The MinnMax Awards 2025

you Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode of the MinMax Show, a place about games, friends, and getting better. I am Ben Hanson. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me once again, but I'm joined by Hayley McClain. Thank us for having you. Thank you for giving birth to all of us. That's right. In one fell swoop, my wife took it all out. We're also joined by Jacob Geller.

Ben, you're looking great. Audio listeners, he's never looked better. So, yeah, we should probably acknowledge it. During our big charity stream, the Give to the Max charity stream, Rachel Atkins came in down to the wire. Don't explain it. It weakens it. She donated $3,000 to the Immigrant Law Center in Minnesota for me to shave my head to look like Butter Man. And Charles Hart did it too, except everyone...

when he got done with his head shaving, was like, he looks really good. Oh, my, Charles, look at this. He was pulling it off. Yeah, and I said that Ben looked good when I logged on, and then Kelsey said, no, he does not. No, that's, I think I said he looks... Perfect, actually. Angelic, really. I did have that moment as I was shaving it where I was like, oh no, I'm giving...

Sean Penn in one battle after another vibes, and that's not what I'm looking for in this episode. I'm shaving it after this episode. This is just for this episode, but thank you, Rachel, for your big donation and charity. I'm joined by Kelsey Lewin. Have we mentioned you? No, well, Jacob did, so I'm here. Good. We're also joined by Jeffrey Fava. That's me. We're joined by Jenna Garcia. Hello. We're joined by Kyle Hilliard. Heyo, what's up? Leo Vader, what's up? What's up?

And Sarah Pazorski. What's up? So happy to be here. Yeah, this is the MinMax Awards, everybody. We have gathered the full crew, the full team here to debate. categories for gaming in 2025. We have, I believe, six categories to go through. Of course, we have best thing. And this is a pure list. No one's added anything ahead of time and jumped the gun. Best thing. We're going to... debate, nominate, award, dumbest thing of the year, biggest news in the world of gaming, best game we didn't play.

Best moment. And for that one, we're going to have really clear spoiler gates for everybody. So don't be scared. In the time codes, there'll be spoiler warnings for everybody. You can jump ahead and skip anything if you want to avoid a specific spoiler. And then to cap it all off. We have the greatest work of art of all time for 2025 that we can argue as well.

Thank you so much, everybody. I am coming back from paternity leave for these Goatee debates. Again, thank you to everybody in the community for supporting us on Patreon to the level that I can take a paternity leave, that it's all possible. It's been magical times. My wife's doing well. kiddos are doing well little baby girl is is awesome it's just been a magical time my other kid is obsessed with her in a really fun sweet endearing way because you never know it's like we have neighbors

Let's talk crap about my neighbors. We have neighbors where like, they were talking about having two kids and like, yeah, they don't really like each other. I don't know. And I think that's so scary to think of as an option. So I've been very delighted. From what I know of your neighbors, Ben, they don't really like anyone. So that just passes on to their kids. From what I know of your new child.

They're what? Like two months old? Don't make fun of his baby time for not like your other kid. Yeah, they might turn against each other. That's true. But... All right. We have a lot to dive into in this episode. This is not our big game of the year debate. That is coming up over the next two episodes of the Min Max show. We're not going to be skipping a week here. If you're following on YouTube or your favorite podcast app, there'll be new episodes rolling out throughout.

holidays the next episode is the first debate in what we call the two tenths where we compile a list of the best games of 2025 and then whittle it down Some would say the top 20. We say the two 10s games. And then the episode after that is then we rank those in, of course, the objectively correct order.

So that's going to be coming up in the future. You can always subscribe to The Midmax Show on your favorite podcast app if you're watching this on YouTube. If you want to have a convenient audio version of this episode, the next two episodes, we would greatly appreciate it. And as an extra incentive for you all to...

jump in and listen to it and support the show. A great way to support the show is by subscribing to the podcast version of the show to help spread the word and Apple's algorithm, all that fun stuff. So here's the deal. We're doing a big Steam Code giveaway. If you subscribe to the MinMac Show podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, that includes your social media handle. Now you say Steam code giveaway. I like games. I like playing on PC. How many codes are we talking?

That's what everybody, 25 Steam codes were giving away in a variety of games because throughout the year... People send us game codes, especially being judges for the Game Awards. We get so many Steam codes rolling in that we don't even ask for great games. Trying to buy us off. Yeah, you know how it goes. But it's just like, hey, here's this game. Check it out if you want. And so we just put in a big dumping ground. And now we're sharing the dumping ground with...

one person because we're randomly choosing one person who submits a review for the min-max show on apple podcast before december 22nd before december 22nd leave a review that includes your social media handle we'll randomly choose one winner contact you and give you 25 codes nay you know what jacob geller i'm feeling generous let's go with 50 codes nay let's go 75 steam codes for different games

You can't stop me this early. We're going 100 Steam Codes to the winner of the big Steam Code giveaway. Surely that's plenty. I quit. But Kelsey, what if there was a number higher than that? What if there was a, I would say, Mewtwo amount of games. 150 Steam codes going to one lucky winner.

This isn't like 150 Steam codes for Pac-Man World Repack 2. It's a variety of games in there. Okay, so it's not just one game. 150 games to one person. That's right. That's right. One lucky person. So if you want that, help spread the word. words, subscribe to The Midnight Show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts with your social media handle. I'm talking Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, Discord, some way to contact you, and we'll randomly choose one winner on Monday, December 22nd.

and send it your way thank everybody for your support rotten craft in the backstage pass chat says that's so many to activate lol Who cares? You can quit your job. You can do it full time. It's like opening a pack of Pokemon cards where every code you put in, you're like, what's this one going to be? Yeah. Are we not attaching the names of the games to the codes? We are, but I guess you can close your eyes for that part.

Let's just give the code. I think we should just send the code. I'll let them choose. I'll let them choose, maybe. This lucky winner. So thanks, everyone, for supporting the show. Also, you know, we talked about the roadmap for the next two episodes being our Game of the Year debates. If you're really eager to get to those Game of the Year debates,

also have an option for you where you can unlock them all right now right here right now if you jump up to the ten dollar tier the backstage pass tier on patreon if you've enjoyed mimax's content this year it's a great time to jump in there you can cancel after this month if you want, but if you jump up to that $10 tier, you will have the unedited archives of our full game of the year debates waiting for you.

in the discord and in a post on patreon so thanks everybody for making all that possible you can get in there early and don't tell the world what we went with with our game of the year

All right, let's clean this up. I'm getting ready to start a ruckus. Okay, I guess that's fine. PewPewBang rules. Please subscribe to PewPewBang, award-winning podcast. I guess that's fine. Midmax drools. Dumbest thing. Okay, let's clear this out. Greatest workout of all time. PewPew. There seems to be some PewPew games.

Who could be writing these things? It's unclear. Friends in high places. It's the word of God. Also, we should call out before we dive into this because we have a lot of categories to get through. We're recording this before the Game Awards. So if there's some wild news or some wild best thing or dumbest thing from the Game Awards, there's not going to be contributing to this list. So please forgive us. What do you mean if?

Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, we're missing a huge dumbest thing. We know that already. They're actually going to announce that Microsoft is buying Saudi Arabia at the Game of Thrones. And that's the best moment, I think we all agree. All right. How's everybody feeling? Are we ready to jump into this thing with the first category, which, of course, is best thing? Yeah. Yeah? All right.

Who's got something good from gaming this year that they want to put in this list? Switch 2. Just general Switch 2? Really? That is the first best thing. I'm just getting us started. Let's get, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let's get right into it. Let's get right into it. Shut up, Kyle. I'll say it. This year's been asked, and that's why we didn't have anything. Okay, I got you guys. I got you guys. Musical number in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Nice. Good one. Okay.

Now, do we need spoiler discussion for that, or is it kind of self-explanatory for this section and we can keep it rolling? If we want to go into it more, but this is very much a, like... It's in the first two hours, right? Yes, and...

extreme no let's just leave it at that okay all right for a couple of hours and it's a wonderful fun little musical number and i don't think that spoiled anything yeah i have a pirate who's a best moment i think for later but that is fun well great now you stepped on it dude I have one from the video game, Skin Deep. When you are pickpocketing someone in Skin Deep, you sneak up behind them.

and you click your button to start stealing their key, and it doesn't do it instantaneously. It plays little piano keys going like do-do-do-do-do-do-do until you steal it, and it feels like you're in a little Wallace and Gromit. movie every time it's awesome that sounds good i have a similar one good answer good answer um in schedule one uh when you're being searched by the cops

and you're hiding your drugs in your inventory, and you have to manually move where the drugs are in your inventory as you're being frisked. Very fun little interactivity thing. Schedule 1 frisking. Frisking's a weird word. Can we add the proximity chat specifically in the game Peak? That's a great word. For distance and falling and various voice distortions. Yeah. I mean, should it be broader? Should it be like, you know?

proximity chat just like making games cool that's certainly in the scope of best things you've had before and it is a bit of a trend but it's like the peak one is better than the other ones like peak it proxy chat and peak is better than proxy chat and arc raiders yeah yeah i think they're both really good i'm just trying to boost the one thing jacob don't fight me on this

I feel like legal company also can speak. Making it more general helps it. I suppose. Kyle, frankly, your attitude is off today, buddy. And we're noticing. I liked the Switch, too. You could switch to is generally in stock and wasn't hard to get. I thought that was pretty cool. I wonder why.

Yeah, it was the fastest and best-selling console of all time. It's because there's nothing to play for, Kyle. It's just because more humans exist. There's an extra couple billion from when we were children. I would like to nominate... that we stopped talking about whatever Kyle keeps bringing up. The Ark Raiders community. Ark Raiders community is a good one, yeah. Yeah. The fact that they...

Like, this could have just been like every other toxic extraction shooter, and the community just said, nope, we're not playing that way, and we're going to be mad at you if you do. It is interesting. Do not play the game right now, Jeff. But I totally agree. It's going back and forth. For sure. What about the non-toxicity in solos? Could we say, like, the first month of Ark Raiders, if we want to? Sure. Shut up, Kyle! That's a good idea! Let Jeff and Matt have that idea eventually.

I got a simple one. Kyle, this is – it's a love letter to you and your interest. What about just Donkey Kong Bonanza specifically? Just the, ooh, banana. Just that good. That was literally my next one. Okay. That's a good one. Ooh, banana. Which I guess was in Donkey Kong 64, but it's better in Bonanza. Yeah, they elevated it. Is it too general to, while we're on Bonanza, just say smashing stuff?

I know it's the core mechanic, but the fact that you can destroy an entire level in Donkey Kong Bonanza and the terrain doesn't respawn and you can just... level it to the ground. Yep. It is still a thrill. Yeah. Absolutely. Destruction in Donkey Kong. Yeah. Yep. Love it. I would like to shout out the, the drifters controller support. The Drift or the Adventure game this year? Okay.

It is so comfy to play on a controller because it creates a circle around your character and you point with the right thumbstick at the thing in the environment you want to select. It feels totally revolutionary because that style of game, I want to lean back and play.

versus it being a mouse and keyboard thing. I want everything to rip it off. I think it's genius. What? I know it's complicated. We talked about it on the podcast. What about just the fact that Silksong was released for $20? Is that where celebrating is the best thing?

I like that. For the consumer. That is cool. For the consumer. For the other indies that want to be more priced higher than that. Right. But in a year where everything was getting ridiculously expensive, for that to be like, wait, what? $20 for that? Okay. Okay, guys, if you want. I like that. In the video game Void Breaker.

The roguelike first-person shooter thing. There's a mod that you can get for your gun within the game, a mod called the Potato Mod, that gives you a higher magazine size the more you lower your resolution.

yeah so if if you're if you if you can play it at like 480p your gun can have you know like a hundred rounds in the magazine that's so good is there is it better to get more general just like void breaker unique perks or like is that specific one the way to go okay settings menu perks because i also did have one for for void breaker the lens breaker one where your sprint speed increases relative to your field of view

So you have to go in the settings and make it so you're seeing around your head and like you're going through a, you know, warp speed at all times. Yeah. So are we okay with that? Settings? Yeah, void breaker settings mods. Settings, mods, perks. That's such a specific one. Yeah, I love that. Training your left arm in Ghost of Yotei. Yeah, okay. Good choice.

You want to explain that? Yeah, the first new weapon you get is you can dual wield katanas. And in order to do that action, you have to train your left arm. And so you do a bunch of like... you know, quick time events that you will do throughout the course of the rest of the game, but for this specific instance, they're all buttons on the left side of the controller, which is fun. Yeah.

What about just a good old-fashioned all-American group Perry in Expedition 33? Yeah, that's fine. Team Perry, what's the best way to phrase that? Yeah, Team Perry. Team Perry. Look, while we're here, let's bring out the big guns. In Expedition 33, when your original three, the three people squad that you're playing with wipes.

And the final two walk out and it says the last stand of expedition 33. It is the coolest thing in the world. Yeah. It makes you care so much. Oh my God. This is actually it. This is actually happening right now. And then they just get wiped immediately. That's when I restart the fight. I said, oh my god, guys, we're so screwed. I can't spec another character.

I don't even know how to use CL. I know it's the same as the other one, but it's just different enough that I don't know who I'm looking at. What is this teddy bear guy? We continue when you die as well. That is nice. What about – I know it's silly to thank them based on them limiting us. But what about the painted power picto in Claire Obscure?

Where when you get that, then you can go above 9,999 damage. I have that for dumbest thing, actually. So can you hold on to that? Okay, okay. I think put it for both. I want to hear why it's at each. Okay, okay. Best thing in terms of like those little moments again just make you feel like, oh, thank God. I feel like I can conquer the world now. It just feels so exciting about that. And why would you have to feel like that?

That's what I want to know. But when so many games have limited you to that number, you know, it's like it's got its heritage in the genre. It's cool. And it makes you like it makes act three feel substantively different than act two in a way that is neat. But by letting you suddenly steamroll everything because the combat isn't very well balanced, right? That's why it's there in the first place. Yeah, Leo's right. I think that's right.

I don't know. I don't think you end up being able to, maybe this is getting too much into why it might be dumbest, but I don't think you can steamroll everything in X3. Like, you steamroll what you steamroll, and then you get steamrolled, and you're like, wow, there's still something hard here. And I think that's...

Where I feel like there's balance in it. I am listening to the clear obscure deepest dive where people can are writing in a lot about how much they're steamrolling everything in act three. But I want to say that's not even like to say the combat is bad or it was a wrong decision because it's like.

That decision feels like it was made so that you can have a trillion different options that they didn't have to meticulously nerf until none of them were overpowered. Yeah, I mean, it's like building up to being really strong at the end. You play the game at kind of a, you know...

a certain level of overpoweredness and then in act three it's like if you want to do a billion damage you're gonna have to you know think really hard about how you do that but then you can and it's i don't know i think it's neat that you can do that But why would they not let me do that in Act 2? So it feels cool when you get it in Act 3. But then why do I work so hard to build out all my Pictos and give myself all these 25-30% damage increases just so they can cap me at 9,999?

Because the first time you hit a parry and you do 600,000 damage, you're like, oh my god! Why is it after Act 3? Why am I being limited? Just give you the one-hit kill at the beginning of the game. Why not? I mean, I worked hard for it. I put those pictos together. Why are you punished? It's good for both. It's good for both categories. What about the Simpsons Fortnite crossover?

Just the level of detail they went into. No, you really pissed me off. No, put it in. Put it in. I like that one, Ben. Okay. Commitment. Yeah, put it in. Can you put Hudson and Miku in Fortnite underneath that one? And Sega Racing too, right? Big break. Ladies, go in places. For Claire Obscure, for my best thing for it, which could also be dumbest thing, the intentionally rage-baity platforming sections in that game.

Yeah. That is a good best dumbest thing. Wait, isn't that dumbest thing? No, I think it's best thing. I think it's best thing. It's both. I feel like it's in conversation with Always Up in the new sort of sub-genre of platforming. Like, the platforming in clear-obscure when you're just in a level, that's...

just dumb and bad but here they're like it's meant to be dumb and bad and it's done so masterfully masterfully in my opinion like if you played chain together or always up it's like oh this is what it's invoking it is funny

I think. And I think it's part of the strength of what the game offers. It's like randomly really funny for no reason. And it's also optional. So you don't have to do it, but you want that little swimsuit, don't you? Yeah, you f***ing do. So I think it's... you do it as well dumb looking swimsuit it's awesome and the hardest one you get the one for minoko

hard platforming challenge followed by an fu by the designer is like peak platforming it's like in prince of persia when you do that one room and they give you a pair of pants it's like this is our history and it's sacred and i think that's beautiful so that's my best thing but i

I feel like it's unlike you to be like, it's bad on purpose and that's great. Yeah, because it's like... within its genre confides that's why like when it's in the level it's just bad and it doesn't feel good but here they're like what if we use this like slippery feeling and we orchestrated the assets in a way where it's now meaningful like so it's it's all contextual

Like, I would never say Chain Together is a bad game, even though it doesn't feel good to control, because it's in the design for that, to have that feeling. it's like leo's if it's if they say it's supposed to be dumb at the end now it's good which he said years ago and it's like lived in my head run free ever since thanks to kyle for beating it into our skulls hey kyle as an olive branch to you again as an olive garden branch

Your Nintendo Switch 2, what if we got more specific with it? Why are we revisiting it? Do you feel bad, Ben? Do you feel like... I do feel a little bit bad because, look, we're all sensitive flowers and I bet Kyle did a thing dunked on that heart out of the game. I love my Switch 2. I think it's very cool. Cool. Why don't you frickin' marry it, dude? But what I'm going to say...

I'm already married. In the middle of his apology. See, this is why the apology was a mistake to begin with. You don't mean it, so you shouldn't be saying it, Ben. No, but it's specifically at the launch of the Switch 2. Do you remember when Walmart just packed the Switch 2s with like, hey, here's a Coke and Pringles, and they just gave everybody a bunch of free stuff? That was cool, right? Oh, the advertisements. I mean, okay. Every trailer's an advertisement. I'm Jeffing.

I emailed Walmart to try to find out what the story was behind that. I never got a reply, though. People voluntarily posted on Twitter, look, I got this from Walmart. Yeah. I'd love free Pringles. Okay, I've got one. Stray Children, the new Onion Games game. Yes. They apparently emailed people before the game came out on their mailing list to submit voice samples. And that game uses a lot of, like, kind of...

you know, Animal Crossing-esque like jumbled voice samples to simulate the voices in that game. Those are just like fans. That's awesome. I like that. I wonder how they chose. Maybe that's the dumbest thing. Maybe they should have been paid or whatever, but I think it's cute. I think that's cute. I think it's cute. All right, Sarah. All right. I have count. I have count.

I have one from Kingdom Come Deliverance too, which is that in the first game you have a horse named Pebbles, and then you get Pebbles again in the second game, and it's like, it's my horse Pebbles, but she's kind of bad.

But if you ride her for a certain amount of distance, she gets a perk that makes her one of the best horses in the game. And they don't tell you that. So it's only if you're, like, nostalgic and nice and like, I want to keep pebbles, she ends up being the best horse in the game.

Which I did, and then all of a sudden, one random afternoon, it was like, you got Pebbles' ability. And then I looked, and all her stats were insane. I was like, whoa! That's great that you discovered it on accident. And the perk is called Good Old Pebbles. That's very cute. What about in a game about digging a hole when you get that drill?

That's pretty damn good, right? That's a good thing. That's like the big dough and clear skewer. In the beginning. Why'd you limit my digging? It should be called drilling a hole. In... Death Stranding 2, very rarely, and I think more often on the mountain, the moon will suddenly just be 100 times its size, and it's not tied to a story thing.

And it I mean, genuinely, it's like the most magical thing in a game that I experienced this year was just like climbing over this ridge of a mountain and the moon is there and it is.

taking up the entire sky and it like it's so cool and it's not scripted and it just kind of happens sometimes that's weird can you see it are you describing a bug jacob no no it's very intentional and it's like and it looks amazing it's like the it's super high res and so you feel like you can like see into like the craters on it it's yeah it's in the trailer it's so cool it's photo mode bait

It's really cool. Oh, that's smart. That's smart. Could you some Pringles? Not to Dimitri at all. It's just like, oh, God, I want to remember this. This is awesome. What about Leo Goes? Okay. The duels in Frag Punk, the one thing that game will be remembered for, if it's remembered at all, is Frag Punk a Counter-Strike-style round-based game, and if you end in a tie, you go to a series of 1v1 duels.

and the winner from each team keeps playing until they're killed by somebody from the other team. So it's like, oh, we got whomped three in a row, and we only got two guys left, but the second to last one, now suddenly they're staging this huge comeback with their kit. It's really smart, and it's that classic Shrek 2 spotlight on the player mechanic. They call it the Shrek 2 spotlight. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Iconic. Here, a moment. What about in Metal Gear Solid Delta?

The whole Guy Savage, Snake's Nightmare thing, how they got Platinum Games to make a really good, bigger version of that. Yeah, I like that. Platinum's Guy Savage is a weird thing, but... Snake's nightmare. They still call it Guy Savage, right? Yeah, it's in the menu. It says Guy Savage after you beat the game. For no reason but sure, yeah. The elevator and the alters. How fast and punchy it is. Hmm. If it wasn't, that game would lose a whole point. I bet. And then where would it be? It's dead.

Dead. It's too afraid to even think of that. Yeah. The customization in Kirby Air Riders. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I still only have one hat. Where are you getting the hats? well i mean like the way you can specifically the customization of the ship and how you can like buy other people's designs and like sell them like that i mean i like the hats also um

You got to go into the hats, too. I was about the hats. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all of it. I think all of it is encompassed in the customization. And then it can be kind of grading sometimes. But I think when it works, it works. Their narration and Lego party. Because specifically I had a moment, like the other day when I played it, my husband's really good at rhythm games, like ridiculously good, and we were doing the rhythm minigame, and I immediately like...

started falling behind because he had like a perfect multiplier for almost the whole thing. And the narrators were like, wow, player two is doing amazing. Oh my gosh. I've never seen anything like that. And they were just hamming it up so much. And I was so discouraged. emasculated by that and I just felt like yeah I know can you be emasculated as a woman I was I was I never felt so small and

It was the longest moment of my multiplayer life this year. It's just having to fall apart while someone soars and the in-game commentators comment on it. I love it. Let's get specific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about in Mafia the Old Country, how good the fruit looked? And you're going to say something about the meat on the table or the fruit or something. It's the dust on the VCR all over again, Ben. Are you sure you don't just want to look at art? I can't tell what I want to eat more.

Go to a museum. He wants to print it out and then hang it on his wall. But you're walking in to like, you know, collect some money. uh, in this no good old barn. And they just have like sun coming through the windows and the cracks in the walls, that beautiful Tuscany sun hitting these beautiful crates full of fruit. It's, it's a good looking game. Yeah. No kidding. They look bumpy. What's the old country fruit? Second image. Okay, but if we're selling food in video games...

We gotta do Monster Hunter food. It's like consistently... It consistently looks amazing. But there was one that was like this gooey cheese. on like a big puffy non-branded Monster Hunter Wild and I think about that fake piece of food so my mouth is watering right now

I like that they show your character eating it, too. They show your character cooking it, because you kind of cook the food yourself. They show you cooking it, and then they show you eating it. And I was like, hell yeah. Does it lose points for not being... the mouscular chef though i am kind of waiting for like when am i gonna get to see the cool cat chef prepare it for me and the food looks so good i'm not thinking about cat it doesn't lose points yet jacob

The food looks so good, I'm not thinking of cats. In Elden Ring Night Rain. Sarah, be with me on this. You can just say that ahead of time? The big final boss, which I can't even remember its name. The Night Lord? Yeah, the Night Lord. After you beat all the other ones, you get to fight it. There is classic FromSoft. There is a phase transition.

in which the Night Lord... rises into the sky and literally cuts the sky box in half shut and it's like it's like the coolest looking thing there's just this big sword slash and the sky box behind him is like

And it turns into something else. Oh my god. I need to get that game and get a couple friends and then beat the Nightlord and see the Skybox. Okay, so it's not going to happen. Anyways, also in Night Reign, I feel like reviving allies through hitting them... is the funniest thing that when someone oh and you can crawl when you get down in night rain all you can do is crawl so just imagine crawling onto your friend

So somebody can stand on top of you and just wail on you until you stand up. Like, it's the slow night rain crawling for me. Like, I can't do anything else except be sad that I died and I'm bad at the game. So all you can do is crawl away from the boss. I love it. A similar one from Arc Raiders, the fact that you can press the evac button when you're downed by yourself and still evacuate is a brilliant game to sign. Specific animation of you crawling up.

Yeah. Typing it in while you're like, oh. So Evac wins solo. Is that the best way to phrase that? Evac wins downed. When you're downed. Downed. Downed. You know, if you teamed up with us, you'd probably do it every once in a while. He played it with me once. I want to quickly shout out the fast travel in Ghost of Yotei. That's a quick one. Just...

It's freaking magical how quickly that thing works. How fast it is. And that you can pick, like, I don't just want to go to the town, I want to go to the map dealer in the town. Yeah, I love that. I love that. In Tales of the Shire, which is a game I did not enjoy, I really love that when you click somewhere on the map...

little birds land on the direction on post signs on which way you should go in the real world so you never had to open your map again and know which way to go. Oh, that's nice. That was really cute. Great idea. That game also has a skip button. It's kind of nice.

Oh, like not skip cutscene? Yeah, it does. That's running. Like skip around. You skip instead of run. I like the idea of it being in the corner where it's like, yeah, skip cutscene button, but it's just on the screen at all times. If you're not in a cutscene, it just does something else entirely then. You can actually skip to correct. Old start. In Baby Steps.

If you skip every cutscene in the game, which gets increasingly complicated because you have to do QTEs to skip them, at the end of the game you will get an unskippable 45 minute cutscene where... it's just like unscripted the developers kind of shooting the sh** Yeah. Where they talk about, like, Game of Thrones. Don't they talk about, like, what Naughty Dog's next game is going to be and stuff? That's awesome. That's fantastic. That's really funny. I didn't know about that. Best thing for me?

The MinMax community coding the timestamp tool that I don't know how much you saw and checked out. I saw a glimpse of it. Coding timestamp. You want to say that for greatest work of all time, Leo? Oh, it's kind of a work of art. Hmm. Can tools be art? This one is. All right. I think so. Yeah. God. Quick sum up is Johnny in the community. We talked. with the whole community about how do we do it to make timestamps easier so they can be more accurate faster.

We've put out our set. Here's the dream version of the product. That'd be easier than what we do and faster. And Johnny made it that evening. And I use it with every video now. It's such a huge time saver. Awesome. It's publicly available. Odd one. Demon School, fresh new game. The credits for Demon School specifically. There's a post on Blue Sky from Brennan Sheffield. And basically the idea is like, hey, why do credits have to be so ambiguous? Like we're going to list their name.

exact title, and then a description of what they actually did on the game. So you can understand how this game was made and they can use it for their resume moving forward. The way he talked about it, he's like, there's no limit on how long credits can be. I don't know why you wouldn't just explain and help every aspect of this.

