Kinda Funny Fantasy Critic Finale 2024 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Fantasy Critic Finale 2024 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Overview: In the "Kinda Funny Fantasy Critic Finale 2024," the Kinda Funny Gamescast hosts—Tim Gettys, Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., and Snowbike Mike—conclude their annual Fantasy Critic competition. This episode delves into the intense discussions, strategic game selections, and heated debates that unfolded throughout the year, culminating in the crowning of the Fantasy Critic champion.

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1. Introduction to Fantasy Critic Finale Timestamp: [00:35] - [03:05]

Tim Gettys kicks off the episode by explaining the early airing of the Gamescast to accommodate a movie night featuring "Craven the Hunter." He emphasizes the camaraderie of the team and sets the stage for the main event—the Fantasy Critic Finale. The hosts briefly acknowledge Andy Cortez, who is protesting the competition's outcome, hinting at underlying tensions within the group.

Notable Quote:

• Tim Gettys [02:58]: "We're about to go watch Craven the Hunter… We'll cheer him up somehow."

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2. The Fantasy Critic Competition Overview Timestamp: [03:03] - [10:25]

The hosts transition to discussing the Fantasy Critic competition, a year-long game where participants draft video games and score points based on their Open Critic reviews. Greg Miller expresses frustration over the leadership and decision-making processes, particularly criticizing Tim Gettys for moving the competition forward despite unresolved scores.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller [05:50]: "If you were even worth half your fucking weight as a CEO, Tim…"
• Tim Gettys [10:25]: "So actually, before you call him, let's give some context…"

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3. Controversy Over "Marvel Rivals" Score Timestamp: [10:25] - [22:08]

A significant portion of the episode revolves around the contentious review score of "Marvel Rivals." Greg Miller vehemently criticizes Open Critic for allowing a low score from Josh Broadwell, whom he accuses of bias. The debate centers on how this singular negative review disproportionately affected the game's overall score, leading to Greg’s near victory being overshadowed.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller [16:10]: "If Josh would have not been so selfish…"
• Blessing Adeoye Jr. [15:18]: "Have you heard of the Outer Haven Production?"

The tension escalates as Greg demands that Open Critic retract or adjust the score, presenting it as an injustice to his team.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller [43:01]: "Games Radar Plus, this is your chance to do the right thing. Retract the score."

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4. Final Standings and Reflections Timestamp: [22:08] - [66:23]

As the competition draws to a close, Tim Gettys leads with 147 points, followed closely by Greg Miller and Snowbike Mike. Blessing Adeoye Jr. and Barrett Courtney round out the top positions, while Andy Cortez, despite his protest, secures sixth place. The hosts reflect on their game selections, admitting missteps and celebrating successful picks.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller [50:41]: "I had a really strong draft..."
• Tim Gettys [60:02]: "Like, things walking like a duck…"

Tim claims victory, asserting his strategic choices despite some bad calls. The hosts humorously acknowledge their errors and express anticipation for future competitions.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Gettys [60:02]: "Like, why would I do that? That was silly."
• Greg Miller [63:25]: "Two quick things. I accept the formal apology…"

5. Award Predictions and Conclusion Timestamp: [66:23] - [66:23]

Before concluding, the hosts briefly mention their game award predictions, tying it back to the Fantasy Critic results. They announce plans for the next year's Fantasy Critic and tease upcoming content, including a movie review session of "Craven the Hunter."

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Gettys [65:26]: "Fantasy Critic for 2025 starting in January…"

6. Closing Remarks Timestamp: [66:15] - [66:23]

Tim wraps up the episode by thanking listeners and encouraging support for the next Fantasy Critic cycle. The hosts hint at continued playful rivalry and future episodes, maintaining the show's engaging and competitive spirit.

Notable Quote:

• Tim Gettys [66:17]: "I'm coming for you, Josh."

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Key Takeaways:

• Fantasy Critic Competition: An engaging, competitive game where hosts draft video games and score points based on critical reviews, fostering strategic choices and friendly rivalry.
• "Marvel Rivals" Controversy: A focal point of the episode, highlighting issues with review scoring and perceived biases within the Open Critic system.
• Final Standings: Tim Gettys emerges as the winner, with Greg Miller challenging the fairness of the results, leading to ongoing tensions and humor among the hosts.
• Future Plans: The hosts express enthusiasm for continuing the Fantasy Critic in 2025 and teasing new content, ensuring ongoing interest and participation from the audience.

Overall Insight: The episode captures the dynamic interplay between competition and camaraderie among the Kinda Funny Gamescast hosts. Through strategic game selections, debates over review fairness, and light-hearted banter, the finale offers both entertainment and a glimpse into the complexities of gamified critique systems.

Transcript

[Tim Gettys]

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime.

[Greg Miller]

There's nothing sweeter than baking cookies during the holidays. With Prime, I get all my ingredients delivered right to my door, fast and free. No last minute store trips needed.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And of course, I blast my favorite.

[Greg Miller]

Holiday playlist on Amazon Music. It's the ultimate soundtrack for creating unforgettable memories. From streaming to shopping. It's on Prime. Visit Amazon.comprime to get more out of whatever you're into.

[Tim Gettys]

What's up? And welcome back to the kind of funny games cast for Friday the 13th. Oh, 2024. Of course. I am your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by blessing Ado junior.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good day, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Snowbike Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

Good morning, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Greg Miller.

[Greg Miller]

I wish I could say it was a good day. Justice is being railroaded. I have a lot to say and I want first want to applaud Andy Cortez who is protesting this farce of a fantasy critic. Thank you.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. Andy Cortez will be joining us.

[Greg Miller]

He's just running protesting the farce of a fantasy.

[Barrett Courtney]

Or did he forget that games cast was first today?

[Tim Gettys]

You know, it's one of the other games cast is happening before games daily today for a very important reason. I got a Craven Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wow.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm craving the hunt. Okay, we're about to go watch Craven the hunter. Greg, that might bring your day up just a little bit. Your mom's going to come hang out with us. A lot of joy, a lot of laughter. Good times to be had. We'll cheer him up. We'll cheer him up somehow. I got two up, my sweet.

[Snowbike Mike]

I like that the team is going out to see Craven together.

[Greg Miller]

Let's just talk about the failure of leadership. From the top.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

From the tippy top.

[Greg Miller]

If you were even worth half your fucking weight as a CEO, Tim, you would say we're canceling everything today and just streaming Helldivers. But instead you're like, let's do this game. We're. Let's call. Let's call the fantasy. The votes haven't even been counted yet for fantasy critic. All right. We are still waiting on so many people to file their reviews. You're like, let's call it. Let's give out the trophy. I'm the CEO. I can do whatever I want. And then you're like, all right, cool. On top of that, arguably second place game of the year, hell divers. Maybe first place there drops new content. Last night. You're like, let's go watch Craven. Let's go watch Craven.

[Tim Gettys]

It's almost like we have a thing we do here. Bless called in review where we rank, review and recap all the movies in the franchise. And we've been doing this for years at this point. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I know what you mean.

[Tim Gettys]

We're going to throw it all away just because Greg's upset.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Also, Greg manages the Gamescast.

[Tim Gettys]

I know. I don't even know why we're doing this today.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know why we're doing this today either.

[Tim Gettys]

But I'm happy we are, everybody. Because this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we get together, talk about you, all of the biggest things in video games. For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. A little housekeeping for you. Like I was saying, we're doing the games cast early today. The. The boys are still going to do games daily after this, but we need to go watch them.

[Greg Miller]

Gotta go watch Craven.

[Tim Gettys]

Gotta go watch the first showing of Craven today.

[Greg Miller]

That's what we have to do with our Friday.

[Tim Gettys]

So we're gonna go watch the movie and then come back. And if you're a kind of funny member, you're going to be able to watch our in review live as we record it. I'm sure it's going to be a good one because we're going to be hot out of coming out of that theater. What will you have to say? Will it be the best of the Sony Pictures universe of Spider man characters movies or the worst? I don't think there'll be any.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's competition. That's some competition right there, Ma.

[Greg Miller]

Did you ever see Madame web? Venom. Venom 2. Venom Last Dance. Her opinion is going to be really good on this one.

[Tim Gettys]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Greg Miller]

Imagine this is where you start the cinematic journey. Oh, wait, Morbius. No, that's a no. No, no.

[Tim Gettys]

Morbius, everybody. The stream will be Fortnite. Anything more you want to say about that, Mike?

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, yeah. The Fortnite crew is back. You know, ballistic mode. We are holding out on Helldivers because of course, our fearless leader will not be there, Tim. So me, Joey, Kevin, will jump into Fortnite. We're going to bring it back to 2017.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, okay. I thought. I thought you were saying that we're playing ballistic mode because I was going to cancel my plans and come join another fantasy.

[Snowbike Mike]

Cancel plans.

[Greg Miller]

Blessing will join, but Tim's like, oh, we got to make these shows. We promise these shows. God forbid we just say, know what? Snow day when Tim said, greg, you know what?

