The 2024 Get Played Games of This Year Awards

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It's gaming's biggest night here on the Get Blade podcast.

And boy, oh boy, they have come out to the red carpet.

That's right, it's the Games of the Spectacular Year Awards, the Goatsees 2024.

and all the stars in gaming are here.

If you think you've seen them before, you've never seen them dressed to the nines and walking to the tens as they 11 their way all the way down that red carpet.

Look who it is, folks.

James Sunderland wearing his best green coat.

Look at that.

Look at that coat.

He looks so good.

James Sunderland.

Oh my goodness.

It looks like he's looking for somebody.

I don't know who he could be looking for because

I think he must have lost somebody in the crowd.

He's been here before and he'll be here again and again and again.

Well, I know who I'm looking for.

Tifa from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth looking fantastic with her date.

Oh, Jake Paul.

Oh boy.

That's kind of a bummer.

Because you know what's sad about that?

It's not that he's here necessarily.

It's that like she's here with him.

Yeah, well, what are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do?

Sometimes a legend just teams up with Jake Paul.

What can you look, look at this.

I'm so excited.

The entire family's here.

We've got Pac-Man, Miss Pac-Man, Pac-Man Jr., Baby Pac-Man, Puck-Man, Mrs.

Puck-Man, Puck-Man Jr., and Baby Puck Man are all on the red carpet together.

Well, that is a photo op if I've ever seen one.

I definitely recognize at least a couple of them.

Oh, hey, look.

Because we know that fame now has crossed over from just video games to to mainline pop culture.

There he is.

Chris Pratt Mario.

Wow, look at it.

Wow, he's looking good.

Oh, he's coming up to the mic there.

Hey, it's me, Mario.

Mommy Mia.

He said it.

He said it, he said it.

It is the stars are out, and the stars are aligning here at the Goatseat.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I've heard rumors about this couple, and now this is confirmation that this is fact, this is true.

There they are.

There's the little little guy from Animal Well and Chapel Roan.

Wow.

What a power couple.

That is a political statement, if I've ever heard one, and she doesn't like to give them.

No, no, no, no, no.

And she's pissed.

Hey, and speaking of some of the year's standout platformer mascots, there is Astrobot.

Now, you know, Astrobot loves to dress up.

Spyro the Dragon, Solid Snake, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper, Sly Cooper,

Sam from Death Stranding.

We could go on and on.

But here, very topical, Astrobot dressed up as the Hawk Tua woman.

How fun is that?

That is...

That brings into question some of Sony's investments in the past, but

I wish her success and good for Astrobot for repping all of the Sony clientele.

Does that shirt say botua?

It does indeed say botua.

With kind of the first pitch you'd think of, but they ran with it.

Yeah, it's good.

But you know what?

Sometimes the first pitch is good.

It's true.

Oh my god.

Just ask

the guy who hit the home run, Click Laurence Lamb off the first pitch.

Just ask Freddie Freeman.

Oh God,

can you?

I didn't think they would show up because they're famously reclusive.

It's a freaking Joker from Bellatro.

Wow.

Wow.

That's a special Joker, too.

And all the Jokers are special in Bellatro, but this one takes the cake.

Eat your heart out, Folly Doo.

Oh, hey, look, from Tekken 8, a series none of us play, it's one of the Tekken guys.

Wow,

one of the Tekken guy.

You know which Tekken guy it is.

He's the main one.

He's the buff guy, the one with the hair.

Yeah, he's got the hair right that guy, yeah.

And he's also sort of like wearing like the pants, too.

That's right, yeah, the pants and the hair and buffer together.

All that stuff, yeah.

I love a Tekken 8 guy.

But wait, there's more.

It's more for Metaphor Refontasio.

Hey, wow, hey, Moore.

More.

Oh, I love it.

And you know what?

I didn't understand what the fuck you were talking about at first, but then I understood because you clarified.

That's more,

and that's more right over there.

That's right.

You clarified, and I remembered that the character's name is more.

Now, I wasn't sure if he existed in our reality or some other reality.

It appears it is our reality.

So there we go.

Some closure there.

Oh, boy.

I don't know what's going on here.

I don't know if he's supposed to be here.

We have a disheveled man who's wandering

with a copy of Crazy Taxi for the Sega Dreamcast.

I don't know what that guy.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

It's former vice presidential candidate Tim Walls.

Oh, no.

To the window, to the walls.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, boy.

Just like the stench of failure following all of us, Dreamcast fanboys.

Get him home and get him in front of the sea, man.

Just get him out of here.

Coming up right behind Tim, it looks like those breast physics have been updated once again.

It's Eve from Stellar Blade, and her tits tits are all over the place.

They are the biggest, brightest, shiniest, slickest tits on the red carpet.

They're sort of like two of those tube guys from like outside of a

car dealer.

But like two different ones going crazy.

The wacky wigglers or whatever they're called.

The guys from Nope.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah, her titties are like wacky wigglers.

Hey, I'm doing some wacky wiggling of my own right now.

Hey, over there.

It's Paper Luigi from

Paper Mario, the Thousand Your Door Remastered.

Look at Paper Luigi.

Oh, Augusta Wind got him.

There he goes.

Oh, God.

Oh, he fell in a pot.

That's B, buddy.

Oh, God.

He's died.

He's dead.

He fucking died.

He's dead.

Oh, man.

That's rough.

Oh, God.

That's tough.

Oh, wait.

Look, look.

It's Chris Pratt Garfield.

Hey, it's me, Chris Pratt Garfield.

I love Tuesdays.

Wow.

Wow, that's

different.

I'll say that's different.

Getting that guy on the mic is tough, and you've managed to pull him off twice.

That's a legendary status for you, Nick Weiger.

That's right.

And of course, the most important guest of all,

you, the player.

We look back on the year in gaming 2024 and hand out trophies as we host our annual Games of the Spectacular Year Awards this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Wiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone, and it's gaming's biggest night.

It's gaming's biggest night.

It's our final new episode of 2024 Annual Games at the Spectacular Year Awards, the Goatsies.

We're very, very happy to be doing this.

Very fun thing to cap off the year with.

And unfortunately, Rochelle Chen Ranch is out of town, but fortunately, guest engineering for us, returned to the show, Sam Rogic.

Hi, Sam.

Great to have you back.

Hey, guys, thanks for having me.

Hell yeah.

Thank you so much for being here.

How are you liking the show so far?

All the stars are here.

Overwhelming, and I feel like you're wrapping up this great year.

And what a great year it was.

This is maybe on record my favorite year.

I've been alive.

It has been one of the years.

That's for sure.

You know, you said this was fun, but I also want to say it's a little serious.

It is a little serious, yeah.

That's something that, yeah, we don't really, we always say like when something's fun, but we actually should say this is actually really fun.

We should all remember out there, all of you listening.

I can't drop the affectation.

I'm having a lot of trouble talking as my normal self.

It's hard not to be the awards guy once you start being an awards guy.

What do you mean?

I love speaking this way.

Oh, man.

So, so for people who have not heard this in the past, we do this every year.

And the way we go is we kind of go through and we give a bunch of different awards in a bunch of different categories just to sort of survey the year that was in video games.

