Kinda Funny Smileys: Video Game Awards 2024 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast Episode Summary Title: Kinda Funny Smileys: Video Game Awards 2024
Release Date: January 10, 2025
Hosts: Tim Gettys, Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andy Cortez, Mike Howard, Barrett Courtney, Roger McCorney

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Introduction

In this special episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, the hosts come together to celebrate the best in video gaming for the year 2024 through the inaugural Kinda Funny Smileys: Video Game Awards 2024. The Smileys are Kinda Funny’s category-by-category awards designed to honor outstanding achievements across various facets of the gaming industry. The panel, consisting of Tim Gettys, Greg Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andy Cortez, Mike Howard, Barrett Courtney, and Roger McCorney, delves into each category, discusses nominees, and announces the winners with enthusiasm and insightful commentary.

Overview of the Smileys Awards

The Smileys Awards aim to recognize excellence in different areas of gaming beyond the conventional "Game of the Year" accolades. With twelve distinct categories, each Smileys focuses on specific aspects such as innovation, storytelling, character development, and more. Votes are gathered from the panel and supplemented by community input through Kinda Funny’s platforms.

Award Categories and Winners

1. Best Indie/Independent Game

Winner: Balatro
Balatro emerged as the top indie game, praised for its pure gameplay mechanics and multi-platform availability.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Balatro's addictive nature and strategic depth.
  • Comparisons to classics like Tetris and Vampire Survivors.
  • The game's utilization of the standard 52-card deck combined with roguelite structures.

• Notable Quote:

  • Blessing Adeoye Jr. [13:02]: “Balatro is almost like one of the few perfectly designed video games, akin to Tetris or solitaire.”

2. Best Style

Winner: Destiny 2: The Final Shape
Destiny 2: The Final Shape was lauded for its outstanding combination of visuals, music, and game fidelity.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The art direction and how the final expansion provides a satisfying conclusion to Destiny 2.
  • Mike Howard emphasized the game's stylish environment and cohesive aesthetic.

• Notable Quote:

  • Mike Howard [30:06]: “Destiny 2: The Final Shape oozes style. It was messing with your mind and had some great touches and music.”

3. Best Old Game

Winner: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster
The remastered version of Dead Rising was recognized for bringing the classic zombie apocalypse experience to modern platforms.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The nostalgic value of playing Dead Rising on updated hardware.
  • Mixed opinions on the game's quality, with some finding it funny and others appreciating its depth.

• Notable Quote:

  • Greg Miller [38:24]: “Dead Rising as a franchise is fantastic, and I'm so happy it's back.”

4. Best Early Access

Winner: Hades 2
Hades 2 stood out in the Early Access category for its iterative development and exceptional gameplay quality.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The continuous updates and community engagement keep players invested.
  • Praise for the game's versatility across different platforms and devices.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tim Gettys [48:23]: “Hades 2 is the perfect game. It’s amazing no matter how you play it.”

5. Best Innovation

Winner: Crypt Master
Crypt Master was recognized for its unique mechanic of integrating typing and puzzle-solving within a dungeon crawler framework.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The innovative use of language and riddles to progress in the game.
  • Comparison to classic games like Typing of the Dead.

• Notable Quote:

  • Greg Miller [74:16]: “Crypt Master combines typing with dungeon crawling in a way that’s both fun and challenging.”

6. Best Character

Winners:

1. Aerith from Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
   • Celebrated for her expanded role and emotional depth in the remake.
2. Basilio from Metaphor Refantasio
   • Praised for his resilience and character development.
3. Ichiban Kasuga from Like a Dragon
   • Recognized for his inspiring journey and charismatic personality.
4. Hayes from Deadlock
   • Noted for her overpowered abilities and engaging gameplay role.
5. Ye from Nine Souls
   • Admired for his character arc and emotional storytelling.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Aerith’s enhanced narrative and impact on the overall story.
  • Basilio's compelling journey and strength.
  • Ichiban’s perseverance and likable nature.
  • Hayes’s dominant presence in Deadlock.
  • Ye’s emotional depth and character design.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tim Gettys [90:26]: “Aerith's time to shine in Rebirth was incredible. Her character adds so much to the narrative.”

7. Best Story

Winner: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was awarded for its outstanding storytelling, character development, and emotional resonance.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The game's ability to expand on the original narrative while introducing new characters and plotlines.
  • Emotional moments that resonate deeply with players, particularly regarding Aerith.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tim Gettys [108:44]: “The story of Rebirth is incredible. The character dynamics and emotional moments elevate the entire narrative.”

8. Best Surprise

Winner: Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 surprised the panel with its engaging gameplay and improved mechanics, exceeding initial expectations.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The seamless transition from predecessor to sequel.
  • Enhanced multiplayer experience and dynamic gameplay elements.

• Notable Quote:

  • Greg Miller [119:02]: “Helldivers 2 was a huge surprise and has become one of the biggest games of the year.”

9. Best Studio

Winners:

1. Team Asobi
   • Recognized for their charming game Astrobot and maintaining a small, agile development team.
2. Atlas
   • Honored for their exceptional output, including Persona 3 Reload, Metaphor Refantasio, and Unicorn Overlord.
3. Studio RG
   • Celebrated for their contributions to the Yakuza series and innovative titles like Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble.
4. Ubisoft Montpellier
   • Awarded for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, blending classic mechanics with modern storytelling.
5. Nomada Studio
   • Recognized for Neva and their ability to deliver concise, impactful gaming experiences.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Team Asobi’s commitment to quality over quantity.
  • Atlas’s diverse portfolio and successful remakes.
  • Studio RG’s continuous innovation within established franchises.
  • Ubisoft Montpellier’s seamless integration of story and gameplay.
  • Nomada Studio’s efficient and engaging game design.

• Notable Quote:

  • Blessing Adeoye Jr. [146:02]: “Team Asobi captured what makes video games magical with Astrobot’s charm and personality.”

10. Player's Choice

Winners:

1. Thank You, You're Here
   • Celebrated for its humor, style, and unique gameplay mechanics that resonate deeply with players.
2. Dungeons of Hinterberg
   • Praised for its enjoyable dungeon crawling and engaging puzzles.
3. Content Warning
   • Recognized for its cooperative gameplay and entertaining mechanics.
4. Caravan Sandwich
   • Honored for its serene storytelling and charming gameplay.
5. Witchfire
   • Acknowledged for its fast-paced roguelite shooter mechanics and deep progression systems.
6. Sonic Cross Shadow Generations
   • Celebrated for revitalizing the Sonic franchise with dynamic gameplay and nostalgic elements.
7. UFO 50
   • Appreciated for its unique anthology format, offering 50 distinct games within one package.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The community’s favorite games that may not have received mainstream attention.
  • Emphasis on games that offer unique experiences and meaningful engagement.
  • The diverse range of genres and styles represented in the Player's Choice awards.

• Notable Quote:

  • Blessing Adeoye Jr. [161:35]: “Thank You, You're Here has a charm that I hope remains a staple in indie games.”

11. Best DLC/Expansion

Winner: Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Elden Ring’s DLC was commended for expanding the game world, introducing new content, and enhancing the overall experience.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The seamless integration of new areas and quests into the existing game.
  • The enriched narrative and challenging boss fights.
  • Comparisons to the base game’s quality and depth.

• Notable Quote:

  • Greg Miller [64:03]: “Shadow of the Erdtree is just a massive open-world expansion that feels like an extension of Elden Ring itself.”

12. Best Card Game

Winner: Queen’s Blood
Queen’s Blood was celebrated for its strategic depth and engaging gameplay mechanics, making it a standout in the card game category.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • The game’s ability to combine traditional card game elements with innovative strategies.
  • Balatro’s influence and comparison to other successful card games like Magic: The Gathering.
  • The community’s enthusiastic response to Queen’s Blood’s nomination.

• Notable Quote:

  • Andy Cortez [137:16]: “Queen’s Blood should have been broken out into its own game. It’s crazy that it’s part of Rebirth.”

Audience Participation and Super Chats

Throughout the episode, the hosts interacted with their audience via Super Chats, receiving shoutouts and comments that highlighted viewer support and feedback. Notable mentions included encouragement for the panel to explore specific games, appreciation for the hosts' efforts, and humorous comments related to the discussions.

• Notable Super Chats:
  • Lewis Leg [62:40]: “Thank you all for what you do. Massively helped me through struggles with grief.”
  • Dill Shriit [62:40]: “Factorio Space Age. The greatest automation/base builder of all time.”

Closing Remarks

The hosts concluded the episode by congratulating all the winners and emphasizing the diversity and quality of games recognized. They teased upcoming content, including the Game of the Year Top 10 and individual Top Tens for the following week. Additionally, they promoted Kinda Funny’s Patreon memberships, offering exclusive benefits to supporters.

• Final Notable Quote:
  • Blessing Adeoye Jr. [168:21]: “Congratulations to all of our players' choice winners and thank you for celebrating video games with us.”

Conclusion

This episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast provided an in-depth and entertaining overview of the best in gaming for 2024 through the Smileys Awards. From indie gems like Balatro to blockbuster expansions like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the panel offered thoughtful insights and passionate endorsements for a wide array of games and studios. The inclusion of audience interactions and Super Chats added a personal touch, highlighting the community’s engagement and appreciation for the hosts’ efforts. As the podcast series continues, listeners can look forward to more engaging discussions and award recognitions in future episodes.

Transcript

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Greg Miller]

So if you're into growing your business.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Con20 Games Cast for Friday, January 10, 2025. I want your host, Blessing. Adio. Yay, Junior. Joining me is the Lacroix Poppy, Tim Gettys.

[Tim Gettys]

Let Tim host. Happy to be here. My first ever smile.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Is everyone Mr. Stars in the bank? Greg Miller.

[Greg Miller]

That's right. That's right. Tim. Any chance gonna rub our velvet together? I do want to rub our velvet either. What if it gets stuck in like Velcro?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got the master of hype, Snow White Mike.

[Mike Howard]

Congratulations. Blessing leaving the lab and moving to the big set for the Smileys. Congratulations.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you, thank you.

[Mike Howard]

Big upgrade.

[Barrett Courtney]

Remember last year, Bless, where we saw a lot of comments even though at the front end we were like, hey, we're in the lab right now because Barrett's prepping game of the year and doing rehearsals and there are so many people just like they bought that big. They had that big ass set for what? They're not even using it. Listen to the show. Please God, people.

[Tim Gettys]

Please God. And now this year I was able.

[Andy Cortez]

To do tech stuff earlier for you.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

There's so many of our listeners and viewers that I wish would die.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And that's a category. That's the vibe, Mike.

[Mike Howard]

What's the vibe of the show?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What's the vibe? I do like this suit you got on.

[Mike Howard]

Oh, thank you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bless.

[Mike Howard]

Went above and beyond for you because of course I let Tim down just a couple of weeks ago. And so the conversation was how does.

[Greg Miller]

Adam Sandler showed up to the game Horn.

[Mike Howard]

So I went to Macy's and I bought a very overpriced suit jacket for you.

[Roger McCorney]

Can we do an over under?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, well, it's Macy's. Macy's. It's in bags.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Roger McCorney]

You go.

[Greg Miller]

So are we doing prices right?

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, yeah. I think we all know except for Tim.

[Greg Miller]

Sorry.

[Roger McCorney]

And you. Right, okay.

[Greg Miller]

Well, it's Macy's. Macy's is a steal. That's where this came from.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, it's a great deal.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Mine came from Macy's.

[Greg Miller]

So I'm going to say rock stand's.

[Mike Howard]

Not going to be happy with you at Macy's.

[Barrett Courtney]

140.

[Greg Miller]

See, I was thinking he said it was overpriced, which scares me. So I'll say 199.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, yeah. So I'm thinking 2 426.

[Mike Howard]

What? The 400, Mike. Well, Roxanne said that these are the suit coach. And I said, well, for blessing, I'll do it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, you're not. Okay, first of all, don't put this on me. Don't put this on me.

[Mike Howard]

Blessing and Andy on the smiley's year, number 75. Macy's was busy. Okay, what did you want me to do?

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, it looks nice. Did you say here's 200.

[Barrett Courtney]

Somebody help me.

[Greg Miller]

No wonder he's all bent out of shape today.

[Roger McCorney]

He's uptight.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who's Roxanne?

[Mike Howard]

Roxanne was the lovely old lady who helped me at Macy's.

[Roger McCorney]

She robbed you?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Great.

[Mike Howard]

You know, she's helping me and others we were talking about, you know, it was a whole lot of fun.

[Andy Cortez]

That was the biggest upsell of her life.

[Barrett Courtney]

Got a great commission on that one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Over there is the nitro rifle. Andy Cortez.

[Greg Miller]

Hello.

[Barrett Courtney]

Happy to be here for the second annual Smiley Awards Plus.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And of course you got the lock. Roger McCorney.

[Roger McCorney]

Someone said Andy fixer Roger's collar.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh, no, probably Roger fix Andy's collar. Maybe it was sticking out.

[Greg Miller]

Maybe it was collar fix Andy. Roger.

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, smart.

[Greg Miller]

I've been on since fucking funny day.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then he just went out. But on the ones and twos, we have Barrett Courtney, who I introduced because of course we're all here. We voted on the kind of funny Smileys, which is kind of funny's category by category awards. Andy, you're the co founder slash, I would say the kind of funny smiles is kind of your brainchild here, right? Last year, I think you were the one that. That came to the group and I think came to me and you were like, yo, we should do an award show. We should do more like category style awards.

[Greg Miller]

We do game of the year, right? Monday is going to be the big game of the year. Our top 10. We don't know what it is. We don't know. We all put in our votes. We don't know how it's going to. But there's so much other juice to squeeze out of what 2024 was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. And I believe. And I. And you can explain more of this, right? But I believe the idea was like, all right, cool. We have the top 10 games of the year. We're going to do that. That is the big event. But there are so many things that happen throughout a year in video games and there's so much to talk about beyond the top 10 games. And so let's find ways to honor a lot of the other things that happen in 2020.

[Mike Howard]

Some love.

[Barrett Courtney]

Let's bring the positivity, right? It's a tough year. It's, you know, it's always been a tough year every year. And why not have a way to kind of showcase and give more love to a lot more developers other than the, other than Astrobot or other than like the ones that are always metaphor, the ones that are always going to win. How can we get everybody's sort of nominations and there's never just going to be one winner. It's always let's shout out five things that the whole Kind of Funny team can kind of vote for category by category. Showing off, you know, letting these smaller devs also kind of get some shine and be like, hey, we really like this. We want to call you all out. Five awards per category.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Five awards per category. We're going to get into it, but remember, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. And you know what? Today Super Chat in with what you think should win the categories. If any of our five aren't the same as any of your picks, write in. Let us know why you pick what you pick. Of course. Housekeeping for you. Thanks to the overwhelming generosity from the community, we have a brand new batch of gifted Patreon sub memberships going up on Saturday at 9:00am Pacific Time on Kind of Funny. Patreon Kind of Funny's Patreon page. To be able to see the post, create a Patreon account and click the Join for free button on patreon.com kindafunny if you'd like to be added to the list you can send or if you'd like to add to the list, you can send gifted membership links to support at kind of funny.com to be included in Saturday's post and Real Talk.

[Tim Gettys]

This is a great way to get a taste of the Kind of funny membership. Like I have a feeling if you are there at that time on patreon.com kind of funny you've made a free account, you're going to get a membership. Like there are so many memberships that are being given away. So word to the wise, be there or be square.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Jump on that. Remember, we're an 11 person business. All about live talk shows. The Gauntlet episode of Game Showdown went up this morning. It's the precursor to the new season which starts next week over on YouTube.com kind of funny games and on the Gamescast podcast feed, you won't believe who wins the Gauntlet.

[Greg Miller]

Tim.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Kfgd Today was the reveal of the Dice Award nominees. Right now is the games cast and after this is nothing. We're not having a stream today because this episode is going to be a jam packed episode. So strap in. If you're a Kind of Funny member you can get today's Greg Way, which is Gregory.

[Greg Miller]

It's me talking about a number of things. All right. The death of Superman lives. Are we going to Paxis? You can see the wheels turning as.

[Tim Gettys]

I try to remember what the Greg Way was.

[Greg Miller]

And one other thing you'll find out. Don't worry about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Don't worry about it. Thank you to our Patreon producers Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by Rocket Money, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. It's the 2024 Kinda Funny Smileys. So like we mentioned, what are the smileys? Well, we want to honor a lot of the releases that came out in 2024. I look at this as kind of the appetizer to our Game of the year top 10, which is coming on Monday. Baird, is there anything you want to mention about our Game of the Year? Should people be hyped for it?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh yeah. I mean obviously it's one of the the biggest productions that we do every year. You know, like this set here we take full utilization of the big set. A lot of exciting stuff, a lot of exciting reveals. I've been watching back our last couple of Game of the Years just because I love seeing y'all react to what comes in at number 10 and number nine and all that stuff. And yeah. So if you want to see the boys live react to what the official kind of Funny Game of the year top 10 list is for 2024, definitely check in Monday for that. And then also something special next week we will be Talking about our personal top Tens throughout the rest of the week next week on gamescast to give even more love to some of the games that were on our personal top Tens that may have not made it to the official kind of funny top 10 list. So as we talk about things today and categories and stuff, let's try to hold back like what games were at certain places on our list and all that stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So no spoiling Game of the Year. No spoiling your top Tens here.

[Tim Gettys]

Paris will be here in studio for Game of the Year next week for both the the big episode on Monday and for his own top 10 that he's going to be doing on one of the games cast throughout the week. So people have been asking that there, you know, there you go. It's going to be a Game of the Year week here at Kind of Funny. So strap in with a special week exception. Oh yeah, can't say much yet. We got something very cool, very, very, very cool happening next week.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. What is it?

[Mike Howard]

Yeah, you know.

[Andy Cortez]

And he really tunes out of the weekly meeting.

[Greg Miller]

So Game of the Year on Monday. Top Tens every day of the week with the exception of Wednesday when we will do the Games cast at 4pm Stay tuned.

[Tim Gettys]

Wink Wink.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Two winks for you. So this is the appetizer, right? We got 12 categories that we're going to talk about today. Each category has been voted on by everybody sitting at this panel plus Paris Lilly who of course you will again see next week during the actual Game of the Year. We have five winners for each category based on write ins. The categories are as follows. We have Best Indie slash Independent Game and I'm putting that as however you want to define it right? Because of course everybody wants to define indie their own way. I'm letting you guys define indie however you want. We got Best Style. The game encompassing an outstanding combination of visuals, music and or fidelity. We have Best Old game. A non 2024 game that deserves recognition. Could be for a remake, remaster, resurgence or something we relate to the game on Best Early Access the game that had the best showing in Early Access. Best DLC Expansion the expansion or downloadable content that you fell in love with this year. Best Innovation honoring a game mechanic or system that was unique and or pushed things forward. Best Character A character this year that stood out from the pack. Best Story the game that displayed outstanding storytelling and writing. Best Surprise the game that came out of nowhere and or exceeded your expectations. Best Card Game. This is a 2024 specific category because of 2024 was a huge year when it came to card games, Magic the.

[Greg Miller]

Gathering coming out of nowhere, who would have known?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So this is for the best game based in a card format, whether a mini game or a full fledged game itself. Best studio for the studio that earned MVP status in 2024. And the player's choice award. This is a shout out to a game that might not get love on the game of the year list, but you still want to give it flowers. Also, as a reminder, we don't know what's on the game of the year list, but this is kind of us thinking ahead and being like, all right, what's kind of low key? What's something that we want to, you know before we even get there? Make sure that it's shouted out, make sure it gets the love that it deserves.

[Andy Cortez]

And even more context with that, because I am the only one here on the show who does know what the top 10 is. I. We did vote for these, I think before I got any official top 10 list finalization.

[Greg Miller]

So, yeah, even when we say vote for these, we put in all our nominees. Right? Is that. What did you do? You tabulated the ones that had multiple nominees.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's the thing is like the one. So again, I'm picking five for each category. There's about eight, nine of us somewhere around there. Basically I went in and I pick it. Pick and chose. Anything that got more than one vote automatically makes it in. Okay. And then from there I just bounced based on vibes, based on like, all right, I know this thing is loved by multiple people and so this one I'm going to, you know, give more push to, but I'm just going to make sure to balance and make sure that everybody is represented through all these categories. And so this is translated through the eyes of blessing Adioa Jr. I think a bit of Andy Cortez as well, but this is representative of all of our tastes here are kind of funny.

[Roger McCorney]

I love that.

[Greg Miller]

All right, don't kiss his ass.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Are you ready to hop in with our first category, Best indie slash independent game. Barrett, you can reveal the first game. It is Balatro. To give a little context to this one, I believe three people wrote in Balatro making it the highest voted one for this category. And so shout out Balatro. Who wants to talk about it?

[Barrett Courtney]

I didn't write it in because I haven't played it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think. Bear, were you one of the writes for this one?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't think so.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wow.

[Roger McCorney]

Who wrote the sim?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I wrote this.

[Mike Howard]

Him. I wrote made by one Jabroni. So shout out I mean, Blockchain is.

[Greg Miller]

A fantastic game, right? I mean, I think the addiction you've seen from the industry at large, let alone people at large, you know, dominating as it did, you know, when Barrett had inside information to get it into his fantasy critic.

[Andy Cortez]

I listened to a public podcast.

[Roger McCorney]

He didn't tell us about it.

