Game Scoop! 837: The 2025 Daemie Awards

What's up everybody, welcome to a very special episode of iJane Game of the Year, I'm your host Damon Hatfield and joining me this week are Justin Davis, Nick Lemone, I'm back baby, and Sam Claiborne joins us as well. Oh my, you've caught me in my study today. I mean, it's so good to see you. It's so good to be here. I wasn't expecting company. It does look great. It's very cozy. Yes. I see the glow of the fire, the thrill of the recent adventures. Actually, I'm reporting live on the scene from outside Olathe, Kansas, which will tie into this episode's theme. Please take it away, Damon. Olathe, Kansas, a birthplace of kings, they say. That's what they say about Olathe, Kansas. It's the most wonderful time of year. Everyone, all year long, around the world waits for this moment. It's time for the Damien Awards. Everyone has just been waiting with big to find out what was the kill gag of the year. You have to know. People have to know. So let's just get right into it. I'm going to reveal my top five games of the year. Damon Hatfield's top five video games of the year, 2025. It's the one time a year that Damon gets to take over the show. Yep. I let you guys talk all year long. And then there's one episode that's just about all the stuff that I like. Okay. Here we go. My top five games of the year coming at number five is the Outer Worlds 2. Again, I'm just about to wrap up at 50 hours. I didn't know you got that far in that game. Yeah. I'm past the point of no return. I'm on the last sort of like final stretch. This was a slow burn. It really grew on me. It's like Outer Worlds 1, but it's so much bigger. It feels epic. It's like, you know, 20 hours, it felt like it could have wrapped up, but then it just launches off in this whole other story arc. It's all good. I'm going to describe one of my favorite missions of the game. So if you don't want to know about a mission that's about midway through the game, feel free to skip ahead. But in this one, you have to get to this supercomputer to analyze this data that you have. But the supercomputer is in a facility that's guarded by enemies of the protectorate faction. And so you can call in another faction, the order, to help you clear out the base. But in return, they want you to let them take control of the supercomputer when you're done with it. So I was like, whatever, that's fine. But then the supercomputer, when you get there, it sends you on this long quest all over the ice planet for stuff that it wants first. And you talk with the computer a lot. And by the end of the quest, I kind of liked the computer. It's an AI. And then it started asking me, like, what should we do next? What should we work on in the future? How can we collaborate? So when I walked out and the order was there and they wanted to take control of the computer, I was like, actually, no, I think I'll keep the computer for myself. So I became their sworn enemy of the faction. They all attacked me. I had to kill everyone that helped me clear out the facility. And now I'm an enemy to that faction. If they ever see me, they're just going to attack me on site. So well, yeah, to the AI. Oh, he's my he's my friend now. Yeah. Nice. No, he's a giant supercomputer, but I can go visit him. There's some other side quests I can do with him. The game even warns you the game warns you when this happens. He says, you're an enemy of this faction now. They will attack you on site. You may want to reload a previous save or just enjoy the chaos. So I'm just enjoying the chaos. Nice. Wow. That's awesome. Also, I think the gunplay feels and sounds great. I don't play a lot of first person shooters, but to me, they really put a lot of work into that and it almost feels like a correction to Starfield. I mean, yeah, God, it's it's a much, much better game than Starfield. Yeah. And how do you think I compared to a vowed, which I loved. I liked about quite a bit. But I never finished. I just, I, something else came along and probably a sassus creature or something and I bounced off of that and never went back to it. But I did like, I liked it. I like the water endorsement made the top five. Jamie's crazy. Top five. Moving right along. Coming in at number four is Ghost of Yote. This is a game I, you know, I was really, really hot on. I think I lost a little bit of steam on it right at the end, but it's probably tied with the sassus creatures shadows for the best looking game of the year for me. I think combat in this game feels so good. I wish the side quests had more meaningful rewards. It's usually just, oh, I got a different color hilt for my katana. Like the worst rewards. Yeah. I don't care about that. But I think the bounty hunter missions are great. And it's some of the best stuff in the game. I could just spend a whole evening just doing bounty hunter missions. There's usually a bit of a puzzle in finding them. They all have their own dialogue and the got your bounties have their backstories. That stuff is great. I like the deceptive ones where they're like trying to be somebody else or that they're helping you for a while. Then you're like, you're the person I'm looking for. Right. They're like, yeah. There is also just really cool one off story mission or unrelated story missions that I really dig. Like there's a whole horror, like J horror, like ancient ghost mission like Kaidon. Very evocative of some really cool Japanese horror cinema. Really fun stuff. Surprisingly, bears play a surprisingly big role in this game. Both on submissions and also just roaming the countryside. You encounter a lot of bears. The greater throwing you around. Yeah. You know, I like the, just sort of like the way the campaign is built. You have a kill list and you, I like how you can basically take them in any order that you want to. But there is too much walking and talking. And that's a critique of PlayStation studio games in general. You know, it's a big open world game, a sandbox. I want to be free to just play the game. But every time you want to do a story mission and the camera zooms in and the letter box comes in, it's like, oh, okay. Now all I can do is hold forward on the left stick for the story of my people. But yeah, they got it. They need to figure out a different way to deliver information than taking agency away from the player. But it goes to the Ote very good. Best hot springs in a video game this year, better than Assassin's Creed Hot Springs. Yeah, I don't even remember the hot springs in the shadows. They were quite lovely. Look how good this game. It looks. Okay. Number three coming at number three is Shinobi Art of Vengeance. Wow. Here's a ninja game with no walking talks. It is the 13th Shinobi game. But it isn't. It is not an unlucky number. It reimagines Shinobi from a straightforward arcade action game into a hand drawn collection of mini Metroidvanias. So it's level based, but each level is kind of a mini Metroidvania developer lizard cube did for Shinobi what they previously did for Streets of Rage 4. An old sort of arcade brawler and completely blows it up for any adds a bunch of like modern features. It's a beautiful game. All the hand drawn artwork is really amazing to look at lots of each level kind of has its own set piece. That's really nice to build for replay ability. You can revisit levels. It'll tell you what secrets you haven't gotten yet. And as you proceed, you'll you'll find new traversal techniques so you can go back to the previous level access new areas you hadn't before. It also has Shinobi executions, which is like, I don't remember which Splinter Cell it was that added the point where you can tag enemies and then execute them like three at a time instantly. You can do that in Shinobi Art of Inch as well. Conviction of a walk and talk emphasis. It's a hop and chop. Hop and chop. I would much rather hop and chop than walk and talk. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com. Set up. Coming in at number two is Donkey Kong Bonanza. Very nice. Hi, that's high up there. Very, very close to the perfection that is Mario Odyssey. If Mario Odyssey is here, it's like, I think Donkey Kong Bonanza is like right there. I like Donkey Kong's redesign a lot. I know maybe some original Donkey Kong country fans weren't a fan of it, but I think it looks great. It's all about destroying the environments and all of that feels really good. Super fun, satisfying. I like how you can just pick up the environment and maybe it's a means of traversal. Maybe it's a weapon now. The environment can be your weapon or your transportation. I also think this game has the best map of the year. The maps look like really cool. It's gorgeous. Diarramas. I want a 3D print of just the maps in this game. Totally good map game. I mean, the Nintendo, the Tokyo team just keeps going from strength to strength. They're getting very better. This is a platformer that has best of breed platforming. It's doing really, really interesting stuff from a trained definition standpoint. Even just the puzzles, the puzzles in this non-puzzle game are better than the puzzles in many puzzle games. It's just unbelievable what they accomplished. I think it's... Yes, that's the best part. I think one of my favorite things about this game, like Odyssey, is the shmovement. There's just this effortlessness that you don't need to master everything that Donkey Kong can do, but if you're a sicko like me, you can just really do insane things that get you due part to the map that you shouldn't be able to access early and the game does not punish you for it. It basically is like, great, good job, dude. Here's a bunch of coins or gold. I do think... I mean, I didn't make a top five games of the year. If I did, Donkey Kong would definitely be on it, would probably be top three. I do think this game is incredibly ugly. Ugly. And I don't think that on a technical level, just the art palette and just the level design, it's just as deeply unappealing to me. But I was able to get over it, as I said. I absolutely loved the experience overall, but even just watching back this footage, I'm just not vibing with it at all, just on a visual level. I wouldn't call it ugly, but I do know what you mean. Maybe Goddy is a word I would use. It's an interesting color palette. You're right. It is a game of the year candidate. You're right. I was explaining to somebody at work why this got nominated for music awards. Oh, the music is great. But I'm like, oh, it's because of the transform music. That's what people like. Oh, I completely forgot about that. And a lot of the game has that type of, you know, a lot of games, music themed, right? You know, there's like DJs in every level. And you do that cute little Yakuza dance. Yep. Yep. Things that's really good. And so I would call this genre a jig and dig. Jig and dig. I wish the game awards I wish the song they played there would have been the zebra song. That would have been the best one. Zebra, zebra. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah. It's like it's a choice to make Pauline not going sidekick, but their relationship is really cute. Charming. Yeah. Fantastic ending. They blew up the timeline, y'all. Yeah. We're never recovering from this one. One of the hypest endings, not quite Odyssey level ending, but very much up there. Bar for bar, I think. Yeah, I agree. Okay. So everybody was saying that originally and. Oh, no, no, no. He froze. We lost Sam again. He was about to unveil his undying love and passion for Donkey Kong. I think so. I think he was going to say he was wrong all along. That change of heart. He's just just like Scrooge. He's seen the error in his ways. I'm sorry. I'm using the benefits of Starlink at this location and I think it goes out every 15 minutes. What is the ending that you all love? There's a couple of different endings. I don't know. I'm not going to spoil it. We should. Well, Phil, let's just say if we're going to talk about the ending for a moment, people, if anyone wants to skip ahead, go ahead. I'm just curious because like there was a couple of different ones and I don't know which one people were glomming on to because none of them are particularly. Are we talking about it? If we're talking about it, it's like the build up and eventual reveal of K rule is incredible. And then the execution of the box boss fight is like, although it is, it's like, you know, it's 10 times harder than anything else in the game. So yeah, that boss rush. It's also really cool. Like he's seeing him take away. It's not it. I forget. Is this New Donk City that you go and you go back to New York City? Yeah, it's unbelievable. Like all of it is like 10 out of 10 stuff. It's like the reverse King Kong where he goes instead of going to New York to be the bad guy, he's like, oh, he gets to save New York this time. And it's from King K rule with the very fun and really interesting set piece. And again, you know, King K rules going to be showing up at the end by the time you get to this point in the game, you're like, I've been reading the lore. I've been reading these little, these little tombstone things. And I'm like, okay, I see what you're doing. All the writing with cranky Kong works if he's talking about K rule or if he's talking about the misdirect, you know, boss. And then you pull like his big golden belly in the ground. Like all that stuff's great. And I'm not going to be, I'm going to be a little bit controversial here. I don't know that it should have cost DLC money, but Emerald Rush is so much fun to play. I don't know if it's it was what 999 or 1999, but regardless. It was 1999. Yeah, I think it was 20. It is such a fun way of like re approaching this game from a rogue light experience. And I think it's so clever. And I really hope that we see more stuff like that from like the next Mario, maybe don't charge money for it. But man, that was sick. I think it's the best part of the game. I think it's really worth a revisit if you, if you can spin those books, if you get a gift certificate for Nintendo points and want to spend it on something, it's great. Treat yourself and the Donkey Kong Island is really, really cool. Hearing like that DK theme too. And when you're in the side scrolling levels, when you hear the Donkey Kong country theme like reimagined in this game, oh, it's delightful. Grant Kurt Cobb, like they did him justice, I think. Donkey Kong, Vanessa. Great, great, incredible game. Okay. Time for my number one game of the year. Do anyone know what I'm going to say? A lot. That was last year. Ninja guide and rage bound. No, Ninja guide and rage bound is going to win an award later in the show. My number one game of 2025 is Monster Train 2. Whoa. So good. And it's a little frustrating to me that I don't think anyone else has played this game, even though like Justin likes Monster Train 1 and this is totally the type of game, but he refuses to play Monster Train 2. It's on Game Pass. Is it? Good news. I've been, I've been waiting for a sale on this bad boy and it's finally 1999 on Steam. So Papa's about to eat real good. I don't know. It was a game pass game. Not that I mean, whatever, like games are worthy of the 20, 30, $70 that we pay for them. But you know, yeah, I'll check it out. This game is so good. It's a roguelite deck builder. It's actually roguelite deck builder perfection to me. The first game, you're the denizens of hell and you have a train, a monster train and you're battling the denizens of heaven. In this game, they have to, they have to collaborate. Whatever, the story doesn't matter. They have to collaborate now because now those, these other Titans are even worse. So that's what's going on. So in this game, you go on runs in your train, you pick two classes and you pick a hero unit who has some special abilities. Each class has their own