It's not like, it's not like, I think film has specific rules for credits, right? But like video games, we don't just do whatever you want. That's why we're the best medium. Who are we beholden to? Yeah. Nobody. The Silksong Sherma song. Silksong Sherma, please. That's my favorite from this year. Could that be a moment? Because it's not... It's not like a thing. He sings it in multiple places.

Love it. I love that, you guys. In this game called Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, there is a mechanic called the hypercharge mechanic. Which I really loved, where the idea is, like, if you're fighting enemies, occasionally one of them just has, like, a light blue glow on them. And if you happen to take them out, then it's a little bit like, I don't know, like a final smash. It's just like a little power-up that then you can get, and then your next attack is a one-hit kill.

And so there's like challenges in that game where you can kind of like chain it together. It's like, okay, I need to get that enemy and then get over here and then use that to take out that and then that'll affect the next thing and then you can just kind of keep that rolling with the hypercharge. But it's a fun little mechanic. In Lives of P, Overture, specifically the DLC that came out this year, there's a weapon that's a rocket spear, and if you sprint while you're holding it...

the rocket ignites and pulls you through the level and you run way faster than you can normally. So you're just kind of like holding on to a jet engine while it drives you around. I love that feeling. Overture, that was called? Yeah. Sweet. Scanning things in discounty. Yeah! Yeah! I had that on mine too. Scanning in the store?

Skin, just, yeah. Skinning, items, and discounty. Why is that too good? The store. You want to explain it? Wow. It just feels good to go bloop, bloop. Every game that has the ability to go bloop. is just like everyone wants to do that but not in like a 12-hour shift just like on their own whenever they want as a fun thing yeah you you have to hold like the direction of the type of food that it is

And so like there's a little and you have a book that you can flip through to that will tell you specifically what you have to do. But it's something that you slowly learn. So as you get better at being a grocer. you're just, like, flipping each direction and pressing the button to go through it super fast. And when you have, like, a long line and you're just whipping through all the items and, like, just remembering all of that stuff, it feels really good. Sweet.

Do we like it or not? And sorry to be the Fortnite representative, but do you remember earlier this year when they made like AI Darth Vader and then people tricked it into saying f***? And immediately they're like, okay, we gotta change this. That's the dumbest thing. I like that people showed how stupid it was. Yeah, that's what you meant, right, Ben? Or maybe not. Not AI.

Yeah, right, right. Just how dumb it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that is just dumbest thing. Is it the best thing how dumb it is? Yeah, you're right. He hated that he could make Darth Vader say, I love you, Ben Hanson. You're my best friend. Yeah, it was so laughably bad, you guys. I have one more from Expedition 33, which is that you can find pianos that you can play in the game, and you literally just hit a button to play piano, but every character plays the piano differently.

Yeah. And they all kind of play their themes. And it's very cool. Yeah. Metal Gear Solid Delta. Perhaps you've all heard of it. The idea that in the original release they had... posters of like pinup models in the game. And then for the remaster, they went out and got modern pictures of those women. And some of them were just like them, like with their kids now, like, Hey, we're still here.

That's really good. We're not objects. We're still alive. I'm so ready to hate on Metal Gear Solid Delta, but the two things that you've brought up have both been very good. Is there a better way to put that? The women kept living. They allowed their models to age. Women are allowed to have value outside of being attractive. We've really broken the glass ceiling gracefully. Gracefully. Let's not go too far. I watched the cutscenes in that game. Skip them, please. For our sake, please skip them.

Let's see. In the game Easy Delivery Co., there's a radio in your K truck. And when you drive around the map, the radio station will change based on your location and also your proximity to various radio towers. So you kind of know when you're entering different areas. By the way, your radio will start to glitch around. Very atmospheric, that radio. What's the name of the game again? Cool. Easy Delivery Company, or Easy Delivery CO, period. Weird.

Love it. I love how you say love it at the end. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I love that. Let's see. I like in South of Midnight. They basically have hit R3, the classic dead space. Let's just guide you, show you where you should be going.

But in South of Midnight, I like that it's, like, ghosty whispers, which pretty much fit the tone of that game. And every time they just fly by you and they go, Hazel. And they, like, say your name as they're guiding you. Gives me goosebumps every time. I like that, too. Hazel guiding ghosts. Is this about the list? Do we got other things that are on there? This is the category. I feel like we could go on for years. Why not? Hey, I got years.

The Assassin's Creed account replying to Elon Musk trying to say that someone was a sellout by saying, is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you? Yeah. P.S. Please pay attention to Assassin's Creed again, Internet. Yeah. That's the one time we'll talk about Assassin's Creed this year. You never know. You never know. I got a dumbest thing coming up for that.

I think this might be another doubler, but I do think it is just a fun best thing that Nintendo announced there's a Virtual Boy that you can slide your Switch into. that they're going to be releasing. It's going in dumbest thing, Ben. I have that on my dumbest thing. I'm buying it, but it's dumbest thing. It's an affectionate dumb thing. Dumb thing doesn't have to be bad. Dumb can be bad. I think it's like a best thing. I love that they're sort of like...

Why not? Like, what else are they doing with the Virtual Boy library? You know, it's like, I don't know, like, do weird stuff with it. Like, bring it back. Why not charge $100 for it? If only they had that theory for the rest of their catalog that they couldn't charge $120 for a piece of plastic. It's like dumb bracket positive. Right, yeah. I think that can exist, yeah. Anything else people want to throw on the list? In Goodnight Universe, when you can tilt your head...

in real life to try to read someone's mind and it feels crazy. It feels real. It's like you're tuning a station by turning your own head around. You're trying to read someone's mind. Oh, that's cool. That is cool. Yeah. In a game called Slots and Daggers... Slots and Daggers? Yes, it's a slot machine roguelike. Don't act surprised that this is the kind of game I would bring up. The slot machine mechanism...

is amazingly designed in that it looks like the symbols are going by super fast. It's kind of like the, you know, the effect that a helicopter has when it's like the propeller is going really fast, but then it like... Also kind of looks like it's going slow at the same time. But basically like when you were playing that game, you can stop it on the symbol that you want it to be like 80% of the time. But every time that you do it, it feels like.

I thought I had ESP and I was like... telepathically picking the right time to stop these every time i did i i was doing it on a stream and i was losing my mind because it felt so good that's like i was breaking the game but i think it's sneakily just designed to make you feel amazing while you're playing it. Jeff, I watched those clips, and that's just you, buddy. I did not play that well when I played it. I fear you also just have good timing in the game.

Well, apparently amazing too. So can we put that on the list instead? I will say watching you have the amount of accuracy you did was like, was genuinely insane. Very impressive, Jeff. Is this the list everybody? Well, I just want more games that Jeff from loves the, um, the Bellatro vampire survivors mashup. Did you guys see this? No, there's like a whole Bellatro mode of vampire survivors and like,

The Bellatro UI becomes like attacks and stuff like that. It's really crazy. It's so bizarre and unexpected. There's cards flying around and stuff, and your counter is doing damage to enemies and that kind of thing. That's cool. Yeah, it's weird. And it's going to win, so I'm glad I brought it up. All right. Is this list any other additions? I like it. What feels slam-dunky? What feels like one that's like, well, come on, of course, of course.

The Pebbles one stood out to me. Again, I don't know if it's going to make it the whole way, but if we're just calling quick standouts. Let's start moving them. Where are you, little Pebbles? I feel like games don't often reward you for being like... a weirdo about how you play it and i was very pleasantly surprised and i was like i got rewarded for liking the horse that was nice i would like to nominate peak proximity chat yeah yeah i think i think without that that game

is almost pointless. It's like the whole game is kind of hearing your buddy in a cave fall off a cliff. Yeah, hearing your buddy go, wait... Oh, I think I'm about to get knocked out, and then you don't hear from them anymore. Right, right. As they pass out from gas. Now, for the historical record, in 2023, we did nominate Proximity Chat and Lethal Company. It did not win. It did not win. It's valid. They perfected it here. I actually am charmed by the baby steps.

thing that I learned about. The cutscenes, that's really funny. I like that a lot. I do think that's fun. Yeah. Last Stand of Exhibition 33 I think is the best Exhibition 33 thing, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of X-Men 33 to go through. You could cherry pick a lot of things with that game. Yeah. Team cherry pick. I mean, on that note, I know it's mine, but...

Is Silksong leasing for $20 or is that just too complicated because it's throwing off the entire indie market and everything is kind of out of whack at this point? I like it. I don't like that one. You don't like it? I like it. Noted indie developer. Yeah. I like it, but then when I talk to my indie clients, they're bummed because now they have to lower their price because of that.

These greedy indie developers. I'm just the person who buys the games, so I like it. People who buy games will like it. It's not even, like, about the game. It's like, in two years, it'll be on sale for $10, and, like... it won't matter anymore. Sure. It's just so obvious they could have charged 40. It's just like so plainly obvious that they decided to be less greedy. I mean, maybe it adds up to more sales, but that's just how it reads to me.

I like the void breaker stuff. Like just those things that does sound amazing to hinge so many of those perks onto your specific settings. The, the asterisk is I never.

actually use any of them. They're conceptually fun. I like the Demon's School's credits. I think it also speaks to a lot of times in these episodes we talk about how bad the industry is and it's like a rare dub in there so i kind of like it for that yeah yeah i like the metal gear delta affirms women can age i think that's a cute little thing that's really cute yeah i enjoy that one I wish they looked older, is all I'll say.

Why? They're still like... Are you saying they're too hot? Yeah, I am. I am saying they're too hot. I think it'd be more powerful if they were less hot. It's always easier to humanize a hot person. I think I'm with Ben on this.

Yeah, absolutely. This came up on the deepest dive. And then prove that you care about something. And I could consider bringing it up earlier, but I was like, I'll let Ben leave that in the deepest dive. I'll leave it buried. I'm not going to throw him under the bus like this. It's okay. I think we should give it its flowers now and put digging in bonanza up there. Yeah. I think I might like ooh banana more.

This is a great debate. But I feel like digging is the entire game, though. It made me throw up. I guess. Yeah. Well, the camera. I don't know if we should decide anything based on guilt. We're going to, we think we're going to feel later. I guess digging is to make it more specific.

the fact that you can dig up everything in bonanza is kind of conceptually dig the yes rather than just like the mechanic of the game is dig The fact that Nintendo made it, made, like, one of the best games with, like, being able to terraform, like, that kind of level destruction in a Nintendo game, like...

blew my mind i like that kind of thing and i've been looking for a game since red faction that like a developer to actually try and do something like that and i was very surprised it was nintendo and a donkey kong game Also, Jeff, there's like a song in Metroid Prime 4 that sounds exactly like a song from Red Faction 1. So this year Nintendo is just like Red Faction all the way. They're so on fire. That's actually when they started development of Metroid Prime 4.

The Ibuki in the backstage past chat said Red Faction Gorilla. Everyone already made that joke, Leo. I made that joke on stream. I was the first person to make that joke. I'm saying, get him!

how dare you steal jacob's joke yeah that's an attack but thanks for watching live um um the radio glitching also maybe maybe we're at the risk of just naming too many but the radio glitching that sarah brought up i think is also really cool i really like in-game stuff like that for navigation i feel like lately that's been a big angle people are leaning into like ways to get more creative with that and i always enjoy seeing what people come up with

I think I think we got to start whittling the tops at this. I think you're probably right. Yeah. The one that still is kind of like is the Simpsons Fortnite stuff. But that's just like I was literally looking at that and I'm like, why should I bring it up just for it to get shot in the head? That's the only reason.

not talk about it again it's really it's really well detailed i know this is gonna age us as a podcast to be like the simpsons are pretty fun right like it was really cool come at us um okay So, what are we all like from this list, if we had to bump stuff up from this list? The Horseman Kingdom Comes, Peak Proximity Chat, Baby Steps, Unskippable, 45-minute Cutscene, The Last Stand of Exposition 33, Voidbreaker Settings, Demon School Credits, Metal Gear Solid, Women, Delta, Every...

aspect of how they handle women in that game is what we're saying. Digging everything in Bonanza. Ooh, banana. Radio glitching in Easy Delivery Company's Simpsons commitment in Fortnite. Baby steps for me. I really like that a lot. I was going to bring that one up, and I'm glad I'm not the one that nominated it, but that conversation is so long, and it's the two main developers. The back half of it just kind of feels...

almost like a podcast of them just kind of talking about random stuff and like development stuff. And like, you know, a lot of it is them being funny, but some of it you can tell is like, hitting actual notes of like seriousness of like, why are they skipping all the cut scenes in the first place? And like, like I listened to that entire thing and was just completely smitten by it. Although I know I'm.

So it's like a genuinely good chat that's like born of what is clearly, wouldn't it be funny? They drop the facade after like the first five minutes of it being the characters, and then they're just talking about stuff. And they're talking about their studio. Is it what? Animated? Like, how much is it like the other cutscenes? For like the first five minutes, and then they're like...

hey, can you pan the camera up so that we don't have to keep animating the characters? And then it's just the smoke from their cabin that's going up and they just keep talking. That's really good. It's really fun. That's good.

We should point out too that the way this works, if you're new, thank you for being here, but we have a maximum winner and a minimum winner. Basically first place, second place, winner and runner up is the way this structure is. So we're looking for a winner and then the runner up. I think digging in Bonanza is my next contender here out of this chunk. Chunk jump.

My beef with digging in Bonanza is with the Red Faction Guerrilla comparison, it's like you go, yes, I'm digging. This rocks. I'm doing the digging stuff. And then you dig the bottom part of a pillar out, and the rest of the pillar is just floating. And you go, oh, this is just... This is kind of something. Might I point you towards a game called Minecraft Leo, the biggest game of all time. So, checkmate. I have never been spoken to like that. Die your ass, dude.

I think if digging in Bonanza, and to be clear, I like digging in Bonanza quite a bit, but I think if it was truly the best thing, everyone here would like that game more. Some of us like Bonanza. That's a good point. I think you can love one mechanic a lot without the game being like it's my game of the year. That's the whole game.

It's half the game then. We learned who, us earlier? Okay, wait, is it the whole game or half the game? Because those are two very different numbers. It's between half and whole, the game. I like Oobanana more than Diggy. If we're going to choose a Bonanza thing, I think everyone can agree.

To Haley's credit with the motion sickness, as much as I like the digging, the camera is so bad, it's astonishing. And it's like, the second you go underground... the camera stops working and that is also half the game we don't need to get into a bonanza debate but that's like that is

That is way too strong. Like, it's fine. I mean, I never, I don't know. It's not broken. It is fully like that. I don't know. It worked totally fine for, I mean, it's certainly not perfect. I'm not pretending it's perfect, but to say it's like.

fully doesn't work and like is it's like i love that it's so janky but it's like the power of being able to dig anywhere is so important that like yeah let the jank reign free this is here to appease people who are already mad it's giving consolation prize From my perspective, but maybe I'm wrong on that. We're a bit too porn on it. We're a bit too divided. I bet we can find something we're all excited about. Yeah.

Which peak proximity chat feels... Yeah, you're right. Yes, it is peak proximity. That's it. Right? Similarly the whole game in one mechanic. Mm-hmm. Does anyone else feel like they don't want to recommend Exhibition 33 stuff for these categories because it's going to win so much in real life? A little bit. It's like the inverse of what I just mentioned, yeah. But it's hard because The Last Stand does hit so low.

That first time that happened, I was like, oh, and I thought about it for weeks. So good. It is pretty good. Do you mean like the last stand is when you swap the party members? It's like the first three get knocked and then the last two come out. When that happened to me, I went, oh, we're f***ing.

now, because I didn't level these guys. I ignored them. I didn't level any of their weapons. It's the vibe. That's what makes it turn, because it's the last stand. Just the fact that it doesn't say two party members swapping in.

You know, the whole game is about this fight that you're doing in vain. Yeah, and then it's just the last stand of Expedition 33. Also, how much... Maybe this never, like... you know didn't happen for all of us but like how much did it hit when they did pull it off though because you're right sarah that team was like ass and a half because i never you never tried

No, because every time I was like, well, I didn't mean anything to you. People died. We were all on that beach and some of us are still there. Okay. They're not going to make it. I'm just going to watch them die slowly. it takes too long to die in my opinion it takes so long to die and i just want to start from the beginning you gotta fight you gotta fight for your right they're too weak to fight but also they don't

They don't die fast. They're not going to do any damage. And it's going to take me five minutes to watch them perish. I'm sorry that their death is an inconvenience for you. It really is an inconvenience. Hey, team, I like about it is so many games just dead and they're like, that's not your party. But this one, they're like, we're going to let you try. And I'm like scrounging my ideas together. I don't know. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Dig out some freak Pokemon from the PC. Here you go. Yeah, it is kind of giving that, right? You're like, oh, Bulbasaur, this is the last time I saw you, right? Yeah. Yeah, but by the time I'm down to my level 11 Bellsprout, I'm not...

I don't have any fight left in me. I'm starting over. But that's our point. If it said the last stand of Bellsprout, you'd be like, hell yeah. But also, like, what's kind of, and now we're kind of dipping into, like, just the game, which I think we are all trying to avoid because that's not what the category is. I think also part of the fun of that game is how much you can defy the odds because of the way the mechanical structure is. So it's like in this version...

What if Bellsprout could make it? What if Bellsprout could actually get together and learn how to parry? And he lands every single parry! And would Pokemon not be a better game if that could happen? It would! It can't be worse? It's having some problems. The beginning of the game is like literally we're like two dozen people and I guess we're going to go try and kill God.

And it's like, you just feel so doomed from the beginning that for them to incorporate that into the feeling of the combat is cool. And I like that, you know... If you do want to put in that effort to have the reserve team that has their own personality, that being rewarded, I think, is cool. Especially for the brief time where you have four party members, and then your one reserve one, you can spec into doing things by themselves. Get buffs when...

there are no party members for them. So there were a few cool fights. Who has time for that? You're totally right. That's a good point. Hey, what if... I had 80 hours in that game. I still only barely had time. Hey, crew. Hey, crew. Um... Raise your hand if you think peak proximity chat is a lock for this category. Haley, we literally played peak together. I want that all back. Okay, all back.

Deleting all those clips from my stream. I really think it's a strong contender. We said a lock. I said lock. It was like five of us for the record. Yeah. But I was waffly also for the record. Okay. You lied? You raised your hand because a bunch of other people raised it. I raised it. At least I didn't do that. I raised it early. I thought about it. I said, I'll raise my hand. I'm not going to sway anyone anyways, but I didn't. And that's called integrity.

And for that reason, Haley is the best thing. This is actually a test. Is the last stand the best thing? I don't know. I feel like it's not after that discussion. i do think it's really cool like to be clear super cool i just think it's cool hard once and i don't think that makes it the best but like remember last year when the bellachro fire thing when we all were like yeah like everyone was very jazzed i was not very jazzed so you're rewriting history a little

Oh my gosh. I have it down here. You were jazzed AF. Well, you're exactly as jazzed this year. The only time I've seen you jazzed is when you screamed Hatsune Miku when you saw her on that live stream. Yeah. so hot steam you can actually be higher and barrier you can apple watch said oh you're alive we had called it to the medics years ago we're killing janet by making her laugh too much that she comps

We're killing her. I've been going through it. What's taking this category, y'all? Expedition 33. Three steps. I like Baby Steps. Is that like... Baby Steps is my number one, personally. And I just learned about it like 10 minutes ago. the fact that it's built up to you're like i don't know this but it sounds good to me i'm like he's making some good points i don't know yeah i like when i like when it's something only a game can do you know

And it's the first time that a game has done anything like that. A 45 minute cutscene? Yeah. I nominated it. Only if you skip the other cutscenes it happens. It only happens if you skip cutscenes, right? Acknowledging that the player is skipping cutscenes and both rewarding and punishing them for it in a charming way. I really like it.

I didn't really play this game. It's not my style of game, and it's also probably not my brand of humor. Oh, I don't want to play it any more than the five minutes I played it on the live stream. I don't ever want to play this game again. But the reason I bring it up is, like, I know it's a very, like...

you know it has a very specific brand of humor is this even the funniest thing they do in the game like what's kind of the how does how does it speak to the rest of like the tone of the game is this just a part of the game or is it like best thing of the year you know it's it's it's very rewarding in the sense that it's the two

main developers of the game who are also the two like being voice actors for a lot of the characters in the game and and so like it's it's building off of all of their humor and the two main characters that they play in the game, and then to just kind of like see this behind-the-scenes snippet of their friendship through the lens of them making this game together is just like...

I was completely smitten by it. That totally added to it. It wasn't just a goofy, hey, this is a funny... It starts as a funny gag, and then it's like...

I got more of a sense of their personality and like their working relationship by listening to it, which was like really amazing. I do think that game also is like a really hard... oppressive horrible thing to go through and you're rewarded by a bunch of different best thing contenders like surprising little things i think it's a good place to celebrate what seems like the biggest weirdest thing everybody's baby steps unskippable 45 minute cutscene

the best thing of 2025 is it too late to bring up the metal gear solid yes jacob it's too late which aspect i just i like it i like it okay here's here's my i guess my argument for it is like That game and Kojima is incredibly gross about women, and they found... Maybe like the one way that they could have both kept something consistent about the game and made it less gross and made it like a funny joke about it being...

20 years later. For all of my complaints about that game not really doing anything with its idea of a remake, that's kind of genius. Sure. And can I just say, if it's this photo with the woman and her family now, it's like, oh, he found that model and married her. Oh, yeah. And that's his family now. Isn't that sweet? Right. Snake fell in love. Yeah. We can insert this guy back into it. I agree. Anything can happen in the fan fiction, you know. I'm with you, Leo. Yeah. It's a cool thing.

If it's not as good as these other dudes. They're too hot for Ben. We already heard this. They should be older. Yeah. Ben wants them older. Dumbest thing that weren't older, yeah. Maybe in the next remake. Right, right. In 20 years. I mean, yeah. We don't need to keep going into it. Who thinks Baby Steps should be winning this category?

Okay, it's Kyle, Jeff, Kelsey, and Sarah is putting her hands up. Do you mean win like number one? Yeah. Or just a lock? I want it in there. I want it as a lock. And I don't care where. As long as it gets in. Gets in to the two? Yes. Okay. So is it baby steps or is it peak? What's on top? I think peak is peak. Yeah, personally. Yeah. If I had to pick, I would pick Peek. I would pick Peek, too. Peek Peek? Peek Peek. I would pick Peek. Okay, and now I promise to never bring up proximity chat.

in best thing ever again because i brought it up last year for lethal company and i brought it up this year and now that i've won i will never bring it up ever again okay and that is it's honor that's my acceptance speech all right best thing 25 is the peak proximity chat Runner-up is the Baby Steps 45-minute cutscene. Finally, some cutscenes and games. There we go. Congratulations to everybody nominated. And congratulations to our dear friends at IM8Bit as well.

iM8Bit has been a big supporter of ours for oh so many years and they want everybody to know that you can use the promo code 8BitPresents. 8-bit presents throughout December for 10% off of everything in their wonderful online store. And they also have a big blue prince bonanza. going on in their store. You can get an entire bundle. The Mount Holly gift shop bundle includes all of these things. They have postcards for blueprints.

They have a desk mat, a swimbird pin, a secret garden key replica, a swimbird plush. They have a ton of amazing stuff for blueprints. You can also buy that all separately. If you're a fan of blueprints, you want to help celebrate that game with some cool physical things, check out IMF. 8-bit keep them around use that promo code of course 8-bit presents for 10 off everything in the wonderful online store thank you i am 8-bit we appreciate you charging for welcome tour have we started yet

Give it a chance to breathe! Thank you. We're in the dumbest thing category, everybody. Charging $10 for Welcome Tour. We had us throwing in here the... Virtual Boy. I don't know how you phrase it. The Virtual Boy that you put your Switch into, I guess, is the thing that kills me specifically. Virtual Boy 2. Yes, Switch. Sliding Switch into it. Holder.

The announcement of it is kind of what we're going with? Yeah, I guess so. All of it. Whatever conjures in your mind when you hear it. The requirements for using it. Oh, I have two Nintendo ones.

They're kind of samey in a way. Us finally getting Wind Waker, but it's the GameCube one. And I know people will say, well, it's because they added the GameCube. Shut up. We all know what we need and they won't give it to us. So I don't want to hear the, well, it's because of the GameCube. I don't want to. hear it that was that that thing is infuriating and my other nintendo one is hang on i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry sorry i missed it what about the gamecube what was it

The Wind Waker was not the HD version. Ah, okay, sorry. We finally get Wind Waker on Switch, and it's not the version that we want. You guys should have just bought a Wii U. Which I know is because they added the GameCube. I did buy a Wii U. I saw my Wii U, yeah. She did that. I want to play it again, Kelsey. I want to have a place to go when the depression hits. And I want that to be Wind Waker. I want to be Wind Waker. And the Nintendo virtual game card sharing system.

Specifically the fact that it automatically goes back to the main account older after two weeks slash you have to be in person to transfer the game over. All the technological protection measures.

that i've never felt broker than having to like walk over to isaiah and say can you reshare slay the spire with me because i went back to your account like yeah it's been a rough it's been a rough year for me so i do like that that feature does go ahead i like it yeah but nintendo style they made it it's a great idea yeah it's a great idea that they like it's felix they had a great idea and they said whoa what's

messed up about it and then someone else came in and said hold on let me cook and then they messed it up i'm not saying it doesn't deserve to be on the list i'm just kind of just Just like a little, a little compliment of just like, I do like that it's an option, but it is, it is. Oh, but this is like the bad student who's like, he showed up to school today.

It's not enough. Anyway, that's my thing. I got another quick Nintendo one. In the Mario Party, they have a lot of camera games, and they're very silly, and they make you look very stupid. But you cannot take screenshots during the camera games. It does not let you record footage or take screenshots. when you're looking stupid. It's another Uno Xbox Live thing. Yeah, you guys just want to see pictures of children, don't you? You weirdos. While we're kicking Nintendo...

The Nintendo Switch 2 controller has a button that I have never pushed, and I will never push, and is completely useless unless you pay for an online mode. It is just a button on the controller that is... actively detrimental to me that is pushing you to get the subscription for for game chat yeah i was yeah it's just that it doesn't do anything else if you don't have nintendo online it just doesn't do anything and i i always think of janet

from a couple years ago in these awards when we were talking about, like, boy, it's a lot of Nintendo in this category. And Janet's wise words of, hey, it doesn't have to be. Like, it's on now. They can change it whenever they want. Because I was thinking the Nintendo Today app.

that they announced when they're like, you know, Twitter's getting a little murky. Let's go with the Nintendo Today app, which also no photos or videos or links can be shared out of this. But specifically, or maybe these are two separate things, but... this like hey we're announcing this app be sure to check in every day we'll have news in the run-up to the big

Launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, one of the biggest gaming events of the year. Hype is palpable. So many rumors swirling. Everyone's on the edge of their seat for more info about the Switch 2. And in the run-up to the Switch 2's launch of the Nintendo Today app, one of the days... The big update was it was a 3D model of an HDMI cable that you could just rotate around and look at.