[Greg Miller]

I know, right? When he's like, have you ever heard of GN Bomb? I hadn't heard of GN's Beyond. You know, it's out of. It's out of France.

[Barrett Courtney]

Doesn't matter. I didn't even fucking win last year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who gives a?

[Greg Miller]

But anyways, coming on to be that strong. And I think we talk all the time about games that come out too early in the year. This would have done better if it came out last. Balacho had consistent love praise, let alone then the addition of going in and we're going to add in decks for other independent games, which is always a nice look. Let alone then to launch on iOS and mobile devices and really dominate the game and see a whole new group of people being like, oh, my God, the LA wildfires, right, are going on. And I've seen so many people who are like, I finally downloaded Batro while I'm. I'm at my aunt's house, evacuated. This is amazing.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. I think the. The versatility of Balro being available on so many different platforms and including mobile.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Tim Gettys]

And just how big of a hit it was, how small of a team that actually created it. And like, I think that that obviously adds a lot more difficulty to creating the game, but I think it also allows a lot more ability to be nimble and, like, to do different things, try different things and, like, be able to collaborate with others. And you were the one in control of those collaborations. And it reminds me a lot of Vampire Survivors, a couple where it's like, that was just such a major hit. I think a lot of that was being able to, like, find the trends and find the moments and like, we look at something like Fortnite and the collaborations it does and how impressive that can be. And I feel like anything I say about Fortnite I can say about Balatro, that's very, very cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Tim Gettys]

But I think that they have taken such great advantage of having an amazing game, an amazing product, and speaking to their users, giving them what they want and continuing to feed them more and more of that. Like, shout out to Balatro.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. And I. This is the game that I have been able to, one to one, every single person, I would be like, hey, here's this game Balancho. You got to try it out one to one. Every single person would download it and become obsessed with it. I know so many people in my life, at least five people in my life that did not hear about the game. Hey, check it out. It's only like, what, like 10 bucks, something like that. Download it on your phone, download it on Steam. Try it out. Oh, my gosh, I didn't sleep last night. I'm playing Blotcher all night, right? So that's that. Really incredible to just be able to pitch it to somebody and then just fall in love and become obsessed with it like that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So the folks who wrote this one in were Paris, Lily, Snow White Mike, and myself. And yeah, I think the thing I would say to Palatro is the fact that it is such pure gameplay. Like, aesthetically, it's a good game. The soundtrack is really cool. And really, it is an earworm, right? The, like, the music of the game gets. Gets into you. But as far as talking about, like, Balatro and why I think Balatro is special, it is almost like one of the few perfectly designed video games. Like, when I play Balatro, I think of it in the same vein as I think of, like a Tetris or even a solitaire, where I'm like, every computer going forward should be. Should come with Balatro pre installed. Right? It is that good of a card game. I think it takes roguelite structure, and I think applies that to the standard 52 deck of cards, and I think does maybe some of the best stuff ever done with the 52 deck of cards. Right. And that is like, you know, taking in those mechanics of poker. But you don't have to be a poker expert to play this game. It is about taking that idea and creating infinite possibilities in terms of how you can play, how you can strategize building a build. Right? The amount of jokers. The amount of the jokers for people who may not have played Balacha Rider, essentially, like the different things that alter your gameplay that you can strategize around and being able to go, all right, I have four slots, five slots, six slots for different jokers that I can, like, you know, use to play off each other to build the best build as possible. It's so fantastic. It's so good. Barrett, what is our next game for best indie slash independent game? 1000x resist.

[Andy Cortez]

So I think this is the one that I voted for, correct? Yeah, I wanted to shout this out specifically, and maybe me writing this in might have been better for Best studio. But I think just there's something special about the way this game was developed. If you don't know A Thousand X Resistors is. I'm blanking on the studio name.

[Barrett Courtney]

Sunset Visitor.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes, it is their very first game. And what they did before making games was like they were all like artists. Like a few of them were like theater actors and all this stuff. And then when the pandemic happened, they couldn't do, like, they couldn't go out and perform in all this stuff. So they're all stuck at home and they're like, well, let's make a video game. And I think just like the way that came together and the way that oozes through this game of like, kind of different, like forms of art kind of flooding through this game in so many different ways. The way that like cinematography works in this game, there's so many, like, beautiful shots. The. There's like at one point a medic commentary on like theater that I think is like, really cool. And yeah, I just thought as this being their first game, I thought it was something really, really special. If you don't know, just the quick premise is you play as watcher who is a clone who lives in a colony of clones, and they're all cloned after this one girl who is the sole survivor of a world ending event. And it starts off with you killing the original girl and then kind of you backtrack from there and kind of learn why your character was led to do that. It has very interesting commentary on the pandemic, on power structures and how power structures can. Or like how people can kind of use turmoil to gain power in certain situations that I think is just very reflective of our current times. And I think it's just a very beautifully written game. I think it's like one of the best told stories in video games in the last decade and I think everybody should try it out.

[Greg Miller]

This got a lot of love in the DICE Award nominations. We just did over on Games Daily in which it was written in on you are wrong that it's 1000 times resist. That's how the developers have spoken out, saying that's how it's meant to be pronounced.

[Andy Cortez]

X sounds so much cooler though.

[Greg Miller]

You know, Cross, I mean, just make up your mind. Everybody maybe write the word. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. This is one that played, I think probably right after Barrett played it and like evangelized it.

[Tim Gettys]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And like for me, a thousand times Resist is one of those cases of a game that I play and I'm like, oh, this stands out for the pack. It's one that I think is special and one that I think could possibly move things forward in terms of how people approach writing in video games and approach like, you know, how we can tell, how we can portray different themes. Right. I think the fact that this is not necessarily a walking sim, but it is. I would, I would maybe categorize it as more adventure game adjacent as far as like how narrative focused it is. There's gameplay around it, but like the gameplay almost feels like, hey, we just want to compliment this story we're telling. And the way they go about that I think allows for the stuff that bears talking about in terms of what they tackle thematically. Right. But I think it's not just about the fact that they're talking about, you know, political structures. They're talking about like Pandemic. They're talking about these different things. Is the fact that they're able to do that with like such emotion and such like strong feeling that by the time I finished the game, there was like an anger I felt in my heart. Right. And like, I think that is something that is so strong and that's something that I feel like, you know, video games have the ability to do, but I think sometimes rarely get to that point. And a thousand extras. This is one of those ones where, Barry, you can correct me if I'm wrong. This studio, I believe this is their first game. And it feels like. It feels like somebody with new and fresh ideas entered the fray.

[Tim Gettys]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right. Like it feels like somebody that's like, oh, I'm not in here. I'm not here to make my own God of War. I'm not here to make my own like 2D metroidvania. Like, I'm here to make my vision. I'm here to make my vision Super Mario.

[Barrett Courtney]

What's that? No idea.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And especially. And it's how they tell the story. And you know, there's a lot of jumping through time to see different eras. Like there's some points where you can see the girl that you're cloned after her perspective of when this world ending pandemic starts. And the pandemic, the. The disease that's going throughout the people is when you get sick, you're flooded with all of your saddest memories that you cry until you have no more moisture inside your body. And yeah. And so movie like to see like you jump to like seeing her perspective, you, you know, jump to watchers perspectives. There's some other time things that happen. And there's a moment where like three or four threads are all unraveling at the same time and you're jumping from point to point. And I think it's really impressive that like, it doesn't feel jarring to jump from all these different points all within like a 10 minute span of each other because they're all emotionally relevant to what like each one happened happening at the same time. And so yeah, I just think how they tell the story and how they kind of slowly reveal all of these different threads that emotionally tie together I think is really, really impressive.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Barry, what we got next for best indie slash independent game, which is one that I expected to be written in by Barrett Courtney, but I was surprised to see that it was instead written in by Andy Cortez.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, I showed this game to Barrett, told him, recommended it to him, told him to give it a shot. Yeah, it's a game that I was very frustrated with early on. Nine Souls is a 2D metroidvania platformer that has a lot of Sekiro tendencies, a lot of deflections. That's how you parry. And gameplay was always fantastic. But I was very frustrated with the early on. And this is a game that I on the kind of funny channel during the pandemic. I recorded a demo gameplay for it and put up like demo gameplay. Sekiro2d, whatever the hell on the kind of funny channel and was like, where's this game? And it finally came out and was super stoked about it and was immediately kind of annoyed by the exploration and stuff. And kind of once I got over that and started getting into the really good boss fights. But not only that, stories and characters. It gets really, really dark at times. But I love the journey that the main character goes on. And I think that it's. If you're somebody who enjoys kind of difficult gameplay or just somebody who wants a game with amazing characters that these boss bosses that always have kind of motivations that you can kind of understand where they're coming from. I love that stuff. They tell a great story. It's from Red Candle games. Shout out to Nine Souls.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Shout out.

[Greg Miller]

Well said. Well said, Bear.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What's the next game? Thank goodness you're here. Which I look at Greg, because I assume this is a Greg joke.

[Tim Gettys]

It was.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I'm never sure if you have stats on who else put it on here. Yeah. Thank goodness you're here. A game that caught me off guard. I thought it looked really goofy and looked really funny, but I didn't think it would be a good experience in terms of games. Right. Humor. So hard to get into a game, let alone the fact that this is based entirely on British humor. Which as much as I love Monty Python or Benny Hill. Right. Like I'm not necessarily into the references and all these other different things they'd be dropping in here. Even though I did live with Lucy James for quite some time. Oh, and worth pointing out of course that Jen, my wife, works at Pop Agenda and they helped publish this game and. Or help market or whatever. I don't know. But doesn't matter, you know how much I don't like most of the games they put out. Thank goodness you're here though. Just a great indie hilarious the entire way through and I thought engaging in a gameplay way I wasn't expecting. Right. You just jump and you just slap. That's all you do in this game. And I think they go through and pack this thing with funny references. Gorgeous art.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

I think even look when we were looking at the trailers it was never the art didn't look. It was more like am I watching Adult Swim? How is this going to actually perform? And they of course make it a slap former where you go through and have all sorts of little mini games, little mini things you're doing to do this thing to move the next thing. You're always basically just pushing to the right which will then loop you back around to get where you need to be. Hilarious, enjoyable, colorful and most importantly unexpected, I think. And I did not want my time with it to end which I thought this is very much going to be a game I play I'll enjoy for a little bit but eventually fall out of. Instead I went all the way through and just had such a good time with it.

[Roger McCorney]

Hell yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah. Barrett, what's our final game for best indie slash independent?

[Roger McCorney]

Animal well, ah was knocked over my water. Hey everybody, you're 10 out of 10.

[Greg Miller]

Roger.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. Animal well is. Is a special video game. I am not somebody who is a Metroidvania person. I've tried a lot of Metroidvanias this year but Animal well like stays with me in a way that I. I can't describe. It feels like an all timer experience when it comes to games. I love the exploration of this. I fell in love with going and just going into. Into a direction and getting completely lost and triple a, triple backing, quadruple backing going through the entire. I had a moment where I took out a pen and paper and drew the entire map and was trying to figure out where certain things Were the special thing about animal well is that there is no combat or traditional combat in that sense. So you're always just finding things to survive. Right. You never feel like you are powerful against any of the animals or any of the kingdoms. You always feel like you're just surviving, you're just trying to get by. And all of the items are so unique. You see, of course, you have a bubble blower where you can hop on little bubbles. You have a Frisbee, you have a Yo Yo. It's in the visual style of. It is gorgeous. It's very simplistic. And the game is extremely optimized. Like, not to get into the nerd side of it all, but like, this game was made by one developer. All the music, all the graphics, everything about it is one guy made entire engine for this game. I think he said that the game is like eight megabytes or something crazy like that. You can put this on a flash drive, put it anywhere, booted up and will play on anything. It is. It is a really special game and it's one that I don't even want to say more about, because if you haven't played it, play it, buy it, whatever, and just boot it up and hope you love it. Because if you don't, that's totally fine. But it might be really something really special for you.

[Barrett Courtney]

Shout out to Billy Basso.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. With the game, it's hard to talk about the gameplay. Like, I'm definitely there with you, Roger. So much of that game is discovering what the gameplay is and discovering what. How things work. I just want to shout out that if you play it in window mode and if you move the window around, the physics of the game follow the window on PC, which I think is pretty neat.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, it's incredible stuff. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is one that I also got super obsessed with. I think, you know, you mentioning that there's not as much. There's not really combat in this game, at least traditional combat is such like a big aspect of what I think does make this game special. Where it is purely exploration and puzzle solving. And the fact that it does, it isn't. Oh, you're unlocking a bigger beam or you're unlocking an uppercut that allows you to like get to higher places. It's more so. Oh, you're. You're unlocking a Yo yo. Yeah, we got to really think about the ways in which you can use this thing. Oh, you unlock, like, I don't want to spoil the other items, but you unlock items where it's like, as you play, as you tinker around, you kind of learn what these things get to do. And it like, as you mess around in this thing, it's the same way that I'll like, point to a game like Mario 64 and like learning just how to use your abilities and move and, like, do these different things. It unlocks different how they work together.

[Roger McCorney]

Too, in interesting ways. Like, yeah, there's. So it was awesome having the playground moment with Andy right as we're playing it. We would come in every day and I'd be like, did you know XYZ did this? He's like, oh, I didn't even get that ability yet because I went this way the entire game. So, like, you can really go at it any different way. Yeah, it is. It's a masterclass in game design and level design specifically. That whole map is something special. And there's so many secrets in that game that they were even saying, like, Billy Bassett was saying, like, yeah, like, there are secrets in the game that I expected people to, like, find 10 years from now. People found in like a day. And there's some really wild stuff out there.

[Barrett Courtney]

I almost wanted to fight Greg on Daily this morning, who was talking to Stella about Die for the Dice Awards nominations, and you were going through the list of outstanding achievement in game design, and you said, animal. Well, no combat, so probably Astrobot. It's like, I didn't.

[Greg Miller]

So I wasn't insulting it for now. But you were calling out what was different about its design.

[Barrett Courtney]

You were using that as a way to say, like, it probably won't win because there's no combat.

[Greg Miller]

No, that's not my point. But I understand where you could interpret that.

[Tim Gettys]

You want to.

[Barrett Courtney]

You want to fight him right now.

[Greg Miller]

See, if you win, I think you're.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll go after his calf, not my Garfield calf.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to the best indie slash independent games. Yeah. Let's move on to our next category, Best style. This is for the game, encompassing an outstanding combination of visuals, music and or fidelity. Barret Reveal, our first pick. Here it is, Destiny 2, the final shape.

[Barrett Courtney]

It was probably mine.

[Tim Gettys]

Gotta say yes, it was yours.

[Barrett Courtney]

Probably mine.

[Tim Gettys]

The man that's talking about the style of Destiny 2, any chance he gets?

[Barrett Courtney]

Well, because once I saw the nominations, Tim, I was like, was that mine? Because I could have sworn that I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Here's the thing. It wasn't.

[Mike Howard]

It was mine. Yes.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yes.

[Tim Gettys]

Come on.

[Mike Howard]

I had a really good time with Destiny 2, the final shape. Great entry. But really, when it comes to style, it ooze style. It was all over the board. It was really messing with your mind. It had some great touches, some really good music, some cool fights where they incorporated 12 people instead of just your normal three on the fire team, which I really enjoyed. And all in all, yeah, this was a great little ending to Destiny 2.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Mike Howard]

It's always fun to go back for the DLC and have a good time. But yeah, this is how I wanted to end my Destiny 2 run.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

1000%. Every time you'd walk into a new place it's like, wow, this is a wallpaper. Amazing art direction. And I was so happy with the experience as somebody who fell off of Destiny quite a bit. Loved it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, this is one of those categories where there wasn't really any consensus. Right. Like everything that that's being pulled up here got written in once. But Destiny to the final shape I pushed to the front because you know, Mike voted it in. But I remember hearing Andy all year talking about it. So yeah, congratulations. Destiny to the final shape. Next up we got Black Myth. One that got voted in by Paris Lilly, but another one that like I saw and immediately co signed as far as like. And I'm sure Andy will too. Of like, yo, this game looks fantastic. It has those cutscenes from chapter to chapter which surprise you, delight you, makes you go, wow, I can't believe people are doing this in a triple A video game. Like this is so creative and, and you know, forward looking as far as what you can do with this medium. But then also like a game that I think one of the best things about it is how it present presents. Right. I love looking at this game. I love the effects that happen as I get into combat in this game. I love how the environments look in this game. Right. I love the cutscenes. Like there's so much that is there as far as like how this game presents that I think works and really does for me carry the experience while I'm playing it.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, really, really pretty. And you're, you're totally dead on with those little interstitial cutscenes. Whenever you finish a chapter and you just get a short animation and it's like, here's a four minute, here's a four minute stop motion animation. Here's a four minute, just 2D anime style thing. It's really impressive what they do chapter to chapter.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, this is one of those games. I keep on looking at the trailers and I'm like, damn, this looks like a fake game. But like in the best way, you know, I Can't believe this is real.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Next up, we got Never, Never, Never Ever.

[Tim Gettys]

Great, great call out for this. This was not my pick.

[Barrett Courtney]

I think it was mine.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. But it makes sense though. I'm happy to see it here because. Yeah, gorgeous. And I feel like the way that it, it ties just the look, the colors, the animations, with the music, with the ambient sounds, with the. The voice call outs of. Of her calling Neva, like all of that combines to something that is like stylish for a purpose. Right. I feel like the style just backs up the substance of this game so beautifully.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, I really enjoyed my time with Neva. Similar to Destiny 2's you know, every screenshot they really let you soak in those environments. And when they know they have something beautiful looking, they will totally pull the camera out and then just have your character super tiny amongst this amazing landscape with amazing color palettes and great environments. Yeah, they studio Namada really kicked ass.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Next up for best style, we got metaphor. Refantasio was a Greg Miller submission.

[Greg Miller]

It was. You know, I respect metaphor so much, I did not roll credits on it. I tapped out early. JRPGs aren't my thing, but it is, I think, a remarkable stylistic choice from Atlas and this team. Right. And obviously you come to expect that when you look at, I mean, any Persona, but Persona five especially, right? For them to come in here with metaphor and have this visual style for the world. And I know we've talked at length about this, Andy, on shows, right, where you're like, it's ugly, like it's not a good looking game, but I don't, I don't like this. But the style is what I think carries it in terms of, like, it's committed to what it is and how it looks. And I think that's why it works. In the same way we can look at Switch games a lot and be like, well, of course it's not stunning 4K, whatever, but it's gorgeous in terms of what it's doing. I think that's what metaphor is for me.

[Barrett Courtney]

For me, it's the ui. I mean, their ui, they always knock it out of the park.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, and yeah, whenever I say the game is. Is unattractive, I think is there's just some performance things where it looks noisy and they. Maybe they go for crunchy textures in a way that doesn't appeal to my eye. But then I hit the pause menu and immediately all my complaints are like, shut up, you little.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, the menus are so wild and cool and I love that they leaned into it being kind of messier. Like, the one thing I want to shout out is, like, all of these. Like, all of these words are in different fonts from font to font, I believe. And it's just, like, them kind of going away from Persona 5 and, like, how, like, sleek and cool Persona 5 was, and them just getting, like, totally weird with metaphor. I absolutely adore.

[Barrett Courtney]

And then grungy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

The art style in Engine, all that stuff is just building off of what the Persona games have done so far, and I think they nailed it out of the park.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I think I lean a little toward Andy talking about, like, kind of the crunchiness of some of the assets and how maybe it doesn't appeal to my eyes, but, like, Barrett mentioning even the fonts being all different font types, but, like, it works. I think that might loop back in a little bit to, like, what does work about them committing so hard, so hard to this? And also, I think what is wild about how. How hard they committed to this, because it is, you know, you have Those, like, the 2D key arts for the characters as they're talking, but, like, when you're traveling from a location to another location, you look at the runner and you look around in the environment you're in, it almost looks like PS2, like, type graphics. Right. But then you look at the characters, and the characters have, like, this anime, ish aesthetic to them, and everything is committing real hard to almost a different type of style, which kind of gives us this really interesting, like, colliding feel of, oh, y'all are throwing everything to this pot. And I think, for the most part, it does stick.

[Tim Gettys]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

When you talk to people and talk about, like, metaphor, what do they bring up? They'll bring up the story, they'll bring up the characters, but they will bring up the style and how. How well it works. And I don't want to, like, let this get lost to this. Right? Like, this category also encompassing music as well. And the music of Metaphor is goddamn right. The. The battle music especially, I think is one of the best songs to come out in a video game this year. But even outside of that, I think it commits to the Persona Persona tradition of, like, just great music throughout. Right. So shout out Metaphor next game. Our last game for Bestow it is Dragon 0. This is one that I had to double down for this category, right? Like, this is maybe one of the best looking games I've ever seen in my life, and I can't believe that it's. It's a sequel to the Tenkaichi series of Dragon Ball games. But it is. I. I think I knew this game had something special in its style. When I would have people walk by my desk, I would have Roger look at my desk and be like, I can't believe how good this game.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, I think I walked past you. I was like, I think this might be the greatest graphics because it literally looks like an episode. It's insane. It's insane stuff, dude.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And like, you know, when I talk about metaphor and how much I. I think the style or when I talk about black myth, I think specifically and talk about how much the style I think carries black myth, I'll probably say the same thing in Dragon Ball Sparking zero. As far as like, I love the gameplay of Dragon Ball. I love like how they interpret the story. I love the amount of characters and the amount of content. There's so many good things I can talk about with this game.

