny membership help this 11 person 11 year old small business keep the lights and mics on. Of course you'd also get in return every episode we do ad free and your daily dose of me Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. But right now you're not using your benefits that you could get on patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple and Spotify so here's a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. The amount of times Mike has signed up for something, forgotten about it after the trial period ends, and then been charged months, month after month after month is quite frankly terrifying. He didn't even realize he was paying for SoundCloud for 10 years until Rocket Money helped find and cancel his unwanted subscriptions. But he is not alone. So many people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Thanks to Rocket Money, you can see all of your subscriptions in one place and cancel them within the app with just a few taps, saving time and avoiding charges. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. [e-mail] Kinda Funny that's RocketMoney.com KindaFunny Rocket PocketMoney.com Kinda Funny this episode is brought to you by Factor. It's a new year, which means new goals and even more things to take up our time. That's why so many of us here at Kinda Funny love Factor. Factor makes it easy with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs so you can eat well without the shopping or cooking. On many occasions, Factor has completely saved me and Jen when we needed it most. Choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost. Enjoy even more GLP1 friendly meals and new Mediterranean diet options packed with protein and good for you fats. Feel the difference no matter your routine? Head to factor meals.com kinda funny 50 off and use the code kinda funny 50 off to get 50% off your first factor box plus free breakfast for a year offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make Healthier eating easy with Factor hey you. Join us in person for our live in review of Howard The Duck.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Howard The Duck joins MCU in review. Wednesday, January 28th at 7:30pm at Cobbs Comedy Club for SF Sketch Fest. You can come watch me do all the podcasts within a podcast you love. Andy will be going. Nick will be shopping for pants during it, but everybody else will be there too for you to come hang out and see. All you have to do is go over to kind of funny.com sketch fest right now to get your tickets before they sell out because come and watching a bunch of people talk about a very old Howard the Duck movie is really selling tickets fast. Number five on Mike's list is Greg.

[B]

I'm having such a good time with you and I'm gonna make you smile.

[A]

Let's hang out another two hours.

[B]

Number five, baby steps.

[A]

Ah, it makes me smile.

[B]

Gabe Maxi and Bennett Foddy. A Fadian style game, a special one. I was never big into getting over it, but a man did. I love only up. Yeah, there's been this push and pull inside of me lately that's like, like I love these uber challenging games. I love these like moment of disaster games where you get to the tippy top and if you make one false move, you fall and lose all your progress and you got to do it again. There's something inside of me that loves the challenge, loves the thrill. And you and I went during gdc, got to sit down with the team and play a little bit of baby steps. And right then and there I knew I was interested because it was Mike and Greg with the controller slowly taking steps and then we headed over to Bennett Foddy who immediately starts running right? And I'm like, I'll get to that point one day. Like I got a feeling I'm gonna get that good. And when the game came out, I loved it, right? Like Nate and his journey about taking steps to bettering your life, asking for help getting out of the parents basement in a one piece, you know, coma really spoke to me. Really, really connected with me on a deep level, which I enjoyed. And I think they job of this giant mountain that is ever ongoing but all the fun side activities, all the fun side paths that you could go do that might have fun challenges or different alternating paths that you can go take. Like they did a really good job with this. And I loved baby steps. I loved the challenge. I. I loved learning more about it and like there was something. The music is just so annoying but so weird that I loved asking. I loved asking during our interview with the dev team of like what the hell is going on? And then, like, making it all up and just having fun with it. I have to highlight baby steps. It's just so good.

[A]

Hell, yeah. I'm glad you did. Yeah. Like, I liked what I played. I thought it was really funny. I just knew the gameplay would drive me up the wall.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I'm not that, like, I want to only up it and do the thing and lose hours of progress. Slide in the demo, just sliding down the mountain where we're like, we fucked this up, and now we're all the way at the bottom. This sucks.

[B]

It's so much fun. I look back on it, and I. I only got better every single time. Right. It's so funny. We had the review period, right, where you're learning, you're getting better at the game. And at the end of the game, it shows you the whole map of the mountain, and it tracks every step you take on this cool map. And they show you all the things you did. And there's this moment where you can see during the review where I got stuck on this one challenge, and you can just see me doing circle after circle after circle of, like. I distinctly remember that moment going, I'm gonna do this. I don't know. And then finally saying, why am I taking this path? It's too challenging. This isn't the right way. You need to get out of that. Right. You need to go do something different. And then all of a sudden, you see a hard left turn, and I find a different path that's easier, maybe I'm more equipped for. And I go through. Right. And finishing the game, having that moment with Nate, who finally asks for help. He's got to find the potty the whole way. And he finally has to ask, can I use your bathroom? And it's just so much fun. And. Yeah. To see the. The whole map come to life, see all the steps you've taken, and then immediately go, well, I can do that better. Right? And I looked right at the camera, I said, I'll do that better. And there's a piece of me. I think I can get sub 90, maybe sub an hour. Oh, wow. I couldn't move in this game. I really got the path down. There's something about me and video games. I love a map. I love charting the map, seeing how I can get better navigating. Yeah. And, like, this is that kind of game. And then also the Man Breaker, the ultimate test, right Here it is. The Man Breaker. You don't have to take this. You know, our good Friend. He made a whole staircase. Mike is using the staircase. Just take the staircase, and you could get up to the next level, no problem. Or do the man breaker. Yeah, I said, I'm gonna. I'll break the man breaker. And doing that. And the controls, right of, like, it sounds so basic. Right, Left foot, right foot, R2, L2, left foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, left. And it's like, you get that. Then it's like, okay, well, there's a balance as well with the stick right of, like, how far you push forward, how do you push back? And then that next level of gameplay, Jeff Grubb comes into the chat, and I'm. I'm on the man breaker. I'm like two thirds up. And you hit this challenge where it's not a whole step. It isn't a full lean and lunge. It's a softly pick up just your toes and just softly move them to the right and dig your toes back into the rock. And I didn't understand that. And you can just mess with the L2 R2s just enough to just lift it up, keep it small, scoot it over, and then put it back in. It's like, you think about that, and you hear that, and you're like, oh, my God, the gameplay changes so much to. Now you're in a Uncharted 2 train that is hanging over a cliff, and now you got to climb up the train with luggage and chairs, and you're like, like, well, everything I know is just forward, right? It's this 3D world, and I just move forward. What do you mean? I'm climbing up. And then you start moving your feet sideways and getting them in different angles and moving. It's like, wow, I didn't know it could be that deep.

[A]

It could be like that.

[B]

It's like that figured that out. And it's such a fun challenge. There's like, some really interesting narrative going on there. Some really weird, wacky characters that you meet. Nate is like, a really fun character that, like. Like you've had someone in your life like that maybe you're that person, right?

[A]

Like, you connect.

