0:00

This park is over

0:03

25,000 square

0:05

yards with over

0:07

50,000 acres of

0:09

arable land. Up

0:12

here the'll build the

0:14

building in 1402. Terraces

0:21

through 40 acres of forest that

0:23

we turn into lakes Hello

0:32

friends and welcome to episode 153

0:34

of the Noclip podcast. It's

0:39

our final regularly scheduled episode

0:41

of the Noclip podcast as

0:43

we enter the domain

0:45

of GOTY. The

0:48

GOTY, Game of the Year. Game

0:51

of the Year. We'll

0:53

have to get Jeff Keighley on here to

0:55

tell us how the categories work. Because the

0:58

way we do it is clearly not the right way. Jeremy

1:00

Jane, how excited are you to talk about

1:03

the games of the years?

1:06

I couldn't be more excited. And you know, the best

1:08

thing is that everything is an... I love indie games.

1:10

And you know, I just... I

1:12

love seeing the category of indie games

1:14

expanded to include every... No, I'm just

1:16

kidding. Yeah, no,

1:19

I'm very excited. Game

1:21

of the Year is like probably my...

1:23

I love the podcast every week, but the Game

1:25

of the Year stuff gets so spirited. And it's

1:27

not like... We're not like debating what the

1:30

best game of the year was. So I feel

1:32

like there's a world in which we do a real

1:34

contentious game of the year. Right. And I'm like, no,

1:36

Chance of Cenar is objectively better than this and this.

1:40

But yeah, no, it's just like we all

1:42

just get to yell about video games in

1:44

the most optimistic, positive, celebratory way ever. It's

1:46

like the best. You're right. There is a...

1:49

I think when we were approaching this, there

1:51

was an acknowledging

1:53

of other websites over

1:55

the years that we have worked at or

1:58

ones that we haven't worked at where... it does tend to

2:01

get contentious like the games about ones I

2:03

remember were real real ripe sometimes

2:05

and I know the giant bombs over the years

2:08

can get kind of testy whereas ours are there

2:10

more, you know, maybe they're less. I

2:12

don't know, maybe they're less something less less

2:14

total. Maybe they're less universal. Maybe you don't

2:16

play every game. Maybe they're a little bit

2:18

skewed one way or another, but I think

2:21

everyone, hopefully everyone comes away with like those

2:23

are 10 games that I will play now

2:25

because they've been each of them

2:27

celebrated. Frank Howley, how

2:30

are you doing? How are you? How are you excited for the games

2:32

of the year? I'm excited.

2:34

There's always the anxiety is that there's never enough

2:36

time to play everything and I like even 10

2:38

years from now we'll be discovering games from 2023.

2:42

Like even last night I had my Xbox

2:44

on playing Def Jam fight for New York

2:47

still discovering still discovering new classic, but so

2:49

much to discover. I'm glad to see

2:51

you're using your last days until we do the

2:53

game of the year podcast to play the run

2:55

of the title. I'm

2:58

just diving into all the

3:00

wrestling stuff. No, I'm

3:02

excited because it's honestly just it's nice to have time to

3:04

kind of play a bunch of really, really good games.

3:07

Like I finally, I mean, we'll save it all the sketch work,

3:09

but like I even like crack deeper now in week two

3:11

and I'm like, oh, this is yeah, I don't know. So

3:13

it feels good. It feels good. The

3:16

layers. Well, as a result of this, this

3:18

week's podcast, which is not a game of

3:20

the year podcast is a little bit light

3:22

on games because we've all been tunneling into

3:24

the year that was 2023 and we don't

3:26

want to burn good game of the year

3:28

pod. But let's before

3:30

we jump into the games we have played, let's go through our sort of

3:33

tentative game of the year list. We'll do

3:35

it right after I do a

3:37

shout out to all of our

3:39

incredible battle pass holders, battle royale

3:41

games, Arno, Richard Matheson, James Brown,

3:43

Jason Drury, Mark Rojas, Ryan Cobb,

3:46

Tucker Morgan, Crimson Cyclist, Sven Huster,

3:48

Tim Robinson, Forrest Brueck, Darren Birmingham,

3:50

Eric Hamilton, Schneider, Cameron Latt, Alex

3:53

Sharp, Alex Gouché, George Tsikotis, Jacob Godserve,

3:55

Tohir Tilev, and of course, Rycen, thank

3:57

you all so much. And thank you

3:59

to all of our incredible players. All

4:02

of the folks who purchased some merch

4:04

over at store.noclip.video. It's finally up. Store.noclip.video.

4:06

Go check out a, what

4:08

looks like a Doom mouse pad, but

4:11

is definitely intellectually properly, property distinct from

4:13

that made by AuraHack, our awesome artist

4:15

who's done, done some incredible work for

4:17

us over the years. Go

4:19

check out the Among

4:21

Us poster. Go check out the zip

4:23

up hoodie, no clip zip up hoodie

4:25

with the embroidered logo. We got some,

4:28

we got some good shit up on that. We got a

4:30

Stunt Derby shirt. It's all happening. I'm going to get some

4:32

secret tape on stuff up there too. And

4:35

if you're a patron of noclip, go to the

4:37

general chat on our Discord and look at the

4:39

pinned message and there is an offer code to

4:41

get 10% off any off,

4:43

any, uh, uh, order, uh,

4:45

through Sunday. So Sunday, the doodle

4:47

doodle doo, third of December. Um,

4:49

you can do that. And

4:52

yeah, thank you so much everyone. We really appreciate it.

4:54

Uh, a lot of the stuff has been priced to

4:56

make it so it's easier to get.

4:58

So, you know, we're not earning shed

5:00

loads off this stuff, but we make up. I think

5:02

I went through the, the budget stuff

5:04

a couple of days ago and we get like a 38% markup

5:08

on everything that's there. So definitely a

5:10

good vibe. Y'all get to have

5:12

some cool no clip stuff like badges and

5:14

cups and t-shirts and awesomeness. Audrey

5:16

did some rad designs for us, which we

5:19

finally got up as well. I should mention

5:21

that with the posters and the mousepad stuff

5:23

as well, any of those that we did

5:25

with artists that weren't specifically done

5:28

for merch, we're actually doing a 50% call

5:30

with those folks as well, just to make

5:32

sure that, um, that, that, that, that's, uh,

5:34

that's all equitable and everything. But,

5:36

uh, yeah, it definitely helps us out. Should we also,

5:38

we do it through Pinterville and Shopify, which is, uh,

5:41

every product that's up there, I have tested

5:43

myself to make sure it's not garbage or

5:45

it doesn't cost a fortune to ship. I'm

5:48

looking at you, the pint glasses, which looked all

5:51

right, but they cost, they were all made in

5:53

like Croatia. So if you want them to cost

5:55

a fortune to get them. So we're not, uh,

5:57

we're not doing any of that sort of stuff,

5:59

but yeah. It's good. It means that you get some

6:01

cool merch maybe for Christmas, maybe for a loved

6:03

one. Maybe your grandmother really loves this podcast. She

6:06

wants to get some badges. You know, I don't

6:08

know what's going on, but we got stickers up

6:10

there. Finally, the number one most requested thing for

6:12

years. Obviously it helps out

6:15

Noclip and yeah. And you get

6:17

some cool shit too. So store.noclip.vidget.

6:21

I should say video just in case somebody will

6:23

type in vidget. And it won't be IDYA. Yeah,

6:25

that'd be pretty cool. Someone's going to type video.

6:27

Games.vidget. That'd be pretty cool. We should get

6:29

that. We should get that too. We should, you're

6:31

right. Let's

6:40

have a look at our game of the year list before. This is not a game

6:42

of the year podcast. Maybe I'm

6:44

breaking the rules here a little bit, but what

6:46

we decided to do as a team, I'm sorry,

6:48

rather what Frank decided to do is organize our

6:50

ramblings over on the staff

6:52

discord and get together a

6:54

list of games that myself,

6:57

Jeremy, Frank, and of course, Jesse, who will be joining us on

6:59

the game of the year podcast, we would never do it without

7:02

him, wouldn't dare need

7:04

his insight on bomb funk cyber funk, which

7:07

I cannot say that fucking guy. I call

7:09

it bomb funk. Like the bomb funk MCs.

7:11

Do you remember that song? Does that ever

7:13

make it to America? I

7:15

straight to the top of my dome as

7:17

a rocker rocker rocker rocker rocker microphone. Frank.

7:19

Yeah. The only reason I know about it

7:21

because I would spend summer vacations in Russia

7:24

like in the late nineties. So it was

7:26

on Russian MTV, but I had that bomb

7:28

pump MCs or whatever. I had that kid.

7:30

I had it on single. I came with

7:32

the video with the little, little kid with

7:34

the dreadlocks. Oh, I think was in the band.

7:38

He looked like he was like eight, but he might've been, he

7:40

might've been older. Yeah. It's called

7:42

the, the butt fuck MC because

7:44

I was a child when that song came out. Anyway,

7:46

roasted. Exactly. Um,

7:49

so let's, let's have a look. Well, let's go through. We have, we

7:51

have, we had 29 games in here. I

7:53

did just add Lisa company because, Oh yeah.

7:55

We, you know, we got to do our

7:58

due diligence. That game is fucking. bloating

8:00

on Steam. It's

8:03

funny, you mentioned it to me on Discord

8:05

yesterday, Jeremy, and someone else had

8:07

mentioned it to me the day before. And

8:09

the day before that, I had heard, read

8:12

an article talking about it. So I'm like, it's

8:15

finally gotten to the middle-aged guys. It's

8:17

like, are the people in their 30s?

8:20

Sorry, I shouldn't call you middle-aged. Exactly. It's

8:24

finally gotten to us. It came out back in

8:26

October. It has 90,000 reviews

8:29

on Steam, overwhelmingly positive.

8:31

Like a sort of a co-op

8:34

scavenger, scavenging game.

8:37

Yeah, it's like a co-op horror

8:40

game, comedy horror game, about

8:43

the gig economy and scavenging

8:46

in places full of monsters. It's kind of

8:48

like, it has a little bit of phasmophobia,

8:50

a little bit of SCP in it. Yeah,

8:52

it's a really cool... SCP. SCP?

8:55

I don't think I played SCP.

8:57

It's a, it's like a, okay,

8:59

I'm a millennial. So if you're

9:01

a Zoomer and you're listening to this, pardon my

9:04

ignorance. It's like a internet meme

9:06

turned into a bunch of, spawned a bunch

9:08

of video games. It's about like a secure

9:10

containment protocol. It's like a bunch of cryptids

9:12

and monsters and stuff that have different behaviors.

9:15

So like one is like the weeping angel from

9:17

Doctor Who and you can't look away and stuff.

9:20

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. SCP

9:23

containment breach remastered is available on

9:25

Steam. I will not be making

9:27

the 2023 list. So

9:29

I stuck Lethal Company on there, but we had a bunch of other

9:31

ones. So let's go from the top, because I feel like that's where

9:34

a lot of the bangers are. Or

9:36

at least it goes from AAA down

9:38

to indie stuff. So

9:42

I shouldn't confuse money spent

9:44

on developing game with quality of game.

9:47

That is the problem with, I guess, the

9:49

term AAA in the first place. We

9:52

have Alan Wake 2 up here, which seems

9:54

like everyone has to play a lot more of. Judging

9:57

by the notes on this. Frank, how close

9:59

are you? to the end of it or do

10:01

you have you gotten the long game? I think I'm halfway

10:03

through. I think I checked my progress

10:05

to the trophy list and I'm at like 54% of trophies. OK,

10:09

yeah. 17

10:11

and a half hours, according to howlongtobeat.com. So

10:14

it ain't short. By the

10:16

way, if you don't hear a game on this that

10:19

you think and you're listening to the podcast, feel free

10:21

to send us an email or hit us up on

10:23

Discord if you think there's something we have tragically overlooked.

