Our Top Ten Games of All Time

This is a head gum podcast.

Oh my god, did you guys hear there's going to be another season of succession?

Like, what?

Succession.

Wait, I know it doesn't, it like, apparently it's a bit of a prequel.

Uh,

you know, so some like

anyway, I'm just really excited.

I love the show.

You know, HBO's succession is like, it's like, you know, prestige drama.

And they've released,

they've just dropped the first episode of the new season on just yesterday.

Do you mind if we play a little bit of it so that I can

like I'd love to watch it?

We were going to talk about our top 10 games all time, but I think that has to wait.

We got to watch this succession trailer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Every single fight, no matter how big or small, has a story.

It's Logan Roy.

It's Logan Roy.

Let's go, Logan.

Fuck off.

That's why, when it comes to Tekken and the King of Iron Fist tournament,

there's one helping.

Wait, what?

I don't understand.

No, it's like a recap.

It's a recap of succession.

No.

Tekken eight, Jin Kazama.

will face off against his father.

Yeah, this is like when

Connor and Jane is threatening global dominance.

And since Jin is the only other person who possesses the devil gene as well, he may be the only child.

Tom Wamskin is left.

But how did we even get to this point?

What the hell is a devil gene?

And why do these fathers and sons keep throwing each other off cliffs?

We gotta stop this.

I don't know why I won't get.

We're getting

to spoil the whole season for me.

Yeah, we gotta stop this.

This is incredible.

I can't wait to see how Shiv plays into this.

Maybe Jerry and

Roman sort of rekindle their sort of

their tryst, as you'd call it.

This was huge.

I'm going to say the opposite, which is that I feel like

too many TV shows

end on a low note when they could have gone out on a high note.

And it seems to me like, you know, the finale of succession was so good.

I don't want to see Logan Roy talking about Tekken.

We take a trip down memory lane and understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity as we reveal our personal all-time top 10 list this week on Get Plane.

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 Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where once upon a time, we only discussed the worst and weirdest video games, but now we have entered into our permanent era where we only talk about things we want to talk about.

And sometimes that's bad games, but this week we are talking about games that we really,

really,

really want to talk about.

I'm so excited about this episode, and I'm so excited to be back.

Even if it's just for a week.

We're thrilled to have you back for however long you're going to be here.

And I'm glad that we're doing this episode.

Could not be more opposite of our old format where we are immersing ourselves in the you know the the the drek of gaming and now we are just talking about the games that are our most beloved we are all giving our personal top 10 lists yeah and it's important it's i want to highlight something else that heather said that i think is really important too we talk about the stuff we want to talk about in this show this podcast has no filter okay we we sort of we it's raw yeah and it's it's uncut and there's just no filters you just never know what we're gonna say yeah i would not describe the studio we're currently in as a safe space no no so if you are uh worried about hearing something you don't want to hear uh you might want to turn the volume down if you're a snowflake out there you're gonna get melted yeah sorry frosty

what

it's just how it is now you see anyone this is anyone's first episode of the podcast

that is something that i do think about a lot is that like

any episode of any podcast could be somebody's first episode.

It's always somebody's on ramp to what you're doing, what you're offering.

So, I should also now say, I was just kidding.

Yeah.

Matt was just kidding.

I was doing kidding.

And Heather was legitimately confused.

Yeah.

Yes.

We should talk about a couple of things before we get to these, a couple of logistical things before we get to our top, our all-time top 10 list, and also talk about some games we're playing right now.

First thing, and we touched on all this.

I touched on all this in my little monologue I did last week before the episode, but since we're all here and we can all, we're caught up to the present, we're recording this in January of 2024 for an episode that's coming out next week.

I think we should touch on these things as a unit.

First up, you talked about our old format, Heather.

Our pre-head gum back catalog is now available on our Patreon.

That's right.

So if you go to patreon.com slash get played, you can not only get get animated, which is our weekly anime recap show that comes out every Wednesday, but you can also get the entire back catalog of pre-head gum get played episodes and how did this get played episodes, as well as our premium DLC format that is all available on our Patreon.

And also, Heather, you and I should give a little shout out to Matt because Matt did the raw legwork of just getting all this shit uploaded manually.

Oh, my God.

I was talking to all the audio.

That's a normal thing to say.

Raw legwork.

Fuck.

I was doing squats when I did it all.

It is kind of interesting.

You guys can't see me because it's an audio podcast.

My cash is a little bit more than that.

Squat

first adjective that came to your mind when, like, he, he did, he did the tough

production work of uploading all of these episodes to our Patreon.

And yeah, he deserves a shout out.

But in no world would I be like my friend Matt Apodaka just raw

producing

raw anything.

Raw.

no there's some there's some raw blank there's some raw thing that's an actual thing that I could have said but that's not where I landed but I can't like my brain couldn't think of it so I went to legwork point fucked

raw fuck man raw fucked all these episodes so manually all 180 or however

we got it just might just because this might be somebody's first episode we're just kidding but I did we're just kidding well I did I did take time during the during our break to um I won't get into too many details of it.

It wasn't, look.

Yeah, because apparently you did it raw.

I don't want to know that.

I did it raw.

I did not do any details.

You know, because I don't want to make it seem like I'm some hero, okay?

It took me several days.

It took me several hours each day I did this, but

it was all for the grand prize of it being worth it for the listener.

And for, so they finally had a space to

actually hear these episodes because they were previously paywalled and Stitcher Premium went down and decided, just decided no longer existed and had no, you know, there was no plan for them to exist elsewhere after that.

So it just took, it took a little bit of doing, but

it was ultimately very worth it.

And I'm very happy that people that wanted to hear those episodes can now.

Yeah.

Well, we're grateful you did it and hopefully the listeners are as well.

Yeah.

Thank you for doing that.

Yeah.

Imagine they're on the list.

I'm sure that

all six of the most parasocially intense listeners are really excited to be able to listen to all of those.

Yeah.

And it should be.

Just kidding.

I love the listeners and I interact with them a lot on Discord and Fortnite.

So yeah, that's all very exciting.

Again, you can get the Get Play Back catalog as a standalone or you can get that as a bundle with GetAnimaid.

That's available to you on our Patreon.

Also want to shout out Ben Prunty, the great composer

behind FTL, Into the Breach,

Subnautica Below Zero, one of my favorite working video game composers who composed our new theme song, which you're hearing every week now.

And also want to shout out BenPruntyMusic.com.

Also, want to shout out Duck Brigade Design, who made our new show art, which you're seeing as the podcast title, DuckBrigade.com.

Are we a functional podcast now?

Is that what's happening to us?

Because we got this, like, we've got like a real fucking cool name composer to write our theme.

We've got this incredible new art, an incredible new home.

We've got an organized back catalog.

Are we functional?

I think we're functional.

I think we're functional.

I think we're doing, we're operating at a new level.

Yeah, we have a great new producer, Rochelle Chen, who's with us.

Yeah.

He's been helping us out.

I think the one liability remains the hosts.

Yeah.

So once we iron that out.

And just to go back to this point from earlier, it's because you never know what we're going to say.

It's all raw.

It's unfiltered, uncensored.

And it's, I mean, it is raw.

So we can go ahead and say that.

Yeah, see, their raw makes sense.

What you just said makes sense.

Yeah, Matt did the raw legwork of using that properly.

Let's talk about some video games because we have a lot of show to get to and we don't have the largest window to get through this.

I think this might be a big boy.

I think so.

We got to go?

I don't know.

Don't you have to go?

I don't have to go.

Oh, then never mind.

Then maybe we don't.

Maybe we might.

We

might have some time.

But we do have a lot of show to get to, whatever our time constraints.

So let me ask the question that we ask every every episode: What are you playing?

What are you playing?

Wow,

Resident Evil Merchant from Resident Evil 4 perhaps might turn up on one or more of our top 10 all-time lists.

Well, is that true?

I mean, it's possible.

I don't know.

I haven't seen everybody since I haven't revealed my own list.

Honored.

I would be honored to show up on our top 10 list.

I'm here to ask the question I always ask:

What are you playing?

And also, to announce that I'm in therapy.

Oh, that's great.

Good for you.

Thank you.

You know what I've learned is that

what you tell a therapist is a secret.

I mean, I think that has some limits.

I think if you, if a therapist, I just know this from the Sopranos, if a therapist is made aware of an ongoing criminal act, they may have to inform the authorities.

I gotta go.

And yeah, you guys got this.

I'll see you next week.

I gotta get, I gotta, I gotta,

oh boy, I gotta make some phone calls.

Okay,

uh, what are you playing?

We're glad you're working on yourself wherever you have to go now.

That that's that's good for everyone.

Yeah, that's good.

But just

you can't fall in love with your therapist either.

That's another thing.

Yeah, like they legally can't date you.

You can't.

I wish he was still here because I feel like he should know that too.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

No, you can tell.

He's He's an absolute simp for his therapist.

We hate to see it, actually.

Who wants to go first?

I had a sort of a productive break.

You did have a productive break.

I think maybe you should tee it up.

You should start things off.

Okay.

Tee us up.

Yeah.

So when we last met,

I had just freshly finished Alan Wake Remastered.

This was back in November of 2023.

And that was the last game that I actually, this is not true.

This is one of the last games games I finished for the year but during the holiday break I took down two more two more remedy games wow

control and Alan Wake 2 and they're all holy shit they're all you know part of a shared universe right which I was delighted by and it's not but it's not like a shared universe in the way that feels dumb now or it's like sort of cheap like the stuff

in each game that is a reference to the other games feels earned, and also, um, if it wasn't, it you wouldn't notice it if you weren't playing the games, like, you would just think of the oh, this is an interesting um piece of lore or whatever.

But I played through control and I was liking it a great deal more than I liked Alan Wake one

because Alan Wake,

Alan Wake is like a little bit dated control-wise and stuff.

And

control is

just a more fun video game um it's like

i said this to uh a few people i was like they sort of i think the lesson they learned from alan wake was

they wanted to make a fun video game in instead and they then they made control and control is like

there was a sequence in it that i won't spoil uh for those of you that haven't played it but i texted you guys when i finished it and i was like i think this just crossed over into this is one of the best games i've I've ever played ever.

It was unbelievable to me.

And I played the DLC, loved that.

There was a lot of side stuff that I didn't do that I'd like to revisit.

Honestly, I might like to play through it again.

I really loved it.

And I watched several YouTube videos about

control and about the wider remedyverse at large.

But then I was like, okay, now I'm ready.

I'm ready to go into Alan Wake 2.

And I wasn't ready, actually.

I was not ready.

That game is very scary.

It's a lot scary.

It's a lot scarier than

Alan Wake 1.

And Control has some scary stuff in it, but Heather, you played Control.

I wouldn't classify Control as a horror game at all.

Yeah, it's not a horror game.

And I did play some of Control.

I did stop like right before the final boss or something because I was just like, I don't, I don't look forward to it.

So it's really exciting to me that you connected with it so much.

Yeah.

And that you connected with all these games because it's so great to just love stuff.

Oh my God, it's so great.

That's how I felt playing this because my love of

these games propelled me through Allen Wake 2 despite wanting to stop playing it every 10 minutes because it was.

I just couldn't believe that I was playing a horror game for fun.

Like, it was legitimately terrifying at times.

And

my fiancé told me that

I didn't look like I was having fun while I was playing it, which I thought was really funny.

She's like, Do you like this game?

I was like, Yeah, I love it.

