Good2Game Radio
Good2Game Radio is a podcast that offers discussion on video games, board games and the newest shows airing from the Marvel and Star Wars Universes. Join in and listen as your hosts Vance, Jaime and Tony share their perspectives and love of those topics.
Good2Game Radio
A Debate on Balatro as Game of the Year
What do adulting and gaming consoles have in common? Join Jaime and me as we navigate the quirks of living on our own, starting with the revelation that a trash can is more crucial than we ever imagined. Our chat then power-ups into the gaming universe, where we dissect Xbox's bold move towards digital gaming and Game Pass subscriptions, especially under the Black Friday spotlight.
Our conversation takes on the pricing terrain of Xbox Game Pass and its ripple effects on Black Friday deals—or the lack thereof—for Xbox consoles and Call of Duty games. We ponder whether Xbox is shifting its identity from console maker to a game publisher, hinting at a future where Halo might embrace the Unreal Engine for cross-platform harmony. Jaime also shares his misadventures in compiling a Black Friday deals list, battling the last-minute announcements from major retailers.
In our grand finale, we tackle the coveted title of "Game of the Year," questioning the ingredients that make a game truly exceptional. With contenders Final Fantasy Rebirth, and Astro Bot in the mix, we scrutinize whether DLCs should earn a spot on the podium. An unexpected entry, Balatro, stirs the pot, making us question why some standout titles are sidelined.
show right here. Hi folks, welcome to the game radio. This is tony speaking. I'm here tonight with jaime. What's going on, man?
Speaker 2:hey man, it's been a while. Sorry for for not being here. You know people argue with me when I say that I'm babysitting for my own kid. But I really am. People say you can't say it's babysitting with it when it's your own impossible.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad mine are all grown up and they're all out living their own lives now, pretty much for the most part.
Speaker 2:I got one you missed them, tony you missed them.
Speaker 1:The house is kind of boring really it was. It is kind of boring, uh, but that's fine, you know. Yeah, don't want to hold them back anymore any longer. Let them go learn their life lessons. You know, after us doing that ourselves, now it's like, oh, you kind of sit back and kind of chuckle watching them relearn everything that you've already learned. It's like I told you. I told you you didn't listen.
Speaker 2:What is like one of the things that you remember from like the first time that you ever moved out and lived on by yourself one thing that just like hit you that you're like oh, I never thought about this in particular uh, who's gonna clean the apartment?
Speaker 2:but for me, it was this particular moment that I was living in South Carolina. I got my apartment, I'm in my apartment, I go to Walmart and I get an inflatable mattress because that was a concept of a bed for me, right? No roommate, just by myself. And later that evening I went out and got some Taco Bell or something. And after dinner's done, I proceed to fold everything and I'm like let me throw this in the trash can. I didn't have a trash can. Yeah, it was like this magical moment that I'm sitting there thinking like, oh, I should have bought this. And then it's like what else should I have bought?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all these things that you didn't know worked in the background of living. Yeah, you don't appreciate, yeah right, who pays for the electricity, who pays for the water? Who buys all the stuff that you need to? You know, garbage bags and dishwashing.
Speaker 2:So now, you get to do this with your kids, who have moved out and have started doing their own thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know we try to do our best to talk them through like this, scenarios of you know this is what you should expect and of course, the problem run you probably run into it's like oh I, they can't buy the this because I don't have any money, so you don't want them money, a common problem that we all that we all have come across yeah, but you know, hey, you gotta live and learn it the hard way to for it to really sink in, I guess okay, so.
Speaker 2:so right before you hit the record button, I said something that got you all riled up and you're like we got to record this.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, you had brought up the fact, we were going through the fact, the fact, the topics that we were going to talk about tonight, and somehow we ended up on Xbox not wanting to sell consoles anymore.
Speaker 2:And I think you were giving me the example of how, like the black friday shopping, their stuff was more expensive than playstation yeah, I mean I I think I've told you in advance and I'm kind of I feel a little bit ashamed to say this out loud but I've kind of been toying around with the idea of buying an xbox series x, just having around getting it for game pass, maybe play some games, before really fully committing to buying it. I mean something like what I've heard you do in the past and I said, hey, black Friday is coming around, surely it's going to get some discount right, the console's been on the market for four years, even though they just released an Xbox Series X that's all digital and a two terabyte version. They're more well-established. One terabyte Series X it's all digital and a two terabyte version they're more well established. One terabyte series x it's gonna get a discount.