[B]

And then at the end of the journey where it finishes, it's like, wow, that was really cool. And so, yeah, baby steps for me. A special one. I love, you know, Bennett Foddy. What a cool dude.

[A]

You had him on there. You had him on the show.

[B]

Check out that stream. It was a lot of fun. And, yeah, baby steps for me. A great game this year. Hell, yeah. Greg, hit me with your number five.

[A]

My number five is the Outer Worlds 2, of course, Obsidian Entertainment MVPs of the Xbox ecosystem this past year. You start with Avowed, you go into Grounded 2 and then you hit with the Outer Worlds 2. The Outer Worlds 2 is that genre I love. Y' all know it. It's a Bethesda, it's a rpg. It's a open world rpg, Western rpg. It is that first person, maybe third person perspective as you go through and make choices and see how they net out in the world. You know, I had been so hyped for this one and definitely on the outside coming in, playing at SGF and then talking about it and seeing everything I had it as front runner for what I thought my game of the year would be. So to hit five isn't to hit number one. And it was just a bit as I talk about in my review of that overarching story doesn't nail it and didn't keep me going. And I thought kind of fell not apart, but sagged under the weight of its own aspirations. However, it. These games are always about the journey rather than the destination. And getting the chance to play my evil slash gray character and then go into my good character and see the differences and see the changes and see this person that I said goodbye to in the past is here, multiple years later doing this over here. There's this ramification, there's that the, you know, I was so blown away to get into that second playthrough and be like, oh, I'm gonna play it in third person and I'm gonna commit to these two attribute for skill points rather than these two and have it play. Be like, man, this is a different game. Like, this feels and looks like a different game. I am engaging in conversations differently. I am engaging in battle differently. You know, being such a weak little sniveling bad guy before and having to hide and sneak and you know, try to power through this shit now to be able walk in like the fucking Terminator and kill everything. Like, like different experiences. And I think again, what I want out of these RPGs is to role play. And I think Obsidian really gave you with the flaws, with the ability to go into these attribute points and commit to who you are on these two, whatever you wanted to be. But I committed to two things. Like, I am still role playing in the outer worlds too, because I still have to finish my good playthrough. But so much fun in this. Such a gorgeous game. Gunplay feels so good. The sci fi nature of what they're doing really getting to play with that. And again, to as much as I talk about Tsushima to Yotei, oh, it's a better version of this. This is such a better version of the outer world. It's like this is improving on so many of the things that kept in outer worlds as like a seven or a six, whatever it was when I reviewed it back then and even when we redid it this year and played through it where it was like, man, this is very rinse and repeat. Whereas this, they really did focus, I think on giving you artisanal selections and choices and how it's going to pivot out and like giving you more of the are you going A or B? Because that'll then influence X, Y and Z as you go out. Like, they really delivered on a lot of the mechanics I want from this type of game. And so again, not my game of the year, sadly. But I had high expectations and I really turned my eyes and go all right Obsidian, what's next? Like we talk about, you know, right now as we are going, I see you talking about it. There's big news. The Animal Crossing 3.0 update came out earlier. Watch it was. I already started it and I'm so back. I'm so fucking back. We'll be talking about that tomorrow on the gamescast plays. But I look to avowed and of course in February, I think it's February 12th we're getting that anniversary update that's coming to PlayStation. Sure. But here's a new game, plus here are new races and it's like I love tinkering in these Obsidian games so much that even avowed a game that I think I six or seven and was just like it's fine. It didn't. I'm excited to start a new thing there and see what have you done in that year that I haven't seen in terms of just quality of life updates, let alone what you're bringing for this big update. Because Obsidian, I would say even though they have never made one of my favorite games of all time, they have never. They're not, they're not my number one game of this year. They are a developer. I love, I love them taking chances, iterating and doing different things. And so when they show up, I show up.

[B]

Yeah, it's really awesome. I mean to have them still be making great RPGs but also just making different passion projects and games. Right. Grounded to a survival crafting game. They had pentiment out there and it's like yeah man, Xbox and Microsoft are really letting that team work and create and do whatever they really feel like. It's pretty awesome.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What do you think about, you know, the big one for Outer Worlds One was the selling point of like it's a more smaller condensed version of a giant Bethesda game right now. You come out with a vowed in Outer Worlds too. Were you happy with that? Is it getting bigger and bigger? Is it getting so big where it is now all of a sudden a fallout where it's too big.

[A]

They are small or open world RPGs. I would if Obsidian was taking advice from me and I hope what the community is giving them in terms of opinions go smaller. Well, we should be doing I think with these kind of RPGs and I say this as somebody who adores them. We should be aiming for 10 to 12 hour playthroughs, not 10 to 12 hour games. It should be that I make this choice and guess what? I'm off this planet for the rest of the game. And then I come in and I talk to you and you're like I made this choice and I never left that planet. Like we should. We should be making rather than scoping it out into this outrageous. There's a million points and you can go do it. And this. That never makes sense. Where it's like well, you can. Yeah, the faction hates you. But you can still take their quest and you can still be on. We should be these kind of RPGs and something Baldur's Gate does really well. Right. Should be. You make choices and you live with the ramifications. And that's what this Outer Worlds 2 does better than Outer Worlds 1 in many of the the games it stands shoulder to shoulder with but still could do more of. It really should be that like we are and be upfront about it. We dial it down. We're doing eight hour playthroughs. We want you to be able to. We feel there are however many paths you could do to do this. But this is what it is and how it's going to play out. Because I think and that's also what hurt my experience of Outer Worlds two in my evil character. We set off with what I think is an easy objective. I my character I was very clear like she is on. This is Lee Everett. She is on a revenge mission. She got roped into being a space ranger. This is all based on the choices I had there. Right. She didn't want to do it. She's doing it and now she has revenge. And I was like clearly this will take me. Oh, that was like act one. Okay, well, we've achieved revenge and now this other thing's happening that the character you just allowed me to create in my head would not give a fuck about. She should be like, fuck it all, peace out. You know what I mean? And go. And like, they give you enough reasons why that wouldn't work. But it's like, you let me build this character that way and I would rather it be that that was my. That storyline went and did that and even the way I did it, you know, because the games always do that of like, all right, you're there and it's revenge. Do you want to kill the person or let them go? And it's like, obviously the game wants me to let them go. You know what I mean? But I love it that I kill them and like, cool. Next division. Oh my God, the universe is ending because you did. Oh, well, that makes sense that I should go and replay it and do the thing. Yeah, I know. Thank you, Mike, for letting me rant and rave about what open world RPG should be about for you. I turned to number four. What should number four be about?

[B]

Number four. Greg Miller, Elden Ring Night Rain. Do you have that higher on your list?

[A]

I don't have that on there at all.

