Sunday Special: The Year in Gaming

I'm Kevin Russe. I'm Casey Newton and we're the hosts of Hard Fork, a show from the New York Times about technology in the future. About the future that's already here, Kevin, every week on the show we bring you news from the front lines of tech, interviews with key news makers, wacky experiments that we get up to and we just generally have a lot of fun. Yes, so whether you're curious about developments in AI or just what's happening on TikTok, we are here for you. So that's Hard Fork. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Sunday Special. I'm Gilbert Cruz. Over the past few months we've talked about many different art forms, music, film, TV, theater, fashion. But there's a big one that we haven't touched yet and in fact it's one of the most popular artistic mediums in the entire world. It is a medium that some, perversely, still don't consider to be an art form at all. I'm of course talking about video games. I love video games. I grew up playing them. I play them with my child. I play them for fun and relaxation and sometimes, incredibly, I get to play them for it, which I did this week to prepare for today's show. And with the game of the year set to be crowned in December, there's no time like the present to talk about this year in gaming. With me today are two people who are eminently qualified to do that. Zachary Small is a culture reporter for the Times who covers art in video games. Welcome, Zach. Thanks. And Jason Bailey, a culture editor here at the Times, edits all of our video game coverage. Jason, welcome. Thank you. Excited to be here. So before we dive in, I think it would be great to talk about each of our relationships with gaming, how we got into it, what we love about this medium. I think I could easily talk for half an hour about my history, but let's start with y'all. Zach? It would only take you a half hour to talk about this? No, you're right. You're right. I was under-sale. I mean, for me, it was kind of a strange experience because I was about six years old. I had chicken pox. And one of my cousins was like ordered to entertain me. So I'm sitting there scratching itchy and bad. And he comes over and brings Super Nintendo and Super Mario world. And I'm watching this moving cartoon. And I mean, I obviously still remember it clear as day. I think for me, it was so important. Now, my main job here at The New York Times is covering the art world, fine art, painting, sculpture, blah, blah, blah. But video games were really my first interaction with a quote unquote art form. And I think that stuck with me and sort of influenced me throughout my life. Jason? Similarly to Zach, I came up on a Nintendo console. I'm a little bit older, though. So it was the original Nintendo entertainment system. Did you two have chicken pox? I did not have chicken pox. It was a Christmas present. It was one of those where we opened all the presents. And then at the end was the big surprise, the Nintendo. But my parents had it and thought it through. And they gave us some games as presents earlier. And we just opened them up. It had no idea what it was. And like threw it over our shoulder because we didn't have the console yet. So I really started there in the 90s with the classic Super Mario Brothers 3 and Legend of Zelda. And as I got older, I kind of switched my interests more into first person shooters than the 2000s. And now is a a grain parent. I have less time. So I'm more interested in the indie games that you can actually complete in a few hours instead of dozens and hundreds of them. What do you think Gilbert? What started you on this journey? Capitalism? I think yep. Yes. There was a time when Nintendo was the big gift. And my parents said we need to get this for our kids they did. And I think I had almost every iteration of Nintendo after that. When I was in my 20s, I got an Xbox. I became obsessed with open world games, which I still am. Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption. And then there came a point. There came a point where I said to myself, if I keep this console in my home, I am not going to want to do anything else with my life. I'm going to stay up to midnight every single night and just immerse myself in these worlds. I cannot do this. And so I sold it to a friend's brother. And I did not get into video games again until the year 2020, which was the year in which I bought a switch and Xbox and a PlayStation because we were all locked down. And I needed to entertain both myself and my child. Wow, you're like going on a binge there. Yes, I've rediscovered my love and appreciation for for this medium. Was there a game that year that you really got back into? Animal Crossing, I think started. Yeah, my son was quite young at that point. I think he was five and he was going to school for half the day virtually. And so we needed to figure out what to do with the other many hours of the day. So building a virtual village with animals is kind of the perfect option. It was it was beautiful. You know, it was a beautiful introduction. And then we quickly rolled down the hill into many other things. There was a very strong just dance period. It was like, my boy, you are not going outside, but we need you to move your body. So we are going to download you this dancing video game that he became obsessed with. And now he does dance like five times a week. Thank you video games. Power of video games. The power of video games. So do you first person shooter like what kind of games are you into at the moment? Because I think one of the things that is true about video games is that a lot of people who don't play them regularly have a picture in their head of what a video game player is, what a gamer is, what video games there are. When the reality is the range, the scope is so, so brought from people who play games on their phones on a regular basis to people who only play sports games to people who only play first person shooters. Tell me about your preferences. Yeah, well, first person shooters might be the most popular genre out there. You look at Call of Duty. It comes out every year and is one of the most sold games every year. When I was a teenager, college, post college, that was what I played. I played Halo. I played Call of Duty. I played first person shooters that were more spooky, like dead space or bioshop. And like I said, as I've gotten older, your fast twitch muscles literally degrade. It's like gymnastics. I was just talking about this. The best gymnasts in the world and ice skaters are 15, 17, 