Speaker 2:And actually you know what I'll tell you this last december not for black friday, for this, for like around christmas time I specifically remember that it came down to 320 bucks and I didn't buy it. Then I thought I thought it's not worth it. So naturally, here I'm thinking, oh, it's gonna come down to 320 bucks and I didn't buy it. Then I I thought I thought it's not worth it. So naturally, here I'm thinking, oh, it's gonna come down to 320 bucks again. Yet again it did not by a long shot.
Speaker 2:But the point that I was making here is that when I was comparing the xbox seer sex all digital versus the playstation 5 all digital, or the Xbox again the 1TB versus the PlayStation 5, both with disc drives on them, xbox was always more expensive just for the base console, whereas PlayStation was cheaper and they were throwing in a, a second controller, a charging station, even a game in some instances. So this all started because I was saying like hey, here's my opinion. Somehow I think that xbox doesn't want to say how am I going to capture more sales?
Speaker 1:and this, to me, proves it so, yeah, I kind of chuckled, I kind of like, oh, I started laughing because, like, oh, I've won.
Speaker 1:I've warned all the xbox people that xbox didn't care about their console because everything that they've done over the last two generations has gone to not caring about the console, from going all digital in everything to going, you know, promoting game pass and making that like their driving force between behind their entire strategy for this generation. You know, game pass, game pass, game pass, game pass. You can play on anything right, because now you see those commercials like oh, your computers are at console, your phone is your console, your tablet is your console yeah, your tv is your console, you know.
Speaker 1:And all these xbox cheerleaders on youtube and stuff, you know, oh, you know, they were so concerned about beating playstation that they couldn't read the writing in the wall and see all the warning signs. What xbox was doing pretty much just tanking the whole console console idea. They know that the console market consists of like 300 million players and that it doesn't grow. They've stated that themselves, like, for some reason, you know, that market just doesn't grow that much. That's why game pass was their strategic move, because everybody has a tv right. So it's like oh, we can get the gamers up to 2 billion gamers and they'll all be on Xbox and we don't need a console for that. So this is where it's led to Like the console is dying. On the Xbox side, playstation is still holding on for now. Don't know how much longer that'll be, but for now it's still holding on. But that's why I was laughing and chuckling, because it's like oh, yeah, everything, everything we've said on this show for four years now. We've talked about coming yes, it's coming.
Speaker 1:So everybody gonna go run off to all the other youtubers and all the other podcasts get their expertise. But let me tell you from day one on this show we've talked about the diabolical plans, about how xbox was out to destroy the console. Hardcore console players and you know everything they do just continues to do that. And not only were there no sales for the xbox consoles right, I didn't even think about this till you brought it up. Uh, we were talking about call of duty zombies and you had like a hundred dollars that you you had to go buy games on black.
Speaker 2:Every year I take a hundred dollars and I buy whatever as much as I can with a hundred bucks right now.
Speaker 1:if you've been a call of duty player for any given amount of time, you know that. You know call of duty comes out in october and almost all the once you've bought it in October, they turn around and put it on sale on Black Friday. They do they do for sure. Yep, Guess what game was not on sale?
Speaker 2:I noticed that I 100% noticed that and I remember having this moment where I I just thought to myself that's weird. The last three games have been on sale, for black friday is it weird.
Speaker 1:Well, let's think about this right, because if you wanting, if you were looking to get a deal on call of duty on black friday, there was no deal to be had. Maybe digitally for a few bucks but not on playstation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, but yeah, on xbox I think you could get a couple bucks off, but there was no, you know, 39 black ops deal at best buy or anything like that. There was even a 49 one. There just was nothing. Um, why would they put it on sale? Because most people are going to have x game pass, right? So if you're already on the xbox ecosystem, you have game pass, so you're already getting the game, so it's part of your subscription. That leaves who's left to buy, call of duty, everybody who is not an xbox owner, everybody who's not an xbox owner. So that's why there's no sale, because, oh, you wanted that deal, guess what you should have got on the Game Pass. Now there's no deal. Remember how this was sold as supposed to be a good thing for consumers, for the gamers, right.
