Hello, welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how are you doing? This is the last regular pod of the year, and then you and I are taking a little break. People on the free feed, they’re getting a little Patreon sampler next week, and people on Patreon are getting our best TV shows of 2022, and then we’re having a bit of time off. Are you excited about your time off? Oh, incredibly excited. Gonna sit on a couch, not think about video games, or play video games and not have thoughts about them, which is always a nice way to consume video games. Hopefully read some books if people have adhered to my very clear instructions on my gift list, but we shall see. I hope they do for your sake and their sake, but what is on your list? Can you share such things? A lot of crime fiction, which would be unsurprising to you. The problem I have is that there tends to be a couple of things I really want, and then I think, well, I better pad this list out with other ideas to make it easier. And then I worry, well, what happens if people pick the lesser choices and not the main event? So that’s the dilemma I face every year, but there’s a new Higashino app, which for listeners of our Japanese crime Patreon episode, they’ll know he’s one of the main events in modern Japanese crime. So I’m hoping, at the very least, I get a copy of that. It’s funny, back, I reckon like even a year ago, if you’d have said there’s a new Higashino out, I would have laughed, but now I know you so well, but I’m just, this is such well-worn territory for me, that doesn’t surprise me whatsoever, so there is no amused response solicited from me. I’m just like, yeah, that’s Matthew Castle, that’s what he does. Yeah, I’m feeling the same way, actually. I was almost tempted to not take any games machines with me when I went to my parents this year, but I think I will regret that after day two, because it’s sort of like a windy town in the middle of nowhere, and like go for a walk on the coast, not so fun. So probably a bit slightly better if I had my steam deck with me and all the delights that are on the steam deck. So yeah. You don’t want that wind howling through the clarinet. It’s not quite, it’s got double glazing. They’ve moved to a house with double glazing. He doesn’t take it out for brisk Christmas day walks. Yeah, it’s not like he just carries it around and it’s playing itself. That’s not a thing that happens. The cursed song of Samuel’s dad’s clarinet. I always wonder how much of that is like a Patreon gag versus like a regular listeners gag, because I think that all of the saboteur stuff started on a Patreon. And then, so it might be confusing to people. So yeah, that’s like, again, DLC law for people. That’s very obnoxious to reference a DLC like that. No, it’s all good, Matthew. So yeah, Matthew, it’s our third Game of the Year episode in terms of like we’ve done 2020 and 2021, obviously, in the time the podcast has been around. I’m curious, how was your year? How was 2022 for you? Had it compared to the last few kind of up and down years, I suppose, for you personally? Has it been good for you, pal? Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking. Yeah, it’s been a lot better behaved than previous years. I’ve had like regular work throughout the year. So, you know, much more than like nine to five, which, you know, gives you a structure. I do better with that kind of structure. Between that and the podcast, like that’s kind of most of my time accounted for, to be honest. Like I’m a slave to my two jobs. No, that makes me feel terrible about this. No, no, this is fine, you know, I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun. Yeah, I think it’s been an all right year. I’ve been trying to, you know, now I’m in the like more sort of stable routine. I’ve been trying to kind of like lose a bit of weight, kind of sort myself out. We had a death in the family this year, not to bum everyone out, which does make you sort of take, you know, think about these things a little bit. So yeah, I’m trying to lose weight. And I did that by going on holiday to a country famed for chocolate. So that was good. But yeah, I was eating quite well before I went to Bruges. But when we went to Bruges, we just ate like absolute hog. I say we, I ate like an absolute hog. And it basically just sort of like unlocked all my bad ways again. So yeah, hopefully in January, I’ll be back on the gruel. Yeah, that’s why I keep telling myself. But then like today, I was like, you know, I can, even though it’s not like 2023, I can start healthy eating a bit early, you know. And by 11 a.m. I’d already eaten a packet of foam bananas. So like, you know, just no stopping it somewhat. This might be beyond the realm of me being able to have self-control to sort this out. So, yes. Just don’t have foam bananas in your house. It just, well, you know, but they don’t, they never really last in my house for more than like 20 minutes. I buy them and they consume, that’s it. It’s like, you know, it’s like they’re 55p and I’m satisfied afterwards. And my body just like makes a noise, like why the fuck are you still doing this to me about it the whole thing? The thing which is like my dieting kryptonite, and it’s like the worst trash imaginable is in Sainsbury’s, there’s like a miniature, fake Krispy Kreme stand. So not even like proper Krispy Kreme from a Krispy Kreme shop. And they sell like a little box of like six miniature ring donuts. I can demolish one of those. Those are like, if I go down, if I pass those, I’m like dead. I just can’t deal with it. Yeah. Yeah, it’s real, real bad. That’s the sort of thing I might do once a year if things were going like not so well. Oh no, it’s like all the time for me. I’ve got such a sugar addiction. But sugar addiction just isn’t an addiction that anyone takes seriously because it’s so daft. You know, they didn’t make a season of The Wire about sugar addiction. But they should have just me with just loads of mini donuts, like bubs. If it was still on the telly, they would have done, you know. If it was like season, we were on season like 18 of The Wire, they would have done sugar by now. And then like, I don’t know, a season about theme parks, like bad theme parks in Baltimore. Obviously the Firaxis season as we talked about. They call him the Candy Man. Yeah, so yeah, lots to think about there. I would say that like you and I both have the slight tiredness of end of year about us, I think. Because I think like we’re both incredibly proud of the podcast’s success this year. Is that fair to say? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and so I think that like, it does mean I think that we’ve put probably slightly more effort into it than we did last year as a result. Maybe like, just obviously like there’s more time invested in making the Patreon episodes that we do. That’s kind of a given, but also just like the kind of researching for it. So for this episode, there’s definitely a sense of like, pedal real fast and just play as much as I can. So I’ve got some comprehensive takes I can. So yeah, but that said, I’m still, yeah. Do you just not play games as much throughout the year? I don’t really, I can’t really explain it. I think that like, or I play games that I’m not massively in love with. There’s a few, I’ve got like a five to six honorable mentions this year. There’s obviously like the factor where I will play the God of War series from September to November. It just wipes out those months, which are, you know, crucial months. I’m going to try better next year, but I do think that thinking about the last two Game of the Year episodes we did, and I think I could have done better in both cases. I felt like quite disappointed with my performance in terms of stuff I’d actually played and had an opinion on. Yeah, actually 2020. Well, I don’t think that’s true. I think you always bring very you picks and justify them very eloquently. Well, I think it’s good to, like I never dislike anything I pick, obviously, but there’s a sense of, oh, I wish I had more time to actually finish everything on my list, or I wish I had more time to have played this 60 hour thing that I kind of ignored. So the 2020 list, I didn’t have The Last of Us 2 or Ghosts of Shima on there, or Hades, because I hadn’t played them yet. So when we eventually do the 2020 Redux list, which will probably be about a year from now, I will correct that, you know. I was suspicious when last year, your 10th best game of the year was chasing that Chris packet down the side of the river. I thought that was odd. It was, I mean, it was Ratchet and Clank. So if that’s a diss at Ratchet and Clank, that’s- No, no, no, I forgot that it was that. But actually chasing Chris packet down by the river is probably more enjoyable. But that said, I think this is my best 10 yet. But in terms of, I think, I’ve actually picked 10 interesting games that I really love and I think would stand the test of time in terms of my, even if I played everything else from this year, these games would still be in the top 20, no question. I think that that’s where, there was like X01 last year, for example, a game I enjoyed. That’s probably a borderline seven or eight. And I did like it, kind of had a cool 2001-esque unknowable sci-fi quality about it. But it was like displaced as soon as January in terms of like when I actually got round to playing everything, you know, stuff moved down. And I didn’t feel like that, caught up about moving stuff down. This time I was determined to have 10 things I liked. But here’s the thing that happened, right? I think I had to fight my own nature to get to like 10 games that I think are worth putting on this list. This does not look like to me, what a familiar Samuel Roberts best of list looks like to me. Like it’s actually quite, it feels quite foreign in a lot of ways. Like there’s one blockbuster on there. That’s it. Maybe two out of push, arguably. But that’s weird. So I suppose that leads us into my question, Matthew. Was this a good year for video games? It’s a big question. I would say it didn’t give me any all timers this year. And not every year does, and that’s fine. I think there was definitely a bit of a kind of blockbuster vacuum. You know, the AAA games, which I am drawn towards, and I am a fan, didn’t really deliver for me this year. But actually that vacuum was filled by lots of like dark horse stuff that came out of nowhere. I mean, if I was asked to pick what my 10 favourite games were going to be at the start of the year, I don’t think I would have heard of most of the games that ended up being on my list. Exactly. Which was a real treat, actually. But I wouldn’t say it’s an incredibly idiosyncratic list. It still feels like there’s a lot of mainstream entertainment in there. It’s just been a really unusual year in terms of how things unfolded. Yeah, I think you and I have already discussed the whole state of blockbusters quite comprehensively on that Patreon episode about PS5 versus Xbox. More DLC talk. Sorry about that. And also on the pod as well. I think we discussed it on God of War Ragnarok, actually. I think we were saying that, oh, there were so few blockbusters this year. And then the time one did come around, you and I didn’t necessarily love it as much as we maybe thought we would. So yeah, it’s been a weird one for that. I think it is like an ocean of eights this year, truly. I think I agree. My number one is a game that I think I will treasure and discuss for many years to come. But the rest of the list, I don’t know, I think they might all be eights. Yeah. Or at least like personal eights, I suppose. So that’s where it’s a bit different. There’s usually at least like two to three nines, you know? Because I was looking even last year, which I thought was also quite a rough year at the time. And then I looked at Deathloop and I was like, oh, did I like anything as much as Deathloop this year? And my number one I did, the rest of the games on this list, I’m not so sure I did. Okay, interesting. But there’s still plenty of heart picks here. So yeah, it’s weird as well, because I don’t know if you saw Matthew, I tweeted that I listened back to Our Best Games of 2020 and we complained about it being a slightly lighter year. And that makes no sense in retrospect, because that was a year that had FF7 Remake, Half Life Alyx, Ghost Tsushima, Last of Us Part II, Doom Eternal, Animal Crossing, Star Wars Squadrons, a massive, massive pile of stuff. I was trying to wonder how I ever thought that that was like the case. And then like, I think I came to the conclusion that I must have been comparing it to like the two years before that, and that like, I had no idea what the next two pandemic altered years would look like. So that’s a weird one. Do you have any thoughts on how this year compares to like the last couple of years now that we’ve been doing this podcast across that period of time? No, I mean, like, in terms of trends and stuff, I guess it felt like this year, I’m only looking down my personal list and speaking for myself here, like, I felt there was a bit of fatigue setting in with some of the more, like predominantly popular sort of forms of like the last five years, you know, things which have been very trusted and regular, your cinematic third person adventure, and your kind of action RPG loot driven thing. You know, I feel like they were, they’ve never really been weaker for me. And that that speaks to the lack of blockbusters on my list. You know, it feels like, you know, you look at something like Gotham Knights, which was a real kind of conceived in the heat of Destiny 2 excitement, but by the time it comes out, it’s like, has that, is that already done, you know? But at the same time, you know, you then look over in like, sort of indie world or kind of mid-tier world, and I feel like people there are doing either really experimental stuff or they’re beginning to like mine genres that weren’t previously mined. Like I think particularly indie is a space which tends to like turn to the past quite a bit. You know, and it felt like the predominant genres, I mean, this is a huge generalisation, but like, you know, there have always been a lot of 2D platformers and Metroidvanias, and these have been very sort of favoured early indie darlings. They’ve always been there. There’s always a heap of them. But this year, actually, you know, there’s been, you know, interesting shoot-em-ups and quite interesting point-and-click adventures. There’s been survival horrors. You know, it feels like people are, again, looking to the stuff they played as teenagers, but maybe slightly different stuff, and the scene is becoming richer and more interesting for it. So that’s quite exciting, and I think you’ll definitely sense that in the list I’ve put together. Yeah, same here. Like, I think it’s actually, like, low-key a sort of banner year for those kind of mid-sized indies or, like, you know, indie plus, maybe you could call it. Like, that was something else I wanted to ask you about, actually. It’s when I’ve been looking at the lists of, like, you know, Polygon’s list or other outlets kind of like best games of the year, while I think there’s an obvious couple of blockbusters you see over and over again, there were around, like, 20 or so games, maybe even 30, that could either be at the top or bottom of people’s, like, best-of lists. And these usually were indie games or mid-sized games. And, like, I wonder if that, do you think that’s a sign of, like, good health for this type of game, basically? Is that, like, there are so many of these things that, you know, you can very much stake her, well, this is what’s, like, personally important to me. And, like, there’s no, not necessarily, like, the same critical consensus you get with a blockbuster because not everyone’s playing the same thing. Do you think that’s kind of, like, what’s going on there? Yeah. I would say that that speaks to, like, a diversification, like, of genre, especially. You know, like, there’s so much different stuff happening that, you know, whatever you’re a fan of, there’s probably something interesting happening in that space. So your individual lists vary quite a lot. It feels like, you know, and this is an ongoing trend, that, you know, you’ve either had, you’ve had, like, indie studios who’ve been around for so long that their stuff is becoming, like, more ambitious as a result, because they’ve got a few games under their belt, you know, or you’re getting a lot of people who are just leaving the grind of, like, Mega Blockbuster AAA and taking their quite polished experience into the, kind of, indie or mid-tier space. So it actually, you know, where once upon a time you’d say, you know, there’s big studio games and there’s, like, independent games, it really does feel like the middle ground is, like, filling up from, sort of, below again. You know, it’s kind of come all the way round. Like, we’re actually now getting stuff which you would technically classify as indie based on that it is an independent studio. But they’re made with the production values of AAA, or if not the production values, the kind of, like, you know, other elements of Polish or just the kind of, you know, I don’t want it just to be about production values or, you know, it’s like ambition of ideas as well. And, you know, there’s games here which feel like they would have been made by what we would have called a big team 20 years ago, but now made like something like Tiny Kin, for example. Like in the N64 era, that would have been a rare game. You know, that is the quality and size and scope of a 60 pound N64 game from Rare, and now it’s not. And it just feels like that space filling up, that has always been the space where people have found like more singular games that speak to them on an individual level. Yeah, I think it’s a shame that you’ve revealed your number one pick so early, Matthew. Tinykin is not on my list, but that’s a little courtesy shout out because it’s not an honourable mention. I thought it was fine. I thought it was fine, like the Rare games of the N64 era were fine. We need a new category after honourable mentions called courtesy shout outs. It’s like, we’re not saying they’re good or bad, we’re just saying that they were, they sure were there. We’re acknowledging them, and I’m also acknowledging people in the Discord who I know are fond of these games and, you know, we’re not just ignoring them. We recognise these games happened. I would probably put Metal Hellsinger in that bracket. I thought it was perfectly fine. It just didn’t quite grab me enough to do the kind of like big replays and like get up the sort of, you know, leaderboards, sort of like loop of it. I was kind of there thinking, I wouldn’t mind basically just playing another version of Doom Eternal that’s about music. Too much metal music for me. I was kind of waiting for the Girls Allowed mods to drop, you know what I mean? Like that’s kind of what I was waiting for. Get like, get the entire biology album on there and see how that goes. So yeah, that’s courtesy mentions out of the way. So here’s a question for you though, Matthew. So it’s more of a kind of a chicken or egg question, I guess. But I assume we both have Game Pass games in each of our lists. And I was curious how much you think Game Pass is driving the conversation around indie or mid-sized games. And I mean this on the level of like, the games being available, but also maybe press feel like there’s more incentive to cover games that, I’m not saying they do do this, but maybe they would, to cover games that they know that lots of people will be playing, will play, will be curious about playing, much like when a new Netflix series drops and everyone’s got Netflix, so you check it out. So to what extent do you think the conversation around these games is being driven by Game Pass as like, reach? Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely having an impact. I don’t think we’d be talking about Tinykin if it hadn’t been on Game Pass, for example. Not that we really aren’t talking about Tinykin, but anyway. You’ve brought it back around to Tinykin. I’m perplexed by it. Tinykin is like the definitive, like, Game Pass breakout game, you know? Like I think it was just there, you know, it feels like a comfortable six hours. You can dip in, it establishes exactly what it is incredibly quickly. Like it’s just a good fit for Game Pass. A terrible thumbnail on Game Pass, which I think has a big impact on me. Like I look down a lot of the things, I’m like, does this one image make me want to play this game? And it didn’t do it for me. I only played it because people were talking about it on forums. But anyway, this isn’t the fucking Tinykin podcast, so let’s move away from that. That’s next week, so look forward to it. It’s four hours long. That’s a real tough Patreon episode having that one. XXL, Tinykin special. It’s interesting, I think, in a way, I can’t work out if Game Pass is growing or shrinking what we play. I think you might be doing it simultaneously, in that you are much more likely to try something that’s in Game Pass. But I also find, as a result of Game Pass being there with so many things to play, that I’m less likely to try something that isn’t on Game Pass than I was before. Because it’s become another steam sale type mechanic to me, where I’m just waiting for things to be on there. And there’s these games I’ve got banked as like, I will play that on Game Pass, which feels quite unhealthy. I know that isn’t particularly the question we’re talking about, but… And the short answer is, whether or not I think it’s opening up and is maybe responsible for slightly more varied end of game lists, end of year game lists, I think definitely. I don’t think it’s coincidence that there are so many Game Pass games on these lists. That also might just be Microsoft being very savvy about putting stuff on there or obtaining stuff which has got tremendous buzz around it. I don’t think we can claim Vampire Survivors isn’t a Game Pass win. That was a huge early access success story that Microsoft have very cleverly got on that bandwagon. But something like Norco, for example, then putting that on Game Pass, that feels maybe like a response to critical acclaim, which came from traditional journalism. And maybe because it is on there, that now amplifies it beyond that traditional journalism. I don’t know. What do you think? I think you’re right about it growing and contracting what you pay at the same time, because you have this pool of stuff that you can access very easily and that is extremely compelling as an offering, even in a year that’s been pretty blockbuster deprived on the Xbox side. And it’s still really exciting to log on, go to that lovely What’s New button, you just see everything that’s been uploaded and it’s like, oh, high on life, looks like an ultimate play it for 40 minutes and log off game for me. I mean, maybe I’ll like it, we’ll see. But it’s been like that all year, but some of that stuff has been amazing. Some of that stuff has just been okay. It’s telling actually that every single game in my honorable mentions is a Game Pass game. But in my main list, it’s only three Game Pass games. So, clearly, my buying habits still extend beyond the limits of Game Pass. But yeah, I would say I can’t deny that it has changed my taste to quite a large degree, or at least the things I’m sampling have changed as a result. But I think it is probably ultimately good for everyone to have this variety of things to dip into. And it is nice as well. It does become almost like, to use a Netflix analogy again, everyone has checked out this new Netflix series and everyone has access to it and now everyone can talk about it. And that is quite cool, even though I guess I’m not thinking too much about the effects of what happens outside of Game Pass there. But as a kind of like seeing our Discord light up with people talking about Signalis, for example, and you know, everyone can play it and everyone can talk about it. That’s pretty cool, except Balladeer, who only has a Nintendo system, but that’s their problem. It’s a special name shout-out. That should be a new Patreon tier. I only shout-out my enemies on the Discord on this podcast. A £10 Patreon tier, that’s personalised burns. We’re talking about the Patreon way too much in this episode. Sorry. I promise we’re not. It’s not a hard sell. The podcast will remain free. Last Patreon mentioned, patreon.com back page pod. It won’t come up again on this podcast. Now to. Matthew, we’ve discussed the fact that I have failed to keep up with the games that have come out this year. Despite having relatively good access via the old Epic Games press account, which saves my skin every single year, that thing fucking rules. I hope they don’t have to delete my access to it. Touch wood. What was the best game you played this year that wasn’t released in 2022? This is like the nerdiest Matthew shit possible. It came up in our Visual Novel episode. It is the 100 plus hour crime epic that is Uminiko when they cry, which I’m still playing through because it’s so fucking long. This is the 10 or 12 part, I can’t remember. I mean, as straight as they come, Visual Novel, there’s no puzzle element to it whatsoever. It is pressing A a million times to scroll through text. But it’s just a brilliant murder mystery novel, which I happen to read on a Steam Deck in bed occasionally. But I was playing it so much that I felt like my book pile by my bed was beginning to like teeter and become a bit of a health and safety concern. So I had to put down the Steam Deck and start going through the books again, because otherwise I can’t be asking for a load of books for Christmas. If I’ve got a big pile of unreads like that would be gross. So yeah, I’ve still got to finish it. So it may shit the bed at the end. But yeah, I’m sorry that that’s not a very exciting like Hitting Gem from 2021. Is that what you intended for this category? No, I was genuinely curious. This one’s going to be probably God of War 3, which fucking rules. So yeah, there was that. I mean, I won’t lie, it wasn’t so much discovery, but going back and replaying a lot of Kirby games, some of them, it was like playing them afresh. The Kirby’s Wii Adventure or wherever it’s called, Return to Dreamland. A game we very much dismissed in NGamer and playing that again now with maybe, I don’t want to say a more mature understanding of what Kirby’s about, but understanding that the personality and the weirdness of his world is his reason for being rather than thinking about it as just a technical skill platformer. It changed my perception on a lot of Kirby games and that one, I was like, this was really polished. This was a secretly great Wii game that we never ever did any justice to on the Nintendo Mags. So, yeah, I feel a bit guilty about that one. That was a nice treat. Famously, you have to be in your late 30s to really crack Kirby. I don’t know what it is, you know, just when you’re a snotty 22 year old and you’re just like dumping on Kirby because it’s funny. He’s such an easy target because he’s so daft and yeah, I was just wrong. I’m happy to put my hand up in a bit to that. Jail Matthew Castle for that take 15 years ago. I will say actually that Kirby episode was really good and I did re-listen to it after playing this year’s Kirby game. So I definitely recommend the listeners to go back and check that one out. That one’s free. That’s on the free feed, that one. So yes, very good. We’re getting perilously close to the banned topic. Yeah, steer away very quickly. So yes, yeah, we probably got a War 3 for me. I know we got a War 2018 on the top of that list, but 3 is the one I reflect on as like, what a fucking great use of like 8 hours that was, you know what I mean? Just like Climb Olympus and Beat a Load of Gods to Death. I had a great time. That was really good. So obviously disclaimer apart from the problematic bits. Yeah, of which there are about 15 bits like that, as discussed in that episode. That would probably be number one on my list if it came out this year. And no offence to all of the indie games I’ve called out. So Matthew, what was your biggest disappointment of 2022? So I’ve got a couple of things for this. Like a minor disappointment was Dying Light 2. Partly because I did the edge cover feature on it. And when you’ve spoken to a team and they’ve spoken very thoughtfully about their own game, you know, I’m not saying you have a like a natural affinity for the game. I can still like review it, you know, critically, but you kind of you know where they’re coming from when you’re playing something you can see what they were going for. And you kind of, I don’t know, it puts a face to the game in a way and then you sort of you can’t help but like wish them well because I’m a human being full of compassion for my fellow human being. And but like I just I felt like they’d sanded down so many of the rough edges of Dying Light 1 that it just lost a bit of its character. Like I’m not saying nothing is contrarian as, oh, this game needs to be mega janky. But in some of its weirder decisions is where it is where it’s like magic lay in the original. And that’s a game like I really grew to like quite a lot over the years. Didn’t think much of it originally. But actually I think it’s quirks to find it. So the sequel I just thought was was just a little too safe and which was a bummer. But I’d say for me, probably the big one was Ghostwire Tokyo, which should be pure Castle Fodder, you know, from Tango, you know, Shinji Mikami’s lot. It’s not a Shinji Mikami involved game. Like this was meant to be the game where like his younger kind of creators kind of stepped up. And they definitely did. Like it’s it’s it’s perfectly fine. I don’t think it’s a bad game at all. But I was it really bummed me out. Like just how many of the conventions of like the open world map icon game this this adhered to. I think it tried to disguise a lot of it behind sort of interesting kind of Japanese folklore ideas. But I thought they were quite flimsy skins on on quite boring ideas. It’s very easy to see the same old crap you’ve been doing in Far Cry for years kind of here in this game. Which is a bummer because like, you know, a big game where you can basically parkour around an amazing digital recreation of Tokyo. I mean, that side of it. Awesome. Like what a place to be in. I just wish they’d found a more interesting game. And I just don’t think that the way they leaned into urban legend was was anywhere near as interesting as it needed to be. So, yeah, it was a that was a bummer. I wasn’t I wasn’t I took no glee in writing that review. Yeah, that’s interesting. I think I actually like might have skipped out on that one because you were a little bit cool on it. But I do actually want to play it still. Yeah. But it’s a favorite of, you know, lots of people I respect really dig it. I know some people think it’s one of those seven out of tens, but I just think it’s just too conservative to be one of those. It’s it’s it’s just a seven. It’s not a seven. Back on that bullshit. Oh, God. Let’s not repeat that. That was a headache, but a lucrative headache, frankly. Yeah. So I feel a bit cruel picking this, but Card Shark was mine. I just wasn’t really into what it was doing. And yeah, I thought it looked amazing and sounded fantastic. It was a great period piece. But as basically a string of quite fiddly midi games to learn, it just didn’t really do it for me. And I don’t know why I was quite hyped about it. I guess because, like, is it Nerial, the studio, that made this? They made the Reigns games, which are all fantastic. I love those games. Yeah, I thought this would be more for me than it was. But that’s not to say it was a massive disappointment. It was not nearly as disappointing as playing Aliens Fireteam Elite was last year. Yeah, to be honest, the bigger disappointment was I played the Avengers game to the end this year, and the fact that you unlock Spider-Man, then there’s nothing to do with Spider-Man. That was such a bummer in that game, except go and fight the same robot lads over and over again. There’s a couple of cool story missions in Avengers that are worth seeing. But yeah, I got to the end game and it was like, you want to go do more of this? Go to these war zones? And I was like, nope. But thank you for turning up. Whoever gets excited about the prospect of going into a war zone. It’s just, I don’t know. That doesn’t speak to me. I mean, it’s always a bad sign when like you don’t want to play the next bit. So you just queue up the cut scenes from the Black Panther and Hawkeye DLC that you can’t be asked to actually play through. So that’s what I did. I just sat through like about 30 minutes of cut scenes while I was peddling on my exercise bike. And that was that was how my experience with Marvel’s Avengers ended. So that’s tough. But Matthew, that’s enough. That’s enough negativity. Should we get into our list? Let’s do it. Welcome back to the podcast. So, the top 10 lists, we’re here. If anyone’s listened to the podcast before, our Game of the Year episodes, we always do it in the same old format, borrowed from our pals, Chet and John. I say our pals, I don’t know if Matthew knows either Chet or John, but I don’t know Chet, but I do know John. Oh, great. Completely unnecessary, but yeah, I think that, yeah. I’m sure Chet and John are great. I know John a bit. I don’t know Chet at all, but I’m sure he’s great. John supports the podcast on Patreon, so tentatively I take that as his approval. But yeah, so we alternate. We start at 10, go down to one, and then whoever’s got, if we have the same game on both our lists, whoever has it highest, that’s when we discuss it basically. Like the last one of these that we did was Best Games of 2013, back in July, I think it was. So yeah, we’ve done this format for the last three years in real time, and then we also go back to 2006 onwards. So this is a well-worn format at this point. If you’re new to the episode, and a lot of people listen to this episode as their first, people tend to jump on when we do Best Games of the Year. That’s kind of how it goes. So God knows what you thought about the 35 minutes before this. But that’s not- That was some top dieting chat. Yeah, I don’t know why I’m trying to be accessible now after upselling the thing that we don’t discuss and babbling about Marvel’s Avengers cutscenes. So yes, Matthew, are there any caveats for your list before we jump in? Anything you couldn’t find time to play before this episode or anything else you want to say before we get into it? I started playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns about a week ago and it seems great, but it’s just too big to mainline. And I thought, I want to take my time with this. I’m not going to rush this just for the podcast, just on the off chance that it makes the top 10. I don’t know if it would. Catherine reviewed it for RPS, spoke very highly of it. And the opening few hours I played seemed good. But yeah, that has not made the list. That’s their fault for releasing a 80-hour campaign in December. Who the fuck does that? That’s insane. That’s tough, isn’t it? That’s hard when you’re a part-time podcaster. And yeah, you can’t fit that in. And I also haven’t yet played Chaos Gate either, so I’m apologies for that. Are you apologising to me personally? Well, I know, you know, well, yes. I think you gave me a code for it. Oh, did I? That’s how ungracious I am. No, I don’t mind. It’s all good, pal. But yeah, let me know what you think if you ever play it. But shame, because I know you’re a big, you’re a big Grey Knights guy. You’re always talking about those Grey Knights. Well, the 40k-ness of it aside, Catherine loved it. Like, I’m pretty sure that was in the RPS calendar. Yeah, yeah, it’s been popped up in a few lists, but enough about that. We don’t cross the streams, do we, Matthew? No, we don’t cross the streams, which is tough. Tough when the stream is a good game that I want to talk about, or I shouldn’t. Oh, okay, that’s very nice of you. Okay, my caveat is very similar to Matthew. Marvel Midnight Suns I did not have time for. Don’t release a game in December that’s that fucking long. I haven’t got time to play it. It can’t go into this. Tough, tough break. We should probably thank Sam White for giving you a key for this as well, Matthew. Don’t know where he got it from. Maybe he stole it. I don’t know. That was nice, wasn’t it? He did say he owns your ass now, which is tough. Well, that’s good. That’s his 10 pound personalized burn. Yeah, so that was one. Weird West I didn’t have time for. Sorry about that. I know that as a kind of immersive, semi sort of twin stick style shooter thing from one of the key figures at Arkane Studios. I would probably like it, but I haven’t had time yet. Roadwarden, I’ve not had time for either. Pentament, I’ve not had time for either. So those are all on my list, I guess, to go into, to play. I’ll probably talk about them in the first what we’ve been playing of next year. But yeah, that’s not to say that the games on my list are not still good. They definitely are. So let’s kick off then, Matthew. What have you got for number 10? Okay, I’ll just say beforehand, I’m really interested how much crossover we have. Yeah, I think- There’s a version of this episode where we talk about 20 games and there’s a version where we talk about just 10 games. This will sit definitely in the middle, but I’m curious how far either way. I’m certain that three of my games will not be on your list, like certain. But the rest could be. Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. So yeah, for my first pick, I’m not a huge fan of like the FMV genre, but this year there was a game that kind of really convinced me to it. Had amazing production values, story that kind of took you through time and you had to really piece together a mystery, which I really loved. So for my first pick, I’m going with the Centennial Case, a Shijima story. I honestly thought that was going to be immortality from the way you were describing it. That was so like, was that deliberate, Matthew? That was deliberate. That’s such a shit head. You cheeky motherfucker. What an absolute shit, what podcast shit house three that is. Amazing. Right, well, I’m going to go on mute for 40 minutes while Matthew talks us through this game. This is the great white way of this podcast because talking about the Centennial Case is a game which I really struggle to make sound interesting. I should say that was no shade on immortality. Was it? Was it no shade? No, it was just being silly. I was trying to mislead you one way. It was really funny. That was really good. You got me, pal. Well done. No, this is like the ultimate heart pit game for me. This won’t appear on any other list or I have not seen it on any other list. It is not a particularly interactive story. It doesn’t have a great detective mechanic at the heart of it. But what it is, and why it speaks to me, is an incredible Japanese mystery story that is in itself about Japanese mystery stories. You play a crime author who goes to a house, she’s pulled into a situation to work out what’s going on with this family and a mysterious crime that has occurred there. But while she’s there, you are also pulled into the past. But you’re pulled into the past through crime literature. So you find like early manuscripts of an early crime story and you find a short story written in a crime magazine. So it’s a game which is a mystery and it is about our love of mysteries through the ages and how all that adds up into just a super compelling mystery package. If, and it’s a huge if, you are as big a Japanese crime fiction head as I am. So that is why it’s the ultimate heart pick. Joking aside, I did think this was beautifully made. I thought it had TV production values. I really like the cast in it. The way it has a cast of like eight actors, say. But it jumps through time and it recasts everyone. Different people play, the same people play different characters in each timeframe. And over the course of the game, you kind of build up all these like weird prejudices towards characters based on what they do in individual stories. So you keep thinking, well, if this guy was the villain in this story, does that mean he’s likely to be the villain in that story? It just creates a very good possibility space for weirdness to happen. And it’s a pretty good story. It’s a pretty good mystery. They turned to mystery writers to help them construct it. I was watching a making of documentary about this that Square Enix put out on their YouTube channel. It got about 1000 views, which made me laugh. And they were talking about how they actually took the story to university mystery clubs in Japan to kind of road test it and see if it held up and if the logic of it was sound. And those mystery clubs are like, they’re the same breeding ground where a lot of Japanese crime writers kind of came up from. So it’s just, it’s a game that’s so embedded in a certain community. I just cannot help but love it. And I had to include it somewhere on my list. Yeah, so, you know, I’m pleased to see it here. I feel like you gave a good rundown there of why it’s good, Matthew, without, you know, sort of like getting self-conscious about talking too long and all that stuff that made for such controversial podcasting this year. I wrote it all down this time. So I’m allowed three paragraphs and I have to fucking log off. Yeah, that’s good. No, I would play this at a certain point, but I feel like I should play Should Be a Scramble for a playlist on the kind of like FMV front, you know what I mean? Or style, style front. Yeah, Should Be a Scramble, which has a connection to this. One of the writers on Should Be a Scramble is the director of this, which is maybe where like just it’s sort of solid storytelling kind of building blocks come from. Yeah, I really love it, but I can completely understand. If you approach it as just a, does this hold up to like Ace Attorney? Like it’s kind of ass as an actual mystery game. But if you push that aside and you just watch it through, it’s really great. I do feel pretty shitty for making it sound like I was going to pick Immortality. I feel bad about that. No, I’ll tell you what I think it is. I think it’s fine. This is bound to be popping up in a few Steam sales end of the year kind of stuff. Is it on Steam actually? It’s on Steam Play? It’s on Steam, yeah. Yeah, absolutely amazing soundtrack actually. The Steam version comes with a separate downloadable soundtrack for it, which I have been listening to a lot this year. Okay, cool. Well, that’s a