The 2025 Get Played Games of The Spectacular Year Awards

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Speaker 1 It's gaming's biggest night, and we are here on the red carpet for the game of the last year awards.

Speaker 2 Here on Get Blade. That's right, it's actually the Games of the Spectacular Year Awards, but close enough.
And all of video game stars are out.

Speaker 3 That's right. Donkey Kong and Pauline, they're making their red carpet debut in matching little outfits, and it's really cute.

Speaker 1 It's Kratos. Kratos coming right down the red carpet.
Where's he been in gaming for the last couple of years?

Speaker 3 Could he have something be cooked up under the covers? Under the...

Speaker 1 Where's Kratos been? But he's here tonight.

Speaker 3 Aw, they grow up so fast.

Speaker 2 Toddling down the red carpet from Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Speaker 3 It's Lou. Oh, how adorable.

Speaker 3 It's Lou. And toddling down the red carpet, it's the baby walking man from Baby Steps.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 1 that's so sweet.

Speaker 3 He can't do it. Oh, he fell over.
Oh, fuck, he fell over. Oh, fuck.
Oh, fuck. He fell over.
Oh, fuck. Fuck.
Oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Speaking of fuck, Gertzman is here. I think he's one of those celebrities from

Speaker 1 gaming, and he's covered in Pikmin from head to toe. Pikmin.
The Pikmin are all over him.

Speaker 1 He might be nude under that full Pikmin suit.

Speaker 3 The red Pikmin are making shirt and the blue Pikmin are making pants. That's right.

Speaker 3 Red shirt Pikmin,

Speaker 3 blue pants, Pikmin.

Speaker 2 What a way to honor legendary video games journalist and pioneering games podcaster Jeff Gershman here on Get Play

Speaker 3 to acknowledge him on the red carpet.

Speaker 1 He's on the carpet, he's here for the awards.

Speaker 3 He sure is. He's been a video game big star.
What happened?

Speaker 1 What went wrong there? He's just covered in Pikmin.

Speaker 2 And nude.

Speaker 3 We're all nude under our clothes. You're right, we're all nude under our clothes.

Speaker 1 He's wearing Pikmin ass clothes.

Speaker 3 He's not nude.

Speaker 3 He's fully. I can't see any of his.

Speaker 3 You can't admit that we're not, that we're all nude under our clothes. I don't know what we got in here.

Speaker 2 We are all nude under our clothes, and so is this next red carpet guest. Oh, he looks fantastic in 4K.

Speaker 2 From the remaster of the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, it is Link.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 Hubba hubba.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Link.

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 3 Oh, great. Jesus Christ.
I was hoping I was. I wasn't going to see this.

Speaker 2 What's wrong?

Speaker 1 What's wrong? Who do you see?

Speaker 3 I see an ex of mine. Oh, no.
It's a chair from Date Everything. Oh, boy.
Wow. This is awkward.
That's embarrassing.

Speaker 1 Oh, I think they see you. I think they see you, Matt.

Speaker 3 That's great. Matt, just trying to hear.

Speaker 3 Oh, hi. Yeah, hi.
Hi. Good to see you.

Speaker 2 Oh, hey, speaking of awkwardness, we have a very muscular caped hero with slumped shoulders and the head aimed squarely at the carpet from dispatch its major depression sufferer phenomena oh boy

Speaker 3 is going through it i'm not trying to make light of that but that is that is fun it is funny here's the thing it is funny in real life as it is in the game a depressed superhero is funny funny it is

Speaker 1 it is funny but you know what's not funny our next guest on the red carpet is the lobby from blueprints it's just the entryway room making its way down the red carpet god reminding me how how much I fucking hate that place.

Speaker 3 I was worried about who these next people were, because they seem to be,

Speaker 3 to put it lightly, disfigured in some way, but it is actually just the cast of mind's eye. Their face just happened to be populated on the sides of their heads.
Wow.

Speaker 3 It's kind of where it would normally be, which is the front.

Speaker 2 Nightmarish IRL. And oh, you know, the celebs turn out to promote their new projects.

Speaker 2 And with a Super Mario Galaxy movie on the horizon, there he is, Chris Pratt Mario got any words for us Pratt Mario

Speaker 2 mommy Mia I'm Mario from the Mario movie

Speaker 3 love Mario that's so good and I can't wait to hear

Speaker 1 just hear more of that voice in in the movie that's good stuff it's one of a kind oh my god oh no what is that it's a dog it's just a dog dragging a dead duck Oh my god, that's just

Speaker 1 the dog from Duck Hunt.

Speaker 3 Exactly. We can't be be gross down there.
It's not that adorable.

Speaker 2 It's not just the contemporary stars, it's legends too.

Speaker 1 Legends of gaming!

Speaker 2 And of course, the most important guest of all on the red carpet, you, the player.

Speaker 1 Now get the fuck inside.

Speaker 3 Get the fuck inside.

Speaker 2 Get in your fucking assigned seat and sit the fuck down.

Speaker 3 And by the way, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 2 Except when the applause sign goes up, then you better clap your fucking hands off.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and you know what?

Speaker 3 Clap them cheeks too while you're at it.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck, I've got some Pikmin on me.

Speaker 3 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 We look back on the year in gaming in 2025 and hand out a different kind of hardware as we host our annual Games of the Spectacular Year awards this week on Get Played.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, HAC, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

Speaker 2 That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Speaker 3 Hello, everyone, and folks. It's gaming's biggest night.

Speaker 2 It's gaming's biggest night. This is our final new mainline episode of 2025, our annual Games of the Spectacular Year awards, the GOAT sees.
And I would say 2025, a good year for gaming.

Speaker 1 An excellent year for gaming.

Speaker 3 I'd say, on the whole,

Speaker 3 pretty freaking good,

Speaker 3 if I do say so myself.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to see who wins awards at this biggest gaming's night podcast.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 3 Biggest gaming's nights. Gaming podcast.
Biggest nights podcast.

Speaker 2 Biggest gaming nights podcast.

Speaker 3 Biggest games nights.

Speaker 2 Biggest night and gaming.

Speaker 1 Biggest gaming's nights into dreams podcast. Yeah, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 That's it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. No.
Biggest Gaming's Nights into Dreams podcast. Yeah.
Yeah. No, no, no, no, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's been, it's been really quite a year.
There's been a lot of hits, a lot of misses, and some new, some new hardware came out this year, too. That's true.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 A lot of been some crazy stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Somehow Concorde keeps coming out every year and also keeps being deleted from our memories.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know what?

Speaker 3 I had forgotten about Concorde. We did it up.

Speaker 3 And it's crazy because

Speaker 3 that's not the only one of those this year. There's like so many of them.

Speaker 2 I assure you, I'm going to forget about it again.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
I can't wait to forget. I can't wait to forget about it.
Concord, what the heck?

Speaker 1 I think Concorde came out last year or didn't come out. I can't remember.

Speaker 3 It's been.

Speaker 2 I think it was 2024.

Speaker 3 I think it was the, but then this year's was Mind's Eye. Mind's Eye was like the one, but I think you could still buy Minds, I think.
I don't know. Who could say? I don't know.
Who could say?

Speaker 3 Nick, I just noticed your hat. Hog Island Oyster Co.

Speaker 3 I was just over there, but I didn't get to go in.

Speaker 3 I was really disappointed.

Speaker 2 Some great oysters, great meal there. Man.

Speaker 2 Up in the Bay Area.

Speaker 3 Up in the Bay. Up in the Bay.

Speaker 2 You were up in the Bay. You were up in SF.

Speaker 3 I was up in SF. I got to see

Speaker 3 the level from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. That's right.

Speaker 3 It was cool that they decided to build it after the game came out.

Speaker 3 But guys, you know,

Speaker 3 these award shows, award shows in general.

Speaker 3 The hosts come out. That's kind of what we're doing.
They do a little talking. They sort of address the crowd.
They sort of say what's going on.

Speaker 3 What we got to look forward to. Sometimes they do a little joke.

Speaker 2 Billy Crystal, Seth McFarlane, Jimmy Kimmel.

Speaker 3 My favorite Ricky Gervais.

Speaker 2 They're going to come out and they're going to say some

Speaker 2 pre-written jest at a Hollywood royalty.

Speaker 2 It's the opening show monologue.

Speaker 1 Are you teeing yourself up for something, Matt?

Speaker 3 I maybe wrote a little joke.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's hear it, man.

Speaker 3 Let's hear it. I see the kid from Blue Prince is here.
Ah, but it appears he hasn't made it to his seat yet because he keeps going into the wrong rooms.

Speaker 2 I thought it was really good.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's more, actually. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. So the joke is coming.

Speaker 3 Maybe he'll get there tomorrow.

Speaker 2 So a little tag there on the end.

Speaker 1 Why are you in so much physical pain, man?

Speaker 3 It hurts. It fucking hurts.

Speaker 3 I used all my brain power.

Speaker 2 Should we maybe drop a little bit of pertinent to the show news?

Speaker 3 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 I think it's worth sharing in the main feed.

Speaker 3 Great.

Speaker 2 That, you know, we've been doing Get Animate over on our Patreon for some time. Yes.
At the end of this year, GetAnimade is going away, but our Patreon is remaining. Yes.

Speaker 2 Our Patreon will change to a video game, et cetera, format. So we're going to have more gaming behind the paywall, but also some other assorted content.
We're going to figure out what that is.

Speaker 2 But one thing we are going to have very early on is a Patreon episode in our old format. How did this get played? That's right.
Coming in 2026.

Speaker 1 How did did this get played is coming back, and we've chosen it. And I guarantee,

Speaker 1 30 seconds into that record, I'm going to be talking about what a mistake it was.

Speaker 2 For people who came on in the get played era, this podcast began and we used to play the worst and weirdest video games. And we largely centered entire episodes on notable failures like Superman 64

Speaker 2 or Night Trap. But then over time, or Night Trap, more of a notorious game than an outright failure, but that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 These games that that were renowned for their oddness or for their low quality uh we eventually just were enjoying just talking about video games in general more so that's where the format progressed and here the get animated format is progressing um into or i guess regressing in part yeah

Speaker 1 it is played rather um it's devolving

Speaker 2 but also we do that we've we've noticed a lot of our audience is just like you know less interested in anime and that's okay we will still have some get animated episodes in there on occasion for maybe for maybe special notable releases.