23. And by the time you're 30, you're retired. That's true in these first person shooters as well. So I still dabble in them to the point of the pandemic. I would stay up late playing Call of Duty War zone, a battle royale game, kind of like Fortnite with friends. But now I don't do that as much. It's more of the artsy games. I kind of broke them into three categories. There are the atmospheric puzzle games, limbo inside cocoon are some of the big ones. Walking simulators like gone home, what remains of Edith Finch. This is kind of like the equivalent of an art house. You're really flexing right now. Yes, exactly. All these deep cuts. And Metroid Fides right here at the top. Yes. And then Metroidvania is which we will definitely get to later in this conversation, but games like Ori and the Blind Forest and then last year Animal Well ate up a lot of my time. So that's where I'm at. How about you Zach? Have you evolved or devolved in terms of your interests? I like how your description started with you describing yourself as like a hundred year old man, which is not true in video games terms. It's true. You know, I love a story. I love something that's going to try and make me cry or that's very funny or it's taking a risk. So I guess you could call it like an artsy game. But you know, I like something that I can sink my teeth into like a good novel. So oftentimes these are called RPGs or role-playing games. I've gravitated towards those a lot, but I like a platformer. I like something that's fun and really gamey. Like Mario is a platformer. The man jumps. He used to be called Jump Man. Like how do you get to the essence of that kind of style of game? So I still dabble and sometimes first person shooters or puzzles or these role-playing games. So I'm all over the map. Tell me a little bit more about what it means for you that this word gamey. What is the thing that sort of, you know, this is sort of interactive storytelling in a way, but what is the thing that separates video games from a lot of the other stuff that we experience with our free time? Yeah, I mean, listen, we could be like, well, what does distance it from other things we experience? Like you could say nothing. In doing this job and thinking more critically and deeply about the games I play, I oftentimes divide it into two different things. I think all games are about the gameplay loop, right? It's what you do. It's the routine, which is also our lives, right? We often have these routines. We come to work. People work nine to five jobs. When games teach you either how to master a routine or how to break the routine, and those are two very important life skills to have as you're going through your day and you're like, oh my god, I'm not an honest thing that I can't escape. I'm in the matrix. You got to break the matrix. So I think really great games can teach you to do both. And I would say that that game loop is so important, but it comes out in many different ways, depending on what type of game it is. So I think of a game like Rocket League, which is basically soccer with cars. That's the premise. I love the description of the game. And the rounds are, I think, about three minutes long and you play, it's competitive, it's exciting. There is these amazing tricks that people can do that you definitely cannot do yourself. And the round ends and you want to play again. And you want to master the skills. There's those types of games, Mario Kart might be another example where it's a short loop, but it's fun. It's engaging anybody can play. And then there are games with much longer loops, some of which we'll talk about today, where, quote unquote, run might be 45 minutes or an hour where you're really investing that time into it and trying to master the game. I think also another side of that too, a lot of games are about death and about caring for the protagonist you're playing, like especially when you're talking about early 3D games, like even Legend of Zelda, the reason why Link doesn't talk is because you're supposed to identify with the character. You care for them. I mean, the health bar is hearts. These are intentionally designed displays. And so you care for them, but also in many games, death is just a part of it. One of the games we'll talk about later is Hades 2, which is a game where the designers expected you to die repeatedly as you're trying to work through these dungeons. So again, really important life lessons all boiled down into, yes, a game, something that seems fun on the outside. Yeah. So we have covered the personal. We just got a little philosophical. I want to get down to brass texts. Where are we practically in the industry right now? I think the pandemic, to me at least it seemed like a real boom time for gaming. You had a lot of people stuck at home with all this time on their hands, but it's 2025. Where are we right now? You know, the game industry has enjoyed about 30 years of growth, kind of unending, gradual growth. And we are at a period where that growth is stopping. It is now a mature market. The pandemic broke video games through the mainstream. It also sort of told video game companies, oh, like this audience boom, it's going to last. It's actually going to keep going. It wasn't true. And so video games are on these like five, six, seven year timelines of development. It takes a really long time to make them. And so all of these decisions that were made in 2020 during the boom, we've now seen over the last couple of years come to fruition. And oftentimes or sometimes fail. And so now these companies are losing millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. Sometimes scrapping games just weeks after they come out and closing studios and creating layoffs. So it's a really turbulent time. A good example of what's happening in the industry right now is if you look at Spider-Man 2. So obviously Spider-Man huge franchise. The first Spider-Man game that came out a few years ago, it was huge. They created the second one. It cost somewhere around $300 million. Now that's like an Avengers movie. That is an absurd amount of money. It's an absurd amount of money. And the game sold really well. It was critically acclaimed. And they still did layoffs in that studio. And so the question is, if the games are too expensive that even a major hit can't make enough money, then what can? And I think they're stuck there. The overhead costs are too high. People want really realistic graphics that are expensive to produce. So where do you go from there? And I think it's worth noting there are