[Andy Cortez]

But.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But there's something about how this game looks when you are pulling off anything. The amount of different animation sequences they have for all the special moves across. I forget how many characters they have in this game. I think it's like 100 and something. It is a. An incredible looking video game. And also shout out to the music as well. Right? Like so many tracks that they have in this thing. They have like a customization setting where you can like put in different tracks for where when characters enter like their sparking mode. It is fucking fantastic in terms of what it brings style wise. And so that is why it's my pick for best style.

[Barrett Courtney]

Congrats to all the winners.

[Tim Gettys]

Congrats, Congrats.

[Greg Miller]

We're proud of you and your style.

[Tim Gettys]

Prince was once again robbed. But you know, it's okay. I get it. I get it.

[Roger McCorney]

I put yellow taxi goes broom as well. We'll talk about that our next.

[Greg Miller]

We'll talk about it right now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Voted in for every category. Our next category is best old game for a non 2024 game that deserves recognition. Barrett, if you can bring up our first winner, it is Dead Rising Deluxe remaster.

[Roger McCorney]

Take my hand, Mikey. Mikey and I went through an incredible experience playing Dead Rising Deluxe remaster on stream. It's not a good game.

[Mike Howard]

You know what? It's a great game.

[Greg Miller]

It's a great game.

[Mike Howard]

It's a great game.

[Roger McCorney]

No, it was funny because it was. It was my first time actually, like rolling credits on this game. I played maybe the first five hours of it as a kid so many times. So like actually playing it through, I was like, wow, there's like something here. Like they have a message here. They're going for something.

[Barrett Courtney]

Is it good?

[Roger McCorney]

I don't know.

[Mike Howard]

It's great. It's beautiful. It's awesome that they brought this game back to 2024 and beyond. I'm just so happy they rem hell yeah. And Dead Rising as a franchise. Fantastic video game. Does some really fun stuff with a zombie apocalypse world and the first one starting in the mall and how old that game truly felt if you were trying to play the original nowadays is tough. They've definitely brought that to a new, you know, 2024 feeling where you can play that in present day and smile and laugh, put up with the dumb shenanigans but still get to see the psychopaths and see all those killer moments. Get to try to run around the mall and try to save all of those different people within the time limits. Like this game absolutely rocks and I'm so happy it's back.

[Barrett Courtney]

Shout out to another thing we can add to the list where Roger says is it good? I don't think so. But I like, that's my.

[Roger McCorney]

That's me though.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, that's.

[Roger McCorney]

Those are my favorite things are the things that I'm like, I don't. Is it actually like if I were give this to the Oscars, like, are they going to say this the greatest thing ever? No, they're not.

[Greg Miller]

Like, I don't want to look at the chat.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't want to play.

[Roger McCorney]

Don't look at my shame. But yeah, I had a great time. I did however, see in the chat, people were like Silent Hill 2. And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

[Tim Gettys]

Jesus Christ.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm laughing. Not what it said.

[Greg Miller]

The smile takes itself very seriously.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nominee our next game is Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door.

[Tim Gettys]

You love to see it. I wonder who put this here. Of course it was me, everybody. One of the best Nintendo games ever. And that's saying something. I feel like this is definitely one of those games came out in the GameCube, I would say kind of forgotten over the years. It has definitely gotten the credit that it deserves and at least starting to. And I think with this remake it's going to continue to. But this is one of those games we, we can talk about Nintendo and the, the. They're all stars, right? Like what are the. The biggest hits they've had? What are the best games they've ever had? And we all can kind of understand that. We can come up with a list of what, 10, 20, 30. Like we know that there's a lot of great games. This is one of those, like, cult classic ones. These are one of those if you know, you know, type things that everybody that played this knows that it is special, that it is one of the, if not the best of the Mario RPG series. No matter if you're talking about Paper Mario, Mario RPG or Mario and Luigi, this is the one. Like, this one is awesome. And I really want to give this extra flowers and credit for being one of the best remakes I've ever played. They put so much love into this GameCube game, turning it into a modern switch game. And you might look at this and be like, all right, cool, this is what it was. No, like, this is. The lighting in this is so, so advanced. Just even it being like widescreen all the. The way it all looks is. It's perfect. This is a perfect remake. I'm so happy. Way more people have been able to play it. I feel like even just getting the sales numbers we got, like, I think that in the one year it's been out here, it's already like four times, five times sold. What it did on GameCube, like, that's awesome. But yeah, this game is. Is great. And like, I would continue to recommend it to everybody at this panel. Like, I feel like you would vibe with it. This game's awesome. It is very funny. The gameplay is rad, music's great, the adventures fantastic. It's. It's a classic.

[Barrett Courtney]

That's the first of two Mario games because I submitted Super Mario Sunshine. Okay, not on the list.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next game for best old game is Monster Hunter now.

[Greg Miller]

I assume that's me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Anybody else?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Monster Hunter now, of course celebrated its year anniversary over the summer. Right. And I was somebody as a Monster Hunter fan, somebody who enjoyed Pokemon Go, jumped in right away back when it first launched and was whelmed enough. Feels like, okay, move on. As Ben's gotten older and I've had more free time in parks and walking around cities and also just sitting there while I can't commit to busting on a PlayStation portal or a Steam deck and really getting into something, I went back to Monster Hunter now. And the stuff they've packed in the latest season or the latest big season update about a year thing, it was like, damn, they've really come through and made a game that I feel is more active than Pokemon Go. At least for what I want to do in terms of like, I like getting in there and leveling up my weapons. And now I'm switching this and now I have a daily quest that wants me use a weapon I've never used before. I'm going to go this, I'm going to build this. What do you hate?

[Tim Gettys]

I'm just so jealous. I'm so jealous that you get to play a fucking new game. And I'm stuck playing this like game from 2016 that they just refuse to change. There's building on what was there. And I'm sitting here tapping like an idiot. Every time I play Monster Hunter now at a demo or an event, I'm just like, this is so much better. I hate it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And it's like, it's one of those things. It's still a time waster. It's still a, you know, a mobile game. It's whatever. I don't think it's doing the gotcha. And I'm not trying to grind to the highest degree and all this other stuff of like making me pay or anything that thing. But like they have a great battle pass that I really enjoy playing. They have cool unlocks, they have cool events all the time. They're giving me free outfits and this, that the other, like, I really do enjoy it. And you know, the way they've expanded it this year of dropping in and giving you the portals to go fight monsters that aren't necessarily by you is very nice. The, you know, there's the different biomes that you know from Monster Hunter, right. But they move across the map. So like, even if you were to stay in one park every day, that's where you play every day. Theoretically, it should be a different biome that you're able to capture a different monster and do a different thing. And I love Monster Hunter now. And I can't get enough again, shout.

[Barrett Courtney]

Out to me going to Osaka to play Monster Hunter Wilds and then getting an email from Capcom PR saying, and while you're in Osaka, Andy, we would love to reward you with this Monster Hunter battle pass. And here's this like in game currency and all this stuff. And I saw the email and then immediately get a reply from Greg, who's on the email Thursday. Whoa, wait, wait. Can I. I want that.

[Mike Howard]

Can I get that?

[Barrett Courtney]

Of course.

[Tim Gettys]

Give me the stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Our fourth game for best old game is Blood.

[Barrett Courtney]

Hey, you heard of this game?

[Tim Gettys]

Whoa.

[Roger McCorney]

Who wrote this one in?

[Barrett Courtney]

Heard of this? So who's this? Somehow great. Yeah. Somehow tan infiltrated. Yeah. I played it again for the first time since I beat it. Since the first time I'd ever played it. Played it last year, obviously. You know The Saga spent 1200 on a modded PS5, got it to run in 60 frames per second and it was as glorious as I could have ever hoped for it to be. And yeah, really good video game. You also check it out. Bloodborne.

[Greg Miller]

Never heard of it.

[Roger McCorney]

Remake this year.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh man. Frost Adamus.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And our fifth pick for best old game is Backyard Baseball.

[Mike Howard]

I've played a lot of old games this year, Tim. I don't know if you've known. I've gone through all the FromSoft catalog. I've played Kingdom Hearts. I've now completed Half Life and none of them compare to backyard baseball. Of course, the Goat. The greatest of all time. Who would have thought that a point and click sports game would be the best sports game ever made? And I'm happy to say they did it okay. They knocked it out of the park. Backyard baseball 97. You draft those kids, you make the best kids youth sports team that you can and you have fun. From Pablo to Ernie, Petey Wheeler to the Weber twins, you can have a great time smiling, swinging and having a good time with your friends. I mean, I'm blown away that we live in 2024 and we are now returning to the backyard sports franchise with baseball, soccer, hopefully basketball, hockey and football make their way onto the catalog. But I'll tell you what, nothing better than, you know, drafting nine kids onto your sports team, making the Mighty Melon heads, going out week to week, taking on the Blue Socks, the Giants, the, the, the Swamp Rats. It doesn't matter. A fun time. And so yeah, best back or best old game of the year goes to backyard baseball this year for me.

[Andy Cortez]

I will also say best stream of the year is this stream from the over the break which I randomly caught. And you, you really made something special here, Mike.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah, you don't want, you don't want to know about that one, Tim. You don't want to know about Blackwood and what she's doing out there.

[Barrett Courtney]

This is definitely one of those.

[Mike Howard]

Father.

[Barrett Courtney]

We really have to thank. We really have to thank the Photoshop select subject pool for Mike.

[Mike Howard]

Really, really learned. You know, shout out to eevee. I'm hosting parent teacher conferences right now because my team of nine has to go to a team of eight for soccer, which means one kid will be cut. And so we're currently having conversations. You can see Pete, he comes from a. A split family. Of course. You know, he has a stepfather now. It's a lot of lords.

[Tim Gettys]

A lot of lords.

[Mike Howard]

Which one is the stepfather or no new Kenny Powers. Kenny Powers. Doesn't really love Pete. You know he doesn't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Damn.

[Mike Howard]

But, you know, you got to give a lot of love to Earl.

[Greg Miller]

He's not expecting his best backyard baseball to have the storyline this deep and complex, but here we are.

[Roger McCorney]

This is built into the game, too. Yeah, this is just right there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is one of those ones where, like, I remember streaming and raiding Mike and, like, I didn't know that this was happening, and, like, he was in the middle of one of these streams and I'd never seen him commit, commit so hard to character. I was like, good for him.

[Tim Gettys]

Just living his best life.

[Roger McCorney]

I'm so proud of him.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to all of our best old game winners. Again, those were Dead Rising, Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door, Monster Hunter, Now Bloodborne, and Backyard Baseball. Our next category is Best Early Access. Oh. The game that had the best showing in Early Access. Let's start off with our first winner, which is Hades2.

[Tim Gettys]

Of course it is. Oh, my God. What a video game. Honestly, I think the worst thing about this game is that it came out in Early Access. I wish it just came out, was finished and amazing because it would be the best game of all time. Hades 2 is infinitely playable. It is fantastic. Every single thing you can say about it. It's good. Like, I have nothing bad to say about this game.

[Roger McCorney]

Wow, that's incredible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This game is, like, the equivalent to the Green Goblin Mask on my computer in the way that I played it when I played the Early Access when it first came out, got obsessed with it. I played so much of it, and then after a while, I had to put it down to be like, all right, I don't want to play any more of this until final release. Like, I can't let myself play this throughout the year with the updates and all that stuff. And then, not that I'll burn out on it, but I. I want to have that fresh experience when it finally does come out. And so, like, I've had to try and pull myself back, but every now and then I open up steam and I am looking for something to play. And I'll play me. I see the Hades too, and it is speaking to me like, the Green Goblin Mask, like, playing me now. And I'm like, I should. I shouldn't do that. I want to kill Spider Man.

[Barrett Courtney]

But with all of the early accesses that. That we play, especially, I would say me and Mike probably play the most Early Accesses. There's always the discussion that, all right, I'll play a little bit now. And when the new update comes in, then I'll hop back in. What are the odds that we ever hop back in, Mike? It's very low. I would say, like we rarely ever go back to those games whenever a new update comes because it's time was here and we moved on to something else. Whatever the case may be, a lot.

[Mike Howard]

Of them just stay in early access Purgatory.

[Barrett Courtney]

They sure do. They sure do. And Hades drops in immediately. You know, 40 hours in, I play it and I love everything about it. It's like, wow, what an incredible experience. And then the. We've seen a couple of other DLC drops that we had. The Ben Star sort of DLC recently, the something of the Olympians. I forget what it's called where he's. Yeah, that's exactly how he talks. And, and I've. I've put in another 20 hours and it just. And it just happens so fast and it's just as fun. And the new additions make the game even more rewarding. Rewarding and more fun. It's. Tim, you're right. It may be the perfect game.

[Tim Gettys]

And, and with that too, it's like, you know, we, we often say, like, oh, it's the perfect mobile game or it's the perfect Steam deck game, or it's the perfect this game or that game. This is the perfect. Anywhere you play a game like I on the Steam deck, I can't imagine something being better, especially on steam deck OLED. This game freaking sings. You get that 16 by 10 aspect ratio. It takes advantage of that extra real estate and looks great. I play this on my super ultra wide computer at home and it takes advantage of it. Like, this game is amazing no matter how you play it. God, I can't wait for it to be done.

[Roger McCorney]

I booted up in not the early access, but like the test that they gave us or whatever and I beat that. And I was like, I can't touch this game until at one point, oh, it's just so.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I forgot about it.

[Roger McCorney]

It was so fucking good. And I was like, no, I need to just. I'll hold off. I'll hold off.

[Greg Miller]

That's mine as well. Where I jumped in, tasted it. I'm like, okay. I don't. I want to just wait for the final product.

[Mike Howard]

Best fantasy critic draft I've ever had.

[Barrett Courtney]

Shout out like 94 90.

[Mike Howard]

You just got to believe in the early access.

[Roger McCorney]

You should have been able to do it again this year.

[Barrett Courtney]

Come on.

[Andy Cortez]

Reviewing an early access game. But I, I cut myself off as well. Greg and Roger, just because, you know, there's that moment once you can go up. And then I went up and I was like, this game is so much bigger than I expected it to be. And it's only in early access and I don't have. I. This needs to be in different year games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah. Out of the eight of us who voted, six of us voted for Hades too.

[Mike Howard]

I think I voted for it too.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mike Howard]

That's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But there was a. There was a single brave soul who did vote for our next game, which is Fields of Mystery.

[Roger McCorney]

I'm just such a brave person. Fields of Mystery is an incredible game. I wish this is the game that I regret not playing more of. I wanted to really dig my teeth into it. There was one moment where I was like that a month where I was like, this is the prime moment to get into it. And then for some reason kept on crashing on my Steam deck, so I just could not boot it up.

[Greg Miller]

It's gaming.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, I know, right? But now it's fixed. But whatever. I love. I do not. I'm not a Stardew Valley person. I'm not even really that deep of an animal crossing person or any cozy type of game. But this one just took me by surprise. I was playing it religiously every single night. It was one of those few games that me and Lianza were playing together concurrently, which was awesome. She had her save and we're like going back and forth and being like, hey, what's the best way to do this? How do you, you know, how do you actually deal with all of these animals and these crops? And I love getting to know these characters. Like, that was the part of this I did not expect at all. I expected me maybe to, like, get into the farming aspect, maybe even the going into the caves and mining, but the characters are really compelling. They're so hot, all of them. It's incredible. And yeah, I have my favorites. And I'm like now trying to get the one that's really mad, that really is annoyed at me. And I'm like, trying to find all the stuff so then he can, you know, date me. And like, that's. That's now my whole gameplay. I just. I'm excited for the 1.0 because I think I'm very much where I'm at with Hades, where I'm like, this is really great, but what if I just hold off? What if I just hold off and I have the full 1.0, but the place that it's in right now is so polished. If you told me that this wasn't a 1:1. This wasn't an early access game. I would believe you. I'd be like, yeah, this is, this could go as a 1.0 and I would, I would love it. I'm excited for this game specifically to get onto Switch and to other platforms because I think it's going to be fucking huge. Like this is going to be like a cultural phenomenon. Fields of Mystery specific.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah. The most recent update added the ability to kind of go further with relationships and added a much more progression towards things. And this is one of those games I was just mentioning earlier where me and Mike are like, ah, we'll get back to it. This is one that all year I kept saying I'll get back to it once that newer update comes through because I put in 25 hours into the initial launch and unfortunately never got back to it because just other I would look at my Steam deck like, yeah, what if I just boot up 80s too? But this is one I definitely want to get back to. I had a great time with this one and yeah, a lot of baddies.

[Roger McCorney]

The color scheme is so beautiful too. Like the. Everything about like the way this game looks is gorgeous.

[Barrett Courtney]

Good music too.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Our third winner for best early access of 2024 is Path of Exile 2.

[Tim Gettys]

Damn, you're the coolest.

[Greg Miller]

Hello everybody, it's me, Greg Miller. Path of exile 2. The narrative here would be of course Xanth. Our boy, the man, the official ARPG expert of kinda funny.

[Tim Gettys]

The most well spoken person to ever make an appearance on any of our shows, period.

[Greg Miller]

In such a good temperament. He's like so gentle while we're like screaming and farting into microphone. Of course, Xanth. I know from the Diablo podcast because I am obsessed, still am with Diablo. Excuse me, sorry, Inhaled right at the wrong time. And this year would be marked with my Hype for Diablo 4 building up to Vessel of Hatred and how I did something that does not happen to me usually with video games, and burned myself out. I wanted the platinum before Vessel of Hatred. I threw so much time into it and I had to grind so hard for that final push, which would have been way easier. After Vessel of Hatred. I then got Vessel of Hatred, reviewed it, got the retail copy, played it and then put it down where I thought I'd still be doing my usual check ins work on the thing, blah, blah. So when path of Exile 2 is coming up and entering early access, Xanth is all about it. He is telling me and coming on the shows and talking about how it might be the best action RPG of all time. And I downloaded truly expecting to be like, okay, not. But I'm burned out on Diablo. I don't want more of this. And I was so shocked to get in. Oh, there's no character creator. I just person that's not usually my scene jump in and find that this game has such a different rhythm that it is not Diablo. It is not trying to be that click, click, click, click, click, click, click, kill. You know, numbers go up, I'm happy, blah, blah. It is, for lack of a better term, even though it's not for me though, it is what you guys see in souls games. So much of like, okay, cool, there's a large boss. There are bosses all over the map. I see them there, I go there. I engage with this boss. And cool. I have to learn the attack pattern. I have to know when to dodge. I died. I'm coming right back. I'm jumping in. It's not, you know, you lose all your stuff and all this stuff. It's very forgiving on the deaths, but it is this. Okay, cool. I'm jumping back in and I'm trying to figure this out and I'm trying to crack this nut that is this one boss. I've done it. Congratulations. I've gone up. I feel you level slowly, which is fine. I feel the gameplay is more weighted. Is it slower gameplay? It is that. I walk in and guess what? There are a bunch of ads around me. And in Diablo, we were playing hardcore the other day, granted, on normal. And then we cranked it up to hard. But like, you get surrounded by ads, you're gonna be fine for the most part.

[Tim Gettys]

Ads.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. You know, not your boss. Additional enemies. Yeah, that's what you call the little grunts or whatever when you get Tim, come on, man. A half circle Mario doesn't have ads. You know what I mean?

[Tim Gettys]

World of War crazy show ad free with the kind of speaking of that.

[Greg Miller]

But when they, you know, hear a crap pressing of like five guys, that could be the end of you. You gotta fall back, you gotta get defensive. I love the how differently this plays. I think that there's room in my heart for both of them where I will eventually be over my. Oh, I had too much Diablo at the buffet. When I come back, probably the next season and when this gets more updates and when this is a full 1.0, I'm gonna be off to the races on both of them. I love Path of Exile too.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah, this game rocks. Spent about 14 hours on this one. Got to act two and loved every single minute of it. It is the Diablo alternative that I've always looked for.

[Tim Gettys]

Right.

[Mike Howard]

And I love all of it that it has to offer. I know a lot of people get a little worried because it does look so overwhelming, but it's not right. You take the time to learn. And of course I had Xanth as a teacher, but I love the giant skill tree that you have. I love that all the passive abilities look like the galaxy of stars above your head as you go through each and every one and level up your character. This is a must play arpg. If you're looking for another piece of Diablo pie, this is is great.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

The last two selections for best Early Access plus because these were the only three that were nominated. So I took executive power and I just added two that I also really enjoyed this year and that is Witchfire, which is a game that I cannot talk enough about. First person shooter Roguelite. And it's a game that's been in Early Access for a very long time. So I say that so that you don't think that, oh, I'll wait to buy it because it's probably not very much of a completed product. Like, this game feels very developed. This game has been in development for about I think like seven years or so. And then it hit early access in 2021, I believe on the Epic Game Store. And then it finally hit Steam Early Access last year. This game is very, very developed. It's from the developers of Painkiller. This is a, again, very doom sort of style with a lot of Destiny type magic. But the progression is so damn addicting. And the amount of times I thought I was going to end the stream and said, oh, let me just check out this new gun I unlocked that marks all of the enemies when I'm a aiming down sights so that when I shoot one of them, the bullets travel to all the other enemies. Let me see how that looks. And then you get addicted to that loop. It's so creative and it's so fun and it. It's oozing with style. This, visually, it's awesome. And the only thing is that I wish the. The soundtrack was a bit more banging, but other than that, like I think the. It's so addicting and so much fun to play. And this is kind of why I love Roguelites. And the next one on the list is another Rogue Line and that's Windblown. This is one that I really want him to play.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is a good one because.