good number 10 to kick us off, Matthew. So my number 10 is an artfully done, beautiful and slightly horny journey through cinematic history. It’s the city builder, Dorf Romantic. I really hope Sanbarla doesn’t listen to this episode. Yeah, so again, I also harbor no issue with immortality. Nothing but respect for my man. Yeah, it’s really nicely done. It’s going to cover up in my honorable mentions. So yeah, it’s all good. Yeah, so Dorf Romantic. It’s a game that Catherine recommended to me, Matthew, or at least I think maybe she wrote an article about it and I ended up picking it up. I bought this last December and I’ve checked in every now and then with it. It came out of early access this year, which is why I picked it. Basically what this is is a quite chill city builder game where you place different parts of a landscape onto the hexagonal grid. So one tile might have a few houses on it and some forest. The idea is that you want to connect different hexagonal tiles together that are of a similar type. There’s scale in it because let’s say one part of the hexagon has a bit of forest on it and you want to connect it to some more forest and you need to twist the hexagon around and place it there so you can chain it together. Then the UI will give you a nice little thing being like, oh, there’s a nice little shiny effect because you’ve built a little forest here or you’ve built a little housing community and stuff like that. But it’s really complex as well because the cities grow and grow and grow and you are given these micro objectives, these goals within each game to basically string together a whole bunch of tiles of the same type to build an epic-sized forest and then it will give you more tiles to place. The whole thing with this is it’s counting down the number of tiles you’ve got left and when you hit zero, it’s game over and then you get your score and then you’re kind of done with it. So basically, it’s in your best interest to keep hitting those objectives but they get harder and harder and then the map gets bigger and there are some spaces you can’t always put down a tile of a certain type. So, yeah, it’s like simple seeming, like maybe a bit might remind you a bit of Townscape if you played that on, I think that was on Game Pass and it was pretty cheaply available. But I think it has a bit more going on with it in terms of like game design than that. It does ask a little bit more from you. And then as you go along, it’s got these kind of meta objectives where you’re adding new types of tiles. So, you know, you build a tile where you can add a train onto a train track and then different types of resource tiles and that sort of thing. And then the game will kind of give you points based on how kind of like neatly you’ve stacked it all together. But because it’s not strictly a game about efficiency, you’ll end up building these quite characterful landscapes using the tiles and end up being quite happy, pleased with your creation. It’s a good vibes game, Matthew. It’s really the only thing like this on my list that is kind of like a dip in, dip out. It’s the only game that made you happy. No, it’s like it’s a game that’s compulsive, but it’s pleasant. It’s so pleasant. I don’t question like what it’s doing to my brain. You know what I mean? Sometimes these games, I had a bit of a wrestling with this this year with Marvel Snap, for example, with shit, which is like games that are like where the primary motivation for playing them is they’re compulsive as opposed to like, some other element like the narrative or the world, that sort of thing. And I’m like, am I playing this because I like the game or am I playing this because basically they’ve sent some fucking Tesla tanks to the pleasure centers of my brain and they’re just like zapping it constantly. Those are like the questions I was kind of weighing up. But Dwarf Romantic is on like the kind of like the, you know, the cheerier side of that equation, I think. So I don’t feel bad picking it. Have you come across this one, Matthew? I haven’t played it, but like, I’ve been a bit of a Dwarf Romantic widower for a while because Catherine played this so much. I mean, she loves this game. And it’s a game I’ve like never been really been able to pass by like watching her play it. Like I’ve still don’t really, well, I know how it works. You’ve explained it. She’s explained it to me many times, but I’ve never made the actual leap. But there’s no like panic element to it. You have all the time in the world, right? You do, but there are like, there is like a panic style mode. They added, I think with the newer version, but that’s not how I play it. I tend to just play the version where, yeah, it’ll just, yeah, you just, you can take your time, place your tiles however you like, and then just, you know, if you do a bad job, you can start again. It’s all good. The game doesn’t punish you, you know? What’s a dwarf when it’s at home? Dwarf romantic is a word. I did read about what the meaning of this word was. I think it’s got, it’s like one of those words that means something very specific. Let me just look it up, shall I? It’s usually used to describe the kind of nostalgic feeling you get when you long to be in the countryside. So that’s, it’s an older German word, apparently. So, yeah. Do you have that? Not really, I hate countryside. Same here, like, I want a version of this game where it’s just about laying down tarmac over grass. Yeah, I need a German word for the nostalgic feeling you get when you long for a sandwich shop that’s been closed down. Like that’s like the, I need that, that word. Flavour in Bournemouth. Oh, and a game where I basically, yeah, you have to place all the right tiles so that Tony will come back to Intermezzo because the new shop’s terrible. It’s like, the sandwiches are still good, but the guy in it, did I talk about my new Intermezzo experience in the podcast? Maybe. It’s like, I ordered online, went there and he went, oh, the online orders aren’t working today, what did you order? And I just had to tell him, and then I had to like go away and wait again, even though I’d already, I’m prepaid, and I was like, come on, man. And then someone walked in, I think, and ordered like a vegetarian based sandwich, and then he just went, oh, we haven’t got the vegetarian chicken in today. And then the guy just left. Oh, this is kind of a bumpy ride, really. A shame, because the sandwiches are as good as ever. Oh, really? Oh, interesting. I didn’t know the sandwiches held up, but yeah. Yeah, you know, it’s decent. Yeah, it’s tough. Tony DLC for Dwarf Romantic Wind. Oh, very good. So this game is good. I think you would like it. Do you know there’s a Switch version, Matthew? That released this year as well. Oh, well, I should play it. I mean, it would make Catherine happy. Well, they go, or at least just play out of spite for all the time Catherine didn’t spend with you while she was playing this. Now, you can do the same to her, you know? I mean, I’m distracted all the time. Like, she would have to do, play so many video games to cancel out all the time. I’ve been looking at Twitter and not listening to what she said to me. So, well, let’s stop going to that. Yeah, as somebody who’s been around your house a few times, I’ve seen that happen in real time. That’s, yeah, that does happen, but let’s move on. So, what’s your number nine, Matthew? My number nine is Drainus. Oh, yes, a side-scrolling shooter, right? Not on my list. Yeah, I was put on to this by Ash Day’s enthusiasm for it on Twitter. Actually, this year I tried out a few shoot-em-ups. Like, I really like Martin Robinson’s writing about shoot-em-ups on Eurogamer, and, you know, he put together an article, maybe this year, maybe last year, about just the scene on Switch and how there was all this good stuff, and I bought a load of stuff there and started dabbling, and, you know, it’s not a genre I know anything about. Like, I have no expertise here at all. Drainage happens to be, like, a game that came out this year, and a very accessible one. It’s not just accessible, it’s also just excellent. It’s still an incredibly satisfying game to play. I really got into this. It has this central mechanic where your ship has a shield which protects it from purple projectiles in the world and turns those same projectiles into attacks, and to survive, you have to use this shield judiciously whenever purple stuff is coming your way to absorb and then shoot it back, and from this, they build a beautifully choreographed dance with different enemies in that the way you time your shield to pass through waves that are coming your way or the movement you have to sweep through certain projectiles to get to safe zones, it almost has the feel of a rhythm game in the way that you pilot this ship and you interact and think about projectiles as an opportunity. I probably haven’t explained it brilliantly well there, but if people play it, you’ll immediately pick up what I’m talking about. There are some boss fights where you’re almost locked in a very tight space and the patterns of projectiles that are coming towards you have the feel of a rhythm game when you’re tapping the shield on and off to fight this thing. That in itself is great, but around it, it’s just a really fast-paced, beautifully animated game. It’s got really fun enemy design. I’ve seen Treasure mentioned a lot with regards to this. It has a lot of that energy, almost feels like a bit of a spiritual successor to your Treasure shoot-em-up. But also in the boss design reminded me a lot of Gunstar Heroes, the way these weird animal mechs will constantly transform into all these crazy new phases and you just don’t know what it’s going to do next. It’s maybe a couple of hours from start to finish. But in that time, you feel like you see a hell of a lot. Yeah, just very flashy, very fun, very accessible, very generous with checkpoints. It looks hectic, but because of the shield element, I don’t think it actually, it doesn’t feel like the more bullet hell games, which again, not an expert, but I’ve tried a few this last year or so, and this definitely feels on the gentler end of things. So as a great entry point, there’s also just really entertaining in its own right. I thought this was great, great Steam Deck game, if you fancy it, quite cheap. Yeah, about 10 quid or something like that. Yeah, I think, yes, it’s not much at all. I’m not familiar with the studio at all. I think they’ve made a few like Metroidvanias before this, Japanese studio called Ladybug. But yeah, just a complete sort of shot in the dark recommendation that I took and I’m pleased I did because it just, yeah, really resonated with me. And yeah, Asher’s Sonic Frontier’s recommendation, Matthew. I just don’t understand how a man who has such good taste in some respects, I just don’t get the Sonic Frontier thing and I don’t get the Balan Wonderworld Wonderland thing either. I feel like I’m being trolled in some twisted way, but whatever, that’s fine. And we can litigate that when Asher comes back on the podcast with a better microphone, which I’m looking forward to next year. Yeah, that’ll be good. Yeah, Draenus, I think I’ll keep an eye on this. I’ll wishlist it and see if it pops up for under a 10. That sounds like it’s well worth a punt. Kind of like almost sort of Icarugary use of color sort of thing, Matthew, where it’s like the color indicates something specific. I guess like quite a few shooters do that, right? But yeah, it’s a little simpler in that, you know, the shield just absorbs this one color. You know, it’s like purple. You can negate red is always trouble. There’s other stuff in here about like the weapons upgrade system. You can kind of like customize your ship on the fly. One of the criticisms of it is it’s a little bit fiddly. You can like pause it mid-flow and go in and like re-equip your ship. I must admit, I didn’t really do that once I had like a broad weapon setup I was happy with. But again, I’m not really playing this on it, you know, any kind of advanced level where I’m interested in like score chasing or like optimizing my ship. You know, I imagine people have got like different ship builds for different stretches of the level because it makes more sense. But, you know, if a doofus like me can sort of scrape through, I imagine most people can. Amen, brother. Not just in shooters, but in life. No, no, I feel the same. Maybe like a Gradius advances my training wheels for this one, Matthew. So, yeah, Drainus. OK, cool. That’s a good pick. Maybe we are going to have completely different lists. I’m starting to wonder. Yeah. I wish it didn’t sound like Anus. Yeah, that’s tough. You know, I keep thinking about that. Like I was thinking I was there teetering on the edge of do I make a joke about this? But I’m like, look, just because we talk about old magazines on this, we don’t have to do all the things old magazines used to do and make really tacky, naff pun jokes about, you know, rhyming, Drainus and Anus. We are slightly above that, just a tiny bit. So, yeah. OK. So my number nine, Matthew, is the Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe. So this year, the Stanley Parable, which started off as like, I think, a free free game, like a source mod, something like that, that then became a commercial game in 2013, a full game, about this office worker, first person game, who is given instructions by this narrator and either follows his instructions or doesn’t, to a number of wild outcomes. This game, I think, is quite clearly an influence on Severance, which released this year on Apple TV+. We just discussed that on the TV episodes. We’re not going to go to the Patreon stuff again. I really said that, but still, it is relevant here. So this now, almost 10 years later, they’ve come back with, I think they had to port Stanley Parable to a different engine, I think, or there was some reason they wanted to do that. But as well as doing that, they’ve basically made a game that, if not doubles the content of the original, adds a significant chunk to it. It’s like both a remake of the original in that you can play the game as it was and get more or less the same outcomes as you used to. But it is also a meditation on sequel-making. It’s like new content. Took me about four to five hours to get through, which is about as much time as I played the original. It’s full of new secrets to uncover basically. It’s reflective about the game as it originally released. It makes fun of a couple of bits of dialogue that didn’t stand the test of time, which is really funny when that happens. They got the same narrator back to do a load more new lines. There are a couple of quite famous game references in the original that they have swapped for new game references. I sent Matthew a picture of one of these actually. I haven’t played this, but when I saw that, I was like, oh shit, I have to play this. Yeah, it was pretty rad. It was always worth paying for this just to see that. But then, yeah, it does some quite wild things with the idea of sequel making, and then I did have to use a guide to get some of the cooler secrets pride out of it, but I didn’t mind doing that. It was great to go back to a game that felt so familiar, a beloved favorite, and then just find all of these new layers to it. That’s really, really exciting. So I’m pleased that anyone who comes to this game now has so much to discover and so much to enjoy. It’s on consoles now as well as PC. So yes, well done to Crows, Crows, Crows, and Davey Reedan for bringing this back. It was an absolute delight to step back into this world and enjoy that kind of humour again. So Matthew, do you ever play the original Cup member if we discussed this? I’ve played it a little bit. You know, no way near enough to get into the true depths of this game and what it’s really about and what it can really do. I guess my question is not specifically about the new stuff, but if you want to play this seriously and you really want to mine it for all it’s worth, how difficult is that? You said you had to look to a guide or do you feel like the pointers are hidden in the game? Is the game a puzzle to figure out in that sense? So there is literally a door that says new stuff here, but it’s probably best explained by explaining the structure of this game. It’s a game about endings, basically, Matthew. So if you follow the narrator’s instructions, you’ll basically reach a not particularly satisfying ending quite quickly, probably in about under five minutes, right? And every ending in the game is a bit like this. There are some slightly longer ones, but no playthrough of the game, quote-unquote playthrough, lasts for more than ten minutes. Really it’s a game of going back in, it’s like Stanley stood up from his desk and then hearing that same intro over and over again as you begin your journey once more. And then, yeah, this is kind of a, yeah, so the new stuff here thing makes it super clear and then some of that stuff spills over a bit into the old game as it was. That’s probably the easiest way of saying it without spoiling it. But it is designed to like, there is like a meta layer to it basically where repeating the experience is the experience, you know, if that makes sense. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, the new stuff in here, Dora, is super handy because, you know, it really is like if you’ve never played it before, then you can just go and play the game as it was more or less. That’s cool. But yeah, there’s a lot more to it besides. That’s probably as much as I can say about it without spoiling it any further Matthew. Maybe I’ll double bill this with High on Life because I hear that they’re both quite satirical views of video game conventions. That’s a tough break for Stanley Parable. I mean, High on Life, a lot of people seem to be like this is like having a bad Rick and Morty episode on where you’re trying to play a first-person shooter or whatever. I would say it’s slightly arched but pretty refined, pretty funny, good script writing. Oh yeah, no, no. I was being facetious and imagining this to be much better than High on Life. Yeah, I mean, you know though, I’m yet to play High on Life and I might love it, so I will play that over the break. I mean, I’ve yet to see a clip on it on Twitter which hasn’t made me wince, but… Noted, okay. What’s your number 8 Matthew? Well apart from It’s Me Blauto which is obviously sublime. I see you’re getting royalties for that one, aren’t you pal? Yeah, you’re getting royalties for that one? Someone there wrote at least one amazing joke. My next pick is Prodeus. Oh nice, first person shooter, right? First person shooter. It is part of the wave of boomer shooters. Now I’m going to put my hand up and say for the longest time I didn’t make the connection between the nickname boomer shooter and boomers being the generation, a couple of generations before us. I thought they were literally talking about these in terms of they had big booms in them because I’m a dumbass. Wait, no, I thought that too. Oh no, apparently it’s like, oh it’s the shooter’s your dad like and your dad’s a boomer. That’s disappointing. That’s poor. That’s like, these are Gen Xers as well. These aren’t people who fucking listen to Bob Dylan and then fucking play Quink, you know what I mean? That is absolute bullshit. Like, that suggests, yeah, you’d have to have been like 40 when Doom came out and been into Doom and I doubt there were many like reasonable 40 year olds playing Doom in the 90s. You know, like your reasonable father. Yeah, playing his reasonable clarinet. Anyway, and he loves the saboteur. The saboteur? Now that’s a boomer G. It definitely is, actually, what with the DLC nudity and such. Anyway, what Prodius is part of is this wave of like retro FPSs that basically draw their inspiration from 90s shooters, you know, the likes of Doom, Quake, basically the pre narrative shooters, pre Half Life, I would say, they are about just incredibly fast action, running around often quite abstract video gaming spaces, you know, they are worlds, science fiction worlds, Prodius is a science fiction world. But it feels like explicit level design, if that makes sense. You know, it’s kind of like key cards and winding corridors and pillars and jumping challenges, you know, they’re not trying to sell it as you’re going to immerse yourself in this world. It’s just a very pure place for action to happen. Prodius is kind of, it looks like Doom fed through a crazy modern filter in that the enemies are like digitized sprites. So they look like 2D and flat, but it has very cutting edge, like lighting, shadows, particle effects, which kind of, which makes it look incredibly modern. It’s, you know, static shots, you might think, oh, this looks very old hat, but the second it starts to move and the second the kind of shit hits the fan, it suddenly becomes so beautifully cutting edge. It’s just such a delightful effect. Like that is a big part of its appeal, just how cool this world looks. You know, you shoot the most fucking nineties looking exploding barrel you’ve ever seen, but the explosion that comes out of it is just a searing like 4k modern death explosion. It’s a very satisfying way. It’s very satisfying the way this game like blooms into a modern shooter in that way. I love shooting enemies in this game, like I say, they are like