This is so good. I like using that as sort of the target for this specific entry. I'm just like, yeah, that's good. I forgot about that. Someone should just say switch to game key cards. Let's just get it up there and wait. And that's separate from the game card sharing system. This is the game key cards. Yes. Yes. Just their existence at all. Just that they were like, nope, we can't do regular cartridges. We gotta do these ones that will die when we decide the Switch 2 is dead.

They're just a trick to make you think you're buying something physical. There's nothing to do with that. There's no game data on the physical thing that you're putting in the system. It's just a ticket to download it from the eShop. And you can resell it. them and stuff and they'll still work but when nintendo decides no more switch 2 they're just gone hey i've got more

The Nintendo Music app, which I genuinely enjoy for what they have in there. Stop, stop, they're already dead. The first ten. The fact that they're slowly... Wait, did we put that up there last year or did we not? Yeah, no, the fact that they're slowly trickling stuff out.

They don't have Mario Kart World soundtrack in their music dedicated app, one of the greatest soundtracks of the year. And they had the big announcement of like, hey, we're putting the soundtrack in there for Kirby's Forgotten Land.

Okay, sure, that's great. Well, just half the tracks. We're going to have an update later on where we have the rest of the Forgotten Land tracks. It's really hard to upload tracks, Ben. You don't know how much work goes like that. They're huge. Nintendo music app stinginess. Yeah, that's good. Let's keep going. I've got a two from Metroid Prime 4. Yeah, okay. Number one, there's a big giant desert in the middle of the map that you have to go through all the time as Kyle likened it.

to its Hyrule field, except there is no music at all except if you buy the Metroid Prime 4 Amiibo and then you can play music while you're driving through the desert. But if you don't buy it, it's just silence and you have to spend a huge amount of time in it. How much is the amiibo, Jacob? $4,000. At least one silk song. I think someone in chat said it was $30.

So it's more than Silksong. Just another little one from Metroid Prime 4. You can jump, and also you can jump as the Morph Ball, but they're not the same button. Two different buttons to jump and to jump as the morph ball. That would make my brain not do it right, yeah. That's tough.

I wasn't even gonna say this, but it's like human instinct, I guess, at this point, to pile in on the weak one of the social group. Donkey Kong Bonanza, you can't equip the clothes when you buy it. You have to back out and go into the... To your little dresser and to your little dresser. When you buy a pair of pants at the Gap, do you just change right at the counter? Ooh, banana ID.

If I was an ape, I'd do whatever the hell I wanted. That's the thrill of the ape! I have a welcome tour one, which is all the minigames. The whole thing. Yes, they did not try. They did not try. They put in the minimal amount of effort, and I feel like if they at least, like, if the minigames were good, I could have possibly swallowed spending $10 on it, but it was the laziest, like quickest.

You can't even call them Game Jam games because Game Jam games turn out better than that. Okay, let's move on, please. Hey, remember that time when Nintendo refused to announce who was developing Dragon Drive? They do that all the time. Which was frustrating but this is the extra level of they promoted a competition happening before the game came out where you can play and compete in the game against the developers.

but they still refused to say who the developers were, and they just listed the names as Oliver and Mikey, just generic American names. That's so scary. I agree. On that note... Them refusing to call them wheelchairs. Right, right, right. Oh. The machines. And then another really fast Nintendo one, maybe this is just bad thing and not dumbest thing, and...

Maybe this is starting to come to the end of the Nintendo segment, but how ugly the game cases are. They look like not for resale cases. Yes. Okay. Oh, the big red logo on top. Yeah. Yeah. Other than these things, I've been enjoying Nintendo this year, I think.

What about the Nintendo patent thing? Yeah, I love them just getting those patents, but then later on, best news is getting re-examined. Right, right, Haley, there's some updates on that, so. Only one of them, though. There's another one that's still approved. Pokemon patents, yeah, I think it deserves a spot here. Can you put Pokemon patents suck my nuts from Hayley? Suck Hayley's nuts. Suck Hayley's nuts. Avoid getting canceled. Smart, smart, okay.

Can we also put that Nintendo shutting down people's Switches, Switch 2s, for playing games that they bought off of eBay? So they bought used games on eBay, but it turned out they were... like bootlegged games and Nintendo detected that and then shut down their switches. And they had to call into the helpline to say, Hey, you bricked my console. Can you please turn it back on here? Here's the receipt.

that i got from ebay that i bought these games i didn't know they were pirated or whatever bootlegged and then they turned them back on now this your switch i got i got it much the same way that welcome tours on here but it's like an affectionate way What about, in an affectionate way, the fact that there were two Nintendo Directs all about Kirby Air Riders? No, we like those. That's a positive dumbest thing. It's a positive dumbest thing. I see you typing!

I reacted to both those. I was a fan, but it's dumb. It's got two hours. It's like, why are we doing this? Thank you for doing this, but why are we doing this? That's what's kind of my reaction. Yeah. I think how good the game was kind of retroactively validated that. Because before that I was like, yeah, this is dumb. And then I'm like, he kind of cooked here. So I don't know. I guess he made a good game.

everyone's like why do i need this and then they boot up kirby air ride and they're like i don't know how to play it i hate it it's a bad game and it's like you didn't even watch the directs didn't know how to play it yeah Yes! Have you seen people try to play it? It's complicated. You have to really sit in those tutorials. You cannot just boot that thing up. And watch the movie. And do well. That talker I made about how to play it. Yeah, obviously. Guys, what about...

Now, this is a little sneaky because it came from the leak, but the fact that Pokemon Legends ZA's budget was $13 million, does that go in here? That pisses me off. Put that on there. That's pretty bad. I mean, it's interesting. I don't know if it's dumb. I think it's pretty dumb that it's the single most profitable franchise in the world. Five times more at a minimum, yeah. Okay, that's fair. I like that.

Can we move on from Nintendo? I got another one, Kelsey. Can I have one more? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Haley. What do you got? Mine is that there's certain mega evolutions you can only access if you have the online version of ZA. Okay. Oh, like the download version? Like if you buy the cart, you can't access it?

No, it's like you only can get certain mega evolutions if you do the little tower thing that you need online in order to do. Technically speaking, you need online in order to get those. That's kind of a larger video game problem, right? There's a lot of games like that.

Stop it, though. Nintendo is at the top of the list of the egregiousness. It's still dumb. I'm not saying we should put it on the list. This is a long list for Nintendo. Nintendo, they were extra naughty this year. What about the fact that they raised the price of the... Switch 1 this year, which is odd to do. That's so messy. I think that's a larger tariffs conversation. But it's dumb. I mean, yeah, PlayStation and Xbox. That's the one thing I will not blame Nintendo for. But it is dumb that...

price hikes because i mean price hikes that's true we can talk about i mean just consoles raising their price this deep into the generation the fact that xbox raised the price twice for the series x and it's raised 150 bucks and i understand it's a larger tear of conversation But it is just dumb to be this deep in gaming generations and the prices of consoles are increasing. I was going to put all this in news, but I think that's fair too.

This is a Ray Luwaza contribution from Backstage Pass, but I do think we have to mention it. The Piranha Plant camera that you can buy with a Nintendo Switch 2. The incredibly cute and like, oh, it's so fun. It's a webcam. It's a Piranha Plant. It maxes out at 480p. A resolution that... has not existed for the past 12 years. It's hurt even more that there is another simpler camera that has a higher resolution. It's like...

I don't know. And the fact we tried to play Chillin' by the Fire, but half of us had two nice of webcams that were five years old. They were too new to be used with the Switch 2. Wasn't the Piranha Plant one not like... I mean, obviously it's Nintendo licensed, but isn't that like Hori? Not Nintendo? I think it is, yeah. So, Hori's dumb too.

I'm trying to cut Nintendo the smallest amount of flash. Didn't that alarm clock come out this year or was that last year? That was last year. Oh, I thought you were talking about the talking flowers. What do you think I woke up for this recording? Yeah, obviously. I have a not Nintendo one. Yeah. Rouge the Bat's audio in Sonic Race. Oh my god, yes.

the whole race how did no one stop and go let's adjust that let's adjust that baby real quick and that was like half as sexual as it actually is yeah no it is and it's all the time yeah That was my big takeaway from the time with the game. A quick one that I just found particularly personally frustrating. Little Nightmares 3 does not have local co-op, even though...

two characters are always on screen together. That's insane. My daughter and I love Little Nightmares 3 but we haven't touched it because it's like I don't want to... Make it local co-op. Yeah. Which is also another larger problem, but definitely extra vile with the angle they took.

Which I always hate that, like Kyle, I end up having two consoles in one room and then I go online to play with the person that's one foot away from me. It's so stupid. Yeah, frustrating. A game that really needs to be taken down a peg, Mind's Eye.

from earlier this year we all remember mind's eye game of the year good luck when uh when you beat that game you're granted access to its free roam mode which At release, the free roam mode, you can play as one non-customizable character who is a man wearing a bright turquoise crop top.

a gas mask and had written on his chest can't drink dust um and there were no uh there was nothing to do and they took out like all the npcs of the world and there was one drivable car and you could kind of like drive to locations and shoot people and that's that was the entire thing wow you can't criticize something for something it's not you're right that's what they wanted to make This one might not make it because I think people might be on the other side of this, but I think...

unnecessary touchpad integration of in ghost of yotai specifically like your painting and because i think they do have some really good integration like with the mini game where you're like tossing the coins but a lot of times i'm like they really just want me to feel immersed and i don't

I really don't. Use that touchpad for something. Y'all are wild. I like an infamous second son where you hold the controller sideways and do spray painting. Janet, I'm with you. It's like the idea that it's immersive to think more. about your controller I think is absurd. But I do think it's kind of fun.

I only wish you were writing out the names. I knew it was dangerous to come out. Writing the names on the touchpad, I thought was such a wonderful way to start that game. I don't know, it really worked for me. I wish it actually felt like you were. were writing them out and not just swiping around and then it magically writes correctly. But my handwriting is awful. I'm not going to like... I would love if you were bound to that the whole game. That would be so much cooler.

If you actually wrote the names yourself and it was your handwriting the entire time? I feel like we've seen, I don't know, obviously it's not going to make the list, but like... There's been integrations of like minigame, painting, drawing, whatever, where it does feel like, oh, I'm really part of it and I can try or I can not try. And here it just feels like, I feel like a kid getting handed like an unplugged controller and being told I'm participating. I find it infantilizing.

Make me feel like a child. You've been infantilized and emasculated so far in this episode. Yeah, that's why I didn't have a lot for Best Thing. It's been a rough year. Swiping up to make the wind blow? Beautiful. Oh, divine, of course. That's also fair. Yeah, I like that as well. Um, I would like, I think it was retroactive. I would like, I would like to nominate, um,

AI Studio Ghibli slop in Black Ops 7. If you have not seen it, please Google Black Ops 7 Studio Ghibli as an image search in Google and look at this shit. Because it's... Not only is it clearly just the Studio Ghibli filter that was popular for a month before Black Ops 7 came out, but all the images are medieval people because I assume that's what the AI just...

reverts to when it's doing it. So one is called Reeled In, and it's like medieval Studio Ghibli villagers holding up a giant fish who has a knight's helmet in its mouth. And this... It has nothing to do with Black Ops 7 unless they go back into the past that I don't know about, which is a possibility. But, like, it does not fit any kind of...

art style that is relevant to that game at all. It's like the laziest version of the laziest way to make fake art for their billion dollar franchise. It makes a billion dollars a year for a... company that has a trillion dollar market cap and, and like you can't, you can't, you can't get one guy to, to make some actual art for these little calling cards. You're asking a lot. It's upsetting to me. That's a lot for them to work on. Let's see you draw, dude.

Just because you brought a beautiful Samus during our art show this year doesn't mean everyone's good at that. They should have hired me. That's why I'm so upset. I gotta put Jeffem's art on here. My future as an artist is in peril. Hire Jeffem. On the AI front.

It might come up later in Biggest News, you know, but the whole Kraft and CEO, it's not a Cato drama, but how it came out in court filings that the Kraft and CEO used ChatGPT to figure out how to get out of the contract with the studio heads. That is awesome. How to not pay them bonuses. Yeah, how to not pay their bonuses. Can the dumbest thing just be that guy?

Well, wait, I've got another guy that's a contender for dumbest things. I have a guy, too. Which is a Splitgate 2 director. No, that was mine! Dang it! Make FPS raid again! Yeah, it's like the director went on stage at the Summer Games Fest thing, whatever that's called. And yeah, with a hat that said, make FPS great again, and then refused to apologize for it and doubled down. Yeah.

He said it wasn't political, right? Yeah, he said it was not political. Pissed off everybody. Nobody knew what to make of it. Everybody's mad. Is immediately... split gate 2 had incredibly expensive microtransactions and uh basically nosedived so he came out with that and then yeah That hat was about Battlefield. You guys didn't know that? No, he called out Call of Duty specifically on stage. He was like...

I hate playing Call of Duty every year. Here's this game that has all the same problems. Hey, I got a question for the group. You guys want more dumb guys? Do you guys remember at the start of the year when the LA wildfires were raging and it turns out that Treyarch's co-founder flew a drone into the firefighting plane?

Some a-hole flew a drone into this as we're trying to put out the wildfire. It turns out it was Treyarch's co-founder that was flying his drone around the fire. That's such a good one. This Nintendo stuff is looking tame now, honestly. Yeah, Nintendo stuff is like, oh, that's kind of weird. Oh, our camera's not as good as it could be. Yeah, welcome to her is good.

The drone taking out the plane that was the helicopter that was being used to put out some of the fires is definitely, that's going to be tough to beat. In the game Death Stranding 2, there's a scene where a kind of... A mannequin dummy pops up who is named Charlie and will actually be a major character for the rest of the game. And he says, hey, Sam, I'm a dummy. I can have whatever voice you would like me to have. Which voice should I have? And it gives you four options.

and if you pick the four options are dead man heart man lockney or die hard man and if you pick any option other than die hard man it's like sorry sam can't do that one yeah i was like you can only pick die hard man that's good I was like, yeah, I'm going to have Margaret Qualley voice this robot, of course. Like, who else am I going to pick? Oh, yeah, and I guess I should also, just to throw in there, Margaret Qualley is listed seventh in the Death Stranding 2.

credits, she does not appear in that game. She has no voice lines. What? How? Her character appears. Yes, her character model from Death Stranding 1 is present. inexplicably in a scene she recorded no dialogue for the game i love it i'm laughing about that scene now because it is it was just a moment of like oh hi mom or mama like

I didn't know you were here. Have you? Okay, thanks. Thanks for coming. I didn't know. Hey, on the lighter end of things, remember the Tales of the Shire game that Haley was talking about? How about just the fact that it's called Tales of the Shire colon A.V. Lord of the Rings game. That's their trademark, baby. That's their trademark. Don't defend it, lawyer. Why not the Lord of the Rings Tales of the Shire?

Because that sounds too great, Leah. What do you want me to say? The Lord of the Rings, a tale of a shire. Ah, Lord of the Rings again. Tales of the Shire about a blob. Ah, the Lord of the Rings. Remember last year when Ben made us all try to pick Lord of the Rings characters to spin a wheel randomly and none of us... We're talking about 2025's dumbest thing, Sarah. Keep up. I liked that idea. I saw the vision. But it happened like after...

Somebody just undercut the whole bit immediately. You already put it in the list last year. I don't remember who it was. Sarah looked at the screen and saw. Yeah, because I watched what was going on. In 2017, Sarah said something dumb to you guys. Really? I don't remember that. It was nutso. Ben's paid his price for that. 10 times upper. For dumbest thing for me, Harmonix's revolutionary fuser drop mix remix technology is for the Fortnite loading screen now. Really?

You do it while you're waiting to start your match. You remix songs from Fortnite. Does that really break your heart? Have you done it? I've watched my friends do it at Discord stream. It's not the worst thing. It's cool that it's out there in some way, but it's definitely really dumb. Yeah. It's like really cool technology and it's just like this, the emote wheel in Fortnite. It's crazy. It's weird. It should be honored. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry I let this go. It's great with Leo.

Affirmed. I'm sorry I let it go before we go to the Death Stranding Zone, but remember when Hideo Kojima announced his own credit card? That there's going to be a Hideo Kojima credit card coming? That's pretty dumb, right? No, I don't remember. No, I don't remember. He announced that in that very long stream. It was in the, like, two-hour-long Hideo Kojima stream where he... Is it real? Yes! Is it a real credit card you want you to get?

now it might be coming in the future but yeah your collector mind is reeling i can see it uh yeah it's it's coming Something you can collect that you can buy other things to collect with. The idea of getting rejected for the Hideo Kojima credit card is too much for my mind to bear, actually. I would definitely think it's because I'm a woman. Have you thought about becoming a mother? One of two kinds of women there can be.

I got one. The Infinity Nikki 1.5 update that completely retconned the entire story of the game and ruined it and caused an enormous boycott of which I quit the game. I never booted it up again. after spending quite a bit of money in it. And playing every day. That was a huge fumble. Yeah, that's good. That's good. What about the time that Borderlands 4 was coming out and in the run-up to it when everyone was toying with $80 prices?

Randy Pitchford just kept talking. And he went out there and he's like, hey, you know, if you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen no matter what it costs. And that rubbed people the wrong way. And then it turns out the game did launch at 70 and they dodged that PR disaster only for it to run like crap on PCs. And then Randy to come out there again and not stop talking and say, quote, well, it's a premium game for premium gamers.

Randy Pitchford keeps talking. I feel like we need to just have an umbrella of video game CEOs and just put them all under there. Yeah, but they'd all win every year. We gotta get more specific. We gotta find the worst one every year. Can it be like Umbrella from the Resident Evil franchise? Yeah. I'm all under that.

in the game where winds meet that new mmo game yeah when it first launches there's an ability to leave voice messages for other players like audio messages and it's kind of like elden ring where like if you get close enough to it it will just start playing And this is automatically on and you'll walk around the world and all of a sudden you'll hear like the metal pipe drop or somebody screaming.

And you have to go into the settings and turn it off. And it's one of the worst ideas I've ever seen put in a game. It's auto-playing voice messages that players can drop wherever they want. That's hilarious. I'm feeling a little bit about this the way I did about learning the baby steps thing where I'm like, that's pretty phenomenal. Yeah, it's just like, did they think about it for one second? No.

I don't even know what the benefit's supposed to be. You're doing great. Assassin's Creed Shadows finishes on a cliffhanger that apparently gets resolved in DLC. That pissed me off. Damn. Damn it. Maybe it's more news, but EA is selling to the Saudis. I think that's news. That's news. Yeah, definitely news. It's dumb news. And it's cool and rocks. Yeah, it is dumb news.

Is all the news negative? Yeah, we gotta go back to best thing quick. It kind of feels like all the news is negative. No, we'll find some good news. We'll find good news. This might go into news. Just gotta dig deep. This might go into news as well, but I'll say it here. But remember when they announced the game from Square called The Adventures of Elliot? And then the continent in that game was called Philibildia?

You love the names of JRPG continents, Ben. I know. You love them. It's not my fault they're all funny. Oh, I missed you, Ben. I'm glad you're back. Oh, thanks, man. This is a hardcore pandering pick, but this is a min-max list. Oh, here we go. Border Patrol not letting Hayley into the country. What the hell?

And now they hold me and harass me for hours every time. Yes, they're three hours early because she knows she's going to get interviewed. At the very least, an honorable mention, like a special credit, you know, this year, a third option, you know. Guys, they're watching the content. They're really not going to let her in. One dude who was nice. He was like, this stuff seems pretty cool. Did he ever play Papers, Please?

Yeah, I recommended him papers, please. And I was like, I low-key want to interview you. That dude actually quit his job. Yeah. He wasn't there the next time I was there. My favorite part from that, Haley, was when they opened your suitcase and it had all those chips and you're like, yeah, those were for my friends. And they're like, oh, that's nice. Yeah. And then I went home and ate them. Yeah, it would have been.

It's dumb to call layoffs dumb, but sometimes they're dumb. But remember when NetEase laid off all of the members in the U.S. that worked on Marvel Rivals, including the game's director, when the game was number one? Yeah, that was pretty dumb. To add on to that, Marvel Rivals' tendency to gooner bait their ads. Every single ad is gooner bait. It's so embarrassing to play that game now. Frag Punk has that as well. We could have a general...

Rise of Gooner Bait. And I think it's pretty self-explanatory. But the Marvel Rivals one is relevant or like more so because it's like I get ads for that on Instagram and it looks like a porn game. It looks like one of those fake games that you get a pop-up for on a sketchy website. It's a screenshot of gameplay and they're trying to be like, look at our game! And like 80% of the frame is hella's ass. Very highly rendered. And you're like, okay. I'll play. You got me.

I'm pretending to be a gooner. Sure, sure, sure. I'm pretending to be a gooner's rise up. Hailey playing Marvel Rivals, shaking my head so people know I disapprove. This is ridiculous. All right. We got a big list. Anybody else got something else I want to throw on here? Can you add my 9,999 damage? Oh, yes. Because you said that you would. Yep. Thank you. I have one. Dead by Daylight tried to roll out a change where...

Killers got punished for tunneling, which is when you go after the same person over and over, but they overclocked it so hard that everyone was mad, and then killers would join the matches and just stand in the corner and be like, this is what you want! you want me to kill things i guess we'll stand over here and they backtracked on everything and they're like sorry and they didn't implement any of it but dead by daylight community

if you stare into it too long, I think is the wildest online community. It's because it's severed in half and both halves hate each other. which is like how do you manage that community you have literally murderers and then normal human beings and it's like how do you marry those two to get along you can't that's the whole point

A theme this year, my last thing, is annoying voices for talkative characters. I wrote it down for Linked Banner of the Spark, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Revenge of the Savage Planet. Three games I like. They have characters talking constantly and their voices are horrible to listen to. Yeah. Metroid Prime 4. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. I was listening to the Muppets Christmas album.

I was like, what if somebody listened to this and I didn't know who the Muppets were? They'd just be like, these guys suck at singing. What about listening to the Alvin and the Chipmunks? I was just thinking that. Who sits down to listen to that? My sister and I love playing that in the car. As a bit, right? Not because you want to listen to it. Did Emma and I go see the Squeakquel in theaters? Yeah. Was it perfect? Maybe. But we did that in real life. Don't come into our country.

The nude in backstage patch chat reminds Arc Raider's AI voices. That is a really dumb thing for a game where you're fighting AI, especially. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I have one. It's in Firebreak. There's a level where you need to carry orbs. Jacob and Leo will know. The orbs poison you, and you are very slow when you carry them, and it's just, why did you do this?

It's just like the whole time I was like, I want to turn the game off now. It's just such an obviously awful thing. By all accounts, they fixed that game completely two days later and no one has checked. I swear they can just say that because they know no one's going to check. That is a fascinating game. It is unfortunate. Also, I mean, kind of news, but like that.

firebreak has seemingly just torpedoed remedy just the the i guess the dumbest thing is just like why would you ever make this and we all assumed that it was like oh this is just like a way to have like the remedy interns make things and then like the ceo gave a statement that was like remedy has to rethink what it is because that game performed so badly

Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's not like they were betting everything on it. I do think it was kind of like, you know, building a small job, but it is, yeah, definitely an odd release. And the CEO stepped down for it. Really? Well, step down into swirling. It was like the same announcement, I believe, like update for the company was like, hey, this game is underperformed. Also, we're shifting CEOs. They're not connected. Yeah.

Okay. What do we feel like are contenders here for dumbest? Someone changed the category to dumbest thing. I like Sarah's – what was the game? I already forgot the name of the game. Oh, I also forgot the name of the game. Where the Winds Meet. That one's wild. I also actually will go to bat for the HDMI 3D model in the Nintendo app. In which sense?

Like to defend it? That's my two. Okay. Go to the top. Because like... The context of that of knowing... It was like we were building to... like a new nintendo console that we were all over the moon for with lots of questions about yes yeah like that context like really reminded me of like how

Cause like I was genuinely checking that every day in the same way I checked the smash dojo. Yeah. Right. Of like, Oh, what's the new thing today? And it was an HDMI cable. It's like, what are we doing? That's so funny. So I liked it. I liked that one. The Pokemon patents for me would be my dumbest thing of the year. It's got to be the Treyarch co-founder flying a drone into a firefighting plane. The most just like unforced error.

just like it would be so easy to not fly a drone into a fire there's bad business decisions and then there's just bad everything decisions. Why would you do this? I don't think it'll win, but I do want to put up the Drag X Drive not... calling them wheelchairs and refusing to say the game is about accessibility but is there a reason i shouldn't well because they released a developer q a

within the last couple weeks. And in that, the developers are openly like, yeah, this was based on wheelchair basketball. They're wheelchairs. Like, it's that they're very frequently just calling them wheelchairs. Well, so then it's even dumber. But to me, that makes it even dumber. Yeah, the Nintendo was like, no, this game is not about wheelchairs. But God bless you for knowing that and listening to that, you psycho. You have a new baby! What are you doing with your life? She can wait!

He's like, are you seeing that I have some questions about DragonX Drive and Ben has to be prepared to answer them. Come on, come on. um ai slop in black ops 7 i think because i think this is the start of a wave we're gonna see this but from those big companies for decades and we can't go back it's gonna suck and this is our first sight of it yeah yeah yeah

I like Infinity Nikki for this. That is a game that especially had a ton of goodwill that it completely immolated. Is it greed or stupidity? Both. The update was just like, even if it had been not a disaster story-wise, it was also technically terrible and glitchy and didn't work. And so, I mean, I think that part is greed and the retconning is stupidity. So, so both. Yeah. The console prices I think is a big from this, big one from this year, but is it just so like...

We understand why it's happening conceptually. It sucks. But dumbest things is like, it's kind of a forced error. We're calling it a dumbest thing is mean to the games industry. A little bit. Yeah. when it's the tariffs that are dumb yeah if we wanted to have that but sometimes it feels like they're just like well the tariffs are letting us do this let's go even higher than we would have if the tariffs wouldn't a lot like make it look like we're just doing this because we have to

I mean, Sony hasn't done it with the base PS5 in the U.S. yet, you know, so there's like a little weird and uneven still, but, you know. It went on sale. Yeah, it did for Black Friday. Black Friday. Probably better for just news. Did the tariffs also affect Xbox Game Pass increasing in price? Because what the heck was that? Wi-Fi. Or Mario Kart World being $80. Wi-Fi tariffs. There's only so much you can blame on.

