Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] Speaker A: G'day, and welcome to the Oceanic Gaming radio podcast. It is the 18th of the twelveth, 2023. It's episode 82 and it is our.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Final show for the year. That's wild.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: It's budy. Almost Christmas, boys.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Merry Christmas.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Merry Crimbo.
[00:00:42] Speaker D: Merry Christmas, guys. Seven days away. Can you.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Dude, I can feel it.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: I've still got Christmas shopping.
I haven't bought you guys any presents yet.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Sorry about that. My God, dude. What the hell?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: See, this is what you do, right? This is the big plays. This is what I did this year is I did all my Christmas shopping online during Black Friday sales.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Yeah, that is a good idea. What kind of things did you get? What kind of things did you pick up, mate?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Well, I can't say too much because a lot of people that I may have bought things for might be know, including you, Chris. But look, a lot of stuff just through Amazon and shit like that. Like, it made life super easy for me. And it just all arrived in boxes and I've just got to unload the boxes and wrap them up.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Done.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Well, if you bought electronic vacuum cleaner cap, I've already got one of those made.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Oh, shit, dude.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: I only got your v three, the worst one. I don't even know if that exists.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Anyways, let's freaking jump in. Pav, how's your week been, mate?
[00:01:50] Speaker D: Good, fellas. I wish it's the last episode of the year and I wish I could tell you that I had a big one, but I've had a series of small ones, which has been really nice to close off the year, to be honest with you.
Yeah, just been chilling out.
I'm not sure if you guys seen the Instagram stories, but I've been hanging out with some of the crew over at SAE, which is technology school here in Wa. Well, it's actually international school, but we have one here in Wa and it's been pretty cool. They've been keen to collaborate with the stream Perth community, which I'm heavily involved with, managing with a wonderful, wonderful team.
And yeah, we've got some interesting stuff in the works for the new year. So excited. Very, very excited.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Hell yeah. That's such a cool thing to be able to do as well. Right?
[00:02:41] Speaker D: It's really weird.
We've talked about the stream Perth community many a time here on the podcast. Cap was one of the founding members of this one and I took the reins.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: I can't remember when you been a while now.
[00:02:58] Speaker D: Left it and.
Yeah, it's just been a really crazy journey. To seeing how everything has transformed in the last five years or so.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: It's grown leaps and bounds and bounds.
[00:03:14] Speaker D: Seeing the things that we're able to achieve now is a little unreal. Unreal.
Yeah, it's been cool. Even crazier things to come. So I'm excited, dude.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: So good. Dude, that's lovely. And what about Christmas plans? What's on the books?
[00:03:31] Speaker D: Christmas plans? It's always pretty chill getting on the beers. Always. Maybe it will be a big one.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:38] Speaker C: Guys, we're going to do this episode from your house, Pav, and have beers. Isn't that the original?
[00:03:43] Speaker D: We were going to, but cap's got just over one year old.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Not going to happen, basically.
I mean, you guys could have gone. You guys could have jeweled it.
You guys live on opposite ends of Perth. It is very true, I think.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Literally an hour and a half drive between us.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah, literal.
[00:04:07] Speaker D: We should have came to yours.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: We should have done it here. Right, next idea, guys. Yeah, real great idea.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Mia would love that, Cap. Love that.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I'm sure she'd be a huge fan of that. I'm sure. So, Pav, fairly chilled Christmas, but plenty of beers.
What's your standard Christmas traditions? What do you got?
[00:04:32] Speaker D: Usually at my mum's I wake up, spend time with the family, nieces and nephew, then piss off straight over to a couple of friends places and then straight on the booze. And then we'll see what happens. So it's usually a series of friends misses for me.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, love that. Catch it up.
[00:04:49] Speaker D: It's like the one time in the year. Probably catch up with some of these friends, but it's really nice, dude.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Sick.
[00:04:56] Speaker D: How about you guys?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Well, Chris, what about you, mate? What's your Christmas plans? How was your week? Chuck it all together.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: I feel like it's been a while since we've yarned this out, but I've moved house, guys, so. Brand new house, brand new stream room as well. And I've got a much bigger area here. I feel like I've got so much space for activities. Can have all my stuff set up.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Massive in comparison to the last place it is.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Yeah, much bigger. And the house is much bigger too, so it's very cool. Loving that. Got myself a sit stand s two, which makes the work life a little bit nicer. But honestly, Cap, all I've been doing, dude, is just fucking working my ass off.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: That's pretty much it.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: So I can't wait to Friday this week, last day of work, and then I've got two weeks to hang with.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: The fam and relax.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Looking forward to that.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Should be good.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Fuck, yeah, mate.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Love it. Very nice.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: But, Kat, I have got a gig with the offspring tribute this weekend. First ever show at the amplifier bar, which should be pretty cool.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: So, first time playing there.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Give that a tickle.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker C: If there's any Perth legends around that.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Want to come along and listen to some offspring stuff. Amps.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Yeah, get in there. It's going to be great. It's ticketed. I'll post it in the discord so you guys can come. Should be great. But there is some future ones, too.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: That's sick. That's the bar. I met my wife.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Is that right, Cat? Yeah.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: I've cut some fucking shapes on that dance floor, mate, as well. Holy moly.
I was a force to be reckoned with back in my day.
That's cool though, mate. Amps is such a good venue. I haven't been since they put the bowling ball alley in, but pretty fucking cool.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: I'm very excited, cap, because I feel like it's like the.
As a gigging Perth musician, it's kind of like one of those venues that I feel like once you've played there, it's like, okay, well, you've met a tier of an echelon of professionalism to actually get on that stage and play a show. So I'm pretty excited to get in there. It's a pain in the ass, dude, because they give you a backline kit.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: But you've got to park somewhere and.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: Bring all your stuff in. Somehow. I've got to get this little cart and it's actually a real pain in the ass to get your shit in.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: There, but should be good.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: So you've not played there before?
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Never play damps?
[00:07:18] Speaker A: No, we did one gig there.
The band room is, like, wild. It's dingy, disgusting, but it's like a rider passage.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: It's good, yeah, nice one, mate.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Good.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: They give you a rider in there? Some beers, some exports or what?
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Can tell me what we were drinking? Probably would have been exports back in. What was that, like, ten years ago? But it was a while ago, but you see, because a lot of bands played amps around that time, and even since then, you see heaps like birds of Tokyo and carnival and see all their names written over the wall and shit.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: So cool. You're going to love that part of it. So, yeah, man. Fuck, yes. Fucking excited.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Exciting. Okay, very nice.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Now, grizz.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Christmas traditions.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: So I have austrian heritage in my blood.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Capo.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: And nice.
We always opened our presents and basically celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. And even as kids, we would open our presents on Christmas Eve and have a good old time. And then kind of as we made our way into adults, it'd be just a big piss up. Christmas Eve and usually extremely hungover on Christmas Day. So following on that tradition, my family's Christmas is Christmas Eve. This year has been for quite a while.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: And, yeah, a couple of beers and.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: Kids open their presents from our immediate families and do their thing, and then, yeah, Christmas days with my wife's family.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: And then we've actually got Christmas night.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Free at this stage, so we might do our own little immediate family Christmas dinner and.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Wicked, mate. That'll be nice.
I'm excited for you. It's going to be brilliant. How good's Christmas got to love?
[00:09:01] Speaker C: So good. So good. Now, Cap, what about you, mate? What's been going on and what are your.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Like? Last weekend, we were exceptionally busy catching up with some family we probably won't see ever the Christmas period and stuff like that. So yesterday, we caught up with some people on my dad's side of the family at the pub. And what else do we do? Took ted for a swim down at the local leisure center. That was really good. Just. It's so funny, man.
He wants to go for a swim. He just wants to go and launch himself into the water, but he cannot swim.
Chill out. So you kind of run around holding him and that's really fun. And he's just like, just loving it. Loving it big time. He's such a water baby. So it's really fun to kind of get in the water with him.
What else did we do? Saturday was a fair bit. We got Christmas photos.
I don't know how well you can see this.
[00:09:58] Speaker C: So nice, dude. You're going to get that framed or what, Cap?
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to chuck those into a few frames.
We'll get that framed and all the grandmas and bloody great grandmas and everyone in between will get that for an easy Christmas present for us. That'll be really good. So we got that done on Saturday. And just what do we have to do?
Just some little bits and pieces just for food shopping and stuff like that before next week, because next week's fucking Christmas, which is crazy.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: We just sit out really quick, hopefully sort it out. The only thing I need, dude, is booze. I haven't bought any booze yet, dude.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Do you know what? So we've got shitloads of booze. Just kind of latently that it's just.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Like Jit and stuff like that that.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: We just haven't attended to. So we're just going to get stuck into stuff we've already got.
Yeah, we're going to make the most of the latent alcohol that we've never really gotten to over the. You buy a bottle or something and then you don't finish it and then go and buy another bottle or something and you don't finish that either. You've had one drink out of it kind of thing. So we're going to make our way through some of those.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: But part of our yearly Christmas tradition.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Is I'll make strawberry daiquiris every year. And so I've got some rum left over from last year I'm going to use, and it's going to be, oh, man, strawberry daiquiri.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Is there white rum?
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Well, speaking of Christmas traditions and making alcohol, if you follow the OGR TikTok.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: My most successful ever TikToks were Christmas punches that I made from the TikTok channel.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just looking at it literally just before we started the episode, and it's like almost 300,000 views, which is out of control.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: So I might do that again, but.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: I don't know, maybe I'll wear the scuffed OGR hat merch that Pav has.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: And market the podcast while I do it.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, actually, you know what? In saying that, we've been toying with the idea of maybe getting some merch, if that is something that it sounds like you would be interested in, I need you to confirm that interest in the discord. So go to OGR show and look for our discord link. If you're not already joined, chuck it in the general chat and tell us that you want what you want.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: He wants the scuffed hat. He wants the scuffed hat.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: We can get more scuffed hats cracking, don't you worry. Wasn't the coloring like.
Yeah, the test print didn't go too well, and that would have been a full representation of the final print.
Basically not great, but yeah. Anyways, that's my Christmas tradition. And what's been happening recently, I've also got my work Christmas party tomorrow, which I'm quite excited for.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: What are we doing?
[00:12:58] Speaker A: So I work for a disability services company, and we've got an art therapist. So we're going to be doing some art therapy in the morning, and then we're going to be doing some dumpling eating later on in the day and drinking a bunch of beverages, which is going to be excellent. So I'm quite excited for that.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: How good are dumplings, cap?
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Well, they are exceptionally good. What's your go to if you're going to have a dumpling gris? Do you have kind of like a favorite?
[00:13:25] Speaker C: Probably pork, I reckon. Pork, I must say. So, going to Singapore to watch the.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: International, I reckon, was the first time.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: That I really appreciated dumplings. They were just very good. But also the prawn ones that we had over there were not too bad.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Either, quite like, hell yeah, dude.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm definitely a pork bun kind of aficionado. Like, I always get at least one. Is that with the soft?
[00:13:54] Speaker C: What's the pork?
[00:13:56] Speaker A: You pull them apart and you put them into a couple of sides, you let them cool down and you're eating. Oh, man, this is so good. But even, like, the little. Yeah, the prawn and chives is always quite good, as well know. If you're looking for some, know, they're pretty good. But, yeah, anyways, that's kind of what I've got to look forward to, catching up with both sides of the family on Christmas day. And then, yeah, we've got two weeks off over just after Xmas, and Ted's in daycare, so me and Miro are actually going to have an actual rest for a bit, which is, honestly, you have no idea how excited I am for that. It is insane.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Cat Bloodborne's happening. Well, sorry, bloodborne's happening.
Is there going to be beverages consumed?
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Absolutely.