She's like, You look like you're having a miserable time.

I was like, I am.

I'm having a horrible time playing this.

And I just thought it was really interesting.

And I loved,

I loved Saga as a character.

Saga is a new detective in the game, or is a detective in the game that is investigating

just the goings-on in

Cauldron Lake and thereabouts, and

Alan

comes into the story in an interesting way.

And

I've been watching clips

of interviews with the game's director and the creator of these games, Sam Lake.

Oh, yeah.

And I didn't really know anything about him, but he's basically finished Hideo Kojima,

but he goes the step further and just puts himself in the games.

Like, he's a full-on, he's just a full-on character in Alan Wake 2.

The rocks.

And, like, he's the, he's the character model for this detective, Alex Casey.

But then there's this meta element of the game where Alex Casey is a character in Alan Wake's books, but he's confused as to why he's in the books.

But he's a real guy who is a detective, and how did he get these details?

But then there's another meta layer above that where Sam Lake is an actor who portrays Alex Casey in these in these games and movies and stuff.

And so he's just like in it as like himself, as an actor.

And it's very, it's just wild.

But he's great.

And I think he seems like a pretty cool guy.

Did you ever play the Max Payne games?

He's Max Payne.

Right.

He's the face model for Max Payne, right?

Yeah, at least for the first two.

I don't know if he is for the third because I think Rockstar did Max Payne 3.

But I'm just really in love with these games.

And I finished Alan Wake 2 pretty quickly.

There's a lot of stuff that I didn't even get to see in Allen Wake 2 that I'm not too eager to revisit because it was, I had a hard time.

I was like screaming while I was playing the game, like just making noise.

Wow.

Or and often being like, where?

Like, because I would hear something

and not see it.

There was, there was a new type.

Just imagining

your fiancé in your apartment hearing you in the other room just go, where?

Horrible.

And there's these new guys that sort of reminded me of something you'd see in Silent Hill, where if you're familiar with Alan Wake,

the taken are these like shadow entities.

They're the main enemies in this game, and

they mostly look like shadows, and you shine your light on them, and they sort of look like blurry people, which is scary enough.

Like if somebody came up to you and they were blurry, but nothing else was, you'd be scared.

And then

there are these other types that fly and zoom around really fast, but then there's these other types.

And this is where the type that reminded me of Silent Hill, particularly Silent Hill 2, where it's an upper torso

of a person.

Yeah.

And then the bottom half is also an upper torso.

And so we've seen the legs on legs, but the actual scarier part of it is upper torso and upper torso because both can scream.

So it's, it's, it's, it's, they did a really great job and it has a cool like um

uh I don't know if you guys watch the true detective show at all, but uh it has that sort of like detective vibe, that sort of like new

like neo-noir type of detective storytelling that I really, I really love.

And

I highly recommend the game to anybody.

Because also it plays so much better than Alan Waquon.

It's just a refined, really nice game and

good story.

And I can't wait to, I can't wait for more.

But I don't think I liked it as much as Control because Control just like Control just knocked my socks off.

I loved Control so much.

And it's because I like, I like that vibe more.

That's that.

The control, the vibe in Control scratches that itch of like

when I was watching Lost and I was like, what's the Dharma initiative?

What is that?

I would like to know more about what's going on with that.

That seems interesting.

It has all this like brutalist architecture in the game.

There's like not a lot of anything else.

So you just see like, it's everything in the game is gray, kind of, and it just kind of looked interesting and

just interesting setting for a for a video game.

And I, I really loved it.

Um, but uh, that's, I mean, that's a big update for me.

Finished two games.

That's huge update.

Last game of 2023 was control.

First game of 2024 was Alan Wake 2.

You've sold me on Alan Wake 2 at minimum.

Hell yes.

And I definitely, I mean, I've heard so much about that game, and I definitely got to check it out at some point.

That's a great rundown.

Heather, what have you been playing?

So my wife says to me one day, hey, I want to play the cooking game.

And I went,

okay, I don't know what that is.

And she's like, there's a cooking game that people talk about that's super fun.

And I want to play it with you and my friend.

And I went, oh, does your friend play it?

And she's like, no, we're going to introduce it to my friend Courtney.

We're all going to play the cooking game.

And I was like, okay.

So I looked up cooking games and my first thought was Cooking Mama, because it's the only one that I know of.

Yeah.

But apparently,

and this will come as no surprise to literally everybody who listens to the podcast, because the eighth best-selling Nintendo Switch game of last year was Overcooked the game, Overcooked One and Two Collection, right?

So this is a massive hit that I just was totally in a blind spot for me.

We loaded up for Courtney and Mary and myself, and we learned to play Overcooked, which is a

post-apocalyptic cooking simulator,

but it's more like a restaurant.

Yes.

Wow.

It's post-it's, so it's the cold open is it's the post-apocalypse and you have to cook for this beast who is demanding food and you try very hard to effectively beat the final boss fail miserably and a king made out of an onion and his dog

time travel you back to 1993 so you have enough time to learn how to run a restaurant so that you can eventually

save the world from this meatball and spaghetti based monster.

The gameplay is often that the restaurant is poorly designed, and you and up to three other players have to manage the tasks of a restaurant while fulfilling orders.

So, one of you is chopping vegetables, one of you is cooking food, one of you is assembling the food.

So, like, if it's a cheeseburger restaurant, somebody's grabbing the shredded lettuce and putting it on a bun and then grabbing the tomato.

Up at the top of your screen is a list of the orders in the priority that they need to be served or serviced.

And you have to get these

orders out the door while also then cooking the dishes that return to you in a mad cap

bomber man sort of perspective.

Like it's like top-down, like maybe

slightly isometric perspective.

And it's a lot of communication between you and the other players because like you'll set out with a plan and you'll be like, Okay, I'm gonna chop and

plate.

And then somebody else will be like, Great, I'm gonna cook and uh wash.

But inevitably,

the restaurant, the chaos of the restaurant means that you have to improvise a little on the fly, and somebody yells, you know, I'll take the order, I'll take the order, and they run across the room to drop off the order.

When I say

that the um

that food or that the restaurants are poorly designed, I mean that after your initial level that takes place basically in a restaurant, you are then cooking in the middle of busy streets.

So there's pedestrians running around on

inside of your restaurant, or you are cooking on the top of two cars, which are moving at slightly different speeds.

Wow.

So sometimes you cannot cross from one part of the restaurant into the other part of the restaurant.

Sometimes there is an earthquake which

shifts the levels of the restaurant so you can only go from one part to another part and then you are trapped there until an earthquake resets the levels and then you can only go from one part to the other part.

The kitchen will catch fire.

It is, it's

it's a party game in that it is designed for multiple people, but it is a strategy game in that it is not, you cannot just fucking wing it.

Like if you wing it, you're fucked.

So it is, it's a really good bridge game for people who love to play video games and people who want to have like just a party experience.

Shortly after my mother started playing it.

So now I've got a four-player team.

Then,

then, yeah, Gail got into it.

Then some of my

permanent Fortnite squad members were like, yo, I saw that you play overcooked.

I play overcooked.

We got a squad up in overcooked.

This is like, it's like I, it's like I lifted the carpet and found an entire society.

Everybody knows about this game.

Everybody plays it and everybody's having a blast.

And the truth is, so did I.

I look forward to my next round of overcooked with Mary, Courtney, my mom, or my friend Darius, or whoever the fuck it is that ends up playing overcooked with me.

It's also cross-platform.

So my mom's playing on a Switch.

I'm playing on a PlayStation.

It's, you know,

it's a good game.

That's awesome.

And totally not my kind of game.

Like, you cannot kill anyone.

I mean, unless you count like that none of the food is vegan.

But this is like...

I also.

I was going to say, this is is like an extension of your philosophy about what combat is.

I feel like working in a restaurant is combat.

Sure.

That is like

it's a hundred, that's it's all combat.

Like when you say thank you, chef, you're basically saying thank you, general.

Yeah.

And

the gameplay, there is no downtime in this game.

Like you can't take it if you take a break, then the kitchen starts on fire and you have to grab the fire extinguisher and put out the fires.

Like it's it's it is constant, constant engagement and thus constant rewards.

So, you're totally right.

It is, it's kitchen combat.

Um,

but you know, the only knives you wield are the ones chopping onions.

Love it.

Um, side note: I got a PlayStation portal.

Wow.

Let's go.

Two of the three of us have PlayStation Portal.

Portal Gang, rise up.

This is what I'm talking about.

Portal Gang, rise up.

Why'd I get it?

Because some days I can't get out of bed

and uh you have a better excuse than me

uh

this treatment is rough i only have one chemotherapy session left and

then i probably won't ever touch my playstation portal ever again uh but you know for the time being

you think that but

because because of where i know your playstation is located right it's not necessarily it's not in the home right but you might want to be on the couch with Mary or something, but you might also want to be playing

something in the garage, right?

Yeah.

This portal,

now your PlayStation's inside the house.

That's actually not the same.

I'm the PlayStation.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess now you're the PlayStation is what I was trying to say.

That's great.

I'm so excited.

I will say I can't believe it, but I can completely believe it that when this thing was announced, we on this podcast are like, this is fucking stupid.

Who's this piece of shit for?

And now two of the three of us own one.

Yeah.

And by year's end, Nick will be bullied into having one as well.

Year's end.

See you next week.

Nice to see an order confirmation.

The Steam Deck doesn't, there are ways to do it with the Steam Deck or whatever, but

you can't.

There's just not a convenient, I have the backbone, but there's not like a truly convenient pickup and play option option for remote play on a PlayStation, which is, which is bullshit also, because the Vita exists.

Let me fucking,

if, if you're an insane person who has a Vita, let me remote play the same architecture.

It has to be.

Sony's too lazy to build new architecture.

So.

I've heard that the lag on

a PlayStation portal that is in the same room room and direct connected to the PlayStation 5 is worse than the Wii U.

And that's how I know that they didn't update their architecture from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5.

Nick,

what are you playing?

Thank you for asking, Heather.

You know, last time we took a winter hiatus in 2022 into 2023, I played through a 100-plus hour RPG, which became an all-timer for me.

That game was Persona 5 Royal.

Will it make my top 10 list?

We're going to find out.

This past winter hiatus, 2023 going into 2024, I played through another 100-plus hour RPG, which is now an all-timer for me.

Baldur's Gate 3.

I have finished Baldur's Gate 3, and I have started a new game on Tactician.

Incredible.

Also, will it make my list?

We're going to find out, but let me just talk about this game a little bit.

And you know me, I could do a one-hour unbroken monologue on Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm not going to subject anyone to this, but you know I could do it.

So I'm just saying that.

I have a lot of thoughts here.

I'm compressing them a little bit.

I have a lot of things I could complain about this game, but I'm just going to give this a full-throated rave right now because I think it's an absolute masterpiece.

And

I think it's an

unmissable gaming experience.

So he said raw, and he said full-throated.

So what was Nick doing right before we started this record?

Yeah, you know.

Sitting in his car

in full view of the street on Sunset Boulevard.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

So, the bulk of my DD experience, I realized as I was playing this game, has been through single-player PC games.

You know, I've played some tabletop, I've played some PNP, but overall, like most of what I've done with DD has been PC games.

And, you know, that includes the Gold Box games back in the day, I've the Beholder, Dark Sun, Shattered Lands, one of the few people who played that.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale.

I played all these games.

I think Baldur's Gate 3 is the best single-player DD video game experience and one of the best RPGs ever made.