Speaker 2 Something like the chainsaw man movie might warrant a get animated episode. Um, and also, if you're a get animated listener, thank you for your support.

Speaker 2 If we want to discontinue the Patreon, completely understand.

Speaker 2 Um, but for anyone who remains, I will all the archived animated episodes will remain, and the ad-free mainline plate episodes will still be available. That's look for that in 2026.

Speaker 3 New year, same

Speaker 3 show, same less get Patreon. Yeah, that's right, yeah,

Speaker 1 guys.

Speaker 1 It's been a year, it's been a year, it really really has.

Speaker 2 Shall we get into it?

Speaker 1 Let's get into it.

Speaker 2 Let's begin the Goatseas.

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Speaker 1 The goat sees.

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Speaker 1 That's what makes you healthy. All the little guys.

Speaker 2 We're also sponsored by White Collar Crime. It's legal.

Speaker 1 Guys, I'm so excited.

Speaker 3 So excited.

Speaker 1 We're here at

Speaker 1 the Goatsees, and I think some of these categories are about to hit the stage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let me introduce the first one. Our first category is best subtitle.

Speaker 2 The original Italian, the stickball special, turkey and provolone. Those may be the kind of things you think of when you hear the word subtitle.

Speaker 3 You goddamn fool.

Speaker 2 But in video games, subtitle refers to an additional word or phrase following a colon that's typically unnecessary and if anything makes the whole thing more confusing the nominees for best video game subtitle are hey ranch can you edit in uh the sound of me killing myself with a gun

Speaker 3 after that intro

Speaker 2 the nominees for best video game subtitle are

Speaker 2 rage bound from ninja gaidan rage bound

Speaker 2 throes of the watchmaker from sea of stars throes of the watchmaker

Speaker 2 Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii from Like a Dragon, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii,

Speaker 2 Retold Immortal Pillars from Age of Mythology, Retold Immortal Pillars,

Speaker 2 The Ghost of Glamping from Duck Detective, The Ghost of Glamping, and the Goatsy Goes to, Wow, a shocker!

Speaker 3 F from Silent Hill F.

Speaker 2 Accepting the award on behalf of Silent Hill F is Mary from Silent Hill 2.

Speaker 2 In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill.
You promised you'd take me there again someday, but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now, in our special place, waiting for you.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Mary. Very cryptic.

Speaker 3 Yeah, who knows what that means, but I guess I'll have to go visit the town and see what's up.

Speaker 2 We're gonna have to visit Silent Hill and investigate.

Speaker 3 Which honestly, this is actually just as good a spot as any to do this. Oh, but we have have to announce our very first live show coming in the year 2026.

Speaker 3 We're playing Silent Hill.

Speaker 2 Check us out in Silent Hill.

Speaker 1 We're going to be doing it right there in the foggy streets of Silent Hill.

Speaker 2 And let's just say, our special guest's head may be a little bit triangular.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I would say if you're thinking that our first guest for the show has many people would describe as a normal-shaped head, think Think again, bitch.

Speaker 1 I've also heard he has a pyramid-shaped penis.

Speaker 3 And he's going to show it live on our show.

Speaker 3 Is it hairy? We'll find out. Is it hairy?

Speaker 3 Oh, that's one hairy penis.

Speaker 3 You want to hear?

Speaker 3 You know, we talk about a lot of games on the show. Yeah.

Speaker 3 A lot of games that we're playing. Yep.
Sometimes we'll talk about a game that maybe we're interested in playing. Yeah.
Maybe a game we haven't played yet.

Speaker 3 But sometimes the amount of games that we're playing or the amount of games that we talk about on the show,

Speaker 3 not to the satisfaction of the listener. That's true.
This category is games that people wanted us to talk about/slash play more of. Okay.

Speaker 1 And the nominees are

Speaker 3 Clara Obscure Expedition 33.

Speaker 3 Nobody was mad or anything that we, quote-unquote, bounced off of it.

Speaker 3 Ranch did finish it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, even though one of the four of us finished it. That's right.
Ark Raiders, a game we all learned about last week.

Speaker 3 And Blue Prince, even after we all rolled credits, we did it. We did do it.
We did a full episode.

Speaker 3 Apparently, still more game in there.

Speaker 3 And the winner, a games that people wanted us to talk about slash play more of.

Speaker 3 It's Claire Obscure Expedition 33. I think a big thing about this year is that it's kind of

Speaker 3 Claire Obscure Expedition 33's year.

Speaker 1 It is, it is. And what a triumph the game was, at least as far as I played it before I bounced off of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know, you have to give it up for those French.

Speaker 2 It is a really cool game. It hit me at a weird time of the year, and then I didn't return to it.
It's just one of those life circumstance things. Yeah.
But I mean, like, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 Like, it took me till winter break when we stopped down last year to finish Metaphor Refantasio and ended up loving it. So maybe I'll do the same thing with Claire Obscure.
We'll see.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll see. It's, it's the year's not over yet.
It could happen.

Speaker 2 But hey, probably not the only award that Claire Obscure will win this award season. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's aiming to be a big night for Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

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Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Beck Bennett. I thought I was Beck Bennett.
No, no, no, no. It's okay.
Kyle Mooney. Yes, sorry about that.
Exactly. No, all good.
All good. Thanks, buddy.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And we host the show, What's Our Podcast here on Head Gum. But we want to make sure you heard about a very special episode with a very special guest that we just released in the feed.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's in the feed. It was sponsored by Squarespace because they were appalled that we didn't have a website for our show yet.
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Speaker 3 Kindergarteners? They wanted to do something about that. So we built a flawless, beautiful, perfectly designed website live on the pod with our very special guests and very web-savvy guests.

Speaker 3 Should we tell them who it was?

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Speaker 3 I don't think we have time for that. Is it a person? No, it's not.

Speaker 3 It's Finn Wolfard. But Finn had a bunch of great ideas for the website.
Beck, you had some amazing ideas for the website. Thanks, Mean.
You had some amazing ideas.

Speaker 3 Well, I was sort of driving the thing. I was sort of like clicking and I was like, let's put a little, let's put some widgets in there.
I was talking about widgets.

Speaker 3 You kept on using that phrase widgets. Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff there.
And you might want to check out the hippo. Just go check out the website.

Speaker 3 Know that there's a hippo video and know that you're going to want to watch that. We had a lot of fun making this episode.
We all finna make this website.

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Yeah, yeah, this is a gift for you. Okay.

Speaker 3 It's just like it's a selfless thing we did for you. Thanks to Squarespace for making us build a website, sponsoring the episode, and for supporting creators across the Head Gum Network.

Speaker 3 Go check out the bonus episode, What's Our website from What's Our Podcast on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts? Go to squarespace.com/slash beckandkyle for a free trial.

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Speaker 1 Our next category is one dedicated to a single game. It's Blue Prince.

Speaker 1 And these are the nominees for the top rooms not drafted in Blue Prints. And the nominees are:

Speaker 1 single hole bathroom,

Speaker 3 single hole,

Speaker 1 hallway with a doctor pepper puddle,

Speaker 1 the kitchen/slash hospital waiting room,

Speaker 1 eighteen-door garage.

Speaker 1 And the winner is

Speaker 3 Fuck Library.

Speaker 1 Accepting the award for fuck library for Blue Prince rooms not drafted. It's the Blue Prince himself.

Speaker 3 God.

Speaker 3 The Blue Prince is like a little creature man.

Speaker 2 I mean, imagine he's been driven insane by the labyrinth he lives within.

Speaker 3 Can you imagine you lose, you lose something in one of the rooms and then you run out of steps and you have to go to sleep, and then you have to, to get the thing you lose, you got to go back in the, you got to get that.

Speaker 3 Hopefully, you get that room. Fucking nightmare.
I would just hope that my house would just be normal at some point. Yeah.
God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it really, really makes you value a normal house. But congratulations to Blue Prince.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Congratulations, Blue Prince.
This award was for you.

Speaker 2 Our next category is Horniest Game.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 2 Let's face it, people love to fucking suck.

Speaker 2 But why bother with building social connections and organically turning romance into physical affection when you have a gamified version that turns navigating dialogue trees and gift-giving into virtual sex with an animated character?

Speaker 2 The nominees for Horniest Game are.

Speaker 3 He didn't read this, by the way.

Speaker 2 Date Everything,

Speaker 2 Dispatch, Hades 2, Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 8 Update,

Speaker 2 Steam Early Access Game. Adventures of Willie Dickhard.

Speaker 3 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 And the Goatsy Goes to.

Speaker 2 What a Dark Horse. Power Wash Simulator 2?

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 2 Accepting the award on behalf of Power Wash Simulator 2 is the hose.

Speaker 2 Wow, congratulations, The Hose. Wow.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 I don't want to get choked up or anything like that, but I've just known the hose for a long time. Yeah.
And he's worked so hard. He really has.
And it's just, it's, it's, it's nice to see.

Speaker 3 It's just nice to see old friends finally getting their due. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, you know, they say that this industry isn't a meritocracy, but awards like that make me realize it is.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That's right.
It is.

Speaker 1 Everybody loves fucking that hose.

Speaker 3 There's a lot to be said about, you know,

Speaker 3 gaming outside, you know, you're playing games.

Speaker 3 Everybody's playing them. Everyone's playing games.
But sometimes significant gaming moments happen when you're not sitting in front of your TV with a controller in your hand.

Speaker 3 Sometimes you experience gaming moments outside of gaming.

Speaker 3 And so this next category, best non-gaming, gaming moment of 2025, parentheses, parentheses, for me personally.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 So this only applies to just me.

Speaker 2 Very specific award.

Speaker 3 The nominees are the time that I went to the Nintendo store in San Francisco pretty recently.

Speaker 3 The time I won a bid on a new Nintendo 3DS XL on eBay and then modded it.

Speaker 3 The winner.

Speaker 3 The winner for best non-gaming gaming moment of 2025, parentheses, for me personally, it's of course when I got to meet the great Hideo Kojima.

