#61 Our favorite games of the year (so far)

2024 has been one of the years of all time for games! A lot have come out, some quickly forgotten, some we're still playing. Today we figured we'd do a little midpoint check-in on our favorite games of the year so far. Also, a cameo by videogamedunkey...?!

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SHOW NOTES
Check out MRIXRT's newest video, "How Language Shapes Legacy" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGIUJgipSuU&pp=ygUGbXJpeHJ0

8 minutes in we mention a thread from a former Square Enix employee divulging information about the company in a pre-Fortnite world. It is absolutely recommended reading. Here is a link to the start of the thread:
https://x.com/JNavok/status/1793779717813723521

TODAY'S CRUBCAST HOSTS
Brody: https://www.youtube.com/@RACROX
Chris: https://www.youtube.com/@MykonosFan
Kevin: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGoldenBolt
Moriarty: https://www.youtube.com/@reallycool

CHAPTERS
00:00 Gamers, we have been gaming in 2024
02:25 Why Palworld is Moriarty's favorite game ever
12:58 How FF7 Rebirth made Chadley the true villain
22:49 Obligatory "Kevin and Chris like Yakuza" segment
38:08 Dunkey asks Brody about Animal Well
54:04 MickJaegar's Crubscriber Question of the Week

Creators & Guests

Host

Brody

Brody is the owner of the RACROX channel on YouTube. Ask him about the Spyro remakes.

Host

Chris

Chris is the owner of the MykonosFan channel on YouTube. He hasn't been to Mykonos.

Host

Kevin

Kevin is the owner of The Golden Bolt channel on YouTube. He's a boul.

Host

Moriarty

Moriarty is the owner of MRIXRT on YouTube, it's @reallycool.

What is Crubcast?

The Crubcast is a weekly podcast tackling various gaming and life topics with a touch of controlled chaos.

What's the best game that's come out in the first half of 2024?

We don't know, we all have bad taste, but we're gonna talk about the games that we liked so far.

My name's Kevin, I'm here with Moriarty.

Hi, M.

Hello.

I'm here with Chris.

Hello.

Yo.

And I'm here with Brody.

Hey.

And they all made the same sort of grunts, so if you're in the audio realm, I hope you're excited for that.

We're talking about the best games of the year so far.

There's a good list of games that have come out this year, contrary to what everybody on Twitter seems to always say about video games.

But that's because there weren't any Nintendo games that came out in the first half of the year, so those babies had nothing to play.

I'm also a baby.

How quickly do you forget Princess Peach Showtime?

Oh, I didn't forget.

Kevin.

Even the best reviews of that game were like, yeah, it's okay.

You can play it again.

It's there.

50 bucks.

So I figure we'll go round table and kind of just name what our current game of the year is for the first half of the year, and then we'll talk about them.

M, what's your game of the year so far?

So, boy, I have a lot of thoughts about this, so we'll come back to it.

I'm gonna explain why it's Palworld and nothing else.

I'll explain that, because there's a lot of caveats to that.

There are so many asterisks next to this.

Honestly, it's fair, because I think even most of, I think all of ours are gonna have asterisks, especially probably Brody's.

Brody, what's your game of the year?

God, that's a tough call, because honestly, I'm in the boat of thinking there haven't been a whole lot of games this year, but then I look at the list of the games I've played, I've played 11, I've played 11 games.

Not all of them came out this year, but it's low for me, but I guess it's still pretty high on average.

If I had to pick from this list, I would probably pick Animal Well.

That's the one I kind of expected you would pick, so that's fair.

Chris, I think you and I might have the same one, I'm going to guess, but what's your game of the year?

Take a shot if this one surprises you.

You won't have to drink.

It's the latest like a dragon game is probably my favorite so far.

Who would have thought?

Infinite Wealth?

I think that's also mine.

I have a big old list here.

And every time I think about any other game that I really liked from this year, Yakuza 8 was better.

So I'll be different and I'll say Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but I don't think I believe that.

Oh, the game you were given by Square Enix that we both contractually have to say that was given to us by Square Enix or else we get in trouble for 12 months?

In the last year or more, we had gotten a single game from Square Enix, so we must disclose that every time we talk about Square Enix legally.

Thank you, Square Enix, for that.

I didn't get it from Square Enix.

Okay, so, M, let's go to you first, and we'll hit on Palworld.

In ten words or less, explain all of your nuanced thoughts on your caveats.

This year's games really suck.

I hated it.

Badly.

You got one more.

Alright, we got two wins in five minutes, let's go!

We got a good episode coming up.

Okay, so, we all played Palworld together on stream.

Well, the three of us and Justin did, I should say.

Brody, you're Justin for this podcast now.

Ooh, it's me.

I mean, he was there as frequently as Justin was, to be fair.

That's fair.

Justin was just running away from us.

He was our father the entire time.

I enjoyed the bit I played of Palworld for what it was, but it was also, I played it like an early access game, which it was and is, you know?

So, I had that metered perspective on it, where I think a lot of people expected it to be the game that sold 40 million copies instead of just being an early access game that also sold 40 million copies.

I think it was 20, 25 or 30 million copies.

It was something insane, either way.

Absolutely insane.

People may not understand that this is one of the best selling games of all time, just one of the craziest best selling games of all time.

And it probably will remain one of the best selling games, like I bet it's in the top 50.

That's definitely the top 50.

One of the craziest things, made so much money, and it's not particularly good, but I spent a lot of time with it, right?

I played it for, I don't know, 50 or 60 hours, I had a separate world with you guys, I had a world with my partner, I played the game enough to feel that I completed it, I didn't do everything, I didn't get the jet dragon or anything, but it's my first Pokemon game and I completed it, I feel good about that and I'm happy with it, but that's not why it's the game of the year, because I don't look fondly on my time in Palworld, I don't look back and be like, man, I enjoyed it, it was fine, it was so fine, it was one of the most mid-experiences ever, but like, what else is there this year that I would consider to be really, really good, right?

And it's like you've got Helldivers 2, I mean, that was fine, but that's not a game that I look at fondly, I enjoyed playing that with my friends, I could say the same thing about Fortnite, right?

Like it's the exact same experience to me between Helldivers and Fortnite.

I've been playing The First Descendant recently, which is just, it's a carbon copy of Destiny with absolutely no heart or soul whatsoever.

Oh, so a carbon copy of Destiny.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

It's right there.

You know, we've got Manor Lords, which was another early access game that I played for like a day and a half, and then I was like, yep, I've experienced all there is to experience there.

Most recently, I've been playing Kill the Justice League, and it's not that bad, to be clear.

It's terrible, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

And like, what I find is that I'm in this, this weird limbo where everything feels really soulless to me, right?

Like every game that I've been playing, I feel like Stan in South Park, right?

Where it's like everything is just absolute garbage.

And go ahead.

Have you played the new hit Hoyoverse game, Zenless Zone Zero?

I have not.

Hashtag, I'm not sponsored.

Thank you for beating me to it.

It all feels really, really soulless is the problem, right?

And it's sort of, it's not surprising to me that this is the year of the layoffs, right?

And I saw maybe two or three weeks ago that New Zoo, who does a lot of surveys and statistics and they're really good at putting out reports on industries, and they put out a report on the industry of gaming, which they do every year, and found that 60% of the playtime of all games were spent on games that are six years old or older.

60% of all playtime for the year 2024 was spent in Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, League of Legends, The Sims 4 and Grand Theft Auto V.

