A dragon that looks like Macho Man Randy Savage, terrorizing Arkham City as Batman and searching for the center of the universe. Join us for the second installment of our all-time favorite video game lists.
A dragon that looks like Macho Man Randy Savage, terrorizing Arkham City as Batman and searching for the center of the universe. Join us for the second installment of our all-time favorite video game lists.
In this episode, we each present (2) more games from our all-time favorites lists. Joseph travels to the island of Tsushima and remembers the stunning graphics, epic music, and excellent combat system of Ghost of Tsushima. Willie picks Batman: Arkham City and reminds us of how good it felt to lurk in the shadows of Arkham City and how the game popularized the freeflow combat system. Taylor talks about the freedom of choice and exploration in No Man Sky and highlights the development effort behind the game. We also chat about the photo mode and lore of Control, countless hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gameplay and dragon mods, and the general ridiculousness of the poundmates in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. We wrap with a lightning round of honorable mentions.
Our All-Time Favorites picks in the episode are Ghost of Tsushima, Batman: Arkham City, No Man Sky, Control, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
Honorable Mentions: Borderlands 2, Halo 3: ODST, Tecmo Super Bowl, Metal Gear Solid 2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Bioshock, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War (2018), Mass Effect 2, Metroid Dread, Joust, Galaga, Fallout, and Bad Dudes.
Other games briefly mentioned in this episode: Halo, Resident Evil, Prey (2017), Surviving Mars, Gears of War, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, God of War (2018), Resident Evil 7, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham Knight, Spider-Man 2 (2004), Alan Wake, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto, and Overwatch.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Taylor: Just the silliness, the Macho Man Randy Savages, Thomas the train dragons,
Joseph: What does that mean? [Willie laughs]
Taylor: The- oh dude. People were modding the dragons to be Macho Man Randy Savage was one, but it wasn't normal–
Joseph: [Laughing] Oh my gosh.
Taylor: –He was all stretched out like a- shaped like a dragon. So that first scene where the dude's getting beheaded, and you just hear, "Oh yeah," and [laughing] you like, the guys are like–
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: –"What the hell's going on? What's going on?" They're looking around and then you hear, "Oh yeah!" And he's just flying in, and [Joseph laughs] he's Macho Man in his fucking dragon face. [laughing]
Joseph: This sounds ridiculous.
Taylor: He's got the sunglasses and the hat–
Willie: It is ridiculous, but it's so good. It really is good.
Taylor: Dude, it's amazing. It is amazing.
Willie: The thing is, we've talked about this before, but you know, Joey's never played it, so he doesn't even, you can't even put that into context for, for–
Taylor: Oh, man.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: You don't even need to play it.
[Willie and Joseph laughing]
Taylor: All you have to do is play it through those clips. Go watch the One Punch Man–
Joseph: [Still laughing] Oh my…
Taylor: –which is a guy who made, did that thing Willie talked about, except he was just one punching the hardest Dragons in the game, just knocking 'em the fuck out. And laughing and being hilarious about it while he was doing it.
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:21
Joseph: What's up everybody? Welcome to Berries and Blades, a place where we analyze and break down some of our favorite video games. My name is Joseph Bullard and I'm here with my friends Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. We're just three regular guys wearing eye patches, staring at you hard with our one good eye, but I digress.
So what's going on with you guys this week?
Willie: Oh man, I'm just, uh, I messed up my sleep schedule. I've just been like- my sleep schedule is never good. I should say that. I think anyone who knows me knows that.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: But I've been like, staying up and playing guitar, working on D&D stuff, like to ridiculous hours. Probably two weekends ago, just like, messed my sleep schedule up completely, and now it's just off. Now I'm pretty much just up at night and sleeping like, half the day.
Joseph: What about your schedule, Taylor, with the baby?
Taylor: So it's a, uh, it's the opposite of what Willie has been up to. He sounds like he's been real productive, having a good time. Uh, me and the fam have been fighting Covid for about a week, and we are just now on the, on the other side of it, which is the good side.
Got my voice back and throat not hurting. The baby, he fought through it real quick. He seemed to have one bad day with like, an image that will forever remain in my head. That is, him just all snot faced looking at me like I should die.
Joseph: Oh man.
Taylor: Hungry and whatnot. Yeah, that, but that was only one day and that was really maybe six hours.
And then beyond that, he burnt through everything. Uh, Rebecca had the hardest time with it. She had a couple days where, just a real shitty fever. I mean, I would walk into the- she quarantined herself off to our guest room and I would just walk in there. And as you entered the room, there was like an aura of fire, basically. [laughing]
Joseph: Oh, just heat? Gosh.
Taylor: Yeah, just straight up heat. It was insane. But um, she got over it first, and now I'm kind of the last one, and I'm feeling good today. So I'm ready to do some shit. I actually, during all that, or at the beginning of it, I got a PlayStation 5.
Joseph: Oh, right, right.
Taylor: Yeah. I've been trying for a long time. And I will say, that I think Sony and or PlayStation gave me Covid because that is the second time that [laughing] I have bought a PlayStation, a new PlayStation, and gotten an awful flu, that lasted a long time.
Joseph: Really?
Taylor: Yeah. The PlayStation one was the other one. So it's the long game Sony, it's the long game. I get it.
Joseph: Got you.
Taylor: Yeah, they got me again cause that was, um, I don't know if y'all remember that episode, uh, where we were talking about our childhood. One of them, I, I mentioned that I got a PlayStation one and then got extremely sick and played through Final Fantasy VII, so–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: –it was a repeat, except I had a kid this time, so I couldn't just play through a game, which was, uh, I'm not gonna say annoying because we're recording, but. [whispers] Annoying.
Willie: Also, let's be perfectly clear, Sony had nothing to do with it.
[Laughter]
They hold no liability for anything that might have happened.
Taylor: All right.
Alright. Right. All right. I'll let that stand.
Joseph: Yeah, let's keep the litigation away from us.
Taylor: [Laughing] Yeah.
Joseph: I love how you're like, y'all remember that one episode? We've only recorded four, so yes, I definitely remember all four of the episodes we've recorded.
Taylor: Okay. I was willing to do a flashback cut scene. If you needed it, like with–
Willie: You can definitely just drop it in there for sure. [laughs]
Taylor: –Scooby Doo, yeah, [mimicking sound effects] "Diddly-diddly"
Joseph: Oh yeah just edit it in? [laughs]
Taylor: Or something. Yeah, for sure.
Joseph: That could be interesting.
Taylor: But glad to be alive. Glad to be here today for sure.
Joseph: Yeah. Word. Great that you're feeling better. I'm in that kind of paranoid mode right now because I was traveling over the weekend, like I tested yesterday and it was negative and I don't really have symptoms, but I'm like, mm really hoping I don't get hit with it.
Taylor: Dude, it came on so quick. So quick, cause um, I thought I was in the clear, Rebecca was already kind of coming out of hers and I was like, yes. And we didn't even know it was Covid at the time. And I swear to you when we got the results for hers, finally, that told us it was Covid.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: An hour later I started feeling awful.
Joseph: Wow.
Taylor: And then, yeah, and then it, by that night I felt terrible, and the next day I felt even worse.
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: I feel like subconsciously I was holding it off because I knew that we had a baby to take care of. For her to take care of him was impossible with him being sick and her, because they were two 103 fevers.
You can't just hold a baby when you got a 103 or I, I mean, people probably do. They find ways people–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: –You know, gotta figure it out on their own sometimes. But–
Joseph: Not an ideal situation.
Taylor: –Yeah, exactly. I just didn't even consider it. I was like, I gotta, I can't be sick right now. I gotta be taking care of everything. And as soon as, it's almost like as soon as I got the pass, I was gone. I hope you don't come down with it. If you do, man, it, it wasn't that terrible.
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: I don't know if it was the vaccination that helped us or what, but it didn't seem as awful as my mind had it.
Willie: You sort of facetiously said before we got on this that, uh, you had some brain fog. Is that true? You still feel like you're feeling that?
