Hello, and welcome to The Back Page of Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, do we want to bore people talking about how fucking awful the weather is in the UK, or have people had their fill of that shit by the time this goes live? Imagine they’ve had their fill of the shit. I read some post-apocalyptic, not post-apocalyptic, pre-apocalyptic, portents of doom on the hot days. And I normally, I’m not a denier the rest of the year, but they hit particularly hard where you’re like, oh yeah, this is gonna be it forever and it’s gonna be really shitty and bad. Yeah, I didn’t think this would happen during my lifetime, but it definitely is. I’m now like 95% convinced that the sun is the thing that will kill me. So that’s a good place to be in. But yes, on a lighter note, people are back with one of our best games of the different year episodes. These are kind of like our flagship episodes, me and Matthew each to a top 10, counting down. Fun to do these. We’ve done 2006 up until 2013 so far. They’re all available in the back catalogue for you to go listen to. By the way, this podcast is supported by Patreon, patreon.com/backpagepod. We just passed 500 patrons at the time of recording, which is really exciting. How did you feel about that, Matthew? Because I sort of tweeted about it without telling you I was going to do that. And I thought, I hope he’s not bummed out by I didn’t warn him this was coming. Oh no, it’s fantastic. Yeah, like, you know, super pleased. People like the podcast enough, want to throw some money. I know money is tight at the moment and the world is very expensive. So, you know, I really wouldn’t judge if you felt like it was too extortionate to throw money its way. So thank you to those that do. You know, for the people on the slightly higher tier who get the bonus episodes, I hope people are enjoying those. We put quite a lot of effort into them. Hopefully it’s not cannibalizing the normal episodes. I don’t think it is. No, I don’t think so. I hope, you know, the old What We’ve Been Playing episodes seem to be quite popular. So, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. We’ve tried to make the whole thing a bit more workable. Yeah, it’s good. You a bit tired? You’re tired out by it, Matthew? No, no, not at all. Right now in this heat, if it was this hot all the time, I would say we should cancel the Patreon. So that’s like, yeah, another victim of global warming. The real victim, somebody say. Yeah, it’s going really, really well. We’re really happy with it. So, you know, I feel like we’ve invested back into the podcast by hiring someone to edit our Patreon episodes to take the workload off of us. You know, offering all of our guests like a fee when they come in. We paid Rich 80 quid in the end for his contributions to the Metal Gear Patreon episode because that went down so well and led to a massive bump of subscribers. It was so long. It was basically that we recorded for like two episodes, basically. Yeah, it should have been two episodes really, but yeah, very value packed. Which is my way of saying all the other contributors don’t get any ideas. I felt particularly bad because Phil completely carried that destiny episode, but poor old Phil had only got 40 quid. So hey, take it out with my lawyers. So Matthew, 2013, this year is a console transition year. So other than 2006, we haven’t really had one of these kind of weird in-between years where you sort of get these launches that coincide with a bunch of, you know, slightly also ran launch games that are rarely, sometimes, but rarely sort of like remembered as the kind of classics in the library of different sort of hardware. And you also get the kind of like last burst of sort of like the previous generation’s best stuff. And it kind of, it happened less in the, with the launch of the Series X and the PS5 because games are a lot more like, you play a more powerful version of the same game now rather than there being this massive leap. So I guess to start there, do you think it was a good year for games? And how do you profile this year in games? This year is a very Nintendo centric year for me. Like I was thinking back on what my various opinions were. And I was massively in the Nintendo zone at work. I’d obviously moved up to London to work for official Nintendo the year before. It wasn’t like I wasn’t clued in on Nintendo before that, but I felt like we had a lot of magazine to make. It was quite an intensive mag to work on. I think I had a more balanced life this year because after I moved to London, started seeing Catherine, I was finally not a lonely boy. That’s the big difference this year. It’s the first year where I was in a relationship for the whole year. And because of that, I could kind of clock off at the end of the day and not think about things. So actually, my perception of stuff outside of Nintendo is a little murky. Right, yeah. That’s completely fair. So, congratulations to 2013, Matthew, on this relationship. That’s good. That’s a weird thing to say. Pleased that there’s a work-life balance could be attained. I definitely think you and I are cut from the same cloth here where it’s like, we’ll sacrifice our 20s, basically, to our career. And then by the time you hit 30, you’re like, I kind of need both or I’m gonna go a bit mad. I think that sort of kicks in a little bit, doesn’t it? So, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So yeah, I was much more tuned into what was going on with Xbox and PlayStation at the time because, I’ll talk about this in a minute, but I started the year working on a PlayStation magazine, then moved over to a multi-format magazine. These are always miserable years to work on. Well, they were, I imagine, because it was like, how could we find different ways to put like a black box on the cover, like eight different times, when there’s only like three bits of artwork for it that are even viable for like putting on a cover? So that was kind of like a big challenge of this year. But the funny thing is that a narrative very easily emerged with them covering it, which is of course the PS4, would kick the Xbox One’s ass. That’s the kind of like big takeaway from this year. But in terms of the spread of games, it is pretty good. I will say, I do have a list of 10 games I really like, but I don’t have much of a list of like honorable mentions beyond that. And that’s maybe a difference to previous years. Is that the case for you? Or is it, did you find you had a bigger spread? My list may seem a bit contrarian in how much Nintendo stuff there is, given the strength of non-Nintendo stuff, but it really is just an indicator of where my head was at that year. I imagine our lists are gonna be very different. Yeah, exactly. So which is why for this episode, I wanna dedicate a lot of time to our top 10s, because I think they will be just, they’ll diverge so much compared to previous ones. So, okay, so yes, in these episodes, in the section one, we always do a kind of recap of what happened at the E3 that year, major events, that sort of stuff. I will say to our Patreon subscribers, they have heard me talk about this E3 in massive detail in the recent history. So while I will recap it, I won’t go into it in quite the same depth as I have in previous episodes, just so we can focus on talking about the best games of this year. But- Those memories are behind the paper. I’ll recap all the key stuff, but if you want to hear me dunking on Don Mattrick more, just go to your four pound fifty, it will sort you right out. We also talked about it quite a bit on the episode that Johnty came on to, John Hicks. So that covered some of it quite nicely. So Matthew, what was going on with both of us career-wise this year? So you say you had a bit of a work-life balance here. How was O&M at this point? We basically replaced the old O&M team in the second half of 2012, and it was a bit manic, and we were just trying to get the mag done, and then we had a bit of a redesign at the same time, and there was the Wii U launch, so we didn’t really have a chance to properly bed in, and it was almost too busy to get a proper feel for who everyone was and what everyone was doing. Joe, just join the team. So it was all a bit manic. So this year, yeah, was more of getting a sense of, oh, this is what this team is like, and getting to know people better, and it was a weird one, because Chandra was the editor-in-chief, and I was, I think I was actually listed as a deputy editor, even though I’d edited Nintendo Gamer. So I always felt like there were two editors on that mag, and Chandra was definitely a more traditional, efficient Nintendo magazine editor. He had edited it in the past, and he’d gone away and then come back, and I’d come from an unofficial Nintendo background, although Chandra did originally as well. He worked on Cube. And I felt like there was maybe a little bit of tension in terms of what we can do in the official space. You know, Chandra was very, very optimistic and supportive of Nintendo on like every point, where I sometimes felt there are times where we could like dial it back, you know? I felt like we didn’t need to be all in on everything, but we’ve gone all right, actually. We’re quite different people. Anyone who knows us both will know that we’re, I think we value very different things. I think Chandra is interested in being a cool person, and I’m not. I’m surprised to hear this. This is news to me. So that was fun. But I, you know, navigating that, and I do plan to talk more about Official Nintendo Magazine. I think we’re actually planning to do an issue with Neil Long, who edited of O&M before both me and Chandra rejoined. So I’d like to talk more about O&M editorial memories in that episode. But, you know, working with Joe Scripps, who’s just brilliant, like so much fun and you know, all the time on NGamer, I was always the most junior person on the team. You know, even when I was the editor, there was no one under me. You know, it was just people above me being removed. So actually to have a staff writer who was really young and brilliant and hilarious was just so refreshing to have all that kind of banter in the office. I loved working with Gav Murphy as well, who was like the video guy and was just constantly harassing me. But we had, I think we had lots of jokes. So I told you about the photocopier thing on here. This is where I started getting emails from the photocopier of saying things like, everyone hates you. And it was like handwritten notes scanned in. So that’s like a hilarious indicator of what it’s like to work with Gav. But that aside, I was still quite affectionate. I’ve caught a lot of affection for that time. We started our Expert Super Guide YouTube series, which was my first video project. I would play Nintendo games. I wouldn’t say I was playing them deliberately badly, I was just playing them like as I would. And then Gav and Joe would sit behind me and kind of like wind me up about how bad I was doing and I would deliberately play up to it and say weird stuff and offer like very strange glimpses into my past as I do on here to try and like confuse and befuddle them. But that grew a very minor fan base of about like 5,000 people. So you know, I think I should have probably twigged that I was never destined to be a YouTube star from back then. Testament to your sort of like good humour about yourself is the existence of this podcast, I feel. Do you have anything to say on the sort of raft of images of you that are floating around the internet, Matthew? Like the ones that our listeners use over and over again to make memes, I assume were mostly taken on O&M. Yeah, I think so. I think the one that I see a lot is me with a Pikachu like head scarf. I don’t really know what you’d describe it as. It’s like a Pikachu balaclava. Yeah, that one. Which actually, I think I was wearing that when we made a promotional video for the Golden Joystick so I was still on NGamer at the time. You can tell where it came from based on how fat I am. The fatter I get, the later it is. Much like sort of you can know which season of Friends you’re watching by looking at Chandler, I would say. Nothing against that. Yeah, very much that. The only image I absolutely hate, and this is a 2014 image, is there’s a picture of me in a Pikmin onesie which doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It was so tight and I was so fat and I had to wear it because I lost an episode of Expert Superguides. I bet I could make it through this quite difficult level in Donkey Kong Country tropical freeze without dying, which I obviously wasn’t going to do. It was set up to fail and then had to wear this onesie and I really pushed back filming late into the evening because I knew it was going to be horrendous for me and I just I thought if I push it late into the evening it’ll only be me, Joe and Gav, but for some reason like total film and a eczema deadline. So I had all these people, I mean literally like, you know, full of revulsion at my body. So that’s psychologically scarring and it’s good fun to see that picture pop over every six months on Twitter. So please stop sharing that list, all the other ones are fair game, but not that one. Anything that’s my face, fine, anything that’s my torso, let’s not do that. Completely fair. That’s very much the same for me. Around this time is where I started getting fat. That’s my nostalgic memory for this time, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. But yeah, can I sort of float a theory to you Matthew, that this is secretly one of the best Nintendo years ever. And I think your list will reflect this, but I don’t think they got credit for it at the time at all, because no one was paying attention to Wii U. It had been deemed a failure by press already, and so it didn’t matter really that it had this quite amazing second year. But I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that. Am I along the right line, sir? Wii U is seen to be sort of shitting yourself like the whole time it’s alive, but it does have amazing games. Admittedly, like now, so many of them have ported to Switch that people sort of see it as a bit redundant. At the time, we obviously didn’t know that was going to happen. At the time, those games were amazing, and you had a handheld division that was just going for it. Yeah, the volume of games. It’s why my list is mostly Nintendo games. A real treat to work on a Nintendo mad covering that stuff, and it was just hit after hit. And also, it was really Nintendo coming out of the Wii years in terms of what they valued, you know. We definitely talked about this on a recent episode. The idea of, like, I think it was on the Switch one, actually, of kind of Nintendo kind of just allowing kind of core games to be core games and not trying to kind of water everything down and make everything family friendly. And it just means when you do get these sort of series, which are kind of more traditional game affair, they absolutely sing. And, yeah, like, so many people make the best version of their game series ever this year. Yeah, yeah. No, just looking at the line up of games this year, was that was it? This is maybe like the last moment you see an amazing year on both a handheld and a home console from Nintendo. Maybe after this is not quite as consistent, but… No, no, it definitely gets shaky. And I think you get into the period where they start uniting those teams and start dialing down stuff. I mean, yeah, 3DS definitely gets a little bit shakier after 2013, I think. Yeah. Okay, good stuff. Shall I talk about what I was doing this year, Matthew? Yeah, yeah. So I’m intrigued about this three magazine timeline. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, on these episodes, this may bore anyone who’s just sort of like seen it in the iTunes charts. Oh, Best Games of 2013, then two blokes just yammer about magazines you’ve probably never read like years ago. But we always do this to kind of set a bit of a background for what we’re doing professionally. So, I started the year working on Play Magazine, the PlayStation Magazine, single format. This is the old version, not the current version that exists. So I was running this magazine as the PS4 was announced in spring of 2013. And then basically, everyone at Imagine, who was more senior than me, left. And then they almost hired someone to run the other game, the biggest games magazine there, which was Games TM. From the future, I won’t say who it was, but it’s pretty well known amongst games industry people who that was at the time. But I do not know who it was. Okay, cool. I’ll keep it a mystery. I’ll tell you off air. It’s not that exciting. It’s a mag that’s now closed, who was going to join it nine years ago. But that person chose not to take it in the end. And so I was basically like their only option, because the editor-in-chief of Games TM left. And then there was no one more senior than me. It was weird. I was 24. And everyone who had ever worked with Imagine, I’ve been there since 2007, a lot of my friends had moved on. This year I looked around and found out I was basically like one of the most senior people there, which is quite strange. But it was nice because play wasn’t that fun to run. I’ve talked to us before. It was a pretty, it was kind of like trying to be a bit lads, Maggie in general and mainstream. And I just, you know, as is probably obvious from the very nerdy contents of our podcast, I don’t really care about that so much, I’m much more interested in the nerdy stuff. But it was the end of the PS3 generation, which was bumpy and miserable for Sony, and it was quite hard work. So moving on to Games TM was quite exciting. Multi-format magazine, slightly bigger team, as in there were three of us rather than two of us. Magazine was bigger, I think it was 148 page magazine. Yeah, it was a chunk of Games TM. Yeah, and it didn’t have like that many ads in it when I was running it, so it was a bit of a fucking nightmare to make. And I would say that in general, I wasn’t as on it on the editing side as I could have been. I was very good at like the creative, which features should go where, what should be in our retro section this month kind of stuff, but I would say that the actual time I had to dedicate to editing was minimal. So the mag never read as well as it could have done, I would say. So I did this for a few months, steering us through like E3 and like I say, putting many different black boxes on the cover. And I was definitely ready for a change at this point. I actually, I really enjoyed working at Imagine, like it had a bit of a mixed reputation amongst people, because it was, they didn’t pay very well. But it was actually like, probably slightly more fun in terms of the people there than the future was, in my experience. I think just maybe because of an age thing, a lot of the people I worked with there were in their 20s. Whereas I think a lot of people I worked with in the future were like, oh, I’m 30 now, so I’m either going to have kids or not go to the pub anymore. And those are the two types of adults that exist, basically. So I did, you know, the present company accepted Matthew, you’ve always been great fun. So one of my friends had sort of left Bournemouth and it was just me there. I was kind of like, ah, I’m kind of ready to move on. So it’s funny because I had a meeting at GameStamp that sort of sealed what would happen next, which was when you pitch covers, imagine you had to pitch multiple covers. It was like options, basically option one, two, three and four. The idea being these are the ones we want to have and these are the ones we know we can get. And this is like an outside kind of shot for one. And as an option four, I put down Lego Marvel Super Heroes, which