10:26

We have Baldur's Gate 3 on here, of course, which

10:29

I think is a lot of people's sort of front

10:31

runner for Game of the Year on lots of

10:33

the websites. Blasphemous 2,

10:36

which I absolutely adored. Bomb

10:39

Rush Cyberfunk, great song,

10:42

which I've only started playing a couple

10:44

of days ago. It works really good on Steam

10:46

Deck. Man, that game is fucking cool. That's

10:49

the soundtrack alone is like fucking, yeah,

10:51

it goes pretty hard. We

10:54

have a Cocoon on here. Have you any, Jesse put

10:56

this one down. Have you guys played this? I

10:59

played a bit of it. It's a it's like

11:01

a puzzle game, kind of a dimension swapping puzzle

11:03

game. It's really neat. I think

11:06

the one of the designers from Inside

11:08

made it, if I'm not mistaken. Oh,

11:10

this thing. I saw Austin Walker talking

11:12

about this on Twitter and saying, like,

11:14

do not sleep on this game. Oh,

11:17

yeah, this looks neat. OK. So

11:20

we go games. Counter-Strike 2

11:23

on here, too. Played some of that last night.

11:25

Dave the Diver, Indie Game of the Year, according

11:27

to the Game Awards, despite

11:29

being created by Nexon. Interesting

11:32

one. Dredge. I

11:35

think that is the DLC for that game coming

11:37

out? Before

11:39

the end of the year. It's

11:42

soon, though, right? At least at the very least, it's

11:44

soon. Pale Reach.

11:46

The Pale Reach. The Pale Reach

11:48

around. When's it coming

11:51

out? When is it reaching into our? November

11:53

16th, it came out. Oh, it did. OK, cool. Reaching

11:55

into our hearts and minds. Beautiful. I got to check

11:57

that out. Got to add it in. Final

12:00

Fantasy 16 Jesse's the only one who's

12:02

played this one I think if

12:04

you guys played this year you're gonna crime in

12:06

a Final Fantasy game before for next week Thank

12:09

you But right I got like a third of the way through it and

12:11

like with a lot of Final Fantasy games a lot of people Are like

12:13

oh you got to play the first 10 hours and it gets good No,

12:16

I honestly I mean I this might be the kind of

12:18

game I want to play right now because I want just

12:20

stuff to grind and I forgot I had that in progress

12:22

But my problem was I was starting to skip cutscenes

12:24

because I did not care about the story stuff, but

12:26

now that's back in consideration I will

12:29

pay attention to the cutscene Beautiful,

12:31

but the game plays good Game

12:33

of great cutscenes hi-fi rush not

12:36

not not not hmm It's

12:38

like it's like it's like bomb rush cyber funk

12:40

if it was made by like a hundred people

12:42

and had like 50 million dollars Maybe or something

12:45

like that and the soundtrack opened

12:47

with like dad rock the black keys. You're

12:49

right. Yeah Yeah, it's got one

12:51

foot in there. It's a it's 401k there homebody

12:55

I have to go back and play more of that I

12:57

really enjoyed the start of that, but it freaked me the

12:59

fuck out Jeremy. So thank you in advance. It's

13:01

so good It's like it's like immortality

13:04

when I've had to when I played that and I

13:06

was texting you through it It was a sort of

13:09

a coping mechanism and you saunce

13:12

Should mention as well cocoon Oh cocoons on game past

13:14

right so it's high fire rush and so is just

13:16

saunce Which is a climbing game that's come

13:18

up a couple of times over the past few weeks here on the

13:20

podcast Lies of P played some more

13:22

of that during the weekend as well. Love

13:25

me some lies of P Am I the only person

13:27

who's paid lies of P? I might be I I

13:29

still yeah, I started I still gotta play more expensive

13:31

boys Just do it just get it look expensive anyway,

13:33

cuz like you might not play you might play two

13:35

hours of free game of the year But next year

13:37

you're like, you know what? I'm craving some blood-borne shit.

13:40

Give me some of that Kirkland signature blood-borne,

13:42

baby Let's go Liza P

13:44

and midnight Sun's is on here, but that

13:46

did not come out this year. So maybe

13:50

just as a as a farewell

13:52

to Jake Solomon over and Day

13:56

by the layoffs over there. I'm not quite sure

14:00

Great game. Maybe, you

14:02

know, one of the, one of those tragic games, it's just kind

14:04

of like a cult classic maybe didn't sell as well as, as

14:07

it deserved to, although you can kind of see this

14:09

year with the Marvel stuff has just sort of died

14:11

on its art. So it's not like comic books just

14:13

fucking ate shit this year. Midnight

14:16

Sun's did come out December 1st, last year though. So there's a

14:18

good, there's a good argument to be make that that was a

14:20

game that we did not, you

14:23

know, didn't make it into game of the year conversations last

14:25

year. Did we have a best gig 2021 game of 2022

14:27

last year? You

14:31

guys remember? I don't think so now. I

14:34

can see the argument for it. We kind of do

14:36

a game of the December to December, not really the

14:38

year. You know what I mean? That's, that is true.

14:40

Um, I'm trying to remember, do we have the names of

14:43

the other ones written down anywhere? Um,

14:46

listen to the podcast. I

14:49

have a, oh, I have the document. I found the

14:51

documents. We'll go through the document in

14:53

a second. Um, what

14:55

else do we have here? Resident Evil four remake. That's

14:58

a Frank Kelly joint right there. I gotta play some

15:01

more of that. Another flank early job. This

15:03

is the part where Frank started writing games into

15:05

the document. We've slayers X up

15:08

next. What was the full title for

15:10

that? I think it's like slayers X terminal

15:12

aftermath of the slayer, something, something, yeah, it's

15:14

amazing. I should put the full title in

15:16

it to honor and respect J. Pullman. Absolutely.

15:19

Yeah. We have, um, two of us have completed

15:22

that one. So I feel like we're well covered

15:24

on that. Anyone wants to play

15:26

it a little bit, maybe, um, Street Fighter six

15:28

here as well. I need to fix more of

15:30

that. Uh, system shock.

15:32

I might be the only one to say that one remake

15:35

that one I grabbed on steam sale. So that one

15:37

I made my plan to play. Um,

15:39

which I'm yeah, that looks awesome. Do you know how long that is? I

15:41

feel like the game is super long. I

15:43

don't know. I don't know. That's a

15:45

good question. System shock remake. Let

15:48

me look it up. I would guess 11 hours. Oh God.

15:50

Is it 20? It's 20 to 50 hour, 25 hours.

15:53

Really on game ranch. That says 12

15:55

hours. Other people have said on

15:58

the, who knows the internet is not. Not quite sure. How

16:00

long to beat? I'll use them. They're always my go-to. 15

16:03

and a half hours. Alright, that's a long game. Terra-Neal?

16:07

That's from Free Lives, the folks behind genital jousting, which

16:09

we did a documentary on a couple of years ago.

16:12

And you guys played Terra-Neal yet? No,

16:15

I have not. I would say that's good. If you're

16:17

not in the mood to play some game of the year games,

16:19

and you just want to chill the fuck out for a little

16:21

while, stick on Terra-Neal. It's very chill. It's like

16:23

the most chill. It kind of looks like a...

16:26

like a... like an isometric strategy

16:29

game, but it plays more like it's just

16:31

a chill ass. It's very about

16:33

like bringing life back to Earth, so

16:35

the vibes are immediately great. You're just

16:37

like... You click a thing down,

16:39

it makes water, and grass starts growing, and

16:41

the music starts lifting, and you're like, Oh

16:43

yeah, okay. So yeah,

16:46

enjoy some Terra-Neal. Venba, who put

16:48

this down? Is this a Jesse joint? That's

16:50

a Jesse game. Venba looks really interesting. It's

16:53

sort of more of a narrative-driven game. It's about...

16:56

I believe it's an Indian family talking

16:58

about food and like kind

17:01

of sharing their story through like food

17:03

coming together through cooking. Nice. In

17:05

Canada as well. So shout out to Canada, there,

17:07

Jesse doing his home nation proud. That

17:10

actually reminds me that another game... Lethal

17:13

Companies, a couple of games I've been playing, one

17:15

game I have played that I want to talk about today,

17:18

and then there's another one, Thirsty

17:20

suitors, which is another

17:22

game that I wanted to play before we finalize this

17:24

list. So there's a couple more other ones that might

17:26

slip in here as well. We Love

17:29

Katamari ReRoll, that's the remaster,

17:31

right, Frank? Yeah, so this one I kind of

17:33

just put on here as like an honorable mention,

17:35

because legitimately like one of my top five gaming

17:38

experiences of the year was going through all the

17:40

Katamaris, and it was launched by the We

17:43

Love Katamari ReRoll that came out, and it

17:45

was only like 30 bucks, or maybe even

17:47

20 now, but incredible. I had never touched

17:49

that one. And the soundtrack, like, oh

17:51

my God. So I strongly recommend everyone just

17:53

play it regardless, just it's so good. We

17:55

Love Katamari. I think I even like it

17:57

better than the original, because the missions in We Love Katamari are...

18:00

even goofier, even though the

18:02

creator did not want to make a sequel. And

18:05

it's so weird because of that.

18:07

So it's spiteful art. It's great.

18:11

It's like K to Takashi, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.

18:14

Bay Area local now. Uh,

18:16

Pizza Tower is in here too. We had a great

18:18

video of that over a crew a number of months

18:20

back. Chance of Sonara, which Jeremy talked about quite

18:23

recently. Um, did you play more

18:25

of that since we- Oh, I finished it. Oh, you did?

18:27

Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another Jeremy

18:29

classic here, Mo Salina, which I've

18:32

also enjoyed. Um, might be

18:34

in contention that one. Uh, Small Saga,

18:36

which we talked about last week, Octopath Traveler 2.

18:38

Frank, you've gotten a range of playing some of

18:40

that. So Octopath Traveler 2 was a game I

18:43

played like 20 hours at the beginning of the

18:45

year and I loved it. So I should allow

18:48

myself to play more of it, uh, with the next

18:50

few weeks. Cause like, it's so good, but so

18:52

many games kept coming out. Yeah. You got

18:55

to complete Final Fantasy 16 before you

18:57

do that. Uh, Slay

18:59

the Princess, which- did we talk

19:01

about that last week? Oh, oh

19:03

yeah, this one. I downloaded this after I saw it on

19:05

the list. I haven't played it yet. It's like

19:08

a horror game. It's like a very meta kind of

19:10

like narrative horror game. I don't know that much about

19:12

it because I feel like it's one of those games

19:14

you go into blind. Right. Is it, who, did you

19:16

put this one in or did you just- Uh, I

19:19

did. Okay. All right. Okay. We'll stick it. Maybe you

19:21

give it a go and then I'll know- well, actually

19:23

I'll think I've already bought it. So maybe I'll let

19:25

you know if you should return it. Excellent. Um,

19:28

typecast of course. I played a bunch of that

19:31

this week. Very cool. And I

19:33

just stuck in lethal company for shits and giggles. Is

19:36

the setup we have this year. So plenty of games. We

19:38

want all play all of them, of course, but

19:41

the way it works for a no clips game of the year

19:43

is that we will pick our top 10

19:45

favorite games. No order, just

19:47

like here are the games we think are the best 10

19:49

or both cheap like last year and

19:51

do 11. And then,

19:53

uh, we give them their

19:56

own bespoke award. Right. That

19:58

was the. That was the vibe.

20:01

So I have a document here, but it

20:03

really is very confusing. It looks like the

20:05

type of document somebody has rushed

20:07

together last minute. It's

20:10

just like, it only resembles one though. It was

20:12

not rushed together. Oh, I found it. I found

20:14

it now. Okay. Okay. Are these

20:16

accurate? These may or may not be the right ones. We did

20:18

last year. I can't remember, but let's, let's go through them. Tunic

20:22

won the Rediscovering Mystery Award

20:24

last year. That's

20:27

a good game. I've played more

20:29

Tunic this year. I kind of liked with

20:31

me more this year. Yeah, it's a game

20:33

I have played in two to three hour

20:35

chunks every couple months or so. I

20:38

find out the most optimal way to enjoy it, but I

20:40

have come to appreciate it. Call

20:43

of Duty Modern Warfare 2 won

20:45

Gaming with the Homies, which was,

20:48

I believe Frank's doing.