Taylor: Um, I think my fog is from the lack of sleep.
Willie: Gotcha.
Joseph: Ah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. I'm probably like two or three nights behind and that is definitely causing a fog, but I've been doing a lot of animating, you know, since I started feeling better the last day or two. That seems to be clearing everything up too, just kind of using your brain... again. [laughs]
It helps a lot.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: So hope to be getting back on your street too, Willie of, uh, playing some guitar and practicing and all that jazz. I got a show in a couple weeks, so it'll be time to get back into the swing of things.
Willie: Cool. Yeah. I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm glad. Uh, I hope that that does clear up and uh, you don't have to worry about that shit anymore.
Taylor: I appreciate it. Yeah, man, me too. Yeah, I'll probably be wearing a mask a lot more from here on out.
00:07:12
Joseph: Yeah. Well, in today's episode, or today's episode is part two of a conversation about some of our favorite or some of our all-time favorite video games. And if you missed episode four, you can go back and listen to that recording to get caught up with part one of this conversation.
And thinking back to that conversation, which was a couple of weeks ago for us, Willie, you chose Halo and Resident Evil and Taylor, Prey and Surviving Mars.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: And then I talked about Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. What was the second one I said?
Willie: Gears, right?
Joseph: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gears of War. Uh, so I have three more on my list. I'm not, I'm, I'm just gonna start with the first one, Ghost of Tsushima.
Taylor: Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Joseph: Which Taylor you were talking about recently after getting that PS5.
Taylor: Ooh, boy. Yes. I, uh, I started Ghost of Tsushima on the PS4 Pro. And then about halfway through it, or maybe two-thirds of the way through it, I had to bounce off of it. I don't remember exactly why, but yes. Oh, it's been a pleasure.
For whatever reason, I guess all my saved games aren't coming over. Maybe I have to download 'em or didn't upload 'em or something, but I did not even flinch for a second when I realized I had to start that game over again because it is beautiful, brother.
Joseph: I thought it looked amazing just on the straight up PS4, man. Not even a Pro.
Taylor: It's beautiful.
Joseph: So I can only imagine what it looks like on PS5.
Taylor: It's insane, man. And um, I'm playing it on the new monitor, so I got the 144 hertz or whatever it comes through from the PlayStation and wow. It's my first experience with a real smooth kind of buttery gameplay on a monitor like that. It's amazing.
Joseph: What made you pick that game?
Taylor: Uh, like as one to download whenever I got the PS5?
Joseph: Yeah. To play.
Taylor: Just because it, just, like you said on the PS4, it looked incredible. I mean, I'd never seen anything that looked that good. And just like I messaged you whenever I was playing it the other night, it's the best looking next gen experience I've seen yet.
And that's including all of the games I've played on Xbox so far on, on the series.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: But that's the way the PlayStation does it. They just hone in on that game that is specifically for that hardware and, and I guess they just do it to death, but damn it is shining brightly. I mean, I'm, I'm gonna finish it this time. Don't care if it's 40 or 50 hours.
Um, the photo mode seems to have more. You know, when you get a, a blood splash and you can zoom into it with the photo mode and you're like going through the blood particles and, uh, it seems like there's even more of that.
Joseph: I bet they've added some features to it recently. I haven't opened it up in so long that there probably would be some new features in that photo mode.
Taylor: I haven't recognized any, but I would be curious to know if they have improved it at all. I didn't even think to look for it. I didn't see anything new though. You would probably be able to spot it out a lot faster if they did.
Joseph: I feel like I remember reading something at some point that there were some updates to it, but I, I never went back and actually fooled around with it.
Taylor: Hmm. Maybe some quality of life or something.
Joseph: Yeah. Willie, how much of the game did you play?
Willie: Maybe like a third to half of it.
Joseph: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I, it is one of the most beautiful games I've played.
Like just the landscape, and the way the game interacts with wind, and I think it's just all very, very well crafted and rendered. It's a third person game. So that's obviously fantastic. The combat system, I think is top notch.
Taylor: Oh, it's so, oh my God, dude, it, it's one of those that you play and you're like- why hasn't everybody, since this game came out, copied this? Because it is so fluid, it feels so good.
Joseph: I love that you chose different stances based on who you were fighting against.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm-hmm. Adds in that, For Honor, that difficulty in there where you don't always have to use it necessarily. You can hack and slash away and use different methods or be a ninja or whatever, but I, I, I love all the systems that they have added together–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: –and that every single one is just perfect. If I could throw in one thing before I forget it, I was really blown away by how ballsy their choice was at the beginning to not allow you to skip anything–
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: –story related. Like that is a very ballsy choice, that if you're not the best of the best and truly, truly believe that that's gonna be like minimal people bouncing off of that because of the fact that they can't just skip something.
Wow. [laughs] I was impressed to see that.
Joseph: They threw you into combat immediately, which I thought was a cool tutorial, kind of like intro to the game. It was very linear at the beginning of the game, but I really liked the fact that it was.
Taylor: And that intro had some passion. It made you hate the Mongols.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It really made you hate 'em. Like they did a great job in the way that they kind of, uh, pushed the intro on. It wasn't just one scene. You do it and there it is. No, you travel, and then you get the title screen, and then you go do a thing, and then it, you know, then you're kind of fully launched into it.
Joseph: Gosh. And the title sequence too, like right when it flashes the name.
Taylor: Oh, yep.
Joseph: And you're like cruising through the fields on the horse.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That was a moment where I was just like, chills, because the music is fucking amazing.
Taylor: Yeah. They could have had a thing come up on the screen that said, "now's your moment for a perfect screenshot," because if you stop it and you go into photo mode, right there–
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: –It's your first gorgeous shot where the sun is just coming up and like your dude, it is a silhouette.
And then you got the, the wheat field and it was beautiful and the music and everything and the wind. Oh my God. Such a good game. Still I'd, I'd say that's probably one of my tops of all time, dude. I'd have to agree with you.
00:13:18
Joseph: I just loved playing it, man. Photo mode is the best I've played. The best I've experienced. I mean, obviously I haven't played all games with photo modes, but that one I think set the standard and set the bar really high. I think all of the quest lines are good. Lady Masako is a beast.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Ishikawa is kind of like, old school.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But I thought everybody was good, man. Like even Kenji and Norio, all those quest lines.
Taylor: All the stories. Everybody's stories are amazing, man. And it's so well written. That Sucker Punch, they don't, they don't mess around.
You could tell every little bit of the game, both graphically and story, engines, everything was just so handcrafted. There was no umbrella that they added to anything. You know, everything do this or fall under this. It was like every little strain of it is perfectly and meticulously crafted.
Joseph: Yeah, it's definitely a game I recommend completing all the the side quest lines for, cause I think they're all good and I think they add to the entire world. Oh, the last thing I wanna mention is that there's a decision you have to make at the end of the game, which I'm not gonna spoil for everybody cause it would be a huge spoiler. [Taylor laughs]
But there's a decision you have to make at the end of game that is by far the hardest in-game decision that I've ever had to make. [Taylor groans] I knew exactly what I was gonna choose, but I had to like stop and think about the consequences for making that decision at the end of the game.
Taylor: Was it harder than Mass Effect–
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: –when you had to potentially jettison the alien you had sex with or the woman that you had sex with?
Joseph: Definitely harder than that.
Taylor: Oh, damn.
Joseph: Yeah, it was harder.
Taylor: [Laughing] Okay. Okay. Oh.
Joseph: This is harder than that.
Taylor: Okay. Maybe I'll just shut it off at 90%. Okay. Thanks for the heads up.
Joseph: But it was great, man. It was fantastic. It was like a decision I'm glad I had to make, but it definitely stopped me in my tracks and I was like, hold up, hold up.
Do I wanna make the decision for me as the player or am I making the decision as Jin–
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: –the character in the game? And so I was really battling between. What would Jin do versus what do I think is the right thing to do for his story? And that's what like slowed me down.