The two can't be mutually exclusive. They have to be together at all times.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: It's true.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be really good, man. I've got so many plans. Me and me are going to do some escape rooms and just going to have lunches together and just make the most of that time because we're like, oh, should we go somewhere? I was like, no, let's just staycation, keep going to daycare and we'll just go back home, sleep in, go and have lunches, chill.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: I feel like the last five years for me have been exactly that around Christmas time. That's what I really enjoy, time at home with the family, zero plans and just spending that quality time because I feel like leading up to Christmas is always insane. Cap, I think it's probably, regardless of where you work, whether it be retail.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Or whatever else, but it's always a.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: Big rush leading up to that period.
We've only got four more days left, Cap, and we're there.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Four more days.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Four more days and we're there. So get excited.
Now, we probably should talk about what the plans are for this show over the next couple of weeks, because we're going to be taking a fortnight break. That's not to play Fortnite. That is a fortnight worth of days. We will not be having episodes, basically over the next couple of Mondays. The 25th is the next Monday, so definitely not streaming then. And we've also got the first, which obviously New Year's Day, again, not just not happening.
So look, we'll be back on the. I think it's the eigth looking at calendar. Yes, we'd be back on the eigth. So look, you're just going to have to go bloody listen to something else till then, okay? So I apologize.
Or listen to some old episodes.
There's some cracking stuff in there, if I do say so myself.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Or additionally, go listen to another OGR certified podcast, the Dungeon Brothers, which is.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: How do they find that, Chris? What do they look up? They literally just look up the dungeon brothers.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: The Dungeon brothers. Yep. It is A-D-D podcast. There are four episodes. Four three hour episodes live already on Spotify.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: 3 hours used episodes.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: So if you need some quality listening.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Get in there and have a look.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Hell yeah, brother. Well, you heard it.
Go and consume those. Go and get the analytics cranking. That'd be great.
Basically, just so you guys know, that's the plan.
And yeah, that's how it is now.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I figured this is probably the best.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Time to sandwich this one in here, but we've got some sad news.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Pav is going to be basically stepping.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Back quite significantly in the podcast moving forward. Unfortunately, we're going to miss him a lot, but he won't be on regularly on the show anymore. But we'll be coming back here and there. Just say, know, filling in, helping record when Grizz isn't here, all that kind of so. But you won't see Tav's beautiful, lovely face or hilarious beautiful laugh every week. So, Pav, from our deepest cockles of our heart, we are immensely saddened that you will not be one of the three pillars anymore. But you will always be one of the three pillars, if that makes sense. So we're going to miss you immensely, mate.
It's been beautiful on so many levels.
[00:18:14] Speaker D: Cap.
That means a whole hell of a lot, man. It's been a wild journey.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Two years.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Two years of podcast. Two years.
[00:18:22] Speaker D: Dude, that has been insane. And just seeing from us drunkenly talking about starting a podcast at Grizz's birthday to here we are. 82 episodes along, two years strong. And the world's ogre's oyster. There's so much more to achieve and grow and do so much. And I'm super excited for the two of you. And I'm excited to become a weekly listener.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: I'm excited for that, too. I can't wait to talk shit about you and you can't.
[00:19:00] Speaker D: Yeah. I'm excited. For those of you who do tune in every week, it's been a pleasure meeting everyone, getting to know everyone and all the familiar faces. Absolute pleasure.
But I will sneakily say, watch the space. All right?
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:19:16] Speaker D: Now, a few things in the works where maybe. Yeah, we won't say anything. We won't say anything.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: You know, keep it under your hat. You got to do some fun marketing for all the stuff you got on now, Pav. If people want to keep up to date with you, give them the links, hit them.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: Obviously, Pavlovaface is my name and that is my tag, my Instagram socials handle or my handle everywhere. So Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, official, all the places. All the places. Pavlovaface. You find me there.
Hopefully back to some regular streaming as well. So who knows?
[00:19:56] Speaker A: I mean, in all honesty, I'm quite excited for that because I do love a Pav stream.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Do you love Pav stream?
[00:20:00] Speaker C: We all love Pav stream.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Be good.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Big time. Yeah, but, yeah, look, you might see Pav from time to time, but, yeah, we're going to bloody miss you big time. Okay? And I know a lot of listeners are going to miss you too. So thanks so much for your bloody service, mate.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: You're a bloody ripper.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: We're going to have to get some pav sound bites on the soundboard cap. I think we need to laugh. We need to laugh.
I've had a big one, boys, and a couple of other ones.
[00:20:28] Speaker D: Let me close this piece off with. Do you fellas want a surprise? Scuffed hat merch drop link.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Exclusive scuffed merch.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Available to purchase.
Is it actually available?
[00:20:54] Speaker D: Do you have that live since I announced it?
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Are you joking me?
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Can guarantee it's limited edition because this will not be around for much longer.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: It is utter garbage. I'm so sorry. What is it? Through stream elements or something? It's so bad.
[00:21:11] Speaker D: It's not amazing. All right.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: You got it up.
[00:21:16] Speaker D: I'm going to throw it in the chat. If anyone is interested, we'll put it.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: In the show notes and it will probably only be live for like, a week.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: What?
[00:21:25] Speaker C: Until we fucking fix it? I mean, it'll be live until cap.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: Can find it to delete it.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: So bad. It's not good.
[00:21:33] Speaker D: It's not good.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Put that in the discord as well for those people.
It's so bad, dude. It's like super washed out. You could barely even tell what it is.
God, I can't even begin to adequately describe this to audio only listeners, but it's freaking terrible.
Go and check it out in the discord. We'll drop a link in there.
Don't buy it. Do but don't. But also maybe do because it may be sick. Yeah, it's kind of like a bit of a meme. Anyway, so there you go. We got the scuffed merch. So it's pretty exciting. Speaking about merch links, everything else, classic house rules, et cetera. Just want to say a big thank you to all of our wonderful listeners every week coming out here. Freaking listen to the content. We appreciate you. You can do so live. Twitch tv, earthshinicgamingradio and yeah, join us from 07:00 p.m. Australian western Standard Time every Monday except for the next two Mondays because we're on holidays, but we're back after that. Don't worry. In the meantime, you can join the rest of the podcast listeners on all your favorite podcasting platforms. Recently, you couldn't listen on iTunes, but we since fixed that. Can't believe no one told us for that many weeks. It's actually kind of embarrassing, but we fixed it. Apparently you can't upload. We thought we were so funny, we were uploading ogg. What was it?
[00:23:03] Speaker C: Og files.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah, and we'll call them ogre files. And we thought we're the coolest guys ever.
[00:23:10] Speaker C: So cool. Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Files. They're our own patented file. Anyways, turns out itunes wants nothing to do with them. So we basically had the last five or six weeks rejected on iTunes. But anyways, we fixed it. Don't worry. There should be, should be fine. So yeah, you can listen to us on iTunes, you can listen to us on Spotify podcasts around the globe. Your favorite, just look up OGR or oceanicama radio. Alternatively, you can go to OGR show and just listen straight off our website. So also a valid option.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Now, just also want to say a.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Big thank you to our wonderful Patreons, the legends that just keep that cash rolling into our bank account so we can make all kinds of scuffed merchandise and TikToks. And boy, do we do a good job of those two things.
Now, those legendary legends are the following. Sukai, Moosey, caging runt sergeant Paul Lee, GD jlibs Brendan, Dan, fantastic strops and Slatos legends. Thank you so much for your ongoing support this year. We really bloody appreciate it. That money's going straight to the TikToks and yeah, it's doing things okay. So thank you big time. Now, if you want to become a Patreon as well, you just got to go to patreon.com ogrshow and just follow the prompts. Chuck your digits in there and lock it in. Thank you very much. Appreciate you.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: All right.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Not a huge quest log tonight, but it is a hearty one. Okay?
It depends on how you cut it up, really. If you cut it up into major chunks and then you go into sub chunks, that's where your chunkage is.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: But yeah, look, regardless, we got a.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Big one, all right? And we're going to go through it right now. Obviously, we had last week the game awards, okay? We weren't around last week. We decided to take another break, but we're going to go through it now. Okay. We're going to go through all the game category winners. But before we do, I wanted to.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Kind of just general sentiment analysis of the game awards. Grizz, did you watch any of it, mate?
[00:25:20] Speaker C: I watched snippets, bits and pieces, yeah. And I must say, cap, at first.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Glance, I heard Jeff Keeley kind of.
[00:25:29] Speaker C: Say that he wanted to be kind of like the logies, kind of this big, fantastical, big props, amazing stage and everything else. I reckon they kind of achieved that. But I was pretty impressed with the way things were set up and presented. But, yeah, it's pretty cool.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I think overall, I think they've kind of gone from strength to strength each year, and they run a pretty tight ship. I think there's a few things that kind of just generally annoy me.
And yeah, Jim in the chat saying those are the exact words he used, just like the logies.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: I don't even know if Jeff Keeley.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Knows what the logies are. For those listening at home that aren't australian, the logies are like our local, like, awards, basically. Here in Australia, he probably said Academy Awards. Anyways, we're diverging.
I think one thing that kind of just generally annoyed me, and it seems to kind of be something that cropped up for a lot of other people was just the way that people were kind of rushed off stage for their speeches and whatnot. You're kind of having these people who have poured their heart out into games and obviously gotten quite a significant amount of recognition at a very significantly recognized event and an event that is always kind of touted as being for gamers, by gamers that kind of. So, you know, these people are coming up to accept awards, sometimes getting little to know speech, I guess, giving capabilities. But then you have guys like Matthew McConaughey given like a three minute just monologue of talking about how he's in a video game, or you've got Timothy Charlemagnet kind of doing his thing. So I think they're quite selective on what they do and don't want on the screen. And it's understandable ultimately, because they're trying to market this event and get eyes on it. And how do you do that? By putting celebrities and shit on the tv. And I guess that's kind of what happened.
So I think that's one thing that I was quite disappointed in, ultimately, is people not having realistically enough time to really thank who they wanted to thank. I mean, I believe what's his name, the lead of Larry and studios. He really had enough time to.
Yeah, he basically didn't even have enough time to announce that the game was being released on Xbox that day at the game awards, game of the year winner speech. You know what I mean?
[00:28:01] Speaker C: In my opinion on this, cap, just for information, they got given 30 seconds until a prompt came up on the screen to hurry them along.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: And 100%, I mean, last year, I.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Feel like some of the speeches maybe took the piss a little bit. Cap, we saw for sure Christopher judge had like, he had like a nine.
[00:28:23] Speaker D: Minute speech.
[00:28:26] Speaker C: And we're just talking away and talking. Obviously, people are saying, yeah, Keeley's just hurried these guys along, but it's probably come from somewhere else and saying, sure, let's stick to a format. This is the format so we don't go over time. And they pressured them. But I do feel like there needs to be a bit of middle ground here, that they needed to do a little bit better.
Maybe they make the lesser awards, I don't know, 30 seconds. But surely you give the game of the year cap, you give them five, six minutes to say what they want to say and have a nice big conversation about things. Like, it just seemed really quite bizarre.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: I really like that commentary. J not all gamers skip dialogue cutscenes. That's a classic. But, yeah, I mean, ultimately, I think you're right, grizz.
The show itself is still pretty fledgling. Like, we've had, what, four or maybe five of these max. So they're still kind of finding their feet. I think a little bit, despite also having the summer games festival. But ultimately, I think they have a certain amount of time to work with. They obviously want to kind of fit a certain length of time to kind of get everything in there. And, yeah, I can imagine it's pretty difficult to ensure that everyone sticks to a certain time limit. So, yeah, look, it's definitely not a conundrum I'd want to be solving personally, but I still think, for example, I really think that best indie and debut indie deserve, like, a significant amount of time to have a bit of a chat about why they are there and what they did to achieve their video game. I want to hear that as a gamer, that's what I want to hear. And especially when you get a game like Boulders gate three that is just so superbly put together in every bloody way, give those people some time on the stage to go through that. Give them the opportunity. So, yeah, a bit disappointing.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: But ultimately, I think the other takeaway cap is time was taken away from these devs to be able to speak about their games.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Yet there were other sections where it.