And boy, it sure does feel that way, doesn't it?

Because those are the games that I played this year.

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft.

I've been playing a lot of Fortnite.

I've been playing a lot of The Sims, right?

It goes back to that thing we talked about a number of episodes ago.

I don't remember exactly which episode where we were talking about that Twitter thread from a former Square Enix marketing employee of some sort who was talking about the stuff that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and 16 and etc.

have been running into where they're being seen as disappointments in terms of sales, not because of the sales performances themselves but because if you just put that money in the stock market, you would have made more of a return over that time span in part because these games were being developed and pitched with the idea that, oh, well, these are the games we'll be competing with in this time window so we just need to get people's 60 or now $70.

Compared to now, now it's competing for time as well because Fortnite is free, so why would I spend $70 and time on a thing when I can just spend zero on the on Zenless Zone Zero, the next hit game from Hoyover's hashtag not sponsored?

Zenless Zone Zero?

It will be.

Yo.

I mean, the thing is, though, right, like Netflix and we've said it, I know I've said it several times on this very podcast, Netflix doesn't consider other streaming services to be a competitor, right?

They consider Fortnite to be their main competitor and Fortnite doesn't consider, you know, your big, you know, whatever, single player game to be a competitor, it doesn't matter, right?

Like they look at these these time sinks, which are typically free, as the big thing, the First Descent that I mentioned is a free game, you know, Palworld was on Game Pass, Helldivers 2 was on everything for free for a lot of people, you know, on PlayStation and stuff.

It was actually not free on PlayStation, believe it or not.

I thought it was.

That's the one.

That's the one they didn't put for free, as they usually do.

It was still like $19 or whatever.

It's not a big investment.

These are cheap games and or they're free games, the Hoyoverse games.

I mean, like, you know, Roblox is free and Minecraft, everybody has a copy of it by now.

In fact, that might be the most expensive game that's on these lists because I think it never goes on sale less than $30.

And yet, you know, this is where all the time gets spent.

And I don't know, man, like when we talk about the idea of investing a game and we look at like, I'm sorry, I'm kind of rambling here.

When we looked at the the cost of, oh, Tomb Raider failed and Hitman failed and Sleeping Dogs failed and all of these games sold two to four million copies and you go, well, no, they didn't fail.

And they sold a lot more than that, to be clear.

Like I think Tomb Raider failed with like eight million sales.

Right, you know, they didn't fail.

They're huge mega hits.

But then you compare that against, well, if we just invested all of that money in Nvidia and it's like, yeah, if I'd invested 10 grand in Nvidia, I'd be a millionaire today.

I'll jump off the depressing part of what you were saying to jump into Final Fantasy in a moment.

I do want to jump back quickly and touch on something you said, which was that Palworld was your first Pokemon.

And if you want to watch M's second Pokemon coming very soon to patreon.com/crub, I'm going to be going through and probably Chris as well, I'm not sure.

We're going to be going through a number of Pokemon episodes with M from the first season, a game series he's never played before, to get his experience with the anime and then ask him what he thinks a Pokemon game plays like based on his experience with the anime.

We're getting up close to the Pokemon, the first movie in the podcast Iman subseries on patreon.com/crub as well.

It is as little as $5 a month for every piece of video content we offer, which is over 100 hours of bonus content as well as $10 a month for all the audio content, including podcast Iman and other fun stuff like that.

And if you join any of our platforms, whether it's patreon.com/crub, crub.org/join, to join the Discord and support us via Twitch or YouTube or anything, you get access to BookCrub.

Em, do you want to talk about BookCrub briefly?

Sure.

In fact, if you jumped in right now, maybe by the time this airs, I think it will have happened.

Yeah, you're kind of out of luck if you're listening to this live, not live rather.

So every month we will choose a game that is free on one of the various services, whether it be Epic or Nintendo Switch Online or Xbox Game Pass or whatever.

And we'll play it for a month and then we'll get together and we'll talk about it.

And this month we are doing the Chevalry 2, which I have a lot of thoughts about because I've actually been playing it quite a bit.

And we're going to talk about that together on the Discord, which I'm sure there's a link somewhere.

crub.org/join if you want to join the Discord.

That part is free.

The Book Crub part is part of the Patreon slash YouTube slash Twitch Suite.

So if you have any of your accounts linked in some way when you're supporting Crub, you'll get into the Book Crub room and all the special awesome rooms where we show pictures of Justin Nude.

That's legal, right?

We can talk about that.

He's not 19 anymore, so.

So going to the depressing part, and we were talking about the Final Fantasy thing, I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about Rebirth.

We've talked about it a bunch on the podcast, and I know, Chris, you've almost beaten it.

Brody, you've almost beaten it.

And we all kind of beaten it.

Oh, you have now.

That's right.

I forgot.

We talked about it.

That's that's how much we talked about it.

I was looking because I, you know, editing the show, I would hear every time you talk about the thing.

And I realized, like, I've only been on one episode with you this entire year because it kept being like, man, I'd love to talk with Kevin about this game on the podcast.

And then we just never honest together.

We just missed each other.

Well, now we can, except without spoilers still, because I, yeah, we probably can't.

My thing with Seven Rebirth, again, very briefly, is I think it's the perfect example of what a 2024 game currently is, to go to Em's point about games kind of being a little depressing right now, because it feels like after Seven Remake came out and they got criticized for the game being a bit too short for only being 30 to 40 hours, God forbid, only, only.

They started looking at other competitors and trying to compete with them.

So you have things like, well, now you can play piano like it's the last of us guitar.

Or now there's an open world, which is what people obviously would have wanted out of the second part of Seven anyway, but it's got a bunch of Ubisoft towers and side missions and card games and card games and card games and card games.

Now, the card game is the best part.

Honestly, the card game is pretty rad.

I will agree with you on that.

The card game is awesome.

But there's a whole chapter dedicated to playing the card game.

That's true.

Book ended by chapters that involve dancing and then going to the beach.

So there's a lot of issues with how I think Seven Rebirth structures itself because it feels like it took all of the tropes of every major AAA open world experience of the last 10 years or so and said, let's do that without thinking about why those things do that.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of shoehorning and everything, man, right?

In Final Fantasy, we've talked about how many mini games there are that end up feeling like just, I don't know, puffery, right?

And to be fair, Rebirth is an incredibly faithful experience to the middle part of Final Fantasy 7, and I think that's what I consider bold about it in some way, is that after the first game went and said, hey, everything you thought about 7 is now up in the air, they then took you on a pretty close to one-to-one retelling of the middle part of the game, to say nothing about the final couple hours of the game, of course, but up until at least that point is pretty fairly the middle of Final Fantasy 7.

That sounds like I burnt out right before the part of the game I wanted to get to the whole time.

That's kind of the blue ball part of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is, man, there's so much shit there.

Chris, since we haven't talked about it, what are your thoughts on it, on the podcast?

It's a game of peeking valleys in terms of my energy toward the game, because I'd go through and I'd do everything in one of the areas in the game, right, and I'd be like, yeah, I'm feeling good.

I get to the next area and be like, okay, I just want to see the story, so I hurry through that area, then in the next area, I'm like, oh yeah, let's do everything in this area, I guess I should go back and do everything in the last area, and I just peeked and volleyed through the whole thing and burnt myself out by the end.

