56: The Geekenders: Looking Back on Video Games in 2024

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Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow, number one, geek podcast.

without a doubt.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Geekenders.

Our final geek enders of the year?

I think it is.

I think that's it.

And then we're done.

It's the 27th, yeah.

And then we're finished.

Goodness.

If anything, this is, it's been a full year.

It's our first year of doing this show.

oh look at us that's quite sweet when did we start this december 2023 really and those are like yeah and those are the those are the beta episodes yeah

that's pretty crazy look at us go

i know actual podcast dude crazy who would have thought that we'd be here 50 some episodes in and you would still want to watch

If you're being forced to, good.

I hope whoever's doing it has you tied down and you can't look away and they're just putting on repeat because that would be awesome.

Clockwork orange style.

Yeah,

I'm going to reprogram you eventually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what you and I reprogramming people would look like per se.

Me neither.

It would not benefit society whatsoever.

No, no, it wouldn't.

But, you know.

But it would be funny.

It would be.

Not on a societal level, but I'm like, that's kind of cute.

Like, you're watching.

It's a podcast.

Not like societally, that would be terrible for all of us.

We would really ruin the fabric of really just civilization.

But on like a fun level, it's kind of cute.

It's a pod level.

That's a cute, funny little thing we did.

A little oopsie-doopsie.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

See, right now someone's...

got their eyes hooked open and they're watching us be like oopsie doopsie like no oh

make it so

yeah it's their villain arc.

If they're already, if they've got their eyes peeled open, their villain arc started a while ago.

But like, right, this is definitely contributing to it.

Yeah.

Oh, well, what are you going to do?

Oopsie doopsie.

Oopsie doopsie.

Yeah.

How are the holidays, buddy?

You made it.

Great.

As usual.

My Christmas was very simple.

Hung out with the parents.

We all gave each other exactly what we wanted because this year we're like, what do you want for Christmas?

It was real easy.

Very simple and then uh went home and started packing i've been it's it's moving time for old jesse moving time he's doing it literally when we're done here today movers arrive at my apartment to move the big things i cannot move so fantastic thankfully it should be quick it's just gonna be it's like bed dresser tv tv stand bookshelf Are you taking the couch?

Or did you decide to say goodbye?

I'm going to, oh, I'm tossing the couch.

The couch is gone.

The couch, I don't, the couch, I love that couch, but it's 15 years old.

It is crumbling in places that couches shouldn't be crumbling.

It's at a good go.

Love that couch.

Yep.

It's had a fine run.

Big fan, but time to go, couch.

All right.

Yeah, not much.

Thank you for your service.

Yeah, not much actually moving.

But what I did realize is that I have a lot of little crap things.

And once again, Marie Kondo Jesse kicked in and I was like, what can I get rid of?

How do I get rid of this stuff?

And it's only because I hate moving so much.

I would be fine moving if it wasn't for the amount of just like bull crap I have in my apartment.

That isn't like what.

At a certain point, it feels better to just be like, I'm just going to fucking throw this away than to move from point A to point B.

Yeah.

I must stress, I realize that over the years I've accumulated.

And again, I'm not this guy, but I've done enough bits

online that I have exactly four Kigarumis.

I don't wear them.

Why do I have them?

What is the point of them?

I don't want them.

And so I was like, what the?

They take up so much space.

I just got to keep moving these.

Like one day, I'll dress up like a skeleton again for some reason.

Like, no, no.

We're just going to give it away to like charity or something.

I'm done with them.

So that's what I've been doing.

I've been stressing, like, discovering, I found a jacket that was given to me at an event years ago from the show, or not show, but movie Rogue One.

And it's a really cool, it looks like I'm Andor Cassian or Cassian Andor or whatever.

I look like a badass.

Yeah, yeah.

Except that is three sizes too small.

And I've never worn it, not once.

But in my mind, I was like, one day, one day I could.

Why do I have that?

Sure.

Yeah, I have multiple times said to Sam,

hey, maybe go through the jackets you have.

Because one of the things, for whatever reason, that companies love to send people is like

jackets.

Yep.

And it's nice, right?

But eventually you get to the point, and this is like a silly problem to have, but you get to the point where you're like, well, I can't throw away the cyberpunk jacket.

And I don't want to throw away the Valheim jacket.

And ah, but this Witcher 3 jacket is so cool, right?

And you just have all these cool jackets, which again, great.

But we currently have a closet that's like, I have two jackets, Clark has two jackets, and Sam has 15 jackets.

Most of them are like just cool game jackets, you know?

I have exactly, based on last count from this move, exactly 12 t-shirts.

12.

Very pleased with that.

However, I have roughly...

22 jackets.

And they're almost I was like, what am I going to do with all these jackets?

I don't wear them ever.

Oh, god.

And so this is why I do giveaways on the channel.

I just give away stuff that I've gotten.

The problem is I'm a big boy.

And so not everyone out there is rolling with a 2x, 3x jacket.

Most people are like,

large, please, or small.

I'm like, well, I can't help you there.

So I got all these damn jackets.

But yeah, I was going through it and I was like laughing because in order it was.

End Walker jacket, Final Fantasy VII Remake jacket, Final Fantasy VIII rebirth jacket, Final Fantasy, like Dawn Trail jacket.

And I was like, I got so many jackets, all from just Final Fantasy.

Not to mention the Witcher jacket that I have, the Cyberpunk jacket that I have, the jacket that I have from

Wolfenstein.

The jacket, like, I've got all.

And I'm like, here's the thing.

I love them all.

I don't want to get rid of them.

They're so cool.

I don't want to get rid of them.

But I'm like, what am I going to do with these jackets?

I got so many.

I love them all.

I love them all.

And like, I know with t-shirts, when people have like limited run t-shirts sometimes or like a signed t-shirt, they'll like frame it.

But the difference in thickness and ability to frame a t-shirt versus a jacket is like,

like trying to figure out how do I turn this cool jacket into decor

is.

I don't think as attainable or makes as much sense.

So you're still kind of like, I guess I'll leave it hanging.

I don't know.

I even think about my, I even think about my wedding dress all the time.

Like I run in, my fucking wedding dress, I run into all the time in our house.

I'm like, what are you doing here?

Like, I don't know what to do with this anymore.

There's a lady that I saw who will take like old dresses and turn them into lampshades, like really pretty lampshades.

And I was like,

Might be cool to send my wedding dress to somebody to like turn it into a cool thing that I could use.

you know, that might be a nice idea because I have no attachment to keeping that dress as a dress.

And it's in the way.

It's just, it doesn't have a home.

It's too big.

It doesn't remind you of the sanctity of your wedding vows.

Not really.

No, it's beautiful.

I love that dress.

You don't look at it and say, I remember that day, the day my father and I almost fell in the mud.

We did.

The day that

he was so drunk.

That's funny.

That he sweated on a bed and a wished for death.

Like, you don't think about that on you?

I mean, I do.

Oh, good.

Okay.

Well.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the second I see my wedding dress, I think to myself, remember when Jesse got really drunk at my wedding?

It's the first thought I have.

I had to keep up with the Brits.

It was an American Pride thing.

They kept saying, like, hey, Yonk, you want to drink this?

And I was like, hell yeah, I do.

And they're like, you're not too bad for a Yanki.

And I was like,

you're not too bad for a

posh Liverpoolian.

For Pudlians.

That's what I said.

That's what I said to them.

Yeah.

And they were like, cracking, Yank.

And then we drank more.

And then we flew 1942-style fighters together.

And we.

Yeah.

My favorite part was when everybody was was wearing ties on their heads.

That was the point where I was like, and maybe the bar should close.

You set up a wedding in which the wedding ended at like, I'm going to say noon.

And we were there till 10 p.m.

We drank for 10 solid hours.

That was on you.

To be fair.

And then you kept feeding us.

Yeah, that was the thing, right?

Is Sam and I were like, okay, the wedding is going to be fine as long as, like,

the actual ceremony can be a shit show and it's fine.

But like, as long as there's tons of food to eat and good music playing, then it's fine.

We're good to go.

So, Sam's number one priority with our wedding was to make sure that there was always food.

He nailed it.

He nailed it.

There were tons of food.

When there was no food, suddenly food would appear.

And we were just like, yeah.

Because, you know, we was like, bro, I've had so much to drink.

Oh, what is that?

Pork?

And then that's it.

Yeah.

And you're good.

It's great.

I love that wedding.

That was a good time.

Thanks.

Anyway, I don't need the dress anymore is the point.

If at some point Clark wants to get married and is like, oh, I really wish that there was like a part of your dress that I could use or whatever, I'm keeping the cape,

the like hooded cape thing that I used instead of a veil.

I'm keeping that for her.

But the actual dress, I'm down to just...

give it to somebody and be like, chop it up.

Turn it into something cool.

I don't know.

Have you considered Halloween costume?

Bloody it up.

Go around the neighborhood being the widow.

Be like, yeah.

I don't think it would sell.

I think it would need to look more like a normal wedding dress to sell.

I forgot that we did go to a hobbit wedding.

I did forget about that.

The wedding between a hobbit and an elf.

And to this day, it's my favorite wedding story.

It might be the only wedding story worth telling about how the hobbit and the goblins

side.

one side was dwarves, hobbits, goblins, ogres, and the other side was beautiful elves.

And we all, it was very obvious who was there to see who.

It was very clear which part of the family was what and whose friends were who.

And

we were over there like, yes, yes.

Good vibing,

yes.

And the other side, it was like, oh.

It was good vibing.

I really loved it.

Yeah.

It was great.

I love that wedding.

That That was my favorite wedding I've ever been to.

It was like, look at the beautiful people over there.

Wow.

They're all so gorgeous.

Yeah.

They weren't like,

who are you here for?

Which person?

They were just like,

weirdos on this side.

Yeah.

Normie's on this side.

Normie's on this side.

And they floated over to it.

Like, oh, they're just like, what?

Yes, good.

Yeah.

It was like

all the the best men and bridesmaids.

The bridesmaids were kind of like

you would summon creatures of the forest.

And the groomsmen all were like, I am a soldier who has fought in 7,000 wars.

And I am a male model.

And my penis pleases the world.

Right.

And they're like, oh, there are all these guys looking like amazing.

And then it was like, come to me.

And like birds flew down to you.

Like the critters of the forest were your handsmaids.

It was crazy.

That was an amazing wedding.

Yeah, I loved it.

It was great.

It was fun.

We should do that again.

We should do that again in America.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've honestly been thinking to myself, like, when Sam and I hit like, I don't know, 20 years, assuming neither of us is like, I don't know, the worst.

Yeah.

Oh, right, right, right, right.

Then when we hit the 20-year mark, we should do like another big fun thing, but in America, since we made everybody fly over

I think that would be fun I would love if you did some sort of 20 year

although 20 years way off I'll be dead by then killed in the water wars that's what I'm saying

who even so much can change and that'll be another what

for you what is that 13 years

13 clark is Clark is turning seven

We got pregnant almost immediately after the wedding, which is so embarrassing.

So

it'll be like four decades.

Over a decade or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a ways off, dude.

I will, yeah.

I'll have died in the corporate wars trying to ensure that stockholders.

Corporate wars?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, the line must go up.

And so we must die in

the front lines

for the shareholders.

Yeah, I'll sacrifice myself for them, but the fraction of a percent increase in stock will have been worth it, I think.