Speaker 2:For the gamers. Remember how it wasn't this year.
Speaker 1:Remember this acquisition was supposed to be good for gamers Right Right year. Remember this acquisition was supposed to be good for gamers right right. So now the game is full price unless you're on their on game pass. So how is that?
Speaker 2:good for gamers. So think about this, though. I mean, if the sales numbers has remained constant, and like in players like me who, year over year, will say I'll wait three weeks so I can get $20 off, now they're kind of saying, hey, we still got the business from all these guys, but now they got it for full price. And I think that what you're kind of building up to is that I doubt that we'll see the same discounts on these as we have before until it's the next generation. Right, because guess what? Guess what game wasn't so modern warfare 3 was being sold for 20, right? Right, because at this point, they're basically saying, hey, if you still want to play the latin, here's your shot at it. Guess what? For this new one, black Ops 6 is probably not going to go on sale.
Speaker 1:Here's my prediction until next year, around this time period, which, at that point, the newest Call of Duty is going to be out Exactly Now the good thing, not that I'll be playing Black Ops 6 in a year, but the one thing is and I looked this up when I do decide to maybe buy this at a discount if it ever does go on discount on playstation the game has cross safe.
Speaker 1:So all the progression that I've made on, okay, we'll be coming over to playstation one side I guess that makes sense because it's tied to my activision account right, yeah okay, so that's the good thing, but I won't be playing this game in a year because one the next version will probably drop and and and, and you know we'll all have moved on to the next, to the next generation. So the real question is here how much? How much are they gonna lose monetarily? Are they gonna make any money? Are they gonna lose any money? Uh, I believe that further down the road, xbox is just going to be a publisher okay, I I agree with you and you know what.
Speaker 2:You know what actually has led me to agree with what you just said? Did you hear the the the rumblings that the new halo game is no longer going to use whatever engine has been proprietary to Microsoft and their studios and they're moving it to Unreal, the Unreal Engine? No, they're not. The next Halo game is going to be done using the Unreal Engine.
Speaker 1:Guess what facilitates, if you do that, porting it over to other consoles, yeah, so, yeah, it makes sense. They're good. They're moving toward just being a publisher. I'm not. Would be surprised if a version game pass light shows up on playstation yeah, you want to play our games on a different system.
Speaker 1:Here you go yeah, instead of just making a port per se where did you just buy it through the playstation store? I know playstation is not going to want to do that because it's going to take this negotiation on how big of a cut playstation is going to get, but but playstation already does something like that with ea play, don't they? Yeah, they already do that with ubisoft and ea and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So this would have to be some similar deal.
Speaker 2:But yeah, game pass light on on playstation well, okay, so we, we just went through the black friday season. Uh, as I said, I always this is something you know I'll save like $100 and then I'll buy several games and I usually put together a spreadsheet that I share amongst the community and say, hey, here's the things that I know are going to be on sale. It was really hard to come up with that list this year because Walmart Target target best buy waited to like the last possible minute to announce what was going to be on sale. But I want to share with you, tony, that I came out with four games, four games that actually added up to 95 bucks. Okay, and there's a reason why it added up to 95 and not 100. Okay, this one you know about. But I bought Silent Hill and actually it was on sale for 30 bucks at Walmart first. Other outlets caught on because they were losing all the sales. They had it on sale for $50. Yeah, but if you are Walmart Plus subscriber, you can get it for $, like before. Everyone else did it. That was a deep discount and you know, that's the type of discount that I was kind of hoping I would see on call of duty. They, it never goes down to 30, this new right, but I have seen it go from like 69.99 to 40 and in years prior, but to me, to me, this one was the deepest discount that I got.
Speaker 2:Other game I picked up was Sonic Crush Shadow Generations for 30 bucks. This game is not bad. My only complaint is that the game they actually divided the campaigns and so you have the original Sonic Generations game and then it's like a second game, which is the Shadow Generations game. It's really short but it is really fun. I mean, I really think that you know they did a really good thing by giving us this extra content. Anyway, that's game two. Game number three was a game that nobody knew was on sale, but it was actually Suicide Squad and I got it for the unbelievably low price which you might argue was too high of a price of $15. The deluxe version no, the base version. Okay, the deluxe version was not on sale anywhere. Okay, right, maybe digital.