different levels of games. Hollywood is just a good way to make this parallel. Inside the industry we often use the term triple A games. That's basically the equivalent of a summer blockbuster, maybe a mission impossible movie, maybe Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey that's coming out next year. Those are the ones Zach's talking about now. And there are indie games, sometimes made by one person over many years, sometimes by a small team. The challenge to there is there are so many of them. There's literally thousands of them released each month that it's hard to break through. And you can break through and we'll talk about some of those games today, but that's the challenge there. Then there's the middle tier, which you could call double A games, perhaps. And those are games kind of like where the movie industry is hollowed out and people aren't going to the movies to see things that might have been popular in the 90s like, romcoms or just like smaller dramas. Those games have challenges. There were a lot of games that came out this year that just have smaller audiences because they don't make that huge splash on either side. And we might mention some of those titles later, but there are these distinct tiers and I think distinct challenges for each of them. Right. So if we look at the games that came out this year, how would you, how would you characterize the year, which of these categories that you just sort of broke down for us seem to dominate? I think this is the year like the revenge of the indie game. At the top of every year, we of course look ahead and say, okay, what kind of year is it going to be for the industry? What are the big hits coming out? Some of those major games like Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed. And I mean, other studios shift their whole schedules based on a mega game like that. So you suddenly saw other delays or things were pushed up. I think in the absence of like a major hit from the Switch 2, you have all these indie games. And to me, I'm like, we kind of have to stop calling them indie games. Like, yes, they're independent developers. The same way we have indie movie studios, but like these games are selling millions of copies. And these games have huge fan bases. These studios are getting stronger. I think that's really healthy for the industry. Yeah. We have more major companies and it's not so much of like, you know, oligopoly or something. One of the biggest stories of the year was the release of a new console. This was the Switch 2, Nintendo, one of, you know, the big three in console gaming released. A new one, bigger screen, better graphics, more expensive. How did this land and where are we when it comes to the Switch 2? I think this is definitely one of the big storylines of the year. New consoles are always a big deal. You know, these companies need to make money off of them, but there's slow adoption over time. Initially, it's the hardcore gamers that have to get their hands on the hottest, newest thing. And then I think the long tail is what's important to see a, you know, a broader audience buys in. But the thing that happens with a new console where there's going to be better graphics, stronger hardware is also do you have the games that can show off those things? Nintendo, I would say, made interesting decisions this year and that it hasn't released a new big Mario game or a new big Zelda game to show off the newest hardware, which are the two big franchises. Yeah, there's the, we mentioned some of them. These are the ones that are 30 years old and have brought many of us in this room into gaming in the first place. And they're synonymous with games. Exactly. The Nintendo Switch 2 launch title was Mario Kart World, a popular franchise on its own where you drive around tracks and lots of zany things happen, but not a traditional Mario game. And then a few months later, they released Donkey Kong, Bonanza, leaning on once again, an iconic figure from the original Donkey Kong game, who's now in a 3D world smashing everything up and looking for bananas and gold. But they relied on those characters instead of the biggest ones. And how do you think that went, Zach, with what Nintendo fans really wanted? Economically, great. They sold. Nintendo Switch 2 sold incredibly fast and incredibly well. I think in this sort of long tail moment right now, you have to look at Nintendo and realize like how they sell games is fundamentally shifted. This is a company that is trying to combine strategies from Apple and strategies from Disney together into what they see as the future of global entertainment. So yeah, of course, like, it would have been great if they gave us a new Mario platformer, but Mario Kart has the synergy of all of these characters in the Mario universe. And what are they also now heavily marketing a new Mario movie? I mean, they know this, right? They're planning this out. And speaking of Nintendo, we had another pretty big release on the Switch 2 this year. This is a long running game franchise that is inextricably tied to the Nintendo brand. This is Pokemon. The new game is Pokemon Legends Zeta A. It came out and it seemed to cause a little angst. Zach, I was wondering if you could explain what that was about. I would love to. Pokemon is so fascinating because it is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest brands in the world. Everyone knows what a Pokemon is. And yet with the games, there's a significant amount of criticism that they just never live up to players expectations. And this latest game takes place in one city. It's based on France, but like, it feels like you're playing a game from 2001. Like the graphics are just really low bar. It's clear that the Pokemon company at large isn't investing that much in the video games. And that's really put off a lot of gamers. And how does that happen? How does a franchise that's been running forever, that's beloved, that's extremely profitable? How does it make something that, by all accounts, is so mediocre? Well, you know, it's a big company. You can actually look at their earnings reports. And video games is just a small slice of the money that the Pokemon company makes. They make a ton of money off of the trading cards, actually, if you can believe it. I do believe it. Having bought a lot of those trading cards. And you know, there's been a lot of rumors of exactly how much you're spending on development of video games. Some analysts have put it around 30 million. That's not confirmed. But you know, compare that to these AAA games that are oftentimes 100, 200, 300 million dollars to produce. That this is a much lower level despite the huge brand. At the same time, this game Pokemon Legends Z to A is one of the biggest selling games of the year. And so this is some of the tension you see in the industry. If people are buying it, why change up what's works? We are going to take a break. And when we come back, we are going to dig in to some of the best games of the year. I'm Robin and I am excited to open my crossplay app. I'm challenging John. My colleague at the New York Times. Robin played the word grunge, which has a G, which is four points. She got that triple word multiplier. I'm going to take facts and make it faxes for 30 points. I might just take another two letter word here with woe. It gets me at 23. I think this will put me back in the lead if my maths are mapping. I like to play it more from a strategic point of view and see where I can block the other player from scoring high. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and co-workers and also get to learn new words. Crossplay. The first two player word game from New York Times games. Download it for free today. I think he thinks he has us in the bag, but I'm not so sure. So towards the end of every year, there's something called the Game Awards, which awards this top honor. And we're going to talk about some of the likely front runners for that game of the year prize. These are some of the titles that people consider to be some of the best games of the year. I personally have quibbles with a couple of the titles on this list, but we have to start with one of the big ones, Silk Song, a game that has been years in years in the making. Zach, please tell us about this one. Sure. You're going to be crazy using a shorthand to friends to describe this game as it is a bug's life, but with a lot of death. So what it actually is, it's a sequel to this quickly acclaimed game called Hollow Knight, which was released in about 2017. You play as a character named Hornet. Sure. And you've been kidnapped and taken to this far away kingdom that is basically dying or maybe already dead. Hey, go there. Your goal there is both to escape, but also to figure out what is plaguing this kingdom full of desiccated bugs. Huh. And it is this Metroidvania that mixes platforming and combat and it's really hard. It's a really, really hard game, but it's also gratifying because you as the gamers say, get good as you continue playing and dying and retrying. And this was a game that was first announced in 2019 and then every year, people are waiting. I was not one of those people, but people are waiting, waiting, waiting. Is this game ever going to come out? It came out of the meme. It did. And how they would become a meme. Well, in every like video game showcase that people were excited about to see what comes up next. There's like, this is it. Hollow Knight silk songs going to be announced and just silence. And this is made by a very small team in Australia. It's about three people. Team Cherry. Team Cherry. And they just wouldn't say anything about the game to the point where people wondered, is it ever coming out? And then I believe in August this year, it finally happened. And not only did they announce it was coming out, it's coming out soon. And I would say it was the biggest story of the fall because of that. And this game is one that has been critically acclaimed. It is one that so many players, despite the difficulty level, which is quite high. And how do you feel about that? Let's I want to hear how you feel about it first. I want to hear why this game is so great. And then I can have my brief descent. Well, I have kind of a mixed opinion of it. I played it on release. And I think it's still an expertly design game. I just think that some of the design was a little bit too painful towards the player. You know, there's a difference between this idea of like, get good and helping players understand how to get good. You know, so when you die, you get sent back to your last save point, which is a bench in the game. And sometimes you have to like go like 10 minutes back to where you were. That's not fun. I don't I'm like of the unpopular opinion that not every game has to be fun all the time. It doesn't have to be this adrenaline rush. But I do think that there's a respect for players that was sort of missed in this long, long development cycle where, you know, the first Hollow Knight was incredibly acclaimed. And I think just had a better flow of difficulty. I would say the difficulty is definitely the big debate about the game. They actually patched the game, meaning adjusted some of the difficulty early on because it was so hard that people were complaining about it. So the studio did respond to that. But on the flip side, that's what makes this game so exciting for a certain segment of gamers and games like it from software as a studio that made Elden Ring and Dark Souls. Some of these dark fantasy games that we've mentioned. And they're all based on the premise of it is going to be extremely challenging. And you are going to feel extremely satisfied once you complete this challenge. And then there's going to be an even harder challenge immediately after that. And it's a genre that sounds masochistic to some, but to others, there's nothing more fun than beating it. The creator of like the Souls games and from FromSoft, you know, he's described as trying to teach people to like get back up again, right? Like, and as we talked about before, like games are also about life and death. I just think, you know, at some point, the death has to stop. I agree. The death has to stop. That is part of the reason that I was not a fan of this game. I am afraid to express this opinion because I feel like saying, I'm not into SoulSog and you play video games just automatically invalidates any opinion that you have. But I think I'm coming at it from a very particular perspective, which is as we talked about, I only have so much time in any given week to play any video game. And what I'm looking for is not necessarily a challenge, just to be frank. This is also going to apply to a game later on. Do I have a game for you? It's called Wii Sports. I loved Wii Sports. I also loved Rock Band. I'm so angry that Rock Band no longer exists. But I understand that there are many people who look to video games for a challenge. I do not. So there came a certain point, even though this game is beautifully designed, gorgeous to look at, incredible sound design, just like a