I believe you.

They'll put me on the front lines.

Like, send him in suicide squad.

That'll be it.

It'll be like, all right.

The holidays went fine for us, too.

You know, I was going to ask about your holidays, but I realized nothing is as important as what happened last night in regards to cheese and your husband.

Because word on the street is you.

I was just complaining about this, okay?

Because I got set up.

He came to bed and was like, I just did a banger tweet about you.

And I was like,

what does that mean?

Was it mean-spirited?

And he said, no, it was just funny.

Later, I read it and it was something along the lines of, I'm scared to go to bed because my lactose intolerant wife matched me pound for pound in cheese.

Yep.

But I ask you, who do you think

got done putting the gremlin to bed and immediately just started bringing out every single bit of cheese in our house and putting it on the coffee table?

It wasn't me.

Clearly.

It was Sam.

But why did you say, I'm going to get me some of that cheese?

Even though you know milkies make you poopies.

Because it looked delicious.

He grabbed the camembert.

He put the camembert in the air fryer.

What am I supposed to do here?

No.

He toasted up a bunch of bread.

He toasted up a bunch of bread.

He brought a bunch of different types of crackers.

He was like, let's go.

And what?

It was supposed to just be for him?

Absolutely not.

You're right.

Marriage is about an equal partnership.

And if he's making delicious cheese and crackers, then the assumption is he's willing to exist in a world where your stanky, stanky farts

stick up his entire life.

He created a situation where he knew in the end I was going to eat a bunch of cheese.

And he said,

by putting it in front of me and giving no other option of thing to eat,

he said, without words, I'm okay with whatever happens here.

So you're telling me

that Sam

loves

your stinky butt toots.

Sam set up that scenario.

He loves everything about me.

Right.

He set the whole thing up so he can get them sweet, sweet toots.

So he can get them stanky butt whiffs is what you're saying.

He set it up because that's what he wanted in the end.

He likes the farts.

Yeah.

He wanted to nosedive the butt test.

Yeah, no, I get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Yeah.

I think that's what you, that's what you should have, that's what you should have retweeted.

Sam, the only reason why we ate that cheese is because you said take me down to stinky butt town

and i and that's what happened

take me down to stinky butt town is yeah would have been an absolutely incredible response i mean you can do that right now you know what i'll allow it if you want to just take a time right just take a just take a pause to retweet that no no no say

all right i'm just saying i'm trying to help you

because everyone knows marriage is mostly waged on the internet.

It's about 50% internet-based marriages these days.

So, if you really want to communicate, you got to get them.

You got to get them.

Yeah.

That's so true.

If you don't have strangers laughing at your relationship, are you even in a relationship?

Yeah, you know, are you even, yeah, what is love except to be mocked by strangers?

Why bother?

I will say, my kid's big gift this year was a hoverboard.

Oh, that's right.

You keep making me think when you say this that you mean about back feature two hoverboard, but no, no, you mean like

board you hold on to that skateboard, right?

Board that is kind of like a skateboard, except it's self-balancing.

Oh,

and you just put your feet on it and then you lean forward to go forward and lean back to go back.

Oh, it's motorized?

Yes.

Well, yeah, I guess.

It's not the two-wheel.

It's still a skateboard.

It's a big wheel on either side.

It's like a Segway, except you don't hold on to anything.

A Segway with no handles.

Oh,

okay.

Basically.

Yeah, I see

people with it.

Yes.

Only in movies, though.

I've never seen it in real life.

Yeah.

So I'm.

It's like from a movie.

Sam and I went back and forth for a while about whether or not this was a safe gift for my kid.

Because

if you'll recall, I was talking about us going ice skating last week and

how she

does a lot of roller skating and took to ice skating really well.

And Sam was like, I honestly think this is going to be easier for her than either of those things.

And I've tried to use one of these before, albeit as an adult.

And I was.

terrified.

I was absolutely shitting myself.

Like, I can't even stand on this thing without dying.

right?

So, anyway, in the end, Sam was like, Let's just go for it.

So, we did.

These things are built for little kids, I think, because

kids aren't worried about falling.

No, she learned how to use this thing.

Like, she's been on it her whole life within about five minutes.

And she's now zipping all over the house on this weird pink Segway machine.

And it's fun, it's

But like,

I don't know.

I feel like the older you get, the more you let creeping anxieties ruin the fun of learning a new thing.

Sure.

And it's just something...

Like when I was a kid,

my dad to this day will be like, you could have killed yourself.

Oh, my.

Like everything I did as a child.

A great example is he will always tell the tale about how my friends and I took our bikes and rode them into a pit.

Like they were doing construction on our street and there was a ramp leading into a pit and the pit was filled with water.

And we thought it was so much fun to go off the ramp and take our bikes into the mud water.

We were like, Yeah,

as an adult, looking back, I'm like, Oh, there could have been all sorts of crap in there.

There could have been sharp objects that would like just brutally murder us, terrible things.

But as a child, did I think about that?

No, did I care?

No, we just were like, There's a ramp and there's water.

Let's go.

And I think that's the difference:

a kid will be like, Well, I don't have to think about those things.

Meanwhile, the adults are like,

What?

Yeah.

Something that has been fun, though, is just letting my kid be the teacher.

Cause she kept trying to convince me to get on there.

And I was like, I'm going to die, dude.

But in the end, I did.

And it's been fun just kind of letting her be like, okay, here's what you're going to want to do.

Right.

And sort of like talk me through it.

I did 100% fall and hurt myself once.

And she immediately was like, mommy, are you okay?

Like, oh, God.

But I think kids, especially when they start to get a little bit older, kids really like opportunities to be sort of like in the grown-up role, you know?

So to just be like, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm kind of scared, to be honest, to write on this thing and have her be like, I'll hold your hand.

I'll help you.

You know, it's like, okay, sure.

Do you also think that's a Sam thing?

Do you think that's some like stripping DNA in there?

Because to me, I keep trying to think about everything I know about Sam.

Like, you always tell tales about, like, well, when I was younger, I was in the mountains doing this thing, or I was over here in this country or this country.

And I'm like, brother,

what age did this occur?

Because you had a like life before I knew you.

You were like gallivanting around doing, I'm like, Yeah.

Was that for a year?

Did you do that?

And it seems very like built in to have a child who would suddenly be like, I'm about adventure and doing things.

And I like to move.

It just seems like that would be the case.

I don't know.

I guess.

Or is it just a child thing?

I do think at this point there's some, like we were saying last time, there's some foundational knowledge, right?

For her, it's like, this is yet another thing I put my feet in and move.

And I've done that with a, in a couple different ways now.

And I'm sure that this is no different, right?

Or is

similar enough.

Do you think that's why kids take the technology so much easier?

Because they're like, F it, I'll just try it.

And they just do.

And because they're children, there's no expectation they'll be good at it.

They just go like,

and they press buttons and then it works.

And you're like, how'd you do that?

And they're like, well, I learned because I'm like you, I wasn't like, this is hard.

I give up.

Yeah, I don't know.

Not to use the same phrase like three times in a row.

But yeah, I think there's building blocks there, right?

And maybe our building blocks are different or we get hung up on an earlier rung and it's hard for us to see the bridge or maybe we didn't experience the bridge onto the new thing.

You know?

Sure, sure.

I do know that there are studies, not to get like existential, but I do know that there are studies out there about how people think of technology and how kids

now

think of them as like actual extensions of themselves, whereas earlier generations don't really.

And it's because I don't have my phone, but it's because, you know, people walk around with their phone as though it's like a limb.

Sure.

Which I think is interesting.

So that inherently is going to make you think about technology differently, isn't it?

It's weird to me that we have a phone extension.

We have all these things, but we still don't have, where's my glasses mods?

We were about that for a little bit.

We were doing a thing.

We had like a whole, you're going to have AR and we're going to do Google Glass and then just it stopped.

Yeah.

Dude, all I do is wear glasses.

I would love to have a little heads-up display thing here that was like, and 25 feet, turn right.

I'd love that.

Are you kidding me?

Why?

I don't understand.

We could have had something.

We could have had it all, but I'm rolling in the deep.

I bet we'll come back to it.

Yeah.

I hope it comes back because I love...

I mean, if they can stick those stupid cameras, by the way.

I hate that idea.

I'm not a fan of the camera and the glasses thing that Ray-Ban has.

Okay.

So

I think you can get them at like lens Crafters, but they have

two lenses here, and you press the side, and it records stuff onto your phone.

Oh,

not a fan.

Don't like that because to me, all that means is that even more so, everyone feels like they're being filmed.

Like, there's a weird vibe.

I don't, I'm not young enough to know exactly why, but when's the last time you went to like a concert or to like a big event thing or to there's like a or like a club

There's a weird vibe of like everyone's a little concerned they could be on film at any time.

So no one lets go

Like no one's like screw it.

I'm gonna get hooray they like it doesn't happen as much

and uh I'm I'm curious if that's because at any point someone's like you could be on TikTok and people are like I don't want that yeah whenever I see whenever I see a TikTok or a video of somebody filming somebody else across the room, my immediate thought is,

did they ask this person if it's okay for them to post this video?

And very rarely do you look below and see like, I asked them permission, right?

Almost never.

And like, I would hate that.

I've been on camera for so many years of my life and I would still fucking hate it if somebody filmed me and posted a video of me without me knowing knowing they were gonna do it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It's a weird vibe to think that anything you do that's normal could be filmed then mocked.

You know what I mean?

Like, I hate seeing videos where it's just someone living their life and then people like,

it's like, what?

The dudes, stop making like, or the whole like, I'm at the hardware store and I'm going to harass random strangers.

I'm like, oh my God.

You guys suck.

I will say the funniest thing I saw in the comments was, Jesse, not at the metal shows.

Metal shows don't have that.

Metal shows are a different breed.

You're all just from a different world.

You're a different, different reality of people.

You're somehow the most insane, nicest human beings that ever lived.

You will at one point want to bash someone in some sort of death pit and then be like, you good, bro?

Like you're like, it's a different.

I'm not getting...

I'm not including you in the conversation.

You're in your own box over here.

You live your lives, you sweet little cherubs.

Do what you do.

I'm not even gonna, you're like, like, you're over here.

Dude, I

got into a mosh pit when I was like 18, I think, and 100% got knocked over.

And immediately someone picked me up, put me outside of the mosh pit, and was like,

don't come back in, basically.

It's a different, but I was like,

thank you.

Yeah, what's interesting about it is I, so

having grown up when mosh pits became a thing, you know, like it's during the 90s, one of the things that's, and I'm sure it was before that, but mosh pit as a term was like starting to be used then.

And as that would happen, at first it was like, we're bopping, we're bopping.

And then it became like

angry.

And do I want to blame Limp Biscuit?

Yes, I do.

So at some point,

it was like, Papa Roach, sure, you're getting blamed a little.

Sure.

But like, it became like angry.

And so I think there was a period where like, oh yeah, if you you went in the pit you were getting beat like dudes were coming to beat you up and i think people realize okay there are people like that so the only way to negate that is to be like very very kind to those who get knocked down or get hurt or whatever because otherwise the guy who's got a look that look in his eye he's gonna like keep kicking you while you're down he came there to hurt someone and so it's like all right all right that guy's an ass but we're not gonna be like him and i think what ended up happening is all the like ass

people

kind of phased out because they're like, we don't even want you here.