Speaker 1:I didn't check this I, it was, I think it actually, I think it was on sale digitally, huh I didn't check that. I'll admit the problem is it's digital. Yeah, right, so actually, yeah, I was. I was really toying with the idea of picking up the suicide squad, I think at what 15 is that what you said?
Speaker 2:well, it was on sale for 20. But remember, remember two years ago, tony, two years ago that I bought modern warfare 2, that they didn't give me the steel box. Gamestop gave me a five dollar credit. Two years later I finally used it on this game. That shows how much of a history or how much of a memory I have, that I got shafted by gamestop to. For two years I've given them none of my business yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Uh. Suicide squad is still right now. It's cyber monday today. Uh, it's 18.99 at best buy for the regular ps5 edition, right right.
Speaker 2:So I picked it up for for 20, plus the, you know, minus the $5 voucher that it ended up with for $15. And the last little gem that I picked up, which was I only picked it up because it's a Game of the Year nominee it was Bellatro and we were talking about this. I picked it up for $20. So at the end it totaled up $95. I have spent all of my time out of these four on playing balatro and and shadow generations. I finished shadow. It's a really short campaign but it's a good one, it's fun, it's really creative and in uh, something I would really highly recommend. Yeah, and balatro was like such a surprise it is. It is one of those like fun, addictive games and actually you said something earlier that makes a lot of sense the fact that this is the type of game that uh, gives people who have, like some maybe, addiction to gambling stuff, something that will just provide that fix that they need, because this thing will hook you.
Speaker 2:It really will all right, gamblers, you know, stay away from this game because it's basically like a combination between solitaire meets, poker meets, whatever game that you can make cards that basically break all the rules. And my son was upset with me that I was playing this game because on the back of the box says cheat your way to victory.
Speaker 2:And he was like dad, you can't play this game, it tells you to cheat and so there's like, there's like joker cards in this game and the joker cards provide you with um, well, first off, it's like I said, it's poker, so you score by making poker hands right, but you make uh games, you, you, when you, when you're playing, at the end of each round, you get the ability to like buy packets, packs of cards you can buy. Like the ability to buy packs of cards, you can buy additional cards so that, instead of playing with a deck of 52 cards, you play with I don't know 53, up to whatever, how many cards you bought. You buy tarot cards that give you like Wait you can buy with real money additional cards Well no, Otherwise it'd be like a gambler's delight, right?
Speaker 1:Wait, this is opening up a whole other dimension to this. You're telling me you can buy cards.
Speaker 2:At the end of each round you're giving money based on how well you performed. Okay, in between rounds you always land at a shop. In the shop you can buy two cards that are like revealed that it's like hey, you can buy this card, or this card, you can buy a voucher. The voucher gives you, like, additional ways that you can break the game like they like. The voucher might be like hey, you can discard, can discard one more hand for your playthrough, or you can get an extra hand. Or one voucher was no, I think it wasn't a voucher. One voucher is like hey, you can hold additional Joker cards in your deck, or you can buy packs, packs of tarot, celestial or just cards. So you kind of stack the deck and make it do real combinations.
Speaker 2:But the crazy part is when you start getting joker cards, and joker cards have different wild effects. So as you play a hand, for example, a pair would be like hey, a pair's worth 10 chips and a multiplier of two, so that's total 20 points. But to the chips you add the value of the cards. So let's say that you make a pair of 10s, so you had 10 chips. You get another 20 because you played two 10s, so that's 30. And then multiplier of two, you end up with 60 points, and so that's how it scores. But you might have different Joker cards and there's like I was looking at my phone trying to figure out how many cards it's either 70 or 150 possible Joker cards that you can unlock, and I haven't unlocked all of them. Some of them will be like hey, if you play a odd number card, your multiplier goes times four, or plus two, or every time you play a two pairs, you will generate a random tarot card. Or some joker cards are like hey, instead of holding five jokers, you can hold six, and two times you have to make it up through eight, through eight rounds uh, not eight rounds, eight, and what? How do you pronounce it?