Speaker 1 Hideo Kojima.

Speaker 3 And accepting this award is me.

Speaker 3 That was a really cool moment. We got to go to the

Speaker 3 Death Stranding 2 on the beach

Speaker 3 premiere in Los Angeles and got to see

Speaker 3 footage of the game that Heather and I were confused by and thought was real.

Speaker 3 And then told that to Hideo Kojima after we saw the stuff and he laughed at us.

Speaker 3 He thought we were dumb.

Speaker 3 It was very, very

Speaker 3 surreal moment to meet somebody who has obviously a mythic presence on this show, but is such a,

Speaker 3 it was like meeting a beetle, kind of. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was kind of crazy. Yeah.
Just unbelievable experience. I hear that.

Speaker 1 I hear that. Speaking of Death Stranding 2, our next category is the best delivery mission in Death Stranding 2.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 And the nominees are

Speaker 1 eight rubber bands for a guy on top of a mountain.

Speaker 1 A stack of pizzas delivered to an active war zone.

Speaker 1 10 copies of Bicentennial Man on DVD to a woman giving birth to an oil dog.

Speaker 1 A nuclear weapon for a guy named John Hates Ohio.

Speaker 1 And the winner is 30 Fabergé eggs to a family inside of an earthquake. Excepting for the family who lives inside of the earthquake, is the family who lives inside of the earthquake.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for giving us these Fabergé eggs.

Speaker 3 But we are having a lot of trouble keeping them on the shelves.

Speaker 3 Clearly, acting our earthquake.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Sam Porter Bridges.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 The emotion in that acceptance speech had me shaking.

Speaker 3 I'm shook.

Speaker 1 I'm shooting myself.

Speaker 2 Our producer, Rochelle Chen, Ranch, you had an award you would like to give out, correct?

Speaker 1 I do. I'm very excited to announce the category, the most alpha guest podcast host of the year.

Speaker 1 The anthropomorphic Bobcat Bubsy from Bubsy.

Speaker 1 The guy who won't stop talking about those comic books that Ellie likes from The Last of Us.

Speaker 1 The guy who has beef with the dragon from Elden Ring.

Speaker 1 Ash Ketchum from the World of Pokemon.

Speaker 1 And the Resident Evil 4 merchant from Resident Evil 4.

Speaker 1 And the winner of the most alpha podcast guest hosts, goes to

Speaker 1 Ash Ketchum from the World of Pokemon.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow, I'm so happy to be here and accept this award on behalf of me.

Speaker 1 Now, it was recently told to me that the Get Anime podcast is ending. And that means I'm going to fucking kill you guys because Jesus.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 Fucking hell. I don't want to get killed.
Please don't kill me. Certainly not by the likes of you.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, then don't be a bitch and bring back the Get Anime podcast.

Speaker 3 It'll appear periodically. We'll do it sometime.

Speaker 1 We'll do it someday. So you're telling me I still have my job?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 I want my weekly retainer. I want my per diem.

Speaker 1 And I want my monthly salary up front every beginning of every month.

Speaker 2 Look, you sometimes have, you somehow have one of the best lawyers in entertainment because despite all the turmoil and layoffs at headgum, your contract is ironclad.

Speaker 3 It will be honored.

Speaker 1 Well, there's Johnny Cochran for you.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 His lawyer's Johnny Cochrane.

Speaker 3 He's still got those little gloves out, too, just in case.

Speaker 1 He's a good man, he's an excellent lawyer.

Speaker 2 Congratulations, Ash Ketchum.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 2 And nice work, Ranch.

Speaker 3 I think that's bullshit.

Speaker 3 I worked so hard finding all them comic books Ellie likes.

Speaker 3 I have a little song I've prepared for

Speaker 3 the award, actually.

Speaker 3 I'm singing it to the award.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 If I were to lose you,

Speaker 3 I'd probably lose myself. Oh, boy.

Speaker 3 I miss you award. I love you.

Speaker 2 Not NIF anymore. You lost it.

Speaker 3 I'm going to

Speaker 3 go to a putting range and see if anybody just wants to fucking just take my ass out.

Speaker 3 I'm sick of this shit.

Speaker 2 It's time for a special award here at the Goatseas, the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Now we honor a figure who made video game history, whose entry into the medium of 2D and later self-reinvention in 3D pushed the boundaries of what could be a video game, and perhaps what should be a video game.

Speaker 2 Wearing sunglasses, chomping cigars, giving money to strippers and saying, shake it, baby, mowing down pig cops with a miniaturization gun, reciting lines plagiarized from John Carpenter movies.

Speaker 2 Today's honoree is the first true anti-hero in video game dumb, whose rampant sexism and general annoyingness has truly stood the test of time. One could say he has deserved this award forever.

Speaker 2 This year's Lifetime Achievement Goatsy goes to

Speaker 2 Duke Nukem.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 Congratulations, Duke Nukem.

Speaker 2 Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award is Duke himself.

Speaker 2 I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of gum. Now let me take a piss in this toilet.
Whoops, that's the lectern. And there's a whole bunch of people here.

Speaker 2 And I accidentally whipped my dick out and then got a boner and then shit my pants.

Speaker 3 Hail to the king, baby.

Speaker 3 Wow, congratulations, Duke.

Speaker 1 Congratulations, congratulations, Duke.

Speaker 1 Guys, every award show deserves a little snack. And that's why I had a full large pizza delivered

Speaker 3 to the record. That's right.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this will be a clip or you'll just have to infer that there is an actual giant pizza here while we're recording.

Speaker 2 Very thematically on point with a Death Stranding 2 acknowledgement earlier. A pizza has been delivered to someone in need.

Speaker 1 Now, I want everybody here to have a slice of pizza.

Speaker 2 I'm down to have a slice of pizza.

Speaker 1 So why don't you enjoy yourself a slice of pizza while I

Speaker 1 get onto this next category?

Speaker 3 Wow, okay.

Speaker 2 Don't have to talk me into it.

Speaker 1 Ranch put the pizza on like a TV tray and slid it towards me like I was a horse.

Speaker 1 Our next category is the top Fortnite collaborations in the year 2025. This is a bit of a long list because there are a lot of collaborations in Fortnite every year.
Whoa.

Speaker 1 And the nominees are: the Mariah Carey God Killer Gun,

Speaker 1 the skin of tribal tattooed John Lovitz,

Speaker 1 The skin of John Wayne Gacy.

Speaker 1 The skin of Minnie Mouse.

Speaker 3 The car from Father of the Bride.

Speaker 1 Justin Bieber as a sexy cat. The car from Malcolm in the Middle.

Speaker 1 Lego George Bush Sr.

Speaker 1 Wendy's all-beef toilet man.

Speaker 1 The car from David Cronenberg's crash that James Spader fucks Holly Hunter in.

Speaker 1 And the winner of the top Fortnite collaboration of 2025 is the entirety of Ghost of Yotay playable on a television inside Homer Simpsons living room.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 Accepting the award for the entirety of Ghost of Yotay playable on a television in Homer Simpson's Simpson's living room is Peely from Fortnite.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck. That's right.
All of these guys are mute.

Speaker 1 I think he's trying to tell us about something terrible that's coming.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's like pointing at where his mouth would be. Yeah, he's like, no words are coming out.

Speaker 1 He's a desperate-looking banana.

Speaker 1 What a miserable-looking banana. All right, they're playing him off.

Speaker 1 I guess we'll never know what it is that he's saying.

Speaker 3 I hope whatever it was wasn't bad. Yeah.
I hope it wasn't bad.

Speaker 1 He looked desperate.

Speaker 2 And I hope it wasn't political i hope it wasn't the pantomime uh pantomime equivalent of that uh famous memo that said uh bin laden determined to strike us that was ignored by the national security apparatus

Speaker 3 i hope it wasn't anything like that yeah that would be pretty that'd be pretty bad because you know what i'll say it they picked the wrong guy to deliver the message we need somebody that could say it someone who could vocalize but maybe there's some sort of reason that it's trapped inside peely's brain.

Speaker 3 I guess we'll never know. It could be.
You know, we do, I feel like on this show,

Speaker 3 we play a lot of games. Yeah.
We play a lot of games. We play a lot of games.
And sometimes we do,

Speaker 3 you know, a little bit of coverage on like something like a

Speaker 3 Nintendo Switch 2 welcome tour, or we'll dip into Marvel Rivals for like an episode just to see what's going on. But sometimes we play a full-ass game

Speaker 3 for this show, and then we report on it. Yep.

Speaker 3 So, this category is best game we played for the show this year.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 3 And the nominees are

Speaker 3 Blue Prince.

Speaker 3 Spoiler alert, it's not that

Speaker 3 Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Speaker 3 Mother 3.

Speaker 1 That was this year?

Speaker 3 That was this year. Jesus Christ.
Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Speaker 3 And the winner for Best Game we played for the show this year

Speaker 3 with a fucking bullet

Speaker 3 mother three baby let's fucking go

Speaker 3 that's just me screaming yeah yeah heather's screaming what a game what a game we got to experience and just i i i think back about uh you know the games that i've played this year and that is still chief among the best of the best yeah what a fucking video game i mean i just like i was really glad i finally uh was cajoled into experiencing it yeah And Heather winning, winning the bet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm really happy I won the bet for the Switch 2 release date,

Speaker 1 which came at a time that seemed insane. Yes.
Just the middle of the fucking summer.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it should, it really should have been

Speaker 3 the weekend of July 4th, like I said.

Speaker 1 But I'm really happy that you guys got to share in a game that meant so much to me, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. What game,

Speaker 3 I mean, not to derail the awards, I for sure would have made us do Kingdom Hearts 2. Yeah, right.
What game would you have picked, Nick?

Speaker 2 Uh, I thought I'm trying to remember what it what I had

Speaker 2 what I had pitched. I can't remember if it was we had picked.
I was either gonna do Planescape Torment or uh Half-Life 2.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, I think it was Half-Life 2. Yeah, that would be wrong.
That would have been really cool.

Speaker 1 It would have been, but maybe we can do those things anyway. We can be

Speaker 1 such a pleasure to play your game.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it'd be really fun. Yeah, uh,

Speaker 3 but yeah, that's that was it for my categories.