[Snowbike Mike]

We should.

[Greg Miller]

Greg, I know you have it all at ign, but why don't you quit? Why don't you quit and then try to support Nick Scarpino for two decades? And I said, I don't know about that. He said, whenever you want to, you can cash in snow days and we can just play games all day long. He said that? Did you say that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sounds like a direct quote.

[Tim Gettys]

He's two decades.

[Greg Miller]

I'm halfway there, you know.

[Tim Gettys]

Thank you to our Patreon producers Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today we are brought to you by still wakes the deep and aura frames. But I'll tell you about that later. Let's get into it. The topic of the show, it's fantasy critic time. We've done a whole year of this. It's time to crown the winner. But before we do that, actually, I just want to give a shout out to this entire crew. Shout out to Barrett, shout out to Roger, who's not here right now, but I'm sure he's watching. Last night was one of my favorite kind of funny nights of all time. What an amazing show. Great time, hanging out with everybody. And it was such a rare thing of having the whole crew able to react to the game awards normally. Bless and Greg are gone. Not only was it a great show, great time hanging out with everybody, amazing job from the entire team. Roger clipping out like no one's business. The set looks better than it's ever looked. Barrett with the time codes and just the overall perfection of running the shows last night. Incredible stuff. So round of applause for kind of fun.

[Andy Cortez]

So many time.

[Tim Gettys]

Incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. I feel like it's just important because, like, I mean, already I. I saw the video has like 150,000 views, which is awesome. So thank you guys for watching.

[Barrett Courtney]

And I decided this year to do something different. Look at Greg talking shit about my time codes, you know? You know, I time coded the world premieres as world premieres and not what the games were. So smart if that was the first time people were watching the game awards, they could still be, you know, surprised by things.

[Greg Miller]

Also shot for you. Also shout out to Barrett. He's looking great in that insert coin shirt. That's that Persona shirt, right? Yeah. That's great on you.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Can I give a shout out as well?

[Tim Gettys]

Go for it, man.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'd love to give a shout out. There was a man on this panel that saw the future.

[Greg Miller]

I didn't see this coming. I didn't see this coming.

[Snowbike Mike]

Indiana Jones, Todd Howard, Troy Baker. And then the one, the only actual Harrison Ford showing up on stage.

[Greg Miller]

How could Greg Miller know that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Helldiver, when am I going to get my flowers for the Naughty Dog new IP prediction that you all doubted me for.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. Thank you. There it is. Welcome to the Game Awards. The star of Indiana Jones and the great circle, Troy Baker. And the star of the Indiana Jones films franchise, Harrison Ford. Clap, clap, clap, clap.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, I'll definitely let you keep that.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Tim Gettys]

Join me in welcoming Bethesda's Todd Howard and act Troy Baker close.

[Greg Miller]

They. They do give an award for best indie game. And I think everybody here can agree you make a great case for best indie performance. Oh, now is where Harrison Ford.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you.

[Greg Miller]

There was. There was another guy, though. Look at d. The other guy. Our eye contact here is so good. Absolutely. I wonder what he thinks. And here I go. Oh, is it going to be a video message? And then I see the feet and I flip.

[Tim Gettys]

Right there. Right there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Called it.

[Greg Miller]

Who is the gu. Goddamn fucking king of calling shit for the fucking Game Awards? I'll tell you who. Trending Gamer 2015. That's who can fucking call a Game Awards Fantasy Critic winner 2023 as well.

[Barrett Courtney]

Who do you know, Greg?

[Tim Gettys]

Who do you know?

[Barrett Courtney]

Who do you know?

[Greg Miller]

People.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

People in chat said Blessing. Everybody guessed the Naughty Dog new IP. It was a 1v3 on the Gamescast Prediction episodes. When I was talking about this thing blessing. 1000% was blessing.

[Greg Miller]

Blessing everybody was. Last night predict wild two days after.

[Tim Gettys]

The game came out.

[Greg Miller]

Give me this. Of course Harrison Ford's gonna be there today.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

In fact, of course Harrison Ford's gonna be there. The game just came out with his likeness.

[Barrett Courtney]

He hates going places, though.

[Tim Gettys]

But he knew somebody make the game's class clip for Blessing so he can see.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, damn. Enough about.

[Greg Miller]

Not to mention, that's probably just one somebody put in his chat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Watch the vod. It was there already. It was in the doc.

[Tim Gettys]

We've been doing this grave. The fantasy critics. We've been doing it for a couple years now. Yeah, this year. We all got together about a year ago drafting games, putting them on a list, putting them on our little teams. I don't.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say. You don't understand what Fantasy Critic is, do you?

[Tim Gettys]

But Craig, you want to. You want to take this?

[Greg Miller]

Sure. We love Fantasy Critic here. Of course you should go play fantasycritic games. You can play with your friends. The idea is it's like fantasy sports, which I know not everyone is familiar with. But it's simple. Stick with me. You go through with your friends, get. You have your own teams. You then of course come in and draft video games for that year that are coming out. You can start whenever I do believe, but obviously you want to start at the beginning of the year like we will next month. You go in, you draft a certain amount of teams, then you have a leftover budget. You can then use that money to bid on games as they get announced throughout the year or right away if you wanted to. You assemble your squad. Then as reviews go through, the open critic score is then used to either give you points or take away points. Every point above 70, basically. I'm sorry. Yeah, every point above 70, you get a point. As you get higher, you start doubling points. But we don't worry about that. Every point below 70, you lose a point. There's also counter picks where you go, oh, Tim drafted this game. I need. You need a counter pick at the draft. So I say, I think that Tim game he picked is going to actually do bad or not as well as the others. I'm picking that. And then for every point that. That one would be above 70, you lose a point. Every point below 70, you'd get a point for your counter pick. Then you get to the end of the year when all the games are done and it's set, it's said, and all the reviews are in. This is important. All the reviews are in. You are not still waiting on a score that could change game spot. Tamor Hussein. I don't know what's going on over there.

[Tim Gettys]

Call him.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, do you want the gamespot review of Marvel Rivals? Like you're asking for reviews like Barrett.

[Greg Miller]

Barrett, Barrett, you and I CI to eye all the time, and you know that. All right?

[Barrett Courtney]

CEO, CEO Junior.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I like to see. You know what I mean? I don't mind losing when it's fair, but this is a rigged.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Crazy critic.

[Greg Miller]

Is all I'm saying. Like, we just haven't counted all the scores yet.

[Tim Gettys]

So actually, before you call him, like, let's give some context to why you'd even be calling him.

[Greg Miller]

Because I'm the champion from last year.

[Tim Gettys]

And I'm the champion from this. No, everybody.

[Greg Miller]

No, no. Put an asterisk into that, all right?

[Tim Gettys]

I don't know, man.

[Greg Miller]

Put an essence.

[Tim Gettys]

I don't know. Listen, here we are.

[Greg Miller]

Listen.

[Tim Gettys]

Points.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Knock over your wall.

[Tim Gettys]

146.63 in first place. Greg, 142.77 in second place. You're four points below me, Greg.

[Snowbike Mike]

It really feels like Marvel Rivals should have an 8 and the 0 as that open critic score.

[Greg Miller]

So as Tim has called out here, we, we, we were coming down to the wire here. All the other games had been counted for everybody else and ourselves and it came down to Indiana Jones for Tim. Marvel Rivals for me. As you all know, everybody in the video game industry got kicked in the head and suddenly thinks Indiana Jones is a nine. I don't know what's happening out there. You know what I mean?

[Barrett Courtney]

It's a great game.

[Greg Miller]

I hate. You know what, Barrett? We see eye to eye all the time. Eights. I got no problem with nines. Game of the year, best thing you played. That's when I started going, what's wrong with you, Lucy James? You know what I mean? Is there lead in your water that I didn't know about? You know what I mean? Thank God I'm not living in that house anymore. I digress. Tim's got a bunch of points off of that, right? Which gives him a lead. Right now at 147 is where Tim is on the fantasy points right below him is me at 1:43. This has been mine. I've been out in front for a while and it's seemed like all Greg's there bear seemed like a threat. Tim, you know, we're, we're gonna get into the airing agreeances on this one. All right. I know you got issues too. I know you got issues too.

[Tim Gettys]

All right. I just want to let everyone know I have no issues.

[Greg Miller]

I want to give a big shout out again to Andy Cortez who I know fuming about this so Maddie could come into work. Yeah, because he said it's an injustice to Greg Miller, my hero. Yeah, the man I based my entire life on. The man who is the whole reason I twitch stream. And I should probably give him and his company that revenue. I, I stand down or he just.

[Barrett Courtney]

Slept in a little bit.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, because he was so distraught tossing and turning last night. I mean, Baron, not everybody is like you, all right? When there's a miscarriage of justice, they can just roll over and ignore it.

[Snowbike Mike]

All right, all right.

[Greg Miller]

There's a miscarriage of video game justice happening right now. We were on the highest of eyes last night. Here we are in court right now.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm just happy.