deck of cards. You mix the two decks together and then at each stop along your way of run, you fight waves of enemies and a boss. Your cards or your characters, spells and equipment, your train is three levels and you can, you pick where you play your characters and then during each wave, the characters just smashed into each other and you know, I mean, they fight each one has hit points. So you hopefully you, you don't lose your characters. Hopefully you're killing the enemy characters, but it doesn't matter if your characters die. All you really need to do is keep the enemy from reaching your train's heart at the top of the train. So the fun comes from combining different classes and finding synergies between decks. Like any good rogue, rogue light, it is possible if you are smart with your card draws and luck is on your side, you can just become totally OP, maybe one out of every 20 runs. You'll just totally OP smashed through the enemies. No problem. But like Bellattro, you can't rely too much on one strategy. You have to have a contingency because Sam, you know, event like if, if you're a, you playing a, let's say you're doing a, a streets run on Bellattro, well, then you, you're eventually going to hit the, the boss line that's like, you can't play a more, a hand, a hand more than once. Thanks for trying to relate to me on card games. So, and also not only did they make an entire sequel here, a whole new game with new classes, new cards and bosses. They also put the entirety of Monster Train one in the game too. It's both games together. You can combine decks from both games. That's what I, that's the, like I haven't played two yet, but that's what I know everybody, like that's the sort of, oh, oh crap moment in Monster Train two is that it has this Smash Brothers ultimate sort of everyone is here thing of like, you know, they just from a game design and balance standpoint of just piling all the new stuff in with the old stuff and you can remix it and combine it all in really interesting ways. Is this I've, I've seen it getting a lot of praise from, you know, from Roguelite sickos for that. Is this game more difficult than the first one? Because I found the first one to be a little too easy. I say it's on par. However, like Bellattro, as you beat it, as you beat runs, you unlock higher difficulties. Okay. Okay. There are 10 difficulty levels. I am on 10. I'm on the final difficulty tier. And when I eventually beat that, then I feel like I'll be done with Monster Train two. But I've been, I've been playing level 10. I've been trying this for weeks now. I'm going to buy this as soon as we're done. This looks great. You know, I the video game form is the best way to play this because I don't want to spend all that time setting up the board game, man. I played, I played the Slay the Spire board game. Very, very fun. But oh my gosh, it takes forever to set up and then you got to put it away. It was like, well, we got to save our game and then put it away. Video games take all that out. This is great. I couldn't imagine having to play a train three floors of a train in a board game like this is great. Do all the, do all the like easy stuff like that. I don't want to do for me, please. It's great. What do you think? Train and Mame? Train and Mame. Yeah, that works. That works. Monster Train two 11 out of 10 off the charts. Off the charts for me. Idol Money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button. Wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money's always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares, Iso. It even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo Current Account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. That's mine. I want to hear your games of the year. If you didn't know I was going to ask for that. This is the day. Okay. Off the dome. Off the dome. Dude, this is how you know it's real. What? Okay, Nick, I'll start off. Number five, I'm going to go Donkey Kong, Bonanza. Number four, Ninja Gaiden, Ragebound. Number three, I'm going to go with, well, let's do number one, Claire Obscure. Expedition 33. Number two. Oh shoot. What else came out this year? Name a video game. Ah, it could have been Ghost Rote or Doom the Dark Ages or. Tilt song. Number four, Silk Song. Uh, we'll throw Silk Song at number three and two will put Doom the Dark Ages. Yeah, there you go. Did you like Hades? You know, I liked it a lot, but I liked it significantly less than the first one. Gosh, I can't, I cannot do what you just did. I very much fall into, look, this is my primary hobby. It's the thing that I spend every single night doing and thinking about. But if the way that my brain works, if someone says just to name a video game, I just can't do it. My mind goes completely blank. Um, if you do your brain, wait, I mean, it's gotta be. It's gotta be. I mean, Donkey Kong and Claire Obscure are the standouts for new releases this year. But I played and continue to play and enjoy a lot of kind of like old, like I put a dozen hours into the Vampire Survivors DLC this year. I played a lot, a lot more of like, I put a hundred hours in a modded factorial this year. So it's like, I'm very much a kind of like, you know, play what I want to play when I want to play it kind of guy. Um, I played Kingdom come deliverance one and talked about it on games before this year. So those are like, those are the most memorable standout video game moments for me this calendar year. Um, but in terms of new releases, Donkey Kong and Claire Obscure, the two that are the top of my pile. Sam, I'm going to be assesses, screenshots for you. Uh, no. So one surpass that. So, um, prime four, four, and I ended up for I'm playing it still and I just tried a hundred percent it. And I think it's really fun. I like every element of it. It's not my favorite Metroid. It's not my favorite Metroid Prime and it's not even close, but it's still, you know, a Metroid Prime game is still pretty good no matter what. So, uh, I love that one. And then I have a tie for two. So this is my two and three places going to be as essence created in your day. I like both a lot for different reasons. I want to go into that, but I think they're both great. And then my number one is Death Stranding two at the most. And, um, I, I basically a hundred percent of that game spent a lot of time in it. At the end, I just wanted to do more. I like everything about it. I love just connecting the world and seeing other players use my stuff. And I got in there early and was making sure I was really helpful. Yeah. I had a great time. Man, you just reminded me. I played and loved the first six or eight hours of Death Stranding one. And then I was in London and Germany for like two weeks and then I came back and just couldn't, you know, like it's just that moment of just like, what, like, where am I and what was I doing? And it's really hard to come back sometimes. And like, and so I do, you know, I don't know if I'm actually going to be, I probably have to start over, which like, then that's a whole pain. But like, man, I was loving it. So I am interested in maybe I'll just bite the bullet and watch a story recap and do two instead. There were some smaller games that I did like, like I like blueprints. And there was, you know, there's something that I'm missing that's just sitting on my steam deck, which I wish I was shouting out right now. But I don't know. Man, ball pit. Ball pit. I've spent a lot of time with ball pit. I'm not, not in my top five, but I like ball pit. I'm looking at my, I'm looking at my steam stats now to be like, oh, what else did I play this week? I'd like to swap a doom the dark ages with blueprints. There you go. Now my list is done. I think runs take a little too long in ball pit. And I like the in between like the farming stuff. I'd rather do that a little bit more, have shorter runs and do the farming a little more. I