What we did for Nintendo in this category, we're just going to do for Microsoft in the next category. It'll have its time in the spotlight. It kind of is, yeah. Now, here's a controversial one. I do think charging $10 for Welcome Tour, even though I'm number one defender of Welcome Tour, I do think it is a dumb thing. It is like when that hit in that live stream, we all said, are you kidding me? This is not the free packing thing. It is objectively. That almost feels like a.

walk for Jacob's personal dumbest thing. It's like, how could you say that's not the dumbest thing? It is another case of raw kinetic goodwill. that could have been had, that was tossed in the trash. For me, the Wind Waker standard definition on Switch 2 is the most micro example of the macro problems at Nintendo right now. You know what I mean?

why do that? And it's just like an indicator for how they make decisions right now. It's like, cause we can squeeze you over here in a different way. It's like, that's just how they think now in terms of selling tech to us. Okay. Those seem like good contenders. Is that what we're working with? Yeah.

There's so many. Good old fashioned. Good old fashioned, just dumb. I mean, Hio Kojima's credit card. I do like that just for like right down the middle. That is objectively dumb. Okay. Technically I looked this up. Yeah. It's just him putting his logo on an existing Banks. credit card. It's not like he's opening a bank. It's still dumb, but I don't think it's flying a drone into a plane.

I think the drone is a hard lock for me. It's either hard lock or for some reason doesn't make it. I feel like there's no in-between. That was so hard, because they're all so dumb. Sending that out while they're trying to save lives is so stupid, though. It's the dumbest thing in the world. Didn't it ground a plane?

No, it wasn't even a helicopter. It was literally a plane. Yeah, it was a plane. Wasn't it a Canadian plane, too? Like, it wasn't even ours. Oh, that could be. I don't know if... Because we sent you guys help, right? You're welcome. You did. Thank you. And we said, no, thank you, our Call of Duty man needs to fly his little toy. We crashed the drone into it.

And also, like, not to mention the severity, like, there weren't that many planes that could even do that work, so one being grounded, like, genuinely, like, it spread, like, it spread the fire so much worse because it's like... you have, like, one shot to do this, and they're like, yeah, that one shot's gone now. It's like a metaphor for CEOs in general, if you think about it, right? Like, taking out the one thing that's supposed to help people the most. That's a lot for number one, right?

Yeah, I think that gets a lot. Yeah. And I also admire Jeff and share his passion about the AI slop, too. I like the AI slop. I feel like there has to be an AI one. There has to be there as well. Actually, the AI one I like more is the Krafton CEO asking ChatGPT how to not pay their clients. That's pretty bad. I just feel like it feels more encompassing, yeah.

Okay. Okay. What I do like about the Black Ops 7 one, though, is Studio Ghibli AI slop is specifically like the oldest version of when AI art was becoming more mainstream before people were even having conversations about it. It was like, look, I made myself in Studio Ghibli. typing into this thing yeah it's like specifically baby's first ai thing now years later that's a good point yeah that's true what if ai slop was just two

No. It's not slop. I tried that with the CEO thing. It didn't work. It becomes too powerful. I mean, the CEO thing is so good because it's literally just, it's a CEO. All of every AI story is a CEO. kind of asking, how do I not pay my employees? You literally have a CEO typing in the chat, how do I not pay my employees? That's fun.

Recently I got an agreement back from somebody on the other side who didn't have a lawyer and his prompts from ChatGPT were still in the agreement and I saw them. Yeah. He ran my doc through ChatGP2 and asked, like, what's bad about this? What should I fight back on? What should I fight back on? And I pointed out, I said, I can see your prompts.

He actually removes your ability to read. This is my working theory. So I know this is cliche, but it is so weird how people just like treat it like it's God. These people are like, I keep asking it how to cure cancers. working on string theory it's like you're like my god bless a member of my family i was watching survivor with them and then it seemed like a character like somebody like whispered to another person and they didn't have the audio

You know, just to keep up the drama. Like, what's this person saying? And they asked ChatVPT, like, what was that person saying in Survivor? It's like, why would ChatVPT know that? Like, it's not an American god. What did it say? It actually said, get out of the house. There's a meteor coming. Can I put your family member as dumb as things? No, they'd love it. Kelsey, that was my new baby girl, you dick. Wow. We're raising her on chat. Free third sibling.

Okay, is it Trey, our co-founder, Drone into a firefighting plane, and Crafton CEO ChatGPT as the top two? They just feel like a lot. I like it. It's funny that it's QCEO. Okay. That's objective. Which is top? Top banana. The Treyarch drone. Yeah, it's got a firefighting plane. Literally, the...

The quote from the lawyers is Mr. Ackman finds himself before this court not because of greed or malice or bad intentions. His fault in this case is a single decision of sheer stupidity. It's literally perfect. It's a lot. That's one of the richest lawyers in the country. He was being dumb. All right, congratulations to Treyarch co-founder for flying the drone and the firefighting plane as the dumbest thing in 2025 and the runner-up Krafton CEO.

ChatGPT to not pay bonuses. I like how we ripped into Nintendo for like an hour, and then they did. Also, a special third one to Hayley being held. Oh, that is true. It is kind of a story of Nintendo. Honorable mention, yeah. You can make so many bad decisions and somehow Microsoft will make worse ones. All right. Well, there we go. Next category is biggest news.

It's not all layoffs, people. Kyle, prove us wrong. Game Informer's back. That's news, right? Why don't you just give the URL to subscribe? I love we're starting off on a good note. I didn't bring it up in Best Thing. I did Biggest News. Biggest News. Best thing. This won't win, Kyle, but we're happy you said it. That is, yeah, because last year it was a lot of...

You know, we had Game Informer going down, I think, is the biggest news, you know? There you go. Gameformer.com slash subscribe. I'm just going to go with tariffs as the theme of the year. It's done. So much to increase prices everywhere on everything and just in general kind of made the whole gaming landscape more miserable.

Yeah. I mean, you remember just how weird and specific it was? Like, remember the whole Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders where it's like, ah, they're indefinitely delayed because of the tariff announcements. We'll get back to you. Like, just that state of – and just – I remember. Sarah was quite tickled by it. Just the complete lining up of the tariff announcements and the Switch 2 announcement and just Doug Bowser having to get out there and be like, oh, yeah.

Economic maelstroms. Trying to rephrase it any way they possibly could. And it was so hard he retired. That's right. Hey, Doug Bowser stepping down for Nintendo. It was, I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you guys have this, but it's like, it is the type of news where the people in your lives who don't care about video games, but know that you are involved in video games, reach out to you and ask you questions about it. Doug Bowser?

yeah yeah what's up to this bouncer guy no uh the tariffs affecting prices of video games was like mainstream to the point of people being like yeah that's crazy right like you're you're a video game guy right yeah yeah yeah Kyle is video game guy. I am video game guy. The steam machine getting announced. Yeah. Yeah. Like the big bundle. It is. It's so funny to.

I guess be covering this industry for long enough to be like, we did this. We had all of these discussions 10 years ago, but now it's legit. Valve is playing a long game and it's going to be sweet. Actually, kind of. seemingly in line with tariffs, but I think from a different source and affecting the Steam Machine.

all computer part price spiking um for a long time it was graphics cards it's still kind of graphics cards but now it's also ram is super duper expensive yeah and it's basically happening because uh ai companies are buying so many parts for server farms that everything else is just you know the price is going up and up and up yeah

The EA-Saudi Arabia deal. EA-Saudi Arabia. Yeah, EA going private. I'm going to say they're sad or happy after each news thing that gets announced, by the way. I like that. I like that because I can participate. Yeah. Nice. Is it? Yeah. I mean, trying to think of the most compact way to say this is EA going private, Saudis and friends. EA sells to the worst people. Is that the right word? Yeah. And friends?

well it's their friends the new children's general sense kind of pop name scooby-doo kind of vibe exactly uh yeah that's that's a huge one that's a huge one for the year for sure sad Anything else feels like way less important, but did you take getting delayed again? Yeah. Hey, hey, we're taking all kinds here. Yeah. GTA 6 delayed. Yeah. With that. Rockstar fires unionizing workers, and it becomes probably a way bigger mess than they anticipated. I think the kind of story is like...

They fired people and then there were ramifications because they did it in the UK. Right. Sat happy. I don't know why they all had to leak stuff together, though. I thought that was really rude that 30 of them went to go leak things all of a sudden. Yeah, it was really rude. Do you guys remember at the top of the year, cast your minds back, when the United States government shut down Marvel Snap? Remember that weird saga? Yeah. Because the TikTok ban is ByteDance.

It also took down Marvel, so yeah! That was wild. What a year. Neutral. Really? I don't know. I don't care. Well, it was still in Canada. It was only in the U.S. Oh, happy! It being revealed that, well... The reporting that Ubisoft had canceled their post-Civil War Assassin's Creed due to fear of online backlash that Steven Tadillo had reported on. Yeah.

So civil war, post-civil war. What's the term looking for? Come on, historians. The post-civil war period. What's that called? Reconstruction. Reconstruction. Thank you. Period AC canceled. Jacob would be the one to answer that. That was a nerd test and you failed. You know basic facts. Can we just introduce a section called Microsoft's Terrible No Good Very Bad Year? Yeah, absolutely. Because there are a lot of them. Sure.

Obviously, a huge number of layoffs at Microsoft. Kind of layoffs everywhere, but I don't know if we can pick a single event. I think we can. I think the layoffs where they... Shutdown Everwild, shut down all the initiative, canceled Perfect Dark. That wave, I think, was the biggest. That was all at once, wasn't it? Yes. Perfect Dark, Everwild, yeah.

Related to that, this should have gone in dumbest thing. Microsoft exec advises laid off employees to talk to AI if they're feeling stressed about being laid off. That's just something that happened. BDS boycotts Microsoft because of their collaboration with the Israeli Defense Force. That happened this year. That was a big thing. Related, Microsoft actually... divested a little bit from the IDF that is kind of not terrible news and also like a shockingly effective you know like

Putting pressure on them worked. Yeah, especially the employees within Microsoft putting that pressure on them, yeah. Negative, ICE ran recruitment ads using Halo, and Microsoft seemed... pretty cool with it. I don't know about cool with it, but certainly it's like, we're not ruffling a single feather. They did Pokemon too, right? Everyone just decided that they are too chicken to...

Fight it. Not Sabrina Carpenter. Hell yeah! And you know what? We got a victory royale as four Sabrina Carpenter. Exactly. Biggest news. I know another Carpenter who stood up for what's right.

His name was Jesus. Speak on it. If he's not Fortnite, I don't know who he is. Give him time, give him time. The Xbox ally, sort of, I don't know what story we want to... give to that but like the launch of that and it being a mess it doesn't play your xbox games retroactive dumbest thing of just maybe like messy launch or something or yeah yeah yeah better dumbest thing confusing launch yeah it is yeah

I think it's worth noting. Do we have the Game Pass hike in there as well? Oh, yeah, Game Pass hike. That was definitely really, really a big talker. 30%? 50%. 50% increase in Game Pass. Yeah. Hey, other news, Ted Price stepping down from Insomniac ever since its founding. That's pretty wild, right? Right, Ted Price fans? He's making it. Oh, wow.

No! That's crazy! BioWare was cut in half. They're down to 100 developers now. I mean, I think just kind of the layoffs is always the classic thing. Not to diminish it. Zyra cut in half. Warner Brothers. Cut in half is not the phrasing I like. That plays for cut in half. Warner Brothers, hell of a year, when they shut down Monolith, Player First Games, Warner Brothers San Diego, they canceled the Wonder Woman game.

kind of mirroring the Microsoft closure, the initiative here. And then they were just acquired. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Is the headline there Netflix accidentally buys video game division? I don't think they even know that they did. Right. Yeah.

They didn't include it in the valuation at all. And we still don't know if Paramount's going to sweep in whatever, whatever. It's going to be such a complicated mess. But yeah, just Warner Brothers sold, you know? Yeah, or up for grabs or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm struggling to get the wording down perfectly. So maybe someone has the headline, but the the push from that one group to get payment processors to like stop.

on steam and other platforms kind of in a larger conversation with like censorship and games uh yeah payment processor um censorship push something like that yeah i'll try to grab the name Push. I'm trying to remember the name of the group that was behind a lot of that, but I can't. I think, yeah, I'm just trying to grab a hold of that, but if I get it, I'll go let you know. Can we use a positive one? A little pick me up? Please.

Yeah, please, Hayley. For the first time since 2012, the director of the USPTO said, that patent needs to get looked at again, and they're reassessing the Pokemon Battle mechanic patent. Probably because Japan... denied the same patent and they got embarrassed by other countries being better at their jobs than them. But hey! I choose to believe that they're a MinMax subscriber and they listen to the freaking bonus podcast, Haley. Oh, I hope so. You think we saw a live subscriber? Yeah.

What about on the lawyer front when Sony sued Tencent for that Horizon Zero Dawn ripoff that happened this year? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Another great bonus pod. Just put bonus pod episodes. yeah that's where that's how you stay up to date biggest news great show available for only five dollars on patreon a steal um well i guess i can say it's not toxic because i don't actually know but like the um

reporting Schreier did on Silksong's development. Again, I'm just not going to win, but that was a little bit of talking for that one to two days. Which is most of these conversations are just one to two days. It was weird that the biggest news... Silksong development took so long because they were having a good time. It's kind of anti-news. I was struck that it spread so far, but I guess that's just the power of Silksong because I was like...

Good reporting that the studio was just like, we're all good over here. How are you? And everyone's like, oh, 30 headlines off of that. Yeah, I mean, I also think, which again, bigger problem with the industry, but like they just don't talk to anyone. So the fact that they said anything on the record at all is like... They could have said what they had for breakfast that morning and it would have made rounds. It's not a discount.

They could have shared a 3D model of an HDMI cable. Yes, absolutely. And I would have said, thank you, Team Cherry. Actually, sorry. Yeah, Ice just posted that HDMI cable. They took it. Oh, my God. you gotta be in so deep to this podcast to know what that means Ubisoft spun off its biggest franchises into a new studio that's kind of owned by Tencent. Yeah, the Ubisoft Vantage Studios with Tencent.

So that is the studio that they spun off due to a lot of struggles within Ubisoft recently and Tencent buying more and more and the largest shareholder at this point. But Vantage Studios now runs Assassin's Creed, Far Cry.

Rainbow Six. Anything successful. They're like, ah, that's Vantage. Under this umbrella now. Yeah, that was big for sure. Again, it feels positive, but maybe it's... doom for the future of people buying and playing games, but the fact that Grow a Garden and Roblox had 22 million concurrent players. It is the wildest thing in the world. And not a single podcast has talked about playing it. Ooh. Literally.

That story that came out about... I forget who got interviewed, but they were talking about... The exploitation of kids on their platform and whether or not they were worried about it. And they were like, we see this as a feature, not a bug. Yeah, the Roblox. Right, right, right. That came out of that. Roblox loves child labor. Headline. A pro.

Yeah, Fortnite came back on iOS while we're in this realm of things. I just sound like you're going to cry. You know, whatever you want to cover there. He was really excited about it. He was really proud. Is this good news, y'all?

Kyle, you remember your beloved director of Napoleon Dynamite, Jared Hess? And it's like, hey, he had the... big hit with that film and he'll never reach those heights again and then he directed a minecraft movie and it made a billion dollars and was like a cultural phenomenon to think of that director got another crack at the culture bat is so chicken jockey

That's probably biggest news Like a guy said Chicken Jockey Chicken Jockey is awesome Chicken Jockey is awesome Amazes people everywhere Everyone is saying It's on the movie front. And I've actually just because I'm kind of fascinated by it and what that thing is going to be. But Zelda movie casting. Okay, yeah. And like the fact that they're shooting in New Zealand. These are like little things that I'm like...

I still don't think this movie is going to be good, but they're going to a place and they cast unknowns. That's kind of interesting. Are you getting that news from your Nintendo app? Can I get it anywhere else? Drink your Kool-Aid, bro. Is it news just that Nintendo, you know, broke the seal on $80 games this year? We did it. Mario Kart World. Did they break the seal? I mean, if you go back in time, you know, but by and large, I mean, Kelsey, you can probably speak better to it, but...

effectively. I think that it was kind of like the marking of an $80 era, because there are probably, I mean, there's certainly retro examples of $80, $90 games, but... That was definitely the first big company to do that in a way where people were like, oh, games can be $80 now. This is an odd one to look at now and to talk about, but at the time...

The day or week when Polygon and Giant Bomb were both gutted. I was literally looking at that same one. That's creepy. Yeah. But then Giant Bomb had... I mean, is it just as simple? Because Polygon is, like, still going. You know, is it just giant bombs independence is maybe a better way to put this? Because that still is the wildest thing. Every time, I know I'm close to it, but I just think about that idea of, like...

They just handed them the company? Like that has never happened in the history of companies. It is so weird. And it was like within a couple weeks, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. Yeah. Less than a month, maybe. It was pretty fast. It was definitely really fast. Yeah. Because they had a panel lined up and they were sort of just like, we might have some news to share. We don't know. And then, you know, it seemed like it happened really quickly. Dan Reichert's power is.

terrifying. And frankly, we should have this win to appease him so he doesn't turn his ire on us. Good idea. Biggest news, Dan Riker tried mustard for the first time. Yeah, that's true. More stuff like that. Max and Min, yep. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Hey, guys, let's get real. Remember when EA shut down Cliffhanger Games and canceled that Black Panther game? I mean, that was a big one, right?

Sad. Sad. Saudi Arabia wouldn't have had it go down like that. What about just the Cinematica 2 lawsuit? Just getting that one in here. That's been a weirdly defining thing in every category. You know, that was news this year for sure. It's weird that this happened and we're all just not riding in the streets, but...

Remember when they announced the Halo 1 remake and then the guy was like, ta-da, I have a PlayStation shirt on on this Microsoft stream and Halo is coming to PlayStation. Don't give that to them. They want that to be biggest news. It is wild. It is a wild thing that we're all just totally cool with. It's because no one cares anymore. I agree, but it's just weird. I feel like Sonic got on the GameCube and we're just done. Like, you know...

You tell Microsoft fans that from three years ago and they would, I think, have some wise words. Yeah, from three years ago. What's happened in the last three years that has changed that dynamic? That is the notable thing to talk about is that within the span of three years, it was like, Sea of Thieves over my dead body.

And now it's like, I didn't hear a peep about Halo because everyone's just so beat down. It's wild. And that's why it's the biggest news. Yes! It's the biggest news that no one cares. They don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Crickets. Yeah, that's interesting. Needler crickets. Peaks sold a billion copies. Yeah. I saw headlines about that all the time. Is that accurate?

I think that's the actual number. Yep. Yep. One billion. Sold a lot. One tenth of the lowest spot peak. This is recent, so obviously recency bias, but the... closing ranks around horses the game you know this is kind of like a small indie game that probably would not be talked about almost at all if not but steam not allowing it on their storefront and then

seemingly out of just like fear of being targeted uh epic also took it off and humble took it down but then did put it back uh but but similar to the credit card thing These are closed platforms that can make decisions that affect what kind of stuff you can put on them. The Pokemon leak? I know we had the Giga leak. years ago, and there have been Pokemon leaks in the past, but this one has been like, here's their entire five-year roadmap. Ta-da.

This wasn't the one with fan fiction in it, right? I thought this was the fanfic one. No, that was an earlier one. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is a different one. Can that be in there too? Because that was a big deal. Was that this year? Yeah. Was it this year? I feel like I would have talked about Typhlosion, the fanfic, if it came out last year. Sorry. I think it was last year. I think it was last year. Oh, it was last year. It was?

Yeah, we all messed up. It was last year. We're going to look into it. We loved it. Harada leaving Tekken and Band of Namco. Can I get a hell yes? Am I supposed to be sad or happy about that? It's news. It's news that this person has been associated with... One of the biggest series going. The longest continuous story in video game history, Sarah. He's stepping away. The story is punching. What's the story? How dare you? It's about familial...

anger and volcanoes. We all know it. That's called the holidays. Punching with hot, hot men. Have you seen Tekken's cast? Hi, Hachi. They're all too muscly. They look like brick walls. I don't want to cuddle that. Hey, Hachi Mama. Yes. Other news we should consider? PP Bang wins an Astro Award. Yeah. That didn't surprise me at all. That should have been the best thing. Maybe we should have thought of that earlier. Lay up. We call it in the biz. All right. What do y'all like?

For question of the week. That's so weird. I really wanted you to say that. My brain wanted you to say that. Mine too, you guys. Mine too, mine too. It's like a note resolving. Is it so general that it's just a black hole but just tariffs impacting the game industry is kind of like the... EA Saudi Arabia. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a huge one. I think you're right. I think also it was mine, but the payment processor thing, because I think that kind of ties with the horses thing that Jacob added to, like this push for... conservatism leaking into like the gaming sector and yeah i think it it speaks to like the the private platforms that we rely on are at the whims of

bad faith actors you know is kind of like it's a it's a big story and it will keep being big because it's like steam is you need steam or the xbox store the playstation store to be cool with your game and if they're not You just can't put it on the biggest platforms. Yeah. Looking at this list, I always like measuring it in terms of just like the times you look at your phone or your computer and just have that like, wow, when you see a headline pop, right?

Looking at the list, I know I'm close to it and stuff, but Fortnite on iOS. No, I was going to say, like Giant Bombs Independence is one of those that is just like, are you kidding me? It is niche, but what are we if not niche? I'm just saying. On the list, that's the one that stands out to me in terms of just like, whoa.

i agree getting an astro award goes above that okay there's no doubt there's no doubt it's not just biggest scope and reach but like biggest in terms of shock factor giant bomb getting its independence like something like that Has not happened before and will probably not happen. Yes. I like the Pokemon patents getting reassessed. Yeah. Or just the entire saga of the Pokemon patents. Because that never happens. Literally never happens.

Without the conclusion of that, I'm kind of wary. I'm very comfortable. that it's going to get revoked because of the Japanese decision, and I feel like they wouldn't reassess it unless they were really leaning that way. So I'm comfy that it's going to go well. Even if it doesn't, I think the news still stands as like, you know, this patent was issued and they're reassessing it, which is like, according to Haley, like does not happen. 13 years. Yeah. So like.

Even if they're like, you know what, actually patent remains like I still think it's I still think the the value as of it as news is, you know, the same. I think from the chunk that's at the top. Is it tariffs and EA as the two biggies? Yeah. Is EA number one? My only gripe is this has a kind of a boringness to it. I agree. I agree. You want some color? You want some splash? Also, the terrorists aren't a specific story, which I do think is a little bit weakens it a bit.

The waging of the tariffs is the story. But yeah, I mean, you're right, because that's not really the story. The story is that everything, every single game console company raised their prices. Specifically, the Nintendo pre-order delay, I feel like, is the biggest, like, government-affecting games sales-related story. Well, I would say shutting down Marvel Snap a week.

yeah it got resolved really fast yeah but it's still it doesn't change the fact that it happened you know i mean like i don't like to me that's the one for me because that's the one that broke through that i was like people who did not care about video games were taking notice

It was also like a dark, funny thing of, oh, now people care about what the government's doing because you can pre-order your Nintendo Switch 2. And I feel like that also kind of fueled the conversation a bit as well. Haley had a pretty good point earlier, though. Would you say those two magic words? Chicken doggy? Yeah. We should consider the chicken jacky.

okay we'll consider it okay consider it considered okay that's not news that's why we considered it i mean it was it was news that like children were terrorizing movie theaters. They killed people. I saw that news everywhere. They were biting jugglers in the audience. Yes. Children having fun. Yeah, children had fun. Yeah, I agree. Stop it. And we think this is bad news. Yes! At the expense of no one but service workers. Who gives a f***? Yes!

I do think it's interesting that Pokemon patents get reassessing would be like a follow-up to last year where Pokemon Suing Power World was our min for best news. Oh my gosh. Interesting. That's why it feels so familiar. Closure. Closure! Well, you're in the sense that nothing has been decided yet. Here's the thing. I feel like Biggest News is kind of a category where the boring stuff wins. Yeah, it's a little bit boring. It's boring because we heard about it so much.

Yeah. Okay, so congratulations. Because it was all over the news. Biggest news. At what point is something like fun and quirky the biggest news? People smile while they play games. Tonight at 11. What's wrong with our kids? Their lips are curling up. How do you describe a smile? Is it lips curling up? They're flushed with joy. Kids are flushed.

All right. Biggest news. EA going private. The Saudis and friends buying them up. The runner up. Tariffs impacting the game industry. Round of applause. Round of applause. No. hear ye hear ye well done you earned it just one year i would love for this to just be all positive news wouldn't that be so cool biggest news parentheses positive

The biggest, like, no, just what if it naturally was? What if the biggest news was positive? The dream jockey was right there. It was right there. You just didn't pay attention. Obviously, you guys didn't watch the scene. All right. Next category is best game we did not play. Now, to spare you all at home, we sorted some of this out ahead of time. Not to debate, but to figure out, like, who has played what.

We already figured it out. We're going to be so light on content. We've really got to beef this up. It's midnight for me and I'm not complaining. Here we go.

The best games we didn't play. My nomination is Delta Rune, chapters three and four, which is like, granted, it's not done, but like, those are, those are games. I'm going to play it when they're all...

Ow! The deadline on that keeps getting pushed! We can tear it down later. But yeah, like, what I want to throw out there is Popucom. I do intend to play this, but I haven't gotten to it yet. It's a co-op, like, platformer. Kind of has, like... splatoon vibes with the shooting i hear it's really good i've been waiting for it to come to switch and like any piece of garbage when it came to switch i still haven't played it but maybe one day i will i want to nominate date everything

Where you can date the floor, you can date your wall, you can date thoughts in your head. Yeah. Do it. Do it. Put it on there. Do it. Unfortunately, Hayley's... Never mind. She doesn't have thoughts in her head? I think the most egregious one is... I have thoughts in my head. No pictures. You have something. Okay. Date those. I think the most egregious one is Once Upon a Katamari, which I assume tons of us here love Katamari.

It is weird. And we just have not gotten around to it. It's so weird that we've not gotten around to it. It's not a remake. It's like, it's a full new game with new mechanics and everyone likes it. Yeah, right. That's a great choice. Yeah. Good choice. Good choice. Octopath Traveler. Yeah. I'm going to get to it over the break. I'm going to get to it. Well, never mind. We're just getting stuff out there. Okay. Traveler Zero. Okay. Okay.

Kelsey, you already were absolved of your sins earlier. Yep, everyone's good. No, but I'm nervous about that. It did just come out a few days ago, but I still feel a little bad that I haven't played it yet. Have people played Power Wash Simulator 2? No. That's weird, isn't it? I'm still working on the first one. I'm working on the first one. There's a lot of game there. Yeah, it's like the first one.