[Greg Miller]

God damn everybody. Why are you craving?

[Tim Gettys]

Anyways, my favorite thing about all this is like legitimately, we don't need to do this episode today.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Greg scheduled this episode so he could.

[Tim Gettys]

Do this like, Greg is a monster.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Greg is like taking up grievance with himself right now. I'm.

[Greg Miller]

Because Rivals should be this low. All right, a 76 on open critic. And you go there and you start going, why are we. Why were we doing it here? What could I run a tight ship when I. When I schedule all the games content here, okay? And I put it here for a very specific reason so that next week I could rub it in all Yalls faces on every one of these shows that I was the champion. But what now I gotta say no. And we gotta wait. We gotta asterisks. We gotta talk about this. All right? And we gotta go talk to one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Man as commissioner of this whole thing, because I was never consulted about any of this. I'm not taking the final scores until the end of the year.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Tim Gettys]

Which sounds right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

I have also until the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Here's the thing. You're still going to lose. Like, I do think that Marvel Rivals isn't going to get you enough points to get you above Tim. So I do think that this episode is good. Is going to be the.

[Greg Miller]

Tim can take the trophy today. Again, my. With all due respect. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think Tim's won it.

[Greg Miller]

With all due respect, Commissioner, I've never gone against you. You've always been good to me. Always been good to me. You know that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sometimes too good. You know what you did last year.

[Greg Miller]

What a trade that was. Tim, I legitimately have no bones to pick with you. All right? My issue comes down to one man, all right? And that man I've never met, but his name is Josh Broadwell, all right? Now, he reviewed this in Games Radar Plus. Now, you want to talk about most of my past haunting me from this year. Remember the whole thing when I stumbled upon the biggest story of all time, that Games Radar changed their name to Games Radar plus, like 15 years ago and nobody knew until it fucking got called up by VGC and Jordan Midler. Josh Broadwell has personally fucked me. All right? That's what you need to know is going on. You go to the fantasy, you go to the Open Critic, where GameSpot has not weighed in, where so many other people are probably still. Wait. They're having so much fun. They're having so much fun over there.

[Tim Gettys]

That's what it is.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Greg played two minutes of Marvel Rivals and Bounce.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I installed it right away. But look at these scores. Simon Carty, a man who I think is like so picture perfect for current ign. Just vapid. Not a good thought in his head. Simon Carty says 8 out of 10, right? Game rant, 9 out of 10. Then you go down to. What do you got? Gaming Bolt, 8 out of 10. God damn, these are some good scores. Outer haven Productions, right? Four out of five. You go here. Spazzio Games, 6.5 out of 10. Respectable name.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Anything else any of these outlets do.

[Greg Miller]

Like when they review video games?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Have you heard of the Outer haven production?

[Greg Miller]

Says 8 out of 10.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You didn't know those niggas in Spain?

[Greg Miller]

I know that. Get out of here. All right. Every time I'm like, I need to know about alt chart, they're giving it 95. Then we got Josh Bronwell games radar plus 2.5 out of 5. That means it's a 50 out of 10. 50 out of 100. That's what Metacritic is seeing when they do this to me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think out of.

[Greg Miller]

It's all on Josh.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think out of all of these reviews that were given, it was the one 2.5 out of 5 review to.

[Greg Miller]

Bring it down 100%. If Josh would have not been so selfish. All right, if he would have not been so selfish. Because here it might have gone up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

To like 78 maybe.

[Greg Miller]

Let's read Josh's verdict. All right. Very well written. It's a great review. Marvel Rivals wants to reinvent the hero shooter genre with its complex characters and special synergies, but it's so preoccupied with trying to be like Overwatch that it forgets to play to its own strengths. Its oversized roster also needs more balancing and more differentiation from Blizzard's stable of heroes. So well written, totally great review. Just play ball, Josh, you know what I mean? Like, come on, you know, you know, open critics can look at that, say it's a 50, a 50. Throw. This game, it's trying to be over. What? I don't again, I played it for two seconds like, oh, this ain't. I don't like this game. I don't like this game. You know what I mean? But I wouldn't say, oh man, 50 out of a hundred, you know what I mean? Very well written review, Josh, but fuck you.

[Tim Gettys]

So here we are, we have the reviews.

[Greg Miller]

What a surprise. What a surprise. Another one of these so called video game journalists sinking to personal attacks. Oh my God, I get a DM. I'm just out here doing my job. Simon Carty, DMs me. You're vapid, you big fuck. Listen here, Cardi, alright? I'm getting fired up, everybody. All right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Big fucking hilarious.

[Greg Miller]

Cardi, do me a favor. All right. Go boil some more cabbage in your hovel where you're living in Hobbit land over there in London. All right. Nobody's got time for this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you type that in the British accent, too. That's cool.

[Greg Miller]

Hairy.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, so Marvel Rivals does have enough reviews to make the cut to get the scores on the correct. But. So it is December 13th, Friday the 13th.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Technically, this fantasy critic doesn't end until the 31st.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That is correct.

[Tim Gettys]

So are there other outlets that have not reviewed Marvel Rivals that might end up changing the score?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, how many reviews are on there on the Open Critic right now?

[Tim Gettys]

Right now?

[Greg Miller]

20. 20.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's a lot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I don't. I mean, it's a good amount, especially.

[Barrett Courtney]

For December where people are going to start going on break very soon.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What do you need? Like, what does Greg need to get.

[Greg Miller]

The win from Tim, I appreciate you asking that question. Can I get the one Games Radar plus retract this review?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, what's, what's the literal number is what I'm asking. What does four points to tie?

[Snowbike Mike]

Five, five to win?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think you're getting that. I don't know if you're going to get that by the end of the year.

[Tim Gettys]

That's a lot of points.

[Greg Miller]

That's a lot of points. Again, Josh Brodwell didn't mean.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, yeah. But GameSpot has not reviewed it though.

[Greg Miller]

Right. So if they came out and said, yeah, 10.

[Tim Gettys]

You want to call Tam. I think Tam's.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think Games.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't think 110 would like drastically change.

[Greg Miller]

I want to be very clear, be very clear. I want to be very. I don't understand how Open Critic works because it says, you know, top critic average. So is. Are there non top critics? Are you just a critic and your thing doesn't count?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think any critic that is, that is, I guess registered with open critic is considered a top critic. I don't think they're picking.

[Greg Miller]

But see, I click on it and then it's like they have top critic stars and then they have ones that are not top critic stars. Oh, and that's my problem.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let me double check this.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Can we sit here with a straight face and talk about justice, objectivity and fairness and not be making Alt Char a starred review? They're not a starred review. Open. I'll turn it. I'll, you know, I'll, I'll take the anger wherever I need to. Open critic. What's your problem with my boy Alt Char? Tom it over There gave it a 95 out of 100. Can we not. I'm sick of this alt char erasure. You know what I mean? Like they didn't. They didn't do anything. Let them off the bench. Let game line are off the bench with their nine or four out of five. You know what I mean? Or again, simple way to fix this. Remove games Radar's top critic decide they're not a top critic. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They have two lists of critics here. They have the top critics, which is a long list, right? I think all the names that you would think of are on the top critic list. But then they have another list that is critics included only in the percent recommended score. And like honestly I don't recognize any of these names. And so it. I think the top critic is what you're looking for anyway. Like, though why those.

[Greg Miller]

Matt gives it a 9 out of 10. Not a top critic. You gotta stop and at some point, Tim, you know what I mean? You look around, you're like things walking like a duck. It's eating bread off the ground. It's in the water. It's a fucking duck. So we need to talk about open critics bias against Marvel rivals and why they're not letting people off the bench here. Okay. Xbox era Jesse nor 7.5. Actually, don't. Don't worry about that one. We don't need to get that. We don't need to make them a top critic. We don't need to make them a top critic. Eric Hodges try hard guides 10 out of 10. Not a top critic though, you know. Mike, what's going on over there? What does Josh Broadwell know?

[Tim Gettys]

It's a good question. I don't know. I don't know at all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know where we're going with this results.

[Tim Gettys]

So the results as of December 13th are. I'm in first place. Greg is in second place. We got Mike in third place.

[Snowbike Mike]

Which what I believe Barrett's in third.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm three fucking projected thing here.

[Snowbike Mike]

Rejected.

[Andy Cortez]

Actual.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You can click the thing. The arrow right next.

[Andy Cortez]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

I think.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, we got it. We got it. Barrett's third. Mike is fourth.

[Snowbike Mike]

What did that happen?

[Tim Gettys]

It's fifth.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Big shout out. Of course. Open criticism. And the team over here at Fancy Critic. We changed the score for Path of Exile. We put the score in because a lot of people were saying it wasn't going to be blessing.

[Barrett Courtney]

We got to fix early access stuff next year, baby.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yes.

[Barrett Courtney]

Unforced games as well. Also insane.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was fourth like two days ago.

[Greg Miller]

So that's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Damn.

[Greg Miller]

Good job. All right.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank you.

