Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. How’s things over in your postcode, Matthew? They are very, very good. I often enter your postcode. I go for a little walks every couple of days, and I wander around your flats. Not in a creepy way, but if you sometimes look out your window, you may spot a very red-faced me go huffing by. There’s a number of great landmarks in my postcode, including the petrol station, if you want to get yourself a lovely bit of tube of Smarties for your walk. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of live in a dystopian sort of a state where all the flats look identical, but the ambience is kind of nice. So yeah, I don’t know, dystopia is good or bad. Who can really say? I like that petrol station because it has an Indian restaurant attached to it, which is meant to be very, very nice. But I always think, I don’t know, do I want to be in a restaurant that touches a petrol station? I think there’s like, I mean, they’re technically not the same business if that reassures you. Oh no, they’re separate. I’m not saying they’re run by the same people, but I don’t know, just the idea of knowing that through that wall, there’s a car wash happening. I find that weird. That’s true. But it’s not like you can go in there and order a Dupiazza and then also pay for your unleaded. There’s a separation of church and state. Nonetheless. Yeah, so Matthew, this is part two of our Games of the Generation podcast. And there’s not much preamble here because we might as well just get into it. We had lots of preamble last time. So if you want to hear the bottom 15 of our top 30 lists, you can listen to the previous episode where we talk a bit about PlayStation versus Xbox and stuff. I’ll reestablish the criteria. These are PS4, Xbox One and Wii U games. It seems a bit arbitrary, but we just want to kind of put a capper on the generation, I suppose. Otherwise, the generation stretches out forever and you can argue the 3DS is the previous generation, et cetera, et cetera. But Matthew, I was curious if you changed your top 15 at all after our last conversation. I actually haven’t. I’m pretty confident in them and I think they are the right and definitive 15. So, what about yourself? Yeah, I did change them a bit. I didn’t take any games out or anything, but I did rearrange the order of the top 15. I think that’s just because there’s at least one game in my top 15 where a few people at home will go, oh, fuck off, the suggestion of it. And I wanted to head them off at the past by bumping it down from the high position I had before. I will mention which game this is when I get to it, but otherwise you seem pretty confident in your choices. Yeah, I think so. I’m really intrigued to see what your upsetting entry is now. So I’m going to shout, oh, fuck off after every single one. Well, no one will contest that it’s a good game, but well, you’ll see, you’ll see. So shall we jump straight into it, Matthew? Yeah, let’s do it. Cool, so I forget who was going first, is it you or me? I think it’s you, isn’t it? Yeah, do you want to go first this time just to mix it up? Yeah, sure, all right. Okay, so Matthew, my number 15, it’s Doom Eternal. Not on my list. Is this on your list? Right, okay, well, we talked a tiny bit about Doom in the last episode, and that sort of hinted to me that this wasn’t on your list. I should say, actually, to listeners at home, we have no idea what each other’s lists are. We’re surprising each other as we go, I guess, just to kind of give it a bit of spice, make some good content. But yeah, so Doom Eternal, this is the highest first-person shooter on my list. That’s a complete lie. There’s another one. I’m just completely wrong about that. In five entries time, there’ll be another one. But this is the highest single-player first-person shooter on my list. So it represents having Doom Eternal and Doom 2016, that kind of duology of games that are actually surprisingly different from each other. That’s probably why Doom Eternal took so many years to make. But yeah, we talked a bit about this on the Best Games of 2020 podcast. I think the pace of this is fantastic. I really love what it did to reinvent Doom this generation. I love the different enemy types. I love the kind of relationship between melee combat and shooting. I think that’s really well done. Every interaction in this game feels really good. Loads of lovely animations. The level design in Doom Eternal was particularly great. A real variety of settings. And yeah, I rate it. And I think that these are games that people will just play for years and years and talk about with reverence just for decades to come. And yeah, really cool to see a reinvention of a series this old, this generation, done so well. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love both Doom and Doom Eternal this gen. Doom Eternal is probably at number 31 for me. It very almost made the list. I absolutely adored it last year. It was such a great thing. Yeah, I think you’re right. It just has an energy and a pace to it. No other shooter has. I really like it when you throw the grenades in the space hopper demon’s mouth and then it kind of belches and then you pull out its eye. I think that’s really good. Yeah, that’s what I have to say on Doom. Yeah, I sort of took your point last generation that there weren’t that many of that kind of old Call of Duty style of campaign shooter this generation. And there weren’t many of this either, that kind of like lineage of old kind of mazy sort of windows, early window shooters. It feels like it’s something that’s maybe coming back in like indie space. You know, there have been quite a few things that kind of hark back to the sort of the mid 90s period. This is where I’m unable to name any of them. They’ve all got single names like Shed and things like that. Yeah, Hexen, kind of Heretic, those sort of games. Yeah, there’s been quite a few very, very super fast paced, hectic maze, sort of labyrinth shooters the last couple of years, because I know RPS obviously covered them a lot and went nuts for them. But yeah, it’s a period I have a huge affection for. When these shooters were picking up in the 90s, I was just playing a lot of nerdy point and click adventures. So maybe that’s a genre we’ll come back to, unlikely. It kind of did, sort of, with Broken Age and the remasters of LucasArts games and Blackwell games as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s fair. You’re not happy, Matthew, Jesus. The games you were referring to there were like Amid Evil and Dusk. That’s it. Not Shed, Dusk. Yeah, somehow Shed is a less evocative title, I don’t know why. Yeah, so you’re right, there’s a bit of a resurrection going on there. There’s also a thief alike that’s being made by someone. I can’t remember who, but it was announced at PC Gaming Show a while ago. It might already be out, and I’ve forgotten what it is. So, instead of dwelling on that, let’s move to your number 15, Matthew. My number 15 is Mario Kart 8. Not on my list, and I’ll explain why after you’ve talked about the game. Oh, my God. This is going to be like Mario killed a family member in a hit-and-run in his kart, and you’ve never forgiven him. Yeah, my best friend was killed by a blue shell. Yeah, I try not to talk about it. So talk me through it, Matthew. Why Mario Kart 8? This was just a Nintendo team firing on all cylinders. Mario Kart 8 is the Mario Galaxy of Mario Karts. Just an incredible burst of invention and colour. One of the best soundtracks of the generation. It’s got this, like, sort of very jazzy sort of swing band vibe. And when you hear it, it’s one of those soundtracks that you can see the musicians in the room having just an amazing jam. I doubt that they cared that they were doing it for Mario Kart, but it sounds great and it kind of imbues the game with this amazing energy. The kind of gimmick in this one was the tracks are sort of anti-gravity. So it’s kind of Mario Kart meets F-Zero, where you can drive on the ceiling and drive on the walls. And they’re kind of impossible spaces, which is the Mario Galaxy connection. I don’t think mechanically it does anything too complicated. I think it’s really the core basics of Mario Kart done very well. But just the invention of the tracks, I don’t really think there’s many duds in there. There’s the new batch of tracks. They’ve taken some tracks from the classic games and kind of remade them. And they feel as new and fresh because they’ve updated them with some of the newer mechanics. Also done the soundtrack on them. The N64 Rainbow Road music is just absolute bliss. I would happily have that played at my funeral. Actually, probably not. It’s a bit hectic. The vibe might be a bit weird in the room. It depends how you die, I suppose. If it’s old age, I think it’ll be fine. But if it’s anything else, it might be a bit awkward. Yeah, after a very long, prolonged time in hospital. I don’t know if the parping wonderment of a rainbow road set in space is necessarily what everyone wants. But as I go to the great rainbow road in the sky, that’s what I refer to as heaven. Yeah, this was just pure Polish, pure class. I mean, following… If you listen to our earlier podcast where I was talking about Mario Kart Wii, which I really didn’t get on very well with at all, I thought it was so lacking in personality. It was so sort of vague and flabby. This was super tight. It just looked amazing. From a magazine perspective, it was just so nice to have a game we could properly crow about. Cover art’s so nice that I did it two issues in a row, as you’ll know from our covers from Hell. I associate this game with some really good times on O&M because we’d just hired Kate, Joe Scribbles was still on the mag, and doing multiplayer features on this, and the three of us going to Nintendo UK headquarters to play this as a little gang. It was really good fun. It was a really good bonding exercise. It also helps that it absolutely rocks. But because only five Wii U’s were sold, they obviously re-released this on Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which you could also play and have a great time with. Just a sumptuous thing. I love it. Yeah, so I completely agree. I love it. I remember playing it at E3 2013 in Nintendo’s treehouse thingy, which whatever that was called. And I remember thinking, it was the second of the Wii U HD games that I played at that point. Or like new Wii U games. So I played Mario 3D World and I played this back to back. And it was that the track that’s like by a beach and it’s got like the anti-graph panels kind of curving up the side of the track. Maybe this doesn’t narrow it down. God damn it. But nonetheless, I remember thinking, wow, this is what a Nintendo game looks like in HD. And it is like incredibly beautiful. And even though the Wii U was completely kind of like, I’m not really taken that seriously by people. I remember looking at that thinking, how can you not like see that Nintendo making a Mario Kart in HD is like a real event? You know what I mean? Yeah. The only reason I didn’t make my list, Matthew, is because I so closely associate this as a Switch game. And I figure I’ll have another chance to talk about it down the line. I did buy it on Wii U, but yeah. Yeah, it’s absolutely fine. I think that’s true for a lot of people. Yeah. And what a great thing to pick up with your Switch on day one. I mean, obviously it wasn’t made knowing that the Joy-Cons existed. Maybe it was. I don’t know. They probably knew a little bit about it. But I think that that’s where it became a transformative experience for me. It’s like playing in a pub in Brighton with my girlfriend and just putting the Switch on the table. I mean, there’s no socially acceptable way to do that, to be honest. But nonetheless, there was just real magic to seeing it on Switch. But no, I agree. I think it was the best selling Wii U game. I think it sold one in every two consoles. Wow, so it sold 18 copies. What a great done. Congratulations to Mario Kart 8. I stand by my verdict as well that you were right to put on your cover twice as we discussed in that previous episode. I thought it was great. So my number 14, Matthew, is Super Mario 3D World. So I won’t talk about this too much because we’ve got an episode coming up on it, I think next week. I feel bad for calling this my most disappointing game of the generation. No, I mean, I think that’s fine. So a little kind of rough plan of what we’ve got next week. We’re going to talk a bit about this game because it’s coming to Switch for the first time with a new component attached to it. So it’s a game we can talk about with some authority. I’m really keen to hear what Matthew thinks of its kind of place in the Mario 3D sort of canon. We got a bit of that last week. The verdict was not good. And Matthew’s going to talk a bit about what it’s like to write about Mario games over and over again. So that should be quite a fun episode. But yeah, I really love this game. I think that it’s one of two Wii U games I finished basically. And I know it must be good because I went through the hassle of plugging it in at my girlfriend’s house so we could play it in co-op. And playing co-op on the Wii U, like one person having the Wii U controller, the other person having like a Wii controller and playing it with, you know, the D-pad. What a pain in the ass that was. Yeah, it is sort of like, but despite that, it was worth it. I agree that this is not the most inventive Mario game when it comes to like spectacle and sort of level design. But like the wide open spaces of the levels and the kind of like, the feeling that it’s kind of old 2D Mario but just truly translated into 3D for like four players to share. It feels more like it’s, I don’t know, like the evolution of like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or something like that. It was like, how can we make this work for multiple players? But I’ve never played it as a single player game, so I couldn’t really talk about it on that basis. But I did really like Mario 3D Land, the 3DS predecessor that led to this. So yeah, I rate it, Matthew. Do you have any further thoughts on it? No, like I said, I’ve not properly played it in co-op. And when I say it’s disappointing, it’s still probably like a nine out of 10 for me. I mean, it’s it’s only disappointing by the standards of it’s not it didn’t beat the, you know, my favorite game of all time. But that is what I expect from Mario. So it’s more just like my incredibly harsh rule. There’s a lot to love about this. Again, amazing soundtrack, Nintendo soundtracks from I’m from Galaxy onwards, but like the Wii U generation was just absolutely superb. They just get in a frickin jazz band and just go, just have a good old time. And it just really translates on screen. You’re like, oh, yeah, this is great. I’m having so much fun. Yeah, it’s also such a such a funny game to play in co-op. Like you kind of find yourself racing to every single bit of the level. So racing to get down a pipe going to the next bit. And if you’re if you say you skid past the pipe and your partner goes down first, then you go down three seconds later. That pause is funny. Like that that pause is comedic and it’s like it creates humor in a way that like all the great the best co-op games do. Yeah, I think this is magic. It’s really good that it’s been salvaged and and people can play on Switch and for most people will be a new experience. Right. So yeah. All right, Matthew, hit me with your number 13.

1. My number 14 is sorry. It’s Rayman Legends. I would never have guessed this on your list. Oh, this is so good. This is so good. This is like my favorite 2D platformer of the generation. I loved Rayman Origins. I thought I thought it was, you know, just the feel of the character, the sort of momentum and the little bit of AST get on Rayman. It’s just really, really satisfying. It’s a really nice character to control. And I do not care for Rayman. Like until Rayman Origins, Rayman was absolutely like in with the crashes and the Spyros and the Gexes of the world. But yeah, I really liked Origins, but I just thought Legends was such a such a step up, like really coherent, big, funny ideas. Like every level had like a funny little narrative to it or a big kind of visual idea or some kind of mad gimmick. This made brilliant use of the Wii U pad. Like it’s a funny game, so I think a lot of people who played it on other consoles were maybe didn’t get the full wallop of what the kind of co-op was for. Because this was originally announced as a Wii U exclusive, I’m pretty sure, and it was only quite late in the day that it was also coming to everything else. But on Wii U you had a lot of like interactive level elements. You basically controlled a little kind of sort of fairy character with the touch pad. And on console it was just, it was quite borked what they did with the character. It was no way near as sophisticated or well done. But this was a genuinely brilliant like TV Wii U pad combo game in co-op. Yeah, like I say, just the level of creativity. I mean, the levels I think a lot of people remember from this are set to music. They’re like choreographed. So they’re almost like auto runners in that like every jump. Like when you hit them, it will be on the beat of the music. And it just feels like a big playable music number. This is just I love this game. I think the craft of it. So much love and attention. And it really bums me out that Ubisoft Montpellier are now they’re working on, you know, that whatever that beyond good and evil things going to be when they should just be making more Rayman’s because they’re absolutely like the best platform is going to the platform is going. But instead, they’re, you know, kowtowing to like five people who liked a game 20 years ago. So I’m making a sequel that will probably never come out. Yeah, well, it wasted everyone’s time. But yeah, this was great. Again, a bit Wii U like this a bit of O&M nostalgia, like just to have a game which arrived and was just firing on all cylinders. You were like, this is the stuff. You know, this is what you want, something where you could sort of feel proud and excited of, you know, as a magazine. I say proud, I didn’t make Rayman Legends, I should point out. But just by association with it, you were like, yeah, this is great. Particularly as, you know, I have found Mario’s 2D offerings pretty bad for quite a long time. Like I’m not a fan of the new Super Mario Brothers series at all. Like I think they’re incredibly flat feeling games. Again, that’s heresy to some. But yeah, this was just wild. What a wild thing. And you know, what a redemption arc for horrible Rayman. I mean, he doesn’t have elbows, which is just disgusting. But now he’s all right. Yeah, that’s good. I mean, he’s a 90s platforming icon, earned redemption with Matt Castle. Is there any greater endorsement? I mean, imagine if someone did that for like Crash or Spy. That would be, if you managed to make a Crash game I liked. I mean, that would be a true miracle. You’d be the Jesus of game development. I agree with you that this, I