Yeah, and you know, even though it's a tongue-in-cheek endeavor, I think there's actually some honest,

earnest

affection for games in this episode.

Yeah, I was saying before we start, I always struggle with trying to make these funny, but they end up just being very sincere.

Well, look, I think another way to say this is that this is fun, but it's serious, too.

Here's the thing.

That's Nick.

It's so good that you guys are thinking about this because it is fun, but it's also serious.

It's also serious.

I I mean, yeah, there are a couple of categories that I've got to present tonight in front of all of Gaming's finest, and they are not jokes.

No, no, no, no.

I mean, look, I'm looking at a several pages long document that I made for myself.

Let me tell you something.

No jokes on here.

All right.

Shall we get into it?

Who wants to start?

Well, let's start right away with,

I want to start with the biggest surprises in games of 2024.

You know, there were a lot of big supplements, what?

No, the crowd's so excited.

Oh, that was me streaming.

Oh, okay.

Well, the crowd got the memo because the crowd is having fun, but they know that it's actually very serious.

The crowd is dead silent.

I just want to launch us right off the gate with a real,

an honest category, which is the biggest surprises in games.

And no, we're not talking about the dogs smashing through the windows of Resident Evil.

Yeah, idiot.

We're talking about a banner year for games that came out of nowhere and fucking knocked us on our, on our asses.

Wow.

And the nominees are.

Oh, I've got the envelope right here.

Oh, no, it's you.

I read it off the teleprompter first, then I open the envelope, right?

Okay, I just want to make sure that's clear.

Okay, great.

So to read off the teleprompter.

Yes, got it.

All right.

Come to rehearsal next time.

Oh, what was that?

The note is just come to rehearsal next time.

Don't, look, I don't.

And this is good.

I'm glad we're starting to give each other notes.

I don't do rehearsals, okay?

If you and my stand-in,

this is a live broadcast.

I know.

You're ruining my chances.

This is like the craziest thing that's ever happened at a live award show.

All right.

The biggest surprises in games and the nominees are

Animal Well,

a game that came out of nowhere and rocked our socks off.

Dragon's Dogma 2.

Nobody,

nobody thought that they would be playing Dragon's Dogma 2 in 2024, and yet it was a pretty big hit.

Helldivers 2.

Holy shit, Helldivers 1, I didn't even know that was a real game.

Like Street Fighter 1, Helldivers 2 came out and started firing all the guns at the same time.

UFO 50, which I haven't played, but I think a lot of people really liked it, and nobody was excited about UFO 50 before it came out.

Definitely caught me off guard and definitely a game I was delighted by.

Crow Country.

This is a

low poly PlayStation 1 style survival horror game on the Switch and other platforms that people fucking love.

But the honest to God winner of the most surprising game of the year goes to Bellatro.

And I'll tell you why it's surprising.

Because Nick and Matt said play a card game and I said there's no fucking way I'm going to play a card game.

And then I looked at it on their phones and I was like, nope.

And then I went home and I downloaded the game.

And the biggest surprise to me was how much I fucking enjoyed Bellatro.

Thank you, gentlemen, for sharing Bellatro with me here in the year 2024.

Okay, so do I exit left?

Do I exit left or do I exit right?

Yes, exit, exit right.

Do I exit?

No, stage left.

Exit stage left.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, I'm just

okay.

So these stairs go to the audience.

All right.

I'm going to go.

Goodbye, everybody.

The debacle.

The one person we should thank for Bellatro is a local thunk who was the solo dev who put it together.

Just another an incredible, another incredible game like Animal Wall that came from one individual.

That's kind of, you know, it's a similar name for me.

I go by local hunk.

It's true.

Yeah, people, I mean, you've been going by that.

I've been going by it.

I've been trying to make it happen.

So, like, when, if something happens to me and it lights up on the news, that's what they lead with

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

I don't think it's going to be anybody's year.

This is the type of award show pattern that we do, you know?

Yeah.

Well,

we're just doing our damn best.

How about this?

How about what?

How about we go on to our next category?

Oh, I can't wait to hear it.

Look, there's so many games come out.

So many games come out.

I'm reading the prompter, by the way.

So many games come out during the year.

I could just say it just generally to everybody.

You could just read the prompter.

How did we know that we had to read the prompter?

Well, here's the thing.

Like, I didn't know that we were supposed to read it.

You guys are acting like that's like I shouldn't be saying that.

It says it on the prompter.

I'm reading the prompter.

This was built into the whole thing.

You guys are, you guys are breaking the illusion.

It says in my prompter that I'm supposed to tell you

you're not supposed to say the line about reading the prompter.

My prompter is blank.

It's a oh, I'm not supposed to be on stage.

Oh, cuz I just did my category.

I'll just walk off.

I'll just walk up.

The prompter says,

Look, so many games come out every year.

Every year, we see so many games coming out.

So many games.

And it's impossible to to highlight or even play all of the games in a given year so this next category is

game we ignored the most

this is the year's most ignored game from the get played podcast which which which game did we ignore the most was it ufo 50 kind of not really because it's come up a little bit hasn't it yeah it has it has Black Myth Wukong.

Now, that's something.

Hasn't really, really come up.

Yeah, I don't think any of us have played it.

I think that's a pretty strong candidate.

The candidate for the for the win.

Dragon Ball Sparkling Zero.

Nobody's talked about.

Those words have never even been said in this room before.

My first time hearing them.

Gorgeous.

It was a gorgeous-looking game.

And the winner for the game we ignored the most.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2.

Wow.

I've never said that out loud in my life.

Wow.

We ignored it completely.

We never even talked about it.

It seems like something, from what I understand of what it is, something we'd all like a lot.

Accepting for Warhammer 40,000 is a guy I'm assuming is from the game.

It's the Warhammer?

He's walking up on stage and he's accepting the award.

Yes, feel free to say a few lines.

Hello, it's me, Tekken Guy.

I'm accepting on behalf of the Warhammer guy,

my good friend, who couldn't be here tonight.

All right.

Well, I didn't know either of them.

Sonic Boom?

No, you know that that's not right.

You know that that's wrong.

He doesn't even know his own name.

I'm unclear.

I'm sorry.

I'm unclear.

That sucks.

The worst part of that is that was all on the teleprompter.

All of this has been so, so preciously written.

Yeah.

This is like, well, you know, we had Sorkin in the room.

The ums and the ahs, Sorkin drafted for us.

Exactly.

You got to script that stuff out to make it feel natural.

Also, a little egotistical of him to include us shouting him out in the teleprompter script that we are being forced to read at this very moment.

And I I know that this is an audio medium.

We've been doing a walk and talk this whole time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Right down the hallway of power in the Oval Office.

The next category is best dragon-based game.

Where would video games be without dragons?

We battle them, we ride them, sometimes we even romance them.

And 2024 was a banner year for our oversized reptilian gold hoarding frenemies.

The nominees for best dragon-based game are Dragon Age, the Veilguard, Dragon's Dogma 2, Dragon Quest III HD 2D Remake, Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, and Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erd Tree, featuring the dragon, Baal the Dread.

And the Goatsee goes to

Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erd Tree, featuring Baal the Dread.