Not to jump to a different game that we mentioned, but playing this right after Infinite Wealth, it felt like the fording vs harassment meme, where everything Infinite Wealth did, FF7Rebirth kind of does, but I like the way Infinite Wealth did it more, so I'm like, you're okay.

Rebirth, not as okay, but still okay.

But I was calling HR with Rebirth, basically.

And to go to your Peaks and Valleys thing, I will say, the thing that 7Rebirth Stockholm Syndrome me into by the end was realizing that each area when you start feels like it's a little bit, not overwhelming, but they're like, okay, I've gotten to a new area, now I have to stop the story if I'm a real gamer and go do all the side content first.

And I realized as time went on that each area was actually pretty close to masterfully paced for each of the open world sections took me an hour or two.

And then I would go and do an hour or two of game.

And then right when I got done with that part of the game, I'd be like, well, there's nothing that's immediately pulling me into wanting to continue the story.

So now that I'm in the next open world area, an hour or two of that, and then I'm like, okay, I've had enough of that.

And I moved on and like it was exhausting at first.

And then as time went on, I kind of realized, no, there's a little bit here that like it was created with like a catered design philosophy, especially when we get to like the final couple areas of the open world stuff, where they start actually doing story things with them after 40 hours of the game.

And by 40, I mean like 70, like at least it feels like 70.

Yeah, it's an exhausting game.

And I hate that about it because it's such a damn good game, too.

The gameplay is so fluid and fun and enjoyable.

And once they added the smooth graphics setting, it looked less like shit, which was nice, you know.

Always a help.

Brody, do you have anything you want to say about 7 before Chris and I gush about Final Fantasy Yakuza?

I mean, you've said most of my thoughts already on it.

It is just an exhausting game.

It's very fun.

When you get to play the combat, you're having the time of your life.

It is just as flashy and awesome.

It's just in the arena.

It's god damn it.

Sorry, Chris.

This is the F word episode.

Yeah, let's go.

The thing is, is yeah, it's in the arenas and the arenas are fine.

They're fun.

They're in some way.

They're almost like puzzles.

Yeah, in a way like you have to use your moves and stuff.

And that's I like that.

Yeah, I wish there was more of that moment to moment throughout the game.

That's kind of where I was like the open worlds don't have any combat encounters outside of the six that you do for Chadley.

Like the open ones are functionally empty.

Ninety percent of the time.

Chadley is like, you start saying something ironically, and then the sticks and you hate yourself.

Because in remake, I was like, Chadley, that's a funny name.

This guy's really funny.

He's a little Android boy.

And then in rebirth, he has like eight times the dialogue of any other character combined.

I hated him in remake.

I think I'm going on Chadley.

If he's like crucified in part three, I think I'll be happy.

It's just a little too much.

I hated that little guy.

I was going to call him a little effort, but I stopped myself.

I hate him so much.

And then in rebirth, they give you so much of him that I feel like that was my Stockholm syndrome.

Because I'm like, I guess I have to like you because otherwise I'm just mad the whole time.

I feel like I would have been fine with Chadley.

I think Chadley is the perfect example of the flirting versus harassment that Chris mentioned.

Because in remake, he's just there for a little bit.

And it's kind of funny, in rebirth, every time you do anything, he stops you, makes you pull out your phone gun, and then talks to you via the telepathy through the phone gun to say, Hey, cloud, you did good.

And then like you can't, you could skip it, but you can't skip the animation of you pulling up your phone gun.

Sometimes they let you walk around as he talks, and sometimes they don't.

And there's no rhyme or reason why.

And then he starts arguing with like his twin on his chair.

They had to double the Chadley.

If there is a Chadley of the Year category, like that's a clean sweep on that one.

I can't think of any other games with Chadleys.

The director of the game had to know, like he had to fully understand what he was doing when they did that.

This feels like one of those things where you dig into it, you know, and it's like, oh, you know, women in Japan love Chadley.

He's a fan favorite character, so that's why he's here.

It feels like one of those things where you dig into it.

He won the Smash Ballot.

He won the Smash Ballot.

Honestly, Chadley in Smash would go hard.

Like he has the Sephiroth intro.

Speaking of Smash, I really want it to be a thing of like, where Sakurai was like, oh, Kirby makes it out of the opening cutscene because he's the only character that could feasibly do it up against this opponent or whatever.

I want them to be like, yeah, we had to give Chadley that many lines because he's the only character that it made sense to have on comms.

He's the only character that can beat Sephiroth.

You know, speaking of characters on comms though, like that's another thing is like the thing that's most bold about it, and this is the last thing I'll say about this game.

The thing that's so bold about Rebirth is that it's not just the second game.

It is quite literally just right where you leave off at the end of remake.

They put you there.

So all the characters are quiet and like, man, that just happened, huh?

Like, they're all just kind of not really talking to each other.

There's not really any characterization happening because they're already all comfortable with each other.

So they don't take that time to rebuild them, for lack of a better term, to rebuild those relationships, which then means that Chadley is the only character that talks for more than five minutes for the first four hours of the game until after you're off the boat.

And the boat is Chapter five.

So like, yeah, it's a flirt with some characters having tension, right?

Like Cloud and Tifa are kind of in a weird little thing.

But then they're just like, well, we have to act fine around the others.

And Cloud's like, yeah.

And then it's just like, all right, sweep that away for like 20 hours.

We'll get back to it in 60 hours.

It's like, OK, they're having a good time, but I really like the characters in the last game and then they're here, but they're fine.

They should have Tifa sing karaoke about how she's secretly in love with Cloud.

That's what they should do.

Speaking of, Yakuza, Like A Dragon, 8, Infinite Wealth.

That's probably honestly still going to be my game of the year.

Like, it's that or Astro, unless anything else comes out that like completely sweeps me.

It's Chris, you have faster things to say than I will, probably.

Faster things to say?

Well, it's a game that...

That's it.

I agree.

It's a game.

Brody's Endless Zone Zero.

It's weird, because like I said, everything Rebirth does, Infinite Wealth kind of does, in that it starts off with a lot of the characters kind of already being comfortable with each other, right?

They spend like eight or nine chapters running around looking for a woman, and then that's kind of the only plot, really, if you look at it.

Things happen, right?

There are some issues with Danny Trejo, and Daniel Day Kim is sometimes around, I guess.

But for the most part, nothing is really happening in that game.

And then they'll be like, oh, well, you want to go play Animal Crossing for 20 minutes, right?

You can't skip the Animal Crossing.

And I'm like, I guess I can't skip the Animal Crossing.

It's just doing everything Rebirth did, but I'm like, you know, at least it's funny here.

Now that you mention the Animal Crossing, I forgot that I was like, man, that's like a really intrusive hour of game.

And now that I've played Rebirth, I'm like, man, an hour of intrusive game.

That ain't bad.

Like, that's not too bad.

Even when Infinite Wealth is like, oh, well, what if we had a Pokemon knockoff and then flushed it out even more than last time?

Yeah, 3v3 battles.

Why don't I spend half an hour on this in a forced way?

At least it wasn't the Queen's Blood tournament, which in chat, I think Chimpus did point out that you can skip the card tournament, but why would you?

You have to be a gamer, you know.

You can skip it, but you have to go out of your way to skip it to the point that it's not much shorter to just actually do it or to skip it first doing it.

Let's get one of the best interactions.