remember playing this on PS3 and thinking it feels a bit, it does feel a bit made for Wii U. There’s some like placing items on the screen elements, I recall, being made for the Wii U controller that don’t translate it quite as well. But it did look amazing. And you could play it in co-op, right? Yeah, great co-op game, just really easy drop in, drop out. Yeah, just very accessible, very sort of friendly to co-op players. There wasn’t a huge amount of interaction between the co-op players. It was more just like four people kind of chaotically kind of gambling through a level, but that was fine, that was fine. Yeah, cool. So that’s an interesting choice. I actually like, I had no idea how sort of into 2D platformers you were really. So that’s something I don’t really know about you. Yeah, I like them enough. I’m a big, like, it’s quite hard to go back from like the stunning, what some people have achieved in 3D, I feel, but yeah. Yeah, okay, fair enough. So number 13 for me, Matthew, it’s PT on the PS4. Well, this is the game that I thought everyone would go, fuck off, to… Oh, god, I thought I was going to get ahead of that. That wasn’t what I, god damn it. You forgot to shout fuck off. Yeah, I did. What a blunder on your part. You’ll just have to inexplicably shout fuck off at every succeeding entry that I read. I’ll just go back and edit it in. In like a robot. I’ll use one of those robot voice generators. So yeah, PT. I put this in here. 2014 horror game. Now sort of legendary. I know there’s a few people in the itch kind of horror demo scene who are sick of PT. And sick of seeing PT like remade by loads of different people. But as an original kind of horror creation, this is one of the best horror games ever made. And it was a free game. But if this cost £10, I think I would still have it in the same place on my list. Obviously it’s like a looping corridor. There is something has happened in this sort of like suburban house kind of environment. And you’re kind of investigating what’s going on. A lot of it is quite abstract. You have to sort of piece it together. It’s mostly about the imagery and the sounds that the game hits you with as you go through each corridor loop. Very unpredictable. As a lot of people know, there’s stuff that may happen on your playthrough that won’t happen on other people’s playthroughs. All these years later, no one can definitively say how you’re supposed to end it, which I find really interesting. I think it’s deeply upsetting that whatever this game’s kind of like the ethos was behind this game, Konami just abandoned it. I don’t truly believe that Silent Hills was going to look like this. I think that Kojima saw this as like a cool way to kind of marry it to a game that he had in mind. I don’t think this is what Silent Hills would have been. But the way it kind of obviously teased a game that was to never be sucks. But the Silent Hills thing isn’t something I’m that cut up about. It’s more just like the group of designers who made this could have made like the best full length horror game ever. And I feel like we’re never going to see them do that. I think a few of them are scattered to the wind. I think Jordan Amaro is one of the developers of this. I think he works for Nintendo now. Yeah. So yes, PT, I love it, Matthew. Yeah, properly scary. I mean, one of the trends of last generation, I thought, was the how the horror game basically gave up on being scary and just started being kind of psychologically chilling, which is which is a code word for boring. But this was actually this is like genuinely the only game I’ve actually screamed out loud at, which I was playing this with Catherine in when I was living in London and we were we didn’t know how to finish it. And we were we were following a walkthrough guide online. And it was like you say, it’s super abstract and none of the walkthroughs agree. Like some people like or telephone rings. And if you pick it up on the fourth ring and then, you know, say cheesecake into your PlayStation mic, a ghost will appear. Like it’s a game full of urban legends. It’s quite it’s a fascinating sort of artifact. Yeah, we did this process and then nothing changed. And we were like, oh, it’s obviously broken or we did it wrong. And then we turned around the corner, the bend in the corridor. And there was a person at the other end of the corridor. And for a split second, we were both like, oh, it’s that person. And then it just rushed towards us incredibly fast. And both of us went, ah! And then I had to walk around my house apologizing to my housemates, telling them that I was OK, that I was playing a very scary computer game. And these were not like this was when I was living in London, I lived with like genuine adult professionals. They were all like lawyers or worked in the Bank of England and things like that. And they always thought my job was ridiculous. I remember telling them about Pikmin. And then that basically defined my relationship with them ever since. Like whenever I saw them in the house, they’d be like, who collected any giant apples recently? Like I was obviously just a fool. But yeah, luckily this kind of over overwrote that experience. And I was just the weird screaming boy in the attic. Yeah, I mean, hey, you know, like, let’s face it, in 2021, who’s more popular, the man who enjoys Pikmin or a banker? PT, yeah, I remember screaming at it as well. Like, I’ve played this several times, and it’s actually one of the only games I’ve streamed with people, which is a very, like, hackneyed thing to do. But I was drunk with a friend in Cardiff, and we just thought it’d be fun. My friend Lynch, who actually listens to this. Hey, Lynch. And so, yeah, it was just really sort of surprising. I agree with you that, like, I now know that if I get to that end bit and you walk 10 steps, I think it is, and then say Jareth into the microphone, that works for some reason. That works. Imagine, I am like, that’s just saying Jareth into a microphone. That’s so preposterous. Yeah, it is. So can I truly say this is one of the best games of the generation where you have to end it by saying Jareth? Jareth? How did anyone come across that? I wonder if it’s, like, meant to be something else, but, like, it’s close enough to the syllables of Jareth. Yeah. Mispronouncing Gareth. Amazing. Yeah, so the other thing is that, like, there’s stuff in this that people were discovering years later. One of my favourite things that happens in this game is when the ghost appears at the window in front of you when you’re walking down that first corridor out the door. She can appear there and start vibrating, and it’s fucking awful. Like, it’s just absolutely awful. Yeah. Now I can play it reasonably comfortably. I know how to not be killed by the ghost and stuff like that. There are mechanics to it. It’s not all random. What a phenomenal work. I must say, like, Resident Evil 7 did not make my list, and I don’t think it’s a great game, and I think all the things it does well, it sort of borrows some PT. And yeah, even including releasing a demo before the game came out to try and get people interested, which they’ve just done with Resident Evil Village as well. I do like 7, but it’s kind of like dumb PT, but it is quite full on. I think it has some, like, it actually has some jump scares in it. I don’t think it’s particularly sort of, you know, it didn’t frighten me, but it did make me jump, which is, like, considering the state of horror games this generation, I would actually settle for that. Well, hit me with your number 12? My number 13 is… The numbers are really escaping us this week. It’s Persona 5 Royal. See, it’s on my list, but not the Royal version. Let’s talk about Persona 5 when we get higher up. Because I was umming and ahhing about this, and we can talk about that more generally. Should we do that? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, the next game is definitely something you’ve played too, Matthew, so you could weigh in on this one. Number 12 is Resident Evil 2 Remake. So, I was just slagging off Resident Evil 7 there. This, I’m not really like a purist when it comes to Resident Evil. I just think, if you’re going to do something, if you’re going to innovate with the series, just do it well. And I think that Resident Evil 7 basically turns into as much of an action game as Resident Evil 5. By the end of it, you’re just shooting big blob monsters. Yeah, definitely. You know, you’re right. I think people like The Baker Mansion and not the rest of it. Yeah, absolutely. So that first hour is amazing when you’re walking around the house and you see the dude in the yard, and it’s like you’re going through the crawl space. All that, really scary. And then, yeah, turns very silly by the end. But Resident Evil 2 Remake, Matthew, we both went to the same preview and to play this. I remember that being a really weird day that ended in Yumi and Rich Stanton eating KFC by Paddington Station. Good times. But what’s your take on Resident Evil 2 Remake? Yeah, I really like this. I didn’t have a huge connection to Resident Evil 2, the original. I’ve played it. But it’s not like a… I know for some people it’s a top game of all time, but I didn’t really have that relationship with PlayStation back in the day, I don’t think. Well, obviously it was on other platforms as well. But yeah, I thought this was great. I absolutely love the police station particularly. I think the later game stuff I’m a little less interested in in remake, but I think the police station is fantastic. I think the actual… I love the shooting of the zombie limbs. I know it’s not a particularly sophisticated take, but the fact that you can shoot their arms and legs off and sort of pacify them rather than kill them is like a really fun wrinkle in the kind of survival horror kind of playbook. And obviously the stuff with Mr X I think is fantastically well done. Like, a really great update and taking kind of like the core of the idea from the original game and then just turning it into something way more substantial and interesting. Like, almost that… The first half of Resident Evil 2 is good enough that it doesn’t really matter that I don’t like the second half quite as much. What’s your sort of take on it? I would agree with that. I think that everyone remembers the police station when they think of Resident Evil 2, and it’s definitely the strongest part here. There’s some good bits in the sewers and the labs later on, but yeah, the heights definitely come early. But I also think that like Resident Evil 2, the way it sort of changes the second playthrough is a different character. So like the first one is kind of like your Resident Evil 2 basic playthrough, then the second one for me who is playing as Claire is when Mr. X is chasing you basically the entire time. And like the idea that like you played both to kind of complete the game was just really cool. It would be a short game without that for sure, but like now it works perfectly. And I also think that I sort of agree with you, I like the limb shooting stuff. I think that they finally found a perfect middle ground between like that old school Resi and Resident Evil 4 style of combat. Yeah, so that’s why it’s only a shame that the third one is apparently not very good. I’ve still not played it. The weird thing there is, you know, that’s a game built around you being pursued for the whole thing, but the Nemesis is no way near as interesting or sophisticated as Mr. X. Like it never actually puts you in a, you know, for want of a better word, sandbox environment with this creature. Like every chase sequence is quite scripted in a way that it doesn’t feel the same way in Resident Evil 2. Yeah, they really like messed him up. Like he’s not scary at all. It’s quite flat. It’s just quite short as well. But that’s, you know, maybe they don’t have as much to work with, but it definitely didn’t. It’s definitely like a drop in quality off the two. Yeah, I think Mikami considers the original three to be a lesser game anyway, based on that Archipel documentary we talked about before. So yeah, I really love it. And I hope that whatever they do next, whether it’s Code Veronica, there’s some strong rumors about Resi 4 remake. Yeah, I’m kind of confident as long as they kind of give it the proper time. Don’t try and bolt some NAF multiplayer thing onto it. I wish Capcom would stop doing that, but it doesn’t look like they will. Yeah. Yeah. Hit me with your number 12. Why am I so bad at this number 12? It’s because I deleted one of the numbers on my iPad because I’m an idiot. So, your number 12, Matthew. My number 12 is Uncharted 4. Higher on my list. Then we will talk about it later. What is your number 12 or number 11? We should never have switched the order. What a terrible decision. Oh, fatal. So, this is good though, Matthew, because number 11 is Persona 5 for me. So, why don’t you hit me with your thoughts on Persona 5 Royal? Yeah, so I only picked Persona 5 Royal because I only played like a certain chunk of Persona 5 originally. I didn’t play it all the way through because I knew Royal was coming. So, for those that don’t know, the way the recent Persona games have worked anyway is that they release a Persona game and then they tend to update it a year or a couple of years later where they basically polish it up, tighten it up, add a few characters, add a bit of bonus content on the end and it becomes like the definitive version. So for Persona 4 it was Persona 4 Golden which I played on the Vita and had a really great time with. So I decided to hold out for Persona 5 Royal. But like, you can group them together. I think what I like about this game is fundamentally true to both versions, which is just it’s like the most stylish video game ever made. I mean, it’s just an absolutely ludicrously cool triumph of… well, it’s got… I was going to say style over substance, but that’s not fair because it’s a pretty meaty RPG and there’s plenty going on under the hood. But everything about this game from just, you know, the art design of the characters to the interface, it’s got this insane interface which is actually like not always the most practical thing, but it just looks so cool. I just imagine the group of people making this being just the coolest gang of people in the world and that I get to hang out with these cool people for a little bit is just such a treat because as an uber square myself, persona always feels like the opportunity to, I don’t know, just… it’s true escapist fantasy for me because, you know, my teenage years were nothing like this. So to explain the general setup you are, you play a bunch of school, teenager sort of school kids who discover kind of a sort of other realm where they go and take on kind of RPG battling to kind of fix things in the real world and the game kind of juggles their kind of lives as heroes in this sort of fantasy realm with their social lives as teenagers doing teenage stuff. And you have this social sim element to it where you hang out and kind of build your social bonds, which turn into benefits in the RPG kind of combat side of the game. It’s just so cool, so trendy. Like if you’re a Japanophile, just the idea of getting to hang out in like Tokyo and go to cool restaurants and kind of like experience vicariously this sort of, you know, what it’s like to live in a big sort of Japanese urban centre. That’s quite exciting. You know, I love the PS4 was one of my… PS4 Golden was one of my games of the previous generation. I’m not saying this one’s like outright better in every way, but yeah, it’s just so cool, isn’t it? Yeah, I think I played a bit of quite a lot of Persona 3 actually at the time when that came out on PS2. And I remember that was when the series starting to kind of blow up. It became a huge hit in North America, I think, before it became a huge hit in Europe. I think Persona 5 just like is the most digestible version of that kind of game. Like it’s always had that mix of Social Sim and Japanese RPG. It was a bit more of a dungeon crawler, I would say, in the earlier iterations. And I much prefer the balance here because I think a lot of people are kind of playing this like they’re watching a long anime. Yeah, definitely. And so I should say I’ve not finished this. I felt a bit guilty putting on my list, but I just thought I can’t not have it on here. I’ve played it for 70 hours. It’s just a really long game. Yeah, yeah. But I love it too. I think about this game, if it existed when I was 16, it would be my favorite game of all time. My little brother, who is 11 years younger than me, he adores this game. I think I had to convince him a little bit to play it, but then he’s played the original and he’s completed the raw version. So I think, yeah, if you’re just a certain age group, this just really hits home. Like you say, the fantasy of it is like having a cool group of friends. You are superheroes, sort of. But then I think just having a nice group of friends you can go and hang out with in Tokyo is itself a sort of fantasy that people have, I think. Andy, I love that about it. I also think that when it comes to its whole handling on adults, it really fucking hates adults this game. And I really like that. It basically says, don’t trust teachers, don’t trust politicians, don’t trust law enforcement. And that’s quite bold. The messaging of it can be a little bit up and down. But that feels to me like what the game is saying. These are young people who have very black and white versions of what morality should be. And everything they do is based on that. But this game celebrates that as a good thing. None of the characters are mired in the murky gray areas that all the adults are in this game. Did you get that vibe from it as well? Yeah, definitely. And I recognize that. It’s kind of funny because I am so not that person in terms of, as a teenager, I was so like, follow the rule, everything. I was not a law breaker. You’ll be surprised to hear. No. Yeah. So maybe that is also part of the appeal. Like it’s like, I don’t know, a taste of rebellion in my absolutely like rule following life. Like, you know, I know we joked about this in a previous episode, but like when I play this game, like in truth, I am much closer to a villain in this game than I am a hero. You know, I would be someone they had to fix, which is kind of depressing. But that’s why it’s such a good escapist fantasy, because you’re like, yeah, I definitely do this. And you’re like, I definitely wouldn’t like the, I mean, just the school uniform infractions, some of them pull off would have put me in a tizzy. You know, I was the kind of kid who opted into extra school uniform by wearing the optional jumper. Amazing. Yeah. So you wouldn’t have like dyed your hair blonde. Oh, definitely not. Definitely not. I would have, I would have been the prefect who definitely reported you for that shit. I think I do. What I do like about this game though, is it does sort of remind me of types of people I went to school with, particularly Ryuji. I feel like I knew a few boys like Ryuji. Just very sort of like, I know, lose their temper