[Barrett Courtney]

And this is one that I want me blessing Mike to get back to because for the amount of times that you see a game that it's that you ask yourself, oh, you could play multiplayer, will it be as good? Nah, it's probably meant for multiplayer. This is one that I looked at was like, like I'm gonna play Windblown just as a single player experience. It is from the devs, it's Motion Twin, the people that made dead cells. And Windblown is a top down roguelite adventure action game with a lot of the same ideas of dead cells. A lot of the that core DNA is there. But while you play, I was like, I'll play this as a single player experience. We'll stream it with Mike and bless. I'm probably not gonna dig it that much. And somehow I dug the multiplayer experience even more than I did. The single player experience has a really awesome feature. Whenever everybody's dead and there's only one person left in the game, it kicks on this sudden death mechanic where the one person who's alive, if you kill a certain amount of enemies, you bring back your homies, but you die in one hit and it's just like all or nothing sort of thing. You really have to clutch up. And moments like that just bring so much more excitement. But this game is a lot of fun and again progression and meeting NPCs out in the wild that whenever you meet them they'll. You'll recruit them back to your base and now they upgrade this and that NPC upgrades permanent. You know, permanent things about your build that may improve future runs. It's so much fun. It's got a great style and the coolest thing and the best decision they made is that you can't dash off the edges.

[Greg Miller]

Nice.

[Barrett Courtney]

It makes you feel so good and, and fast and slick while you're kind of traversing the world. It's a blast to play and this is one that I really want Tim to play because I think you'll see the magic.

[Tim Gettys]

I bought it and I've downloaded it on my PC and Steve Deck I just still haven't booted up. That's my bad.

[Barrett Courtney]

Bad. Very, very good. This one is definitely one that I will say is earlier than a lot of the early accesses on this list. Well, I get. I think Path of Exile might be equal, but Wind Bone is one that is still very early on where a lot of the feedback is still being taken into a lot of consideration. Where I'd say something like Witchfire and Hades 2 seem really, really kind of far down in their development cycle.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's tracks based on. It's gonna be really special when it gets to that 1.0.

[Barrett Courtney]

I I, I this was like so close to making my kind of like top 15. Will it kind of get close to be top 10? For me this is one of those. It's like do not be surprised if you see it as a top 10 in the year that it finally releases. A lot of fun.

[Tim Gettys]

Love that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to all of our winners of best early access of 2024. We're gonna move on to our next category. But before we do, I want to shout out some super chats. We had quite a few come in. Ultra Hyper J dub super chats with a birthday tax. Thank you so much for that CJ Splitson WROT during our early access segment and said Hades 2 gave me the year contender 2025 question mark. We'll see.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean probably my biggest problem with is I feel like the early access gets in the way of all that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think so?

[Tim Gettys]

I think it's still going to be in the conversation but I do think there's going to be a lot of people that don't necessarily like yeah, they think I think I'm one of those people.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wow. Failure to think right. Cinema says PPV of Mike coaching a real kids baseball team us. I'm sure you'll get that at some point. Rails writes in and says master of hype Stone Mike. Mike. Dig the jacket. Looking sharp. Jabroni feel great. Joe Fararelli wrote in. I believe during our best indie segment it said reminder Balatro is free on Apple Arcade. Dill Shriit still got that, huh?

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Apple Arcade. Yeah.

[Roger McCorney]

Updating it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dill Shriitzen says Factorio Space Age. The greatest automation slash base builder of all time. Play it Mike. And everyone Dear six, it says, oh man, I hope this award show has the silk song announcement. Beast rights in and wants to know why you're not wearing a kind of funny blue blazer, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

See I like look. Look how good I look. You know what I mean? You go with the offset, right? It was like we're mainly blue. It's like I want to pop off with the accent color. Yeah, we have the blue and the gold. You got to pop with the gold.

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, that's why you asked that question. Yeah, I thought it was a back end thing. You're like, hey, I gotta like for.

[Tim Gettys]

What outfit I was gonna wear. I brought my as well today. Just I was like I wanted to back up. I wanted to sit down and see with you. Guys, if I look stupid and I don't. So I was like, I'm on rock Crazy Killer. Thank you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got one more from Lewis Leg who writes in and says thank you all for what you do. Massively helped me through struggles with grief. All looking dapper as fuck. And Roger would be a great Lex Luthor. Love you all.

[Roger McCorney]

I love that. I love that. Hire me, James Gunn.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let's move on to our fifth category here. Best DLC Slash Expansion. This is for the expansion or downloadable content that you fell in love with. Our first winner for this category is, of course, Elden Ring Shadow of.

[Roger McCorney]

What a surprise.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What a surprise. Similar to, I believe Hades. Two out of the eight of us, five of us voted in with Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree.

[Barrett Courtney]

This is one that I told Bless. If this has a lot of nominations, then put something else on the list. But yeah, Elden Ring. I mean, what a great time. Tough adventure, amazing art direction, incredible discovery. They. They made a whole other video game that took 50 hours to beat for their DLC and a great freaking time.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah. Andy and I almost missed Tim's wedding because Andy couldn't beat the boss.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, well, that would have been a good story.

[Barrett Courtney]

We definitely stopped playing co op and then I beat the boss.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

So Mike got really mad at me. Mike got really mad at me.

[Mike Howard]

What a great game. What a fantastic DLC. Especially because I played all the FromSoft games this year and I played all the DLCs and to see the growth of a DLC package and what you would. What you would expect out of a FromSoftware title 2, then a giant open world here is just an experience that is almost like Elden Ring, where It's just massive 40 hours. You can get lost, you can find different caves. You have everything that you would expect from it. I. I cannot believe that they built this and we got to play this and enjoy it this year. What a great game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I think one that captured the zeitgeist, especially in the first half of the year, where so much of our coverage felt like it was anticipating Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, and that dominated so much of our. Oh, what does this mean? Us watching the trailer and being like, okay, so what is like this sickle sort of thing that looks like a side of grace, but it isn't a side of grace. And so much speculation was so fun leading up to this. But even while playing it, it was the thing of, you know, playing the original Elden Ring in anticipation for Erdtree and then playing Erdtree and being like, like, wow, y'all didn't just make more Elden Ring. Like, y'all found ways to, you know, redo how certain aspects work. Right. Like caves are different, the catacombs are kind of different. Right. Like you guys are adding in more of like the side content that you'd expect or like, I guess, the discoverable content that you'd expect. But remix, remixing it in ways that makes this world feel a bit more alive and a bit more, you know, seamless as you go. That plus the bosses being incredible. The diff, like how they figure out the difficulty ramp, which might have been a bit much, but yeah, like there's not. There's so much I could say like how vertical the world design was compared to base Elden Ring, where it is. Wow. You guys continue to level up how you think about even how you design an open world. Very impressive. With Shadow of the Erdtree, our next winner for best DLC slash expansion is Alan Wake two Night Springs.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, I wrote that one in. Just me, right? It just me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I believe it was.

[Roger McCorney]

I don't know. Greg played it too. Yeah, I actually, to be honest, this is a year of like, I didn't really play many expansions or dlc, but this is the one that stood out to me. Surprisingly disappointed by the other Alan Wake 2 DLC. I thought it was kind of bare bones and didn't really move the story ahead at all. But Alan Wake two Night Springs, which is a fun time, right? It's three bespoke stories inside of the multiverse of Alan Wake two. And they get weird with it, right? You have Jesse Faden in alternate universe. You have the waitress and a diner and then you have what's his face from the. He's the detective in this one, but he's also in Quantum Break.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, Sand Lake himself. Yeah. Oh, no, you mean Sean Ashmore.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, Sean Ashmore. So three really weird stories that play into the multiverse of the Remedy universe. And it gets really weird, but has some interesting implications for the rest of the universe. Right. For Control two and potentially an Alan Wake three. And it gets super meta and fun. But I just had a blast. It's such a great hanging out after work and just playing this for two and a half hours and I'm not going to forget this experience. This is a great way to kind of put a pin into the DLCs.

[Greg Miller]

For story based games are so difficult where it is like, well, how much are you doing? Why wouldn't you Go make a sequel. And I think so many times things get released and it actually doesn't take away, but it's like, well, I already rolled credits, so to jump into this is going to be so tough. This being an anthology set in the Night Springs, which of course set in Night Springs, which of course is their twilight zone inside of Alan Wake too. It was such a great little fun way of like, let's give you more out of this game in this quirky universe we've made.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I just want to shout out just the writing as well.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like the hilarious.

[Andy Cortez]

So funny. Especially with the. The Waitress, which I think is like, technically the first one. I think you can play him in any order, but like, that's the first one that pops up in the menu. And just the writing of that, of her kind of delusion of having a relationship with Alan Wake and how that plays into like fan fiction writing and all that was so goddamn funny. They nailed it. It's so good.

[Barrett Courtney]

The villains yelling, random barks that are just very, very meta about like the game development or about the game as a whole. And like, yeah, you. In the normal game, you just hear a bunch of enemies saying like wake or whatever. But in. In this dlc, just having villains yell at you like. Like this meta narrative is too hard to understand. Random like that the boss fight where.

[Andy Cortez]

Alan Wake turns into like a werewolf with her. That is like, my. My motorcycle's a werewolf too.

[Mike Howard]

Like all this.

[Andy Cortez]

It's like, what the are we doing here? It's so fun.

[Barrett Courtney]

So creative and a lot of fun.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our third winner for the best DLC slash expansion of 2024 is Starfield Shattered.

[Barrett Courtney]

Who is this?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, it's your Dark Horse for game of the year, everybody. So look out on Monday. You never know what's going to happen.

[Tim Gettys]

Very dark horse.

[Greg Miller]

Nobody would see it coming. You know, everybody knows how much I adore Starfield, how much fun I have in this game. That again, is not a 10 out of 10 by any stressed imagination. Shattered Space was my pick for this because of course, it is a DLC that gave us what the base game should have been. Here is a planet that was handcrafted. It's chock full of what you'd expect from a Bethesda RPG of little conversations to listen to. Here comes the quest. Here are these decisions to make. How do you want to go out? You know, you get to the end, there's going to be this big choice, this choice. Who do you put in charge? Blah, blah, blah. On top of that A completely different color palette from what we had seen in Starfield before. Then on top of that, for so many people, it was their return to a starfield that is far different than a launch game. 60 frames per second on Xbox. Of course, having vehicles to drive around in the launch of the mod shop, right, that had had quests from Bethesda and then other quests from other creators that I think are better than some of the quests that are from Bethesda have been added to it as a Starfield. Stan. It was just a great way to jump back in, enjoy that world. I spent a lot of time in there and feel like, man, this is what I wish the game would have been all the way through. But I'm happy to have it now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah, there you go.

[Barrett Courtney]

Congratulations.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fourth winner for best DLC slash expansion of 2024 is Prince of Persia, Mask of Darkness.

[Tim Gettys]

Who is this? What a dlc? What a video game. Honestly, I feel honored that we were even able to get this expansion this year. I remember when they announced it at the Ubisoft forward, it was just such a like, whoa, oh my God, we're getting DLC of this game. Like, didn't expect that. And if we did, I thought it was just going to be kind of like, oh, hey, here's some outfits. And they did that as well. I think that at the end of the day, Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown is going to go down as one of my favorites of all time. And, and with the post release content that they've done, I think that it's only gotten better. And any kind of issue I had with the core game they addressed and any outfit that I wish that they had, they added. And a lot of the little quality of life things that playing through it the first time, I was like, man, I really wish Fast Travel worked just a little bit different now. It does. The DLC added all of that stuff, but in addition to that, specifically the Mask of Darkness expansion here added everything that I love about Prince of Persia Lost Crown. Amazing combat, amazing platforming challenges, and very, very, very creative abilities and power ups and using those in every way imaginable, getting the most juice out of it. And I couldn't believe that in this, what, five hour expansion, whatever it is, there's like two new abilities that are as good as the ones in the core game and that was very special. The boss fights in this were great. I don't know that this is. Is as good as every single thing from the core game, but getting more of it was Such a surprise. Story wise, I. I thought this stuff was a great addition and I just. I absolutely hate what happened to this team. They do not deserve it. But they really, really put their all into even this expansion and I'm very thankful for it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then our fifth winner for best DLC slash expansion of 2024 is the final Shape.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh, this is mine. This is my alternate one in case it was too many Elden ring votes. Because I just again, as somebody who fell hard off of Destiny 2 for a long time to hop back in and knowing that I wanted to hop back in for the final dlc, which is the final shape, I. Somebody who just does. I don't know about the lore, but I don't. I think those final moments culminate in such an amazing way. Even for somebody like me who didn't really know every touchstone for every side character that you've met along the way. But them having this Avengers end game moment at the end was just awesome. And gameplay wise, puzzle wise, what, whatever they're asking you and your squad to do, gameplay wise was so fun and I. It's just like pure first person shooter fun. The amount of puzzles where a lot of I, I think just. Just really engaging in ways that I hadn't experienced in Destiny in a while. And I was so happy that the largely the whole community of Destiny was like, wow, you all crushed it. You landed the plane. This was a great time. I had an Amazing time with Destiny 2. The final shape. Didn't do the raid though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Didn't.

[Barrett Courtney]

Didn't get RAID ready. Mike, Chris Anka didn't tell us.

[Mike Howard]

I got RAID ready.

[Barrett Courtney]

Damn.

[Greg Miller]

Did you do that? Did you do the raid?

[Mike Howard]

No, no, no. Everybody talks a big game. They don't want trade.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I got ready. I didn't do it. The though. Congratulations to our winners. The best DLC slash expansion of 2024. This brings us to our sixth category out of 12. We're about halfway there. Best innovation. Probably my. One of my favorite categories. I'll say this is honoring a game mechanic or system that was unique and or pushed things forward in 2024. Our first winner of this category. Well, I was going to do a half.

[Greg Miller]

A half.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah. After this. Our first winner is Crypt Master.

[Greg Miller]

This is me, I assume this is me and you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This one had two votes for it.

[Greg Miller]

Come on now. Crypt Master, a game I think that was criminally overlooked this year in a great year of games, you know what I mean? And even recently the developer came out on the social accounts like, hey, we have what, a 95 or whatever on Open Critic and everybody loves us, but like we can't get in front of press and people aren't paying attention. You know, as a fan of Typing of the Dead, which I just talked about with Stella today, right, like this game dropping and being this, you know, you have four characters, you're dungeon crawling, but you're, you're. The way you are doing it is trying to relearn words and you're typing words in and trying to figure them out. When you do, you can then use them to cast, right? And go through and have these attacks. Like I thought, taking that. Yeah, type Typing of the Dead. Type out your attack, right? But have it be this. You're. They're giving you riddles that you're then trying to solve, right? There's things you find that are other riddles to open the chest and you have to type in questions to the masters. Then describing what it is. Like, can he taste it? Can he smell it? All these different, different, like, this is such a fun game. I think even me talking about it doesn't showcase. If we can put a trailer up, right, of this amazing black and white structure. They have to it the voice acting of the crypt master being so cool. But then, yeah, going through and having to type and have him do things for then you to learn how you can attack and go out there. So cool, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Him having so many responses too, whenever you type something. And like if you say anything that is, you know, maybe whatever related to the scenario, he'll have some commentary, commentary to it. And it's one of those ones where I don't understand how they made this work as an indie game. Like this feels like it has so much work put into it to make it. To make it work. But it's super fun, right? And like the variety of puzzles in it. Like, you know, Greg, you know how much I love puzzles.

[Greg Miller]

Poppy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This game very much like speaks to me in a way where I'm like, oh, this feels tailor made for me.

[Greg Miller]

And, and that's the thing where I think it's, you know, it's. Yeah, it's a dungeon crawler, but it is a puzzler, right? You go through and you, you have to figure out how to open the chest and you have to figure out how to move through these doors using language and words.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our second winner for best innovation of 2024 is Prince of Persia. The Lost Crown's memory shards.

[Tim Gettys]

Timmy, you want to talk about id?

[Barrett Courtney]

This was not on mine because I knew Tim was Going to put it in there. But I love the idea. I also have tic tacs in my mouth, so maybe.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, cool. Well, yeah, so I did. I did put it here. It's not a surprise, but I do think this is one of the biggest kind of selling points. Points to people. And initially, when I was trying to pitch Andy and some of the team on playing this game early on, where it's a Metroidvania and it's very, very big, the map can kind of. It's much larger than you expect it to be, especially by the end of the game. But it had such a simple but brilliant innovation, which is these memory shards. You can essentially take a picture of a room you're in where you're like, okay, cool. I don't have the ability for this, but I know that eventually I'm gonna come back and have whatever power I need to be able to solve whatever puzzle or get to wherever I need to get that treasure, get the treasure, get the. Whatever it is, go through a different door, go through a hole, whatever it is. We've all played Metroidvanias. We understand that. That feeling of, like, oh, man, I wish I had the thing. And you're never going to remember that. You try to remember. Maybe you can pull up the map and, like, try your best to come up with some system of, like, every game has some type of, like, mark. Not every, but, like, the markers or something.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

But to be able to actually pull up a screenshot of. Of, like, what that room was, and you remember exactly what it is. It really caused me to. Anytime I got an upgraded ability, pull that up and be like, oh, I need to go back there. I want to backtrack there now because I have this ability instead of waiting, and it's like, that's very cool. And I feel like it. It gives you this, like, familiarity with the. The map and the traversing the game. So much fun that, like, I. I think that it enhanced my experience so much. Not just in the, oh, this is making it better to remember where to go, but also making me play the game in a different way that I think overall benefited the gameplay.

[Barrett Courtney]

It's also not. It's more than just taking a screenshot on your switch or something like that. It in your overworld map, where you see this gigantic, sort of sprawling. You know, here's this, what you would expect a Metroidvania map to look like. You see that little icon all over the map of the places that you were putting down these memory shards. And then you can hover over that little icon, and then boom, up opens up this little memory shard. Here's a screenshot you took with that treasure chest that you couldn't get to because you didn't have double jump yet or whatever.

[Tim Gettys]

And in addition to you saying it's like, it's not just a screenshot, I feel like explaining it kind of sounds like this is the most simple thing in the world. I think that's kind of like, yeah, this is a great innovation. Like, why hasn't every game before had this? And I think that it works very well in tandem with all of the options. This game allows you both from an accessibility perspective, but also just from just. Just every perspective. Like, you can tweak from like, a scale of, like, 1 to 10 of, like, how fast you want things to move, how much damage you want to take or whatever. And it's just like, it really allows you just play the game how you want. And I feel like for something like a. A challenging combat focused and. And challenging platform focus, Metroidvania, being able to kind of decide how hard you want the combat and the platforming to be it, the way that this game handles it, it's like. Like, if this is an innovation, I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Don'T know what is.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, they truly took a tried and true genre like a Metroidvania that has some of the best games we've ever made and innovated on how they play.

[Roger McCorney]

My only nitpick with it is that I wanted unlimited. I just wanted to be able to do it everywhere. And then I realized, like, I maxed it out and I was like, well, I don't know what to do here. Now I'm just gonna stop playing this game.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, you eventually level that up as well and you get more.

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, really?

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Roger McCorney]

Well, eight of them. I need a 10.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our third winner for best innovation of 2024 is Metaphor Refantasio's Archetype System.

[Roger McCorney]

Interesting.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is probably my favorite part of this video game is the Archetype system.

[Roger McCorney]

Explain to me how this is different from someone who played Metaphor, didn't play Persona.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's just way more customizable, and I think it's way more deep than the Persona games. And Barrick might be able to explain it with more accuracy.

[Andy Cortez]

So Persona is different in terms of the rest of your party have one specific, like, monster or whatever you want to call it that's attached to them. So they're only upgrading, like, that specific. Like, as an example, ryuji in Persona 5 has this skeleton dude who does electric attacks. Ryuji's just doing that for the entire game. Right. Whereas Metaphor does something different, which isn't new for JRPGs, but it is a classic class system where you're able to kind of pick and choose what your team members are doing. But I think the innovation with the archetype system is being able to unlock all of these different routes for your entire team and then mixing and matching abilities. Whereas in Persona, only your character, like the mc, is the only one who can, like, switch out monsters and all that. And so I thought the mixing and matching and being able to play around with all of these different types of gameplay styles, not just for yourself, but for your entire party, I think was such a, I don't know, big push for this style of game that I thought was, you know, that we've seen before, but just like the little tweaks here and there and might not be the biggest innovation, but I think it's something that really pushed something forward in making sure to have the player think on the gameplay and battle mechanics on a deeper level than before, especially in Persona.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I know, like, I think a lot of people would say, like, oh, this is just like any job system. But I think when you think about what Persona brought to the table, as far as mixing in the social elements with the dungeon crawling and RPG elements, I think adding in the architect archetype system or job system or whatever you want to call it right to it, I think doubles down on the strengths of what made Persona stuff great, but also the strengths of what makes job systems in JRPGs great to, like, now have something that is, oh, I am invested as. Stroll in a. As a character, and I am hanging out with that character in my social time, but I'm also building him towards these things that feel way more complex than we had in any Persona game on the combat side.

[Andy Cortez]

And I just. The way it all unlocks as well, and I think it encourages you to try everything out to unlock, like, the better version of, like, the, you know, the mask dancer or whatever. And having all these people kind of. It loops into the gameplay, but it also loops into the story, because that's definitely a Persona thing where, like, the more you hang out with all these characters, you're able to unlock certain archetypes in this as well. But also having, like, a. A reason to try out all of the kind of different base archetypes as well to get better versions of those, I thought also played in another level to it that I really liked.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fourth winner for best Innovation is the pawn system in Dragon's Dogma 2.