[00:30:32] Speaker C: Was an extended period of time, like Jeff just waffling shit, basically, and he did a section with a puppet and like a bunch of stuff where maybe they could have cut those bits a little bit and let Larry and talk.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: About their beloved video game and actually.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Say something so you can see why people are angry. But at the same, you know, Jeff took to Twitter and I feel like this feedback is taken on board. Look, all in all, I think it was a pretty good show.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: I enjoyed it.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: I think some of the theatrics were excellent. I don't know if you watched the Alan Wake musical section where they had like a rock band, like jamming out to this Alan Wake themed song and they had the voice actors up there.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Singing that song is played in the game and it's both bizarre and brilliant in the game. And it was the same for the stage production of it. I just thought it was so well bloody done. And it's really cool to see a video game, I guess, just generally have.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Such a banging tune.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Well, realistically, like a marketable pops tune, kind of good.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: The musicians were fucking amazing too. That drummer and the guitarist were absolutely shredding. Just like, enjoy. Brilliant listen to.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so very rad. One thing I do want to kind of note as well know, we didn't touch on the fact that Christopher judge had a significantly long speech the previous year. And I think his comment was something along the lines, know, my speech last year was longer than this year's Call of duty campaign or something I thought was.
And that generated quite a lot of hate on the socials from developers and fans alike. So even better personally when I find that out. So get a few noses turned up. But it was brilliant.
[00:32:27] Speaker C: Just on Jeff's Twitter announcement, this is what he said here. He said, I do agree the music was played too fast for the award winners this year and I asked our team to relax the rules as the show went on. While no one was actually cut off, it's something addressing going forward, but I would almost argue him saying no one was actually cut off. I think by having prompts on the screen to wrap up and other bits and pieces. Obviously we had devs like Larian Studios.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: It felt like they didn't get a chance to really talk about what they.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: Wanted to talk about so much.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: So cap that the devs from Larian.
[00:33:05] Speaker C: Took to Twitter to basically write out their acceptance speech of the game of the year award. So I don't know. It's interesting hearing that come from Jeff when really maybe they did actually get cut.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: I can't look, it's the game of the year award. Like, let them have a bit longer.
What are you doing? It's just wild. Anyways, hopefully next year I'll take a few of those things on board, like you said, but shall we discuss some category winners? Grizz? I mean, we've been talking enough about it. We probably should go through it. Well, obviously we already know that the game of the year award went to Boulders Gate three.
Well deserved. I personally think, and I think, God, I mean, it's one of those.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: I was trying to explain to my wife Mia, the influence, I think of.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Boulder's Gate as a video game property and what it as a game means for just gaming in general. And I honest to God think the Boulder's Gate is one of those pinnacle landmark video games in our human timeline, where you go, it's in the same caliber as Ochron of time, for example. For me, I think it's one of those games where you go that is such a unique experience that I just can't see myself really getting ever again.
And even things like Breath of the Wild, for example, another classic, maybe Red Dead Redemption as well, I think is probably one of those pinnacle games as well.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: But I really think it's going to.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Be one of those ones that you could chuck on the calendar and go, that was the day.
[00:34:52] Speaker C: It's one of the ones that almost forms the basis of what a pinnacle game of that nature is from other devs and they always will feel like.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Once you have that, you see all.
[00:35:04] Speaker C: These games that try to mirror exactly what Larian have done with that game and just never quite hit the ticket because it's such a special piece. But I 100% agree, Cap, and I'm so glad that Game of the year went this way because, I don't know.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: I just feel like we haven't had a game of this caliber with this much depth.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: The narration, the voice, acting, just the attention to detail was just unbelievable.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: I think my favorite part about all this is the main vehicle and driver of this game being such a pinnacle. Experience is its narrative, and I think we're going to talk about it a little bit later. But there's been a lot of talk about how important narrative is in video games and I guess certain companies taking it upon themselves to suggest that perhaps single player experiences and narrative experiences aren't that important anymore and everyone wants multiplayer. But a game like Boulders gate three proves that we are still after expansive, immersive video game experiences of a high narrative caliber. So I'm just so stoked to see something like this.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Grab it.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: So it's fucking awesome. Real fucking awesome. Now I'm going to go through basically all of the winners of the categories that we went through the other week. So there's a bunch of other ones in here that bloody check it out. We're going to go through it. All right. Best narrative went to Alan Wake two, which I was surprised about but stoked about because I thought it would be Boulders Gate three. I just thought it was going to be like a tsunami of Boulders Gate three awards.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: But I'm really glad to see Alan.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Wake two here, take this, because I think the storytelling in Alan Wake two is phenomenal and the way that they utilize face cam and dialogue and weave this insanely mysterious, weird tale, it's brilliant. I still need to finish it, but everything I've played up until this point.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I have bloody loved.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: And man, I'm so stoked that they've won it. They totally deserve it for sure.
I think absolutely in the same caliber as far as narrative goes, within Boulder's gate, for example. But two vastly different stories. I think they just done a really good job. I don't want to give too much away because I think everyone should really give it a crack. If you are thinking of playing this game, I would recommend either a playing one or if you don't have the.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Time, watch a really good synopsis.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Overall kind of general thing on YouTube just watch something to orientate yourself on the story. That's what I did, and it definitely paid off because I kind of knew what was kind of going on in the greater world. But yeah, once you have that under your belt, it's superb. Excellent game.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: What do you think, grizz mate?
[00:37:56] Speaker C: I tend to agree narrative, and what I found amazing about Battlesgate three was the possibilities between different playthroughs, different decisions.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Different things that you could do playing multiplayer single player.
[00:38:11] Speaker C: Like the amount of thought, I just cannot fathom cap the mind map that forms the relationships with the outcomes and everything else, and tying it all into one piece.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: And I feel like maybe act one.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: And two were done, maybe a little bit better than act three in Battlesgate.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: But it is just an absolute masterpiece.
[00:38:30] Speaker C: Of narration with all of the possible permutations of things happening. And you being able to tell, like, a logical story is just nuts.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: But also the fact, I mean, it's. It's kind of a triumph of just.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Tenacity, realistically, because they've managed to narrate all of these possible permutations and then have the story follow all of those permutations, like the amount of content required.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: And if you think about it as.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: A conditional logic tree, and here's the first point, then you've got a branching choice that you make, and those choices, having more choices, more choices, and you think about the tree of choices that you have from top to bottom. It is a web. How do you manage that from a project management's perspective?
[00:39:21] Speaker B: It is insane.
[00:39:23] Speaker C: It actually reminds me, because I keep going back to this when we talk.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: About battles Gate, but to me it is like an extremely well done home version of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Yeah.
[00:39:42] Speaker C: That'S kind of how it feels like to me. And as I've played in Dming things, but I have mind maps for stuff, and depending on where my players go and what they do, then it might expand out.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: But just to see, I would love.
[00:39:55] Speaker C: To see how they've planned out the stories and how that kind of fits together in that game, because it is seriously a master.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: I'd love to see like a full in depth documentary on just how they managed to project, manage something of this size.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: And I mean, realistically, stuff all bugs, like bugger up. Yeah.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: And the bugs they had, cap, they continued to fix. I do feel like I remember speaking.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: With you after it originally released, and.
[00:40:24] Speaker C: You were telling me as you progressed through the game, you kind of felt.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Like there were things slipping out, like.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: Story wise, like little things that wouldn't.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Make sense in dialogue and stuff, but.
[00:40:34] Speaker C: I feel like that they have fixed those through patches and other things, for sure.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: But despite all this, just want to go back and say, despite having spoken.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: About boulders, get three the entire time for best narrative. Well done, Alan Wake, too.
All right, now, so the next one that we have in the list here, Grizz, is best performance, which was taken by Neil Newburn or newborn for his performance of Asterion of boulders, gate three. So, yeah, congratulations to Neil, I think, ultimately makes total sense. I mean, Neil Newbin's been like a bit of a pop icon, realistically now, there's so much thirst for that person on Twitter and everything else, so I think it makes total sense.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: An exceptional, I don't know, act, I guess.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Asterion. Asterian is a really well fleshed.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Know.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: Character and I think it just kind of met the whole vampire kind, know thing, had it going really well.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: So, yeah. What are your thoughts, Grizzo? Yeah, look, looking back on, actually, when we did our OGR votes, I put.
[00:42:02] Speaker C: My vote on this, not knowing a whole heap about the voice actors that I was voting on. So, no, I tend to agree, mate.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: I think all the voice acting in Belder's gate three was pretty amazing and.
[00:42:15] Speaker C: It still surprises me now, the random little bits and pieces that you come across, but, yeah, did a good job.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Well done.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Yeah, big time, mate. Yeah, well done, Neil. Now, best ongoing game went to Cyberpunk 2077. Grizz, super stoked with this one as well. In all honesty, I'm surprised Fortnite didn't win it with the year that they've had. But personally, I'm very glad that Cyberpunk.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Won it because I just think it's.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: I mean, I'm going to sound like such a dickhead here, but it's more of a video game than what Fortnite is. I think Fortnite is almost like a social experience, which is obviously a video game, but I like to see game.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Ass video games winning these, you know what I mean?
[00:43:00] Speaker C: Well, it's interesting too, cap, because I don't know whether you would call Cyberpunk 27 2077 an ongoing video game either, because probably after this DLC, it's probably going to be pretty much done. Whereas the other entries in that category are.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: There's more content coming or.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: No, no, sorry, I meant as in, yeah, you're right, they haven't know previously. This is the last piece of content they're going to be putting together. I'd say they might trickle some bits and pieces out because I think it's had a bit of a resurgence, but ultimately I think they have actively stated that they're looking towards Cyberpunk two as.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: The next major kind of thing in that series, basically.
[00:43:44] Speaker C: So this is interesting because when we.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Did our votes in the last episode, I actually picked this four ongoing game.
[00:43:52] Speaker C: But I didn't think it was going to win it because I thought that there were other games that are probably classified as ongoing games that have done a good job, like Fortnite. So yeah, it's an interesting one, but yeah, absolutely cap stoked for them. It's good to see them win an award here because the game has come such a long way since release. It's almost like the no man's sky of these cyberpunk games in 2023. So good job. Well deserved.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Big time. Absolutely. All right, Grizz. Best indie game sea of Stars winner, winner, winner. Chicken dinner out of dredge, Dave the diver, Cocoon and viewfinder. So I'm not surprised with this. I think again, it came down to just the nostalgia trip for a lot of people being such a strong kind of chrono trickle like experience.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: You know what mean great game, but yeah, beautiful visuals.
[00:44:41] Speaker C: Still yet to play it, but it's on the list.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Now, best debut indie Cocoon, which 100% agree with what a freaking game. Absolute masterpiece. If you're listening to this podcast and you still haven't freaking played Cocoon after hearing me talk my ass off about it virtually every episode since I've played that game, what are you doing? It is for free on Xbox. Game Pass this is by far one of the best gaming experiences I've ever.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: Had in my life, especially when it comes to puzzles.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: I'm just saying this is a seriously freaking good game. You need to play this game.