Curse you, Baal!

I hereby vow you will rule this day.

Behold, a true Drake warrior, and I, Egon, your fears made flesh.

Solomon of scale, you might be foul dragon, but I will riddle with holes your rotten hide, who is a hail of harpoons,

you son of a bitch.

You fuck my wife, Bail!

You backed over my mailbox, and you didn't offer to pay for it.

I caught you red-handed on my hurring camera!

I will never forgive you!

Bail the dread!

You shall haunt me no longer!

Wow, a spirited speech right there by Egon.

I can't believe they started to play him off.

That was rough.

Yeah, you know, I think he got most of his stuff out.

And I know that, like, this is like a very tightly produced award ceremony.

Yep.

We got to make it so that the winner of the award isn't accepted, that the person accepting the award isn't the mortal enemy of the winner.

I think that was maybe, yeah, not the best booking on behalf of the producers.

Yeah.

That was almost a the slap.

That's like, that's like, uh, that's like booking Hulk Hogan

to be representing, say, democracy.

No, no, I meant

accepting the award for Andre the Giant.

That's what I meant to say.

I was going to say Bubble the Love Sponge.

The what?

Famous Shock Jock DJ?

He fucked his wife.

Oh, my God.

Are you just learning about this?

Wait, what?

That's where the Hulk Hogan sex tape comes from.

Wait, the what?

Sam, do you know about this?

Not enough, but yeah.

This was the whole reason Gawker got shut down.

Because they posted Hulk Hogan's sex tape and then he sued them and then they shut it down.

His sex tape is him having consensual sex with Bubba the Love Sponge's wife.

And on that same tape, he says a bunch of racial slurs and that's what got him into trouble.

Oh my god.

And among some of the things he says, he also says that he ate too much sushi before he fucked.

Oh, I'm so full.

I feel like a pig.

Oh, my God.

And he's all in here just learning about that.

I think you guys have said it on this show, but I thought it was a joke.

No, it was real.

It's all real.

It's all real, and it's all in the teleprompter.

Oh, God.

All right.

So as long as we're listening to that, maybe we should flush out our ears with some of the best OSTs, the best original soundtracks that I heard in 2024.

Again, this is not a category for every OST.

It is only the OSTs that I've heard in 2024.

And there are some powerful nominees.

Let's hear a little bit from each of these selections as the dancers take the stage.

from Metaphor.

Nick, are you ready for to do the dance?

The battle theme.

Yeah, I'm ready.

Being played by the Goatsies Orchestra.

The metaphor, battle theme.

And now, on the microphone,

Adam Sandler.

He's just killing it.

That's metaphor.

That's what you're going to get when you get Sandler.

One of the nominees, let's hear from another nominee.

It's from Final Fantasy Rebirth,

the Genova theme.

Genova Life Clinger.

An incredible reimagining of one of the most iconic pieces of music from the 1990s.

And that's Sandler conducting the orchestra, too, right?

No, that's Nobuo Uematsu.

Who's Adam Sandler?

I mean, this is the part of what's great about the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth: these remixes of tracks that we've heard so many times.

And Genova is like my favorite track from Final Fantasy VII.

I think this is such a great version of it.

You know what's so great about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, also?

Literally fucking everything.

It is unbelievable.

I'll tell you what, hearing this song, which I had heard and not played the game, I dedicate myself to playing this fucking hell

in 2025.

All right, from AstroBot, it is

the tree rap.

Samblur on the lyrics again.

A song that once you've heard it playing the game gets stuck in your head for like a solid month afterwards.

It's also hard to convey if you haven't played the game and you're hearing this in isolation, how joyous the moment is when the tree who is in-game starts singing and starts narrating what you're doing with the rap.

It's a pretty awesome moment.

One more nominee before we announce the winner, and it is from Stellar Blade.

A game known more for the boobies and less for the OST.

Or maybe I should say the OS Titties.

Ah, well, it doesn't matter.

Just say what it says in the fucking teleprompter, Heather.

From Stellar Blade, this is the.

Could everyone stop cussing?

We're on PBS.

I'm sorry, I just get mad.

From Stellar Blade, this is just the intro battle on a game that unfortunately features a lot of boob physics, so it was overlooked by some of the gamers who would enjoy this very game.

Sandler coming up to the mic.

Singing in a register I've never heard from him before.

Incredible mics.

Like, when you're talented, you can just do so many different things, you know?

This is great.

I'm not familiar with this at all.

This slaps.

The whole score is great, yeah.

The game is

upsettingly good.

I kind of want to get it.

I'll get it.

Why not?

I give you guys permission.

But finally, the winner.

And

it had to be one hell of an OST in order to...

I'd missed the joke.

What was the fucking joke?

What did he say?

And this is also, you know, like this part of it.

He said that he got a Stellar Blade Hall pass, which is not a joke, really.

It's kind of just a thing that he said, and I liked it.

I don't believe him.

That's the thing.

I just don't believe him.

But shockingly, in a category that has Nobuo Omatsu and all these other incredible composers, the winner of the best OST that I heard this year is Helldivers 2 with the main theme from Helldivers 2, a cup of liberty.

This score has no business being this fucking good.

Sandler on that trumpet, just fucking killing it.

It's like so much better than some of the scores of even like movies that came out this year.

It's fantastic.

I really, I think this is a great pick, Heather.

I really think this is the track of the year.

I mean, it's, and what you talked about of like, has no business being this good, I feel like that's kind of a microcosm of the whole game.

It's like, like, like, like, I just feel like every aspect of it is so, so dialed in.

Also, when you hear it again, because I was like, I want to rehear it and decide what

might win this category.

And I heard it again, I was like, fuck, this is so fucking good.

It's also thematically like, just like gets you so, like, it makes you feel like you're being

propagandized to, which is like the whole, like, like, it makes you feel that sort of jingoistic urge, which all the hell divers have to squeeze them to their death.

Change the national anthem to this.

Yeah, I might even get on board with a couple of things.

I wish we could change the UN to super earth.

That was the best OSTs that I heard this year.

The winner again, Helldivers 2.

Wow.

What a category.

A feast for the ears.

Well, now, that was a great category, Heather.

Great, great category.

While you were propping up the great music of this year, I'm going to take a couple shots.

Oh.

Fire some shots.

Wow.

This next category is Least Necessary Remaster.

Now, earlier,

you might remember me saying, So many games come out every single year.

It's true.

A lot of them are remasters of games that already

came out.

They already came out.

These are games that are already games.

This is already a game.

It already came out already.

I can play it now just on something else.

The nominees for Least Necessary Remaster are

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered.

Wait, did that come out?

Yeah, they did.

They remastered it for PS5 this year.

They remastered it for PS5.

And let me tell you something, I bought it.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Horizon Zero Dawn, remastered.

Hold on though, but didn't Last of Us Part 2 just come out two years ago?

When did that come out?

2020?

I think their logic first off is

they sold this.

Last of Us Part 1 Remastered sold like gangbusters, but I think also

it was a very last, basically the last gasp of the PlayStation 4.

So I think they're like a proper PlayStation 5 release, but still, a remaster feels a little over the top.

Love the game.

Love the game.

Great game.