[Barrett Courtney]

Not an innovation. It already happened in part one. But this, I, I, I feel like this was the one where this game sort of had a lot more eyes on it and this was definitely more of the, the popular version of Dragon's Dogma because I don't think part one got had as many players as part two had. And part two for me was kind of like kind of eye opening because I didn't play a whole lot of drag Dragon's Dogma 1 but I just had so much fun seeing everybody's created ponds and bringing people into my squad. And so when you play Dragon's Dog Em 2, you create your own character in this big fantasy RPG and then you also create your main pawn and your main pawn. I created Rebecca Ferguson. She's the love of my life and she's an awesome wizard warlock. She kicks so much ass. And to be able to, for other players around the world to be able to recruit Rebecca to their squad and I could set Rebecca out on a job that says like hey, I, you know, if you kill five of these enemies or whatever, I will get this reward. So if you recruit her to your squad and you kill five of those enemies, then I get a reward. And it's just, it's a really nice sort of passive way to kind of play the game as well and just have something else to kind of remember and go, oh, here's these other little additions that I'm getting throughout the game. But I just loved creating Kevin Coelho for Mike Mike and having Kevin Coelho be Mike's pawn and then recruited Kevin to my squad and it was awesome just seeing like a 4 foot 5 Kevin Coelho just destroying beasts out there. A lot of fun. And I think they just had a really creative way of. It's a really creative way of seeing everybody's creations and having these weird sort of meme moments where everybody's like man, nobody's selecting my pawn because he's a, because he's like not a hot lady. So like, and then, and then like just seeing this sort of like internal struggle of please pick my guy. Like I need my dude to go out in jobs and get rewards or whatever. It's just a really kind of creative way to have a lot more agency in the game. And with as awesome as a character creator as that was a really fun way to kind of get creative there as well. I looked at my most played games on my steam wrap up and I saw Jack and Zagma 2 was there twice. I was like, what the fuck? One of them was a character creator. Because I spent 27 hours in the character creator. Wow.

[Roger McCorney]

Good for you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner for best innovation is the Plucky Squires 2D to 3D gameplay. This is one that was written but in by the one and only Paris Lily. But I think we all can speak to it, right? Especially those of us who played the game even deeper right from. From me just playing or just seeing the trailers, but then also playing the preview of it. Right. Plucky Squire was not one that I, I spent too much time with, but is one that like I was always jealous to see when people when like Andy would talk about it or whoever would talk about it and like talk about, about, you know, how charming it was and seeing like that transition from playing this legend 2D legend is all the game to them playing this 3D game of WoW. Like I can't believe a game actually pulled pulled this off and it is out, right? It is like one that seeing the trailers, I would have been like, there's no way this game actually does this. And it's really cool to see that. It made it happen. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Today, you know, on Games Daily, talking about the dice knobs, this Plucky Squire made it for art direction, I believe. And that's what I called out where, you know, I reviewed it for us and I thought, you know, gameplay wise it was a bit thin in terms of what the game was. But this 2D to 3D, the arts direction, the style of that was impressive. I think my only criticism for best innovation is I feel like it's a little bit like the medium where I wish we could do it anytime. Not specific sections, you know what I mean? And I wish they used it a bit more interestingly. But in terms of the fact that it works, the fact that it looks good, the jumping out of, you know, meeting a new enemy in the book in 2D and jumping out and finding them in 3D, that was always cool.

[Mike Howard]

Cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to our winners. Best innovation. That does bring us halfway through our categories and we're going to continue with our seventh one. But before we get there, I want to tell you about patreon.com kindafunny and YouTube.com kind of funny games along with Apple podcasts and Spotify where you can get the kind of funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. Speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

[Tim Gettys]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And we're back. I believe Roger's in the back and Greg's in the back. You know, either taking pee pee breaks or they're getting beers. One or the other or both. Andy, how you feeling so far? We're halfway through the smileys. We're a brainchild.

[Barrett Courtney]

I, I love it. I, you know, we're celebrating video games. We're throwing the love as far and as wide as we possibly can blessing and you could use a little bit more love.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Of course, of course.

[Tim Gettys]

Do, do we want to stall for a little bit? Because I have some things I could say. Oh, I mean yeah, just a real quick shout out. I was joking earlier but like I nominated Prince of Persia for style. I do think that's something that I want to speak on just a little bit because the, the way that, that the combat of Prince of Persia kind of adapts the like Marvel vs. Capcom style of like ultra moves and just like makes it all feel so perfectly dynamic with the gameplay. I just think deserves a shout out because the anime influence just gets more and more clear as you get further into the game. And I feel like the opening of the game is like, like the worst part of the game and I hate that so much. It's not the type of like you got to get five hours in before it gets good. But I do think that the, the first like, like 30 minutes just do not do justice to how much style this game. I totally agree with that.

[Andy Cortez]

And, yeah, that's the reason why I didn't continue.

[Tim Gettys]

It's. It's upsetting. It really is. But, like, I'm telling you, like, it very quickly fixes that. But, yeah, it's. I want to give that a shout out. And I also. I know we don't have the best boss fight category this year, but I just want to say, like, I don't think it's the best in terms of, like, oh, it's the most difficult. Definitely not or any of that. But one of the most satisfying video game moments I had this year was the octopus boss fight in Astrobot. Like, that entire level is kind of like why I love video games. The way that the music theme just kind of, like, builds up in each kind of phase you're going through. The ability you have of the. The arm style kind of like punch and then, like, be able to Spider man swing. There's just. It's pure joy, pure fun. Love that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah. Well, everybody's back, so let's move on to our seventh category, best character. A character this year that stood out from the pack. Our first winner is Aerith From Final Fantasy 7, Rebirth. This was written in by, I believe, two of us. One of them, of course, being Timo Gettys, of course. I think the other one might have been me. Hey, it was me.

[Tim Gettys]

It's Aerith's time to shine, right? I feel like this game, Rebirth, long time coming. I think Brianna White's performance of her was fantastic. I think the way that Aerith was written in this game was. Was incredible. And I think that overall Rebirth, I had, I personally believe an amazing story, and I don't think that's because the narrative of the plot is the best thing in the world. But I think the characters are just so well defined and so well written and believable and I think do such a great job of kind of continuing the legacy of Final Fantasy 7, which I've said forever is the Star wars of video games to me, in terms of a cast of characters that I just love, love, and I want to know more about. And Aerith, clearly everybody kind of knows what happens to Aerith in the original. I feel like being able to get more of her in this game, different perspectives to get into her head a bit, a lot more. There's certain sections in this game that kind of deal with her past and deal with her relationships with different characters that I just think is like, man, is some real, real good stuff. So overall, shout out to my girl Aerith.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I Think Aerith is also representative of me for, like, best cast of characters like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Aerth as a cast of characters in this video game, which, now that I'm saying that out loud, probably should have been a category, but that game has such a good cast. When you talk about Aerith, when you talk about Barrett, when you talk about, like, you know, all these different Tifa, Yuffie, whoever, all these different characters who I think get their stories expanded on in really interesting and really emotional ways. Aerith, I think, is the one that probably gets, like, you know, the most focus because of where this game takes place in the Final Fantasy VII saga. And the ways in which they. They highlight her character are so good. I have. One of the things I talk about with the original FF7 remake is, like, the scene I'm gonna, I guess, spoil, like, the beginning of FF7 a little bit, but, like, not really, but the plate falls at some point. I'm sorry. In the scene where the plate falls and, like, you know, you follow Barrett's character as he's looking for his daughter and all this stuff, there's an emotion that is conveyed in that character that is so strong. And I'll say there are scenes in Rebirth that are equally as emotionally impactful for me with Aerith's character, when I, you know, think about where that character comes from, the soul of that character, what the soul of that character means for. For Cloud, and, like, how much that elevates the entire story of the game. That's one that I think is special. And also, she just has a banger theme. Like, come on.

[Tim Gettys]

It's just so emotional.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's so good.

[Tim Gettys]

Versatile, man. I love that. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was like it. We can turn any theme into a battle theme. And we're going to.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Just because we're On Final Fantasy 7, there is no love for Kid G.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, shout out my guy.

[Tim Gettys]

Kid G. Yeah, the homie that is true.

[Barrett Courtney]

Never meant that guy. That is an AI generated, man.

[Andy Cortez]

This is a real character in this game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Parappa the rapper.

[Barrett Courtney]

No idea.

[Roger McCorney]

Wasn't alone. I was like, did I not play this game?

[Barrett Courtney]

No idea, though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, he was in the main story, too.

[Barrett Courtney]

Magic cards with Mike.

[Roger McCorney]

That looks like a Roger tattoo. It might be a mix, might be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A Creed at some point.

[Andy Cortez]

Said Mike almost missed what happened to a.

[Tim Gettys]

My God bless you. And he was sending me all those clips.

[Mike Howard]

I was looking at.

[Barrett Courtney]

You send me Rizzler Memes Price out of the future.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our second winner for best character of 2024 is. Basilio from Metaphor. Refantasio.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Basilio. I, I, I imagine I was the only one who wrote this in. I wanted to give a shout out just because I know everybody. All the other outlets, when they're talking about their favorite characters, the one that always gets talked about is Heisme. Heisme is obviously like the goat. He's like one of the best anime dads. But for, and I know a lot of people thought when I was talking, when I was alluding to my favorite character in fiction in the last like decade or so, a lot of people assumed that was high as me. No, that was, it was Basilio for me. I love him so goddamn much. There is so much that, that he goes through. There's so much loss that he goes through. There are so many. I think he goes through the most. And the way he is still able to kind of put on a bright face for his friends and push the rest of the party forward, I, I just really love in like just a person and a character and the way he's, he has to process through a lot of the things he goes through. I, I think it's truly really beautiful. He is like one of my favorite kind of moments in Metaphor as well. Which is hard to talk about when it's an 80 hour RPG and I don't want to spoil it for those who may be watching, but yeah, I love him so much. And just the performance of Basilio, I don't have the actor's name off the top of my head here, but he, they just had so much fun with him. Anytime that he's in the party and you bring him from like the second or when it's like his turn and, and he just goes, I love this pot. I'm just always like hyped up and ready to go.

[Barrett Courtney]

And Matt White.

[Andy Cortez]

Church.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, like.

[Barrett Courtney]

Or Matt Whitchurch. Sorry.

[Andy Cortez]

He just, he ate up as Basilio in the, the performance. And I adore it so much. So that is all I'll comfortably say about this character without getting into too.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Metaphor is definitely another one that could have been in like the best cast. Shout out. Because Metaphor had multiple characters written in, I narrowed it down to one character just for the sake of like trying to represent more games. But, but also shout out to Louis Lewis. Louise. Louis Lewis.

[Andy Cortez]

You play through this game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Louis Louise. Louise. But you know, I read that name and it's Lewis.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, exactly.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm two hours St. Louis growing up, so. But shout out to that character.

[Roger McCorney]

Luis is definitely the hottest character of this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So if the category was hottest characters. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I feel like there's got to be an FF7. Yeah. Sephiroth would be the other one.

[Roger McCorney]

I mean, there are. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Get those two in a room together.

[Roger McCorney]

That's a threesome.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our third winner for best character of 2024 is ichiban. Like a dragon.

[Roger McCorney]

That's me. Ichiban Kasuga is the greatest video game character ever created. Like, he's just such a. Talk about a bright boy. He has went through so much in his history. He was in prison for like 20 years. Comes out, he's 42 years old, has nothing, nothing going in his life. The yakuza that he was part of kick him to the curb. And he's just. Just a happy boy. He's like, you know what? I believe he believes in the video game, in Dragon Quest. Right? That's the. That's the. The franchise. He loves Dragon Quest, the video games. He wants to be a hero like. Like in Dragon Quest. So that's his whole purpose in the game. And that's kind of the. Also the reason why.

[Greg Miller]

It's like a dragon.

[Roger McCorney]

That's not what the. No, not yet.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like a dragon.

[Roger McCorney]

No, that's not. No, it's not because of Dragon Quest.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It is because of Dragon Quest.

[Roger McCorney]

No, it's not. The games were called like a dragon originally. Originally.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're right.

[Greg Miller]

Greg almost had you. That was a rumor. It wasn't that a thing for a while.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That was a thing, though. I remember talking to somebody that was like, yeah, it's like a Dragon Quest.

[Roger McCorney]

But yeah, Ichiban is an incredible character and he goes through so much in this game. And it's wild because I could have said Kiryu because Kiryu is also dual protagonist game and he goes through so much. But Ichiban is betrayed, he is hurt. He is beaten down. And the ending of this game. Oh my gosh, like I can cry talking about it right now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It is.

[Roger McCorney]

It is so powerful. It is so absolute anime. It is like, like pushing through. And like, you know what? Everyone's on you. Everyone's throwing cans at you, literally and pushing you down. You're gonna get back up and you're just gonna go. And it is. It is gorgeous.

[Barrett Courtney]

Dragon Quester.

[Roger McCorney]

Exactly. Like a dragon.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dragon Quest.

[Roger McCorney]

Like a Dragon Quest.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Damn. Somebody got me. Cuz I definitely. I think it was Imron or somebody. Like, I definitely remember having a conversation where I was like, yo, that's crazy. Dragon Quest. I didn't think about that.

[Barrett Courtney]

Hey, pass me that blunt, dude.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And Ken Jr.

[Roger McCorney]

In the chat says, ichibonds positivity, remember? Reminds me of Mike. And I absolutely feel that way. That's the reason I keep on saying, like, you got to play this game. Because he's. He is what we all should aspire to be. We should all want to be like Ichiban.

[Greg Miller]

I want to be like Mike.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They made a movie about that.

[Mike Howard]

Buy a suit. Buy a suit jacket.

[Greg Miller]

Not for that much money. Tell you that right now our Priscilla is getting thrown out of Macy. She tries to sell me a $450 jack.

[Barrett Courtney]

This may be my favorite one on the list.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fourth winner, Mario of Best Character 2024 is Hayes from Deadlock.

[Mike Howard]

I like that you found the game because I just put ha.

[Greg Miller]

Hayes.

[Mike Howard]

Just so y'all know, I had a Google haze. Yeah, man. What a character.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean so much.

[Mike Howard]

I mean so much.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wait.

[Roger McCorney]

I love this, though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is great.

[Mike Howard]

That's how you interpret when you talk about mobas, Tim. You talk about top lane being the strong one. You talk about bottom lane with the ADC carry, right? Who's going to carry the team, that support role. Who's going to heal the team? And you talk about mid. Who's that magician that's going to hold down the middle? But sometimes you forget about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know.

[Mike Howard]

Okay, who carries the jungle? And of course, in Deadlock, there is no jungle, so we can't really call this a jungle character. But Hayes would be a jungle character.

[Barrett Courtney]

Who'S gonna be getting 90 kills.

[Mike Howard]

Hayes was broken for months on end. And I love playing this character. And so, like, when I think about Hayes, I think about like the daughter of darkness, right? And so she's got this great moveset of. She's got the sleep knife. So when someone's pushing hard up on your lane, you hit him with the sleep knife. Just let them know, back up, okay? Like, chill.

[Greg Miller]

Back the up.

[Barrett Courtney]

And then, of course, because her father died, the his pocket makes me think.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He didn't think this was gonna get pissed. You know, I think of the angel of darkness has the cloak.

[Mike Howard]

So, like, when you need to go under coverage, when you need to surprise somebody and get that other lane, gank, you go with the cloak and then you jump out for that extra damage. The third move, of course, is her passive. Every time you get head shot, the guns shoot faster. And she's got two dual SMGs.

[Barrett Courtney]

And these things, those are given to her by her uncle demons.

[Mike Howard]

And then of course, your ultimate is the cool just spinning around like you're in wanted movies shooting at people like Angelina Jolie. And it's like, what an incredible character, right? Like in a cast of characters that are all so unique, so cool. The only one that really stood out was Hayes. And maybe it was the orange, maybe it was the bright orange. I don't know.

[Barrett Courtney]

I do think that definitely a lot of it was that this game. If you didn't know Mike prior to his Deadlock career, you would assume Mike was the best best video gamer on the planet because he was always dominating at Haze. And as soon as somebody else on a random team would pick Hayes first, Mike was just like a different player. Hayes is so broken in this video game.

[Roger McCorney]

This is the magic of the smileys, right? Is that Deadlock is not nominated for Early Access. And you had three Early Access choices, but it is nominated for best.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was wondering that. I want to ask like, why. Why wasn't Deadlock Early Access? Access.

[Barrett Courtney]

We don't even know. We don't know.

[Mike Howard]

Thursday at 5 o'clock.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's been no trailer for Deadline. It's not on their blog.

[Roger McCorney]

We don't know.

[Barrett Courtney]

We don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, we don't out yet. Hayes is one category character.

[Barrett Courtney]

I would say I would recommend reading the two comic books that they came out with first and then watch the movie afterwards to get the full kind of character back. Ground.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner for best character of 2024 is Ye from Nine Souls. Did I say that right? Is it Ye or is it.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, this guy kicks ass, man. He's the main character in Nine Souls. He's. He's a little dude just hell bent on revenge and goes through so much development throughout the whole game. I love him so much. And the amount of love and care that he. That you slowly see him develop through this whole journey is. Is really awesome. And again, it's really the hard to kind of convey that stuff without voice acting and without cut scenes or anything like that. I mean, there's definitely like some cutscenes, but they're not relying on that a whole lot like your traditional sort of video game. But it's still. Still really, really impressive writing, I think. And I really enjoyed his journey throughout Emotional.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to our five winners of best character of 2024. I want to bring some super chats before we go to our next category. Greg's gonna cook Demon Hacker. I mean, writes in and says, isn't Deadlock like early, early, early?

[Barrett Courtney]

We don't know.

[Mike Howard]

We don't know how to get an invite. You go to the Steam page, it doesn't even happen for a little bit.

[Barrett Courtney]

If you has a friend, you have a friend who has it. Mike. He has to invite you, send you an email.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Officially announced this game.

[Barrett Courtney]

No.

[Mike Howard]

Where was my email? You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Was there a blog post? Was there like a. Yeah, they officially. Hey, completely.

[Greg Miller]

This.

[Andy Cortez]

Website wrote about it and then they got mad.

[Roger McCorney]

That was so awesome.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, that was cool.

[Roger McCorney]

That should be a category. It's like the best moment. That's my favorite moment.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All these categories for next year.

[Roger McCorney]

Okay.

[Mike Howard]

Best moment of the year.

[Barrett Courtney]

I said, Tom Marks. It wasn't Tom Marks. It was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was Tom Warren. He was like, hey, man, we didn't.

[Roger McCorney]

Sign the NDA so good.

[Barrett Courtney]

And they're like, hey, man, you swore. Cool, man.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You can't do this.

[Mike Howard]

20,000 people are playing the game right?

[Roger McCorney]

Right now. You can't talk about it.

[Barrett Courtney]

You look me in the eye and promise. I can't believe you did this to me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Another super chat we got is from sorts, sort by first name. Who says, Ichiban Kasuga is my best character of 2024? RGG games don't get enough love in awards. Absolutely mellow fellow says, shout out to Persona 3 reload. Metaphor is awesome, but as someone who played Persona 3 for the first time this past year, man, what a game. And then Lucid Dream writes in and says, best dlc. Shout out. Helldivers two Omens of Terran.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

I was gonna vote Storm as best character from Marvel Rivals.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Good cool character.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Storm or Sue? Storm.

[Tim Gettys]

Storm. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I guess who storm was in 2024, right?

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah. Different year. She'll get nominated next year.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah. Great cosmetic.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next category.

[Tim Gettys]

Look.

[Barrett Courtney]

Got that dumper.

[Mike Howard]

Holy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next category is Best Story. The game that displayed outstanding storytelling and writing. Our first winner of this category is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth with two write ins. Who wants to start?

[Tim Gettys]

Whoever this. Not me. Did I vote for this?

[Mike Howard]

I don't know what I put.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Listen. I don't know what I put either. I don't like trying. I'm pulling up the thing right now. The two people that wrote in this were. It was Mike. Mike. You wrote.

[Mike Howard]

Oh, shit. Especially because I was like, I'm lost.

[Greg Miller]

You stopped paying attention to this story.

[Mike Howard]

The end of it all. Tim, there's a moment in the end of Final Fantasy 1, he also said, they lost me. He was like, lost me. I knew where I was, okay? I knew where we were going. I could at least guess then. In this one, there's so many branching paths. You don't Know which way is up. You don't know what's real, what's not real. But I do know what's real. Barrett never called his daughter. Never checked in on her one time throughout an 80 hour experience. And that's pretty up, okay?

[Tim Gettys]

He left her behind.

[Mike Howard]

And you know what? Know what? Other people had to come in and become her father, and that's good for them, you know what I mean? Other people stepped up to take care of this girl Marlene, and I'm really proud of that, you know?

[Andy Cortez]

So best story for you, Mike.

[Mike Howard]

And so, like, the story. What a beautiful story, right? Like, how cool. We leave Midgard, we go out to this beautiful world that I didn't know about, and we just get lost in the fun from the awesome boat cruise that we had. That had a lot of fun. There was a lot of. You know what I mean?

[Greg Miller]

Couldn't identify Queen's blood off a board.