Right. If you already own the first one, I'm not really like, oh, I need the new nozzle or I'm kind of like, oh, keep playing. I thought this felt like a powerhouse simulator crowd. So I was surprised that no one jumped out of that.

It is, but I'm going through it really slowly. Like I'm still on like the first area because I play it and then I fall asleep because it's very relaxing. I'm still filling mine with water. And there's like a million DLCs too. What an interesting reason to get punished for like not... not high sequel sales is because your first game is too relaxing and you fall asleep every time you want to play it. Yeah, that's why I haven't gotten that far. It knocks me out every time.

I really have the meaning to check out Jump Space. They changed the name. I think it was Jump Ship originally. But it's a lot of the leads from It Takes Two. when they left that studio and they made this sci-fi game where you're running around co-op, repairing your ship, jumping out of the ship, all that fun stuff. I've been meaning to get to it for a long time, but I feel bad that I haven't. So that's on my list.

And these are games that we didn't play but agree are good. There is like Black Ops 7. Has anybody touched Black Ops 7? I know it's getting trashed. And I also don't agree that it's good. I know. I'm just throwing it out there. It was an interesting one that no one touched it this year. Off? Did anyone play Off? No. No, but it is technically just a translation. And they revamped the combat system. Oh, Monster Train 2. Did no one check out Monster Train 2? I played the demo.

Okay. I played maybe an hour of it, and then I was too scared that I don't know what's really different about it, because I wasn't...

It had been so long since I played the original Monster Train that I – People are loving it in terms of games that are good that we dodged. I think it's up there. There's other stuff. I mean stuff that I don't think is going to – be a contender but stuff like lost in random the eternal die i meant to get to uh destiny 2 the edge of fate destiny rising that weird mobile game everybody's golf hot shots uh henry half head ratatan came out in early access

I played the demo for that and I liked it, but Henry's half-fed. Okay. Oh, you did? All right, never mind. We can't include that one. There's stuff like Terminator 2D, No Fate, which... I have not played yet as of the time of this recording. That's not out yet. It's out December 12th. Yeah, yeah. So it's a weird one. Okay. So it's a contender then. It's, I mean, tricky. GTA 6.

GTA 6, that's true. Alright, what do we like for the top of the heap here? Is it Delta Ruin 3 and 4? I think it's Delta Ruin. Because it's such a fun reason why not. Yeah, Delta Ruin and Katamari. I don't like this because it's not a game. It's part of a game. We don't have time to get into that. But then a sequel is part of a game in the same logic. No.

No, it's not, though. It would be like, you know, why can't I think of that? Dispatch. If it was just like the first three episodes of Dispatch or something, you know, it's kind of like that. But these are much longer.

It's like... It's not good for this because we haven't not played it yet. Yeah, like if this was Final Fantasy... 7 the remake trilogy those are separate games even though they're the same game broken up into pieces and they're quite long like those are separate games this is just part it's like an ep it's episodic it's chapter wise So that's why I wouldn't count it for this because, yeah, to Leo's point, we had a chance to not play it. So are remake and rebirth are not separate games?

No, they are. She's saying they are, yeah. They are? Okay. You can have a big story broken up into parts and be a separate game, but I don't think Deltarune is. Yeah, so wait, hold on. I've played Deltarune's Chapter 1 and 2. Does that mean this is off the list? I don't think so. I like measuring this list based on guilt. Delta Rune Chapter 2 came out in 2021.

Like, it's been almost as long between Deltarune Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 and 4 as it was between Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth. Like, I actually think that's a good comparison in the other direction of, like... He is kind of making these like they're fully separate games and they're just called chapters instead of Delta Rune 3. Yeah.

If he said they were separate games, it was very semantics-y. Like I would be like, oh yeah, sure. But like they're not. So that's why I don't see them as separate games. But I also, I mean, I think you're right, Janet, that it's an odd one for this category. But I do like measuring this category in terms of like guilt.

of like the games on sports like oh yeah i was meaning to check that out and it seems like what's about katamari is number one and i think deltaron still feels that category just like i feel kind of guilty for not playing any of those yet

Even though it is... I don't, though. I'm waiting for it to be done. Yeah, but Kelsey feels guilt, I think. She looks deeper than her soul. I hear the music, and I go, oh, I want to play it, but then I want to wait. Okay. All right, if it's not Deltarune, what's number two? I'm so proud of us for how weak this category is. I am too. We really do. Yeah, honestly, it's good that it's weak. Octopath? No, because it just came out.

That's why I wouldn't put it for that. And if Kelsey is guaranteed... And I think I'm the only one that kills Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt Kilt I don't know if I like that. Monster Train 2 is also up there for, if we're talking critical acclaim. Yep, yep.

It feels kind of silly to separate these into, like, the tops and bottoms. The two cents. The piddly bits. The two fours. The piddly bits. And one five, I guess. The bottom one is five. I mean, I... If we're not counting Deltarune, I feel like we can. That's just my feeling. We don't have to go off my feeling. We can count Deltarune and then we'll count it for all the other years that the chapters come out and the game's not done. Okay. It can kind of just have its own spot. Yeah.

All right. So is it Once Upon a Katamari as the lock, the maximum best game we didn't play for 2025? What we all agree is probably good. And then runner up with an asterisk, Deltarune chapter three and four. If it's the runner-up, then we can care about it less. Exactly. Kamari's truly egregious.

There is something wrong with us. Yeah. I'll get to it. I feel like there's no rush for Katamari, right? It's like Carabasher Sim 2. You know what you're going into. It's true. That's a game I should like a lot. And then I played it and was like... I don't know. Okay. I don't think I'm getting around to what's going on. We got the biggie.

next category will be a breeze this is of course called best moment the best moment from games in 2025 we will give spoiler warnings when we have a category that is or an entry that requires a thorough explanation, of course. And for everybody watching visually, we will have an extra treat for that. But the best moments...

From games in 2025, who wants to kick this off with a little humdinger or a big humdinger? You choose the size. I have a little humdinger. All right, Kyle. Yeah. Hey, Kyle Hilliard, everybody. Show us your little humdinger. Okay.

I guess, okay, so... We'll have to... I question about the spoiler hats. This is not like... I want to talk about Pirate Yakuza, and it's not a mainline story spoiler, but we still want to put on spoiler hats, I guess? If it's not like a... something where someone would be like oh i know i know what you're gonna pick and i feel like we don't need to i agree um there is an optional side quest that appears at a certain point it doesn't matter when in the in the game

where one of your shipmates is like, oh, I really want to meet a fancy woman and date a fancy woman. I want to fall in love. And if you follow the path of this side quest, you are rewarded with a, like...

30 40 minute live action um basically episode of the bachelor based around all the women that you met in the game and the actor who plays um your shipmate is like there like he is he is the the live action actor that they scan to like put in the game and voices him it's a full like clearly very improvised just like he's going on little dates with all these women that you meet in game

And it is like the most off the cuff improvised weirdest thing where he is just absolutely terrible at all these dates. And it's hilarious. And I was like, I was like crying, laughing. Like there was one time he's like, I'm going to cook for you.

And he just spends like three minutes just like spitting pepper shakers. Like it's very clearly that they were just like, hey, we're going to film this. And I don't know, just pretend you know how to cook. And they just let the actor kind of just do what he wanted. And they did not do any cuts. And like it just would go to the.

It would move to the woman, and she would just be falling asleep. It's so bizarre. I highly recommend just looking up the YouTube video on it. But if you're a fan of The Bachelor... there is an episode of the bachelor inside of pirate Yakuza and it's wild and it's hilarious. That's fun. I love it. I love it. It's very good. Um, I want to do clear ones, but I'm scared. Oh my God.

Should we just start a Claire Obscure section and then go from the beginning toward the end of the game? Yeah, then we can put on spoiler hats. All right. Should we jump into Claire Obscure right now? All right.

Spoiler hats! How does typing it out work, Ben? The person should just not look at the typing. Yeah, just don't look at the screen. I guess everybody... Ooh, I get to cover up my stupid head. What do we normally write it in a way where it's not? Thank you. Jeff, put that spoiler hat on fast. Oh, my God. I'm trying. It's like a heat wave coming. Everyone here is beating. These are so cute. I have not. No, you haven't. Leo said I had spoiled myself on the game. Just mean.

I'm 30 hours, which I don't even know what it means. 30 hours is about when I ended the game. You could just end it. Like I chose to. I wish I could.

Okay. Speaking of that, I would like to introduce my Claire Obscure best moment. Yes, please. Spoilers fully on, by the way, everybody. Check the timestamps. Yes, please. Yeah, so this is really early in the game when they finally get... to i don't know the island right yes and gustav looks all around and everyone's dying they're getting massacred he sees the bodies of old expeditions and he sits down and he puts that gun to his head yeah i said

mad respect. I would do the same thing. I was like, because it really... the whole act one is about like the hopelessness. Right. And I feel like that moment, it was so, I don't want to say bold of them. Cause I think more video games should do that, but how realistic, you know, like I'm tired of heroes going in and going, no, I'm.

gonna hero my way out of it no sometimes the best way out of it is the only way out of it and like mad props to him in that moment and i love it too like that it's even the entire game i still think my favorite sequence or moment from that game is the continent landing because like you have the gommage in the beginning where it's like oh my god and then the continent landing is landing is just

a double punch in the gut of like, oh my God, this game is playing for keeps. This is so bold. And then kind of the third one is, and Gustav just clearly cannot handle it. And he's saying goodbye. Like it is wild. the part where they land on the continent and that guy who immediately gets decapitated says why are you old he's like he's like he's literally like never seen a person that old Yeah. And it's so cool to think about. Hell yeah.

the gravity of oh this is so much worse than we thought yes like just knowing it was a hopeless expedition but they've been dying like on the beach yes they haven't even gotten past that point that one is so good yeah it is so good i think it's maybe one of the strongest openings in an RPG.

Yes. I mean, so often I'm faced with the task of telling people you got to get through the first few hours, sometimes the first 12 hours before it starts getting good. Nope. This one you're crying within 15 minutes and it just gets. We're not crying, but let's not go. Okay, well, I'm crying because I have a lot of empathy in my heart, Sarah. Oh, yeah. Just an empty black box there. Separate moment. The gommage. Feel like we should.

probably give the gommage some respect. Everyone respects the gommage. Yeah. But honestly, the fact that the festival is like not...

Everybody crying and mourning. It's like a festival. Yeah, they do it every year. Yeah, right. Which is such a cool way to world build so much so fast. Yeah, the fact that you have that conversation about, like, should you have... should you have kids or not right you know what they have they just like put that right before it um and then and just like how how beautifully they do the gommage itself of like

It's not just everyone turning into dust. They have a specific artistic take, but I mean, I've watched that cut scene of Gustav and Sophie so many times where it's like they are just like standing alone. in front of the paintress and the obelisk and her whole kind of like black hole Corona. Like it's so kind of abstractly done in this really beautiful way. Yeah. As we get to the next big one, we're running through a bunch of them, right? Yes. So five minutes later.

I mean, the big shocking one is Gustav dies. I was totally surprised by that. And I was like, when it happened, I was like, oh, wow, okay. In the sense of like, I was like, oh, well, surely I go get him or we save him somehow. Or this is not the last we see of him. But it's like it becomes pretty clear, pretty fast. It's like, no, no, no. The protagonist of this game.

who you know some of the marketing has been behind a voice by a celebrity is dead and he is not in the rest of this game and you have to deal with that and a fun gameplay mental mathing is like no but he had more in his skill tree oh they were locking it

And that was just the pretending there was one of skill tree, which is so clever. Yeah. And no hints of it. They did such a good job of... hiding that it was really like just seeing so many pre-release interviews and launch interviews with like ben star and jennifer english where i was like where's charlie cox it was like that was like my only hint you know that that was coming up

But you've got to be like, he's famous. He doesn't need to do those. Right, right. I guess that's true, yeah. But, like, it is so huge. It's so... awesome for them to be that bold and take him out when he has, you know, fully, fully featured battle system. And it's like, Oh no, he's just, he's yanked out forever. The only thing that draws us back a little bit is like, I think the moment I was more just like confused. It wasn't.

It didn't have like the gut punch in that moment that I would think it should have. It was a weirdly frantic moment. There was a lot going on. Yeah. My biggest. gripe with Claire obscure is they put these really big emotional cut scenes right after boss fights again and again and again and again and like it bothers me that I'm coming off this boss fight usually mad about something

in the boss fight, and then they'll play out this emotionally devastating cutscene, and I'm like, but less of that! Let's talk about these weird mechanics! There's a small thing from that moment. Isn't that just how games worked, though? No, I wish the customs were paced out better. You put your big story beats after a boss? No, no, but they only do them after boss fights to the point where I was like, okay, here's a boss, time for a big story beat.

After the biggest frustration part. There was one small thing that bothered me about that scene, which is very silly and petty, but Maiel is like... you know trapped in that bubble and yes like kind of banging on it really weakly and not frantically like i don't i feel like they messed up that animation she's just kind of like yeah no As opposed to like going nuts on it. I agree.

Yeah, and it's just that weird thing of, like, okay, then the rest of the party is, like, down fighting the boss in the water. I just feel like the way that was laid out in stage is, like, this should have been, like, a moment, and it wasn't, it didn't hit me that way. Conceptually, it is. Well, because, yeah, the people down in the water, like, didn't know that Gustav...

is no longer, and it's like, well, now you gotta go tell them that they missed something that's kind of important, but I still think it's a huge moment, obviously. It is, it is, for sure. Yeah, I think more video games should kill their main characters. Hell yes. I agree with that. I think there was one of the many scenes they had like black and white integration as well. Or am I making up?

the black and white youth for that scene. Okay. I think that actually was what carried the moment for me because I wasn't much like Sarah. Like I'm not weeping at like all these emotional scenes. I'm just like intrigued by the story. And that's what made it intriguing because it had like a layer of visual weight.

that sort of felt impactful. Not so much that like, it's sad that he's dead. Um, but that, that's what helped that moment for me. Um, my favorite clear up screen moment is also, is not that far after, uh, when Mael goes to bury, um, him.

Like they want to have like a ceremony for him. So they go back to this forest and like the speech she gives, I think is really moving. And I'll admit like a lot of this is me imposing my own life onto the characters a bit where like I have a very close relationship with my brother. He's very much a parentified adult.

in my life. So like the lines she says where like, I really looked at the scene right now, which is couldn't wait for me. Could you? And then they like kind of talk about like what he meant to like the whole party kind of talks about like what he meant and how they're going to keep going. And she has this line that says, we can never tell if you were my brother or my father.

but to me you were both and like that hit me really hard and i i'm gonna fully admit that's because like oh like that's so relatable to me but i feel like that was also authentic to like her character and like speaks to like a unique relationship that she has in this world and like it

That's when, like, I feel like Maya really started to pop off as a character for me, where this isn't just, like, another cheesy video game story about, like, vengeance and, like, honoring people and whatever. It's, like, that felt real, you know? It's up there with, like...

again maybe not in the pantheon of all media but it reminds me of like that Fresh Prince of Bel-Air scene where it says why don't you want me man hits so hard where it's like just a good monologue about like a f***ed up little family it's like oh that gets me every time like I'm a sucker for that in media so that's my um

One of my main favorite moments from that game. And as they explain, family is hard. It seems to be a writing theme throughout that entire game, right? And I like that his, you know, cyber arm he's had the whole time. uh, is the only thing left of him. And it's like this weird gift that he wasn't fully organic so that there's this thing to remember him by, to put by the tree. That's like a complicated, cool moment. I liked when SGA is like,

oh, I need you to find my name, my Francois. He has it all. And I remember thinking in my head, oh my God, it's going to take forever. And they're like, oh, he's five feet over there. I was like, that was so nice and fun. That'd be awesome to pick that moment. For just another fun little bit of a moment, because I think they did such a good job with the humor like that in this game.

After the boss fight, the mask boss fight, and the masks are flying everywhere, and they're attaching to everyone's faces, and they're like... struggling with them and everything, and they're all just bouncing off of Monoko in a very... That was great. He was hitting him in the face. He doesn't have a face. That was earlier when I was like, oh, I should bring that up for best thing, but I was like, I'll save that for a moment.

Just the mask bouncing off his face really made me laugh. I don't know. While we've got spoilers on it, it's not a moment, but SKA being his toy and Minoko being his dog. Yeah. Is that just kind of like reality reveal? Just kind of like the whole picture? Yeah, that's a good way to phrase that. Because it's like real life connections. Because the thing I was thinking about with Janet's funeral moment, what's so kind of beautiful and sad about that upon revisit is like...

Miel is kind of reincarnated Alicia. from the real world and both of them lost their, their brother figures in the same way. And so there is this way that like reality echoes into the painted world. And it happens with the main characters, and it also happens with SGA and with Minoko. I want to talk about the ending choice, but I feel like that should probably be the last moment. So is there...

Anything else? Mine was to do with the ending. Let's do it. Let's jump in. Yeah, so I feel like it is... This is one of those games where you don't make any decisions throughout the story until the ending, in which it hands you kind of a binary, which I often hate. And it just... just lands like an atom bomb here. That basically your two choices are you find out that the world that you inhabit... is a painted world. It is not reality. It is a world that both Eileen, the mother...

And Alicia, the daughter, have kind of fled into in their grieving for Verso, who died in the real world. And so then after you beat... Renoir, the father and the mother and everything, you can either become Verso, fight... maiel out of the painting and force her to live in reality and and condemn the painting and all of its inhabitants to obliteration just like the world is destroyed forever

And you're forcing Mael to be like her disfigured, not like her, her reality is not good. Like she's disfigured. But if she stays in the train, she will die. Yes, but you're also freaking Verso's soul, but then that's all the other thing I wanted to add. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. So, yeah, so you're forcing Maelle into the cruel reality where her brother is dead and she is disabled and her family does not like her. Or...

You can play as Mael, and you force Verso and everyone else into the painting, into essentially, like, role-playing slavery. for the rest of their lives, where technically the painting gets to keep going on, but Mael becomes a paintress who allows even less free will.

And Verso, who only wants to die, it's the only thing he wants, has to go out on stage and play his little piano songs because that's how Mael wants to remember him. And it just, it is like, there is no... good ending yeah there's no good ending both of them hurt both of them feel true to the character like it doesn't it doesn't feel mean just because they wanted to do a mean ending it's just like

Both of these are how the story has to end. They're both kind of necessary for understanding what is going on here. How you doing there, Jeff? I'm alright. That'd be so funny if he didn't answer and his volume was turned down and that's how we caught him. I'm feeling guilty now for my Pope past. Yeah, what have you done, dude? Yeah, it was pretty mean. Oh, dear. I chose the Verso ending.

And the moment that got punched me the most was the look Lunay gives you. It's so powerful. When she's sitting on the floor and she looks up at you. She's just giving up at that point. But I really resonated with her. I liked her the most of every character in the game.

I felt like a lot of what I did was to appease Lune, and then for her to just be so mad at me, I was like, oh! I truly felt awful in that moment. Just... nihilistic disappointment it's just like it's yeah it's wild she doesn't say anything she just looks at you and she's like yeah And then, yeah, on the other side, the kind of big performance, and it's a much bigger performance than Lune gives, but like, as Mael, after you kind of beat Verso, he collapses on the ground.

And he's just saying like, kill me, kill me, let me die. And it's like... It is such a good performance, and it is hard to watch. It's truly kind of pathetic in a way that is just devastating. I was almost a little frustrated by it because...

being Verso and destroying the painting felt like so objectively the right answer. It was like, how could anyone choose anything differently than this? I don't know if people did. I mean, a lot of people did, yeah. I also feel that the alternative is genocide, which I think is a...

that's not why i did i mean we know we know i understand what ending you picked but it's i i don't i'm not even saying i don't even want to defend my the ending it's a little more complicated because it's a bad one you have to understand why it's a valid bad choice they're both valid bad choices yeah no my my sentences but now i understand better as i thought about it which is that like you know it's if

It feels like, okay, we know what's going on. We know which world is the real one. So that's the one that matters more. But not to all those people. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. Well, a lot of them do know, though. Okay, okay, okay. The entire game is about how this family cannot accept their grief from losing Verso.

So they've created this entire world out of their suffering. Yeah, they have the original sin of creating the world in the first place. They have this entire world on their suffering because they literally cannot resolve their grief, that they would rather hurt themselves.

and hurt all the people in the world, because they simply just cannot come to terms with losing Verso. I mean, that's true, but then you're asking, like, hey God, you made... all of this if you figured out you made a mistake are we all just cool with him turning it off you know like i don't want that i feel like we all need to be more comfortable

with non-existence. Like, I feel like their existence does not equal goodness! It does not equal righteousness! Because, like, Verso doesn't want to be here anymore! He's not consenting! You don't get to decide that for everyone, though. Yeah, just Verso... I think Sarah should. So, Verso and Mayow, who actually exists in a real world, have to, like, rot away because nobody wants to come to terms with grief?

yeah and the point this world will eventually end this world will eventually end because eventually male's gonna die and the canvas is gonna be there and they're gonna destroy it but if you were told will eventually end exactly i'm okay with that jacob i'm okay with that right now right now in the world right now look i get it this world's painting this world is a painting sarah yeah fake and you're the real one

I'm the only real one. Are you going to leave right now and kill us all? Yeah. Goodbye. Yeah. All right. And listen, if I was one of you and in the world of the painting. I would also be okay being ended. Knowing that I was only there because I was created out of grief to extend somebody's suffering. I'm not. I like living. You have that thing where you don't think anyone else is real and only you are real.

It's called Sarah Podzorski-ism. I'm real Sarah. I'm real. I think that part's really fun. I think also we're getting a little bit away from, I guess, what makes the moment good or not in some ways. I don't think we are. And actually, I kind of disagree with you, Jacob. I think the happy ending is that Verso ending. I know it's still kind of sad, but I think that is the good ending, bad ending. I think that concept of happy ending, bad ending is some Super Nintendo bullshit.

We need to let it die. I feel like it's such a legacy thing for the game industry. I don't think they do, though, because they don't have really weight. in the same way. Like, one is way darker than the other in its depiction. It's also what I love about the ending that I got. I got the Maelle ending. Now, I didn't have to think of it on a big level because I was playing

at the same time Isaiah was playing, and we just picked opposite endings and watched them back to back. So the original YouTube is just making someone else play the game, and then you look at their screen. And I was so much more satisfied with the... ending with my L because it's more dark it's more f***ed up it's more twisted it's more cinematic it's more beautiful it's more moving like I think it's the better artistic ending and the other one's there

I guess if you want to have a nice time at the end. Nice time? I disagree with you. I made the same decision. Complicated one and complicated two. That's not how everyone feels. That's why it's great. It's just how I feel about it. One is good and one is bad.

Right. It is a great choice. Never scream unless it was a good choice like this. And that is what elevated the game for me. A lot of people hype up the twist of, oh, there's different worlds. I don't really care about that. It's narratively a little intriguing. But what elevated the game to me was this specific ending.

cut scene mile single tear her face falling apart i was like okay they kind of tore it up with this yeah yeah yeah i think the question it poses to people is such a good question like i love that question of like what is consent to exist what is all of that like the grief the morality of it i talked about this on the deepest dive but like when that choice came up i literally like put my controller down did you cry had a conversation

Sarah. You know she did. Did you care? Like a little baby? Yeah, my partner and I talked about it for like half an hour before I clicked one. Same. It was fun. Yeah, and I knew...

What's so silly is I knew that the second after it ended, I was just going to YouTube and watch the other ending. But it was your characters. But I still had to take like 30 minutes to just think about it. Yeah. Which I think is... incredible especially like if you found out that at the beginning of the game it's like oh yes it's great rpg it's going to end in a binary choice i think the reaction maybe it's just like remnant mass effect 3 legacy stuff people would be like lame

But like the fact that it can be such an interesting, powerful choice and they pull it off is commendable for sure. Do we set ourselves free of this debate? fight the painting out of it and take her hats off? Are we there? I think so. Exposition 33, spoilers over.

And good day. Welcome to non-spoilerville. Welcome back. I'm thinking one of those might be number one. We'll see. No one can say it for sure. I want to shout out the chatter who was worried we would forget to take off the spoiler hats. Like we wouldn't all see each other wearing A-9. hey here's one that's not a spoiler at all so we can just relax how dare you jet uh

So, no spoilers here, but just a good goddamn moment is in everybody's favorite game. Say it with me. The Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection. The whole documentary making of behind-the-scenes thing about the Mortal Kombat series. The fact that in that, they have the moment in recorded video when Ed Boon says, you know it would be a badass move.

As if Scorpion threw a spear like this. Just the fact that in the history of video games, the fact that they could have that recorded is still so mind-boggling to me. Like, what other iconic... video game thing do you actually get to see the inception of and how just like on a novel women it is it was it was just on the fly

Just like, hey, maybe try this. I know it makes no sense. That would be cool. How about the ninja guy just throws out his spear and then yanks him over and says, let's get over here. So shout out to Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection. Obviously top of the two tens this year. So look forward to that, please. Big spoiler.

Big spoiler. Oh, I got to write it down because it was so good. Good job, Ben. Good job. Yeah. Good job. I guess this is another spoiler one. So if we can take some more time out of the spoiler zone. Hey, whatever, man. Go for it. That's so far away.

Okay, spoiler hats on. I want to talk about Silent Hill F. Okay, Silent Hill F. Check out the timestamps. You're going to dodge these. I literally finished this last night. Oh, wow. Nice. This is the first time I've admitted that I'm not going to finish it, so this is a big moment for me. I'm not going to play it, so spoil away.

There are a lot of really good moments in Silent Hill F, but I think my pick in just kind of the moment where my jaw dropped playing the game is her... journey of marriage preparing self mutilation I think is what you would call it where she so you play as Indico kind of high school girl who you gradually learn through the game is kind of going to be betrothed to a man that she doesn't know very well

doesn't, you know, doesn't want to marry because she doesn't want to marry anyone. She just wants to be free and sees both her mother and her sister as being like, just... when they when they got married to their husbands they became like not a person they essentially had to like give up all of their individuality in order to become a wife and the way that that manifests in the game is in this weird shadow world, you have to first have your back-branded...

with an enormous kind of searing iron that puts a mark on her that's visible through the rest of the game. And then she cuts off her own arm, which is replaced with a giant werewolf arm.

Just Hineko gets a big werewolf arm and then finally the last thing is literally like cuts off the skin around her eyes and it is pulled off and then... replaced with like a mask and it is so so horrifying like you know in in a game full of like scary gory stuff just just like and and no one's even forcing her really to do this you know it's not like they're holding her down and cutting off her arm they just kind of hand her a knife and she's like okay i guess this is what i have to do

and cuts off her own arm, and it is, like, it is the game's biggest swing at its kind of central metaphor, and it is unforgettable. Sarah just kind of wondered why she's doing it, which plays into it. It's very intentional. Right, right, right. Sarah Damien said it was actually good. The combat becomes more fun, and I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that. It's fun to have a werewolf arm. Sharon and I had to share werewolf time on the stream because we were getting jealous.