came out this year, as in like I was going to say, I was suggesting, oh, we could do a deep dive on Traveller’s Tales. And like this is going to be probably their most deluxe game that they make with this license in quite a long time. Indeed, it was probably the best Lego game for a long time, Lego Marvel Super Heroes. And someone, I won’t say who, said to me, if you put this on your magazine, you’re betraying your brand. And it was only on there because I was obligated to put four options on there. And I kind of felt like by suggesting it and being put down that way, I was being richly humiliated for the fun of it. And so I got back to my desk and I checked my Hotmail and I had an email from Tim Clark at Future saying, Do you like PC gaming? And it felt like one of those things that slotted into place. Truthfully, I was, you know, whether or not that happened, you know, no big deal. But I did like resent being spoken to that way. I thought I’m worth more than that. I don’t make loads of money to run this magazine. It’s very, very stressful. And, you know, I was living on Lidl for most of my career there. And it’s like, you can at least give me a bit of respect. And so that was a kind of thing just went off my head. And I was like, no, I’m done now. I’m done. So applied. Well, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, but, you know, kudos to you for, for recognizing that and doing something about it. Because I think, you know, definitely one of my problems is I’ve had moments where I felt like I felt that, but I didn’t act on it and was just like, no, actually, I can eat a load more shit. It takes courage to do it. That’s the thing. It also takes energy as well. And like, I don’t, I don’t know if I have enough energy anymore to do something that drastic. I might be too tired, but I was like 24 and I was still, I was still felt like I was far from reaching my full potential work in games media. So, so yeah, this opportunity came up. Graham Smith, the editor of PC Gamer, was leaving. So, September 2013, I went in for this interview at Future, and I got it. I think I managed to demonstrate I was like full of ideas and really enthusiastic, and they maybe wanted someone a bit younger and sort of punchier coming into it. I thought I was hot shit. I had like a copy of Games TM on my iPad, that I flicked through to show I was a contemporary magazines man. That’s embarrassing, isn’t it? I also found Matthew recently. I found the covering letter I sent through for the job and it is so shit, like so abysmally shit in terms of like sentence structure and paragraphs and the absolute waffle I put in there. I’m amazed I got the job off the back of that. Yeah, so, but yeah, I went for it, got it. And it was like the buzz of getting it was just like phenomenal. It was like, PC Gamer was the first games magazine I properly got into. So it was really, really exciting. So, yeah, like scary. Yeah, yeah, it was because I was 25 when I got it. And I was the youngest member of the team coming in to manage the team. And none of them had any idea who I was. And they all had this structure of for years and years, PC Gamer was a cabal that you basically entered as a staff writer. And then you like you would ascend very slowly as people left. And that was how they operated for years. So I think I was one of maybe two editors ever who came from the outside and weren’t just like grown in this little future lab, you know, basically. And there was definitely an element of I felt like I was sized up a bit. Yeah. Sized up is the right term. Yeah. So I was kind of like, it was it was when I got there. The thing is, I got the job in September, and I had a three month notice period, I imagine, which is actually crazy for the amount they’re paying me. But I started to wait until December to do it. So my first day, I think, was like 11th of December. So I had to move right at the end of the year, which was quite stressful, and sort of like crack on with it. And so, yeah, it was, it felt really exciting, but it was very daunting. And like, I did. Yeah, I did feel a bit without a paddle for a while on PC Gamer. I like it took me quite a long time to settle into it. But it was exactly what I needed, or I probably was facing a scenario where I would just leave games media and do something else, you know. So, yeah, yeah, I don’t know if you have any thoughts. It reminds me a little bit, like when I moved to London for O&M, which admittedly was in 2012, I remember thinking, well, this is like a new office, you know, I can kind of present a new me a bit. You know, I wasn’t a figure of fun in Bath Future Offices, but I wasn’t also kind of like a terrifying authority figure. And I remember on like the second day of being on O&M, you know, thinking, well, you know, they still don’t really know me. You know, they don’t know that I’m a fool yet. The two art, the art heads in the department, Will and Dale were talking about this competition to eat two pizzas at the local Pizza Hut. And I said, oh, yeah, I imagine I could do that. And from that moment on, they called me Two Crusts for the for the rest of my time on O&M. Right. I see. And they were like, oh, Two Crusts, they used to say, fantastic, I’ve probably knobbled this instantly. I feel like that nickname requires too much effort. Like, that’s just slightly too much brainpower needed to remember Two Crusts. I would find it easier to call you Matthew, but, you know, like, hey, maybe this is just how maybe the how the bants worked in the London office. It was all very, it felt like very specific Londoner bants, oh, Two Crusts over it sounded like something out of a Guy Ritchie film. It’s got a bit of the old Oi White shirt energy from Peep Show, to be honest. Clean shirt. That was it. Clean shirt. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was it was exciting thinking. So I feel like my confidence took quite a hit from going to PC Gamer because on Games DM, I’ve been at Magic for such a long time that I felt quite confident in the choices I was making, how I was managing my staff and stuff like that. Whereas I just felt so much more daunted by PC Gamer and just felt quite I was a bit like on edge, just doing it and trying to get it right and also trying to navigate working with a US team for the first time because I’d never done that and they had a bit of history so I was kind of coming in to help repair that sort of bridge a little bit. They had like a bunch of great editors and writers and it was about just kind of like joining up to make the whole operation, which to be honest is by doing that, that was kind of Tim Clark’s doing, that is what has led to PC Gamer being this phenomenally successful website that it is now so it was nice to be there and play a key part in doing that but I think like if I learn something about management from this time Matthew, not to get too kind of boring and sort of Ted talking about it. I think most people listen to this for a while. We will get to some fucking games, don’t worry. It’s that like people, I thought all it took to be a good boss was to be, to have my editorial instincts and be nicer than the bosses I didn’t like were. But you realize over time that being a good manager is all about being attuned to what your team needs in terms of progression and feeling heard and things like that. And I would say that I would say I didn’t learn that lesson when I was on Gamers Jam and could have been a lot better at it. And I would say it took me till my later years of PC Gamer to really get that actually. So anyway, that’s a boring note over. I thought it was about just learning how to stomach imbeciles. OK, good. So yeah, that’s kind of what I was doing that year, Matthew. Maybe I thought it would be more fun than it sounded out loud. It sounded quite bad, didn’t it? It was actually fine. It was just daunting. And I was very young doing this. I didn’t know anything when I was 25. And I don’t really know anything now. I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about people at Future who were doing much better than me, or were doing the same as me, who were younger. I remember when I found out that Neil is basically the same age as me. He may even be a year younger than me and was editing O&M all those years while I was in just the absolute doldrums of being a star front on NGamer for what felt like 20 years or something. I was like, oh man, I’ve really biffed this. I must be held in such low esteem that this is what I’m doing. And I remember being on the editor’s calls when you started turning up in them and being like, oh, this guy’s much, much younger than me and he’s not a deputy editor. He’s an outright editor and he’s on PC Gamer, which is a much bigger deal. I think I was on those editor’s meetings because Chandra didn’t want to go to them because he was like, oh, it’s just all your bath friends. They don’t want to see me, so you just may as well go. That’s funny. That’s funny to hear. That’s how you sort of perceived me. But, you know. I was like, who’s this guy? I was like, this guy’s like dangerous, super ambitious guy. When I came to Bath, I was like, oh, actually, we’re really on the same wavelength. It’s funny, though, because I almost wonder if I wasn’t quite ready for it in retrospect. Like if I was, I did maybe need a bit more time to sort of bake in the oven, as it were. Oh, you seem to know what you were doing. Well, I knew what the mag was, I knew how to make it good, but I was fighting upstream because it was so hard. I had it harder than previous editors of PC Gamer, I had less staff. And so it was immediately tougher. And so, you know, you’re expected to produce a mag of the same quality, but you don’t have the same resources that they did. So, you know, it was tough. Plus I had to panic about a website as well. Like, you know, most print editors didn’t have to worry about that shit. I had to worry about this magazine’s review has to go on the website to meet this embargo. And it was like a whole other thing to worry about. And then later on, there was a US magazine to worry about as well. So there’s all this stuff taking up my headspace. More fun things, Matthew. Did you do any fun trips this year? Because I had two I wanted to mention. I went on a really fun Lightning Returns trip to Paris. Never played Lightning Returns. Here is quite a good, interesting, odd little sort of like Final Fantasy spin-off. But yeah, I went to Square Enix trip to Paris. That was quite fun. I walked around, looked at the Eiffel Tower. All very nice. And I went to E3 this year for the first time, Matthew. What was your year like? I don’t think I left the country, actually, because Chandra did most of the juicy trips. He did E3 and he went over to see Rayman and things like that. So yeah, I was kind of office bound, which actually I was fine with at the time. Did you go to the very weird Assassin’s Creed Black Flag reveal event in London? I think I did. Was this like a quite a fancy venue? It was like a Mariners Hall. It was slightly traditional and there was a very weird bit where Ralph Innocent, aka The Green Knight, did a dramatic monologue about life on the sea, except it was about half an hour long. And after five minutes, you were like, oh, this is cool. This guy’s like pretending to be a pirate. But it was so long, you were like, does he actually want us to like sign up to ship? Like, it felt like it was going full method. And it wasn’t like a speech which had details about the game. It was like all in character as a pirate. It was very odd. This was, I always remember this, this event because I remember trying really hard to get an interview for Black Flag to like basically do to take and write a cover feature out of on play. And I was told, oh yeah, we’re not doing interviews. And then the PR turned to another journalist went, come with me, your interviews this way. And I was like so pissed off by that one exchange that I never ever dropped my grudge against that person. Even to this day, that was like a perfect example of like, oh, yeah, so I do remember that event. It was a really fancy venue. I, it did seem good, but I don’t remember them showing much of it. I think there was like a PowerPoint presentation where you saw, you saw him swimming under water and they were like, oh yeah, you can swim under water in this, but they didn’t actually show the game that much. They sort of said, oh, it’ll have like these famous pirates in it. And they sort of said that thing about you’ll be able to sail up to islands and get off on the islands. So you’ll be able to transition from like fighting against the fort in your ship to being in the fort and assassinating people. And definitely talked a good game, but I just mainly remember the very weird monologue. Yeah, that was, I completely forgotten that until you mentioned it actually, but yeah, this is also when I kind of thought, I guess I didn’t think it was cool that they had Ralph Innocent there, like, just because this is pre him being in every A24 film, I suppose. Yeah, he’s more famous. But back then he was just finch in the office. Yeah, yeah. But did he play Blackbeard or someone like that in the game? I think he did, right? That was kind of the connection. Oh, maybe that’s the connection. Yeah, it was very long. It was very like ornately written about like feeling the sting of brine on your cheeks and all this kind of stuff. And you’re like, what is this? This is very, very long, it’s like a mood piece. And the whole time you’re like, this is great, but like, how many guns has it got in it? For sure. Right, Matthew, gonna fire through this E3 stuff so we can get to our game. So like I say, we covered a lot of this in our Patreon episode, but this is a pivotal E3. The actual console reveals this year happened in two events before E3 itself. So people had a bad feeling about the Xbox One after they kind of revealed it as an all-in-one entertainment device, whereas Sony took a very different tack of, we’ve made a games console. The very clear narrative to me was that Microsoft had seen this enormous success and had seen the number of people using Netflix on their console and thought, okay, the next direction then is to push more in this way, it’s the centerpiece of your home. Whereas Sony had tried that with the PS3 and realized that people just wanted a games console. And that to me felt like the guiding principles that led to this swish in fortunes. Do you think that’s fair? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Not that it was like, I still think it took Sony a little while to warm up to the message. I think the initial reveal was quite dry if I remember correctly. It was alright. It had like actual games there though. And it had like Mark Cerny explaining what the philosophy behind the console was basically. Yeah. I think it’s more that it’s the Mark Cerny-ness of it that I remember. But maybe I’m conflating it with that presentation they did for the PS4 Pro where he did quite a deep dive into Checkerboard. No, it wasn’t quite that bad. The thing is they were also really forthcoming about these are all the things these things do on the console. Like here’s the share button, that sort of thing. And so it and like that his destiny, whereas they actually is the witness and here’s Kill Zone and all this stuff. So they went front and center with the games, Microsoft, I think only revealed Quantum Break and then said, we will talk about the rest of the games at E3. I think that’s what happened without rewatching both of them again. So Sony did put games at the center, and I think just kind of won people around from that and people just saw warning signs of the Xbox that would later turn out to be sort of correct. But like the E3 is where the killing blows really happened. So you had Microsoft reveal first that its console was more expensive, was bundled in with Kinect. I would say there was actually kind of nothing really wrong with Microsoft’s Xbox conference this year. Like they actually had some really good stuff there. I don’t think its launch line up was really any worse than the PS4. But maybe people just didn’t have the optimism for the future that they did with the PlayStation. But the key thing that happened next was Sony said that the PS4 is I think it was like 75 pounds cheaper than the Xbox one. People condoned the idea that the PS4 was more powerful as well. Once it launched, people kind of realized that’s a more powerful console. But of course, it was the used games debate that really lit a fire this year. So Microsoft tried to do this thing where you would basically license a physical copy of a game and you couldn’t borrow it without transferring a digital license, basically getting rid of pre-owned games for good with no upside to you as a consumer. It was a bad idea. And Sony kicked them when they were down. They got an absolutely terrible response to this, kicked them when they were down by showing this video of I think Shuhei Yoshida and Adam Boyes of Sony saying, this is how you trade a game to a friend on PlayStation 4 and they just handed the game over and went, thanks. And then that was the end of the video and that got like over 10 million views. All this stuff just led to Xbox being in a really bad place. So it felt like it was decided at E3 that they would lose. And then from there it is basically what would happen for the next five years. Any thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, you’ve basically nailed it. It just felt like the meme that killed the console. Just awful, awful business. It’s so weird because now, you know, seeing everyone dive quite enthusiastically into Game Pass where you don’t own anything, you know, is a… You almost wonder why they didn’t sort of accelerate things to that point or, you know, Xbox’s sort of vision for a different future has, you know, has eventually come about. They just found the palatable way of packaging it up, I think. I don’t know, just like that was a defining factor then, but now it’s just like, who cares? Yeah. I said this on the E3 episode as well, but I think the key thing that exists now that didn’t exist then is the existence of like, first of all, every game is available digitally, which it wasn’t for quite a long time on the PS3 360 generation of consoles. It was like, some games were, some games weren’t. It wasn’t always day one, some games would be added later, and also the sort of Steam sales style sales that you now see all the time on PlayStation and Xbox didn’t really happen then. So a lot of these games would just stay at like 50 quid and not come down, while box copies would. So people wanted that flexibility. It is a different age now, thankfully. So yeah, I think ultimately it did, you know, Xbox took a bruising, but it did lead to them being in quite a good place now. Sony identified perhaps not at this point, but they would eventually identify that strong exclusives, single player exclusives particularly, would be the thing that would set them off. I would say we’re actually like at least two years from that becoming like the narrative of PlayStation. And there wasn’t any inkling that that was going to be the case. No, because like there wasn’t there weren’t trailers for like Horizon or Uncharted 4 or anything like God of War at this at this point. Like that that messaging kicks in like I don’t I honestly don’t think it was until like Bloodborne turned up that it truly had an essential first party game. But that’s that’s my memory of it. No, I agree. I think that takes 18 months, I think, Bloodborne essentially. It’s not a knockout punch. That’s what bugged me at the time. I remember thinking, you know, I know Xbox biffed it, but like, it’s not like the games here are stellar. No, definitely not. Question, did you play