I just think it's the best reflection of what I've experienced playing DD offline, not playing it on a computer.

I think it's the best translation.

And I don't think this is necessarily even a controversial opinion.

If you want to argue for Never Winter Nights or something like that, fine, but I think that's a lot less accessible or a lot less approachable for the average player.

For me, it's BG3.

I played as a bard in my first playthrough.

Complete blast.

So many class-specific choices, you know, being able to busk for money.

Just the attention to detail in this game.

Like you have, there are, there are, I think, six different instruments that you can pick as a bard.

You will come across other street performers and you will hear them playing a certain song.

You can join in playing that song and it will sync up to tempo.

And, you know, for instance, my character is playing a lute.

So if I come across someone playing a flute, then it would just become a duet and the two of us would be playing together in harmony.

You can do this with up to, you know, with what you can do this with full instrumentation if you like.

If you want to give every party member

an axe,

a figurative axe, because there are literal axes in this game.

It's there, there's silver-tongue dialogue choices you get as a bard where you can talk multiple bosses into committing suicide.

And I know that's not like a thing that's, you know, that's a thing that's been in other videos.

I'm going to respect.

I'm respecting right now.

I'm respecting.

The moments when I hit that, I was like, this is great.

I'd rather do this than have this boss fight.

Not just for ease, but just because it's like such a memorable moment in this experience.

So I will say that I said this when I was playing it earlier.

I finished on Explorer mode.

That's what I played on, which is the easy mode.

And the new game I'm playing is on Tactician, which is the hard mode.

They've since patched in a hardcore mode, honor mode, which I'm not going to play yet.

I have zero regrets about playing it on Explorer because this game is so complex and inscrutable.

It took me like 30 hours just to figure out the quirks of combat and the UX.

This was with watching like endless YouTube videos of like 15 things you missed in combat, you know.

Once I clocked all that, once I figured it all out, the combat became trivial, but it was still so fun because there's just so many ways to play through one of these encounters.

And I'm now well into act one, like pretty deep into act one on tactician.

And each combat encounter now has the stakes of a boss fight.

It's just unforgiving.

Every turn matters.

And knowing how to play it, it's just an absolute blast when I'm like, okay, well, yeah, hey, hey, I know I can one-shot an enemy by pushing them off a cliff.

I understand, you know, I know the fun of like dousing them with water and then blasting them with lightning because that doubles up the damage and that's intuitive.

Just all the detail that exists in the combat system made me come to really love it.

And I'll also say, as someone who played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, much prefer this combat engine because the Infinity Engine in those original games was...

It was a weird hybrid real-time with pause system where turns took place, but they took place in real time.

and you'll you'll see this happen actually in the in Baldur's Gate 3 because you can go into turn based mode at literally any point you do that when you're in town just around NBCs around a non-combat encounter turns are still occurring like through the game clock but there's no actual like turns that are taking place in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and you know the the other related games and so I always just felt it a little clunky here I feel like the discrete turns just makes it a much more compelling game.

The other thing that I'm finding replaying it now is all the things I missed because I didn't use a guide for my first playthrough.

I looked, you know, I looked at things which are like, here's how to play the game, here's some combat tips, here's some ways to spec, but I didn't look at anything in terms of quests, except for one quest, which I thought was bugged, and it turned out that it was just dumb.

Anyway, I'm not going to play about this game.

It's great.

But the thing that I'm finding is there's so much of the map I missed.

There's so many quests that I was just like, oh, I didn't realize there was this extra dimension to it.

They're like...

They're little details.

They're references to things.

You'll find a letter on a corpse that's addressed to a character you meet in Act Three.

And if you're playing really close attention on a single playthrough, you might pick up on that.

But I'm not taking notes, I'm playing a video game.

So, playing in a second playthrough, I'm like, holy shit, I can't believe this connection that has just been made.

It's got great art direction and terrific character design.

When we're talking about video games visually, the word that's used is graphics.

And I think that's a tell because a lot of times what we're talking about is things like resolution and frame rate, things that are technical.

But here, this is just a game that, yeah, yeah, it's it's maybe a little, it's obviously a little bit buggy, but the character design is so fucking good.

The environments look so lush and lived in.

And

you look at a character like Lazelle or Shadowheart or Astarian, and it's just like their visual design is instantly memorable and is shorthand for what that character's essence is.

And it's also so

that you could, I don't feel like I met very many people in the game that looked anything like another person I met in the game, really.

Like there's like, you know.

Yeah, it reaches a certain point where you start to see the same, you know, know, gnomes with cornrows.

And you're just like, okay, well, I feel like I've, but, but that said, given the limited number of templates that they have for hairstyles and faces and scarring or whatever, yeah, I think they do a really good job of diversifying all the various NPCs.

Um, the while we're talking aesthetics, the music by Borislav Slavov is so fucking good.

It's one of the best video game scores I can remember.

Uh, the down by the river late motif that you that you hear in character creation that keeps resurfacing throughout the game, it never gets old and it's endlessly reshuffled.

Uh, the combat music, you'll you'll come to notice it's dynamic um and will change if you felt if you like just defeat a powerful enemy or if a party member is downed so it's like it's like reacting to the flow of combat and making you feel more triumphant or more backed into a corner and that's really effective and also and i told this to the two of you on text and i won't give any spoilers in terms of of who it is or what the specifics are, because I think people should experience it the way I've experienced it if you haven't gotten to this point in the game, which is organically and not knowing it was coming.

There is a third act boss who sings their own theme song.

You get to their area and a fucking musical number breaks out.

And I was playing this and a smile is creeping onto my face.

And in my brain, said with affection, is like, is, are they really fucking doing this?

I could not believe it.

I think it's like one of the best boss themes ever.

And it's such an amazing moment that actually also ties in with the essence of the character that you're fighting.

An incredible incredible encounter that is just taken up several notches by the scoring there.

Incredible soundtrack.

Talking a few more things, and then we'll get into our top two.

It's the best fuck around and find out game I think I've played.

Fuck yeah.

Here's some examples from Act 1.

These are all non-main quests, so these aren't story spoilers and these aren't,

you know,

this is stuff from early in the game.

So hopefully I'm not stepping on too much, stepping too far into spoiler country.

There's a blighted village where you hear sex sounds in a barn.

Yeah.

And you can open the door.

You can go to open the door and your party member is like, hey, leave them alone.

Don't do that.

Yeah.

And of course, like, I'm like, I'm going to fucking know.

I'm going to open this up and see what's going on in there.

And it's a bug bear just railing an ogre.

And they turn to you and they're like, what the fuck are you doing?

Like, what are you like, leave me alone?

And it like, unless you like pass some, some skill checks, they will attack you.

And then it's, then you just have to like kill these people who are having a

consensual encounter that you intruded upon.

And like, I killed what I killed the bug bear, and the ogre is just like, no, like, it's all distraught that her lover has been killed in front of her.

So they were in the throes of passion moments ago, and I felt horrible.

And it's, but it's also like, you're just like, what did you expect to happen?

What did you think was going to go on when you decided to open this can of worms?

It's so, like, that's so good.

There's so many little things like that.

I remember declining

a quest to go steal an egg

for this lady.

And she was like,

you're not going to do it?

Fine.

I'm going to fight you.

And I was like, I guess you're dead then.

What am I going to do?

Like, I'm not doing it.

I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

I'm also remembering, I don't remember if I've mentioned this on the show.

Is her name Lizelle?

Lizelle, yeah.

She died in my playthrough.

Oh my God.

Like early on.

And I didn't.

Jesus Christ.

she wasn't in my party, she wasn't in my party at the time, like, I, I, holy shit, I just saw her and I was like, I don't know, Matt, I'm shocked.

We, like, we got into like an argument because, like, you meet her in the very beginning, yeah, right, and we had like an argument.

I was like, she's kind of rude, I don't like her, and so we had sort of like an argument.

I picked like an argumentative uh, like dialogue choice, and so we just didn't get along, so she didn't come with me initially, it was always me and Shadowheart.

And then, um,

then

uh, later on, like in act one, there's a part where there's a big dragon or whatever, and like some people have

Liesell and they like kill her.

And I was like, oh, I guess I could have stopped that.

This is like the Gethyanki cray shit, I think.

Yeah.

And they kill her.

And then I, or I, you know, I did a bad job of trying to stop the encounter.

And she just died.

And I know, but I didn't know she was.

so impactful or such a like a like you know main character until i started to like engage with people like online talking about like, you know, like watching YouTube videos about Baldur's Gate 3 and stuff.

People are like, I love her.

I was like, she died immediately.

Like, she was not, she was nothing to me in my game.

I love that you committed to this and didn't save scum out of it.

I think that's the way to play the game.

And I wasn't save scumming here either.

I was just like, you know, if I fail to roll,

I'm just going to go with it.

I think that's the way to play this game.

And save scummed for other people, but I just didn't, I didn't know.

It was just so, the game was so new to me at that point.

I just didn't know what I could do.

Well, this is this is related to my experience with the game, which is, you know, I haven't beaten my first run of Baldur's Gate 3 yet, but I have said on the on the pod before that

everybody in the entire fucking world hates my character.

And

almost every interaction I have with an NPC, there's something I've done in the past where they are like, kill her on sight.

And I,

there, there was a, uh, an somebody who was just an NPC in the woods, who's like a, you know, like a devil-looking character, um,

whatever the fuck those guys are called.

And she sees me and it's just like, or, or it could be a tieling, too.

A tiefling.

There you go.

And this tiefling's like,

there is blood on your hands.

I shall avenge them.

And I'm like, what?

Who are you?

She like fucking draws her sword and I wipe her out with my party.

And then, you know, weeks later, happen to see a tweet where somebody's like, she's my favorite party member.

And I'm like, oh, no, that was good.

That was a character that I didn't even have the opportunity.

Yeah, I didn't have the opportunity to talk to you.

She fucking drew, she drew her sword at me the moment she set eyes on me.

And I think that's probably because

I looked through a barrel in the town she's from,

and somebody was like, Hey, you can't do that.

You got to go to jail.

And I was like, I'm just looking through the fucking barrel.

And then they draw their sword.

And then I'm like, okay, I kill that person.

And it created a domino effect where my party had to wipe out an entire town.

And the town apparently has a lot of story and a lot of quests.

It's the one where it's like tieflings and

the plant people.

Really?

What are those guys called?

Yeah, the Druids.

Yeah.

Really, the central hub of

the first part of Act One.

The first portion of Act One.

So that hub is decimated because I had to go person by person as I'm trying to get out.

I'm just like, okay, I'm sorry.

I dug through the fucking barrel.

You know, there was like a paralyzed woman in the room, and I was like, she's not going to fucking mind.

But anyway,

yeah.

So there is a huge amount of content that I'll get to see on my second playthrough when I don't play a thief.

And that,

look, it's not, it's, I can't, with any honesty, put a game like that that I haven't beaten in my tier list for today, but it is a fucking masterpiece.

And that, and we're having such divergent experiences in a game that is not quite a sandbox, but also is like a conceptual sandbox because you can kind of do anything.

Yeah, That's what's so astonishing about the design is that you can kill party members or not have them in your party and the game still works.

Because there are so many versions of this that honestly, maybe from any other developer, what you would have expected is an objective to find the Geth Yankee from that craft and partner up with them.

And maybe a hard fail if that character dies.

Like it's, it's just, but they're just like, no, you don't, you don't have to party up with them.

You don't have to be allied with them.