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Speaker 2 It's time to acknowledge some of the figures in gaming we've tragically lost this past year.

Speaker 2 It's the Goatsies in Memoriam.

Speaker 2 Trillions of aliens in Deep Rock Galactic Survivor massacred in a genocide by greedy space dwarves,

Speaker 3 countless Oni Raiders in Ghost of Yote,

Speaker 3 decapitated,

Speaker 3 amputated, cut in half.

Speaker 3 Hornet,

Speaker 3 lots of times in my playthrough of Hollow Knight Silk song.

Speaker 2 Toxic, the dick-out supervillain from Dispatch, punched in the dick.

Speaker 3 The Xbox Series X,

Speaker 3 Series S, Game Pass,

Speaker 3 and basically anything that is in Xbox.

Speaker 3 Gunned down in its prime.

Speaker 3 The developer of Postal Bullet Paradise.

Speaker 2 Suicide by AI-generated assets.

Speaker 3 The BTs I pissed on in Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Speaker 3 Drowned in my piss.

Speaker 3 Me playing Blue Prince.

Speaker 2 Killed myself after being fucked by RNG for the last time.

Speaker 3 The hype for Grand Theft Auto VI.

Speaker 3 A second delay this year.

Speaker 3 Just put it out, goddamn.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 Rest in power.

Speaker 2 Gone but not forgotten.

Speaker 3 We love you. We love you.
We love you.

Speaker 2 And you know who else we love? Someone who's a fixture of Get Played. Please welcome to the stage the Resident Evil Merchant.

Speaker 3 Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm happy to be a special guest star of the Ghostly Awards of 2025.

Speaker 3 I heard a lot about things that we lost this year in gaming, and I thought I would provide a list of things I personally lost in 2025.

Speaker 3 Number one,

Speaker 3 an onion ring that I had padlocked.

Speaker 3 Number two,

Speaker 3 three identical loose wets.

Speaker 3 Loose wets?

Speaker 2 I can picture it somehow.

Speaker 3 Three, a mint condition map to Ronald Reagan's grave.

Speaker 3 Four,

Speaker 3 my belt that I use for measuring things.

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess we know how long the belt is. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Five,

Speaker 3 a yellow Dracula.

Speaker 3 Number six, Mr. My Little Legs.

Speaker 3 Mr. My Little Legs? Number seven,

Speaker 3 a Dutch oven that was not mine to begin with. Wow.
That's actually probably the worst of all.

Speaker 3 Number eight,

Speaker 3 kid-sized Drano bottle, half-drank.

Speaker 3 Number nine,

Speaker 3 sprayable yogurt.

Speaker 3 Number ten, the nine o'clock dog.

Speaker 3 Number eleven, my punch card for Mr. Dick's Big Dick Drinks.
Let's just suck out of the Big Dick at the bar.

Speaker 3 And number 12, my most saddest lost item.

Speaker 3 The key to the tunnels under Jiggly Loob.

Speaker 3 Jigglylube? Wow.

Speaker 3 This was

Speaker 3 the list of things I lost in 2025.

Speaker 2 Wow, also gone but not forgotten. Thank you, Resident Evil Mershant.

Speaker 3 If you see my onion ring, it's the one with the padlock.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I figured it'd be kind of hard to.

Speaker 3 How could you steal it?

Speaker 2 Well, here's what I would suspect. I think someone could probably eat the onion ring around the padlock.

Speaker 3 But it was locked.

Speaker 2 Well, if you bit a chunk of the onion ring circle, then you could easily detach it fully from the padlock.

Speaker 3 The padlock is guaranteed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think this is just maybe a...

Speaker 3 If you lock anything up, it's guaranteed not to be stolen.

Speaker 2 Again, just from an OPSEC standpoint, I think the point of failure is that the onion ring itself is very easy to break.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 like Nick is saying, one bite, and that thing is just free. I don't, I,

Speaker 3 I understand what you're saying here,

Speaker 3 but it makes no sense. You understand, but it makes no sense.

Speaker 2 What's your favorite thing to dip an onion ring in?

Speaker 3 You know, I went to a restaurant once that put out free onion rings for the table. Okay, that's why.

Speaker 3 I could probably replenish my stock there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And the dipping that they provided was salsa.

Speaker 3 And I was kind of like, are we sure about this?

Speaker 3 And I did it, and it kind of fucks. It's good.
That's good stuff.

Speaker 2 That sounds like an AI restaurant.

Speaker 2 It's so fucking weird.

Speaker 3 It was very strange.

Speaker 2 What kind of salsa was it like a p is not like a picota guy?

Speaker 3 No, like you know like a paste picante type thing It was fine.

Speaker 3 It was good enough. The Roja.

Speaker 3 A little roadside restaurant near Pismo Beach.

Speaker 2 I would say Pismo Beach, California. I would say that the camp there in Boy Scouts.

Speaker 3 I would say the some stay he's still there.

Speaker 2 I would say the

Speaker 2 I like I like the little ranch dressing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's usually the go-to for some rings.

Speaker 3 I've got an out-of-the-box answer. Hold on, man.
You wait, hold on. What? You have an out-of-the-box answer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, tell me.

Speaker 3 Well, you ever get onion rings with like a in a fish and chip situation?

Speaker 3 Like, oh, I would want to get French with

Speaker 3 an onion ring instead.

Speaker 2 I've actually never, never done that with fish and chip.

Speaker 3 Well, you can sometimes find a restaurant that you get that option. Wow.
Anyway, you would never think to dip an onion ring in tartar sauce, but it's actually a delicious combo.

Speaker 3 That does sound really good. That sounds good.
Yeah, I can't. Out of the box, like my boy, Matt.
Wow. My best friend.
What the hell? And I was his best man. That is true.
Yeah, as a matter of fact.

Speaker 3 Residential Four Merchant did do some remarks at my wedding. Beautiful ceremony.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a lot of fun.
I watched them consummate the marriage. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 It was very helpful for you to cheer me, Hod like that.

Speaker 2 I actually remember him as he was giving his remarks holding an onion ring with a padlock on it. So obviously pretty important to me.

Speaker 3 Oh, there was a whole time. Do we know that it was still with me at that time? It was still with you when I got married last year.
Over a year ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 14 months ago, you still had the onion ring.

Speaker 3 That narrows down the window of when I lost it. That's true, that's true, it sure does.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Shall we do some real awards?

Speaker 3 I kind of want to.

Speaker 2 I do want some onion ring, even though we just.

Speaker 3 Which way do I walk?

Speaker 2 You could just walk down the stairs there and the just straight straight straight steps.

Speaker 3 No, not straight into the wedding. I want one more step.
No, no, no, he doesn't.

Speaker 2 No, there's a lip of the stage that you're going to fall for.

Speaker 3 That's a dick stage. Stop kissing the lip of the stage.
You're going to fall off like Kelsey Grammar

Speaker 3 and say, Oh, dear God. Is this curtain? No, this is a dead end.

Speaker 2 Which way? No, yeah. Go to the wings.
You see, like the sides of the stage. It's called the wings.
So go to either wing, and there's some stairs.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, out of there.
All right, bye, everybody.

Speaker 2 Okay, bye, Resident Evil Merchant.

Speaker 3 When Kelsey Grammer fell,

Speaker 3 maybe the funniest he's ever been. And he's been funny.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Pretty good. Pretty good fall, but kind of scary because he's such a big guy.

Speaker 2 He's a big guy. Said Joe Bob himself.

Speaker 1 Man, he's super MAGA now, isn't he?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 well, he's also in Money Plane.

Speaker 3 First category.

Speaker 2 First category,

Speaker 2 I don't know if everyone has a pick here, but I have one for me. Disappointment of the year.

Speaker 3 And I'm making... We got time, brother.

Speaker 2 I'm taking a big swing here. Come at me, but Nintendo Switch 2.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 it's like,

Speaker 2 why do you need a Switch 2 right now? Bonanza is a good game. But beyond that, a Metroid Prime 4, I mean, the reception scene is pretty muted, too.

Speaker 2 I haven't played it yet, so I can't speak to that myself. And then in terms of other, I guess, if you really want to play some of these

Speaker 2 Switch exclusive games in 4K, you have that option. But like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 The mouse, which is one of the big new things, feels like really awkward to use.

Speaker 2 I just, like, I'm surprised by how little use I'm getting out of a new piece of Nintendo hardware in its first year of release.

Speaker 3 This is an interesting...

Speaker 3 I probably wouldn't have said this myself,

Speaker 3 but I can agree with the sentiment. Yeah.
Yeah. Because I do, While I do, I love my Switch 2.

Speaker 2 It's a sleek piece of hardware.

Speaker 3 It's slick, it's nice.

Speaker 3 I was playing it just last night. I have all my Switch 1 games on there.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 But where are the Switch 2 games? Right? I even tried to boot up Mario Kart World last night. Just was like, yeah, you know what? Let's play this.
Didn't even really care to play it.

Speaker 2 It was the world's kind of whatever.

Speaker 3 I think the pre, you know, I'm not saying anything new here, but Mario Kart 8 is like the Mario Kart. That game is so fucking good and so great.

Speaker 3 I did get Metroid Prime 4 and started playing with it. And it's like,

Speaker 3 I do think that there is something that has happened in all of sort of any type of discourse that has become poisoned by everybody having childish brains

Speaker 3 now, where, you know, somebody gives something like a 7 out of 10, an 8 out of 10, and everyone's like, we're cooked. It's not good.
And it's like, that's like a perfectly good score for something.

Speaker 3 And I've played it. I'm like, yeah, this is fine.
This is exactly what you want from a Metroid Prime 4 game.

Speaker 3 It's not reinventing the wheel or anything, but it's still like extremely fun and I think well-made.

Speaker 3 But I saw somebody posit a theory that it's also a Switch, you can play it on Switch 1 also.

Speaker 3 And because

Speaker 3 it was originally announced for Switch 1, there's speculation that they had to put it out for Switch 1 still

Speaker 3 because otherwise there could have been like a class action lawsuit or something. Interesting.
Like false advertising or something something like that.