Stop beating people up.

And then all that was left is like, hey, man, I really hit you hard.

Let me give you a hand and help you.

Like it's a vibe.

It's a whole experience.

I must stress.

The whole experience.

No, no, metalheads.

You are not like everyone else.

You are not included in this conversation.

You're your own subset of individuals.

Keep doing what you're doing.

Yeah.

I mean everyone else.

I mean people who went to see Taylor Swift.

That's what I'm referring to.

I'm talking about like the dude who like the group that got together to go see like

a movie or something and they were like, look at, you know, like that kind of thing.

I'm not talking about you where you went to go see

iron hatred

live at the palladium with death clatter and

revenge of the moon.

By the way, all great.

You can take that.

Metalheads, you can take that if you want to make a band.

Great band, Dan.

Lamoon, that's great.

That's great.

Hell Sonata.

Hell Sonata.

Hell Sonata.

That's like one of those ones where it's got for some reason a violin.

And then the opera song.

I was going to say

the singer is an opera singer.

That's the thing.

Yeah, the singer is an opera singer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the music just wrecks your face.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

Obviously.

Yeah.

Hey, dudes.

Hey, it's the end of the year.

And I felt like this would be a great time to sit back, relax, and talk about the things we enjoyed this year, what kind of games we loved, what we had really

enjoyed and wanted other people to play, or what we thought were our best of this year, things that just really made us happy.

You know, it's the end.

It's whatever day this is, the 27th.

And I felt like that.

That would be fun.

I thought it was a great idea.

I will say,

before we get into previous things, I just played a demo.

And it's, I think it's the team that made Let's Build a Zoo, but it's called Let's Build Dungeon.

And what it is, is right up my alley.

I love these types of games.

It's so fun.

I can't wait to play the real one.

The demo is pretty quick.

You're a game studio making an MMORPG.

So you have to, one, make the MMORPG, but two, hire the team to keep it going, to build things, to create assets, to do all sorts of different stuff.

It's straight up like video game dev, but an MMRPG.

And the reason why I love it so much is because it is exactly what I think every MMORPG player needs to play.

In that, if you think you're so good at making an MMRPG,

then you give it a shot.

Because it's a lot harder than you would think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I just wanted to...

Put that out there.

Absolutely enjoy it.

It's called Let's Build Dungeon.

I also played a demo this week.

Can I throw it out there before we get into Fave Games of the Year?

I'll allow it.

Okay.

It's called Wilmot Works It Out.

And it's

yeah.

It's a game where you're a weird little cube person

and somebody keeps knocking on your door to leave packages and the packages all have puzzle pieces in them and you're trying to create the puzzles, whatever the picture is supposed to be.

And the second you finish a picture, you can put it up on your wall.

But the pieces come out of order.

So you'll get a package with pieces for like three different pictures, and you have to like,

you have to keep everything organized.

The demo is pretty small, but I can see how it probably over time gets like, oh my God, I have six different paintings that I'm working on sort of a thing.

And you just decorate your wall with pictures as you finish them.

It's cute.

The trailer does an incredibly good job of showing how it works.

It literally shows the mailman show up, deliver a series of images, and then it's like, okay, well, one is clearly a spaceman, one is a hamburger, and one is something else.

And we only have enough pieces for one thing.

That's very cute.

It's a fun little puzzle game.

Also, upon first look, one of the most duger games I've ever seen in the history of video games.

It's like it is right up your puzzle alley.

Yeah.

You can see why when Steam recommended it to me as a demo, I was like,

download immediately.

Of course.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

No, this looks great.

And also watching him put together the spaceman.

It's like, oh, I see.

Or the hamburger.

It's like, well, you thought it was this, but it's actually this.

That's neat.

That's very cool.

I love those kinds of things.

It's cute.

It's very cute.

Yeah.

All right.

Did you

put together like a when in the year you played each game sort of a thing or no?

I just thought back over over the year and said what did i play or more importantly what did i not play but somehow still love does that make any sense okay i guess so for you like for example watching someone else play it or you like that it's yeah yeah yeah okay so i did not and have never played bilatro but i have watched so many hours of people playing bilatro yeah

and i don't know what it is about that game it's fascinating to me i've sat there and i've been like octo why did that give you those points and what was that about?

And how did that work?

Same thing with apparently,

according to Steam and Twitch, and all the different like

you know, end-of-the-year things, most of the stuff I did this year was literally watch friends play games I would never play, but games that I don't think have a definitive story, which is crazy for me.

So, I watched Crendor play way too many hours of Kaizo Ironmon.

Why?

Not because I care about Kaizo Ironmon.

It's because watching him fail over and over again is hilarious.

Hilarious.

Yeah.

October playing Bellatro, he was really, he was like, I'm going to do this thing that's going to net me 80 bajillion points.

You're like, how'd that work?

Why did that happen?

And he's like, well, you see this thing, this thing, and this thing.

I'm like,

all right.

Very cool.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

That kind of stuff.

I have a lot of those games where I simply just watched and enjoyed.

Big fan of that.

Mostly because

late at night, I'm like,

I guess I'll just watch whoever's online.

And those are literally the only two people online late at night on my friends list are Crendor and Octo.

So those two get my views.

Yeah, I have a couple of games on here that I like marked as being early access.

So like I enjoyed what I experienced of it.

And I have full faith that.

When it comes out, it's going to be great and really fun.

Like Hades 2.

I did not play everything that Hades 2 has to offer because I was like, okay,

if what they released with early access is already bigger than Hades,

it's going to take me so long to get through all of this content.

And I'm fine with that.

But also, for some reason, there's a part of my brain that's like, should I just wait until it's all out then?

Like, how big is this game going to wind up being?

I kind of want to know what I'm getting into, I guess.

But obviously, Hades 2 is gorgeous and super fun to play and is 100% like the perfect follow through on everything that was built with Hades 1, which is one of my favorite games ever.

So, and also on a totally different side of the spectrum, Trash Goblin is another early access game that I have had so much fun with.

completely differently from Hades 2.

I think I exhausted all of the potential dialogue in that game that's out so far.

So I'm like, okay, I'm going going to cool it now.

I'm not going to play it until it's out now.

But that game is so cute and so chill.

Yeah, I love it.

This is the lesson I learned playing Larian games: is that I can't do early access anymore, unless it's a brand-sponsored thing, in which case I got you, baby.

But no, like when it comes to early access things,

every time I play something early access, every single time when I complete the early access content, a like switch in my brain goes bink you beat it and I will never return to it I don't know how divinity original sin 2 ends I couldn't even tell you because I beat act one roughly 12 times right

and it was like well that's all that's available now I'm like okay and so I beat it and I loved which is why when Baldur's Gate 3 came out I was like I'm not I'm not doing early access.

I don't want to play the first thing.

I don't want to see what it was like before.

I don't care.

I'm going to wait wait till full release.

And then when it released in full, I played 127 hours of that damn thing.

And I loved every minute.

So, like, right.

That's, I simply can't do it anymore.

And so, while Hades 2 looks great and I love watching everyone play Hades 2, I'm like,

I'll wait till full release.

I'm no dummy.

If I don't, I will play it and then never pick it up again.

Yeah,

it happens all the time.

Yeah.

I also think with a game that's like as

big

as

like systematically big, right?

Like it's big on the inside, story-wise, mechanically, whatever, like Baldur's Gate and like Hades 2.

There's always a question in your brain of, have I exhausted this for real or have I exhausted what exists right now?

And

I think part of you feels like you'll find it more satisfying if it's released and you know for sure, like,

I did all of it or I,

you know, I've pursued this to the end.

There's no question of whether or not it's done.

I know it's done because the game's out, right?

So,

yeah, yeah.

I, it's, it's one of, it, it also bugs me when, um, going along those lines, what you're just saying, when, for example, I finally buckle down and say, oh my God, I think I can get all the achievements for this game.

I'm gonna, I'm going to do it.

This is maybe one of the first few games I get all the achievements.

And then a DLC or expansion comes out and then the achievement list grows and it's like, oh,

you thought you had completed.

You completed nothing.

And you're like, it's me and Hollow Knight.

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

I was there.

And they're like, no, you weren't.

It was a mirage.

And you're like, cool.

All right.

I hate that too.

Not a fan of that.

Let me have it.

I don't need your other achievements.

That's, you know what?

Bake them in the cake cake or don't but don't just add them now i'm like oh my god

yeah not a fan i feel it i feel you i feel you

let's see so here's a game that i'll throw out there that i enjoyed and dlc for it just came out um the snuffkin melody of moomen valley game came out this year And as a reminder, my only interaction with Moohan stuff up to that point was that when I had my kid, someone sent me the very first Moo Moomin book, which is called The Great Flood.

And I had read The Great Flood to my kid, which is like an oddly dark, weird story.

But she liked it, so we read it quite a few times.

And I, that was it.

That's all that I really knew about Moomin's.

Okay.

So then I played the Snuffkin game when it came out.

And I was like, wait, I love all these little weirdos.

This is very fun and really cute.

And I enjoy it a lot.

And I've wound up now like reading a few more of the books and watching the show.

And the snuff game game wound up like mostly being my introduction to all of the Moomin media that's out there,

which is crazy because so many people grew up with Moomins and I did not.

So

yeah.

I don't remember when this happened.

But I do remember that that was a considerable part of your life this year.

Was you you went down the Moomin rabbit hole?

I did.

I don't know why this happened, but honestly, it is a fun development because

they're so goofy looking.

I love that that's the thing.

Like, Moomin's and I, I'm pretty sure we were descendant from the same thing, the same primordial fish.

I'm pretty sure we came from the same place.

Yeah, they're weird little stove trolls.

Honestly, I like that.

I like that for you.

Also,

yeah, I wonder how that game did overall.

Because it seems very niche, but like,

I don't know.

I think it wound up being because

people love the cozy game market.

Sure.

And when a cozy game comes out that

really nails a vibe.

and is just like nice to play, a lot of people will check it out.

I think the snuffkin game was really fun.

The DLC was pretty short, but it was cute.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The DLC literally just came out.

So the fact that they released DLC for it, I guess, is a good sign for how the game did.

Sure.

Yeah.

I have to imagine if you're willing to put that much time into it.

But also,

you know, maybe, I don't know.

I have no idea.

I don't know a damn thing about Moomins except for what you tell me.

You are my gateway to the Moomin world.

Fantastic.

You're my moon.

I'll give you a small bit of trivia.

Are you ready?

No, but okay.

There aren't none of the characters in Moomins are humans.

Right, they're moomens.

No.

Well, the little marshmallow people are moomens.

Then what are the other people?

But like, what do you think Snuffkin is?

Um.

Because he's not a human.

Snuffkin is a glorpus.

Sure.

They're all little troll creatures.

They're all little creatures.

They're all little spirit creature.

Trumpuses, glorpuses,

grip norps.

But here's what pisses me off.

Ready?

I'll die on this hill.

Snuffkin's original design has a tail and like a weird like snub nose and like fur and shit.

And they got rid of all of it.

They humanized him so much.

Give him his tail back.

When you read the books, all of the characters have paws.

Give them their paws, dude.

Why do they got to look look like humans?

It upsets me.

So we can relate.

We can see little creatures.

So we can, by seeing ourselves inside of these little creatures, what they go through, we can understand as being relatable to us if they look like us.

The little fleshy frumpuses.