You don't have to keep them alive even.

And then there are so many times.

You can progress through the entire game.

And there are so many games that will, you know, at the start of the game, they'll tell you, like, your choices in this game actually matter and they impact the game.

And like, a lot of the times they don't really.

There's like a couple of options that get you to the ultimate choice that the game wants you to make.

But in this game, it's like, yeah, fucking do it.

I don't care.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

Right.

I'm interested to ask Rochelle how you are playing this game because you said that you are um about five hours into act three, and that's probably about where I am as well.

But what is how are you engaging with the world?

Are you are you around and finding out, or are you like, what are you doing?

For the first act, I was definitely trying to play as like straight as possible because I just didn't really understand, I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of like just being able to do anything, yeah.

Um,

until I

kept not being able to beat this boss.

Yeah.

And it was like on, I don't know how spoilery, but it was like on an island situation.

And

I probably saved scummed like 10 times, not being able to beat this boss.

And then I

turned him into a sheep and then pushed him off.

And I was like, oh, this game is so

cool.

Yeah.

Oh, I had a hard time.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

I had a hard time with this guy

it's sort of like a floating island at the end of Act 2, right?

And

there are a bunch of enemies there and all of my guys are just, I guess, very easy to push.

And they would just get pushed.

So I lose, like, you know, one

save, you know, Carlak gets pushed off this floating rock into the abyss.

Gail gets pushed off the next save.

I'm like, I got to make sure.

I got to make sure everybody is as center as possible.

But then there's all this crazy stuff happening.

But

that was a really tough part of the game for me as well.

I was going to say we should do a Baldur's Gate 3 episode, but we're kind of doing it now, but inadvertently.

But I do think that's a thing we should do at a certain point.

Brischelle, what character are you playing?

What's your best?

I am a rogue elf.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah.

We definitely should do it because I was thinking the same thing.

I was like, we are kind of doing this.

I can guarantee you we could talk for two more hours about stuff we haven't talked about.

Yeah.

Let me wrap up my thoughts real quick and then we'll get on these top 10 lists because we've gone way long.

Yeah.

So I think I mentioned this.

So I was saying it the second time, I apologize.

But you were talking about the tieflings earlier, Heather.

I do want to say on my tactician playthrough, I'm playing as a tiefling, which I really am enjoying because there are all these unique interactions, especially in that first area.

And I was kind of like going in, like, I think I'll do an evil playthrough just to see what it's like.

But then my Tiefling goes in the Tiefling village.

And the Druids are like, another one of your cursed kind.

I'm like, fuck you.

I'm allying with the Tiefling.

So I decided to just be good again.

And honestly, just playing a different good playthrough, but making different choices and having a different party composition.

Again, I'm seeing a bunch more stuff and seeing the stuff that I already seen through a different lens.

I also want to talk real quick to anyone who hasn't played this game because they are worried about how long it is.

Because, you know, my playthrough took me 134 hours.

It's a big boy.

Or anyone who doesn't like turn-based games.

It's like, I just don't play turn-based games.

For anyone who's worried about the length, but if you're interested in narrative games or games with choices, just play this game.

like just don't don't worry about it you don't have to rush through it and honestly if you play 20 hours of act one and that's your balder's gate three experience you've gotten your money's worth and that's probably better than 20 hours you would spend playing a complete game uh just play this game if you're at all worried about the length if that's your obstacle if that's the thing that's that's keeping you away from this uh forget about it it's it's worth playing regardless uh anyone who's worried about turn-based combat first off you can play it on explorer i did it it's totally fine and you don't have to and the the combat engine is still fun and you have a lot more room for error.

But also, I will say that your idea of turn-based combat may be like a bad JRPG.

There's good JRPG combat, but there's a lot of bad JRPG menu combat where your actions consist of attack, attack, attack, heal, spell cast, attack, attack.

It's just like, it's very monotonous and tedious.

And maybe that's what you're thinking of.

This is not that.

Your character positioning matters, both horizontally and vertically.

All these status effects that we talked about, the idea that like, you know, a lot of times in bad combat engines, the most powerful effects, like polymorphing a boss into a sheep, are gated away from you because that for balance reasons.

A lot of that,

these, these ways of approaching combat, all these different techniques you have to solving these problems are present.

And I think it's just a much more enjoyable combat engine than maybe what you are picturing in your turn-based skeptic brain.

So to anyone who is at all worried about the, you know, has reasons to not play this game, game, but is interested, play this game.

It's fucking great.

Let's get into our all-time top 10 list.

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Before we get into that all-time top 10 list.

Yes.

I want to say,

I'm pretty sure that there's a certain game that might be on Matt's list.

And I had an alarm set

for

1.30 p.m.

because I knew that a certain pre-order was going to go live on Amazon and that

if you weren't in that opening window, you'll end up paying an exorbitant third-party fee in order to get a thing.

So I just wanted to tell Matt.

Live right here on the show that I got you the Sora amiibo.

Heather.

thank you.

Heather, you don't know this, and you don't know.

Um,

I haven't told you this.

My, I had a pre-order for it that got canceled literally two days ago.

Wow,

it got canceled for me.

I got you, buddy.

Heather, what a friend that rocks.

Thank you so much.

Um, wow, I'm Nick.

I got you a kind of glove that doesn't ruin skin, it says.

Okay.

I was going to reference how you got me a PlayStation 5 back in the day because you saw a pre-order window and how that was a very thoughtful gesture for my good friend.

Yes, this is an amazing

because I...

We went that direction.

Okay.

I just want it because

I have the character in Smash.

I'm not good at Smash.

I just want it because I need to see Sora on my shelf.

That's like the main thing I need it for.

So I really appreciate that.

It'll be out mid-February, February.

I had my little alarm set and this is unbelievable.

Incredible.

Wow.

Yeah.

The podcast is over, I think.

We're done.

We're not done.

We have our all-time top 10 list to get through as we're approaching the one hour mark.

So

I'm going to say a few thoughts real quick.

I want everyone to chime in with any general thoughts.

My real quick bullet points.

I don't think,

my approach, we're not doing the sight and sound poll.

Like we're not doing like, that's the thing the British Film Institute does every 10 years of like they survey a bunch of people to try to come up.

Here's the 10 defining films of this medium.

This is not what we're doing.

We're doing our own personal lists.

Yes, that's how everyone approached it.

Because if I was doing like a sight and sound style poll, I would include games like Minecraft, Tetris, Wii Sports, World of Warcraft that maybe aren't on my personal list.

Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

These are all personal posts.

These are all personal ones.

And also, this, Heather, we asked you about this and you were clear on this.

We are ordering our lists.

So we are ranking them one through 10.

I think we go, I think go reverse.

That's the way to go, right?

Ten to one or ten.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did anyone have any personal methodology they wanted to talk about for coming up with this, or are you just gonna are we just gonna get through it as we as we get into them?

I

searched my mind palace and I just kind of was remembering like what games, what games have I played the most?

What games do I return to?

What games have I played multiple times?

What games have I told people like

are my favorites like to their face in the last like few years?

And I was saying to you guys that one through nine were easy.

And then that 10th spot, that 10th spot, the first spot on the list, really,

was the hardest one for me.

But everything, one through nine was pretty rock solid.

Heather, how about you?

I,

so I thought generationally, I thought, what's my favorite game of this era?

And what's my favorite game of the systems out in this era?

And then once I had that game, then I thought of the next era and the next era.

And then I would be like, is this game better than a game from like my second favorite choice from this system?

So that was kind of how I went: I was like, let's just name my favorite game for each console and then

stack those against one another and see if there's anything that is shoved off of the list.

Um,

so, uh,

so yeah, that's that's how I did it.

I love that.

Uh, yeah, I basically just made a made a huge list of like everything I could think of.

That ended up being like, you know, 73 games.

Um, and then I winnowed that down first to a short list of 25, which was actually very quick.

Like that, that was surprised by how quickly that went.

Uh, like Matt, like the tough thing for me was, you know, I had like six locks, and then the remaining four slots

were a struggle.

But let's get into it.

Who wants to go first?

I should not go first.

I just bloviated for way too long about Baldur's Gate 3.

I'll go first because,

like I said, this 10th spot on this list was really challenging to

figure out because

there's just a lot left on the table, right?

Your number ones are your number ones for a reason.

Those are never going to be out of question, right?

But the further you get down that list, I was like,

I could put anything in the in the 10th spot.

Yeah, 100%.

Also, we should, I should say real quick, we, Heather and me and Matt, we all have

compiled our own guesses for what we think is on everyone's list.

And on the honor system, we will say what we got right.

Yeah.

So in the in the 10th spot, because I've played this game a lot, I have a lot of fond memories of this game.

And

luckily was able to replay it again just last year when the remake came out in the 10-spot Resident Evil 4.

Wow.

A horror game.

Can you believe this from me?

Holy shit.

Wow.

But a horror action.

Yeah.

I know somebody who I wish was here to hear it.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a perfect.

To me, it's like an all-time, just great game.

I love it.

I love it so much.

And I loved the remake.

Oh, boy.

Love the remake.

Wow.

Great pick.

Unimpeachable.

Unimpeachable.

Are we doing all 10?

No, do all 10.

Okay, go to your whole list.

Oh,

you're doing your whole list?

I think so.

We don't have to, but I think it's maybe easier to track an individual's tastes.

I think snaking is going to be tough.

We could alternate if you want.

In the number nine spot, I think this game is just staggering.

It's just such a,

it still looks great, even though now it's,

gosh,

it's not that old, but it's like seven years old at this this point.

Uh, probably one of the newer games on this list.

Um,

I just think it's, it's, it's fantastic.

And, uh, so number nine, Red Dead Redemption 2.

Wow.

Red Dead Redemption 2.

That game, when it came out, just really like took over my life in a

borderline negative way.

I was like, oh, I think I'm a cowboy now.

I think I'm a cowboy.

I love cowboy stuff.

You could pull off that look.

You know what?

I think my head is too big for most hats, but I think if you put a cowboy hat on me, no one's saying shit.

Everyone's like, oh, look,

Haas is walking in.

I'm so frustrated that there hasn't been like an upscaled, nicer 60 FPS version of that fucking game released for PS5 because I didn't finish Red Dead Redemption 2 in part because I think I've mentioned on the show, I got tired of eating cowboy food, and I was dedicated to eating the food while playing the game.

But

it is such an incredible game, and I still watch other people playing it because it's also endlessly funny.

It's so funny.

It's so fucking good.

It's really really great

in the number eight spot

I Had to get this guy on the list.

I was like what

you know,

he's my guy.

I love him so much, but which of his games are my fit is my favorite

and I landed on Super Mario 3D World.

I love Super Mario 3D World so, so much.

When I played through it, I was like, I think this is just one of the best games ever, period.

I love it.

I love it so much.

It's my favorite Mario game.

And so I thought

I had to get Mario on the list.

And why not have it be my favorite one?

3D World was on my short list.

Will it make my final list?

But yeah, I was definitely one that was in the final going at minimum.

Number seven.

We talked about it.

We talked about it.

I fucking fucking so much.

I fucking love this so much.

This is my pretty funny.

I'm so happy right now, like listening to this.

This is the best.

I know last week we started, we made a joke that like

a lot of podcasts are just like lists and like people like it.

I am having fun and I do, I do like this.

Yeah.

Number seven, The Last of Us just come up.

But I was pretty surprised at where it ranked just in general.

I knew it was going to be in the top 10.