[00:45:20] Speaker C: Remember, you're talking about it as nearly being game of the year mate over Baldor's Gate. When you were first playing this, you're.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Like, yeah, this game is, dude.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: When it comes down to it as a packaged experience, sure, it's nowhere near the scope of Boulders Gate, and Boulders Gate is obviously one of those pinnacle things, but this is by far one of the best puzzling experiences I've ever.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Played for a video game, full stop.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: It is exceptional and I think the way that it kind of, I guess it's approach to Sci-Fi weirdness, but then very minimal on explaining anything to you. It's kind of one of those figure out yourself kind of experiences, but everything just feels so kind of organic. And when you figure out a puzzle, it just kind of clicks, and then there's all this weird recursion going on with the way you're supposed to solve some of the puzzles. And when you figure those out, it all just comes together, and it's just such a wonderful.
Oh, man, it's so freaking good. The guys who made this, their brains just must be gigantic because I don't even know how you come up with some of the shit that they have put in there. Yeah, absolutely.
Even from a development point of view.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Like, coding some of this stuff would.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: Have been a nightmare. So good on them. It's an exceptional game. So, yeah, again, if you ain't playing.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: That game, sort your shit out.
[00:46:41] Speaker C: Cap, does it run on Steam deck?
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Okay, I played it exclusively on Steam deck, so I can confirm it does indeed run very well on Steam deck.
All right, best action game.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Grizz, armor core six. Yeah.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Surprise, surprise or little surprise surprise?
[00:47:02] Speaker C: That game was all action, mate. All action, no dialogue. That's what it was.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: So best game focused primarily on combat, which I think. Yeah, that basically. I'm a bit sad that hi fi Rush didn't win it.
In all honesty, I really couldn't give a shit about armored core six. I feel like it fizzled out really quickly, in my opinion.
Whereas hi fi rush just had something going for it that stuck around for a bit. So, anyway, it's a bit of a shame, but is what it is now. Grizz, best action adventure game.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: The Legends Zelda Tears of the Kingdom took one of the awards away, and this was the one I got.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: So there you go. All right, best rpg, not sea of stars and definitely not Starfield.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: It was Bobblesgate three. Big surprise there.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: So, yeah, poor Todd. There was a couple of memes that I saw of when the winner for best RPG was announced, and Tod Howard looking incredibly well. Not that he wasn't stoked. It was just kind of like a real awkward, weird smile that he was doing. Know, my game didn't fucking win anything, dude.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: It was.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: Yeah, look interesting. But also, Cap, do they deserve anything in the game?
[00:48:20] Speaker C: Awards, mate.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:48:24] Speaker A: Participation award, maybe?
[00:48:26] Speaker C: Coaches award? Coaches award, right?
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: Coaches award. Exactly. Right. All right. Scooting down. Grizz, best multiplayer game went to Boulders, gate three.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. Essex.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: It's interesting, Cap, because I was hearing you say how it's great to see a game with a narrative driven story do so well these days when we've got lots of devs pushing multiplayer games, but still Beltor's gate winning best multiplayer game, I think, is also saying something, and I can speak to that. Playing through Beltor's gate three in a multiplayer campaign is truly like a DND experience. They've just done so well in piecing that together.
The scope, very good.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: I think they've done a really good job of presenting a fairly unique gaming experience as well. I mean, you can literally have conversations that you don't let other people in on in your playthrough, right? And for a brand new player, that's going to be a really interesting experience because you've obviously got one of the backstories that you can choose for your character is, and I'm not going to give too much away, but it's quite a game shattering, I guess, reveal when you finally find out what the backstory of the. What do they call the dark urge.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: There'S breadcrumbs all the way through, but when you finally get confirmation of.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: Who you are and if you've hidden.
[00:50:01] Speaker A: That from your party for all that time, that's really good.
[00:50:06] Speaker C: I actually wish I kind of held because I am playing dark herds right now, but I actually kind of wish that I did hide those early dialogues.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: From the party and just see how.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: It would go because, yeah, next time I totally will do that because I'm.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Just curious here, Cap, but if you pick an origin backstory like dark urge.
[00:50:29] Speaker C: Does the rest of your party know.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: That you've picked that?
[00:50:33] Speaker A: I assume so. I don't know because I've not played multiplayers, so I don't know what people see on their side.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: So it's a good question.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: Someone in chat might be able to kind of give us a bit of information there.
[00:50:47] Speaker C: But either way, it's very well designed, mate. It's very well designed, being able to hide dialogue and do bits and pieces.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: And I think ultimately providing a pretty close to, obviously not quite one to one, but a Pretty bloody good representation of what it's like to play a.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: DND campaign and what this game has done for Wizarders of the coast's.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: I guess overall D D sales is.
[00:51:18] Speaker C: Mean.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: It definitely deserves mean again. Boulder's Gate has just been kind of a power unto itself. It's just one of those crazy games. I thought they might give it to something like Street Fighter six, but they.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Just went, nah, Cap, you're an idiot.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: You bloody idiot. Of course we're not giving it to them. Straight to bloody walters, gate three. So there you go. All right, moving along, Grizz. Most anticipated video game goes to Final Fantasy seven, rebirth.
It's hard to fight against an almost globally shared nostalgia.
[00:51:55] Speaker C: My most anticipated video game is Hades two cap. I think that's going to be an.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Absolute banger from super giant games. Pretty keen on that.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: But you're right, Hades two will be amazing.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: I'm sure.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: I'm positive.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: But, dude, for a lot of people.
[00:52:12] Speaker A: Final Fantasy seven was again another pinnacle moment game. Not to say that Hades hasn't been. I think Hades deserves recognition as a significantly pinnacle, roguelike experience. But I mean, Final Fantasy seven, Christ, man. Jesus. All right, anyways, moving along.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Grizz, one of the last ones, well.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: The last one on our list, best adaption went to the last of us.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: Yeah, Pedro, you've done it again, my friend.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: Well played, sir. It's good, yeah. Oh, dude.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: I mean, that adaption has been exceptional on every level.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Just fucking good. Anyways, those were all the categories that we kind of went through the other week.
There you go.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: Now, if you're playing at home, not.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: The week, but the week before last, you'd know that we put our predictions in to see who would come out on top.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Now I'm going to go through from.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: Least with five correct answers was Pav Lovaface. Pav selected Neil Nubin for performance action adventure. Being tears of the Kingdom best rpg. He selected Boulders Gate three multiplayer. He did not get right. Most anticipated, got correct, and game of the year. So well done.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: Well done, Pav.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Hey, that's a pass, mate.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: Yeah, easy.
[00:53:47] Speaker D: I wasn't.
[00:53:49] Speaker C: Wait, hang on.
I did think I was going to.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Fail worse, so I'll take it all right now. And then next was a tie between myself and grizzly. Game again.
[00:54:09] Speaker C: Two years running, cat.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Two years running.
[00:54:12] Speaker C: Next year, we'll fucking settle this, mate. We'll settle this.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll settle the score. So Grizz got best. He selected adaption. He selected ongoing game. He also selected debut indie action game, action adventure rpg multiplayer and game of the year. And I selected adaption. Indie debut indie action action adventure rpg, most anticipated in game of the year. So well done, everyone.
[00:54:40] Speaker B: Good job.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: Great shit.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: But yeah.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: So there you go. Now, we did put out a Google form a little while ago in the discord and asked people if they wanted to kind of play. You're more than welcome to fill this one out. This out. And we'll do a bit of a count.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: Now, I have since counted those hoopst put their things in, so we had the same category.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: What do you think?
We did indeed.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Now, tied for second was Sukai.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Erijay and strops with eight. So tying with myself and grizzly. Very well done, all you bloody legends. Blazing ahead in front with nine was straight jacket. Jim, you bloody.
[00:55:27] Speaker C: He's Jim. He's the fucking powerhouse of knowledge. Get him on the podcast, mate.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: Get him on, get him out of know. He's just proving his worth.
Well, very, very well.
Yeah, look, we'll do that again next year. Jim, you are going to be getting a very special discord role when I get my shit together. And Pav is going to be giving you a cameo, so get excited.
[00:55:57] Speaker C: That's in your contract of the OGR podcast, Pav.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: All right.
[00:56:01] Speaker C: I don't know if you read that. Fine print, Matt.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry. You got one more job to do before you leave.
Very well played. Jim with nine.
He's a very knowledgeable human being and he's showing it off.
[00:56:19] Speaker C: Here's Luka now. Pav's leaving the show. His cameo is worthless.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: La.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: Hot take.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: Poor Pav.
[00:56:32] Speaker A: Look, you know, you can't control these things sometimes. All right?
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Now, so that was the game awards.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: And in classic OGR fashion, we wanted.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: To do our own game awards. And we are calling them the Ogies, I. E. The gaming version of the Lokis.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: So we're going to call them the Ogies. All right, so we've got one, two. How many categories we got here, grizz? 712-345-6789 no, not even. Not even seven. It's nine, actually. I've just done the incorrect numbering here. And look, we didn't want to replicate the same kind of categories as the game awards. We want to make them a little bit more interesting and whatnot. So we've got the following categories, which we're going to talk about. And Pav, did you want to weigh in on these, mate? Have you got anything for it?
[00:57:24] Speaker B: No.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: Cool. No worries. Yeah, I didn't think you would. That's fine.
You can give us game of the year though, mate. Surely you got a game of the year. All right, you can do that one. All right, so we're going to have the following categories. Best indie, best story, best gameplay niche, best gaming news, story of the year, best OGR moment of the year, biggest gaming community legend, biggest disappointment. And it's not Pav's cameo. You weren't allowed to put that down. Is it a disappointment? Most.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: And game of the year?
[00:57:59] Speaker A: Okay, so let's dive in.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Grizz, best Indie, who'd you choose? Okay, well, the way I wanted to.
[00:58:07] Speaker C: Approach this cap, that obviously it's different, right? Because I can't pick ones that I haven't played. So I haven't played Sea of stars and I haven't played cocoon, so those are automatically out.
So I've picked two here that I've tied because. And I'm basing this purely on enjoyment level.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Cap, have you heard of the game.
[00:58:30] Speaker A: Christopher?
[00:58:30] Speaker C: But it's not Brota. It's not bro tato because Brotato came out last year, but a game in a similar nature, kind of. No, seriously, though, there's a game called halls of torment.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: Cap, do you know what totally great.
[00:58:46] Speaker C: Game, which is, for those of you who don't know, it is similar to zombie survivors, where you control your character and it auto uses your weapons, but it has a diablo like aesthetic to it, as well as a Diablo like inventory system. So you can pick up and equip items in the inventory slots as you would in a Diablo game. I had a look at my playtime.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: On this cap, and it's like nearly.
[00:59:14] Speaker C: 60 hours worth of halls of torment. So clearly it's an enjoyable game for me this year.
[00:59:20] Speaker A: I've quite liked it playing on mostly.
[00:59:22] Speaker C: Just pc or pc, but I've also deckin as well, so also quite a good steam deck game. So it's got ten out of ten reviews on Steam. I think that was a bit of a hidden gem this year, but hell yeah, brother. My winner, cap, has to go to Dave the diver.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: I think.
[00:59:38] Speaker C: I think it's just been an enjoyable experience.
[00:59:42] Speaker A: You're open up a can of worms there.
[00:59:44] Speaker C: Is it actually an indie game?
[00:59:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Well, look.
[00:59:50] Speaker C: Did it win anything at the game awards, cap?
[00:59:53] Speaker B: Did it win anything?
[00:59:54] Speaker A: Don't think it did, no, I don't believe it did.
Yeah. But it has won Grizzlies best indy, so well done. I'm sure they're going to be taking that trophy and putting it straight up on the. Sure they will.
[01:00:08] Speaker C: I'm going to click and send it.
[01:00:10] Speaker B: To them, let them know. Yeah.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: That's going to send some ripples through the gaming community.
[01:00:16] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[01:00:18] Speaker B: All right.