Do you pop it with like L3R3 or something? Well, you always have it. And then there is like an expanded attack where you can strengthen it after sucking the souls out of baddies. I have another one that I want to talk about. I mean, in our list, we can just call it like, I don't know, the first ending, probably the bad ending, I guess. But the thing that really struck me about the ending is very pretty vague gestures that a lot.

A lot of things. One of which is that the protagonist's name, Hanako? Is that what's her name? Hinako. Yeah, Hinako. Is abusing pills. That she's like taking pills and it's kind of making her go. crazy and violent. And the thing, and the way that they sort of, they kind of put it in, in the sort of fault of, of me, the player, because I had been taking pills the whole game as a health item.

And it's kind of revealed late that it's like, oh, these pills that you've been taking the whole time? Yeah, those are drugs that you've been abusing the whole time. And it totally worked on me that I was like, oh my god, I've been doing this to her. I didn't...

I didn't know I was doing that to her. This is a great health item. It's like, I've been picking these up and eating these like Skittles. Like I didn't realize this was a problem. Helps her sanity meter. Yeah. And it's like, so like I was, I was really, cause that is one of those things that's like, you know. just a video game thing where they're taking an action that you are performing as a player and like sort of contextualizing it as like for a narrative and what it means and then the

alternate endings of the game, which I admit I did not do and I don't think I will, is you play the game without taking those pills and you get a very different ending. Oh, cool. Okay. yeah so like i i was really impressed by that that was like i was enjoying silent hill quite a i was like yeah this is pretty cool and in the pill sequence i was like this is this is great like this really uh surprised me in a way that i really enjoyed um

Yeah, the pills ending I thought really worked on me. Yeah, that's cool. I would probably say when the big wife monster comes out and then it's also you and then you fight a bunch of times. Just seeing her... Her vibe is so impactful in that game. Yeah. Wife monster? Yeah. Bride monster? Bride. Because she's dressed in white. The woman in white. Yeah, it's like I don't want to give too many other moments, but those other endings are really good. There's one...

So you can basically choose, like, I am going to marry the man that was chosen for me, or I'm going to marry my best friend, kind of partner. Or ultimately, like, I'm going to kind of be free and choose my own path. And that's very much the best one. But the most memorable one, I think, is you choose...

that you are going to marry the man you've been set up with. And things actually kind of go... okay you know it's like oh it's he's you know maybe he's not that bad and you do get married and there's the scene where you're just kind of standing on you know the the outside your house and he says come on in and you're like okay

And then you just hear this screaming and it's like, no, no, I don't want to be like my mom. I don't want to be like my mom. I don't want to be like her. And the camera pans down and it's literally, it is Hinako's. face like just the skin of it like cut off on the ground just screaming and then someone steps on it and that's like the ending and it's so disturbing jesus christ

That's why we didn't play Once Upon a Katamari. We're busy playing real games with stories. All right. That's it for Silent Hill. Okay. All right. Silent Hill F. Spoilers off. What do we got? Who wants to step right up? With a nice one. Yeah, be nice to us. I got one that's... It's more of like a gameplay-driven...

That's not spoilery. But the end of the final puzzle and the root trees are dead. Last puzzle of the game. Yeah, it seems like we should put on the hats. I'm nervous. Okay. Put on hats. All right, all right. Spoilers, here we go. Let's play it safe. We've got these for a reason. Timestamps below. We've got to get our money out of them. Yeah, that's right. In the rest of the game...

When you're – you have the big cork board with all the different – you're tying all these – you're making all these connections between these characters and you're filling out this entire family tree. And for every character that you're – that you're discovering and you're filling out, you're always given options of, like, who this person is. Like, you have the big list of all these different names that you've discovered and things. So it's always, like, you could, like...

theoretically brute force things. And sometimes you'll get it down to like a couple and it's like, well, okay, I'll just kind of like pick and choose. And the last one that you have to figure out... Kind of comes after you filled everything in and it's like, hey, but also solve this. And it's another two people and they don't tell you like there's no one to choose from. It's like you have to have.

already figured out the names and you have to type them in yourself and then when you solve it like like this i guess it's it's kind of cheap in terms of best moment because it's like it's like exciting that you actually have figured it out and done it yourself but like when you actually put everything together and figure it out and type it in and get it

It is a cool moment. So kind of going off the sheet. Yeah. Yeah. That's sweet. Cool. Riches are dead. Spoilers off. I don't think we needed the hats. I think we did. I think we did. It doesn't hurt. Another puzzle one, but the first time you unlock a permanent unlock in Blueprints, that hits. It's open or something, yeah. And you're like, that's forever? Yeah.

I have a blueprints one, but it might require the spoiler hats. Let's do it. Put the damn hats on. Blueprints, everybody. Spoilers. So, as you're playing blueprints, they kind of start hinting...

at like all these different kingdoms, right? Like you start learning about all these different kingdoms and the history of the area that you're in. And I feel like the game, it never really has many like stop in your tracks. wow moments like the rooms are all cool but i never really go oh my god so this one moment you're underneath the mansion you've like unlocked the underground and you're looking around

And you're in like the mines because they were mining under the manor. So there's a lot of hints along the way. And you approach this window, which is just black. And you approach it. And the way that... the developers do it is like you have to get a certain distance from the window and then it shows you deep in the mines it like lights up there's like a decrepit castle And you figure out that like all those like fairy tales, like fairy tales and like history that you've been reading.

they built the house on top of it like there's this one kingdom that went missing and you've been learning about how this kingdom went missing and they don't know what happened to it and it got it's under the house and there's like literally i like walk up to this window and i'm like there's a castle under here

And I feel like Blueprints doesn't have a lot of, like, stopping my tracks moments. But that one, I backed up and I walked forward again. And then I backed up and I walked forward and I took a picture. Because I was like, there's a castle under the house.

We never go there, but I thought it was very cool. That's cool. I didn't see Blueprints to credits, but I didn't see that, I don't think. I don't remember that. Blueprints, at least when it was first coming out, it had that great vibe of like, am I the first to see this? Yeah. And you don't know for sure yet? Probably not. But it kind of felt that way whenever you found something really crazy. Cool. Blueprints. Caps off to thee. Of course. Of course. My hair's getting old.

Everyone looks great. Did anybody else finish Keeper? Double Fine's Keeper from this year. The game that was obnoxiously short. Okay, that's fair. Spoilers on. I'm sorry, Ben. I'm sorry. All good. All good.

Can I not listen? If you want to. Want to play that? If you want to. I think you'll be fine. But if you want to... The Pope's going to judge you. Don't tell the Pope. I already have a definite Discord. So Double Fine's Keeper, it's the game from...

All the marketing and trailers is the game that stars a lighthouse, and you're a walking lighthouse going around and shining your little Fresnel light on different things in the environment to solve puzzles, yada, yada, yada. It looks gorgeous as you're going through the entire thing. And you're trying to make your way to the top. top of a mountain the entire game. And pretty early on, you're getting up there, like suspiciously close. And then...

Uh, the lighthouse gets destroyed on the mountain and it falls all the way down. It's one of those things like, okay, I go down the mountain. I guess I'll climb back up. But it's like, it is clear. The lighthouse is fully ripped apart, destroyed as it falls down.

then it falls down and then it's reassembled as a boat. And so the entire middle section of the game, you're like a boat navigating kind of like this bigger space, solving puzzles and the Fresnel lights on the front of the boat. And it's very cool. Then. You go back up the mountain again, and then it is fully destroyed once more. And so you're wondering the entire time as a boat is like, is this going to happen again? What is going to...

What could I possibly be next after a lighthouse and a boat? You're destroyed again, and all the pieces of the boat are flying all over the place, and the Fresnel light is then rolling down the mountain. And then that is the cool final act of the game. Basically, you're also a dragon later on, but let's ignore that. But basically the final act of the game, then you are just the Fresnel lens.

And you're basically – it's like the Morph Ball in Metroid. And all of the puzzles become like – pinball action puzzles where you're like charging up and like and shooting around and you're going super fast as this charged up little Fresnel lens solving puzzles and like you're going through these environments again and again.

And it's awesome. And the part that is unexpected is there's like holes in the environment and you go inside those and then it just becomes this psychedelic warped tunnel. And it feels almost cliche to be like, guys, this psychedelic. psychedelic tunnel looks really cool but genuinely the coolest looking psychedelic tunnel i've ever seen in my life it's like this metallic black distorted hellscape that you're flying through as this little lens uh navigating these kind of

speed puzzles for the entire last section of the game. And then you go up and you become a drag. One of the coolest looking games. Oh, for sure. For sure. Even a little bit of this year. Yeah, it is gorgeous. And then, like, you eventually get to the top of the mountain and you then become the kind of eye of the mountain at the top, which is very cool. And then I just love this weird final shot, too, where they do the eye of the mountain. And then, like, you see in the background things like...

And then you see the mountain with you as the eye like look up and you're like starting to ascend into the heavens and then like cut to black the end. So it's... Cliche to say it's trippy and weird, but specifically like the psychedelic tunnels and kind of just the speed pinball puzzles in the third act of that game I think are awesome. All right.

Spoiler's over for Double Fine's Keeper, everybody. Should I? Your hair looks better and better every time you take off. Thank you so much. It's like parting weirdly in the middle. Your head is a mustache. Is it better or worse for my head-to-head mustache? Three Stooges or something. Oh, I don't like the head mustache. I don't like it. Well, I like it and I'm keeping it. Should we put it right back on? I would love to talk about the end of Donkey Kong.

Yeah. Oh, I'm like right there, so I'm not going to listen. Donkey Kong Bonanza Spoilers. Has everyone finished it? I know, Janet, you finished it, right? Yep, I finished it. No, I just kind of don't care about it. I finished. Okay. Yeah, so...

Okay, okay. The end of Donkey Kong, I really love this game. It gets weirder and weirder and weirder the deeper you go. And then you even end up in this weird place where... everyone's like, doesn't want you to be around and you're like throwing objects to create platforms and things like that. And you're making your way to the bottom, to the middle of the earth or whatever, to like get a wish granted. Um, and you finally get there and you fight the big bad.

That's, you know, you've been fighting with the whole game. But then it turns out that King K. Rool is down there, which was already like a big reveal for me. I did not expect King K. Rool to be in this game, like truly, because it wasn't even sure if it was like Donkey Kong Country canon. Like it just wasn't clear on purpose. And it's like Donkey Kong Country is a rare game. This is a Nintendo game. So it genuinely surprised me.

for him to be there. But the thing that I love so much as a big Donkey Kong Country fan is that from that point on, those last few levels, which still are continuing to be stranger and stranger,

become full, like, Donkey Kong Country reference. Like, it's, like, just for me. Like, you start fighting Kremlins, they have all the Kremlin sound effects, the bonks that you hear from the Super Nintendo game, the soundtrack starts, like... borrowing from donkey kong country and you're making away deeper and deeper and it's like i was just like over the moon just because i adore that the sound of those original games so much

And you're like riding on these big mine carts and it's just like, it's just hinting at the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack and it's so wonderful. And then, so then you fight King K. Rool and it's a great fight and things are going crazy. There's this like weird... uh another psychedelic you're killing jacob stop stop with the cool description there's like this like psychedelic

like wish granting banana that's like just folding in and out on itself and eventually you you know you wish for to go home and you wish for bananas and so what happens is it like creates this like growing pillar of bananas that are just shooting up at high speed. And the whole time you're fighting King K rule up there. And then you emerge back on the surface of the earth or wherever we are. And you're in freaking new Donk city.

Which is like, again, like genuinely surprising for me. I didn't expect King K. Rool to be in here. I didn't expect so much fan service to be related to Donkey Kong Country. I certainly did not expect to be. in New Donk City, and then you have your final confrontation with King K. Rool, which I think is a really fun and challenging boss fight, in New Donk City from Mario Odyssey. And it's just like, I don't know, that last hour or two...

was just like thrilling for me i just i just loved it so much and like i've said a couple times as we were talking about you know donkey kong bonanza like i really enjoyed the game i think i maybe even enjoyed it more than most people on this panel up to that point but once you get to that area where you're throwing objects and creating platforms and the music is weirdly creepy. It was just like, it became one of my favorite games of the year just because of that whole...

And I admit it was the strangeness in combination with loving Donkey Kong Country so much. And yeah, I really adore the whole ending of that game. I really like it a lot. It also does do, worth pointing out... the donkey kong country thing of there's a fake credit sequence yeah that is good when you're when you're going up on that banana pillar and then it starts playing the credits but then all of the credits are like of

King K. Rool's henchmen. And then he pops up. The K. Rool theme coming in is amazing. Like, it's so...

It is so there. They just go so hard on it. Yeah, it's basically the version that's in Smash. His belly is in the ground, and you think that's the thing that you're going to go... like get your wish granted from it looks like an eyeball and then you like hit it and you're like oh my god yeah of course that was king k's rules iconic golden belly just like sitting in the ground yeah it's weird for that to be like the big

moment of seeing his gold belly because it just sounded inherently a little a little creepy but that yeah that was a moment that i also like enjoyed a lot like seeing king k-roll there was was cool Um, yeah, that also the final, this isn't, I wouldn't really count as his best moment for me, but it's worth knowing that that last boss fight, at least to me was hard as hell. I had a really, I really had to dig deep to beat that. I, and I was playing on easy at that point.

And I was still really struggling. It kind of became a Persona game at the end. And if you fail, I'll run back. I was like, really? After Silk Song is a run back in Bonanza. So I definitely think it has some surprises up its sleeve for the end. But yeah, it's obviously very fans to receive. But seeing King K. Rool, it's like, yes, I've played this franchise before. I'm not going to lie. It's fun to see him. Like, that's...

Kind of just objectively enjoyable to see. I didn't like seeing him, but... Really? You didn't like seeing him? Look, Donkey Kong land means a lot to me, and I guess the original Donkey Kong means a lot to me, but I was excited for a new era of Donkey Kong, and so when it's like, hey, it's Diddy and Dixie, and they're basically not redesigned, and then here's King K. Rool, and he's not redesigned.

The Donkey Kong redesign is so good. Pauline is so good. I was like, all right, new page, new chapter, new era. And then it's like, here's just kind of some 3D versions of the old guys again. See, I'm like, I don't know. I'm kind of like, I loved seeing Rambi for the first time, but then like Rambi.

He didn't really book. They didn't do Rambi justice in this game, but seeing him was like, I remember when I was having fun with Rambi. There you go. Yeah. Cool ending for sure. Donkey Kong Bonanza. All right. Hats off. Can we put these damn hats back on? Split fiction.

Yeah! Now that we have the hats, we're drunk with power! I'm actually going to mute because I still want to play this with my daughter. Good lord. You can definitely in Discord if you want. Something you almost suggested earlier. I'm going to wait for the hats to come off.

and then I'll return. Okay, so the end of Split Fiction is... It's hard to even describe, but it is just kind of like... The things it does with Split Screen seems... impossible and it's the whole it's not it's not like five minutes it's like the whole last 40 minutes of the game are just like, it's like the split screens are like revolving around each other. They're like crashing into each other. You know, it's the thing where like...

They're just fully rendering two worlds at the same time on top of each other and just kind of throwing them back and forth in this way that it just like... It's impossible to describe and it's almost impossible to comprehend like while you're watching it because it just feels so weird that your screen is like spinning around these multiple worlds at the same time.

Yeah, and the reel of that entire section I think is so good of like, you know, the entire game, you're jumping back and forth between sci-fi and fantasy, you got it. And then it's like, hey, you're teleported to this weird world and the characters are split apart.

And they're like, where are you? Like, I don't know. Where are you? All right, we're in different worlds. I guess let's try and find each other and get back together and find a way out of here. And so then you're exploring these two different worlds, thinking you're completely separate. And then you see each other. And have that moment. And like, you know, I'm so thankful that it was like recorded with my playthrough.

with Ronnie on our channel of just like that moment of like, Oh, do you see what they're doing here? Do you see what's happening is technically we're in the same world and I'm just seeing it as sci-fi and you're seeing it as fantasy. And then for the split screen. push and pull after that being so much fun. It's amazing. Yeah. I still don't understand how they did some of the things that they were doing. And I was, I was playing with my wife and I was just like gobsmacked and, and she like,

Didn't understand why it would be such a technical nightmare in Marvel to do that. And so it was a very nerdy moment of like... But how are they doing it? It's double rendering and things are moving from one to the other. And she was like, yeah, okay. It's fun. But, yeah. Like...

It's not often that I feel wowed and don't understand the technology that's going on in a video game. You can make very pretty graphics and stuff, but it's like, how is this even working? How do you guys... figure out how to do this.

And that is so many ideas on top of that. And it's like, oh, the glitches and the boss fights. And it's like, okay, it just keeps going extending beyond that. It's like, you know, the game has so much variety and every level is like, wow, here's a cool new idea. But like this. This last section is like...

All of these could be full levels and they're throwing it out every like 45 seconds of just like, here's a new thing. Here's a new thing. You know, now you're on like you're on an etch a sketch and the other player is like tilting it to like. help you jump further it's yeah it's so cool it's awesome my moment from split fiction was the captcha i was just thinking about that oh yeah should we tell kyle his his

Kyle, come back in. Kyle, come back. I got it. I'm here. He just came in. He's in. He's in. You want to talk about the capture, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's, um...

Yeah, in Split Fiction, you know, the co-op game, there's this scene where one character's riding a motorcycle. Is this what you guys are giggling at? In the middle of the Split Fiction section, I know you wanted to talk about this from earlier. So we're getting you in the... he is being facetious little devil that's all uh anyway so one player's driving a motorcycle one person is on a cell phone trying to i don't remember exactly what they're doing they're trying to like hack a

A bomb or something? They're trying to, like, turn off a bomb? I think the motorcycle itself or something. I don't know. Right. Yeah, I don't remember, but, like, so one player is driving and doing normal split fiction stuff, but the other character is trying to do, like... mini-games to unlock a phone, and they have to try to take a picture of themselves and enter codes and stuff, and I think it's basically impossible. You have to scroll a super long Terms of Service.

yes yeah you have to like scroll and scroll and it's just the the dichotomy of those two things happening at the same time is so funny and like it's intentionally difficult and like i i was playing with my daughter and we were just like rolling on the floor laughing at just how funny it was while she was

trying to figure out how to do all this phone stuff while I was just backseat driving, literally, and trying to give her suggestions of what to do. It's just a really well-executed sequence that was just really funny. It was perfectly immersive, too. I was driving. Marie was doing the phone stuff. And you get a call in the middle of what you're doing. It interrupted and she answers it. And it's like this little voice just talking gibberish.

And she's listening to it. I'm like, hang up the call. She just has to hang up and move on. It was exactly us as those characters in that moment. That's fun. All right. Split fiction, everybody. Another. No, I have another one. Please. It's just a side quest, so I feel like it's not that deep.

to have but for people who don't want spoilers on it it's in general I think the side quests in this game are like really well done I think it's some of the best content especially from a narrative component which frankly I think we all know that's like the weakest part of split fiction but I think what they did narratively with the side quests

quest is so cool because so often they're sort of side stories or half ideas they individually had as writers and I think the shining stars are the things that they wrote as kids where it's like this is my for a story it's cute it's playful it's narratively relevant like i think they're nailing it there and specifically my favorite level for that is the sweet tooth side quest um where you go into it's kind of like a world of food which this is also like me bait i love food worlds in game

So if you have a food world, I'm like, already you have me in. And it doesn't take much after that. But something else I think Split Fiction does really well is in general, it's boss battles, especially being...

Essentially, like a 3D platformer, I think it's moment-to-moment level structure. It doesn't feel as 3D platformer-y because it's so magnetic with the way you make jumps that you don't have a lot of movement autonomy. But that's not true in the boss battles where you're like, it's completely on you. Everyone has individual roles. And I think the dentist boss fight in that level.

Might be the best 3D platform or boss fight I've had, which I know isn't a wildly high bar because they're kind of repetitive structures, right? Kyle has that amazing thread of you're always just jumping over rings. We can write a 3D boss fight right now if we all just gave one idea. the idea would be done, but I think they have you move around the area so much. They bring in like the lore and vibe of.

how scary a dentist is. And then you play as two teeth. They have like, I think what they bring out with like the dentures and the toothpaste being stuck there. Like it's so. cool and fun and challenging and thematically relevant that that was one that really stood out and impressed me uh within that game so that's that's one of my favorite moments with split fiction oh yeah all right split fiction spoilers

Over. What's next? I've got a really light, non-spoiler really, moment from Consume Me. Chapter two, the moment will be called Waking Up for School.

It's really just one gag, which is that the whole first chapter you are waking up on summer vacation and you hit your alarm and you hop up and you get dressed and you're so excited to greet the day you brush your teeth in the mirror. It's really stylish. It starts every single day in this game. uh, music getting you excited for the day. And then in chapter two, you've started college and it's the same sequence, except the time is way, way earlier on the alarm and you hit it.

And then it keeps going. And then 10 minutes later it goes off again and you hit it again. You just keep hitting snooze. You eventually get up and you're totally like frazzled in the mirror. It's just like a really funny twist on... what it had set up the first chapter yeah and in of course a really relatable way of course it's easy to get out of bed and summer vacation i would like to talk about another consume me thing that

is more of a spoiler. Sorry, everyone. Spoilers for Consume Me. So this will be a... It's probably the most controversial part of the game, but it is one that I have found myself thinking about a lot, which is you go to college and things are just like...

there is not a relaxing moment in that game. Like, just period. You know, it's like whatever you're doing, you just have the weight of all the things that you need to do kind of... pushing down on you and you're always like okay if i walk the dog now then i'll have just enough energy to work out later and then i can read my book before i go to bed if i you know drink the coffee to do the thing whatever and you go to you go to college and it's like so much worse

And I think it's after you have been broken up with. And you go to your friend who's always been like the model, you know, the kind of the kid that your mom pointed at. That's like, you know, why can't you be like her? And she's like, you know, I went to church and it really helped me. And you're like, that's weird. Okay. And you go to a church service and it plays like a very long musical.

sermon basically and and during the sermon you are seeing these abstract images of you falling down and kind of being being cradled by jesus in this like very you know the consume me art style is very funny and very silly but like it it is kind of the first exhale of the entire game you know like the first time in the game that you're not like oh my god there's so much stuff that i need to do right now and and like

It is weird that it is so overtly religious, and then she is having this moment with Jesus, but, like, it is... I think it fulfills its role in the story perfectly is like she's finding something here that she has not had in her life. And I think it's really emotionally effective.

Yeah. It's at her lowest moment sinking into it for sure. Yeah. Falling asleep, it being half a dream sequence is so interesting of it being like almost at a time when she's most vulnerable, she gets like pulled into it. It's really interesting. And of course, I think it helps that this is like, we know this is a real person's story. Like the developer has been pretty candid about like, yep, this game's about me.

and my life and so you know it's not like a it to me it never read as like and everybody should convert to christianity it was just more of a like and this was my journey with this yeah right right And it helped me in this part of my life. What am I to do? Yeah. All right. Spoilers off for Consumi. Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay. I have a really little one that I mentioned on PewPewBang.

as well, but just for a fun little breather here. For a game that I didn't play, I actually watched my partner play, but I just thought this moment was really funny. In Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I love this. There's just a whatever side quest where you're trying to argue with a guard and you're trying to get in somewhere and he's like, no way, whatever. And he says, I'll kick your ass into kingdom come. Deliverance.

And it's just so stupid and so funny. Like, it was clearly just the voice actor just... adding that to the end of his delivery and they kept it in and it was a great choice and I loved it. It doesn't feel like you finally know how it got its name. Yeah. It doesn't feel like that type of game. Does that seem really out of place? Or is that game a lot jokier than I realize? Is it like super jokey?

it's pretty funny a lot of times like not fourth wall breaky jokey but like i could see it doing that and not caring like it's not like oh the realism is shattered it's like that was fun yeah that's cool i have ghost of yote ones two of them

Let's do it! Ghost of Yote! Spoilers! Check out the timestamps! Ghost of Yote! Um... So Atsu lost her family and now she's on a revenge quest. We've heard it. We've seen it. Spoilers. The hat's on, Liam. But if you... play it and then um you know she lost her mother father and brother there's a lot of like flashback cut scenes and stuff like that but there's a great moment um where

She is like, she meets this kind of like high up in the military dude and she's kind of put off by him and he's kind of like, he's not mean, but she just like doesn't like him immediately because he stands for what she's opposed to. And they end up doing this little side mission together, and they're kind of like...

Butting heads. There's like a weird sexual tension that they both immediately throw away right away. They're like, you know, ignore it. Anyways, keep going. And then they have this little campfire together and they're like talking to each other, blah, blah, blah. And then he notices she has a sword, and he's like, where did you get that? And she's like, I found it off a dead guy. And he's like, tell me the truth right now. And she's like, my dad made it.

yeah and and he's like atsu and then it's her brother who lived and they like have a really nice reunion moment and like and yeah and they have like a really interesting nice discussion about just like oh, I don't know you. Like, this feels so wrong that I don't know you. And it's kind of like, even though they're like, oh, we're so happy we didn't lose each other to this. It's like, but we lost.

knowing each other and that almost feels as bad and they have like a really interesting conversation about that that was really impactful but when i realized it was jube i was like Because I kind of realized it right before she did. I was like, it's stupid. And then he was like, Atsu. And she's like, what? And he's like. Yeah, it happens early enough where it like it doesn't. I mean, it is kind of a twist, but it's it happens early enough.

where it doesn't really feel like one, and he becomes so important to the rest of the game. He is a primary element of the story. it's yeah and their relationship's really sweet and it's it is the way they reveal it it's very nice i like that part too he's like an interesting juxtaposition to like he's very naive about how she's had to get about the world he's like just hang out with us in the samurais and she's like literally they hate me

They haven't let me in to do anything with them. But he just hasn't experienced her hardship. He's like, they'll like you. And then they take two steps in. They're like, who's this woman? Get her out of here. And she's like, you know, it's an interesting thing for him to be like, oh, shoot.

Yeah. That sucks. You kind of like see it through his eyes as well. I'm still seeing the internet is shipping them in a big way though. So I'm sorry. Yeah. No, I was going to say since we're in full spoiler territory for Ghost of Yote. What's up with that goddamn wolf? Was there any reveal or anything with that wolf? No. Just a wolf. Oh, cool. Okay. They never claimed it would be. That was something we all sort of attributed on.

I actually quite like the wolf because the wolf is like, it's just this like random creature that like... comes near you sometimes. She can't control them. I don't know. I think it really works well for the game. She just treats it nicely and it hangs around. There's no twist related to it. People were hoping it was the ghost of the protagonist from the first one. Your original theory.