Seven is lower than I would have thought before, but once I get through the other ones, you'll hear why.

Not a lot to say about The Last of Us.

It's just good.

It's just, it's just, it's The Last of Us.

It's on the list.

It's just good.

Number six, God of War 2018.

God of War 2018.

Because, you know, I've played all these God of War games.

Kratos is my dog.

I am a ride or die for Kratos.

I love that guy.

And

I loved Ragnarok a lot too, but I think

I had to put the 2018 one because

the only reason Ragnarok is so good is because they made such a different game out of 2018 from the previous installment.

And I like all of them.

I had to get Kratos on the list,

but I wanted

God of War 2018

to represent my love of Kratos.

Number five.

Prince of Persia in the Sands of Time.

This is just,

I've probably played through this game like

10 times yeah i love it i just i love when it when it came out uh i i just i would just not stop playing it i would just roll credits and then start again because i was just like i love the i love the rewinding time mechanic

mechanic yeah it's it should be in it should be in every game i think it's so good it's so fun um and i like the other games too but sands of time i think is just it's just such a home run it's also like the the tough thing i remember that game came out of just completely reinventing a franchise and updating it for a modern age that's maybe not familiar with the originals and doing it in a way that you know honors its source but also like makes it contemporary yeah and um

you know if this remake ever comes out uh i'll certainly give it a try that's sort of the other thing about what do you think comes out first that or the rdr2 remake the i can almost guarantee that the um the the update for uh red dead redemption 2 will come out first wow before uh before the prince of persia stands up time uh remake um

but that thing about this list, too, is that all these games are still playable on modern hardware.

No,

I love this about your list.

The next one, number four, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, the original.

Number one.

Because that was one of the first games that I had.

And that game is just in my bones.

I'll never hear Goldfinger without thinking of my boy Tony Hawk.

It's never going to happen.

Never.

It's just, that's just what my brain is now.

Number three, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater.

Placed at the three spot completely coincidentally.

But that's where it goes because I've played, I own, I think I own like five copies of this game.

I own it for PlayStation.

Let's count them.

I own it for PlayStation 2.

I own it for PlayStation 3.

I bought a digital version of it on Xbox.

I have the

3DS version.

I have four versions of it.

I have not

quintuple quintuple-dipped on this game yet.

But once that volume one collection gets to about like maybe $20,

that's in the bag for sure.

Number two, Pokemon.

Let me just say,

Snake Eater, a game we covered on the show with Gene Park, correct?

That's right, with Gene Park.

And absolutely holds up.

Just a really,

just an incredible experience and one of the defining franchises in all of video games.

I think that's a good one to have represented on your list.

And being remade, you know, so we'll see.

We'll see how that remake comes out.

And then, yeah, number two, Pokemon Gold version.

It's just my favorite Pokémon game still to this day.

We played it on the show as well.

Yeah.

And I just, I just love it so much.

And it's just, to me, it's everything that a good Pokémon game should be.

And finally, number one.

Number one with the bullet.

This was the easiest one on the list.

Kingdom Hearts 2.

Kingdom Hearts

2.

Let's fucking go.

Okay.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is everything that Kingdom Hearts 1 is, but better and more.

It plays better.

It looks better.

It's more fun.

It rocks.

It fucking rules.

And that, to me, is the best video game of all time.

I love it.

Kingdom Hearts 2, baby.

I love that.

I love that pick.

I love it.

I love it too.

We had talked.

ahead of time about like sort of

secretly making lists for one another of what we thought the other

members would say and then being sort of scouts on her about how many of them we got right from one another.

Do you want to talk about that at the end of this entire segment or should we just talk about Matt's picks right now?

I think we should do it now.

Interesting.

And I will say, I wrote down 10 options for you.

I got seven of them.

The ones I got right.

Wow.

God of War 2018, Kingdom Hearts 2.

This is in alphabetical order.

Last of of Us, Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater, Prince of Persia, Sands of Time, Resident Evil 4, and Super Mario 3D World, I did guess.

The ones that weren't on your list that I guessed for you, Control, just because I know you've been raving about that game, and I thought that might be like a recency bias thing.

Elden Ring, I just know is one of your most played game this generation.

And the Tony Hawk, I guess, was Tony Hawk's Underground.

Yeah.

Yeah, Tony Hawk's Underground made the list at a time, but I just went back to the original because I just played it so, so much.

And Control almost did take that 10th spot.

That 10th spot was brutal.

Elden Ring was in the 10th spot.

It was that

one changed the most more than any of the other ones.

I should have guessed a Pokemon for you, but I couldn't figure out which Pokemon it would be.

So I just was like, you know what, I'll take a mulligan on that.

Heather, how'd you do?

I got four of them.

Wow.

But I did get them almost in order.

Wow.

With Metal Gear Solid 3, Pokemon Gold, Silver, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Tony Hawk, which was what I thought was going to be your first, your primary pick.

I had Rock Band on my list for you.

That was a great pick.

It was on the list.

Great.

It was on the list.

Because I definitely thought, I was like,

Matt might pick a rock band.

He might pick a rock band.

That one was tougher because I didn't know.

I was like,

Do I just pick rock band as a property or is there one that I like more than the other ones?

They're all functionally the same.

They just have different songs, right?

Guitar Hero also was like in contention, but I ultimately went with, yeah, Resident Evil 4 in that 10th spot.

But

all these ones that you're mentioning.

Yeah.

The big shock for me was Super Mario 3D World, which I knew you liked, but I didn't know that you loved.

And that says a lot to me here, you know.

I just...

Well,

I don't know.

It makes me feel like a kind of warmth for my friend Matt.

It's nice.

I do sort of feel nice about

just doing this, and it sucks that

you guys don't get to do it, and it was just for me only.

Yeah.

Yeah, but that's just the format we've committed.

Yeah, it's just for me only.

Just kidding.

No,

this is great.

No, it's, I mean, look, Super Mario 3D World.

You know what?

The fact that you can be a cat in that one is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but not that much.

It's just a good, it's just a good game.

One of the best Mario power-ups of all time.

Cat suit.

Absolutely.

Who wants to go next?

I feel like Nick should go last because I feel like his choices are going to be such a

strange puzzle box.

Whereas I'm pretty sure that most listeners could guess mine

because I just talk about the same 10 games over and over and over again.

That's fair.

So I'm ready to go next.

Let's do it.

All right, let's do it.

Number 10.

This is a

multi-platform game developed by

Eric Chahi.

I speak about it a lot.

on this show, and it is another world slash out of this world for, you know, Super Nintendo, Genesis, computers,

Atari ST, 3DO, MS-DOS, the fucking Game Boy Advance has a version, Sega CD has a version, there's a Vita version, a PS4 version, a Windows Mobile, a Switch, an Xbox One.

So if you want to know what my top 10 best game of all time is, you can play it basically on anything.

I think it is a masterpiece of atmosphere.

And I think it is also

one of those incredible games made by effectively one person.

And because of that, there is a thematic consistency from design to

the sort of

cinematic quality of the game.

There is no, there's very few options in Out of This World.

So, unlike most of the things that I enjoy, you kind of have to figure out how to, how to beat a certain level, so to speak, by figuring out what the developer wants you to do.

But

it is so challenging and it is so satisfying when you do that.

And the story it tells is mysterious and simple.

I fucking love out of this world/slash another world, which couldn't be called another world because in the United States there was a sitcom

with that title and it wasn't there.

They were like,

we can't call it another world, but that's what it is.

It's another world.

And it's like, no,

there's a main sitcom on television, so you can't call it something else.

Out of this world, all right.

What's interesting is there was also an out of this world show, right?

Wasn't that the one where the girl who gets stopped time?

I don't know, yeah,

sure, yeah, Maureen Flanagan.

Maybe I'm conflating, maybe I'm conflating the two.

That might be, I never watched the sitcom, I have no idea.

That's a great pick.

All right, uh, number nine: Elden Ring

had to beat the other.

It was like, okay, it's a Souls game, but which Souls game is it?

And I, you know, I, for a while, it was Dark Souls, for a while it was Demon's Souls because I fucking love Demon Souls.

But ultimately, I was like, look,

there were very few video games where every time I played it, I would go into the house and tell Mary, I fucking love this game so much.

I thought about it all the time.

I think it's going to stand the test of time as one of the most excellent.

It's so again, like Out of This World, it's fucking hard.

And it's so good when it's good.

And you can make yourself be kind of any kind of thing.

Like you can, you could be a lumbering idiot

who's a tank.

You could be a glass mage.

You can be like, it's, it's a fucking, everybody knows Elden Ring.

It's a fucking great game.

Elden Ring.

In the only game on your list where you invaded and killed me.

Look, no, I didn't kill you.

I didn't kill you.

No, that's right.

No, you didn't kill me.

I killed you because I got scared.

I started to attack you because I didn't realize it was you.

And then the moment I realized it was you, I ran away and you chased me down a flight of stairs and murdered me.

That's right.

That's right.

So, yeah, no, I, yeah, I almost accidentally

slayed my podcast brother.

Number eight,

Final Fantasy 12.

Wow.

Which

is not a lot of people's favorite Final Fantasy game.

And

it is

not even a game that shares a lot of

in it doesn't have a lot in common with the rest of the series.

Right.

Because it has a combat system that is unlike any of the combat systems of any of of the other Final Fantasy games.

You set up a programming language for your characters.

If this happens, then do this.

If this happens, then do that.

Called gambits.

And

once you set up your gambits, you enter into battle and you watch your characters do what you've told them to do.

So you're almost like a

omniscient strategist for your team.

And then if things start going south, you can micromanage and like choose things on the fly.

But most of the game, you are like, all right, let's see if this is the right set of parameters in order to take down this fucking giant armadillo.

But I loved it.

I love the story.

It's the first of the Final Fantasy scripts, which is mature.

and not a bunch of,

I don't know,

it's not hokey.

It takes itself very seriously, and a lot of people aren't, you know, it's and it does it in a different way than Final Fantasy 16 does, which is that it is still full of joy.

There's still like weird moments where you're like running around a town, shouting another guy's name in order to convince the villagers that this guy's important or that they need to pay attention to him.

So

it's still got kind of a quirky goofiness to it, but the story itself is like earnest, robust, and satisfying.

So that's my number eight.

I think it's a great pick and a great representation of the franchise.

One of the best Final Fantasies, also a personal favorite of mine in the series.

And yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

And your description of the combat system is so novel, unique, and satisfying.

Number seven, shocked at how low on the list this is.

The Last of Us.

Wow.

The Last of Us is so good, and Factions

is the best multiplayer game I've ever played.

So you can imagine my broken heart when it was announced that Naughty Dog was abandoning the factions project, which was going to be a Fortnite-style live service game.

Uh, because I would have died on my couch if they had brought that game out.

Um,

and uh, I'm heartbroken that it doesn't exist.

Apparently, Apparently, they are shutting down the faction servers soon, so I might dip back in.

Last of Us is a masterpiece.

I don't even know what

there's nothing I can say about it.

Other than to say that my number,

what am I, six?

My number six game

is The Last of Us part two.

Wow.

I'm shocked.

I had guessed you were going to do that, but I didn't

lock it in, but I had thought about you doing that.

I'm shocked you did both.

Please continue.

The longer I'm away from The Last of Us Part 2, the more I love it.

When the remaster comes out later this month, I'm going to play it again.

I know a lot of people.

didn't ever find the empathy required to make the ending of the game work for them.