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The fleshy frumpcuses, the galurpuses, and the moons.

And the movies.

And the movements.

Yeah.

Hey, I will say one of the games that I want to give a shout out in the indie scene,

UFO 50.

UFO 50.

That was like 50 games in one, right?

I didn't play that.

UFO 50 is an experience.

I don't want to ruin it for everyone, but I will say that

I love the games they put in there.

Some of them are short and sweet.

Some of them are like, oh, this is a game game.

And everything about it is

it's like like a labor of love kind of vibe.

Um,

I must stress, it is a treat to play.

Um, it's retro, it and it, and it isn't retro feeling like Beyond Galaxy Land, which is another game that I love, the the RPG.

It's great, it isn't retro feeling, it's like pure retro, and it is so well done.

I cannot stress it enough.

Uh, if you're down to have an experience in a retroverse ufo 50 is pretty great and and

uh

every game is like its own different experience and

i don't that's all i'll say about that enjoy the game it's very good it's very very good

i'm double checking when a game came out

okay Lorelei on the Laser Eyes is another one that I would absolutely recommend.

I think pretty much every time that game has come up,

I've immediately been like, oh, that game is so good.

Aesthetically, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an incredible game.

It is a hardcore puzzle game, though.

Sure.

I've said this before.

It's fully like.

Every single place you need to go, every way that you need to progress will be locked behind at least two puzzles.

Like every time you open a door and you're like, finally, I figured out how to open this door,

you've revealed three more doors that are all hit, like that you need to do a puzzle for.

It's that sort of a game.

But it, it really, if you love puzzle games, it really tickles something.

Like it's such a weird game.

And I don't know how many hours of it I played before.

I reached the point where it was like, oh, this is what's going on in this game.

Right.

But it, it, like, took a while.

And even then, I was still like, I think I get it.

But it, but yeah, it's, it has such a like cool style to it.

And it's so puzzle heavy.

I love it.

I, I think it's such a cool game.

Does it have the same sound?

So I remember the previous game, Sayonara Wildhearts.

Right, because it's by Andrew,

yeah.

Filled with music.

And it was like a lot of great bands, a lot of musicians I love.

And is that something similar here?

Or is this a totally different?

Is this not music-based?

This is just a puzzle.

Can I be honest with you?

I can't really remember.

I would imagine it's just like...

The music didn't stand out enough in this game, I don't think, for me to

remember really what the music is like in this game.

Okay.

No, the thing that stuck with me is definitely the visuals.

on it and how they use like color because most of the game is black and white.

Yeah.

I don't remember the music.

I'm so sorry.

It's all right.

I was just curious.

Yeah, I think

it looks really cool.

I just haven't had a chance to play it.

For some reason, every time I see a puzzle game, I'm like, awesome.

I want to play that.

And then it's always on the back burner to anything else that won't burn my head off.

I won't be like, oh, God, no.

So, yeah, it's on there, though.

It looks neat.

Everything about it looks very cool.

I've heard only good things.

Yeah, love that.

Hey, if we're in the indie category,

let me just say,

even though this needs no shout out,

you should have played Animal Well.

Should have taken the time to play that game.

I will second that.

Yeah.

It's very, very good.

It is a game that is more than some of its parts, and I cannot stress that.

And again, I don't want to talk about it.

This is it.

Here's the problem.

Most games that I love are games that at some point in the game is going to be like...

It's like, just experience it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I will say Animal Well is one of those, and I absolutely love it.

It is, I will say, difficult.

There's a difficulty level there that,

yeah, you're going to get your butt beat frequently, but

it's not long.

I think that's the thing.

Is it's not

Elden Ring levels of getting your butt beat.

Like you're going to be like, all right, this is manageable ass kicking instead of this is an 80-hour game.

Like, I got to do this for how many hours?

Yeah.

It's a different experience.

So, big fan of that.

I'm trying to think what other indies.

Oh, Tiny Glade was a great one.

Loved that game.

You loved Tiny Glade, dude.

I love Tiny Glade.

It's so simple.

My brain shuts off and I build a little house.

And I'm like, yeah.

Neva was a lovely game.

I loved that.

Nava's on my list, too.

Beautiful, beautiful game.

Neva's another one that is like not that long, but is just

artistically fantastic.

Yep.

Yep.

Absolutely amazing game.

I'm trying to think of the other indies that really got me.

Oh,

Cryptmaster, hilarious game.

Cryptmaster is also on my list.

Cryptmaster is fantastic.

One

funny game.

Yes.

Well made.

Good.

If you haven't played that, I would highly recommend it.

It is truly a joy to play through.

I have a couple of

Metroidvanias that I can throw out there.

Nine Souls was such an incredible game.

Nine Souls, I played all the way through.

I did everything that I could in that game.

It was such a fantastic, like

mix of these really

cute characters and just

some horrifying sequences, lots of body horror if you're into that, and like actually very difficult fights that felt fair.

You were really rewarded for exploration.

I just think that game was fantastic all around.

Another one that I thought was really cool art design-wise was Ultros.

That one came out earlier in the year.

Yes, the game that I wished was about Ultros, but really was just about crazy colors and slimes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ultros was also really cool.

I never finished that one, but I think I got decently far into it.

Yeah, that one was really interesting.

But

if I had to pick a Metroidvania that I think just like blew everything else out of the water for me, it would probably be Nine Souls.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

I was trying to think of games that I played that I really, really loved that were sort of outside the box.

The Operator.

I think that's a very fun indie game that is kind of like, yo,

we're going to get real weird with it.

Yeah.

Love that stuff.

Thought that was very, very fun.

I saw people in chat were like, Holo Cure, Jesse.

I don't know if that came out this year.

I'm trying to stick to things that came out this year, but I did enjoy Holocaure.

Oh, that's right.

Holocaure.

I mean, I did, but I don't think that came out this year.

I don't know.

Did it not?

I mean, I discovered it this year, but I don't know when it released.

I couldn't say.

I really enjoy Galacticare.

I think that's doing like

a hospital sim in space is very fun, very well made.

That came out earlier this year, I believe.

Okay.

People will let me know if I'm wrong.

I have to shout out CatQuest 3.

I love CatQuest.

I'll never not love CatQuest.

It'll all be fun.

CatQuest 3 is so fun, too.

Like really just an amalgamation of all of the good quality of life stuff that got implemented.

It's so fun.

Yep.

Big fan of that.

Man, we played so many games this year.

I'm trying to remember all the different ones.

Was Harold Halibut this year?

Oh my God.

I think it was.

Wait, wait, wait.

Because I love that, too.

On my list.

Like, there's, this is the problem.

There's so many indie games that come out.

It came out in April.

Harold Halibut was fantastic.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

And so unique.

Yeah.

There's so many indie games that get, by the way, speaking of indie games.

Oh, my God, Doctor, you almost got me in trouble.

What?

removed the game from my PC, but it was a demo that you said, Jesse, you should play this.

You'll really like this demo.

You said it's kind of like a vampire

survivors

like movement thing, whatever, you know?

So

I said,

oh,

okay.

I can't wait to play it.

Dukes, I don't know.

Again, I can't remember what it was called, but I turned on stream, started up the game, and everyone in chat said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Jesse, no, no, no.

And I was like, what do you mean?

They said, don't play this on stream.

You'll get in trouble.

And I was like, all right.

So I didn't play it on stream.

I waited for stream to end.

I played the game.

Damn it.

Now I'm going to have to find it.

It was like...

I jokingly want to be like butt slapper, but

I know that's not what it was called.

I removed it from my computer, so I don't have it on here anymore.

It wasn't Wedding Witch.

Wedding Witch is

pretty simple.

Are you sure that I was the one who told you to play this game?

You 100% were.

I would need to see it because I have no idea what game is.

Hold on.

Hold.

I'm going to have to.

Oh, son of a biscuit.

I'm going to have to see if I can find it under Steam under previously played things.

It won't show up, though.

I know this is.

It wasn't Glitch Spanker.

It was a game that you

library, library.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Yeah, I think, I think, because I removed it.

I uninstalled the demo.

Oh, what a shame.

Um,

basically, what it was is: it was a game where you played as a

knight and you went around, you had to save a princess that was kidnapped by like barbarian guys.

And the art is very, very cute and very, very sweet until you win the level, and then it's full-on, pure-ass porn.

I was like,

What?

and you said

you should play this game

you did

people are saying butt night butt night is that what it is yeah butt night butt night is what it was and you told you said you should play this and that's the only reason why i downloaded it

homie

the butt night demo

homie i'm gonna hold on This was you.

Look, I've never seen this game in.

I've never seen this game in my life.

This was you.

You told me to play the demo.

Because you said the gameplay was really good.

Right now, you said the gameplay was good.

No, listen.

I have typed in butt night in my library and there are no hits.

I've never downloaded this game.

I don't know.

I have zero minutes in the game.

I don't know what to tell you.

Because there's a demo and you said play the demo.

Dude, you told me to do this.

I think maybe I told you to play a different game and you got to play it.

And then

I just gravitated to butt night.

Look, somebody said that I recommended it on a Geekeender's.

Find me a clip, dude, because I've never seen this game in my life.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Well, it is a game where you play as a big butted knight and you save girls and you go through it like a schmuck kind of thing and you fight guys and the gameplay is actually really good.

And then at the end, you beat the level and it's like, now we bang.

And I was like,

Dodger, what?

Here's the thing.

That's why I like seized.

Because

you got that little, you got a little button in you.

You're out there being a little freakety.

Bro, I have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm letting you know.

I've never seen this game before.

I'm telling you, you recommended me this game.

That's the only reason why I had it.

Find the clip, dude.

Find the clip.

I don't know when that was.

It was on my desktop for a while, and I only tried to play it recently, which is why it came as such a shock when I was was like, Whoa!

And chat was like, Don't play this, dude!

You're gonna get banned.

I'm telling you, you're the one who recommended it.

I have no idea.

I do remember it, Jesse.

You're not crazy.

Thank you.

I know I'm not crazy.

I'm not the crazy one.

Prove it, chat.

If you all believe it and remember it so vividly, then prove it.

There's no evidence, and I've never played this game before.

All right.

I'm not going to fight you on this.

Chat, I will just know that I'm right.

And I'm not going to, there's no reason to keep going.

No reason to fight you on this.

I'll just know that I'm right.

Just find it.

Just find it.

That's all I'm saying, chat.

Don't keep saying I remember that in chat if you can't back it up with something.

So anyway, that was a whole thing, and it made me laugh very hard.

But no, it's just well, I'm so sorry that alternate universe me,

that Baronstein Bears me

told you to play a hentai game on stream.

First off, first off,

never be sorry for telling me to play a hentai game.

Don't apologize for that.

Who do you think you are?

You did nothing wrong.

If anything, you improved my life.

So don't,

don't, don't make this a sad thing.

I'm just saying.

It wasn't appropriate for stream, but when stream ended, I played and I was like, yeah, all right.

This is pretty good.

This game's great.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

I'm very glad.

So don't you worry.

This isn't a Dodger, how dare you thing.

This is a Dodger.

Thank you for educating me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was going to say,

going back to games we recommend, Tactical Breach Wizards was fantastic.

Sure.

That game, so fun.

I don't care if you hate tactics games.

I never play tactics games, but the writing in this one is so fun.

The concept

is like

is like an XCOM game, except all of the characters are different types of wizards.