beautiful, if creepy world to be in, where I got tired of throwing my controller down and cursing inappropriately in front of my child. I'm done. I mean, I think I've started the original Dark Souls 3 or 4 or 5 times. Everybody talks about it as a masterpiece. And I'm just too dumb, too slow, too old to figure it out. Also, I feel slow. Yes. I cannot move the controller all the time. Exactly. So not all games are for all people. And if you're listening to this and aren't a gamer, do not pick up Hollow Knight Soxon, you will be scarred for life. It is very intentionally challenging. But I think to your point, it is beautifully made. It's clearly thought through. It is an art piece in the sense that the background animations, the sound design, the character design are all wonderful. Just to restore the New York Times credibility here, I did 100% silk song. But I still, you know, I agree with you. We have a real one right here. This is a real one. You know, true heads know. But I just think like in a design perspective, it's okay to say, like, you know, there were some things that should have been tweaked. And that's an interesting thing about the video game world. And I think everyone seen it online to a certain degree. There are die hard fans. The same way that Nicki Minaj has die hard fans that are willing to go to war on social media. Silk Song also does. And speaking of highly anticipated sequels, we have to talk about Hades 2. This is another indie game. It's set in the world of Greek mythology. In it, you play as the daughter of Hades. She is a princess of the underworld who has to battle through waves and waves of monsters. Along the way, she's aided by her family members. These Greek gods with powers called boons that make you stronger and stronger. And like Silk Song, this was one of the best reviewed games of the year. What do we think? Well, I'm curious, actually, what everybody's relationship with Hades, because this also came out during the pandemic and that really meant a lot of people, I would say, played it and played it more than they might have in another context and it became very popular. I played it a little bit, but to be honest, never got hooked the same exact way that many others did. I'm pretty sure Yuzak went really deep on the first Hades, right? And the second one. I have developed a theory since of why I like this game so much. And I will say, playing it so much, there are these things called boons, which you mentioned, which are powers that the gods give you that make you more powerful. And lately, whenever I need a favor from an editor, I say, I crave a boon, please. I think it's because for me, it's kind of a math game, right? You're trying to get stronger and it shows you the numbers, like the damage you're doing. So you're always trying to minimize or maximize your impact in the game. And through these repeated runs, and as you're getting more powers, you can lengthen that. And it just like, it's about growth, I think, ultimately. And that's what makes it so addictive. And I mean, the story that they've also put together with the game, I mean, I'm like a Greek ancient Greek nerd. So this is like the perfect game for me. And both Hades and Hades, too, does something really interesting with the storytelling because you are dying and then coming back and kind of doing the same thing over and over again with more abilities. These other gods who are in some cases, your family members coming in and talk to you and the narrative builds over time. And it's very responsive to what you've done or maybe not done so well in the game. And I think that's been a big influence on other games as well once they saw that Hades did that. I mean, the amount of time they spend in the recording studio, like I, nobody really knows. It must have been thousands of hours. It's insane. Absolutely. I was going to say, certainly with the first Hades, the voice work, the acting and maybe people don't think about that as much when it comes to video games, but the acting that went into that performance. Oh, no, no, no, look at that. It was very entertaining. It was sort of drull, but sexy at the same time. Like, I thought it was great. I should have known you were the source of all that singing. Don't you drown your so-called fans to death? Have you even got any left? Don't you ever say such things about our fans? Oh, hey, Gels, we see we give her the old song and dance. I just once again, you know, if we're talking about like how video games relate to real life, maybe I don't deal with frustration, well, this is that what I want. Are you scared of death? I think about it every day. I'm thinking about it right now. Maybe that's part of it. I mean, we're talking about two games where like death stares you in the face. There are very few players who would play either of these games and never die once. Like it is built in. And so if that's something that you're seeking to avoid, then yeah, I can see how you might not like these. Well, let me complicate that because the next game that we're going to talk about here also deals with death and it has a very different tone, maybe more one that why I was to my liking. This is Clarebskir Expedition 33 and this is an RPG game, a role playing game, the story of which is this essentially every year, the citizens of an island named Lumiere and the world is like a late 19th century France or late 19th century Europe, Bella Puck. They have to deal with a being out there who is slowly exterminating them year by year, age by age. You see off in the distance every year on this one day, a number written on a giant rock and everyone who's older than that number sort of crumbles into dust like at the end of the event. This is an amazing premise for a game. I agree. And then every year a new expedition of fighters is sent out there to try to defeat this thing, which in the game is called the Patrice. And so this is Expedition 33. It's been 60 something years. This is a game that is inherently about death. It is a game that I didn't cry at, but I got Tiri Idaat many times. It's a very sad, very melancholy game that also is incredibly exciting to play. I absolutely love this game. Let me ask you, is it a game about death or is it a game about mourning? Damn it. Why are you getting so deep on this? Because that's what it is. Say more. I think it is a game about mourning. And as you're following it, I mean, it has real narrative elements. This is a game, the creator of it, Guillaume. He had thought about how to tell this story that, you know, what was very