[Tim Gettys]

Andy in sixth and Raj in seventh. And like, I don't want to talk shit, but like, Raj has 55 points.

[Snowbike Mike]

Roger got lost this year really long.

[Tim Gettys]

That's a third.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And Roger was maybe the person I was talking the most shit about Fate's critic going into this. Like, he was doing the study. Like, he was doing a lot of research going into this moment.

[Snowbike Mike]

He chose Dragon.

[Barrett Courtney]

When you do your own research online.

[Snowbike Mike]

Counterpick, you knew it was Dragon Zombie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

2 as a counterpick was a big mistake. Metroid Prime 4 Beyond was a mistake. Mina the Hollower, Hyper Lightbreaker. But both. The. Both of those. Them for a lot of games didn't come out. I don't know what he thought.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like, but also a lot of his games that did come out. Like, even if he didn't counter pick Dragon's Dogma, he would still only have like 72 points. At the end of the day, it just. A lot of his games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know what he saw in like Locomotive to pick it for like a fancy critic thing.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, he was trying to go for the off the.

[Snowbike Mike]

He was going for the sickos out there. He was going for like those weird super wild games that only a certain audience would be reviewed.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No rest for.

[Tim Gettys]

He said, I didn't know the buttons.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. He did get fucked on. No rest for the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No. Yeah, that's kind of bad for that.

[Snowbike Mike]

That game came out and like, a lot of people held back their reviews as opposed to like me with early.

[Andy Cortez]

Access people where people were like, fuck.

[Snowbike Mike]

It, let's just review this game. They're like, you know what? Actually, we're not ready to review this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hindsight is 20 20. We're being able to get Hades to in path of exile kind of fucks.

[Snowbike Mike]

I know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Kind of fucked up.

[Tim Gettys]

Someone's like, the rules got to play by him.

[Barrett Courtney]

Maybe we change the rules next year though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm all considerate because. Yeah, that's kind of weird.

[Greg Miller]

Commissioner is going to commission. I respect it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's what I do.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, look, let's look at everyone's list.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Go team by team, right? What happened?

[Tim Gettys]

Let's go next to Andy Cortez, who's.

[Greg Miller]

Sitting this out in protest. And I appreciate that he is sixth.

[Tim Gettys]

Place in this completely unquestioned league. And here he is, everybody.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He made it.

[Andy Cortez]

Did I win?

[Greg Miller]

Andy, I respect you so much for sitting this out in protest. You know what I mean? I appreciate you letting me have your time on the floor here to really let everyone know that there are some big problems at Open Critic. There's a Marvel rival miscarriage of justice. Exactly. That's what we've been saying right here.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, you were saying that too.

[Greg Miller]

And then you got Tim over here just pushing it through today. You know what I mean? He won't let me delay it. He won't let me play Helldivers. What do you want me to do today? What do you want me to do, Tim?

[Andy Cortez]

It's Friday the 13th. You know, I got cursed this morning.

[Tim Gettys]

Andy, is there anything you want to say about your games?

[Andy Cortez]

I mean. Okay, though, you know, I don't want to call out this Josh guy.

[Greg Miller]

Real quick too. Real quick, too. I know sometimes this is. I'm being serious.

[Andy Cortez]

Part of the bit.

[Greg Miller]

No, yeah, yeah. Tim just did the face where he's like. He's not sure if I'm going serious or even crazier. I. I always like to. You know, I. I don't like breaking kayfabe. I reached out to Josh this morning, who I have not met before and DM'd with, and I was like, hey, do you care if he's like, no, that's hilarious. Go for it. So Josh did a great review. Obviously. His review is great. Obviously. You should stand. I'm going to go back into character now. Fuck Josh.

[Andy Cortez]

I had a similar Josh on Anger Foot. For me, it was a lot. A lot of eights. A lot of, like a lot of eight, couple nines. And there was like one five. And that really, really broke me. Otherwise, for somebody who, you know, was not understanding the rules mid season and then Barrett calling me out for not understanding the rule and me not understanding.

[Barrett Courtney]

You dropped Space Marine 2 for some reason and then picked it back up.

[Andy Cortez]

And even when that happened, I didn't understand why that was something to laugh at until five weeks later when somebody was like, well, no, you don't have any drops because you dropped Space Marine. I was like, oh, that's why Barrett was making fun of me for that. Like, I didn't understand the whole concept there. Also, Skate Story fucked me, you know?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

You gotta come out.

[Greg Miller]

Skate Story.

[Andy Cortez]

You gotta come out.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Release.

[Andy Cortez]

You got to just release your game. It's unbelievable. Also kind of shocked that Brothers A Tale Two Sons had that low of a score when the original was already kind of like hovering around the 83 point era. I was like, all right, well, a better looking version of the original.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, we'll surely change, right? Things have changed.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Got an 81.

[Andy Cortez]

Kind of a bummer. Yeah, brother, tell two sons. But aside from that, you know, Star Wars Outlaws, you know, that was one that I called it. That was just a Hail Mary that just didn't work.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, that's his second round pick, right? And if you rewind to the start of the year, you didn't know it was gonna. If you were like Star Wars Outlaws, you'd be like, oh, yeah, like that's got to be an 80 75. That's a tough pick.

[Andy Cortez]

I didn't know it was going to be as disastrous as it was.

[Tim Gettys]

It was my counter pick and I.

[Barrett Courtney]

Talked to it and I wish I didn't. I wish I had counter picked it.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Stalker 2, only with five points. That's a tough pick too.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Really thought, you know, but you know, it's a war zone over there. I should, I should have known. They're, you know, they're going through some tough stuff and well, I think they're heartbreaker.

[Greg Miller]

Because that is such a great example of this year, right? Of like, that is such a standout of. Why did you have us review this then? Right? Because it was. By the time it got out, everybody's response, it seemed to our review and so many other reviews was like, oh, it's not a problem for me. Day 1 Patch fixed everything for me. And like you guys who were reviewing got like what, something like 20 some hours with the day one patch. Like, that was stupid because that's what this ends with.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And I, as you know, I didn't know the census war was gonna escalate either. You know, of course I wasn't aware of the geopolitical sort of point of our nation in our world. So that would definitely kind of hurt me a little bit as well. But otherwise I'm. I'm pretty proud of myself for not being last place. Like the fact that I'm in triple.

[Barrett Courtney]

Digits, well, that rounds up. You're technically 99.7, so.

[Greg Miller]

Nice.

[Tim Gettys]

Three digits.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'll take it.

[Greg Miller]

That's four digits.

[Andy Cortez]

That's huge for me. That's great for me. I love that. That's five digits actually. 99.0. That's four.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

That's not easy. Frostpunk. I was proud of that one. Yeah, that was a good pick. Under night in birth two. Sis Celeste when I picked it. Bless. I didn't know it was a fighting game. Just thought it was a. Because I remember somebody commenting, man, Andy, really repping for the fighting for the fighting teams. Like why I just got Tekken 8 and made a whole lot of sense when that game came out.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Tech was a huge pick though.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, that was definitely. I mean it was my first one and I, I thought I would have had a lot more sleepers later on and the sleepers ended up just being me coming in late for the, for this show. So. Yeah, otherwise I'm still proud of myself for not understanding the rules until about like thirds of the way.

[Greg Miller]

Excited and more confident for next year.

[Andy Cortez]

100 absolutely.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I love. I love, I love Fantasy Critic. You see there's a Patreon like you should all support Fantasy Critic. I love it. And the thing about it is even here and losing this close, like what a fun ride it's been, what a great conversation has been. And I'm so then excited for January to go and draft a new one and start thinking about what I'm doing and try to fix what I did wrong.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I actually have looked at their Patreon and it comes with a lot of cool features. One of those features is you can do a conference and get up to 20 people in one league. And I was thinking, I was like, man, I wonder if there's a way that I can do this. We obviously we don't employ enough people to do a 20 person fantasy critic, but I want to figure out some way to like do this even if it's on my own time because it sounds fucking involved.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, maybe like bombs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, like a giant bomb. Get easy allies. Get min max in here. We each send our five top people.

[Andy Cortez]

Because this isn't, this isn't Final Fantasy or a Final Fantasy Football. This isn't fantasy football, Mike. Where you know, an eight person league is kind of pushing it and you'll get like 12 person leads where it's like my fucking third pick is a shitty wide receiver who's never going to get time. Like there's still a lot of good shit on the bench when we look at the game selections and yeah, I. Next year I feel a lot more confident because I really feel Mike like, you know, I spent my time out in the second half and it's like at the end of the game it's like if I still had that time out that would have been great and I would have dropped Skate Story and picked up some other shit. But I just wasn't looking forward to me.

[Barrett Courtney]

Would you also have not drafted and filled up your team right after the first week that we drafted?

[Snowbike Mike]

You did do an odd move there.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Why?

[Andy Cortez]

I just didn't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Every year there's one.

[Andy Cortez]

This is my first year and I'm just, I was kind of just looking around like what are you all doing?

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Andy Cortez]

And yeah, I just didn't really fully.