The thing I was going to say about Infinite Wealth's side content is that Yakuza always does that sort of thing where they're like, okay, we're going to pull you away to give you a tutorial for the side thing.

So it wasn't too excessive to me outside of the Animal Crossing stuff.

And that was only because it was like, oh, the game's really getting good.

All right, see you in 48 hours of in-game time and you can go to the beach for some time.

Is Ichiban just on the beach and he gets like knocked out or something or a dolphin steals him away and he wakes up and he's like, oh, I guess I'm here now.

I'm like, the plot was finally doing something.

Wait, go back, go back.

Yeah, like.

You're US cancer.

Eight really meanders for a lot of a lot of the time in the middle, like you said, Chris.

And that's my biggest critique of it is like how it meanders before remembering that Kiryu exists because so eight for those that maybe are somehow unfamiliar and we're not going to hit on spoilers, of course, for this or any of the games that we're talking about today.

Curious back.

He never really left, but now he's back.

And that's the final Kiryu story for real, we promise.

Definitely not a lie.

But he comes back and then he's just a secondary character helping Ichiban out for a while because they have a shared goal of getting to meet this character.

And then they halfway through go to the big story beat, which is not a spoiler because it's in the trailers of Kiryu having cancer.

And they're like, oh yeah, we're supposed to make you think he's gonna die, whether he does or not, you know, who knows.

But like we're supposed to make you afraid that he will for the big story beat of the game.

And then they finally get to the Kiryu stuff and the game like really starts coming together.

Coming together like after so many stops and starts of, well, we got to find this character.

Okay, we found them.

Oh, they got kidnapped again.

We got to find them again.

Oh, they got kidnapped again.

Oh, we got to find them again.

Over and over again.

This is in the other castle.

Straight up.

I was going to make the Princess Peach joke, but even Peach doesn't get captured this much.

And yeah, like it's only for about two hours of in game time that I'm really like, okay, this is getting excessive, you know, of actual story time.

And then they get to the Kiryu stuff and like they split the party.

So you have now the two protagonists doing their own thing.

And that's where the game's magic really, really hits.

I don't love everything about the last, you know, run of the game, but it's maybe still one of the best runs that any Yakuza game has had.

And that's saying a lot for how good Yakuza games can be about having like those those climactic final, sometimes 15 hours.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a good stretch.

I just think of Infinite Wealth and it's like, man, I enjoyed everything.

I think I put 100 plus hours into it, you know, which I guess I tend to do in these games anyway.

But yeah, it just for a long time, I'd been thinking about how these games would just like put a stop sign in your face and be like, we have weird side content.

Here's a character that will introduce you to it.

Come this way.

You know, maybe it's supposed to be like how in Japan, if you walk around Kabukicho, people will try to usher you into their bar or something, right?

But I was just always thinking about that from like five or zero onward.

I started noticing it and I'm like, this feels like a problem.

Like I'm used to it.

So I get it.

But I feel like for a lot of people, like you try and get people to play zero and this is a tangent, but they play it and it's just like, okay, we are walking.

Okay, there's karaoke.

Okay, there's here's the slot cars.

Here's all the weird things.

I'm like, I hope this resonates with people.

But eight is really the thing where that ramped up and I'm like, man, this is like I get it.

But even I'm sitting here like this is too much.

Yeah, like, but like the fact that they have to spend the time saying, oh, here's this island and we're going to spend three days of in game time showing you every bit of the mechanics rather than just saying, hey, this is here.

You want to go back?

Okay.

Like, yeah, like that's where it got excessive.

That's Sega trying to make their super game.

I mean, that game has quite literally everything in it.

It's got a Pokemon game, it's got Animal Crossing, it's got the longest arcade game I think I've ever played.

What was that shopping cart thing you showed me one time?

Oh, yeah, it's got a crazy taxi, but you're delivering food as a new Breach driver.

Speaking of super game, that is going to be crazy taxi, right?

Like, that's one of them.

Yeah.

This new open world GTA killer they're trying to do.

Well, apparently it was a it was a it was a miss misread.

It was supposed to be like there's five different games coming out instead of five games in one or something like that.

Right.

I'm talking about the new information that we have about yeah, well, yeah, yeah, because we know it's going to be like an MMO deal now.

I'm interested in what they do with that.

I don't know how that's going to work out, but everything has to be a service game now, so I'm not surprised.

I know this is a huge digression.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'm curious.

So, now that you're talking about your game of the year, which is Infinite Wealth, is it as good as the last one?

Better.

Much better.

Like, and that's what I was going to hit on next, actually, so thank you for segueing us here.

I read the room.

I think it's better because I think that Seven has maybe the best story of any of the games outside of like judgment, like of the regular Yakuza games.

I think that Seven has the best story because Ichiban's immediately introduced as a protagonist in such a way that he's so genuine and likable and he is like that lovable idiot, except that his ability to stay genuine no matter what pulls people in to root for him.

Like, he's just an anime protagonist in a lot of ways.

And his story tying along with the story of the past of the Yakuza series, essentially of the concept of the Yakuza was so compelling in Seven.

And it did the thing that a lot of the later Yakuza games and Judgment and Eight as well have done where they're like, there's this big government conspiracy also going on in the background to like tie into the crime underbelly stuff going on.

Seven did it just about perfectly.

There's a little besides Mirrorface.

And Eight doesn't do it as well in that regard because it tries to tell two more personal stories.

And I think that it just it got a little too long in the tooth by trying to be too much of game and get rid of Kiryu in terms of, you know, his story is done for sure definitively.

And Ichiban's story is continuing, but Ichiban is kind of not really the he's just kind of there for a lot of the game.

The thing that makes Eight a better game is the fact that as a game, it is so much better.

Like Seven is a very basic RPG because supposedly they had the April Fool's joke of it being an RPG and fans were like, oh, that's really funny.

That'd be really cool.

I'd be into that.

And then in seven months, they were like, yeah, why don't we actually make that the game that's coming out in seven months?

Supposedly.

I don't believe that.

That's a straight up like that is Jez San met Miyamoto and said that Croc inspired Mario.

That's what that is.

But it was a very basic game.

As a result, I didn't really interface with a lot of the class stuff too much because it was really easy to beat the game while 30 levels underleveled.

I did it.

Eight, I did interface with those systems a lot more because there's a lot more synergy between the different skill sets and the elemental abilities have a lot more of an impact going forward.

It's just so fun to mess around and by virtue of Hawaii being an even bigger area than Yokohama and being more filled with things and different things, it meant that there were more sectors of town that could be like, here's high level enemies here.

There's different enemies here.

You might find a Sujiman here.

That's the weird super jittery men.

That's the Pokemon thing.

You beat them and then you capture them.

It's a great game.

Big game of the year.

It just felt like eight, eight genuinely might be one of the best RPGs I've ever played in terms of being in RPG and having that fun gameplay loop that I just I would go in new game plus and do it again if you didn't have to pay for that.

That sucks.

I think there's something to be studied about how good of a tribute it is to the genre while also being an incredibly good contribution to the genre and its own rights.

Also it's a very weird line of walks of like, well, we very obviously love everything that came before and then we're making our own mark.

And I think that's pretty impressive because you see it.

It's usually one or the other.

Right.

It's like you're either a landmark title or you're just a love letter and it's kind of about it.

Right.

I don't see a lot of games thread that needle very well.

Like this one did.

Like to go back to Seven Rebirth, like how Seven Rebirth just copies a lot of open world mechanics and doesn't think about them.