French, let's be honest. There are characters in the game called like Renoir and are always swearing in French and there are mimes that you have to fight. That mime was very surprising. Multiple mimes. You find the bald mime. I haven't gone to the bald mime. It's very scary. But you know that when I talk to these people, because I went to Paris, I've talked to them because it's the front runner for Game of the Year and it has been since it came out. It's just sort of this anomaly. The developers have gone on this world tour of like meeting RPG creators in Japan and just talking about what it means to make a really good story-based game. And I think this is exactly, it has an amazing premise. It has characters that you learn to care about and then the shocking twist that you could only find in like some high drama move. Absolutely. I'll be the slight downer on this game, not that I don't love it, but I'm not as much of a narrative player as I'm more interested in the mechanics. Like what are you doing? What is the vibe? What does the feel? Are there exciting moments and there certainly are? But the beginning of the game was a little slow to me. Like the prologue took a long time to set it up. And so I set the game down for a while when I picked it back up because everybody's talking about it. This is the game of the year. I kind of have to force myself to play it. Once I got to maybe the main act itself, it's instantly recognizable that this is an amazing game. Like Hades 2 and Sokzeon beautifully design the soundtrack, the animations. You can explore the world. The story is so compelling. There are these turn-based battles where you have to respond to the attacks as they're happening so you're invested the whole time. It's things once you get past that prologue. The music has been on the top Billboard. The music is gorgeous. Jason, you're right. It does take a while before you hit the title screen. Is it an hour of story? Once you get there, it is. To me, you need all that story. All that story about morning and Malen Kali and telling you the world and telling you the stakes. Which again, very French. Very French. Do I like France? It's possible. This is where I learned that I like France. I do think this game is accessible even for a non-gamer. The technical aspects of playing are not so challenging that if you haven't used a controller or a keyboard or mouse before, that you couldn't pick it up. The story is so compelling. The world is so engaging. I would say give it a try. I think also industry-wise, it turned a lot of these dogmas on its head. It's a very small team. They made it. It's still millions of dollars to make this game. It's unclear. They made it at a fraction of a budget of a AAA studio. They animated it and filmed actors moving around in a black box theater that I visited. It's so small. It's like the size of our recording studio. And yet it works because it's a good story and the gameplay. Yes, it's simple. Like anyone could pick it up, but it's addicting and there's also ways to break the game. Do you think the industry to that point will take lessons from at least the critical success of this game? They definitely are. I mean, these people are going on this worldwide tour and meeting with all these studios. They're selling movie rights. There's been some offers of like, can we do a deal? Do you maybe want to get bought? So they're definitely paying attention. I think the challenge always is development takes like five years for a new game. Is this taste going to be the same in five years? Nobody knows. Yeah. Let's move on to split fiction. This is a co-op adventure game. I'll describe it very briefly. As they're group of writers, they're recruited by a technology company to come and test some new gear, which allows you to take your stories and make them interactive and immersive. Two of those writers end up intertwined in the same world and the same storylines and the game hops back and forth between science fiction worlds and fantasy worlds. The thing about this game that's super fun, as I said, is it is one that you have to play at someone saying next to you, which again, as a person who has a child who's into video games and is always looking for something that I can play with my child, this was just candy. We spent so many hours side by side on the sofa playing this until we beat it together. I loved it. I did the same thing with my daughter who's nine. We had tried the previous game by this studio. It takes two a few years ago and she was just a little too young to actually beat some of the bosses. I would try to play with both controllers and beat them and I couldn't do that myself. So we set it down. Split fiction was perfect. It's a very forgiving game and we were able to just take it chapter by chapter maybe on a weekend. It took us a little while to beat it. It's my personal game of the year because of that experience I had. Wow. This is so different from my experience playing the game. With your experience. Not with my non-existent child. With my ghost child. No, I played it with my partner who is not really a gamer. I think the most interesting part of the game is what happens off the screen which is the relationship between you and the other person you're playing. I imagine when the child is very different and I'm like, why won't you jump? You need to jump now. And then I was like, this is, I should not be playing this with my partner. So you learn something here. You do. You learn so much playing video games. Another indie game that I super love this year is a game called Blueprints. This is a puzzle game. Essentially, you play someone who's inherited a house that your great uncle has passed on to you. The house is 45 rooms and your job is to discover the hidden 46 room. Every day you have a certain number of steps by which you can sort of discover new rooms and put them together in different configurations to try to get to this 46 room and then keypoint every day, the layout of the house resets and it's completely different. I think this game is fantastic and you haven't mentioned it but there are so many puzzles in this game, visual puzzles, audio puzzles that you have to really take literal notes on pieces of paper in order to break out a notebook. In order to keep track of what's going on so that in your future runs, you can remember this is what I need to do to accomplish this. It's just so fun. A run can take like 30 minutes to an hour. You knock it out in one night and then come back the next night and do it again. All right. There actually