[01:00:18] Speaker A: Very nice, mate. Well, look mine.
Can you believe it?
[01:00:23] Speaker B: Cocoon. Just an absolute delight.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: I mean, I'm not going to go through it all over again, but in terms of indie puzzlers and just puzzlers.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: In general, and just what they've sort.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Of produced in the Sci-Fi genre, I just think they do such a bloody good job of just presenting something so unique and wonderful. It's absolutely superb. The devs need to really give themselves a pat in the back and, yeah, cocoons. Just again, look, if you haven't played.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: It, God fucking sakes, go play that game, please. Get in there immediately.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Get in there. All right, Grizz, I want to hear your best story.
[01:01:03] Speaker C: Best story. Look, narrative, we've already kind of discussed this to death already today, but look, it has to go to Beldos Gate three. I haven't finished the game yet, but the narrative and the storytelling in that game is some of the best I've ever experienced across my gaming years, for sure. I've just done a fantastic job at tying everything together. Even given the amount of choices you can make in the game, it's done a really good job.
[01:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, look, I'm going to join you on that one. It was really hard for me to.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Differentiate between which I thought deserved it.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: More out of this and Alan Wake two. And I just love Alan Wake two for its weird and wacky take on Twin Peaks and that kind of inspiration that it's drawn from that.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: But you're right, mate.
Boulders Gate three is just to be.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: Able to provide a story that can branch to that degree whilst also just.
[01:02:10] Speaker B: Being so coherent and interesting around every.
[01:02:14] Speaker A: Corner of that game. It is insane. So it was really difficult for me to put that elsewhere. So, yeah, Larry and man, if they manage to do another experience at the caliber of Boulders Gate three, like, Jesus Christ, man.
[01:02:29] Speaker C: That's just so keen, dude. So keen.
[01:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:31] Speaker C: Hope they do.
I'd love to see another whole take like in space or something random.
[01:02:37] Speaker B: Just.
[01:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm kind of sad that we've had because we had rogue trader, which is one of the latest Warhammer games from. I can't remember who has done that one. Don't think it's fat shark. It's a different company. But that is a CRPG. Our kind of same kind of vein as Boulders Gate three or divinity.
All the original Boulders gate games. That kind of top down, kind of tactical thing.
I haven't played it yet.
[01:03:08] Speaker C: Alcat Games says Alcat game Legend.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: Every j is saying that road Trader.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: Has been fun, but I do wonder.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: If it is the same caliber as Boulders Gate three. I'd love to see Larry and put their mark on the Warhammer franchise. Like, I reckon that could just be insane.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: It is very true. Yeah, well, I feel like they've put them.
[01:03:27] Speaker C: They've proven themselves, cap. I feel like divinity, original sin.
[01:03:31] Speaker B: Both games one and two were excellent.
[01:03:34] Speaker C: But Battlesgate three was a step above those again. And I feel like they've really proven.
[01:03:41] Speaker B: Their worth and yeah, maybe it'd be great.
[01:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to see what Larian gets up to next.
I imagine there may probably be a large company that seeks to have them either bought out or do something on their behalf with their ip. So I'm very interested to see where they go next. Yeah, it's going to be insane. Negriz, next one. Best gameplay, mate.
[01:04:08] Speaker C: So when I was thinking about this, cap, I approached it like this, a game that's come out this year that the gameplay mechanic is unlike something else.
[01:04:18] Speaker B: We'Ve seen to date that is new and refreshing.
[01:04:21] Speaker C: It is not like a rendition of something else that's already been done. And there's a couple of games that stood out for me.
The first one is only in beta, but I've spoken about it before, and.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: That is backpack battles.
[01:04:34] Speaker C: I've got quite a few hours in that game. And for those of you that don't know this game, it is almost like an inventory management. You need to fit certain items in certain spaces. It's a PvP, auto battling, item crafting video game where you kind of piece together things from a shop that you.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: Buy into a backpack, and then you.
[01:04:56] Speaker C: Fight other people using your backpack against theirs. And I just thought it was a really cool idea. And honestly, mate, I reckon when this comes out in full, I know this is a bit of a controversial pick because it's not officially out. It's in beta. I think that this might be one of those vampire survivors oh, shit games. Because I know there's already a couple of these that exist and are coming out pretty quick.
Look, that's the runner up. But I think my number one here, cap, again, goes to Dave the diver. In terms of a gameplay niche, something that I've played this year, that it's completely different. Like, if I pitched to you, Dave the diver, Cap, as a developer, and I was like, yeah, Cap, I've got this great game, this diver that goes down and collects fish and sells it in a sushi restaurant. And then once you've done your day diving, he's going to go back and you're going to attend tables in a sushi restaurant.
[01:05:42] Speaker B: You'd be like, what?
[01:05:45] Speaker A: That's not going to work, right? Sounds interesting. Yeah, here it is.
[01:05:50] Speaker B: It works. Yeah, it's fun. It's good. I love it.
[01:05:53] Speaker A: Well, in a similar kind of avenue to you, Grizz, when it comes to the backpack.
[01:05:59] Speaker B: What was it? Backpack what? Backpack battles.
[01:06:02] Speaker C: Yeah, backpack battles.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Inventory management. I think my gameplay niche of the year has been dredge.
I loved what they did with, I guess, managing your boat and having a certain kind of capacity and having to kind of tetris fish into this variable stow size and upgrading your ship over time, having that kind of road light element to it, but then also mixing it with one of my favorite things of all time, fishing minigames. I just love a fishing minigame. I'm a sucker for them and having a bloody good one. Really enjoyed that. And I'm a massive, massive lovecraftian fan. And their take on the whole lovecraftian tale and having that kind of the whole shadow over in Smith kind of fishing village thing going on, but then you're out in the ocean, and you're kind of trying to get back before sunset before all the heebie jeebies comes out in the dark ocean. And, man, just an exceptional game. And I mean, Grizz, speaking of, Dave the diver dredge is getting some dredge themed DLC in Dave the diver.
[01:07:17] Speaker B: Soon, the crossover we didn't know we needed.
[01:07:19] Speaker C: But honestly, that sounds great. And the more I think about dredgecat, the more I think, like, they have designed that game for you, specifically around what you find attractive in a video game.
[01:07:30] Speaker A: Almost like they went into my brain and went, okay, these are the things we need to get cat and Perth's money. And, boy, did they get my money. And it was money well spent. Loved it. So, yeah, well played to those guys. All right, next one. Grizz is best gaming news story of the year.
[01:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Grizz, what do we got, mate?
[01:07:49] Speaker A: What is yours?
[01:07:50] Speaker B: What was yours?
[01:07:50] Speaker C: Can I have two again? I've picked two for all these caps.
[01:07:53] Speaker A: Yeah, go on.
[01:07:54] Speaker C: Sorry. The first one that I found just.
[01:07:57] Speaker B: Fucking awesome is the normal guy who finds the one ring card in magic.
[01:08:03] Speaker C: The gathering and sells it to post Malone for $2 million.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: That, to me, is just, like, just.
[01:08:11] Speaker C: A cool story because people are out there buying, like, hundreds of boxes of these things to try to find this one ring card. And it's this one guy who first pull, buys this one box of cards, pulls the ring, and then sells it to pocket alone. Just pretty cool.
[01:08:26] Speaker A: Absolute legend.
[01:08:27] Speaker C: Yeah. The second one, which is more of a larger story, I think. CD Projekt red. And the way that they have handled Cyberpunk is commendable.
That game went from, like, a dumpster.
[01:08:42] Speaker B: Fire when it first came out.
[01:08:44] Speaker C: Extremely buggy. It didn't run on the PlayStation four. It was literally unplayable.
[01:08:50] Speaker B: It was released at a complete and utter dumpster fire.
[01:08:54] Speaker C: So for them to then release a.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: DLC and with a huge patch alongside.
[01:08:59] Speaker C: That DLC and make a game that is absolutely, I would say meta people are enjoying it and done what they've done with that.
[01:09:08] Speaker B: I think it's a pretty cool story.
[01:09:11] Speaker C: And I think, yeah, it's a bit of recognition for those guys for doing that.
[01:09:18] Speaker A: That's resounding. I definitely can see why you would select those. They have excellent gaming stories this year. Good shit. Well, I'm doing two as well.
[01:09:31] Speaker B: Firstly, I've just got to talk about.
[01:09:34] Speaker A: This one, because it happened this week. We finally have actual confirmation that e three is now dead, fully canceled. Will never happen again.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: I think that has, it's kind of.
[01:09:47] Speaker A: A bittersweet because e three has been such a landmark in my year to year. And for many people before the game.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: Awards, e three was the thing you'd.
[01:10:00] Speaker A: Look forward to for all the big announcements, all the big releases, they all get announced there now. It's sort of died a very slow death over the last couple of years and just heaving from its own weight and they just could not make it work again post Covid. And I think ultimately, majority of announcements were completely usurped by the game awards and summer games fest. And as a result, e three just could not keep up, couldn't maintain the momentum they had, or get people on board to present and do their showcases there. But ultimately, again, it's one of those things you just mark on your calendar. It's the year that e three officially died. And it's sad ultimately, I think, again, it was a big thing for me. I used to love every July, e three coming in. I used to get really excited for it as a young dude.
[01:10:57] Speaker C: They had a lot of issues. Cap, too. I remember seeing reports on Twitter and here and there that the cost for a booth at e three for the big players to attend was like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
We've seen quite a change since COVID really switching to digital platforms of media and less in person events. Not those things can still happen. But I think paying a premium on an in person event over, like, a digital platform to talk about your games has really changed the game quite a lot.
Yeah, it's interesting.
[01:11:34] Speaker A: Absolutely. The whole space has changed significantly. So, yeah, just one of those things.
[01:11:39] Speaker B: Now.
[01:11:39] Speaker A: The other one that I want to highlight is one that I just found supremely interesting. And again, Boulders Gates throwing its weight around the AAA industry with a narrative heavy video game winning game of the year, and a game that originally or IP, that was originally generated by BioWare, which Bioware often remembered for their Mass effect games, Boulders Gate, other such legendary.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Titles that they put together, known for their narratives.
[01:12:16] Speaker A: Right now, one thing that came up earlier in the year was David Geider, who was a lead writer for, I think he might have been on Neverwinter nights and maybe, I think mass Effect as well, basically. David Geider kind of shared that a lot of the management at BioWare kind of sort of looked at the writing teams as the albatross holding back BioWare. And that narrative wasn't as important as people seem to think it was. And I loved this story, less so because of what it meant about BioWare, but more so because other games this year, and I think over and over we've seen that narrative is so bloody gave. David Geider also highlighted the fact that BioWare were looking to try and kind of retrofit AI to develop quest lines and stuff for narrative. Quest lines and stuff. And just the whole idea that chat, GPT and AI couldn't realistically produce the special source that is needed to make a great narrative. The things that it was coming up with was kind of just a bit scattered and reasonable, but it just wasn't quite right. It was missing something, I think.
[01:13:46] Speaker B: For me, narrative is such an important.
[01:13:49] Speaker A: Aspect of video games, and to have that highlighted and seen what's going on behind the scenes, I guess at some of these bigger companies, and when I was a young guy, Bioware was one of my favorite developers, and to see what I guess they became later on and their thoughts about narrative was quite abrasive for me. But ultimately one of my favorite stories.
[01:14:09] Speaker B: Because I guess just to see narrative.
[01:14:13] Speaker A: Stick up and do so well this year, I think was just really fun.
[01:14:17] Speaker C: Broke the mold, like you say.
[01:14:21] Speaker B: I feel like AA developers are all.
[01:14:24] Speaker C: Putting their money into ongoing multiplayer, massive multiplayer or multiplayer shooting games of service.