Great game.

Two great games in this category, Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Both PS4 games.

Oh, my God.

I forgot Horizon got remastered.

And the winner is.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is unprecedented.

It's a fucking tie.

Holy shit.

We didn't need any of these.

Oh, my God.

Accepting the award, nobody, because nobody cares.

Nobody deserves the award.

I'm going to throw it in the fucking trash.

Wow.

Both those games probably sold like five million copies.

Probably.

I should upgrade my version of Horizon Zero Dawn to the PS5 version.

I actually have no idea what the sales figures were, but it does feel.

I wonder,

I should have looked into this.

I wonder if there is an upgrade path because sometimes with those upgrades, you could pay like an extra 20 bucks if you have the previous gen.

I think that might be the case.

Yeah, I think so.

I think the upgrade path for The Last of Us was actually $10, which is actually pretty nice.

And honestly, as somebody who preferred Horizon number two's face to Horizon number one's face,

I like that the new face is on the old game.

Don't get me started about the faces of

these people.

I like that face.

We need the stellar blade physics in Horizon.

That's what I'm talking about.

I want to see those fucking robot jugs going crazy.

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You know, linguists estimate there are over 700,000 words in the English language.

But that's not nearly enough for the people who name video games, apparently.

The nominees for best new word in a video game title are

ReFantasio from Metaphor Refantasio,

Veilguard from Dragon Age, the Veil Veilguard.

Galuga from Contra, Operation Galuga.

Dawn Trail from Final Fantasy XIV, Dawn Trail.

And Balatro from Bellatro.

And the goatsy goes to unbelievable, what an upset, even though it came out in 2013.

Revengeance from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

Accepting the award on on behalf of Revengeance is one of Get Played's pedantic commenters.

Actually, Bellatro shouldn't have been eligible to be nominated because it's based on the word Balatro, which was in use in ancient Rome to refer to court gestures.

So it's not technically a new word.

It's actually referencing an existing word, and they should just pull the episode because Bellatro is about jokers.

Historically, the word has a good exit.

Oh, the commenter's being played off.

Oh, boy.

How about that?

Well,

our next category.

No love for Brothership, huh?

Brothership?

Yeah, you know, I don't, I think Brothership because it was a remaster, right?

Wasn't it?

No, Brothership's an all-new one.

Oh, is Brothership a new one?

Yeah, but it came out and it was like bad.

Did Brothership come out in 2024?

Yeah, I guess it did.

Oh, wow.

Last month or last month.

Boy, it completely off my radar.

Brothership.

Brothership.

Yeah, glaring a mission, but I guess it just wasn't nominated by the committee.

No, I like games and I like the words that games come up with.

Me too.

I love video games so much.

Whatever makes my my brain smoothest, fastest.

Smooth it out.

And now,

a slightly bittersweet category.

It's the best canceled game of 2024.

Uh-oh.

The best canceled game of 2024.

Who made this list?

A bunch of

triggered libs?

I don't think it's that kind of cancel.

Oh, we're going to find out.

We're going to find out.

And the nominees are

Factions, The Last of Us Online, which was canceled after we recorded our year-end episode last year in late December.

Real bummer.

Star Wars FPS by EA, canceled this spring, as if Star Wars isn't a big enough pull.

Star Wars Mandalorian by Respawn, a second Star Wars title that got the axe when it just wasn't drawing in the funding it needed.

New Twisted Metal by Fire Sprite, a game that had a lot of enthusiasm behind it, but apparently was canceled at the last minute.

There has to be a new Twisted Metal coming at some point.

It wouldn't make any sense not to do it.

X7,

which is Z Oms, Z A slash UM's follow-up to Disco Elysium, was announced and then canceled here in the year 2024.

But the winner for best canceled game

was released and then canceled.

It's Concorde by Sony.

Wow.

Sony's third-person shooter had only mere minutes to live before it was post-birth supported.

Oh my God.

What a bummer.

If you watch the trailers for that game, it actually does look fun.

It certainly looks polished.

Yeah.

It's wild to me that they weren't just like, well, just let it ride.

Maybe

it'll develop a fandom.

Yeah, or maybe, hey, well, let's change the model.

Let's refund everybody purchases it.

Let's make it free to play.

And let's try to find an audience that way.

You know, like it's, it's, I, I,

you know, my, my heart goes out to those devs because I know that many, uh, many birthdays were missed

in the crunch period of making that game.

And unfortunately, it's just not, that doesn't exist anymore.

Can you imagine?

Yeah.

There's a Concorde episode of Secret Level coming out next month.

That's wild.

On Amazon.

Like, this can reference characters none of us ever got a chance to know.

Maybe that'll give the game a second win.

Who knows?

I mean,

I think it just more seems like they bungled the marketing and the release strategy of that game more so than the quality of the game will be at the end.

Certainly, I didn't know that it was coming out.

Yeah.

And then it came out and then it was killed.

I just want to say, Matt, you did take one of my jokes

by saying triggered libs because one of the canceled titles was going to be Stellar Blade, which canceled all the dudes who wanted to play it.

Look, I can just so I can always see where the wind's going, and I just think that

if I stepped on it, all I can say is I'm sorry.

Accepting on behalf of Concord is one of the characters characters from Concord.

Hey, it's me, Tekken Guy.

Oh, no.

Oh, God, this does.

Tekken guy.

God damn it.

Congrats to Concorde.

I mean, sorry to Concorde.

Yeah, you don't even know what you're talking about, man.

Hey, I'm trying to win the Tekken tournament over here.

Ow, stop hitting me.

It's a tournament, right?

Ow.

Was that what Tekken is?

Oh, boy.

He doesn't.

Sonic Boom.

Stop.

Oh, no.

No.

No.

Oh, boy.

All right.

I know we're all having a lot of fun.

And the fun is not going to stop.

This next category,

games that Matt bounced off of and will return to.

I know I keep saying that.

This is a promise.

It's a promise.

We'll see.

It's a public pledge.

This is a public pledge.

And, you know,

is it tough because

I actually don't know what it says on the envelope?

That's how these things work.

This is like what the awards committee is going to decide what I play.

That's true.

It's kind of tough.

But, you know, as I've been saying, too many games come out.

Too many games come out within such a narrow window of time.

It's

hard to get to all the games you want to play.

Here are the nominees.

The Legend of Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom.

I bounced off of it.

Bounced.

Me too.

Played it for about five hours and was like, I think I'm good.

I lasted longer than you did, but yeah.

Didn't realize it was a competition.

I just got to pull some more hours in Echoes of Wisdom before forming my opinion, but we did end up at the same place.

Uh,

Star Wars Outlaws.

Now, this I played for a long time,

but the good news is they updated that game to make it awesome.

Did they really?

I know they took out the forced stealth, yeah.

They took out

the game overs if you get seen, so you can fucking blast your way through any of the stealth sections, which makes it my kind of game.

Thumbs up.

The next nominee, Thank goodness you're here.

Now, I think I'm the only one in this room that played that.

No, I didn't get around to it, but I heard a lot of good things.

I thought that was a sitcom.

No, you're thinking of NBC's Thank God You're Here, which was like an American

adaptation of, I think, of a British show that was like an improv show where they have like an actor come in who isn't.

an improviser and the improvisers are all acting around him.