[Greg Miller]

Understand that's always the hard thing of like you get out of that draft and that game you didn't draft but have been looking at is there and available and you're like well do I spend the money? But you have to remember how much stuff going to come out and then. But then you have to remember to be on it. Like the one that breaks my heart is. And I know we're getting a little bit ahead as we go through teams but it was Astrobot where Astrobot got announced and I was like fuck yeah. And I was so excited about it. But if just totally, totally spaced on going in and making a bid. Yep.

[Tim Gettys]

Meanwhile I eye on the prize. That was the one I'm like I'm getting at whatever it takes because I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Had enough monies where I could have I would have outbid anybody on Astrobot. And it just totally spaced on it.

[Andy Cortez]

I always think I'll be probably still the worst ish at this game. Like post picking. Right. Like, you know, when we have that one draft I'm sure I'll feel really confident. But throughout the rest of the year when it comes to, you know, because I'm, I am, I'm the dude who this game is not always on my mind.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So when a game comes out I'll get excited and then I'm the guy who misses out on the waiver wire picks.

[Tim Gettys]

You know, I literally put it on my like bookmarks tab at the top of my Google Chrome just so I'd always remember and be like, okay, keep this in mind.

[Andy Cortez]

That's good, that's good. I'll buy. You know what, I'll buy one of them. Like I'll just have a monitor in my room.

[Tim Gettys]

Next up we have Snowbike Mike who I think let's go to Bless this shit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Breaks my heart man. Because like there are contender I what breaks my heart here is I'm looking at the choices I made and I can see the reasoning and it just, it breaks my heart to see things just not pan out right. Flight sim Flight simulator. So for context, number one, my pick number one was Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 with the idea that the previous Flight Simulator game you go on Open Critic, it has a 92 on open critic.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So I thought that was an easy slam dunk.

[Greg Miller]

At least 80.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

At least 80 at least 90 was my hope.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And this isn't your fault.

[Greg Miller]

Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's where I'm at.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. You did nothing wrong.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I start breaking down crying.

[Greg Miller]

You pick.

[Andy Cortez]

You picked Patrick Mahomes as your quarterback and he threw four interceptions. Like, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, this is me picking Derrick Rose and him, like, breaking his ankle again.

[Andy Cortez]

D. Rose child.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I mean, from Illinois, but yeah. Microsoft Flight Simulator fucked me going through it, though. Like, Black Myth Wukong, I think ended up being what it is. What it is that got so for context, Flight Simulator ended up getting a 76. Black myth got in 82. I think I was hoping for hire seeing the trailers and seeing how cool and, like, you know, innovative it looked. But it came out and it is. I should have expected this to be what it is, which is a really cool action game. But, like, is the combat bad? No, it's not great. So, yeah, like, that did what it did. Rise of Ronin also disappointed me. And I think if I'm going by the history of Koei Tecmo, maybe I could have seen this coming. But I thought this was going to.

[Greg Miller]

Be the PlayStation exclusive. We thought of something different. Yeah. It's also ridiculous that Rise of the Ronin was this year.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

It does not feel like a 2024 game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Grand Blue Fantasy Relaying kind of did what I thought I was going to do. Got an 81. Pepper grinder came in under what I thought that was going to be as well.

[Barrett Courtney]

That should be an 85.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That got a 79. And that is the story of my fantasy critic team is I look at a lot of these and I'm like, you should have done better. Sol got an 82. That seems appropriate. I in Chronicle, I thought would have been the one for the nerds. I thought that would have been the one for the GRPG Sigils who love Sweeten. Little sleeper hit that came in at 76, which came way below what I thought I was going to do. Lorelai was a good pick. Got an 87, steamrolled heist two. Good pick again. Thought it was going to do better as a Steam world game. I got you hyped up.

[Andy Cortez]

That's what it was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. But also, I know about the previous Steam World steamroll Digitized people love those games and those usually do really high on Metacritic. Neva did what I needed to do with an 87. And then Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D remake was kind of like my last Hail Mary of man. I really need something to do over 90 here. Ended up doing 85, which is good, but just wasn't good enough.

[Tim Gettys]

Well, this list, though, Bless you put the work in, you know what I mean? This list shows somebody that was playing this game. It might not have been your best game, but you played it.

[Andy Cortez]

You had a big fourth quarter comeback. Bless.

[Greg Miller]

That's what's always interesting about it, right? Is like watching those top, what it six that we draft and then the bottom half, right? And you see the blind picks from. For with you from the draft, right. Where you don't have a lot of information. You're just hoping you want to get these big titles. You make educated, I think, smart choices. And then you really turn it on when it's like, oh, here's something being announced late, you know, Lore line, the laser eyes. Here's a preview. Nobody would have drafted that. I don't even know if it's announced, but you know what I mean? Like, we wouldn't have been ready for that.

[Tim Gettys]

The next up, we have Mike in fourth place. And I feel there's an injustice with Mike when it comes to Marvel Rivals.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, Tim, you know what? Marvel Rivals and I have a long story, a long history. But it turns out that I'm up and they're down. Okay.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean?

[Snowbike Mike]

We might have broke up.

[Greg Miller]

They broke.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm up. Turns out I got the right pick.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is when your ex finds the next partner and they're like, you're like, oh, I'm way better looking than that guy.

[Tim Gettys]

Got it.

[Snowbike Mike]

You know, after the blunder, which was Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree pick, you know, a lot of people remember that maybe I wasn't there. I thought it. I was excited for it. You know, of course, I really messed up with Hollow Knights here. Yeah. But I will say, if you look at my team, I actually think I'll say it. I only have four misses and the rest are very strong selections. Right. Two of those misses are games that did not come out. And then the other two are Final Fantasy DLC and LEGO Horizon, which I'm very surprised, only got 72 really fantastic.

[Tim Gettys]

DLC was this year. Holy shit.

[Snowbike Mike]

If you look at Lego Horizon, you would have thought that should have been higher, but it did not get that. And Final Fantasy that was the ending DLC that was one of those where it's like, hey, they kind of already gave it their all. This is a smaller piece. Messed up on that. But I mean, I played the game very well on the back of early Access titles that were red hot, like Hades 2 and Path of Exile. Also doubled down on DLC, of course, with Destiny 2, the final shape. I doubled down with World of Warcraft War Within. So, yeah, I had some really strong picks here. If I didn't have a couple of games missing, I would be. I would be flying up in this ranking right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I really feel for Mike because, you know, there's a lot of inspired choices here and it really was just like the ones that miss. It's not like you were picking bad. Yeah, thank you. And also just looking at the score and. And I know the motivation this year was like, you know, maybe. Maybe the rules kind of elude us every once in a while, Mike, but we, you know, I was really pulling for you to be Barrett and you should, you know, so close.

[Barrett Courtney]

Why me?

[Andy Cortez]

It's because, you know, Bear's a stickler for the rules, you know, and Mike is a rule breaker.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm a rule breaker.

[Andy Cortez]

And he was like, I really want to be Bear. I just want to talk to him.

[Snowbike Mike]

Hades 2 with a 90 massive Dragon's Dogma 2 that came through. Plucky squire with 12. I was very happy with World of Warcraft the war within with 15 little guardsmen with 14. Shout out to that great game. Destiny 2 the final shape with 22 points.

[Andy Cortez]

Amazing.

[Snowbike Mike]

Come on. That was a fantastic.

[Greg Miller]

Would you be interested in trading Destiny 2 for Marvel? Let's get it back on your team.

[Snowbike Mike]

I will gladly send that over to you to make sure that I've already.

[Greg Miller]

I've already sent it in if you want to approve it.

[Snowbike Mike]

Final Fantasy Let me down. Like I said, Lego Horizon really let me down. And then Path of Exile. Three days ago, if you asked this panel, it was going to be, oh, Mike's not going to get the points for that. And then, boom. I woke up this morning, I typed an open critic and I had a big smile on my face.

[Tim Gettys]

Tim.

[Snowbike Mike]

I was like, yep, I'm up right now. And so I've taken fourth place this year. I'm very proud of myself. Hollow Knight Silk song. I'll put the clown nose on. I really thought you were gonna pull me through on that.

[Greg Miller]

That again is another educate. It's gotta happen. It's gotta happen.

[Snowbike Mike]

And I did it because Andy's my best friend. You know what I mean? I only know that game because of Andy. I believed in that game because of Andy. Andy didn't let me down. That team let me down.

[Andy Cortez]

It seemed more and more true as we went throughout the year. We had that one ESRB listing in Korea or something. It's like, oh wow, it's getting those things are happening. Xbox put it on their flyer and it was like in the next 12 months these games will come out and it's been 38 months or whatever. Like what is going on, man?

[Barrett Courtney]

That was two years ago. And then also didn't the team like right before our draft say like, hey, this game is farther out than you think?

[Andy Cortez]

Superfluous Team Cherry said that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know. They said that verbatim. I I think they said it's like not coming in the 12 months for sure.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, maybe 13 months.