[Mike Howard]

And so we play a lot of Queen's Blood. Then we get the Costa del Sol. We see my main man Johnny. Shout out to Johnny, he's not the cat man. So we found out now that Johnny didn't turn into the cat man. Very pleased with that.

[Greg Miller]

When do I see Parappa, the rapper.

[Mike Howard]

Hojo shows up and he's like, ah, snap. I got these cute girls with me and I'm gonna cause a problem at the beach.

[Tim Gettys]

And you're like, oh, Joe, no.

[Barrett Courtney]

He's not beating the accusations.

[Mike Howard]

You battle Hojo. Then you go up to the tippy top and we find out that Barrett, he sold out his people, bro. It was pretty messed up that he sold his hometown to let them go out. Yeah, well, I'm gonna stop. Stop. Yes.

[Tim Gettys]

What's the story?

[Mike Howard]

I'm giving you the story about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Howard]

Fantastic story. All you need to know.

[Roger McCorney]

Fantastic story.

[Mike Howard]

Lost me at the end, though. Magic cards took over.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah. Yeah. I do love that. When I showed everybody the clip of Mike, me getting mad at Mike for not paying attention during the most critical cutscene of the whole video game, Mike said, well, it lost me. You know, the game lost. So for him to put this on here, I'm really proud of him.

[Greg Miller]

You know, he came to his senses.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know, a lot of character development.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah, I need about four and a half hours of recap videos to watch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, this is a tough category for me because I think there were a lot of, like, really good contenders. And Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth definitely was 1:1. And it did come down to, like, the ending loses me a little bit of, like, Why I might have put something else above it. But even still, for, for me, when I think about the story of final fantasies on Rebirth, I don't necessarily think of the journey because the journey, we can talk about the journey because you journey continues, you kind of start, end where you start in the journey, if I'm being honest. But I do think about the characters. Right. This kind of goes back to my best character conversation as far as like the cast and like the moments of the game. This game has moments for a day ways, right. This game has a moment that like, like had me like you know, my fist balled up my desk, like holding back emotion just for the fact that like man, I can't believe Cloud is getting this moment right. Like so many times in which, you know, characters, the character work in this game did justice to the fact that, you know, not only are you telling a story that needs to I think do its characters justice and like allow them to have their moments. Whether it be Red xiii, whether it be these things that I don't want to spoil, even though it's an old game, whether it be that or whether the game is thinking about me as a fan, right. Or even not just me, somebody like Tim Gettys as a fan of this forever and thinking about the fact that Tim Gettys has investment in maybe Cloud and Tifa or Cloud and a. Or whatever these things are. Every combination, every combination of every. Of every one of these characters. The game speaks to those people so strongly and I think does justice by that. And like it's one of those ones where for as much as I enjoyed this game, playing it at as, you know, part of my first Final Fantasy 7 journey, because I've not. I never beat the Original Final Fantasy 7. I am still, you know, I wish I played the original just so I can love it that much more.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. As somebody that has been there from the beginning and like with not just the game, but the movies and the world and the spin offs and every single thing, the theorizing and all of it, like this story to me continues to deliver, continues to make me ask questions, continues to give me new things to ponder. And at the end of the day, like, story's not plot. I feel like the plot of this game might not be the best.

[Mike Howard]

Sure.

[Tim Gettys]

But I think the story of the characters, the dynamics, the backstory that they all have, like Mike bringing up the what everything Barrett goes through, I think is so, so powerful and incredibly well presented in this game. And yeah, I feel like to me the. The story of Rebirth is.

[Barrett Courtney]

Is.

[Tim Gettys]

Is incredible if the plot is not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Even on top of that. Right. Like, I respect and appreciate a game or a story that, like, that might be an adaptation, that might be a remake or whatever it is that bathes in the source material. And this game bathes in the source material. You took a. I don't even know how many hours I would say this is in the first game, but you somehow made 80 hours of it. And you, like, you were in that. Right. You lived that.

[Tim Gettys]

The investment that I have in the world and in the characters and the dynamics between all of those things, like, it's unrivaled, I think, compared to maybe any other game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Barrett Courtney]

What are you doing, Greg? What do you.

[Greg Miller]

It just occurred to me that we're in perfect pairs. Like, everyone is like, alt skins for each other. Like, you got the two suit jackets and the gold chains, the two T shirts under blazers, the two collared shirts. Like, we're all, like, lined up in, like, I'm button, and you guys are unbuttoned. It's just like, nobody playing this.

[Roger McCorney]

Even the chains.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, the chains. Yeah.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

It's like a very weird, weirdo.

[Tim Gettys]

Fighters.

[Roger McCorney]

Macy's. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our second winner of best story of 2024 is. Metaphor Refantasio. This is another entry that had two people right in.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, I'm assuming that is me and Bar.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Roger McCorney]

I want to take this.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't think so.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, maybe not.

[Andy Cortez]

No.

[Roger McCorney]

A magical person. That's a metaphor.

[Mike Howard]

I played the demo.

[Greg Miller]

No, you didn't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Vote twice for best story.

[Barrett Courtney]

No. A bear.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You wrote it in for best story Story. Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, okay.

[Roger McCorney]

Never mind then. All right, but I want to take it off and just say, like, I'm gonna be honest. Like, I still have not finished this game. I'm at the very, very ending. Probably have five hours left. But it's a story that has affected me so deeply. You know, just been. Go. Went through a rough time over the break, and this game, like, it's one of those things that just pulled me out of the darkness, right? Like, it just. It inspires me. It makes me emotional talking about it and watching trailers even. It's a special video game that I did not expect to hit me. And it's that. It's that group of characters, right? Like, those people and those. That. That. That. That squad that you have that really rises, and also just the twists and turns. And I. I want to talk spoilers, but I won't. But, like, the what your main Character becomes, is, is such a great metaphor for, for reality and also where I want to be in my life and you know, how I want to, how I want to grow as a human. Right. And it's, it's beautiful. It's some beautiful stuff. And that's all say I love it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

There's so many, like every game that this team has made before, there's so many different themes, character arcs, stories that you could pull from, to talk about. But I think like the, the thing that doesn't get talked about enough because I think a lot of people focus on the kind of core narrative plot thing of it being like this big election and you winning over the will of the people over the course of a year. But the other kind of meta narrative thing that like really grabbed me that we talked about in our spoiler cast and in our review is the developers kind of thinking about what makes art successful. And is art successful when it sells a million copies of a video game or of like a DVD or whatever? Or is art truly successful when it inspires people to or challenges people to look at what is important for to them in life and their ideals and challenges them and pushes them to live out those ideals in the real world? And a lot of that is fiction truly important and can fiction change reality? All of that stuff really worked for me in big ways. And where all that goes in the meta narrative, I think is fucking awesome. So I just wanted to give that a quick shout out.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Personally, 20 hours in, like, I would put this on best story. Like, I think metaphor story is.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm so proud of you that you're.

[Tim Gettys]

20 hours utterly captivating. Like, I, I, I don't think I'm going to see this through just because like the gameplay of it all isn't my thing, but the story of it, like, it's incredible. Like if this was an anime, I would watch the anime for sure.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our third winner of best story of 2024 is 1000 times resist, which I assume Barrett thought it was the one that he know the list.

[Andy Cortez]

So I thought I voted for this one, but is this, this was me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I, I voted for me.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, unless maybe I'm wrong. Hold on, let me double check. Check.

[Andy Cortez]

It should have been all three of us, let's be honest.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No. Yeah, I was the one who voted a thousand times Resist. Yeah. And like, I mean the three games that are listed here already are, like, would be in contention for my top three of when I talk about best stories 2024 and the reason why a thousand times Resist for me elevates above is like like I mentioned before, right. Final Fantasy 77 made me feel right that game made me feel emotions just cuz I I. Not that I identified with the characters but like I felt for this. Those characters. I love those characters. I love what they went through together. Metaphor, Refantasio. I'll say like made me think like that's the game that I think dives so well into its subject matter and so and so well into like the politics and how it goes about like its depiction of an election and like a fantasy world's version of an election. A thousand times Resist is the game that made me do both and I think that is why it elevates above and it made me do both deeply. Right. Like like I mentioned earlier in the show, it's a game that you know, by the time I finished it, by the time I got later into it like I felt anger. Like I felt anger for the system. I felt like I want. I wanted to resist. I wanted to go do something right. But like you know, it's also a game that I think tackles its subject matter. So interestingly like Barrett gave the premise as far as you know, you are this. There is a character who essentially like is basically Ellie from the Last of Us, right? Like she is the immune one or like she is immune might not be. Might not even be the right word. But she is like the sole survivor. Survivor of like like a. An apocalyptic event essentially. And like that leads into like cloning and very interesting like sci fi type like subject matter. And they take that and put it into such interesting context and really ask questions and push a. And the biggest compliment I can give this game talking about we were on KD yesterday or no we're on Gamescast yesterday it was me and Mike and we were talking about this game mouthwashing. One of my complaints with mouthwashing is like it gets to a point where that game gets so tricky trippy. And one of the things that I don't necessarily love in fiction as much and this is a me personal thing is like when gets so trippy that like I can't really. Not that I can't follow the narrative but I it things are happening that I don't necessarily give a about right? Like okay, I'm walking in circles. Okay, the world's flipping in on itself. Okay. Like this is happening and it's a dream sequence. Like that's where loses me oftentimes when that happens so much a thousand times Resist does that where it's like what the is happening. But it didn't lose me like I was on the ride the whole time.

[Barrett Courtney]

And you get your answers pretty quickly. And that's one thing I really appreciate for all that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And it like it does it. It navigates that stuff so well.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't know if my nomination made the. The list cuz I know we. We try to limit them to 5 but I mean throw me in for a thousand times resist because I. I love this story and I think it. If you're somebody who doesn't want to look deeper than just the. The surface level sci fi story which I think is interesting enough on itself herself. But dealing with all the familial type of relationship stuff with the main character and her parents and the dynamics that they have there and them being. Them fleeing a country that. And trying to go somewhere else and being in this place that they're brand new to and they don't feel like they are welcome. It's. It's so well done in every sort of aspect of what it's trying to do. Storytelling wise.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep. Our fourth winner of best story is Dragon Age the Veil Guard.

[Barrett Courtney]

Greggy, are you.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I was wondering.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You. You don't remember what you did? You put this one?

[Barrett Courtney]

No, I'm pretty sure. I don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I can tell you what you did. It didn't make it. It was. You did Nine Souls.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh no.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay.

[Barrett Courtney]

Got you. Got you sure?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I put Dragon Age of Elgard in here. Well known that I loved it. It's the story that connected with me the most this year. I think what's impressive of course is that I'm not a Dragon Age person and I'm not. I guess I'm a little bit more than I used to be. But I'm not a fantasy person either. Just I found that this cast of characters that you were going about and recruiting was so good. I think it was good enough to put it set the stakes right away. It was excellent to get us in there and give us a cast of characters to go through in towns and cities that were actually mattered and things were going on that I enjoyed. The relationships I made with all my side characters as I ran through the decisions on who to romance. Sure. But then the answers to that. The relationships that came from the people I didn't romance. I loved all that. Let alone there's a kind of a Sixth Sense thing at the end. They do.

[Tim Gettys]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

A gotcha moment that I didn't see coming that leads to a cool Thing that leads to a giant fight and stuff. Like, I had a great time. I was in in the whole time. It's one of those games I look back so fondly of enjoying every moment. Not only from the gameplay, but from the story side too.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Had I not been Nine Souls, Bellara probably would have been my best character.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Loved her story, loved her development, everything about her.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I shot out Tosh, but I didn't make the cut on that one for my favorite character.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner of best story of 2024 is Indiana Jones in the Gray. This is one that I believe was a Paris Lily write in. Yeah. And I can really. Yeah. Well, let me double check. I believe it was a Paris Lily one. Yeah, it was Paris Lily.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean speaking on not even his behalf, I guess my own behalf. Like, I can't believe how well of an Indiana Jones experience this is from a cinematic presentation. Like a story Perspective. Perspective. Right. Like if you cut. If you like stitch these cutscenes together and handed it over to me, it might be a top three Indiana Jones movie.

[Andy Cortez]

Like it is obviously top two.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly for me at least. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't say enough good things about Troy Baker as indie. It's. His depiction is so good that there was a part where like I had the thought of, oh man, Harrison Ford. I didn't. I don't know if I liked Harrison's like delivery here. And then I remembered that it wasn't Harrison. Then I remember it was Troy and was like, that's Troy Baker as Harrison as Indiana Jones. Like that is so impressive. But yeah, the moment to moment. Like I think one of the things that kept me in the game was the fact that I felt so Indiana Jones playing this game. And so much of that is the globe TR of it going from the Vatican to Egypt to wherever you go later. Right. Like, I love the game for that stuff and so shout out Indiana Jones.

[Andy Cortez]

I. I think it's very impressive that at the end of it, you know, doing kind of the same things that the movies does, but it hitting on the same level as the movies. Like the kind of last hour of this game hit in a way that brought me back to watching Last Crusade for the first time. And I was like, God damn.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Indiana Jones is actually sick as hell.

[Andy Cortez]

And I like didn't give him his. His due. And talking about this game for. For years and years. Mike, give it to me.

[Mike Howard]

Indeed.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All right.

[Andy Cortez]

Except acceptable.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations, our best story winners of 2024. Our next category is Best surprise. The game that came out of nowhere and or exceeded your expectations. Our first winner of this category is Helldivers 2.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, what a great lead off to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This with two write ins. I believe. Does anybody. It was Greg and Andy. I believe.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean a game that we left the studio and was like, yeah, we went previewed. Yeah, it's probably going to be good for a little while. But what a surprise that it just resonated much longer. And I think mainly what we didn't get from that preview was that there was just so much more fun to be had with the. The overall world. And that's why I think we were a bit down on the preview.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, we weren't down as much as it was like, okay, cool. It's going to be Helldivers one brought into this new perspective. Right. And on a new platform. And it was when we played it. But we did the thing where we ran with arrowhead and it was an just being inundated with information and so you. It was more the E3 call outs of like all right, let's flank left and do this. Oh, here come the automatons. They're dangerous so we need it. And they're like just bop bop, bop. Rather than what it is Hell Divers is supposed to be.

[Barrett Courtney]

Let this.

[Greg Miller]

You get out there with three of your friends and nobody knows what they're getting crushed by things. The bugs spitting on you. This is going on. And so to see that they kept that fun and anything goes nature and anything can happen nature of Helldivers one and nine years later, right. Are able to put it out. Helldivers 2 have. Or yeah. And have it be ready to go and have that fun. But look, better be. Better be bigger be all these different things, let alone the fact that it's the only PlayStation Live service game that fucking dominated this year and was great. Hell yeah. Like the Helldivers 2 surprised me because again, as somebody who loved Helldivers 1 and played so much of it on Vita and played so much of it was just. I was expecting to have a good time with this. I wasn't expecting this to be a hit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like you think you look at my games I've talked about so far, I'm the guy who gets to say things and everybody looks at me goes okay. And we move on. Because nobody else liked the things I liked this year. So the joke was when Helldivers 2 was the biggest thing and I was playing it and we were all streaming it every day for eight hours. I kept saying on games deal, I'm Like, I don't know what to do with this. I'm obsessed with this game and so is the world. That never happens. It never happens that way. Huge surprise.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One that like, I would never have been able to guess. Right. I think this encompasses this category so well of Helldivers 2 being the sequel to Helldivers 1 and thinking what Helldivers 1 was, which was like a great game and a success. Right. But like one that I only knew because Greg Miller talked about it and to get here and yeah, like you mentioned, the whole world loves it and it is one of the biggest games of the year. The fastest selling PlayStation game of all time.

[Tim Gettys]

Getting a movie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Crazy.

[Roger McCorney]

Crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Getting a movie announced. Yeah, like, absolutely. Nice. Our second winner of the best surprise of 2024 is I am your beast. This one had two write ins. Oh, I believe it was the both of us. Oh, look at us.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let me tell you, this game fucks.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dude.

[Roger McCorney]

Dude, this is. This came out of nowhere. Literally came out of nowhere. It was just like, oh, it's announced. This trailer looks cool. Ah, how's it actually gonna play? And it scratched that neon white itch for me. I'm just replaying every level, trying to get S Rank and I did. I s ranked every single level. Not the challenge rooms. It's too far.

[Greg Miller]

I know.

[Roger McCorney]

They added more levels too. And I'm like that. I'm not, you know, I mean, I'm doing.

[Barrett Courtney]

I did what I need.

[Roger McCorney]

I did what I needed to. But yeah. Just obsessed with it. It's such a. The fact that this game was developed in I think less than a year. Like, is insanity like? It is. It is so tight. The graphics and the style. The style is incredible. There's a story going on that is cool. I just didn't. I didn't really fall in love with it, but I love the presentation of it with this incredible voice acting and this awesome typography going on. It is just. It is just style, right? It is a first person, I would say close to like a hotline Miami type deal. It's not one, not one hit, you're dead. It's more of like a few hits, you're dead. But still it is tight. It is twitch action and it is. It's great.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a great time. You mentioned the. The story, like not necessarily being like the highlight, right. But like, I think the story is in service to the gameplay in such a good way where it is almost more about the vibes.

[Greg Miller]

The sto.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like the story, like the Cutscenes are not long, right. They're very short and they're just setting up each mission and it's like cool ass dialogue talking on a radio phone. And like I really like what was happening. Like I'll never, I never nominate this for best story. But like it's still good stuff though. Like you're still getting good stuff out of those dialogue exchanges between your character and the other character characters. And yeah, like, I can't believe this is a Zalavir Nelson joint. And I played El Paso elsewhere when that came out and I really liked it. And I can't believe that on top of that he puts out like he puts out a bunch of games, which is crazy.

[Roger McCorney]

TMNT game soon he's doing the TMNT game soon.

[Andy Cortez]

He did, he's writing on Borderlands 4.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Borderlands 4. He did the Click holding game. He's done a few other things as well. I can't believe when I play this game it plays as well as like honestly like not only any other like very well made indie game, but when I talk, when I play the shooting in this game. Like you could have tricked me and told me that like a good, like a big developer, like worked on this for how good the shooting is lenient.

[Roger McCorney]

Enough where you are getting those headshots when you really don't deserve the head shots. But it's perfect. Like it's. It gives you that like, kind of like that cycle of like you're shooting, you're feeling like you're good and oh no, I missed that one thing. I can go back. I can do that better.

[Tim Gettys]

We have, we have a best studio section coming up at some point, right? Best studio I up. I know. Not putting scaffold.

[Roger McCorney]

That's a great call.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. This is one that like it's my favorite one of strange scaffolds so far. Like it is a very special game that I'll recommend anybody play if you like these types of games. Our third winner of Best Surprise is Nico derico the Magical World.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh man. Any chance I get to talk about Nico de Rico the Magical World? I'm going to worst named video game of all time for something that is like truly, truly incredible. Incredible. It's the best surprise for me because I said this when I reviewed the game a couple months back, but I saw this game on Twitter get announced a while ago and it was like, all right, this is cool. I'm gonna put it on my wish list. And I don't believe I'm ever actually going to play It. Because it just has that look to it where it's like, all right, cool. It's a mix of Donkey Kong Country, Tropical Freeze with Crash Bandicoot 4, but it is in on Modern Kong consoles, so you're getting actual great resolution and frame rates and stuff. Nintendo could never. And I'm looking at them. All right, cool. Like, I. This is either gonna get shut down by somebody because of how much it is just copying the things that I said, or it's just way too ambitious for a small team, so it's not actually gonna come out. And then, lo and behold, one day I pull up my Twitter and people are like, oh, the game's out. And I'm like, it's out now. Like, the full game.

[Mike Howard]

What?

[Tim Gettys]

And I played through it and I was, like, blown away. This game is incredible. If you like any of the platformers I mentioned mentioned, you should definitely check it out. It is coming soon to all consoles if it's not already available there. When I played it, it was only. It was on a weird set of systems. I played it on PlayStation, but it wasn't on Switch or it wasn't on Steam. There was something weird about it that I was surprised about. But anyway, very, very good game.

[Roger McCorney]

I didn't realize it was co op. That's awesome.

[Tim Gettys]

And, yeah, you can also co op. Yeah.

[Roger McCorney]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I have it downloaded on something. I think it switched because I think it recently came to Switch, which inside.

[Tim Gettys]

Y'all are gonna love this game. Like, the worst parts about it are the name and the main character designs are, like, a little uninspired, but that's really it.

[Andy Cortez]

No, they're not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They're.

[Andy Cortez]

They're going towards a specific audience, I feel like, with the characters.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And they deserve video games.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes, they deserve video games, but also blessing. You're not allowed to play this game until you've played Tropical Freeze.

[Tim Gettys]

And I. I think.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know what?