at the sort of drop of a hat, but ultimately sort of good guys sort of thing. And yeah, no, I love Persona 5. I think the only thing that sucks about it is it takes them so long to make them that it’s going to be eight, I’m probably going to be 40 when the next one comes out. And I’ll definitely feel too old to play it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, you’re definitely. And the next one will just be them straight up murdering 40 year olds. And you’ll feel very burnt by that, I think. Yeah, I look forward to that feeling. So rather than dwell on that further, Matthew, I’ll move on to our next one, which is it me or is it you? It’s you. It’s your number 11. My number 11 is Red Dead Redemption 2. Not on my list. Go ahead. I know this is like, it’s like a huge cliche to be like, oh, like big, expensive Rockstar games. But I do like big, expensive Rockstar games for my money. This is just what happens when you when you throw probably the most amount of money that’s ever been thrown at a game, I’d imagine, at a world is that you end up with just the most complete, coherent, virtual Wild West you could imagine. I just love being in this place. It’s a game I’ve replayed a couple of times. And it helps that I do love I love cowboy films. I’m a big fan of that period, like I’m a sucker for it. But yeah, I will just I’ll happily spend all the time in the world trekking around this landscape. I love the forests. I love the wide open plains where I can just gallop my horse about. I like that it has a lot of boring landscape for one of the better words, like it’s not just all, you know, absolute thrills that feels very realistic to me. I like that it isn’t hugely populated, that there’s only a couple of little clusters of towns. It just feels very, very realistic to me. I quite like the story. You know, some people are quite snooty and snobby about rock stars writing, but I’ll take their writing over most games writing, like the characters, I, you know, I remember them, which, you know, I know what they’re about. And there’s a lot of characters here that I remember. So I think that’s a sign of success. I like that it’s kind of weirdly verging on, like, almost an RPG, like it feels like a game that almost wants to become an RPG because it’s built such a complicated, vast world that it needs a kind of almost like a complex genre to like nest in that world. Like it almost needs the scale or the depth of an RPG to actually fill the time. And it’s at its weakest where it doesn’t have that depth. So the fact that basically every gunfight in this game feels the same from the first gunfight to the last gunfight in the game. Like you’re basically just necking, chewing tobacco to bring up bullet time, chew everyone in the head. And you do that a thousand times and then the game finishes after like a hundred hours. But I like the kind of social interaction stuff. You know, I like the fact that you kind of have a reputation in this world and people kind of react to you in that way. I like the fancy of sort of going into the shops and interacting with all the like individual items. It almost feels like kind of Wild West Shenmue at times. The fact that you can open cupboards and then eat everyone’s peaches. Big fan of that. It feels quite expansive, even though every time I play it, I always do exactly the same thing. Like I buy the same outfit. I’ll save up enough money to buy a very specific outfit because it basically looks like a character I like in Deadwood. And every time I’ve played it, I’ve played it in exactly the same way. You would be able to take screenshots and you wouldn’t be able to tell that I was playing it at different times. Fantastic mud tech. It’s just the triumph of tiny details in this game and just a scale and a cowboy fantasy that really speaks to me. Yeah. Probably my number one surprise this generation is that I didn’t play this. I was quite bummed out that I bought a PS4 Pro with Red Dead 2 and I was quite bummed out you can play at 60 FPS on a PS4 Pro. You can do that on PC, but I feel like having played G25 on PC, having that higher framerate does make a difference to how you enjoy that world and I know that’s like a wanky PC gamer thing to say, but I don’t know, if you just see the PC one next to the PS4 one, you’re like, that is a world of difference. For sure, and I played this originally on Xbox One X, so it was a nice resolution, but yeah, the 30 frame rate and everything, and then I’ve replayed it since on PC and yeah, it’s beautiful on Xbox for sure, but it was on PC that I was, you know, I couldn’t really believe it. I think it is the best looking game of the generation and I think it’s going to take quite a while for anyone to kind of beat that, but yeah, I don’t know, it’s so boring to say like, I like Rockstar Games, like… Nah, that’s not, it’s, you know, but hating on Rockstar Games, I mean, it’s been conflated with a lot of those crunch reports, but like, people just dunk on Rockstar Games incessantly, even though they’re pretty great for the most part, like, I don’t know, it’s become fashionable to kind of kick them and I don’t entirely agree. Yeah. Woody, why do you think people are kind of like a bit down on them these days? I mean, maybe it’s that, maybe like it’s the like, tales around it. I don’t think that stuff actually impacts people as much as people would like to pretend it does though. I think most people hear that stuff and go, oh, that’s terrible and then just forget about it. I don’t know. I well, you know, if we’re talking about general people, I don’t think they do. Loads of people bought this game. Loads of people bought this game. I imagine loads of people love this game. I just feel that like in particularly in like within games journalism, it’s like perceived as a bit kind of boring or basic to to like rock star now. I don’t know if they’re just sort of people are like, can you get bored of quality? I don’t know. I literally don’t understand it. You know, when it comes to blockbuster games, what is the high art that everyone’s kind of worshipping? They’re all kind of like, you know, they’re all different versions of this sort of game. Like they are they are blockbusters made for big audiences. Yeah, and it’s I feel like people kind of hook on to certain things where you’re like, oh, that’s so needless. You know, the big joke with this was the kind of the horse testicles that shrink in the cold or whatever. And you’re like, yeah, ha ha ha, you know, a waste of someone’s time or, you know, a feature. I don’t think I ever noticed it in all my times playing this game. But at the same time, like, there’s magic when a game does something completely logical that you’ve never seen a game do, or it behaves in a realistic way. So like, when you get kicked into the mud and exactly the bit of you that fell in the mud is what’s muddy, so like, half of your outfit is muddy. When I stand up, I’m like, oh, wow, the bit of me that went in the mud is muddy. That is impressive. And that’s the same level of detail there. And this is a game where, like, hundreds of times things happen where I thought, oh, wow, I can’t believe they did that. That’s amazing. And so for everyone who’s like, horse testicles, you’re like, yeah, but, you know, they’ve literally just checked every box so that everything happens. You know, if someone noticed that, that would have blown their minds. There is a lot of mind blowing stuff in this game. And I, you know, I don’t think they should be embarrassed about throwing a vast amount of money at something to make something this complex and beautiful. Like I’m glad that someone is doing that. Yeah, I mean, like I’m, you know, the I’m definitely sensitive to the crunch discussion. I remember, you know, I read the Kotaku piece, I think it was a Eurogamer piece at the time, and they were both like, very well researched. There’s like, at least a couple of people I follow from Rockstar on Twitter who did disagree with that, the kind of testimony about the working conditions there. So like, I don’t know, I don’t want to, I guess I just don’t want to get too in the weeds on that one talking about the game itself. I’m not dismissing that at all. Like, I’m not saying that’s, you know, you know, 100%. I’m not saying I don’t believe it or I don’t care about it. I’m just saying that what they have achieved is amazing and, you know, divorced of everything else. I find it kind of, I just, you know, I do find it staggering, however it came to be. It is an amazing thing. I agree with you that when I kind of played, I played about 10 hours of this, I did find this at the start very slow. The main reason I have not endured with it is because it is so long and I’m just waiting, I guess, for the right window to play it. Plus I was waiting for it on PC and I’ve got it on PC and I will play it at some point. But I do remember, like, there seemed to be so many layers to the different areas in the game. So the different sort of, like, in-world sort of randomly generated scenarios you come across, like some guys digging something or planting a bomb or, you know, just NPCs you’d come across doing their own thing or going into a town and seeing, there’s like a secret room behind a shop where stuff’s going on and so, like, just amazing handcrafted stuff, like you say. It’s the, like, the gulf between this and Cyberpunk. Like I think what a lot of people are reacting to in Cyberpunk is the fact that the world has no, it has none of that life in it. It’s just people milling about everywhere. And the gap in scale and ambition is vast, you know, and I’m not saying everyone has to meet these standards, but it’s just very telling. Like I played Cyberpunk, the first thing I wanted to do was replay Red Dead, so I started replaying it before Christmas, and, you know, you can watch a guy, like, building a house and he’s, like, legitimately putting up, like, planks and carrying hammers and nails and stuff and you’re like, that’s mad. I mean, it’s mad that they did that, but that’s the difference between being wowed by something like that and wondering why, you know, there’s just a man literally walking up a pavement turning around and walking back down in Cyberpunk or whatever. Yeah. No, I’ve still got a lot of time for Rockstar’s games and, like, I agree with you that kind of world detail is something they’re still the best at. Now in this next version of GTA Online, if they can get bastards to stop calling me all the time in that game, that would be great. But no, Red Dead, I actually didn’t realise that you love Red Dead 2 this much, but that makes me want to play it more, the fact that you have replayed this enormous game. I really like Cowboys. Red Dead Redemption 1 was probably my favourite of the Rockstar games previously. So I just, I don’t know, I never really get on as much. I don’t really care as much about driving, I think, in modern day GTA. So for me, not that I care about horse riding either, but I don’t know. And there’s no mobile phones for people to call you up in Western times. It’s not like every time you go to the post office, there’s like 20 letters from some bloke who wants to play dominoes. Yeah, in GTA Online, it’s like, hey, you, when are you going to pick up this car for me? And say, hey, get your ass to this office now, man. I like, that happens like every five minutes in GTA Online. So yeah, maybe Red Dead would be a relief. So Matthew, my number 10. We’ve got the numbers right this time, yeah? That was your 11. Yeah, good. Destiny 2. So this kind of sums up the whole Destiny experience, which it feels like Destiny was the first proper phenomenon in this generation. Came out in late 2014. People were so up for it, even though I think it was bad when it first came out. People were so like, oh, Destiny is my game now. Like, Destiny is the game I play. I didn’t really get it because it had a bad campaign. And then it’s end game stuff just seemed to be repeating the same stuff you’ve done in the campaign over and over again. And I thought, well, why is this good? And it had a bad multiplayer component. Well, not bad. Just not up to the standard of other multiplayer games. So I bounced off of it. But then The Taken King expansion came out in 2015. Add a really good campaign. Added loads of Nathan Fillion, which improves anything, I find. And yeah, just and gave my character lots of fire hammers to throw at people, which I liked. And yeah, it was a much stronger sort of like bungee campaign. And people were really into the raids in Destiny 1. I only ever did two of the raids in Destiny 1. I’m looking forward to doing Vault of Glass on the added to Destiny 2 later this year. And Destiny 2, I got much more into. We’ve talked about it. It’s mostly motivated by the pandemic. Got to do something, got to throw some hours into a hole to make the pain go away. I’ll be melodramatic there, but you get what I mean. So yeah, it’s a social space game at its core. And I think that the reason it succeeded so well so much early on is that the PS4 has really good like party features. It’s really simple to just jump into a multiplayer game with people. And I think that this just sort of like solidified what Sony had got right about the PS4 in those early days. But yeah, Destiny 2 is just a more complete feeling game. Bit sad about some of the stuff they took out last year, but I get why they did it. Yeah, it’s good. Any thoughts on Destiny, Matthew? Do you ever really get much into it? No, I’ve played the campaign of Destiny 1 and the campaign of Destiny 2, but I never really got into the end gamey thing. I can’t really have any… I can’t commit to any one game like that in this particular job. What I’ve found is that I was always too busy having to play something else and I just couldn’t get on top of it. I’ve never really, you know, I’ve been wowed by my peers who’ve been able to play this for like thousands of hours because I think, man, for thousands of hours you could literally have played every other game and be like the most knowledgeable games critic around. So yeah, I was always put off this one. I like the feel of it, good headshots and everything, but not quite my cup of tea with like the lore of it and all that kind of jazz. You know, Nathan Filly in his side is not really for me. Oh, I don’t know what’s going on in it. I know nothing about the story of Destiny. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about it. And people who I play it with get very excited about lore eggs in the game that they find that tell them bits and pieces about it. I understand like almost none of it. It is just a game where I point at things and they explode like kinder egg style enemies and have loot in them and that makes me feel good inside briefly and then I do it again. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like I talked about Destiny 2 enough though on our Game of the Year podcast. So let’s move on to your number 10, Matthew. My number 10 is Hitman 2. Higher on my list. I’m surprised it’s so low on yours, but low is not really correct. Yeah I’m looking at it now and thinking, was that right? We’ve attached ourselves to Hitman in a way where we kind of have to justify it, I think. So I’m actually very disappointed to hear you put it so low, Matthew. Yeah, especially when you find that wife put higher. Okay, so my number 9 is Marvel’s Spider-Man. On your list? It isn’t. Okay. Why don’t you tell me what you make of it though, because I just rambled about Destiny for a while. I really enjoyed Marvel’s Spider-Man. It took me a while to get into it, but when I first got it, I played for a couple of hours and went, oh yeah, this seems nice, and then didn’t play it. And then actually playing through it properly when I had a bit of time last year, which is code word for when I was made redundant. I really enjoyed the story. I really enjoyed how many villains were packed into it. It felt like the closest thing to the Batman Arkham games in terms of density of characters. With comic book stuff, and it really felt like it had been made by people who were super into the comic books. And I love hitting all the big signature moments. I really liked the combat. I actually find the swinging, while obviously visually impressive and delightful, incredibly boring. Which is my big problem with Spider-Man. For me, this feels like how I felt about Spider-Man 2 back on GameCube. Which is everyone’s like swinging around so good, and you’re like, yeah, for an hour. And then every time you have to swing up and down the city, it’s such a pain, and I read so much stuff where people said, and I hope this isn’t what you’re about to say, apologies if it is, where they’re like, hey, it didn’t matter if I, you know, I never used fast travel because it was such an amazing delight to swing through that city. But I just find it like, mechanically not very interesting. Like I just don’t, I don’t really get it. So traversing that place, I found quite boring, but I love the villain stuff and the combat stuff. And it’s a really, he’s a great Spider-Man, like he’s a really fun version of Spider-Man, like where he is in his life. So I hope that hasn’t poohed what you’re about to say. No, not at all. I agree with you about, I agree with you about the place in his life thing. Like when it starts, I think you, for your first villain, you fight his kingpin and he says something like, we’ve been doing this for like eight years, and you’re like, oh, okay, he’s in his mid twenties and he’s like, you know, getting on with life. And so he arrives with all this history, not every villain in that universe exists yet, but most of them do. And he’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve dealt with this guy a million times. So whatever. And I really like that because that’s what reading a Spider-Man comic is like in 2021. He’s already done everything. I really like the swinging though. This is the only PS4 kind of open world narrative-y exclusive that I put in here. I know that like people really adore God of War and Horizon. Those have not made my list. This I feel like is set apart by the swinging. I always do use the fast travel function because I’m in my 30s. Anyone who says it’s like, oh no, you always want to swing across the city. I don’t really agree. When you get to the last stages of the game, you just want to get on with it. Also when you get towards the end of Spider-Man, people are just shooting at you on rooftops and it’s really annoying. The city is too hostile in the final third of that game. Once you’ve finished it though and it’s cleared out again, it is nice to mop up side content. I thought the side content of this game was very good. I really liked finding the little backpacks. I had different bits of Spider-Man lore in there. You were like, oh, he’s got a real history and the people really give a damn. It’s because they got a couple of real Spider-Man comic book writers to weigh in on the story, which is cool. And it really shows and yeah, I think that yeah, it’s just cool, like a cool, nice superhero game. I put it above Arkham Knight because I enjoy this with almost no caveats. I