[Tim Gettys]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Greg Miller]

This episode is brought to you by SkinnyPop. Popcorn, perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Oh so light and crunchy. Skinny Pop Original Popcorn is the snack you've been searching for. Made with just three simple ingredients. Popcorn kernel, sunflower oil and salt. Snacking never felt or tasted so good. Perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Give yourself permission to snack and pick up Skinny Pop Original Popcorn today. And we're back. And I want to go to the super chats where of course Engine 25 reviews writes in and says, I apologize for giving Greg shit. For indie by math, the average of provided scores for rivals is 80.6 or 82.6 after they remove the 50. What the fuck? That's all I'm saying. Josh, this is a personal affront to me. Games radar plus, this is your chance to do the right thing. Retract the score.

[Tim Gettys]

Retract or bump it up or.

[Greg Miller]

Mike approved the trade I sent you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, okay.

[Tim Gettys]

The math.

[Snowbike Mike]

Be math.

[Andy Cortez]

And over there for trade if the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Score'S already been out.

[Greg Miller]

No, hey, I. It said I could. I could propose the trade. I proposed the trade. Let's see what happens.

[Andy Cortez]

I am.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Turn that off.

[Andy Cortez]

Look, I'm not. I'm not trying to suck up to Greg here because he's my boss and I. And I blanked on this games cast. But I like. I'm not trying to talk to Josh either. I just don't understand how you could give the game a 5 out of 10 when it is.

[Tim Gettys]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. It's fun when Greg's doing in character and I appreciate the suck up thing, but then you got a little too serious with it. Like remember, they're on the 2.5 scale, they're on stars. It's a different thing. So it wasn't a strict 5 out of 10. That is just how Metacritic slash open critics can interpret the score.

[Andy Cortez]

We need better interpreters.

[Greg Miller]

You can still have a problem with the 2.5.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm just.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm just like, sticking up for Marvel Rivals because I hear you.

[Greg Miller]

Josh's review is, like I said, very well written. I'm not. It's not. I don't want to turn this into me actually, or any of us actually having beef.

[Snowbike Mike]

Rainbow six Extraction. Okay. Game deserved better. There's only one better on the scores.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And that's what Marvel Rivals is today when you go to open credit. That should be an 80 minimum.

[Andy Cortez]

Minimum.

[Barrett Courtney]

That was a singular bad score.

[Andy Cortez]

The Rainbow Six extraction.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're not talking about any bad scores. We're just saying the number that me and Andy look at. That's all that matters to us.

[Andy Cortez]

That was the 2023 miscarriage. That was crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like Rainbow Six extraction. Why does. Why is that the.

[Andy Cortez]

It's because he had it on the list. He kept on bringing it up, and I didn't know anything about Fantasy Critic. I was like, mike, they're you on this. Like, this game. This game is better than they're saying, you know. Wait, what did it get? Oh, I got a 72. That seems right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That seems accurate.

[Tim Gettys]

God. In third place, we had Bear Courtney again, another junior man that played the game very well.

[Barrett Courtney]

Not well enough.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I'm.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm proud of myself this year. I haven't done Fantasy Critic in a few years, but yeah, of my original draft, I think there was only one game that I dropped because Tim, you and I were on that like Mario or Switch High and we're like, let you draft. I think. I think the Mario Mario platformer. So I. I dropped Mario Kart. But all the other games from my original draft are still here. And that's mainly because Andy counter picked Tales of the Shire. And once previews started coming out and I was like, oh, shit, I hope they delay it. And thank God they delayed it. And so, yeah, my original picks with metaphor, Persona 3, Rise of the Golden Idol, Unicorn Overlord. Like the story There is Trust and Atlas. They had a fantastic year. And Rise of the Golden Idol, like, I wasn't invested in that game. And then, you know, Blessing and I got into We're Golden Idol boys now. And that game's just. It kicks ass. And yeah, I'm very happy about that. Thrasher is one I was hoping for a. A bit more from that is the Thumper. Yeah, that's the Thumper. Team, and it originally only came to Meta Quest, I believe, and then I think it's coming to PC and Steam later. But if I'm going to hold a grievance, if I have a grievance, is that, you know, maybe, you know, there's a couple of top certified reviewers on Open Critic who had reviews of Thrasher that would have given more points to Thrasher that maybe I was submitting to Open Critic, and then they never, you know, like, accepted, you know, some of those reviews. So I feel like Thrashing would have.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Gotten, like, these are all commissioner responsibilities. I'm in their discord.

[Greg Miller]

Are you interviewing?

[Barrett Courtney]

Well, you're not a commissioner of Open Credit. This is specifically for the Open Critic site.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, I see.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Where there was a couple of, like, outlets who had reviewed Thrasher, but for some reason weren't put onto the Open Critic, like, Meta thing. And so I would have only gotten, like, three more points, I think, from it.

[Andy Cortez]

But, man, I hadn't, like, I had no idea even what Barrett's argument was, because, like, I just don't like Open. Like, no, there's some reviews that weren't put on. Like, oh, okay.

[Barrett Courtney]

From outlets who are usually on Open for whatever reason, they weren't put on Thrashers, and so it would have gotten me a couple more points.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why are you that deep in the game? Goddamn.

[Barrett Courtney]

Because I was looking to fucking win blessing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was like, why you say the word?

[Greg Miller]

Barrett, you say the word. Mike, you're with me. Andy, because you being late to work here with you. We go storm the offices.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, justice, the big high rise they got.

[Barrett Courtney]

And that was, like. That was coming out, like, in a time where, like, I thought there was still a real shot there, right? Shout out to Janacho, who talked so much about Balatro when it had a demo early on in the year. So I picked that up, and this.

[Greg Miller]

Is something we were talking about earlier. This should be banned again. Barrett was using inside sources, you know.

[Barrett Courtney]

To get information about a podcast, about a demo.

[Greg Miller]

Just saying. Just saying. It seems like, you know, we had a bunch of rules that if we had a review code, we couldn't do anything.

[Andy Cortez]

Great point.

[Greg Miller]

Just over here. Just listening. He's a rat in the wall listening.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, he's got the. He's got the recorders in the Watergate.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know, Felt good. About Nine Souls. That's also one of. Just a personal favorite of mine this year. Glad that it's got the review scores that it does. I personally would love to see it have a 90, but I know it doesn't work for everybody. And here's the thing. Dragon Age, the Veil guard. I feel like the previews that were coming out about Dragon Age, I was like, 90, guaranteed.

[Greg Miller]

Maybe.

[Barrett Courtney]

Maybe high 80s. And the fact that I reviewed this, though, I was like, man, Christ, that was. That was a tough one. And then my two big blunders, Sandland and Alan Wake to the lake house. And I was. I was truly surprised by the reviews of Alan Wake, too. Like, I. The way y'all were talking about those two DLCs, I really felt like the sickos were waiting for the lake house specifically.

[Andy Cortez]

That's the one that I feel you should be surprised by Sandland. I don't. That's the. That's the one that looks.

[Barrett Courtney]

No, that's the one that sticks out.

[Andy Cortez]

Like a sore thumb for me.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm not surprised by Sand Land. I said Sandland is a blunder on my part.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, no, no. Like, I. I think I look at Alan Wake scores, and I'm like, 74. That's kind of surprising. I would have thought that'd be higher.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

But Sandland on the list, I'm like, I. You know, when that demo came out, I was like, this game kind of sucks. Like, I. Like, that's the one. I'm like. Like, that's the one real bad choice where everything else is just, like, I.

[Barrett Courtney]

Called it a blunder.

[Andy Cortez]

You should have won, man. You should have won Sandland. Take that out. I'll trade you right now, Barrett. I'll give you another game.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, my two big blunders around the time that I was trying to make, looking at Sandland, I remember also thinking about Batman. Arkham Shadow, I believe. And I was. I was thinking about that, even though with my initial reaction, more for the Barrett, Courtney brand of having a Batman game on my list. And then the other game that I was thinking of instead of Alan Wake to the lake house, that I was thinking about, honestly, for most of the year that I'm surprised nobody else picked up was Call of Duty. And those. And those were just. I think those two decisions, if I had flipped them, that would have gotten me a guaranteed win. And so. So some bad choices in the second half of the year, but I'm.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm at least right now proud to be in the top three.

[Andy Cortez]

What's. Do we know what Call of Duty's sitting at?

[Barrett Courtney]

It's like an 83. So it would have gotten me, like, compared to Alan Wake. What, nine more points? And then Arkham Shadow was at an 85, I believe. So that would have gotten me 11 more points compared to Sand Land, so.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm gonna try to pick that up.

[Tim Gettys]

That's good to keep in mind that Call of Duty, even like this one, I would say, is kind of regarded as like, like one of the better ones. And it only got an 83, but that's still 13 points.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And then second place, we have Greg Miller.

[Andy Cortez]

Hello, everybody.