20:52

Horizon Forbidden West won Best

20:54

Road Trip. I like

20:56

the two of those because it's very like, it sort

20:59

of contextualizes why these games are good. Call of

21:01

Duty is just like, it's good to

21:04

stick on, hang out with your mates. And Horizon

21:06

is like, yeah, it's just seeing shit's

21:08

cool in that game. Yeah, I feel

21:10

like that's why I like

21:13

the superlative approach because we're not arguing about,

21:15

it's not like we're doing this is the

21:17

third objectively best game of the year. We're

21:19

just kind of honing in on the games

21:21

that we appreciated the most and like

21:24

zooming in on the reason why we appreciate them. Like

21:26

I don't know. I feel like Frank wouldn't even say

21:28

that Call of Duty is the best

21:30

game of last year. It's just like his experience

21:32

with it is kind of the more primary thing

21:34

that we talk about. You know what I mean?

21:36

I feel like it's like if you were the

21:38

parent of like seven kids and you have

21:41

to love each of them

21:43

individually and equally, right, for like their

21:45

own thing, right? Yeah, it's like that. Speaking

21:48

of, God of War Ragnarok got Father

21:50

of the Year Award, which felt like

21:52

a bit of a cop-out, but Jesse

21:55

battled hard to keep that one in there. So

21:57

we needed to make sure it had a good

21:59

award. at pendant had tapestry of

22:01

humanity awards. I love that one. It's a

22:03

good one. Maybe we'll talk about pencements a

22:06

bit more before the year's out. I'll have

22:08

to wait and see.

22:10

Uh, immortality won best picture. That's

22:13

pretty good. That's pretty good. Good job. I was

22:15

last year. Yeah, we did good. Yeah. And we

22:17

could, we did good on the dock. We made

22:20

the dock as well. We had it, had it

22:22

done. Neon Weiss

22:24

won God of speed,

22:27

which was God like Gody. Oh

22:30

yeah. But I don't get the reference

22:33

now. God's. Yeah. God of

22:35

speed. Like God of speed. Like, Oh, cause

22:37

you're a God. Right. Cause there's

22:39

gods in the on Weiss. Right. Okay.

22:41

Hermes is the God of speeds. I guess some people,

22:43

I was trying to think of like what God of

22:45

speed would the God you would refer to outside of

22:48

the context. I guess that's it. God of speeds. I

22:50

guess you're running around the last. Some of these are

22:52

a bit like a tattoo. You got as a teenager.

22:54

We're now showing it. Yeah. It's a tramp stamp. Love

22:56

it. Citizen sleeper

22:58

got one narrative. Shishimi is

23:02

pretty good. Signalis won

23:04

survival horror homecoming. Matt

23:07

homecoming this year. The

23:11

devs listened to it and they liked the other one

23:13

that we were tossing around better, which was, um, uh,

23:16

like it was like cosmic void of sorrow.

23:18

The void of sorrow. Yeah. Cosmic void of

23:20

sorrow. That's what it was. They were like,

23:22

you guys should have gone with that. Okay.

23:24

Maybe we'll, we'll put, I'll drag that one

23:26

down. So in years when civilizations in the

23:28

past, the future aliens dig this

23:30

up. Yeah, exactly. They'll see the

23:32

other name. This might've gotten a

23:34

weird West one occult

23:36

classic, which is they

23:38

should use, they should use that in their fucking marketing,

23:41

to be honest, occult classic we're available.

23:43

That's pretty good. Cult

23:46

of the lamb one sweetest execution,

23:49

which is again, a nice little

23:51

double on palm there, you know, you

23:54

got, you got the sweet. We got, we got called to

23:56

the lamb right here. We got my little, the

23:58

long lamb. this really

24:00

long, if you're watching a video, I've got

24:03

a Cult of the Lamb person. But they're like, I have

24:05

a question about the Cult of the Lamb stuffed animal. Did

24:08

that come vacuum sealed and expand when

24:10

you opened it? It did. It

24:13

came like absolutely horrifically. And I was like, there's no

24:15

way this is going to, and it took like three

24:17

days. It blew up like a snake in a can,

24:19

like those pranks from the 1950s. Yeah,

24:21

right. I should have had like a, like

24:24

a little, you know, stop motion or, you

24:26

know, a little photograph every hour. What do

24:28

you call that? I use cameras. Time lapse.

24:30

Time lapse. Thank you, Jeremy. Elden

24:33

Ring, grandest adventure. Sure.

24:36

Vampire Survivors won Best

24:39

Fang for Your Buck. That

24:41

was pretty good. Which I think somebody

24:43

else came up with. I have a note here

24:45

saying Ink-a-Lot. So I think that maybe was

24:48

one of our patrons. Oh yeah,

24:50

that was on the Discord someone posted that.

24:52

Was it? Yeah. Best Fang for Your Buck.

24:55

It's pretty good. And then Return

24:57

to Monk Island won the final award with

24:59

Impossible Comeback, which I feel like I think

25:01

I was the only person who played that.

25:03

So I felt a little bit cheeky getting

25:05

it on there, but it was a very

25:07

good game. And we have a very long documentary

25:10

for us coming out in pretty

25:12

soon, actually. I'm going to try and get the early access one up

25:14

like in the next week or so. It's

25:16

an hour and 35 minutes long. I

25:20

have it rendering again. But

25:22

something I'll put the files on this one. So I have to

25:24

render it in software. And it takes 12 hours. So

25:27

that's it. So I'll be

25:29

setting that up before I go home tonight.

25:32

Like a work at Pixar or

25:34

something. Rendering all the

25:36

animations for the one character with a thousand

25:38

polygons. A thousand more. That's not that much.

25:41

Ten million polygons. Exactly. So

25:43

I'm excited. That's a bit of a warm

25:45

up for everyone for next week. You know,

25:47

just getting this back in the mindset of

25:50

what are the games you got? We're going to have to

25:52

battle. The hardest part is always battling to get the 10

25:54

in. That's it. After that, it's good fun. So

25:56

we're going to do four episodes like

25:58

we did last year. The first episode

26:00

will be getting that list of whatever

26:03

it is thirty odd games down

26:05

to the ten that we think are the best

26:07

or eleven if we cop it out you know

26:09

good vibes over here and then. We're

26:12

gonna go through what we want spend a lot of

26:14

time sort of arguing about the

26:16

good and bad of each game or any of

26:18

that sort of stuff we keep that for the

26:20

next three episodes which will come out the next

26:22

three weeks. And those

26:24

will be basically we will take four

26:27

or three of those games we will

26:29

talk about them celebrate them. Ask

26:32

questions about them answer questions about them and then

26:34

we will at the

26:36

end of each episode give them their award whatever

26:38

it is and then we'll do that it'll take

26:40

us three episodes to get through the whole shebang

26:42

last year the episodes were about two hours each

26:44

a piece and so we'll see if that's the

26:47

case this year again. And

26:49

yeah those episodes will be coming

26:51

out on the eight fifteen twenty

26:53

second and twenty ninth of

26:56

december and we'll be back in

26:58

january. We may be off for

27:00

a week on january fifth my birthday i'm flying

27:02

back from ireland that day so we think we'll

27:05

have a week off start of january and then

27:07

we'll be back with the right schedule no good

27:09

practice for twenty three four a week

27:11

after. All

27:20

right let's talk about some games we actually played

27:22

this week jeremy you

27:25

have similar to

27:27

frank decided to spend your time

27:29

in the past in

27:32

the eastern europe what's

27:34

going on what's going on over in pripyat. Yeah

27:36

so i have been sick basically since the last

27:39

time i talk to you guys i got a

27:41

cold over the weekend so i i

27:44

whenever i get sick i feel like it's an excuse to watch

27:46

a movie that i've been putting off for a long time. And

27:49

especially good opportunity to watch a movie that

27:51

is hard to justify otherwise because it's extremely

27:53

long so i

27:55

this year has been the year of kind

27:57

of gotten into slow cinema like directors who.

28:00

Slow Cinema is a term. There's a really good,

28:02

I don't know if it's like a book

28:04

or like a section of a book. I've

28:06

only read excerpts from it, but Paul Schrader

28:08

wrote about Slow Cinema and talks about like

28:11

Ozu and Tarkovsky and these directors who make

28:13

these grand sweeping kind of epic films, but

28:15

within the moment to moment of them are

28:17

just kind of like so meditative

28:19

and so like so ruthlessly focused on

28:22

the moment that they're not afraid of

28:24

like, oh is the viewer gonna get

28:26

tuned out because there's like a two minute

28:28

long like no play in the middle of

28:30

this that no one's gonna watch. So

28:33

I watched a bunch of Ozu films earlier this year. So

28:35

because I was sick I decided to finally get into Tarkovsky.

28:38

Andre Tarkovsky, one of the most famous directors

28:40

in history, probably the

28:42

most famous Soviet director. So

28:45

probably best known for his film Stalker

28:48

based on Roadside Picnic, the novel by

28:50

the Strugovsky brothers, which is an amazing

28:53

name. So

28:55

the people are probably most familiar with

28:57

Stalker because of the video

28:59

games, especially because this is a video games podcast. So

29:02

I, the day before we

29:04

filmed the podcast, I mentioned that I watched this

29:06

when we were gonna talk about it and

29:08

he was like, I'm about to watch it. Please

29:11

don't spoil anything. I know I'm so sorry. So

29:13

I, this is like I winced

29:15

over this last night because when I saw you

29:17

write it down, I was like, fuck. Because on

29:19

Monday, I'd had like a, like

29:22

it was kind of a long weekend. Thanksgiving

29:24

is super extended because we have people out of

29:26

town who come in and it was kind of

29:29

stressful. Kid was off

29:31

all last week. So I was just like, you know,

29:33

super busy and super, you know, moving house,

29:35

all this sort of stuff's going on. And

29:38

on Monday night I was wiped and I was like, I'm just

29:40

going to sit down and watch a movie. And I

29:43

have had the Criterion Collection copy of Stalker

29:45

since COVID because I'm like, one of these

29:47

days I'm going to sit down and watch

29:49

Stalker properly. And I was like, fuck, are

29:51

you gonna watch Stalker? And then I went

29:53

to get up and watch it and realized

29:55

that I packed my Blu-ray and my Blu-ray

29:57

like player. So I was like, well, fuck.

30:00

I guess I'll watch and I ended up watching I guess

30:02

I didn't know this Whoever that

30:05

was a Paramount Plus today did

30:07

a series of the stand which

30:09

I had never I've never read Stephen King's a

30:11

stand and I actually thought it was about a

30:15

I thought it was a courtroom drama I should go to

30:17

the combat the stand I always heard about the stand like

30:19

for some reason I just thought it was a courtroom job

30:22

because his name and then I was like,

30:24

oh, it's this weird like end of the world Eldritch

30:27

thing I was I watched two episodes of

30:29

that show instead of stalker And it was

30:31

actually pretty good. So I'm just probably waiting

30:33

for them to arrive at the courtroom You're

30:35

like, yeah, when's the star the lawyers? Why

30:37

are the why is 7 billion people are

30:39

dead? What but we know when when are

30:41

we gonna get down to the what are

30:43

we gonna litigate? Litigate exactly.

30:45

So so I felt like shit and I saw you write that

30:47

down. I was like cut down I should have watched stalker and

30:50

then last night I was like what I watched stockage nice And

30:52

and then I was like, no, it's like

30:55

three hours long So

30:57

I will not that I was planning on talking

30:59

a little bit about the differences between the portrayals

31:01

of the zone Right you in like I'm sorry.