think that Arkham Knight has better combat. The combat’s a little bit messy in this, but I really like the different kind of abilities you get. There’s no way this game would exist without the Arkham series. It definitely kind of like feels like a midpoint between those and Spider-Man 2. That’s what Insomniac was going for. But no, good on them. For years, everyone wanted a good Spider-Man game. Activision wouldn’t give it to them, so Sony did. And respect. Insomniac did a great job. My guess is, Matthew, that the next one will be built around co-op between Peter and Miles Morales. I think that’ll be the premise of the next one. That’s my guess. I just think that’s a way to differentiate it so you can have them swinging around New York doing fun stuff. I like one of them’s like, I’m going to swing, and the other one’s like, I’m fast travelling so I guess I’ll see you in like five minutes. And they just have to sit there by the mission marker going, oh god, why couldn’t you fast travel you sod. Everyone likes to fast travel anyway because you get these cool little sequences on the underground. There’s so many people. The worst thing in that game is when you’re swinging along and you realise you have to get across Central Park, DEATH. Pure death. Because all of a sudden you just happen to zip from tree to tree and it absolutely blows. That was the best part of that Spider-Man Homecoming film, when he realises he’s in a flat part of New York and he’s like, fuck, I just have to jog now for ages. Spider-Man should petition New York to build a massive spike in the middle of Central Park that he can swing off. Yeah. I never really got bored of swinging though, I’ll make that very clear. I also think there was a nice, I felt a real Sam Raimi movie influence on this game in terms of how it looked. There’s a lot of nice sunsets and I don’t know, it felt like, I would guess that most of the generation of people making this game at Insomniac grew up with Spider-Man 2. Yeah. So yeah, I got that vibe from it too and then they added all the cool costumes as well. Good game, Matthew. Good game. Yeah. What’s your number nine? My number nine is Yakuza 0. Yeah, Yakuza 0. So we talked a bit about the series before, mostly the Like A Dragon game, but this is the one everyone says is like the best starting point for Yakuza for most people. Is that right? That’s partly because it’s a prequel, so it’s set in 1988 and it’s like a good introduction to the characters. I mean, I think you can, I think most of the games do a pretty good job of explaining themselves. You could hop in. I kind of picked this because I just feel like Yakuza was a really great like series of the generation. That team put out a huge amount of games. Bad games, like they make them pretty fast, you know, every couple of years you get one and they’re all of a decent standard. I think this one like stands out a bit more just because it’s so much, it’s just pure fun. Like the fact that it’s a prequel, you’d think that they could, you know, it can go one of two ways. You can get kind of a bit angsty because characters are younger or you can just say like, oh, it’s a big bit of like silly fan service, so you know, the 80s fashion and the 80s settings, quite good fun. If you if you know the map, so Yakuza famously reuses a couple of areas quite a lot. There’s a map called Kamurocho, which is you kind of explore in several of the games and seeing it slightly reskinned for the 80s, so it’s a bit like dirtier, it’s a bit like scuzzier. It’s not as like gleaming as it is in some of its modern iterations is quite fun. And you know, there’s just a great sense of humor to this game. There is in all Yakuza games, but I think here particularly like the side stories and the side quests, which is, you know, probably make up about half the game are just so daft. You know, it’s a series that gets away with like, it’s got so much good writing in it and it rejects so much of like modern gaming practices. Like it’s not all voice acted, you know, there’s not loads of incredibly complex motion capture. You know, a lot of the characters you meet are stuck in these like preposterous animation loops. It feels quite arcade-y, not cheap, but you know, it’s a decision they’ve made to kind of go with that. It’s not going for like ultra realism and that combined with this really funny writing where they manage to turn the most boring quest structures, which you know, go to their place A and punch person B or collect five of this, but just by dressing up with some really weird framing device, I think they actually get away with a huge amount and it’s just, it’s pure pleasure this game. Like it’s so fun, it’s so silly. The actual main story is pretty gray. It’s this big kind of like, um, sort of real estate conspiracy, but it’s quite melodramatic characters and villains, which make it make it good fun. This one famously alternates between two characters in two cities. So you’ve got Kazuma Kiryu in Kamurocho and you’ve got Goro Majima in Sotenbori. Yes, I did write those down in case I forgot them and revealed myself as a big Yakuza noob. And you know, they both have quite different fighting styles, different lives, different attitudes, so the constant switching between them is quite fun. It’s got these two massive mini games which could be standalone games. One about managing a hostess club, the other one about buying up real estate in Kamurocho and sort of beating up other estate agents, which I really loved. It’s just a massive positive fun thing. Not particularly complex, not particularly deep, but just joyful. I love it. Yeah, I think it’s really cool for Yakuza fans that they had been saying for years under kind of like PS3 days that this series is amazing, and that it took this generation for it to achieve some level of like greater success. Like I wouldn’t say mainstream success, but like certainly, you know, more sort of persistent, wider success. And yeah, I’ve played about 10 hours of this. I do really like it. I feel like if I could take a year’s back or I might get through all the Yakuza games. They just added all of them to Game Pass, which I’m quite tempted by, because I’ve only played three or four of them, I think, so you know, I do fancy going back and getting through a lot of it. That’ll probably be quite good for the sort of like growth of its audience as well, that. I bet it’s leading to a heightened interest in the series. So yeah, good day, really. What I think is funny about this is when they first bought Yakuza over, like they didn’t westernize it, because you can only westernize it a certain amount, but like the amount of focus that went into like this big western voice cast, because you remember it had Lex Luther from Smallville in it and other people of that kind of ilk, and that felt like the big push when it back on PS2, where now like I think there’s such a western sort of Japanophile appetite that it really leans into that stuff, and now actually the reason to release it is just because people are like mad for the setting, in a similar way to Persona I guess. They are beautifully localized as well, I can’t remember his name, he heads the localization team. They’re so funny, the way they translate some quite region specific stuff for everyone else I think is brilliantly done. I’ve got a great story about Toshihiro Nogoshi that I’ll tell on a later podcast actually, the one time I’ve met him. That’s a good story, I’ll tell that sometime. But yeah, I did think that the original Yakuza on PS2 wasn’t great. I think that the later HD ones really improved the experience of walking around Kamurocho. So I think there is a difference in quality between them. But yeah, this whole kind of like HD age of them, I like that you can just play them all now. There are so many of them to get through. And again, like I think Persona is an apt example, because I think people do treat this a bit like an anime as well. Yeah, and certainly in terms of how it’s discussed on social media. So yeah, good choice, Matthew. I’m glad you put that in there actually, because yeah, it can retain cred with that audience. Yeah, for sure. Okay, good. So my number eight, Matthew, is Nier Automata. Oh, this didn’t make my list. Yeah. So did you, where did you get to with this one? I did a playthrough and a half and that second playthrough was too much like the first playthrough. And so I just couldn’t be bothered. There’s no doubt there’s a lot of repetition in this game, you will go to the same three or four areas to sort of fair, groundy sounding area, the kind of castle in that forest and then like the sort of like gray skyscrapers, you’ll go there to those places over and over again in Nier Automata. You are, in this game, like an android who is sent to earth to essentially clear the earth for humanity to eventually return, it’s loads of robots running amok on there. I believe that’s linked to the original Nier’s story, which they’re re-releasing the original Nier this year as Nier Replicant with a big number at the end, I don’t remember what that’s called. But yeah, Nier Automata, I didn’t think I’d love this game. We talked about this before, I didn’t really get into the first Nier so I was really surprised by how much I loved this. Helped so much, like the real sugaring of the pill, as we also discussed, was that Platinum made the combat for this game, well they made this game. And so that improves the feel of it, generally. That’s not to say it’s as good a combat game as Bayonetta, I don’t think it is. I don’t think it’s trying to be either. And yeah, it’s a really mournful, great sci-fi game, there’s some really lovely bits of storytelling in this, and lots of sad moments. It’s very insightful, and it’s a lot deeper than you think it’s going to be on that first playthrough. It has a lot going on thematically, and just some really depressing twists. But yeah, a really memorable game, really fantastic soundtrack, I really loved roaming around this world. I went from not really getting it to just adoring it, and while I agree with you that it takes quite a lot of stamina to get through each of those different playthroughs, I think the complete story it tells is worth it. Anything else to add, Matthew? No, I will finish it one day. It’s a big black mark against my cool game journal cred for not having properly played this. Yeah, which is very important to your identity. So what’s your number 8? My number 8 is Ori and the Blind Forest. Yep, big 2D platformer guy Matt Castle, apparently. Yeah, well, this is so I love Metroidvanias and this generation was really, really good for Metroidvanias, which are, of course, 2D exploration platforming games tend to have you find cool powers, you get to backtrack. I’m sure everyone who listens to this knows what Metroidvania is, but whatever, just in case. There were loads of great games in the genre of this generation. Hollow Knight, Bloodstained, Blasphemous which I really loved, Steamworld Dig 2, also great. Many other indie variations. Ori and the Blind Forest is my favourite. Because it looks like a big living moving cartoon, just one of the most beautifully animated games ever. It’s almost like the opposite of inside, in that it’s just life everywhere. Life and movement and lush greenery and water and it’s a really natural, beautiful world. It’s quite weird that this game is so beautiful in the eye. I genuinely think this would appeal to most people visually, because it’s so beautiful. But then it’s actually like, surprisingly rock hard. Nowhere near as hard as Hollow Knight, but it’s not a pushover by any means. I think it’s got really fun creative powers. It did the rarest of things, which introduced a power which I simply hadn’t seen in a 2D platformer before. Maybe this has been done and I’m just ignorant and haven’t seen it before, but Ori’s got this power where they can launch off any projectile in the world. So it can double jump and then if someone launches a fireball at it, it can catapult itself off that. They get amazing mileage out of this very satisfying power where you’re basically chaining between projectiles to fly around otherwise deadly mazes. It’s got some really finger twisting platforming and it really like difficult stuff, but brilliantly done. I loved searching for backtracking, searching for clues in this world. It’s the reason I’ve gone for Blind Forest over Will of the Wisps, the sequel, which is like probably even more beautiful and more ambitious in terms of scale. But I actually found it became a bit more linear. It almost felt a bit more like a Zelda game with like a hub world and then individual dungeons, rather than a big kind of big loop of kind of metroid platforming. It’s also got Blind Forest has got this really interesting save system where you basically sacrifice your sort of energy, which is used for firing projectiles in combat. But you have to sacrifice some of that energy to like make a save point, like manual save points. So you have to save anywhere and that’s where I think some of the difficulty comes from for a lot of people because they just forget to do it and then they die and then they’re sent back like miles. But I really like this sort of risk reward of like, do I put a save point in the middle of this nightmarish platforming section, like just to save myself or should I just take another run at it and try and get here with more health? And it was an interesting concern. Beautiful soundtrack too. Just again, like similar to the Nintendo games actually on O&M. On official Xbox, I finally felt like this is like an enviable first party exclusive. Like this was the only game I think we reviewed on official Xbox where people from like PlayStation magazines were watching it on the TV and going like, oh wow, that looks amazing. Where most people, you know, and that shouldn’t factor into it, but that’s quite a nice feeling of like, yeah, we’re writing about the cool thing for once. Yeah, so that, I don’t know, that carries like a weird amount of weight. No, I get it. That’s fair enough. I played like maybe like a couple of hours of it and I did like it and did think it looked beautiful. And I remember when they showed, I was at the E3 conference where they revealed the newer one and people did go like crazy for it. There was a huge audience for it and I don’t think, I think it just quietly accumulated a big crowd without me realising it. Probably a good way to get a game to play on Switch as well. Yeah, yeah, they did some really nice Switch ports. Yeah, yeah, it’s just like you said, quietly picking up fans in the background. I mean, it’s so well made and I know that like the big Metroidvania story of this generation was Hollow Knight, but that just game just never ever really clicked with me. You know, I’ll always champion this over it. I think it’s a more, much more interesting platformer. The combat’s not very good in Ori, but you know, whatever. Yeah, I don’t really have much close ties with Metroidvanias, but like I now own about 12 of them. Yeah, I’m a big fan. I just find it a very, just very, very compelling. Like the completionist in me, I like ticking off maps and filling in maps and things. It just, I don’t know, speaks to me. Yeah, like you say, it really is one of the quiet generation all stories. It was just the sort of revival of that genre in the indie space. Like it feels like 2D platformers, trad 2D platformers sort of faded away fairly fast in the kind of indie movement, but this is the genre that stuck. Yeah, good stuff. So, Matthew, my number seven is Alien Isolation. On your list? No? No, it wasn’t. I think last week, yeah, this was my game I’m sort of ashamed I didn’t play more of because I was just too scared of it. Yeah, so made by Creative Assembly. It was released about a year after Aliens Colonial Marines, which was a notorious disaster of a first-person shooter by Gearbox, bad in so many ways. And yeah, I kind of I feel bad for CA that they couldn’t go first with this because I think it would have made a big difference to its perception. There are a couple of reviews that I think did some damage to Alien Isolation that I don’t think really got the game, not to point fingers, but like, you know, sometimes people click with these games, sometimes they don’t. These things are subjective, you know, and Alien Isolation takes some big risks. It’s a game where you’re pursued by this, you know, incredibly clever sort of AI monster through these big sort of like space environments. And yeah, the way it behaves means that you can’t always predict exactly what it’s going to do. In some places, there’s clearly a guided hand at work, so you can kind of progress. But at other times, it can just feel like the thing is just sort of psychic and finds where you are. So I get why people can be annoyed with it. Nonetheless, as an atmospheric piece, as a world to explore, in terms of how long this game is, it’s like weirdly long for what it is. But I think they make it work because they do every conceivable thing you could do with this creature to make it interesting, they do, in terms of putting you in wide open spaces and kind of tight corridors in different parts of this massive spaceship. Yeah, so I really love it. I think it’s the best horror game of the generation. PT was a bit splashier, probably, but yeah, I just think if you love the original Alien movie, how can you not love this? To my mind, it’s probably the most successful, in terms of licensed games, the most successful recreation of the vibe of a film. Yeah, it really is. Just the way it looks and sounds, the very tactile world that you’re in. When you save, you use a punch card and pull down a lever and stuff like that. It’s not a high tech world. It’s built with all the restrictions of Alien, as it was made in 1979. That has a huge positive effect on the game. Just a real kind of love for that source material. Like I said, I can’t believe it. This is so long, this game. It’s like over 20 hours long. I was convinced before it came out that it was going to be like six hours long, because you think, well, how many things can you do with this Alien? I went to a GDC preview event for it in 2014, and the guy who programmed it was there, and showed us a sort of tree of its behaviors, like, oh, and if it detects this, then it can do one of these three things. If it does this, it can do this, and it explained how it worked. It really is an amazing thing to behold. Sometimes it’s like an ally, sometimes you can attract it to take out enemies for you. Sometimes it’s such a pain in the arse, it’s a puzzle to figure out how exactly I’m going to get past this, because he always appears out of this vent when I walk over here. Brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. Not the only great thing about this game either, the working Joe enemies in this game, the androids who attack you and have posh British voices, they’re basically like nasty C-3PO’s. They’re amazing too. There’s a particularly memorable moment in this game where you’re in a showroom full of them, they’re all stood there, static, and you know at some point they’re