more than the first level of Shadow Fall, or did like everyone else just give up? I never played it. I just did. Well, like, I had enjoyed Killzone 2 and 3, but then people said this one wasn’t as good. So I just thought, well, I’ll skip it then, I don’t really care. Also, this, it takes me a little while to buy a PS4 because I joined PC Gamer and bought a powerful PC this year instead. So some of this passed me by actually, like I missed out on the first few months of PlayStation. Well, I will say, though, Matthew, is I think that what powered Sony through quite a lot was Destiny and their ties to that because what they had was Bungie on stage showing the game and also that the DLC would be exclusive in year one to PlayStation for a limited time or something. So it was kind of earmarked as the Destiny console. And it was kind of a console that was about, hey, you know, it’s really easy to get a multiplayer game going and share what you’re doing and all this stuff. So I think the Destiny and the overall goodwill towards this console just being a games console, being affordable, kind of being the opposite of the PS3 in some ways, easy to develop for, games run really well on it. All of that is what powers Sony through. But I agree, it’s, yeah, 2015 at minimum is when that run of exclusives kicks in. It’s a while, you know? OK, so Matthew, Nintendo at E3, is there anything that’s kind of you want to share on this front? Uh, I don’t know, this is the year they start doing The Treehouse, which is obviously their sort of all day streaming from the show floor, which I would argue kind of killed the need to really be at Nintendo’s E3 as a journalist, because you basically had the people who spent the most time with the game, The Treehouse localisation team, you know, they’d put hundreds of hours into this game and they’d be able to play the demo, A, really well, and B, like tell you all this cool stuff that you couldn’t possibly get from that demo, from playing it on the show floor. So even though, maybe that’s just a myth I’m telling myself because, you know, Chandra got to go that year and that’s how I feel better about it. But yeah, I was watching all that stuff from home thinking this is absolutely amazing, you know, like what we could have done on NGamer where we did those like mad deep dive E3 previews from afar, you know, would have been absolute gold for this. Like we actually did quite conservative E3 coverage on O&M that year, I would say. But yeah, in terms of the actual games there, like they had a lot of cool stuff that was coming out that year. Wonderful 101, Wind Waker HD, they showed Bayonetta 2, they obviously announced Smash Brothers, Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. I mean, it was pretty stacked, like, you know, I remember putting together that issue and it being like an absolute doddle, like, just so many good things that we were interested in. And even though Wii U was sort of floundering as an actual console, it felt like, well, this is like a way better lineup than we could have imagined. Yeah. Like, it’s not undeserving of that lineup, but it’s kind of ludicrous that that console has that lineup. Yeah, for sure. So, I did go to the E3 Nintendo area for this, and I remember it was the first time I’d seen what a HD Nintendo game would look like. I’d never used a Wii before that. And so, my first glimpse of it was playing Mario 3D World or Mario Kart 8 on the booth and being like, wow, Nintendo is doing things with HD visuals that I don’t feel like I’m seeing on the other consoles. And that itself is magic to see, you know? So, yeah, yeah. Really was a strong year. Like, when you look at that E3 line-up, that’s just, you know, if a Nintendo sort of, like, Direct Now had a line-up even comparable to that, people would be like, that was fucking amazing. Right. So, yeah, yeah. It’s worth looking back on, I would say. Just look at the kind of different sort of chapter markers in the video they got for this Direct because it was just, yeah, unbelievable line-up of stuff. They were leaning heavily into, like, weird Iwata memes as well, so you had a lot of, like, oddball stuff. Maybe it was the year before, but there was the year that, like, he appears in the middle of one of the conferences just holding a load of bananas and looking at them for no particular reason. It may have been a Donkey Kong joke, I don’t know. It was very odd. Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, yeah, but still, it was a good format for them. It meant they weren’t being compared apples to apples with Sony and Microsoft, which was good. They’re kind of setting their own terms more than joining the E3 fray and getting their asses kicked, as they did throughout the Wii era. Okay, cool. So, the last thing to note, Matthew, is that the Ouya launched this year. Mostly, it’s kind of a running joke now, but they did actually launch it. And I think people only backed it because Sony and Microsoft made people wait too long for their consoles. So, yeah, but Ouya, I remember being a big deal for about two months. Did learn recently it had a version of Sonic CD that was native to it, which made me laugh. I was like, okay, very good. Okay, Matthew, that’s 2013 sort of roundup done. Should we take a break and then get into our top 10? Welcome back to the podcast. So, the top 10 games of 2013. Hoo, me and Matthew, we both have a top 10. We will alternate the usual style, going from 10 to one. Then we’ll go through some honourable mentions if we have them. So, Matthew, would you like to go first? Yeah, I’m gonna kick off with definitely the only odd ball pick on this list. I would say this is a pretty conservative list, and I apologise, but it was a good year, and you’d have to be a contrarian to sort of deny some of these games. So, number 10, I’m gonna go with Attack of the Friday Monsters Tokyo Tale. Oh yeah, 3DS cult favourite, really, isn’t it? Yeah, 3DS cult favourite download game was part of the Level 5 Guild series, which was an anthology of games. I think they were released physically in Japan, so you’d get one cart and it would have four games on them, but most of them got released over here as digital downloads. Very odd, very experimental. This was made by Millennium Kitchen, and a cultish designer called Kaz Ayabe, who worked on a social RPG series, the name of which escapes me, but never made it to the West. His whole deal is kind of like deep childhood nostalgia represented as a sort of RPG visual novel-y type thing. Really striking art style. I’d describe it as quaint Resident Evil. It’s like hand drawn backgrounds with 3D characters on top with fixed camera angles. But it kind of looks like, you know, you’re in an anime film and it’s kind of got this very sort of gentle, kind of dreamy sort of vibe to it. Very safe world. It’s about a little boy exploring his town where on Fridays there are monsters appear on the outskirts of town having a massive fight. And there is a basically an air of mystery over this story about whether these are actual monsters. Is it maybe something to do with the film crew who are producing kind of monster superhero Japanese action films? Very sort of whimsical take, you know, kind of coming of age tale. Feels like, I wouldn’t say it hasn’t got like the hard edge of like Stand By Me, you know, or the kind of like adventure of the Goonies, but it’s that kind of eternal sort of summer childhood energy where you kind of walk around this town engaging with the oddballs, sort of unpicking the story. And the main gameplay element is a kind of card game that the children play, which is basically rock paper scissors with a few kind of extra wrinkles. I don’t think you actually have to engage with the card game very much at all if you don’t want to, but you can kind of use it to kind of, you know, beat certain kids and get more information out of them. So, like, there’s really not a lot to this, you know, it’s probably like a four or five hour thing. It’s this beautiful little mood piece that I think, you know, I wanted to represent the guild games in some way in my top 10. You know, this was a kind of a sort of felt about as close as you got to sort of a Japanese indie scene on 3DS, like an indicator of some of the opening of Nintendo’s doors to digital downloads and digital-only games and being open to slightly more experimental things. Incredibly charming, only exists on 3DS. So if you have a 3DS and don’t have this game, maybe one to get before it is destroyed forever. Yeah, this is one I’ve had on my 3DS for literally nine years, I suppose, I’ve never played. But the guild games did come up in our best 3DS games episode with Scrabb. So if you want to hear about, I think, Crimson Shroud, that will be discussed as well on there. Yeah, that’s the other one. That came out just at the end of 2012, maybe. Yeah, that was the FFXII guy, that one, wasn’t it? Yeah, I always thought this looked beautiful. Has this guy also been working on an anime tie-in that’s coming to Switch? Did you just mention that, Matthew, and I kind of missed it? No, no, yes, he is. He’s working on a Crayon Shin-Chan game, which came out in Japan this year, I think, and has been announced that it is being localized for the West, and everyone’s very excited because, again, it’s basically one of his summer holiday adventure games. They’re very hard to pin down what his games are. I wouldn’t describe them as social sins. I don’t think they’re not like full Animal Crossing, but they’re just about simulating an aimless summer’s day as a child. But you go around and meet people and do silly little chores, and go fishing and catch bugs and things. He’s just tapping into this one memory repeatedly. He’s been given the opportunity to do it through a license for Crayon Shin-Chan, which is like the little boy who’s always exposing his butt. That’s all I really know about him. That is all I know about that character too, is that he’s a very cursed little boy who will sometimes have a crudely drawn penis shown in his anime. In fact, every episode pretty much. Yeah, is it a bit South Parky? I don’t know because this game would suggest it is aimed at kids, right? But I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t really know what the vibe of that is. I’m sure someone will correct us on our Discord. It’s something I watched endless episodes of on Spanish TV. So I had no context of what was going on other than the animation. The animation would just show this little boy being quite perverse or disgusting. So yeah, when you look at this game, though, you’re kind of like, oh, it’s a beautiful looking slice of life adventure game or something. And it’s like, I can’t marry those two things up in my head, but I’m pleased it’s coming to the West for sure. Yeah, it’s going to be a delightful mix of nostalgia and exposing your heart. Yeah, I’ve always loved the aesthetic of this one. I will play it at some point for sure. I think also Attack of the Friday Monsters is a lovely name for a game. I love that name. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, that’s really cool. Oh, awesome. I really wish those carts with the four games on one would have released here. What a great little collector’s item that would have been. Oh, it feels like the kind of thing that would be worth like $5. Yeah. You’d be able to put a kid through university with that. Yeah. So, yeah, instead you’ll have to get them from a store that is disappearing in under a year. So, very good. Everyone involved, well done. So, Matthew, I’m a bit bored by my number 10, so I’m going to boot it out at the last minute. Oh, shit. Goodbye, Gone Home. I don’t want to talk about you anymore, because I just can’t be bothered. We all talked about it enough back then, do you know what I mean? Yes. Oh, there was a lot of talk about that game. The walking simulator happened. This is a beautifully done passive game where the story was told through finding different clues in a house that’s empty and then not entirely knowing where the story was going to go and having some fun misdirects and then really evoking a 90s time and place. All that stuff is very good. But do you know what? I kind of want to put in Injustice Gods Among Us instead. Of all the games to smack, the incredibly delicate Gone Home 4. I’m going to put the dumbest comic book game in here possible, which is… Oh, that’s so good. That’s much more us. Yeah, I think so. So the premise of this is that Superman has become an evil dictator type because the Joker killed Lois Lane. And so it’s like alternate history, DC, and it’s like heroes fighting heroes and stuff like that by Netherrealm, the Mortal Kombat developers. What I loved about this was like Mortal Kombat 9 before it, Netherrealm included a very, very elaborate story mode, only about five hours long. But you know, would show and try and rationalize why all these characters were fighting before the fight started with like a proper script. I think the script was done by Tom Taylor, who is a very well regarded superhero writer these days, writes the current Nightwing book, Deceased, the zombie DC book. So he’s got form with this sort of stuff. But yeah, I kind of, I thought our story mode was just absolutely like so much fun. And I just have such good memories of just powering through it. And it kind of went to the effort of getting like Kevin Conroy to play Batman again, did all these kind of like sort of rad attacks where like Aquaman was sort of drown people with his kind of like his fatality attack and stuff like that. Those moves would get even better in Injustice 2, where you see like Flash sort of like going through to back to the prehistoric age in order to slam a guy’s head into a bunch of stuff. Like more to DC through the prism of Mortal Kombat, but very well done. So yeah, really committed to its absurd premise and even though for a little bit cheap and rough around the edges, just really enjoyed it like an absolute 7 out of 10. Definitely Gone Home deserves to place more. But you know what? Fuck it. I’m putting Injustice here. No, this is more Backpage Pod, do you actually rate their like versions of the heroes? Like is their Batman a good Batman? Yeah, because they gave you a bunch of skins as well. Like I remember I was watching Arrow at the time, shameful thing to admit, but they had like a green, they had an Arrow skin for the green arrow from that and they even had Stephen Amell, the actor, like voice Oliver Queen when you selected that costume, for example. So they were very tuned in to fan service. They did create bespoke versions of heroes to make them fit into their fictional universes when necessary. But yeah, you know, I always wanted a game where Batman could beat this shit out of Superman and here was that game at last. So yeah, yeah. Have you watched Lewis and Superman? Do you mean Lois and Superman? Lewis? What did I say? It’s Lewis! It’s Lois, isn’t it? It’s not Lewis. Lois? All right, well Lois and Superman. No, Superman and Lois, I think it’s cool, but no, I’ve… Oh, fuck, I’ve really fucked that name. I’ve got every word in the world. You’ve got Andright, that was good. All right, Superman, have you watched Superman and Lois? No, I just, I hear it’s like a cut above those other Arova shows. Have you given it a go? We watched the first episode the other day, because it’s on iPlayer, and there’s a bit of quite on-the-nose storytelling in the first episode that made me chuckle, because they’ve got kids in it, it’s the basic set-up, and they don’t know that he’s Superman, and he goes into, he’s having problems with one of his kids, he’s very surly and doesn’t really like his dad, and he goes in and the kid’s playing in justice, and he’s basically just endlessly baiting the shit out of Superman, and he’s like, oh cool, you’re playing as Superman, and he’s like, no, I like to kill Superman, and you’re like, oh, oh, this is going to be tense when he finds out, but it made me laugh to see that weird nod to the It’s so dumb to suggest that Injustice exists in a universe that has Superman in it. That’s the dumbest shit ever. Like, well done. Well done, and you put that in episode one. That’s fantastic. That’s good. That’s a good crossover. I like the… That’s gutsy. That’s quite fun. I hear they spent quite a lot of money on their set there to bring Smallville to life. That was quite a big undertaking apparently, so yeah. Yeah, it seemed all right. Our listeners in our Discord seem to like it. So yeah, I’ll definitely give it a go at some point. But yeah, Injustice, Matthew. Beats out far worthier games because it lets you kick the shit out of Aquaman. What’s your number nine? My number nine. I don’t know if this is held in high regard, but I like it. It’s Lego City Undercover. Oh, great. Yeah, yeah. I think that people do see this as one of the top tier Lego games for sure. Yeah, I mean, this is obviously the period where Lego is just churning out like hit after hit. I think the issue, like before we reviewed this game, we had like Lego The Hobbit rather than Lego Lord of the Rings. And then there was this, and then there was Lego Marvel. Like you said, everything was going on with Lego. They used to make like four of these a year. Here’s what you need to know about Lego City is that it basically ends with a character skydiving from space while a huge choir sings the word Lego over and over again. Sounds great. Which I think is just one of the silliest endings of the games I’ve ever seen. And I absolutely loved it. It was, you know, before the end, it is a really marvelous game as well. It is a quote unquote unlicensed Lego game, or rather the license is Lego. It’s the Lego City range. And because it’s not tied to any films, it actually frees it up to spoof anything and everything. So it’s got spoofs of Goodfellas, Die Hard, all these different police shows. It’s kind of what if the Lego team weren’t limited by one license. And I think that’s really exciting. And it’s genuinely very funny. And the parodies are really neat. And there’s a real mixture of stuff in there. I’m not entirely sure Goodfellas’ parody is going to land amazingly well with its child audience. But, you know, whatever. There’s a spoof of the tracking shot through the club. It’s pretty deep. Yeah, I mean, let’s not forget, Matthew, I’ve mentioned this before, but Animaniacs had Goodfeathers, which was pigeons who were the character. But pigeon Joe Pesci, basically. Just a load of kids who were like, oh, well, those pigeons sure are weird. Very aggressive pigeons. Don’t know why, but yeah. Yeah, as an actual game, it’s a bit of a kid-friendly GTA. I remember showing this to my then very little brother, and he was just quite taken with being able to poodle around in vehicles, and you get helicopters and cars, and you can just spawn them and drive them around the city, which for an audience that couldn’t touch GTA for years, because it was just so brutal, I think there’s something in having that kind of fantasy delivered to you in a way that you can play it. It’s nice that they kind of open that up to people. It definitely has more density than a GTA. It’s a city, but it has that kind of Lego attention to detail where every building has a puzzle or a bit of platforming or a kind of weird character-specific gimmick to it. Probably the thing you could liken it more is to Arkham Knight in terms of how dense the city is with stuff to do and find, which just, I don’t know, it’s like a constant flow of little distractions. This is the only Lego game I have 100%ed. I collect hundreds and hundreds of gold bricks and unlocked every character and replayed all the levels to do everything. Like, I was really, really into this. I just thought it was just incredibly charming. I love the humour of it. Like I say, it