Taylor: That's tough. That's one of the downsides of having such a good story, right? As a, at the end, it really makes you think about it. You can't just press that button, that X button or the square button or whatever the context is, without giving it some thought. I mean, they did their job.
Willie: I do really want to go back and play through that game. It's one of the games that I was playing at the same time as like three other things, that I never finished any of them cause I was just like juggling all of them.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: But I, I do wanna play it again, and I should just go back and pick it up. But it's funny because I've been very much considering going back and playing God of War from 2018. I've almost started that a couple times in the last few days and just haven't done it cause it's like, man, am I really gonna make time? Cause I still need to finish Resident Evil, uh, seven.
Joseph: But you're almost done with that game, right?
Willie: I think so. Uh, more than halfway, I think. Yeah. So I need to finish that and then I might actually maybe go back to Ghost of Tsushima or I might end up, might end up playing that God of War from 2018. Who knows?
Taylor: You have time.
Joseph: I would play God of War Man, that's really close on my list. I'm gonna play it after Kena: Bridge of Spirits, which I'm really close. I'm like in the end phase of Kena, and I wanted to finish it before I left this weekend, but didn't. But I think I'm like a day away from finishing that game, and then I'm gonna jump straight into God of War.
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: What I wanted to say about Ghost was that, uh, I think the reason that I didn't finish is cause I was just, I was doing every side quest and I was, I was just going to collect everything that I could on the map. I was just like, oh, I wanna upgrade this thing so I'm gonna go find the next, you know, bamboo cutting challenge thing or whatever.
And I just like was just riding around looking for stuff, taking a lot of time to do everything that I possibly could in that game.
Taylor: Once you add those skill points, you can follow 'em around.
Joseph: You reminded me when you were talking about upgrades. The menus in that game I think are beautiful. They're typeset well. The color palette and the way that the menus are designed, I think are some of the most beautiful menus I've seen.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: The other thing I really love about that game is the upgrade tree. They have a small video that shows you what the abilities do, and it's like a, a, a little short clip of what those videos do, and I love that.
Shadow of Mordor did that. Kena: Bridge of Spirits does that.
Taylor: That seems to have become the, the standard. I know there's a lot of games that I've played through recently that do that same thing. If you're looking through a skilled tree about to click on an upgrade, it shows you a video of what it does, how to use it, and has a nice description there.
00:18:11
Joseph: I love that. Willie, let's bounce over to you. What's the next game that you wanna talk about?
Willie: I've been having trouble deciding what I was gonna pick off this list that I have. Cause I've got like five or six things listed here, but notes on a couple of them. But since we were talking about that mechanic and that combat system, I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna go with Arkham City.
Joseph: Ooh.
Willie: I couldn't decide if I was gonna say Arkham City or Arkham Asylum. Cause Arkham Asylum–
Joseph: What about Arkham Knight?
Willie: –It's good too.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Maybe I do like the fact that you would, you can like, you know, drive around the Batmobile in that one.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: I'm picking Arkham City because it came out at a very specific time in my life also when I didn't have a, a job at that moment. Uh, and I played a shit ton of it because it was so good.
It's the only like AAA title pass, Xbox 360 release that I've sat down and played from beginning to end in one sitting. And like I said at the top of the episode, my sleep schedule's terrible. It's always has been. [Joseph laughs]
I remember I started that game like in the afternoon, the day it came out I started it. Maybe stopped, ate dinner and then stayed up all night and finished at like 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM the next morning. I just like sat down and played it from beginning to end. Maybe that doesn't speak to its like length or whatever, but like, I was just so enthralled with what was happening that I just like, I gotta do it. Like I'm gonna do that.
And then, and then I spent the next week or so finding everything I could in the game, getting every Riddler trophy and upgrading everything that I possibly could. But I had upgraded most everything. Like I just hit that game really hard when it came out and I just really liked it.
And again, I think it was, you know, Arkham City- or Arkham Asylum did it first, but the introduction of Freeflow Combat–
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: –That changed every game after, that wanted to do that style of fighting. Even something like Ghost or thinking about Shadow of Mordor obviously, or thinking about the Spider-Man game, which also does that thing you're talking about.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Where you can preview the–
Joey: Mm-hmm.
Willie: –the mechanics in it, which also Batman did. That system though, particularly Arkham City, added so much more that you could just combo so many moves together.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: Once you get good with gadgets, you're just like ripping people towards you with the grapnel gun and then like, slamming into 'em and then–
Joseph: Beating the shit out of them.
Willie: Yeah. It's like, I don't know, it's just wild that that system is so good for, for combat and I know that there are other things, man, I'm not gonna remember ah, I'll look it up.
Taylor: The challenges were great.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That was one of my favorite things. Honestly, I, I never finished any of the games. But I did a ton of the challenges. I, I feel like it was, those games were probably amazing for you because you were way into the Batman, the lore and the story and all that stuff. So, and they, they did such a good job of encapsulating all of that.
Whereas somebody like me who was less into it, but I loved their flow system in that engine, just throw all the enemies at me and see how fast I can beat 'em up and how long I can do a combo. That shit was fun.
Joseph: That style of combat was next level for sure at the time, and just the flying. So like just being able to launch yourself above the city?
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: And just fly across it. I thought it was badass.
Taylor: You really felt like Batman. They did a really good job of making you feel like you were a badass dude. Just kind of dropping out of the shadows on people.
Willie: I think that was it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: There were multiple ways to tackle scenarios and like you were saying, those challenges, there were stealth challenges and there were like fighting challenges. But in the game itself, you were choosing how you wanted to tackle a problem.
Right, like you could be really sneaky about it and stealthy about it and just drop down and take one person out at a time if you really wanted to–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: –and just... and when you did that, you would start to hear the chatter amongst the people, being afraid.
Joseph: Yeah. That was cool.
Willie: It's just like such a good, so weird to say, it's such a weird, good feeling to like, feel like Batman in that situation and just like, be completely vigilante, making people just afraid of this mythos of the Batman.
Joseph: I, I like that feeling too, where you're just like, you're in the shadows, picking buildings apart, one person at a time or going through like the ventilation system. And I, I realized a second ago when I was talking about flying over the city that I keep thinking we're talking about Arkham Knight, so I'm hoping that that's something you could do in that game.
Willie: Oh yeah. Arkham City was the game that first introduced that mechanic of like, needing to traverse the city like that. The one thing that was missing was the like launch yourself out of the batmobile thing, right?
Joseph: Oh, I forgot you could do that
Willie: 'Cause that, that was cool for sure, in Arkham Knight.
Taylor: Yeah that was a good upgrade.
Willie: But yeah, you definitely could, uh, use the grapnel gun off stuff and just like, yeah, launch yourself into the air to just get around the city. And some of those challenges were like going, I can't remember now actually, honestly, if this is Arkham Knight or Arkham City more. Cause there were flying challenges in one of those games where you had to hit certain rings.
Joseph: Oh, right. I think that was definitely a part of Arkham Knight.
Willie: Yeah.
00:23:09
Joseph: I know one of my favorite things about that game, and probably the whole series is Mark Hamill.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: Mark Hamill as the Joker is incredible.
Taylor: Great performance. That guy is awesome.
Joseph: I think some of the best video game voiceover that maybe has existed.
Taylor: He did it for a cartoon as well, right? He also–
Joseph: Yeah, as the animated series.
Taylor: Several cartoon Jokers.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Yeah. A couple movies off of that as well.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I'm still gonna say his best work ever is, uh, that video he did with Yoda. You know that YouTube video, the Seagulls video?
Joseph: [Singing as Yoda] Stop it now. [laughing]
Taylor: [chuckling] Yeah.
[as Yoda] Don't fall asleep.
Joseph: [whispering as Yoda] Don't fall asleep
Taylor: Yeah.
[whispering as Yoda] Don't fall asleep. That's right.
[Joseph and Taylor laughing]
Joseph: I used to say that all the time dude, and Meg would get so annoyed.
Taylor: Oh yeah. [laughs] That's funny. I wonder how many people say that to their, like, loved ones.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Cause I know I do it too.