But they're still dressed in like tactical gear.

It's so funny.

And it's such a, and there are lots of like really heartfelt moments in it.

Like it's one of those games where as the writing builds, you're like, wait.

Oh no, I care a lot about the wizards.

It's so good.

It's such a fantastic game.

Hey, simpler times.

Very simple game.

Very easy to play.

You just pack stuff and listen to music.

Again, pure Jesse Cox greatness.

I love a good shut my brain off and listen to like chill beats and do a thing while a video renders.

So

big fan of that.

Love that stuff.

Let me ask you, was Banishers this year?

Was Banishers this year?

I don't remember.

I think that that was last year.

Was it last year?

Was it last October?

Banishers.

No, it was this year.

Oh, my God.

Look at that.

Look at us.

Again, this year had so many great games.

There's just so many games that came out.

And this is again

not including games that you would just automatically be like, oh, these are good games.

Like

Elden Ring DLC, Helldivers 2, the updates they did for Baldur Skate 3 and Cyberpunk, Space Marine 2,

Metaphor, Indiana Jones, which I'm still playing, and I love, like, love Indiana Jones.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Marvel Rivals.

We got a new Diablo DLC.

We got,

dear God,

an Alan Wake DLC.

We got just so much came out this year.

Big fan.

Oh, yeah.

We got Wukong.

came out this year.

Wukong, yeah.

Just like a ton of stuff.

Path of Exile 2.

Which, by the way, I have to stop playing.

I get so mad at it.

I'm going to wait until the full release.

I'm so mad at it because like

it's tough.

Yeah.

I've discovered that I lack the motor function to do some of the like combos it wants me to do.

It's asking for button presses and things where I'm like,

I don't operate that fast.

My brain is not that.

I can't like, there's some things that click with me.

I'm like, okay,

if I cast curse and I curse these skeletons and then I raise the dead, the undead that I've raised now have the curse.

So whenever they attack, they curse other things and snowballs and things die really quickly.

It looks awesome.

Right.

But to pull off said curse combo, I have to press three buttons in the exact same order and be like, okay, so I got it.

Yo, no, I missed.

Okay.

Hold on.

No, that guy died too quick.

Like, it's just.

Yeah.

I really need

a one-button combo thing.

Like, I need to go in there and be able to be like, I press one button and it casts all three spells in a row.

I would be so happy.

I would just be the happiest boy on earth.

That's all I want.

Now, if that's in the game and I just don't know about that, she'll jump back in immediately.

But some bosses are just like,

bitch.

It's like, I just get wrecked.

Yeah, can you set up like macros in that game?

I don't know.

I don't know if you can set up macros.

If you could, that'd be great.

I guess you could go into your, like, if you have a Razor or whatever mouse where you have that program and you can click, you could, like, combine things into one.

But that already is too much for me.

I'm like, if I do that, suddenly I'm going to be playing other games and I'm going to press a button and it's going to be like, no, that's rebound to those three buttons, dude.

You screwed up.

And I'll be like, oh, I'll forget that I rebound things.

Yeah.

no, I'm all right.

But PoE2 is great, it's very fun.

I'm just not.

Like, I decided to play as a monk the other day and just was like, Am I?

Do I suck?

Or does this class suck?

I was like, no, it can't be the class.

It has to be me.

And I was like, fine, I'll just go back to wielding a shotgun,

which is great.

It's great.

Shout out to WASD plus shotgun.

It's great.

Tons of fun.

Dude,

I think Marvel Rivals is so fun.

I finally

playing it.

It's so fun.

Like, people really love to be like, ugh, it looks exactly like Overwatch.

They didn't innovate at all.

Bro, it's fun.

And if somebody is looking to feel the way that they did playing original Overwatch, they get that with Marvel Rivals.

I think that they, I think they made all the right calls about what, what to copy.

Yeah.

They literally took Overwatch and said, why did they make so many stupid changes?

Let's just make it what it was.

And then they just Marvel skinned it.

And to be honest, it's great.

And more importantly, as I've said before, and I will continue to say,

Marvel Rivals falls squarely right in the middle of the perfect Venn diagram of the Jesse Cox.

Will this game succeed or not algorithm based on how many people want to have sex with the characters?

And here's the thing.

Y'all horny for Marvel Rivals.

And that's how I know it's going to be a smash hit.

Bro.

Because it isn't just one character or two characters.

Dude.

It's every character.

You're like, damn.

The number of people that I know that are like, bro, am I about to go through a Loki phase again in 2025?

I don't know if I can do that.

I don't know if I'm going to live through that.

Yep.

It's great.

Yeah.

The fact that...

And again, this goes back to original Overwatch.

Before Overwatch even released, the amount of like dirty stuff popping up online was crazy.

And right now, if you see what's happening over on Twitter, they're like, dude, we're trying to crack the code so we can get all the models out.

I'm like,

y'all nasty, but you talented.

You have skills.

I'll admit it.

You're perverts, but you got skill.

Yeah.

I saw a couple pieces of fan art and I was like, oh, interesting.

Maybe I'll just look at the tag in general and see what people are making fan art of.

It's all squirrel girl.

It's all squirrel girl in a variety of situations.

It's a lot of squirrel girl, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did I tell you about when I was at the Game Awards thing and there was a bunch of people talking about Marvel Rivals?

And there were two guys in line with me.

And one guy just kept being like, dude, playing Marvel Rivals is awesome.

And his friend was like, oh, yeah, who are you playing?

And he's like, oh, I love Squirrel Girl.

She's so hot, dude.

And the guy was like, oh, so you are furry?

And he was like, no, man, it's just Squirrel Girl.

And he's like, she got a tail, though.

And he's like, yeah, what?

That's not.

It was just like a guy really being like, I'm pretty sure you're fur.

And he's like, no, I just like Squirrel Girl.

And he's like,

she got a tail, though.

He made me laugh so hard.

I was like, I mean, he's not wrong.

She does have a tail.

That woman is a squirrel.

Meanwhile, the people that are really into Venom being like, yo, Venom's caked up.

If you were like, what are you into monsters?

They'd be like, absolutely.

100%.

Yes.

The amount of shame is so different.

That same like

I've been seeing a lot of

magic and storm and whoever the hell that ice girl is that I've never heard of in my entire life.

People are starting to cosplay her.

I've also never heard of her, and I was like, no clue who that is.

I mean, I like that they're trying to do some deep cuts, but

yeah.

But also, I think a lot of people didn't know who Jeff was before this game, and suddenly they're like, oh, I'm a huge Jeff stan.

Well,

look, the seasonal event is just Jeff's.

You're all Jeffs.

Everyone's a Jeff.

Oh, Luna Snow is an OC from the game.

All right.

Well, if that's true.

Luna Snow is the devs OC.

Fantastic.

I've been introducing another game recently.

All right.

Okay.

Sure.

She's from the Marvel mobile game.

Well, that's fine.

Okay.

Sure.

Doesn't affect me at all.

Yeah.

All right.

But

I love that,

yeah,

there's, again, they're doing this.

There's someone for everyone, which is what we did for Monster Prom.

And it's what I will continue to do as a dev always and be like, let's make someone that everyone can be in love with.

And that's pretty much what they've done.

And so,

although now there are mods, oh, God, there's so many mods.

And it's not just like nude mods, dudes.

We're talking like

imagine any fetish you can think of.

There are mods for it now.

And I'm like, y'all went too hard.

Y'all went too hard.

It went too hard too fast.

Ran out of room immediately.

Yeah, it just, it got a little too crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a lot.

Yeah, I was very impressed with what they've done with that.

I'm curious

where that goes game-wise

because

there's a part of it that,

you know, it could end up, I'm worried it could end up like what Overwatch did, where eventually it becomes about monetization rather than like we had a good game.

And like original Overwatch was pretty straightforward.

You paid for Overwatch.

You played the game.

And then they're like, oh, we can make more money if we add extra stuff to it.

And I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see what they do.

I don't know.

What would you say was your biggest letdown of the year?

Do you have one?

Because I definitely have one, and it sticks with me to this day.

And I will gladly say it.

I would have to think about that.

I still have quite a few that are like, I loved this game, but a letdown.

Well, yeah, I mean, there are plenty of games that I love.

Like, we didn't even mention, thank goodness you're here.

That's an amazing game.

That's very fun.

Even though the rest of the world hated it, I actually really liked Dragon Age.

I thought that was fun.

I don't think the rest of the world hated it.

I think you're in good company with people that liked it.

There's like four of us, and we are.

There's dozens of us.

There's dozens of us.

Mouthwashing was like such a surprise for me.

Oh my gosh.

It's on the list.

It's on that computer back there for when Scary Game Squad gets here.

We'll play it eventually.

That game really threw me for a loop.

I still think about that game.

I thought it was so good.

Prince of Persia Lost Crown was fantastic.

And I'll always be salty that they shut down.

But I don't know.

Hmm.

Something that really disappointed me.

The game that got me, I'll tell you because this one drives me crazy.

Yeah, tell me.

Pacific Drive is my biggest disappointment of the year.

Conceptually,

trailer-wise, everything about that game, even the first, I'll say first hour, I was like, yo, this is what I'm here for.

I love your driving.

It's weird.

It's going to be creepy.

There's things in the distance.

What's going on?

Loved that.

But the game itself was car repair the game.

Search for materials, repair your car, find crafting things.

And I do not like those games.

I do not like any of the games where it's like, well, it's one thing, but also you're spending most of your time finding parts to repair and do stuff.

It's not my brand.

I see people chapping, I love it.

It's so good.

I do not like that stuff.

I don't, that's the reason why I'm not playing like

when they had like Rust or all those games, Ark, where it's like, yeah, I do want to ride dinosaurs.

That sounds cool.

I also don't want to

hit trees and build a fort.

Like, that's not fun for me.

That's not exciting.

That's that's hard, isn't it?

It's like when Cults of the Lamb came out, people that wanted a colony sim game played it, but so did people who wanted a dungeon crawler Isaac-ish game, right?

And some people love both of those genres, like me, and were like, this is great.

I love that I can do both in one game.

Sure.

But there were plenty of people that were like, I don't want to go fight.

And I don't want to, I don't want to have to fight bosses and shit in order to build the colony.

I just want to build the colony.

I just want to run a cult, you know?

Yeah.

And

I think sometimes when there's sort of a crossover of two genres,

people, you know, will be disappointed in one way or another if it turns out that one of those genres plays a more important role than you were expecting or than you were hoping, right?

Absolutely.

And here's the thing: I love Call of the Lamb, but I very much know that if I had not done my first playthrough on stream using viewers as cultists, I don't know that I would have continued because when you hit, there's a point in Call to the Lamb where every time you leave to go do your questing stuff, when you come back, your cultists have just shit everywhere.

And they're too stupid to clean it up.

So you're like.

Brother, what?

So now you have to clean it.

Half of your cultists are sick.

They're all like, oh, there's poo everywhere.

Or people, like there's a loop early on before you start getting bathrooms and whatever, before you get the things to upgrade, there's about a good hour of gameplay where you're just like, anytime you leave, your cultists are destroying your cult.

And you're like, well, this is, this sucks.

I hate this.

And if it wasn't for the fact that I was on stream playing with people and laughing at the fact that like, you know, do me 22 was the one who took a dump in the woods.

And I'm like, hey, you suck.