[Greg Miller]

It's me, Greg Miller. Miscarriage justice. What's up? What a year. What a year for fantasy critic. This is. This was a really fun one. I appreciated how much we were committed to it. We, you know, Blessing and me have done it through P.S. i love you, then through PSLVU X cast, then through, like, we've done iterations of it. And it's cool to see people get more and more involved because it has been for some people said it and forget it, and they'd never come back to it. So I had so much fun this year doing, arguing about it, seeing what was going on with it. I'm sure you did. I did. You know what I mean? This is, I mean, imagine saying that he looks out his window drinking his Lacroix coffee for some reason. I did a coffee when I was drinking Lacroix, and he just sees me, just injustice all over me. I'm waiting it and I'm rolling it. You know what I mean? It's all over my chest. It's in my hair.

[Andy Cortez]

It's really.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I wanted.

[Tim Gettys]

I had a good time.

[Andy Cortez]

It's the inaction, you know, it really.

[Greg Miller]

Is, you know, you know what I mean? Stand for something or fall for everything.

[Tim Gettys]

Two snow days, everybody.

[Greg Miller]

No, this is a really good one. I, I, you know, Barrett was a threat the entire time. I, I will, I will admit.

[Andy Cortez]

Funny.

[Greg Miller]

I will admit. I, I never thought Tim had a real chance when he had the, the Mario Platformer on there. There was something else switched. You had or no. Did you not? I thought. Did you ever drop anything?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I dropped. I, I, I made some bad calls.

[Greg Miller]

And like, that was the thing is, early on, I kind of laughed you out of the room where I was like, okay, Tim's Tim. I. Because I was, I was going for.

[Tim Gettys]

Second place the entire time.

[Greg Miller]

There was the, this isn't the year, but there was the one year where you filled it all on the first day. Right?

[Tim Gettys]

That was the first time.

[Greg Miller]

And so, like, I was expecting more of a performance like that out of you.

[Andy Cortez]

You gotta tell me those lessons, Tim.

[Greg Miller]

You're on the shows. You're watching the show.

[Andy Cortez]

But like, if you made that same mistake, you got to be like, hey, for the newbies. Don't fill it all out on the first day. You know, like, you gotta come on. It's the inaction, you know, in action.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

You're watching a kid, you know, not being able to tie his shoes. You're not even teaching him.

[Greg Miller]

It's like he's the frog from Frog and Toad, but he's just stepping on tadpoles. You know what I mean? I love rocking Toad, man. Anyways, yeah. So, you know, I had a really strong draft. I thought Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth 93, right? 25 points. That was immediately. That was so early in the year too, where it was like, papa. I was out the gate, ready to go. Paper Mario Thousand Year door gets me 19 points on an 89. Fuck yeah. Let's go. Alan Wake two nights bring 12 points. I honestly am a little shocked by it because it was one of those that I did my third pick in the draft. Threw it down and then it was like, should I drop that? Like, DLC is always such a weird thing. It doesn't get reviewed by as many people if again are the sicko is going to be there for the Allen Wake way. I I when it got a 12 and then it was like, oh, the lake house is still coming on Barrett's team. I was like, the lake house might have been the right way to go because that's going to be more of the Alan Wake 2 experience than this one, which was the the goofy iterations Twilight Zone.

[Barrett Courtney]

And it was the opposite.

[Greg Miller]

Shocked by that. Like a dragon Infinite Wealth. Of course this is one that there was drama to a degree about where if we remember we came in here and the rules this year where we will not pick anything we are reviewing or have a review code for or whatever. And like a dragon had come in two days before. But we had a conversation at the table where it was. I wasn't reviewing it and I only knew as much about it as before. Or we all knew as much about it. But still you guys. You and Raj didn't feel comfortable.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was a thing where there was. It was back and forth because it was like a dragon. Then also Tekken and also Persona and also Persona 3 reload. And I think the conversation was like.

[Barrett Courtney]

Just because the games were what they were.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like, I don't think us playing the games really exactly swayed us as far as like these games are what you.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. And I wasn't playing it. Not that it matters.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Mike had a point though, with it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I would have picked it, but you know.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

I didn't pick it because I had the review code. So I held straight to the bargain.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But we did talk. We talked. We did talk about it beforehand. We're like, all right, these games are on the table.

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I remember them making that decision.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm not so sure.

[Snowbike Mike]

No matter how much I don't know if I heard that.

[Greg Miller]

Anyways, 20 points. 20 points for me on that one. I'm stoked about that. A Vessel of Hatred, I thought was another gamble that paid off. You know, I obviously, I love Diablo and that sometimes gets hard of like, I know that I love this thing and I'm gaga for it, but is it going to play for the people? And you know, 13 points off vessel of Hatred. I was happy with. My thing with Fantasy Critic is I want double digits on every game. That's. That's the goal on every game. I feel that puts you in a really good spot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Consistency.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Right. So I was. But I was worried about it. Another. Another Crab's Treasure. My first single point game, a 78. 8 points this one.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm shocked by that.

[Greg Miller]

I was shocked by. Of it. But it really proves something. And I think we can look at just about every other list and find them. I think Pepper Grinder is another good analog too. Is that indies are. I feel so hard to put into these things. You look at this indie, it looks stunning. It looks cool. It's doing something different and maybe it really resonates with you. You really like it. Which was not the case with another track, Crab's Treasure. It was a souls like. Right. Which isn't my deal. I did play it and enjoy it, but I was like, I'm not going to be crazy for it, but what we had played at the GDC events and on our own streams, I was like, this is going to really fucking hit with those people. And to put it on only get eight points. I was shocked. I really thought that was going to do better numbers than that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think this is one where for indies you kind of have to be sure. That's why I think Barrett made a good, good one with Balacho where you heard the preview. Like you've seen the game. Like you understand what you're working with here. I feel like I made a similar thing with Pepper Grinder where Pepper Grinder I picked because I also like. I saw. Seen the game. I forget if that was. I forget if we saw gameplay before no, that I picked up later 6 I saw it at GDC was like, oh, that looks cool. It's Devolver. Surely that's going to be good. But like that's not enough. Like you kind of have to be sure that this is a thing that is going to be a hit for the genre.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, I will save for the Balatro pickup. It was purely only because of listening to Giant Bomb. I had never seen gameplay. I didn't even know really what the game fucking was. That was truly a shot in the dark based off of two men's vibes on a podcast.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nice.

[Greg Miller]

From there. Yeah. Banishers Ghost of New Eden. Let's be honest, I dodged a fucking bullet here. I got 10 points off of that. I'm very lucky as somebody who is like, I'm enjoying myself. This game's too long. I'm gonna stop playing it. You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. There's some of these you can look at, Greg and you go, that's the developer's fault or that's the reviewers fault.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Andy Cortez]

Like Josh, you would never blame yourself. Yeah, yeah. Like another crab treasurer. That's the reviewer's fault. I would say that's at least an 83 minimum. Banishes ghost New Eden that games need. It needs to be half as long like it is. There is such an incredible game there. And the fact that while I was playing it and was loving it, people were telling me in the chat, oh yeah, it's 60, 70 hours long. Like no, no, no, no, that's not what this should be.

[Greg Miller]

That's not what I want.

[Andy Cortez]

It's. It's such like legitimately I was. Was stunned by the performances and the story moments in my first like seven hours with it. And then I was told how long it was.

[Greg Miller]

I was like, oof, no, I don't know this much. I'm not that invested in the story and where we're going. Then you get, yeah, another per pick from the heart. That paid off enough for me. Obviously I didn't win, but I'm happy WWE 2k24 getting 10 points. Like I know wrestling games are wrestling games. How are they gonna, you know, blah, blah. But I, you know, watch the tea leaves on this. Done the previews for it. But like they're putting a lot of cool in here. They already got a great base. They're adding on to it. It is the, you know, 30 years of WrestleMania mode. 40 years or WrestleMania, whatever it was of like, hey, there's all this stuff going on. Yeah, 40 and that's going to be cool. And it worked out to get 10 points. I'm happy with that. Right. Like WWE 2K, 22K is not going to be an annual pick for me. That's not a guaranteed.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

I thought this one specifically seemed like it was going to perform well based on nostalgia and where we were. And I think, you know, when we get to my top 10 list in this getting on there, I think this is such a encapsulate. Encapsulation of where WrestleMania 40 was. Right. And what that energy was and Cody Roman and all that stuff. Blah, blah. Crit Master 78, 8 points. Another shocking one for me. This was one that I was at the GDC Awards and the. They do the, you know, the Independent Game Awards before that. And when I saw this one go up there, they won a. I think they won maybe. Overall, I was like. And I looked at it, I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. And then we got it and I played it and reviewed it for us and I was like, this is so cool. I think 78 is not outrageous, is too far. But like, this is a game where I'm like, this is an 80, 81 at least. Like, this is so clever and so cool. A typing RPG where you're discovering all this, the performance, just so clever. And get saddled with a 78.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought we were getting inscription 2.0 with this one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought this was going to be one of those, like, wow, here's this shocker. 9 out of 10 that suddenly you need to play this year.