digitized sprites, but the gore that comes out of them is like physically modeled. So like where it splats on the wall, it kind of sticks, you know, after a fight, the rooms are just covered in blood, like exactly showing you where the fight played out. You know, it’s almost kind of like, like, imagine these 2D characters have got a kind of like, I was going to say, not an inner life, but they’ve got like an inner biology that you’re kind of spilling everywhere. It’s just it’s a really delightful idea that you’re like cracking them open and getting to the gore. Rick Lane, in his very good Eurogamer review of this, likened The Blood to Splatoon, which once I read that I now can’t unsee it. Like how the blood sticks to everything. It is like Violent Splatoon. Really I don’t have too elegant a case for this game other than it looks amazing, the guns feel amazing. I think the minigun in this is probably one of the best video game guns I’ve ever used. And this is a game that understands that not only is it important to have like a minigun which feels great in the hands, but to often give you like a room of 20 generic goons to just absolutely liquefy with it. If you do anything after this podcast, play this game until you get the minigun because it instantly drops you in a room. And if you do not like what happens in that room and the chaos you unleash with that weapon, I, you know, maybe the shooting genre just isn’t for you. It’s just so sublimely entertaining, one of the best moments I played in a game this year. Other than that, just a very fast moving shooter. What I like about the levels is that they’re kind of long enough to establish a gimmick or an idea. Like this level is about snipers. This level is very platform heavy. But they’re also short enough that they never outstay their welcome. And you can kind of dip into this game for a little 10 minute or 15 minute blast. It’s very elegantly structured and done. It’s, you know, like Doom Eternal, as much as I loved it. Like a lot of its levels are quite long slogs. And this just feels like much faster on its feet. Yeah, it’s really good this. How dare you take a shot at Doom Eternal to praise this game? No, no, no. That’s unfair. But I do love Doom Eternal. But like Doom Eternal is like a, oh, I have to sit down and kind of commit to it for a bit. Like this game, I’ve been playing in very little bursts. You know, like, oh, I’ve got 15 minutes before tea, I’ll pop into Prodeus and I’ll mince some people with that minigun for a bit. And it almost plays the game’s strengths in that way in that, you know, while there are differences between the levels, like I say, there’s like a kind of hook to everything. You know, it’s fundamentally like mincing a lot of the same enemies over and over again. Like I don’t, I wouldn’t want to play this game for like three hours nonstop, but dropping in just enough time to remind yourself, like how good the guns feel and then popping out again is just right. It’s a real like palette cleanser, albeit like incredibly grisly. Yeah. Just like, you know, again, like with the shooter maps, I’m not going to claim to be like the biggest expert or advocate of those 90 shooters, you know, I was playing point and click games when other people were playing like Doom and Quake. I can’t really speak too eloquently about those games, but, you know, this captures what I remember of the era, but also feels suitably modern. It’s, you know, I also played Cultic this year, which riffs quite heavily on blood, which I liked a lot. I thought was pretty solid, but I just I thought this had like an immediacy to it, which, yeah, just really spoke to me. Yeah, this is a genre that’s, you know, in quite good form at the moment, right? Like there’s got this, and as you mentioned, Cultic came along, but also there’s, I think Ultra Kill had another chapter this year. That is a game that people seem to really fucking like. So a bit more of an acrobatic sort of shooter, I think. My question for you actually was, because the thing I think that when I played that Quake remaster they did, the thing that I had completely forgotten about 90s shooters, is how densely, almost like dungeon-like the level design was. There was a puzzle in figuring out how you actually get through it and get to the end and unlock certain doors and that sort of stuff. Is that part of the DNA here or is it more like just kind of like waves of enemies and get to the finish line kind of thing? No, it almost feels like your memory of those levels, but they are designed with a more modern sensibility. I think they’re a bit more accessible. I think that the central through line is a bit more obviously planned out. I’m not saying they like shepherd you through them, but a lot of the levels are quite neat loops that you end up exiting where you enter and you realise you’ve just gone round the houses and I never felt lost. There are definitely secrets in this which tap into the older way of things. There’s kind of, well how the hell do I get above that and maybe there’ll be a secret door or a bit of a wall you can shoot and something will appear. I wouldn’t say it’s designed for you to spend hours in the level picking them apart. It’s the difference between do you want to run through this level in ten minutes or maybe take a bit more time in fifteen minutes and discover its secrets. They look and feel like your old Doom levels, but I never had that moment which I used to have in Quake a lot of like, you could get to a point where you’re basically walking around an empty level trying to work out what the fuck to do. That like never happens here, you know, like it has that like, modern, not handholding or I don’t know if it must be like part of just, you know, the modern design sensibility. I think the two guys who made it were like, X Raven guys. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, Singularity. I think one of them also left and worked at Starbreeze for a bit. So, yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like, it’s not like modern level. It’s not a lot like narrative baked into the levels, but there’s maybe like a bit more, you know, a bit more sense of place than you might have in it in a just like a Doom 1 level, say. But yeah, visually, it kind of looks slightly of Serious Sam, actually, in terms of like, I don’t know where it sits on the sort of like timeline of first person shooters. Like it kind of like feels like it straddles the eras a little bit, it’s like, like you say, so it’s kind of a tough one to call. But this is on Game Pass, isn’t it? So there’s no excuse not to play it, it sat right there, so yeah. It’s great. I mean, I just think, you know, from the first gunshot and seeing these enemies just go to pieces that you’re like, you’re either in or you’re out on this one. And if you’re in, stick with it, because it like, it gets so violent. It’s really like, it’s the kind of game, it’s what your like mum thinks video games are, you know, it’s the stuff of delight. And yeah, who can resist when it’s made by two people who used to work at the Soldier of Fortune 2 developer. That’s a big win, big win for us. Okay, great. I’ll check out Prodius. That was your number eight, wasn’t it? Yes. My number eight is Arcade Paradise. I’ve discussed this on a previous episode, I think one of the What We’ve Been Playing’s. A friend who is connected with the publisher for this one just gave me a code, said, oh, you want to check this out? And I had no expectations. It was not on my radar at all. I knew nothing about it whatsoever. Reddit was this kind of like arcade management sim, but then you could play the games while you were managing it. And I thought, well, that sounds pretty cool. I got a fucking rotten cold after Gamescom, so I installed it on my Steam Deck, lay in bed for a week just playing this basically. And it’s like, it’s the truest heart pick on my list, I would say. A game I was not expecting to sort of love. I wondered if maybe like the arcade scene that it kind of taps into is maybe slightly before my time, like more of an early 90s, late 80s arcade scene, but that didn’t really hold it back. So there is a kind of story loop to this game. It starts with you managing this, basically a laundrette. And then over time, you basically clean out this back room, you start adding a couple of arcade machines there and people start dropping in to play the arcade machines as well as using the laundrette. And then over time, you’re basically building an arcade where the laundrette once was. And you’re doing this while you’re father in the game, played by Doug Cockle, the voice actor playing Geralt of Rivia, basically is calling you to express his disapproval as he slowly realises what your plan is. Does he do it in Geralt voice? No, he sounds nothing like him. I mentioned there’s a really naff Geralt reference in this game previously. That’s a tough hang that reference. Oh, are you walking on your dad in the bath with his legs over the side? Yeah, just chatting up Kieromets. The arcade games, they feel like they’re all made in a game jam or something. I would say only a few of them are standout, and I would say the management some elements around it are also just quite good. But this is an entire game of just quite good things hanging together. As a whole, it adds up to something really satisfying. The journey through the game, I think it took me about 16 hours to finish, something like that. It’s not super sure. Then packing your arcade out with all of these machines, getting more advanced machines as you go, getting these slightly like F-Zero-y, wipeout-y ones, and then the pool game in it is really good. There’s a twin-stick shooter that’s pretty good as well. It’s really satisfying to just see that really naff, dirty laundrette convert into this full-scale arcade that doesn’t really exist anymore, certainly not in the UK. It seems to be dying everywhere anyway. But yeah, I just I’ve had it really appealing. I did not think this would be my sort of thing, then it absolutely was. So any thoughts on that one, Matthew? I know I have to give this a go. Like I really like the idea of the kind of sort of almost Zen simulator of everyday work. And then the kind of fake arcade machines sound really fun. I wonder what would happen if they ever like could team up with like Sega to do like a license you’re building like a classic Sega arcade or something. Yeah, that feels like it’s just that feels like the natural next week for this, doesn’t it? Because how the game works, it basically rewards it gives you daily goals. And those daily goals correspond to the arcade machines themselves. It will be like, play this game for certain amount of minutes or kill a certain number of enemies in this game. And you can imagine that being like, you know, kill 30 enemies in Space Harrier or something. Like it’s, it could transfer like perfectly and the branding would be so, so good. And obviously Sega’s done, Sega’s big into repackaging its retro games anyway, right? And putting them in different forms, having them in Yakuza, etc. So yeah. I just want Doug Cockle ringing you up and going, son, I found a Ghost Squad machine. This is massive, dad. Yeah. He sort of, it weirdly sounds like Ed Begley Jr. when he’s on the phone to you. He doesn’t sound like, weirdly I just, I got that vibe from him. But yeah, no, I agree. I agree with you. That’d be, that’d be rad. But yeah, this is, this is great. Like it’s, it’s not that expensive. I think it’s under 20 quid, but in a Steam set, it’s bound to like hover closer to 10 and it’s well worth it for that. Like I really enjoyed it. So yeah. Oh, I’m going to, I’m going to give it a go for sure. Yeah, it made GameSpot’s honorable mentions. It must be good. It did have a few, a few fans across media, but I don’t think it was like the seen as the sexiest indie thing that happened this year, but it was super, super good. Really satisfying. What’s your number seven, Matthew? My number seven is Marvel Snap. Holy shit. We still didn’t have any crossover. Okay. Okay. Cool. I’m surprised that you got into this, but yeah, what’s the deal? I have a very casual relationship with this game, but this was a, everyone’s talking about it. I’ll give it a little go and see if I can click with it in a way that I don’t tend to click with card games. Like I always feel by the time I’ve got them, they’ve, they’ve like run away from me a bit or the way people talk or they’re just too complicated. Full stop. I, you know, the very simple reason I like this is I think it’s incredibly accessible. I think it’s very beginner friendly and I am still a beginner in it. I’ve been playing it for about a month, sort of on and off, but I haven’t been like devouring it. For those who haven’t played it, you build a deck of superhero cards. They’re all based on Marvel superheroes and you go into a match. There are three locations and you place cards with points on them. And the idea is to accrue the most points at two of the locations. Each card has a special ability, often tied to the kind of character on that card. And from that comes all the mad strategies and synergies and all the kind of things people are going to write a billion SEO articles about online. But if you don’t care any about that and you approach it in quite a casual way, as I do, I think it’s still just a really, it’s a really fun game. It’s a really fun exercise in getting your head around these walls. I actually think it’s the three locations gimmick that really makes this for me, because the three locations in each match, they’re all based on different Marvel places and they change in every match. And you know, the conditions they add to the game can radically change how you think about your hand. So this idea of like building a particularly winning deck or having some grand strategy in your deck, you know, I don’t really have the strategic brain to think like that. That’s what scares me off other card games. Here, I feel I have a smattering of stuff in my hand, I go in, I see what locations it gives me, and then I work out on a match by match basis, like what I’m going to do. And that’s why I like it. I think it’s a really reactive, flexible, malleable card game that allows you to improvise. Sometimes you’ll go in and go, well, I’m fucked. All these cards are horrible. Obviously, better players will negate that and will have a deck which somehow suits every board. But if you just like the challenge of going in and seeing what you can do every time in quite a fast moving game, matches about two seconds, two minutes long. This is just a very enjoyable time. Every time I get a new card, I’m like, oh, cool, let’s see what this does. And I’ll add it into my deck and have a little play with it. It’s just it’s just very fun, beautifully made, amazing production values. Like the way it like each card, when you place it, it animates like the hero. So you know, Spider-Man will have like webs coming out of it or whatever. And annoyingly, the Ant-Man card, when you place it, it shrinks to the point where I’m always like, have I picked it up? Is there a card under my finger because it’s smaller than my big fat finger. So I’m looking at the thing going, where am I actually putting this? Have I got Ant-Man? Have I fucked up? It gets me every single time. But yeah, I just, yeah, I like this on a casual level. I haven’t looked it up, you know, I don’t care. You know, if there are bigger problems with the fucking meta of this game, they have not emerged to me on my lunchtime dabblings. And it’s just a card game that I like, you know, probably the only card game outside of Witcher 3 Gwent, rather than the hard Gwent they made afterwards. But I just understand and feel like I stand a chance at. Yeah, weird. I’ve grown weirdly attached to some really weird Marvel characters that I know nothing about. Which ones? My winning combination, my mega deck, is the power coupling of White Tiger and Odin. Yeah, I don’t think you can buy a comic book in 2022 that’s got both of those characters in it. Well, they should be in a film together, because they are incredibly potent in Marvel Snap, and I would love to see that pairing on screen. Anthony Hopkins, White Tiger, they could cast as whoever. Michael Jai White? Is it a woman, or is it a man? Oh is it a female White Tiger? I can’t really tell from the art. I thought White Tiger was a daredevil character. They’re fully in a white bodysuit, but whenever they turn up, they basically make a big phantom tiger appear on another spot, and Odin’s power is he reactivates her or him and that makes another tiger appear. Which paired with the locations which allow you to clone cards or repeat certain actions, you can basically fill everywhere with fucking ghost lines. It’s just wild. It just looks like a fucking Sig Friedemroy magic act just gone haywire. Every time it happens it really makes me laugh. Basically I play this game to wait for the locations that let me throw loads of tigers everywhere. That’s the level I’m connecting with this game and that’s why it’s my seventh favourite game of the year. No, no, that’s good. I think to clarify, as with any Marvel character, I think there’s about five or six different white tigers. Yeah, I think I was thinking of an older one, but anyway, yeah, I think having a casual relationship with this game is the right way to get into these games. Because I think that when you get to the point where you are, you know enough about it, that you feel like you should be winning some games, it can like start to break your love with it a little bit because you start getting too competitive or you don’t understand the level on which people are working or like, in the case of Hearthstone, they had a load of new classes or cards you don’t really understand. So you don’t feel like you can dip into it maybe as much as you once did. So I think like maybe the way you’re playing it is the way it’s meant to be enjoyed, Matthew, for most people. Well, yeah, I haven’t paid a penny for it either. Like it’s all been free. I’ve had tens of hours of entertainment out of this for free. So yeah, what’s not to love? Yeah, very generous. I can’t doubt that about it. Yeah, so beautiful. Like the animations on the cards and the card designs and you sort of upgrade them and they become like more complex, like how they become like 3D layered and 3D animated and they have like, I don’t know, shiny variants or whatever. And it’s just really lush, you know, yeah, very impressive. Yeah, I did enjoy this. The only reason I didn’t want to, I kind of deleted it off my phone though because basically I found myself in a pattern with another very compulsive game that I think we’ll get to later in the list. And like that, I just felt like I was making a choice because I thought what is the end point for me with this game? It’s me just playing it until I eventually get too competitive and get annoyed and then have to delete it anyway. So let’s just cut out the middle man and get rid of it. And like, despite me thinking it was very good and that the it was very simple to learn, but obviously very tricky to master and that it did make very good use of its license. Obviously the Uncle Ben card destroying that to get Spider-Man. That’s amazing. Of course. Apparently that’s not real. Oh, isn’t it? Is that a joke? That’s an urban legend. That’s a real shame. Yeah, it’s a real bummer because I’ve been waiting to see that. I’ve been like, oh, come on. I mean, there are other funny ones of like, you know, certain mad things can happen, you know, when certain characters behave certain way. I think it’s, um, what’s her name? Is it the is it the witch from whoever the bad guy was in WandaVision? Oh, uh, Agatha something? Agatha Harkness. Yeah. If she’s in your deck, she plays for you. You don’t get to choose. So it’s like an AI. It becomes like an AI controlled deck, but she’s really powerful. So if she plays herself, like you’ll win her spot. But yeah, I think that I think that’s one, unless that’s also bullshit that someone’s Photoshopped. I’ve only read about that online. In fairness to me, there are Kotaku, USA Today and ScreenRant articles that say this is real. So yeah, no, no, absolutely. I like I’ve been telling people that as well and I looked up saying when does this card that’s the only thing I’ve looked up to see how you unlock it. And then it was like, oh, it’s not actually real. I was like, oh, that’s a shame. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Good. Well, that’s that doesn’t hold back this game from no, no, no, this would have been if Uncle Ben had been in it, this would have been my game of the year. It’s one dead uncle away from tough, tough break. So shout out to studio for having an awesome name. Second dinner. I’m on board with that. That is good. You’re on board with it as a name and an idea to live by. More as an idea than an idea, that concept is getting amplified through this game. I’m big into that. Very good. So my number seven, Matthew, is Kirby in the Forgotten City. Wait, is that what it’s called? Actually, Kirby in the Forgotten Land, isn’t it? That’s right, yeah. You wrote another wrong fucking name. Well done, Samuel. It’s because I called it Kirby in the Last of Us for so long that I’ve blurred out the real name. Kirby in the Forgotten Land. So is this on your list? It is not. Really? You didn’t like this as much as Prodeus and Drainus? I’m really surprised to hear that. It’s terrible, isn’t it? That’s me. You were the Kirby guy. Yeah, I do really like it. Yeah, maybe it was just too long ago. Maybe it’s been supplanted by my lust for virtual gore. Well, that’s fair. And there’s definitely a bit of recency bias. I think that’s inevitable when it comes to the end of the year. This was like what? February or March? This came out quite a while ago now. Yeah. So Kirby in the Forgotten Land. So this is like kind of a 3D sort of mega Kirby in the sense of like, it feels like the production values are… I suppose like I only have a casual relationship with Kirby, right? But this to me felt like how the studio being like, we want to make the basically like the Mario Odyssey of Kirby games or, you know, something like that. They’re kind of like stepping up the scale a little bit. Like I know you… What’s that 3DS game you really rate Planet Roboto? Is it something like that? Yeah. Yeah, and I think like that was really well received, right? That was like a very beloved Kirby entry. Yeah, it’s still fundamentally a 2D game. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so this was like, you know, taking it to that 3D blockbuster ish kind of like platforming kind of next level. And I think it’s really cut through and people really enjoyed this on Switch. I would say as a 3D platformer, it’s like a it’s kind of like a seven out of ten game with 10 out of 10 mechanics. Yeah. Like I think that’s like a fair way of putting it. Like the or 10 out of 10 ideas rather. Like a level will dazzle you as Kirby just becomes like a roller coaster for a bit. Or like you have to assume several different shapes in order to fit into these gaps in the wall to blow them up and knock them down. Or you have to like ice skate over basically like a floor of lava, that sort of thing. Each level, I think, you know, manages to distinguish itself by having a different idea to kind of like as a hook to kind of make you engage with it and then these different worlds across the game add these different twists and Kirby can pick up all of these different abilities which are like meaningfully different from each other but also each have their own kind of mini progression system where you can level them up twice more to basically have amplified effects. So for example, like, you know, Kirby chucking fireballs is like the first version of that power. So by the end, you are breathing dragon fire and you can basically grow these temporary dragon wings to fly really quickly across the environment. So that’s an example of how they scale these things up. Basically these these abilities start small than they get massive. And I found this an absolute joy to play. I thought it was I thought it was slightly too easy. It could have used a mode, an extra mode for people who are like adults and want a tiny bit more of a challenge. And I know I sound like a dumbass saying that about Kirby game because these games are like notoriously quite gentle but the but I will say that towards the end and in some of its bonus stages it does make more use of its mechanics and ask more from you in terms of like skill as a player. And that’s really good. I think you kind of alluded to this but if you like the kind of like fighting God in space kind of like endings to these games then that this game does pack that basically it gives you a fight against basically Genova and then a fight against Sephiroth. It gives you both of those things so really rated that I was just surprised how much I was kind of in love with it. My brain was just scrambled eggs towards the end of this year and I just this was a real kind of like comfort play for me and while it didn’t reach the heights of like say you know any of the recent Mario games or last year 3D they reissued 3D world with Bowser’s Fury. I probably didn’t like it quite as much as that. I think the mechanics in it like all the different abilities they’re like they only have a certain amount of precision to them they are kind of meant to be a kind of like one button easy to use sort of thing. There isn’t a high higher level of skill to really reach with this game as a result but still really liked it regardless. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this one Matthew. I basically agree with all that. I think you’re right that there are some quite stiff challenges hidden in the margins of this game but the central thing itself is it’s almost so generous with the power you know, it’s a real power fantasy which is something I sort of admire about it that you know games aimed at kids are often so sort of flat and unambitious but this one really goes places. I love the idea that like I think a five or six year old could play this quite comfortably on the ease level and it will show them something that you’d probably normally have to wait until like you know your platinum games or something to kind of see you know it really goes places, it escalates brilliantly, that I really love about it. I think it’s a game from all accounts if you read the interviews around it where they were having to do a lot of problem solving, you know, there’s been this dream of like 3D Kirby for a long time and there’s been various projects which have been canned for various reasons and it feels like every time Howl’s taken a little go at this they’ve learnt a bit but not quite learnt enough and they finally brought it all together and made this. So that this is sort of like a first completed attempt and is as good as it is, I would say points towards there being like a really kick-ass version of this in a couple of years. You know, it’s like, you know how to do it, you know, now just go crazy because everything’s here, everything’s here. This is a good foundation. There’s a world in which this is like the third pillar Nintendo series, right? Alongside Mario and Zelda. That’s like not out of the question when you play this. And like, you know, indeed, I felt that way after playing Metroid last year, Metroid Dread last year to an even greater extent. You kind of hope that Nintendo recognizes that these things are mega important and that they, you know, they want to see those ideas push further and they want those studios to kind of get there, to get to that next creative level. Like the, I think like you say, like there is like loads and loads of potential in this. The other thing I really love about this is like, I think that it very nicely weaves in its optional collectibles as like things that you want to do in each level, which are, you know, basically collecting Waddle Dees, these little lads that you save Kirby’s pals. And they are kind of like hidden, like I suppose, you know, like what the stars, red coins are in Mario. What’s the equivalent in Mario, Matthew? It’s different things, a different game, you know, Mario has like the 3D stamps, got the green stars in Galaxy. Yeah, like it’s the optional kind of like extra skill challenges, I’d say. Yeah, and like some of them are just like, you know, here’s a racetrack, try and get through it in a certain amount of time or whatever. And again, you’ll sometimes get more meaningful challenges than those, but they’re really fun to do. And I collected every, every single Waddle Dee that was hidden around the environment across the game. And you know, because that was otherwise I was basically just sprinting from start to finish. And I think that this is kind of the way you are meant to play it, but yeah, really, really good. Didn’t expect to like this as much as I did, but really rate it. So a worthy number seven. Okay, what’s your number six, Matthew? My number six is Elden Ring. That’s my number six as well. So full disclosure, we had a little conversation about this the other day where I was sort of asking, you know, what are you thinking about Elden Ring? And you said all it’s going in the list, but you know, in the placement of it, I’m trying to put it where it’s fair and whatnot. And I was likewise trying to find a position for it on the list that best reflected my thoughts towards it. Yeah, yeah, very similar thought process for me. Well, I’m not gonna steal your line what you said to me the other day. I’ll let you say that. Oh, I don’t even remember what I said, but yeah, I’ll find that while you’re talking about the game. You know, obviously, you know, probably the, you know, the game that dominated the conversation this year, definitely for the first half of the year, I think the conversation has trailed off. You don’t hear as much about it now. And I feel like there have been a few more interesting, not more interesting things. I think there’s been a few other interesting things which have kind of come in at late year and mix things up a bit. But obviously, yeah, Miyazaki’s Dark Souls writ large into a sort of semi open world, which sort of marries the intricacies that you would expect from a Dark Souls in its kind of signature dungeons, but embedded in this vast landscape full of truly horrible monsters and fantastical designs and secrets that run deep for miles and take you to whole other lands. It’s a really wild thing and I don’t really feel like I need to kind of explain what Elden Ring is. My relationship with this game, it’s probably the furthest I’ve ever got in a Miyazaki game. The most I’ve ever played one. I have stalled in it. I stalled in what I think is the third region, which is the Plague World. Whether or not that is the third region I don’t know, but I sort of did the opening area and then I did the magic school and then I went to Plagueland where basically for about a week every time I booted the game up I had a really rough time there and everything killed me and I didn’t fall out of love with it but I just had enough and decided I had better things to do with my life. Which is why I was like umming and ahhing about this game because I thought, well, it’s like not really a heart pick for me but I obviously recognise it for the achievement that it is and I thinking back on it, you know, I love the time that I spent with it. Will I go back and finish it? I honestly don’t know. I’d like to think I would, though the idea of picking this up now all these months on without like what limited muscle memory I had back then fills me full of fear. But to counter that, like there are sights and scenes in this which were just so amazing, you know, like dipping into the underground and just seeing what what lay down there like entire new worlds or the kind of core childhood fantasy of like see that castle, you can go in there and you can fight everything and there’s going to be some amazing treasure. You know, it’s, you know, it’s like your core idea of what adventure is. Dungeons and dragons and weird forests and deep bogs and magic schools full of creepy ass magicians with stone masks and mad secrets hidden on the rooftops. You know, there’s so much I did love about this, but I can’t in my heart of heart say like it’s, you know, an all-timer for me, like it just didn’t, it just didn’t, you know, that I couldn’t get over that hurdle, that it did scare me off, I think speaks to the fact that we are just on a slightly different wavelength, me and Miyazaki, and that isn’t a slight on him. I recognise his game. That’s basically what I think. Yeah, I think I more or less agree with all of that. I will confess, though, Matthew, I couldn’t find what I told you about Elden Ring. What did I say about Elden Ring? You said, like, basically what you played of it was like some of your happiest memories, you know, of playing games this year. Right, yeah. That is basically true. Yes, like the 24 hours or so I did put into it, I was dazzled by its secrets and its experience as a game to go out and discover things and see what is through that tunnel and see what is in that lake. And that is something that I always crave from games and is something that I don’t feel like I’ve had for many, many years. Just a true, true feeling of discovering an open world game. And this game does that really well. The caveats are that, yes, like Matthew, I just, I think I saw, it’s partly doing this podcast where there are other things to play in order to feed the content machine, I suppose. But also I think that this has happened before to me with these games. It happened to me with Dark Souls, it happened to me with Bloodborne. Sekiro remains my favorite from Softgame because you don’t have to deal with the RPG-ness of it and working out is my build the right build and do I have the right weapons for this and all that stuff, which I think is just such a fucking minefield to figure out. Like, you could be times where you’re basically butting your head up against something you don’t need to be, but you don’t know that maybe you were meant to be doing something else. That’s still a thing that can happen in Elden Ring. That’s why I suppose I’m not the person who’s like, oh yeah, this is absolutely the number one game of the year. While also understanding that for most people, well, for many people and absolutely anyone who finished this game, it will be. Because if I was like you were saying, Matthew, if I was in the same wavelength as me as Aki, I can see a world in which I am going to bat for this as my number one pick. But I still love what this did. I still adore the 24 hours I spent in it. I may go back to it. It definitely went down smoother for me than Bloodborne and Dark Souls did. I didn’t get stuck. That’s the thing. I didn’t get stuck as such. I found a couple of dragons that fucked me up, but I didn’t get stuck. That’s something. It gave you more options to deal with getting stuck than previous games did, where it was just like, okay, well, I’m a tunnel of shit now, so I can get out, basically. This was a lot more generous because you can move fast enough that you can go to parts of the world you’re not supposed to be in yet. You can see what the deal is, and I really enjoyed doing that. The risk of being hit by two projectiles and being killed instantly, but it was quite a thrill to kind of go through those landscapes. And yeah, like it almost had more of this sort of… But in much more detail, the Shadow of the Colossus open world experience, where you truly can go around a corner of a cliff and then see a fucking giant monster. And that kind of unexpected scale that is incredibly exciting. And yeah, I can see why it feels like the ultimate statement from one of the types of games they make in a lot of ways, because, you know, they literally, or at least they seem to, reuse a lot of content from those games, which I’m absolutely, you know, I absolutely endorse, because it means that they have this fucking giant pile of stuff that kind of represents everything they’ve made up until that point. And that’s really rad. So, yeah, will I go back to it? I mean, yeah, I’m still an evil Hogwarts. I’ve got to fucking finish that bit, I suppose. Yeah, like, I will probably do it at some point, but it wasn’t going to be… It’s not going to be soon, basically. And so, yeah, here’s to you, Elden Ring. You still absolutely deserve a place in this list. One of the games of the year, but I’ve got five that are better than it. Imagine if I put this lower than Centennial Case. Yeah, I suppose it is strange that it is in this place, but that’s the thing. It’s that kind of pull between head and heart, right? The head says, this is fucking amazing. And the heart likes this, but doesn’t… And loves parts of it, but not all of it, you know? I wish there were pockets of just pure goodness occasionally in this game. I wish there was just some… Occasionally you just happened across something which didn’t have something horrible in it. It’s so relentlessly grim that it’s quite hard work. It did ground me down. Maybe I think that because the plague area is particularly ugly, and it’s full of these decomposing dogs and everything in it seems as shit. I never even got to the dungeon or the boss of that area, but everyone was like, the boss of this area is like a total pig. You’re going to have a really bad time with it. It’s like a perfect storm of unhappiness that stopped me from playing it. But I just occasionally let me find a pond with a nice rabbit jumping around that doesn’t turn into some fucking lake hag or something. Yeah, I will say that there’s a spontaneity to this that I didn’t really experience in From’s previous games. There was a bit where I was in the fiery area near the start. You know, you’re going to go off on the map to the east, I guess. And there’s basically the skies are red there. And it feels like you’re in Mordor suddenly. And then something that resembled a Nazgul just started chasing after me on horseback. And that was like the scariest, raddest thing that I’d experienced. I was just like, that’s so, so cool that that can happen in this game. So yeah, I’m just thinking that there’s still 75% of the map I’ve not seen, basically. That is enticing to get through at some point, but yeah, just not yet. Yeah, okay. I think that’s a good piece on Elden Ring there, Matthew. We like it, basically. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it’s your number five. What’s your number five? Yeah, somewhere number five is Case of the Golden Idol. Okay, that’s higher than I thought it would be, but I’m pleased to see it here. This has grown on me. I feel like I was slightly down on it when we talked about it in what we’ve been playing. It’s a sort of Obra Dinn-like in that it’s a detective game which gives you a lot of information and then you slot it into an account of what happened, which is obviously the central mechanic of Obra Dinn. You walk around the ship, you collect information and then work out how everyone died. Here it’s a bit more focused in that you kind of step into individual cases, which are like little dioramas. You sort of scan them for information, collect all the nouns from the area, so all the different objects and people, and then you have basically like a written account of what happened in this scene and you have to slot everything in. So Lord Chumlee was killed by a cannon, fired by his butler or whatever, and then the game goes, yes, you were right or you were wrong. But the way that you kind of work out these scenarios is that the scenes tell their story. There’s a lot of visual information you have to read. There are letters on people’s bodies. It’s never really explicit about what you are, like you’re some kind of presence. You’re not a man in this world, I don’t feel. You’re just sort of an omnipotent thing that can see everyone’s possessions and nose into any cupboard or whatever. You collect all this information and from that you have to work out what happened. Like Obra Dinn, I think it calls on a mixture of detecting abilities. Some of it is simple logic. If this person was in this room at this time, then he couldn’t have been in this room doing this murder at that time. Some of it is observation of, well, he’s got a bit of blood on here or mud on his shoes, which means he was standing here. It gives you a really nice range of information and sources to pass, which is what I loved about Obra Dinn and what I love in this. It’s not as good as Obra Dinn. For me, because it is these kind of self-contained puzzles, I don’t think it ever gets the mad scale and the mad ambition of what Lucas Pope did in that game. But some of the later cases kind of bring the whole story together in a way which is quite satisfying. And you’re asked to take deductions from previous cases and weave them into your final deductions in a way which is quite neat. So it does eventually reach this more ambitious point. I just think as a game that captures the thrill of being the detective, which is a thrill I always want and I’m always seeking, just because it doesn’t do it quite as well as Obra Dinn, there’s no reason not to celebrate this game. It’s quite short and sweet, but it shows you quite a lot because they are self-contained scenes. You get to see many different murders in quite striking environments. As the game goes on, it becomes less about murders and more about other deductions, which is quite a surprise. The third act’s got a very different flavour to the first two, which I think is quite a fun twist on it. It’s just, yeah, a good… It’s like the anti-centennial case in that, like, you know, everything it values is like the mechanics of deduction and the thrill of kind of, like, really getting into that stuff. Yeah, I think that, like, that was the thing you struggled with when you were talking about it, or at least that was the barrier to you thinking this was, like, you know, maybe, like, the highest tier of a detective game is because Obra Dense is such a high standard, and you were kind of, like, putting it up against that. And that’s, like, you know, I think I’m glad that you asked, you have instead chosen to take it on its own terms. Yeah. In terms of, like, scale and, like, you know, its approach to being a detective game, because I think that’s a better way of looking at it than trying to make that comparison to something that is so, like, such lightning in a bottle game. Yeah, yeah. And I just think about it a lot. And, like, whenever I see a screenshot of it, I’m fond of it. You know, it’s got a very distinctive look. Everyone’s got their ugly, sort of, potato-faced beings, and they’re all, like, screaming the whole time, because you always enter these scenes just when someone’s murdered. You know, I talked about this on the previous episode. It really captures the drama of, like, a body has been found and, like, how everyone wigs out. It’s, you know, kind of funny and frightening at the same time, you know, to sort of observe. And that stuff is just… That’s what’s sort of grown on me. It’s general vibe. So I’ve kind of got… Yeah, and this is… Other games I played that I really loved, I called on afterwards. So this is, yeah, an exception to that. Well, shout out to, I think it’s Numan from Playstack who sent us keys for this. Like, listened to the podcast and was like, think Matthew might like this. So, yeah, that was… Yeah, it’s good. A good, you know, will fill a couple of Sunday afternoons quite happily, this one. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I’ve got this installed on my Steam Deck. Seems like a good Steam Deck game, doesn’t it? Yeah, okay. Good stuff, Matthew. Good. I’m pleased to hear that we’ve suddenly got one game between us that’s cropped up across both our lists. That’s surprising at this point. I wonder if that will change now. So, my number five, it’s me, Norco. Higher on mine, but that’s all right. It’s four, so we can talk about it. Yeah, that makes sense, doesn’t it? So, I just finished this today, Matthew. So, there is, I guess, a high risk of recency bias, but I tried to, like, temper that a bit. So, I had heard all year about how this point-and-click adventure game set in this, like, sci-fi, slightly kind of like near-future version of Louisiana, this game was like just such a standout in terms of, like, world-building and storytelling this year. And I had been, like, putting off playing it a little bit because I was kind of curious if it would be for me, but then they did the amazing thing of putting it on Xbox Game Pass as well as PC Game Pass, which ensured I would play it because I don’t like sitting at my fucking desk now because I work from home all the time. So, thank you for that. I played on my Xbox over the last two days. I was absolutely blown away by the world-building in this. It’s such an original-feeling world, an original-feeling story. To explain the story, it’s kind of like you are the daughter in this family returning to your Louisiana hometown, Norco, essentially when your mother has passed away and there is the lingering presence of oil corporations in the area. That’s come to define the space to some extent in terms of the environmental damage they’ve done, the culture shift they’ve unleashed, and this town is kind of like a victim swept up in it. The story of your mother is tangled up in that company somewhat. The game is about unpicking that, unpicking what happened to your mother and what else is going on in this town. This kind of boils down to what I think is a fairly tried point and click template, except for the fact that there is almost this slightly JRPG element to it where you have a little party to go around with you. You occasionally do battles where those battles just basically come down to just pick a character you’d like to attack, pick a character you would like to perform an attack, then pick a character you would like to attack, and then you basically do a kind of series of QTE style prompts on screen to pull off an attack. Very straightforward stuff. There’s not that much of it. But it’s not ever really obtuse, like a LucasArts adventure game. It goes down smooth, and it’s just a great bit of worldbuilding and narrative design in a game. Kind of like, it feels like it’s in the vein of Kentucky Route Zero, but I find this slightly less lardy-dar than that, and I think that’s why I appeal to more. I’m keen to hear what you think, Matthew, because it sounds like you liked it as much as I did. I’ll admit, when the reviews first came out for this, and the general buzz around it, I thought it was going to be a total wankfest and just not for me. I thought it sounded very, like, highfalutin, and actually what I love about it is I think it is really accessible, it’s very funny, and it’s really fast-moving. Nothing outstays its welcome. They’re obviously great at writing dialogue in this, like, the characters, they establish themselves really quickly, but they’re also, like, known to shut the fuck up, and they sort of say their piece, and the world seems richer for it. It has similarities in, like, worldview and worldbuilding to Disco Elysium, but it’s kind of like the five-hour version of Disco Elysium. Like, it just sort of plows on forward, and you meet all these weird people. I think it helps that most of the people you interact with are quite regular people. Barflies and bums and idiots, and you’re hanging out with regular people. They’re very sort of easy to sort of sympathise with, or at least empathise with. There are some really good jokes in this. You must have fed a guy a bad hot dog at some point in this. I did, yes, and met him outside a nightclub. Oh, my God, that made me laugh. Also, there’s a PI character in your party, and him interacting with a member of a cult near the end of the game in the swamp when you come across them in this swamp area. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That made me laugh. That’s a great character, that PI character. Yeah, really funny. I think that really helps cut through any potential pomposity that might come from the setting. When people were saying, it’s a very particular study of region. It’s about the gig economy. There’s definitely some stuff about all right movements in there. It’s the kind of stuff we think, I imagine I will probably agree with a lot of this, but it’s going to be a bit of a hard ride. And actually it’s so light on its feet. That’s what I loved about it. I thought the puzzles were fast moving. I actually thought it had a couple of fun puzzles in it. There’s a mechanic where you can record lines of dialogue that people say to you to play back to other people, which it used in a couple of, I thought quite a funny set piece where you’re trying to sort of help a man lose faith in the people around him by recording them at their worst, which I thought that really made me laugh. Did you get the secret ending that involved that mechanic? Oh, I don’t know if I did. Probably not. Yeah, because I did and I didn’t realize it was a secret ending until afterwards and I looked it up. That was quite a surprise, actually. That doesn’t spoil anything for the listeners, because you have to be on the lookout for it. But yeah, I’ll tell Matthew what it is after the episode’s over. Yeah, not at all what I thought. I’m really glad I gave it a go. And yeah, Game Pass is just like what a treat this is. Yeah, that’s a gift from Game Pass right there. Yeah, I think as well, the setting, you just can’t underestimate just how well the setting is brought to life with beautiful pixel art, amazing music, and just like the sense that this community has been battered by, you know, the gig economy, lack of opportunity, and a corporation just like destroying the environment, like that lingers over the entire thing. And you really just palpably feel it. Like it’s about real things, but yeah, it doesn’t rub it in your face. And yeah, I really liked every character that you encountered. I like the way the game found different reasons to get you to go to the different environments again, like to go home and there’s more in your home that you didn’t know about, that sort of thing. And also just the way that the achievements would sometimes reflect your choices. Like this doesn’t really spoil anything, because I think it was in the demo, but really early on you meet a guy outside, a convenience store who’s been quite aggressive with you. And if you knock him out in the fight, and there are different outcomes I think to that encounter, you get a class traitor achievement. And I felt terrible after I got that. Really, really good. This is so good, Matthew. I can’t wait to see what that team does next. Like it was so singular. It’s like, this is the world we want to build. This is the story we want to tell. Just like I say, wholly original, right? It’s just well done. Okay, great. So I think we come to your… Your number four. My number four, yes. My number four is Vampire Survivors. That’s my number three. Amazing. This has suddenly become quite a short ending to the podcast. So, as mentioned, I wanted to give myself a limit of compulsive games to play this year. As mentioned, Tesla tanks kind of like making a beeline for my fucking… The pleasure centers of my brain, shocking it. I just had a… I try and like… Ever since I got addicted to Rocket League, I’ve tried to like curtail that a bit and just try and focus on things that have at least some kind of like forward momentum. So you’re not just playing the same kind of thing over and over again. So this game, this game is kind of like a sort of shooter game, but you don’t do anything other than choose which weapons to automatically fire against hordes and hordes of enemies. Now, I first heard about this when… Well, it kind of became a viral success. Then Joe came on the podcast and I think put it in the Indie Games Hall of Fame Volume 2, I think. That’s what he did. And then finally played it myself like about a week or so ago. And my first thought was, is this it? Is this all this game is? And then I had played it for four hours in a row and hadn’t moved from the spot. And that kind of sums up what this game is like. So those weapons might be a whip, and then your character will just automatically whip around you and then you can kind of aim where your character is facing to hit enemies with the whip. You might get garlic, which creates like this basically protective layer around you, so it will damage enemies who come within a kind of close radius to you. You’ll get like these sort of spinning bibles basically that will knock enemies aside. You’ll get like magic wands, fireballs, all kinds of stuff. And it’s kind of a game about sort of like building a beautifully automated clockwork kind of guy who could just like unleash loads and loads of damage and become this self-perpetuating death machine to finish these levels. And I think that is really addictive in itself because the ongoing progression system within the game is accumulating these abilities and leveling them up. And that includes like increasing the amount of damage they do and also the radius of the attacks, which is really important because the screen will swarm with hundreds and hundreds of enemies to kill. But what I think is the true magic of this is when you start the game, you don’t have everything that the game has to offer. There is a meta progression system where you unlock new, where you unlock boosts to your health and to the speed of your attacks, that sort of thing. So you can progressively get better in that respect. You unlock specific characters by playing different levels as different characters and unlocking more and more options. And these characters have different buffs and that sort of thing. And there are so many ways to play it that it becomes like, it’s not just in the moment satisfying. It’s like there is a larger feeling of progression to this game that I think is the real secret source to it. The feeling that it is changing as it goes. And means it’s not just like another flappy bird. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Why don’t you take it from there, Matthew, because I’ve been talking for a long time. No, I mean, I think you’ve put it really well. It’s interesting you described it as a shooter. I keep thinking of it as like, it’s almost like it has the power curve of like playing 30 hours of an action RPG like Diablo, but boiled into 30 minutes. So in the course of a level, you go from being the weakest you are to like the most powerful being you could possibly be that you can push back like thousands of people. And that’s incredibly satisfying. I think it’s tapping into the same bit of your brain that like slowly optimises a build over a campaign in a bigger action RPG, but here you’re doing it constantly afresh and then the character is, you know, the level is over and that character is gone and you start from the beginning again. So it’s like such incredible highs for such like a low level of investment that it’s like completely throwaway, but also hugely compelling when you’re in the thick of it. And I think you’re absolutely right that the kind of key ingredient for me is like the achievement system, which unlocks new weapons, new characters, new areas, new mechanics. There’s like a quite a key power up that comes in like, I don’t know, if you can say halfway through the game, like it’s hard to gauge how this game really works in time, but there’s like a sort of tarot card system which adds like an extra layer of power ups on what is achievable like in the game. And that gives you like further opportunity to like create just truly absurd, you know, damage dealing builds. But at the same time, while it’s just layering on this stuff, there is a sense that it’s like finite. You know, I think you can like work your way through that achievement list and be done with this game. Like you can see the end of it. It isn’t just an eternal loot grind, like a destiny, you know, it doesn’t have the just endless stretch of random number generation that defines so many of these RPGs. It’s kind of, you can unlock everything, you can see everything and then step away from it. I already kind of have stepped away from it. I love it and I will dip into it occasionally, but I also feel like I’ve sort of, I’ve seen what I need to see of it and I loved what I saw of it. Yeah, that’s exactly, I think I’m almost at that point too. It gives you all these moments that like, where you feel like Captain America with Thor’s hammer in Avengers Endgame, where you’re like, you’ve got like fucking like four different mind carts going from side to side wiping enemies out, while these like, these Bibles spinning at 200 miles an hour, like mincing enemies. And like, I, you know, that’s that there. I’m sitting on my exercise bike playing this thinking, I’ve never been this powerful while peddling in my underpants and a really sweaty t-shirt. Like that’s like, that’s what this, the kind of high this game gave me this year. Yeah, I do agree. That’s got a big print magazine energy, print ad energy. You’re an exercise bike and it’s like, you’re the ultimate hero. Right down to like, yeah, right down to like 2003 era, like print media content, obviously. Yeah, so really just, really just sublime. Just put a smile on my face so many times. And like, even if you have a build that goes bad because of the like larger progression system, you can, the gold you earn, you can just spend on power ups that go into your next playthrough. So it doesn’t feel like you’re wasting time. It always gives you something for your efforts. And I think again, like that’s where it differentiates it from other games to where the compulsive loop is just all there is to the game. I think there is more to this that makes it worthwhile. So not surprised to see this crop up on so many lists. I guess it is kind of a rare type of sort of breakout here. Like it’s quite, you know, it looks, superficially looks quite lo-fi. I also did find it very funny that I’ve bought an Xbox Series X this year, and I’ve chose to use that power with basically like 400 sprites being put on screen in this game, while my dude’s like, you know, whipping it, whipping and throwing fireballs at high speed. Really good stuff. There’s always this constant sense of like, has he just ripped all of this from like a Castlevania sprite sheet? Like it’s got big like, kind of like Game Boy Advance Castlevania visual energy. I’m sure he hasn’t. No, no, no, absolutely not. But you never know. It’s got a good sense of humor as well. Like some of the characters have got really goofy. There’s like weapons and things. There’s like a guy’s got these exploding cats and like the more you upgrade it, like the more exploding cats run onto the screen. It’s just silly. Someone’s having a wet, it’s like one guy, isn’t it? A Luca Galante. And I think just clearly having a whale of a time, just putting loads of mad bullshit in this game. Yeah, it’s like there’s at least half the characters where they, you’re like, why are you doing this? Why are you in this battle kind of a situation? Yeah, yeah, really, really good. Do you have a favorite weapon? I think I just really, the thing is like, a playthrough that’s got garlic in it feels like you kind of need it, I think, or at least you don’t, you can go without it, but if I don’t get garlic, I’m annoyed I don’t have garlic, you know what I mean? It’s always the foothold for like my best runs. Exactly, yeah, so you can compensate for a lack of garlic with the spinning crosses and then like the bibles and stuff, like it’s not, garlic does all of it, so it’s like, yeah, it’s tough to go without it. Do you have a favorite apart from that, Matthew? Yeah, I’m a big garlic and Bible combo person, you know, because if my bibles don’t get you, the garlic will, so that’s the level I like. The feeling when you’ve got to like the last, because each game, is it each 30 minutes it goes for then you finish the level? When you get to like that 20 minute mark and you’ve know you’ve got this self-perpetuating kind of like, you know, killer character, it’s so satisfying to just like walk into a wall of like a hundred enemies and just watch them all like dissolve. That’s like such a satisfying loop in this game. Or even just like going to pour myself a cup of tea and just leaving it on play because I’ve created such a good character, I know I’m gonna be fine kind of thing. Yes, really, really good. I’m pleased we both like this one because doesn’t feel like, doesn’t seem like my sort of thing on paper, but I think a lot of people had that journey with this game. You know, they think, oh, you know, it costs almost nothing. So even if it’s not for me, maybe I’ll just give it a try. And then everyone’s loved it. So yes, good stuff, Matthew. So we’re on to my number three, is that right? Yes. Okay, my number three is Sifu. Oh, not on my list. Yes, so this game is from Slow Clap, the developers of Obsolver, who I think before that were like former Ubisoft developers. So this is like a martial arts game where the twist of it is, if you die, you age each time you come back to life. And if you’re doing well in a level, that aging will be fairly lean. If you’re doing badly, you can age years at a time and your character will visibly become older, will visibly change over the course of the game. At first, this mechanic is utterly defeating and so, so sad because as someone who has wasted years of his life on grudges, it is quite sad to see this revenge story. This person literally become like 45 across, like when he started as 20, becoming 45 over the course of a level because he fucked up so bad. That is tough, but… Big magazine games editor, John. Energy as well. Absolutely. And the thing is that you carry through your age to the next level. So if you even, there are five levels in total, if you reach like the third level and you’re 60, you’re not gonna get to the end. That’s the thing. So you have to replay it. You have to replay it. And the combat is third person brawling in the style of something like, well, if you’ve played Obsolver, that’s definitely like a touch point here. But like God Hand is a good touch point here. Try to think what else is a good touch. But I guess even like the Arkham games a little bit, just sort of like close quarters, fast combat, counter-attacking, dodging, that sort of thing. It’s really, really kinetic and exciting combat. Like it’s just fundamentally extremely exciting to watch. It’s also a really frustrating game. And I think it’s slightly over-designed. This game has four different ways to block or parry, I think. So you’ve got an evade move where he’ll jump backwards from an enemy or jump to the side. You’ve got an evade where you stand on the spot and you can either evade high or low attacks. And then you’ve got a parry button, which is where the timing is super opaque. That’s one of my biggest problems of the game. Really opaque compared to something like Sekiro, where the parrying is fucking perfect and does exactly what it should. This is a bit more like, at the end of the game, and I don’t understand how the parry system exactly works. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it doesn’t. And I’m not the only player who said that. It was in PC Gamer’s review, it’s all over Reddit, but anyone who asks about it on Reddit is like, whoa, sounds like you’re a fucking new basically kind of responses. And you’re like, okay, great. Can’t have a constructive conversation about difficulty on the internet, obviously. But in spite of that, so cinematic, so exciting, and there really is a sense of mastery to it. And it’s less cruel than it seems at the start. It’s like it has, it lets you unlock a wider move set that you can take across playthroughs. And if you can get through a level dying less, it will change your progress. So each time, let’s say like you get to level three, you’re 60 years old. Now, what if you replay, if you replay the first two levels, you get it down to 30 years old. That progress is saved. And you can always start that level at 30 years old. That is really fair, I think. And so that like allows you to build, you know, at the same time, this, that you’re able to like bring down that and increase your odds, you’re getting better at the game. And that’s where the skill curve kicks in and really works. The bosses are a fucking pig in this. I don’t think they quite nailed them personally. This is an eight out of 10 from a studio that I think will one day absolutely make a 10 out of 10. Like that’s what I feel about this game. Like they know how to make this, these brawling games exciting and like hard but fair. And just like amazing to look at. Really, really rate it, Matthew. I’m guessing this is not exactly your sort of thing. No, I haven’t even tried it, which is pretty bad given like what a big game it was this year. I just, yeah, like the chat around it and not in like a negative way. Not like people were kind of, you shouldn’t play this. You’re too weak to play this or anything. Just the kind of people who are really getting into it are also the kind of people in my Twitter feed who are like super into the minutiae of fighting games. This doesn’t sound like it’s for me in the same way that fighting games aren’t for me, but I’m obviously wide at the mark on that, because four defensive systems aside, this does sound pretty cool. I’ve read so much about it. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. Yeah, truthfully, like I don’t know if, and I haven’t finished this. I haven’t beat the final boss, like, you know, confession time. The final boss is a fucking nightmare. But, like, it’s, it’s not like, I don’t think you can fully master it in the way you can fully master Sekiro. I think, like, there’s still a couple of things about it that are just too opaque for you to ever feel like you got that or, or bosses that require you to not do certain things or to do certain things. But yes, there are, there are moments you reach where you truly are super powerful and you unlock all these cool abilities that you just, when you started the game, you just didn’t have that in your armory. Like, the coolest one, I think, Matthew, being that, like, you can kick objects on the ground towards enemies, like a table or like a, you know, something like that. And so, again, really feels like martial arts film vibe when you add that to your, you know, to the things that you can do in each level. Really, really good. The levels look beautiful as well. This is kind of always, like, painterly style to it, kind of like, maybe like woodwork-y kind of style to it. It’s just a very confident visual style. I will say as well, this, I don’t know if this will make it more appealing to you, but they did add three, it’s got three difficulty modes now, which it didn’t at launch. It just had normal at launch. Now it’s got an easy mode, so I don’t know if that would be more appealing to you, or if you’re like me and you feel like you need to force yourself through the ringer to like get, to feel like you’ve had the proper experience. Does EZ add a big stinky cloud of garlic a la Vampire Survivors? EZ adds a Waddle Dee who just kicks the shit on the half of the enemies on the side. Waddle Dee with like a bandana. Yeah, he’s fucking rad, that guy. He knows what he’s doing. Yeah, so it’s really good. It’s like the closest I’ve seen to like a Matrix style game, I guess. And there is like on the spot dodging when you do learn it, and you do start to like pick apart a boss who has given you so much trouble, you know, like two hours ago. That is amazing. You really do feel yourself learning it in real time. So, yeah, pretty good. Could you see this team like being interested in or being given like a, you know, like a Matrix license or a John Wick license? It’s hard to say. Like, it’s kind of like a, this is like a, this is like a double A kind of game really. Like, if this is a 360 area, this would be a 40 pound box game. You know what I mean? Like, it’s that scale of game to me. Even though it only has five levels and they are theoretically short, you will play this. How long to beat says nine hours. That’s a fucking lie. There’s definitely at least 10 hours that’s to go into doing this, in my opinion. But I don’t know, I don’t know if there is exactly a perfect fit for it. Because obviously if you bring guns into it, it becomes like a very different deal. And if it was John Wick, you would have to have guns in it. But I’d like to see them try. Like I said, they’ve got the potential to make a 10. I did see that Lionsgate guy saying we want to make a AAA John Wick game. And I was like, that’d be fucking rad. I hope that happens in my lifetime. That’d be cool. Yeah, they’d have to really kind of dial back the sort of quality levels. But I think they could do it. So, yeah, Sifu. Did Catherine play this at all? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember it being played in the house. This is more of a Dorf romantic house. This is what you play before you play Dorf romantic. This kind of like they cancel each other out, I think. So that’s my number three. What’s your number two, Matthew? My number two is Signalis. Ah, wow. That is unexpected, but very cool. Is this in your list? It’s in my own rule mentions. A top-down take on survival horror. You are a character looking for someone in a science fiction facility. It’s attached to some minds. The nature of where you are and who you’re looking for, you unravel as the game goes on. It’s quite mysterious and abstract in a kind of Silent Hill manner, but I actually find it for the meat of the game a lot more Resident Evil. I think it feels like a Resident Evil game that turns into a Silent Hill game, kind of like in like the last act. This is a game that taps into that era anyway, of like PlayStation 1, Resident Evil and Silent Hills, and I think it made me realize how much I enjoy the kind of building blocks of that genre, and people don’t tap into them as much anymore, or people think they’re a little outdated and have sort of moved on, and actually I really enjoyed rediscovering those. It made me realize that something I really enjoy about survival horror is actually the chore of managing my inventory, plotting routes, and that thing where you almost have to risk your safety against efficiency. It’s the idea of being in a location which is full of enemies, you can’t take them all out, you’re trying to work out what should you take with you, knowing that you also need to leave inventory space to pick up the items in the rooms that you’re going to. You know, some people who haven’t got on as well with this game or its inventory system at least, say it’s a game where you just endlessly run back to your inventory box to drop stuff off. And that is true, but it’s also a game where you try and enter a very deadly space with as little equipment as possible so that you can maximise your collecting time in that space. I personally find that dilemma super engaging, you know, it really really spoke to me. I don’t think this is half the game it is without those limited inventory slots. I think it has like the magic of survival horror that makes you kind of excited about what’s behind every new door. Like the world is very compelling, you know, discovering the nature of the facility you’re in. The idea that you have all these door keys, a bit like Resident Evil, like they’re like named keys that you’re trying to get to open them. And you go in and inside that room, is it going to be something horrible? Is it going to be something useful? Is it going to be the item that finally gives some context to another puzzle elsewhere that you didn’t understand? You know, it’s very like meat and potato stuff. You know, when when you put it alongside like your old school like Resident Evil 1 or 0. But again, I just I just really dig that particular format. I think it also like modernizes it in certain ways. I think storytelling is quite sophisticated in that you have this top down view, but occasionally pulls you into these like first person dream sequences. You know, there is a dreamy sort of Silent Hill element compared to, you know, Resident Evil, quite black and white, good, bad, kill the big monster at the end, energy. But it also has a little glimmer of what I like about No Codes games, like interfacing with like weird machinery, both devices you find in the world and interact with. And you also carry this like transistor radio, which you have to tune in to like solve various puzzles, fight certain enemies and that kind of like weird interface and the kind of inherent spookiness of like shifting a dial and the crackle turning into something which, you know, may help you or may just freak you out. Like that felt like quite a modern edge. Like it felt like it has a few mechanics, like completely of its own embedded in this quite traditional format. Yeah, I guess I just thought this was great. Like a really good mood piece, a really good mechanical survival horror. Yeah, the only reason it’s not on my list is because I just haven’t finished it yet. I’m about I think like three hours in and I think it’s like a nine hour game, ten hour game. Right, yeah, yeah. I didn’t want to pick it without having the confidence in where it goes because there are some bits that made me think, oh, do I miss everything about old school survival horror games? Do I miss the combat? This is slightly different, the combat here, but do I miss the inventory management? It made me ask those questions in the first few hours. I thought I would at least like to know how I feel about it having reached the end of the game before making that call. Yeah, that’s fair. I think like, and it’s very high up my list, obviously, I think one definite mark against it is that I don’t find it particularly scary. I think that’s something to do with the perspective. You’re so far removed from it. You know, it’s not like Resident Evil with those fixed hammer angles where you’re really pulled into those kind of claustrophobic spaces. Like, it’s all like one step removed. It’s a little bit sort of adrenaline-inducing as you’re trying to basically run past stuff without firing because if you try and fight everything, you will be fucked in this game. It doesn’t give you enough ammo, but you do gain confidence to just run past things and maybe that shifts everything too much in your favour come the end of the game where you’ve got all the… You know, it’s the classic Resident Evil thing of you open your inventory box and you’ve got 20 magnum rounds, loads of flame bullets, and you’re like, well, maybe I played this too safe. Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. But that’s… I don’t know. That it even sort of accidentally mimics the classic flaws of those games. It’s like part of its charm. Yeah, I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did, but it… Yeah, I thought it was excellent. I just love this little facility that you’re in. I love that each area, you know, there are weird puzzles involving classical music. There are very sort of strange close ups on like certain bits of the world, which kind of, I don’t know, really bring it to life. It’s just a very, very like evocative, tangible space given how sort of abstract and lo-fi it is. Yeah. Did you play this on Game Pass? Yeah, Game Pass. So, yeah, like I actually, I think the other thing that sets it apart from, or at least kind of gives it a tonal difference from some of the games that inspired it, is like it feels like maybe anime played a bigger part in like the, you know, the tone and the character design. Like it’s a bit Ghost in the Shell-ish, you know? A little bit of that going on. Yeah, it feels like it’s got a bit going, a bit different in terms of influences. But yeah, it’s like, it’s not, it really does a good job of evoking those games without mimicking them. And that is like a, that is really impressive about it. Like even the experience of like rifling through documents or examining an object in this is like, it’s nice to be doing that again. And it like, yeah, it sort of, it does that while layering on its own perspective and its own sort of taste. So yeah, I rate this. It probably, you know, there’s a very good chance it might have made my top 10. I’ll keep playing it, Matthew, and report back how I feel about the final hours. You see, I was expecting this to be in your two or one slot. No, just in the end, I just didn’t quite get through it. I blame that. Yeah, yeah, so it didn’t get in there. But yeah, I know a lot. It’s a lot more different than I thought. That’s exciting. That’s what you want from an episode like this. Yeah, absolutely. And there was like, yeah, just, it really is a year without any blockbusters, wasn’t it? Just look at these lists. Like, that’s just so, like, not where these normally land. So, yeah, I am pleased that I was pushed out of my comfort zone a bit by this year, because it has led me down some interesting paths, you know? It feels like it has for you too, you know? Yeah, definitely. Like, the idea of you putting a kind of retro-style shooter in your list, like, two years ago, like, didn’t even seem like something… No. I wouldn’t have expected it, you know? So, yeah, good stuff. So, my number two. Cult of the Lamb. Oh. Yeah, so really love this. Devolver published game. I’ve forgotten the name of the Australian studio that made it, I’m afraid. Sorry about that. I should have written that down. That’s poor. Poor form for me. I wrote down fucking Kentucky Route Zero inspired next to Norco on my notes, but not the name of the developer here. So, this is like the second game on my list that is like a management sim as a shell for other stuff that your character does. Arcade Paralyze being the other one. So, here you are building a cult and then basically going on these hack and slash missions to get resources and recruit more cult members and basically like fight back against these like these gods who are these like you know old gods, evil gods who sort of like you know have basically control everything. You’ve been given a reprieve and then you kind of like you fight back basically. And the actual like the actual management stuff is is weirdly the most compelling thing about it because you build like little like little places for your cultists to sleep and places them to gather resources to rest even to go for a shit you build a little toilet from at a certain point all that stuff and like it’s what what it does is it kind of like becomes the version of Animal Crossing that I was always forcing Animal Crossing to be which is like twisted animal twisted sociopathic Animal Crossing and so like because like of the cult mechanics you can basically sacrifice your own followers to give give your you know give people’s belief in you like a boost that sort of thing and the game kind of encourages you to do that because your your cultists can get old and when they’re old they’re very cute when they get old they wear these like little white kind of like nighties and they kind of hobble around with a little walking stick and they can’t do work anymore so they don’t actually functionally have a use anymore so you are at first the first time you sacrifice one it’s kind of heartbreaking but then you get so ruthless at it it’s like yep you’ve fucking you’ve turned old let’s go to the fucking church let’s get you killed and we’ll just you know everyone else to get a boost and we’ll crack on but then like the cult powers expand you eventually get the power to revive your your people and you can like if you’re if your villagers are hungry if your your cultists I think it’s a great way to get to know cultures. You can hold a feast to instantly boost everyone’s hunger meters, that sort of stuff. It gives you loads of different ways to manage them in quite a fun fashion. And you’re also in charge of item placement around where your cults stay, that sort of thing. And then when you go into the game, it’s a bit like, I think, Binding of Isaac is the kind of comparison it’s had. Someone called it more goth-y aesthetic. It’s like a juxtaposition between these cutesy animals and these very nasty situations they find themselves in. And while I don’t think it’s amazing as a hack and slash kind of game, it’s pretty good. And the management stuff is really good. And together, that added up to something that I didn’t know I’d find appealing as I did. But I just think there’s so much character in the way its world is brought to life. I just really loved it. Do you play this one again, Matthew? I haven’t played it. I haven’t read much about it or anything. It hasn’t passed a bit. I know it exists, but whenever I see footage of it, I can’t really pass it. So hearing you explain what it actually is and why it spoke to you, yeah, super interesting. And based on how much you like running the Discord, I know you’ve got good cult leader energy to you. So this makes sense. This tracks. That’s really funny. You really do live and die by people’s belief in you in this. It’s like a meter that’s always ticking down. And if you die, this was a game actually that made me think, why is everything fucking Dark Souls now? Because if you die, you don’t just die and then you lose a life. You die and then you go back to your village and you’ve lost a bunch of resources that you’d picked up and your villagers have lost belief in you because you lost fighting on their behalf basically. And I was like, ah. And yes, I can’t help but call them villagers because in my head, this is Animal Crossing, this game. But then you can do things like brainwash them. So their faith in you is fixed for like two days or something. And then they’ve all got these fucked up looking eyes basically. And some of the villagers will eventually turn on you as well. They’ll stop believing in you. You can put them in stocks until they’re reprogrammed into thinking that you’re good. That’s really cool. And I got very attached to some of my little dudes who I sacrificed, brought back to life and sacrificed. Over and over again. I was like, I miss my little like, you know, my little horse pals. I’m just going to bring him back from the dead. Help me chop down some wood basically. So yeah, really, really good this. Yeah, well, I just, yeah, I stand out for me. It’s quite tough to place this in the list. It was sort of like, it was hovering around my top five in different places over the last couple of days. But I think that this, it did amount to something very memorable and very enjoyable. Is it one you’ll go back to do you think? Well, I don’t need to, I’ve finished it now. That’s the thing, like it’s done. Like it’s sort of, once the gods are gone, it does remix the existing levels to be harder. It gives you harder things to deal with. And that is the other thing, actually, I haven’t really talked about how the combat kind of gets mixed up. But like you do, you can actually like have your villagers as like summons in the game basically. So you can go into combat and then like, they just take the form of like an additional melee attack that hits automatically or an additional projectile attack or you get healed, that sort of thing. But it means it’s like unification between that layer of the game and the combat layer. So that’s cool. And the weapons have different capabilities like poison and stuff like that. So there is like the potential to keep playing if you want to. But I feel like I did about 20 hours and I feel about done with it. So yeah, that’s good. It was a very, very pleasurable 20 hours. So we come to your number one, Matthew. Yeah, I have no idea what yours is going to be. Really? Okay, interesting. And that was genuinely struggling to pick. I mean, yeah, that was the only one that was easy to like place on my list. Everything else was like a fucking nightmare. So yeah, I don’t, do I know what yours is? I don’t know that I do. Unless you’ve become a big secret pentamon head. Oh, right. Is that your number one? No, no, no. Oh, right. Okay. No, no. Okay. No, no. So my number one is unsurprising for people who’ve listened all year, is Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Of course. Of fucking course. Yeah. Of course. It’s the game I played for almost 200 hours. I don’t know if this is Stockholm syndrome or if it’s genuinely good, but it’s the game I played the most this year. I fully lost myself in it. I am coming to it as a huge Xenoblade Chronicles fan. I love this series. Like that, we keep getting these massive JRPGs from Monolithsoft is very exciting to me. And with each new one, you think, surely they’re gonna drop the ball at some point, turning around these huge games around relatively quickly, but this was not the one. It’s got very different flavor from the previous games. It’s got a bit more of a science fiction edge, which I really liked, sort of set in a world of two warring kind of nations who restock their army with kind of cloned teenagers, well, not cloned, just teenagers grown in vats who then last for about 10 years and then they die. So it’s got this very sort of weird melancholic kind of air to it because you’re playing as characters who are kind of doomed by their very sort of genetic nature. So very, yeah, different energy to your kind of chirpy JRPG party. Also quite interesting in that you have a squad of six characters established in the early hours of the