I think I'd be pissed at that part.

But I played through it and I loved it.

I mean, that's the same thing when it comes to Pacific Drive.

We're like,

there's, I played it.

I don't think, I don't remember if I played it on stream or not.

I might have, but like,

it starts out so well and it's spooky and scary.

And then it's like, okay, repair your car, put the doors on a car, do this, this, this.

I was like, all right, cool.

And I did that stuff.

And in my mind, I was like, oh, okay.

I'm going to have to, you know, keep the car repaired to drive through this thing.

But really, you stop, you have to run around, collect items, dodge floating weird things.

And it's like, okay, this isn't a drive where shit goes bad.

This is a

like, I'm getting out.

I'm taking a walk.

We're doing some things.

I got to get back to my car.

It wasn't what was advertised in the trailers.

And I think that's what got me.

The trailer for Cult of the Lamb was like you're a cult manager and you're doing like a dodge roll fight.

Like that was there.

Right.

It was in the trailer.

And for Pacific Drive, it just, that wasn't what I got out of what I I thought the trailer was going to be or what the game was going to be.

And so I was like, oh, okay.

All right.

And yeah, I was, that was my biggest letdown because I wanted to love it.

Like, conceptually, the idea of like, we're going for a weird drive through the Pacific Northwest and it's crazy weird.

I would love that.

But it's straight up like a roguelike.

It has like roguelike vibes to it.

And it's just not, uh

it's not my, it's not my thing.

I don't know.

It just never really did it for me.

Now, if you're saying it can change all that chat and make it different, I might give it a try.

But like, there's so many other games.

If you don't get me, I'm moving on.

Right.

This wasn't this year,

but a game that wound up being kind of like that for me.

And I keep thinking to myself that I really should go back and try it again is Dredge.

Dredge, everybody keeps being like, there is so much cool stuff to this game.

Like, it's so creepy and like atmospheric and all this stuff.

And I just didn't enjoy the dredging loop.

I didn't enjoy that.

And I keep thinking, I should go back and try it again.

But I didn't, I didn't like it.

I didn't like playing it.

And I feel like I missed out on a lot because I didn't enjoy playing it.

Sure.

You know,

yeah.

So, yeah, sometimes that just, that's just how it be, right?

Yeah.

I mean, like,

there was another game.

This is a few years back.

There's another game that you recommended that you were like, you'll love this.

It's by a dev team you love.

And I was like, great.

And I played it for maybe an hour.

I was like, nah.

No, I don't like this one.

And yeah, it just happens.

It's not, it doesn't mean like, oh, that's a terrible game.

It's just not for you.

I get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyone's like, but I love that game.

Cool.

I'm not telling you not to love it.

I'm just saying that it didn't, you know, scratch my itch.

I know what I want in a game and I want it to be one way.

And if it's not, I'm going to be like, well, I'll just play something else.

I'm not too upset.

You know, it goes both ways right like there are games that that we have said oh my gosh these are some of our the games of the year for us and there's always at least somebody in chat who's like oh i really didn't enjoy that game actually for xyz reason it's there's such a huge gradient of like what people are looking for in a game and what's going to like hit just right you know right and you just can't you can't hit for everybody it's impossible yeah and that's fine i mean that's why you know there's all sorts of different weird games out there that you can play.

Like, we didn't even mention,

I think that Skulld is a great game that I think is very niche.

It is pure, like, old school RPG DD style.

Lots of reading.

Like, it's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it tremendously.

I thought it was a lovely game.

Yeah.

It's just, it is what it is.

Um,

let me see.

Yeah, yeah.

Banishers and Harold Halibut.

I'm so glad you brought both of those up.

I loved both of those games.

Locomotive was an end of the year like hit for me.

I absolutely recommend that game if you like 2D side-scrolling, like mystery games.

Takes place on a train,

all the classics, all the classic elements, switches POVs.

It's so good.

Oh my goodness.

What else?

What else was there?

Oh, when did Sheepy come out?

I just played that recently.

I don't if that came out this year.

It was this year.

It was February.

Okay, there is a game.

It is so short.

It's, I think, supposed to be more of like a proof of concept or like a showcase of style.

But there's a game called Sheepy, a short adventure that came out February this year.

And I just played it like a few weeks ago.

It's

so good.

The music and the sound design is insane in it.

The style of it is so good.

It's extremely short, but by the end of it, you're like, holy shit, I want this person to make another, like a big game.

I want like a big game that's like this, which is why I'm hoping that they made this to be like, let's see what people think of, you know, my vibe.

But

yeah, it was great.

Interesting.

I'm going to, yeah, install on Steam.

I'm down to play.

That's really cool.

Sheepy.

Never heard of

my life.

Sheepy, a short adventure.

It's free.

Go play it.

It's fantastic.

You know what?

I love a good free game.

I'm no fool.

Same.

Sheepy.

Same, same, same.

Nice.

Downloading right now.

Install.

Oh, my gosh.

Crypt Custodian came out this year too.

Loved that game.

I played all of that.

Yep.

That's the one about a cat that dies and gets put into purgatory, basically.

Yeah.

Also, I realized this year I didn't play any of the games that were water-based, even though I downloaded them.

I have Thalassa, Edge of the Abyss on my desktop, and I have Still Wakes the Deep on my desktop.

Haven't touched those once.

The threat of playing them was there, but I've never played them.

And you know what?

That sounds right.

The water games.

Oh, well.

Still Wakes the Deep.

Oh my my god it was so good it would scare the shit out of you i think i don't think for sure yeah oh yeah i would play that with scary game squad the biggest problem is this is like the the the main problem with a lot of scary game squad stuff these days is we'll see a game we're like yo that looks really good we'll look at it and we'll say the game is 16 hours long and we're like brah

we meet once every friday for maybe five hours total this game that would take weeks to complete right still wakes the deep playing by myself took me seven hours it says

not too bad

but yeah yeah but fancy oh god what a good game fantastic game yeah i hear that and mouthwash is the whole thing mouthwashing is also much more hard to play that but

it's on look it's there it's it's it's definitely there

Also, for everybody who loves a power wash, Sim, Crime Scene Cleaner was a fucked up little weird cleaning game

where you get sort of

blackmailed, I guess,

into working for the mob and cleaning up their crimes.

It was fun.

Yeah, it was good.

Yeah, I'm trying to think.

There's a lot of games that I played that I liked, but I didn't get a chance to play them a bunch.

Like...

Man, Frostpunk 2 I played, but I didn't get to play a bunch, so I don't have a full, like, here's my thoughts on it.

There was a game called

The King is Watching

that I played a little bit of, but I didn't get to play a bunch.

Baladins, I know that you and I played a little bit, but we didn't beat it.

Dude, I'd love to try Baladins again.

Yeah, I would too.

That was a lot of fun.

I think we're going to try and get Octo to join us.

Yeah, we were talking about doing us Octo and Crendor, maybe?

Yeah, maybe.

Obviously, Void Crew is a game that I think is super fun, but I haven't had a chance to play a bunch of it.

And Empire of Ants is the other one.

Conceptually, visually, awesome.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I haven't had a chance to play much of it, but I love the idea of an ant-based RTS.

Very cute.

Sadly, my entire life over the last two months got taken over by every single Square Enix RPG that released all within the span of one month, which was crazy.

Visions of Mana, Romancing Saga 2, Dragon Quest 3, HD 2D Remake, Metaphor, Dragon Age.

They all came out within one month of each other.

And then immediately, Indiana Jones came out.

And I'm going to let you know, all those other games I love.

However, I love Indiana Jones more.

I am thoroughly enjoying it.

It is

so, so good in every single way.

And I love it.

It is the best Indiana Jones movie I've seen in years.

I'm enjoying it.

There's so many.

Whoever the director of the game is,

their knowledge of Indiana Jones shots and goofs and camera angles is

lost.

Last year.

Oh, it's so well done.

There's so many goofs that they absolutely nail.

Like, this isn't a spoiler goof.

It's the one I use all the time just to explain, like, how indie it is.

But, um.

You're in the Vatican and Indy dresses up as a priest.

In order to hide, he hides in a, like, like one of those, you know, like confessional booths.

And this Italian man gets in the booth and he starts talking to him.

And he's like, father, I'm in so much trouble.

And it's just, all we see is Indy's face reacting to it.

And he's like,

my, my mother-in-law, she's so attractive.

I've started having an affair with my mother-in-law.

And Indy's like, and he's like,

I got my mother-in-law a pregnant and my wife is a pregnant too.

And he's like, holy crap.

Oh, I guess like three Hail Marys.

You know, it's really well done.

And it's just like a little scene added because it's an Indiana Jones scene where it's like, well, of course, this is the one thing that would happen to Indiana Jones.

It's very well done.

There are a lot of good goofs.

It is truly just a very fun game.

Plus, it is, yeah.

Have you played any of it?

I haven't.

I was just about to say that it's just such a skill to be able to like analyze a type of media in a way where you can like reconstruct the same vibe, especially in a different media type, like a video game, right?

So that's amazing.

Yeah, what's what's brilliant about it is most of the game is,

you know, solving riddles, doing Indiana Jones tomb exploring, finding treasure, completing quests and that kind of thing.

But

when you do the story bits, it is full on.

There might, you know, there's one scene where,

spoiler, Nazis are involved uh there's one scene with the two nazi bad guys and indy and it's like a full-on i would say that scene you don't touch a controller for like seven minutes and it's just slapstick indiana jones comedy of like you're watching an indiana jones movie and because it so nails what indiana jones is i didn't care that it was just a cutscene of like

Indy being it.

Like, I didn't fight anyone.

I didn't do anything.

It just did it.

And I was like, yeah, that was, that was pretty great.

That was

cute.

And I'll say,

Troy,

yo, absolutely nails the voice.

It is crazy how good Indy sounds sometimes.

Nice.

Yeah, he really nails the Harrison Ford mumble.

He's like, oh,

you're like, oh, I see what you're doing.

Because that's how Harrison Ford talked.

Oh, it was great.

How many hours do you have in that game so far?

That was a solid question.

I will look right now.

Most of it, to be honest, most of it is because I have a total of 23 hours in it.

Okay.

Most of it's because I'm doing everything.

So you can complete the story bits and do all the stuff, but there's

so there's secret missions you can discover.

There's different things, but then there's also just straight up like find these relics.

And I'm like, oh, I'm doing that.

And the problem is, is that a lot of them you can't get until you proceed further into the story because you can return to locations, but you can't like get to certain places without a certain item.

And so you have to like backtrack.

I would assume most normal people would not do that.

But I'm like,

I got to go back and look.

Literally the last time yesterday when I was playing on stream, the entire stream was, I'm going to go back and find the things that I could not get before.

Yeah.

And so I ended up going back through.

And then what ended up happening is in the area I'm currently in, I found a chest and the chest, the mystery was, there's keys hidden throughout the world and I was like oh my god so then you have to go back to previous areas and get the keys that are that are hidden there so that's a whole other time sink I most people I assume will not do that like there's um

I guess two types of currencies.

There's the currency of money, which you can find and then use to buy things.

And those will give you hints or give you upgrades.

But then

if you buy an upgrade, you then have to unlock the upgrade.

And that's your like research points or whatever the hell you, when you like find cool things or take a photo, and it's like a good photo, you get points.

And then you use those points to unlock stuff.

So the more points you have, the more badass your indie can be.