Joseph: It's hilarious, man.
Taylor: [whispering as Yoda] Don't fall asleep.
Joseph: Man, have you seen, have you seen the regular show? It's a Cartoon Network show.
Taylor: I don't think so, I, or maybe I've come across it, I just can't think of it right now. Hmm.
Joseph: But anyway, the reason I bring up the regular show is because Mark Hamill plays a character named Skips–
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: –in the regular show. And that's a pretty cool voiceover role.
Taylor: I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Pretty much anything he's ever in I've, I've usually been interested in.
Joseph: What else Willie, anything else you wanna add?
Willie: Oh, I was thinking about, you know, that combat system, like I said, changed a lot of things. It just added so much. I was going back to look, cause I had seen a conversation about, coming up in that same category was Spider-Man 2. I think that's what people say, like that was pretty influential on that sort of system too. That had a really good combat system like that. The original, like Spider-Man 2, movie tie-in game.
It did use that same sort of system, but it, it did not have the same, the polish that happened in the Arkham games to that system. And if a game has that type of fighting system in it, I do wanna play it for sure.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: I wanna check it out because I'm sure it's gonna be good.
Joseph: This Spider-Man 2, this is not the recent Spider-Man and then plus Miles Morales, right?
Willie: No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about original, like old school PlayStation* Spider-Man 2, Tobey Maguire movie tie-in game, which actually was a good game.
Joseph: Oh shit. Really? [laughs]
Willie: It, but it did, it was, I, I dug that game a lot too.
Taylor: Yeah, it was pretty good.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: It could probably be in my, one of my favorites lists. It was super good and it's probably one of the best movie tie-in games that has been made, because that's not a hard–
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: –hard list to top. Yeah, I think, I think we said it all. I, there's just, it's, there's something about an open world game that lets you choose the paths you wanna take as far as like, are you just gonna go brawler in this? Are you gonna do some stealth stuff?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And yeah, choose what skills you're gonna upgrade cause you want to challenge, like you want to do things in a different way. Arkham City was the one that also let you be Catwoman for a portion of the game.
Taylor: Oh right.
Willie: And had challenge maps for her too, I believe. But that was changing up the gameplay just a little bit, right? Like it's still, same combat system, so you get to do different things with different, different gadgets, different weapons and it's, it's cool.
Joseph: Word.
00:26:17
Joseph: All right. Taylor, what do you got for us?
Taylor: Oh man. My first one on the list is gonna be No Man Sky today. It's one of my favorite all-time games. And um, that's for a lot of reasons. I am big into space. I am into nerd shit. I'm into exploring and discovering new stuff. I'm into artificial intelligence and AI created stuff.
All of these things are right in my wheelhouse and that game, do it all greatly. Hello Games, is that, is that, who makes that Hello Games? I think that's what they're called because I wanna say Hello Kitty, but I'm pretty sure that's something else.
Joseph: Pretty sure it's not Hello Kitty. [laughs]
Taylor: Yeah, something tells me. So that game dropped and I think it came out in 2017 or 18?
Willie: 16.
Taylor: 16. Geez. And it had, so much hype. It had a fucking hype.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Flossed in Paradise, giant ship that was going 1 trillion light years per hour. And whenever it dropped, it was a big deal but there was all these failed expectations that... I still played it and had a good time, but I totally got where people were coming from because there were these things.
For me, the big disappointment was, the commercial or the trailer originally had a giant sand worm and for me, all I could think about was I gotta go find a giant sand worm or something giant like that. And it turns out that it didn't exist. It wasn't in the game. Two months later, three months later, once people had explored so much, uh, Sean Murray had to, I think tweet or something and literally tell people like, sorry there's no sand worm.
But they stuck with it and they kept going, and people complained that there was no co-op, but they, they said there would be co-op and, sure enough, over time they have just added every single thing that I think people wanted, didn't want. And everybody seems to have just done a total about face on it because it has everything, and they've streamlined all the systems.
And also it's just a, a journey to go from a broken ship on a planet where you know nothing and have nothing to trying to locate the core, the center of the universe. I mean, I feel like that is about as well as you could quantify the human struggle. Where are we right now? Okay, well, if you zoomed way out like lightyear or millennia or whatever, you know, we're gonna be trying to find something.
We gotta get out and find something. If it's not in the ocean, it's gonna be out in space. If it's not in space, it's gonna be in another solar system, you know? If it's, it's not there, it's another dimension or wherever. Like if we're given the time... and so that's what was so cool to me, I think about it, was that you could just get in this ship and start flying and try to find the center of the universe and, and they just kind of built on it.
I mean, they added mechs, motorcycles, uh, pets, you could train and ride. Like anything you could possibly want out of a game, they've just done it. And I gotta give 'em all the respect for that.
00:29:36
Joseph: Uh, for somebody like me, I don't know, is it the kind of game that I could jump into and not sink like a hundred hours into, but still like, enjoy the game.
Taylor: I think you better be willing to s... to dump 20 to 40, or 50 hours into it. Because there is a clear progression system where yes, when you start out, you've got about two or three hours of, how does the gun work? You know, getting your basic upgrades of getting a gun that'll shoot stuff, getting yourself a terrain manipulator that'll allow you to build and dig holes and, and do all that kind of stuff.
But maybe 10 hours in you're actually flying from system to system, you know? And, and 20 hours in, you're really looking for the center of the universe. And beyond that, it's anything because what you find enjoyable may not be what somebody else finds enjoyable. For me, one of the great joys was that you didn't know any alien language whenever you first start that game.
And there's multiple an, uh, aliens. So it's not like you learn one alien language and you know them all. You only know how to talk to one set of aliens. That was really cool to me. That was the Gwent in this game, was go find the words on the different planets and the different universes, and use the words to find out that that alien of the space station is calling you an asshole and then call him an asshole back.
Like that's the, that's the ultimate in, uh, in existence right there but... you may find that you love it for some other reason. Like maybe it's the exploring and photos of distant planets and lining up planets and stuff you've never been able to do in a photo mode before. But I, I think you'll have fun in it, man.
Just cause it's the fact that you can go third-person or first-person that immediately squashes a lot of people's dislikes based on–
Joseph: Oh, you can choose?
Taylor: –perspective. Yeah, you can choose, at any time.
Joseph: That's cool.
Taylor: I think it's just a click of a button or, or like a quick menu flip, and they have tons of menu settings, and accessibility, and all the stuff you would expect out of develop- developers who are constantly putting work in
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: But I think you'd love it.
Joseph: I like that they, they give you a choice.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And that seems to be, that game is so much choice. I mean, choice of what you wear, a choice of your equipment. Choice of your ships are extremely vast. Even the bugs I've seen in that game have been fucking hilarious. The last time we got on, Willie, did you play with me whenever the giant ship bug was going on?
Willie: Yeah, yeah, for sure. [chuckles]
Taylor: So when when you fly into a space station, your ship suddenly becomes, I don't know, a hundred times larger. [laughing] It was a bug, so you would look over and your ship was bigger than the space station you were in somehow.
Willie: Yeah, it was just taking up the entire docking bay, like...
[Taylor laughing]
Joseph: That is pretty funny.
Taylor: People would be trying to land and their ships are just getting turned around because it doesn't know–
Joseph: Oh gosh.
Taylor: [laughing] –how to handle the fact that it's got a giant ship. But I definitely think you should check it out, man. It's um, and it'll be a lot of fun. The co-op in there is flawless and amazing, so we can just get in. Find the same planet, all meet up, go be pirates, explore, do what the fuck ever we want to so, there's a lot of appeal there still.
Joseph: Nice.
00:32:52
Willie: Yeah, the thing about that game, to go back to your question, Joey, is, I don't know if you could not sink a [laughing] hundred hours into it or 200 hours into it.
Joseph: [chuckling] Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. That's true.
Joseph: That's what I'm afraid of.
Willie: But the thing is, it's, it's exactly what Taylor said though. You get to choose how you want to enjoy it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: What I think you can't think going into that game is like, I'm gonna look at everything.