31:03

No, no, it's okay. It's totally fine I'm just

31:05

gonna talk more about the game. The only thing

31:08

I'll say is that it might be my favorite

31:10

movie of all time Oh, wow. Okay. Well now

31:12

I definitely don't want to talk about it. Well,

31:15

there was stalker podcast. Maybe yeah I

31:17

would actually love that. I actually you've probably played more.

31:19

Have you played much of the soccer games? Oh absolutely

31:22

loads. Yeah, okay Then I feel like we should I'll

31:24

talk a little bit about my experience with the first

31:26

few hours But we should we should revisit this and

31:28

put a pin in it because and talk about the

31:30

movie once you've seen it That's not right because it

31:32

is like I I

31:34

need more time to say it was my favorite movie of

31:37

all time It's only been less than a week, but like

31:39

I have not stopped thing. It's unbelievable but

31:42

the so the concept of roadside picnic

31:44

and stalker and the stalker games all

31:46

kind of Gravitate around

31:49

this place called the zone This

31:52

this place in Eastern Europe in

31:54

this kind of alternate history where

31:56

strange things happen And in

31:58

all of these different stalker media there

32:01

are people called stalkers and and

32:03

this is the reason it's actually funny if you listen

32:05

to the last podcast I've talked about those urban exploration

32:08

channels that I've been watching about this is this is

32:10

kind of what put stalker back on my radar because

32:12

money in in those

32:15

videos when those urban explorers go to

32:17

Chernobyl people who are tourists in Chernobyl

32:19

when they see those people they refer

32:21

to them as stalkers oh that's crazy

32:23

and it is it is such an

32:25

important piece of media that it's a

32:28

what's a neologism when a new term

32:30

emerges like someone makes up a fake

32:32

term and it turns into a real

32:34

thing yeah so because these guys in

32:36

stalkers in like in the media go

32:38

into the zone it's like dangerous abandoned

32:40

forbidden place with gear with backpacks with

32:43

masks and stuff and sneak around and

32:45

kind of do forbidden stuff people who do

32:47

urban exploration in Eastern Europe are often referred

32:49

to as stalkers that's very cool yeah that's

32:51

very cool so that put it back on

32:53

my radar cuz I was like oh damn

32:55

I like if it's if it's that important

32:57

that like even because I think of Tarkovsky

33:00

as something that's like film nerds watch like

33:02

right and so I was like if it's that prevalent

33:04

that like normal people use it as a as a term

33:06

I just need to like

33:08

I must need to watch this so

33:10

the the differences in

33:13

the way that they represent I won't talk about Tarkovsky

33:15

stalker to preserve it for you but basically like in

33:19

in the game stalker it's kind of more of like

33:21

an ecological thing in the

33:23

book I guess it's more of like an

33:25

alien visitation like right there's some sort of

33:27

extraterrestrial event that uh that creates the zone

33:29

and then there's like weird anomalies with like

33:32

radioactivity and like artifacts and people are trying

33:34

to steal artifacts from the zone and stuff

33:36

yeah so that's in the game there are

33:38

like these radioactive artifacts that are kind of

33:40

like damage you with radiation but

33:42

give you little boosts and stuff had you played

33:45

stalker until this point no never played and you're

33:47

playing the first one I'm playing shadow Chernobyl so

33:49

which is okay right the first one yeah clear

33:51

skies the one after that okay cool I bought

33:53

the 2010 one Pripyat

33:57

as well all of Pripyat yeah So

34:01

yeah, so I started playing I played probably

34:03

between three and four hours of Chernobyl. It's

34:06

a it's really interesting and it's the best part

34:09

is kind of comparing and contrasting the different portrayals

34:11

of the zone because in this it's way more

34:13

literal. Like the only thing I'll say about Tarkovsky

34:15

is that it's way more like mystic. Yeah. Yeah.

34:18

So this is it's you're like

34:21

the intro is like you're on a truck full

34:23

of corpses like struck by lightning. And

34:26

like you're the only one who is alive. I

34:28

guess or something. You're like the marked man. Is

34:30

this the start of of

34:32

the game game? I can't even remember that.

34:34

It sounds like the start of Skyrim. It's

34:37

actually it is kind of

34:39

like Skyrim. Now you mentioned it. I feel like

34:41

every RPG you're just like a guy on a

34:44

on a vehicle and a wagon. Oh good. You're

34:46

awake. Yeah. I just remember all the lads playing

34:48

fucking fire and doing the

34:50

wiggy wiggy or whatever they say. Yeah.

34:53

Yeah. Yeah. So so you kind of

34:55

get to this like little camp and

34:57

the only thing you have is a

34:59

PDA that has this guy's name Stralic

35:01

on it. And you totally am the

35:04

Ugiac which is very classic RPG. And

35:06

then you meet up with these people in this camp

35:08

who are kind of like all right. Well we we

35:10

kind of know who Stralic is. He's like a talker

35:12

in the zone. If you you scratch our back we'll

35:14

scratch yours and you start becoming kind of like an

35:16

errand boy around the zone. And

35:19

the zone is a place filled with like rabid

35:22

mutated dogs and bandits and

35:24

other stalkers and just like

35:27

a weird gravitational anomalies that will lift you

35:29

up in the sky and tear your limbs

35:32

off if you run into them. And they're

35:34

kind of invisible. Yeah. You got I

35:36

got I got to have your pocket full of fucking screws man.

35:39

Yeah. A little bolt. So

35:42

the feeling I keep getting when I'm playing

35:45

this game is that I'm playing an

35:47

MMORPG that nobody plays

35:49

anymore. It's which is kind

35:51

of perfect. Like I just I could say that because you

35:53

know in the beginning they're like oh there's like radioactive bores.

35:56

Can you go clear out the bore cave? And I was

35:58

like oh hell yeah. Yeah,

36:00

I could go skin some leather for

36:02

you kill the 12 rats But

36:06

uh, but yeah, it's just this really kind

36:08

of like I don't know It feels it

36:10

feels I've played a lot of FPS from

36:12

the mid 2000s And I feel

36:15

like a lot of them are with the exception of you

36:17

know maybe like far cry and stuff a lot of them

36:19

feel kind of like corridor shooters and everything kind of like

36:22

Constrained and there's like, you know, they heavily

36:24

designed encounters you walk into the room There's

36:26

like two guys like this and a flamethrower

36:28

guy and kind of about dealing with this

36:31

This is about like walking around and then

36:33

your PDA beeps and there's like oh, there's

36:35

like three stalkers in range of me and

36:37

one of them is the 724th

36:40

best stalker in the zone. Yeah, and

36:43

I've there's something about how how

36:46

open it is and how much freedom they give you that

36:48

not only makes it feel like an MMO but really makes

36:50

it feel like a like a sandbox RPG Yeah,

36:53

it's it's a it's one of those

36:55

games that is like it's really difficult

36:57

to describe how amazing it was in

36:59

like 2007 I think it

37:02

was when it came out because it was Like

37:04

now we take it for granted the first-person shooters

37:06

are like open world affairs Like the first game

37:09

that really did that was the original far cry

37:11

But even and I was oh for

37:13

but even then that game was like each level

37:15

was like sort of wide But like it was

37:17

sort of the it was just that there was

37:20

no real Internal until later in the game like

37:22

inside buildings you were just outdoors So they just

37:24

it was just like big levels basically and then

37:26

far cry too Obviously was the one that went

37:29

open world But like you had half-life in you

37:31

know around and oh for as well with that

37:33

was you know Super super linear and then stalker

37:35

comes around and it's like it's all the shit

37:37

that we took for granted now all the like

37:40

games like Dead

37:42

Island and dying lice. These are

37:44

all from stalker like even stuff

37:47

like And I guess the far

37:49

cry series eventually went into this like

37:51

open world or PG first-person shooter thing

37:53

But stalker was like like

37:55

was the first one of those and it's funny that you mentioned

37:58

the MMO in the sub it's because it is like

38:01

menu-y, like it's weirdly, like even your inventory screen

38:03

is like kind of, it's all very cumbersome. Like

38:05

I think Clear Sky is the one that a

38:07

lot of people will play today because it's a

38:10

bit more streamlined than that first game. First one's

38:12

a bit rough around the edges, but I

38:15

wonder what it's like. As I mentioned, how you, how

38:17

you felt playing the first game because

38:20

like to me, I wonder

38:22

if a lot of that stuff is like, because it's

38:24

been, it's so, it's got so many

38:26

rough edges that have been smoothed out by games

38:29

since then. Like is it just, and

38:32

the impressive thing about it was something that is

38:34

now so commonplace. You know, that's why I worry

38:36

about stalker too, because I'm like, oh, people are

38:38

just used to these games now. Whereas back then

38:40

it was like, you can just find a bunker

38:42

and then go in the bunker and it's a

38:44

level. It's like, what? Yeah, it kind of reminds

38:46

me of Fallout a little bit because of that.

38:49

Like I, it does feel like

38:51

a, like if Fallout is the Western

38:53

stalker, then stalker is the Eastern fallout

38:55

in some sense. And did Fallout three,

38:57

Commodore seven or eight? Oh, eight. So

38:59

it was the year before Fallout three.

39:01

Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So I was

39:03

curious about, I didn't even know where to start with

39:05

stalker. I mean, I, I'm like aware of which games

39:07

there were, but I looked up kind of what people

39:09

suggest and a lot of people on forums were saying

39:11

that there is kind of stories,

39:14

spoilers you can run into, but the biggest thing

39:16

is polished spoiler that if you play the later

39:18

ones first, that's funny. Going back to the initial

39:20

one, you're like, Oh, this is just like a

39:22

shittier version. That's

39:24

great. Okay. Great justification. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to

39:26

start at the start and, and see. Yeah. I,

39:28

I really like it. I don't know. I don't

39:30

know how long it is. So I don't know

39:32

if I'll play a hundred percent of it, but,

39:34

um, but I'm really enjoying it. The, the only

39:36

thing that's rubbed me the wrong way so far

39:38

is, uh, there's no auto

39:41

run and you have to run very long distances.

39:43

And I want to just like, num block my

39:45

world of Warcraft keyboard and like, drink coffee and

39:48

via the TTK, the time to kill

39:50

on, on like NPC enemies is, um,

39:52

it feels quite high. And so there's

39:54

a, there's like, I almost wish it

39:57

was like, you died faster and

39:59

they died. faster and it was kind of more about

40:01

like popping out getting one shot off and then hiding again.

40:03

It kind of feels like I have to pop out and

40:05

I also I'm in the first four hours So

40:07

I have like a pistol and like an mp5 Yeah

40:10

I'll probably this will balance out but it

40:12

does feel like I have to unload Like

40:14

two full clips into a bandit for them

40:16

to die and in that time I'm taking

40:19

so many shots that I'm just like eating

40:21

sausage and bandaging myself constantly. Yeah Yeah,

40:23

I'll say the you know, I

40:25

don't want to say anything that would like change

40:28

how you're playing so I

40:30

don't want to say I'll

40:32

say The game doesn't

40:34

do it's not like World of Warcraft where

40:38

You can attack everyone immediately It's kind of

40:40

there are some there are some fights that

40:42

maybe you don't do until you're like leveled

40:44

until you're like 20 hours in And then

40:46

you can start to have those fights No,

40:49

yeah, cuz the the intro zone even has like

40:51

a there's like a train bridge and underneath it

40:53

There's a bunch of guys with guns and it's

40:56

the obvious way out of the starter zone to

40:58

the next objective And for a while and

41:00

like I probably spent 45 minutes Just

41:02

like save scumming and trying to have that if I go well

41:04

for me And it I think after

41:06

a while like I was kind of halfway through it

41:08

and I had taken used like all of my items

41:10

and Ammo, I don't think the game wants you to

41:12

do this. You've done it again. It's

41:15

the same It's the thing you did in the

41:17

Caesar's Legion In

41:24

the game everyone in this camp us to die I

41:27

just that's what I like about like old Kind

41:30

of open-ended the RPG adjacent games

41:32

though is like giving me enough

41:35

leeway to do weird shit like that like

41:37

I Kind of sensed I was

41:39

not supposed to be doing that long before I gave up

41:42

on it Yeah, and I just you know That's what I

41:44

like about those games is like how far can I take

41:46

this and will the game let me and and it does

41:48

But there's also it gives you other paths of least resistance

41:50

to explore as well But it's cool if you can pull

41:52

it off you get all that gear and you bring it

41:55

back to your man and trade It all in like it's

41:57

it's it's good shit. That would be a

41:59

great game Um, we got to restart

42:01

no clip game club in the new year. That would

42:03

be a good one for that. I think. Yeah, I

42:05

would love that. It's a good fun. Hell

42:07

yeah. Stalker shadow of Chernobyl.