[B]

Yes. Let's talk Elden Ring Night Rain from software, a base game and a DLC this year. Great job. They somehow kudos to them. This team is for real Snowbike Mike. Let's make money, let's print money, let's live service this game to death.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Somehow this team stayed on track. They kept it all in game. No microtransactions, nothing funny, no season passes, nothing weird. Just here's the game. We're gonna add content along the way and we're gonna get to a DLC that we're gonna sell for a price. You're gonna buy at the you're going to add on and you're going to have a good time with and Elden Ring Night Rain for me, I've said it before, is my favorite from soft experience. This is number one for me. It is an experience that is so Snowbike Mike. It is crazy. What if we made the complexity and the difficulty and the challenge of all of your favorite Dark Souls games? We put it on a giant open world map and we make it into a battle royale where a circle is constantly shrinking, making you make split second decisions in your gameplay. Should I fight this boss? Should I leave this boss? Do I need these rooms to Level up, Do I need to go for that extra flask for health potions? What do I need to succeed? Before the circle closes, I have to Fight Night 1's mega boss. And then we reset and we do it again in preparation for Night two and the final boss. They figured out exactly what I love in games right now, what I want, and just nailed it with their execution. And so yeah, for me, Night Ring has been a ton of fun. I love being able to play these games with your friends. They've had updates where it's solo and duos now, but to be able to play with up to three friends and you and your threesome run out on this beautiful, awesome Dark Souls esque Elden Ring esque map that is like just screaming to explore me. Find the hidden past, find out all these things. And then on top of that, having weapons that you have characters that you don't have to worry about, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think the big one always for people who jump into a FromSoft game for the first time. Well, what do I level up into? What should I be? What should my weapon be? Right. Throw all that decision out the out the window. You're gonna pick one of the six characters, they're gonna have a class, they're going to be very defined of what their role should be and you're just gonna run, you'll level up, the points will be added already. You don't need to worry about anything. We have two cool special moves. That's all you need to know. And I love that they did that. They really found a streamlined way for players to not have to think about that. Because there is so many more things happening on the map and in the gameplay that you're already thinking about, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Making these split second decisions and then having a weapon system of like, like you're not going to get tied, you'll get tied into one weapon, but you're going to collect six and all those weapons tie into you through these passives. Right. So now as we're making the runs, I'm going, okay, well I want my spells to cost less mana. I want my spell duration casting time to be shorter. Right. And so I'm collecting six weapons that will all build in and feed into my character. But I'm most likely going to just use the one mega weapon that I find at the end. But I want all these to play in. And man, oh man, awesome music, great boss fights. All unique bosses. They made all their own bosses. With callbacks to some of your favorite Elden Ring and Dark Souls. Bosses on the map throughout the nights. Like, man, this game freaking rocks, Greg. I love.

[A]

Got me 10 points on fantasy Critic. Thanks for nothing.

[B]

That's like, he warned you. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Quarantine. Remember that? That game's better than 72. That game was better than 72. Should have got me more points, but, yeah, this game rocks, Greg. All the bosses were awesome. The music was awesome. A standalone experience. You didn't need Elden Ring. This is, like, such a perfect mix. And I love that they tried this as a company that is so known for a single player experience. And the multiplayer is, like, just, like, this funky add on that never quite works, right? And is so obtuse and, like, doesn't ever play right for you and your friend to be like, hey, this is supposed to be with you and your friends. Hey, maybe we're testing systems for future games, but to have them nail this so good, Such a blast. I would have been printing money, okay? I would have been out there yelling, make costumes. Sell a battle pass. Let's crush this. And they said, no, Mike, sit down. Where the players are gonna love this. And they did. So, yeah, for me, Elden Ring Night Rain number four. We beat the game, beat all the bosses. Now there's harder bosses. We'll get back into more challenges. Had. They had cool maps too, Greg. They had one map to start off with, but it had different variations from a giant icy mountain, a giant volcano, a cool palace that you'd go into. And, like, all these were gameplay decisions of, like, day one. Should I go into the heart of the volcano? Okay, well, maybe I'll wait. I'll get stronger. I'll go to day two, and then you get rewarded for that, right? We go down this crazy volcano with seven levels that you got to fight different bosses in, and then get down to the bottom. You fight this giant magma dragon. You kill him, and they're like, guess what you got rewarded more. The ultimate upgrade. And you're like, yeah, I feel so powerful. Right? Or you go into the giant castle. You got to navigate all these crazy, intertwined, winding pathways that you'll get lost in knowing that the circle could push you out at any moment. And you're like, I gotta fight this Mega Centipede death creature. And then they're like, guess what? We got the superpower. And you're like, nice job. And then they added a new map on the dlc, and I wish you could choose one or the other. I wish they just made me play that all the time. Because like, it was so exciting to get a new map, learn a new map.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And what they added there, it's like, nice job. Greg, what's your number four?

[A]

Number four for me is. And Roger, I feel like this is a hilarious game to have on this list because this place went from no one talking about and Roger to I feel it is the most talked about game in 2026.

[B]

Crazy.

[A]

We. I had played it and done a Greg way some point in 2025. Blessing, of course, played it on stream shortly before the end of 2025. And then Tim played it during break and so we all. They came back so talkative about it. I was shocked that it actually made our list. You know, me and Blessing were able to get it onto the kind of funny top 10 list. Blessing, of course, yesterday talked about it here on this episode of the Gamescast for their top 10. Tim talked about it. So I really don't need to spin my wheels too much, especially because it is a game you should play not knowing as little as possible. And Roger, as we all describe it, it has Florence like mechanics where you're going through tracing, doing this X, Y and Z. It has an emotional storyline that you should go through. Again, as I've said multiple times, it's the reason I like video games and the reason I love video games and play video games and everything else about video games because it puts me in someone else's shoes experiencing something hopefully I will never experience. And at that point I would just say that's enough that you should go. It's on every. It's on me's list. It was almost on Tim's list. It was on his. He said that 11 to 15 range in there. It made him weep at his computer. There's a lot to love and be bittersweet about. So go play.

[B]

And Roger, you guys have talked about it so much that you've gotten even me, the ball and gun guy excited and interested to play this game, right? It's like we talk about these experiences and I've seen so many of them now that like all speak to these different stories that really hit you right at your core and talk about humanity and life and experiences that hopefully maybe in life you'll never have to experience, right? But like, you feel this connection. You understand, right? And so, yeah, to me it's like add that to the list of games that I'd like to try because super short.

[A]

You can get in, you know, sayonar.

[B]

Wild Heart still always speaks to me about breakup and moving forward. Right. Like, I love that. I wish I played to a T. Right. And like, got a little more of that message. Like, there's games that have, like these really special messages that I. I hope all the audience maybe takes a moment and says, yeah, I'll try that. Right. Because. And Roger, is that for us?