Thank goodness you're here has a really, really cool art style.

I'll show you a screenshot right here.

Yeah, it's great.

It's so funny and fun, and the puzzles are very fun to try to solve.

Yeah, very well received.

An indie game I didn't get around to.

Bounced off of it, even though it's only five hours long.

So I think I'm almost done with it.

I just have to get back in there.

But the winner is

what could it be?

Somebody's shitting.

Sounds like somebody in a toilet.

Bounced off, he did.

But play again, he will.

Star Wars Outlaw.

Let's go.

Let's fucking go.

Accepting the award.

It's.

I know.

A lot of Star Wars characters were burned through setting up the winner, so

it's R2D2 when he's like doing that little scream he does.

Woo!

That was pretty good.

Horrible

from R2D2.

That was pretty good.

Nightmarish, but incredible.

He's wasted.

He's freaking drunk, this guy.

You know who else wins this category?

Me, because I'm reminded to add thank goodness you're here to my wish list and finally give this some bitch a play.

Get that wish list in front of Santa Claus.

Yeah, I really hope that games take a break because there were so many good games in 2024 that I didn't get a chance to play all the way through.

And I want to play these fucking games.

Though Sony did announce that they're going to release a handheld in the next few years that plays PlayStation 5 games,

in which case, I can play these games.

I can't wait to buy a second PlayStation 5 handheld.

I hope it has an absurd name, like the Sony Dionysus.

Here he is, me, the resident evil merchant, and I'm here to announce a couple of categories that I brought in myself.

Oh no, I kind of thought by not doing what are you planning that we could kind of skip.

What are you planning?

It's me, the resident evil merchant, and I'm dressed up too.

I've got my ball sack in my pants and a suit and tie on my body.

Category one!

That's sort of the main difference between how you're you're dressed now and how you're normally dressed.

I usually wear a big jacket and I got stuff in my anyway.

I've been keeping track all year long,

and this category is some animals in games.

Wow.

And the normalities are

fish.

Uh-huh.

Big dog.

Okay.

Cat.

Eagle.

Roach!

And the winner is

Gorilla!

Wow.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Gorilla.

Gorilla prominently featured, of course, in the Diablo expansion Vessel of Hatred.

That's right.

That made me worse on it.

What do you mean?

Oh, wait, so you can't place these specifically.

I kept a list.

You remember I brought it on the show before.

That's right.

I kept the list all year long until I

the winner was a gorilla.

Should I do my next category?

You want to go, Matt?

Yeah, sure.

I think maybe let's not invite the gorilla on stage to accept it's a war.

Yeah, one brother gorilla can kind of hang loose.

Yeah, hang back.

On behalf of the gorilla is fish.

Oh.

Oh, boy.

That's bad.

Let's put him back in the

jug.

Okay, yeah, the titles were worried about that.

He was having a bad time.

Just kind of flopping about.

Meg, do you want to go?

Yeah, sure.

I'll read

my next and final category here.

Best tree.

Now, look.

It bears repeating.

I'd love to hear it.

So many games come out every single year.

Lots of trees.

Lots of trees are in a lot of these games.

And folks, there's many different kinds of trees.

Here are the nominees for best tree in-game.

Dialogue.

Dialogue.

You know, and there's like multiple options.

Yeah, dialogue tree.

Skill.

Yeah.

Skill tree.

Skill tree.

Lots of trees.

When you're like picking

your loadout is going to be, what kind of build you're going to be.

There's a skill tree there.

Erd.

Erd tree.

I know that one.

Yeah, Erd Tree.

Erd tree.

From Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erd Tree.

Shadow of the Earth.

Titular Tree.

And the winner,

a nominee earlier tonight, it's Papa Tree from Astrobot.

Papa Tree.

Big night for Papa Tree.

Accepting on behalf of Papa Tree

is Papa Tree.

Oh, Papa Papa Tree is being played off.

Yeah,

by his own song.

Yeah, by his own song.

Very awkward.

That's awkward.

But hats off to him.

We love all the different trees, but we especially love Papa, don't we?

Yeah.

We love Papa Tree.

I'm another category.

Okay, please go ahead.

All right.

A lot of games came out this year,

and

here there's a lot of nominees.

But the final category for me, the Resident Naval Merchant, are things that aren't games.

And the nominees are

laundry

my leg

Thursday

roast beef

Mr.

Darcy

and the winner of things that aren't games

is

that video of a dolphin having sex with a dead fish.

God, wow.

We're just gonna play that for the audience.

Okay, no, we're not playing.

We're not gonna play that for the audience.

We're not playing.

I want to hear, I want him.

It deserves a win.

No, no, no, we're not.

We're not playing the video of the dolphin for the audience.

Thank you so much.

Accepting on behalf of the video of a dolphin having sex with a dead fish is

the guy from Tekken.

Hey, it's me, Tekken guy.

I got the fish from earlier here.

Oh my god, no, no, no, no.

Don't let him do it.

Don't let him do it.

Oh, God.

Oh, my God.

That was the worst thing I've ever seen.

And on this show,

on this very award show, I think Kevin Costner died.

That did happen in the previous year.

Previous year.

Rest in power.

Rest in power, King.

He died?

Yeah, I think somebody killed him.

Oh my God.

That is Goatsy's cannon.

You never know what will happen during this ceremony.

Hey, you know, podcasting isn't just talking,

it's also recording and editing.

Without those essential components, we're all just having conversations into the void.

And those essential components require an essential worker.

The nominees for Get Played Podcast Engineer of the Year are our producer Rochelle Chen, aka Ranch,

guest engineer Sam Rogich,

guest engineer Emma Erdbrink,

guest engineer Chef Kevin, and the goatsy goes to

Guest Engineer Sam Rogic.

Wow, congrats, Sam.

Thank you so much.

Amazing.

Doesn't feel fair.

Accepting the award on behalf of Sam Rogic is Rochelle Chen, aka Ranch.

Are you fing kidding me after I fing do for you, you pieces of s?

All I do is look at this stupid shit show for hours and you give the award to Sam fing Rogic, the new guy, you Bellatra loving fusy piece of

f your mom.

I can't believe this.

I f in all of you.

Pokemon sucks.

I don't know half the you talk about anyways.

Keep on jerking off to Baldur's Gate.

Why don't you?

Take your little dork podcast and your life-size torgle and shove it up your little holes you this podcast and

sonic the hedgehog

wow okay strong words from ranch yeah pretty intense very rough uh sorry you had to hear all that deserved on on our on our on our behalf that's right deserved better luck next year ranch though we don't pick the awards we don't pick the awards i pick my award you picked yours

Evil Merchant picked his own awards, but none of the rest of us do.

And that copy that you read before the award, I just want to say,

I do think podcasting is essential work.

Yes.

And when I'm banging my pots and pans outside the window, that's who it's for.

I agreed.

And I'm glad you're still doing that in 2022.

I'm still doing it.

Honestly, we did keep working through the fucking pandemic.

That's still ongoing, and we just gave up.

That's right.

Hey, you know, speaking of loss, it's time to acknowledge some of the figures in gaming we've tragically had leave us this past year.