Speaker 2 It could be that, but also I think just as easily, it's like how a lot of the early PS5 exclusives were also on PS4 because it's just like, you know, it's a much bigger install base.

Speaker 2 So I don't think it requires

Speaker 2 necessarily like they had some, they were worried about some contractual obligation. They probably just said we could sell more units.

Speaker 3 Hopefully this Virtual Boy accessory breathes some new life into the Switch 2.

Speaker 1 Guys,

Speaker 1 it would be an honor to have another Virtual Boy episode episode based on the Virtual Boy re-release for the Switch 2.

Speaker 2 I think it's inevitable. I think it's only a matter of time.

Speaker 3 I'm going to have to figure out how to write off that accessory somehow. So, yes,

Speaker 3 we should do it. We should do five maybe.

Speaker 1 The craziest thing to me is going to be having two of those in my office.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. A Virtual Boy and a Virtual Boy emulator.
Yeah. Really crazy.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Gosh, because I don't even know what's on the horizon really for Switch 2. Like,

Speaker 3 what to be excited about?

Speaker 2 I was going to say the Switch 2 mouse, but I was like, that feels like kind of an easy one to do.

Speaker 2 I was like, all right, so let's, you know, I think just in terms of the

Speaker 2 my personal reaction to it, and I also think just like a larger sentiment of the Switch 2 is that it was much anticipated, but then kind of landed with a shrug.

Speaker 2 Of course, it will ultimately become ubiquitous, but still, I don't think it's been a, outside of Bonanza, a particularly notable first year for the Switch 2.

Speaker 1 Was it rushed to get an installed base before the inevitable PlayStation handheld or Xbox handheld? I don't know.

Speaker 1 It seems like a strange thing for Nintendo, a company that is honestly synonymous with big launches. Like your systems generally come with huge system-selling games,

Speaker 1 even if that's just Wii Sports. Yeah.
You know, like it is like the signature title of the Wii is the game that came with the Wii. The signature title of the NES was the game that came with the NES.

Speaker 1 The signature title of the N64, etc. The game, the systems that flop the Wii U,

Speaker 1 to some degree, the GameCube

Speaker 1 are systems that don't come with that initial huge explosive title. And I don't think Bonanza was that title.

Speaker 2 Yeah, NES, Super Mario Bros., I'm not sure if that was available at launch, but that was the most strongly associated with its most common pack-in game or Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and later

Speaker 2 the ROB accessory. Then there was Super Mario World.
There's Super Mario World for Super Nintendo, Super Mario 64 for Nintendo 64. Yep.
GameCube, you're right.

Speaker 2 You kind of get like, what, Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race, what else was on there?

Speaker 2 It was, it was kind of like, I don't think Smash Brothers was quite at launch, Smash Melee, but it was like, it was not like a, there was not like a huge, like, this is the game. Right.

Speaker 2 And then the, but then the Wii, obviously with Wii Sports, Wii U, what were the Wii U launch titles? Was it New Super Mario Brothers Wii U? New Super Mario Brothers U?

Speaker 1 I truly don't know.

Speaker 2 I can't remember. And then,

Speaker 2 you know, of course, the Switch.

Speaker 3 Had Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild.
Yeah. You know, it's,

Speaker 3 it's,

Speaker 3 I think that there will eventually be something for it.

Speaker 3 Right. There will be something that will be like worth having one.

Speaker 3 But I do think we are sort of at this point in gaming where there's, I don't think we're ever going to be like, there's not much more further we can go in terms of like, there will always be maybe like more power.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 But they like. I don't think so, Tim.

Speaker 3 But there probably won't be huge leaps forward graphically anymore because like, what? It's going to look like a fucking human?

Speaker 1 I think, and I, and I still think we should do an episode on this also. I do think that the Vision Pro, if there were games for it, would represent a huge leap forward.
You think so? Like, like.

Speaker 1 As much as I like the Oculus or the,

Speaker 1 what was it, the Vive? What the fuck was that thing called? I don't remember.

Speaker 1 A PlayStation 2 VR, all excellent systems, all excellent experiences. The Vision Pro is so laughably advanced and strange an experience that you're like, how, why,

Speaker 1 why isn't there a game that is representative of the power that's being put out by this

Speaker 3 machine? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it would be unsettling. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I have a disappointment of the year. Oh.

Speaker 3 And I think you guys already know what it is. Uh-oh.

Speaker 3 Pokemon Legends ZA. Oh, boy.
Sorry, buddy.

Speaker 3 I think they should go fucking

Speaker 3 back to school and relearn your goddamn alphabet.

Speaker 1 Wait,

Speaker 1 you're mad because they put the Z before the A?

Speaker 3 No. I'm mad that it sucks.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's not that even that it sucks, is that it could be good. You know what I mean? Like, there's some of it is like fine enough and fun, and some of it even, like, looks okay.

Speaker 3 But then the stuff that looks bad looks bad. The stuff that is not fun to play is not fun.
Yep.

Speaker 3 It is just such a bummer. And

Speaker 3 I wish I had liked it more. I wish they had stuck to more of what was good about Legends Arceus.

Speaker 3 And I think they just need to sort of just really sit down and think. They won't do this.

Speaker 3 But sit down and think about what... they need to do to fix this franchise.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because it is like, I think kids will always be playing it, but like the hardcore fans that have been, I've been playing Pokemon games for

Speaker 3 your whole life. My whole life.
Yes, yeah. God,

Speaker 3 like 28 years, probably.

Speaker 3 And it's just like

Speaker 3 they could be good. Yeah.

Speaker 3 If they actually tried and made one good, it'd be fantastic, but they just don't seem to care about that aspect of it anymore.

Speaker 2 I mentioned this in a previous episode, but I was at the barber earlier this year.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it was like the barber and his client, and both dudes in their 30s were spent the whole haircut complaining about the Pokemon franchise.

Speaker 3 It's made me very interested in this new Digimon game that just came out that I think I probably will check out at some point to see what's going on there because everyone's like, this game is actually good and like is eating ZA's lunch.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I'm disappointed as well, even though I would never play it, that ZA is, you know, under delivers because we could have called you, if you loved it, Matt Zapodaka.

Speaker 3 That would have been really cool. That's good.
And it's such a shame that the game is not good, so we can't call me that. No, yeah.

Speaker 3 Because if it was good, I would be like, yeah, let's do it all day.

Speaker 3 But because the game is bad, we just can't.

Speaker 2 You don't want that association. No, it's fucking great.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 3 Call me that, even though the game sucks. God damn.

Speaker 3 It is really such a bummer, but I still,

Speaker 3 look.

Speaker 3 I can't definitively declare that it'll be my last Pokemon game that I buy

Speaker 3 until I know that they're going to make a good one. Because what?

Speaker 3 They announce one next week. I'll be like, oh, baby, can't wait to get that pre-order in because I'm fucking sick.

Speaker 2 No, it's like, look, unfortunately, your relationship with Pokemon is a lot like Trump's tweet about Coca-Cola, whatever. I'll keep drinking that garbage.

Speaker 3 Look, a broken clock is right twice a day.

Speaker 1 My biggest disappointment might come as a shock because I'm not like a vocal fan of the franchise or anything. And that was the delay of Grand Theft Auto VI.

Speaker 1 My disappointment is twofold. One is I do think that it compromised the release schedule for all other games in the year because it was going to be a

Speaker 1 meteor crater of a release that was then postponed. The other reason is I've been watching a lot of Red Dead Redemption videos on TikTok about details in the game.

Speaker 1 And one of the details, for example, is that every NPC in the entire game is programmed to accurately eat the food that is on their plate in any like restaurant or whatever.

Speaker 1 So if you go up to a random NPC who's like eating a steak, you can see him cutting the steak, picking up that steak, putting that piece in his mouth.

Speaker 1 Whereas like in other games like, you know, Cyberpunk 2077, you just see the miming of like a spoon going into a non-diminishing bowl of soup.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 1 Or you'll see somebody like eating a sandwich and they're just kind of like moving their head around the sandwich, but nothing is happening.

Speaker 1 But in Red Dead Redemption, every piece of food is actually eaten by the NPCs, and that is an insane amount of detail.

Speaker 1 That game was released so long ago now that all I want is to see what they've done in Grand Theft Auto. I am looking forward to the serotonin of

Speaker 1 details. Yeah.
And to see why, like to look at stuff and be like, what were they, why were they doing this? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, like to see possibly an NPC putting on roller skates and actually tying the laces.

Speaker 1 I'm waiting for that sort of like

Speaker 1 absurdist next generation experience that I'm hoping is coming with the next rock star game.

Speaker 1 And every month that it is postponed, the less impressive it's going to be because other games are going to get there.

Speaker 3 You see an NPC at a urinal and

Speaker 3 they don't shake enough, so they got a little piss on their shorts. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Like, how do they do that?

Speaker 2 Then you hear them say, like, oh, yeah, I splashed myself washing my hands.

Speaker 3 Like, yeah, dude. Okay.
Exactly where your piss comes out.

Speaker 1 Well, also, the NPC routines in Red Dead Redemption are absurd.

Speaker 1 Like, you can watch somebody, like, go to work and then, like, finish their job, put the clothes sign on, and, like, walk to their house. And it's, like, I want to follow people around in.

Speaker 1 Is it Miami the next one?

Speaker 3 I think it's

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah. I want to walk around and see people, like, doing shit.
Sure. Like, that's fun.

Speaker 3 You might like the movie Free Guy.

Speaker 1 I've seen Free Guy, and you know what? I did like it.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 I have to watch it. I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 It's fine.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 2 We polled the listeners in our Discord for your game of the year and the results are in matt who to the discord

Speaker 3 give this commendation look there were hundreds of submissions and only some of them were spelled incorrectly

Speaker 3 even though i asked to do your best

Speaker 3 because the way it works is that like

Speaker 3 you know it's a google form yeah so you type something in and the more things that are typed in the same get added to the thing. So, you know, you,

Speaker 3 when something is a little wrong, it creates a second entry for it.

Speaker 3 But, so, all that to say, yep. Some of you followed my instructions really well.

Speaker 3 And the winner of the listener game of the year is,

Speaker 3 if you can believe it, Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

Speaker 1 That's the people's choice.