[A]

Speaking of Tucker Danzy film super chats and says, Greg, thanks for putting me to an. Roger played last night. Redacted. It was cathartic. Redacted, Redacted. So there you go. There's a lot going on there. Tucker. I'm glad it was there for you. And as you put cathartic. Michael, that brings us to the top three.

[B]

Big three.

[A]

Give me your number three.

[B]

I got a banger. Big three. I got a big three that I couldn't, Couldn't argue with. I got a big three that I looked at and I said, I'm glad

[A]

you can't argue with yourself about it.

[B]

I couldn't. I could not change this because at number three, dispatch.

[A]

Thank you very much.

[B]

I know you had that at your number seven.

[A]

I had that at number seven on my list. We are big fans of dispatch here. Kind of funny. It did rank number two overall in the kind of funny top ten list this year.

[B]

Ad Hoc Studios, eight episodes. Episodic Adventures. Superheroes. Greg, this one hit me and this one was good. Right. I played all in one sitting. I was so happy. I waited. Aaron Paul and the whole voice acting cast brought life to some really awesome, relatable characters in the superhero world that you could see, that you could believe in from the mcu, dc, of course, the boys that we all kind of live in this superhero just filled world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And somehow they created characters that stood out and like, were characters that I wanted to connect with. I wanted to get to know more characters that I fell in love with. And it's like, like, oh, man. In a super saturated market, you somehow stood out and like delivered. And I loved that. Right. And I'm a telltale guy just like you. Right. Of like, you got some great stories about that. But for me, the telltale storytelling and fun sometimes got lost in that. Hey, now you're Lee Everett, and I want you to slowly walk around this house and find the keys that I hid in the. The fifth drawer that you'll look at. And sometimes those moments dragged. When I wanted more story, I wanted to stay with it. And for me, when they were like, no, it's just hacking and dispatching, I was like, I took a breath of like, fresh air of like, yes, this is what I need. Like, let's keep it short, simple, to the point, and let's get back to this awesome story. And I did fall in love with dispatching. I really enjoyed the fun idea of looking at the big spider web and going, what characters fit this web? What team do I need to send together to maybe attack this and get the job done correctly? What. What person can go out solo that might benefit from a solo experience? Why do I keep sending young gravy out? Because I love young gravy.

[A]

You got it. You got it.

[B]

Crazy. And I love the dispatching. The hacking, I would say, was just good enough. Right. You know, as we like to call it, serviceable. Right. It's, like, wasn't anything that stood out, but it was fun enough where I didn't have to go find drawer number five in Aaron Paul's house. Like, I'm sure the keys will be.

[A]

Cutting that out was huge. Yeah. Again, for me, having this on my list at seven, A game I loved this year, a game that I think. Think almost, I would say, did the impossible of, like, at the announcement of this, it was like, oh, okay, they're bringing Telltale Games back. They're doing a superhero one. They're doing episodic. Like, is this gonna work out? And then for them to assemble the cast, they did have the story. They had have these emotional beats. This animation, like, this game is just layered with great. And I. You know, for me, it's just the thing of I didn't enjoy the act of dispatch. I enjoyed the conversations had around dispatching. I enjoy the ramifications of my choices outside of that influencing, maybe who would work with me, who wouldn't be. Who'd be late for work, so on and so forth. But, like, the gameplay part of it didn't wow me by any stretch of the imagination. And so many people have said, you know, oh, man, I would love a game that's just that. And for me, I would as well, because I think the mechanics would be more fleshed out, which is what I was missing here. But none of that takes away from this game being amazing. Like, what a great time this was. What a nice twist on the superhero genre. And even saying that is one of those. Like, is it a twist? It's Guardians. It's Suicide Squad. It's a group of outcasts who come together and it's like, they crush it. They just crush it. Doesn't matter that it's like, okay, maybe on paper you could make some allusions to this.

[B]

It's Mature, raunchy jokes like we see in the boys. Like, it. It fit all the things that we like in the superhero genre right now that are like the cream of the crop. And it's like, yeah, this is where I want to be.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, man, there's a couple more highlights. Really quick. I mean, please. Of course, the decision making. You always love that. They had some really good decisions in this game.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Right. Of, like, who could you think, who could you romance? Who do you not romance? What do you want to do? Who's on the squad, who's not? Right? Who we bring in? Like, I love that I made decisions. You know, I have a person in my life that played this, like, seven times. And, like, we would always go back and forth and they would tell me all the fun things that they did. And it's like, I played it once. Yeah, this was it. But, like, I would have loved to seen all those other options or, man, I can't believe I failed this and this happened, but it was so badass. Oh, you. You didn't pass that. If you pass that, this happens. You're like, oh, that's so cool. And, you know, we had a great kind of feudi where it's like, beef is a standout. Chase is great. Right. Like, there's so many good characters here. And Visigal is fun that you fall in love with. And the music, we have to highlight the music. You gotta turn on licensed music and let that thing bump that song radio or whatever. I listen to that daily now. That song where they're dancing in the apartment will be a standout music hit of the year for me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I want more of that.

[A]

One thing I don't think we talk enough about, especially for that episodic vibe of it, is the fact that you can feel one way about an episode, and then two episodes later, they give you something that makes that episode you make so much more sense. And that's one of those things, I think, that benefited them of. Of doing episodic releases in twos and dropping them in a different way, but really getting them out there. And when you finish that game, I wanted to replay it because now that I knew everybody and where they were coming from, I wanted to feel that again from that angle.

[B]

Give me your favorite characters. Oh, yeah. Guardians of the Galaxy. They're all villains, but they turned heroes. But give me some. Give me two. Give me two. Give me a couple.

[A]

I mean, I enjoy Invisible. You know, I chose her. I had. I had a role with her, and I Think then, you know, Prism is a standout of just great lines, a great conversation. Like when. Oh, yeah. Prism temporarily blinded me. Temporarily. You, Brian, forever. Like, so good.

[B]

She was great. I loved her mechanic that she can become too. Right. As well. Yeah, I really did like moist, critical. And Charlie as Batman, you know, the bat guy is like, oh, I'm this cool, smart dude with a bad head. All of a sudden, I'm man Batman. Yeah, that juggle was always fun. I liked that a lot. You know, of course I brought up young Gravy I thought was just great with the voice acting lines of, you know, Young Gravy and you know, his music. And we all know that music's probably not for you. Who's listening, right? But like, you know, the voice and the moment you hear, you're like, is that Young Gravy? Like, what's the point of that? Yeah, and I love that. So, yeah, all the characters were so great for me. I love that.

[A]

Excellent.

[B]

Greg. Take me to your number three. Your big three.