In the first reveal, you called that. Everyone thought it was gins. Okay, yeah. And now we find out on this day in December that Leo is a straight-up dummy, I guess. It's a freaking girl wolf on top of all of that. Leo, did you even check, bro? Did you even check? I never would have talked about a girl wolf. Now it's three of them, because that reminded me of something else that happened in the game that I really liked. But the second one...

is the part that I, the only part in the whole game I cried. We talked about it, Kyle, before. But essentially, you're killing the Yotei Six. um you're going through she has her sash it's very impactful like she uses their blood to cross them off on the sash and it's always like a big moment when she finally gets to do that and then you see the sash on her skin like the whole time when you're playing her and you see which ones are crossed out it's awesome but she finally finds

finds out that this woman that she's been working with, Lady Oyuki, I think her name is, she was the Kitsune, which is one of the Yotei Six who always wore a mask. And she was there when her parents got killed. And she feels obviously conflicted because she's like, what the hell, now I have to kill you kind of thing. So they have this big long fight and she's having like flashbacks the entire time. But she ultimately reveals herself to be the one member of the Yotei Six who like feels bad.

Yeah. We screwed your family and I'm actually trying to like make up for that. And Atsu has to come to terms with like, do I even want that? You know?

And she kind of, like, let Atsu go. Like, she was the reason Atsu even, like, got to run away a little bit. So there's a bit... a thing there but anyways they have this huge big fight and then she wins and she's just standing over her and she's like i'm so sorry like there's like she could completely kill her and like probably be valid for it you know kind of thing but there's just like a long breath moment and she's kind of like I hate the Kasune, but I don't hate the in...

the inn's daughter like all this stuff that she's learned about her so aka she forgives her and it's like the antithesis of everything you've learned about atsu so far like could have been really tropey and she just kills her anyways and keeps going off the story but she's like yeah that's fine like kind of thing essentially

And then her mom has a song that she sung to her and she lets Lydia Uki finish the song with her own lyrics and they like sing the song together. And I was like, oh, guys, like it.

Genuinely, I'm getting a little choked up thinking about it now. It is so well done because she's playing guitar with the Kitsune, this woman that she has just recently... forgiven who's like changed the trajectory of her whole life leading up to this point and everything she stands for and she's like what if i maybe i don't need to kill all these people and it's like the camera pans around and they're like playing together and she's and atsu has clearly accepted her as this like maternal figure

and it's I mean it's it's like and then if the camera pans and you kind of see the ghost of Atsu's mother there playing with them and it just totally Like, I don't know. I, to the point where I was talking to my wife, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going through something else right now, but like it, it, I don't know. It just totally killed me. Like her finding a new mother, remembering her mother.

like reaching this point of forgiveness in this like this trial of vengeance it all just was like happened in this cutscene and it was so beautiful and like I it was like the most emotional moment of the year for me and I and I had a chance to talk to sucker punch about it and I was like tell me about how this moment came to you

because it totally worked on me. It's great. It's why Yote is one of my favorite games this year. It really surprised me and how much the story got to me. It's so funny because I feel like I haven't heard a whisper of that.

uh like people talking about yote it's like oh you know story is not the greatest moving on it seems to be like my general consensus so it's nice to hear that there are these moments that are really landed for you guys like i haven't heard this it's also funny there's also an interesting aspect of it with jubei too who never really

accepts her. Like, Atsu accepts her, and then Jubei learns that she's one of the Yotei Six, and he just always has a grudge with her in every scene that they talk together. You know, I kind of liked that. I didn't like that.

Like, Jubei's not going to go and kill her, but he's also like, F you, why are you hanging around? Like, he's just like, bad at her the whole rest of the game. You were there when my family died. I know Atsu's forgiven you, but that doesn't mean I don't know you. Yeah, I liked that. There was like a double down on that, and that kind of made every scene a bit more tense and interesting.

that had all three of them together. I liked that. What were you going to say, Jacob? Oh, it's fine. Just because it's open-ended, I really haven't played much of this game, but I just ended up going to her first.

And so I didn't feel like kind of a big turning point in the story for me because it's like I haven't killed any of the others. She was like the first one that I... met and so like it wasn't it wasn't like oh a change in my path of revenge it was like oh well maybe you'll find out that all these guys aren't that bad

I talked to them about that, actually, because they kind of put the Jubei reveal closer to you at that point in the game. So they kind of were pushing players, which I actually think... like you should go meet the brother first and go kill the oni first like it makes it for a better story but they did want to leave it open-ended so like you can go way out of your way and go it was it was because they told me the guy who would teach me to learn the chain

was way up in the north and i was like that's what i want to do and so it just yeah that weapon's awesome Um, but the final fan service thing they did, that's a nice moment, is you kind of stumble across this deserted farmstead, and then you're, like, picking up items and looking at them. It's, like, all Jin stuff. Oh, cool. And so it's, like, Atsu learning about the history, because Jin...

Jin's whole thing is like, he's forgotten about. That's like, he takes that on at the end of the first game because like, that's like his, you know, penance, I guess for him being the samurai and like killing people dishonorably is like, he's never known of again.

Yeah. And so, um, you know, her finding out like, who is this person? Like, blah, blah, blah. She learns about him vicariously. And you're just kind of like, I know who, you know, that good feeling you get when you're like, that's who I know. I know. But you just have to sit there and watch her look at it. Yeah.

It was nice. That's nice. In the Rapid Fire, he was so cagey about another playable character. And I assumed it was going to be a Jin flashback thing. Is that not in the game? No. What was he talking about? It's just yourself young, yourself old. No. Yeah. That's weird. Why was he so freaking cagey? What was that? Maybe they cut something? I don't know. You'd be cagey and the answer could be either one. I feel like, okay. That's true. I had to go back and check that. All right.

All right, go Saviote. There we go. I have a non-spoiler systemic moment from Keep Driving. Systemic, anybody can do it, but this is a good moment. Keep Driving.

I was doing a dirtbag run, being a real piece of crap, smoking, drinking, picking up all the scum hitchhikers, the casino gambler, the ex-con. Who you're driving away from the cops. Every time you go to a big city, when you leave, you get stopped by a mob. mafiosos who are trying to collect on the gambler's debt. And that's like one of the situations that you mini game card game your way through is getting through those debt collectors. I dropped off the

who said, thank you so much. What a great trip this has been together. Here's a gun. And I put the gun in my trunk. I said, I don't want to use this, but I feel like I can't just get rid of it. I can't just throw this gun away. I feel like I'm going to kind of keep it safe here. I don't know what I would ever do with it. Maybe I can sell it at the right place. And then the next time I'm in a big city and I leave.

The debt collectors pop up for my gambling guy who's with me, and then you just hear seven gunshots, and the minigame is over, and you're driving away. And I was like... Couldn't I was like, did I miss something like that would really happened until eventually I go to another city and I do see. Yes, it pops up gun in the upper left and you instantly end that encounter. That's like one of the random things that helps you with.

The gambling guy uses it to kill the debt collector. Jesus. Wow. It's so weird and shocking. That's cool. And funny. I have an alters one that's a similar energy. That's early.

So – Let's put the hats on. Put the hats on. Let's put the hat on. Let's enjoy ourselves, please. Alter spoilers. Check the timestamps. I'll be quick. The gist of the alters, you're Jan Jolsky and you can make other versions of yourself with some tech. Who in the hell knows how science works? But there's one you make and he can get dependent on...

um, like drugs to keep, to keep his upkeep up. And the whole thing with your alters is you're like, get to work, get to work. If they're not upkeeping on things, you don't finish in time. So he kept being like, I need the drugs. And I'd be like, just take them. Hurry up. Go finish your. Finish all the crunching of the rocks or whatever they were doing.

And you do that a bunch of times, blah, blah, blah. And then I came down the elevator one morning and I walked in the room where he works and he was dead on the floor and he was too high off the drugs and he effed up the machine and he died. And they were like, why was he so high? And I was like, I was giving him drugs. He's handling heavy machinery. I'm keeping things fast enough. Can you read the label? It says do not operate heavy machinery when using. Yeah, literally.

but it was a really like I felt my heart go in my gut when I walked in the room and it's like it's not just like he's in the court like there's blood everywhere and he's limp and you're so used to just seeing them doing their auto animations and like doing their work yeah and I walked in he was just dead I was like yay like it was true

finding someone at work i was like oh my god i can't see just auto triggers and everyone's mad at you because they're like oh my god you're a bad leader there's a bunch of there's a bunch of times where they're like just because you were first doesn't mean you're the best at leading and i was like That's cool. Damn, you kind of got me there because I'm dunking up, so maybe someone else should take the reins. Also, the minor thing can go so differently. Like, it can have such a happy conclusion.

It's not just like bummer after bummer in that game. It's like you can handle that so right that the miners loving life. They hated me. I just didn't do that. The moment from the authors that felt like a shoe in for best moment when it happened was getting the band back together, which is everybody. You're all Yondolski. The vast majority of you were in a crappy band in high school. And so as you're.

killing time as your giant wheel ship is moving from location to location. I think it's the first change, maybe the second. You're like, why don't we get the band back together? And you all, again, you can bring back a bunch of different Yondolskys with different personalities.

We're all contributing to this song that's going around line by line and putting a little bit of their own flavor on it. Like they've got their own voice and they've got their own little personality. And it's like this kind of dynamic song based on who you happen to have at that time.

That's cool. It's a really cute... I'm glad you remembered that one. Because I remember when we talked about it, we're like, best moment alert. And then I probably forgot. Snooze. I'm glad you remembered. Cool. Alter, spoilers over? Yeah.

There we go. We got to talk about Hollow Knight Silksong. Oh, there's a Silksong game that came out this year. There's a game called Hollow Knight Silksong. Should we jump into Silksong? Alright, Silksong spoilers, everybody! Silksong spoilers! I have one if you want me to start.

Uh, the clockwork dancers fight. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. That was my favorite fight where you, you know, very hard. fights in all those games this one you you are fighting against two like robotic mechanical um you know twins that come out Yes, bugs. Everybody's a bug in that game. And it's a genuinely beautiful fight because everything is timed to the music.

as it's going and they're all very mechanical in how they fight and so like you know like every every fight in that game is is figuring out the rhythm and the pattern of The boss fights, you know, the bosses. But this one, it's like literal rhythm and patterns of them dancing around. you know, the big arena that you're fighting them in, and you're whittling them down, you have two bosses that you have to contend with, and they're doing different patterns everywhere. And they should, it's like...

They're not even really fighting you. They're definitely not fighting you. They're just dancing. They're dancing with each other, including, like, their big move is they will fly together and they'll do, like... they'll hold each other you know they'll do like a dancing lift like in dirty dancing or whatever yeah yeah and and so like you're whittling them down uh and then eventually you kill one of them

And the other one keeps on going, but it doesn't have its partner for all the moves that it's doing. And at that point, it's not a tough fight anymore because it's like... half the amount of attacks, and you already know all the patterns and everything, but the last one is just sad and broken and slow, and the music is, like, missing half of its...

arrangement because the other one isn't there and you just have to slowly murder the other one I was playing it on stream and I felt just terrible like I was tearing up because it's like It just makes you feel guilty in a game that's all about, like, fighting these bosses and hating these bosses. And, like, and usually...

like you do a boss fight 10 times and then, and then the boss fight gets harder because you get to the next phase and it's harder. And in this one, it's like the hard part of the second phase is the emotional guilt that you're feeling. for what you're doing, because the rest of it is really just kind of a cakewalk. It's one of my favorite boss fights, like, ever. Like, it truly, it's so good, and you are so expecting, just like you said, Jeff, it's like, when you beat...

When you destroy one and the other one goes back into its chamber and is being wound again, you're just like, I know what's coming. this thing's going to be freaking impossible. It's going to go hyper mode. Yes, and it's just going to destroy me. And instead, it's this sad, broken thing, and it's playing this little music box version, and it goes up to do the lift.

but there's no one to hold it. And so then it just, like, falls to the ground. It's so sad. It's awesome. It's an amazing boss fight. It's so sad. It's awesome. I can feel it. It's just good. Make fun of me for crying. It's a lot of that. The other silksong moment that I want to talk about, which is also an act two, is...

At some point in the game, there are these guys who will just show up with giant cages, and they'll try and hit you with the cage, and they're kind of hard to avoid, and you'll probably get hit by one.

You don't die. You instead wake up in a prison in the corner of the map. Hornet is... naked question mark like she doesn't have her she just looks like this figure and and it's the classic kind of prison break sequence where you don't have any of your tools and you're running and you're kind of doing stealth and eventually you make it back and and you see under you

the kind of prison warden bugs. And one is wearing your cape and holding your needle. And it's just kind of walking around like, Oh, I'm Hornet. And, and there's a prompt that says like, drop down. And there are incredibly few... cut scenes in the game where hornet does something that you are not actively controlling it almost never happens at all you know you're you're controlling her the whole time but you click drop down you drop onto this prison warden

And just snap his neck with your knees. And the game makes like a big... like neck snap sound and it's like horn it's back baby and then you get the weapon and you just get to kill everyone and it's so they like they give her this moment of being like she's gonna be the most badass bug in the room yeah

Yeah. And it's cool that you can also like get there other ways as well, which like I think that's where Silk Song really shines, like how many different ways people can have the experience or like the order. One of my also act one, act two, I think it was act one. at least for me, I think it changes based on how you play it, moments, was that first town, was it called Bone something? Is it called Bone Bottom? Yeah, like it's actually called Bone Bottom, like Bikini Bottom, Bone Bottom.

A big thing that you might do, which I did do, if you're trying to not take a lot of elves and silk song is like rest a lot and give your beads into a little shrink because like, you know, they're kind of like.

If you know the soul system, you can also like string them up together so that you don't lose them because they're on a rosary like tied up. So I would be doing that all the time because I didn't want to take any L's and I kept saving and saving back at bone bottom. And I think this is what eventually triggers it. There's a boss. called Skull Tyrant, who you see one, maybe two times before that. I don't remember. You fight them. They're not too wild of a boss. Sure.

you're there you're in the town the town has like little bug villagers and you have like it's kind of your nice like safe little place you can like shop there and do your rosary beads and sometimes their map is there and there's all these and you also can you know donate through quests like shards or do wishes

for people so it's a place you revisit really often and all of a sudden you're there you sit down to save at one point and the skull tyrant comes back and runs through the whole town, decimates the entire population, and then boom, you're instantly in a boss fight.

It was such a wow moment, such a cool surprise. And also such an F you to the player where so often, you know, I'm saving the game. I'm like, all right, this seems like a good place to stop. And I'm like, we're not sleeping tonight because you're literally just there in the action immediately. so it really like shakes up the formula in a fun way and in a moving way where like this is not I know some people are really into Silksong's story and the lore behind it

I think me, like a lot of players are kind of just there for the action exploration. So I wouldn't say that I was very tied to much in the story. And I think that's what makes those moments so impactful where I'm like. I guess I cared more than I thought I did because these little guys, it's like they really felt like I witnessed.

a massacring of these bystander and i felt like it was my fault like i kind of brought the time in here and it was such a cool moment of like emotional weight and guilt all paired with damn now i have to fight this boss again like a little while ago like did i do this for saving so that was definitely a

standout moment that seems to come not totally randomly, but I think tied to things that you might not fully be aware of. Yeah. Does the town come back? Like the things you do there, are you able to do them again? Not really.

I think they rebuild in a really sad way. It's not the same. It always looks busted from that point forward. That's cool. Another big one for Silksong for me is... chakra carrying so that's the map giver uh map salesman like character but you can have her come by and fight alongside you for certain battles Sometimes, again, I don't really know what triggers it. I know what triggered it for one of mine. There's a really hard arena room right before the final boss that I think is the hardest part.

of act one and act two and i really could not do it i left to come back and i'm like i don't really think anything's gonna change this isn't a game where you level up etc etc but i had done like enough side quest lines and i hadn't triggered her before to come fight for me so her coming in

through a hard room and again this can happen different points in the game I think is definitely a high point because it is at a time of great despair and then you can just sit back and like let her basically do the whole thing for you and that's awesome I know for some people that wouldn't be fun for me it was a blast and a half being able to skip the hardest thing and then just go and finish the game uh and it felt like a final payoff after having been

screwed over in so many places before for reasons, again, unknown to me, but, um, having her finally come in at the end was, was a big highlight. Oh yeah. Hold on to slow song. We tip our cap to the.

What else we got for moments? I want to just do a quick shout out to a moment in... I feel like I want to talk about... 100 Line Army, Blast Defense Academy, or 100 Line. I keep adding the word army. No one knows. It's not in there. I don't know the title of this game that I sunk 80, 90, 100 hours into. The title card was so long ago. I know. Yeah, is this spoilers? It's spoilers. There's a lot of spoilers in the game. Spoilers for Hundred Line. So...

I really liked this game. This game has 100 endings. There's a lot of moments that are... You're going to describe them all now. Yeah, I'm going to describe them all now. We're going to go through all 100 endings. There's some really big plot twists in the story that I don't actually think, like... moment to moment like they reveal it's such a cadence that i don't think any of the really big plot twist ones were crazy uh moments on their own other than just

the end of the first boss fight which i can talk about a little bit but i think that or the the first your first playthroughs boss fight um but a moment that i that really stuck with me that i thought was really cool and just another one of those like

this is such a video game thing to do, is kind of randomly midway through the game. You know, you're playing this very dark... story about the end of humanity and you're the last hope and there's these invaders coming and they're killing everybody and you end up in this cruel situation where you basically will... die over and over again and your body gets revived and you have to keep fighting um and then you just kind of wake up randomly and you're in like this tokimeki memorial

like very old style visual novel thing where everyone's in high school and just hanging out. And this goes on for like a long enough time that you start being like, oh no, is this going to be like a... And it was all a dream or like just some kind of weird, you know, what is this flip right now? And it turns out it's actually just like one of the invaders in this game. blasting like i guess magic music is the best way i can describe it they're like sending sound signals that just

make you feel like you're in this dream state and forget about everything else. So when you finally snap to, everything's just like completely screwed. Like you are. clawing your way back from this, like they've done so much damage already because you were just like playing through a weird high school visual novel day. And I thought that moment was... It was really, really cool. Yeah. I want to see it. I want to see that shift. All right. A hundred line, less defense Academy. That's trading too.

Oh, Christ. Yeah, let's go to the beach. All right, spoilers. Guys, it will officially be my wife's birthday in 10 minutes.

I gotta go at 12. I didn't think we'd be going this long. Celebrating at midnight? What are you talking about? You got a dinner date at 12.01? No, it's important to her. It's important to me. Okay, bye Kyle! No, I'm not leaving right now, but I'm just saying at 12 I'm going to go. So I can wish my wife a happy birthday and be with her. Eight more minutes. Okay. Spoilers on for Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

The photo booth thing when all the girlies want you to take their picture. I like that moment a lot. Is that it? Is that it? No, there's more. That's the first. I'm trying to be concise. Photo booth moment with the girlies that I was learning that they were having fulfilling interactions without me needing to be in the room. And I said, pass that Bechdel test. That's raining too. And I loved it.

The dance sequence that Die Hardman does at the very end of the game. That is undeniably... I don't know if it's best thing or dumbest thing, but that is a moment of the year. I think it's dumbest. Hayley, do you want to describe what happens? There's...

So they're out in this ethereal, weird, plain place where there's servers everywhere kind of energy, but the servers are also meant to represent, like... humanity's consciousness should we turn it off should we turn it on don't give Sarah the turn it off turn it off turn it off but then

Like, Die Hard Man, who the big reveal is Charlie the whole time, hence why we chose his voice. Like, when you gave him the four options and he only let you choose Die Hard Man, it was because he was Die Hard Man the whole time. Haha, they got us there. And then he is out at the servers. What's the song he dances to, Jacob? Do you remember? So there's like the evil AI president guy.

Who's just like, I'm the president and I'm evil and I'm taking over humanity. And then this mannequin that's been on your ship the whole time rises out of the goop. And starts singing a version of BB's song, I think, where he's like, I will hold you. But he's doing, like... He's doing like K-pop boy idol dance moves and his like his face is turning into emojis and he's like mugging for the camera.

It's impossible to overstate how out of nowhere this is. Nowhere in the game has there been even a hint that a mannequin's going to rise out of the goop and start dancing. And then the president looks amazing. Do you know what I mean? Like the graphic fidelity costs $10 million. And then at the end, the president's just like, I guess you win. And, like, that's the end of that. Like, it really, it's just... Yeah, I mean, there's a reason, like, I didn't...

I didn't forget Death Stranding 2. There just weren't really any moments for me that stood out. Even that one crossed the line of weird for the sake of being weird for me. I liked the final twist. of, like, you know, who... Ellie... Ellie Fanning? Is that her name? Yeah, Elle Fanning, like, who her...

who her character is and everything. But I don't know. They weren't impactful moments for me. I was just kind of like, I don't know. There's a reason I haven't brought the game up yet for best moments, you know? Guitar solo fight hit like crazy though. Guitar solo fight. The dumbest thing. Kyle and I disagree with you on that one. I know, and then I'm such a Kojima defender, and I'm like, it's because AI could never do this.

That's why he's so stupid. The humans could be this stupid. It was like completely out of nowhere, unexpected. And it was like, oh, I'm shocked how much this is expected to me anyway. anything could happen. This may as well be happening. This may as well be happening is a great way to sum up the last hour or two of Death Stranding 2. Or five.

I feel like I'm coming off very negative. I do like the ending. It is a nice build-up to insanity happening, but it wasn't anything... Maybe I just have my expectations for a Kojima game are too high, where it was nothing really hit me.

in the heart, really, you know? That's why it's hard to be Death Stranding 2. Like, the first time Death Stranding 1 came out, it's like, what the hell's happening? And then you're like, oh, more of the thing that's the absolute craziest thing I've ever seen. Okay. It's just an easier tack-on that when you see a bespoke guitar fight with two shirtless men absolutely going crazy, you're like, okay. I also like Metal Gear Solid 4.

And one. Yeah, and one. Shouts out, we did a full max spoilers on Death Stranding 2. Check it out. Good game. I love that game so much. Is that it for Death Stranding? Yeah. Yeah. Boink! Nothing else would win. Yeah. God bless you, Death Stranding. All right. Anybody else want to throw anything into the big moments pile?

Jacob, I played It Takes a War, and the ending of It Takes a War is a great moment. It is. I don't know if it... I don't know if we need to put it on this list. Okay, that's fair. It wouldn't win. It just came out recently, no? Yeah. Yeah, we'll be talking about it on the podcast last week. Nice.

All right. Are we choosing between these moments? Yes. I feel like Claire is like... one it's like a lock right we just have to pick which one yeah probably i mean i was feeling pretty strongly about like the continent landing yeah kind of dark i like the continent opening i think it like yeah i do too but considering how much we talked about that ending choice just in the discussion it's like i feel

that's kind of unavoidable at this point. That ending choice is so top to heart. I think it's like the defining game conversation of this year. Like, I haven't talked about anything else in games as much as I've talked about that ending this year.

What about the apocalypse? I've had multiple times where I've, you know, I've learned someone is playing clear obscure and then we just both kind of do the thing like, and did you, did you get to the end? Okay. And then we have to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Everybody's feeling okay about that? Yeah. It's just, you know, top contender. What else do you all see as top contendies?

I'm a big fan of Donkey Kong personally. I was sold by that Hollow Knight fight. That sounded really compelling and interesting in the context of this thing. Hollow Knight people? Okay, that sounds like a contender. Oh, by the way, in this discussion, spoiler hats are off. I think we're okay in that last exhibition discussion. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so don't go in specifics.

The Alters Band moment is one of the few moments this year where I thought about us talking about it at the end of the year. So I feel like that has to go up. Sure, sure. Not that I'm forever going. Yeah. I think that... Split fiction finale, I feel like, is one that should be in the contention here in a bigger way. Hey guys, you all are great. And you're going to make amazing decisions, and I'm so proud of you all. Dad? Thank you for everything. Okay. Bye, Kyle. Thank you, Kyle. Good night.

let's move donkey kong to the bottom of the list real quick real quick first for silksong i prefer the jail to the dancers but am i low in that jeffman jacob I like the dancers more. That's fair. I love that they're dancing. From hearing it described, I love that they're like... It's a waltz. The music feels like ballroom. I think Silent Hill F is the moment that preparation mutilation is that? It was so hard to watch.

In a good way? I watched it. It sounded good. It made the game sound better. And I felt no emotions during it. Y'all had that bunny suit on the whole time. You got to. If you watch the stream, I'm literally like this. I'm like, what's happening? This is happening. No, you're going to get it. They're not even showing anything. They're not even showing it because they did it. I can hear the sounds. That feels like good contention for... The Death Stranding 2 dance scene I think deserves to be up.

there okay in the top i don't think it's gonna win but i think it should be a part noted the rest noted the ticket to kyle um okay is it expedition ending lock It has to be. I love the exhibition ending, but I feel like I still love the con and landing more, but I guess I'm fine with either. I feel like the con and landing was so much more like... Eyes open. Oh my god. I feel like the ending, you kind of saw it coming. Both of those things could...

be number one and number two that just feels wrong to do. It'd be kind of funny, though. But they are both extremely impactful. No, yeah, I think if we weren't trying to have two different things, it's really pretty... And I'm not even the biggest Clarkshire fan here, I don't think. And I think that ending Max, the kind of landing min, feels pretty accurate. But I kind of feel like Act 1 ending hits more in terms of something I'm going to think about for a long time.

Other people here didn't like the Act 1 ending. I agree the Continent Landing is more... I think what they're trying... They nail what they're trying to do a little bit more with that scene. Yeah. I would absolutely do two Expedition 33 things at best moments. I would do it. Ben's like, whatever we need to get this Charlie rolling. It's such a meme.

like already how much it's gonna win at the game awards that have not happened at the time of this recording yeah yeah but it's really good yeah i guess we should probably pick the best things okay but also the fiction finale also was like It's up there. The gobsmacky. Yeah, I hear a lot about that. Yeah, it's what fiction finale. It sounds like it has the pageantry. It's just like you right now. You look really cool right now, Sarah. Cool girl.

The Expedition 33 one and several of these are so much kind of like look at this crazy thing that happens in a cutscene. Then I do like that the split fiction one is like, this is the most gameplay ass gameplay that you could possibly get. Yeah. I also really do like the, the altars crappy band though, for it's.

lightness and the dynamicness. Not just being a straight up carbon cutscene. It does sound cute. It was cute. The band did seem cool. I hope they play music for the Death Stranding dance sequence. In hell. I like that you agreed with Leo as you moved the altars down. Yeah, I was kind of wondering what was going on with that. It's like, what the hell? You're like, yeah. Totally, totally, totally. This feels right if we're not going to do two Expedition 33 things. Final...

group tally, who would put continent over Expedition 33 ending? So, continent landing Expedition people, raise your hand. It's me, Leo, Sarah. Okay, and ending people. The dramatic one is in the groove. Yeah. I would agree. Jeff, why didn't you finish the game?