Speaker 2 It's honestly pretty much what I expected. I mean, I remember we did this last year for the first time, correct? Yeah.
Or was it two years ago?

Speaker 3 Here's the thing. I don't remember.
I had no no fucking idea.

Speaker 2 I remember whatever year it was. I think it was last year where

Speaker 2 not on not on my list, but the listeners gave the award to Bellatro. That's right.
And when I came back to Bellatro and put dozens of hours into it, I was like, you know what?

Speaker 2 If I was going to do my own list again, that would definitely be on there, maybe even at the top.

Speaker 2 So I think this is one of those things where the listeners have correctly identified the consensus choice for the lasting game of the year for 2025.

Speaker 3 Lots of votes for Blue Prince still. A lot of people still evangelizing that game.

Speaker 3 But, you know, some of these people can't even fucking spell stuff right. What do they know?

Speaker 2 Let's talk about our own personal games of the year, unless anyone else has any other awards they'd like to shout out.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 I don't have like a full breakdown of this, but I've been really enjoying.

Speaker 3 You know, I think a lot of games this year, you mentioned before we started, a lot of games this year year had some just like really, really great music. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm consistently blown away by the music in Ghost of Yotte.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 3 Even just like at the menu screen, like at that, not even in the game menu, the menu on PlayStation, in like the PlayStation Hub menu.

Speaker 3 That music is just gorgeous, and the music throughout the game is just really stunning and incredible. So I think if I had to pick a game with the best music this year, I think it's Ghost of Yote.

Speaker 3 Maybe second to, or maybe second place would be

Speaker 3 Death Stranding 2 on the Beach, which has an incredible score and soundtrack, too.

Speaker 1 Yep. Yep.

Speaker 1 I would agree with those, but in reverse order, I thought Death Stranding's soundtrack was

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 stunning.

Speaker 1 But Ghost of Yote's did make me buy a Shama set.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 2 Man, Heather's cool.

Speaker 3 Heather is cool. What are you talking about? You're cool.

Speaker 1 This is the weirdest shit.

Speaker 2 Remember, she posted that video of her just like murking all those dudes and ghost of yote

Speaker 2 i actually didn't post it and people got really upset so i meant i meant i meant posted in terms of like you showed it to us yeah because you sound like an old man i don't even know she posted it to us

Speaker 3 and guess what you'll never see it well i don't know if i still have it yeah like i i brought it in for the for the show but i don't think you brought it in on a uh piece of like celluloid film yeah yeah yeah we ran it we ran it through a projector.

Speaker 2 But, you know, you talk the talk and you walk the walk, I would say.

Speaker 1 I like to walk. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't like to talk.

Speaker 2 Okay, personal games of the year.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 I have one pick, but I'm going to give a few honorary mentions, honorable mentions, which are games that were lower profile. And,

Speaker 2 you know, as me as the guy who kind of fills the

Speaker 2 story-driven game, the narrative-driven game slash puzzle game sort of beat over here, I just wanted to acknowledge some games that maybe some people who are into these genres, if you didn't already get to it, maybe you've heard of it, maybe it's been on your radar, but these are games I definitely thoroughly enjoyed this year.

Speaker 2 The Drifter, the Australian graphic adventure game where you play an unhoused person in a really disturbing sort of Lovecraftian world. Is This Seat Taken, a game that Ranshaw also played, which is a

Speaker 2 puzzle game about just social manners and it's it's really soothing. It's a nice short journey.
And Strange Jigsaws, which is from a solo dev, that's just like a really unique

Speaker 2 and a pretty dazzling design in terms of all the different ways it takes existing puzzles and remixes them. Almost WarioWare style,

Speaker 2 absent the timer. But my pick for game of the year

Speaker 2 came late.

Speaker 2 You know, recency bias ahoy. Although I think this game is going to stick with me and I really, really am anticipating what developer ad hoc is going to come up with in the future.

Speaker 2 Telltale veterans have reinvented the Telltale style game with Dispatch. Wow.

Speaker 2 Superhero management sim story game that is an absolute triumph of narrative design and also just like has great writing, great acting,

Speaker 2 fantastic art. Like I've mentioned it when I talked about this game.
It's my favorite looking game of the year, just from a purely visual standpoint.

Speaker 2 Favorite looking game from a visual standpoint. Fucking Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 Come on, man.

Speaker 1 I got to do better. Keep it together.
Keep it together.

Speaker 3 But we were talking about audio earlier.

Speaker 2 I held my tongue because I didn't want to spoil my game of the year, but Dispatch has my favorite soundtrack. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Excellent.

Speaker 3 I'm going to play that soon. As soon as I play with Yotay, I'm going to get straight into Dispatch, I think.

Speaker 2 It's really funny, too.

Speaker 3 I'm ready to laugh.

Speaker 3 So am I. I'm ready to laugh.
I love it.

Speaker 2 As you guys know. 70 minutes into get played.

Speaker 3 I'm ready to laugh. Hey, look, I'm ready to laugh.

Speaker 3 Look, I keep a list.

Speaker 3 You guys know I do this every year. I keep a list of the games I finish.
Yeah. And this year, Mr.

Speaker 1 Games, the numbers

Speaker 3 were low. Oh,

Speaker 3 the numbers were quite low this year, actually.

Speaker 3 It was a busy year. Yeah.
Lots going on. Yeah.

Speaker 3 These are the games that I finished this year.

Speaker 3 Kingdom Hearts

Speaker 3 0.2, Birth by Sleep, a fragmentary passage.

Speaker 3 Real snub first subtitle of the year for that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 And here's the thing. It was short, but it was really good.
I loved it. Blue Prince, yuck.

Speaker 3 Celeste, a great,

Speaker 2 incredible video. Incredible game.
I love it.

Speaker 3 The thing I will say,

Speaker 3 I finished 10 games total this year. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Some of the games I finished are just like, just all-timers. Celeste being one of them.
Mother 3.

Speaker 3 An incredible experience, as we mentioned earlier. Donkey Kong Bonanza.
Really good, but overstate its welcome. Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Speaker 3 I'll have more to say about that in a second. Wow.
Metal Gear Solid 5 ground zeros. The opening chapter.
Not even the full game. Also, really fucking good.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I got to get back in there and play the Phantom Pain. So our pal Sean Diston will stop bothering me about it.
Okay. Just kidding.
I love you, Sean.

Speaker 3 Hollow Knight. And then after Hollow Knight, Silk Song comes out.
A bunch of stuff comes out. I'm not finishing any games because I'm only playing Hollow Knight and then like, or

Speaker 3 Silk Song and Ghost of Yotte. But I finish, I play through Inside, and then I finish Pokemon Legends ZA, and that's it.
Okay. That's a lot.

Speaker 2 That's pretty good. It's pretty good.

Speaker 3 It's 10, but it's, you know, some of them are chunky, right?

Speaker 2 You're approaching a game a month, which is a damn good finishing rate. It's not bad.
You are the finisher after all.

Speaker 3 In previous years, there was like 17, 24. Like,

Speaker 3 some of these certainly pandemic years

Speaker 3 when I started making the list.

Speaker 3 But last time this year to finish some games. But now, when it comes to game of the year, I have two options.
One, a game I have not finished,

Speaker 3 Hollow Knight Silk Song, which I need to get back to because it's it's calling to me like a like a siren out on the rocks in the in the ocean there.

Speaker 3 I need to get back. And then that's honestly what my wife thinks the game sounds like.

Speaker 3 I have to turn the volume down sometimes without playing it because I'm dying too much and my wife hates the sound.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Speaker 3 The other those are my two contenders. Wow.
Okay. And I think solely because I haven't finished Silk Song.
Wow. I think I have to give the the edge to

Speaker 3 Death Stranding 2 on the beach because it's just such a, it's such a

Speaker 3 triumph. It's such a,

Speaker 3 it's, it's, it really takes what's great about the first one and makes it more accessible. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It is

Speaker 3 a great story, a sequel.

Speaker 3 You know, I feel like he's done, he, Hideo's done, sequels to games, but never necessarily like direct sequels. Yeah.
Right. So this is kind of like the first one of these he's ever done, really.

Speaker 3 And it actually just works and it's really, really great. I think the gameplay is really just well-refined and a lot of fun and the story goes into interesting places.

Speaker 3 And I just think it's a game that everybody should play. I think it's just fantastic.
So I think that's my overall pick for Game of the Year.

Speaker 2 I did not finish Death Stranding 2 on the beach, but I really enjoyed my time with it. It

Speaker 2 is a definite step up from Death Stranding, which is itself a game that I love.

Speaker 2 But just like in terms of iterating on the formula, making it more accessible, more playable,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 just a little bit more user-friendly, but also continuing to have the world building and story. That's such a signature of Kojima Productions.

Speaker 3 I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 Guys,

Speaker 1 I played a few games this year, and I beat more games this year than I normally beat.

Speaker 1 I beat Blue Prince, I beat Ghost of Yote, I beat Death Stranding 2.

Speaker 1 And for me, that's an enormous amount of time dedicated to playing video games in a year where I was extremely busy.

Speaker 1 I also want to shout out

Speaker 1 Pokemon the Card Game Pocket,

Speaker 1 which, as of record, I've just hit Master Ball for the second time this year.

Speaker 1 There is no win, there's no beating the game unless I guess you're ranked first in the whole fucking world, which I don't have the time to do.

Speaker 1 But I do feel like

Speaker 1 as the game has gone on, I have become a better Pokemon the card game player

Speaker 1 because there is a surprising amount of strategy in the game and mind games that you start to learn how to play against your invisible online opponent. So I want to shout that game out.

Speaker 1 But I would be lying if I said that either of those games matched the tonnage of a game that I played every single day this year

Speaker 1 at least once, and that is Fortnite.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 Since Fortnite came into my life here on this podcast, it has affected my joy. It has affected my social circle.
It has become something that I truly look forward to every single day.

Speaker 1 So, even though I know that Death Stranding 2 tells a better story, even though I know the combat in Ghost of Yote was was more enjoyable for me.