[A]

Number three for me. Hell is us, of course, from Rogue Factor. This is the game that talks about player plattering. Got an 8.5from me and I still stand by that score. But it's high on the list because it did something out of the ordinary. I think it gave us such an interesting world to explore and so little guidance, but not none. You had the guidance in there. You are able to read through your little data pad and piece it together. But it made me work just enough for it not. And I when I was talking about this and why I like this, so many people are like, but Greg, you're not a souls guy because it is very Soul Z. You know what I mean? You got a parry. You got to get out there. You know, you parry at the right time, you do the thing, you're going to be able to get back to health rather than even have to use a health pack. You know what I mean? There's this idea to the gameplay and the obtuse world, but it is the idea that I think souls games make their world for me beyond that threshold of acceptable obtuseness, where this is still a game they want you to enjoy. This is still a game. They want you to find the piece of paper, then connect the dots of. This is what it is. It is a game. They want you to have a notebook with. With and keep little notes and little pads of what you're doing, yada, yada, but it's all obtainable. It was it. It isn't some mountain. I Couldn't get over. And then even beyond that, beyond, if you want to, you can go into your accessibility and really dial this into what works for you. But more than anything, it was just a world. I loved exploring and I did love hitting the wall. But as I said in the review and in the tiktoks and all the stuff about it, right. Like, for me, what was shocking that I didn't expect is that it's a masterclass in level design. It really is that thing of you get dropped into these new areas, these blown apart towns, these tombs. And like, in the preview when I went to Montreal to play it, I. They were like, oh man, you finished the demo? I was like, I didn't finish the tomb. I was fucking. I could not figure it out, you know, I mean, so lost, confusing. You spend however much time you spend in these areas and suddenly it does become like the back of your hand. It does become. I got this key. Wait, there was that locked door. I did that. And then suddenly it connects in a way. Suddenly it's your playground of like, okay, cool, I can take this shortcut through this house to pop up over and I'm just getting where I need to be and go do this thing. And then, you know, the storytelling they're doing in there, the things they are, tackling the mature topics of a civil war and not shying away. There are dead children here. There are children grieving their dead parents. Like, and I'm not saying that's like the benchmark of storytelling, but glossy games don't fucking do that. They won't lean on that. They don't want to go this way. And this one went into a civil war and had you working on both sides of the equation and seeing how they are both just looking at the other side. People who used to be their neighbors and now they're no longer people. They're animals that need to be put down. And the way they were talking about it is jarring and fucked up. And I think does a great job of illustrating how stupid war is and how stupid it is that we can't all look at each other as human beings. Right. But from a gameplay perspective, I loved being lost in that world. I loved figuring out the puzzles. I loved having those aha moments, you know what I mean? I loved seeing what they were doing with it. And again, I think it's a game that you get to the end of and it's like that came together way too quickly and I don't find I. But by the time I'm Processing that for the main story. They have the after credits or the whatever cut scene at the end of it where I'm like, oh, I'm in. I give me the number two where we're going with this. And so like, it's a game that is far from perfect, but I think in a year where we're talking so much about and me so much about frictionless experiences and we're also talking as a industry about AI, about, you know, everything being ruled by committee, it all being the most blase thing. Like, this is a game that is obtuse in rough edges and it's because a very small team worked on this and they made something I think truly unique and truly special. And I wish more than anything on this list, this is the game I wish more people played, took a chance on, took a shot on, because it is, oh, we want new ip, we want new experiences. I think this one is doing it and doing a lot of cool people would like, even if you're not the Souls person or whatever, like, it's existing underneath that benchmark in terms of difficulty and in terms of combat awareness. But it's like, there's something really cool here.

[B]

I love, love, love that you've been that guy for us here in this office with this game. Right. I remember when it was first announced and we all were interested, but there was like, this is another Souls. Like, and then we had that extra layer of like, like, well, they're not going to hold your hand, right? It's like you're going to have to be the detective. You're going to be the one to figure it out. And everybody kind of perked up of like, that's interesting. Like, okay, like, prove to me that this is worth it. And you have been the guy in this office to really hype this game up, Greg. And I love hearing that, right? I never took a chance on this game, never tried it. But like, every time you talk about it, I am a little more sold on, like, maybe I should make a night, maybe two nights of this game. Because, yeah, I do love the Souls games. I love good level design, right. I think the best part about a lot of those Souls games is the branching different paths. And you go down the left pass and you take 50 steps, you go, I'm gonna go back to the right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you go to the right one, you go, oh, well, I love that. I enjoy that. Right? And so, yeah, maybe this is it, right? Because this was kind of the first step of a couple other games, I think Adam Fall did something similar of

[A]

like, hey, we're not gonna.

[B]

We're not gonna just give you a map quest or we're not gonna put a pin down. You're gonna figure it out.

[A]

It's like, like, see, for me, Adam Paul was too obtuse with it where it was like, go to the southwest. I'm like, I'm in the southwest. Give me more than this. What am I looking for? This isn't doing what I want.

[B]

There was a game that came out. The Ukrainian studio from X that teamed up with Xbox came out, but it was super buggy. But I enjoyed the thrill of it, that I would try more of it. Stalker 2.

[A]

Stalker 2.

[B]

Stalker two. If you gave me stalker two with that shooting mechanic, with this kind of stuff, I think I'd be more in.

[A]

Okay. What were you into for your number two game of the year?

[B]

Number two? Kingdom Come Deliverance.

[A]

There it is.

[B]

From Warhorse Studios. Yeah, I fell in love with this game. A lot of people are gonna say, mike, you said that you weren't really an open world guy right now. And I will say Kingdom come deliverance 2 didn't feel like the super big ultimate packed open world game like a lot of them are, but it is, right? This is a very dense game. This is explore as you go. I said it. And I still believe that this is a crawl of a game. This is. You are really slow going at the beginning, and it's a crawl to a soft walk video game. It's about your journey. It's about what you and Hans and Henry do throughout this awesome epic adventure out in the European countryside. And I fell in love with it. I gave it a chance. I know our first time we talked about it, Greg. It's overwhelming at first. There's a lot of systems. There's a lot of different things at play. That kind of hits you as a player that go, man, this is almost too much. It's daunting. I don't know if I want this, but, yeah, it is a journey. It's an adventure. It is as long as you want it. 40, 60, 80, 100 hours, it's your adventure. And how deep you want to get into it really is your kind of play style. And when you start to. You give it your all and you say, okay, like, I understand that. I'm not gonna speed through this. It's not gonna be that kind of game. I'm gonna enjoy this. It kind of opens up in a different way where I fell in love with it, especially the characters, the Stories. There is some fun twists and turns. There's some great content in there that you're gonna fall in love with. But I, I just couldn't get enough of it. It's crazy that I'm talking about. I love it.

[A]

You pandered and it worked out.

[B]

I didn't think I would, I would love it as much as I did and I did. And the combat I hated at first and I still don't love it.

[A]

Don't you encourage the sword that kills everybody in one blow?