think the runs can be, I don't know what unlocks it or when, but I play everything on like double speed. Like there's a, there's a fast mode. Is that just in the settings? I don't know. It's a, it's an unlockable. I don't quite remember what triggers it, but like, yeah, you don't have to play it on the normal speed very much. All right. Now time for some more awards. Here we go. And we're still sticking with games here. So the, the, hey, this actually turned out pretty great award goes to a vowed, which is like, I just had no hype for that game before release. And we talked about it. It didn't seem to have, it looks generic. Didn't seem to have a personality. It really bugged me that no one had a British accent, but no, the game is, is really, really fun. It's right up there with, you know, you know, it's like, it's like a, it's like a Skyrim like, I think it's very close to Skyrim quality. I don't know how obsidian did what they did this year. I know. I think that this is like, I think for me better than outer worlds one, which I cannot wait to see what a vowed to is. And hopefully that'll push it past outer worlds too. You know, like just the baseline is a little stronger for me on this one. Okay. The, I really liked this one. I played it for preview, but never got around to playing the final version of the word goes to Ninja guide and rage bound. But since it's in, since it's in next top five, I guess I really got to make, make time for it. Dude, I hundred percent of this game. It is so fun. The art is gorgeous. It's challenging. And it's just, just a such a fun and good feeling game. Like it takes everything that you expect about how good ninja guidance feels in 3d. And just like, yeah, we just did that in 2d. It's from the blasphemous folks, I believe. And just some really fun hardcore platforming and action. Cool stuff. Love the designs in this game. And I do love the, the, the opening boss fight spoilers for the opening, like tutorial boss, but the tutorial boss is Ryu and he's borderline impossible. And it's so sick. Are you sure? I love it when games make you fight. You, I think you're supposed to lose, but I do think that there is an achievement for beating him. Yeah, I love that. Love it. I mean, even before that, the prologue is so cool because you play as Ryu's father in the moments that lead up to the opening cut scene from the original Ninja Gaiden on any. Yes. Smart. Yeah. It's so cool. Beautiful game. I'll play this and Nick, you play Shinobi if you haven't played that one yet. So that's my, that's like a good pitch for how to save Metroid is like, don't use Samus, don't make Samus silent. Use some like cool character that leads up to the point in which Samus like, you know, first starts a mission. That's the end of your game. Like, come on, we got to fix it. We got to fix Metroid everybody. Samus has gone missing and her daughter is, is, is, is searching for her. Percent. Miles McKenzie is back. He's there to rescue Samus. Oh, okay. I've heard a name. I've heard in a long time. Let me tell you about her for two hours. The most questionable cooperative game to play with a five year old award goes to split fiction. Oh, yeah. You know, great game. It's fun. It's not that bad, but there's some comical violence and some like swear words. I think they use the S word in there one time, but I don't think Kingo even noticed. He doesn't know that word. I think there's a lot of S words in that game. If I remember right. Well, I did turn the language to Japanese. Which is really, it makes it really fun to play. That's really cool. That's a clever worker. I like that. That's smart. Yeah. Okay. This is a hit in my house too. I just really great game all around. Yeah. Split fiction. I see this is why I don't, I can't do off the dump because like, yeah, this is absolutely one of my top five games of the year. And in the IGN meetings where you're discussing our official awards, I was really advocating for split fiction. I am convinced a lot of people that don't read it more highly didn't get finished, didn't finish it because just the stuff that it's doing in the back, you know, quarter of that game are just absolutely incredible. Yeah. I will mechanics. The mechanics of game introduces in the last like two worlds. I was like, I would play an entire game of just these two, like mechanics alone. And you could see the last level is like, oh, this is why this game was concepted of like this is, this is why this game exists is that last level is incredibly good. That's exactly, that's exactly right. And I played it with my 11 year old and it was a good family bonding time. Same. This came out early this year, like February or something. And Kingo still talks about it. He's like, daddy, remember when we were, when we were hot dogs and then we were the pigs that farted. Yeah. See, as he gets a little older, you can get him to play a way out with you. And then we can play. We tried that. We started that, but it didn't didn't grab like this one. Yeah. I don't like the other games as much as this one. Same. Oh, I like the previous one way better. It takes two. I think it takes you as bar for bar, better game. No. Yeah. I think it's only the last two levels, the last two worlds of this game that are good. The rest is kind of boring, but clever. It's him. Sam gone. I feel a little intimidated by this rage. This is no longer a bug. This is a feature of the episode. He's back. How'd you live? And I'm so sorry, Sam, please. Okay. Moving on. See, Justin, you can come up in top five, but then you can also just make up awards for any other game that you want to mention. The Densis foliage award. Assassin's Creed shadows, which, oh my God, if you go off the path there, you're going to end up in the bushes and the weeds and just can't see anything in front of you. It is very dense foliage. Unlike Yote, you can get to the top of the mountains in this game if you want to go in whatever direction you want, which I tremendously respected. I've actually been thinking about going, I haven't played this since, you know, March, probably, but I've been thinking about maybe trying to pick this up again, but maybe I'll run into the same problem that Justin did. And I'll just be like, okay, what, how do I do anything? How do I assassinate? But you can turn it to winter and enjoy a completely different game. And how cool is that this game has every season in it? I mean, that is a remarkable feat of game. Yes. You also mentioned that it allows you to turn on instant kills, assassinations, which is the way I think the game should be anyway. I'm just, I love that they add, they just let you do that if you want to. Makes the game much more fun for me. Smart. Because if you sneak up behind someone and stab them in the neck, they're not going to just lose half their health. Right. That's what happens to me, though. So don't try it. Okay. All right. Uh, okay. The, uh, um, but this is all really weird, but I'm not mad about it award goes to death stranding too. Yeah. That's, that's just the box quote for that game. Basically feel free for the director's cut. Kojima, feel free to use that box quote from me. Uh, the most disappointing game that is still pretty great award goes to Mario cart world. Yeah. I am good assessment. It's just, you know, as a follow, as a follow up to Mario Kart eight deluxe and as the first open world Mario Kart game where that was touted as a big feature. I think it's a failure on both of those levels. And yet it's still Mario Kart. It's still great. Yeah. Still super fun to play. And I love the whatever the battle royale mode is called. I forget about knockout to knock out mode is super fun. I think this game is foundationally there. It could be a great game. You could, you could just add a bunch of open world shit. That's so fun in this. They just didn't do it. I mean, they might like look like Mario Kart eight became, you