But I have never experienced a game that

pained me

in the way that Last of Us Part 2 pained me.

I think it is

a game that argues for the existence of video games.

It is a game which

I think the only other medium, I'm really curious how they're going to pull it off as a TV show because I don't think it'll work as a TV show.

I think the only other medium that would be able to do this is a novel, but

it really makes you feel a thing that you can't feel while watching a movie.

I mean, you can feel like

empathy and you can feel like catharsis,

but you can't.

You can't, there's a specific embodiment of

this dual protagonist situation that I don't think works in anything else but a novel.

So, well done to the team on The Last of Us Part 2.

Incredible.

Again, I'm really bummed that you guys aren't doing factions.

All right.

Number

five, four, three, two, one.

Yeah, five.

Number five.

I

counted how many copies of this game that I own, and I

was like, oh my God, god I own 17 copies of this game on different platforms wow

so Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is

my number five I oh it's the first game that I buy when it like I

why do I own it for the 3ds like what what was I

what was I expect it's just because like if there is if there's a game that I just want to dip into for like literally six minutes,

I'll throw on Sonic 2.

It has been in my entire life, it's my whole life game.

Uh, it's not

so, is it better than The Last of Us Part 2?

I don't fucking know, but it's better for me.

All right, so that's fine.

Yeah, it's your list.

Yeah, I also do think it's better than Last of Us Part 2.

So, I think that's a great ranking.

Wow,

number four:

Final Fantasy 15.

Wow.

Wow.

Two Final Fantasies, two Last of Uses on your list.

One away from making the correct choice.

I've realized

that Final Fantasy XV is my favorite Final Fantasy game, and I don't know what to do with that information.

You love your boy.

And I

love those boys so much.

When I thought I was going to, well, when they told me I was going to lose all my hair,

I had to buy, I was like, well, I might buy a wig, but I'm not just going to buy wigs that look like my hair.

I'm going to buy wigs that would be fun to wear.

And to my shock, I purchased a Noctis wig before any other wig.

Because I was like, oh man, it would be fun to look like Noctis.

Look at the wigs right now.

That is a cool looking wig.

It's a cool looking wig.

I've been fortunate enough that.

Also, if you showed up wearing that to a record, I would not bat an eye.

No.

Nobody wear the stracks.

Nobody.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

There's wearing a noctis wig.

I've been fortunate enough that I'm doing an ice capping system where they pump frozen alcohol onto my skull while giving me chemotherapy.

And I've been very fortunate that it has worked extremely well for me during treatment.

Wow.

I know that a lot of women are not fortunate as I am, but I've kept almost all of my hair.

And that's not what was supposed to happen.

So I'm really, really lucky.

And I will just have to wear the Noctis wig for literal fun.

I also got a cloud wig because cloud's got great hair.

I

can't believe Final Fantasy XV is my favorite Final Fantasy game.

I think about it all the time.

I listen to the music for it all the time.

It's also got the same composer as Kingdom Hearts.

Like, it's a great fucking score.

And I was like, I can't believe it's not a Nobu Uametsu score that is my favorite.

Like, how is that possible?

How did this happen?

The game was released in a

slightly broken state.

Like, the development was rushed after being announced 10 years too early.

But then I also have all of the camping equipment that the boys use, and I have it in my real life.

So,

like,

I love it.

Love that pick.

Number three.

Shocking nobody, Fortnite is my number three

video game of all time.

And it is weird also because at this point, Fortnite is like

a launch platform.

Like, it's not even like I can say

Fortnite's not even just Fortnite anymore.

It's like Fortnite Racing, Fortnite Lego, Fortnite Zero Build, Fortnite Regular Build, and all of the fan-made, like, you know, fan-uploaded levels.

I don't even know what the fuck those are called.

Fortnite is the metaverse that the metaverse thinks it is.

Yeah, Fortnite's incredible.

I play it every day.

I have played it every day for more than a year.

It's perfect.

It's so crunchy and

like fun,

and and it's funny, also.

It's so funny, uh, and not in the way that like the story itself is funny, but in the way that, like,

you know, you can be playing a very serious battle royale game with a squad, and one of your squad members can be like, What if I drive a car at them?

And you're like, What?

And then somebody gets in a car and drives a car into a gas station and explodes the gas station.

It's great.

Um,

that's that's three.

Have I been talking too long?

Doesn't really matter.

No, no, you've been doing great, crushing it.

Number two:

Street Fighter 3.

Hell yes.

Street Fighter 3 Third Strike is fucking perfect.

Wow.

It's fucking perfect.

It's a fucking perfect game.

If Street Fighter 3 had

the

sort of online presence that Fortnite had, I think I would play Street Fighter 3 every day.

Um, it doesn't.

Uh, Street Fighter 3 is the game I will buy an Astro City cabinet for after I can someday buy a house.

So, I'm gonna have like a one-year window in between being able to afford to buy a house and the total collapse of civilization.

And in that window, I will buy an Astro City and play Street Fighter 3 on the original hardware.

Street Fighter 3 is fucking perfect.

My favorite thing is that I'm going to be able to

get a game.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

I was just going to say on Street Fighter 3, Third Strike, I think this is one of the best-looking games of all time.

The animation is so just gorgeous in that game.

And obviously, the character design folds into that.

But

as far as a game that's made with sprites, with pixels, maybe the best-looking one.

it's

it's such a good game and it's so

fucking pretty and it's got such a uh just the soundtrack rips

it's so good

it's so good and it it it occupies not only like uh uh like it's it's a nostalgic game for me

but it's not a nostalgic game where where I play it now, I'm like bummed out because it's not what I remember.

You pick up Street Fighter 3 and it is as perfect now as it was then.

And if you have somebody to play against and like in your in your space even like if there is an arcade that I walk into which is so rare but if I walk into an arcade and Street Fighter 3 had like a small crowd around it

I'd be so excited for the rest of my night.

Like I'd be like, oh my God, I hope these fucking dudes are good.

Cause there's like losing Street Fighter 3 is great.

Winning Street Fighter 3 is great.

I love it.

Wow.

My number one game of all time is Disco Elysium.

Let's fucking go, dog.

Hell yes.

I

don't know how that game is made.

I don't know.

I don't understand.

Like, I'm sure that if I finish Baldur's Gate 3, I will think that Baldur's Gate 3 is

a more incredible programming masterpiece with the same sort of fluidity of choice.

But I don't know that Baldur's Gate 3 will ever tell me anything about myself.

And Disco Elysium told me stuff about myself.

And I've now played it.

I've played it more than once.

And

it is, it is,

it is, I don't want to live in Revisal,

but

I would.

And kind of feel like,

like,

it's, it's a miserable place, but like something about it is like...

a siren song.

It calls to me

the design of the game,

the acting of the game, the score, the soundtrack to this game, the relationship between the two main characters that is different

every time you play it.

And to be able to see multiverse variations of that main relationship,

I think Disco Elysium is perfect.

And I can't, I'm shocked, I was shocked that I was like,

it's my favorite game ever.

Um,

I bought Harry's coat right before I got rediagnosed with cancer.

And I can't, my, one of my goals is that when I'm done with this and I can go sit at a restaurant, like outside again, that I'm going to put on Harry's coat and I'm going to, I'm going to sit outside a restaurant and I'm going to feel something, hopefully.

But yeah, Disco Elysium is,

it's perfect.

That's my top 10 list, and I don't know why that, it made me so sad.

It made me emotional, really.

It's a great list.

It's a great list.

And also, you're reflecting on games that have made an impact on you.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

Disco was also in contention

for my number 10 because I loved it so much too.

But I'm happy to report.

That of your 10 picks, I did guess five correctly.

Wow.

Those being Fortnite, Sonic 2, Disco Elysium, The Last of Us, and Street Fighter 3.

I got six right.

I got Disco Elysium, Final Fantasy 12.

I did not think you would pick another Final Fantasy.

Fortnite, The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Street Fighter 3 Third Strike.

My other ones that I thought were going to be on your list that weren't on your list, I'll just say them to you.

Cave Story, and that's a game you talk about a lot.

I love Cave Story.

It's a good game.

Earthbound.

I know you love that franchise.

I wasn't sure if you were going to get that or Mother 3.

I imagine they're on your short list.

Knights into Dreams and Portal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Portal's pretty good.

Uh, if I'd chosen an Earthbound game, it would have been Mother 3.

And I think the reason Mother 3 isn't on my list is because I have nobody to talk to about it.

Right.

And I mean that like with love for you guys, even though I bought you guys copies of the game and you never played it.

It's it's like I it's like I walked around a

corner and I saw a tiger

get on a motorcycle and drive away.

And nobody else was there.

And I haven't been able to, like, I can say, holy shit, I saw a tiger get on a motorcycle.

But if literally nobody else saw it, and then also

I don't have any way to like kind of

engage with that memory, then of course I'm not going to name tiger on a motorcycle as one of the best moments of my life.

I'm going to name stuff like my wedding.

You know, like, it's going to be like it's going to be stuff that I can engage with as an active memory.

So, Mother 3 is a great guess.

Yep.

What kind of Tiger was it?

I didn't see

if it was Tiger Woods, I'd be a little less impressed.

It's like, okay, well, like, he can get on a motorcycle.

It's a little less impressive, even though it's cool.

Tony, the

Heather, Heather, I love your list.

I think it's very Heather.

And I think also, I think it speaks to Disco Elysium that given your taste and that you are someone who, when you play games, you like to hit things,

that a game with no combat engine was able to rocket to your number one slot

really says something about that game's impact on you.

I think I said it at the time that we covered the game.

It made dialogue into combat.

Sure.

Like any, like literally conversations can kill you.

So like it wasn't like there

it wasn't like there wasn't shit that was like happening uh and jeopardizing you and and your ability to go f like you're my

i i told my mom about the game and i was like you should play this game and she like started playing it and was like i hate this game i woke up tried to get a tie off of the fan and died and like

that's

that that means it's combat that's combat for me all right nick

it's your turn, man.

Thanks, Heather.

Finish us out.

Why don't you jerk us out?

Jesus.

I don't know.

I'm trying to

raw.

No, no, it was good.

It was on brand.

I'm going to begin by listing five games that were my final cuts without comment.

So just these, these were ones that I almost were

a five-way tie for 11th place, let's call it.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Celeste, Diablo 2, FTL, and Stardew Valley.

Celeste, my toughest cut.

I have a Celeste poster in my home office, but just couldn't make room for it.

Let me get into my top 10.

In the number 10 slot,

The Secret of Monkey Island, 1990, developed and published by Lucasfilm Games, later LucasArts, directed by Ron Gilbert.

One of the most impactful games in terms of my tastes.

It's the first game I remember playing that had had dialogue trees.

The first game I remember that I found funny.

The sort of absurdist, high-concept comedy that's present in that game,

for better or worse, like kind of just sort of affected my sense of humor and the kind of comedy that I like.

I also think it just has incredible puzzle design,

a phenomenal score.

I think it absolutely holds up.

And I played so many point-and-click graphic adventures in the 90s, basically every LucasArts game that came out.

I felt like that had to be, that sort of genre had to be represented.

And the secret of Monkey Island for me is the apex example.

Also, shout out to my grandpa who got me that game.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't have played it otherwise.

R.I.P.

Anyway, number nine:

The Legend of Zelda.

No colon, no blank of the blank.

The Legend of Zelda, the 1986 NES game developed by Nintendo RD4, 4, published by Nintendo and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takaji Tesuca.