ends big. Not quite God in Space, but in space. So yeah, it’s a big thumbs up from me. Wow, yeah, I mean, you know, I too had this. I think I got sent a copy when I was on Games TM. Played a bunch of it. Thought this was a great match for the Wii U in terms of like as an exclusive. Thought it was a really competent version of a GTA style of open world. Was a nice open world to be in. Like the main character, can’t remember his name, but he was pretty… Chase McCain. Yeah, he was pretty well drawn. I mean, it was just like… I was surprised at the confidence with which they went without a licence and made something really charming and fun. Yeah. And like, you know… It just has jokes. It just has like loads of good jokes in it. Like, there’s the film parodies, but just all the NPC chatter is just really weird and goofy, very, very charming. Yeah, I just put this on my Steam Deck, actually. I thought, oh yeah, I’ll play that on the go. Yeah, I’m actually quite keen to try it again, because obviously I played it all on Wii U and it was fine. A little technically limited. Some brutal loading times and frame rate. It couldn’t like render the city quite as well as it wanted to, but they did bring this out and everything else way after the fact. Yeah, it was definitely a Wii fixture for a long time though, right? It was like two years, something like that. Maybe longer. Yeah, we did a cover on this and Chandra saw it and he loved it. This is one where I was really like, I don’t know Chandra, this sounds shit to me. And then I was totally wrong. Like I really, really dug it. That’s why you need two editors to argue about what is good and what is bad. That’s good. No, that’s cool. I’m pleased to hear that on your list, Matthew. That’s really cool. You can pick. It’s nice that your brother back then enjoyed it. For me, the sort of like soft open world game was The Simpsons Hit and Run, but we don’t need to talk about that again. Yeah, that, yeah. I guess like every generation needs one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know, probably Fortnite these days, isn’t it? Just drive a mech around or whatever the fuck you’re doing in that game. That’s like a mode, isn’t it? Do they have mechs in it or something? It is, isn’t it? I do sound like a grandpa saying that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a child-friendly game where everyone’s like John Wick. Someone did say to me it’s like if Ready Player One was really stupid, that’s kind of what Fortnite is. Like it’s just like, yeah, basically just, yeah, like Ariana Grande’s and John Wick’s having fights essentially. So my number nine, Matthew, is Metro Last Light. Oh, I had this on my list for the longest time and then I bumped it out. Oh, okay, interesting. Because I did think, because I can’t remember as the specifics of it that well these days in terms of like key moments. But I do remember when you go to the surface and explore an airplane and then you find a black box and it shows you a flashback of what happened on the airplane as the nukes went off that set up the game. So for people who don’t know, this is a sequel to Metro 2033. And yes, the whole thing is that like basically a sort of nuclear apocalypse has happened in Russia. And in Moscow, people are using the Metro systems as a kind of like living quarters, but the kind of irradiated sort of wasteland has led to all of these mutated creatures sort of stalking the place. And there’s like, generally speaking, it’s a shooter series about survival. You’re always short on bullets. That’s the whole thing in this game. Like bullets are like essentially a currency. There aren’t that many of them around. So you’re not going around spraying things down. What I love about this series is it’s kind of like half-life-ish first-person storytelling and like exploring environments and seeing those little stories play out. So when you go to like settlements in this, how those are depicted just was really richly done. I always thought these games punched massively above their weight in terms of like, they were clearly not big budget games, but those devs sure know how to make things look fucking amazing. And this I thought just refined the mechanics of the first game. Like I think it had slightly better stealth in it. The action was better. It was just more competently drawn, better paced. Really, really, really liked it. And so yeah, this series has got a special place. I feel like it’s no one’s favourite series, Matthew, but these games are all rock solid and always available on basically everything. Any thoughts? Yeah, I think this is a legit really good series. I must admit, I came to it with the remakes on the next gen. So like an extra level of sort of prettiness. Is it Redux? Yeah. And I loved Exodus as well. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. I’m really into that. But yeah, this one, yeah. I mean, more of exploring those tunnels, but exploring different bits of the culture. If I remember correctly, the second one had a little bit more of like the rival factions in it. Because in those tunnels, there are sort of like extreme right wingers and extreme left wingers, and there’s like tension between them. And you can go into like an underground station, which is kind of like, it’s like fascist central. And, you know, I found the idea that all these like mad splinter groups all lived in the same kind of cramped conditions. And what they all make of the same cramped conditions, you know, what does like a Nazi tube station look like compared to just sort of a survivor’s tube station. And yeah, the little trips above ground. I think some people say this one’s a bit more like scripted and a bit more like handholdy than the first. But for me, like they’re really good at that stuff. So I didn’t really have a problem with it. Yeah, that was kind of what I dug about it, is it just felt a bit more, a bit more like a modern game, I suppose. Like it was, like, I think it does have a dynamic way of weather system, but it doesn’t matter really, because you do almost play at half-life start where you are like, you are following a critical path and you are trying to get to the next place. It’s not really a, it’s not a game. I don’t really see the, I suppose, I suppose Exodus does have a bit of this, but I don’t really see it as like, it’s pretending to be an immersive sim, do you know what I mean? It’s like a very specific type of shooter, essentially, narrative shooter, you know? Yeah, Exodus is like a whole, it’s sort of a whole other thing onto itself. And like, I’m looking forward to chatting about that when we eventually get to that episode. But yeah, like definitely kind of one of the very few series kind of carrying the sort of valve kind of way of doing things in terms of first person like narrative driven adventures. This is really cool. Yeah, I can’t wait to see what they make next because yeah, I’ve actually only ever played Exodus that preview event we went to, Matthew, but I was very impressed by what I did play. So I should go back and go through that. It was really, really cool. So what’s your number eight? My number eight is The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds. Ah, okay. Which is not on your list. Not on my list. No, I am denoured about this. I think the perception is that I’m super, super down on this game, which isn’t true. I put it quite low in my Zelda rankings, but it’s still a Zelda game and this has a lot of charm. My new hot take is, is this the new Super Mario Brothers of Zeldas in that it’s kind of happy to play the hits, but it’s still expertly made and you can’t really deny that. It’s a definite nostalgia play in that it’s a direct sequel to Link to the Past and is set in that version of Hyrule and also has a dual world mechanic. Here it’s flipping between Hyrule and Low Rule rather than just the traditional light and dark world of Link to the Past. Unfortunately, I would say the similarities opens it up to some criticism in that, like, Link to the Past just has way more atmosphere and probably a lot more bigger memories attached to it. And this game is, like, weirdly, like visually, it’s kind of weirdly sterile. It’s got really nice 3D to it, but it definitely doesn’t have anywhere near the same kind of identity as Link to the Past. And you are constantly reminded of that because it is the same world. But, you know, not to be too down on that nostalgia play. I could say, you know, it has, like, an inn where you can go to it and they play acoustic covers of Link to the Past music, which fucking rocks. Like one of my very clear happy memories of this year was playing my copy of this in kind of very dingy November and just listening to these little kind of, like, whistle renditions of old tunes and being incredibly happy and thinking, like, oh, these moments are like, you know, that’s a 10 out of 10 Zelda moment for me. It has one great mechanic in the ability to merge into walls as a painting. It’s the kind of idea that you could build an entire game on here. It’s just one part of a much bigger thing and that’s so often the Nintendo way. And I think the dungeons individually make really nice use of the items. They find new uses for the old classics, you know, there’s new stuff on the hookshot, the fire rod, a sand rod, all these kind of things. Anytime a Zelda game squeezes a drop more fun out of something like a hookshot, I’m always impressed because they’ve really done those things to death. But I would say it never quite escapes like the structural flaw that the dungeons are designed to be played in any order. And it does this way letting you rent the items. You don’t find the items inside the dungeons this time. And because of that, they never really know what equipment you’ve got going into a dungeon, so they can only build those dungeons around those single weapons. I mentioned this actually in our Hall of Fame, a similar problem Ori has. I think this is an example of the podcast eating itself, because I think when I talked about Ori, I talked about Link Between Worlds, and now we’re just trapped in this endless reference to each other. It was always going to happen eventually, wasn’t it? Yeah. Normally. Also a really unchallenging game, which is odd, because I still remember Link to the Past as being brutally difficult, and I don’t think it’s just the age when I encountered them. I think modern Nintendo is just much simpler, much kinder. It wants you to get through to the end. So yeah, mechanically brilliant. I think when you’re in the dungeons just doing the puzzles, really great fun. Yeah, a few big nostalgia bombs going off, which I really like. I think there’s enough in there that this still holds up as an essential 3DS game, even if it’s quite far from an all time classic, which Zelda’s arguably should be. I appreciate you making a case for it, because it didn’t make your top ten in that episode, did it? No, it didn’t. I don’t know if Link to the Past did either. No, it didn’t. Which was the spicier take. That was the one you had to apologise for. But I think everyone got it when they listened to your picks and what your criteria was. I will say for the thing you say about how at the pub they’ll play the acoustic version of the tunes, that is something you can do in the first ten minutes of the game, basically. So arguably it peaks in the first ten minutes. I didn’t actually… I think it’s definitely… The fact that it is just a direct remake and it is the same world. Like, that robs it of a lot of discovery, because even though it puts twists on it, you’re like, oh yeah, it’s that thing, and the whole thrill of Zelda is really discovering something new. It’s why I worry a little bit for Breath of the Wild 2, but there’s a version of Breath of the Wild 2 where they lean so heavily on the same Hyrule, and it just wouldn’t work for me. So, I don’t know. We shall see. That’s fair. There was nothing about this that truly captured my imagination when I played it. I’ll be honest, including the wall stuff, which I didn’t massively click with. But I don’t think I got deep enough into it to truly be authoritative in saying that. But what I will say is I did go and put the 3D effect on after you said at some point, oh, you should see what this looks like in 3D, because while the kind of like the actual 3D sort of renders the characters and the game in there, like the art style isn’t top tier Zelda, with the 3D effect on it kind of is. It’s sort of like the art style is built for that. So if you play out a 2DS, you lose that and kind of you don’t exactly see what they’re going for visually, but it is designed to be played in 3D, you know, so yeah, I think that’s a fair point. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Okay, good. Look at me saying definitely agreeing with my own point. Yeah, definitely. I agree with myself. All right, then. So very good, Matthew, moving on then to my number eight, which is the Stanley Parable. So I discussed this on our Indie Games Hall of Fame volume two episode. So this, I think, was like a sort of mod that became a full game. It’s a game where you play as Stanley, this guy in an office. There is a narrator who is telling you what to do and you can follow what the narrator says or you can start deviating from where the narrator is ordering you in order to find different outcomes in the game. Each run of the game is about 10 minutes long, something like that. This is a game about finding as many endings as you can. The theme of it is about choice. You are kind of an office worker, it suggests that you live a dull life. And then the endings you can uncover, let’s think, how much of this should I spoil? Because there is a new version of this game out now which apparently has a whole hour’s more content to find. So I feel like spoiling the old Stanley Parable isn’t so bad. I think that’s fine. Yeah, so probably the most novel one is where the narrator will take you to different game settings in order to impress you. So it takes you to like a Minecraft, for example, when it looks like Minecraft, or takes you to I think Portal is one of them as well. And it looks like Portal. So it will do things like that. Or it will show you like, it will give you a kind of dystopian ending where you’ll see all these screens where all the people like Stanley are being observed by this like, you know, omnipotent force and stuff like that. Then there’s this one where Stanley will just walk out of the office and die. There’s like loads of different possibilities like this. There’s one where you can open the window at the very start of the game where you’re in the office, climb out into the white space, and then the narrator will start talking about the fact that you’re in a part of the game you shouldn’t be in. And like things like that, basically, it’s like a toy box that’s designed to be broken with a kind of narrative framework. Really just so, so good. I have not played the new edition, but I’ve got on a Steam Deck. Definitely going to play it before we get to our Game of the Year episode, because everyone says it’s fucking fantastic, which I believe. Yeah. Anything to share on this one, Matthew? Not only that I need to dig more into it, because you don’t really know where to draw a line with it, I find, you know, because you’re doing this stuff and it keeps giving you new stuff and you’re like, oh yeah, you know, very good. But then after a while, you’re like, you know, is there some stuff like you have to see? You know, it’s not how do you finish it per se, but how do you, you know, how do you know when to call it? And I think for most people, it’s like, I found 75% of the content and I’m fine now. I’ll move on. Yeah, right. It’s a bit like watching Bandersnatch on Netflix, you know, kind of like I’ll look at like a sort of like a flow graph and then see which of them I’ve seen and how much I should still go and see. It’s a bit of that to it. But yeah, I talked about it otherwise on that episode, but yeah, Stanley Parable, some of all the first person narrative things that are happening at this time, I think this remains the most special to me. And this one didn’t get kicked out of the list by Injustice Gods Among Us, so what great praise for those developers. What’s the number seven, Matthew? My number seven is Luigi’s Mansion 2. Not on my list, but I do like it. Yeah, this is the 3DS sequel to a game which I thought was fine. I thought Luigi’s Mansion was a beautiful thing on GameCube and it made me very excited about what this new generation of Nintendo graphics would look like. But I found it mechanically there wasn’t much going on under the hood. I actually think it makes a lot more sense as a handheld game because it is so mechanically simple. I think dipping in for little blasts and maybe within those blasts seeing a couple of new jokes or a little new puzzle mechanic, this game is just designed around ten minute runs. I thought that at the time, having played Luigi’s Mansion 3, I’m willing to double down on that stance. I think 3 is a really gorgeous game, but it just really struggles to cover up the fact that there just isn’t much to a Luigi’s Mansion. You shine a torch at things, then you vac them up and you move the analog stick in the other direction. Really all they can do is throw more bespoke animations and slapstick gags and there has to be a limit to those. And just from a production budget point of view. But here, yeah, just short shot bursts, you know, you can’t really get too bored of it in that time. Another brilliant match for 3DS, I think a huge amount is lost if you don’t play this in 3D. It has this sort of Doll’s House aesthetic anyway, where you’re looking at a cross-section of a mansion, looking into these little dioramas, obviously in 3D they’ve got amazing depth and it’s graphically like a really great, great looking game. I like the fact that it has different mansions that kind of give it different change of pace or like different mechanics going on in different places. Again something 3 does with each floor being a different theme, but actually there I just got a bit tired of it by the end here. I think there’s like five mansions or something and that’s it just hits the sweet spot for me in a way that I think one and one and three didn’t. I also got incredibly stuck doing a guide for this on O&M about where to find all the hidden gems. I couldn’t find one of the hidden gems and I had to send a very grasping email to Next Level Games I think, saying, how do I find the gem? And then their CEO sent me an email back telling me which was nice, so good for him. I didn’t go through official channels on that one. Yeah, also the game which pissed off Eugene Acker, when he took too long playing the demo at E3 and he stood behind me huffing in the queue. What a huffy man he is. Yep, so one day maybe he’ll erase you from a photo, Matthew, who knows. That gave me such an insight to the guy. If he got stroppy about being in a queue, he’s probably a difficult person, I would imagine, to work with. A very sobering thought. I will ask, Matthew, out of the new mechanics they added to this, which do you think are the most memorable? What stays with you from this one that differentiates it from the first game? You’ve got the different sort of like, you’ve got the dark light which sort of reveals hidden layers to things, which is fine. There’s a couple of little stretches where you kind of co-op with Toad, where you sort of suck a little Toad up and then sort of ping him about. That’s quite cute. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, just little things like that that give stretches of this their own identity and it’s, you know, again, something 3D tries to do. But yeah, I’m not saying they’re like deep mechanics, but they’re enough to distract from the fact that you’re otherwise just going into another room and pointing a torch at things and sucking them up. Yeah, this is definitely one of the nicest looking 3DS games. I think that I sort of agree where, I mean, it’s weird first of all that there’s like 12 years between the two games. That’s quite strange when you think about it. But obviously, next level games had nothing to do with that first one. So they did a very good job of taking that base and building something quite imaginative on top of it. Because I agree, the first Luigi’s Mansion is a fine little thing, probably a 7 out of 10. But you know, it looked amazing on the Gamecube with its lovely lighting and stuff. But you know, quite shallow. It’s over and then you don’t really particularly have desire to play another one. So the fact they managed to build a much more elaborate sequel that was extremely good on a handheld was amazing. You can see why Nintendo snapped them up after this, can’t you? That makes sense. Yeah, very good, Matthew. You sound so very surprised. Well, it’s more than like I couldn’t quite dig enough into my memories to put this on my list, but I did like it. I did review it for sci-fi now. It’s like significantly longer than the first one as well, right? Yeah, there’s a reasonable amount because you’ve got each of the different mansions you go into, they’ve almost got mini Metroid vibes to them in that you do several missions in each and each mission opens up new bits of it or lets you dig deeper into other bits. So it has some fun where you repeat certain stretches and sometimes they’ll be ghosts or sometimes they’ll behave differently, but then you also gradually push out into them. So yeah, I guess that is the structure of the original Luigi’s Mansion, but here you get to do it like five times over, so yeah, it really does have the best of the series but sort of slightly shrunk down into a more enjoyable form. Yeah, that sounds good because you get fucking sick of that first mansion in the first game after a while, so yes, well done. Here’s to variety, very good. Are you ready for a spicy number seven, Matthew? Oh yeah. The last of us. Oh, okay. Not on my list. Not on your list! That’s even spicier. Shall we start? I mean, it’s no Lego city on the cover. So I’ll talk about why I put it here. So, yes, this was Naughty Dog’s big thing. It was like the, of all the games that came along at the end of this console generation, this PS3 exclusive post-apocalyptic game was the hot shit, had been very hyped up by sort of story traders before this. Came along. I do like it. I replayed it last year. I don’t think it has particularly great stealth or survival mechanics in it. And I think that having played The Last of Us Part 2, I think that game does. I think that game is a much more complete mechanically sort of game. This is a lot brisker than I remembered this The Last of Us. So it obviously takes place across these four seasons as Joel and Ellie are traveling across America, the whole thing being that Ellie has some immunity from this virus that’s causing everyone to be these kind of fungus zombies, essentially. And so there’s a possibility that if they get her to a certain place, there is a cure that can be synthesized that could save humanity and reverse the damage done. Now what happens in that scenario, I think is very well done and is the best bit of the game, like what the outcome of that storyline is. But I must admit, I found it slightly pompous at the time. A bit too in love with itself, its seriousness. I kind of thought it was The Road, but was closer to like a sort of PG-13 action film or something. Maybe that’s a little bit harsh, but like I said, I think this, I really loved the second one and I thought it was a much better version of this. More thematically deep, more interesting. Like I say, mechanically did loads more with its kind of combat sandboxes. Really, really loved it. This one, I just thought there’s a few too many instances where I would get grabbed by an insta-kill enemy and be like, oh yeah, fuck’s sake, or like, rather than try to stealth my way through it, I’ll just fire a gun, get four people to run at me and try and blow them up with an explosive rather than try and play it properly. I found myself doing that too often and forgetting myself, getting too frustrated with it. Even though I kind of accepted it was beautifully, it looked amazing. It was definitely one of the best-looking PS3 games. It looked even nicer when they put it on PS4, of course. Somehow, there is a third version of this game coming out in September. Now we’ve redubbed part one. So yeah, but it just didn’t quite capture my imagination the way it did for other people. Because I think a lot of people are a bit younger than me, Matthew, to them. This is like what Uncharted 2 was to me. This was a game where they were like, oh, this is what you can do with like kind of blockbuster storytelling in games. And it really captured their imaginations, but it didn’t do that for me. Thoughts? I do love this game and I didn’t not include it because I wanted to be contrarian or anything. I’d rather celebrate some other happier Nintendo things that probably better reflect where I was mentally and in my life. I was just enjoying these fun things and I was in a very Nintendo place. That said, I was absolutely desperate to play this and I bought it on launch day. I remember they kept talking about it on CVG because O&M sat next to CVG and they’d obviously all played it and they were just talking about it endlessly. It was one of those games which, the last time this really happened was with Bioshock where everyone was talking about something and I was like, I have to get on this because it sounds absolutely brilliant. I remember they kept saying that, I don’t know which journalist it was, but apparently some famously stony-hearted journalist had been brought to tears by the intro. Was it Rick Stanton? But it was just like, oh so-and-so, it was like, I don’t know, the editor of MCV or something at the time had like wept over it. It’s like, wow, this must be so powerful if it made him cry. So, you know, maybe I went in with like slightly over the top expectations. I’m completely with you on it, like mechanically, I think it’s pretty soft. Like, yeah, not particularly into it as a like stealth game or an action game. I do really love it when they just take control and kind of shepherd you through something very choreographed, but make you think you’re in control. Like that is the amazing Naughty Dog trick where they get you to be exactly where you need to be for this awesome thing to happen. But it doesn’t, it still feels like you’re playing it. You know, that is a, there is an amazing technical art to that. And as a technical thing, this game, like, was pretty astonishing at the end of the generation. Yeah, I just, yeah, I just didn’t, like, resonate with it emotionally, like hugely. Like, I remember thinking it was quite long and baggy in places. I felt the same about the second one. I don’t know if my slightly cooler reaction is, in some way, a reaction to the hype around it, or, like, counter, a deliberate counter to that. I did really like it. It’s probably, like, 11 on my list, if that helps. Yeah, but just below Attack of the Friday Monsters. Well, like, that’s, that, I don’t know, that, that, that game sort of speaks a little bit more to me in terms of what I want. Like, I know that things are shitty and that people are shitty and that putting desperate situations, like, you know, people do bad things and life’s a struggle. Like, I didn’t necessarily need to spend, like, a gruelling 20 hours being sort of reminded of that. Maybe that’s a simple, maybe that’s a simple take. Well, this game definitely isn’t that long for a while. It’s about 10 hours long. Is it? I remember it being much longer than that. I don’t think it’s any longer than, like, 12 hours. It’s like, it’s significantly shorter than the second one, which is monstrously long. Yeah, the second one definitely is, but I remember this also being quite long. I do like the sections. I think maybe it’s the autumn section, where you kind of, you’re out in the countryside a bit and there’s the stuff with the farmhouses, and there’s a little good illusion that you are in a huge open world, but you’re not really. I think stuff, you ride a horse in this one. Maybe I’m conflating you with the second. Well, I’m slightly wrong here. The last of us, according to how long to beat, is 15 and a half hours. The second one’s 24 hours. It definitely took me longer than 24 hours to finish that second one. The stuff that everyone remembers and sticks with you, I like the giraffe bit. The winter section with the Nolan North character? Yeah, it’s got plenty of fun twists and turns. I think it’s a really, really good game. It just doesn’t resonate with me as much as Luigi’s Punches 2, which has as much interesting stuff to say about death. That’s the only thing I don’t want to generalise here, but I think the fact that there was this young girl at the heart of the story maybe broadened its appeal past what some of these games had previously been targeting. I just note that a lot of women who are younger than me who write about games just really clicked with this. That’s not like me saying everyone did, but certainly on TechRadar I noted that from a couple of colleagues. I feel like that Ellie character just really spoke to people. I totally get why it was their game, but just slightly pompous and not as mechanically refined as it would be. I know you were a bit cool on that second game, Matthew. I thought our second game was fantastic. I know it gets super gruelling, but if we just take the story away and focus on the mechanics, it’s maybe the best. Maybe other than Uncharted 4, it’s the best mechanically of all the Naughty Dog games. Yeah, I think I need to replay it. I will definitely be playing this part one remake for sure, and maybe I’ll re-evaluate it. It’s been a long time. I’ve not replayed it since back then. I was tempted to replay the Remastered, but there’s a stretch in this game I hate so much where you get stuck in the basement of a hotel with loads of those big exploding ones. It’s a real absolute motherfucker of a difficulty spike. I had such a miserable time playing it originally that whenever I’m even toying with it, I’m like, oh no, that hotel bit, I really hate that. I wouldn’t want to encounter that again. It puts me off. Maybe when the TV show comes out next year, we should do an episode on the series, Matthew, and get a guest in or something. That might be fun. Yeah, definitely. Because I hadn’t put it on my list, I didn’t really give it much thought. I didn’t want to make a case for why it isn’t on my list. I would say even though there are games on here that are definitely higher for me, I put it on my list because I still recognize it does so many things so well. And yeah, there’s still a lot I like about it. I like pretty much all of the guest characters who join you in the game. I think they’re pretty memorable. It is well written and well acted like all of the Uncharted games were. Maybe you spoke to me slightly there because it’s a little bit too self-serious. I know it matches the subject matter, but I don’t know. Maybe it slightly rubbed me up the wrong way. I don’t really know. I still really liked it and enjoyed it on a replay, but I think the second one is a legit masterpiece. So, what’s your number six, Matthew? My number six is Fire Emblem Awakening. Not on my list. This was allegedly Intelligent Systems’ final shot at the series, so they really go all in. I can’t really remember the specifics of our anecdote. It’s pulled from the Iwata Asks, but this was a series which had been dwindling a bit, and I’m always slightly bemused by anecdotes where they’re like, we’ve got one last shot and we’re going to throw loads of money at it, and it feels like, well, that seems very risky for something you have so little faith in. But anyway, by the book, let’s put that aside. Like, really, this is just everything that’s good about Fire Emblem, incredibly polished up, it just really nails anything. I don’t think it specifically alters the formula in any grand way, but they definitely hone in on what makes the individual characters tick, and I think it’s the attachment to those characters that makes everything in this turn-based tactics game work. You know, it’s famously got permadeath, where if a character dies on the battlefield, they’re removed from the story. As long as they’re not one of the story critical people, that’s game over. So you can train these characters up over these battles, and in theory you can lose them, and then it really hurts, because they were more than just a generic command and conquer unit. They had a name, they had a backstory, you got to know them. This famously introduces loads of difficulty modes, where you can remove the permadeath. I would recommend playing with it, it is the way a game is meant to be seen. Well, some people would say the way it’s meant to be played is that you reset endlessly, and keep everyone alive, no matter what. But I think playing it and witnessing those deaths is part of what makes it work. But again, I think with a strong cast of characters, the relationships between them are that much stronger. It has this big focus on the strategic advantages of having friends and lovers fight side by side. There’s a big focus on marrying characters and them having children, which is tied into the scale of the story and the time it covers. Again, a lot of these ideas have technically been seen before, but I think they were rarely done so comprehensively or with such amazing production values. When you look at this game, it’s got this really gorgeous art, it’s got the 3D models that you see on the battlefield in the cutscenes fighting, they’re really cool, but it’s also got this very handsome art style, it’s got a really top-notch localisation of this one. And I think because of that, people just got wise to this, these characters being great. I feel like this is the beginning of ushering in some of that performative horniness that we talk about, which they definitely then lent into with the social stuff in the Switch Fire Emblem where you’re in the school and it’s all about basically ogling all the teachers. Not to mention the character person in Jesus. Yeah, there’s a lot of that. But yeah, underneath it all, really not that different from when this series was firing on all cylinders, probably on the GBA, the sacred stones. But yeah, just everything elevated. And with that central twist of strong character relationships translating to sort of bonuses on the battlefield is, I’d say is really where this sort of, everything sort of comes into focus. Yeah, so I’ve never really properly played this series. Do you think I would like it, Matthew? I think you would. They are fucking long. I mean, they’re like, you know, 50 hours plus. How does the combat experience compare to something like XCOM? Is it like a similar sort of deal? Not really. It’s a bit more… Like, terrain is part of it. You know, if you fight in woods or on certain surfaces, certain units are advantage or disadvantage. Really, at the heart of it is a rock paper scissors system between different unit types. And so it’s a lot more about strategically getting your strong units where they’re going to do more damage and your weak units. I’d say it’s more of a higher-minded strategy game. It’s less about an individual combat scenario and more about the bigger battlefield picture. So like Advance Wars, basically. Yeah, but the reason I like this and I struggle with Advance Wars is that you go in with the characters you have. They’re individual named units. It’s kind of like, here are the pieces you have to play with. Here’s the situation you have to deal with. What I don’t have is the strategic mind to build and prepare and plan in advance, you know, taking over buildings, check tech trees, anything like that is where I come unstuck. So for me, this is sort of, you know, it has its own identity in that you don’t have to kind of like build an army in the fight. You can just try and make that army do the best it can. Okay, cool. So here’s a question. If you were going to play one Fire Emblem game now, would it still be this one, do you think? I’d say probably in terms of capturing the broadest strokes of the series in that it has that kind of really traditional core, but it has the kind of the quality of the modern productions. I don’t know, I must admit I’ve only played a bit of The Switch. Right. So, you know, like it’s not one I can speak to hugely, but there I would say like the kind of social, sim side of it is definitely a lot more substantial. Yeah, hard to say. I think this one’s got it all. This is like a real, like this is definitely a core Fire Emblem text. Yeah, for sure. This is like one of those games you’ll see on every single best 3DS games list as well. Like it’s always on there and did seem to like just ramp it up, at least in the West, kind of like capture the imagination to people who had maybe missed it previously. So, yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people were into the GBA ones. I just don’t think the home console ones, maybe like the Radiant games made quite the same impact. Yeah, of course. Like maybe it just suits Handheld a little bit better, but then Switch you can play Handheld, so it’s not quite… Yeah, it’s not the most handsome Switch game though, is it? It feels maybe slightly… It doesn’t look like the sort of mega tier of Nintendo exclusive, like a Breath of the Wild or something. It’s maybe like middle… Maybe not, I don’t know. The character designs and the art style, they are very striking. It gets the important stuff right. Yeah, for sure. It definitely seemed to have struck a chord. With all the horn dogs. That’s what matters. It’s a war on. Yeah, but what else are you doing it for other than the chance to have a shag afterwards? Why else go to war? What’s the point? Hammer, hammer, hammer. As your friend gets a fucking spear through their throat. There you go. That’s what people really listen to this episode for. They’re waiting for that. They don’t want to hear the inside. They just want to hear the jokes about horniness. I don’t know. I would imagine the real armies look down on horniness. Well, it’s funny because I listened to an episode of This American Life which is about everyone, the people who lived on this giant US aircraft carrier, had hundreds of people on it. And even though they were not supposed to, loads of people were just fucking on there. It was just like a frat house basically. And this reporter didn’t have to dig hard to find evidence of that. Yeah, just a lot of people getting on with that. Why wasn’t there more of that in Top Ten? The sort of thing is though, you probably feel more comfortable having a shag on an aircraft carrier because when is one of those, an American one of those ever going to sink? Okay, good. My number six, Matthew, is Tomb Raider. It’s weird because Tomb Raider Underworld, I know it’s a big Matthew Castle favourite, but I feel like it got the reception of being a bit fuddy duddy old school, which was perhaps unfair. So obviously Lara Croft’s lunch had been stolen a bit by Nathan Drake and the Uncharted games were kind of like sort of taking the basic types of setting scenarios and such of Tomb Raider, but making it much more cinematic and with your motion capture cutscenes and stuff. This is almost like Crystal Dynamics borrowing back from Naughty Dog in order to make this Lara Croft reboot, where she washes up on this island, this ship washes up and basically is forced to survive as she’s fighting loads of vague