all going to attack you at once, but you don’t know when, and you’re waiting for that moment. That’s probably my favourite bit of this game. Well done C8, this is just phenomenal. I don’t know what they would have done for a sequel if they got to make one, but I still would have liked to see what they could do. Any more thoughts on it? No, just that I hope I can one day play through it and not shit my pants. Ha, well we’re all hoping for that moment. Cool, what’s your number 7 then Matthew? My number 7 is Forza Horizon 4. I was wondering when this would appear on your list. Yeah, I’m not a racing game guy at all, like I’m really not into driving, I have a very bad history with cars, failed my driving test an obscene number of times before passing and basically haven’t driven since, and I find I’m not interested in cars at all, like the you know different makes, the models, you know I’m not, when a sports car goes by I’m not like, ooh sexy, I just don’t give a shit. But what I love about the Forza Horizon series, and again it’s a bit like the Yakuza thing, I think it’s just a really great success story this generation, is I think they bust open the racing game in a way that like anyone can enjoy, I think it’s a really scalable experience, from like absolute kind of arcade immediacy to like slightly more, you know, nuanced sort of like sim related stuff. It never goes as full on as say Forza Motorsport, which is obviously the sim version, but it feels like it scales difficulty wise, like there’s all kinds of assists which are just brilliantly implemented, you know, the whole kind of racing line is really great and enables idiots like me to play. I love the fact that it’s racing in an open world, so the big thing I don’t like about racing games is that they’re traditionally stuck to racetracks, which are visually the most boring things in the world, because they’re just stretches of tarmac with barriers at the side. And I know some interesting stuff can happen behind those barriers, but just driving around tarmac, no thank you, where here it’s like, you know, in this one, because it’s set in Britain, you’re like, bouncing across fields and driving off huge ramps on hills, or you’re tearing around Edinburgh or driving through these sort of like, you know, muddy kind of rallying in the Cotswolds and it just it feels like a really it feels quite like dumb in a good way in that it’s just like, you know, imagine a country was given over to just like motorheads to kind of tear up. It’s a really fun fantasy and, you know, it’s a game that’s constantly throwing prizes at you and new cars and shinier trinkets, it really rewards you just feels very fun. You know, that it’s, it’s built around this idea of this Forza Horizon Festival, which is like this big musical, big music festival, but it’s a Glastonbury that it sits somewhere on the map and, you know, everyone’s there and you’re having a good time and you drive up and everyone’s, you know, excited to see you in your shiny car and all this, but it has got this big fun like party atmosphere to it. Yeah, just, I don’t know, it’s like everything that’s fun about cars, which is they go fast and that’s basically it. Combined with just a really exciting world. None of the tedious stuff, if you don’t want to engage with it, it’s there if you do. You know, I was humming and aahing about 3 versus 4, because 3 is set in Australia and it is like absolutely beautiful and it felt like that’s when, 1 and 2 are great, but 3 felt like a big step up where it really kind of like the slotted together really well. But I just like the, I like the cross country stuff in 4 a lot in the UK. There’s some great stuff in Scotland where you’re like, you race this huge like hovercraft in this like sort of show stopper event and you race this big hovercraft across, you know, sort of the mountains or valleys around Edinburgh and when you see that environment you are like, oh yeah, this is the right team to make Fable because it just looks amazing. It looks like a big fantasy. It looks like you’re driving a car through Lord of the Rings, you know. Yeah, I love, I love this game. I love this studio. I think they’re fantastic. I cannot wait for whatever they do with Forza Horizon 5. You know, I’m really intrigued to see what location they go to next. Just a really great thing. Yeah, I am. It feels like this is the only racing game of this generation that became a sort of crossover hit in a kind of mainstream way. Would you say that’s true? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, like I say, I just think it speaks to everyone. It’s not dry and boring. I think other games are so bogged down with like specifics, which while impressive on a tech level, you know, I think both Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, you know, they’re so kind of obsessed with this idea of like, realism and accuracy. And there’s enough of that in Horizon, you know, it’s not like it’s like completely preposterous but I just find, I don’t find those, I don’t find Sims at all fun to interact with. But this is, I just think this will speak to you regardless of what you think about the genre and to bust the genre open like that, that’s pretty impressive. I mean, you know, that’s kind of the dream with a lot, you know, there’s plenty of genres which still feel closed off to me but this is the series that opened racing up so. Yeah, historically, like the only kind of racing games I’ve ever really enjoyed were like the Burnout series, like Motor Storm on PS3 and then like the Need for Speed games made by Criterion, like I just wanted and it feels like it kind of fits that lineage a bit, you know. Yeah, maybe this this scratches some of some of that itch. I mean, it’s not quite as wild and arcade silly as like Burnout or whatever but it is, you know, it’s closer to that. You know, you can drive through like walls and the walls explode and you don’t slow down and things like that, so. Okay, yeah, great stuff. Great choice. So my number six, Matthew, is Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain. That’s higher on mine. Nice. In which case, what’s your number six? My number six is God of War. Ah, wow. That is a lot higher than I was expecting. How come this appealed to you? Do you just like the way that Kratos shouts boy? Yeah, I do like that. This was just like the first party Sony game that really clicked for me. A lot of them, it felt like I had loads of people telling me that every game that came out was a 10 out of 10, and a lot of them weren’t for me. But this one, hilariously, this is the one I thought was going to be the biggest bust when they first announced it because I thought, oh, they’re taking this quite silly series, which I didn’t, I quite liked in the past. I’m not a big God of War fan, but they’re taking this quite silly thing and they’re basically naughty dogging it up, which is to, you know, take something and then like remove all the fun from it and make it kind of like quite serious and about sad dads. I thought they were basically, you know, like they had this form. It felt like Sony had this formula, which is like slightly dour heroes. And this looked like that. But I thought that initial demo was terrible. Like when they first announced this, I thought, oh, God, how’s that possibly going to work in third person? But for me, it’s actually like the over the shoulder camera thing. But for me, it felt like just the best, like one of the best genre shifts since like Resident Evil 4, where taking something and completely just putting on his head and changing the vibe and feel of it just really, really worked, particularly for like the very cinematic tale they were going to tell, you know, it really really put you in the action. I thought it allowed, you know, I love the ludicrous scale of God of War and actually being there over Kratos’ shoulder and just looking up at some of the absurd things that happen in this game. I thought that played to its strengths really, really well. I love the chunky meaty combat with, you know, chucking that axe around. Very, very satisfying. I think the first boss fight against, I can’t even remember his name now. I want to say Balder. The kind of bad… he’s sort of unknown to you. The sort of baddie, the big baddie in the game. You fight several times, but you fight him around your house and I still think it’s the most incredible interactive cinematic fight. He like punches you through a mountain and stuff. It just looks amazing. Um, yeah, visually I was just so, so wowed by this and like what they did with the, you know, perspective of it. I think it’s a game where they… it feels like they made, like, felt… everything feels of a quality of the main story, like there’s some really good side mission stuff which almost feels like they just took chunks of the main story and then called it a side quest so that by the end of the game you’re like, wow, even the side quests were amazing. Like they felt like unmissable, big, expensive adventures. Um, you know, it’s a game where I felt like I had to see everything because everything was just so well done. Not big fan of the ending. As we mentioned last week, I think it does the wrong thing of going, oh, I’m going to be all subtle at the ending, where you want the ending to be the most extreme thing you’ve ever seen. And actually it’s just a bit like, have a sad little moment at the top of a mountain, which is a bad trend. Um, but, yeah, I should be fighting, I should be fighting Zeus in space. Yeah, I mean, literally, like, I want to get to the top of the mountain and then the mountain turns into like a golem and I have to fight a mountain. That’s, that’s how that game should end rather than some people going to get enclosure. Snore. You know. Yeah, I’m surprised as you, but I thought in terms of like big, AAA, you know, wham-bam blockbuster making, I thought this was just absolutely magic. Really, really hit the spot. Yeah, by no means am I snooty about this game. Or these exclusives generally, I should say. Like, I do think that it’s really cool they made, they committed to making these big expensive single-player games that were quite long and made the most of the hardware. And this really did. This is one of the few PS4 games that let you play at higher frame rates, which is very exciting to me. And it’s like future-proofed it quite well for PS5. So yeah, I did play about 10 hours of this. I got to the end of that elf realm, which went on for quite a long time. And I agree with you that the camera perspective in this actually does make everything feel a lot more cinematic. And the spectacle of it was great. I don’t really know why I stopped playing it, to be honest. It was good. I think it does dip around that weird elf realm. That’s probably my least favorite stretch of the game. It’s a bit of an odd one, that. Yeah, it goes on for a long, long time, that. It doesn’t end. It’s like missing one truly spectacular beat in that, I think. It does have that cool bit where you disappear and you come back and you realize that your son’s been left there for a long, long time. That’s a very good moment, I think. Spoiler alert, I guess. But most people have probably played it by now, who want to play it, I would imagine. If not, it comes free with PS5, if you’ve got PS+, which is quite cool. But yeah, I’m glad that’s on there. I will definitely play it at some point. Yeah, I’m pleased to see one of those PS4 exclusives manage to crack your list, Matthew. Yeah, well, we’ve yet to cover Uncharted 4 as well. Oh, that’s true. Yes. Cool. Right. So, my number 6, is that where we’re at? Well, your number 5. What was your number 6? Oh, no, my number 6 was Metal Gear Solid. Sorry, that’s higher on your list. Going well. That’s what happens when you do 30 games. It’s too many. And also, while my dad is messaging me on Facebook, which is confusing me on my iPad that I’m looking at, which is why I can no longer count. Is he saying, boy? Yeah, he’s always addressed me that way. It’s weird. My number five is Uncharted 4. God, that was a good opportunity for a segue that I completely fucked. Amazing. So yeah, Uncharted 4, the highest of the PlayStation exclusives on my list, a bit higher than you had it on your list, Matthew. I think this, it feels weird putting it this high. Really, like, this is like the perfect version of what you see in that Uncharted trilogy on PS3, a kind of more contemporary version of that cinematic adventure, less linear than previous entries, it’s got a couple of like open-worldy bits. They’re not massively open-worldy, but they’re enough to change the pace of the game a little bit. They let you approach set pieces and stealth. It’s not a very good stealth game. It’s very simple. You just stay out of people’s vision cones and choke them out and hope that you don’t get caught, and most of the time you do, and most of the time it ends in a firefight, at least it did in my playthrough. But I really loved it, and I think I did feel like Nathan Drake’s story was told by the end of Uncharted 3, and what I think that the brother stuff they bring into this with Sam doesn’t like always work. I think he’s a kind of like mixed sort of end result as a character. I did realize that I’m well up actually for like the kind of one more, one last job, Nathan Drake’s story, and the way they kind of portray Elena in this is very well done as well. That could easily have gone like quite wrong, but the way they kind of bring her back into it, the way the game kind of ignores all the stuff you learn about Sully in Uncharted 3, pretends it doesn’t really happen. It worked really well and the choices of locations are amazing, like these mountainous canyon area where you’re looking for treasure. You kind of get to be Indiana Jones for a while going into all of these different caves and finding cool stuff, but they’re kind of like woven into the open world, like a big kind of islands that you find later. Oh, I love that island. Oh, yeah, when you’re going around in a boat with your brother and you can just take your time to find these bits and pieces that are dotted around the map. That was a wonderful little slice of open world design. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah. What’s your handle on Uncharted 4, Matthew? Yeah, I do. I love Naughty Dog. Last Generation, you know, I think they’re absolutely masters of this kind of like, you know, cinematic third person shooter adventure. I just, I much prefer Uncharted to The Last of Us. I just prefer that they’re putting their powers to like fun and like, you know, weirdly Uncharted 4 is kind of, it does feel post Last of Us in that it’s a bit more like, on the surface, it feels like it’s going to be a bit more muted. I think it’s got the big silly highlights that it doesn’t like, you know, will come crashing down. But I think it, it sort of feels a bit more, maybe a bit more sort of psychologically deep than the previous Uncharted did. You know, he’s a bit more of a muted character. There’s a bit more sort of analysis of Nathan Drake, the character, which feels like it came from the team that made The Last of Us. But despite their attempts to make it boring, it’s just a game where adventure comes bubbling through to the surface. I love all the big set pieces in this. I love the James Bondy Mission Impossible kind of party that you sneak into or sneak around near the start. That bit where you go to the island is absolutely amazing. The climbing the clock tower and then the clock tower collapse. That absolutely absurd chase sequence afterwards where you’re getting dragged by that rope in the mud. I mean, there’s so much stuff in these games. I think, how the hell did that… There’s so much background which exists for like two seconds in this game for you to drive past in a set piece. And there’s so much detail and attention in everything. I mean, god, it’s an uncanny thing, really. I’ve never really bought into it much as an actual action game. I’ve never been wild about uncharted shooting. I think this has got a few little bits which make it a bit more lively. I like the sort of verticality of it. I like there’s a big emphasis on jumping off higher ground and then punching people in the face when you land on them, which is very satisfying. Yeah, the grappling hook, that added a lot to this one. Yeah, I just think he makes more sense as a bit of a sort of scrambling desperation to all the fights, which feels a bit truer to like Nathan Drake and Indiana Jones. I still don’t think the… I think it’s a real shame they don’t really know how to end these games. I think the endings to every Uncharted is always the worst bit. Like this one, you have that quite crap sword fight in a ship, which… Like boss… They feel like they need to have a boss fight at the end for some reason, which I’ve never quite understood. And of course, it ends with the smugest ten minutes of video games ever, like an emotional kind of epilogue, which I… You know. They shouldn’t do. Because they do it earlier in the game, and it’s fine. I don’t mind it earlier in the game, because it’s very charming, and like, they play one of the worst platformers of all time, and you know. It’s a good story beat, because the two of them can play Crash Bandicoot, but still like, be happy together. Shows like, how powerful their relationship is, because the souring influence of Crash doesn’t derail it. So that’s nice. That’s actually a very well-observed character beat. Powerful metaphor, you think? But the end, you know, the set, whether it’s set up for like a potential direction of the series or whatever. Nah, it’s not. It’s just, I found it very like a snore. It should end with you like fighting God in a mudslide on the side of a mountain. Well, I actually quite like that epilogue, even though it’s got that real whiff of, oh, a lot of us are dads now. And like, it’s kind of like, it’s like when people put like too many photos of their kids on Facebook. I’m like, yep, you know, I know, I know you’re a dad. Yeah, well done. Congratulations. I’m fine, like, but I was fine with it here. I thought the tone, the tonal shift works. It’s not very long. I like the idea that you are this, you know, daughter picking through the kind of legend of your parents that you didn’t know about. I thought that was nicely done. What should happen is she’s in that house and she realizes the house has been built on quicksand. The house starts sinking and you have to escape from the house and like all the junk from the previous adventures gets like pulled into the quicksand. Just a big action set piece. It’s not the end of a hundred years of solitude, Matthew. Jesus. Like the end of the Drake lineage, completely destroyed. Yeah, so, yeah, I quite like that. But I think to your point about detail, this game has like the best gravel in any game. Like the collapsing slate in that Scotland section. You could just shoot it. Why is it perfectly simulated? That must have taken ages to do. The one that always gets me is the little bit where you drive around in the jeep, on the kind of planes or where it is. And like it’s got like those sort of slightly springy kind of rods that come out of jeeps. What are they for? Are they like, is that like a radio antenna? I don’t know. Whenever you stop, it like physically wobbles in the right direction. And like the oil cans in the back of the jeep kind of shift around based on how you’re driving. You’re like, that’s mad that they did that. Isn’t this the game that like invented? I’m pretty sure this is like the first one that did the thing of characters are talking. Then you go off and do something else. And then they’re like, all right, I’ll get back to you. And then you get back in the car and they’re like, where was I? Oh, yes, it’s this, which now every game does. But I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’d seen that done. I think GTA 5 might have done it first. But I might be wrong about that. But that’s a trend of this generation. People who are abnormally good at holding on to anecdotes. No one does that in real life. Imagine you’re telling a story to someone, then they leave you and have a gunfight and you come back and you’re like, all right, do you mind if I finish my story now? No one talks like that. Anyway, it was 1986 and I was strangling this guy. Yeah, you’re like, I’ve just had a gunfight. I can’t remember the beginning of the anecdote. Don’t talk to me right now, I’ve killed someone. My last point on Uncharted 4 is that like, The Last of Us influence, I think that you mentioned is very true. I think there’s a sense that like in this game, everything becomes just a bit more real. And I think that kind of mirrors the fact that the game obviously looks way more realistic than the PS3 ones did. Like they look almost like real people. It’s a beautiful looking game. And yeah, the whole kind of like vibe of it is that, oh, this is like a bit too close to real life now for us to keep doing this. And yeah, I like that about it. I also like how the final boss recounts everything that you’ve done in the previous games with like exasperation. Like how the fuck are you the guy who did this, this and this? And you know, you have seen all those adventures play out. And I did like that even though that sword fight is bad. So yeah. He said, if you thought playing Crash Bandicoot was bad, wait until I kill you with this cutlass. Well, I hope that The Last of Us Part 3 has a part where you play Jack 2 Renegade for like four hours. Jack X. Yeah. I’m sure people have made that joke before. But yeah. What’s your number five, Matthew? Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain. Nice. Pretty close together then. That’s probably the one where we’re closest in our list. Yeah. A phenomenal game. Yeah. Brilliant. I think technically, like as a stealth experience, the best game Kojima ever made. I think that might be different from what the best Metal Gear game is because this, I don’t think ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of people in terms of the story. I don’t really care as much about that. Well, it turned out I didn’t care as much about that as I thought I did because I was absolutely wowed by this. Just a brilliant stealth sandbox like nothing else. I mean, you know, people call Hitman a stealth sandbox, but this is like the freedom of having stealth encounters in an open world and being able to approach enemy compounds from any direction. The whole kind of having to recon them beforehand to kind of get a feel of what the challenge is going to be and how wrong they can go. I thought this was like next level stealth from Kojima. Yeah, I completely agree with you. You make a good point there. Everyone would probably say that Metal Gear Solid 3 is the best straight kind of Metal Gear game if you’re after that story stuff or perhaps the first Metal Gear Solid, which is still very playable. But yeah, I agree with you. This is just experimenting with the enemies with different kind of tools. The fact that you can still unlock tools like tens of hours into it that you hadn’t had before, like the Hand of Jehuty from Soda the Ender 2, which lets you like pull guys towards you and then knock them out. That’s really cool. Yeah, like the different, you know, like you get your dog and your mech thing and your, you know, your horse. Like I like the different, how your, your kind of like companions are like different tools you can use in the game. I really like having Quiet as the sniper. That was always really good. Yeah, the fact that, yeah, just like there is like nothing more fun in that game than like just pointing at an enemy and just saying quiet and then she just snipes. It takes like a headshot straight away. It’s like just calling in your helicopter and it’s playing like Rider the Valkyries and everyone’s like, what? Everyone’s just distracted by it. Yeah, the fact that you could find all those different tapes around the environment. There’s some really fun ones out there. I like that there’s a side note. I like there’s a PT tent in Metal Gear Solid V. I don’t know if you’ve ever found that, but there’s a tent that has PT radio noises that play in there. I like that as an Easter egg. What happens if you say Jareth in that tent? I’m not sure, actually. That’s something that I can go and test out after this. It has the classic Kojima’s very childish sense of humor of making your horse do a poo. Which cars can skid on? Yep, amazing. I just agree with you. It took Metal Gear to its immersive sim-y heights. It was more like an immersive sim than those previous games, which had all dabbled in it, but were quite simple. It felt very complex here, the way levels were laid out and the different ways you could plant traps and interrupt enemy behavior. It made some of the backlash to it a bit baffling to me, because some people were like, this game is terrible, the story doesn’t conclude properly. What were you playing in this series? It just made me think, wow, I really am playing this series for different reasons. I just didn’t care at all. That didn’t compute for me. I didn’t get why people were even invested in the story. It felt so clearly like it was trying to be something else. It was a different age of Metal Gear game. I’m just sad that the kind of lineage of it seems to have ended here. There’s a Metal Gear Survive, which I know Rich Stanton has some strong thoughts and that it’s not as bad as everyone says it is. But the fact that, like, is there a Metal Gear Solid 6? Is anyone making it? Who knows? But it shouldn’t be a question, really. This one sold really well. It was critically acclaimed. Just fucking make a new one, you know? People want to see what else you can do with those stealth systems. Yeah. No, I really loved it. And if people had the, like, lore-filled, like, Easter egg-filled game, and it was called Metal Gear Solid 4, it was bad. So, like, why do you want another one, you know? Good stuff. So, Matthew, we are up to my number four, is that right? Yeah. Hitman 2. That’s where I’ve got Hitman 2. Oh, I feel bad. I feel like a traitor to Agent 47 for putting it so low. No, I think it’s fine. Like, it’s a complicated one to do because we’ve chosen to do individual games here rather than, like, entire series, and what we’re really doing here is putting the whole trilogy in, right? Like, it’s, you know, a Trojan horse for that. So this is the, as we discussed on the Hitman podcast, Hitman 2 is the most complete package of a Hitman game in terms of, like, the levels are just sprawling. It had this multiplayer mode. It had the kind of sniper stuff in it. It had DLC like it, you know, it had Warner Brothers as publisher and that seemed to have some kind of an impact on the end result. Is that fair to say? Yeah, definitely, for sure. In a way that felt… you feel the absence of that stuff in 3, I think. Yeah, and it’s made up for, I think, by the fact that 3 lets you boot in these levels from 1 and 2. So it feels like such a complete package anyway. But I agree with you. Having never played the multiplayer stuff, that I suspect I would have quite enjoyed. I played it at a preview event, but never… Yeah, it was okay. Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting idea. But yeah, so how come you put 2 here and not 3, Matthew? I just think that… I just think there’s a bit more going on to the levels in 2. I think 3 is fantastic and I absolutely… You know, there’s some all-timer levels in it. But I think the fact that the theme of Hitman 2 is almost like size and silliness. You know, the levels generally are huge and they’re packed with just really fun stuff to do. Like, I can replay a Hitman 2 level and there’s a lot more to find and discover than there is in Hitman 3, which is slightly… I’d say Hitman 3’s vibe is kind of quality over quantity. That isn’t to say Hitman 2 is like, duff at all. I think the best bits of Hitman 2 stand out with the best bits of Hitman 3 for sure, but there’s just a bit more going on to the levels. I like the kind of silly vibe of it a bit more. When you factor in the DLC as well, that adds to absolutely killer levels. I love The Bank in New York. I love Haven Island. They are absolutely stonking good levels. Mechanically, it’s so much of a muchness. In fact, now the way I’ll play Hitman 2 is in Hitman 3, where everything’s brought in line with that, technically. So, you know, it’s even harder to kind of divorce the packages. But, you know, just for the sake of picking one game, I thought this was like just a huge burst of fun. And since we did our podcast, I’ve become a big convert to the powers of Mumbai. So, yeah. What kind of clinched it for you with Mumbai? I think what I didn’t really realize was actually how many ways there are of like bringing the targets together in different combinations. Like there are a few ways. That storyline with the sniper is brilliant. Like the rival assassin that you kind of trick into doing the hits for you is just stonkingly good. And it is just as a location, it is so dense to explore. It’s just a brilliant place. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, if you want to hear more about Hitman, obviously we did a whole podcast on it, it’s two hours long. It’s nice that Hitman Twitter is a thing that’s like popped up since we did that podcast, like not because of us. Yeah, we created it. I feel like we were early adopters of Hitman trilogy being good, but not like I give myself any credit for its success, but it’s nice that people are playing it. So Matthew, what’s your number four? My number four is Dishonored 2. That’s my number three, so that’s perfect. Fantastic. I think this was just probably my favorite gaming universe this generation. Like just as a world to step into, it’s so fully formed and the way that you discover it free play, I think is just brilliantly done. I mean, that’s like Arkane’s thing to a T is the immersive sim. And like discovering a feeling and a history of a place by being in it is really exciting. Paired with the fact you just have some of the most playful powers and some of the most playful level twists ever. I mean, there’s not loads of levels in Dishonored 2, but I don’t think there’s a dud amongst them. And a few of them are probably like the best like virtual spaces of all time. Like the mansion that’s stuck in two time zones. Absolute killer. The mechanical mansion, you know, a big kind of clockwork mansion, which is all sort of sort of unfolds and rebuilds itself in insane ways. That’s crazy. I love the level where you have to assassinate and there’s like a body double in the level and you have to work out which person you’re actually after. This is just every memory I have of this game is good. Yeah, like that was something I noticed when looking through the kind of like wikis on Dishonored 2. It has fewer levels than I remember, but I remember every single one. And that’s key. Yeah, so I think that the I’ve written down some of the same things here, a crack in the slab, which is the different timeframes level that has like a kind of amazing cause and effect mechanics. Don’t really know how they did that. Just a kind of magic. Same applies to the clockwork mansion. The first time you see all of that move, it’s just unbelievable. And yeah, so those are the splashier levels, but also the Royal Conservatory is a level I really like. Great, yeah. Has a massive street leading out to it with like someone’s bedroom you can explore on the way in. Once you’re in there, it’s just, you know, this sort of prop-laden, like amazing sprawling like location really has loads of different floors, loads of different ways you can play that one. I believe they brought it back for the Death of the Outsider expansion, which I’ve not played actually. Is that good? You played that? Yeah, yeah, it is good. Like, I’m not sure that it looks as fun as either the characters in Dishonored 2. I think that’s the only limit on it. But as a burst, you know, an extra chunk of that game, it’s still pretty amazing. Yeah, also the level where you are going into that kind of like island sort of sanitarium kind of place, like hospital sort of place. That’s really well done and like quite sad what can happen with the target in that one. But also kind of amazing that you can do it in a non-lethal way. Yeah, so I really love Dishonored 2. The only problem I have with Dishonored is that I find the stealth a bit harder to pass than I do in other immersive sims and stealth games. Just because the levels are so like are laid out to be quite vertical, and I can never quite entirely understand why I’m caught or exactly how to like circumnavigate enemies in certain levels where they’re just they’re just stacked with people. You ever had that problem or is that just me? I don’t know. Yeah, I saw I saw annoying me and I think just by playing so strictly stealthily through it, I kind of got my head around most of it. But I mean, it’s a game I I quick load and save an obscene amount. So yeah, but I love the change of settings in this one as well from Dunwall to Kanaka. Just really nice kind of Mediterranean feeling sort of place. Jindosh’s Lock, Matthew wrote that down as well. Classic, absolute classic. Basically like a whole level mission you can do to get the kind of code to break into a house or you can just try and like crack the lock and basically skip a whole level of the game. Yeah, but like I remember like taking loads and loads of notes, getting that wrong like a whole bunch of times, but then cracking it feeling like amazing. Oh my god, what a game. I really hope they make more Dishonored because this is just, what a series. Yeah, just felt like it didn’t sell what it deserved to sell this one. They should have sold like 10 million copies and the fact it didn’t is, it’s on the general public and their lack of taste Matthew. Yeah, well maybe now Xbox own or Microsoft own Bethesda and all these studios, maybe they’ll be happy just having like a couple of studios making just prestige critical hits. Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. Yeah, well that was my number three Matthew. So what’s your number three? My number three is The Witcher 3, Wild Hunt. Nice, I wondered how high this would be on your list. I knew it wouldn’t get number one because I feel like I know what number one is. Yeah, number three. It was a big big deal for you this generation The Witcher wasn’t it? Yeah, I really loved The Witcher. I actually came to The Witcher quite late. In the run up to The Witcher 3 is when I played Witcher 2 on 360 and I played Witcher 1 actually after I played Witcher 3. So I played them completely out of order. Witcher 2 got me super invested in the world and characters and there was a lot of like carryover. There are a lot of people who you know basically went off and were hinted they were going to return and when they did return that made The Witcher 3 extra satisfying. So I love the interplay between the two games. I kind of wish I had played them on PC because there you get like you know the full wallop of being able to bring your Witcher 2 save file over to Witcher 3 where on console they don’t have the transfer down so they just ask you some questions at the start like did you kill this bloke and you say yes or no. One of the best one of the things I’m most annoyed me about that actually is that in Witcher 2 there’s a brilliant side quest where you get really really drunk and you wake up the next morning and you’ve got this huge terrible tattoo and then you solve it’s a bit like dude where’s my car you have to basically work out what happened the night before and so but if you if you then bring your save file over like all through the Witcher 3 Geralt can still have this terrible tattoo which you can’t you can’t unlock on the console which is annoying as far as I can tell anyway yeah I love this I love this series mainly because of Geralt himself like I love playing an RPG as a as a pre-made character who has a place a role and a personality like I don’t actually get off massively on on building a you know a blank slate kind of hero and with a kind of generic I like his generic personality. I like role playing as Geralt. He has the best job for this world. The role of the witcher in this universe of going around and doing quests just makes so much sense for an RPG. It’s a game where none of it feels like bullshit because everything he’s asked to do, that is what he’s there to do. And you can role play as that job and that profession and make decisions as him. It’s got some really fun choice and consequences. This feels kind of adult in a way, and I don’t just mean in the kind of… because there’s loads of swearing and everyone’s a bit unpleasant, but it’s not like cute and soft. It’s a bit kind of sort of mud and blood and piss. It’s all a bit more kind of Game of Thrones-y than like high fantasy. Just a really satisfying world. I love how the trees blow in the wind as well. It’s got really nice countryside to ride around in in this game. And it just… When I look back on it, I think a lot of it has a lot of bad habits, like in other games. There’s an awful lot of ticking icons off the map, but for some reason it doesn’t feel artificial in the way that it does in Ubisoft. And it’s still something I think about and haven’t quite been able to pin down. I don’t know if it’s just because, like I said, his job, it makes sense for you to go clear out these monster nests so it doesn’t feel as off. Or maybe it’s just like the volume and placement of them is just on the right side of like choresome. But yeah, this world just felt kind of alive and explorable in a way that I don’t think Cyberpunk did. Yeah, I love it. I love these characters. I really miss it. It’s one of the few games when I got to the end I actually felt very sad that I didn’t have any more adventures to come until I made two amazing DLCs. Yeah, it’s one of the biggest marks against me that I’ve not played The Witcher 3 properly. I feel like I didn’t entirely get on with the combat from the bit I played and I think it’s largely acknowledged that the combat is the weakest part of this game, right? Yeah, absolutely. It’s a really strange thing where mechanically I don’t think it does anything particularly amazingly well, like the menus are a bit of a fuss, the combat isn’t great, some of the powers are a bit limited, but just the world, the story and the characters kind of trump it and they’re not horrible, they’re just not particularly fun. If you made The Witcher with a really fun combat system, I mean that would probably be the greatest game of all time. Well, it’s largely assumed the next game they’re going to make is The Witcher 4, right? But obviously the appetite for it has probably changed a bit since Cyberpunk came out. I will play this at some point. I suppose like a big barrier, Matthew, is I know that The Witcher 2 is good because I played about 20 hours of it on Xbox 360 and then kind of forgot about my save. This was about 10 years ago. To people who are picking The Witcher 3 up now, how would you recommend going about playing it? Let’s say you have access to a PC. Uh, I mean, if you can, like I really would suggest playing The Witcher 2, they’re sort of self contained. There are odd games in that they sort of throw you in at the deep end in all of them. Like you never have like a gentle introduction to like Geralt. You just sort of have to take it at face value and sort of deal with it. But if you play 2, you know, you have a better idea of like all his mates and stuff. It just means a lot more when you meet them. I mean, it does a good job of introducing them when you do meet them in 3, but it kind of hits the ground running kind of plot wise. And that’s the same in 2, but like I’d say the rewards in 3 are better if, you know, it’s a more rewarding thing if you have that grounding. So I would suggest playing 2. 