Everything Yakuza 8 does, like a dragon infinite wealth, sorry.

Everything that game does is done with intent.

They studied the genre.

They are fans of the genre, and they figured out ways to appeal to just about everybody.

Even the people that are like, I would rather this be a Kiryu beat them up game because Kiryu's alt is he goes into beat them up mode and just starts punching people like it was the old games, which is just sick.

It's just rad.

Even though it has a story that leans too much into being kind of weird JRPG story at times, not in terms of like the actual plot of it itself, but in terms of, well, we need to go this long so we need to have these extra twists and turns that don't have anything to do with the plot, that sort of thing.

Even though it has those more than prior games did, I never really got tired of it outside of like the Animal Crossing part where I'm like, I really want to continue the story and I can't because I'm pretty sure that's right.

Like, they do the Kiryu thing right around then where they're like, oh yeah, Kiryu has cancer.

That's right.

We just we forgot about that until now.

I'm pretty sure that story beat happens where they remind you that he's supposed to be like, you're supposed to be afraid he's going to die.

And then they're like, go to go to the island.

It's right around when they filmed the video for him to find his mom or whatever, right?

Yeah, it's literally right as some things are finally starting to happen.

Yeah, it's anyway, but yeah, yeah, I think the last thing I'd call it out without going too long on about it is how well it has a reverence for the series for long time fans, but also pushes it to the side so that if you are one of the new players, you don't have to go through and wonder what the heck's going on with that.

Which is some restraint that could have been practiced elsewhere in the game, maybe, but there is some genuinely crazy deep cuts in some of the stuff they do with Kiryu when you're going around and kind of digging into his memories and his past and just kind of like if this is the end of my life, what am I doing kind of questions that I thought were interesting for the character, right?

A lot of good character work kind of tucked away to the side there.

I will hit on that super briefly because I do want to get to Animal Well with you, Brody.

The thing that I'll say to bounce off of that was like some of those deep cuts, like I was freaking crying at points over the most the most stupid side characters that you can imagine, the most, the weirdest references to some of the old games that you wouldn't expect to see.

And like they all got me and in the same breath, the one thing that it does is Kiryu's character has always been stubborn.

He's always been, I'm going to do it my way, period.

And and that's, that's it.

And so for the entire game, once you get to the point of, well, Kiryu, why don't you go to a doctor?

Like, why?

Like, no, I have to, I have to deal with this on my own.

He's treating it.

It's like, this is my penance for all the bad I've done.

And like, he's like continuing to punish himself even after there's a chance for him to like, you know, have a potential good ending.

And it's once you get to the Kiryu part of the game, or rather, once you have Kiryu as a separate like section of the game, that you have those moments of him like reminiscing on his past and saying, like you said, Chris, if I'm going to go out, like whatever, the whole time, you're you as the player are screaming at him like, dude, you can live.

Maybe you can't, but at least you could try.

Like people, people want to see you live.

And so there's that like through that side story stuff.

Curious, like, oh yeah, maybe, you know, maybe it's not worth just giving up and being stubborn, which is the whole thing of Curious, Curious character arc over the entire series.

It was incredibly refreshing to see them finally examine this character and let him look back because like I love these games, but he's the same in every single game.

Yeah.

Right.

And if you look at these, like if you study the stories, these games or characters, you just like, man, Curious just always like that, huh, so just finally letting him look back and scratch his head and go, oh, it's what makes six retroactively kind of better to me.

Like I always kind of liked six once I played it of like what it was doing because I played six after seven.

So there was like six was Curious story ending.

Seven was the end of the clan of the Yakuza clans.

And now eight is like ostensibly maybe actually finally the end of Curious story.

We don't know.

Who knows?

We won't tell you, but yeah, you know, he'll be back somehow.

They'll find a way.

It'll be to the credits and it just says, Curious will return, Curious will return and it'll be what's it called?

Dead Souls 2.

That'll be it.

Hey, Brody.

Hey, it's me, Video Game Donkey.

I heard you've been playing my new game Animal Well.

What a segue.

It's so good that you can shout it out on the Crubcast, could you tell me a little more about it?

You're making me not want to sing this game's praises.

What's wrong?

Rack rocks?

Ratchet and Clank rocks?

I was so ready to say everything I like about this game.

It's like Halo 3, right?

Do you like the lack of combat abilities?

Animal Well is a game that surprised me, and that's kind of why it's my game of the year.

So far, anyway, because I'm always looking for something that's new, that's unique, or at the very least, scratches an itch that very few games do.

And when they do, they're usually indie games that does something that I personally haven't seen yet.

And Animal Well does this in the sense that it's an interesting example of the relationship that genres can have as they evolve and inspire other genres and then be able to take what those games later have done and bring them back into its sort of the initial form and go out from there.

And what I mean by that is, I think it's incredibly novel of them to have effectively made a 2D Metroidvania game that functions as an immersive sim rather than a lock and key type of game.

And I think it's a game that I presume most people will have different playthroughs when they go through it, right?

Because no one's going to get the first items all the same.

I ended up getting an item that basically gave me infinite height right off the bat.

And so I was able to solve a lot of puzzles without much of that like Metroidvania, oh, I feel I'm stopped, right?

Like I'm stopped, I have to go back and find a new item to continue.

There was some of that.

There was a little bit of that, kind of.

But generally, if I thought about it, I could use whatever items I had on hand to make my way through.

And what I really enjoyed is that it like very few games I find nowadays.

It inspired within me a sense of wonder and a sense of like, oh my God, that's possible.

Whenever I would think to myself, okay, this is what this item does.

Like, let's say the disk item, it goes side to side, you shoot it, it can hit switches, whatever.

And then I thought to myself, what if I jump and try to land on it?

Like, is that anything?

And all of a sudden, I had this perfect hovercraft to go left and right as like infinite amounts.

Even better, you also spin as it spins, like your character model.

Or your sprite like rotates.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you find out, OK, well, if I use that in a really tight vertical corridor, I can actually, you know, maybe my bubbles, I can't get height with them because it's too tight of a corridor.

But if I just frame perfect jump and release this disk thing, I can keep getting height in this one specific instance.

And so having these moments of like basically everyone loves to sequence break in Metroid, right?

The first time in Metroid that you figure out you can use the bombs to get height is like, oh my God, I can access areas that I'm not supposed to.

That's awesome.

This game is built on that.

There is no sequence breaking because you're meant to sequence break it.

And it's fantastic.

And it's one of those puzzle games that will just, it'll stick with me for a very, very long time.

I don't think it's as it hits the highs of like a Hollow Knight per se.

I think that's a more rounded out package for me personally.

Take a shot, Hollow Knight.

And well, in terms of what's come out this year, though, I think it's I think it's definitely up there because it would either be that or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, because I haven't played anything else that's really hit me.

I mean, Penny's Big Breakaway was pretty cool.

I have to go play more of that to do the speed runs because it really started to click once you got into the speed runs of it.

I've just started playing Zenless Zone Zero, my first Toyoverse game.

Yeah, that'll be the new shot.

If you're a zzzzzz, make sure you hit the like button on the episode on the video feed or give us a review on the audio feed and say that you're a zzzzzz, so that the reviews help us get more zzzzzz.

I'm not going to do this bit anymore.

I'm going to take out a second mortgage on my home to get the shark made.

Someone's gotta.

I feel bad not to distract.