Speaker 1 The fact is that as of a few days ago when Fortnite Wrapped

Speaker 1 was launched, I played 298 hours of Fortnite this year. Wow.
That is about an hour a day. I mean, given days away, time

Speaker 1 where I didn't have access to my console, et cetera, et cetera. That's 1,216 matches with 327 wins and 3,211 kills.

Speaker 3 And how many kills in Fortnite?

Speaker 3 Zero.

Speaker 1 The Fortnite median on

Speaker 1 the island is 55 hours spent playing per game. So 298 hours represents an enormous amount of time.

Speaker 1 I have friendships that have developed inside of this game with people who

Speaker 1 I would not have met in any other capacity and are now like,

Speaker 1 you know, fundamental parts of my

Speaker 1 social life.

Speaker 3 Jonesy, Peely, Ariana Grande, LeBron James. Yep, yep.
The T-1000. Yep.

Speaker 3 Great. They're great.

Speaker 1 And in fact, it gave me an appreciation for The Simpsons that... the show itself never gave me.
Wow.

Speaker 1 And it was like, oh, wow, I'm existing in this world for a month and I get the appeal even on an aesthetic level. Like, I was like, I get the aesthetic of The Simpsons for the first time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like a lot of the younger gamers who maybe their knowledge of

Speaker 2 The Simpsons is like my knowledge of like Betty Boop or Felix the Cat.

Speaker 2 Not that it's that old, but it's like the sort of thing of like, I know this iconography, I know what this vaguely is, I know what Popeye is, but I'm not like a big Popeye fan.

Speaker 2 But so, like, being kind of immersed in it in Fortnite, I think, um, yeah, maybe bring some new fans to Springfield.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the truth is that as much as there were other games that were more complete and singular experiences,

Speaker 1 Fortnite is my game of the year. Wow.

Speaker 1 And I really liked

Speaker 1 playing the

Speaker 1 season ending event where I got to watch Hatsune Miku on the head of Godzilla.

Speaker 1 firing a beam together to kill a giant Cthulhu in the distance.

Speaker 2 It's fucking sick as hell.

Speaker 3 Fucking ruled. The time that I spent with it this year, only in the Simpsons season, sort of did make me appreciate the game a lot more and

Speaker 3 I kind of want to just get in there more regularly.

Speaker 3 It is so much fun, even just playing solo.

Speaker 1 It's the hardest I've laughed this year. Yeah, yeah.
Like, harder than, you know, anything else, like, jokes on television shows, fun, like, my big joke earlier, certainly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, things me and Matt have said.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the things you and Matt have said.

Speaker 3 You can read the joke again if you want. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It just, it's, it's, it's weird because it's, it's therapeutic to laugh that much. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And the game is naturally funny because of the juxtapositions of LeBron James fighting Homer Simpson at a gas station until it explodes. So, uh, yeah, that's my game of the year.

Speaker 3 Wow. It is kind of funny.
I hadn't really thought about this because, like, LeBron James, Ariana Grande,

Speaker 3 Shohei Otani, like, there's a bunch of like

Speaker 3 real people in the game. Yeah.
But then, like, Homer Simpson is like in the game. So, like, then you're sort of like, are these real people fake or is Homer real?

Speaker 1 They're

Speaker 1 they're so Homer is real.

Speaker 1 Homer is real. And the way we know that Homer is real

Speaker 1 is because Saitama from One Punch Man

Speaker 1 can't be in the game.

Speaker 3 That's right. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So the fact that saitama has to be a digital projection because canonically fortnite is happening there have been discussions on reddit about a rumored collaboration with sora and what it means canonically for sora yeah and his access to our world

Speaker 3 that's brainbreaking That would actually probably scare me too much to play. Because they have to,

Speaker 1 like, the way that I guess Sora works and his access to worlds

Speaker 1 means that he has access then to

Speaker 1 Shoheiotani, which means he has access to our reality.

Speaker 3 Damn, Sora in a fucking

Speaker 3 in Dodger Blue, he'd look sick as hell. Yeah, he would.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they'd anyway.

Speaker 3 They need more players. Love the game.
They need more players.

Speaker 2 Ranch, do you have a favorite thing you played this year?

Speaker 3 I think the Little Nightmares.

Speaker 3 Wow. Okay.

Speaker 1 I finished those games

Speaker 3 in like

Speaker 3 three days.

Speaker 2 What was so appealing about them to you?

Speaker 1 I just like loved the environment and the vibe. And like, I love a spooky puzzle situation.
And yeah, I just thought the game was so beautiful.

Speaker 2 And you played a lot of heavy hitters this year. I know you played Silk Song.
I know you played Expedition 33.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and then I think Resident Evil

Speaker 3 7. Yes.

Speaker 3 Was this year? Was Resident Evil 4 this year as well?

Speaker 2 The remake, I think, came out last year.

Speaker 3 Well, the remake came out, but I think Ranch got to it this year. Oh, you got to it this year.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then there's Alan Wake 2.

Speaker 2 Oh, Alan Wake 2. Fuck.
I forgot I played Alan Wake 2 at the start of this year. Alan Wake 2 fucking rocks.

Speaker 3 I was just telling somebody about it, and I was like, you have to just play it. It'll change your life.

Speaker 2 I finished Metaphor Refontasia and then rolled right into Alan Wake 2. I was like, this video games are back.

Speaker 2 Shall we try to come up to a consensus Game of the Year? I mean, I think there's kind of,

Speaker 2 I'd guess there's one or two candidates here because

Speaker 2 of the games you have mentioned,

Speaker 2 I have played Not Finish Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yote. And with the two of you having a lot more hours in both, I will defer to your consensus in terms of what you think might win.

Speaker 2 But I certainly don't think any of my picks were on your radar.

Speaker 1 I still think Game of the Year is blueprints.

Speaker 2 You think it's Blueprints?

Speaker 1 I still think it's Blueprints.

Speaker 2 You know, it's kind of funny for us to not like Blueprints and give it our Game of the Year away.

Speaker 1 The thing is, I just,

Speaker 1 I fucking hated it, right? I don't,

Speaker 1 it represents everything I fucking hate in games. Yeah.
Puzzles, like, like the priority on puzzles. Traversal speed was disgustingly slow.

Speaker 1 And the RNG element of trying to solve a puzzle was like putting my hand in a fucking microwave. It sucked.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 1 as a representative of things that we haven't even thought of yet, that games can do and will do in the future, Blue Prince does something entirely new.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That, that, that,

Speaker 1 I mean, games have been around this whole fucking time, this whole time. And nobody, and nobody has been like, what if you made a game where you built the rooms as you went?

Speaker 2 It is a staggering design. It is really, really impressive and it is incredibly thoughtful and innovative.

Speaker 2 It's the kind of thing where if there was like a, you know, sometimes with the Oscars, there'll be a split between best director and best picture.

Speaker 2 It's the kind of thing of like, you know, like Ton Doraz, who had the solo dev largely behind.

Speaker 2 Blue Prince, I feel like would like like that's the most impressive game direction, most impressive game design of the year, even though that game was not my favorite of the year.

Speaker 2 And I will say, say, contra you, Heather, this is exactly the sort of game I should like. Like, this harkens back to

Speaker 2 games we've covered on the podcast, like the Seventh Guest, you know,

Speaker 2 but also just like

Speaker 2 it's a roguelite, it is a, which I love, it's a puzzle game, which I love, it has all this emergent environmental storytelling, which is all shit that is like that, like give me a yum yum, give me some.

Speaker 2 For me, it was just the RNG of it, and

Speaker 2 that there were not more quality of life elements in there where you had to like keep repeating tasks and kind of like hope things would line up for you so you'd have the perfect run, even if you knew exactly what to do.

Speaker 2 And those are the kind of times that those are the kind of things that just like made me reach a point where I was just banging my head against the wall.

Speaker 2 Sure, sometimes literally, because it was at a dead end. Sure, I

Speaker 1 completely agree with that. I agree with it.

Speaker 1 But when I look at these other games, Death Stranding 2 is now the year that Death Stranding came out, I was like, this is the the fucking game of the year because it was a kind of game that had never existed.

Speaker 1 We're like delivering packages, and that's the full dopamine motivator of your experience of the game, right?

Speaker 1 But Death Stranding 2 is just revision and

Speaker 1 sort of replenishment of that idea. Claire Obscure, as gorgeous and beautiful and inviting as that game was, it is ultimately a game design we've seen before.

Speaker 1 Ghost of Yote, similarly, you know, I fucking loved it. I ripped through all of those guys and had a blast.

Speaker 1 And the amount of control it gave me as a player over the difficulty level on the game and the specificity of that difficulty was very welcome.

Speaker 1 But none of those games were doing something where I'm like,

Speaker 1 yeah, that

Speaker 1 the next time a game comes out like Blue Prince, you're going to call it a Blue Prince-like the same way you call it a strand-like. Sure.

Speaker 1 Which means to me it is it has to be the game that represents 2025 because it's the invention of a new genre and i fucking hate it

Speaker 2 i'll just say i think claire obscure i and i know you're you're just talking in generally and it is it is uh you know largely just like an incredibly well-crafted jRpg again did not did not finish the game but really enjoyed my time with it um but I feel like the combat mechanics feel like something pretty fresh in terms of enhancing like adding some of that genre yeah but intern base yeah but I will say that which again which is something that's been attempted before but i think but in particular how active it is how engaging it is a lot of players i know who are not at all turn like turn-based combat is usually like i i will not play this game a deal breaker ended up playing through finishing loving this game um but

Speaker 2 i think it's an it's a it's a great argument and honestly i'm all for it yeah i

Speaker 3 because i was so obsessed with it in the same way that i was obsessed with animal well yeah i put 30 hours into it like

Speaker 3 right away.

Speaker 2 It just like fucking sucked me in.

Speaker 3 It's well yeah, you're saying that to a lot of things, but like okay, all right.

Speaker 3 On my PlayStation rap,

Speaker 3 you know, all these things, all these things are wrapped now, by the way. Yeah.
Get your own fucking thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I got a fucking Waymo wrapped. It's like, I don't need this.

Speaker 3 You did? Yeah, I did. I got in a Waymo the other day for the first time ever, and it unfortunately ruled.
It was so fucking good. This is the thing.