[Tim Gettys]

That's fair, too.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That is very fair. I understand that. Yeah. Our fourth win winner for best surprise of 2024 is Batman Arkham Shadow. A very good pick for this one.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, the journey I've had were y'all filmed me watching the trailer for this and just not being enthused and more so not being enthused by WB's handling of the Batman Arkham IP, but really like camouflage showing up and actually showing that they understand what makes the Arkham. Not games and just design, but just lore and world so special. And they really fired on all fronts and were able to adapt it to a different platform. A VR setting and translated that so well and brought their own twists and turns on, like, a Batman Arkham formula that I think fit for the story that they were telling. And I said this on the review of, like, if WB ever wakes the up and are like, oh, we need to make another, like, the flat screen Arkham game. I think there's a lot that could be learned from this game if, like, Rocksteady ever goes back to Arkham. And yeah, I was just. I was really fully impressed by it. Like, I was, like, going into it expecting, like, all right, it'll be the fifth best Batman Arkham game that's, like, a full release, right? And it's like, I think it's better than Origins. I think it's, like, tighter and has a better, like, vision of what it does. And honestly, like, I don't know if it has a better story than Origins, because Origin story, I would say, is, like, up there in. In terms of the. The entire series. But, like, they. They did some really special stuff, and the way they tell the story is utterly fantastic. My only critique is that there's some flashback cutscenes, and maybe this is just a platform thing. Greg, maybe you can answer this for me. Or it's like a cutscene would start and be like, oh, this is like an artistic choice to be in black. And then I'd turn around, be like, oh, the scene's over here.

[Barrett Courtney]

Cool.

[Andy Cortez]

That's, like, my only major criticism with it. But besides that, like, keep your head.

[Greg Miller]

On swivel out there.

[Andy Cortez]

And I love that they brought the. The Origins cast back for this, right? Like, Troy Baker coming back, Robert Smith Smith coming back and, like, reminding me of, like, how good he is as a young Batman and Bruce Wayne. But in particular, why am I blanking on the actor's name?

[Roger McCorney]

Kevin Cotton Conroy.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes. Like, being a young Kevin Conroy Batman, he is just so goddamn.

[Roger McCorney]

I get so much FOMO hearing this, because this game is made for me. I'm such an Arkham Origins guy. Like, I love that game so much. I just. This, sadly, is a game that cemented. I just can't do VR. Like, I just don't have the space for it, and I just don't have the stomach for it. Like, and that. That's.

[Andy Cortez]

How much did you play with the accessibility stuff?

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, I. I played all the time. I was just punching things in my wall.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was like.

[Roger McCorney]

Almost punched my cat a few times. I was like, okay, I can't.

[Andy Cortez]

No, I'm talking about with your stomach. Like, yeah, yeah, I did.

[Roger McCorney]

I still did. It was just, like. It was just not.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Like, I didn't turn on the. Like, when it, like, the default is just, like, having the full screen on all the time and then turning on, like, the. Like, what is it? The focus.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. Or whatever.

[Andy Cortez]

The vignette when you move, like, turning that all the way up helped me so goddamn much.

[Barrett Courtney]

So I'm not vomiting.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner for best surprise is. Oh, I'll just say it is Deadlock.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

I think this might be our strongest category. Like, I'm just like, everything here. I'm like, oh, yeah. These are all surprising in different ways.

[Barrett Courtney]

No.

[Mike Howard]

Did I put this?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Probably.

[Mike Howard]

I probably did.

[Andy Cortez]

No one else would have Paris.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This was you, Mike.

[Mike Howard]

You know what? It's something special. There's very few games that can just suck the time and daylight out of you, and that's what Deadlock did. And it's very few games that can step into such a. A crowded and competitive genre as a moba, Right. And do something totally different. To step into the mobile world and say, hey, we're gonna make a third person hero shooter in this and make it really, really good. It was awesome. I love Deadlock. I like the style that they did. I really love the map. I love that we were invited to and then other friends got invited to. I like. I like the secret of it all. And then I like how we just kind of popped the top and now we're playing it. But the gameplay, moment to moment, it is the game of the year. When I think of one more game, run it back. Let's go again. The complexity of all of the heroes, the buy stations. It is League of Legends, it's Dota, it's Smite, but with a third person shooter. And that is so well done and not hard to do. But I'll tell you what, I can't wait for this game to make a splash. I hope it is big and better than ever.

[Tim Gettys]

Ever.

[Mike Howard]

It's so much fun.

[Barrett Courtney]

I need to hop back in for sure. Great time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to our best surprise winners. Yeah, I do want to give, like, a shout out to Marvel Rivals, which I think would have been a shoe in here too, for the fact that that game was announced and released this year.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. That was also one we reacted to. And we're like, all right, let's see if this game actually.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, legitimately, like, I feel like for best surprise, like, I'll never forget all of us gathering around Greg's desk and being like, let's see this new Marvel game. And NetEase pops up and we're like, yeah, we're playing.

[Barrett Courtney]

And then you see the gameplay and you're like, what?

[Tim Gettys]

And we're all like, wait a minute.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like, hold on, wait.

[Tim Gettys]

Within a few weeks.

[Roger McCorney]

And it's like, so fun.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to bring in a super chat from Eric Black who didn't write in any text but did give a 50 super chat. They gave like a little emoticon of a little. It looks like a hippo guy in a treasure chest.

[Mike Howard]

Hippo with sunglasses inside of a box.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mike Howard]

Is what I read on the screen.

[Tim Gettys]

I appreciate that. Yeah. That is awesome. Thank you so much for that super chat. I know you didn't specifically do it for this reason. Maybe you did. But I do want to give a shout out to. I know y'all might be watching this and be like, oh, they. They do shows every day. They do this stuff. There's extra work put in and like, Andy made these assets and stuff. And like, we had to test it, make sure things look good. Like there's just like an extra level of production that isn't just as easy as like, oh, make a thing and put it on the thing. It's like there's. There's testing and there's time and there's a lot of love put into this stuff. So I appreciate you all understanding that because Mike bought a for. This is really cool.

[Mike Howard]

Yeah, Mike went hard for you, Blessing. Anything, Tim.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm sorry. Don't blame me. I appreciate it.

[Greg Miller]

I was gonna say a lot of work put in and then everybody just forgets what they. No, because there's so many good games.

[Mike Howard]

That we all like.

[Greg Miller]

You're like, I get.

[Barrett Courtney]

Well, it's also because Blessing had a smartly use a Google Docs like submission thing. But that means that I can't just look back at Slack and be like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What did I say?

[Andy Cortez]

Because the way you guys vote for game that you guys just slack me so you can easily just be like, oh, this is my list. Yeah. I also nominated my things like a month ago, so I truly don't remember.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next category is best card game. This is a 2024 specific category story. I forget who. I think somebody brought up like, oh, man, we don't have best boss. I think it was somebody in chat that was like, oh, no. Best boss fight. It's because like this year I try to think of things that fit the year. Like last year, 2023 was such a big year for like souls, like type games and action type type games. And games that had really good boss fights in them. I try to think of what encompasses 2024, and I felt like there's a lot of. A lot of card games that we.

[Barrett Courtney]

Got into this year from Elden Ring would have won anyway. Exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, if we had a chance, like, we would have nominated something. Nine Souls, too.

[Barrett Courtney]

That's true. That is true.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly, as we talk through these games, I'd been like. I thought that, like, man, actually this year there were a lot of good boss fights, but yes, there were. It is what it is. Our first winner of best card game of 2024 is Queen's Blood. So let's go three. Come on. Three people voted for this one.

[Roger McCorney]

Yep.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who wants to start?

[Andy Cortez]

Queen's Blood is the best part of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I'm not afraid to say.

[Roger McCorney]

He's right.

[Andy Cortez]

It should be broken out into its own game. It's crazy that we're a year away from Rebirth and it has not been broken out as its own game. Like, like Witcher 3 figured that out.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Of, like, oh, people, really, with Gwen.

[Andy Cortez]

Let's make that its own thing. It is, like, even with how big of a release that I'm sure we'll talk about as well on this list. Balatro. Like, Queen's Blood in terms of strategy, in terms of just, like, how fun all of the different, like, party compositions can be and stuff. And it's like, it's one of those things. Seeing y'all play magic in the last couple months, I'm like, yeah, I get it because I got into Queen's Blood, but it's like, I'm already into Queen's Blood. I'm just waiting for that. I don't need to get into another game. Yeah, I. I adore it so much. And yes, it. It is the best thing of. Of Rebirth, and it is definitively the best card game of this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I feel like, to make a. A mean girls reference, right? Like, there's the quote of, like, you know, stop trying to make fetch happen. Like, you're trying to make fetch happen. There have been so many examples of, like, RPGs or big game that they try to have a card game. They try to have a mini game. What was the one in Horizon?

[Greg Miller]

Machine Strike.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We'll put a. We'll make a PlayStation blog post about Machine Strike. Like, let you guys know, like, oh, there's a board game you can play in this game. Like, these games keep trying to make fetch happen. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth made fetch happen. Yeah, like, this is the best Card game in a video game since Gwent. And like, a lot of developers have been trying to chase that. But it's so crazy how from the.

[Barrett Courtney]

First comments on Machine Strike, but she said fucking sucks. Machine Sucks straight ass.

[Tim Gettys]

For real.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

People really, really hate Machine Strike. Goddamn. But like, I can't believe from the get go of I, I, I, I don't remember if it was the first game of Gwen or not Gwen Sorry. Of Queen's Blood or the second. All I know is that early on I was like, oh, you y'all got something.

[Tim Gettys]

When we first. When I first got to preview Rebirth, actually, second time we got to preview Rebirth, I, I got to play for like five hours. And it was essentially the opening of the game. Not the very, very opening, but like a bunch of it. And when we get to calm and you get to the part where you start playing Queensland Blood, I remember just you talking about the make fetch happen thing. It was like that where I'm like, I don't want to do this. Like, I let, Let me skip this stuff. Like, I want to keep going. I want to get to the battling. I know what I want from fantasy7reBirth and it's not this freaking card game. And immediately I was like, oh, the way they have it set up of like, you beat one of them and you're like, oh, wait, there's a couple other people in this little town that I can face off against. It feels like there's like, story implications to this and the way that the Queen do it yet.

[Greg Miller]

Yu Gi.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, story.

[Tim Gettys]

Exactly. And you know, Mike talking about the cruise ship, it's like the way they handle the. The Queen's Blood story on the cruise ship in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I might. Damn y'all. Y'all did something special.

[Roger McCorney]

Such a good time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

1000%. Our next winner of the best card game category is Balatro. Let's see how.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Walk it to death again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. This is one that was only written in by Paris Lily, but I'm sure most was here.

[Roger McCorney]

We know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, yeah, we talked about it before, but, like, the fact that this game can just, like, spark addiction. Like nothing. Like, like nothing else. Right. Taught me what the poker hands were. But also, like, you know, we talk about how the fact that when this was nominated for Game of the Year at the Game Awards, you saw the immediate wave of people being like, what this card game? How is this nominated with Black Myth and all these other games? And then like the next week, it was like, slowly people discovering Balatro and being like, oh, I'M sorry, like this shit.

[Barrett Courtney]

I wasn't familiar with your game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. Exactly. Our third winner of the best card game category is Pokemon TCG Pocket, which, I'll be honest, wasn't going to make it until I wrote it in. I think I was like either the second or second to last person to vote when, oh next. I forget where I came in on the votes, but, like, I was the only person that wrote in Pokemon TCG Pocket. And like, this is one that I think as far as time accumulated playing a card game, I think this got that from me. I. I'm still every single day opening this up, opening packs, ripping packs, ripping packs. And like, there's an event, there's a blastoise event happening right now. And like, it's taken over my phone to where now as I'm getting ready for work during the morning, like, if I'm taking a shower, put that thing on autoplay. If I get like, once I get out of the shower, tee up another autoplay while I brush my teeth. Right. Like that. Like, it. It really is like, I forget. I think it was Kevin on the ones and twos a few days ago talking about this. If they were somehow mining bitcoin using this app, they would have gotten so much bitcoin out of me. Like, it's one of them ones where I just constantly have it open and it's a problem, but I absolutely love it.

[Tim Gettys]

It tears me apart is I. I don't want to give this game any award, period. Like, just period. Like, there's so much things that I'm like, y'all are. You're messing this up. I don't like the way you're monetizing this. I don't like the way that you're wasting my time here. I have so much bad things to say, but I love this game and I play it every day and I'm addicted to it. Like, this game is a problem, I think in every, every single way, way possible. But yeah, shout out to them for taking over my life. But also, like, come on, guys, come on, come on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. That's thing is, like, as I think about the card games that I played in the last year, like, there are better playing games as far as, like, rules. There are better presented games as far as flare. There are better, like, collectible card games that I've found magic gathering. Right? Like, there's so much. There's so many other games that have caught my interest in greater and better ways, but for some reason, I keep coming back to this one and it's because of the fucking Pokemon.

[Tim Gettys]

It's the magic of Pokemon, man. Gotta catch them all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Speaking of, our fourth winner of the best card game of 2024 is Magic the Gathering. This is a Greg Miller write in.

[Greg Miller]

Throw it up. Who would have known? Who would have thought? Magic the Gathering is a good game, but just like all of your careers working here, kind of funny, you can trace it back to Ghostbusters. Thank God they had me reveal these Ghostbuster cards so I could finally understand what magic was. When Mike got excited about it, when Blessing got excited about it, about it. And then to have it take over here, right. If you're gonna talk about 2024 in card games, obviously Balatro, obviously Pokemon. But I think for kind of funny, especially for the Smileys, you gotta talk about magic.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Because that was just such a great stream where me and Blessing live on the air, fall in love with magic, and Blessing takes it to another level by becoming super obsessed and having free time to really, really, really get into it. But even me playing arena when I can, you know, wanting to play at Thanksgiving, wanting to continue to learn and then my likes, you know, passion for magic reignited, right. And going through and how great, you know, foundations is, which did launch this year, right? Of like, cool. Here is this box that I thought was just probably the best step by step tutorial for a card game or a board game I've ever seen. Where it was like, you and me are reading the pamphlets and getting it in real time of what we're doing. And then for them to take the hands off the wheel and be like, all right now finish it. You know how to, you know, I was like, that was great. Magic's so fucking cool.

[Tim Gettys]

How hard is it to collect every Ghostbusters card?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, easy. No, I mean that's not that many. It's not a collectible thing as much as just a buying thing.

[Tim Gettys]

How hard is it going to be to collect every Final Fantasy card?

[Mike Howard]

Oh no, that won't be difficult. No, they make them smaller packs like 8 to 12. Very nice cards.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Enjoying.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, I mean fantasy is going to get me at least, at least buying these things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I, I, I think the best, best thing I can say about magic, like outside of even just how deep and complicated this game is, which, the more I play it, the more I'm starting to fall in love with the fact that you can play it the way that me and Greg played it during the tutorial section where you learn the basic rules, right? But once you go down, deep down that, well, you learn that this game actually has limit, limitless possibilities. It's very crazy as far as, like, you know, my playing with my. With some of my friends, and, like, my friend Zachary, who's been into magic forever, he's like, oh, yeah, they're introducing, like, these cards that are, like, you know, you can actually. Not that they're introducing it, but they have these cards they can, like, load in vehicles with people and attack with vehicles, or, like, you can saddle up other cards and, like, and do all this different. Right? And I got the Fallout Commander deck that, like, has, like, cards that essentially you load up certain cards with all these different other cards. It's fucking crazy how this shit works.

[Greg Miller]

People are calling out that Final Fantasy is going to be an entire set. So easily over 200 cards representing Final Fantasy 1 through 16.

[Tim Gettys]

A good way. Or like, I mean.

[Mike Howard]

I mean, that's cool. You got a whole binder.

[Tim Gettys]

That's what I want.

[Andy Cortez]

Like, okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was going to speak to the community.

[Greg Miller]

Cheaper than the suit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Where, like, the thing that. That has made me fall in love with it even more is how much it has contributed to community for me. Where, of course, my friends, some of my close friends love magic. So now I'm playing with them. And during the break, we were doing magic mornings. For a little bit there, I've been able to connect with other people who I know in my life who love magic. But now it's like, oh, shit, we got something to do now. We're gonna hang out and do this. And now I want to infect everybody like a fucking disease. If Tim Geddes gets the Final Fantasy card immediately, I'm looking at Mike and I'm like, yo, book a stream. Like, we're playing magic. Magic. Yeah. It's wonderful.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. I got excited because I was like, man, I can play magic. The Gathering with the new Splinter Cell cards. And then I realized that I just completely made that up. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe I just imagined that.

[Greg Miller]

That's amazing.

[Roger McCorney]

I know they're doing, like, some Assassin's Creed thing, so I assumed that they were gonna put Splinter Cells.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You didn't even look at Splinterstone.

[Roger McCorney]

I would have been in, bro. I would have been in Psychotic. I want all the different Sam Fishers.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner of best card game of 2024 is Gwent. Question mark. Question mark?

[Mike Howard]

I just wanted to remind you of how great Gwent was. Don't forget, you know, as Barrett says, its own standalone thing still gets expansions. You should always be playing Gwent because You know, the witcher will return. And I hope that your Gwent game is strong. So don't forget about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think, I think. I think I might have changed my answer to Pokemon TCG Pocket because I think I assumed Mike was gonna write in Pokemon tcg. And I saw Gwent and I was like, there's no way.

[Greg Miller]

Somebody's gotta.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's no way he didn't just forget that Pokemon Pocket came out this year.

[Andy Cortez]

Did you play any Gwent this past year, Mike?

[Mike Howard]

No, but I thought about it.

[Greg Miller]

It's always on his mind, Barrett.

[Roger McCorney]

I mean, what you're for, you know, I mean, come on, think about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Watch out, it's coming back. Did you play the One Piece card game?

[Mike Howard]

You know, I did spend a lot of money on the One piece card game, and I just want to take this phone to let you all know that, like the One piece card game is out there as well. And if you've been on a grand adventure, you should go and check it out. A lot of people love the game game. I love the cards. I mean, I need that Nami card. I got a Boa Hancock card on my phone.

[Barrett Courtney]

What's happening in your brain at any given moment? Like, what's going on?

[Mike Howard]

I just want to make sure you know about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do. I'll go for a bear.

[Andy Cortez]

No, I'm just laughing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do want to shout out what I thought was also going to be a a given for this category. The mind. That's another one that did take over for a second. So shout out to the mind. Our next and second to last category here for the Smileys is. Is Best Studio, the studio that earned MVP status in 2024. Our first winner is Team Asobi with three ride ins.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, God damn, dude. The magic of video games. I don't know if it's ever been.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That well captured 1,000%. Like, this is one. I think me and Roger had a special experience going to visit Team Asobi and seeing like the inner workings and how they approach things and seeing like all the sticky notes that they have of different ideas, how small the team is, how small the team is. The kind of their philosophy of like wanting to retain the smallness, right? And like one of the things they mentioned during our interview was if they were to expand out into being a bigger team, they would still want to work on smaller projects and just like work on maybe more projects in that way. Like, they like retaining that smallness and working quicker. And I think there's something special about that. Because that leads to a game like Astral Astrobot, which isn't a God of war. It's not a horizon. It's not a last less. Right. It is this very charming 3D platformer that is concise, but does everything you want a video game to do. And I think playing through Astrobot, you play and you immediately go, man, I hope we see more games like this out of. Out of PlayStation especially because, like, it adds such a level of charm and such a level of personality among, like all the other juggernauts that they got over there.

[Barrett Courtney]

Alien slime guy, best character for this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, that's the one thing I'm.

[Roger McCorney]

Like, man, the deadlock guy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got to take the what's his name from the God of War. Like, he just went, well, he was on the God of War dev team. They got to bring Raf over to Astrobot, man.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Get some inspiration.

[Andy Cortez]

That sounds like overkill.

[Tim Gettys]

Sounds just right.

[Mike Howard]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

That'll fix any problem the Astrobot has.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Give me a visionary.

[Barrett Courtney]

All right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Anybody else have anything to say about Team of Sobies is a given.

[Tim Gettys]

No.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, totally.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. This was a given. I was going to put it on there, but this is not even my. My pick.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about Astrobot in Game of the Year.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I don't think you have to worry about it. Everybody knows how great it is, especially from how much has been applauded.

[Andy Cortez]

I just want to shout out Yalls interview again. Just because that brought up so much to light that of things that I didn't know about Asobi of just like their headspace around, designing their headspace around purposely making this a smaller title and I don't know, keeping that team small and taking care of that team in a very particular way to make a game that feels so grandiose when talking about the best games this year, but is just so tight and kind of has like a very clear and small vision. Yeah. That I just.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our second winner of best studio studio of 2024, the MVPs. We got Atlas. This was my write in for this category. Atlas. I think I did. I did a stream recently where I did a power ranking of Studios in 2024. Just talking about like, you know, which studios are bringing it right now? What are the best studios right now in this moment in 2024. And at the top two, I had FromSoftware in Atlas. Right. And I looked at it and I thought about it for a second. I moved Atlas to number. Number one the reason being when you think about 2024 and what Atlas brought to the table, they started off this year with Persona 3 Reload, a remake to a game that so many people love. And a fantastic remake. Right. One that like, I finished over break and like, you know, fell in love with, especially as I barrel toward the ending of it. They then followed that up mid year with Shimagami Tensei 5 Revenge. Just vengeance. Yeah. And then wrapped up this year with Metaphor Refantasia.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't forget Unicorn Overlord.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And they did Unifor Unicorn Overlord as well. Over Over Overload. Overlord.

[Greg Miller]

Overlord.

[Andy Cortez]

Overlord.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Overlord as well. Right. Like, they had a fantastic year that I think might go a little bit under the radar just because, like, you know, Unicorn Overlord. I. I don't even think about his Atlas, but is Atlas, right.

[Greg Miller]

They published it. Right.