2 is great. I mean, it’s like a properly brilliant RPG. Yeah, which I like almost as much as The Witcher 3. So I would recommend it. Witcher 1’s like, if you play Witcher 1 after 2 and 3, like, you’ll have a bit of nostalgia. Like when you meet certain characters, you’ll be like, oh, great, it’s them. But it’s also quite ropey in a lot of places. So don’t feel the need to. You have to play that one. Play it afterwards as a curio. Okay, 2 and 3 as a combo. That’s good. I will play that at some point. The blood and wine DLC always sounded very appealing to me in this as well. The screenshots always looked like lovely and had a different vibe. It’s like Geralt goes to Disneyland. It’s like after this like 100 hours of quite grim war torn country. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. I’m going to stop here. What would a Witcher retirement look like? And Hearts of Stone, the DLC, has got probably the best quests of any of the Witcher games in it. There’s one where you have to show this dead man a good time and you let him possess Geralt and then Geralt has to go to this big party. You get to spend an hour at this party with this quite randy ghost inside you. It’s really good. Oh, that’s top. No, I will play that at some point. You’re not surprised to hear it so high on your list. So, my number two, Matthew, is The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. I assume this is on your list. It is, and spoiler alert, it’s higher. In which case, let’s talk about your number two. So, my number two is Outer Wilds. Wow. I would not have guessed this was so high, but I did wonder. I do remember you telling me that you really like this game, so… Yeah, this is… Yeah, this was my favourite game of 2019. I did play it on PC. I ummed and ahned about whether it’s truly of… if I associate it more with PC than specifically the console generation, but it was on Xbox, so I thought, you know what, I’ll give this a shout out. Well, not just a shout out. Oh, it’s number two. It’s pretty high. Um, this… I was absolutely wowed by this. This is a sort of… I’d describe it as a detective game set in space. You’re basically trying to solve a mystery. You are living in a solar system with a handful of planets. You’re basically going out into the solar system to investigate, um, well, to sort of study these other planets and follow in the footsteps of ancient civilisations. I call it a detective game because it’s all about learning information from this world and then using that to sort of follow a breadcrumb trail to discover more about the world. So you know, reading, scientific research which may reveal information on how to get past some of the obstacles on certain planets, for example. What complicates things is that the universe you live in, and this is a spoiler alert, it’s the heart of the game so I have to talk about it, the universe is destroyed every 20 minutes or so and you find yourself in a groundhog day like time loop where you wake up basically at the campfire where you start the game. So you have 20 minutes to explore this universe before it resets. So not only do you have this breadcrumb trail of clues, you have things that can only be achieved at certain times in that universe, like the nature of the universe changes, there’s a planet that’s collapsing in on itself, there are two planets that are very close together and the sand on one planet is sucked to the other by gravity so it kind of, as one planet grows bigger the other one it sort of excavates ruins over time so there’s different things that can only happen at certain times in this world and the mix of like deciphering its clues and using kind of time against this world to explore, that stuff’s just amazing. As design, it ticks so many more boxes. I love sleuthing, I love investigating, I love time loops in games, you know, I love messing with the kind of clockwork logic of a place. So that’s two huge ticks. Just conceptionally, as a place, this is like a really mind-blowing visual experience. You’re on a planet watching it collapse into a black hole in the middle, or there’s another planet where the winds basically pull all the islands on a sea planet, so it pulls them out into the kind of outer atmosphere of the planet and then they drop down with a splash and it’s like just a work of incredible imagination. It’s kind of got the power of like mind-blowing sci-fi, of like its ideas are so big, you just feel dwarfed by them. Yeah, I thought this was like an incredibly like powerful, brilliant game. I played the IGF build of this back when it was floating around as a kind of student project and I did really love it. When I played the final game, I worry I’m a bit too stupid to piece together the mysteries of this game. I don’t think I’m quite clear enough for it. I think it does a lot to help, it has this ship’s computer that remembers all the information, not having to learn the information in every loop. Any information you’ve learned is saved on your computer, so you chip away at it in that sense. Also, you could basically go in 20 directions and there’s not one route through the game. There’s so many different ways of tackling it and the way they all meet up at the end is really satisfying. It’s a balancing act, it’s a huge risk what they’ve done with this. Like you say, if it wasn’t clear enough, the whole thing would just be a totally confusing bust. But I think it is clear enough. There’s only a couple of moments where I actually had to email them, because I was like, I have been playing and playing and playing this and I cannot do it, and when they explained it to me, I was like, oh man, that’s stuff, and I think they changed that bit later. They patched something in to make it a bit clearer. I don’t think you’re the only one who had that experience either. I think that might have happened to Phil Savage on PC Game. Yeah, I think a lot of people were reviewing this. There’s like a hurdle right towards the end, which is just like, it’s like the only place I think it really properly dropped the ball, but they have sort of sorted it since. Well, you can enjoy this game as an atmosphere piece anyway. Like the idea of getting in your little spaceship and taking off in this. Like, that itself is an amazing experience, and it was back in the IGF build. And then suddenly feeling like there is all this stuff out there, and this is kind of like weird music in the distance, and there’s the shape of the planets, like makes you want to explore them. And then when you get there, you’ll see extraordinary things like, I think, like you say, lofty sci-fi stuff. It kind of has that 2001 vibe a little bit there being the, yeah. Yeah, it has that without being too dry, though. It’s not too like, it’s not like cold. It’s not clinical. Like it’s, there’s a lot of life in the world and a lot of character, which I think sort of saves it from that. Yeah. There’s some, there is that kind of like really cool thing about 2001 though, where there’s a sense of something unknowable. In this case, that kind of precursor like species you’re sort of researching the history of. Yeah. Yeah. No, I will definitely. Yeah, I love it. Maybe it’s an odd, I don’t know if it’s an odd pick, but I just as a, you know, I don’t think it says anything about the generation. It doesn’t feel particularly of the generation and it probably is more of a like PC game. But yeah, this just, what a thing. What a thing. I’m not even into space. That’s the thing. You’re like, normally I’m like, oh God, space. Why would you want to go there? You know, like it just doesn’t, it doesn’t appeal to me at all. I don’t like films about space much. But this one, I was just, yeah, to get over that hurdle and be one of my favorite stories, I think shows how spectacular it is. Yeah, I think that’s a great pick. And any excuse you can give people to check it out would be good. I don’t think it was like a mega seller or anything. So it’s not a game pass. Yeah, great stuff. All right, then, Matthew, my number one, it’s Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice. Wow. Yeah, or Sekiro, as it might be called. I’m not sure about that, but there’s one of the main villains in the game calls you Sekiro in the game. I forgot that you hadn’t done that one already. That’s super high. Did that, like, that’s actually genuinely surprised you, has it? Yeah, I forgot. I knew, I know that you love this game. I forgot that you hadn’t said it, but I didn’t think it would be your number one game. Yeah, much higher than Bloodborne. I think it’s a much better game than Bloodborne. This is the best sword combat game ever made. Perhaps the best third person combat game ever made. I know people think it’s incredibly difficult. I say the logic of it is way easier to understand than Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, which to me feel more like turn-based combat games in terms of you swing, then your stamina meter goes down, then you roll, and you swing again. I’ve never quite clicked with that style of combat. This is all about the quick parry and the careful use of abilities and that sort of stuff. I really love it. I think the setting, this unusual mix of history and folklore in this depiction of Japan, everything is kind of decaying in this world. I love that. And its boss fights are kind of phenomenal. A lot of people know about the big ape that throws poo at you. That’s pretty celebrated. I’ve always been after this game, though, where there’s this really powerful one-to-one sword combat, and you get a bit of it in games like Jedi Academy and some other games that have sort of sword combat, but just the way that swords clash in this and the way it rewards perfect parrying, what a phenomenal game. I love this. I’ve got a deep sense of spiritual fulfillment from completing the boss battles in this game. Like I’m learning it. I pushed through a wall of hating it and learned it. There is a boss fight early on, Genichiro Ashina, who you fight on… I think that’s his name. You fight on top of this tower in this castle. That’s where I got to. That is the make or break point of the game. If you beat that boss fight, you’ll finish the game. If you don’t, you won’t finish the game. That’s where you learn perfect timing of blocking hits and learning enemy patterns and stuff. I’m amazed this is the From game that got through to me because I was one of those people who thought none of these games will ever appeal to me. I love how they look. I love the detail they put into their worlds. All that stuff, great, but I just never liked the combat in those games. But this, oh, absolutely fucking adore it. So, so good. So what did you make of what you played of this, Matthew? Yeah, it’s the furthest I’ve ever got in a From Software game because I like the setting in the world more than the others. Being a samurai, that’s cool. I’m into that. Yeah, I could get my head around the combat a lot better, but I just couldn’t do that fucker on top of the tower. It’s a shame because I was having an absolutely great time with this. The problem I have with From Software games, from the very little I’ve played of them, so that’s a major caveat, is that I find the gulf between bosses and the rest of the game so vast that it kind of bugs me. I can do the stuff between bosses fine. I can get my head around the logic of it. I can survive that long. And then I just find myself dying on the same things over and over again, and that feels very boring to me. I wish there was less of a focus on bosses and the gauntlets in between were a bit more interesting because particularly in Sekiro, I managed to… Maybe it’s because it has the stealth elements too, but I managed to just get between more bosses and then luck out and kill a few to get to that one about a third of the way in or whatever. Yeah, so it didn’t quite solve that problem for me, and that is a problem we still have with them. But… That’s fair. I think that’s fair. Yeah, but I don’t know, maybe it’s just not for me. Well, I also think that this one benefits… I think this one’s better than the other ones because it doesn’t have any arbitrary RPG mechanics. Like, oh yeah, you know, you forgot to equip your poison, a resistance jacket or whatever. Oh, that’s the thing. So it’s Dark Souls. You’re like, oh, this description of this character sounds fun. And everyone’s like, oh yeah, you’re fucked unless you play as a jester. And you’re like, oh, right, great. Yeah, that’s it. I actually just hit that playing Dark Souls with a former colleague of mine, a PC gamer, Wes Fenlon, who has very nicely been a guided hand through it. So he’s kind of been doing the bosses basically, so I can kind of have this guided tour of Dark Souls. But it reached a point where it was like, oh, your sword no longer works, and you need to like forge a better sword, and you don’t have the materials, so you have to repeat all these parts of the game. And I was like, like, however you feel about those games, surely you agree that’s dogshit. Like I can’t just carry on playing this game. I have to go back and grind for a new sword. Surely. Then again, I play Destiny. So, you know, glass houses, man. But yeah, that this strips all of that out. It’s just, you know, the sword you have is the sword you will always have. The things you’re changing are like stances and moves and stuff like that. And abilities. So yeah, I feel comfortable putting this at my number one. Like I don’t necessarily think it’s a more important game than Breath of the Wild. In fact, I don’t. I think Breath of the Wild is a more important game. But this is the one that felt like it meant the most this generation that I got the most kind of into. I got into this game in a way that I thought was like beyond me now. Like, sort of being a 16 year old playing game for hundreds of hours. It made me feel like that. Yeah. So, Matthew, number one, go for it. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. What a shocker. We’re all just like, wow, everyone at home is like, holy fuck. Yeah, there was a little bit of army and ironing about this just in terms of like, whether it was of this generation. I think because it’s on Wii U, it is. I will put my hand up and say, I played it on Switch, but I don’t think that massively changes it. I know several people who played this on Wii U and for them it is a Wii U game and, you know, it is of this generation. Yeah, I mean, I actually find talking about Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild quite difficult just because it is so vast and its magic is still slightly vague to me. Writing the review of it was a nightmare, trying to pin down exactly why it made me feel the way I felt about certain things in it. I think the line I came down to when I wrote the review, which I did for GamesRadar actually, was that the line with Zelda has always been, even back in Ocarina of Time, you see that mountain in the distance, you can get to that mountain, and it was such a pure essence of adventure in a sentence. You were like, oh wow, yeah, that’s really exciting. Imagine a world where if you can see it, you can go there and think of all the things that are going to happen. Except, you could, but it was kind of fake, there’s lots of loading transitions, a lot of self-contained areas, and this for the first time felt like this was Zelda which delivered on that promise of if you can see it, you can go there, and you can actually go there, and you had to go there, and the adventures you had along the way were incredibly unpredictable. There’s a genuine spark of life to this world, with the simple introduction of some basic physics, and some interesting alchemy systems between fire and water and electricity, which just put a breath of life into the thing, and just with very few tweaks just made this place feel completely alive and reactive in a way I haven’t really seen in another game. It’s so much simpler than other open world games, but just the sense of the unexpected and what could happen, and the sense of it reacting to what you do, it’s still mind-blowing to me. I don’t know, that’s like magic. That feels like proper magic, in the way that you can do something and the world reacts and unfolds from those actions. Yeah, that’s sort of how I feel about Breath of the Wild. I think a lot of people made the point at the time that you have this sort of reactivity between systems that you do in more immersive simi games on PC, but it’s boiled down into this very easy to play form. I too find this a hard game to talk about. I reflect on it as a truly wonderful, I don’t know, life-affirming experience is just one of those games that I played the E3 demo and obviously everyone had a really good feeling about it, but it’s the way that the abilities you get later in the game stack to make exploring more fun, the amount of secrets buried in this world, there’s some amazing one-off things you can just sort of find and enjoy in this game. Cool recurring stuff like those weird sort of dragons that float around. The first time I saw one of those come out of a lake was amazing. Just like, oh my god, I cannot believe this game had that feeling. Yeah, it’s so stuffed with stuff you have to see, but it doesn’t lead you to any of it. It just happens organically. Nothing in this game is like, there’s no like video gamey kind of bullshit on top of it, you know? There’s no like enemy camps marked on it. You just kind of encounter everything as you encounter it. The sense of like exploration and what the