But you don't need to do any of that.

You can like go through the story, do your thing, and have a good time.

The brilliant part about it, I think, is that there's little tiny moments where

the NPCs do things that are comically funny, like Indiana Jones level comically funny, where you will,

literally yesterday, I went to go swing down a rope and like, you know, we

swing down.

And I accidentally knocked a guy off a guard tower.

And it looked amazing, but it alerted every single Nazi in the area.

And they were like, oh, so they're chasing me into the woods, shooting at me.

And I'm just like, oh.

And I didn't mean to do that, but it was like a really funny goof.

And I was like, all right, that's amazing.

That's cute.

Yeah.

I must stress, it's a shame it came out in December because it would be in the running for game of the year for me for sure.

I will, sadly for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I will 100% forget by we by next November.

When next November rolls around, it's a war season.

I'll be like, that

I get, I mean, I guess I came out at the end of, like, I don't think it's in a weird limbo spot.

The good news is I think that Lucas and Machine Games are talking about doing more.

So

that's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It must be doing good then, like sales-wise.

I don't know, but I love it.

I cannot stress how much I enjoy it.

It's very fun.

I feel like I have to mention that I started playing Warframe this year, even though that game came out a million years ago.

I started playing Warframe this year and have spent a lot of time with Warframe, and that's been very fun.

I started playing League of Legends this year, a mistake.

So yeah, there are some things that I've spent time on playing this year that did not come out this year, but I still feel like I should mention them.

I'm obsessed with

the

League of Legends kind of,

I don't know what the right word is.

It's whatever Arcane achieved, right?

Because

Fallout, when it released this year,

was

a great gateway.

to Fallout games.

It was a thing where everyone who, like, even in the first episode literally had character creation.

Everything in it was this fun little, you know,

Fallouty vibe.

And everyone who watched it had this thing of like, man, I want to play Fallout.

And so after that released, everyone's like, what Fallout should I play?

And everyone's like, oh, play this one or this one or this one, whatever, right?

League for Arcane.

I know so many people

who was like, oh my God, I want to play League.

Arcane's amazing.

And I think I read a stat that I think sums it it up perfectly where I'm not sure if I can find that.

I don't want to give you a fake number.

Is it

the one about

how many people downloaded the game and then never played it again after that first day?

Yes, yes, yes.

That's the same stat.

I've seen the same stat.

And it is dramatic.

It's a dramatic stat.

And it's one of those things where...

It's huge.

It's like...

Everyone got excited about Arcane, but League of Legends couldn't deliver on the promise of what Arcane said it was.

Arcane said this is a world world of characters and lore and magic and this and this and this.

And then you play League and it's none of that.

I think that's what we talked about this a little bit after the game awards, didn't we?

Because we were talking about how, because Fallout won the best adaptation award.

Right.

And we were discussing like, well, Arcane was amazing for

the whole animation industry, right?

But as an adaptation,

Fallout was so much more successful because of exactly what you're talking about, right?

Like you watch Fallout, you go to play Fallout, and you're like, I'm playing the show, right?

But you watch Arcane and go to play League, and they are so

like, there's no harmony between the two at all, right?

Like the same characters are there, and that's basically it.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the biggest things that I,

I don't, I guess.

Riot's working on an MMO.

I don't know that that's going to be a league-based MMO, but I'm very curious about

because they shut,

I guess I don't know what's going on over there.

It does seem insane that they create such a pop, like, I love Arcane.

I love those two seasons.

I think it's incredible.

I will never touch, I played league once.

That's all they're getting out of me.

I'm one of no, and I will never go back because I cannot lose.

That's just a thing.

But I'm fascinated because there's no connective tissue.

You're right.

It's a property that stands on its own that creates some lore, but but the lore is unimportant to the thing that's the game.

There's no one playing the game who's like,

that really, I'm really excited about the new lore prospect.

That's a lie.

There are definitely some people.

But you know what I mean?

Like the majority of players don't care about the lore.

They're Krendor.

They're like, I like my guy.

He blows people up.

Right.

I hate Echo.

I always ban him.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

I do think something that they could be doing is pushing more to the other games that exist within the league universe because I think they do a much better job of telling stories

in the universe, the Yordel game and the Drowned King and the Runterra game or whatever.

Like there's so many

games on my computer at home.

And they're like the RPG, Ruined Kings, fun.

Like

they've got good story-based games, but then they close that entire

part of the business down.

They're making no more of those games.

And so I think that's,

I don't know, it's sad because the story, the desire for story-based games in that universe is clearly there.

People loved Arcane.

And so I'm curious if they would make more, but they shut down that entire branch.

So I don't know.

And,

you know,

Valorant isn't that.

Valorant isn't league lore.

And I don't know what the MMO is going to be.

So I have no clue.

But Arcane was incredible.

However, Fallout, very much like Edge Runners, was clearly a, this is going to tell you what the universe was like.

Please play our game.

And that's why after Edge Runners came out, Cyberpunk blew up again.

And they perfectly timed Edge Runners with the new patch that changed the way Cyberpunk played.

And then people instantly fell in love.

And now

I see Cyberpunk stuff all the time.

For a game that everyone was like, this game sucks.

I hate it.

Suddenly, everyone was like, this might be one of the best games ever made.

it popped back for sure yeah yeah

it's weird i really want more it's strange to say i want more things from riot that aren't league

guys yeah i don't want to play league i'll play it like you've clearly got some talent i'd love to know what goes on but with that said i saw a

series of tweets that all the writing team for arcane when they announced they were doing a warhammer 40k show they all were like, Yo, can I write on that?

Which to me says, Oh, they don't have much loyalty for ride at all, really.

They're like, We'll jump shit right now if you let us write 40k.

So

I don't know, but I'm here for that.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, no, hold on

because I'll watch the shit out of that.

I've been doing a lot of reaction watching of the secret level 40k episode.

Okay,

it's fascinating to watch people who don't understand

what a 40K

thing is watching that Secret Level episode because they're like, what's this?

How's that work?

It's great to watch.

It's like a what if thing.

No, have you never seen

Secret Level?

No.

Torture.

Secret Level is a show, I believe it's on Amazon or Netflix.

It's one of the two.

I can't remember.

And it is a series of episodes that are.

You talked about this last time.

I didn't.

I did.

And I just forgot what it was called.

Okay.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

Yeah.

I think I combined in my mind.

I combined that with the what if show.

No, no, no, no.

Secret level is a series of

animations, kind of like Love, Death, and Robots.

And it is

animation.

Yeah, it's like 15 little shorts, and many of them are

okay.

Some of them are phenomenal.

Again, my favorite one, the Pac-Man episode is very interesting because the Pac-Man episode made no sense until I saw the game awards.

And then the trailer for the new Pac-Man game came out.

I was like, oh, I see.

But the ones that stick with me, New World, I love that one.

The New World episode is so silly and fun.

And it's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So like,

that's fun.

I saw clips from the Sifu episode.

Sifu episode is very cool.

But the 40K one, I think, is

the best hands down episode.

It is so well done.

It is cool as shit.

Basically, I believe, at first, I thought it took place before, but now I know it takes place after.

Oh my God, my brain just died.

The Space Marine 2.

Okay.

And it is like

just

Titus being the biggest badass who ever lived.

And it's so cool.

And I cannot stress.

It isn't like, you know, how most 40k stuff is,

let's go fight orcs or let's go fight Tyranades or let's go.

This is straight up like we're jumping into chaos immediately.

And if you want to get real weird and see how real weird 40k's universe is, dukes, find it online.

Take the, I think it's like maybe 10 minutes long.

It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

And watching people react to it.

Watching people react to it is like feeding me right now because there are many people who get it and they're like, yo, is that Titus?

Is that my boy Titus?

And then there's some people like, I don't know what this is.

And by the end, they're like, holy shit, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Is it a moment watch party?

Is that how people are reacting to it?

Oh, no, they're just like YouTube reaction.

Like, they're just doing YouTube reaction videos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The only weird one is Concorde in that it's they have a full animation for a thing that doesn't exist anymore.

Um

What's weird is I kind of like the Concorde episode and I realized much like when I was complaining about Concorde before I was like, conceptually, if this was just a story-based game that wasn't trying to be a shooter with characters we love,

it would have been a fine property.

They just made the weirdest choice in the history of choices.

And

it's very obvious.

And I mean this in the nicest way possible, Concorde screwed up the Jesse Cox principle of video game success.

Oh, no.

I didn't know anyone who was like, I want to bang those characters.

Sure.

I didn't see one single person be like, all those characters, I'd bang them.

Didn't happen.

Not what they look like.

So I can't say yes or no.

Imagine vague amalgamations of people.

Like there was nothing that stood out about them.

You know what I mean?

They just looked like people, which is fine.

Like people, I'm a people.

I like people, but they just looked like people.

There was nothing unique or cool about them.

The world was neat.

The world they set up, the world building they did for the game, very cool.

I love the idea of the space world they created.

But like the characters were like, I'm pilot.

I'm gun person.

I'm

like big buff lady in weird looking armor.

Like there's nothing about them that said, yo, this, oh, I got to be that character.

It didn't feel like like if you look at Marvel Rivals, people like, oh, I want to be this character because I like the way they look.

I like their abilities.

You know, like that kind of thing.

That wasn't the case for this.

It's weird.

It's so hard to explain what it is.

Because I do.

I feel like the characters have the beginning of something really interesting.

Right.

And I don't, I don't.

They don't planned.

But what is it?

Because it's very like...

Anime and manga does this all the time,

where you can pick out who a main character is going to be based on like how crazy their hair is.

In the background, everyone has brown hair and is wearing like the same outfit.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

But like

there's such a huge difference, and I don't know enough about it to understand what the like it factor is.

There's a huge difference between I'm just going to throw a bunch of shit on this person

and

this is a really cool character to say,

right?

Like the difference there, you

immediately know it looking at the character, but it's hard to pick out like, why doesn't this character work?

Like, what is it about this character that's just like not hitting for me?

Because looking at all these characters, I'm like, I don't understand why I wouldn't be interested in this game, but there is something bland about all of them, despite that, like, they're all

aliens.

And like, really, like, I don't know.

It's, it's interesting.

It's an interesting topic.

I've seen people in the chat say it's corporatized, sanitized.

I don't even know if that's it.

There's just something about the design of the characters that if you're exactly right, Dodger.

These are the characters that would be in the background of a scene that played while the characters that looked visually cool would be walking in front of them.

Like, none of these characters scream, I'm the main character.

They all scream, I exist in this world, but also I've got a nine-to-five.

Like there's nothing cool about them.

And again,

I know it's reductive and silly and stupid, but I promise you, the Jesse Cox rule of will a game be successful works every time.

It isn't about the hotness of a character.

It's about you being attracted to them on some level.

And if you can, oh, I want to play as that character because I want to be around that character.

Like, that's how you get loyalty to a game.

Like, there's just,

I don't know.

It's, it's bizarre to me.

Because, again, the video for Secret Level, the trailer that I saw, the original trailer, I was like, yo, this is cool.

Kind of a Guardians of the Galaxy vibe.

But then they were like, the game is not that at all.

It's honestly kind of the way I felt about Overwatch originally.

Like, obviously, the characters got me like...

Widowmaker, but I couldn't fight that.

I was like, all right, I'll allow it.