Speaker 2 The Waymo experience is like, you're like, I'll never get in a Waymo, and then you get a Waymo, and then then it's like, I will only ride in Waymo.

Speaker 3 They've created

Speaker 3 an issue that they needed to,

Speaker 3 they created a solution for.

Speaker 3 The whole thing fucking sucks. Like, all of it is bad.
All of it's bad. What if you could just call a taxi and it was just an unvetted guy? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because like these taxi guys, you know, these taxi drivers and private drivers had license, special licenses and certifications. What if we just got rid of all that? You know, a normal man

Speaker 3 could just come pick you up. Great.
Oh, great. Now these normal men that are doing this are all fucking creep sickos.
What if there was just no driver now? And so now, great. Okay, cool, cool, cool.

Speaker 3 Now we just do that. Great.
What if now the car runs people over or drives people through crime scenes or whatever the fuck?

Speaker 3 We live in hell. But I got in it and we were in San Francisco.
And I don't know if you guys know about this, about the geography of San Francisco, the topography, rather. Yeah.

Speaker 3 A lot of big hills there. Very hilly, yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, let me tell you, we got to the top of the hill and started to go down the hill. Me and my entire family screamed in the Waymo.
We were all so fucking scared,

Speaker 3 even though we kept we were talking to the Waymo, like, what are you going to do, Waymo? Oh, God, Waymo, this car's not turning, Waymo. You got to take another lane.

Speaker 3 Having a lot of fun in there, but I was obsessed with this game

Speaker 3 to a point.

Speaker 1 Can I say an aside, they published, Waymo published the accident data for the Waymos, and it is

Speaker 1 by a huge margin safer than human drugs.

Speaker 2 So much safer.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's like every argument you could throw at the thing for like how it shouldn't exist and how bad it is and how it's eliminating jobs, all of it, all of it, goes out the window when it's just like there have been three fatalities in Waymo's and every time it's been somebody else T-boning the Waymo.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 If there was like a, if you know, like whatever, if we had a functioning government and public sector under any party, if there was like a, this is the kind of thing you should be like, hey, we should, there's so much money that is spent on people who are injured and killed in, you know, so much loss is endured because of people who die in traffic fatalities and people who are injured in traffic accidents, car crashes.

Speaker 2 And with automated vehicles being so much safer, if there was some sort of Apollo project or a Manhattan project to get as many self-driving cars on the road as fast as possible, financially incentivize people to use self-driving cars over driving themselves.

Speaker 2 It would save so many lives. Oh, yeah.
And also probably save so many hours.

Speaker 2 It would be much more efficient because these automated cars would not create the kind of obstructions and traffic that humans do by driver error.

Speaker 3 I kind of want to buy my own.

Speaker 2 That's the thing. You're in a Waymo is like, I never want to drive myself.
Like, this is fucking the best.

Speaker 3 It'd be cool if I had my own Waymo and I could just get in and pick you guys up, do whatever. Kind of be sick as hell.

Speaker 1 Imagine how many more work hours you'd get in Los Angeles if you could just get in a car and work the whole whole time.

Speaker 2 Boy, I didn't even think about that. The expectation will be then you'll be working on your way to work.

Speaker 3 Yeah, God. Fuck that.
Never mind. Toss them all into the sea for all I care.

Speaker 2 Let me record my fan duel ad from the back seat.

Speaker 3 Honestly, I'll do something like that. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 But I'll do a lot of things in there.

Speaker 3 Oh, boy.

Speaker 3 Great.

Speaker 3 We're going to pound off in the back of a Waymo. It was on my Waymo rep.

Speaker 3 We have

Speaker 3 hours pounded off.

Speaker 1 We've received a complaint from the company that

Speaker 1 Nick Weiger, customer, Nick Weiger, customer 184644, that you took a sponge bath in the back of a fucking Waymark.

Speaker 3 Got one of those fucking sponges on a stick, scrubbing his back.

Speaker 3 The thing about Blue Prince is that to me, it was

Speaker 3 fun until it wasn't, right? Like it was interesting enough. But like, I, I'm somebody who, like, you know, comes as a shock to nobody

Speaker 3 hated homework, hated school. The fact that you're mixing homework into my video games, like, what the fuck are we doing? Right.
You're making me write stuff down. Right.
I'm just trying to vibe.

Speaker 2 See, I'm loving that. I'm loving that I got my notepad in there.
Fine. Call me a dorcass.
That's fine. I'm like, like, that's the stuff I'm loving.
It's just, of course.

Speaker 2 Once you start to get towards the end game and then you're trying to pursue all the post-game content and you know, you do get those

Speaker 2 improvements that you happen, like, you know, roguelite style that, like, make it so you know it is so it just makes everything a little bit easier i'm trying to remember specifically what what they all are are now but like

Speaker 2 Things like, and I know this got this got patched in an update, but like having to put in the safe combinations each time, or like having to hope that you're going to get the specific room, you know, so you can,

Speaker 2 you know, do this valve puzzle and like, oh, wait, the other room didn't spawn in this run, so I can't like, you know, whatever. I just have to open it.

Speaker 2 Like, like, like, like, really just trying to, when you know what you wanted to do and the game would not let you do it.

Speaker 2 That was the sort of things where I just feel like, I just feel like this isn't respecting my time. But I did love it, and it is an incredibly impressive design.
It is a unique game.

Speaker 2 There's, I know, a thriving speedrun community around Blueprints, which is really fascinating to watch the Blueprint speedruns. And so, I'm glad it exists.

Speaker 2 I'm glad, I'm grateful for the time I spent with it. Uh, even if overall, I came away with a pretty,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 overall for me,

Speaker 2 was not it was not the most fun experience in the end. But

Speaker 2 our game of the year, sure, why not? It's It's for sure,

Speaker 3 it's the game of the year. Congratulations.
The get played game of the year is blueprints. I will say one more thing.

Speaker 3 I think games,

Speaker 3 this is happening in TV shows and in movies now, too, where they're sort of like, oh, you know what? It doesn't have an ending. Yeah.
It kind of just ends. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think, or it continues after the ending. Right.
I think it's okay to have an ending. Yeah.
It's fine to have an ending. I think it's good.

Speaker 3 People are complaining about one of the complaints about Metroid Prime for Beyond is that it's only 14 hours long. And I'm like, that's music to my fucking ear.

Speaker 3 That's incredible. Yep.

Speaker 3 I don't need an 80-hour

Speaker 3 Metroid Prime game. I know.
I don't need it. Nope.
But games need endings. And Blueprints, congratulations.

Speaker 2 We love you. Congratulations.
We now love you.

Speaker 3 Hey, that's the GOAT season.

Speaker 2 That's this week's Get Played. Our producers, Rochelle Chen Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.
Ranch, are you streaming anything lately?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 awesome check that out on twitch

Speaker 2 our music is by ben prunty benpruntymusic.com our art is by duck brigade design duckbrigade.com check out our patreon patreon.com slash get played where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and get animated which we are continuing through the year of the end the end of the year that's right and this week we're watching The live-action Ghost in the Shell.

Speaker 2 That's right. Starring Scarlett Johansson.
So check that out over at patreon.com slash get played. And then in the new year, we're going to be doing something a little bit different for our Patreon.

Speaker 2 So keep that on your radar.

Speaker 3 Yeah, some new stuff, some slick stuff.

Speaker 2 Some slick stuff. And hey, what a fun year doing the podcast with y'all.

Speaker 3 What a time. I love doing this.
I love it.

Speaker 2 I love chopping it up with a Triforce of Friendship.

Speaker 3 And of course, Ranch.

Speaker 3 Which sounds.

Speaker 2 Like I'm excluding Ranch from being friends. But Ranch is part of it.

Speaker 3 Ranch is a huge part of the show.

Speaker 3 I do think that doing this show,

Speaker 3 I know I'll speak for myself, but I think for all of us that it's a fun thing that we always look forward to doing, even though when it can become

Speaker 3 like difficult to do sometimes, I've just enjoyed doing this show with all four of us all year, and it's just one of my favorite things to do. It is.
It's such a hoop.

Speaker 1 A staggering amount of work for something that sounds completely thoughtless.

Speaker 1 An enormous amount of prep every week, even on episodes where we're just talking about our three favorite Luigi's.

Speaker 3 And yet. Oh, we should bring that back.
Yeah, yeah. Honestly, it's time for

Speaker 2 very appropriate to bring back the Triforce of Luigis.

Speaker 1 And yet, it is a highlight of my week every week. And I am so grateful to the three of you and also to the people who continue to listen to the show with patience and kindness and support.

Speaker 1 And hopefully the reward for that is the return of the format that brought so many of you on board to begin with.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and let me just reiterate that

Speaker 2 what Heather just said. But, but yes, we really appreciate your fandom and particularly appreciate your kindness.
A lot of you have been incredibly kind and supportive.

Speaker 2 When I've been in and out of the podcast, so thank you so much for all your sentiments.

Speaker 3 I just met some, I met three fans over the weekend

Speaker 3 at one place: Enrique, Christophe, and Matt. Shout out to all three of you guys.
Shout out to everybody.

Speaker 1 Shout out to everybody.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 Everybody's here.

Speaker 2 Everybody is here. And games of 2025, you got played.

Speaker 1 That was a Headgum podcast.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Nicole Bayer.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Sashir Zemeda. And this is the podcast, Best Friends.

Speaker 3 And we're here at Headgum.

Speaker 1 So this is just a podcast where we just talk. Yeah.
We're best friends. Yeah.
We talk, and then we have a segment where we answer questions and queries.

Speaker 1 so audience members can ask questions about friendships and we can answer them to the best of our abilities. Yes.
We are professional friends.

Speaker 3 We are professional friends.

Speaker 1 Subscribe to best friends on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast and watch videos on YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Speaker 3 That's the middle of a work week.

Speaker 1 I was deeply unhelpful to you during that whole thing.

Speaker 3 You were. I'm really solved the support.
I was so okay.

Speaker 1 I was trying to be supportive, but I was like, I don't know, reading seems pretty hard right now.

Speaker 3 It's a lot.

Speaker 1 I think you did good. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 You're welcome.