I forgot Penny's Big Breakaway came out this year.

I was going through all the games I played this year and I was like, yeah, I guess I got them all.

Completely forgot about Penny's Big Breakaway.

Sorry.

Take that.

To those people.

Big Breakaway.

I'll say on Animal World, Brody, one of the things that I think it does really well, like you said, is I haven't really felt a non-Metroid game give me that Metroid sense of discovery outside.

Well, I should say a non-Metroid or Castlevania, Metroidvania, because Castlevania is, or Bloodstained, I'll count as one of those, because that's pretty much Castlevania.

It's as good, it's as official as it can be without being one, obviously.

I haven't had those moments of discovery feel that organic and that satisfying in a proper Metroidvania game that's not official from one of those two genre, one of those two namesakes, except for Animal Well did it.

Or at least none of them have hit the height of Animal Well, I should say.

I've played Ori, and Ori is kind of just a platformer with some, you know, you get power ups that let you do things.

It's kind of just a platformer.

I don't mean that to detract from it.

It's a very good one, but it's more of a like a Metroidvania light to me personally.

I bounced off Ori pretty hard, and it's one that I like to go and give a second chance at some point.

But I was definitely like, I was craving the I want to get lost in this world.

And Ori was like a just, you know, be platform good platform good.

Like it's got worlds, but it doesn't have worlds.

But the worlds are functionally there in a more or less set order unless you're really good at sequence breaking.

So you're just kind of getting power up and then going like you're doing the Metroid thing, but it doesn't feel like you're really exploring a world.

And I will say I have to make the token Souls reference here.

The Souls games are the other example that have that organic sense of discovery in a Metroidvania sort of way.

That's not Animal Well or a Metroidvania namesake, Metroidvania.

So I will mention them as well.

But only one of those came out this year and that wasn't really a Souls game.

So screw them.

It sounds like you guys like my video game.

Unfortunately, yes, I think it wasn't his game.

It's not his game.

I wish people.

It's not.

That's that's kind of that's a really good point.

And that's what I was going to hit on is I feel like I feel like the audience for that game kind of went undertale very quickly.

Like I feel like immediately I was like, this is insufferable.

Instead of being this this this genuine indie hit of the year, it was already like people just saying it's Halo three because that's a donkey joke.

It really makes you feel like Animal World.

Yeah.

And like I feel like the game deserved better.

But I'm also to to his credit to Dunkey's credit and Big Mode and all of them.

They also gave the game the audience it has.

Like that game doesn't get recognized.

Or like he's still just a publisher, right?

Like yeah, I'm not saying he should get credit and give them some money.

Yeah.

And it's very annoying that people call this Dunkey's game.

I agree.

I'm not saying he should get the credit for making the game or anything.

I'm just saying that by giving it that platform, like Influencer Publishing is a thing that people have tried before and it's been sometimes successful.

I think this is probably the successful example that I can think of because that game did reach an audience that wasn't just his fans.

No, Yogscast did something.

They did a game.

Yogscast were in Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transform.

They also did something else that was successful.

Danica Patrick, hot topic right now.

Was Awesomeness the Yogscast thing?

It might have been.

They did something.

I remember they had a game.

Y'all were forgetting the normal boots dating sim.

That was not official and we're not going to talk about that one.

Oh, it wasn't?

I thought it was official.

I think they endorsed it after the fact.

But anyway, I don't have a ton to say about Animal Ope because a lot of it's based on your own experiences and discovery, like you said, Brody.

And also, it's been a few months, so I don't remember a ton of it.

But I really, really enjoyed most of the game.

The last little run was kind of like, okay, this is excessive because they expect you to go from regular gameplay to near perfect platforming at the very end.

And I'm a good platformer.

But when I die and have to go back to the start and then teleport to the fast travel point and then go through one of the fast travel gates and then go through several rooms to get to the next area, to get back to where I was when I died, you could just respawn me where I died.

It's not.

It's okay.

You don't have to do that.

It's one of those things where it has so many little secrets in it that you can only get if you're like paying attention and making like absolutely wild leaps of logic.

So for instance, to your point, there is like a, I know the part you're talking about because it's that one part at the end that makes you go through five screens if you screw up apparently, and I learned this basically when I was done the game, there is a song you can play on one of the things that will just warp you right to the teleport room and then you can go out of the teleporter right beside the room where you have to do the thing that would normally take you five screens and that probably cuts down on like two screens, but it's still it.

I guess.

Yeah, it was one of those where once I knew about that song.

It was like specifically that activating that teleporter, that that that warp door room for some reason.

I don't remember why I had issues getting it to work at first.

Like I got I could get into the teleport room, but not that specific teleporter door.

Anyway, it's that's all in the weeds.

The rest of the game I really, really, really enjoyed.

And I enjoyed the fact that it made me challenge myself.

Like the one of the early sections that most players will experience probably first is the, you grab this frisbee from a stand and then there's a giant ghost cat that starts chasing you or ghost wolf.

I left that for last because I was like, I'm going to need it.

So I did it first more or less.

And I was stubborn at first because it's like, you're now doing a pretty precise platforming section across several rooms.

The way I did it, I did it blind and not knowing where I needed to go next and having the cat chased me the whole way until eventually I gave up near the end.

I was pretty close to like, it's like 15 rooms you go through.

I was like 10 rooms in and I'm like, I don't know how long this is going to go.

So I should probably just go finish the level first and then do it once I know where I'm going.

But in doing that, like that gives you the disk power up essentially.

The first the first run of it.

I did do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The second one I didn't do till later because you're supposed to do it again with a lot more and you're supposed to manipulate the fast travel.

There's a lot of super cool secrets in this game that I think got metagamed too quickly because of having such a wide audience.

Like there were so many Easter eggs and stuff that are really cool.

But like, well, I will say there are some things in the game where I would almost call it a little too obtuse, not in the sense that it like ruined anything.

But like there was definitely there's other like statues in the game that are like, oh, there's a it's a circular, there's a circular crevice for you to put something in.

I'm like, oh, I got to go back to the cat and take the disk and I got to go all the way through this.

That's insane.

And then I would do it.

And it's like, actually, that's not the right item.

You just needed this other item from this other thing that you did.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, time.

I spent so much time getting here with the cat chasing me.

It's I it's a really, really fun game.

And I do recommend it for I think it's also free on a lot of the platforms.

So there's no reason not to try it.

If I'm correct on that, I feel like I didn't pay for it.

I feel like it's free on PS Plus.

It's definitely free on PS Plus.

Yeah, premium.

So it's probably on Game Pass.

And I think it's it's the kind of game that anyone who is a Metroidvania fan has probably already played.

But it's for my albeit somewhat limited experience, the best combatless Metroidvania I think I've ever played.

Interesting.

Even though I do have nitpicks about some parts where I'm like, OK, this is a bit too retro, NES style, go f yourself design.

Like it does that just enough where I'm like, OK, maybe maybe you're a little excessive now.

But it also hits the vibe.

Yeah, for what flaws that I could find in it, I'm very forgiving because it is one of the first games in a long time to give me that sense of wonder.

And I think that's something that I've only really found in like in the recent years in like, like Outer Wilds, like Outer Wilds is the dragon that I'm constantly chasing.

I'm looking for an experience like that all the time.

And Animal Well was when when I was seeing reviews of it, they're like, oh, it's kind of like Outer Wilds.