are, despite this being such a great year for Indies, a couple of big studio titles in the mix here and I'd love to sort of get to them very quickly. One of them is called Death Stranding 2. I don't know how to describe this game but it is from one of the great minds of video game creation. Yeah. So it's by this guy named today, Kojima, who is like the alter of the video game world and he made Metal Gear Solid, which is largely a story about nuclear arms and nationalism and soldiers. Death Stranding is not that. It's like post-apocalyptic. It's kind of about social media and reconnecting the world after this big apocalypse. The first game came out right before the pandemic and the whole idea is you play this guy who is a porter. He is basically a mailman and you walk around the world delivering cargo. You're basically Amazon. You're just about bridging the world together. I think it's brilliant. The second game is much improved. It's faster. It's quick. It's really a story. Kind of about fatherhood and motherhood all mixed into one and again, death, depression, seeking connection in a world that feels like so alienated. I promise you. The next game we're going to talk about is not about death. This is one of the big switch two games. This is Donkey Kong, Pananza. This is exclusive to the switch two because it is about one of Nintendo's big characters. Not Mario, not Zelda, but Donkey Kong is a game in which you go around and just bash the hell out of everything. I had fun smashing things in the opening levels. How long did this last for you, Gilbert? Did you just keep smashing forever? I bounced as they say pretty quickly. My child beat the game. He just wanted to go around and break stuff. This is not a game about death. This is a game about a monkey and his bananas. It is really fun. The worlds are not designed in this luxuriously beautiful way, which the same team did on Super Mario Odyssey, which was released many years ago. I think is one of the classics of our time. With that in mind, I was a little bit disappointed, but it's still a great game. I think as you said, for a kid, what's better than smashing things? Nothing. I can tell you that. Nothing. Before we wrap up here, however, I'd love to hear the two of you talk about other great games. Maybe that you played this year that didn't get quite as much hype as the list that we just went through. I had this game recommended to me by a reporter that I work with. That's how I love getting my game wrecks. People just word them out. That's how you find about the smaller things. This is a very small game called Is This Seat Taken. I've been playing it on the Switch. It's available for some other consoles as well. It's basically Sudoku with people. The opening stages are in a car or on a bus and you have to, somebody wants to sit by the window. Somebody wants to sit by their mom. Somebody wants to not sit by anybody who's making loud noise. You have to figure out where everybody goes. We played this game on a bus in New York City. This is such an editor's game. It's really fun. It's like it's a movie theater where you don't want people in front of you to have a big hat because you want to be able to see. You want to sit next to somebody who has popcorn so you can steal it. It's just very cute animations. Once again, play this with my daughter. It's a lot of fun. Zach. You know, whenever someone asks me like, what game should I play? I've never played any game. I don't understand it. What should I do? I always recommend then this series called Katamari Domacy. Okay. It is just like the most video gamey game in the world. It's something that only video games could do. The premise is really wacky. You're like the prince of the King of all cosmos who has destroyed the universe in a drunken bender. Don't worry about it. You have a sticky ball and you got to roll the sticky ball around the world and it gets bigger and bigger and eventually the king turns it into a star. If you were not following that, that's okay. It does not make any sense. It's just this progression system of continually building a massive object until you're bigger. That's a primal desire, I think. There's a new game that recently came out called Once Upon a Katamari. There's been a large drought in the series. Some of the games that recently came out weren't the best. This is a return to form. It's just joy in a bottle and it's kind of like an arcade game. You can come, you can play it for five minutes and then put it down. Okay. Let's take a short break. When we come back as we do every week, we're going to play a game, a game for gamers. Zach Jason, we're going to end this episode as we end every episode of the Sunday special with a game. It's given that this episode is about games. We felt like we had to raise the bar. Let me explain to you what's going to happen. We are going to play an RPG, a role-playing game, like Player of Scare Expedition 33, but significantly less expensive game. I have a role-playing game here in front of me that has been specifically designed for you to play this episode. The two of you should feel honored. In honor of the classic computer RPG Zork, we're calling this game the New Zork Times. I love it. I know, I know. It's fantastic. I'm very proud of it. This is a co-op game in the mold of a game like Split Fiction, which we talked about earlier. So you play together. Can you do this? I don't know how to jump, Zach. Forget it. I think you can. I'm going to be playing the role of the computer. Okay. Are you ready? Player one? Let's do it. All right. Let's go. You awaken in a dungeon. Torches and iron sconces cast pale light on the cold stone walls. In the center of the room is a treasure chest. It is locked with three golden locks. There are tunnels that lead east, west, and south. What do you do? I always go west and then go west. I always go west. I always go west. I always go west. I always go west. So that you don't get lost in the maze. Yeah. I feel like going west is great. Go west. You step out onto a digital basketball court. The Electronic Crowd roars a giant 2k Games logo spins above the court. On the court, waiting for you is NBA superstar Lebron James. Hey, says LeBron James, do you want to play a game of horse? You immediately realize that your only chance of defeating LeBron James, even in a video game, is to work together as a team. So here's how this game of horse is going to go. I am going to give you a clue, and each of you is going to give me one half of an answer. So, if I said a mode in multiplayer games where