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: I'm gonna get every upgrade. I'm gonna find the perfect ship that I want. Uh, like you could do that, but it's gonna take you some time, to do everything that you want to do. I think it's one of those things that long term, if you, if you wanted something, it's just sort of a go-to, let's go back, check that out and see how it's going now.
Like you could do that at any given time, I think. And there might be some systems that you have to remind yourself how they work, but I don't know, like the main storyline, I don't know exactly how long it is, but it's, it's fun. It's worth playing through. You'll find some upgrades along the way.
Just don't think that, like, you can't go into this mindset that like, I'm gonna get the best ship cause it's like, what is the best ship? I'm sure there's like a class of ship that people really like, right? There's... and there's tiers of them for sure.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie: Do you want one that's good for hauling a bunch of shit in it? Or do you want one that's like really fast? You could find one that's both, but it's gonna take you a long time to find that ship in an infinite galaxy and, or to make that ship with like the money that you have, you have to build your currency.
Like that's one of the things that I like got tripped up on the last time I was playing just... in a good way. I was just running back and forth from system to system, getting rare materials from one system to transport them to another system, to sell them, to get their rarest materials, to go get those and sell those to a different system.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Just to make money.
Taylor: Straight up arbitrage.
Willie: [chuckling] I was just like, that's all I was doing.
Taylor: Yeah it was fucking awesome. Yep. That was it, dude. So you could grind, get that ship.
Willie: And it was just to get money to get my ship up, to get my base built. And it was just like, The thing is, it's, it's definitely a survival game in that way, and you've never played something like Minecraft where you could sort of play aimlessly for a while.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: If you can get yourself in the mindset to play something sort of aimlessly with like, I'm gonna shift my goals, how I want to play this game, and that's the enjoyment I'm gonna get out of it, you can do it. But like, it's definitely a different mindset than just being like, I'm gonna play this game to get every bit of the story and finish it.
Again, you can do that as far as like the main stories go, but you could also just live in that world for a while and be a photographer. You could just go out and like, instead of doing any of the other stuff, you could be like, I'm gonna get a good ship and I'm gonna travel to different systems and take different pictures and I'm gonna...
Taylor: A lot of people did that. A lot of people said they never left their first planet.
Joseph: Oh snap.
Taylor: They just built a giant base and like, inhabited the same planet forever. You could do it man. There will be no lack of people that would hop on with you at any time, cause there is not a time that I wouldn't be down to jump onto that game, and just see what the current state is because they keep developing it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You can tell they, they aren't split off into multiple teams making No Man Sky 2. Or if they are, they're doing a damn good job at keeping up with this one as well.
00:36:06
Joseph: Okay, so I probably need to spend like 25 hours setting the foundation for the game and then I'd be able to kind of like jump in and, and kind of play a little bit more freely.
Taylor: Yeah, I'd say I always recommend in the first probably few hours to like five or 10, just follow the story, don't spend too much time... cause I, I've seen friends get burnt out that way where they're like, "fir...the first thing I'm doing is I'm gonna build a massive base that's super expansive."
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And they kind of burn out and fall off the game before they even leave to do much because then you realize, oh, my base is way back there. I don't have teleportation technology yet or something. And so it becomes a big pain in the ass. So you have to build a new base and you're like, why'd I spend five or 10 hours doing that?
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: Just kind of move forward first and find, and then you'll find some beautiful paradise planet or something, and teleportation, or one of us could come to your planet and we could build a teleporter on your planet. So there are ways to, to get you around.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: And they did just update recently, their big update that just happened, I think. This sort of dates this, but I think it's called Endurance and they updated like all the freighters and stuff, like the space freighters. So you can, there's more stuff that's you can do in them.
Taylor: Oh that's. Oh yeah.
Willie: I think I saw like people growing gardens and stuff in their space stations and researching new technology and stuff all in the, the freighter.
00:37:27
Taylor: The freighters are one of the coolest part of that game, where you could just be floating out in space and you could just call your freighter and they warp drive right in front of your face. Your whole freighter fleet just warp drives in. [imitating ships dropping out of warp speed] do, do , do, do, doot, djoooo.
Joseph: That's cool.
Taylor: And they're all right in front of you.
Joseph: Nice
Taylor: Man, that is just mind blowing. The first time that I saw that, I just had that feeling of, yeah, this game is the best. But yeah, easily one of my top three games I think of all time.
Willie: Also, apparently there's a squid that's back in the game. A giant squid.
Taylor: Yessss. Okay, good. I'd never met that squid, but... [laughs]
Joseph: That's back in the game?
Willie: Yeah. Apparently it disappeared for a long time.
Joseph: [laughs] It's like that sand worm?
Willie: Some bug erased it from the game and now it's back.
Joseph: Is this like on a water planet or something?
Willie: I guess so, yeah. I just, I was just clicking around and saw it yeah. There's a bunch actually in this.
Taylor: I haven't encountered many giants in there.
Willie: I haven't either.
Taylor: Which, which already I needed to play more of that game.
Willie: Yeah. [chuckles]
Taylor: I'm bullshitting by doing this podcast right now.
Joseph: [laughs, making Taylor laugh] One of the most terra- terrifying things I've ever thought of in my life is the idea of other planets in the universe, that are completely water-based–
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: –and the creatures that would exist in those waters, the giant squid on another planet thing is horrifying to me.
Taylor: Let's bring that nightmare to life, buddy.
[Joesph and Willie laugh]
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: We're gonna, we're gonna play that soon and we'll, [laughing] we'll make that nightmare happen.
00:38:54
Joseph: Uh, okay. So, I'm gonna keep things moving and jump to my next pick. Man, I really... there's a game I really wanna talk about, but I, I think I wanna skip it.
Taylor: Ah.
Joseph: Because we're gonna be talking about this game later, so I don't even know if I wanna touch on it now, but it's very possible that one of you might choose it.
Taylor: That's definitely not me.
Joseph: I'm gonna skip it, and I'm gonna choose Control.
Taylor: Ooh.
Joseph: Probably the most original story in a game that I've ever played. The lore in the game, and the story I think is, really, really good. I was definitely like completely, just completely captured by the characters and the kind of world that is built. I mean, you literally spend the entire game in a building.
[Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: It's like you start in the building and then you never exit. And I was just like, that's pretty badass. And of course it's, it's kind of, um, and it's very paranormal. There are objects that have powers, so it has like this very sci-fi, very fantasy like setting for the game to take place in.
But it's a third person shooter. The combat mechanics in the game are badass. You have like this force push ability, and then you can also fire weapons. Well actually, it's just one pistol, but it like kind of morphs into different firing formats so you can use them in different situations, against different enemies with like different armor.
So there's better weapons to use for certain situations. You could fly in the game, just like the ability to hover and levitate. The dashing is really cool. So I think all the game mechanics are pretty badass. The story is so original to me and the combat's super fun. Almost everything in the game is destructible.
Like you can use that force push and just like destroy computer desks; papers that are on the desk go flying, and like it's just complete chaos.
Taylor: Oh yeah, I remember that being uh... one of the coolest things for me was every room, I just wanted to go in there and do like a force push, and see all the stuff go everywhere. They had a great kind of particle system going on.
Joseph: It's so satisfying. And the noise, the sound effect when you hit something with that push is like super satisfying.
Taylor: Was this your first Remedy game or, uh, did you play the Alan Wakes?
Joseph: No, I didn't. I didn't play Alan Wake.
Taylor: Oh, wow. Okay.
Joseph: Control almost made me wanna go back and play Alan Wake because the Alan Wake storyline was baked into the DLC of Control.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Or like one of the DLC, so I was like, "Oh!" Maybe I would've had a different experience if I knew the Alan Wake story. But it was a game I never played.
Taylor: I think more than anything I... then again, on Control, I didn't get super granular with all the connectivity between that and uh, Alan Wake. But the shows that came on the TVs clearly had some tie to the shows.