It's got these puzzles.

And I'm like, I played it and I'm like, it doesn't it's not it's not like Outer Wilds.

It does give a sense of wonder.

That's other people chasing the same dragon and then saying it's like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's definitely like there's a there's a post game that I still have to really get into.

There's like two layers of post game where you have to like find bunnies and then find a thing.

And I guess some people say that those puzzles are more like Outer Wilds puzzles.

And I'm like, I don't really see it exactly the probably the way that you do because Outer Wilds is a very specific experience.

I would.

Yeah, I think that stuff that you're talking about from what I've seen kind of feels like game theory bait, except game theory is not really it's still a thing.

But like that felt like stuff that's like, well, we're trying to get the deep cut mat pat theories to make the video that make the game go even more viral.

Maybe I'm cynical about it, but that's kind of what those felt like to me, because they're so obtuse that it's like they're they're they're beyond classic NES style throwback puzzles.

One of them is straight up an ARG that you just like you have to look up.

Like you literally just have to look up because it was an ARG.

Yeah.

Speaking of Outer Wilds, and I'm going to throw a plug your way, because you just at the time of recording released your Outer Wilds video.

It's a two and a half hour epic digging into I I'm not going to I haven't played the game, so I can't really talk much about it.

M do your plug plug the video send send a video.

I have a good plug for it, but it's a two and a half watch.

It's a two and a half hour look into the the psychology and language and what the meaning of legacy is and the meaning of living that not the meaning of life, but the meaning of living.

And it's oh, you should watch that.

It's a big psychological thing that people seem to be enjoying.

Apparently they're crying during it.

So that that's the kind of thing you're gonna hear your voice.

Yeah, yeah, I've been like the number one comments got to be existential dread, which is fun.

So yeah, it's like a breezy watch.

Yeah, it's a nice.

It's a nice comfy video.

You should definitely watch it.

That'll be in the show notes, most likely.

So check that out if you're listening in the audio feed.

And while you're in the audio feed, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel as well.

Give us some extra support, however, you would like to.

If you're in the video feed, leave us a review on those audio platforms, but we're not done yet, because we have the Crubscriber question of the week, a question asked by one of our wonderful Crubscribers at patreon.com/crub, or any of the other, you know, financial YouTube slash Twitch slash whatever you want to call them, Crubscriptions.

Chris, I think you have that queued up, correct?

Yes, I do.

It comes from MickJaegar.

We saw too many games recently.

Beat his ass in Pokemon cards.

That's true.

Then he killed Niko.

Yeah, Justin and I had a good two good games against him and beat him.

And then he whipped Niko's ass 6-0.

That's probably what happened.

I wasn't there.

I don't know.

Yeah, it was it was ruthless.

His question is, what is the most notable example of a one hit wonder game dev studio that you can all can think of?

I have one that is debatable, but maybe one of the most notable.

And then I have one that is not as notable, but really stuck out to me when I thought about it.

So I'll go first.

The first one is Niantic, which is probably the arguable one because I think people who played Ingris liked Ingris, but Pokemon Go is like the Niantic game, right?

And ever since then, I think they've launched like seven or eight games that are all the same and they're all trying to be Pokemon Go.

None of them are Pokemon Go.

There was an NBA one, you could be basketball players and-

It only lasted like six months.

It was NBA sponsored Pokemon Go where you could, I think, play like 1v1 with like the gotcha players you would get.

I think it didn't ever leave Alpha before they killed it off.

By the time I found out about it, I think we were just in like a group call one night and I was just looking at Niantic's web page and I was like, there's an NBA game?

And then like three weeks later, it shut down.

Like it was bad.

They have a Monster Hunter one.

I think people like that one, but-

I've heard that one's good.

Yeah, like that's a Japan thing.

That's not for our audience for the eight of Crubs specifically for sure.

Yeah.

It's just the thing where like, you know, despite how unhappy Pokemon Go players are with the game at all times, it is still quite popular.

A lot of people do still play it, but nothing since then.

If I could get into the one that was not as notable, but one that kind of crossed my mind, I'm just going to put them on blast.

Supermassive Games, developers of Until Dawn, which was a game I liked a lot.

And then they've kind of kept doing that ever since and I've never felt any pull.

And then I look around and I feel like everyone who has played the Dark Pictures anthology is like, it was okay.

It wasn't as good as Until Dawn.

I think it's tough.

Niko likes them, doesn't he?

He's played them.

I think he was playing them, hoping to like them, and then Niko did not like them.

That's kind of where that went.

I think if he liked them, we would have heard about it.

And if he really didn't like them, we would have heard about it.

So the fact that we haven't heard about it probably means they came and went.

Plus MickJaegar killed him.

Yeah, plus he got completely demolished in Pokemon cards.

That's a really good one.

I think it's tough with Supermassive in particular, because that style of game obviously still exists with the Life is Stranges and whatever the Detroit Become Human.

What's that?

That's that studio name.

Quantico.

Quantic Dream.

Thank you.

Whatever whatever those folks are doing next.

I don't care.

Oh, they were doing a Star Wars one before it got shut down.

The Star Wars one in like 2028 or whatever far off date they came.

Yeah, that's not coming out.

So I think it's tough because that's sort of like just interactive movie type of game is really hard to pull off, especially when you're doing just horror with them.

So I not that I give them a pass, but the even the original Until Dawn was in development hell for like years as a PS Move game before it came out.

Yeah, so that's one where I'm just kind of mean, but I was just thinking about it as like, man, Until Dawn was 2015, huh?

Yeah, rough.

Niantic is a good one as well, because man, they're just trying to cash in on having that having all that data like they're just selling the data more than they're doing anything else with making good games.

I keep giving it to them every day.

Give me that data.

I mean, you're giving them walking data.

That doesn't really do much for anybody.

Niantic is really the perfect example of all money in mobile games is fake, because they have all this extra data that they can use to sell.

They have inflated player numbers that they can use to sell.

I mean, they don't run ads on Pokemon Go directly, but other games do.

You've seen that Star Trek game that's everywhere that I don't know the name of, Fleet Commander.

I don't care.

You've seen that game's ads somewhere, and if you play any mobile games, the top ad banner is going to have that game because then, if you install that game, they have an inflated player base because they also pay people to install their game.

Trust me, Em and I found that out.

We didn't do it, but we did influencer marketing briefly.

They're paying a lot of money, and they do that so that then they can charge more to the ad sellers to sell other mobile game ads on their game for, I don't know, Raid Shadow Legends.

And it's just an endless loop of fake money until the venture capitalist firm shut down the games.

And Pokemon Go is the least toxic of those probably because they don't run ads because it's Pokemon.

But it's proof.

I brace for the day that they do.

I mean, it'll happen eventually, right?

Like Nintendo's going to realize suddenly that there's a billion dollars a year sitting there.

I see.

Nintendo's weird in that they never ran Mario Run as a free game even still.

They are more likely to shut games down like Mario Kart Tour before they are to run ads on them.

To the wolves of gross practices.

Yeah, I mean, it could change.

They're one of the weird ones in that like they just don't listen to investors at all.

They just do what they want.

Yeah, eventually that'll change.

All it takes is for, you know, activist investors to get in there and make them actually want to do that.

And then Nintendo becomes EA pretty fast.

I just want there to be another Wii U so that I can see all those those switchtubers out there suddenly really struggling, like not financially.