the goal is to kill as many other players as possible, Jason would say death, and Zach would say match. Death match. You got it? That implies that we know the answer, but I got it. The Switch and the Steam Deck are both examples of this kind of console. Hand. Held. Switch. A game in which the player can choose the order in which they explore the environment. Open. World. Nothing but net on that one. All right. Getting so angry that you have to stop playing a game. Rage. Quit. We know that one well. Boom! Shackle-ock! Playing a game with the express purpose of finishing it as fast as you can. Speed. Run. Yeah, those are speed running through this game. My heart is pounding. Organized competitions based around video games, taking their cues from the world of athletics. E. Uhhh. You got this. E. Oh, esports. Yes. This is real cool. The crowd goes wild. They're throwing popcorn. They're throwing drinks. They throw a key in the shape of a G. Pumping your fist, you run back through the tunnel. You're returning to the treasure room. You have tunnels that lead east and south. Let's go east. Well, I feel like we should go south. A good editor reporter pairing right there. Let's do south. This room is very clearly a trap. This is why you always listen to your editor. The floor is littered with the charred bones of an adventurer's from famous video game franchises of the past. As you step through the door, a flock, a fire breathing spike turtles enters from the other end of the roof. Now the only way you'll survive is if you can remember the adventures of the heroes who came before you. So what does that mean? I'm going to give you a death sound from a video game and you name the game. Sound number one. Oh, that's Mario. Super Mario Brothers. Correct. Sound number two. I've returned to Shadow now. Oh, that's Milino A and Hades 2. What is correct? Did you also pronounce the main character's name correctly? Sound number three. Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong, specifically Donkey Kong Bonanza. And we now have sound number four. Zelda. The Legend of Zelda. And you are on to sound number five. Oh, that's silk song. I've heard that many times. My favorite game of the year. My strategy is just don't die in video games. So I have an experience. So it's too good. You're just too good. Great strategy. You are on to sound number six. This feels like Dark Souls or Eleanor. This is Dark Souls. Wow. I have died a lot in that game, which brings you to our final sound. Snake. What happened? Snake. Snake. That's got any mental gear solid. Snake. That is a mental gear solid. My Halloween costume is a cardboard box. You hide inside a cardboard box. There you go. And sneak around that final turtle and you grab a key in the shape of the letter S. You beat your feet back up the tunnel before any of those turtles wake up. You have returned to the treasure room. You see a tunnel that leads east. Not much choice here. Let's go east. I guess we have to. I'm glad you're in agreement. You go east. You emerge onto a ridge overlooking a vast, extremely detailed, very expensive looking world. Right there in front of you is a sphinx with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the motion captured head of an A-list Hollywood star. Which one? Robert Pattinson. From a chain around its neck hangs a key in the shape of the letter X. If you wish to take my magic key, you must answer two out of the three of the questions I will ask to thee. Question number one. Death Stranding II on the beach features the re-emergence of what reality warping bad guy named after an elementary particle. Well thank you Robert Pattinson, Sphinx for that question. That would be Higgs. Correct. The Sphinx bell is out. I hope we all have our speakers cranked just like Batman. As high as possible. Question two. What Philadelphia Eagles running back is pictured a herdling another player on the cover of EA Sports's Madden NFL 26? That would be Sequan Barkley. Correct. Question three. Grammy award-winning Seiso singer and rapper became a playable skin within the game Fortnite earlier this year. Oh, I really feel like in my heart I know this, but I think it's ASAP Rocky. It is not ASAP Rocky. We still got two out of three. The answer is Doja Cat. The Sphinx pulls the X key from its neck and holds it out to you. Just then your graphics card overheats and everything freezes. You snatch the key quickly. You rush back through the tunnel before the game crashes. You are back in the treasure room even though you got that question wrong. You stole the key like the sneaky people that you are. In the presence of these three keys, the locks have started to vibrate. You have keys labeled X, S, and G. Those keys clearly open these locks, but you are going to have to pick which key goes into which lock. As you bring your ear closer to the first lock, you hear... Which key do you want to use? X, S, or G? Let's start with X. But of course, was the Xbox startup sound and you have chosen the X key. You turn the key, the lock emits triumphant sound and falls open. You've still got the G and the S keys. You're now moving on to the second lock and it sounds like this. Which key do you want to try? I guess we'll go with S. This for Nintendo Switch 2 of course, the lock falls open in your head. The third lock sounds like this. G must be Genesis. G is Genesis, that of course was the Sega Genesis startup sound. The locks fall away, the lid of the chest rises and out floats your rewards. The two of you played a perfect co-ocke game you worked together and I have two actual prizes for the both of you. This is the first time that we're handing two out in the same episode. Are you ready? So this is just participation trophies basically. Are you ready? Yes. I'm drawing out for you two cheap plastic trophies with my face on it. We call them the gubbies. Oh wow. Congratulations. I did not prepare my acceptance speech. This is amazing. It's like the size of a shot glass. It is. I think you should take a shot. Congratulations to the two of you. Congratulations. Congratulations, Zach. Congratulations, Jason. Thank you for coming on the Sunday special to talk video games. Any time, thanks. It was a blast. Thank you. This episode was produced by Luke Vanderblu, with help from Alex Barron, who is also our quizmaster. We had production assistants from Dahlia Hadad. It was edited by Wendy Doerr, and engineered by Rowan Nemisto, original music by Dan Powell, Marion Luzano, Alicia Bae Etoupe, and Diane Long. Special thanks to Paul Assument. Thanks for listening.