I thought about the Zelda franchise and I was like, this has to be represented on my list because I've played basically all of these games and I love this franchise so much.

And I also just like, I, hey, I had Nintendo Systems.

That was the first, that was my introduction to console gaming.

I felt like the NES was so impactful in terms of like, that's when I was playing games really avidly for the first time.

And that's when I was really getting into this medium.

And when I think back on that, The Legend of Zelda was the game that, again, most informed my taste going forward.

Just the sense of exploration, the sense of discovery, the idea of secrets, the idea of some sort of like open-ended structure, the kind of, you know, it's not a Metroidvania, but it has the same sort of thing of how you have an open world that you develop new ways, new methods of traversal that allow you to explore more of it that's seemingly inaccessible at first.

A game that, that, you know, I played as a little boy without a guide, and it probably took me 25 to 30 hours to get through, but in my memory, it's a thousand hours.

And also, the Zelda, I finished the most times.

I played the first quest and the second quest so many times.

I think it absolutely holds up.

And I think it's my favorite of the franchise and one of my favorite games of all time, coming in at number nine.

Number eight.

I want to have a really hard game on this because that's a big part of my gaming taste.

I like a game that challenges me.

Yeah.

And I appreciate a game where you have to fail repeatedly because failure is learning and failure is self-improvement and failure is progress.

And that's a thing it took me a long time in adulthood to come to understand.

But now some of my most memorable gaming experiences are games where I've felt like I've come up against a wall and I've triumphed.

Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice being a notable example.

But that's not the game that's number eight.

That's not the game I'm picking.

The game I'm picking is Cuphead, 2017 game developed and published by Studio MDHR, directed by Chad Maldenhauer and Jared Moldenhauer.

First off, just a pristine aesthetic game, just like one of the best soundtracks ever, one of the best looking games.

I love how it plays.

I love that it's just like, it's like oops all boss fights.

I love that it's basically a long boss attack game.

I've played through this multiple times and the DLC.

I think it's so fucking fun.

I just think it's pure fun.

And I think it's also just like a game where, hey, I've lost a bunch on certain bosses.

There were ones that I thought maybe I couldn't beat, and I had to take a break and had to come back to it.

I know it's not the hardest game ever made.

I know it's not like a rage game, but it is a challenging game.

And it's a game that's notorious for its difficulty level that appears on hardest games of all time lists.

I wanted that kind of...

type of game represented.

And I think Cuphead is also a type, a genre of game, which is a 2D side-scroller that I absolutely love and were some of my first favorite games and it is a modern version of it that I will come back to because I fucking love it.

Cuphead is awesome.

Cuphead's an incredible masterpiece, both, you know, visually,

audio, from an audio standpoint, and especially from a gameplay standpoint.

How much is

Miss Chalice putting her foot on the scale for?

Look, if the lovely Miss Chalice wasn't a part of the delicious last course, maybe the Cuphead doesn't make it into the eighth slot.

But she is, so that's where it sits.

Speaking of horny games, number seven,

and Matt, I thought this one was going to be on your list.

Hey, wait a minute.

Hades.

2020 roguelike roguelite, developed and published by Supergiant Games, designed by Yamir Rao, Gavin Simon, Greg Kazavin, Eduardo Gorenstein, and Alice Lai.

This is maybe where Diablo 2 would have gone.

And I thought about it more.

And my thoughts on Diablo 2, you know, kind of your best of list is going to be a living document.

My thoughts on Diablo 2 were affected to some degree by Diablo 2 Resurrected, which was a fantastic remake.

But as I was playing it, I was kind of like, I think that game served me at a certain time in my life and I've kind of moved on from it.

I don't know if I need to return to it.

As much as I appreciate its design, as much as it kind of impacted me, the other games I've listed so far are all games I will return to.

Diablo 2, I don't know if I'll ever play again.

I don't know why I'd play it over necessarily even.

Diablo 4 if I want that type of experience, even though it's a staggering game and one of my favorite games of all time.

Hades, I think, represents both that type of, you know, isometric action RPG game.

I think the action is better and more compelling than it is in any of the Diablo games, but also it's got the roguelike structure, which I have really come to appreciate in the past decade.

And a lot of my favorite games, especially indie games that have come out since the 2010s, have been roguelikes.

And I think it's just, I think it's the best roguelike.

And I think it's one of the best action RPGs ever made.

It's also just, again, incredible character design, awesome art, perhaps the most polished game I've ever played.

Just,

as far as I have experienced, completely bug-free and just packed with so much content.

A pristine game with also incredible voice acting, incredible writing, and incredible soundtrack.

Just the total package.

Wow.

That brings me to my number six pick:

Planescape Torment, 1999 RPG developed by Black Isle Studios, published by Interplay, and designed and written by Chris Avalone.

So, 20 years before Baldur's Gate 3, we had a DD set RPG that had the same amount of just choice and flexibility and exploring the same bleak and dark and raunchy themes,

an incredible level of writing, and just so much you could do in this game.

So many ways you could play it.

Also, just like incredible, distinct world building.

And also, you know, funny.

It's like it's its own.

It's very much its own thing, even though it was in that era of the Infinity Engine, uh, isometric,

you know, BioWare-style RPGs, even though that was in that same thing, it felt like its own thing.

It felt like a unicorn, it felt like an utterly unique game.

It still does to this day.

And you know what?

It's influenced games that we've already cited, like Disco Elysium.

That comes in large part from inspiration from Planescape Torment.

It also certainly inspired my gaming tastes.

And just another dense, dialogue-driven, character-driven RPG that

I plan to revisit, especially after spending some time with Baldur's Gate 3 and remembering how much I love that game.

Number five,

Super Mario World, no 3D, just Super Mario World, the 1990 game developed by Nintendo EAD, published by Nintendo, directed by Takashi Tesca.

I thought about Super Mario 3D World for this slot or for the Mario slot.

It came down, it came really close to me, but ultimately Super Mario World, I think, is just a better overall experience for me and certainly one that lingers stronger in my memory.

I just, it's, it's, what can you say about this?

It's a fucking incredible Mario game.

It's the apex of the 2D Marios.

And Mario Wonder, when you come out, I think everyone's reaction is like, this game is awesome.

It's not quite Super Mario World.

It's not quite Super Mario Bros.

3, but it's awesome.

Super Mario World is Super Mario World.

And as such, it's number five.

Hell yeah.

Number four.

What's that?

Some overlap?

We got some overlap.

We sure do.

Disco Elysium 2019, developed and published by Zone, designed and written by Robert Kurvitz.

I thought about putting this even higher.

I think it makes sense in where it is when I list my other games, at least for me.

But just

probably the best writing in any video game ever.

An amazing aesthetic, completely just a total novel approach.

to game design and coming from to RPG design and coming from a studio out of fucking nowhere.

Who was what was this Estonian developer that no one was paying attention to and that comes out with one of the defining games of the genre and of the medium?

Just an incredible game.

We've done a whole episode on it.

I've played through it multiple times.

I've played through this multiple builds and I've played through it multiple ways.

And just the idea that like, as opposed to playing through a traditional RPG as a you know, as a fighter and then as a sorcerer and seeing what's different here, that you can play this through as like a coward and then as a fascist and then as a drunk.

It's just such a fascinating approach to character development and player agency.

Number three is a very different approach to an RPG, but one I very much appreciate and one I think is the apex of its particular style of RPG, the JRPG, 1995's Chrono Trigger.

developed and published by Square, directed by Takashi Takeda, Yoshinori Katasi, and Akihiko Matsui.

I mean, just like, I adore this game.

I think it's just, it's got the best approach to any sort of splintered timeline that's ever been in anything that's interactive.

Incredible art.

Maybe my favorite soundtrack of all time by Yatsunori Mitsuura.

Incredible storytelling, all the different endings.

A great combat engine, one of my favorite JRPG combat engines up there with Persona 5.

And

yeah, I mean,

it's sometimes tough to articulate what you absolutely love.

I think we're all running into this, what you absolutely love about a game.

I just fucking love this game, and it hit me at the right time.

I don't know if I ever talked about my experience with this, but I didn't get into Chrono Trigger at its release.

It was years later when the PlayStation 1 was already out,

when I had my hands on a used copy of Chrono Trigger and finally played through it.

And it was like a very much like the A, where has this been all my life, even though whatever, it was just like four or five years, but just having that feeling of experiencing this game then and afterward.

Number two, I think, is potentially the best game of all time.

It's either this or Tetris,

and it's my number two game on my personal list.

Portal, 2007, developed and published by Valve, designed by Kim Swift.

If I was going to cheat, I'd put the orange box here because that also includes Half-Life 2 as well as some other stuff.

But I feel like putting a compilation game is against the spirit of the exercise.

I wanted to make the tough decision.

And I think Portal is just,

it's just like nothing else, except Portal 2, which to me isn't as good.

Incredible writing.

Chet Falasek and Eric Wolpaugh were the principal writers on that.

I've talked about Kim Swift's design on this.

It's just like, it's an incredible premise that's fully explored, fully exploited.

And

just this one idea is carried away.

carried all the way past the finish line and then some and it does it in five hours it's like it's like the perfect length for this idea like not every game needs to be a sprawling, massive undertaking.

It can be an approachable length.

And that's a big credit to this game is that it doesn't overstay its welcome.

I could replay this again and again when we replayed it for the podcast.

I was like, I'm loving every second of this.

It's so charming.

The music is obviously great, especially that final track and still alive.

And, you know, like The Cake Was a Lie was a meme before meme culture was really a mainstream thing.

I mean, it's just, it's,

I think this is what video games are all about.

I think this tells us, tells an interactive story that could only be interactive.

Which brings me to my number one pick.

Here we go.

I did the math and I've been playing video games for like 37 years, I think,

at my age.

You know, the first game I remember playing was Radon Bungling Bay on my dad's Commodore 64.

And

I wanted to reflect the many generations I've gamed or I've played over the course of my

life and the games that have influenced my taste.

And as I was going through this, I was realizing that a lot of the games that really impacted me are from recent years.

You know, I've certainly got some games from the 90s and before, but I've got some games from within the past five years.

And that really speaks to, you know, again, it's just, it's cool to be alive in this, experiencing this medium as it evolves and as new heights are reached

and

with this, with this art form.

And that brings me to my number one pick.

Baldur's Gate 3, 2023 game developed and published by Larian Studios, directed by Sven Vinky.

Wow.

And it's my favorite game.

It's just your favorite game.

I think it's my new favorite game.

Wow.

I have a new favorite game, and it's Baldur's Gate 3, my number one game of all time.

I love it.

I just think

it marries what I like about

RPGs like Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium with AAA production values and an incredible combat engine.

And

I think it's just a staggering achievement.

And I think it's an unmissable experience for anyone who likes narrative games.

And for me, it's, I think, you know what, fuck it, whatever.

Why can't it be my favorite game?

That's what I was thinking.

I was thinking like Bilbo with the ring.

Why shouldn't I keep it?

Why can't this be my favorite game of all time?

It's how I feel right now.

No, that's where it goes.

No one is fighting.

I'm just saying, it's my number one.

No, there's no argument for your pick.

None.

Yeah.

These are all really great picks.

Yeah.

You saying Portal in the number two slot being as close to a perfect game as Tetris is.

I hadn't thought about that before, and I agree.

I 100% agree with that take.

That's a great take.

That's really, really good.

Thank you.