It's the Goatseas in Memoriam.

Little bean guy in Animal Weld,

mauled by dog.

The wives of horror game protagonists,

usually at their husband's hand,

228,567,113 helldivers from Helldivers 2.

I'm sorry, that's now 228,567,114.

Consoles with disk drives.

We did it.

They're dead.

Me in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erd Tree.

Killed by skill issue.

The concept of fantasy when I party wipe in metaphor Refantasio.

Fantasy is dead.

Or over.

A bunch of weird-looking freaks in the rise of the golden idol killed in nasty fucked up ways.

Concord.

Just Concord.

Thousands of zombies in Dead Rising Deluxeramaster.

Killed by assault rifle, barbell, baseball bat, battle axe, bench, bicycle, boomerang, bowling ball, bucket, cactus, canned food, cardboard box, cars, cash register, ceremonial sword, chainsaw, cleaver, cooking oil.

We don't have time for all these.

My wife's patience when I'm in the middle of a boss battle in Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erd Tree.

President Bill Clinton from Call of Duty Black Ops 6

shot down by surface-to-air missile while flying on the Lolita Express.

Our listeners' self-esteem when we don't talk about a game they like.

We're sorry.

We're sorry.

May all of you rest.

We love you.

Gone but not forgotten.

Now it's time.

for the major categories.

First up, disappointment of the year.

We all have our own pick here.

And my pick is a game Matt mentioned earlier that he bounced off of that he may return to and I'm not going to return to it.

Zelda Echoes of Wisdom.

You finally get a playable Zelda in a mainline game.

And unfortunately, I just didn't like the physics-based gameplay.

I thought it was too puzzly.

I thought the combat was pretty unsatisfying.

And I think so much of the time you're buried in a pretty unappealing UX.

But also, I just feel like it doesn't have some of the magic that I would have liked in a Zelda game.

So that's unfortunately

my personal disappointment.

Yeah, that's here on my list too, only because, like, I don't know, I feel like with

Nintendo first party games, there is a certain amount of

good faith already built in, right?

Where I'm sort of like excited about the product no matter what it is.

And this just didn't deliver for me, didn't scratch any of the itches for me.

Another disappointment in that vein is a game that I never played originally when it came out, Paper Mario Thousand Year Door.

And that's going to sound sacrilegious.

Wow.

A lot of folks, but it just did not grab me at all.

I don't think it was enough of a remake.

I think it was like it just hadn't, they didn't really have any like quality of life features.

It kind of just looked nicer.

How dare you?

I look, I just didn't, it just didn't, it didn't click me.

I'm livid, but I understand.

I have to mention this game, too, while I'm on my disappointments of the year because it was on my most anticipated games list two years in a row.

Got delayed and then finally came out and it was a pile of shit.

Suicide Squad kills the Justice League.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are anticipating that and it feels like the way they kind of made it into a service game, live service game, it was just like a little bit less satisfying.

And also just a game that's so centered on gunplay, correct?

Yeah, let's give all these characters with their own, but that have their own specific weapons and combat styles and just give them all guns yeah that sucks yeah that really sucks and it just didn't seem

i don't know i love those arkham games so much and this was just a botched um

continuation of that series yeah it's tough it's a tough tough pill to swallow yeah my biggest disappointment of this year was the as a former magazine games journalist and somebody who wrote tons of articles that are now disappeared from the internet, and it kind of bums me out sometimes because that was work that I put into a thing,

was the closure of Game Informer and the complete dissolving of the website.

Wow.

More than 50,000 articles were just deleted in a single button press.

And that's

decades of fucking work and legacy and history, and it's all gone.

And I would assume, I always assumed, you know, with my tiny magazine, with Play Magazine, it disappearing and the archives going away wasn't a shock.

It wasn't like, oh, this was backed by a major corporation.

Like, it was basically an independent magazine.

But Game Informer was something that you could get at GameStop.

Yeah.

Like, it's wild to me that those...

that all of that work is just gone.

I suppose you could get it on the Wayback Machine, if that even exists, because I think it was lawsuited.

Yeah, I think that's a huge disappointment and a real bummer.

Yeah, I mean, it's look, it's

the internet,

the promise of the internet was the stuff would live on forever.

And, you know, of course, we've learned in recent years that's just not the case.

But hey, on a more positive note, how about we give out what we are doing for the first time here in 2024 for the GOAT seas?

The listener game of the year.

That's right.

Y'all voted in our Discord.

And the get played Discord pick for game of the year is

Bellatro.

Wow.

Wow.

That's huge.

Oh my God.

Oh my god.

We are all reacting to this.

Wow.

Wow.

We all got this information

live just now and we're shocked by what we heard.

Holy shit.

I'm shocked.

I'm shocked and appalled.

I'm actually really upset.

Yeah, I've got to say to our listeners, how dare you?

Crazy.

But also, well played.

Well played.

A tip of the hat to you, good people.

Well played.

All right.

Let's stay positive here.

Stay possi dog.

That's right.

We'll stay posi dog.

Our personal favorite games of the year.

This will be our individual list, like the, like the disappointment, but I, you know, just kind of whatever you want to do.

I got a, I've got a top five and a couple of honorable mentions, and I'm happy to go first and whatever you've got.

I think this was a pretty good year for games.

I did not have the highest of expectations, but there were a lot of surprises as Heather hit on with that category earlier.

A couple of honorable mentions for me were two of those surprises.

One is a game that is very much micro-targeted at me, and one is a game that is not the kind of game that I play at all.

The first is

an indie solo dev text parser adventure game with an absolutely marvelous retro aesthetic, The Crimson Diamond.

Absolutely had a blast playing this game.

I think the story is charming.

I think the puzzles are on point, and I think there's some quality of life improvements that make it a lot more playable, particularly if you've not messed around with the old Sierra text parser games that it is based off of.

The Crimson Diamond, really, really impressive

debut from a solo dev.

And the next, a game that we mentioned a couple of times, Helldivers 2, a game that's very much not for me, but the multiplayer action I found so compelling.

And, you know, again, it just tonally nails the whole starship troopers homage that it embodies.

As far as my top five, look, here's the thing.

You always want to be like kind of cool and feel like I have my own spin on things.

You don't want to just mirror the consensus, but I think there was a pretty top, like like, like, you know, top heavy,

you know, there's a consensus kind of with what the best games are,

what some of the top releases are from 2024.

And so as uncool as it is for me just to mirror the game awards, I have a lot of overlap there.

I think the game awards actually did a pretty good job with the nominees in terms of chronicling some of the games

or the year's best games.

But my personal top five coming from the bottom,

number five, Astrobot.

a perfect 3D platformer.

Number four, a game that's in early access, but it's my list.

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.

I put as many hours into that as I did anything.

A wonderful next step in the survivor genre,

the bullet heaven genre pioneered by vampire survivors, which also had a great expansion this year.

Number three, Metaphor Refantasio.

We talked about it last week in our We Play, You Play.

Number two, Animal Well.

Just an absolutely staggering game, an incredible design

from another solo dev.

And for my number one, I just sort of asked myself:

Can I give DLC game of the year?