Speaker 2:Antis, so you have to play eight, eight times, and it's always. There's always a small blind, a medium blind and then a boss. There's boss fights, and it's weird to think about a boss fight with poker. But the boss fight is like hey, all your spades are debuffed, they don't count. Or any cards that you've played before, they don't count. There's one that I hate and it's like totally random, and it says you have to reach the required score in one hand, or there's another one that's kind of challenging where it'll be like you can only play the first hand that you play. If you play a pair, you can only score you getting pairs or getting three of a kind or straights or whatever, yeah. So the game challenges you, but it starts getting wild eventually because you know round one is you have to score 300 points, round two 450, round three 600, and that's when you beat the first, uh, the first auntie. So and you're like yeah, I feel good right traditionally like a rogue light.
Speaker 1:So this is like a rogue light card game, right? So traditionally you would be playing a character that has life points and, yes, you would go through like a dungeon of some sort and you'd be encountering creatures or bosses and you fight them and then you continue to do that, uh, until you die right, and then you start over and that's it, and then anything that you've acquired weapons or skills there might be usually very incremental improvements to your character or your equipment.
Speaker 1:That you will carry into your next playthrough until you do this enough times and you start getting stronger and stronger. So that's, this is how. This is how this is working well with cards, right with cards.
Speaker 2:But the thing is is that you don't carry over the cards. Now what does kind of carry over is that if you happen to unlock a card because you never came across it before, either by opening the pack or it appears in the store, it basically now becomes available.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it's available to your storefront.
Speaker 2:It's available to your storefront, but again it's very random, the cards that appear in the storefront. Okay, so every time you purchase these cards, the money that you earn at after you finish each round. Okay, so the poker wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you continue until you're out of money, right? Is that how you? That's like your end run is when you run out of money.
Speaker 2:Your end run is to beat eight antis. That's it, and if you don't, then it's over. You lose, you start again.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But what I was saying is that you start early as 300 points and then you can also select the deck. Now that you do keep, you can have the red deck, which gives you four hands, three discards. The blue deck that might give you three hands, four discards. I'm right now playing a deck that allows you to have an extra joker slot but one less hand. So I I need to reach the required points to beat the round in three hands, which sometimes I'll luck out, and I'll find either a joker card or a voucher that gives me an extra hand so I can kind of level it out. But dude twice, I've made it to like the very last boss fight before beating the eighth ante man. It's ridiculous. It's like, with three or four hands, score a million points. It's like what?
Speaker 1:so I need I what I'm gonna need you to do. Uh, homies, I'm gonna need you to post your achievements in this game as you play to the discord, because I noticed that one of our listeners, who's on my steam friends list, is playing bellatro as we are speaking yeah now if you want to play it.
Speaker 2:By the way, I bought it for the playstation 5 and it's it's playable, but I enjoyed it so much that I actually bought it for my phone okay, so you are seriously addicted already it I have not played marvel snap in a week.
Speaker 2:Man gotcha, it's, it's, it's that addictive, but again, but so okay. So let's tie this back now to the main thing that we were talking about. So those are the four games that I bought this this season. I haven't touched the suicide squad and I I did install silent hill because I want to play that, but it's kind of hard for me to play when my kid is around, so he was out of school. I didn't have a lot of play time without him there. But Bellatro, even though I'm raving about it, I'm saying it's a good game I'm enjoying. It Was also nominated for Game of the Year and, if you remember, last time we all spoke, we were all saying like what the heck is this?
Speaker 1:game, like nobody knew anything about this game and I've I voiced my criticism of that, I think, in the last episode. I'm like how I know we talked earlier, before we came on air, about how these games are nominated for jeff keely's game of the year show, right, and you were telling it that it's a panel up to a hundred media and they give their nominations of who they thought was game of the year and then they're awarded points and then they show up on the list, basically. So this game is not only nominated for game of the year, but it's also nominated for half a dozen other categories, like independent game of the year, indie game of the year and so on and so forth. I can't remember all the different categories is now native for a whole bunch of them. But just focusing on the main category, game of the year, their equivalent of like movie of the year, right, like this, is up there with like what's what? The it's meta phantas, the game from Atlas, the anime game Metaphor Rephantasia.
Speaker 1:So it's going against that game, it's going against Final Fantasy. Vii, final Fantasy and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:I'm like, does it deserve to be in this category? No, okay, I have played this year's Astro Bot. Astro Bot is an amazing game. Final Fantasy VII definitely deserves to be this year's game of the year. I haven't played ReFantasia. I'm not going to jump into another Persona-like game from Atlus. I never did Black Mesa Wukong, although that apparently has a chance. But Bellatroro dude. Like the visual presentation of this, the music of this man. It looks like this was developed by a team of like high school students right.