mercenary men. And it’s an interesting one in that it’s a kind of mix of, at its core it’s basically like an Uncharted style sort of cinematic shooter game, a shooter combat game. But it also has a little bit of Metroidvania structure to it where you can go back to different areas with different tools in order to find new bits and pieces. It’s a slightly Zelda-y world. It’s not quite open world but it’s got open sections and it has got some stuff to find, not loads of stuff to find. But there’s a few things I just really liked about it. I thought the presentation was amazing for an end of the generation game. It looked incredible. I was really game for the premise of this, the kind of washed up on an island idea. I don’t think the story is particularly good, but I think the scenario, the threat level felt high, partly because there are so many brutal death animations for Lara in this quite famously. But also nailed the feeling of like a bow and arrow in a game in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Like it made head-shotting somewhere that feel really good. This quite simple but nice kind of like pickaxe climbing system, I thought was cool. I like that. Just the mix of stuff was fresh enough to kind of get me really excited about it. Just a tiny bit of like survival elements thrown in as well, a little bit of hunting, a little bit of like crafting, nothing too in-depth but just in general made for a really satisfying sort of adventure and of course had like a few of the slightly puzzly sort of like actual tombs to raid as per the title. Weird that kind of that side of it is optional in this game. Thoughts Matthew? Yeah, I still balk at the lack of tombs in a Tomb Raider game but this is a different thing really. Yeah, I thought this was really super slick. I love the kind of the way she sort of automatically crouches. It has a sort of like organic cover system, I guess you’d describe it as, where you don’t sort of go into cover. She just kind of shifts and definitely like outside of Nathan Drake, one of the more sort of like successfully sort of animated characters in these kind of combat scenarios. It really sort of sells you on her and her sort of physical presence in that world. Yeah, I really love this. I got a little bogged down in the weird optional challenges. It’s got this really like slight conflict at its heart in that on one hand it’s trying to be this very sort of psychologically real depiction of what it is to be a Tomb Raider. Like it’s the big narrative thrust. But then it also has like layers and layers of really gamey bullshit where it’s kind of shoot 10 pots for this XP and find these things. And like every area has multiple of these these multiple of these challenges. And I got really sort of stuck, not like I don’t think it’s hooked on them. I just the completionist in me like really went to town on them. And it turns it into quite an abstract game where you’re just hunting around these spaces you’ve emptied of all human life to try and find like five flags and then to try and like shoot like five burning pots. And that’s quite an odd choice. I think it puts you in conflict with what is otherwise like a really well paced game. Yeah, it certainly doesn’t outstay as welcome. I think that I didn’t really do any of those to be honest. Like I was I was really keen to do the tomb the actual tomb raiding challenge bits. I was really keen to do those. But yeah, I just couldn’t like move on from an area until I’d found like, you know, ten parrots or something. This is so dumb because the whole time she’s like, I’ve got I’ve got to get to the village. I’m bleeding out as I’m looking for like 20 wicker men hidden in bushes or something. It just felt lavish as all hell this game. Like you say, the animation and like just it felt like it took them over four years to make it. You know, it felt like that it was that level of operation. And to be honest, like I only played a bit of the second one, but it just didn’t have the magic for me for some whatever reason. But maybe I should give it another try. But I like all three. I actually think they’re much of a muchness quality wise. Okay, interesting. I should give that a proper try then. I’ve just been a bit eye rolling at the ending where she gets her pistols and you’re like, yep. The ending sort of goes full supernatural with like a weather witch as well, right? Oh, yeah. Some dumb bullshit like that. Yeah. And you’re like, oh, you are stupid. You’re pretending that you weren’t a stupid game, but you are stupid. I also like this game has like an Aldi Sean Bean character in it. Like it was her kind of mentor guy. That’s like, you know, it’s not afraid to go. It’s very tropey in that way. Like I don’t think the story was in my mind at all. But I thought the kind of game feel of it was just fantastic. And yeah, definitely. And like you said, I just I like seeing people do the Naughty Dog thing in a slightly different way, but almost as good. You know what I mean? That’s that really appealed or, you know, yeah. A really great late game introduction of a silence pistol in this game. Like it’s like the last bit of equipment you get and you were suddenly a really dangerous self presence because of it, because you can just stop popping everyone in the heads. It’s got a good power curve. Yeah, good, good final act because of it. Yeah, that is like a good power curve about this game because you are meant to be vulnerable, but then you survive and you thrive and then you win. And that’s the journey she goes on. Yeah, I want to play these again now. I did buy all three of them in an Xbox pack for 18 quid a little while ago. So, yeah, I might give these a try, Matthew. Cool. So what’s your number five? My number five is Super Mario 3D World. Higher on my list. Oh, we finally got crossover. Yeah, I didn’t think that would make your top ten. Thank God, says my sweaty back. I’m sorry, Matthew. I feel so bad making you do this podcast this week. We should have had a skip week, shouldn’t we? Okay, so my number five is DMC Devil May Cry. Not on my list. Okay, so this game is really cool. They got so much shit at the time because it was essentially a reboot made by Ninja Theory, who had previously made Enslaved and Heavenly Sword, neither of which were amazing combat games. I think people were quite sceptical that Ninja Theory could make something comparable to what Capcom in-house was capable of. And also had the problem of basically saying that it’s a different version of Dante. They redesigned the character, so he had like black hair, looked extremely different. There is nothing that distinctive about Dante’s personality. He is more coped and haircut than character, I would say. But he is a very, a great, on Capcom’s terms, he’s a great PS2 era creation, like he has a certain attitude and vibe. He is iconic, for sure. So I think they were kind of caught in trouble by giving him such a big redesign and that meant a lot of people didn’t give this game a chance. Would you say that’s fair, Matthew? Bit mad, because Devil May Cry 4 ain’t particularly great. No, and that’s the thing. But this game is really fucking good. And it was one I played again this week, actually, to prepare for this podcast. So, dates, dates better than Devil May Cry 4 does, I would say. Like, if you play it now, it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily feel like a ten-year-old game. It looks a little bit like one, because of the textures and stuff. But, it boils down the kind of combat to sort of like you have these Heaven and Hell themed abilities. It kind of, the whole story in it taps into the fact that your mother’s an angel and your father’s the devil aspect. And so you have like these blue and red color coded weapons. And you can access those at any time by pressing one of the shoulder buttons, essentially. So you switch to, you know, the kind of like the devil weapon or the angel weapon, like a scythe or like a sort of like, not quite a whip thing, but something you can use to drag enemies towards you. And it gives you this amazing range of like, pull enemies around, chuck them in the air, amazing range of movement to kind of bring the 3D combat to life. And I think it feels like a much more contemporary 3D combat experience than those earlier Devil May Cry games do, which are like quite convoluted in terms of like understanding how they work and how to like optimize them. And then they’re kind of like the buttons you press. This is much easier to learn, but has the same skill ceiling for sure. It’s really, really good. But the thing that Ninja 3 also brings to this, that arguably didn’t exist in the same way in the Capcom ones, is they’re very, very set PC levels. So I think a lot of people remember the Fox News style Raptor News level in this, Matthew, where you’re basically fighting the giant head of a Bill O’Reilly type in the game. You’re literally climbing inside the news program. It’s really, really nicely done. There’s a nightclub level as well. There’s a lot of shifting geometry around you in this. It’s a visually spectacular game. While there are memorable set pieces in Devil May Cry, I think the very specific Ninja Theory approach to this is actually extremely effective and makes this game quite distinctive. I must admit, I’ve done a playthrough of this, but didn’t get massively, massively into the combat system. I don’t really know how it’s held with regards to the other games, so to hear that it does have that high skill ceiling is cool. Normally with a Devil May Cry game, I feel like the original ones and five, I feel like, oh, there’s shit loads of stuff which is clearly beyond me or I’m missing here. This is very deep and it’s designed to be mined. Where Devil May Cry felt more like, oh, well, I didn’t feel that for whatever reason. I felt like I’m kind of doing just fine in this. It felt a bit easier, maybe is probably the shorter way of saying it. I think it has the same level of mastery, but it’s just easier to play and get into. Yeah, and in that sense you can just enjoy the succession of wild sites. Definitely a more appealing art through line in this game than the other ones. The other ones are a little bit like Gothic castles and quite cliched versions of Hell. I wouldn’t say… do people love the Capcom Devil May Crys for the setting? I don’t know. I don’t think they do. I think they love them for the combat, the attitude and the very, very specifically Capcom not the storytelling as such, but just the sensibilities that shape the game. Yeah, absolutely. I loved Five, but definitely the setting of it. I was like, this really could be anywhere. It’s astonishing combat happening in quite generic oozing corridors. Here’s the thing to throw in here. The Definitive Edition they released added something called Hardcore Mode, which essentially completely remixes the enemies in the game. So it’s designed to be closer to the Capcom style of like skill-sealing Devil May Cry kind of experience. So it was a deliberate change of one of many deliberate changes they made to that addition to get a bit closer to that experience. I actually did read Rich’s review of this for Eurogamer last night. He was kind of like of the mindset that when you do step up to the higher difficulties, it does definitely come to life and because of the way you can pull enemies around, pull yourself towards enemies and things like that, you’re given such choice as a player that the combat has kind of like real life to it. So I think it does get to those heights, but you have to like maybe wait a little when it is designed to be replayed. So you only unlock the full, a bit like playing Bayonetta, you only unlock your full skill set once you’re going to go through it. It’s an interesting parallel to Bayonetta because both games try and progress what the original Devil May Cry’s were doing, through their own kind of like niceties to make them a bit more comfortable with. That’s easy automatic in Bayonetta’s case, or the slow-mo dodge which makes it, the combat a bit simpler to understand. Like here, here in Ninja Theory have their own take on how to bring that skill scheme down a little bit, well, at least initially so you understand how to play it before you’ll properly challenge, you know. So a lot of waffle there Matthew, but hopefully that’s there. I like that take a lot. I think that’s very well put. Yeah, this holds up for sure. So yeah, good stuff. So what’s your number four Matthew? My number four is Pikmin 3. Oh, awesome. I was going to say this is the Pikmin where they finally nailed the formula. It’s definitely the Pikmin where they finally nailed the formula for me. I never particularly got Pikmin 1 or 2. One I found very stressful because it’s famously a game where you are controlling an army of little vegetable critters to do your bidding and you’re basically using them to harvest… save yourself from having crash landed on this planet, but you have a 30 day time limit. And it’s feasibly a game where you can play a whole campaign of it and not complete it and fuck yourself and then have to replay the whole thing. Too stressful, didn’t enjoy it. The second one, they remove the time limit and then it just becomes a weirdly hollow experience where you have all the time in the world and there’s no pressure and you can just like nibble away at the world with these little critters and then all of a sudden it kind of guts the purpose for being. So I never really got them. This one actually finds a really nice sweet spot between the two, a bit like Luigi’s Mansion 2 in fact, where it has like a pressure element in that you need to constantly harvest fruit on this alien world in order to sustain your crew of pilots. But as long as you have juice, you can keep on going. So you have the basic goal of furthering your exploration, furthering your progress in this world, of getting whatever narrative doodad is you’re currently working towards. But as long as besides that you are constantly harvesting fruit, which is quite readily available, you will always be well stocked. And I comfortably made my way through this with loads and loads of fruit stored up, but it still had that need of like, well, I have to be efficient. And that’s really like what is at the heart of the Pikmin games, is it’s like a big efficiency exercise. Like it may look like it’s kind of cute and throwaway, and then it has these silly little vegetable creatures. But what you’re trying to do is make sure like you’re sending the right Pikmin to do the right tasks. This really opens that up by having three pilots that you control in any given time. So you can sort of send them off to different parts of a level. So you can be literally like pushing out at one frontier, pursuing a narrative goal with like another pilot, and then use the third pilot to collect some of that fruit. So when you really get into that side of the game, it’s very compelling. They made a big song and dance about this being like on the first Nintendo HD console. It’s like a series that they didn’t want to bring back until they had like the ability to do that visual step up. And I think it really pays off. It has a really like beautiful sense of texture. You know, from like sort of shiny kind of shell of like a giant boss beetle or these little ceramic shards that you kind of pick up to build bridges over rivers. These giant crystals that you can shatter with the rock Pikmin. You know, just the water, the sun dappled ponds. It’s a very satisfying game to look at. Like everything feels like it’s very sort of tangible and sort of pleasant to interact with, which I think the extra kind of graphical grunt really kind of like plays a big part in that. Also, like I think the control wise, you can play it with like traditional button controls, which is much like old Pikmin. But the optimal way to play this is with like a nunchuck and Wii remote, where you can control like the movement of your astronaut on the analog stick and then have the full pointer controls and really like surgically target every Pikmin where you want them to go. And that’s really where this game came alive for me was having the kind of game pad map, which you can kind of look at kind of propped up, but playing on the TV with those controls. Yeah, finally, this series made sense for me. Yeah. And like what was always very stressful and scary and like probably too much strategy, you know, even in this for my personal liking, I felt like I finally had the kind of tools to kind of get on top of the situation in this one. And it just completely sold me on the concept. Yeah, I think it’s like just a really like I get it. I get Pikmin and I hope they make more because this game was so good. Oh, that’s awesome. So I had a similar experience to you where I kind of like the sort of basic format of controlling, ordering the Pikmin around and controlling your little dude and like how the game loop actually worked. But yeah, like maybe didn’t quite click with the shell of it. And I’ve never played this one. Do you know if the Switch version has the pointer controls on the Joy-Cons, Matthew? I actually haven’t played the Switch one and I should have looked that up. You’d think they would. It’d be madness if they didn’t because like it’s just it’s a huge part of what makes this game work. I mean, the button controls work fine, you know, you can do it, but it’s a little less elegant. And so much of this game like it’s got really good mission mode, actually. Once you’ve done the campaign, it’s got these like self-contained levels. And I think where this game really comes alive is where you’ve got a very fixed space that you can quickly like a master like where everything is. And then it becomes about really digging into that kind of efficiency of like, I’m going to try and do this time challenge mode as fast as possible and collect the most fruit. I know where everything is. You know, what is the most optimal way of like dividing my pit in between my three pilots? You know, using my remote to just like I’m cane. You know, you’re running, you know, really fast, but at the same time, you’re just chucking these, these pitman exactly where they need to be. It’s a really like a really, really deep game. And I almost wonder if like this is always what Miyamoto kind of imagined for it, being about like this sort of, like I say, efficiency kind of task. But only on this format with that control scheme, can it like properly be recognized? Okay, interesting. I feel like Pitman is at a constant state of, I am making another one. Miyamoto says that. And then like six years later, it kind of emerges. That’s sort of like, yeah, it’s sort of its status these days, isn’t it? Because it is like the whole thing that his sort of passion project, like love of gardening, something like that, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, for a long time, it’s, I think it’s still like the last gamey game that is very, you know, specifically from him. Right, right. You know, like at the time when it came out, it was like, this is Miyamoto’s new game. You know, the brain that brought you all these other games. You know, he’s obviously had a huge hand in like, you know, Wii Fit and Wii Sports and all these things. But in terms of like a game aimed at the core, I’d say this, I think this is still like the last real like Miyamoto baby. Now he’s just too busy, like designing fucking theme parks and whatever. So signing off on like Chris Pratt’s line readings in the Mario movie. I mean, he’s an older guy now. I can imagine that’s, you know, if like your job was like, shall I go into the office and reinvent the game design wheel? Or shall I just make someone build like a fucking rad Donkey Kong log flume? Like, I would probably take the log flume. Like, you