But otherwise, I don't think you would have missed anything. But I did recently play Alan Wake maybe three, four years ago, and they held up pretty well. I was surprised. It wasn't like a terrible thing to go back and play. The controls–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: –were a little, just a little sluggish. Kind of like they were 12 years ago or whenever that came out, but–
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: –Maybe even longer.
Joseph: There was an incredible amount of lore in the game, like documents you could pick up that–
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: –I think really enhanced the story. It's probably one of the few games where I read every single piece of lore, and then they had like audio tapes. Audio tapes that you could find that were lore, but they were providing more context to like the entire situation of the old house and just the bureau and stuff like that.
So I thought that was a really good way to enhance the experience in the game and it had photo mode, photo mode. And I spent a lot of time in that photo mode posting photos on Instagram and... I don't think the photo mode was great, or at least the way you entered photo mode, cause you had to like actually pause the game–
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: –scroll down to photo mode, select it, and then you would be in photo mode. So it didn't have like a Ghost of Tsushima, where you like double click the sticks and like you're immediately in photo mode. But it was good.
Willie: I think those were the first pictures that I probably saw from, from you. Was that the first game you started doing that in? I know we talked about this, but I already forgot.
Joseph: Ghost of Tsushima was first and then–
Willie: Okay, and then it was Control.
Joseph: –Control, I think was after.
Willie: Okay. I just remember the, the atmosphere that's created in that game from those photos–
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: –make those photos really good.
Joseph: It's a really dark game, you know, like not, not dark in the lighting. Some of it is, but it has a really dark mood.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Which I think is pretty badass. And the way they use the color red I think is really appropriate for setting that kind of mood.
Taylor: I was just about to say, the saturation is an interesting choice that they did on that game where, like you say reds or any colors in general, uh, skin color, things like that, they really popped. I felt like all of the environments were so desaturated. And that, that helped a lot for–
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Uh, quickly identifying stuff. Seeing a colored, kind of like an enemy that was like an orange color in your–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: –in your vision or whatever. So you knew to throw a thing at them. Uh, also, one thing I wanted to say about that game was it, when I look back on it and remember playing it, it feels so much like a Jedi game.[laughs]
Joseph: Hell yeah. It does.
Taylor: Like a ridiculous amount. But it's like Jedi meets Twin Peaks or something, which is just genius.
Joseph: Man, you could sling anything in the environment toward the enemies, and if there wasn't anything you could grab and kind of force push, you could like force push stone from the ground.
Taylor: Oh, that's right. That was an upgrade or something, right, where it would just grab anything and throw it out.
Joseph: Yeah, it would grab anything. And if there wasn't anything, it would just grab shit off the floor.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: You can literally use it in combat at any time. And there was like almost no restriction to it.
Taylor: That's smart.
Joseph: And it was just fun.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, it was.
Joseph: Made me wanna destroy shit.
Willie: That's one of those games that I haven't played, that I've watched other people play. I definitely didn't get the full experience, but I don't even know if I got the full story from the people that I was watching cause I was only watching them when I would catch them playing it. I wasn't like actively being like–
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: –"Oh, I gotta tune into that stream," and like make sure I go back and watch the one I missed or anything. I would just like drop in. You know, they would've played two sessions between, you know, the two that I'm watching but did watch quite a bit of that game. I started it right when I got my, my gaming PC cause it was one of the games that everybody's like, oh this looks great.
Cause I think it was one of the first that did ray tracing to the level that it does. And so everyone was like–
Taylor: That's right.
Willie: You gotta check this out. So I did. I downloaded it, started playing it. And then I just never actually play it for more than like an hour or two.
Joseph: I would definitely say it's the best free game I've ever played, for sure, because I think I got it PlayStation Plus or like the download for PlayStation Plus.
00:45:44
Taylor: Just, uh, while we're on ray tracing, I'm gonna throw out there, and PlayStation Plus, Miles Morales, dude. You're gonna have such a good time with that photo mode, man.
Joseph: Aw man. Yeah.
Taylor: Like there are moments, where if you, if you get his face close enough to something, you could see reflections in his eyes, in the Spider-Man, like the kind of goggle eyes.
Joseph: That's stupid good.
Taylor: You can see straight up- dude, it is crazy. And there's no compromise on the ray tracing. Just the fact that if there's a reflective surface, there is your reflection and it's like you- it...in the reflections, you see, just seeing it in the eyes was a real remi- like a wake up call for me because there was no limit.
Like it was, if you were looking in the eyes and the reflection, you were seeing the distance. You were seeing the, the, all the render distance, everything. Uh, you know, there's probably trickery behind it to how they make it work as always. But amazing, amazing. I can't wait for you to get into that one.
Joseph: Both of those games, I have the most regret because Willie actually gave me the first game, long ago.
Willie: I bought that game. I borrowed his PS3** [Taylor laughs] just to fucking buy that game so I could play it.
Joseph: That's right.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Yeah, and then when I got the PS4 back–
Willie: Oh yeah.
Joseph: –you gave me the game with the console.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then I haven't played it in all these years and it's like the biggest regret I have, is that I haven't played that game so I could play Miles Morales and complete both of them.
Taylor: Man, I promise you're, you won't be disappointed. Even if it's a year from now, you'll still be happy you did it. That ray tracing changes so much, especially when it's done well and executed properly. So anyway, sorry.
Willie: I just think if you like that style of gameplay
Joseph: I do, yeah.
Willie: It's one of those things you should play. But anyway, back to Control. It is beautiful from what I've seen, even like that mood, like you were saying earlier.
Taylor: That was one thing I didn't get. They added the ray tracing, I guess like in a basic manner to Xbox, but I don't think it was nearly what it was on a powerful pc.
Joseph: I recommend it. I think the story makes it a great game, but the combat is also very fluid too. So I, I enjoyed the combat mechanics and the combat itself was really, really fun. I don't think the weapon upgrade system is all that fantastic, but the actual fighting in game, I think is badass.
Taylor: I remember a lot of elevated heart rates in those battles, cause the enemies were very sneaky.
Joseph: Yeah, that'd be a good one to have a heart rate mount, uh, heart rate monitor on.
Taylor: Yeah. Yes, it would.
00:48:08
Joseph: Uh, okay, Control. Willie, what do you have?
Willie: I think I have to go back to that time period that I was talking about earlier with Arkham City and go with Skyrim.
Joseph: Oh, of course.
Taylor: He done it. He just went and done it.
Joseph: Stole your pick.
Willie: Those two games came out almost within a month of each other. Just over, I guess. Oh, no, just less than. Uh, Arkham City came out–
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: –October of 2011, and Skyrim came out in November of 2011. And again, at that time in my life, didn't have a job at that particular moment, and all I did was play Skyrim when it came out. Within the first few weeks for sure, I had like 200 hours in on my first character and was just immersed in that story.
And then as I, like as I got through the story, on the playthroughs after that, there was a lot of people in that community being like, how can we break this game? What is the, what are the easter eggs in here? But what are the like glitches that you can do to like level up your characters? And I remember just spending a ton of time making different characters.
One that like used nothing but his fist, but you like got gauntlets that weighed the heaviest and you did something special that would like, the heavier gauntlets, the stronger you would hit. But also you could make enchantments that would level up, sorry, you could make potions that would level up your enchanting and then make enchantments that would level up your potion making skills.
And then you could do that endlessly on a loop back and forth. So you were just making things that were like exponentially more powerful than they should be; making a character who could one punch anything in the game. I remember playing with those mechanics as other people were finding that stuff out.
I have multiple characters in that game. I actually booted up my 360 to see, what I had. I couldn't find my first character, but like one of my characters in there had like 160 hours and the other character had like another 80 hours. Again, that's not including the 200 hour character. Like that's only the first time I bought the game.
I've bought the game at least three more times since then, I think. At least twice. [Joseph laughs] For sure, at least twice, but I think three more times since then because they've re-released like special editions or, or whatever.
Taylor: Yeah, same. And the VR, I had to play it in VR too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Oh wow. I didn't even know that was a VR game.