game, like the first five hours or so, who are your squad for the whole game. And it’s quite rare, I think, to have a JRPG where they take six characters through, like there are two are ostensibly the kind of main protagonists within the six, but you’re always there, everyone’s always talking. And I just came to really appreciate that group dynamic. I think it’s one of the reasons I really fell in love with this world, is just that you’re really embedded in this little group of six friends and you kind of learn what they’re about and you spend the whole game with them. On a mechanical side, what I really liked about the combat system in this, which is still the traditional slightly MMO combat of previous Center Blades, is that it has a really interesting class system where all the characters can learn jobs by basically finding a seventh party member. They’re these other people who can join a seventh party member. If you earn their respect, you can start doing their class. And the classes are quite simple and small, but they’re highly customizable. You can kind of take moves from any of the different classes and kind of mix them together and create these small builds. And I definitely spoke about this in our previous episode when we talked about the Xenoblade series, but the class systems, I’ve always been a little cool on in JRPG, so I don’t really dabble with them. I don’t go deep because my brain can’t hold the idea of mega complicated builds and the idea of taking moves from here and mixing them with moves from there. But the fact that you can have so few building blocks with these classes, I actually found it super engaging. I’d almost describe them as micro classes that you’re constantly changing as you constantly unlock new classes from meeting characters. It’s also a game that has a 100-hour story campaign to it, but fills it with huge melodramatic highs, but also a lot more worthwhile side content. The fact that these party members, extra party members you meet, they’re not just like ciphers there to give you a new class. They have their own stories, they have their own loyalty missions, so you’re constantly cycling in new faces, you learn a little about, you go on little adventures with them, you then get their class and you can move on. I felt like this, of all the Xenoblades, this is the one that filled its time in the most satisfying way. You know, while also ticking the basic boxes of what I want from a Xenoblade game, which is like the big mad story with loads of twists, the slight anime styling, the crazy fight choreography in the cutscenes, you know, a huge, not quite open world, but like vast land masses that you can explore in great detail, maybe slightly weaker compared to 1 and 2 in that regard, but probably one of the only areas where it didn’t quite sort of hold up to the standards of the series, but still very impressive. Amazing soundtrack. Yeah, like, I don’t really have a kind of a very neat, all-encompassing line on this. It was just, you know, a huge amount of time to spend in good company, you know, with fun systems, kind of watched over by a JRPG creator whose, like, voice and world vision I just really, really gel with. That’s Takahashi, of course. He made Xenia Gears, Xenia Saga. And this, yeah, I just feel like working with Nintendo, he’s given the time and budget to fully realize his ideas, and he’s just one of the great JRPG thinkers, and this delivers just a big hefty dose of him, and I loved it. That’s interesting. So, yeah, lots to take away there from your summary. Sorry, a bit sprawling and all over the place. No, it’s okay. It’s interesting. The thing that, like you said there, that really spoke to me was the idea of engaging with the class system in a way that you hadn’t done previously, because I agree, I always find that daunting in games, and that’s why I don’t play many tactical RPGs, where I feel a bit overwhelmed by options, you know? Or even like Final Fantasy XII, where like, you get a lot of freedom over what you do with your characters, and I find that quite daunting to have that put in my hands. So it’s really interesting that this is the game that cracked it for you, you know? Yeah, yeah, and it’s definitely something they focused on. You know, I think the fact that you spend, like, a mission or two, you know, an hour or two with the characters before you, like, unlock their class to give to the rest of your characters, you get, like, a little feel for them. You sort of understand, like, oh, this is a medic who also has a bit of ranged combat, or this is, like, a ranged combat who can also place traps around them. And then you start thinking, like, well, this character, you know, is really good at getting into the heart of matters, so what happens if I take the traps that they place from that ranged class and put it in here and start dropping those in? Like, you can just find lots of neat little synergies. Like, it’s a very good game for, like, you know, I’m playing as this character, because in combat you control one character at any given time. It’s not turn-based, it’s, like, real time. And as you’re playing a class, you get a feel for, like, what its weaknesses are, and you can start plugging those holes with moves from other classes. It’s just a very, yeah, very accessible, very graspable take on combat systems. Also, like, a side shout out to Nobody Saves the World, which has a similar concept. So, I think it’s a class system, but for a single character, it’s almost exactly the same class system on a slightly smaller scale, and applied to a top-down 2D, sort of Zelda-feeling character. But that was in contention for my list for a while, because I was gonna call this the year of the micro-class game, but it’s not the sexiest banner. And also, that game was a little too repetitive for me, but it did have some of the same magic as this, which I really appreciated. Again, thank you Game Pass for the fucking avalanche of games contenders this year, that made this list a lot easier than it otherwise would be. Yeah, oh, it’s good. I still like, still such a barrier to me. I know that a lot of people have- It’ll never happen. You don’t think so? No, not for, no. This is Catherine’s favorite season, series. Even she’s only made it halfway through this game this year, because there’s just so much other stuff going on, like. Yeah. I mean, I played it for review. I, you know, I think my review rate, I ended up getting paid less than a pound an hour. I played it for so long. That’s good. You’re basically like- That’s a depressing boast, but you know. Yeah, that’s basically like child labor pay from like the turn of the century, turn of the 20th century, basically. Yeah, that isn’t a knock on the people I reviewed it for. That’s just like, I just went crazy playing this game. That’s just inevitable with this kind of game as well. Yeah, well, I didn’t want to rush it. I wanted to play it exactly as I would, you know, the next installment in one of my favorite series. And so I did, and I’m pleased I did. It was a good review. I liked it, it was very good. Thank you. Yeah, enjoyed your VGC writing this year. It’s still like, you know, that’s like well worth paying for, for them to like still get Matthew Castle writing on Nintendo games in 2022. That’s like, you know, it’s a good investment, I say. Okay, that’s really cool. Yeah, just had to be, it’s the ultimate Matthew Castle pick for the year, really. I can’t wait to see that coming. I did think about that in the weeks previous, but when we’re actually doing the list, if for some reason it didn’t occur, I don’t know why. No, no, it’s, yeah, it was always gonna be in there, but it’s, yeah, the closest to a, you know, the absolute all-star pick for me this year. It is so funny though, because your list is like, our lists are both kind of like tell the same story of absolute fucking sprint to the finish, play as much as I can, make sure I’ve covered as many bases as possible, because I feel like you have played a lot of your picks recently as well, and so have I. Yeah, that’s true. All those things that I picked up and then I like returned to them, and yeah, yeah, it’s definitely true though. Okay, good. Well, I would come to my number one, Matthew, which is Drumroll Tunic. Of course, of course. Yeah, so this is the only game I think that like, I would give a sort of nine this year too. Wouldn’t give it a 10, give it a nine. So this game captured something so elusive, which is the unknowable oddness and magic of Link’s Awakening in a modern game. And like, I just, I didn’t know how powerful an effect that could have on me until I was experiencing it. This game where you walk around as a little fox on this landscape, that is quite strange, that you don’t know a lot about. And your only way of learning about it really is through this instruction manual that you’re piecing together in game as you go. That is not all written in English and is visually styled after Japanese, NES or SNES instruction manuals, I believe. And there are larger implications to the game from that manual, which I won’t go into in case people haven’t played the game. But there is kind of like a, your journey through the game is like typical Zelda fare in terms of like you’re building up this arsenal of weapons and you’re attacking enemies in this kind of like, you know, sort of like isometric 3D style, very familiar stuff. There is like a Dark Souls style loop to it where there are consequences to dying and having to repeat sections and stuff like that. But I think it’s like, I just kind of loved every single minute of exploring this island and finding new areas to go to and progressing, beating bosses. None of the bosses really pissed me off. Like the combat can get a little tricky at times, by other ways, really liked it. Just thought it was quite cute and then it became just, you know, then I realized it was more, it was a lot stranger than I thought it was. Its secrets are incredible. If you have the patience to uncover its ultimate secret, you’ll be rewarded enormously, I would say. But even if you don’t, it’s still a fantastic journey. And yeah, I suppose I don’t have loads more to say about it other than that. It’s just that like- I’m just glad you found the chute. Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah, so it’s, yeah, it’s just fantastic. And like, I think it’s like one of these games, it would probably be an eight if it didn’t have that manual element to it. Like I’d be like, oh, this is really, it’s really cool that someone did a nice Zelda riff. But because it does have that, it kind of enhances the sense of history to the landscape you’re exploring, you know? And what the implications are for your character as part of that. And yeah, I just, yeah. Like I think that its ultimate secret is so good, Matthew. It’s such a great idea. But like as a complete feeling, kind of like extension of the ideas of 2D Zelda that doesn’t feel like plagiarism, that feels like original and worthy in its own right. Just spot on for me. This was the game I loved the most this year. So this is actually an easy number one pick for me. I know a few people in our Discord don’t like the combats, and I don’t care. I think this game is amazing. And I think a lot of people love this as much as I did. It’s actually like, the manual stuff aside, it is hard to explain why there was something about Link’s Awakening that just lives with me to this day that I didn’t realize I wanted again until I had it in this game. Maybe you get what I mean as someone who is so well-versed. It almost sounds like how I feel about Signalus, you know, in terms of it’s tapping into something where I was like, oh, actually I like this thing from this game and people don’t do this anymore and so just to have even a glimpse of it is such a treat. It awakens just a real enthusiasm in you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay, well, that’s my number one beautiful looking game as well, beautiful looking and sounding game. Okay, so some quick fire to the horrible mentions there, Matthew. Signalus is one of mine, of course. Immortality, I didn’t love it as much as a lot of critics did, but I really admire the execution of it, like how it was shot and that sort of thing. I just couldn’t quite get a grip on what the mystery was and what I was looking for, even though I played it for like four hours. I just can’t get the image of Catherine looking at me as I clipped on a boob and just, you know, a lot of respect was lost that day. Yeah, so there’s that. What’s one of yours? Well, I mentioned very briefly, nobody saves the world. I also had Kirby in The Forgotten Land. They’re very close. I really liked Roman X, like Expeditions Rome. Oh yeah, I saw you going to bat for this in the Discord. Yeah. Yeah, it’s like, I’ve seen some people describe it as like a CRPG, but it has like Xcomy combat. It’s a very interesting mix of like, almost like Mass Effect-y kind of character-led RPG where you’ve got like a little squad of named friends. But then there’s also the fights, a kind of Xcomy and pull in like other sort of NPC characters who then, you know, do your whole kind of hiding behind cover, using all your unique skills to take down as many enemies as possible. And then it also has this like higher, like military campaign level, which like is no way near like a total war, but it’s more about like managing the resources of like an entire garrison and sending them around a world map to fight. It’s quite hard to describe why it works, but fundamentally, the character classes in the Xcom section are really fun and you can stretch out move turns with just like a preposterous number of mechanics to like replenish action points and stuff, which I always love, that always speaks to me. It’s kind of like optimizing a character to basically commit impossible feats on the battlefield. And it’s got this, but it also has this like story element to it, which means it isn’t just like cold and military history, it’s got a bit of heart to it as well. I really rated it. Yeah, okay, cool. Is that still on PC Game Pass, that one? I think so, yeah, yeah. It definitely was at some point, but I don’t know, it still is. The name really puts me off. That’s such a boring name, that. Oh, it’s a terrible name, yeah. Let’s call it anything else. Yeah, it’s part of a series. They did Expeditions Conquistadors, I think, and Expeditions Vikings. It’s got big Encyclopedia Britannica energy, that kind of name. Just, yeah, not doing it for me. Yeah, okay, good to hear the games, good day. Windjammers 2 is my next one. Great January game, this. Came out right at the start of the year. Went on Game Pass. Chucka Frisbee, a dude across the way, used power moves, trying to avoid their power moves and stop them from scoring. Really, really entertaining, like a great seven, I thought. But yeah, just a perfect game pass for that. In a similar fashion, I shall also pair this with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder’s Revenge, as explained. Of course, yeah, yeah. Yeah, as explained previously, I’m not a big turtle head, but this was like beautifully rendered. If I had more of that turtle nostalgia, I would have dug this and I can totally see why it made a lot of people who are slightly older than me, so Game of the Year-less, Matthew. And what’s another one of yours? A little shout out for God of War Ragnarok. Oh yeah, that game. Yeah, I know it felt like we wailed on it a bit in that episode. I fundamentally had a decent time with it. I don’t know that I want to hear Odin and Thor talking about their feelings for hours on end. Sometimes a piece of shit is better as a piece of shit that you don’t understand and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s grown up. The grown up thing is to take the simple, unsophisticated route. But this is still a tremendously polished bit of blockbuster entertainment. I just felt it outstayed its welcome and too much fucking yak riding. Yeah, I too just have enormous respect for the scale of it. But man, not having the ability to turn off people giving you hints, that’s not a good memory I take from this year. As a forced option, that was tough, that was tough. But yeah, still lots to like about it. I also wonder if for me I just probably shouldn’t have played all the God of Wars before I played that one. Yeah, maybe it didn’t help. Yeah, but I haven’t finished it either, that’s why it wouldn’t have made it my list. But then I did try and only pick things that I loved from this year. And I would say I only liked God of War Ragnar. Yeah, same here. A little bit of a disappointment in that regard, but still really, really solid. Yeah, and my last one is Dune Spice Wars, which is actually winning early access this year, like RTS based on Dune, but quite small scale, quite manageable. It is on Game Pass if you want to give it a go. The reason I didn’t put it in my list this year is because I probably would like to put a couple more hours into it than I did. But I also want to wait until it’s left early access and then it might make my list next year, but it is decent. Does it let you stick your hand in the box? No, it doesn’t, but it does have sand worms in it and you can fly those little things around. What’s good about it is the aesthetic of it is clearly inspired by the film. And I kind of worried they were going to do a NAF thing where it’s like, oh, it’s based on the book, not the film, so everything was going to look kind of garbage. But I think that Funcom, who’s making this June game and that survival game they’re making, they looked amazing at the Game Awards. They’re showing for that. Those games I think are both based on the films and the books combined, which I think is a good way of doing it, because our film was rad. So yeah, any more from you, Matthew? Yeah, my last horrible mention, Pentament. I know we make fun of all the Bavarian heads. This is a game which really won me over by the end. I still think the first stretch of this game is quite hard going and quite dry. This is a little bit clever, clever at the start. It’s like bombarding you with medieval history and some people have gone nuts for it. A lot of my peers turns out are like crazy into medieval history, which I didn’t know about until I read all their reviews where they went nuts for it. What I actually liked about it is I feel it starts as a game which is quite cold feeling and full of history and it’s a game about learning about a particular community and embedding yourself in the community and by the end has become like an incredibly human story with characters who you really buy into just because you’ve spent decades with them over the course of the story. And as I said in my VGC review has like flashes of Hotel Dusk in the way that you just come to know a very small unspectacular place in like crazy forensic detail and the weird kind of attachment that develops from that, you know, sometimes a smaller world in huge depth is better than a shallow look at a vast continent. So yeah, Pentamons, stick with it, get through the boring history lesson and it becomes a lot more human and approachable. Yeah, still one for me to play actually. That’s another one that I will play and yeah, before the end of the year, but sadly, we didn’t have time for before this episode. So yeah, good to hear on your list, regardless, Matthew. A solid year for the old detective game, eh? Not too bad. Yes, yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. Well, we’re done, Matthew. Last podcast of the year is over. Three-hour warper, of course, but I think we did a good job. I’m very excited by both our lists. Do you want to do a quick fire run through the lists? Yeah, why not? Yeah, okay, so my number 10 was Dorthromantic. Centennial Case, A Shejima Story. Number nine was the Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe. Drainus. Number eight for me was Arcade Paradise. Yeah, mine was Prodius. Number seven for me was Kirby in the Forgotten Land. Mine was Marvel Snap. Number six for me was Elden Ring. Same here. Number five for me was Norco. Yeah, mine was The Case of the Golden Idol. Number four for me was Vampire Survivors. Mine was Norco. Number three for me was Sifu. Mine was Vampire Survivors. Number two for me was Cult of the Lamb. Mine was Signalis. And my number one was Tunic. Mine was Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Lovely, that should make it easier for old Graham, who compiles the different entries. Thanks, Graham. No specific burn for you. Yeah, you’re doing great work, pal, thank you. Okay, so yes, thank you to all our listeners for listening this year. The Patreon success really blew us away. The support for the podcast we get and the amount of feedback is so appreciated. It’s so easy to make something and for it to fucking vanish and no one to ever pay attention to it. So the fact that people are as engaged as they are is an enormous compliment. And Matthew, it’s been a pleasure podcasting with you this year. So thank you for your patience. Yeah, thank you for your patience and all my messages on Discord. I know I send too many, but. No, it’s good. I like the human contact. I go mad without it. Yeah, I think we’ve built something really good. So I’m excited about next year. It should be good. But both deserve a break, so let’s get out of here. Happy New Year, everyone.