know, uh, Nintendo's first game as a surface almost like they, you know, they updated it for years and years and years and added 50 plus new courses to it. So it's like, maybe world's going to be, you know, around for the lifespan of the switch to who knows? I mean, I know they've been patching it. They didn't, they patch in a map for the open world yet where you can see where the P switches are. I don't think so. Not, not that I've heard that. Uh, I've talked about it when the game was new. So we don't, I don't necessarily need to re litigate the whole thing, but it just, I cannot fathom that they put 500 P switches in this game and no, like this region, this region has 18 and you've found 16 of them or put them on a map or let you buy a map. Like it completely kills it for me personally. I mean, it completely killed it for our gang guides team. It was one of the hardest games ever to cover. Like the open world map is just not, it's just a drawing and it's just impossible to get this game completed. You know, we did it eventually, but boy, and there's like 1200 stickers. I'm praying that this game has a cyberpunk 2.0 moment. Yeah. A hundred percent where they just like, you know what, we, we injected a full story mode into the open world. Everybody have fun. I'm not holding my breath for it, but man, that'd be really nice. I'd be really sick, Nintendo. Oh no, I'm sorry, Sam. It's gonna be fun editing this episode. There he's back. Yeah. Okay. The, I really wish I didn't spend $40 on this award goes to everybody's golf hotshots. Yeah, that was a big bummer. I love video game golf. I love hot shots golf. I love Mario golf. It just feels like it feels like, I mean, it is $40, but it feels budget. It feels really cheap. It's ugly. Uh, it doesn't have any personality. It's generic and has really annoying voiceovers in it. Yeah. And, and what a, what a miss like hotshots golfs whole thing is that, you know, it's personality and it's, and it's silly and it's over the top. And so if you remove all the elements that are over the top, what are you left with, just a mediocre golf game? Yeah, that's what that is. 40 bucks too. Yeah. Okay. The best Sega Genesis game released in 2025. What does everyone know what this is? I wish it was John. Oh, is it earth ion earth? Earth, yeah. I've been pronouncing it earth. The on this is a new Sega Genesis game, a 16 bit shmup runs on actual Genesis hardware, but it looks like it shouldn't. It feels, wow, that was crazy. Yeah. This is gorgeous. And it's made by like the team that worked on, um, uh, streets of rage and shadow. Some of the, um, Sonic the Hedgehog games. So it's like, oh gee, Sega Genesis, Sega developers. Amazing. Uh, you can also play it on PS five or PC. But everything you see happening here actually runs on a Sega Genesis. That's incredible. Crazy. It's incredible. Yeah. Cool. The sprite works gorgeous. Oh my gosh. Yep. Pseudo 3D effects, massive multi sprite bosses. The soundtrack is by Yuzo Koshiro, who did some of the streets of rage and sock the Hedgehog games. And there's things that only the Genesis could do and it's really taking advantage of those versus like a game that has to be on Super Nintendo also. Yeah. It's so cool. There's also an audio filter to make it sound like if you're playing on. Your TV, uh, you can make it sound like it's coming out of a TV in the 90s. That's the idea. Does it add an audio filter where your mom's like shouting at you from downstairs? You got to turn that off. You're going to be late for your band concert. You're like, no, mom, I've never made it this far before. Can't I can't save in the middle? Genesis was a mono channel output too. So, you know, that's probably part of it is that they probably. Maybe released it in stereo. I don't know about like the mono mix is how it's supposed to sound. Oh, adding to the steam wish list now. It's a really good time. Um, okay. Those are the, those are my gaming awards. Let's, let's give out some movie awards. The best time I had with my kids at the theater this year was for dogman. And which is a DreamWorks movie. This movie is, it's fantastic, but my recommendation comes with a giant asterisk in that if you haven't read the books, you're going to be like, what the hell is this? But if you read the books and you know the characters and the jokes, it's a really good time. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, isn't he a cop who was like killed in the line of duty and then he gets brought back to life as a dog? Yeah. A bomb goes off and it's a dog's head put onto the cop. That's kind of dark. It's great. It's like the doctor, the doctor's like, oh no, cop, your, your, your body, your head is dying. Oh no dog, your body is dying. And then the nurse is like, I got an idea. Yeah. They, they need to be tried for malpractice. That's horrific. Yeah. We, my kids outgrew the books, you know, over the course of the last year or so, but they were very beloved when they were a couple of years younger. Yeah. It is. It's usually a pep of mine when a movie is made for people who know the books, the source material and ignores people who haven't. But in this case, I know the source material. So it works out okay for me. This is available on the flight I'm taking coming up. Should I watch it? I don't know that I would recommend you watch it, Sam, but I. I had a great time. Also shout out to line. Uh, there's a giant, the fish is a bad guy. The bad guy is a fish played by Ricky Gervais. And at the very end, that one of our main characters gets in a giant mech suit and his, it has delivers the line get away from him. You fish, which I laughed. I think I left louder than anyone else in the theater. Yeah. That's great. Okay. Uh, the best movie I don't think anyone else saw is black bag. I love black bag. You, so you both saw that. Okay. That's great. I just, it's not a movie that we talked about this year. Spy movie. It's kind of a subtle spy movie. Yeah. With Michael fast bender and, uh, who plays glad real. Hey, Cape Lanshitt. Yes. Cape Lanshitt. Yeah. It's like, it's like tinker Taylor soldier spy, but not boring. That's a great way to put it. That's a great. Hey, Blanchett also seems like pretty ageless and remarkable in this role. She's, she's very elf like generally very elf like. Exactly. Okay. Best subverted callback line is on your left from Thunderbolts. Yeah. I got to kick out of that. That's pretty good. I didn't. Yeah. You're right. That's a good call. Uh, this is an award that's, uh, there's a lot of content for this board every year. Best dreamlike musical mashup sequence this year. I'd go to centers. Yeah. That part was sick. That was incredible. The, so I'm going to go with these pretty fast, uh, Joe, we don't need to stop and talk about each one, but the seriously, maybe you should just make the raid three award goes to Garrett Evans. So I think it's a super talented director to the raid raid two, but then he's made two bad movies since then for Netflix. Havoc was this year. Uh, it's, it's, it's tried to be like a hard boiled cop movie, but it sucks. And I don't even remember a possible, I think was the other one kind of a horror movie for Netflix. Anyway, they're both bad. So come on, just, just make, get back to it. Get back to work. Let's do the raid three. Just make the raid three. I got, I, uh, the DC comics got me cause I did a free trial of DC infinity where you can download, you know, comics and then I didn't cancel the free trial. So now I've paid for a month of DC infinity. And anyway, I've been reading a lot of DC comics and there's a, there's a Batman run that's basically the raid, but Batman, he's like trapped in this building with a bunch of goons and like, what's it called? Do you know? Um, oh gosh. Uh, no, that's all right. That's all right. You could slack me later. Cause I've been loving absolute Batman. Sorry. Side track. That's kind of like the judge dread movie. That was