fact that you can climb anything does, you know, turns every inch of the landscape into like an exploration puzzle, you know? It’s the idea that you can get anywhere if you try, but the journey is as interesting and requires like thought in a way that, you know, when I play like Assassin’s Creed now and the fact that like climbing a mountain in Assassin’s Creed is a case of like holding a trigger and pressing forward and then after 10 minutes your character will have climbed that mountain like it’s just baked in that they’ll do it but here you’re like I really want to get up there and you’re desperately looking between footholds or you’re crafting little stamina potions. It’s full of busy work in the way that like survival games are but it’s positive it’s all like really positive busy work. There’s nothing here that’s like boring, you know, it goes well, you know, unless this is like an obstacle that’s standing in the way of something fun. So let’s not have like hunger meters that doesn’t that doesn’t matter but let’s have all these other sort of systems where if you get on top of them like extraordinary things are going to happen. You know, it doesn’t set as its baseline. You have to master these systems just to live in this world. It says you have to master these systems to be like an incredible adventurer and that’s that’s a huge difference I think. So it just learned from it felt like it learned from like what a lot of other people have been doing outside of Nintendo, and it just sort of like nailed these things and gone. What’s the best version of this? Yeah, like the jump from Skyward Sword to this and I love Skyward Sword, but it’s the exact opposite of this game. Like Skyward Sword is a game where like it’s 100% handcrafted, like everything in its place. Everything is like everything feels like level design. Even the open world feels like very tight dungeon design in that game, like it’s completely like artificial space where this is just a completely organic natural space. Like I kind of struggle to sit, you know, the leap that team made, it’s kind of amazing. It’s like it completely recalibrated itself and changed its entire mindset. You know, it had been going down this avenue that it basically invented with Ocarina. It basically couldn’t get out of the shadow of Ocarina of Time and had been remaking that game in various iterations. Even Wind Waker, which has the open world ocean, like at the heart of it is still Ocarina of Time. And this was just not that at all. It must have been terrifying to like step away from what you know like that. Yeah, like what a thing. I wish there was more about it, you know? You know, we didn’t get in Iwata asks for this, you know, for the obvious reason Mr. Iwata had passed away by the time it came out. And oh, is that right? I think that’s right. Yeah, definitely. But yes, yes. Either way, like not a lot is known about this. I’d kill to know. Like, this is a game. This is the only game I want to know more about. You know, I could listen to hundreds of hours of developers on this, but a lot of it is a mystery and it’s that’s kind of infuriating. Yeah, I think that if there’s one disappointing thing, it’s that the way that people have taken influence from this game is just to rip off its art direction and its stamina meter instead of, like, taking the systemic stuff and thinking how can we build better open world games. So I’ve just been playing Ghost of Tsushima, which is a game I’m really enjoying. But the platforming in it is like you say that Assassin’s Creed, like, oh, I’ll jump from this, like, clearly demarcated part of this hill to another in order to, like, scale a location. And like, Zelda, Breath of the Wild breaks down all of those barriers of interaction that stop those things from feeling fun. It puts everything in your hands, like, it doesn’t feel like it’s ever playing itself for you, which I think is the number one problem with Assassin’s Creed. It does feel like it’s playing itself for the platforming and the combat to a large extent. This game is just like, you just feel completely in charge of it and how you enjoy it and how you navigate it. Yeah, just an unbelievably good game. There’s another one, Matthew, they’re making another one. I know, I have no idea how they’re going to follow it up. As Ocarina set the direction, I’m so intrigued to what Post Breath of the Wild Zelda is going to look like and behave like. Oh, God, imagine if it happened this year, oh, please. It would be a hell of an end to the year. Yeah, I agree with you about Skyward Sword as well. It feels like there’s about 10 years between this game and that game. I think it’s like six years maybe, maybe closer to five. The difference in those games is. I know that Nintendo consistently makes great games, but on a personal level, I’m always here when Nintendo makes these big generational leaps and does something you’ve never seen before, which is how I felt about Mario Galaxy and it’s how I felt about this game. It doesn’t happen so often, but when it does, that’s the Nintendo magic I’m just really here for. Yeah, I just think for years they kind of, with N64, they basically invented some of the rules that would come to define 3D gaming. That’s why they felt so revolutionary. They felt like they were working within those rules ever since then. Breath of the Wild, probably more so even than Galaxy, is like a next leap, but we just hopefully everyone will learn the right lessons from it and not just, yeah, you’re right, it’s not just stamina meters, that isn’t it. Absolutely. Well Matthew, we did it. We reached the end of the top 30. Oh my god. It took fucking ages. Well done us. Yeah, I thought this one would take less than two hours, but unfortunately there were some really good games here that we had to talk about in detail. God damn it, god damn these good games. Yeah, the next episode will definitely be a little bit shorter, just for our sake more than anything. I need to eat another big sandwich now after school. But Matthew, we’ll take one short break, then we’ll come back with a few reader questions or like one reader question, I don’t remember. I think it’s a few. And then some quick fire questions, a la the questions I asked you at the end of the last episode about The Generation. Matthew, it’s the final part of a very long podcast. Yes. I’m going to ask you some quick questions about The Generation. So, what’s a game you like this generation that other people didn’t? I struggled with this a bit, and I came down to Sherlock Holmes, Crimes and Punishments, which I think I only liked the tune of giving it a six out of 10, but this game sticks in my head as it did some interesting things with detective work, where you can collect clues and pin crimes on other people and things. It’s got a weirdly flexible accusation system, which isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, but as someone who really likes detective games, I like to see people doing, trying interesting things in that space. And I don’t know, it’s just kind of like, you know, a good kind of, the kind of AAA game, AAA, the kind of double A, sort of not AAA game that doesn’t really get made anymore. And I like Sherlock Holmes. It’s really not a very good game, but I quite fond of it. Yep, that’s an interesting choice. I went with Mirror’s Edge Catalyst for this one. Ah, that’s more like it. Yeah, so this is, I didn’t like it enough to make my top 30, but I did give it 78% for PC Gamer. I had to mark it down because it has like, I think, three mandatory combat sections, which don’t have those in Mirror’s Edge. That was a lesson they should have learned from the first one. Yeah. But I thought as an open world reprisal of those ideas from the first Mirror’s Edge, like, what a treat. If you really loved that first game, then I don’t know how EA justified making a sequel. I don’t think Mirror’s Edge was a big seller. And I think everyone thought DICE had become the Battlefield Studio, and that was all the stuff they did. But yeah, I was pleased they made this. If you look at screenshots to this game too, I think Dead End Thrills has some really nice screenshots of this one. Like a phenomenal looking game. Yeah, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, I think is a little bit underrated. As is the original Mirror’s Edge. But yes. Matthew, which developer was the big winner of this generation? I am denied about this. I think late in the generation, Capcom had a pretty storming run. I think with like Resident Evil 2 remake, Monster Hunter World, The Devil May Cry 5 was great. Yeah, they just made really… They were making like big fun, quite traditional video games. Considering they started off the generation quite wonky form, I thought it was all a little bit like Dead Rising 3. Yeah, there’s probably a much stronger candidate you’re about to name. Well, I think I put down Respawn Entertainment because they made Titanfall, this generation, wasn’t a massive success, but then they got acquired by EA, released Titanfall 2, don’t know why that came out at the same time as Battlefield 1, seems like a massive blunder by EA, but then made Apex Legends, then made Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, albeit quite different teams, I understand, across those different games, but all under that umbrella. And I think EA kind of needed a developer like this, this generation, because it had stopped becoming like a hit maker outside of FIFA and Battlefield. So, yeah, the fact that Respawn did some interesting stuff for this generation and each of those games achieved some level of success, whether it was critical or commercial. That’s cool. I had three of their games on my list. That seems like a pretty good… Yeah, they make good games. Yeah, absolutely. Even though I hear that that Medal of Honor VR game isn’t very good, sadly, but never mind. So I did put down which developer was the big loser this generation, Matthew. And then I felt bad for that wording because who knows what factors go into making… Yeah. You know what I mean? So I don’t want to say big loser, but who didn’t win this generation? I think this is a very specific development studio in a very specific series. I think Halo had a real dud run of it this generation with 343, not really their fourth. They had the Master Chief collection, which was obviously like a big early kind of stinkeroon-y in terms of like the story around it was like, but you know, it was just a bit of janky, a bit all over the place. It had been made by lots of different people. It was just a bit of a mess when it came out, which was a shame. It should have been a big celebratory thing. And then Halo 5 was just, just felt like there was no excitement around it. I mean, this might be just a hangover of editing Xbox mags from that period. But at a time where everyone else, PlayStation, we’re looking forward to Uncharted 4, here’s us dealing with the resoundingly eight out of 10 Halo 5. Great multiplayer, duff single player. I just felt it was a franchise in the studio that didn’t really get much of a firm footing in this generation. So not a huge loser as such. They’re still open, which is more you can say for several other studios. And I’m looking forward to Halo Infinite, but yeah, it felt like a bit of a sad generation for old Master Chief. It looks rough on paper that in the time between Halo 4 and now there’s been one Halo game. Halo Wars 2 as well, which is a solid sort of, well not like a console selling kind of game, but a solid strategy game, co-made by CA. But yeah, like on paper, doesn’t look the best. No, it’s just like, yeah, it’s a bit of a shrug of a generation for them, I guess. Yeah, so for this one, Matthew, Bioware is my choice. Bioware still made good games as generation. It still made Dragon Age Inquisition, but it did also make Anthem, and it did also make Mass Specter Andromeda. And it’s weird how kind of rudderless those games felt, those last two games felt considering that Bioware has an incredible form of making RPGs that have evolved between generations to remain at the top of the pile. Yeah, it’s a shame it didn’t happen this time, but I’m hopeful for the future. They’ve kind of gone to pains in the last few months to say, we are making the kind of games that you want. You just have to wait for them. And I’m prepared to wait, and I’m looking forward to playing the new version of Mass Effect that’s coming out this year, the trilogy. So yeah, but… That’s a good pick. Yeah, I can’t say they really won, though, this generation. Just felt like lots of missed opportunities. So, Matthew, we have a listener question as well. We have a couple, actually. Now I’ve scrolled down to see the complete sheet that I’ve made that plans out this episode. So, this one’s from Simon, who’s a very nice boy, who follows me on Twitter. So, how do you find that your mood affects how you feel about video games when you play them? If so, how do you remain objective when trying to review them? Fairly against their peers, which you might have played while in a more forgiving mindset. Could the belief that positive moods lead to more favourable coverage explain the press trips publishers put on for the industry in the 90s slash noughties? Has the lack of control over the review environment and general low morale over the past year led to more critical coverage by the gaming press? Thanks to the podcast, it certainly improved my mood. What are you making this one, Matthew? I love the idea that press events were put on to just raise the collective morale of games journalists so that generally what came out of them was more positive. I think they had the opposite effect sometimes, but what do you think? I think I’m pretty good at coming… I can’t think of many games where I’ve been in an absolutely foul, foul mood and it’s had a negative impact. I like to think I’m kind of professional enough to just put that stuff aside. I think I’m fundamentally the same person who’s reviewed every game, you know, and so they all come from the same mind. Yeah, it’s just not really a thing. I remember reading there was an article in The Guardian once where they were talking about, like, reviews we regret, and the film critic in The Guardian was like, he gave the Fantastic Four, as in the Michael Chiklis one, like a four out of five, because he was going on holiday the next day and was just in a really good mood when he reviewed it, which made me chuckle, but I think games are just too much of a time investment. Like, you don’t really have a mood that lasts for 20 hours, necessarily. No, if anything, the mood is created by the game. Yeah. If you hate the game, you’ve got to play it for like 40 hours, and you’re going to be in a bad mood anyway, but that’s the result of the product more than anything. Yeah, actually, last year as well, I felt I was more generous during lockdown, if anything, because games were just a really fun distraction from all the other crap. So I was just like, oh, thank God for games. So, yeah, maybe that played a tiny part. No, so that’s a good answer, I think. So, yeah, thank you very much for your question, and yeah, hopefully that kind of answers it. I don’t think that it’s a factor personally. So, okay, here’s the next question. This is the one I was DM’d, so I mentioned last week. Personally, on Twitter, which is very fine. That’s from Alex Saunders. I don’t mind you DMing me, it’s appreciated. So, hello Sam, just wanted to drop you a line about The Back Page podcast with Matthew. Really liking it so far, especially liked episode 2. Game reviews we got wrong. It’s a favourite, Matthew. Nice insight into the way that you both approach game reviews. So, two questions to follow that. Number one, has being a game reviewer changed the way either of you enjoy games? Number two, what are some of the all-time best articles slash reviews that you’d both recommend? So, those are quite big questions, but we can answer them quite quickly, Matthew. So, for me, I felt at first that being a game reviewer did change my relationship with games. I stopped enjoying them on the same level I did when I was a consumer, and I doubt I’ll ever quite get that mindset back of like, but putting a game on and just feeling like a complete sense of, oh, I don’t know what this will be when I play it, and I know like a kind of a wonder you only get from really appreciating it from the outside. However, there’s in no way to say that reviewing games has reduced the joy I get from them. It’s just a different relationship. What do you think? Yeah, I think very much so. I think the main habit, the main thing that’s changed is just like the volume of stuff I have to play. Like I kind of play stuff and move on. I don’t really have a long relationship with any game, which I used to, you know, I used to games, you know, expensive, hard to come by. So I used to really squeeze every drop of, you know, content I could out of everything I played. Now I’m quite like sort of I’m quite one and done, even with games I love, just because of the nature of the job, I’d say is probably the biggest impact it has. Yeah, that’s very much the case. Like that’s the hard thing about Hitman actually is Hitman 3 is out and I want to play all these levels again, but the pile of shame is outrageously big at this point. What about best articles slash reviews? Oh, off the top of my head, it’s quite hard to pick out. I mean, there’s so much stuff I’ve really loved. Maybe we can address this at a later point in a different episode, like when we talk about how we got into games media a bit more. Give us some more thoughts. Yeah, sorry. It’s a bit weak, isn’t it? There’s too much stuff. If I only named a couple, I’d probably be offending someone else. So yeah, let’s cover this in more depth at a later point. Yep, absolutely. So Matthew, we have reached the end of this podcast, which I think is our longest ever. Oh my god. Thank you so much for sticking with it. Both you, Sam, and the listener. Yeah, I hope the listeners have enjoyed it. I realize there’s less in the way of the kind of like magazine-y insight that we like to talk about. But we have a podcast coming up that will totally get into that. And that’s our Best Games of 2007 episode, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. So there’ll be no shortage of those kind of anecdotes. But I hope people have enjoyed this insight into our sort of tastes. And hopefully they’ve enjoyed us talking about some of their favorite games. I’ve enjoyed talking about them. Yeah, for sure. So Matthew, where can people find you on Twitter? I am mrbazzle underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. If you want to follow the podcast on Twitter, we’re a Back Page pod on there. If you want to email us questions, you can send them to backpagegames.gmail.com. You’re also welcome to tweet us your questions too. And yeah, the next episode will be Mario focused. Like I mentioned earlier, we’ll talk about Super Mario 3D World in some detail. And yes, you look forward to that. But in the meantime, thank you very much for listening. And we’ll be back next week. Bye bye.