Speaker 1:So is there any voice acting in this game?
Speaker 2:none, no voice acting, so you're looking at uh like 8-bit graphics, 16-bit graphics and I kid you not, solitaire on your windows pc looks better than what bellatro looks like okay, and you're you're dealing with cards, so really we're talking about the mechanics of the game.
Speaker 2:the whole selling point of this game is the creativeness that they have developed to make both solitaire and poker combine into this weird mesh and make it really fun and engaging. But again they're selling the concept of the idea. The game itself doesn't look wow. There's no voice acting. The music looked like it came out of an Atari game.
Speaker 1:It's that cheapo and I think you wanted to bring up the question what criteria should be looked at for game of the year?
Speaker 2:Now you've got gotta be fair to some extent, because otherwise you kind of can't have an indie game ever, or like a studio with a lower budget than others ever be a candidate for game of the year. I get that, but again, as much, as as much fun as this game is, it just seems to me like it, there's a better category for it outside of game of the year so what's the most important criteria?
Speaker 1:let's kind of go over what we think. I don't know what their criteria is. I'm sure they have criteria that they're going based off of. I'm assuming that they do, but okay alan wake too, is it? Fun. I don't know, was Alan Wake fun, I mean Alan Wake 2 fun? I don't know. I didn't play it. It's a dark mystery game.
Speaker 2:The people who have played it say that the controls are horrible.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I mean there still has to be some element of fun to it, right? It just can't be poo-poo, not all I'm like. No, I mean it's got to be fun, but at some level it has to be fun yeah, if you want the games to sell, a copy right, yeah, sure right, okay, so is that the most important element?
Speaker 1:it's, it's the fun level, or is it it its fun level or what makes the game unique and the uniqueness of it? Something never before seen in the industry, something groundbreaking, something they've broken the fourth wall with, or something like that. Does that happen? Does that come into play?
Speaker 2:I mean they should, because you want to recognize the developers that are able to craft these masterpieces. But again, I'm challenged with saying game of the year. I mean if you would have told me best indie award absolutely hands down, yes, even best strategy game, sure, why not? Compared to all the stuff that's out there?
Speaker 1:Okay, so you played Final Fantasy Rebirth, right, I did. Yeah, you have like 100 hours in it Tons of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, all right. I mean yeah, and you've played Bellatio and I've played also Astro, bot, astro.
Speaker 1:And now.
Speaker 2:Bellatio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. So is Final Fantasy better than Bellatro? Oh easy, yes, easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay Is Astro.
Speaker 1:Bot better than Bellatro? Yes, okay, so why is?
Speaker 2:it in this category.
Speaker 2:Astro Bot is one of those weird games, tony, that takes you to another era of gaming. It has this magic where it made me think of like me, playing the Super Mario 64 for the first time ever, where it's like, wow, I can't believe things can look like this and be fun, whereas Bellator is like, oh, here's Solitaire with a twist. Okay, let me flip the question here a bit. Elden Ring, shadow of the Earth Tree. You played the original game, right? Yes, and it won Game of the Year in 2022. Technically, should DLC for the game that doesn't but give you more of the same game. Would you consider that to be a game of the year?
Speaker 1:No, no, I would not. I mean, that's just taking a slice of what you've already done and been been awarded for and re reintroducing it as something new.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't even think that from from software is saying hey, here's a brand new game, Right, they're just saying like here's new content, Okay.
Speaker 1:But would you say, if you were to compare Elden Ring DLC to Bellatro, which one is more game of the year material?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Elden Ring all day long again. Right, I don't discount what volatro was able to create. I think they did a really interesting and fun twist on a price established concept. But I don't think it's it and I think it's like, hey, here's one of the greatest games, okay, and if it is, guys, we did that.
Speaker 1:I think the real question in this case is what did not make the list right. That's what did not make the list that your opinion is better than either any of these games or Bellatro in particular.
Speaker 2:I have some reserves about this game because of some choices that they did for development and the story and content. But I keep on hearing that dragon age, the veil guard, got shafted severely for this one.
Speaker 1:Okay, I like dragon age. Is it game of the year? I don't know if it's game of the year, but it there's. A lot of work went into the game. It's fun, it looks great.