[B]

The moment you learn the master strike from Tomcat Tom it is like the game gives you the easy way out. If you are someone like me who doesn't enjoy the star and doesn't enjoy the, the very slow, methodical, brutal combat of. Hey, I'm looking at Greg come at me and I'm choosing which way he's going to attack me. Left, right, up, down. And I have to make sure I either parry block on that side or counter him on the opposite side and start swinging. If that's not something for you, if you don't want to try the other weapons, Right. Because there are more weapons than just the sword, then you're going to go to Tomcat Tom like me and you're just going to get the master strike which is simply read your opponent. Whatever they do, left, right, you're going to match them and you'll get the instant counter and attack. And that becomes boring and kind of brainless after a while.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it is the alternate route of if you don't want this then this is the way, this is the way

[A]

to get around it. Yeah.

[B]

And you'll find that it is not a all out war. This giant chivalry two type game where it is a hundred people running at each other. It is very one on one, one on three. You kind of put them in a line and you, you slow, you'll find that you'll get overwhelmed quickly if, if three or more people are around you, it's over for you. Right. Because it is that kind of combat. And man, oh man, I loved the music, I loved the design. The game is beautiful. There's this difference when I talk about a giant open world Bethesda game where the map is massive and hundreds meters of cross. This game doesn't feel like that. It's. It is that but it's not that it's broken into smaller sections but those sections are such, so rich in detail and so much depth to it that the smaller section still does feel like a giant Bethesda Game, but it's not right. You can walk from side to side, you can ride your horse, but the stuff that they have layered inside of it from getting lost in the forest and having someone tell you, well, I lost my daughter and her favorite place is this waterfall. And if you go down to the creek, go the creek down, you'll see a giant rock. Then take a left at the rock, rock walk up there, you'll see a path. And she's going to be out there in the open field. And it's like, you do that and you're like, man, like, this game is big. And it doesn't feel like that, but it is. And they added so much great side content and the stories are so good to get you off. Just that normal narrative of, like, I'm gonna stick to the main quest. Everything that you do has something going on that you're gonna fall in love with. There's purpose. Right. Of like, I got branded a couple of times. I got.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

Because I was caught stealing. I was. I was at a point where I needed things and I didn't want to bang on steel all day and be a blacksmith. Right. I didn't want to sell potions at the apothecary. And so I started stealing. They caught me and all of a sudden they were putting brands on me. And now people treated me different when I went to that city. And even Henry had the brand on his neck every cut scene. It was so cool. And so, yeah, Warhorse Studios created something special with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. And I'm looking forward to what they do next. It is a team now that, like, I'm definitely in on. And this was a RPG that I don't think I've ever played at such a deep level with all the rich stuff that they had going on. I just.

[A]

Do you think you've never role played this way in an rpg? Is that fair or what do you mean you're never.

[B]

Well, like, this role playing I think is different. Role playing is me and Roger and Baldur's gates. No game. Sure, sure gives me that. Like you said, right. With like, the training wheels and the safety rails in the bowling alley are off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where I can kill anyone and do everything. And all of these games, I find I want to be evil, Mike. I want to just terrorize the city and kill everyone. And you don't really get that in this. I got a little bit of it, right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This guy asked me, he's like, hey, I've fallen in love with like, the king's daughter here, but they won't give me any respect because I'm just an average jabroni. She's gonna get married to this guy. What I want you to do, steal from the city planted on him. Then the city will go against him. Well, this old lady found me stealing. She ran to the town guard I might have stabbed or killed her. Quest over.

[A]

Like, that's cool.

[B]

I like that role playing. But like, I'm Henry. I'm Hans, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not Mike and Roger going, oh, we're gonna cut Carlac's hut off just for fun. It's like, okay, well that's so mad.

[A]

And he was so mad.

[B]

They have a lot of that. They, they have more of that. And so, yeah, I mean, yanking my pizzle, like some of the lines made me smile. I was at the bathhouse way too many times. I opened up my own bath house. The story at the end was really powerful. Brought me to tears in my eyes. Like I really, really enjoyed the two of them and the bromance that they shared. The fun, the, the twist, the bad decisions that I did make. Made a couple bad decisions and I paid for that. You know, Lord von Berghoff, he was sweet talking me. I had to believe him, you know,

[A]

you had to believe.

[B]

But like, like for those who played it, I'm sure really loved it, enjoyed it. For those who are on the fence, give it a try. But this was a game similar to Expedition 33 that everyone was talking about throughout the year. And I'm happy that I did give it a try because I fell in love. Greg, let's talk about your number two.

[A]

Let's talk about my number two and your number seven. Yep. Skate. This would. I think when you and me were on game of the year on Monday, this might have been the pick that got the most. Chatters up in arms right away. Immediately pissed off that skate was in front of Ghost of Yote Cascade was. What was it, Bear number eight or seven? I forget the overall.

[B]

It was tied at eight with Night Rain.

[A]

Right, right, right. So there was a lot to that or whatever. And I went on a spirited diatribe about skate. I adore this game. I think all the criticisms people have of it. I understand where people are coming from, of course, but I think what we do and I disagree in the chat right now. I see what you're saying. I can't get over how much fun skate is to play. I think so many people came in with their own expectations of what skate would be, especially after skates 1, 2 and 3, they set up a thing of what skate is or has been. And so for skate to come out here and be always online, to be early access, to be multiple, I totally get the reaction people have had to it and what's wrong with it in their mind's eye. But for me coming in, I just wanted to skate. And I think that sounds too simple. It may be, you know, boiling it down too much, but it's true. And that's what I do in skate. And what I mean from that is that this game feels so good to play, period. I was never a Tony Hawk pro skater person. I was a thug person. Okay, let's go around a world, let's go have these missions, go skate that way. But the combo stuff of Tony Hawk was never my vibe. It is the vibe for me as somebody who my wife will not allow me to go skate. My friends tell me I can't go skate. I am too old to learn to skate. This game is just jumping in and skating and what I imagine a real skater when they go to a skate park and want to just blow off steam and practice. That's what I get out of this game. I so I understand where people are like, like, oh my God, I hate that they have these battle passes, right? Not even that. I hate that I'm grinding for these tokens. They get clothes I don't want to. Which I. I understand saying that, but I think, and this is eye of the beholder, obviously, never have I thought that is the goal of skate. When I turn on skate, I want to go skate. And so I will do a challenge here, I will do a challenge there. But I'll probably just head off to the skate parks. Maybe I won't. I'll skate through the city until I find a spot I want to fuck around in and jump off of. I think EA Bad battle passes bad. Always online bad. Like they're so. It's so easy to just immediately hate what skate is based on the terminology is used. But for me to jump in there and just play it, I think if for, you know, I don't have my stats in front of me for the year, right? But if you add up my PlayStation time alongside my Rog Ally time, you'd have this very high on literally the most hours I put into a game this year. And I say that because if you were to look at my map, there's three areas that you can get rankings on, right? 10 is the max. I have one at 9, one at 7, and one at 6 because I am not turning it on going I got to grind out my XP in this thing. I go, I got to go. Have fun. What what are I personally like session challenges where I look at the map and I go okay cool. This is going to be drop an area and you have amount of time to do this many kickflips this whatever. Da da da da. I like the ball bearing ones enough. I don't like the slam into the ground hall of meat esque thing. That's not like skate legitimately is what do you want out of this? And I think so many people have had adverse reactions to it because it looks like fortnite again. Everything I ran through with battle passes and microtransactions and always online. I think so much of that has obscured what is actually there. And I will stand by and like it was earlier. I know like you know Greg likes Avengers. Greg's like Starfield da da da. When I like those games I'd like to think that I present why they aren't tens out of tens. And I can tell you again with everything I've just run through of what skate is, blah blah. I do think that the things and terminologies and publishers of skateboard have gotten in the way of people being able to say wow. It actually feels great though and it is fun to play this game.