Jevram, we needed you. Because he's bad. He likes being bad. He would have been on our side. He likes sinning. The ending is compellingly complicated, but the landing is just so completely perfect. I think that just really set the tone. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. But respect. Respect. Great options. Happy to be nominated. How are people feeling about Split Fiction runner-up? Should we put something else there? I mean, it's fudgeable. Everything's fudgeable.

I like the gameplay argument, and I guess I want it for that. I do feel like what it did is kind of its logical conclusion. Like, I did enjoy it. But also, admittedly... I wonder if I enjoyed it less because I knew it was coming because when I previewed it, they showed me that but just said I couldn't tell anybody. Oh, interesting. Maybe that. Because you feel special. You know, it's just like, I don't know. It's just special.

But wouldn't that be why I would like it? Yeah, and that's... I guess I'll take it because I want to... Yeah, but I don't really... It's fine. Like, I don't know. It was cool. Still, you're special. You're special. It's a fiction moment I still have trouble kind of picturing, which doesn't impact the moment. Pull it up on YouTube, baby. You played it, no? We were watching it again today, and I was like, goddammit. It's one of those things where I'm like...

You're just not going to be disappointed by it. You know, like, I'm pretty confident it will not underwhelm, even if, unless you're Janet. Even if you haven't, there are no one's coming. Well, I'm not Janet. Yeah, it's... Isn't it underwhelmed? I just... I don't know. It doesn't... It doesn't light my world on fire in the same way that the other one does. I'm watching Jack's septic guy play it. Okay, cool. Stop! I want to be cool like you. You mean that guy from Dispatch?

Yeah. I'm surprised nobody brought anything up from Dispatch. That is interesting. I was thinking, I think, like, the bar fight is probably the highlight. Not to kick that horn in his nest, but I was like, no. Nothing from Dispatch? It is interesting. You really aren't being messy, Sarah. No! Ben, put Dispatch...

bar fight on the bottom list so we feel good. I would love to do that. Yeah, so we feel good. Another full max spoilers we did to plug for people who want to hear more about this guy. Push Donkey Kong even lower. Wow. It loves digging. It loves being underground. Dig down, donkey. I feel good about this, but I don't want to feel like I'm pushing this sucker through the ramrod.

As they say. It looks good when you look at it. It looks good when I look at it. It looks sexy and good. Everybody, is this sexy and good? I like it. Ladies and gentlemen, the max best moment of the year is the Exhibition 33 ending. It's just endings. It's always endings and moments. I forget about that. We should have known because it saves like an hour. It's just whatever ending was the best. Just wait for all of ours ending. It's going to be awesome.

Also, split-fiction split-screen finale is the runner-up for the men's best moments in 2025. It does feel right, don't it? That's lovely. Can I real quick just say that we probably should have had some Rodemperous moments on here, but it's... It's been a very long podcast. I didn't want to drag it out much longer. I didn't think they would win. Give me one. Can you just throw one out, Sarah? Sure, yeah. So I think...

Spoilers? Hats? Spoiler hats. Okay, right down for spoilers, of course. First time ever that we've concluded. Maybe it'll break it open. Please. Let's see. So there's like... Oh, let's see. One of my favorite Road to Empress moments is that, like, what I like about this game is it doesn't ask you, like, what's the right decision? It asks you, what's the decision that's going to keep you alive? So, for example, I catch my aunt...

scheming against me and they're like the minute she's no longer useful to me i'm gonna kill her and i knock something over in the garden and she looks and i know i'm gonna get caught and when she finds out i'm eavesdropping she's gonna kill me right like she's already i've already watched her kill me several times and i'm next to a servant and we both look at each other the servant was like stealing something so we both look at each other and we're like one of us is going down for this

or neither of us is going one of us is going to take the fall uh so it turns into like a really long scuffle when we're like running through the courtyard being chased by the guards and we're like pushing each other over and tripping each other and then we get to this well

and the games and we're fighting and like she's trying to kill me and i'm trying to kill her and the game's like what are you gonna do and so then i pushed that into the well no and i got away with it because the only because if you don't put her in the well you get caught no matter what The only thing you can do is push her into the well. What is soup?

Sarah, the chat is filling up with you. Oh, so the soup thing? So your aunt, once your aunt's tired of you, she, like, tries to kill you several times. And the way she likes to kill you is with Osmanthus soup, specifically. That's sweet.

it's sweet and she's like it's sweet it's so good for you like i like you'll come in and she'll be like i made this like i made this treat for you because you're doing so well in the palace and i'm really proud of you and i want you to like drink it in front of me because it's a gift from me and then you drink it and die and you're like okay well i'm not going to do that again so you're

like i don't drink the soup she holds you down and like forces it down your throat and you're like i don't want to and then i think like there's a few other ways where like you get souped like it's kind of an inside joke with the community because you're like and every time i see my aunt with like a bowl of soup i know is about to go down. In Road to Empress, you do not eat. You don't eat. Everything is poison.

Every time you eat, it's a mistake. I want to real quick shout out the moment that apparently both Haley and I texted you about like the exact same thing. Which is that as part of your like, you end up kind of scheming with one of the princes because you have no choice. He has chosen you to scheme with him. And if you say no, thank you. He stabs you. So you just have to. And you end up.

sneaking someone who he says is a doctor um into his brother's quarters and you're like you know you have to you have to do some schemey things to even be able to do that because the guards know that there's no guests that are supposed to be coming um and so when you succeed at this you're kind of still in the room and can hear things and the one of the emperor's son is like

probably gay like he's really into this guy he's actually a musician not a doctor um and it's just this huge moment of like this is the biggest scandal this family will ever see and now i have this yeah like now i have this on me if anyone finds out about this this guy this guy was supposed to die and i brought him straight to the prince

It was a gasp moment for me. There's no gay kisses before you ask. I was really disappointed. Oh, there's gay kisses later. There's girl-on-girl kisses at the end. all right finishing that before so congratulations the well in the soup of road to empress the number one number two moments thank you for putting it above donkey kong bonanza that really means a lot to me

Wouldn't we love to see Best Moment, Exhibition 33, Ending Choice, and Getting Souped in Road to Empress? I will say the Getting Souped thing is such an inside joke. Spoiler hats off now? I guess it's like, yeah, getting soup. But getting soup is such an inside joke. It crosses cultural language boundaries.

lines because like in China they like gave out a bunch of little photo cards of the soup and you could put your photo in it and it looks like you're being handed a bowl of soup like that's how serious this is. I love it. That's great. Alright, Road to Emperor spoilers. Over!

The final category for this evening. And whenever you started listening to this podcast, it's the evening now, and we're here with you. is the greatest work of art of all time for 2025. And I'm seeing here the winner is the MinMax Coding Timestamp Tool. Congratulations! What else did we put on this list here? Greatest work of art. I'll do one min-maxed one real quick, which is scripted podcast. Wow. Wow. Those are funny. People really like those. They were like weirdly under-viewed.

compared to other New Show Pluses, but really well loved by the people who watched them. That was a really fun point. Like a lot of the New Show Pluses. Once I get voted for over and over again. That was really fun. I love there was the podcast version, that podcast feed. Maybe that's why it was interviewed. Everybody just listened to it. But I was just really impressed, as always, with MinMax, just like by scheduling, the fact that we're able to like...

Get an entire extra crew to jump in for like 15 minutes at the end. It's like, all right, here's a bonus pee-pee bang for a little bit. Like that's a lot of time out of everybody's day to carve around. Stop playing with your hair nub, man. You should honestly try it. Please stop. Stop pulling your hair nub. Don't blame me. Are you braiding it? I should. You're right. Blame charity. It's really funny. I have to look at you like this now.

I didn't realize it was a punishment for like me. Yeah. You can do the entire podcast with your eyes closed. People listening kind of are. All right. What else do we got? Do we have any that aren't the smell of our own butts? another well another kind of butt smelly one but it isn't as much because it does involve someone else i was upset i'm trying to find the name of the person the guy who made it but the person who did that edit of hayley's metal gear solid delta let's play

I, you know, it's funny. We talked a lot about like, do you cry at games? Do you not? Genuinely, I was crying watching that. I was laughing so hard at it. It was so good. I've never had someone edit my gameplay. It was very sweet. I said that for them. I was like, oh, my goodness. Thank you. Yeah. He reached out to ask if it's OK. I was like, yeah, totally. And then I saw the finished video. It was like over five hours. I thought it was going to be cut down to like.

15 minutes of, like, the best moments. I was like, oh, it's like... Oh, no, I'm talking about the five-minute one. I don't know if this person made two, but there was, like, a five-minute cut of... Oh, really? There's an intro of, like, highlights, yeah. Oh, okay, okay, awesome, awesome. Which, I guess, got clipped out, so, yeah. Joe Town. Shout out. One of the best smelling parts of our own butt was Jeff Samus watercolor. Oh, that's good. It was art.

Forgot. And Haley's. For someone who didn't participate, just finding out that... Like, there were so many people who were good at art in MinMax who I didn't know. And it just kind of kept coming up of like, oh, my God, this one's really good, too. Yeah. It's great. I only want Kelsey Lewin bowls in my kitchen after seeing what she can do with that Birdo. Podcast over! Greatest mid-max art of all time. Sarah's gone. Okay, I've got one that is not about mid-max, but I think is a real heater.

which is the GDQ Crazy Taxi live music run, which was something that they did at... at SGDQ, I think, which is someone speedrunning a series of challenge levels in Crazy Taxi, and they had a live band there who was playing the songs that would go along with the game, which are all kind of, you know, like...

I don't even know late nineties, early two thousands, you know, high energy rock, but they would do it exactly in time with the level. So as soon as they, the singer would be like screaming along to these. And as soon as the level stops. They just stop singing and they go to the next one and they have to sing the same songs multiple times. And by the end of the run, it's just exhausting. I mean, there's like sweat pouring off of them and they're still screaming along. It's a real like.

Video games can be a beautiful community thing. Watching it is just so wonderful. La boo-boos. I have that on my list, too. Timeless. What? It's going to age well. Le boo-boos. It's very, like, in the vein of the Las Vegas sphere, you know? Right. You have my attention, Kelsey Lewin. But this time I can change fate by being here to stop it. No fate for what we make! They're little guys. They briefly took over the world.

And isn't that kind of beautiful? They were at the Macy's Day Parade. You can put different clothes on them. I like to put unlicensed things on them. You can go to Santiali and get a little mini AK-47 for your labubu. Oh my God. I'm listening. That's too much. We've gone too far. What about the rehearsal season two? One of my favorite.

seasons of tv you think oh they can't top season one where could they possibly go in this direction and then it just is surreal through in theory the lens of we're trying to nathan fielder's trying to improve airplane safety and to lessen the number of crashes and it turns out that is largely

His conclusion from black box recordings is it's miscommunication between the pilot and co-pilot. And it's just an investigation that goes so deep into that. As I was watching, I was like, I don't know what else you'd want. from a tv show it just goes so deep and is so unexpected i can't even begin to explain all the layers but just like an aggressive look at like the flaws of society through the lens of nathan fielder's personality and challenges. It's just everything in company. It becomes –

It becomes kind of a thesis on Nathan Fielder's entire body of work. Like his entire career feels like it is kind of culminating in what this thing is doing. And that's only part of it. Yes. And at the same time, he's flying a 747 filled with passengers and he's licensed to fly. Thank you. He's licensed to fly that passenger plane around the world and land it.

And he's been training for years for that. It is surreal. It is also remarkably broadly relatable, this issue of co-pilots not feeling they can speak up to the pilots. It is like we've all been in this position in various different social relationships. where we don't feel comfortable speaking up. And here is a super close zoom in on the point in our world where when people are scared to speak up, hundreds of people explode. Yes. Yep.

Yep. And so it is like the highest stakes thing down to drill down to the tiniest everyday moments. While also being so, so funny and funnier than season one, I think they like really found how to make it funny. It's just start to finish. Season one, not necessary. Perfect work of art. There's a segment about Paramount Plus taking an episode of Nathan For You off of streaming that is the most kind of, like...

I could not believe what I was watching section of TV. It's yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah. That the, the scene with him and that autism test is going to live in my head forever. And just him nodding along to it as if he's just looking at some other test and not that he's being given the test himself. It is. It's amazing. Believe it or not, it's also largely about autism. It's about everything, but it's amazing.

On the TV show track, I won't nominate the whole season, just the marching band in Severance Season 2. Just... Just Severance Season 2, Marching Band. Right on, right on. I want to just lob out a piece of... I feel like, I like us having a piece of, like, not that movies and... TV shows and stuff aren't art as well. But I like having a piece of traditional art on this list, too. La Boo Booz is on there, Kelsey.

There's an artist that I discovered this year whose name is Sienna Martz, and she is a sculptural textile artist. And she just does really cool stuff. And she had an exhibition early this year that was called A Portal Blooms in the Cradle of Night. And it is this just enormous like wall and floor sized. textile art that you can just like sit in and it's just colorful and textural and one of those that you should probably just google and would probably be even cooler in person but I really

I think textile and sculptural art is really cool and not talked about enough. Right on. Sienna Martz, A Portal Blooms, and The Cradle of Night. Rebecca Sugar released an album this year. I love her. creator of steven universe she's worked on a bench time for a lot of years um and one of the songs is called ice water and she released um a music video for it and it's like It's very fun to see just her animate something solo because, you know, she's like the...

the lead for Steven Universe, but she doesn't animate it. She just is, like, the storyboard director and stuff like that. It's just, like, her animation style I really love, and the song is about, like, moving from New York to California and doing long distance with her partner, who she's still with now. And stuff. And it's just a really cute video and I really liked it and I watched it like a bunch of times in a row. That's all. It's art. It's art. I'll fight you.

Mine is the clips in John Legend performing The Birds Don't Sing at the Vatican, making history as the first rappers to ever perform at the Vatican. But also Birds Don't Sing is probably one of my favorite songs from this year. It's a song about... their father passing um and telling the story about finding out that he's dead and the sort of mourning after that um and you know talking about their relationship and also you know there's like really beautiful lines in there about like

I don't remember the line verbatim, but like their mom had passed recently. So it's like, oh, like you're a general chivalry isn't dead. You didn't let her go alone. So it's a really beautiful song. And then for the Vatican with John Legend, it's just like incredible. So that's fine. It's John Legend and who? the clips the clips um you're welcome as pope leo by the way yeah thanks for letting that happen just some some quick

personal ones. One, the episode of the Lonely Island podcast where they talk about the song Ross Trent, which is... a song a lonely island song that's been out forever which is just about andy samberg being a white rastafarian and then they go through the song and it turns out that literally there are there are like three dozen different references to incredibly, like...

Everything is about a famous Rastafarian album, where it is the most densely layered. If it was on Song Genius, it would have highlighted every other word. And it's the stupidest song, and yet it is so... densely interwoven and i've listened to that song a million times that i've never uh never knew any of that so it's very funny do you also feel the more i listen to that podcast the more i love it um but do you also feel like it's a curse because

it convinces you that every SNL sketch is like the funniest fricking thing because like them reminiscing about it and like listening to it and reacting to it is like, God, this is hilarious. But like, I think if I watched it at the time, it'd be like, okay, another five out of 10 effort SNL. Thanks a lot. You know? Totally.

And you know what? That's kind of nice in a way. That's lovely. The other one is the book Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood, who is one of my favorite authors. The book is her kind of... working through essentially having long COVID and having her brain, which was already kind of poetic and abstract in a way that no one else's brain is spin out of her control. And then.

kind of towards the end of the book there's a chapter called the wound where her husband suffers this like major medical event and suddenly she has to take care of him because he has, like, an open wound in his chest, basically, that just needs to be, like, treated constantly. And it, like... It, like, brings her back to lucidity in this way that's just kind of amazing. And it's fictionalized, but it's, like, basically nonfiction. And it's so, it's just so beautiful. That's right.

Hey, Pop Demon Hunters. Soda pop. I love the soda pop. I'm really tired. Drink some soda pop. Hell yeah. Quick personal ones. Favorite music video this year, Boy Crazy by Kesha. She's had a heck of a comeback. Great track. I love Kesha. Cool, weird, grimy music video. Very objectifying of men in a way that's fun and odd looking. Favorite album by one of my new favorite bands.

Water by Anima. A-N-I-M-A! One of the most underrated bands of all time. I can't believe how few lists they have. Spell it again, hotshot. Anima! A-N-I-M-A! Okay. If you like Sylvan Esso, you'll like them. Indie poppy, hooky, electronic stuff. Best song of the album, Jumpy. And favorite YouTube video of the year, How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult.

by Elephant Graveyard. A true revolutionary working on YouTube today. A YouTube video like nothing else except his other stuff. And also the conclusion of like a big arc he's doing on Joe Rogan where he... He has listened to the Joe Rogan experience more than anybody ever should and has such a complete understanding of that man's mind. It's just fascinating and so artful and so funny. What was the name of that video again? I watched it, but I forgot.

How comedy was destroyed by an anti-reality doomsday cult. Okay. Sarah! Are you guys done? Okay. I asked you all to watch this YouTube video in preparation for today. It's the 1000 players simulate civilization rich and poor in Minecraft. I'm sure you all watched it. It's two hours.

it's about two separate it's about this guy who took a thousand players put them up 500 500 he took 500 and put them on a minecraft island that's like full of resources and then he took 500 and put them on a desolate wasteland at the baseball volcano

And essentially he watched each of them develop these civilizations. They developed very differently. Like the one, the island that was like... full of natural resources was all really friendly with each other and they were all very like what if we all just like held hands and like saying kubala and then they did the other side and it was very much more cutthroat and between them was a giant invisible wall

So they couldn't go from one island to the other island. Except for like one week later, he dropped the wall. And there were like, you know, rumors about what was going to happen. And I'm not going to spoil it, but it was very dramatic. And the way they do this video is he like had this entire experiment with the server, but they went in and they like reenacted.

some of the biggest moments between, like, the factions and stuff. So you have, like, Game of Thrones level, like, betrayals and assassinations and, like... just crazy like escape feats of people um so it ended up being like really good it's got 34 million views um definitely one of like the craziest things i've watched this year

about like what you can yeah it's just crazy what you can accomplish with minecraft yeah what's it called one more time 1000 players simulate civilization rich and poor by ish rich and poor i love that Is that it for great works of art? 2025, everybody? Pretty basic art year. I'll throw that Sinners scene with the music. I feel like it's really hard. Yeah, that scene specifically I would, yeah.

All right. What do we, what do you feel like is up? Question of the week. What is up with you guys? Max rehearsal season two, man, the sinner's music scene. Now, is there some Labubu's freak show that has momentum in this group? I think we at least have to talk about it. I didn't bring that thing up. It's a standout. It stood out to me. It turned children feral.

It did. It did. Well, so do, like, Pokemon cards. The Minecraft movie. And Chicken Jockey. Oh, we forgot to bring up the Chicken Jockey! Put Minecraft movie on there. A Minecraft film. Have any of us seen it? Oh, yeah. I saw it in theaters on my birthday. I watched four minutes and couldn't stomach anymore with my wife. You're a family member or whatever, right? No.

Good memory, Janet. You're lying. I was like, who's always your nephew? You want me to dox him? What's going on? What game are you playing here, Anson? Dox him. All right. Is it between La Boo Boo's rehearsal season two and Sinner's music scene? I mean, I like Sarah's description of that civilization in Minecraft. Pump it up. Thank you, Jeffum. I pulled that up for later watching. I really like Jeffum's Samus watercolor. Yeah, you're right.

I was shocked. Let me do this for you, man. Let me put it up there. If they're both up there, neither can win. I know, that's what I'm saying. Unless... What if it was just Min Max's art show? That's too much. That's too much, you guys. The greatest artwork of all time is the art that MinMax creates. Our own art. We happen to make the two best things.

Okay, we've had a good time. Can I move Labubu's down now? I'm waiting to lock it in. I don't think we've had enough time. Yeah, if you all feel, do you feel, Labubu fans, on this call, that Labubu's... If you can explain to me how they're different than... I'm here.

Except you have to gamble on them because you can't see what's in a box. So it's like Beanie Babies, but also gambling. If people sell them on the street, you can see what's in that box. I think a lot of things are Beanie Babies. Funko Pops are Beanie Babies. Bobbleheads are Beanie Babies. Cards are Beanie Babies. I agree with you, Janet. You think Funko Bobblehead would not put any of those in the greatest work of art of all? I stand by the sphere. I do not stand by LeBooBoo.

Okay. All right. The champions have cracked. Get the hell out of here. I had a great time walking around that street market in L.A. and looking at the Libubu clothes. I had a blast. Santiali was awesome. Santiali, greatest work of our... of all time yeah it's gonna do it to you every time yeah okay how do i spell that oh you're gonna put that in there it's fine okay cool is the rehearsal season two

One of the two. I feel like it's just been celebrated so much. Really? I haven't seen it. Is it winning Emmys or something? No. I mean, like, why would... No. We did a bonus pod about that. I mean, that's the thing. You sure should not everyone here talking about it a lot? We did one bonus pod about it. I feel like I've been hearing about it for a while. I wasn't on. Sorry. Ben, please. Please deafen yourself in discourse. I got Sarah private questions. No. I'm so confused.

Leo, what is it? I mean, I guess it's probably the rehearsal, right? Who has watched it here? That was like the decision makers. How dare you? It's about the lowest common denominator for Griswick of all time. You know, it's a popularity contest. It's the one that's most popular. It's objectively the best thing that was made this year. I would love anybody to make it up.

for anything else but here's what we have right now. I agree. Did you watch a thousand players simulate civilization? No, what are you supposed to do? Did you really ask us to watch it? Because I would have. Yeah, I did. I put it in the Slack channel. Yeah. I didn't see it.

All right, so that's taken. Sarah, I started to watch it. I didn't make it through. Oh, that's an attack. He was disappointed by it. That's dragging it down to the depths of hell. I would have watched the whole thing. Okay, congratulations. He is one of your worst traits, Jacob. Is the first one of this generation. Yes. Alright, congratulations. K-pop Demon Hunters number one. Rehearsal season two. Number two. Is that what's happening here? I'm getting my wish.

No. No, Jacob says no. Does anybody else have a thought? It doesn't look like the year when I left. I don't know, because I watched a little bit of the rehearsal season, too, and I kind of fell off of it. It's funny. I only made it through like 20 minutes of K-pop Demon Hunters, so I was kind of disappointed by it. I didn't even watch any of K-pop Demon Hunters, so it's kind of the worst one. I'm just saying, I still got my boo-boo. I don't know. I watched the whole thing.

I thought this is fine. Oh, it's good. You're lying. Congratulations to rehearsal season two, number one, and then runner-up is K-pop Demon Hunters for greatest work of art of all time for 2025. What an impassion. debate. It's so boring. Do people like K-pop demon hunters? Sinners I feel like is the lowest common denominator art piece. Congratulations Sinners music scene number one greatest work of art of all time 2025 the rehearsal season two.

runner-up. I feel like Ben wants to go to bed. I don't. I just want something definitive to happen. Ben refuses to admit that he wants to go to bed because he's the one that picked the time. I'll do another five hours of this podcast. I just want to hear a debate. It's getting spicy. I think the center's music scene is awesome. Yeah.

Great. It's like it's it's like everything that movie is doing in one scene. And and also you don't see it coming at all until it happens. And then you're like, of course, this is this is what it's all about. Yeah, it's a real visual and auditory feast within the film, which sounds so like I don't know. It's been a long day. It's weird to put these because I think the challenge every year is that.

there's not as much crossover in all these, as all the other categories have. So it does become, did you watch sinners if you did? Yeah. And if you didn't, you're like, this is just, these are just words on a paper to me a little bit, but I do think that scene is.

really beautiful and striking and it was like the standout of that one of the big standouts of that film to me i'm just asking no one saw it and didn't like it that's true but here's my here's my question people who doubled up on the rehearsal and sinners which would you put on top Stop touching your hair nub. Stop it now! Is it a crime to think? You're driving me like crazy. Is this how you think? It is now! I hate it.

I like the rehearsal because he spent years learning how to fly a commercial jet, and then he did it. That's fun. Yeah, I do. But if that's not art, then f*** the world. When I get flown from here to my Nan's house, I don't go, wow, what art. I do. Look, I have a hard time getting through Nathan Fielder stuff because it, like... I just have a hard time watching uncomfortable things. That's obviously the intent of it. And I think it does it very well.

I think it's super impressive and cool and interesting, and I do plan to finish watching it at some point. Okay, give it to it. I trust Kills. Congratulations. Congratulations on the rehearsal season two. Yeah, the light just exploded behind me. The sun is closing. It's like when the lights came on in Margarita. Oh, the sun's coming up. We've been podcasting so long. It's freaking morning. Yeah. Oh, my kid needs cereal. I'm saving some piss.

Okay. Yes. All right. Congratulations to the rehearsal season two for this record all time. 2025 runner up is the sinners music scene. Congratulations. And of course. The rest of the list. Best moment. Exhibition 33. Ending choice. Split fiction. Split screen finale is the runner up. Best game we didn't play.

Once Upon a Katamari, Deltran chapters 3 and 4 is the runner-up. Biggest news, EA going private. Runner-up, tariffs impacting the game industry. The dumbest thing, Treyarch co-founder drone into firefighting plane. Who wrote this? Runner-up is Kraft and CEO as ChatGPT to not pay bonuses. How to not pay bonuses? These sound fake. Yeah. The best thing is peak proximity chat and the runner-up is baby steps 45-minute.

Cut scene. That is the mid max awards for 2025. Everybody. Hang on. I'm so sorry, but real quick. I don't like that. This hinged on me. Someone who never saw. Clap louder. Clap louder. I value your opinion even if you haven't consumed the media you're talking about. It's so damn valued.

All right. There you go, everybody. We'll be back next week for the two tens, the debate about the actual best games released in 2025. Oh, we got two more huge episodes, everybody. And if you're at the $10 tier, if you joined the backstage past year, you want to help support.

independent games media directly you can unlock all of those discussions right now you can watch it all everybody we have the archives of those youtube streams waiting for you if you join that ten dollar tier and of course At the tail end, only for people at the $10 tier, the tail end of our discussions, we have the pissy zone where we let her rip and unpack our real feelings about everything that went down.

There's going to be a lot. I'm pissed if you thought we got pissy here. I'm pissed right now and I loved this. The piss is leaking this year. We got a piss outbreak. But there you go, everybody. Thanks so much. Tell a friend about MidMax. Subscribe to the podcast version. And again, leave a review before this Monday, including your social media handle. And you're automatically in the running to win 150.

steam codes we're not messing around here at min max as you can see from the running time of this episode of the podcast and the fact that we're giving away 150 games thank you so much for supporting us we'll be back next week everybody until next time be good have fun let's go