Speaker 2:Is it better than dlc content for elden ring?
Speaker 1:yes, because dlc content doesn't deserve to be in the category All right. Here I want to run off some names of games.
Speaker 2:You tell me if this should take the place of any of these games. Man, I would even say Like a Dragon, infinite Wealth.
Speaker 1:Yep, that released in 2024. Okay so, tekken 8. Over Bellator. Yes, yes, prince of Persia Thai. Okay, january so Tekken 8. Over Bellator. Yes, prince of Persia Thai, okay, helldivers 2. Helldivers 2. Yeah, I would agree, stellar Blade.
Speaker 2:Which wasn't. I don't think Stellar Blade got a lot of love this year, did it?
Speaker 1:I mean, the sales numbers say otherwise.
Speaker 2:Well, sales numbers, but as far as, as far as I think, it got nominated for Best Action Game, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, that's where it is, and it's in there with Hail Divers 2. And Call of Duty, black Ops 6.
Speaker 1:Rise of the Ronin. Never tried it. Hades 2. That's early release.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't consider it an early release.
Speaker 1:Dragon's Dogma. Now I remember there was a whole lot of positive positivity with this game outside of some monetary issues, monetization stuff. I think that was going on right. Dragons dogma, though, is nominated for best rpg so it's good enough for best RPG, but not good enough for game of the year. That's right. Okay. Losing out to a card game? Yeah, right, right. Good enough for RPG of the year, which is like the major cat, a major, major genre, which interestingly enough, doesn't actually fall.
Speaker 2:Let me me. Let me. Let me go back a year, and last year, in the cat, in the one of the nominees for best rpg was a game that I loved and it was called sea of stars, which was also developed lower budget, old school mechanics. I would even put sea of stars better than bellatro, because, again, it's not, it's just a different, it's a different type of game. If you said best puzzle game, okay, bellatro hands down, takes anything that I've played this year right, here's one for the old xbox crowd out there.
Speaker 1:Uh, sinwa saga, hellblade 2. I don't know. I mean I I just don't understand how that game ends up in in this category, not to to knock the developer or developer no, no sure, I mean, they created a good game. Yeah, and it just if you start questioning and I know there's a hundred media, a hundred media, people on a panel or whatever. However they do it, it's weird. Oh wait, wait wait, wait.
Speaker 2:Let me just put it out there. You were the one who said this. You were the one who said this Bellatro gets nominated for Game of the Year and sells Spike.
Speaker 1:Is there more to the?
Speaker 2:story. Is there more to this?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I mean, I don't know. There's just it just seems awfully strange An indie game out of nowhere, developed by, you know, a small studio. Then you know, you get on a list and all of a sudden your sales spike. You know that's. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's questionable to me. Yeah, anyway, that's Bellatro. Check it out, tony. If you want, I have it on my phone. I can lend you the physical copy so you can try it out and maybe you give me your thoughts on it. But again, good game. Yes, this level of recognition for me, at least for me, very questionable, all right. So, in line with the game of the year, wars, you know, the best fighting, best fighting game nominees this year are dragon ball, sparking, zero decent grand blue fantasy versus rising.
Speaker 2:I would argue that the grand blue game has been around for a while. This is, this is again an expansion to the base grand blue versus game tech and eight outstanding game. I love it. I still play it. I actually think that this one should take it. But here's where it gets kind of spicy. Multi Versus was nominated for Best Finding Game, which, oh, by the way, multi Versus won Best Finding Game for the Game Awards in 2022 as a beta, as a beta. To me, a beta shouldn't be as a. It's not, not a finished game. How are you giving it an award for best anything? If anything, they should have given redfall a, an award for best unfinished game.
Speaker 1:um that's a great new category, right but anyway.
Speaker 2:So multiverse is a game that already won this award two years ago is being nominated again. To me, that's questionable. And the other one that's really questionable is marvel versus fight versus capcom, fighting game collection, arcade classics. They grabbed a bunch of Marvel versus Capcom versus Street Fighter versus whatever and packaged it into a collection right of video games like Capcom does they do this like with? They'll do like a Street Fighter collection, a Darkstalker connection. Now they did a Marvel versus Capcom fighting collection, but these are games that were released in the 1990s. Man, they didn't enhance the game, they didn't give it new music, they didn't give it new mechanics. It's just the same game that's been, uh, more than 20 years out. Released. How? What's the thought process? What? Why is that? Shouldn't that have been game of the best fighting game 20 years ago Based?