42:09

Looking forward to stalker too. I hope

42:12

I, you know, obviously they've had an

42:14

absolutely tumultuous development, um, just with not

42:16

even, um, game side of

42:18

stuff, but obviously the war and everything else is just very

42:21

crazy times for them over there.

42:23

Um, uh, looking forward to when

42:25

it ever comes out in 2024. I

42:28

think it'll be an interesting thing. And a

42:30

lot of people who worked on a very little stalker obviously spread

42:32

out. So it was a bunch of other studios

42:34

that sort of appeared from that made some great games.

42:36

So yeah, that first

42:38

game super influential. I

42:48

played a little bit of a game called, oh, not a

42:51

little bit. I paid maybe three or four hours of a

42:53

game called, uh, Leica. I

42:55

want to call it. It is

42:57

a fascinating blend of genres.

43:00

Um, it came out back

43:03

in October. Um,

43:06

head up publishing that it actually has a

43:08

weird devolver vibe to it. Weirdly enough, just

43:10

the graphics and the, the

43:12

pubiness of the, um, of

43:15

the trailer. I got to check out some

43:17

more of their games. Actually, a great

43:19

game here called hell pie, which sounds interesting.

43:22

Um, yeah, so there's a, there's

43:24

a demo of this as well. Leica it's

43:26

LA I K a age

43:28

through blood. And it

43:30

is basically, it's like

43:33

trials, the like motorcycle game

43:36

mixed with like super meat

43:38

boy, maybe something like that. It's

43:40

a very weird blend.

43:43

So basically the game in the

43:45

game, it is a 2d game. You're looking at

43:47

from the side, like if you've played trials, HD

43:49

or any of those trials games where you're just

43:52

on a motorbike trying to get

43:54

across the level left to rise and you're

43:56

doing flips and stuff, you are a, it's

43:58

like in a post apocalypse. world

44:00

somewhere, there's all these anthropomorphic

44:02

animals, you are a fox

44:06

who is riding a motorbike, and

44:08

this motorbike is, the graphics

44:10

are gorgeous, you do like little jumps on

44:12

the motorbike and stuff like that, and

44:15

over the first like couple of hours or so,

44:17

they do a lot of like, you know, tutorializing

44:19

about what you can do on the motorbike, but

44:21

the long and short of it is, is that

44:24

you eventually get in a situation where you also

44:26

have a gun that you can fire, you can

44:29

also slow down the

44:32

world, and you're using your bike to

44:34

traverse levels and have gunfights on a

44:36

bike, so you are driving around, shooting

44:38

people while on your motorcycle, like bending

44:41

the motorcycle, so it blocks bullets, hitting

44:44

a button at a certain time, so that you

44:46

can, like knock

44:49

the bullets back at the people who shot

44:51

them, when you run out of ammunition for

44:53

your gun, you have to do a backflip

44:55

to reload, you, to get

44:57

your like parry back, you have to do a

44:59

frontflip, it's just a

45:01

very like, awesome looking

45:04

experience, when you're like in the flow of

45:06

it, it's very cool, I will say that

45:08

it's kind of, there's a lot of checkpoints

45:10

in the levels, because you get into scenarios

45:12

where like, oh, you still like jump into

45:14

this area, and you have

45:16

to like kill like five of these birds

45:18

while also trying to like reload, not get

45:20

hit, dodge their bullets with your bike, you

45:22

know, do a frontflip to reload, do a

45:24

backflip to get your parry, so they're kind

45:26

of like little puzzles, but you play them

45:28

out as if very physically, because it's

45:31

real time, you can't like just pause and decide what

45:33

to do, you have to like get in there, do

45:36

the thing properly, so it's kind of like me point

45:38

that way, where it's a lot of like thinking and

45:40

getting your fingers to do what you're thinking as fast

45:43

as you can, you know,

45:45

mileage may vary based on how patient you are with

45:47

that type of loop, but

45:49

I think it's so, I've

45:51

literally never played a game like this, it's

45:53

a complete like genre mashup which has created

45:56

a style of gameplay

45:58

that I've never experienced. Graphics are

46:01

just beautiful. It's like really

46:03

well, gorgeously rendered. Um,

46:05

yeah. And it's just confident. Like they

46:08

found a type of game genre

46:10

and they jumped in with both

46:12

feet. And the game is rad.

46:15

Uh, it's got 1700

46:17

reviews on Steam, uh, overwhelmingly

46:19

positive, absolutely not surprised. Um,

46:21

and I've been playing it on Steam Deck and having an absolute

46:23

blast. I'm shocked. I haven't heard more about

46:26

this. Uh, when you posted the podcast doc

46:28

the other day, I looked it up and, uh, I

46:30

was shocked how popular it was because the name kind

46:32

of rang a bell, but it's not a game

46:34

I've heard a lot of people talk about. And then I watched

46:36

footage of it being played and it's just like, it's the

46:39

most immediately grokable, like, Oh yeah. You're

46:41

like drive, you're flying around on a

46:43

motorcycle and shooting people. It's like, it

46:46

just looks, I don't know. It's like instantly you get

46:48

why it's fun. Yeah. It's

46:50

a, it's gorgeous too, right? Yeah. It's really,

46:52

really pretty. Like the graphics are

46:54

nice. It's got some, uh, there's like a

46:57

decent story in it as well. Like you're,

46:59

you're kind of taking calls, like it's all

47:01

text-based, but you're like, you're taking calls while

47:03

you're riding around sometimes and you're like, hit

47:06

E to like responds to them. And

47:08

it's, and it's done in a smart way where

47:11

like, whenever the story comes

47:13

in, you sort of know you're

47:15

in a plot, a non-combat part of the game.

47:17

Cause there's parts of the game where you're fighting,

47:19

where you're like going into a bunker to like

47:21

get somebody or invading a place or doing whatever.

47:23

And then you're driving to these areas too. And

47:25

then a lot of the biomes change and stuff

47:27

like that. So they do a good job of

47:29

like, uh, exploring the, um,

47:32

the story and like the story is kind of hardcore.

47:34

Like it's, it's, you mentioned this, you mentioned something a

47:36

couple of weeks ago. You made some reference to some

47:38

like, I forget what game we were

47:40

talking about last week, but you made a reference to

47:43

like some type of anthropomorphic animal thing where

47:45

like the animals get hurt. It kind of reminded

47:47

me of that old, like is a prayer rabbit

47:49

or something like that? Or, oh, or like red

47:52

wall or something. Red wall you mentioned. Yeah. So,

47:54

or yeah, any of those old cartoons that were

47:56

the animals were like anthropomorphized and

47:58

then they get hurt. And it's like,

48:00

it's so sad. So they do it a bit

48:02

of that in this as well. Like I think

48:04

the warning at the start of the game was

48:06

like, like violence against children,

48:09

but they're like Fox

48:11

children. So maybe it's not so bad.

48:13

That's extra sad to be. Yeah, maybe.

48:16

Um, so yeah, so

48:18

it's like, it's just a great little, it's

48:20

a really confident game. Like a brainwash gang

48:22

are the crowd that made it. Um,

48:25

they have a bunch of credits on Steam and games.

48:27

I don't know how plugged in. They

48:30

were to all of these, I know nothing about

48:32

the development of this game, but it's,

48:34

it's super competence. Like it feels

48:36

incredibly well polished. The controls

48:38

are sticky. The graphics

48:40

are beautiful. Like, I don't

48:43

know. I had to pronounce it or explain it.

48:45

Like I don't want to, we hit, I hit

48:48

the Mobius bell a lot. It doesn't look like

48:50

Mobius, like the style of drawing

48:52

of Mobius, but it looks like the places

48:54

that Mobius would draw, if that makes sense.

48:56

Like these sort of big deserts

48:59

with big skies and you

49:01

know, odd cloud formations. But the

49:03

graphics are sort of like, I don't know,

49:06

somewhat, you know, cell shaded comic bookie

49:08

or something. Just do yourself

49:10

a favor. Go, go Google it. Leica

49:12

aged through blood on Steam. It's 20

49:14

bucks. There's a demo up. Um,

49:17

yeah, can't, can't say anything nice or bad. And

49:19

I've really enjoyed it. I got to keep playing

49:22

it and see if it should go on the

49:24

game of the year. Conversation list. I'm not quite

49:26

sure it's going to break into that top 10,

49:28

but, um, yeah, super smart little game.

49:30

What's the, um, it says it's a Metroidvania. Is

49:32

it like, is it kind of

49:34

a, like, what's the world flow? Like when

49:37

I saw the screenshots, I pictured this being

49:39

like a level one and then you do

49:41

a thing and it goes to level two,

49:43

but is it kind of like open world

49:45

as 2d as much as 2d can be?

49:47

No, it is kind of level by level,

49:49

but the levels themselves have like sort of

49:51

gates that need to be opened through either

49:54

doing certain abilities or, uh, you're

49:57

kind of looping around a lot. If that makes sense. like

50:00

there's sometimes there's elevators and you come back

50:02

somewhere. Sometimes there's like doors you couldn't breach

50:05

before, but then they're like funneling you into

50:07

this other area and then you kind of

50:09

loop back around to us. Um,

50:12

there are like upgrades and stuff, you know, for

50:14

your, for your kit and things like that. Um,

50:17

but I wouldn't necessarily

50:20

call it, Metrovania to me is like a game

50:22

where you're spending a lot of time with one place and

50:24

going back there and looping around it doesn't, I don't get

50:26

that feeling from this one. It feels more like a road

50:28

trip to me. Um, but the levels

50:30

themselves, I can see that. Yeah, for sure. Maybe I've not

50:32

played enough. Maybe later on it gets, maybe

50:35

you're stuck in one place for a while or you

50:37

travel back more or something, but I haven't, I

50:39

haven't experienced any of that myself. Um, yeah,

50:41

one of the things I've enjoyed about it a

50:44

lot is that each new place you reach has

50:46

like a very different look to it.

50:48

It's lots of, um, I don't know. It's

50:51

in some ways it's not, it's not all that different

50:53

from the, what was the climbing game we talked about?

50:55

Pastry, we saw it where it has like, just like,

50:58

just abandon. You know, settlements

51:01

and deserts and high

51:04

bluffs and stuff like that. Like very

51:07

solitary, very Mad Max-y, you know, it's

51:09

definitely, there's a Mad Max vibe to

51:11

this as well. Lots of effigies and

51:13

skulls and you know, uh, camps made

51:15

of, you know, broken down cars and

51:18

metal, sheet metal and wood and stuff

51:20

like that. Uh, yeah.