We see the bungie, Activision Blizzard, well, and all that is buying ips that can deliver this game of a service. So, yeah, I'm with you, mate. It's really nice to see something break the mold of that this year and win game of the year and just.
[01:14:50] Speaker B: Do a fantastic job while doing.
[01:14:53] Speaker A: Yep, love it. All right, next one, Grizz, best OGR moment of the year. Pav, did you have one that you can think of off the top of your head?
No.
[01:15:06] Speaker D: They've all been the best OGL moments.
[01:15:11] Speaker C: What a cop out.
[01:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:16] Speaker C: Look, dude, fucking time is just a.
[01:15:18] Speaker B: Weird thing, but it's actually interesting because.
[01:15:21] Speaker C: Us talking about the fucking scuffed merch, I'm pretty sure that's not in the last year.
[01:15:25] Speaker B: But I'm going to say that I.
[01:15:27] Speaker C: Think the scuffed merch was a highlight for me, just the way that Pav delivered it. He's like, guys, I've got this real big surprise for you. And he had this box, and he's like, here we go. First thing he does is he pulls the finger out of the box. This one's for you. Grizz gives me the finger.
That was pretty good. That was pretty good. And then he pulls out merch.
[01:15:50] Speaker A: That is, like, the worst ever.
[01:15:52] Speaker C: The worst.
We probably should not have even bought that up on the stream.
[01:15:57] Speaker B: It's that bad.
[01:15:58] Speaker C: And we have not gotten.
[01:16:01] Speaker A: I must say, whilst we've been talking, I have purchased myself a hat.
[01:16:05] Speaker C: I have as well. I've got a border on a hat.
[01:16:10] Speaker A: So we made two sales.
[01:16:12] Speaker B: Oh, jeez.
[01:16:13] Speaker C: Well, you and I are going to have scuffed hats. You know what? It's not even the fit that I like. I wear, like, flat brim hats, and it's a curve.
[01:16:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm the same.
It's a real dad hat. But I love it. It is.
[01:16:25] Speaker C: You'll love it.
[01:16:26] Speaker A: All right, well, look, I had to really rack my brain because there has been so much stupid shit that's happened on this freaking show. I think just some hilarious. And some of the shit has happened before the show has even gone live. Just the dumb shit that we do before we go live and stuff. But I think one of my favorite things was when we're talking about how the EU was transitioning handhelds to have. To have easily replaceable batteries that weren't, like, soldered onto the chassis. And then for some reason, Grizz seemed to think that it meant that they were going to be using AA batteries.
[01:17:04] Speaker C: That's a fucking backstep.
[01:17:06] Speaker A: My brain had this little moment where I just couldn't believe that was your thought pattern. It was the funniest thing ever. It's just something that stuck in my mind.
[01:17:17] Speaker C: You've got to brief me about this shit before we start talking about it, Cap. I got to form my own opinions about it.
[01:17:23] Speaker A: Wait, so they're going to be used at Everetti?
[01:17:27] Speaker C: That's a step back. That's bad for the environment, Cap. All right. Those things go to landfill, mate. They're no good.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: Well, as a parent, I got lots of fucking AAA batteries in my house.
[01:17:35] Speaker B: So I'd be fine.
[01:17:37] Speaker A: But regardless, hilarious moments. That was my favorite. All right, Grizz, next one. Biggest gaming community legend.
[01:17:44] Speaker B: Okay, I actually put some thought into this.
[01:17:47] Speaker C: One cap. At first I thought you meant our internal OGR community.
And I'm going to give that one because I'm going to still award this, even though it's not that to Sukai. Sukai is always fucking here. He's always so supportive, always a legend.
Just a good OGR community supportive person. But in terms of gaming community as a whole, I'm actually going to pick.
[01:18:12] Speaker B: Grubby from the dota two community. Nice.
[01:18:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I play a lot of dota two. It is my most played video game. Now, if you don't know grubby, this guy came from Warcraft three. And he decided in 2023, well, actually the end of 2022, that he wanted.
[01:18:30] Speaker B: To start playing dirty two.
Never seen the game, never played it.
He calibrated his MMR cap at 680 MMR.
[01:18:40] Speaker C: It is literally like the lowest tier of ranks. Two you could possibly get. But he stayed super humble. He learnt and he showed the community.
[01:18:51] Speaker B: How to act as a new player.
[01:18:53] Speaker C: And he really bought in. This super wholesome vibe was always really approachable. He talked to his teammates with respect. He never got tilted. And he worked his way up to now. Where he's at, he's at 4620 MMR. Divine one, considered as one of the better players, is like a tier one kind of player. He's not pro, but he has got the skills and he's very much up there. And he's very much up there. And me watching him when he was at the shit tier and he's playing supports and I really valued his approach to the game. But I also think with such a large viewer base behind him on Twitch.
[01:19:36] Speaker B: That it actually may have helped drive.
[01:19:39] Speaker C: Positive behavior scores behind positive behaviors behind that community, and less toxic and more learning and everything else. And showed that by having those attitudes.
[01:19:50] Speaker B: You can achieve what he's achieved, which.
[01:19:53] Speaker C: Is driving your MMR up through the roof. So yeah, I think he has been a really good thing for the data two community. And yeah, that is my biggest gaming community legend this year.
[01:20:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that is a huge banger.
I really like that one, Grizz, because you're right. I think also just the MObas can get a bad rap. And I mean, competitive gaming gets a bad rap because inherently a lot of people are toxic in those communities. And that toxicity bleeds into a lot of the pro scene and some of the bigger streamers. And so someone like grubby coming along and just being a genuine human being is just refreshing for once. Basically not being a bit of a toss here and there. It's nice to see basically a lot.
[01:20:43] Speaker C: Of the pro dota streamers, and I'm not going to name any names, are like that.
[01:20:47] Speaker B: They're just super arrogant and they're just assholes, basically.
[01:20:53] Speaker C: But because they're so good at the game, they get views and recognition and everything else. So it's nice to see opposite for.
[01:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:21:01] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. All right, well, my pick for the year, Grizz, is Lance Reddick. We lost Lance Reddick earlier in the year. Passed away, unfortunately. But I think Lance Reddick had some incredible video game performances. The two that come to mind for me is obviously silence from their horizon franchise. And then also Commander Zavala. He is and always will be Commander Zavala from the Destiny franchise. Despite what that franchise is going through, I think that character embodies a lot of, I guess, just good shit, just staying true and fucking getting shit done and being a bit of a pillar and. Yeah, so I think my gaming community legend, I just wanted to highlight our good friend Lance Reddick, rest his soul. But, yeah, somebody.
The gaming stuff he's done in terms of providing incredible characters. Yeah, what a bloody legend. Well done, Cap.
[01:22:05] Speaker C: What have they done with the voice acting for his.
Who was the guy from Destiny? What have they done? Are they aiing that?
[01:22:14] Speaker A: No, it's a new guy. I can't remember his name, but if you saw him, you'd know exactly who he is.
New Zavala, voice actor. His name is Keith David. You'd recognize him if you saw him. He's been in plenty of movies and shit.
And, yeah, he got a similar kind of voice and tone, so I think he'll take to the role really well.
So, yeah, that's what's going on with that.
[01:22:41] Speaker B: All right, Grizz, next one, biggest disappointment.
[01:22:47] Speaker A: What do you got for me, mate?
[01:22:49] Speaker C: Okay, one game that I was super fucking excited about for the release of, and I was super hyped for it, thinking it was going to be amazing.
[01:22:57] Speaker B: Was dark tide Warhammer.
[01:23:00] Speaker C: Dark Tide was a bit of a disappointment for me.
I really hope more from it. And I guess those of you who don't know what dark tide is, I guess it's like a PvP, pve horde mode game. The devs have other games like Vermin Tide one and two, which were touted.
[01:23:19] Speaker B: As, like, old school, I guess, like.
[01:23:22] Speaker C: Classic Warhammer, which is the elves and.
[01:23:25] Speaker B: Swords and shields and daggers and stuff.
[01:23:28] Speaker C: Whereas dark tide set in the 40k universe. So you're talking more plasma blasters and other bits and pieces. So, look, I think there were great things about the game, but I really feel like they didn't leverage off the.
[01:23:42] Speaker B: Advantage they had, cap, which was the range combat.
[01:23:45] Speaker C: I felt like the areas that they put you in were pretty closed and.
[01:23:50] Speaker B: Tight, and, I don't know, I also.
[01:23:53] Speaker C: Really hated the shop mechanic, and I really missed the way loot was in Vermintide, which was rolling dice for physical.
[01:24:00] Speaker B: Loot, and the way that that kind of worked.
Yeah, it was a real shame.
[01:24:04] Speaker A: It felt like they went backwards a lot with that game, and it definitely released a bit too early, I think, which was a real detriment for it because I think a lot of games do release early and they kind of backfill the game with patches and kind of bring it up to scratch in terms of its feature list. But I think they really fucked themselves over, in all honesty, because I think a lot of people just never went back to it, even despite having apparently some pretty reasonable patches since, and kind of addressing some of the issues that was with it. But, yeah, I think that's a classic one, and it's one I actually didn't think of until you brought it up. But, yeah, a perfect pick because I was exceptionally excited for that game. And you're right, it just didn't hit the mark at all.
[01:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, real shame.
[01:24:50] Speaker C: There's another clear standout here, Cap, but.
[01:24:52] Speaker B: I'm going to leave that because I'm.
[01:24:53] Speaker C: Maybe thinking that you might be saying that potentially.
[01:24:57] Speaker A: Potentially. Now, look, I actually found this. It's a bit of a draw for me, I think. One I'm a bit more aggressive about, and the other one I'm just generally kind of disappointed about.
Clearly, Starfield did not meet any expectations.
[01:25:19] Speaker B: And I mean, true. In all honesty, I think part of.
[01:25:22] Speaker A: Me was prepared for what Starfield ended up being.
[01:25:26] Speaker B: And I mean, Starfield itself is pretty much what a lot of its planets.
[01:25:33] Speaker A: Are, just devoid of any life.
There's no signs of life sometimes in that game. It's like a human being, maybe a fucking AI generated that game. I don't even know. It just seems like it's just the.
[01:25:47] Speaker B: Again, we're talking about narrative, narratively, just.
[01:25:51] Speaker A: Kind of just classic Bethesda attempt at just giving you, like, don't worry, we'll learn on the way. I can't explain everything right now.
Fucking yes, there's space magic. Figure the rest out later.
[01:26:07] Speaker C: But are you prepared to defend yourself when Bethesda come and comment on this video around defending your video game?
[01:26:17] Speaker A: Well, I probably should try the game with a different trait or some shit. I don't know.
[01:26:22] Speaker B: But look.
[01:26:26] Speaker A: I think the thing that pisses me off so much is people just give Bethesda a fucking free pass. And when you have games like Bethesda's Gate. Sorry, Bethesda's gate, boulders, gate three.
That just are so supreme in every way. And then you have a game like Starfield that just kind of gets the. Okay, yep, great game. Come on through. And it's just fucking Garbo, like, full.
[01:26:53] Speaker B: It's just. I find it so difficult to emphasize what it is that pisses me off about Starfield.
[01:26:59] Speaker A: But everything is just so mediocre. Like there's nothing. There's no game system in that game that feels like it makes up for any of the other game systems in that game. They're just all these loose kind of ends that don't really come together and form a tangible product that actually feels.
[01:27:21] Speaker B: Like a serviceable video game. All it is, is just the same.
[01:27:26] Speaker A: Old Bethesda regurgitation that they've gotten away with every year after year. I think, in all honesty, Bethesda stopped making good games. I'm going to go and say it probably at oblivion. I think Skyrim was pretty fucking average. I think fallout four also very fucking average. And this has just solidified my opinion about that developer. And I'm very worried about Elder Scrolls, the next Elder Scrolls game, because I.