[B]

Greg, I'm right there with you, right? Like come take a ride with me just like you rode with Greg of like Skate period sucks. Skate sucks. It is not skate 4 that we all wanted. It is a live service game and it's an always online battle pass ridden, multi currency ridden fortnite looking video game game. I hate that we have a fourth area that somehow still has not been opened right that I have to do these daily quests and missions to grind up levels in certain areas. There are so many things to be mad at and to hate that because it's not Skate four. But at the end of the day it's on my game of the year list and our game of the year list. And there's this shared passion because skate is fun to play. It feels good. The team at Full Circle nailed it. That flick it system that skate was built on continues to this day to be the ultimate skate experience. I crave it, I want it. I want it in a snowboard game. I wanted more games. It is the ultimate sport enthusiast extreme sport just Mecca. They found it, they nailed it and they created it. And the catch thing about Skate like Greg said is like skate is about just having Fun and I want to have fun with my friends. And they did that. They made this giant open world that's now shared online with your friends. And I just want to go skate it. I want to do the challenges sometimes. I want to find the giant downrail and I just want to have a session with my friends. There is nothing more exciting to me than turning on my own Spotify playlist and just skating around and getting lost for 30, 40 an hour, sometimes two hours just skating different spots and they nailed that. There are so many things I wish they did differently but at the end of the day I can't argue and look you in the eye and say that's not fun to play because it's a blast. It is so much fun.

[A]

I'm going to be fascinated. I said this in game of the year talk but I didn't obviously we're not having that kind of conversation there of like what happens with skate. I stand by the fact that I think in a year to 18 months it probably doesn't exist. I think that EA has pulled the plug on it. It did not. You can go see the Steam concurrence and stuff like that, right? Like whatever the crazy. We publicize it. This is how many people are there to where you are in the 24 hour high. And yeah, let's see. It's in the. It's in the doghouse, it's in the shitter. But it is early access and I don't. My, my concern is for somebody who enjoys skates so much right now and has seen the improvements they've made from adding in hand plants right to had getting a season pass going to giving you these new things and new challenges and adding in you now have local co op or not co op voice, voice chat, you know what I mean? For whatever you like. They're adding in the things that first that people have wanted. Secondly people would also that should be there at launch but then you go well it's not launched, it's early access but they're charging for it. Well you don't really have to buy it though to go enjoy. Like there's so many conversations to have that like we're never. I don't think we're ever going to get sadly to a no man's sky moment where people are like it's where it is and it's amazing and I think it's because they'll run out of time from EA doing it because I just don't think they get it back. Yeah but like to your Point, there's a fourth of the map that is open you can skate in, but it isn't ranked and there aren't challenges to. When you're up in the high rise, there's an island over there attached by a bridge. You can see what they're trying to do, right. Of where you're probably going. The underground tunnels. They've added the 90s themes. Oh, when it launched. They don't have any brands. Adidas is in there now. Thrashers in there now, Creatures in there now. Like, clearly, this is spinning up. But I don't want. I wonder if they're. If when they get to, hey, we're leaving early access, if that's enough to get people to try again and do it it. Or if it's just DOA and dead and everybody hates V as they should because she's annoying as.

[B]

I mean, at the. The positive, right, is it's a free to play title.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

And that's a big deal for skates. Right. There's the diehards who love skate one through three. And it's like, yeah, of course I would have paid $60. Right. But I think there is a universe out there that's like, we're trying to get more people involved in this. Right. We know that you were gonna buy this. Right. But there's so many more that wouldn't have bought this for a full price. And we need them to try it, maybe fall in love with it and be convinced to get involved and be a part of it. And, yeah, Greg, you start to worry, how long is the legs on this?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What will be the moment where they go, hey, we're turning off the servers for good and you'll still be able to play the map or maybe not. And, like, you have this moment of like, yeah, you hope. You're like, well, no, I want them. I don't know, maybe like a Rumble versus Knockout City where it's like, just turn it off. But still, let me be able to play it right, because, like. Like, I need my skate fixed. I don't want this to end because you did make a great world. It is fun to skate. And, like, I hope that we get to that where it's like this. But. Yeah, what is this road map? Where do we go? They'll never have the peak concurrent players like they had the first week. Right. But they do have a baseline of, like, people love skates. And if there's some way that the marketing team can resell skate in a big way with version 1.0, that's your moment and that's your hope. But I don't know, Greg. Like you said, I don't know if we'll ever get there.

[A]

I don't know which, yeah, sucks, but they made their own bedded deal stuff. But for me, in terms of 2025, like it's a game that defined my 2025. But Michael, what is the number one game that defined your 2025?

[B]

Yeah, number one game. There's a game, Greg, that I said stood head and shoulders above the rest this year that made a just splash in my life that I will never forget. And that is clear, obscure expedition 33

[A]

Kind of Funny's overall game of the year.

[B]