know, it’s just a diagonal line with some water, isn’t it? It’s really funny. I mean, that must be a dream come true for him. Like designing theme parks and shit. Yeah, that’s got to be exciting. That’s got to be easier, surely. You would think so, yeah. And it’s definitely like a young man’s game trying to like reinvent the wheel. So, yeah. Okay, good stuff. My number four, Matthew, is XCOM Enemy Within. So not on my list. I don’t think I even played it. Which one? Is this the original XCOM reboot? No, this is the expansion to the reboot. I haven’t played the expansion. I have played the original, not this. Yeah, so obviously like XCOM comes back in 2012 with Enemy Unknown, this console-pad-friendly reformatting of the old XCOM formula where it’s turn-based. Basically on a global scale, you combat this alien invasion and then you go to these different places. In a macro scale, you do these turn-based missions to try and kill the aliens and then progress your campaign. So this is two layers, strategy layer and a tactical layer, that work in sync to create this repeatable, enjoyable campaign that you can theoretically lose. So XCOM always has the old permadeath as well, much like Fire Emblem, where you get attached to your soldiers and then when they die, you feel like shit. And the goal is to try and keep them alive if you can, whether you’re sort of same scumming or you accept the consequences of your actions, it kind of makes things feel incredibly tense. So, and it was a really good refresh, a really good reformatting of it for a modern age, really successful. I think this makes it a borderline 10 out of 10 game, because what it threw in was tons more stuff, loads more maps, new enemy types. The big one was that it let you build mechs, essentially. It let you harvest alien technology to pursue these paths where you had like cybernetic implants for your characters, so they had more kind of like psychic style abilities, or they had mechs and they could basically go in like, like dominate the battlefield sort of in that physical sense. And so by adding that, it just, it added so much more in the way of strategic potential. These games are kind of like about basically like repeating the sort of same beats over and over again for a slightly different campaign. The idea there are even more things that got diverse, you could completely change the way that you’re approaching the game on a combat level was really exciting. Meanwhile, there’s just like a massive list of things they added to this. These new kind of narrative style missions where the world council in the game on the sort of on the sly would ask you to go and escort an NPC in a certain place and have these little stories that play out. It’d be like a guy who’s turning his back on the triad. Yeah, it’s those sorts of like mini stories that have been added to the game. A massive increase in variety just really completed what they laid out in 2012 and made it so much more repeatable, so much more fun. Mechs were fantastic. Just having that extra layer of like, you can do all kinds of fun shit with your troops, different ways to customize them, really, really worked. Just so much more scope to enjoy it. I’ve been playing again this week on the Steam Deck, actually, and it is just fantastic. I think XCOM Enemy Unknown did get slightly stale by itself when you did like a third run through. You kind of saw the same maps over and over again, you were done with it. This just meant you could kind of keep playing it over and over again. So really fucking good, Matthew. I know it’s not your sort of thing, but that’s what’s on my list. I love XCOM, I just haven’t played this. That’s how much I love XCOM. No, completely fair. So no, but just really like one of the best expansions ever made. And obviously, for AXIS, they’re super good at making expansions for their games. XCOM 2’s War of the Chosen expansion would show they’re good at finding ways to put out a 9 out of 10 game, but then put out an expansion that takes it to the next level, you know. So yeah, what’s your number three, Matthew? My number three is Rayman Legends. Oh, nice. Not on my list. Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve talked a bit before about maybe I can’t remember if Rayman Origins appeared on one of these lists, but I really like the new 2D Rayman duo. I think the platforming is like very, very maneuverable, very flexible, and because of that, they can really throw in through some like mad gauntlets. It’s got this kind of elastic manic energy to it, which I really, really dig. This was noticeable for a couple of reasons. One, it had these awesome music levels where you are kind of almost like an auto runner making your way through a level set to a piece of cover of a pop song like Eye of the Tiger played by a mariachi band is one of the good ones. And, you know, every jump that you’re making the level is so choreographed to the music that, you know, it’s happening on the beat or you’re punching through barriers when certain things happen in the music. And it’s just a really like brilliant interplay between the soundtrack and what you’re doing in the level, all beautifully animated. But the reason I really love this is this was a really great Wii U game. It’s on just about everything. But I’d say on just about every other platform, it’s compromised in some way because it was built with the Wii U gamepad to be like a key feature of it. Specifically on the gamepad, you control this little kind of sort of frog fairy thing. I think it’s called Murph. And this sort of with the touch screen on the gamepad, a player can interact with the levels where the other person is platforming through it as Rayman. They can like move platforms about or kind of swivel things or shift bits of level furniture about basically. Up to slightly more conceptual things is a level made of cake where you literally kind of drill paths through the cake with Murph for people. So in terms of like giving the gamepad’s player something very specific to do, not many games did. I know it’s argued like they probably did more here than like any other game, any other first party game. Maybe that’s unfair and it’s something that’s slipped from my mind. But at the time we were really like dazzled with how good the card, the card was on this. On other platforms, that Murph stuff becomes slightly unsatisfying in that it basically, I think they add like a Murph button and you press it, you have to press a button on the controller and then an AI Murph will go and do it. So it definitely belonged on Wii U. I mean, that stuff aside just gloriously animated the 2D art engine. I think it’s the Ubi art engine. I think it’s called the Ubisoft made. Absolutely sings in this. Every level has got like a mad visual concept to it. I think Rayman Origins was a bit more of a plodding platformer compared to this. This one is just like an explosion of ideas from start to finish. Like real momentum kind of pulls you through. Yeah, so exciting. I absolutely love this at the time. I actually haven’t gone back to it. Haven’t gone back to it because of the, you know, it being so good on Wii U. Maybe I need to dust off the Wii U and plug in a thousand cables to try that. Yeah, so I did play this at the time. So I think there was like a quite early on demo they released for this on Wii U. And I noodled around with that for a lot because I thought it was so, so fantastic. And then the only full version of the game I ever played was on PS3. And it was really obvious it was made for the gamepad when you played on PS3. And I think you’re right, like it’s almost not worth it by itself because it’s just too diminished. I feel like so many of these games didn’t commit to using the gamepad because either they knew the Wii U was a niche kind of concern or they just didn’t have a kind of inventive way to use it. Yeah, it’s weird that this game pays the price in the modern age for using it in the way it was intended to be used. But yeah, it still looks fantastic if you play it by itself. But I don’t know, it’s just so obvious in the interface of how you play it that it’s meant for the Wii U. So yeah, Ubisoft were sort of all in on the Wii U at the time, weren’t they? So yeah. Okay, good pick, Matthew. Okay, how many Wii U games or 3DS games is that for you now? It’s mostly Nintendo, your list, isn’t it? It’s all of them, isn’t it? I think it is. Wow, okay, cool. Like I say, it just reflects what I was into at the time. I was playing loads of other stuff too. Yeah, that kind of makes sense. So we come to my number three, Matthew, a game you already mentioned, Super Mario 3D World. We’ve definitely talked about this a whole bunch in the podcast before. I love this because it’s boiled down. So it wasn’t the kind of like Super Mario Galaxy style of Mario 3D game. It was almost like the 2D Mario games translated back into 3D in terms like the level geometry, the style of game, stuff like that. It could be interpreted as conservative, wouldn’t necessarily fight that description, but I think very wonderfully done, extremely playable. This game added the ability to play the levels with four people. I think it’s slightly strange to play by itself. I’ve mentioned this before, but the levels in size-wise are clearly built to accommodate four people, so it’s a bit strange running through it by yourself. But it really comes alive when you have two people running through. Just such a hilarious game to share with a person trying to complete the minigames together, picking another player up and throwing them off the edge by accident. One person very nervously getting to the end on the last life while the other player is dead, racing to get up the flagpole, built for co-op in a way that I thought was just phenomenal. Really pleased it’s been salvaged onto Wii U. What are your thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, I’ve warmed to it, replaying on Switch. I did love this at the time. I played it loads and loads. I absolutely rinsed it on Wii U. But, yeah, I played a bit more with co-op with Catherine, and you’re right, the battle for the crown adds all this mad, petty comedy to it. I still think it’s mad going from the fun analogue movement of Galaxy to the eight directions here. That feels like a big backwards step that I find quite hard to get over. But the levels that are happening around that movement are just too wildly inventive. And there’s just an endless parade of weirdness. You know, it’s like a Mario Kart level, a load of clones slipping down blocks that are shifting on the beat. Now you’re a Goomba. Oh, you’re climbing a Japanese castle. You’re Captain Toad. There’s loads of fucking bullet bills shooting at you as you climb up a wall. It’s just crazy, the amount of stuff in this game. And yeah, you just can’t really deny it. Champions Road, the very last level. That’s an absolute motherfucker. I don’t know if I ever finished it, actually. That last level was so brutal. Is that the optional Phenomenon level? That’s the absolute last level of the game. There’s so much secret unlockable content in this game. It’s almost another campaign. Even you must have enjoyed the Mario Galaxy levels that you added to this. Oh yeah, absolutely. That stuff’s wild. If it didn’t have that extra half to it, I think it would be a lot weaker. But the campaign proper is almost like a tutorial for like, and here are the real levels. Yeah, I think that’s probably fair. There’s not too much of that stuff, but there’s definitely enough of it to keep you playing. And then you can obviously go through and get whatever the fucking currency is to unlock the different… I think Green Star. That’s it, yeah. So yeah, it definitely gives you replay value. Yeah, just an endless sort of pot of joy as a co-op experience goes. I’m very, very fond of it. And yeah, it did take me years to get to it, but loved it enough to plug in the Wii U in 2016. I mean, is there any bigger endorsement for a game than that, Matthew? But yeah, okay, great stuff. So, we come to your number two? My number two is The Wonderful 101. Oh, wow. A Platinum game, specifically a cameo action game about binding together an army of superheroes into giant fists, guns, whips and hammers to pull off the insane combos you would expect from a cameo game. Of course, he’s Mr. Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, et cetera, et cetera. Something we actually mentioned in the Nintendo Hall of Fame was this sort of idea of Platinum’s ongoing experiments with a weaker hero who becomes powerful at some kind of scale. This is definitely another really good example of that. Can be a tough nut to crack. I think it’s probably the strangest and mechanically perplexing of all cameos games. There’s a very light Pikmin element where you’re throwing lots of tiny people to clamber on enemies to stun them and open up for combos. There’s this strange weapon selection system where you kind of draw shapes onto the world to form those people into these giant weapons, which as part of a smooth combo system definitely takes a bit of time to kind of click with. The fact that different weapons play very specific roles when you’re fighting specific enemies and it doesn’t tutorialise it brilliantly. Like, I think a lot of people play this game and are just completely thrown by it and sort of fuck it off. I would actually really recommend watching. There’s a couple of very good tutorial videos made by, like, super fans of this. Which, you know, if you just search for, like, wonderful 101 tutorials, they’ll pop up first. And they probably do a… well, no, they don’t probably. They definitely do a better job of explaining it than the game itself. So, as a result, you kind of almost have to play through it once, kind of not fully understanding it and maybe butting heads with it occasionally to kind of unlock everything and then go back through it and really kind of get to grips with it. So, definitely a demanding game. But it is really worth like muddling through, I’d say, because there’s so much to love here. I mean, just the bright colourfulness of it. It’s like this sort of superhero comic book-y, very colourful world, very appealing visually. It’s got these absurd quick time events and giant boss fights, everything you want from Platinum. And Camiat like is the king of this stuff. You know, he is, you know, when he is on top of his game, there is no one better at this stuff than him. Like when those bosses go down, they go down in such spectacular fashion that you really end every level on an air punch, which I love. It’s also got some like really high concept bosses. I can’t remember if this was mentioned in our boss episode, but there’s one which famously plays like a big sort of parody of Punch Out, where you’re inside this mech and you’re trying to watch for, you know, duck and dive around guys’ incoming fists and you’re trying to like knock him out very specific moments, lifts loads of mechanics directly from Punch Out, famously ends with your fists connecting with his jaw. You then run all your heroes along his fist into his mouth and fight another boss inside his head, which is just pure platinum. That is just so good. It makes me very sad that Cameo hasn’t made, you know, quote unquote, a proper big Cameo game since this, which is wild because he’s just unrivaled at this stuff, I think. Again, one which something is lost when you don’t play on Wii U. It does some dual screen stuff, which they kind of replicate with picture in picture on the ports. But like going inside buildings and seeing inside the building on the gamepad or there’s a ship that you see the ship on the TV screen, but you control the ship by like running around its interior on the gamepad. Stuff like that, I think, is what still elevates the Wii U version. But the chances of you buying a pre-owned Wii U and a pre-owned copy of Wonderful 101 is mad. So, you know, just play a version of this. It’s still good. Yeah. So I sort of like at the time the visual style of it was what I love the most. The kind of like tiny superheroes and these kind of like micro machines settings it would take you to. It’s like a water park setting in this, Matthew. Yeah, and you go around. Yeah, the city is very kind of sort of day glow, plasticky, kind of Wonderland, sort of theme park vibes. So it’s, yeah, this. That definitely rings a bell. Definitely felt like it was a great fit for the game pad. Found it very frantic. Didn’t quite click with it on that kind of action game level like I did with, you know, some of Platinum’s other games. But very singular. I don’t think it sold well at all this game. Please, they were able to salvage it and put it on other formats. That’s nice. But yeah, you know, it’s just a real shame that it was ignored. Because, you know, this is the kind of game that hardcore people who are dissing the Wii U would have enjoyed. But they just weren’t paying attention to it. They just didn’t care. And that was unfair. I feel like Nintendo didn’t have, like, any idea what to do with it. Because, like, we wanted to put it on covers and stuff. And they were like, you know, I think it was sitting around for a while. You know, it was kind of like, anything on this? You know, I think we were expecting to do, like, a review of it, like, much earlier than we did in the end, and things like that. It was definitely a… You could tell it was a puzzle to them. Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool. Well, it’s a great pick here, though. I should have expected it to be high up. Looking forward to doing that. Didn’t we say we’d do a Platinum Hall of Fame episode later this year? I think we should for, like, Bayonetta 3. Yeah, yeah. So, just to explain how that’s different to other Hall of Fame episodes, what we’ll do is we’ll try and pick five games that represent the best of their history, essentially. Did you see that interview in the rounds today, Matthew? They’re trying to hire up to a thousand people and they’ve got this Nintendo guy running them now. Did you see that? Yeah. They must have some, like, big projects locked in for other people. Yeah, yeah. I think they talked about… I think there’s one in-house published game that that is what Kameer is making next, I think. And then, like, yeah, there’s other stuff, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Astral Chain 2 or Nier Automata 2. Oh, yeah, yeah. One of those. Either of those would be good. Goodbye, us. OK, we come to my number two, Matthew. I don’t think this is on your list. Bioshock Infinite. It isn’t on my list, but again, I really liked it. Yeah. So I put this very contentious game quite high. I think this is, like, not entirely beloved these days for a variety of reasons, which I’ll come to. So obviously this is the sequel to Bioshock in development for more than five years at Irrational Games, once again directed by Ken Levine. Bioshock, a game set in a city underwater, this set in a city in the skies, Colombia. What is the aesthetic? What’s the description here, Matthew? Because, like, Art Deco is how you describe Bioshock, but it’s kind of got this, like, World’s Fair-y quality to it, right? Yeah, yeah. Whatever that is, that makes sense to me. Whatever Captain America the First Avenger is going for. Sort of like, yeah, I suppose like a steampunk-y, in some ways for sure, setting. So yeah, you play this character Booker DeWitt. You are essentially tasked with finding this girl, Elizabeth, retrieving her from this city and going back again. The city is full of hostile people. It’s a very kind of racist, pro-American, sort of like splinter state. It’s like overwhelming to experience in first person this game. I think like the real magic of it and what I love about it is the moments in which you kind of shoot up from the lighthouse into the clouds and you see this city for the first time is one of the best things I’ve ever experienced in the game. I think most many people would feel that way. Even though there are some big problems with this game in terms of the combat, it doesn’t quite hold the hang together as well as it could in terms of the combination of your powers and guns. It’s still very entertaining. It’s like as a world to experience, it is phenomenal. It does these kind of neat little alternate universe sort of like elements where you will hear sort of like modern pieces of music but played in the past and you kind of question what that is and little… sort of like Elizabeth, your character has the ability to kind of tear open reality and you’ll see sort of like snapshots of other times and places which ask lots of different questions. Really complicated story, ultimately, but really I just really have a fundamental love for this game even though I think it ends in quite… it feels very incomplete by its ending. You kind of fight a ghost and then the game sort of ends and the ghost fight is terrible. But overall it’s a depiction of a world using the different skyhook things to get around. It felt kind of acrobatic and fun. I really like the sci-fi weirdness of it, the questions it asked about the ways in which you can manipulate reality. I really thought that really worked for me. And so I didn’t really have any problems with it at the time, to be honest. I got tired of the sniffiness around this one. Everyone always complains that AAA games don’t engage the mind and don’t try to be ambitious. And then when one does, people are super, super quick to shoot it down and say how much cleverer they are than it and laugh in its face. And you’re like, OK, you can’t hold those two stances. You either engage and appreciate when it happens, or you just deny it completely. That really bugged me about it. When this game absolutely sings R in its set pieces, where it really puts you in the heart of that world, I think the opening stretch of this is absolutely incredible. From that lighthouse up to the arrival, it’s basically just a walking sim as you move through this world, but with production values out of the wazoo and a vision that’s so exciting to step into and just the tension of when it goes wrong and the idea of being caught where you’re not meant to be, it’s so brilliantly done. I love that scene where he gets caught out, where it finally comes to the… Is it throwing the rock at the person on stage? You don’t and then the crowd turns on you and you’re like, oh shit, I’m right in the heart of a really bad place. It really captures that, which is like… You know, you’ve seen it in loads of films, but to experience that tension I thought was brilliantly done. I actually don’t mind the ending. Certainly not the bigger bio-shockiness of it with all the infinite lighthouses and all that. As a big grand sci-fi swing. I heard some people sniffy and say, it’s like a Bad Doctor Who episode. Whatever, I think it sees it through to the end. I just wish it was like… Maybe the central third of this is a bit of a slog where you’ve got the most combat and the combat doesn’t work brilliantly for me. I’ve only played it the one time, but it’s locked in my head as unmatched moments. When it’s at its best, it’s as good as bio-shock. So the cultural backlash to this, I think comes from a fair place, which is that it kind of suggests a sort of both sides are bad narrative. When it’s got like race at its heart as a theme, and like what one particular character threatens to do to Elizabeth is the line it crosses for people. What I will say is I think that is fair criticism, but it’s not the only thing people should talk about when they talk about this game. That’s kind of how I feel about it. Now people may disagree with that, and that’s completely fair, but this game does too much other amazing stuff for that to be the only thing you take away from this game, I think. I think it’s fair to say that the execution on that is flawed. I don’t disagree with that. But I think this whole game is about how lofty can we go, and we won’t quite get there, but goddamn it, it will be entertaining to watch us try. And I think that’s the feeling I take away from Bioshock Infinite is that, yes, when it takes you to all these locations, it is amazing when you go to the museum, the history of Columbia and Father Comstock and the fake narrative he’s built for himself. And when you’re flung onto the beach, for example, and you’re surrounded by NPCs, and these places feel like a real place. It feels so vividly like a real place. It’s just unbelievable. The level of vision behind it is extraordinary. It does feel like a game that had a bumpy ride to get to where it was. And I think that, just to also clarify, I do like the ending on a storytelling level. I just mean the ending on a gameplay level. It does sort of peter out, you know what I mean? The ghost fight, yeah. All I remember from the time was just being so smashed over their head with the discourse about this game that, yes, I imagine within that discourse there is plenty of valid points to be made. I just feel like people got really hung up on Ken Levine as a figure, and it was more about, no, not him, we don’t want this to happen. Well, this is the person who made it happen. So, I would rather this existed. But that is true, it exists because the creative director wanted to make this, essentially, and then had hundreds of talented people who helped bring that vision to life. I’ll maintain the point I said before, which is I think that to most people, you should see Bariolet Sea Part 1 and 2 as the way this story concludes. I don’t think Bioshock Infinite by itself is the way to view the game because the whole point of Bariolet Sea is it’s about the very last Booker and Elizabeth who exist across all realities and closing the loop on that. So, that is the true conclusion to the game. It’s not just a kind of novelty, sort of Bioshock DLC. Recently it bought out the old fucking dunk brigade because of that girl dancing with the baguette. And then you had the designer of it explain very specifically why it ended up being this thing and how this sort of came to be. Not in their defence of it, but the second you can dunk, people will always dunk on this game and it’s really tiresome. And unfortunately the valid criticisms get lost in the sheer tidal wave of fucking bores talking about this game. Also that was shitty on another level in that I think people were like oh how insightful it’s the French setting but there’s a guy, you know, there’s a kid dancing with a baguette. But guess what? That entire section is designed to be stereotypically French. It’s Elizabeth’s idea of what France, Paris is, not what Paris is actually like. The entire thing is heightened and a dream sequence. Stupid point on Twitter to get a few faves. Absolutely worthless criticism. I’m not saying that a AAA game is like The Underdog here. But like you, I just got tired of the what is it that people actually want if it’s not this? Do you want Doom Eternal? I love Doom Eternal too. But there should be a place for a blockbuster shooter game that wants to try and be a little bit intellectual as well. There should be a place for both. So, yeah, that’s me stamping my feet like a small child. Eeeh! Okay. With your sweaty back in mind, Matthew, let’s move on to your number one. My number one is the Nintendo Classic GTA V. It’s my number one as well. Perfect. Hooray! Oh, I thought you weren’t going to have this on your list, and I was like, what the fuck is he playing at? Just like, not putting any… Oh, no. There are lots of… Listen, last of our Spire Shocking… Maybe they should have been on the list, you know. I’m willing to put my tomb raider, I’m willing to put my hand up there, but, you know… I don’t think people will listen to this podcast just to hear two people go, the last of us is good. I think you also want to hear about Lego City Undercover. No, no, I will say, I loved your list. I thought your list was so you. And exactly what I wanted to hear from you. It would have been completely boring if we had the same list, because I have all the obvious stuff. But GTA V is like, undeniable. I absolutely adored this game. It’s my favourite Rockstar game by a long way. I just don’t think I’ve got many happy gaming memories or many gaming memories as happy as just bombing down the coastal highway in this game, listening to Baker Street. It’s just fucking so, so rad. Yeah, I think it’s really easy to forget what this was like now, because we’ve had… GTA V has not gone away at all, of course. Rockstar has kept releasing it across three different generations, and it is the setting of GTA Online, a setting that has not changed in the nine years this game has existed. They’ve bolted lots of other stuff on top of it to make it interesting, keep people playing. But I have seen that city for hundreds of hours now, and it’s true that when you look at the same place that long, the specialness of it does rub off. But in 2013, finally seeing Rockstar deliver that San Andreas scale experience in HD with those GT4 level visuals was pure magic. And bringing back all the stuff you missed, like the flying and the mission design that was a lot more set PC, and the more comical tone, GT4 was quite self-serious in some ways. That mix was just absolutely electric and then did this quite novel, I thought very successful, character swapping mechanic as well. It gave you different perspectives on the story, but also the characters controlled differently. Yeah, just fantastic. Yeah, one I reviewed, I remember just seeing this, it kind of like Rockstar’s Officers before it came out, and then sort of seeing like, you know, kind of doing a mission while Glamorous by Fergie was playing and driving through the Beverly Hills equivalent, just thinking this looks fucking unbelievable. It had been such a long wait for this as well. I think that, why did I move here? I guess it was the weather trailer, which I think was 2011 that came out. So it was a fucking long wait, but so, so worth it. Like a proper 10 out of 10 game this, Matthew. I think of all the GTAs, I think the reason it resonates more, I think it has like the best through line of any of their games, you know, the idea of like the debts that you’re trying to pay off. And then you have those signature heists punctuating the game as the big set pieces. And it kind of captures like, I don’t know, a sense of being like a career criminal, which all the games have been about playing various criminals, but here the kind of the anticipation of the big job and the build up to it, you know, regardless of how what you actually think about those heists individually, like it just gives it this really nice rhythm which carries it all the way to the end. It’s the only one which I played through like, you know, at launch, start to finish. You know, the other ones I have finished, what I gave up on like GTA 4, about 2013, came back to it years later. This one, I was just like, I couldn’t put it down. Yeah, the heists, I really love the idea that they were like, okay, Three Leaf Clover is the best level of GTA 4, so let’s construct our game around a type of mission. I really love that as I can see. And then, let’s have the character swapping allow you to move to different bits of the heist to see those bits play out. Which is your favourite heist? I can’t remember the name of it, but the big bank job one where you go underground in the vault in one bit and then you fly off in the helicopter at the end. There’s a bit that goes full heat where Michael’s out on the city fighting cops in downtown LA, basically. I think that’s all one heist. Do you remember the names of them? No, I don’t remember the names of them. But I think that is the last heist. I think it’s the main one. But yeah, certainly that’s probably the moment I recall with the most fondness. How about you? I actually really like the first Diamond Store heist. Just the escaping on the bikes through the storm drains, I think is properly iconic. Though I do also like the small town one that just escalates horrendously where you’re in that big bulletproof suit and minigunning it. It’s basically like Trevor wearing mech armour, isn’t it? That’s really good. Yeah, it’s weird because in my head it’s almost like the single player heists are kind of overridden by the online heists that I’ve played many times over. I’m afraid I don’t remember them as well. Whichever one has you leaving the bank and then Michael’s fighting cops in the street. I just remember the stakes on that feeling super, super high. I was thinking the other GTAs, it’s very hard at any given moment to say what am I actually doing in this game? I’m technically working for all these people, but how did I fundamentally get here? They’re just games about doing favors for ten horrible bastards, and then one of the bastards wins at the end. I liked that in this one, I was always like, we fucked up at the start, we’ve got to get the money, we’ve got to do the heists. It’s just really, really clean. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, so I think the fact that there was this level of buildup as well turned them into real events. How do you feel about the fact that in the ending you can have the characters kill each other and there’s different ways it can play out so you can keep all of them alive, or do you have any thoughts on that? I only ever played it so they are all alive in my happy version. I didn’t actually know they could kill each other. Yeah, I think you can basically have it so at least two characters are still alive. I know the big criticism of this game is that some of them, particularly Trevor, are quite hard to spend time with. But I felt like the ability to kind of, you know, you didn’t have to spend more time with them than you needed to really, because of the way the game is structured. So it didn’t really bother me. Oh, this is so fucking good. The map in this, because the city in itself is fine, but like, I think it’s when you get out into the countryside and the small towns and the north of the map, it’s just unbelievable how much cool stuff’s in this game. Yeah, at one point it switches to introduce Trevor, doesn’t it? Where you’re in the plane and you’re flying on the other side of the map, and it’s like a proper, wow, this is the other part of the game you’ve not seen yet moment. And then you have the whole drive up to the city as well, where like, I think one radio station fades out and another one comes in as you get closer to the city. And yeah, just amazing, amazing set of scale. There will always be a part of my brain, I think just because when I was growing up and the games which were big when I was a kid, which is like, you know, GTA is just like an indicator of like where we were at. And also like GTA is like what I wanted like games to be and kind of, you know, here’s the world and here’s the world as you know it and you get to be in it, you get to do anything and live that fantasy and just the variety of stuff you could do in this game and just how, you know, crazy open it was. It’s kind of, the excitement around this is kind of, you know, sort of an excitement you only really feel around GTA I feel. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, just an amazing kind of capper to that sort of generation. I do wish there had been another GTA by now honestly and I probably would have, I probably would trade nine years of GTA Online for another GTA just because I still very much prefer the single player experience even though I, yeah, even though GTA Online is very impressive. But yeah, yeah, it was just the real deal. It was the most complete feeling 3D GTA. It did everything you want to. It felt the best in terms of shooting and driving. Like it felt the slickest. Yeah, really, really good. Sort of the easiest GTA, but I think in its favour. Yeah, for sure. In terms of the tone, I do kind of agree with the tonal complaints a little bit just because there is that bit where Trevor kills Johnny Klebbitz from GTA The Lost and Damned and the game is kind of saying, oh, there is no room for mopey emotional characters anymore. This is about, like, we will look at wacky badass Trevor and how evil he is and it is true that he is somewhat repulsive. But yeah, did it bother me long term? Not really. This is the game where you could drive to the military base and steal a jet and fly off with it and it is fucking ruled every single time you did it. So yeah, phenomenal game. Well, Matthew, we did it. We got through our two top tens. Your back is no doubt dripping with sweat at this point. Sorry, I feel so bad for making you podcast. I’m so moist with nostalgia. I’m so sorry for making you podcast today. Oh no, listen, we had to do it. Yeah, we did. This is how dedicated we are to the listener. Yeah, can’t take a week off because people are paying. So we have to just do it. No matter how hot it is in the UK. Any honorable mentions, Matthew? I’ve only got one, actually. How about you? Have you got any? Yeah, I had a couple. I really did like Black Flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mainly because I realised that it had the incredibly overpowered berserk darts. So like, all the assassinations, I’d just get near enough to the target, hit them with a berserk dart, they’d try and kill their friends when they went mad, and then their friends would kill them. So like, that game’s such a cakewalk. I didn’t assassinate hardly anyone. I just let them get killed by all their mates in self-defence. So that’s a happy memory. I really liked the first chapter of The Wolf Among Us. Right, right. Great set up, but I thought the rest of the episodes were dogshit. Which is probably just like the game’s way of saying you might just enjoy the world of the comic rather than this specific game. Yeah, I did think the art style was so striking for it. It was well written and stuff. But yeah, I didn’t go further than episode one. I never quite got far with it. It really unraveled. Just the pacing of it really sped up. And I was like, nah, no good. Yeah, I should probably mention Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. So we have talked about this quite recently, of course. But I think if I had to pick one of the two games, 3D action games from this year, it has to be DMC because it has the vibrant level design that Revengeance does not, as it’s taking you through lots of grey-looking locations and boring places, even though I still like the cutting-up mechanic. I’d actually skipped Black Flag because I hated 3 so much. 3 was not my kind of game and I just couldn’t be bothered. But I felt like I kind of missed out in the end because people seemed to dig it so much. I also wanted to give a shout-out to Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons, is it? It was the first game with Joseph Farris’ name on it, I believe. Really kind of emotional and quite sad, but really nicely done, sort of a little download game where you play as these two brothers and they’re moved individually with sticks on the controller, just, yeah, thought it was really good. Did you like that one, Matthew? Yeah, yeah, I did. I think it’s slightly overshadowed by its bigger beats. It’s not mechanically too complicated. I’d almost like to see more done with its interesting control system, but yeah, I liked it. I almost went big on with a soothe pick, Matthew, and I almost picked Earthbound, which came to Wii U in the UK for the first time this year, but I can bring myself to do that to you on a day as hot as this. Even though I did really love it and think, oh, I wish I’d played this when I was like 11. Another thing I said on a previous episode.