[01:27:49] Speaker B: Just don't know how you can, in.
[01:27:52] Speaker A: A world where we've had games like the witcher three, Red Dead Redemption two.
[01:27:57] Speaker B: Since Skyrim came out, how you could.
[01:28:01] Speaker A: Put Starfield on a plate and be happy to serve that to gamers, I just do not understand at all. And I mean, frankly, I'm pretty disappointed in Bethesda, in all honesty. So that's my overall take on Bethesda. And I just think they're missing their secret sauce. I think they've just gone full corporate. And unfortunately, I think people are just happy to give them a free pass.
[01:28:24] Speaker B: Now, the one I'm not so aggressive.
[01:28:26] Speaker A: About and just generally very thought was just very fucking average was Diablo Four.
[01:28:31] Speaker C: Yeah, big one was on my radar as well.
[01:28:36] Speaker B: Look, I'm going to jump in here.
[01:28:38] Speaker C: And interrupt you real quick, cap, but I think the biggest issue with Diablo.
[01:28:42] Speaker B: Four was the corporateness of that game.
[01:28:45] Speaker C: Like trying to find the micro things that they can do to make money.
[01:28:49] Speaker B: And monetize that game when really not.
[01:28:53] Speaker C: Offering what they need to offer as a base thing for people to enjoy the video game. Enjoyment comes first, and then the microtransactions. Everything else needs to come after that, they just didn't achieve that. And it's frustrating as a gamer to have to deal with that.
[01:29:10] Speaker A: It's a shame because I think there was the bones of a good game there.
[01:29:13] Speaker B: And ultimately I think the developers want.
[01:29:19] Speaker A: To produce a good game.
I think just there's so much working against them.
It's insane that obviously they have to.
[01:29:29] Speaker B: Meet this weird middle ground on monetization.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: And it feels like a lot of money went into the marketing of that game. It's like, why don't you just not fucking have Megan Fox do some weird shit on Twitter and just spend that money that you've saved on getting another developer and making the end game better? What are you? So it's a real shame because I.
[01:29:53] Speaker B: Think I really wanted a fleshed out, great endgame experience.
[01:29:59] Speaker A: But Diablo Four just could not deliver it. And all it did was over time. You could see the themes and you could see where the artificial time inflation was happening in that game. You've discussed it plenty of times on here, Grizz, where it's worked into the game where you have to teleport between things and then traverse out to these areas. For what reason? Ultimately, all you want to be doing is using your attacks and abilities on screen. Just let me go there and do it.
[01:30:29] Speaker C: They slowed down the time it takes.
[01:30:31] Speaker B: You to teleport to town. Why?
[01:30:35] Speaker C: What reason would you ever want to do that? Unless it's to waste people's talk on things?
[01:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah, the only thing I can think of with that and being devil's advocate is if they were having some server issues and it might have reduced the load on the server to reduce how often people are quick traveling and stuff. But I mean, that's me clutching a straws.
[01:30:59] Speaker C: I thought I may have also seen on your list the new Final Fantasy. Wasn't that a bit of a disappointment for you this year as well?
[01:31:06] Speaker A: Look, I have such a love hate relationship with that game because it is.
[01:31:15] Speaker B: In some ways a lot of what.
[01:31:17] Speaker A: I wanted in a video game. But then in a lot of other ways, it just missed the mark a lot. And I think, I really hope that the developers at Square Enix can use this game as a skeleton for another incredible experience in that world. Because the kind of kaiju factor, the kind of Godzilla moments with the big battles. But then you've also got these insanely epic anime kind of cutscenes. I would say anime esque cutscenes, but ultimately the performances in that game were stellar. The Ben staff with Clive, incredible actor, incredible acting. And then that's all kind of wrapped up in a pretty good know. But then the game itself was just so fucking repetitive. And despite the combat looking really awesome and mmosque and just kind of epic, it just could not maintain any momentum. It felt like it was always missing something.
[01:32:25] Speaker B: And being a Final Fantasy game, I.
[01:32:29] Speaker A: Was expecting material systems and ways to kind of change how I can do my battle and stuff. Those things kind of existed but just didn't really.
[01:32:39] Speaker C: The original Final Fantasy games, and maybe.
[01:32:42] Speaker B: Most of them, had like literally a.
[01:32:45] Speaker C: Game within a game with the card battling systems like Final Fantasy Eight with the whole. I can't remember what the game was.
[01:32:52] Speaker B: Called, but you could walk up to.
[01:32:54] Speaker C: Anyone and win cards from them. And it was Gwent essentially. It was like Gwent from the Witcher.
[01:33:04] Speaker A: It was so close to being almost a boulder's gate level experience, basically. But they were just missing so much from what I expect. Look, I think it's hard because I don't want to disparage them for trying to iterate on the Final Fantasy kind of makeup and genetics, but ultimately, I think there's certain things from Final Fantasy that really kind of mark that as what a Final Fantasy game is. And I think ultimately a lot of that is strong rpg systems that reward customization and are complex to some degree, but that complexity just was missing. And it just made a lot of the combat and general rpgness of that game very stale, which is really unfortunate. Yeah, it's a massive disappointment for me as well. Thanks for bringing up.
[01:34:06] Speaker C: Sorry, Matt.
I just remember you saying. I remember talking halfway through your playthrough and that.
[01:34:11] Speaker B: And you were like, it's just not doing it for me. So I was interested.
[01:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I did persevere and I think this ending was pretty good.
[01:34:19] Speaker C: But, yeah, not particularly disappointing for me, Cap, but I think disappointing for some people. Other games worth a mention here were.
[01:34:27] Speaker B: For spoken was particularly terrible.
[01:34:31] Speaker C: Obviously, Golem was one of the ones as well. And I think the other one. There was another one as well.
[01:34:41] Speaker A: I don't know if anyone were looking forward to that game, but yeah, look.
[01:34:44] Speaker C: I think they released that. I reckon they got to the end and they just released it as a meme knowing it was going to blow up in media for it being so shit.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I do feel bad for anyone that spent money on that game because. Jesus Christ, not good. All right, Grizz, your most played game of the year. Hit me with it.
[01:35:04] Speaker C: What was it? Look, mate, I put my top three in here because it's always fucking hard.
[01:35:08] Speaker B: Look, Dota two is my love. I would say.
[01:35:13] Speaker C: Like, if I'm looking to play something, I have a total of 4191 hours now, Cap, in that video game.
[01:35:21] Speaker B: Just enjoy it.
[01:35:22] Speaker C: Got a recent patch out, which is pretty cool. But I've also created some lifelong friends through that game, capo, through some nontoxic gameplay. And it's created like a real.
[01:35:34] Speaker B: I don't know, I guess like a niche little spot in my gaming life that I enjoy.
[01:35:39] Speaker C: And it'll probably be forever. My most enjoyed played game.
[01:35:43] Speaker B: I don't stream it, I just enjoy it.
[01:35:46] Speaker C: A couple of beers and playing it. We call that an addiction, Chris, potentially, yeah. Look, my second most played game this year, actually, funny enough, Cap, is the binding of Isaac, mate. I have copped 303 hours. Most of those this year on the steam deck.
[01:36:02] Speaker A: 103 hours.
[01:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:36:04] Speaker C: Most of those while traveling on the steam deck, while on plane doing stuff. Most of those are this year. Most of those hours are this year, probably. I would say probably 250 of those hours this year.
[01:36:16] Speaker B: Dude.
[01:36:17] Speaker A: I reckon I've had about 250 combined.
[01:36:19] Speaker B: Gaming hours this year.
[01:36:22] Speaker C: The other one, Cap, is battles gate three at the end with 105 hours. And I'm in act three probably. I would say 90% through the game, working my way through that in a co op campaign. So, yeah, that's the top three for me. Dota, binding of Isaac and battlescape three. And I'd say, yeah, look, I think.
[01:36:42] Speaker B: Well, we'll get to it in the next one.
[01:36:43] Speaker C: But yeah, I enjoy those games. All great games.
[01:36:48] Speaker A: Well, I think my most played is going to be Boulders gate three. Looking at my current playtime, it's at 116 hours.
That's a pretty significant amount that's pushing towards. I mean, it's not quite elden ring hours for me. I think that was about 150. But we're getting pretty close. And I probably say I'm about.
I probably got at least another 20 or so hours left once I go in because, I mean, I'm going full completionist because I just can't help myself. So my aim is to try and finish that game before the end of the year. And I think I'm going to get there. So I'm just kind of cleaning up act three, basically. And then I'm going to go and go and make some final decisions that I'll probably be not particularly stoked with. But it's how the game works.
[01:37:36] Speaker B: So there's that one.
[01:37:38] Speaker A: And I think what would probably be close up second is probably going to be tears of the kingdom. I don't know exactly how many I had in that, but I did smash the shit out of that. A lot of it happened around about time. Ted was just consistently sick for like a month. So there's a lot of just downtime whilst he was crooked. And me and him would just be lying in bed, he'd be watching Miss Rachel or something like that. Because that was about the only thing we could really do. And I'd just be smashing out bit of tears of the kingdom.
[01:38:11] Speaker B: Funnily enough, it was a real beautiful moment.
[01:38:13] Speaker A: Despite both of us being quite sick around that time, just from colds and everything else, it was pretty wonderful.
So I spent a lot of time in that game as well. And I was actually looking at my cyberpunk play time this year.
[01:38:30] Speaker B: I've got about 70 hours of cyberpunk.
[01:38:33] Speaker A: This year as well.
I think cyberpunk and tears of the kingdom probably. I think tears of the kingdom probably would be close to 100. And then I think Bouldersgate will have peaked it a little bit.
[01:38:46] Speaker B: It's interesting, I feel like this year.
[01:38:49] Speaker C: In particular, because I've taken this new.
[01:38:50] Speaker B: Job, my day job, unfortunately for me.
[01:38:54] Speaker C: Requires significant amount of thinking. Whereas it didn't used to be like that. So when I get home, sometimes I just don't feel like thinking. And that's where finding of Isaac comes in. And maybe dota two sometimes as well. But I feel like my gaming habits have definitely changed this year. And you touched on this before, cap. But big time steam deck in the last. Since I've had that in the last like three or four months, has actually changed my gaming patterns quite a lot. I don't really want to be on my desk.
[01:39:20] Speaker B: I would rather be fucking somewhere comfortable and tapping away on that.
[01:39:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm the exact same, mate.
[01:39:27] Speaker B: The steam deck has been such a.
[01:39:30] Speaker A: Brilliant asset to my gaming life because I think ultimately, if I didn't have it, I probably wouldn't have played anywhere near the amount of hours I would have this year. I've done a lot of steam link streaming in bed, through the deck and just some native experiences on there, like even cocoons, stuff like that. It's been brilliant for. So the Steam deck has just been superb.
[01:39:57] Speaker B: But you're right, Grizz.
[01:39:58] Speaker A: I think this new job for me is one of the most kind of cerebral jobs I've ever had. And it's required a lot of brain cerebral jobs.
[01:40:09] Speaker C: That's a good way to put it, yeah.
[01:40:11] Speaker A: So I've had to use that big old noggin a fair bit. And by the time I get home, man. And then you're sorting out a baby, and then by the time you put.
[01:40:21] Speaker B: That baby to bed, you're shattered.
[01:40:23] Speaker A: I'm literally shattered, like at the end of the day. And so, I mean, a lot of the time I just don't even play games anymore. And it's not because I don't want to play video games. It's because I just literally don't have the brain capacity to interface with something that requires my input.
I think I'll get there eventually, but yeah, my gaming has changed significantly over this last year.