Willie: Yeah, that's a thing that I didn't do, but I've been wanting to.
Taylor: It's fun, but also man, once you spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in there, uh, which I have done as well. You get to a certain point where you can only see those missions and all the animations and everything so many times before you realize I gotta do something different with my life.
Willie: Yeah.
[Joseph laughs]
Taylor: That was a great one though.
Willie: I was looking through that. Like I said, I like literally took my Xbox 360 outta the closet and booted up. I found the disc and booted up the game, and was looking through those save files and I know this probably pales in comparison to other people and maybe it's hard to even know what this means, but like... I noticed that there's like over 2000 saves I have for that game.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Damn. Like manual saves.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That was easy to do though cause you could, you know, you do one before the door–
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah.
Taylor: –one after the door. One whenever you take six steps.
Joseph: So you could save whenever you wanted.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Uhhuh, spam. Spam save. Spama Lama Ding Dong.
Willie: You know, I know there were other open world games before that, but that one would, for whatever reason, just clicked for me. Like I just wanted–
Taylor: Oh. Cause it was Oblivion and they built on all that great shit. But they made it, they doubled it.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: [chuckling] It was, it was perfect. It was perfect.
Willie: And I think the graphical upgrade between Morrowind, Oblivion, and then Skyrim.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It just seemed like a bigger jump for some reason.
Taylor: Well, it was. If I remember correctly, that was that first game beyond, uh, Oblivion, where they opened it up. You got outta that cave, or you got on your first mountain and you look out and you're saying, "Oh my God, I can go all the way over there. I can go here. There's a dragon flying over there. What the hell is going on?"
[Joseph chuckles]
00:52:04
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And then between that and all the, uh, just the silliness, the Macho Man Randy Savages, Thomas the train dragons,
Joseph: What does that mean? [Willie laughs]
Taylor: The- oh dude. People were modding the dragons to be Macho Man Randy Savage was one, but it wasn't normal-
Joseph: [Laughing] Oh my gosh.
Taylor: He was all stretched out like a- shaped like a dragon. So that first scene where the dude's getting beheaded, and you just hear, "Oh yeah," and [laughing] you like, the guys are like–
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: –"What the hell's going on? What's going on?" They're looking around and then you hear, "Oh yeah!" And he's just flying in, and [Joseph laughs] he's Macho Man in his fucking dragon face. [laughing]
Joseph: This sounds ridiculous.
Taylor: He's got the sunglasses and the hat–
Willie: It is ridiculous, but it's so good. It really is good.
Taylor: –Dude, it's amazing. It is amazing.
Willie: The thing is, we've talked about this before, but you know, Joey's never played it, so he doesn't even, you can't even put that into context for, for–
Taylor: Oh, man.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: You don't even need to play it.
[Willie and Joseph laughing]
Taylor: All you have to do is play it through those clips. Go watch the One Punch Man–
Joseph: [Still laughing] Oh my–
Taylor: –which is a guy who made, did that thing Willie talked about, except he was just one punching the hardest Dragons in the game, just knocking 'em the fuck out. And laughing and being hilarious about it while he was doing it..
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: You don't even need to play that game at this point unless it's in AR and you're living it.
Joseph: Unfortunately, I missed that one. I was probably playing Gears and some other shit around that time. What year did you say it was Willie?
Willie: Oh sorry, what was that?
Joseph: What year?
Willie: Uh, 2011.
Joseph: Oh shit man. So that's even way older than I realize. 2011.
Taylor: Well that's a classic. That's a goodie.
Joseph: I don't know what I was playing in 2011 actually.
Willie: Yeah. The other thing I'd had to say about that game is just that the music for that has just been so nostalgic to me since then. There's some of those things that are, are ripped from earlier games, but I don't know. There's something that you hear that music and you immediately think, I'm standing on a mountain overlooking like this snowy field.
I could see everything out in front of me and the things that I want to go check out. It's just the atmosphere it creates, is so good. I-I didn't quite say this, but I really liked in some of my playthroughs, not fast traveling, just walking everywhere.
Joseph: Oh right. Yeah.
Willie: Just to see what I could see this time that was different than the last time.
Joseph: I like that. I like that the music, you can hear it and you immediately picture–
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: –the, the biomes and you can feel yourself in the game. That's awesome.
Taylor: And after that many hours you can just, if you hear that, a moment of that music.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Because a lot of people will use it for like their streaming music or something. You'll hear some of that and immediately, "ooh, I know what that music is."
Joseph: Yeah. Nice.
Taylor: "I'm in a tavern." That's a good pick, Willie.
Joseph: Taylor, you said that was on your list, right? So if that was on your list it's–
Taylor: Naw, naw, naw.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Taylor: Well, it's, it's on my tops, but–
Joseph: Tops, okay.
00:54:40
Taylor: The game I'm going with as my second, and this is, this one is right up there with some of my all-time faves. This is uh, Yakuza: Like a Dragon–
Joseph: Oh, right.
Taylor: –which I played through whenever it came out. Maybe a year before it came out. I had played the other Yakuzas, uh, or Yakuza 5 maybe.
Joseph: Yeah, isn't there like 20 of those fucking games.
Taylor: There's a lot of 'em and cause there's spinoffs and stuff too, but it blew my mind because they are taking a subject that is so serious in Japanese culture and in Japan in general.
Just because Y- Yakuza is so powerful and like a real part of life, um, in whatever way it may be nowadays. I have no idea other than tv, what TV show me. Those games are fucking amazing. The humor that they use in them to like contrast against the seriousness of the Yakuza families and the wars and the, and the awful stuff that they do to normal people that get in the way, and that kind of stuff.
It is amazing, especially for somebody like me who is very into Japanese culture and anything Japanese, like, just the way that they do everything is appealing to me. You know, in, in the, in the general kind of public sense. But they just take it all the way. It's like a game about Yakuza that was made by people that made one of those crazy Japanese game shows, you know, where everything is satirical and hilarious.
So this one was about... it... they didn't use the main character that's been in all of the Yakuzas. They used a new guy called Ichiban Kasuga. He's a freaking amazing dude with a Afro, that it looks amazing because the game has incredible detail and graphics. And you kind of follow this dude through his adventures in the city and what he gets into.
And it's, it's amazing. Like the story is incredible. It's always heartfelt. The Yakuza guys are always super kind and nice, like the main characters and they're, that's why they're such a departure from the other people in the Yakuza who are still acting as Yakuza, killing each other, you know, fighting over, disputing over land and, and businesses and all that.
But here's this guy who wants to go around and make everybody's life better and wants to make all the right choices. Basically, you as a gamer going into a game, like, I want to be the good guy. And that is, that is you and you are this Yakuza guy trying to make the family better, trying to make everybody's lives more fulfilled.
And it comes out as this like super weird RPG experience where, I mean, the perfect example for me is the pound mates. That's your summons that you could call in. And so I shared a couple videos of those in the chat if y'all wanted to see 'em in action. They're only like 10 or 15 seconds and you don't even need sound.
But, um, the people you can summon. The first one there I think I posted is Mr. Masochist, where it's a guy you could just call in. He's a masochist, you know, he has a, uh, a lady, what, whatever those lady, the BDSM ladies who will, uh, spank you, spank your heinie. Uh, another one was a, a crawfish. You can call in a crawfish, and he'll attack your enemy.
He is like, and to get the crawfish, you have to go through this whole story where you meet the crawfish, you meet the owner of the crawfish, and then you find out that there's a weird sexual thing going on there as you're going through it. It's freaking hilarious. That's one that I could easily see. You just, you don't even have to play.
You could just watch someone stream it–
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: –And just watch that entire game and straight up enjoy it based on the story and the things going on versus someone's reactions to them could be priceless. If it's somebody that's truly entertaining to you, cause that game's amazing. And if somebody's never seen them before and plays it, you have zero clue what the fuck you're getting into.