A turn based video game. Are you kidding me? I fell in love with Final Fantasy 10 earlier this year. I tried it for the first ever time. I have gone on record many of times saying, you know, turn base is just a little too slow for me. I appreciate it. I've played many of turn based games that I enjoy. But when I come in, I want to play video games on the couch. I like something to be a little bit moving faster than that. But Final Fantasy 10 put me in my place and I fell in love with it. I got down with the systems and I enjoyed the ride and I said, I don't know if I'll have time for Expedition 33. I don't know if I'm burnt out on this, but maybe I'll get to it. And I'm so happy that we had a break during Thanksgiving where I said, you know what? Barrett approached me, said, mike, just play one whole Saturday where you play all the way to the end of part one. See if you vibe and from the moment go the story pulls you. What do you mean they're getting go moshed. They're getting erased out of the universe. What do you mean? They got to send a group of jabronis at the age of 33 across the pond to go fight some giant painters behind next to a giant monolith. And like there's been 97 voyages out there. What do you mean this is going on and right away the story pulls you in. The combat is a ton of fun. The Perry system added to this to make it a little more active than just I attack. I sit back and I wait for you to attack. Then I attack. Like I love that it keeps you involved all the way through. And I can't say enough good things about this game. I am blown away that that team over in France, Sandfall Interactive, was able to make A debut title, an indie game, whatever you want to call it and make it so freaking good. The characters you fall in love with, the voice acting is phenomenal. The stories of these characters that you will learn and grow with over your time playing the game are awesome, heartbreaking, grounded and fun. And I loved every single moment with them. The music in this game is top tier. It's crazy that all of a sudden you meet this gosh darn paintbrush monster, the Gestrals, and they hit you with the craziest saxophone solo you've ever heard in your entire life. Life where you're dancing, you're having fun, you're screaming mona me at the screen with Ski. And it's like, I love that. And it was just so good. And then to have stupid, sexy Ben Starr come into my life. Stupid sexy and look at Ben Starr and just be like, you're getting benched. Because I'm going with all the ladies here. I'm doing a Final Fantasy 102 and fall in love with myel cl and of course Lunae and like, like make our own journey and have those guys complement. That was great to have the Picto system and learn that unlock new pictos which then fight with them four times. You unlock that forever. Oh, now there's passives that you can add on to your characters with sharing all the pictos. Monoko who's just eating people's legs and then getting their powers. That's a crazy system like that. I never use this open world map that was beautifully designed. I wish it was like a little bit better to use with the cursor and maybe had like names on all of them that I just can get from the bat. But like, the open world map was beautifully designed. Each level, each world was beautiful to get lost into. All the exploration was rewarding and fun to fighting different cool, chromatic, chromatica blasted enemies that got you more the crazy mimes that were doing the dance and you had to break them to get new outfits for them. The outfits for each character was awesome. The DLC adding new outfits and more story was fantastic. Act two finishes and you go game of the year. Great story unrivaled. Awesome. I don't need any more. And they're like, guess what?

[A]

There's more.

[B]

We got an Act 3. And you know what? I love seeing the division with the Act 2 Act 3. People have like, it could just end at Act 2. I'm good. I didn't like Act 3. I loved Act 3. I didn't think I needed Act 3. I thought Act 2 was crazy and then Act 3 got even crazier. Even more learning about the world. This narrative. I could go on and on for hours about X Men.

[A]

You have. Your review is available.

[B]

It's a kind of funny freaking rocks. And I can't believe I'm saying that. I loved it. It was emotional, it was heartbreaking, it was everything. And so to end the year and say, yeah, Expedition 33 was my number one, I'm just. I'm happy to smile and say, yeah, that was it. Greg, take me there. What is your number one game?

[A]

My game of the year for 2025 is Octopath Traveler 0. If you've been watching, listening, you knew that was coming because after I reviewed at the beginning of December, I said that. And so there wasn't much time for anything to shake it up, you know, Octopath Traveler 0 is such a unexpected occurrence here. I did play and love Octopath 1 and 2, but I never rolled credits on either of them. They were both games that and weren't reviewed for. Kind of funny, I forget why if it was whatever. But I played them, enjoyed them, had lots of positive thoughts about them. But the eight play eight character narratives of them as I've talked about in this very episode, I'm a fan of being in the boots of one character. So it would oftentimes in Octopath 1 and 2, there were storylines I couldn't get enough of. Primrose, what up. And then it would be jumped to somebody else. And I'm like, I don't really vibe with what you're selling and what you're doing. Octopath Traveler 0, having us create our own hero from the beginning. Name your favorite dish from the town. Like, I had ownership immediately over who I was and what I was doing, let alone to be surrounded by such a great cast, you know, fence dia like these people that I was gonna be like, oh, damn, I'm riding with you. And to take it even further of your town gets destroyed, you come back to it, it's like we're gonna rebuild this town, but also seek revenge and head off on that. That I thought that narrative was so strong. And I was then awesomely awestruck and shocked to find out that that was part one. As I've said in my review and I talk about this game, this game is really three games in one. You get EPs, you get your first movie, your second movie, your third movie. And I think that first movie is so good, the characters and the villains are just eating the Scenery marvelous. Like, it's awesome. To then go to the third and be a little bit like our second. I'm sorry. And be like, like, oh, this doesn't seem like my fight, but I'm mixed up in it because I got told at the end in a very, I think back to the future, one way of like, it's all done. Doc shows up and he's like, Marty, no, we gotta go. And you're like, what the fuck? Really? We're doing okay, cool. Then by the end of that second story, be like, I fuck with all these people. You know what I mean? Renew. What up? What are we gonna do? I love what I'm doing here. And then to go to third, after the credits, the game is rolled credits. You go in here and it's like, well now, now we're gonna come up. Why not bring out Deborah Wilson right now, who we've been hiding for fucking 50 hours. We'll bring her out here to do some shit. And it's like, fuck, this game is so deep, so cool. And again, it really came to me when I needed it most. This is the year of me not being able to get into Expedition 33 and having a games cast where I was like, I think I'm done with turn based games. Like, I could not do Persona 5. I cannot do Claire Obscure. Like, I don't know what's wrong with me. And I cited in there how much I like, like Octopaths. But maybe I. I'm done with it. And so to fall in love with Octopath zero, not be able to get enough, have the combat be so snappy, have the team building be so great, have these eight, you know, characters that I'm controlling as a team on the screen to move around and find the best combinations and figure out who should have what spell to do this, to do that. Like the strategy of it, even though it's turn based rpg, the story of it, the feelings of it, the introduction of characters like E, like Octopath Traveler 0 was on another level this year. I'm so glad that I had the time and was able to make the time to really play it all November long for that December review embargo and just I love it. I love Octopath Traveler 0 and I hope other people give it a shot too because again, it's one of those like JRPGs, turn based RPGs, gigantic games that is a commitment and it's hard to get people to make time for it. So I was happy to be able to.

[B]

I love Hearing it. Greg. I love hearing you smile thinking about that. This has been a ton of fun. This has been great Greg.

[A]

Well guess what everybody. It's not over. I mean this episode is of course this has been the Kind of Funny gamescast. But tomorrow you'll get even more top tens as we head into Friday where we will then do our predictions episode for What Kind of Funny's top 10 in 2026 will be. But for right now, this has been the Gamescast. Remember each and every weekday we run you through the biggest topics in video games live on Twitch TV. Kindafunnygames YouTube.com kindafunnygame podcast services around the globe. If you love that, pick up a Kinda Funny membership of course. Patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple Spotify, you can go through and get everything ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a podcast we call Greg Way. And of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person small business. We did run quite late today. You have a stream to go do with Nick right now. There were a lot of super chat lists in there. Thank you so much. I do say dchard Rocker says Mike had his pizzle yanked by difference. Until next time everybody. It's been our pleasure to serve you.

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