And ultimately, I decided it's my list.

And also, who gives a shit?

Elden Ring Shadow of the Earth Tree was my favorite game of 2022.

Wow.

Matt, what do you think?

I think that's great.

That's

a great list.

That's what I wanted.

I wanted you to approve my list.

It's great, but

I think I'm thinking about this as similar to you, honestly, because

as some of you know,

as you two certainly know, I keep a list of every game that I complete

in the given year.

And you're the finisher.

I'm the finisher.

This year, I gotta say, my lowest year since I've started doing this.

Wow.

Only 40 games.

Well, also, some of those games you finished, you put in like 110 hours in.

Yeah, I will say that I began the year by playing through Baldur's Gate 3 twice.

Yes.

So, like, you know, that was a lot of my gaming time was playing a late 2023 release that is my favorite game of all time.

A lot of the games on this list have the words Final Fantasy in the title.

Final Fantasy VII in the title specifically.

Twelve games.

Alan Wake 2, Final Fantasy VII, Baldur's Gate 3, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Super Mario Bros.

Wonder, Animal Well,

I did Animal Well twice

based on how you have to play that game.

Alan Wake 2 DLC, Night Springs, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy 16, The Rising Tide DLC, The Case of the Golden Idol, Elden Ring, Shadow of the Earth Tree DLC, Resident Evil 4, Separate Ways DLC, Chrono Trigger, Astrobot, Silent Hill 2 Remake, and Alan Wake 2, the Lake House DLC.

Those are the games that I completed this year.

As for my list of games of this year.

It's tough.

You know, it's interesting to be thinking about the games that came out, the the games that we played, and

as much as we loved Super Mario Wonder, it's not even really in the conversation, I think.

Like, for me, like, it's not wait, was Wonder a 2024 game?

Yeah, early 2024, I think February 2024.

Was it really?

Yeah, no, yeah, really, yeah,

no, yeah, October 20th, 2023.

Oh, oops, what are you thinking of?

I think that's, I probably just

had finished it in 2024 is what I'm is what I'm there it is

well look but also the reason it's not in the conversation is because

not eligible it's not eligible not eligible

it's just DQ'd as far as I'm concerned you made me think of the Princess Peach game I'm trying to think what you could even I didn't even play that so no it was it was truly I thought it would came out at the beginning of this year

but look my top ones are

Animal Well, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Elden Ring, Shadow of the Earth Tree, Astrobot, and the Silent Hill 2 Remake.

Wow.

I'm the only person in this room that played the Silent Hill 2 remake.

And I saw a comment online that everyone was like, they did the Silent Hill 2 remake dirty.

Nobody played it, and Matt didn't like it that much.

I did like it.

You know, my wife and I have a date planned where she's going to play Silent Hill 2.

Yeah.

And she's never played Silent Hill at all, and she doesn't have any exposure to the games.

She did suffer through the movie with me me when we watched the movie for this podcast.

The movie's good.

But

it's not too late for Silent Hill 2 remake, and maybe Mary and I can put enough time into it that she'll guess on the show and talk about her experience of Silent Hill 2.

I would love that.

I just didn't, I would just say to our listeners, you know, I wish this was my only thing that I do, was doing this podcast because it is really fun to do.

And I do love video games so much.

It's also serious.

It's also serious.

But I think just like the reality is that we are, you know, gaming enthusiasts who also have other stuff.

We're not game journalists where we're able to just play a lot of games.

So what, unfortunately, Silent Hill 2 remake, I just didn't get around to.

I do want to play it.

And

it's great.

It's really fun to play.

Is it kind of unnecessary?

Sure.

But it's...

It's Silent Hill 2, baby.

It's fucking great.

It's a really, really great game.

My top three that I'm considering right now, Animal Well, Final Fantasy VII, Rebirth, and Astrobot.

And like the consensus says Astrobot.

Great game.

I loved it.

It's a great game.

But I think the game that I loved the most this year is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Wow.

That game.

I love to hear it.

To me, this is

the Kingdom Hearts 2 of Final Fantasy VII.

Does that make any sense?

Yeah.

We're like, it's like...

Matt, yes, it does.

Like,

I don't know.

There was just like, I liked Remake as much as anybody else.

I really liked it.

Rebirth is like,

I think it's one of my favorite games.

Like, it's like, it's so great.

The combat's so good.

I talked about it a lot at this point.

I know they're not making any DLC for it, which is completely fine because there's a million fucking things to do in the game that I haven't even done all of it, but I finished the story.

I do want to get back in there and do a lot of the side quests.

These characters are just so important to like just games in general and also now just to me as a

man.

They're like some of my favorite characters ever.

And I loved the time that I spent with the original this year.

I loved playing remake.

Rebirth is like, I'm going to have a hard time seeing how they make something better.

Yeah.

For the third part.

It's going to be impossible.

There's no way it could live up to how good

Rebirth is.

So Rebirth is my personal pick for game of the year i hope the third one comes out because there were all of those like squirrely like business numbers that came out after rebirth came out and it would be a real shame if it was an unfinished symphony I was reading or I had heard that they're they like in the last couple of weeks they've been talking about part three as like a for-sure thing.

Okay, great.

You know, who's to say what could happen?

But

they like they've announced no DLC specifically because they're beginning like pre-development on part three.

Wow, yes, uh, Matt, I love how Final Fantasy VII-pilled you are.

I also've said this before on the podcast, but I, you're not someone who played this game when you were younger.

You don't have nostalgia for FF7, as Heather and I do, having played it on the PlayStation 1.

You came to it late, you played through the base game in its entirety, you played through remake, you played through rebirth, and now you've discovered it, one of your favorite series.

I think, I think that's awesome.

It's really, really great, and it was, I think, very, very necessary to do based on some of the things within these new these remakes uh which is all I'll say about that it's absolutely please play the original before you get into these I'd love to hear it I'd love to hear it um so I don't have like a tight list here uh I've got some games that that meant something to me this year uh Final Fantasy Rebirth is on my list even though I've only played the first couple of hours it was um

enough

of a

enough of an emotional experience playing those first couple hours of the game and getting through the first town that I was like, fuck, I need to put time aside for this.

I need to focus.

I need to dedicate myself to this game because I know it's going to be so important to me.

And I've had a lot of experiences like that in gaming this year.

I've been swamped.

I started out the year with health issues.

But I'm really hoping to get time to truly devour Final Fantasy Rebirth in the year 2025.

Um, other games that I enjoyed, Shadow of the Erd Tree, of course, Stellar Blade, which I am the uh, the only person in the room who was unembarrassed enough to try it.

I checked it out from a

rental store that had a beaded curtain.

It's good, it's shockingly good.

I was gonna get it.

You're like, you're kind of upset that it's good because you want it to not be good, and then you can be like, oh, this is nothing.

But the fact that it's good kind of like, all right, well,

to each their own.

I don't know.

I'm a little self-conscious about having that in my Steam library along with Honey Pop and Honey Pop 2 Double Day.

And then also the rest of your Steam library.

Yeah, I play H games on main.

I, of course, enjoyed Dragon's Dogma 2, and I played more of it than Final Fantasy Rebirth because the barrier of entry was so low for it.