[Greg Miller]

Crypt Master is one you do need to play. I would definitely go and encourage every to pick that up and try it out then. College football 25, 81, 11 points off of that. Again, super happy with it. When we were doing one of the episodes, this is after draft one, I remember, I think it was you, Bear, right. We were going back and forth where you were like. I was like, I picked it. And you're like, it's not going to even get double digits. And me and Mike were on it and we were arguing. No, you don't understand. Like, it's been so long since the last college football. This is going to be something special. And.

[Barrett Courtney]

And it barely got double digits.

[Greg Miller]

But again, which is again, I. First off, you lost. You're third place. You're far away. Don't worry. I made you scared, though. You were saying, I Want to get 76 is what you're scared. Anyways, though, I get back to it. This is another one where it's like this. I will not draft college football next year. I do not expect college football to do to get higher than this. I would imagine it would be lower. And then you have Marvel Rivals as we've already said a steal, a miscarriage of justice. We are not there yet on the scores. This is all Josh's fault as the super chat pointed out with the actual stat stats of math.

[Snowbike Mike]

And then of.

[Greg Miller]

Course replaced where I counter picked that which I think might be my year two of counter picking that.

[Tim Gettys]

That's good.

[Greg Miller]

Paris Lily I counter picked last year on it and I'm happy to counter pick again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's always a reliable counter pick is replaced.

[Andy Cortez]

Marvel Rivals fans stand down and stand by.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Gonna wait for the scores.

[Tim Gettys]

And then next up is me with 147 points here currently winning. We'll see. We do have two weeks left. Thank you very much.

[Greg Miller]

But I want to know he doesn't want to work anym more this year. Nobody's reviewing this.

[Andy Cortez]

This is honestly this is like a lot of your game showdown wins where you will have a big victory even though you up a decent amount. Like the fact that you don't have a game here with a score and you still have that.

[Tim Gettys]

I know.

[Andy Cortez]

Amazing.

[Tim Gettys]

All right. That's. That's my thing is there. There was a couple choices I made that were bad. The main one was dropping Metal Gear Solid three Delta.

[Greg Miller]

Whatever.

[Tim Gettys]

I should have dropped Mainline Mario Platformer and then they delayed Metal Gear and then I would have had another pick. So I could have got even more points here.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

So I definitely fucked that up. But next year I won't. I've learned I am improving and I'll otherwise a couple. A couple choices. I don't think I made any bad calls with the games. I do just think that there was a couple that I was really hoping more from Princess Peach Showtime being one of them that I. I really believed in Nintendo for that. Yeah. Five points really dropped the ball and Penny's big breakaway was such a. A shame. That game from the Sonic Mania team to some extent really should have been I think like a oh crap standout indie special platformer and it was just pretty okay. I ended up going back to it later in the year and I enjoyed it a lot more than I originally gave it credit for.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I think it's a solid good game. But yeah it's. It's not what you would think from that studio based off of coming off of Sonic Mania. I was looking forward to like a hit.

[Tim Gettys]

Exactly. And yeah. So 77 I'm kind of there with. With with Penny's big breakaway, but definitely wished we got more. I lucked out with Star Wars Outlaws as a counter pick. That was a bad call. I don't know why I did that.

[Andy Cortez]

But only it was a good call.

[Barrett Courtney]

I talked to you into it, only losing five points.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, hey, I'll take that. I'll take that. But yeah, a couple other. Like, it's weird that I'm in first place with, like, things like 77 for Mario and Luigi brothership. Like, I feel like I kind of just like, like, point added up two.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Decisions that brought you here.

[Greg Miller]

Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's Elder Ring. Shadow of the Air Tree is your first pick with 94 on Metacritic or Open Critic. And then Astrot. Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

But also, don't count out, like, even though they're not 90s, but animal. Well, and Indiana Jones and Silent Hill 2 Remake, which was one game that I was expecting to get like, a 75.

[Tim Gettys]

Silent Hill 2 was my, like, the. The. The big Tim pick of, like, that. I was rolling the dice on that one, and I lucked the hell out loud because it looked bad and then it ended up being amazing. So hell freaking yeah. And then, yeah, Animal. Wow was another one that I just had such good vibes going into it.

[Andy Cortez]

What does that flag mean next to Silent Hill?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I assume hover over it.

[Greg Miller]

It has all those.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We recently decided that this game is really more than a remake. It's a reimagining. So basically, it's how they categorize.

[Greg Miller]

Got you. So again, see, they can put notes on there and apologies if they want to put one on. Marvel Rivals. Call out Josh.

[Tim Gettys]

But anyway, I had a lot of fun doing this this year, and I feel like I did actively play it. I mean, you can even see it.

[Greg Miller]

Like, yeah, you did great, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, I did play the game. And yeah, a lot of his Nintendo games. Cause I like Nintendo.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, you know, somebody said in the chat it's already gone by, and I know we've talked about it too, but to win with a blank and with a minus is so impressive. But again, you made just such great calls with Erdtree, of course, being the number one pick. But animal. Well, right, getting you 19. Then Astrobot for 29, Echoes of Wisdom for 15. Like, those are some great pickups.

[Tim Gettys]

But going second with the mainline 3D Mario platformer, like, that was just playing a game. Like, y'all got in my head. You know what I mean? I'm just like, why would I do that? That was silly. That Was really silly. So, yeah, I'm the winner. Everybody deal with. Guess what? I won Fantasy Critic. I won game showdown, season two.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, well, you know, if, you know, if Mike remembered that I was, you know, that I had him play for my team and he didn't blink out.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did win season one. Roll the tape back.

[Tim Gettys]

Thank you. I. I appreciate it. I appreciate it, Greg. There we go. Barrett.

[Greg Miller]

Two.

[Barrett Courtney]

Two quick things. I just want, you know, I accept the formal apology from all of you for clowning on me for drafting Metaphor as the first pick. And then also people were saying earlier that Mike ran a tight ship on his team. Just a reminder that he spent $75 to bid on Assassin's Creed Shadows, which then I'll do it again next year.

[Snowbike Mike]

Because you know what? Barrett's competition. A lot of people don't understand that Barrett has a giant brain and he's always working and sometimes you got to box out your competition to hold him back. And that's what I did.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't know if I want.

[Andy Cortez]

You got to spend money to make money.

[Snowbike Mike]

Mike was going to spend 55. I spent 65.

[Greg Miller]

Giant Mike.

[Barrett Courtney]

All I had was like 15 bucks left on my.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Spend money to make money, Mike.

[Tim Gettys]

The show's not over, though, everybody. That was Fantasy Critic. There's one other competition that we need to talk about, and that is our game. Awards predictions. We all predicted who's going to win every single category of the game.

[Greg Miller]

So these are what, these were the award predictions?

[Tim Gettys]

Yes, the award predictions. And I forgot the stipulation here, but something about a dunce hat.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Bless. What did you come up with?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I forget. I think it was like you wear a sign that says, I'm a loser if you. If you're in last place.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

[Tim Gettys]

It's a little complicated.

[Greg Miller]

Not really.

[Tim Gettys]

It's a two way tie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh.

[Greg Miller]

But the fact is we just, of course, are pairing this with Fantasy Critic. Right. So I would say whoever has the most fantasy. Of course.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Pairing with Fantasy Critic.

[Tim Gettys]

Tied in first place with 16 correct predictions. It's me and Andy Cortez.

[Andy Cortez]

Come on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

It's really. It's really like me and Tim win it all, you know?

[Tim Gettys]

Come on. Come on.

[Andy Cortez]

You share that trophy.

[Tim Gettys]

And tied in last place.

[Greg Miller]

Of course, it's plastic.

[Tim Gettys]

And Greg, what was the score?

[Greg Miller]

15. 15.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh.

[Tim Gettys]

We were very close.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know why I picked Metaphor for game of the year. That was a mistake. Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Andy, did you get 16?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. So we're one off. So we're all like right there. We're all. Yeah, we're all pretty much tied right there.

[Tim Gettys]

But you're like. You're not there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, but we're all. We're pretty much tied though.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. What a bear get. Oh, 19 out of good. Great job, bird. So, yeah, I would say since it's paired with Fantasy Critic, of course I came in second there. That gives me a point. So Bless gets the. Bless gets the D sign.

[Tim Gettys]

Now I think we both got it.

[Greg Miller]

Or we said one. We said the person last place.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The person who came in last. So since none of us came in last, technically.

[Greg Miller]

Now if you want to make a really big sweatshirt that says it and we both have to get in the sweatshirt, I'm down for that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Don't maybe get that close to him.

[Greg Miller]

If you want to play.

[Tim Gettys]

Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We will do Fantasy Critic for 2025 starting in January so get hyped for that. Right after this we're going to do kind of Funny Games Daily and then a fortnight stream. And remember a lot of us are going to go watch Craven the Hunter right now and then we're going to come back and review that movie.

[Greg Miller]

If you got your membership, watch it live as we review it.

[Tim Gettys]

Please do it. Going to be an all timer, I promise you. Until next time though. I love you all. Bye.

[Greg Miller]

I'm coming for you, Josh.