51:22

Interesting. Uh,

51:24

Frank, no new games

51:27

is written down here. But you

51:29

have played some Diablo four. Should we

51:31

be talking about Diablo four on the

51:33

game of the year list? It's not

51:35

there. No, it's, uh, fair enough. So

51:39

every time this year, December of November,

51:41

I always like kind of crash. It's

51:43

like, I don't know, winter depression gets

51:45

dark earlier. It's, it's tough, stuff flows

51:47

down. It's time for self-reflection, which is

51:49

terrifying, but there's lots of time to

51:51

play video games and lots of time

51:53

to grind. And so every year on

51:55

this time, I usually fall in the years

51:58

past. It's been earth defense force. Dynasty

52:00

Warriors, One Piece Warriors, Monster

52:02

Hunter. And I realized like,

52:05

oh shit, no, like there's like, there's a reason I

52:07

have an excess of time, it's like, I

52:09

need to acclimate myself to think it's okay to

52:11

rest and take it easy because I'm always like

52:13

trying to, I can't sit still period. But

52:16

the nice thing is instead of doing

52:19

that alone and accidentally making myself feel

52:21

more miserable, Diablo 4 is

52:23

perfect this time of year because all my friends

52:25

have it, they've all beaten the game, they can

52:27

carry me, and it's incredible.

52:30

Playing Diablo 4 now, months after it's

52:32

come out, I don't know if they did hot fixes or what,

52:35

it plays great, it's fun. I

52:37

jumped in, I picked up my Sydney Sweeney character I made

52:39

at the beginning of the year. She's

52:42

like a sorceress. And

52:44

I expect her to be like lightning, so

52:46

now when I do one attack, it electrocutes like

52:48

20 people on screen at once, and I looked

52:50

up a build that like makes the game so

52:52

easy. No, I looked up like

52:54

talent builds and stuff like that to like maximize it, and

52:56

so my friends and I have been playing it and streaming

52:59

it, and it's just like, it's so

53:01

funny and silly, but it's exactly what I need. I

53:03

can turn off my brain, listen to stuff, or

53:05

scoop with friends, and it's

53:08

been like a nice way of decompressing, because I've been

53:10

so like in my head and I need like something

53:12

to chew on or just grind mindlessly. Alan

53:15

Wake 2 ain't that. No, it is like my

53:17

decompress, like Alan Wake, I have to play first

53:19

thing in the morning with coffee. I need to

53:21

be like okay, like I can't stream that game,

53:25

I can't be distracted, it's like fully like, no, and

53:28

yeah, it's legit, whereas Diablo 4, it's

53:31

like it just devolves into me screaming

53:33

at people, and it's fun, it's fun. So I

53:35

don't know, it kind of came and went, and

53:38

then it got smacked by Baldur's Gate,

53:40

a real RPG. Like so

53:42

I get it, but I think maybe also going to

53:44

Diablo after playing Baldur's Gate 3 is like okay, yeah,

53:46

you know what, it's kind of nice to not

53:49

be terrified every time you start a combat

53:51

encounter. Well, you bring

53:53

up a good point, right, because we have Diablo 4

53:55

and it's not on the list, and

53:57

I've decided to do just a quick little.

54:00

look to see if there's any other games that came out

54:02

this year that are not on our

54:04

list, that maybe should be put on the list or

54:06

should be at least talked about. The

54:08

Legend of Zelda, Tears of the

54:10

Kingdom. We never put

54:13

that down. Are

54:15

we all kind of in the same boat

54:17

where we immediately bounced off this game? I

54:20

didn't immediately bounce off. I gave

54:23

it probably 16, 17 hours. Okay.

54:28

But it just didn't click with me. I

54:30

have very specific criticisms about it that I don't

54:32

need to get into here. Maybe we could do

54:34

a Tears of the Kingdom breakdown someday with a

54:36

big listen at your own risk caveat

54:38

on it. Right. But yeah, like my

54:41

best friend who I talk about video games with all

54:43

the time, like I absolutely loved it,

54:45

played it through entirely in like two weeks. And

54:49

we've like hashed out, we just had such

54:51

different experiences that I want to give it

54:53

more time. It's just not clicking with me.

54:56

Yeah. Okay. I'm going

54:58

to stick it in the dock just because we should have

55:00

it in there for due diligence. The other

55:02

one's Starfield. Nobody mentioned Starfield.

55:04

We've all played a lot of Starfield. Bethesda

55:07

is going to reply to our game of the year

55:09

podcast and be like, actually, there's a lot of fun

55:11

in this game if you know where to look for

55:13

it. Did you see that? Yeah. What

55:16

the fuck? I haven't seen this.

55:19

It's very common for the discourse around

55:21

this has been that Bethesda is replying

55:23

to negative Steam reviews and kind of

55:25

like explaining them away. And

55:28

some indie devs have rightfully explained that this is

55:30

common practice now to reply to a ton of

55:33

negative reviews, because it really can make

55:35

a huge difference on Steam. Like, especially

55:37

if someone's like, yeah, I hit a bug, I like

55:39

couldn't get past level four, and it's like an early access

55:41

indie game. And they're like, hey, we're aware of the

55:43

bug. It's like, you know, we're gonna fix it in

55:45

the next two weeks. And that can flip a positive to

55:48

a negative just because that person or a negative positive because

55:50

that person feels seen. But with the Bethesda stuff, they're

55:52

like, so it's like, yeah, this game sucks.

55:54

It's like boring. There's like nothing that all the

55:56

plants are empty. And they're like, well, actually, the

55:58

real moon is empty, too. Assassin's

58:00

Creed Mirage Hogwarts Legacy

58:03

armored core six So

58:06

like two games I would recommend that like I wish

58:08

I had more time to play are like better worth

58:10

checking out is definitely That latest like a dragon the

58:13

the man who erased his name is awesome The part

58:15

of me is like it's also kind of like a

58:17

side mission slash prologue to the new like The

58:20

like a drag is out coming out in next month So

58:23

I love it, but it's like it's all it's just

58:25

you know, it's same thing with Mortal Kombat It's like

58:27

these are awesome games, but it's like oh yeah more

58:29

of the same so like but uh got

58:31

red red fall on the list But

58:37

our record six is hard but our record six is

58:39

tight I think that the armored court six

58:41

is like as it needs to be like

58:44

like no I think it was only a $60 game But

58:46

it felt like that and like high-fire

58:48

Russian bomb rush are on the same element

58:50

of like these are awesome like PS Like

58:52

the best ps2 games of 2023 like where

58:54

it's like no they like medium

58:56

scale but phenomenal like I

58:59

don't know It's I don't know but it's

59:01

nice mentioning armored course six because that's very

59:03

good. Yeah, I'm still bummed about

59:05

redfall I'm just I love arcane so much. I

59:07

want I want I want nothing but good things

59:09

there and Forspoken

59:11

atomic heart, I mean a lot of games that probably

59:13

will make the cut here Payday

59:15

three came out man that game came out and didn't

59:18

make a whisper. That was so strange To

59:20

Chia a game that I really enjoyed that

59:23

new Caledonian game And it came out

59:25

earlier this year up in the joint that one

59:27

my daughter ever since You

59:29

see a stars on our list. I

59:31

don't think so It was on the it was

59:33

on the like need to play more lists And

59:35

I think I was the only one who I

59:38

wanted to play more of it. Maybe

59:40

okay. Yeah, I think it's a mysteriously

59:42

disappeared from the list Spider-man

59:45

2 is not on the list either either

59:47

is Jedi Star Wars Jedi survivor There's a

59:49

lot of so yeah, I think that

59:51

says a lot about the type of games that we

59:53

give a shit about maybe well There

59:56

you go Plenty

1:00:04

of those to talk about next week. That should be

1:00:07

good fun. I'm excited to jump into that.

1:00:09

We do have one more email to finish

1:00:11

out the year. Frank

1:00:13

Hetty, what we got here? From Mikko

1:00:15

the Thicke in our Discord. I

1:00:17

have a question. Mikko the Thicke

1:00:19

maybe? Mikko the Thicke. Oh yeah,

1:00:21

Mikko the Thicke. Depends if

1:00:23

they're Irish or Japanese I guess. I

1:00:26

have a question for the pod. Does anyone have

1:00:28

a favorite RTS game that somehow got lost to

1:00:31

history? Personally I loved Homeworld when I was

1:00:33

a kid but basically never found anyone else who played it. My

1:00:35

favorite RTS has to be Age of Mythology which

1:00:38

to be fair I have successfully evangelized to many

1:00:40

friends. Yeah, I've got one in the

1:00:42

chamber. My go-to. You

1:00:44

guys have any RTS games? Do you guys play much RTS

1:00:46

stuff? I did it that much. My answer for the longest

1:00:48

time was like, man I really like Age of Empires 3.

1:00:50

Why don't people talk about this game? Because I played it

1:00:52

when I was like 11 or

1:00:55

12 but it was my first Age of Empires. And

1:00:57

then when we did that Age of Empires documentary I played

1:00:59

2, I played a lot of 4 and I was like,

1:01:01

oh 3 sucks, I don't like 3. But

1:01:05

I fell in love with 4. I

1:01:07

think Age of Empires 4 is incredible. I loved

1:01:09

that a lot but I never got too deep

1:01:11

into RTS. I

1:01:13

played so much Age of Empires 2 as a kid. I

1:01:15

played it so much that I would just sit and watch

1:01:17

my brother play it because I liked the game so much

1:01:19

that it was just a joy to be around it. Yeah,

1:01:23

I mean I played a ton of RTS. I

1:01:25

played more Starcraft and Starcraft Rude War as a

1:01:27

kid that I'd like to admit. In

1:01:30

terms of obscure RTSs I'm trying to think, the

1:01:33

only one that comes to mind is, what

1:01:35

was the Star Wars RTS? It's a really

1:01:37

old one. It

1:01:39

was like Rebel, was it Empire at War

1:01:41

2006? Okay, yeah. It

1:01:43

seems a little late. Oh no, Galactic

1:01:45

Battlegrounds, I think this is it. Oh right,

1:01:47

okay, yeah. I remember a PC

1:01:49

gamer seeing a bunch of stuff about this. I

1:01:52

just didn't care about Star Wars enough to, I

1:01:54

played Dark Forces but I never played this one.