But

when Overwatch first came out, they had all these movies and trailers and world building but then the game was kind of like pew pew pew eventually it wore off like my enjoyment of overwatch declined over time because they kept hyping it up as a story thing but they never delivered on that not once to this day have they delivered on that and you know It became successful because people were like, yeah, I like these things.

But the promise of what the game was is very similar to what Concorde was doing, which is it's like a story in a world and it's going to be.

I don't think so.

I think we got to stop that.

It's the same thing when I see indie trailers where your trailers in animation.

I love animation as much as the next person, but I want to see your game and your animation's not,

it's cool, but that's not what your game is.

There's so many great animated trailers.

Then you see the game and it's like

that's the game.

Yeah.

If your trailer is like your intro cinematic or intro animation

and it turns out that your game looks totally different from that,

there's this disjointed sort of reaction.

And there's so few times you can nail it.

Obviously, Caul to the Lamb nailed the animation plus the gameplay because the animation looks similar to the gameplay assets.

Yes.

And it nailed the vibe of what it is.

But a lot of the times you and I will look at trailers and be like,

what the hell was, what is that game?

Like the animation was cool, but that told me nothing about what the game was.

Yeah.

Someone said the Concorde episode is the perfect introduction to the world but the game is the opposite exactly like arcane and league so there you go

yeah

and that's it's weird to me but at the same time

i understand

why

you would want to invest in creating because

Having lore, having a background, having a story, having a buy-in is very important for games.

Yeah.

Like, if you want people to play your stuff long-term and get attached to it buy your merch buy your thing whatever you need to have them not just love the game but in some way want to spend time in that world and be a part of that and uh arcane nailed that there's some people that love the characters from arcane and want more of that yeah and uh that's just not what league is Like,

and that's absolutely right.

All those people went to go play League because they wanted more.

And when they got there, that's not what they got.

And so they're out.

I understand completely.

Are there any other games that you want to make sure you mention before we have to wrap up for today?

There aren't plenty of games.

I don't, for the life of me, remember half of them.

But

I definitely wrote down two news things I thought would be fun to talk about because I'm super excited about them.

The first, not excited actually, kind of disappointed, but here we are.

Apparently, they pitched Dead Space 4 to EA, and EA rejected it.

Why?

I guess that's the thing we'll never know.

But Schofield said that EA turned down Dead Space 4 proposal.

I guess he approached EA this year about making a new entry in the series after the success of Dead Space's remake, and they were like, nah.

And if you're wondering why, it's because I fundamentally believe EA is pure business bros.

They were like, well, that's a chance.

Like, Like, the last game came out how many years ago?

And it's a horror game title.

And you're going to want a couple like hundred million to make it.

So we're just not going to give you, like, it's very clearly

about like the last one, they micromanaged.

That bums me out, dude.

Yeah.

So that sucks.

But we, you and I played Dead Space 3, and you saw the like stuff EA put in there where it's like, buy better guns.

And you're like, what?

Yeah.

What, dude?

Weird vibe.

Yes.

Weird vibe.

True.

True.

But also, in a victory for all of us,

take the time, friendly viewer and Dodger.

Have you seen the trailer for the Exit 8 movie?

No.

No.

Yeah.

Is it a real trailer?

It is a real trailer for a real thing, and it is straight up like they got a dude to be like the one lone guy who walks past you and does the like,

they got a guy.

Go look.

Is it like a short psychological horror game, I guess?

I don't know.

It's a teaser.

It's a movie, I mean?

I don't know.

It's a teaser for it.

It's all in Japanese.

I feel like it's a Japanese movie that's going to come out eventually.

Give it a watch.

Yes, it's very cool.

I was like, we're doing this?

Big fan.

Big fan of that.

So interesting.

Yeah, Exit 8.

If you have never played Exit 8, go find it.

Or Platform 8, both very good.

Not necessarily scary.

Every once in a while, there'll be a scare, but most of the time it's just creepy and weird.

And they're a little, if you played Observation Duty, they're a little similar.

It's very like, spot what's weird.

Something's changing.

Something about the world that you're in, the repeating world you're in is shifting.

Can you figure out what it is?

Kind of a thing.

And sometimes it's incredible.

And

like, sometimes it's the wall is a little bit different.

And so it's like, okay.

And you lose your mind.

And then

somehow against all odds, not just Sonic 3 outpacing Mufasa the Lion King, which is good because I don't know who's watching Mufasa the Lion King, but more importantly,

Sonic is on track to have an incredible, like maybe be one of the most successful video game movies of all time.

Sonic 3?

Who would have thought?

Hell yeah.

We just needed Shadow in the mix, dude.

We just needed one of these hedgehogs to have a gun.

Or two Jim Carreys.

I'm not sure which.

We got Shadow and two Jim Carreys.

And honestly, I'm here for it.

It's really hard to figure out which variable really tipped us over the edge, you know?

I like to believe the variable of Jim Carrey saying, when they asked, I thought you retired, why are you back?

And he said, I needed the money.

I feel like that's

a solid answer.

And honestly, I'm here for it.

Yeah, and Keanu was in it.

Oh, oh, speaking of which, Keanu is in the Armored Corps episode of Secret Level.

Oh, look at that.

Yep.

Full circle.

So

it's a whole thing.

But oh yeah.

And anyone who saw the movie post-credit scene was like,

all right, y'all, have you ever been in a movie theater?

And when you sat down, you realized like you weren't necessarily the number one fan base for a thing, but the people around you were.

And like, Sonic fans, I love you.

You're so sweet.

You're just like,

there's so much pure joy in your life.

And I'll never have that.

Because when that post-credit scene rolled, everyone in the crowd was like,

and I was like, okay.

Oh my gosh.

People lost their minds.

They're like jumping around.

I was like,

all right.

Sasonic fans, I love you.

Keep being you.

I love it so much.

Yep.

Oh, my goodness.

What a great year.

What a great year, buddy.

Look at us.

Thank you for, I guess, about a year ago asking if I wanted to do a show with you again.

Yeah, it's been fun.

I've been enjoying it.

It's been really fun.

Tremendously.

It is a true joy to...

Here's the real, here's, look, everyone at home, I want to let you in on secret.

This might be the realest thing you're ever going to hear me say ever.

This entire podcast is literally just an excuse to hang out with my friend for a couple hours every week.

There's really, if you thought this was supposed to be like some informative show

where they like give you the hot takes.

No, this is Jesse and Dodger.

We have two hours every Friday where we get to just be like, so what'd you do?

That's it.

Dish.

That's the real secret here.

I'm going to let you know.

This isn't like us setting out to create the best podcast in the world.

This is us being like, yo, you want to just talk every Friday?

Cool, cool, cool.

All right.

That's it.

Yeah.

And like, you know, somebody was like,

don't you guys want to be having a guest every week?

And I was like, it's fine if we don't because it's just fun to hang out with Jesse and just shoot the shit with Jesse.

That's,

you know, that's my number one joy out of this whole thing is just like catching up with my friend once a week.

Yeah, that's it.

So honestly, I'm every time we don't have a guest, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'll be all right.

Yeah.

So.

It's a

treat.

I'm glad we get to.

Plus, how else am I going to vicariously live through your child raising years and be like, not going to happen to me?

I'm not doing that.

I'm not doing that.

Nope.

That sounds terrible.

That's the worst.

I'll start stocking up the like, truly, I'll add that to my list of reasons to never have a kid sort of stories.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm definitely, I'm definitely a problem.

There's going to be a study in the future about like birth rates in America have declined.

And I'll be like, I helped.

That was me.

I caused that problem.

I caused the economic collapse.

Yeah.

I don't think we're on track for that to be an issue for a while.

So it's fine.

Honestly, I should make, like, what if I instead travel the world to places where they aren't have enough kids and I offer my services, right?

That way my parents get the grandkids they want.

I don't have to raise them because I'm like, I'm like the wind, baby.

I'm like the wind.

Drop it.

If you're like the wind, how are your parents involved as grandparents?

Look, they know there's little Jesse's out there.

Like, just so, so just on the off chance that a little kid is made of you, they'll just be nice to all children.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, they just, I think at this point, my parents just want to know rather than deal with it.

You know what I mean?

So I could be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right?

God bless.

You know what?

Just give me a heads up if you decide to do that.

I'm going to let you know.

It sounds like a lot of work, and I will not do do it.

Yeah.

It's hilarious to think about it.

It seems insane, but there's a lot of, yeah, I mean, like, that sounds like a lot of work.

I don't want to.

I could just stream instead.

That'd be much better.

I'd enjoy that more, probably.

Yeah.

All right, buddy.

What have you got coming up this week?

Anything?

Are you just chilling and moving on?

I believe we're almost done.

Fingers crossed.

Next week is the last video of the year we're making.

It's for Metal Gear Solid.

If you've ever been a Metal Gear Gear Solid fan or you haven't, and you want to know what the lore is, we got a whole Metal Gear Solid lore for you where we go through the old SNES games and we go through the PlayStation game leading up to what will be Delta.

So you can jump in to Delta, even though technically it's the first game in the series.

uh you need some lore in order to truly understand it and so i got that for you uh that's coming down the pipeline amazing and i'm uh yes i'm actually trying to make it comprehensible.

Hopefully by the end, you will understand.

You will understand what the hell Metal Gear is going on.

Fingers crossed.

We'll see.

Yeah.

And then,

yeah, just doing stuff, trying to beat Indiana Jones while moving.

Literally today in X number of time.

They're ETA 1130 a.m.

So exactly one hour and 30 minutes from now movers arrive and hopefully by this time next week, I'll be in a new apartment.

I may even do the episode from the apartment, depending on if my computer is set up.

Oh my goodness.

That's very exciting.

I'm happy for you.

I'm excited as well.

I'm happy for that worry to just be done, right?

Just for that

chunk of obnoxiousness to be over.

Or not.

Or I'll be here next week too.

Whatever.

Or not.

Or I'll be in the office so horribly wrong.

Who knows?

What is going on with you?

Not really much.

I don't think.

My kiddo is still off of school.

So I'll be

doing my streams, but on the adjusted schedule for when she's home and not learning things.

Yeah, you know, I don't know what we're playing yet.

We'll figure it out.

We'll figure it out.

I would like to do a special shout out to whoever helped Jesse find

the

born to eat shirt?

Did someone help you find that?

Everyone.

Or did you just find that on your own?

Literally, every person ever on planet Earth messaged me, Jesse, is this the shirt you're talking about?

And yes, that's exactly the shirt I'm talking about.

Born to eat.

Whole is

F.

Kill them all.

1999.

I am Geozaman.

410 billion dead sorcerers.

It's a good shirt.

This shirt rolls.

Oh, you can't even see it.

It's too bright.

Yeah.

Oh, I love it.

Jesse, very quickly after the last episode, followed up with a picture of the shirt.

And I was like, damn, that was fast, dude.

So very happy that that got sorted for you.

Hey, gang.

Thanks for sticking with us for a year.

Or if you're a new listener, hopefully you'll be here for the next year.

Yeah.

You can find all of the previous geekenders on youtube.com slash jessecox or on on podcast services.

We appreciate the support wherever you can give it.

We're here every Friday.

So we will see you next Friday.

Take care of yourselves.

Have a fantastic week.

And we'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one, geek podcast without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid.

I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like dust, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Donja.

So give them a follow.

Number one, geek podcast without a doubt.