[Andy Cortez]

And that's the thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think Vanillaware made it.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't. I don't remember if I wrote in Atlas or not. If I did, I do take it back because I do think it's cheating a little bit because they're a publisher, whereas, like all of these games that you just listed are developed by different studios.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, it's like saying Nintendo, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, it's the weird thing of Nintendo. Or like Capcom. Right. Of like Atlas games are also published by Sega, but maybe not all.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it's weird.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, it's a. It's a weird one. But I still look at them as like, oh, but you still are putting out some of the best games of the year, like multiple of the best games of the year. So even if I was just limiting this to Metaphor, still they get the right in for me. But I'm including Persona 3 in the conversation and Shimagama Tensei in this conversation as well.

[Andy Cortez]

And Unicorn, like, they just. Atlas in general had a banger of a year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was crazy banger year.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, I just want to say I feel like you bring up from software and Atlas, I feel like Metaphor is the Elden Ring for them. Of just like, yeah, you've had the Souls games before, but like Meta and you've had the Persona games before, but like Metaphor fantasio hit on a different way where, like, have the Persona games. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Andy Cortez]

Persona 5 took over the world.

[Tim Gettys]

Well, was it nominated for game of the Year?

[Andy Cortez]

Yes.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. I take it back then. I still, I still stand by what I say. I think Metaphor is way bigger than.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Persona golden rank, our third winner of best studio of 2024 is studio RG.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, this was me. They only released one game this year which is very not like them. Yeah, exactly. They had Infinite wealth, but they also announced Virtual Fighter, which is insane and Project Century. And they also announced this year is Pirate Yakuza. Pirate Yakuza, the Majima game. So they are just fucking cooking, right? This is talk about a team that knows what they are. They understand that they don't have to be the cutting edge of graphics, right. They have a formula and they are going to work towards serving a fan base of people. And they did that with Infinite wealth, which is a leap forward in the Yakuza type games. And now they're, you know, feeding that fan base with Pirate Yakuza but then also expanding into Virtual Fighter, right, Which is being featured in Nvidia ads, right. So it's like, hell no. This is going to be our like 4 way for foray into graphical, high graphical fidelity video games. So yeah, it's exciting and like, I think every single year I'm going to put RGG here. Like, like, yeah, it's just like they are delivering, they keep on delivering breaking news.

[Barrett Courtney]

They just released another game and I.

[Roger McCorney]

Am absolutely certain we're calling out.

[Greg Miller]

They. They did Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble as well.

[Roger McCorney]

That is also true. Like they just have so many random fucking side quests and these, these guys just know what they're doing. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised by. I mean, Roger Drama's already said, I think they're gonna announce another Yakuza game by the end of this year. Right. Like they are just constantly, constantly innovating and you saw that at the game awards. So yeah, shout out to Studio rgg. They are really fucking incredible and everyone should be looking out. If you want games that are like, oh, I don't want a game that comes out every six years and it's $700 million. Like these people are doing it and they're focusing on the video games that people are actually buying. It's exciting.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fourth winner of best studio of 2024 is Ubisoft Montpellier.

[Tim Gettys]

Rip man. Done. The dirtiest. I absolutely hate this. I can't say it enough how it is that this team does not exist in the form that it did just a year ago. Putting out a game like Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, but in addition to that putting out things like Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins back in the day. Like I think those games in particular back in 2013-15, wherever they, they landed like, there's not a bazillion 2D platformers coming out and I feel like in the indie space there is. But like, in terms of the bigger AAA Ubisoft Level 2D platformers where there's a lot of love and care being put into them, that it's not just like, h, here's an ip people like, let's just put something out but actually be like, let's push this forward and not just be like, oh well, Mario's better. Let's have a conversation of like, this game's different than Mario and succeeds in ways that are unique. And I look at those games and I talk about them as if they're some of the, the best platformers of all time. Because they are. And for them to. Then again, I don't, I don't need to be a broken record about Prince of Persia Lost Crown. I love it. I think they absolutely crushed it. This team is incredibly talented and I, I hate what the industry has done to them.

[Roger McCorney]

Horrible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our fifth winner for Best Studio 2024 is Nomada Studio.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, I, this was my nomination. I didn't. I never played Gree Grease. Finally there's an S, everybody. Oh, because it's Spanish for gray. And I never played it, but I know that it had a lot of great reviews. A lot of people enjoyed that video game. And then for them to follow that, you know, very enjoyable experience up with Neva and just show everybody, hey, like this is what we're doing. We, we're making games that are maybe not the longest things, but they are, you know, know short experiences that will respect your time and you will. I think it's, I think Neva is just like one of the most efficient game games I've ever experienced where it's just like we are going to quickly get to the things that matter, either gameplay or story, beat wise. And yeah, Nomada showed me this year that like, oh, whatever they're going to keep on doing kind of, it's kind of like on the same thing where I'm like, what is, what's Ember Lab working on next? What, what? You know, the people that made Seafu, what's their next video software walker? Turns out fifu. But yeah, I think Nomada Studio is definitely that studio this year for me that says, all right, keep an eye out for the next thing they're doing because it's going to be a banger.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to our best studio winners of 2024. Moving on to our final category of the 2024 Smileys, we got players choice. This is a shout out to a game that might not get the love on the game of the year list, but you still want to give us flowers. Do want to remind people, people that us sitting here, who and everybody here who voted don't actually know what's going to end up on the game of the year list. This is more preemptively us giving a special shout out to a game that we want to make sure gets a shout out this year.

[Andy Cortez]

And specifically for me, even though I do know it's on the game the year list, I sent in my votes for this like a month ago before any of y'all voted for game of the year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So this category is a bit different from our other categories. This one, I did include every single person's pick. We each, of course, wrote in one game and I wanted to make sure to highlight them all because this is the player's choice.

[Tim Gettys]

Love it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Starting with our first winner, which is thank goodness you're here, which was written in by two different people. This was a Barrett write in and a blessing at EOA Jr. Write in.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I shouted this out when I wrote it in. Wrote it in in Jesus, when I wrote it in. Just because I'm. I not sure or at the time, I wasn't sure. Again, it's weird to talk about this if it was going to make the top 10 or not. And I just wanted to give it a lot of love just because this game made me smile front to back in terms of just its humor and how, like, deadpan it's delivered, but how absurd a lot of that humor is. It does remind me a lot of, like, Flying circus, but just also combining how cartoony and weird and very Adult Swim it is, I. I just adored it and I appreciate that there's, like, a localization translation subtitle option to, like, help me kind of understand this very specific humor. And it's just. It's slapstick joy from front to back. And, yeah, I. I loved it so much.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, this is one that I think I was the most scared of not getting his flowers this year when we, like, barreling toward the end of the year for end of the year content when I'm, like, even formulating my top tens and thinking about other people's top tens and thinking about dice and game awards and all these things, like, thinking about thank goodness you're here. I'm like, man, people got to make sure to remember this game and remember how, like, good this one is because it's everything that Barrett mentioned Right. But I think it's also just, you know, this game has a charm that I hope to never see go away from indie games in the future. It is funny. It is complete as far as like its art style and voice acting and like, you know, somebody made this like a small team. Like a small team really put their hearts into this and like you can feel it by how singular it is. A game like this would never be made on the AAA level. Like a game like this, like you need a few friends in a room to like be like, yo, this is what we think is funny. This is what works for us. And like we're going to make something that we want to make. And like I think all that, all that stuff shines through so well in this game and also I want to give it just a shout out to like how technically, technically. Well this is made on just a comedic angle where the loop the. Or the jokes loop back on themselves so well. Like it applies the rule of threes. Right? Right. Like right when you think a bit is over, that bit has another thing to add to it and it is always funny. Lady die. Yeah, like there's like the chimney like coming down.

[Andy Cortez]

My favorite bit of the year. The way you break that man slowly over the. The course of the entire game. Like that is. Yeah, it's so big.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's like a. I think one of the categories we thought about is like best moment. But it's the hard thing if we don't want to spoil games on the show. But I'm sure if we did best moment. There are probably moments from this game enter the list.

[Andy Cortez]

And like the one that Greg shared when they reviewed this game was what got me to play it of just Milkshai no more. Yeah, Milkshy no more is just like one of the most absurd, funniest things and it also just another reason why this game was special to me is cuz you know I, I grew up loving 90s point and click adventure games and even though this isn't point and click, it still had that vibe of just going around being like where the. What do I need to slap slap slap slap slap. You know, and just exploring around, around this very tiny area that feels so alive and having like the area, the entire town slowly change over the course of the game. I thought it was just so well done.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next choice for players choice award is Dungeons of Hinterberg. This was Piers Lilly's write in.

[Greg Miller]

Nice. I love dungeons. Yeah, everybody knows I talked about maybe don't. That's a weird Thing to say. Dungeons of Hinterberg is a game that I played and talked about on the show. How much I enjoy and how much it caught me off guard. If I remember my pick correctly, it's not this, but it's something similar where we had seen this at GDC at the beginning of the year and the art style was like, that's weird. I don't really know about it. And then I was in a place where I was between reviews, wanted to play something, looking for something new. Pop this on and you find, you know, this woman who's what, a legal assistant and she goes to this hinterberg town that 10 years ago, I think it is Dungeons appeared in. And now they've turned it into a tourist attraction where people come here and take on basically the bunny slop all the way up to your K12s or whatever, which would be, you know, a skiing thing, right? It's fun, it's easy to get into. It's very. It feels like a vacation playing it. I played it on my vacation when I was up in Quebec this year and it felt like, oh, cool. There are these little puzzles, these are fun battles. You know, I'm doing this, I'm finishing the day and I come back to my hotel and choose how I spend my night. Who do I want to spend my time with. There's a whole, you know, town full of compatriots out there. You have these relationships, levels. They lay it out so nicely of. Like when you are looking at the map, you can decide, oh, if I hang out with this person, I'll go to two stars and it will give me this buff, it will give me this benefit. It will. You can really make your build kind of based on what you need to go do. Really fun. Really fun game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next choice for Players choice award is Content Warning.

[Mike Howard]

I put this one on because I love dumb, fun, awesome video games.

[Greg Miller]

I didn't know that.

[Mike Howard]

Content Warning is a game I don't want you to forget about. About. From the chain together experiences that you'll have with your friends to this game where it takes over the zeitgeist for a month and we all get together and we play in a game like Lethal Company where now we become youtubers getting sent off to another planet and we have to go out and film content and try to get more views and get that higher and higher. This game is just fun. There are moments in life where you're going to go to the Steam page and you're going to find find just awesome fun games. That maybe a lot of people don't like or maybe they put their nose up at. But you and the world will have so much fun playing. And that's what content warning was this year. It was the lethal company of this year where you will start laughing and having a great time with your friends and man, oh man, once you get everything singing with in game audio and you just start running around screaming and laughing. Someone's holding the camera, someone's got a flashlight light. This game is great. What a great game.

[Barrett Courtney]

That should have been best innovation. It's a great call out because the innovation of having somebody recording with the camcorder and if they die, you have to go pick up that camera and in hopes to bring it back. But then once you're all back at the home base, you all collectively get together and you sit around the couch and you watch the thing you just recorded and when the two, which is crazy and when. And the prox chat the way it all works to like hear that, you know, you have some like, hey, you know, some Mike might hear the. Oh my God, you just hear like the audio cut out and it's, it's a, it's a freaking blast.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, this was a great stream when I got to come in. I think maybe I did two of them with you, but I loved playing this game with y'all.

[Roger McCorney]

Such a fun time. That was a great choice, Mike.

[Mike Howard]

Thank you. Don't forget about some good games out there, y'all.

[Greg Miller]

Don't forget Mike.

[Barrett Courtney]

Shout out Gwen Hayes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next winner for players choice is Caravan Sandwich.

[Greg Miller]

Hello, it's me, Greg. This is the one I put on here, which I do feel is very similar in tone and vibe to Dungeons of Hints. The thing about this one, of course, this is one of my late games from last year, so you might have heard me talk about it in what November? Caravan Sandwich. Even when I reviewed it on gamescast, I forget what I gave it, but I was like, it's not like I don't think it's like this amazing, incredible yada, yada, yada when we're talking about game of the year, right. It shouldn't be on the short list by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a game that I do think into your, you know the category description, right, of things gonna be over overlooked. It's not going to get its flowers. This came out in September, I believe it was. I completely missed it. Finally saw a TikTok about it. I was like, wait, this looks like such a Greg game. And it was Such a great game. No combat, explore at your own pace, drive this van around, figure out what happened in this world, interact with a bunch of different people and characters and build this thing out and take it at your own pace. It was a game I really didn't know I needed till I was playing it where it was such a great palate cleanser like we talk about. It was such a great stop in the middle of review season to be like, oh, here's just something that is scratching that itch. I go in, I go over there, I get the hook, I do the thing, I blah, blah, blah, and I'm on my way. But then there are moments like you just saw where you walk up to plateaus, sit down and the camera just spins for as long as you want to. Right. It is about enjoying, yeah. What this game looks like, enjoying these characters, piecing together what happened to your sister and stuff like that. It's just a really serene nice time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations. Dungeons of Nope.

[Tim Gettys]

Caravans.

[Greg Miller]

But congratulations on Taylor. Hilariously, Cokie over. There goes the Lois origin story. Because your character looks so much like Lois Griffin. There was, there was an amazing moment when I found out about this game and then started following it. I scrolled back and it wasn't too long after I found the game where it was literally the character art next to Lois Griffin and the creator. Like why how the. I've been making this game for seven years. Why did no one tell me he was so. They were so into it, they had no idea they had just made Lois Griffin.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next winner for players choice of 2024 is Witchfire.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, so I've talked about this a lot. Game rocks. Next one. Everybody play Witchfire. Support the devs buy it if you love fast paced, amazing roguelites. First person shooter with great, great, great progression and a lot of cool difficulty and just really, really neat surprises and a lot of depth there. This is not an early access that you feel like you have to play in two years. Once it's all done. This feels like a very, very deep video game already. It rocks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Our next choice for players choices 2024 is Sonic Cross Shadow Generations.

[Tim Gettys]

Hell yeah.

[Mike Howard]

Chili dogs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who would have done something?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, it would. It would be me, of course. I've been my entire life, I've been a Sonic fan through the ups, through the downs and through the memes, through the single thing here, there and otherwise. I can't believe the era of Sonic we're in right now. Whether it's the movies, whether it's the shows, whether it's the games. The last couple years have been hitting hard and it feels great to. To be rewarded for being a fan again through the good and the bad. And I think that Generations, when it came out a decade ago, was such a great celebration of all of that and it kind of created one of the best Sonic games ever. Shadow Generations does the exact same thing thing. The level of love and care put into making every single level have as many set pieces for every moment that actually mattered from the previous games. So great. So hype. I feel like this is kind of to me the pinnacle of 3D sonic so far. A perfect game. Absolutely not. Fun as hell. Yes.

[Roger McCorney]

Speak for yourself.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And our I believe final choice for players choice award is is UFO 50.

[Roger McCorney]

That is mine actually. I almost wrote Shadow Generation so that was going to be my second one. But I was hoping. Hoping that you would give me the. The layup.

[Tim Gettys]

Yes.

[Roger McCorney]

UFO 50 is really incredible. It's a game that I know we're not going to talk about on. On Game of the Year. I don't think anyone here else played it other than me. But it's a game that shouldn't hit for me, right? Like it's a game like I. It is is based off the nostalgia of the NES period that I was not alive for. And I never really had any nostalgia for any of it. I started playing games during the PS2 generation. So I was like, okay, let me try it out. The idea of this is that it's 50 unique video games that are made by indie developers. And it is. It tells a story of a alternate universe Nintendo competitor that over I think the course of nine years releases 50 games. So you start from the first game in chronological order and then you can go to the last game and it. The graphics have improved. The. There's an intro sequence for UFO Soft is the company company in this universe. And it's. It's really, really cool because you know, of course I didn't finish all of these games. I only finished like I think two or three of them. But I had a great time booting it up every single night and just playing a little bit, right? Like bouncing around and going in chronological order and finding that one right there. That game I finished. I forgot the name of it but because there's 50 games but finding those ones that hit for me, the ones that don't hit for me. And it's just such a unique experience and one that you have to call out, right? This is definitely the player's choice for me. When I. When I Saw this category because it's so unique, it is so, so interesting and it's such a tough sell sometimes, you know, because there is so much and it's hard to pinpoint the specific one because you start pinpointing like that's I think Party House the name of that game which is like a card like deck builder type thing with people at a party. It's like it becomes really weird and hard to, to nail down. But it's a great experience. And I'm, I, I was talking to Leanne's about this. I was like, I hope our like kid one day naturally I can show them this game and then they have the fun that I had of just going through and finding the ones that they like and they didn't like because it reminds me of those, it's a better version of those shitty knockoff games that I had where it'd be like a thousand and one, like 500 of them would be, you know, all Mario. Yeah, exactly. But like this is all like handmade really interesting stuff here. And like this is Derek, you right? Yes. Which I, I don't know how it breaks down in terms of like who developed what, who was doing what. But yeah, this is, it's Moss Mouth Productions. But it's, it's really interesting and it's a, it's, it's a really cool experience. So yeah, everyone check it out and support it because it's a once in a lifetime type of video game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations to our players choice winners and congratulations to all of our winners throughout the Smileys 2024. I do want to shout out how just like the variety of games we play. I know this is natural because now we have so many people on our team. When I say so many 11, but like still enough so that like we all, all of our different I think tastes get to shine. And as I go through all these games I'm like, damn, we really got all of our bases covered, right? Like I think the only thing left for us to do is to play Xenoblade Chronicles and we pretty much conquered Nick's on there. So funny. But yeah, congratulations and also thank you guys for such a great smiley.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you Blessing.

[Roger McCorney]

Thank you Blessing.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you Andy.

[Barrett Courtney]

Great job everyone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Again tune in this Monday for our game of the year top 10. That's we're going to go through and talk about all of our best games of the year and crown our actual game of the year winner for 2024.

[Greg Miller]

And then a teaser.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sick. And throughout next week we're going to be talking about our top tens of the year individually as well. So you don't want to miss the content for next week. Greg, is there anything I'm missing out on as far as like promotion?

[Greg Miller]

4Pm Wednesday. That's the day. 4pm Wednesday. There's a special gamescast I can't tell you about yet.

[Andy Cortez]

Also this Saturday for Patreon stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right?

[Greg Miller]

Right, right. For the giveaways. Yeah. 9:00am you can go to patreon.com kind of funny and get gifted a Kind of Funny membership. Get ready ahead of time of course. Go to patreon.com kind of funny click join for free so you have a Patreon account and then the post will go up at 9am you click on the link. If your fastest fingers you can get yourself a Kind of Funny membership to enjoy. On behalf of all the other Kind of Funny fans who are supporting us, remember it's not too late to support us. You can buy patreon.com kindafunny memberships, gift them. They give you a link. You send it to supportindafunny.com we put it into the post for 9am Saturday.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Before we get out of here I do want to shout out the rest of the super chats we got in. Sortsbyfirstname wrote it and says if I could have bet if I could have Best VR Surprise specifically it would be Maestro a rhythm game where you are the conductor of an orchestra.

[Tim Gettys]

How you play.

[Greg Miller]

Gary talks about this one a lot. Gary wanted me to play this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That sounds really cool to Gary.

[Greg Miller]

Get out of my house.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How'd you get in here? It's 2am Bread Boy writes in and says I wish more of y'all played through Silent Hill 2 and Roger didn't forget about it because I think it would have fit right into Biggest Surprise in Best.

[Roger McCorney]

They should have put remake in the title. Then I wouldn't have forgot about it. I thought it was a new game. Forgot about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Red Boy says it is their game of the year 2024 by far. Personally.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Joshua Burns writes in and says if you guys ever want to do vintage Pokemon or Magic Box opening DM me I'm a high end collectible bro broker and broker can can get you guys anything I love. That sounds dangerous. Yeah, that sounds super dangerous.

[Greg Miller]

Return your jacket and take that money and send it to this man.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Omega Buster writes in and says the one piece TCG is about the friends we made. Demon Hacker writes in and says bluebird equals Best studio for beating the expectations.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly. Yeah. Like that's a really good call up for sure.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Total X garbage, right? Sentence says, hey, Barrett, love your shirt. Where'd you get it?

[Andy Cortez]

Great question, great question.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's gatekeeping. I know gatekeepers.

[Andy Cortez]

No, I have no idea. I don't remember where I buy things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sort by first name says yes, Raj repping rgg. Christopher Burnett writes in and says this is for Snowbike Mike to give him some hope. Rockstar announced in the past release Rockstar announced in the past Release dates for GTA 4, La Noir, Max Pain 3 and GTA 4 in January. January. They're removing one post a day counting down to January 21st. Think about that.

[Roger McCorney]

Mike Rocher Thomas, think about it.

[Tim Gettys]

Love that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then just to follow up on.

[Andy Cortez]

The shirt thing, Tim knows this. I used to buy shirts just on Instagram algorithm all the fucking time. Think I'm writing that shit down where I bought this.

[Roger McCorney]

Yeah. Everybody just say into your phone, barrett, Barrett, shirt. Barrett, shirt.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then Christopher Burnett, Jake Jarmel gives us more money to finish his super check. Because that was only. Only the first half.

[Roger McCorney]

Oh, wow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He then continues, my prediction is that Rockstar announces on the 4th 14th that the second trailer drops on January 21st with the release date of either September 16th or October 28th and will score 97 on Jesus. Thank you for that, Christopher Burnett. Of course, this has been the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together, talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games, live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube or now Apple podcasts or Spotify to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive Show. Catch today's KFCD on YouTube or podcast services and know that until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.