It's the only actually funny script in a game ever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will disagree with you there, but I, but I think that it is a very funny script.

I think there were lots of funny games for me.

Yeah, you've never played Ratcheting Clank 3 up your arsenal before.

I'm like those.

But

my guesses that I got correct were Chrono Trigger, The Secret of Monkey Island, Super Mario World, and Planescape Torment.

Some other games that I had on the list that you

mentioned Diablo 2.

I had Diablo 2 in there as potentially.

I had it.

Well, that was my first guess.

I guess I didn't have that ranked as your number one, but Diablo 2 I had on the list.

I had Into the Breach on the list because you talk about that game a lot

I thought that the case of the gold the golden idol was gonna sneak in there.

Yeah,

and then for some reason I wrote down Donkey Kong Country But for some reason I was like first I ascribe Donkey Kong Country to Nick more than anybody for some reason all those are on my long list except for Donkey Kong Country

a left field guess, but um I think maybe it's because you like I think I think you like the music in that game more than you like the game.

Yeah, I do like the David Way score.

I also like kind of just the general lore of donkey kong those are great games yeah really really good i i uh i got four correct uh planetscape uh baldersgate three monkey island and disco elysium wow uh i had guessed uh final fantasy six uh which i think is your chrono trigger slot i i thought you liked six better than chrono trigger because i went back and forth on what which one you'd choose uh ftl was on my list i also thought you were going to say stranding.

I thought you were going to be a death stranding top 10.

I thought you were going to say stranding.

I thought someone was going to say stranding.

I'm a little surprised none of us said stranding.

But I think we all have a lot of affection for that game, but it's maybe not on our personal top 10.

Stranding would probably be my 11.

I didn't make an extended list.

I kind of knew mine.

There was only one swap I did on my list, and it was Elden Ring for Marvel versus Capcom 2.

Wow.

Wow.

But ultimately, I was like, I don't know, man.

Like, I think I think more about Elden Ring than Marvel Capcom 2.

I also had Dave the Diver on your list, which I love Dave the Diver.

It's very recent.

And I knew you loved it.

But yeah, I think we know each other pretty well.

I think so, too.

I think also like the, you know, even with the near misses, it's like, you got where my head was at with a recent game because I'm not like, I'm, that's, that's how my tastes evolve, and I'm not afraid to be, to, be a prisoner of the moment.

Um, so yeah, I think, I think we all did, I think we all, we all did well in terms of our own lists and also acknowledging each other's list.

Uh, let's recap each, we'll, we'll, we'll bounce back around, we'll, we'll list our 10 10 to one real quick.

Uh, mine, number 10, the secret of Monkey Island, the legend of Zelda, Cuphead, Hades, Planescape Torment, number five, Super Mario World, Disco Elysium, Chrono Trigger, Portal, and my number one, Baldur's Gate 3.

Heather.

Out of this world, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy 12, The Last of Us, The Last of Us, Part 2, Sonic 2, Final Fantasy 15, Fortnite, Street Fighter 3, and Disco Elysium.

Wow.

Wow.

And for me, Resident Evil 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, Super Mario 3D World.

The Last of Us, God of War 2018, The Prince of Persia and the Sands of Time, Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater, Pokemon Gold Version, and Number One, Kingdom Hearts 2.

Let's fucking go, dog.

Wow.

I love it.

Let's fucking go.

I might play it today.

Kingdom Hearts 2?

I might go pop it on.

I kind of love the idea of all of us firing up our number one game of all time today.

I mean, I'm going to do it because I'm replaying Boulder's Gate 3.

So

I'm doing it anyway.

I might do it.

I might go see what's

in, see what's going on.

Will we update this every year?

We'll find out.

It could be up to me.

I can't wait to read people's top 10 lists on our Get Played Discord.

Yes, please.

People are going to put it, it's going to happen.

And

I'm going to learn.

There's, I think, if your top 10 novels, your top 10 movies, your top 10 songs, your top 10 video games are a portrait of you drawn in a very specific palette.

And I really am looking forward to learning more about the listeners on their top 10 lists.

And if you're just somebody who's on Twitter, get off there and come to our Discord because I think most of us have abandoned ship at this point.

I haven't logged in in over two years.

All right.

Hey, I got a segment for us if we want to do this.

Let's do the segment.

This will be a fun pivot.

This is a new game I came up with.

E-game or H-game.

I'll read a portion of a review from the Steam Store.

You tell me if it's a review of an E for everyone rated game for all ages or a hentai game for sweaty perverts.

Okay.

Now you did this.

you constructed this game from memory, is that correct?

Yeah, these are my reviews.

All right, so we understand.

I will read a portion of the review.

I will put it to you, e-game or H-game, and you can each guess.

All right, great.

Great.

First up, this is a recommended review.

Watched Mark Applier's gameplay of this game, thought it was funny, and my friend gifted it to me.

Is this an e-game?

or H-game.

So I know that Mark Applier is like a famous Twitch streamer, but I don't know what his deal is.

I don't know what the type of content that he streams on his Twitch streamer, on his Twitch stream.

I'm going to guess it's an H game

because I could see somebody thinking that's funny.

I'm going to guess an E game because he's a Twitch streamer and I don't know if you can stream H games.

Good point.

That is sound logic.

However, Matt takes it.

Matt is correct.

This is an H game.

Wow.

Let me finish the review.

Forgot that Steam loves to show everyone achievements.

10 out of 10 good game, but I hope my cousin who I added doesn't ask about my bestiality achievement.

Crowdy face.

This is for a review of a game I played, Honey Pop, the Match 3 Hentai game.

I had that on your list as well.

It's a good game.

Second up.

You don't have to like Hentai to like the game.

It's good gameplay.

Next up.

This is not recommended.

Overall meh experience.

I kept making myself like this game, but it's dull for what it is.

Characters and their tiny dialogues are boring as hell.

Management mechanic is strange and unbalanced, and it feels like an issue soon in this game.

Is this an E-game or H-game?

I don't, I don't,

I'm just going to go ahead and be honest.

I'm not well versed.

in the hentai game genre, so I don't know what kind of offerings they have.

I don't know how robust or how developed these games actually are.

This seems like it has more systems in it than what I would think an H game would have.

So I'm going to guess an E-game.

Matt guesses E-game.

I'm guessing H-game because my new theory is that every one of these is an H-game because Nick designed the game.

So Heather's guessing H-game, Matt's guessing E-game.

Matt takes it again.

This is an E-game.

No, you're not going to create your dream cat cafe.

You're not even going for a nice cafe that's fine with mechanic stats.

The game feeds on our desperate need for this kind of games, but doesn't care to satisfy it.

Not worth the price, but we don't have an alternative, do we?

That's a very angry review for Cat Cafe Manager.

Okay, gonna add that to my wish list.

Keep in mind, it's not recommended by this user.

That's true, yeah.

Okay, it's uh, Matt has two Heathers yet to get on the board.

Next up, recommended.

As a fan of farm sim games, I loved this one.

I've spent almost five hours to manage and design my farm, max out my tools, and unlock all carpenter crafts.

Is this an E-game or H-game?

So I'm thinking, I'm thinking this might be like a misdirect.

Right?

Like, because this is a pretty

specific review.

It has like elements.

to it like you it's making you think it it's a uh nick picked this because he thinks we're gonna think that it's a a farm sim game and it's rated E for everyone.

I'm thinking this is like

some kind of like fuck farm 12.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to guess it's an H game.

Matt Guess is H game.

I am going the opposite direction.

I'm wondering if

Because at this point, I can't win if I guess if I only guess what Matt guesses, right?

So I'm going to guess that it's an E game and he chose it to make us talk about the idea of a farm simulator that was an H game, and that that was the content he was hoping we'd provide.

So though I do think of a game called like, uh-oh, I fucked my turnips.

Uh,

and I'm going to guess that it's an E for everyone.

Like a mistake?

Like a mistake?

Whoops.

Oh, man, I did it again.

It was an accident.

I'll just finish the review.

I almost forgot that this is a hentai game after the two-hour mark.

It's an H game.

Matt gets it.

It's called Village Rhapsody.

Pretty innocuous title for a very horny game, where I guess it's basically Stardew Valley, but you romance everyone's wives.

That's a good title, though.

I feel like you could get away playing that surreptitiously.

100%.

No one's going to know that that's a hentai game.

Yeah.

Oh, Nick's playing Village Rhapsody.

That sounds fun.

I won't investigate further.

Yeah.

Next up.

Bestiality achievement.

This is a recommended review.

And this game's an early access, in case that affects your thinking at all.

Recommended.

At least four hours of entertainment so far.

I got everyone to 100% and all hearts and whatever.

Is this an E-game or H game?

All hearts and

whatever.

At least four hours of entertainment so far.

I got everyone to 100% and all hearts and whatever.

Is this an E-game or H game?

Let me go first.

I'm going to guess an E-game.

Other guesses E game.

You're going to guess an E game.

I'm going to go ahead and guess an H game.

I don't have a good reason.

I'm just going to guess H.

Matt is building up an insurmountable lead here.

What the fuck is this?

Continuing the reason.

You don't feel good about me getting these right.

Continuing the review.

The jizz scenes are better, but I still wish there was more semen.

Oh, my God.

Also, I feel with some of the poses, there should be more skin-slapping noises and yummy, squishy noises to go along with the thrust.

Jesus.

Jesus is a review of a game called Orc Massage.

Orc massage?

Oh no.

There's plenty of jizz, but not enough semen?

As per this person's recommended review.

All right, one more.

One more.

We can stop there if you want.

Do you want to tap out now?

I feel like whatever the last one is is worse.

Let's do it.

Okay.

Tap out.

I'm winning, baby.

This is a recommended review.

I recommend this game because it allows you to do things that are impossible in real life.

Is this an e-game or H-game?

Well, fucking is always possible in real life.

E-game.

Well,

I'm going to say H-game because maybe some, you know, less fortunate

reviewer

isn't as lucky in love, let's say.

So I'm going to go ahead and say H-game.

So it's like,

Kitchen Disaster 3, I fucked the refrigerator.

Whoops, it was an accident.

How'd that happen?

How'd that get in there?

I'll read the full review.

I recommend this game because it allows you to do things that are impossible in real life, like talking to girls and having sex with them.

This is a review of Escort Secrets 18 Plus.

I got it.

This is H game.

Matt, clean sweep.

You got every single one right.

I just got to say, in regards to this one, also me getting it number one with the bullet, like getting the exact type of review too.

I didn't write this and I didn't see these before.

By the way, my...

There's some X-Files shit right there.

I don't know what to think about this.

Methinks he doth protest too much.

By the way, this was surprisingly hard to research because I just had to look at a bunch of games and browse through the reviews and find ones that were plausibly either.

So from Steam standpoint, I was just browsing hentai games for like 90 minutes.

Well, yeah, sort of more conservative numbers for you, it seems like.

That's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Rochelle, do you have a plug?

You can follow me at yard underscore underscore sard.

Yard underscore underscore sard, as always.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Also, check out our paywall show, Get Animate, where we're watching Pluto.

That's right.

I'm not certain what episode we're on.

I think it's three,

but it might be two.

No, it's three.

We're watching Pluto on Get Animated, which you can find on our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played, which also has all of our

old episodes, our

premium DLC content, everything up at patreon.com slash get played.

Wow.

Check all that out.

And you know what got played this week?

Our favorite games of all time.

Wow.

Hey, I love it.

I love it.

That was a hit gum podcast.