1:01:56

Yeah, I loved Star Wars as a kid. Had

1:01:59

all the... books with like the exploded diagrams

1:02:01

of how the Millennium Falcon actually like works

1:02:03

like if you're gonna build one but

1:02:06

yeah Galactic Battlegrounds was kind of just like a

1:02:09

like basically just like it felt like a

1:02:11

mod for Age of Empires I felt like a Star Wars

1:02:13

mod I don't think it was particularly good but

1:02:15

I liked it as a kid oh yeah

1:02:19

I was a big fan of

1:02:21

Rise of Nations oh yeah do

1:02:24

you remember that that was made by big

1:02:26

huge games which are one of the funniest

1:02:29

devs story I think I like them because

1:02:31

there I lived in Maryland then after a

1:02:33

while and there they were founded

1:02:36

in and around Baltimore somewhere I mean

1:02:38

so was them fear

1:02:41

axis right so it's Sid Meier stuff over there

1:02:43

as well something in the water over

1:02:45

in the East Coast rise of

1:02:47

nations was basically Age

1:02:50

of Empires but from the Stone

1:02:53

Age I think here maybe a little

1:02:55

bit later until like the information

1:02:57

age it was like an

1:03:00

isometric you know very look but looked very

1:03:02

much like Age of Empires but

1:03:04

in Age of Empires you got to like the castle

1:03:06

age and that was it whereas this one was like

1:03:08

now we're gonna keep fucking going let we're gonna go

1:03:11

all the way we're gonna have like you

1:03:13

know we're gonna change like the way we

1:03:15

like we're gonna have like stock markets eventually

1:03:17

we're gonna have you know we're gonna have

1:03:20

World War two and you end up with

1:03:22

these weird situations where you have one country

1:03:24

that's like in like World War one and

1:03:26

what I'm like the mezzolithic period but the

1:03:28

coolest thing was that if you

1:03:33

got to the end and me and

1:03:35

my buddy Dale used to play this on land if

1:03:37

you got to the end where

1:03:39

both of you were nuclear powers you

1:03:42

could like build nukes like silos of

1:03:44

nukes and you

1:03:46

could like get into like a sort of

1:03:48

you know mutually assured destruction situation but

1:03:51

if you fired your nuke at

1:03:54

them like you could like a straw city and they'd

1:03:56

fire one back but I think it was like there

1:03:58

was a limit and it was an uneven number

1:04:00

so it was like seven or something

1:04:02

that if seven nukes went off everyone

1:04:05

lost. Oh wow. It was just yeah it

1:04:08

was like the game

1:04:10

is forfeit so you both the

1:04:12

earth is fucking destroyed there's nobody

1:04:14

wins which is a very cool

1:04:16

way to end one of

1:04:18

those games after you'd built it up. Yeah that's

1:04:20

almost like SIV a little bit like the gameplay

1:04:22

is super different but the like world ending condition

1:04:25

being like a gamified version of kind

1:04:27

of mutually assured destruction is really interesting. That reminds

1:04:29

me of, sorry go ahead. No no I got

1:04:31

to play it it's on Steam I don't know

1:04:33

how good this is but they have an extended

1:04:35

edition that came out in 2014 so back when

1:04:37

they were I guess doing

1:04:39

a lot of these like Age of Empires

1:04:41

had a bunch of HD versions around then to Xbox

1:04:44

Game Studios so I wonder who owns

1:04:46

it now because Big Huge got like

1:04:48

acquired by 38 studios at one stage

1:04:51

at one stage it was called Epic

1:04:53

Baltimore which is maybe the coolest game

1:04:55

studio name ever but it's funny

1:04:57

if you've never seen Rise of Nations you should like

1:05:00

look at like a screenshot of it because it looks like

1:05:02

somebody took Age of Empires and did like a pilot swap

1:05:05

just like stuck like you know fucking World

1:05:07

War two battleships in there instead of the

1:05:09

little fishing boats it's a it's a good

1:05:11

time. You jog my memory by

1:05:14

mentioning the kind of like mismatch of ages

1:05:16

to um did you guys ever play Empire

1:05:18

Earth? Oh yeah totally yeah yeah

1:05:20

yeah. So that was another that was like

1:05:22

the right when games were kind of switching

1:05:25

over into the early 3d era so it

1:05:27

was kind of like a Age of Empires

1:05:29

inspired RTS but um but very kind of

1:05:31

like early 3d and

1:05:34

and it had the the age progression thing

1:05:36

so you would have like drop a nukes

1:05:38

on like cavemen like having like a

1:05:40

B-52 bomber come through and bomb

1:05:43

a Roman Legionnaire. Yeah you're right God

1:05:45

that was yeah I forgot

1:05:47

you're right it's very similar to Rise

1:05:50

of Nations which one came at first it's a really

1:05:52

good question. I feel like Rise of Nations is probably

1:05:54

the OG if I had to guess. Empire Earth was

1:05:56

as it say surely the

1:05:58

first The first one was 2001. Yeah.

1:06:02

They did a bunch of them. The Empire was three of

1:06:04

them in total. And then Rise of Nations... 2003,

1:06:07

there you go. Oh wow. Alright, so they took

1:06:10

the Empire Earth formula and they improved. Empire Earth

1:06:12

was kind of rough around the edges, but I

1:06:14

think it's one of those games that I got

1:06:16

from like the Scholastic Book Fair as a kid.

1:06:19

They did the sort of the Frank Halley treatment, I guess,

1:06:22

is that Age of Empire... Empire Earth

1:06:24

was a bit too Age of Empires 3. And so

1:06:26

Rise of Nations came randomly. You know what, we'll do

1:06:28

that, but we'll do it Age of Empires 2 style.

1:06:31

Back to basics. That'll make it

1:06:33

happen. So I guess they weren't wrong.

1:06:36

Man, yeah. They're some good ones. I feel

1:06:38

like Homeworld is like maybe one of the

1:06:40

most requested docs we got

1:06:42

a lot. We talked to them maybe

1:06:45

last year or the year before at one

1:06:48

stage about doing stuff because they had the...

1:06:50

then the new Homeworld came out or was

1:06:52

coming out? Did that Homeworld ever come out?

1:06:55

Got them so out of the

1:06:57

fucking mood. Homeworld 3 looks like 2024, February 20- No,

1:07:00

it's okay. Yeah, so it's still there.

1:07:04

Yeah, people love Homeworld, man. I

1:07:06

played the first one. I've never played any of these

1:07:08

games. Yeah, I'm just not

1:07:10

good at like 4X stuff or anything that even looks

1:07:12

like it's a 4X game. It's just too much. It's

1:07:14

too many X's for me. I got one more. I

1:07:16

got the best answer of all. So this is such

1:07:18

a good write-in, by

1:07:20

the way. This like spurred so many memories in me.

1:07:24

Imperium Galactica 2. Did

1:07:26

you guys ever play this game? No. Okay.

1:07:30

I... my brother and I played this game. One of

1:07:32

his friends brought it over and we played it and

1:07:34

you know, you couldn't play it without the disc. So

1:07:36

we installed it, played it a bunch, got obsessed with

1:07:38

it and then ordered it from like the, you know,

1:07:40

super old version of Amazon back in the day when

1:07:42

it was a bookstore. And my

1:07:44

brother and I stood out on the curb in our

1:07:46

yard waiting for the delivery to come for like five

1:07:48

days. Like every... or like... I don't know if... I

1:07:51

don't remember if there was tracking. I don't remember if

1:07:53

we knew when to expect it. I just remember like

1:07:55

waiting outside for a week for this game and

1:07:58

obsessed with it. It was like a space. It

1:08:00

wasn't really an RTS. It was kind of like a

1:08:03

kind of like Forex, but not any sort of

1:08:05

like a grid or anything just

1:08:07

like planets and kind of like diplomacy

1:08:10

between different alien races and stuff and

1:08:13

And the combat was like these instanced like you

1:08:15

would have a fleet and then you would get

1:08:17

into combat and it would go to Like a

1:08:19

separate instanced screening to have the fleet like duke

1:08:21

it out But impurity and Galactica too was awesome.

1:08:23

10 bucks on steam right now very positive reviews

1:08:25

release date December 1st 1999 Five

1:08:29

years before steam was released so very impressive that they managed

1:08:31

to get it up there five years early The

1:08:34

original game is five bucks as well man. That's cool. That's

1:08:36

so sweet The two you were like just so jazzed about

1:08:38

this. I remember feeling that way about Transport

1:08:41

tycoon. Remember I Such

1:08:43

a funny one to be so

1:08:45

weird. Yeah, I love logistics as

1:08:47

a kid. I can't wait

1:08:49

to do logistics Such a

1:08:51

weird game as well cuz it's like, you know what?

1:08:54

I like I like roads and bridges, but I also

1:08:56

like trains But

1:08:58

I also like boats and

1:09:00

airplanes too. I like all of them. Yeah,

1:09:02

I'm not just a train guy I'm also

1:09:05

an airplane and boat guy Fuck

1:09:11

transport like remember I got I think I told this

1:09:13

story before I bought it from I was so excited

1:09:15

about this game that The sequel came

1:09:17

out and it was like super cheap in

1:09:19

like a in a thing and I was like, I don't know 12 And

1:09:22

I bought a ship my brother for Christmas

1:09:25

and then gave it to him. He was like, oh, okay

1:09:28

So I was actually me who really wants it

1:09:30

I was I had this thing where like I

1:09:32

just thought that like however, I was just excited

1:09:34

I was like, oh everyone must be really excited

1:09:36

about this game I hadn't like considered that people

1:09:39

have their own preferences and they still feel guilty

1:09:41

about this. Sorry Alan. Sorry It's not funny. I

1:09:44

was I think I was like 10 or 11 actually

1:09:46

I'm in 10. Oh, that's really cute Then if you

1:09:48

were that young that's like adorable. I'll keep going. I

1:09:50

was seven. Yeah Keep

1:09:53

making it the older I get the more embarrassing it is. Yeah.

1:09:55

Yeah, I was like 31 When

1:09:58

the transport I couldn't come out that's the fucking litmus

1:10:00

test for this one. Okay.

1:10:03

So it was ace when I came out. Well,

1:10:05

when I, or came out when I was eight, so I could

1:10:07

have been ace. It probably, I was in a bargain bin, so

1:10:09

it was probably like fucking two or three years later. There

1:10:12

you go. Thank you, Mikko the

1:10:14

Thicke. Great questions. And thank you, Frank, for

1:10:17

taking all those emails and discord messages

1:10:19

uh, throughout the year. We'll get more

1:10:21

into those next year. Obviously we won't

1:10:23

have much of an opportunity with the game of the year

1:10:25

stuff. But if you do have any, uh, games

1:10:28

of the year that we have not mentioned or

1:10:30

anyone's you think might be able to squeeze in

1:10:32

last minute, uh, podcast and no clip

1:10:34

that video, let us know. Uh, ASAP.

1:10:37

That's a podcast folks. Uh, we got some docs up

1:10:39

awesome work on the edit of NHL 94 Jeremy Jane.

1:10:43

Thank you. Um, I kind of

1:10:45

flubbed the thumbnail of it and the

1:10:47

video ate shit for a day. And

1:10:50

then I changed the thumbnail and then it was like, Oh

1:10:52

no, we're good now. And now it's like climbing

1:10:54

back up. Wait, what was the initial thumbnail? Is

1:10:57

this the best game ever? It was like the, it was the

1:10:59

box art, but it just had the text on it. And then

1:11:01

I was like, Oh, it looks like shit. Um,

1:11:03

doesn't even look like a no clip thumbnail. And then

1:11:05

I was like, Oh, I'll change it. I, I, I

1:11:07

got some NHL 94 sprites,

1:11:09

which are just darling. They're just

1:11:11

beautiful little boys. And

1:11:14

then put those ones up and you can literally see

1:11:16

on the, uh, on the, the view

1:11:18

curve, they just goes from like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:11:20

It's like, Oh no. Okay. We're good. We're going back up

1:11:22

territory again. It's got 90

1:11:24

K after five days. That's not bad. Oh, great. I

1:11:26

certainly heard like a, it's like an old game. It's

1:11:29

a sports game. It's like, I dunno, I mean, I'm

1:11:31

biased because I hate sports, but like, I, I

1:11:33

think the stock is amazing. No, you're right. I was, I was the

1:11:35

same way. I was like, Oh shit, did it eat shit? Is it

1:11:37

that because it's like, it's, cause it might

1:11:40

just look like we did like FIFA 2003,

1:11:42

you know, it might, it might look arbitrary that we picked

1:11:45

that game. Uh, if you don't know

1:11:47

about it, um, and maybe people don't click on

1:11:49

it. So here's the funny thing is

1:11:51

that it had an appalling click through rate,

1:11:53

like 2.9%. But

1:11:55

the watch time was like 50% higher

1:11:58

than our average and our average is. pretty high

1:12:00

because people kind of know what they're in

1:12:02

for when they kick one of ours. So the watch, the average

1:12:04

watch time was like 18 minutes or something.

1:12:06

It was like pretty high. So I

1:12:08

was like, oh, shit. Okay. It's

1:12:11

like a very, um, the Alago will have it.

1:12:13

It's a very fast paced edit. I feel like,

1:12:15

like, I feel like it, uh, it delivers a

1:12:17

lot of interesting anecdotes really early on to kind

1:12:19

of get you on board it into the EA

1:12:21

sports history. Um, so I don't know. I feel

1:12:24

like, like I said, like I, I

1:12:26

didn't know the significance of NHL 94 before starting this

1:12:28

edit and I also don't like sports. So I

1:12:31

am, I am arguably the like best use case

1:12:33

for whether or not this, like, I don't think

1:12:35

there could have been a better team member for

1:12:37

this edit because I hate sports and I still

1:12:39

thought this was so fascinating. Um, I don't even really

1:12:41

play sports games. Like I played a little bit back

1:12:43

in the day, but not really. So I don't know.

1:12:45

I feel like I, I was like, how can we

1:12:48

make this interesting? What are the anecdotes here that are

1:12:50

not reliant upon someone being like, yeah, I love sports.