I just want I like I just want to live in the world like a black mirror alternate universe one week where I see all the switchtubers go into clinically depressed switchtubers mode because man, it'd be real funny to see how dire it would get again.

I like the Wii U days were rough.

I was invited to Nintendo New York to play Amiibo Festival 2.

People look back at them.

They say the Wii U was this, you know, great one.

No, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't.

It's the games that were good were good.

But I'd sit there for like eight months between games and been like, man, I guess I can buy Donkey Kong for 40 cents this month because Reggie said, sorry, NES games are 40 cents a month until August.

There was one of them each month.

Also, here's a video advertising that they made the Wii U OS faster.

You should buy the Pikmin game, the one that's three dollars and just a video.

And then the other one that accompanies it on 3DS, that's also just a video.

Oh, I don't miss those times.

It's real good.

It's real.

It's fun.

So I was thinking about that.

Yes, you go.

I'm vamping because I don't I don't have one off the top of my head yet.

I was thinking about about the One Hit Wonders thing, and I found myself in like three categories and tried to figure out what I wanted, right?

Because like you have your One Hit Wonders like irrational, right, with Bioshock, right?

But I don't feel like that's a fair one because they're Take Two, right?

Like yeah, they're One Hit Wonder, but Bioshock still exists and Take Two still owns them and stuff like that.

And then I thought about things like Concerned Ape with Stardew Valley or, you know, things like that.

It was a One Hit One.

Yeah, but he's still making it, right?

And then, then I came across one that I think is the funniest One Hit Wonder of all time, which is the Polytron Corporation.

Yup.

This was my third one.

I was like, if no one mentions Fez, I'm going to mention Fez.

Because I think that is the funniest One Hit Wonder of all time.

No, you're absolutely right.

Because it did have to be a One Hit Wonder.

He got mad on Twitter and cancelled the second game and that's it.

He cancelled it and it's not just that's it.

It's also then the developers were like, wait, what do you mean?

What do you mean we're not making the game we're making anymore?

It's so, that's a really good one.

Brody, do you have one off the top of your head while I still try and think of one here?

Yeah, well, when Chris threw out the question, I've been thinking about it since he did and I was struggling to actually come up with any that I could think of.

And I know that they exist and they're out there, but like I got, I don't know, choice paralysis or analysis paralysis, I just couldn't click with one.

There's a few I could say that are kind of just mean.

So I'm gonna say Team Cherry, because they've only put out one game.

This is the one you joked about saying and then you're like, no, I'm gonna say it.

No, I kind of got it, right?

Because they put out Hollow Knight and it was fantastic.

And since then, every show that goes by, every Game Awards, every E3 conference, every Nintendo Direct, every state of play, every Xbox showcase, whatever it is, I'm sitting there waiting.

And to the point where now I'm like, I never expect it.

I'm not on Specsilk song, it's just gonna arrive one day and it's gonna arrive on like Xbox and Switch where I'll still be like, well, I guess I'll wait to play it on PlayStation because I want the trophies because blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is depressing.

So, now that you've said all this, they're gonna cancel the game on Twitter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're gonna be a one hit wonder.

It's a SwingSilk song.

Yeah, it's all your fault, Brody.

I see Frankenmut in our Twitch chat, because this is done live, brought up Jonathan Blow and Notch and like, yeah, Notch is a one hit wonder, but he made a quadrillion dollars and Minecraft is the biggest game of all time, so I think I'd give him a pass, but Jonathan Blow with number none, right, like, Braid, one game, and then he made The Witness, which I don't think is fair to call a game, it's an attack.

Did I tell you this, I think we talked about this, M, there's a podcast about the making of the Braid 20th anniversary edition, which for one, the game, I'm sorry, it's not 20th anniversary, it was just anniversary edition, sorry, I was going to say for one, it's not 20 years, but the podcast for this game that came out in 2024 after being announced in like 2018 for the anniversary, I'm pretty sure, was recorded in 2022.

They didn't go back and re-record it.

That's good.

Yeah.

I like that.

I will say, mentioning Notch, Mojang is not a bad one, because every game that's come out after Minecraft in the Minecraft series is bad.

Yeah, from what I've heard.

I don't play them.

The Diablo clone wasn't bad.

The Diablo clone was okay.

Inside you, there are two wolves.

What's the other one?

The other?

They did the...

Dungeons.

Dungeons?

Dungeons?

Okay, Dungeons was fine.

Yeah, that was the Diablo one.

Legends was bad.

It was really dumb.

And it felt like nobody had played the game.

Like, I played it when they did the, it's out on Xbox, and I was like, alright, I'll go try it out.

And I played it for like two days, really gave it a shot, right?

I put in my like solid 15 hours on that try and figure out, because I just found every hour I was like, I don't understand, I don't know who this game is for, I don't understand how they got this far.

There's got to be something that's after this, right?

Like, there's got to be something that makes you go, oh, clearly, there's a good game in here.

There's not, there's nothing.

I don't understand it.

I feel like a single playtest session with any gamer would have been like, this real bad guys.

Why, why are we putting this out?

Like, and they would have had to try to answer that, right?

Like there must have been somebody.

This is a Sarah Bond game.

Okay, it is a Sarah Bond game.

I, so I, outside of Mojang, I haven't thought of, like, I have a couple...

Go ahead and have your answer.

I know what your answer is.

What, what, go ahead.

What's my answer?

Your answer is Superbot.

Yeah, I guess you're not wrong.

They did reorganize afterwards, but they got shut down.

They really didn't have a chance.

No, they didn't.

I was going to say, I forget the name of the company, the Polish studio that now works on Fortnite that did Bulletstorm.

People can fly.

People can fly.

Because they only made the one game and then they got bought and then they got unbought, I think.

So now they're kind of just working on Fortnite.

But Bulletstorm is really, really fun and really good.

And I think that that game got really a really bad rap because Epic just lumped it in with like, if you pre-order this game, you get the beta for Gears of War Judgment.

The one that's not on Game Pass, which says a lot.

So that's one I would think of.

I could be an asshole and say Naughty Dog or Bethesda.

But those are neither of those.

You are a real snarky gaming podcast.

Neither of those are true.

Yeah, neither of those are true as much as I'm sad.

I did think of Senzaru for Sly 4.

You didn't like Sonic Boom's Shattered Crystal?

God, yeah, because they've worked on other things, right?

And they worked on the Spyware remake and their work isn't terrible on it.

But really, the only game that they've done that I feel like was was good front to back, all them was Sly 4.

The other one I thought of when I thought of Superbot because I thought of Senzaru.

And then that led me to United Front Games with Mod Nation Racers and I guess Sleeping Dogs as well.

There's so many that shut down after one game because of the way the industry is.

So it's so hard.

Like, I don't want to name any of those.

Chris, Brody.

Brody, I have to stop you.

Yeah, they made Bentley's hack back.

That's true.

They did make that hack back.

That's true.

The biggest hit of all time.

What a game.

The reason the PSN shutdown did not happen for PS3, the Bentley's hackers rose up.

That's a fact.

You can.

You can look at it.

That's a fact.

No more here, Jack.

Are we done?

Yeah, I think that's everything I have.

As far as like one hit wonders that I can think of off the top of my head.

I was looking at my games behind me like I could say Team Bondi, but again, like they all kind of shut down.

So it's it's it's hard.

Yeah.

Uh, and if you want to be...

Shut us down.

Hard.