But it, it's for the best. You wouldn't want it any other way. You wouldn't want to go research a bunch. What are Yakuza games and what are they about? You would just want to dive into that headfirst knowing that you like RPGs, and that you're into maybe Japanese culture and you're gonna have a good time.
I'll probably put about 80 hours into that one.
Joseph: Is the gameplay style like GTA?
Taylor: It is running around the city, but it's not- um, your battles go into RPG mode. Like whenever you, uh, a group of guys sees you, and they run over and one goes to swing you, it like, transforms into RPG mode. Where you basically click on a guy, choose the action you wanna do with your character, and they'll run over there and do the action.
So it's a really nice–
Joseph: Oh, so it like, goes turn-based?
Taylor: It is turn-based, but it, it also, things happen out of turn, like a character may get a boost or they may just have a perk where they can counter attack or anything like that. It's very fast and fluid and you can even speed it along as you go. Like it's, it very, it's very conscientious of your time.
Like it doesn't want to, it doesn't wanna waste your time in there. So I, I really appreciate that.
Joseph: Got it. Willie, you said some said something a second ago.
Willie: Oh, I was gonna say about the turn-based thing. I think that that was, um, it sounds like that was the first one that was turn-based. I was just looking at some information about it–
Joseph: Ohh.
Willie: –and it looked like that was the first one that introduced the turn-based mechanic.
Taylor: Yes. Yeah. The other ones were like GTA, I'm sorry, uh, the originals. Yeah. And so that was- but it worked out for the best because the humor in the turn-based– you can, they go to the detail where you can like outfit your squad and how your squad is outfitted affects how you fight. So you can have your squad all dressed up like a B-Boy, uh, break dancing group.
And so they're all like break dancing on the enemies and like clowning them and shit, like doing break dancing moves or they're all chefs. Or you could have like one as a chef because of X reason, you know, or perk. And another one is a business woman. She's just a business woman and so she takes no guff and she'll hit you with an ashtray if you fuck around.
And it's amazing, dude, you'll fight a guy with a scratch, a back scratcher. You fight perverts in the street who tried to like fondle you. And it's beautiful man. It is an amazing game that I could go back– it's one of the only games right now that even with everything that I have going on, I could probably still go back and play it and replay it and have fun.
Cause they have all these mechanics beyond just the fighting and everything where you have to run successful businesses and work in bars and do different shit. Like it's, it's very much a life simulator in Japan. But just if you were living on one of those crazy ass game shows. I would love to watch you play that for the first time. Absolutely. If either of y'all ever, you know, wanted to download it–
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: –and just start playing through it, I would happily, I think it may be on Game Pass too.
Willie: Oh nice.
Taylor: But I would happily watch somebody, just as a newcomer to the series and to see your reaction to some of the silly shit that happens on there.
Joseph: Even the videos you sent over were pretty silly.
Taylor: They're amazing. Those are your summons. So like- [Willie laughs] imagine serious ass summons in–
Joseph: Yeah. [Laughs]
Taylor: –Final Fantasy or something, except it's a man baby who comes down and like cries so loudly that it affects the enemy. It makes no sense, but it doesn't have to. That's the sense in it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That is silly and kind of weird at the same time.
Taylor: It's amazing. And then behind it all is just some of the best freaking development ever. Like it's just smooth as butter. But yeah, that's a great one, man.
01:02:25
Joseph: Nice. Well, I think we only have a few minutes left.
Taylor: Yeah, that's about it. It's been a lot of fun.
Joseph: But uh, we all got through two games, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Okay. So between the two episodes, we've got four games a piece, in our list of some of our all-time faves. I think it's a good kind of survey, survey of what we all kind of gravitate towards and enjoy playing. Now I think we have to move into individual games and really spend some time talking about one specific game per episode, or at least, you know, be some of the episodes we create in the future, which I think is gonna be awesome to like really dig into something like Elden Ring.
Taylor: Agreed. Where we can all have it fresh at the same time and all riff on it.
Joseph: Yeahh.
Taylor: That'd be a lot of fun.
Joseph: Real quick before we get cut off, let's go through some honorable mentions, just really quick without, without talking about why we like the game. But, uh, Willie, what do you have on your list for, for Honorable mentions?
Willie: I've got, uh, Borderlands 2, Halo 3: ODST, Tecmo Super Bowl, Metal Gear Solid 2
Joseph: [Laughs] Oh shit.
Willie: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, uh, Knights of the Old Republic and Bioshock.
Joseph: Okay. I have Breath of the Wild, which could have easily been in, in the, the game I talked about. I have God of War 2018, even though I haven't played it, I just already know that's gonna be a fucking banger.
I have Mass Effect 2, Metroid Dread, and the one that I had completely forgotten about until this morning was Joust.
Taylor: [Laughing] Oh, Joust.
Joseph: I fucking love Joust.
Taylor: Ostriches, uh, ostrich jousting, right?
Joseph: Yes!
Willie: Oh, I have to amend my list if I'm thinking that far back cause I would have to say Galaga, but yeah.
Taylor: Oh man, Galaga.
Joseph: Taylor, you have anything on your honorable mention list you can think of?
Taylor: Yeah, I'll keep it short. I'm gonna say, uh, all the Fallouts after Fallout 2. And, uh, yeah, if we're talking old schools, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, what is it, Bad Dudes? [Laughing] What about Bad Dudes? What–
[Laughter]
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Cause nunchucks.
Joseph: Bad Dudes.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, man.
Joseph: Shit, man. Um, Fallout, that's another franchise I haven't played a single, uh, single game in series of.
Taylor: That's been one of my favorites, but I tell you, I could not go back and play, say Fallout 3.
I did go back and play Fallout 4 in VR, but that was with heavy mods where I, you know, I was downloading everything that could make it as silly as shit. There were, uh, you know, like, hentai, uh, signs out in the world, which was a pack that I downloaded and didn't realize it was like in all this different shit. [Willie laughs]
But suddenly I'm walking around and [laughing] there's like, you know, the billboards that were once, you know, uh, some soda ad or something were like a hentai, you know, like some characters from, uh, Overwatch making out or something in anime. [Laughter] So that made it a lot more interesting.
But I throw that out there on Bethesda games that, you can- a lot of times, if you go to it now, you can make it whatever you want. You just go in there and kind of customize it and play it your way, which is pretty neat.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: Nice, nice. Great list. Great lists all around, man. Makes me just wanna go play games right now and finish Kena: Bridge of Spirits or something.
Taylor: Likewise.
Joseph: Uh, anyway, let's get the hell outta here before, like, it just stops our recording since we're running outta time.
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah, rudely.
Joseph: But yeah, thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll see you in the next one.
Taylor: Take it easy.
Willie: Later.
Joseph: [Mimicking Taylor] Take it easy.
Taylor: [Singing] Take it easy.
Joseph: [In a deeper voice] Take- take it easy.
01:05:54
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades.
Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: You know, I've always wondered, like going back to the photo mode in Ghost of Tsushima, I was like, who uses these poses?
Taylor: Me, mee, bro.
Joseph: –Like, who uses these facial expressions, like nobody would. But you're that person.
Taylor: Dude, I like that they're catering to me. [Joseph laughs] Like that's the thing is like when people put like real stupid shit in games.
When you can modify your own character, like build your Souls character. Why would they make it to where your jaw could be way up and over your eyes or something?
Joseph: Oh yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Because people like me demand it [Joseph laughs] and if you took that shit out–
Joseph: "Demand it."
Taylor: –I may stop playing if I couldn't make my guy just the hideous fucking thing before you.
Joseph: This is like, uh, reminding me of Monster Factory. Is that what it's called, Willie?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yes.
Joseph: Yeah. It's some Monster Factory vibes.
Taylor: Basically.
Joseph: Put someone's chin over their eyebrows.
Taylor: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Their eyelids stretched like, up to the back of their head.
Editor’s Notes:
* Spider-Man 2 based on the Tobey Maguire movie was released in 2004 and was actually on PlayStation 2.
** Willie was referencing Marvel’s Spider-Man released in 2019 for the PS4 not a PS3 Spider-Man game.