1:12:53

You're probably the best person for it then. Yeah.

1:12:57

Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I really like us. You

1:12:59

did a rad job on us. Thanks. The

1:13:02

interviews are like Mark Lester is a super

1:13:04

fascinating guy, just, you know, just like a

1:13:06

smart person, like was able to problem solve

1:13:08

this thing. And, and it just shows you

1:13:10

like the, I don't know, like,

1:13:12

especially back then, how quickly they were able

1:13:14

to just fuck around and make stuff up

1:13:17

and then have sort of foundation. Like how,

1:13:19

in a way, modern developers, because we also

1:13:21

included the NHL guys, um, at

1:13:23

the end of the NHL 24 guys in this. And

1:13:26

I think, I don't know. I'm like really proud of how we

1:13:28

handled that too. Cause we don't just like, you

1:13:30

know, it's not like blowing smoke up their ass as well

1:13:32

of like, Oh, aren't those cause I know there's a lot

1:13:34

of like discourse in the NHL community about how those recent

1:13:37

games are. And I know those two guys who came in

1:13:39

are also sort of like new creative leads

1:13:41

for that franchise thing. This is the first year for both

1:13:43

of them, or maybe definitely for at least one of them,

1:13:45

maybe the second for the other guy. So

1:13:48

I liked how we included them as well in

1:13:50

a way that was like very honest and sort

1:13:52

of like, what, what are the pressures? Like what's

1:13:54

it like making these games now with like a

1:13:56

smaller budget than all the other EA sports teams

1:13:58

with like this rabbit fan base. you know,

1:14:00

with the annualized thing, like how it's fucking

1:14:03

hard. You know what I mean? And like

1:14:05

they, it, their struggle in many

1:14:07

ways mirrors the struggle that the original developers had too,

1:14:09

where they talked like, Oh yeah, it took like three

1:14:11

years for us to get the game we want it.

1:14:13

Cause you just don't have enough time. You're just, you

1:14:16

know, pumping these things out. Um,

1:14:19

so yeah, I think if you're not into sports games, I think

1:14:21

it's the, it's a great dock to watch cause it's so, it's

1:14:24

so, you know, in

1:14:26

the same way that like NBA jam is a game that

1:14:28

everyone plays regardless of if they, I couldn't

1:14:31

care less about basketball. I love it. I

1:14:33

have an NBA jam machine at home. Like,

1:14:35

like that's, that's, it's the same with NHL 94.

1:14:38

It's just a great, in a way, I think

1:14:40

if you dislike sports games, it's even better

1:14:42

to watch because it just, it's like a

1:14:45

portal into understanding why sports games are interesting

1:14:47

from a game design perspective. Like I kept

1:14:49

thinking about, uh, about like souls born games

1:14:51

when they were talking about hit boxes and

1:14:53

like, yeah, I dunno, it's, it's, it's very

1:14:56

sneakily a very good iterative game

1:14:58

design documentary. Yeah. I really

1:15:00

liked this. Um, yeah, check it out.

1:15:02

It's over on the channel. Uh, the

1:15:04

curve actually in the past 24 hours has shut up again.

1:15:06

So it might actually, it might, it

1:15:08

might be off to the races at this stage,

1:15:10

which is pretty cool to see. Uh, also our

1:15:12

half-life documentary over on, um, our secret tapes, half-life

1:15:15

documentary over on valve's YouTube channel is over 3

1:15:17

million views now as well. Thank you to everyone

1:15:20

who's been sending in lovely messages, watching

1:15:22

that documentary. It's very cool to see. Um,

1:15:24

we have had a lot of interest in secret tape

1:15:26

stuff over the past, uh, two weeks as well. So

1:15:29

that's a, we're all raring to go on that

1:15:31

front, uh, for next year. Uh,

1:15:34

the access unseen documentary will be coming out soon as

1:15:36

well. I always don't can't tell if I've

1:15:38

talked about this officially or not. And I think I

1:15:40

have now on the podcast a

1:15:42

few times, but our return to monkey

1:15:44

islands documentary will be coming out

1:15:47

next or this month as well.

1:15:49

In December, it is a 95

1:15:51

minutes documentary. It is about return

1:15:53

to my gallons, but it is like

1:15:55

30% of it is about secrets

1:15:58

and, and my gallon too, at least. It's

1:16:00

like the first 20 minutes, 25 minutes are all about

1:16:02

those original games. And then every time we talk about

1:16:04

the new game, we are talking about the old game.

1:16:06

So it's, you know, if you haven't played Return, maybe

1:16:08

you don't watch the last five or 10 minutes of

1:16:11

this doc, but if you have, or

1:16:13

you like the old games and haven't played

1:16:15

Return yet, or you're just interested

1:16:17

in this type of, you know,

1:16:19

what is it about Monkey Island that's special?

1:16:21

I think this is a great doc to

1:16:23

sort of enjoy all of that. It's all

1:16:26

much like Return to Monkey Island, the game,

1:16:28

the documentary is all about nostalgia and about

1:16:30

the weight of expectation and about

1:16:32

canon and about fandom and like how

1:16:35

you make a new game that's that

1:16:37

old and also about, you know, Ron

1:16:39

and Dave, we interviewed Dave Grossman, Ron

1:16:41

Gilbert, David Fox, Rex

1:16:43

Crowell, bunches of people

1:16:45

who are part of the team. So

1:16:48

I'm really proud of us. I think it's pretty cool. And

1:16:50

that's it. If you'd like to support this

1:16:53

podcast, fund our documentaries, get access to bonus

1:16:55

episodes, the official discord and loads more, head

1:16:57

over to patreon.com/noclip. Big change is coming to

1:16:59

the Patreon early 2024. Talking

1:17:01

about doing a lot more patron exclusive stuff. I

1:17:03

have some ideas for patron exclusive documentaries,

1:17:06

like mini documentaries we can put out too.

1:17:09

And we're going to get back on with extended interviews

1:17:11

and all that sort of stuff as well. And

1:17:13

so, yeah, look forward to that once we're

1:17:16

cleared of game of the year. Jeremy, what are

1:17:18

you doing for the rest of your week here?

1:17:20

Um, well, before I say that, I just wanted

1:17:22

to use for, if like, there, there are so

1:17:24

many things on the cutting room

1:17:26

floor for this NHL documentary that would make amazing

1:17:29

patron features. So like, if you're, if you're hearing

1:17:31

this and wondering what sort of extended interview, what

1:17:33

sort of bits may there be, there's like a

1:17:35

whole thing about how the game appears in swingers

1:17:38

NHL PA 93 and like, there's, I don't know.

1:17:41

It's just, there's like an unbelievable, every documentary, there's

1:17:44

like an embarrassment of riches because all of these

1:17:46

people just have like an insane amount

1:17:48

of cool anecdotes. So like, I don't know.

1:17:50

I'm very excited about giving our patrons kind of

1:17:52

like a sneak peek into the stuff that

1:17:54

just, it's not like it didn't make it into the

1:17:56

doc because it wasn't good enough. It's just, it doesn't, you can't

1:17:58

take like a five minute. to talk about swingers

1:18:01

in the middle of the intro because it's like

1:18:03

it's weird. But anyway,

1:18:05

yeah, so this week I

1:18:07

am probably gonna do some like, think

1:18:09

about Christmas and stuff and getting ready for the holidays

1:18:12

and do a little game dev. And

1:18:14

yeah, I've also been sick for a week. So probably like

1:18:17

get outside for the first time in a week and get

1:18:19

some fresh air. Yeah. Nice one.

1:18:21

Yeah. You reminded me I need to

1:18:23

get my flu shot, my COVID shot, which I forgot to do.

1:18:26

I forgot to do my family. Oh my

1:18:28

God. I think about you and Josh. I think the

1:18:30

rest of the family got them like last month and

1:18:32

I'm, I just completely fucking forgot. I

1:18:34

forgot to cut my hair as well. I just, I forget all of

1:18:36

these things and then I just do them all eventually. Um,

1:18:39

yeah, rest of my week I've got,

1:18:41

we're moving house next week. So I'm carrying out

1:18:43

the studio as well. Like a

1:18:45

lot of the fake wallpapers now gone behind

1:18:47

over there. It's all just white walls. You

1:18:50

can see, uh, moving a bunch of stuff.

1:18:52

I also got a storage locker for the

1:18:54

tapes so that they will continue to be

1:18:56

in a well ventilated,

1:18:58

uh, spot. Um,

1:19:01

the tape stuff will continue again in the

1:19:03

new year, uh, just with the move and

1:19:05

everything going on and the half-life doc. Honestly, it

1:19:07

sort of, um, God still feels weird saying

1:19:10

that it all got pushed to the side for

1:19:12

a second. It's also why we're coming out with

1:19:14

like three documentaries this month because they're

1:19:16

all like almost done when we got the call. Um,

1:19:19

from, uh, from, from, uh, Gabe.

1:19:22

Um, yeah, so, uh,

1:19:25

I'm looking forward to getting these edits done.

1:19:27

Uh, access is almost done returns. It's going

1:19:29

to render tonight and, uh, yeah,

1:19:32

get some of those extended features out. As you say, we're

1:19:34

going to change our workflow a bit. I think early next

1:19:36

year, I think I need some more support on all that

1:19:38

sort of stuff. And Jeremy's been killing it on the editing.

1:19:40

So I think that's going to be some, that's

1:19:42

how we can super power the Patreon. And Frank,

1:19:44

waiting for the rest of your week, um, playing

1:19:47

some, some more games to, to, uh,

1:19:50

breathe love and light into your heart.

1:19:52

Yeah. Lots of gaming, uh, LA

1:19:54

Comic Con. I'm going this Saturday. I've

1:19:56

never been, it's independent of San Diego Comic

1:19:59

Con. So

1:20:01

yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Randomly the clown from

1:20:03

Slipknot will be there. I don't know

1:20:05

if he's selling NFTs or Whiskey, but

1:20:07

I will take a picture of him. I'm

1:20:10

a comic book writer, Jason Aaron, who I

1:20:12

like will be there and then, you know,

1:20:14

I know lots of stuff. And then randomly

1:20:16

my friend let me borrow her entire Sailor

1:20:18

Moon manga collection. So I have

1:20:20

all every volume of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. So

1:20:22

I started reading that and it's so funny because

1:20:25

it's like, it's, you know, Sailor Moon's

1:20:27

like ever present everywhere. I've never read it or

1:20:29

like watched it. It's great. It's

1:20:31

super charming. Who, you know, who would have thought?

1:20:33

Who would have thought? Honestly, I spent a lot

1:20:35

of time in bed just reading comics and manga

1:20:37

and, you know, maybe feel a little bit better.

1:20:39

So, but yeah. Hell yeah. If

1:20:42

you want to check out some awesome

1:20:44

documentaries about Sailor Moon, you should head

1:20:46

over to Ray Mona's YouTube channel. She

1:20:48

did a rad doc called The Western

1:20:50

World of Sailor Moon from her Tales

1:20:52

of the Lost series, which

1:20:54

is, she does really good docs on

1:20:57

like a, what would you call it? Like

1:20:59

Lost Media and stuff like that. I

1:21:02

did the voice for one of them. I'm not sure

1:21:04

which one it's in actually. But

1:21:06

yeah, Ray's rad and she does lots

1:21:08

of awesome, cool videos

1:21:11

over in that channel. So go check it out. She shoots

1:21:13

some on herself, edits some on herself, writes some on herself.

1:21:15

I'm super sick. Go check those out. That's Sailor

1:21:17

Moon 1 in particular. I watched it from

1:21:19

start to finish and I knew nothing about Sailor Moon. I was

1:21:21

like, this is fucking cool. That's

1:21:23

the podcast folks. Thanks so much. We'll

1:21:26

be back next week with the first of our

1:21:29

four Game of the Year 2023 deliberations. Until

1:21:33

then, we'll see you. Bye. Bye.