Speaker 1:on what we read earlier, the criteria where they have the 100 media outlets present. Are they coming up with a list of the games themselves, or are they being presented with a list of games to pick from?
Speaker 2:No, they're basically being told hey, mr Media Outlet X, here's the categories. You are able to nominate whatever you think should be in these categories, as long as it meets the criteria that it was released between this date and this date and it's not Hogwarts Legacy legacy. And then everyone votes and then, you know, jeff keely comes out and says hey, we've got the greatest games that were released this year, which was, you know, put together by a panel of experts. It's really a voting system.
Speaker 1:You would think that's how the lot tried that up here.
Speaker 2:It was a joke for everybody that's weird.
Speaker 1:Some media places are bigger than others, right? Some were, you know one or two people, some were 100 people or even bigger. I mean, who who's designated like? If you're looking at like a big media outlet, you know that has 100 people. I'm assuming that's big. Who, who, who, who on that staff is designated with that? Probably their main editor or something like that, yeah probably.
Speaker 2:But when they get submitted to the Game Awards they're all counted independently and they say, okay, I don't know, final Fantasy got overwhelmingly more votes than any other game in this category. Boom, it goes into that. And this category boom, it goes in into that. And then they turn it over to the fans and say fans, now that we've got the best candidates out there, you tell us which one's the best one yeah, okay, I mean, I don't know, I don't know, but I all I know is that from the fighting game community there is a lot of like eyebrows being raised that these are not the best fighting games that came out.
Speaker 2:You should take multi versus out. You should take marvel versus kind of come out, fighting conduction out. You should even take grand blue fantasy versus out, because there were other um other games that were released this year. Actually, the first version of this grand blue fantasy versus game came out in 2020. So this, this is dlc basically.
Speaker 1:So this is the nominees. How is the winner picked? I know that if I go to the game awards nominations, uh, yeah, yeah, there should be some sort of ad process where there's like a second going over. You know, I'm saying like right, because you know these questions would be raised. I'm like how, why is how is this game that won in 2022, again up for game of the year when it's not?
Speaker 2:Well, because now it's a full game. It's no longer a beta. I don't know we're 10 days away from sitting down and watching this, but I'm excited to see what we get.
Speaker 1:I don't think.
Speaker 2:Bellatro's going to win this.
Speaker 1:I don't think so either, but you never know. What was the game that won a couple years ago? It was made by a small studio, right, it was about a couple getting into the forest or something, had the two little characters and you had to play a co-op.
Speaker 2:Oh, it takes two. It takes two. They won't game either way. A little bit of a plug. It's going to be in playstation plus dlc games for this next month. I'm excited to download it and play with my son.
Speaker 1:This sounds cool I mean I won't be playing it. It doesn't seem fun to me at all. I mean I don't know. I mean I don't. Well, I'm going to be texting you, being like Tony, this game is awesome. Then you'll say this game deserves to be game of the year. Well, that's it that was the game that beat out God of War. Ragnarok Did it. I think so.
Speaker 2:Wow Okay.
Speaker 1:Or Horizon Forbidden West, or one of those two.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised because the other God of War did win Game of the Year in 2018.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it didn't go up against. It Takes Two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right on, there you go.
Speaker 1:Alright, thanks again for another great episode. We're four days away from the drop of Marvel Rivals. We're getting our community geared up and ready to play that on our Discord so we can team up, and ready to play that on our Discord so we can team up and be an unstoppable force of whatever Unstoppable force. The Avengers what's Captain America say? Assemble, yeah, avengers, assemble.
Speaker 2:That's what we're doing on the Discord. So if you want to, get in on that.
Speaker 1:Click on the Discord link in the description. It's brand new. Updated today.
Speaker 2:Updated today so it's brand new friday night. What is it? 8 30 eastern, eastern what time did I say anyway, friday night, 9 30 central, we're playing open central.
Speaker 1:that's what, that's what we are yeah.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, people are going to be waiting for me for an hour. Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, I'll talk to you later. Thanks for joining me. Catch you later, my friend. Bye, bye, thank you.