[01:40:47] Speaker C: See, I don't reckon I could stomach a elden ring.
[01:40:50] Speaker B: If Elden ring came out right now or in the last two months, I.
[01:40:54] Speaker A: Don'T think I can do it.
[01:40:55] Speaker C: That'd be tough, wouldn't.
[01:40:57] Speaker A: That's why I didn't give lords the fallen as much as I would have liked. Because I think that game has something that I really like, but I just don't have the appetite or the willpower to persevere through it. Because the other thing I have is like, I know that my time is finite. I can't go and spend six to 7 hours just belting out a game on the weekend or on a day off, whatever. I don't have that time anymore. So when I come to play a souls like game, and I'm finding myself.
[01:41:32] Speaker B: Up against a boss with very little.
[01:41:34] Speaker A: Chance of progression in those small windows that I have for some gaming, it's not a fun way for me to spend my gaming, because that lack of progression makes me feel like I've kind of wasted that gaming time.
[01:41:48] Speaker C: With souls games in particular. It's kind of like you learn the patterns, right? And you learn the patterns and then you'll eventually get it.
[01:41:55] Speaker B: But if you're having to have a break between learning the patterns, then you.
[01:41:59] Speaker C: Probably got to relearn the patterns. And so it becomes a cycle of.
[01:42:02] Speaker B: Frustration, which is just not that enjoyable.
[01:42:06] Speaker C: But imagine if you spent that time instead cap playing like Sardew Valley or something, where you're know, you can plant some crops and build your. Actually, I've got a whole new appreciation for games. Like, I think, you know, when I look at my most played games this year, and I look at the binding.
[01:42:27] Speaker B: Of Isaac is a fantastic iteration of that, because it's a rogue light.
[01:42:34] Speaker C: So every run is kind of new and fresh. But there is so much you can do in that game. And I'm not going to go through the gameplay mechanic, but I think that's a really good way that's a good.
[01:42:46] Speaker B: Chilled game for me as something you.
[01:42:49] Speaker C: Can pick up whenever you want. Quit out, come back in and you feel.
[01:42:53] Speaker A: Come back in. Jump in, off you go. Start watering your crops again. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it's interesting seeing. Becoming a dad over the last year and a bit, and seeing how my game preferences and tastes have changed to be in line with my life in this moment in time, even also because of my job as well, and getting much more responsibility and just generally being.
[01:43:21] Speaker B: Pretty cooked at the end of the day.
[01:43:23] Speaker A: It's interesting seeing that progression because I'd kind of never thought that I'd be.
[01:43:28] Speaker B: In this position ever.
[01:43:31] Speaker A: I kind of thought I'd just be continuing to do that, but it's not the case at all. And even being diagnosed later in life with ADHD and my medication has definitely changed the way I interface with video games as well.
[01:43:46] Speaker B: I don't feel as impulsively like I.
[01:43:50] Speaker A: Need to play video games all the time, you know what I mean? Which is not that I always needed that or anything, but my leisure time. I felt like I really needed that. Whereas nowadays I can kind of just.
[01:44:02] Speaker B: Go and lie in bed and just.
[01:44:03] Speaker A: Do fucking literally nothing. And I'm fine with that. I feel like I'm not missing out on anything, you know what I mean? So it's interesting watching my habits change quite dramatically over the space of a year and what that has meant for my gaming. So, yeah, it's interesting overall.
[01:44:19] Speaker C: What's the thing your body gives you, Cap, when you achieve something? What is that?
[01:44:23] Speaker A: Serotonin.
[01:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:44:26] Speaker C: So like ADHD gaming with the serotonin you release from instant gratification on tap? Yeah, exactly. It's on tap now.
[01:44:35] Speaker A: I'm getting it latently through my day to day, which by the time I finish my day, I'm like, I don't really need all that serotonin that I've been craving all day because I don't get it from my regular tasks during the day. So, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. But, yeah, it's definitely noticing it in my video game habits for sure.
[01:44:51] Speaker C: Well, good extended chat about absolutely fucking nothing there, Cap. About the most played game of the year, mate.
[01:44:56] Speaker A: Well done. What we're talking about?
[01:44:58] Speaker C: I don't know.
[01:45:00] Speaker A: Crazy. All right.
[01:45:02] Speaker B: Grizz the pistol resistance, the OGR game of the year.
[01:45:10] Speaker A: Probably the most prestigious award given by anybody or organization on the planet.
[01:45:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:45:16] Speaker C: Oh, Cap's got an award. Here we go.
[01:45:18] Speaker A: Has even got the official cup.
[01:45:22] Speaker B: The official game of the year award.
[01:45:26] Speaker A: To the developer of such a. You know, the yogis game of the year.
[01:45:30] Speaker B: Grizz, take it away.
[01:45:32] Speaker A: I think you're going to be resounding exactly what I have to say.
[01:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Rotato.
[01:45:38] Speaker C: Rotato, absolutely.
I can't wait for rotato too, to come out, mate. That game fucking rocks.
[01:45:49] Speaker A: Everywhere, that.
[01:45:49] Speaker C: Chris, look, I don't need to fucking bang on about this too much.
[01:45:54] Speaker B: We've spoken about it a lot, but.
[01:45:56] Speaker C: I feel like, like you say, cap, I think it was a groundbreaking experience. And for me, being able to play.
[01:46:06] Speaker B: Dungeons and dragons, the tabletop format in.
[01:46:11] Speaker C: Game form, but have so much attention to detail to give you the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want within reason is something pretty dang special. And to have all of that voice.
[01:46:26] Speaker B: Acted and voice acted extremely well and.
[01:46:30] Speaker C: Then again, be able to do that.
[01:46:32] Speaker B: With multiplayer, with your friends and have it run seamlessly is an absolute fucking marvel of game design.
[01:46:43] Speaker C: So Battlesgate three is the game of the year for me, for all those reasons.
[01:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah, look, definitely resounding. Yes. And agreeance from me, I think Boulders.
[01:46:56] Speaker B: Gate three has given me a sense.
[01:47:00] Speaker A: Of wonder in my video gaming, which is very difficult for me to capture these days. And video games don't often wow me anymore, just because naturally, as you get older, you've experienced more and more, so it's harder to generate that sense of.
[01:47:19] Speaker B: Holy shit, this is such a cool experience.
[01:47:22] Speaker A: And it might be because of the gameplay, it might be because of the narrative, but for Boulders Gate, it's just every avenue of that game and what it presents to you is just awe inspiring.
[01:47:33] Speaker B: And.
[01:47:38] Speaker A: It'S one of those games where you go, I just can't see us ever getting another game of this quality ever again. You know what I mean? But then you do get one and you get a boulders gate or you get a red dead redemption two, or you get something along those lines that pushes the boundary in the envelope.
[01:47:52] Speaker C: An elden ring.
[01:47:53] Speaker B: Elden ring.
[01:47:54] Speaker A: Elden ring as well, obviously.
But I think, yeah, Boulders Gate three has just produced an experience that is something so wonderfully special and should be celebrated by everyone. And if you're someone that has maybe looked at the game and thought, oh, I don't know if it's quite for me, I think you just got to give it a crack. In all honesty, I think you really.
[01:48:17] Speaker B: Need to give it a crack.
[01:48:18] Speaker C: I've got to speak about this meme I saw on TikTok this morning, which was a guy who was upset that Spiderman Two didn't win game of the year. And so he went and played Battlesgate three and he's like, in combat and he's wondering why when he presses the attack button, his character is not attacking.
And then when he gets hit by something from someone, why he can't dodge out the way and it's just like.
[01:48:46] Speaker B: Dear Lord.
[01:48:49] Speaker A: Look, if you're going to completely ignore the game and what it is providing, yeah, you're probably not going to have a good time. But yeah, maybe do a little bit of research beforehand. But look, again, it's one of these.
[01:49:02] Speaker B: Games that I just can't see us.
[01:49:04] Speaker A: Getting another one anytime soon of this caliber. So I think, look, 2023 has been a freaking exceptional gaming year on so many levels. It's actually kind of wild that we had so many games of consistent, strong, just hitting well above their weight kind of thing.
And then wrapped up in all that was the freaking boulders gate three crazy game, man. Just bonkers. So yeah, it's really hard to kind of look elsewhere, but.
[01:49:41] Speaker C: There'S a lot.
[01:49:41] Speaker A: Of honorable mentions like Alan Wakes and even tears of the kingdom presented quite a great retake on Breath of the Wild and Cyberpunk 2077 managed to produce some incredible dlcs and we had some insanely good indie games out this year as well.
[01:50:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:50:05] Speaker A: God, Grizzo, we've been eating good this year.
[01:50:08] Speaker C: Been eating good, mate. Absolutely. Last year was a little bit. I don't know how you going, cat? Bit dicey, mate, but we come good. Great year for nerds. Exactly. Great year.
[01:50:18] Speaker A: Absolutely great year for nerds.
[01:50:21] Speaker B: Now look, that's the end of the show.
Before we leave, just want to wish.
[01:50:26] Speaker A: Everyone that listens to this show a happy new year and a Merry Christmas. We all love you immensely and thank you for being a part of this podcast with us.
It's an absolute pleasure to be able to put this out, you know, weekly and. And have people come back and listen. You know, we. We honestly super appreciate it and we love producing this podcast and I think, you know, it's. It's nice to have you guys, you know, consistently come back. I think it's just really heartwarming to see that people enjoy consuming what we put out and not that it's ultimately.
[01:51:03] Speaker B: We'Re kind of, I think, doing this.
[01:51:06] Speaker A: Because we love it, but it's obviously.
[01:51:08] Speaker B: Nice to get that feedback and see.
[01:51:13] Speaker A: That it is positive. So thank you very much. We really appreciate that.
And yeah, look, we got a two week break and after that two weeks, it's just going to be me and bloody Grizz's ugly mug on here. And you're not going to see much of Pav. So, Pav, again, we just want to say thank you very much.
As a parting gift, we want to bestow upon you the first scuffed cap.
[01:51:37] Speaker B: You can keep that, mate.
[01:51:41] Speaker D: Thanks, guys.
[01:51:42] Speaker C: We're going to fucking miss you, Pav.
[01:51:44] Speaker B: Right?
[01:51:44] Speaker C: You've been a staple this podcast for too long, mate. I'm going to really miss the laugh and the humor and everything else, buddy. Love your work, mate.
All the best for everything else that comes.
[01:51:57] Speaker D: Thanks, Chris. Look, I'm not going too far. Not going too far?
[01:52:01] Speaker B: No.
[01:52:02] Speaker A: You'll see him around the traps again if you want to go on.
[01:52:06] Speaker D: Enjoy the quiet performance while I'm gone.
[01:52:09] Speaker A: Well, exactly. Absolutely. Pavlovaface on all of the socials. P-A-V-L-O-V-A-F-A-C-E.
[01:52:19] Speaker D: Excellent.
[01:52:20] Speaker A: That was straight off the cuff. All right, guys, thank you so much for another wonderful year of oceanic gaming radio. We'll see you guys again next year on the eigth of January. For our first episode for the year, expect a sexy episode.
[01:52:35] Speaker C: Is that season three then, cap three, baby.
[01:52:40] Speaker A: It's going to be our third freaking year. Dude, that's wild. I can't believe we.
[01:52:45] Speaker C: I've barely been married for three years. Well, bit longer, but still.
[01:52:51] Speaker A: Crazy, dude. Well, I mean, I've had a fucking baby whilst this podcast has been around.
Crazy shit.
[01:52:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:53:00] Speaker A: Anyways, all right, guys, thank you so much for another wonderful year, and we'll see you guys next year on the oceanic gaming radio. Kisses. Merry Christmas.
Wild.