So I was just like, I'll fuck around with this.

And it ended up being an incredible, it's a great tech demo, if nothing else.

You're like, wow, there's a lot of cool shit going on in this game.

And that alone is worth experiencing it for.

I suggest if you didn't drop in on that game when it came out, wait for it to go on sale and throw a few bucks towards it and you'll have a good time.

A game that I still wish I could talk about on the show because I do play it, but it is still being struck, so I won't mention it by name.

Um, had an excellent season, and uh, and then that season came to an end, and they had an additional excellent season.

They've announced a couple of collabs for next season that really warmed my heart.

I absolutely won't say the name of the game until

they figure out their shit because people deserve to be paid.

A surprise entry on my list is the Pokemon card game for mobile,

which is like

so fucking addictive.

It's really good.

It's fantastic.

It hits that serotonin bump every single 12-hour, like every time 12 hours comes up, I get a little alert on my watch that says it's time to open a pack.

And no matter what I'm doing, I'm like, oh, things are about to be okay.

Even though chances are I'm just going to see another Slowbro or a Slowpoke

again.

Astrobot was

I'll say one other game.

Metaphor Refantasio, fucking awesome.

Another game I wish I had more time to play.

We just covered it last week.

So, um,

so yeah, I hope I get a chance to finish it.

Um, it deserves to be finished.

It's beautiful, it's funny, and the uh music is impressive.

But my game of the year is Astrobot.

Wow.

Um,

nothing else this year gave me just straight joy.

From top to bottom, start to finish.

Astrobot was just fun.

And I feel like it came at just the right time.

It was not so long that it was daunting.

It was a length that allowed me to finish the game, to collect all the little guys, to have a

trip down memory lane in that credit sequence where you got to see all the Sony shit flying by.

I loved it.

I'm happy it exists.

And

I'm looking forward to the fact that I think Astrobot is just going to be a permanent fixture in Sony's library from this point forward.

He's just going to be around and that makes me really happy.

And that's why Astrobot is my game of the year, which...

There's no fucking way I would have said at the beginning of this year that, oh, it'll be Astrobot.

Yeah.

In fact,

I think maybe on our text thread, I was like, guys, have you seen the reviews that Astrobot is getting?

Yeah.

Yeah, we were kind of caught off.

I mean, like, we, I think it was on all of our radar, but we were kind of caught off guard by like how

universal the acclaim was.

And we kind of added on the fly an Astrobot episode, which, you know, you can hear in our archives.

But I like,

yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Heather.

Just

an incredibly joyous experience.

And

so incredibly playable.

Also, a game that I think just like anyone could enjoy, which I think is to its credit.

I think that that it, that, that it along with Bellatra were two games that even a non-gamer can like mess around with and be like, and appreciate it, it's artistry and its craft.

Uh, shout out to Tima Sobe, the developer, who did just such an incredible job.

And from my, what am I understanding, has an extra incredibly collaborative workflow and you know, an international team that is all like figuring out how to work with each other and iterate internally and produce a

platform or masterpiece.

I mean,

is that what we want to do for our get played goatsy for our game of the year?

Do we just give it to Astrobot?

It feels like that's what's on all of our lists.

Game I really liked.

It wasn't my number one overall of the list, but I'd be happy giving it

the collective podcast prize.

It's second on my list, and it's like the closest second that you could be to just not being Rebirth.

And like, there's like things in Astrobot that I like more than Rebirth.

I just spent so much time with Rebirth that I, and I just, I loved it.

So it overtook it just slightly.

Also, have to give a little bit of a shout out for just how polished it is, just how incredible the performance is, the integration of the Dual Sense controller.

It's, it's just a,

it's just an, and, and, a, you know, I call it just a perfect 3D platform, and that's the thing.

It's a, it's a, it's a pretty perfect game.

If it had been a pack-in, like, if the PlayStation wasn't one, oh, oh, very weird-looking machine, like, it, it, it's not the kind of thing that, like, oh, wow, it's Christmas and I opened up my toys and now I've got this thing that's as tall as my chest and as wide as my shoulders.

Like, if you hearken back to the idea of like a pack-in video game, if Astrobot had been the pack-in game for PlayStation 5, it would have sold systems unnecessarily so because people are going to buy the PlayStation 5 no matter what.

Just a lovely, joyful experience.

I love the guy.

I want him to be in my house.

I want a little version.

I want him.

I wish he was running around.

I am Astrobot.

Hey, we are all Astrobot right now.

Congrats.

I am Astrobot.

I am Astrobot.

Sam?

I am Astrobot.

Congrats to Astrobot, the Get Played game of the year.

Wow.

Wow.

We did it.

Hey, what fun we had.

It's gaming's biggest night.

Now it's gaming's biggest night.

It's come to an end.

Now it's come to an end.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Special thanks to Sam Rogitch Rogitz for guest engineering.

Sam, you got any plugs?

My band Guck has a new single streaming.

Check it out.

Wow, check out Guck.

I've enjoyed what I've heard of Guck.

I got to check out this new single.

Our producers, Rochelle Chen, Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard.

Thanks to Rochelle for all she did this year.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes.

We've got some get animate episodes, our Patreon exclusive show, in the can.

They are banked.

They will continue to come out every Wednesday in the Patreon feed.

Matt, what do we got up on the horizon?

All right, so this will be the third episode of the pilot program that we're doing with Heather.

What is that called, Heather?

The pilot presentation.

The pilot presentation.

And it'll be a show that Heather and Nick watched called Kino's Journey.

That's right.

And then the rest of the year we have.

Talking motorcycle.

Oh, hell yeah.

That's Matt.

Look, I'm Florida.

I didn't even know.

I had no idea.

Holy shit.

That sounds awesome.

I'm going to watch that so I can listen to the episode and hear what you guys talked about there.

And then we have what everyone's been waiting for, the Violet Evergarden movies.

There's two of them.

Oh, they are long.

Oh, God.

And then we're starting the year off.

I'll just tell you guys what it is now with a watch-along of Pokemon Forever, the fourth movie in the Pokemon film series, which is a lot of fun.

So be ready for those.

And and we'll see you in the new year with perhaps a new series.

That's right.

Patreon.com slash get played for get animated and for the get played archive.

And hey, why not go to kinshipgoods.com slash get played and get yourself some get played merch?

We'd love it if you did.

And hey, you know, thank you to everyone out there who's listened this past year.

This is our final, again, our final main feed episode of 2024.

We'll have some unlocked episodes in the main feed just to keep it populated for the next couple of weeks, and then we'll be back in in January.

But, but

we love doing this show, and we couldn't do it without our listeners.

Yeah, thank you guys so much.

In all sincerity, thank you guys so much for listening to the show.

Yeah,

it's an honor and a pleasure to be doing this podcast for you guys.

I can't believe we're still doing this show.

I can't believe people are listening to it.

Thank you so much.

And hey, games of 2024, you got played.

In the Amsterdam.

That was a head gum podcast.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Dialed in on the thermostat.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

Clutch move by the home team.

What's the game plan from here on out?

Laundry?

Not today.

Dishwasher?

Sidelined.

What a performance by Team California.

The power truly is ours.

During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.