really good. Oh, wait. Yeah. It's exactly right. The, I forget. Dread. I forget which came first, judge red or the raid. But yeah, they've always been compared. I believe they released the same year. Okay. I believe they released the same year. Crazy. It's a, the raid Sam is also a double dragon like. Yeah, I'm right. I, my wife did not like it. And I, I, I'm gonna pin you, Damon. Uh, okay. The best movie that also might have killed the franchise. Oh, it is ballerina, which is totally fun movie. I don't know when saw this movie, but it's totally fun. It's kind of like Donkey Kong bonanza to Mario Odyssey. Like if John Wick is here, ballerina is right there. It's almost as good. Yeah. I fell asleep during this. I'm sorry. Yeah. I had fun the whole way through. This movie also has the best killgags of the year. Uh, Norman Reedus is in this movie. Okay. I look at this. Wow. All right. That's kind of cool. Um, maybe we're going to show, maybe we're going to see, uh, the best killgag of the year, but there's one where Norman Reedus wraps this guy in a plastic tarp, a clear plastic tarp, and then blasts him with a shotgun blast at close range. And then the blood just splatters on the inside. That's great. But then this is the best one. I think sorry for the listeners. We're actually watching the scene in the video here. But yeah, she's got this strap with grenades on it. Just around the neck. Pull the clip. And this is so good. Oh, good. How Nick can fall asleep in this movie. I'm not sure. It seemed like I fell asleep before this stuff happened. If I'm being honest, midway through. Um, I looked up the Batman. It's Batman dark patterns, by the way. And it's a, it's a collection of it's three comic arcs. So he's solving four cases across 12 issues. Hell yeah. Thanks. Pretty cool. Okay. The, we need one of these guys for every eighties movie. Franchise award goes to Dan Trachtenberg. Yeah. Not only has he done three great predator movies in a row, he released two this year. It's insane. Just find this guy for Terminator. Find this guy for Alien. Guy or girl. Yep. Okay. The, I was very dismissive at first, but oh my God, this movie is incredible award goes to K-Bob Demon Hunters. Yeah, that's great. Great movie. Really important movie for my family now. And like, we listen to the songs all the time. I use, uh, Apple music as a music service and I have a playlist of just songs from the year and that I ranked by most played and my most played songs this year are golden, uh, uh, your idol and free, I think, all from this movie. Yeah. This is a movie I would be interested to know what Sam thought of it. Of course. K-Bob Demon Hunters? Mm hmm. I haven't seen it. I will all totally watch it. So great. First of all, it's Sony and it's the, like the studio that did the Spider-Verse movies. The animation is incredible. It's great. That's, that's what stands out to me about it is like, you know, like it's a kids movie. So, but, but the animation. Absolutely. And we don't need to make this a one studio versus another, but it does embarrass, like Pixar a little bit of like, it's the same, it's the same narrative that's been developing for a few years now with the Spider-Verse movies of like driving the medium of animation forward and like movies that, you know, I know they are making a live action K-Bob Demon Hunters, but I think it could really only work as an animated picture, like make such good use of that medium for sort of what it's trying to do from a storytelling and gag standpoint. Like I loved it. I have just added it to my holiday watch list. Great animation. It's, it's, it's even though it's a kids movie, there's also like well composed action scenes too. Like, you know, I love action. It's good. It's actually good stuff. The characters are super likable. Oh, what are you going to say, Nick? It's a kids movie that isn't just for kids. Like it's one of those things that treats everyone who watches it. Like, you know, we trust you to interpret the story and get what we're going for from it, which I really appreciate. It's very evocative of early Pixar. There's going to be so many sequels to this. We're, we're going to die on like K-Bob Demon Hunters 90. Yep. Yeah. I mean, they announced a sequel for 2029. So it's a little bit of a way off, but Netflix was totally caught by surprise, did not know what they had. There was no merchandise available in this movie came out on Halloween. Everyone was wearing bootleg K-Bob Demon Hunters costumes. Yeah, that happened to my daughter. In my daughter. Well, we keep getting these good freeze frames, though. Finally, two movies I wanted to call out that I didn't have dumb awards for one battle after another and weapons. One battle after another, I'd probably say is the best movie I saw this year. And weapons is probably my favorite that I saw. Well, wait a second. Best and favorite can be different, right? OK, I just can you unpack that for me briefly? If I say like, what is the movie that's like, you know, the best made movie? Sure. I would say one battle after another, but weapons, you know, so like they're both very tense movies. One battle is more of like a thriller action and weapons is a little bit more spooky horror. And I think that just I just leaned a little bit more into that. Weapons is on my top one to watch. Let's do it. It's very good. You will like weapons. Yeah, one battle is amazing. It's streaming already, I think, too. Correct. Is it now? I don't know. Yeah, so OK. OK, a few TV awards. Moving on to the TV shows from this year. The Holy Crap that is actually terrifying award goes to episode seven of Paradise. Which is when they showed the events of the White House that destroyed the world and sent a few thousand people to live in that bunker. I think about that wave a lot. It's so that's what I'm talking about. The way the reporter on top of the building, it's nighttime. You lost it. I haven't seen I'm making my holiday watch list, too. It's already quite it's already shockingly long, but I'm adding paradise to it. Is that James Marsden? James Marsden plays the man. I was already in now. I'm double in. Yeah, he's great. He's great. Yeah, so episode, you know, the premise is that there was well, do you know, do you know the the hook of the show, Justin? Yeah, OK. Yeah. You don't know until episode seven, like what actually happened on that day. And there's a scene with a reporter on a rooftop at night and when the tsunami shows up and it's like, oh, my God, it's harrowing. It's crazy. OK, so that was great. Also, I could it needs some sort of award for the most surprising use of a Nintendo console as a plot device. Oh, yeah. A big one. Yeah. The whole way saves a day. No, it doesn't show boy. Not the virtual way. OK, the no scavengers, no scavengers reigns season two. Constellation Prize goes to common side effects. Great. Another animated show from some of the same people that made scavengers rain. And it's fantastic. Very similar animation. Did you watch this one? No, this is the Mike Judge one, though, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he was involved. Yes, he was involved. He's a producer. Really? Yeah, I got to check this out. It's really good. A guy finds these magic mushrooms that will cure literally anything. And obviously, the pharmaceutical companies are not too happy about that. So he's on the run. He wants to try and, you know, figure out how to make more of it. And they want to, you know, track him down. And then he makes friends with an old high school acquaintance. He's little known to him. She works for one of the pharmaceutical companies. And there's lots of great characters, great writing. It's very funny. It's great. That's on HBO. The funny show, I don't have a clever award for this. The funniest show I watched this year was the studio. That's right. Apple TV Plus. So good. Also, like, it's a really funny show that's also just incredibly well made. And there's an incredible long shot in every episode. It's great. And I think a little bit educational about Hollywood in a even though it's a parody, it tells you about it. Yeah. It makes working at a movie studio look really fun. With your friends. The right turn at Albert Kirke Award goes to Pluribus. Fantastic. So I watched the most recent episode eight. So it's not over yet. There are like 10 episodes. Do we know Sam? I think so. There's 10. Yeah. OK. Well, I was shocked to find out that some of our co-workers are not into the show. What? Yeah. I won't name names, but to me, this is just the ex-file of the bar. From Vince Gilligan. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, I like, you know, my God, I'm going to get crucified in the comments. Is I don't like breaking bad as much as like most people do. I don't think it's I think it's a good show. It feels a lot like other sort of like family crime drama shows to me. But Vince Gilligan, like he did ex files, like that's where he came from. Yep. And so the kind of marriage of like, you know, his breaking bad sensibilities with like his ex files, like, you know, sort of building up this deep lore and like unsettling kind of like sci-fi stuff, like it's just it's great to see like him back in that form again, I think. He's a master storyteller. You're watching this, Nick? Yeah, I'm I'm like only four episodes in. I think I'm going to wait till it's all done, because I do think it's a show that'll benefit from me watching all of it at once, because I just like I think he's an excellent storyteller. And it just makes waiting for a little less painful when it's adversely, I'd like to talk about it every week with stuff. I know it's the show. I look forward to it every week. It's like it's I'm just I'm just enthralled. It's such a cool premise. Ray Seahorn is amazing. Yeah, yeah, I'd watch Ray Seahorn like in anything. She's fantastic. So good. This is also a really well shot show. Lots of crazy incredible shots he's using as little CGI as possible. I think you'd be sick of boring ass Albuquerque by now. No, here we are back in. Back in Albuquerque. I do have, you know, it's it starts out. Scary. And then it's not scary. Yeah, yeah. There's I really want to see where it goes because it's just some what the others are doing doesn't it actually doesn't make sense. I don't think so. I don't if the whole idea is to become a hive mind and where, you know, everyone is working in harmony, you would think they would have more reason and more common sense, but they don't seem to. So I don't know. Yeah, it's like becoming one mind gets like this encyclopedic amount of knowledge, but it doesn't get the reasoning right. Yeah, just doesn't work that way. I don't know. So much of it is thought through to and they play off of it and everybody thinks of things before you do. Like it's just that type of show. We're like, these writers had so much fun making a world. Yeah, you just feel it. Yeah, some people will say it's slow, but Vince Kelly is all about show. Don't tell you watch characters doing something and they don't explain what they're doing until eventually it's revealed. That's that's how they that's how they work. Isn't everybody on their phone watching TV now? Get over yourselves. Yeah, this is what we call good storytelling, folks. Yeah. And the final Damien award of the year, the the I cannot believe how good this is. We do not deserve this award goes to Andor and or season two. Yep. Also, I Jens TV show the year. Another one that started out a little slow, but then at least the last four episodes are just incredible. Yep. I kind of forgot that was this year. I guess what like early early in the year, right? I mean, you're talking before, like, you know, watching the Force Awakens last night, like this show is it's it's a whole other level of Star Wars. Like and how it plugs into the movie, right? It makes Rogue One a better movie. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, also, I mean, we've I'm sure it's been said a billion times, but recontextually, Star Wars is like, oh, no, the Empire is committing like war crimes here. Yes. Like it really does like, oh, yeah, they're like cartoon bad guys. No, they are very, very bad, fascist bad guys. Yeah. I mean, we we we talked about, you know, premise versus plot earlier. And it's like, there's there's just we there's never been a bigger mismatch between like they're making a television show out of him. That guy. Yeah. That guy is getting his on the Star Wars show. You know, and then it's like it's one of the greatest not just one of the greatest Star Wars things, but just one of the greatest things, you know, on television in like the last decade. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And Tony Gerwig, the show winner is like not even the Star Wars like hardcore Star Wars guys. So maybe that's maybe that's maybe there's something there. I heard about this with the Penguin, where it's like these great show creators were very aware that five years ago, they had to pitch a superhero or Star Wars show to get a show that they wanted to make. So if you wanted to make a show, an anti-fascist, crazy war documentary in space, you just had to pitch it to Star Wars. If you wanted to make a mob movie, you had to make it set in the Batman universe. And like, yeah, that's where we are at right now, you know. Yeah. All right. Those are the 2025 Jamie Awards. Thank you for humoring me, everyone, both on the show and out there in Scoop Nation. And that brings us to Video Game 20 Questions. And our suggestions comes from Mav from Oregon. Although I don't believe there's an antidote to go along with that. So let the questioning begin. I'm so I've been adding things to my to watch list, guys. And it's I don't I got bad news. I don't think I am going to get through eight episodes of television in the in the in the break that we have available to us. But I'm going to do my best. OK, did this game come out in the 70s, 80s or 90s? No, not a Oregon Trail, which would have been a good match. I think we have had Oregon Trail before. Yeah. But was this a disc based medium at launch on a no. Cartridge at launch, OK, downloadies or download. Yeah. Is this a downloadable game or I'm sorry, at the time of its release, was it a downloadable game? OK, so do you want to ask that question? It was exclusively a downloadable game at the time of its release. No. It's Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Are you? No, it's not a it's not a disbased. Are you sorry? So it's probably a switch game, a switch or switch or Nintendo DS or 3DS. Did this game originally come out on the switch? Yes. Hey, OK, the original switch and and not on PS5 or Xbox. A Nintendo developer's game. Nintendo was one of the developers on this game. And that's five. Could be could be Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. Yeah. Does this have characters from the Mushroom Kingdom in it? No. Oh, I just have this piece. Showtime. It could also be a Zelda game, because that's Nintendo and Monolith soft. For the echoes. And yeah, or yeah. Is this game set in the Zelda universe? No. Oh, sorry. I know. Maybe it's just Metroid Prime 4. Why not? That's the retro is Nintendo, though. Aren't they? I just think of Nintendo and retro developed it. That's how they seem to present themselves. Yeah, I guess that's true. OK, OK, I mean, there's lots of co developed. I'm having trouble thinking of them because I'm rapidly slipping into vacation mode in real time. That's this podcast goes on. Does this feature iconic Nintendo characters? I don't I wouldn't say. Well, OK, that's a good question. I like that one. Yeah. So I'm just trying to remember. Like, so there's snipper clips. No, but like, yeah, like. You know, I'm trying to switch. Yeah, one to switch. I'm trying to think of those games that, you know, they they partner with third parties, you're saying you don't have the full 30 packaged amiibo run of the snipper clips characters? All worth it. I heard that I got so sad, but I found out Pear is not trying to collect every amiibo anymore. Yeah. Although I kind of don't believe him, actually. He's like, I'm not. He's like, I'm out. And I'm like, you're going to do it. There's going to be some late night where he's going to order. He has all the Metroid Prime 4 ones that he let me scan. So maybe he's waiting to buy the tariff. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. OK. I don't know where to go from here. Was this game or are focused in any way? No, not multiplayer. So it's not not Splatoon. Not snipper clips, not arms. He's got some weirdo characters in it. Maybe it is arms. Is arms multiplayer focused? Yes, it is. Yeah. What about the? What about the the wheelchair basketball game? Well, it's just switch one or two, though, right? We don't know. I mean, I did the same in my head. What else are they partnering? You know, so that's like the like second eight F zero. But that was obviously way before Switch and like I'm just thinking about them farming out their franchises like they hadn't they had Namco make Star Fox. Well, yeah, what was it? You asked him for this sports game. It is not a sports game. That's 10. Did this game review well at IGN? Yes. Did it? Should we ask like when this came out? I'm curious if it came out five years ago. What it could be because Hal's not Nintendo, so it could be Kirby. Yeah, air riders. There's something. Yeah, air riders. Well, except that's multi. That's iconic. Kirby is an iconic Nintendo character for sure. Yeah. Not doesn't star an iconic Nintendo character. But is on the is on the switch is code like what I don't know. Tomodachi life. Something. Yeah, I was thinking means that's how the sport direction. Yeah. But not but not multiplayer focus does eliminate a lot of the kind of like, you know, experimental stuff that does try to get up to. Hmm. Is this game? When this game came out, was it Nintendo Switch One exclusive? Yes. OK. Great. So it's pre Nintendo Switch to. Maybe it's like a more adult skewed game. Horror stuff. So we got like from 2016 to 2025. Not adult skewed like like half of my big games on sale on is this game in RPG. Of a sort. Oh, could be Xenoblade Xenoblade Chronicles. But those are just RPGs. Yeah, I would say those are just straight up because that's where I was going. Is it just advance wars that that's equal or the advance wars one to remake? That's pretty good. That's a pretty good question. Or even even even Fire Emblem, although that's made by that's made by Nintendo. So as I know, they're not co developed. Oh, no, it does have a co developer on it. Maybe they do. I mean, but intelligent systems is the lead developer. Is this a strategy game? Yes. OK, so it's either Fire Emblem or Advance Wars one and two boot camp remake or whatever it's called. Is this a is this a remaker update of an older game? No, that's 15. Oh, is this game set in an academy? Yes. Nice. Fire Emblem Fire Emblem Three Houses. OK, is the game Fire Emblem Three Houses? Yes, it is. Round it out here. Code of Elts with Nintendo and Koei Tecmo. Oh, I didn't remember that at all. I didn't know that either. I did know that I was trying to come up with who was the co developer. But yeah, that's that's been a thing. It's interesting. I'm excited for the new one. You remember when this game came out and they sold millions and millions and millions of them and it took over and there was all the memes and jokes about Claude and the other characters and then they made a sequel and nobody cared. Wait, engage. Oh, I like to engage. I actually like to engage. I mean, I just didn't make a splash. Did not make a similar splash. You're right about that. If you had to say, you know, how there's always been like Marth and Roy and stuff, those are our iconic Nintendo characters because of Smash Brothers and didn't I guess maybe the last game that iconic ones were like Awakening because people knows those those ones. What's it? Yeah. You know, yeah. It's I mean, I would say with these games, if you had a dating simulator to your strategy game, I think that's, you know, that's a gold mine. And they also didn't I didn't play engage, but didn't engage. Take all that stuff out. Correct. It's focused on combat. Just Nintendo. And look, I say this with love and as someone that loves Nintendo games, it's like, like, hey, the part that everybody loved about the last Fire Emblem game and made it a cultural phenomenon. Should we do that again? No. I mean, that's what I said about Awakening. I was like, let my units have a kid and pass off their attributes. That's so sick. That's so fun. Oh, totally. That's my favorite part, too. I really think like just general advice for young game developers out there. If you add anime dating to your game, no matter what it is, it's going to work. Just go for it. I'm not saying I want that. I'm just giving you advice as a young girl. You will. I mean, we're saying this 40 percent is a goof. Like 40 percent for real of like you will attract a different audience to your game. Yeah. Yeah. You make it a dual purpose game. Yeah. And I'd say a city simulator to your, you know, well, hold on now. Hold on. What if what if you had a size scrolling action platform? Well, pit exclusively. Yeah. What if we had a size scrolling action game where you had a real time strategy element, a lot of Actraiser. Let's do that again. Now we're cooking with gas. I just but like and the anime sexiest of a fire emblem, a fire emblem that's also like a city simulator just sounds dope. That's all I'm like. You get to build the battlefield that you fight on. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Justin's throwing up in the corner. You get to you get to date all the buildings. Yeah, that's great, Sam. Well, nicely job and thank you for the suggestion, Mav from Oregon. That almost wraps up our scoops for the show. We're going to be taking the next week off for the holiday, but then we will be back with more and more scoop of the year. We're going to record on Tuesday, December 30th. So please, everyone, please be excited for that. But while we're off next week, everyone, let's share what you're sort of like Christmas gaming plans are. Sam, I know you're in Kansas. Yes, I'm playing a game for the show. Should I should I mention that? Or is that a secret? We'll save that one for a little bit later. OK, OK, then I'm going to finish the stuff, my tasks in Metroid Prime. And then I have a date with, I believe, Baltic, but now outer worlds is really shining through. I mean, yeah, I don't know how it runs on Steam Deck, but. It's a very fun to play, though, especially after the show. You all reminded me of a bunch of games that I get to back to or try out. Justin, how about you? I have a few things. One, I promised my kids that we're going to I'm actually really looking forward to it. We're going to start a family Minecraft world. OK. And then I'm going to we're going to teach my wife to play to who, you know, she's not a gamer in the way I'm a gamer, but she does play, you know, she dabbles. And so this is someone who's beaten Sky Skyrim multiple times, right? Yeah, that's my that's my that's my anecdote about my wife is she's a school teacher and every summer she has a summer game. And so she does not play video games, doesn't follow video games, doesn't care about them. But like one summer, it's just like else. The summer of Skyrim and then it was Resident Evil and it's been some different stuff over the years. So we're all going to we're all going to play family Minecraft together. And then personally, I haven't started Metroid Prime yet. So I'm going to get into, you know, I'm looking forward to, you know, the the criticism of like, oh, it's kind of old school and it feels like a video game from 15 or 20 years ago. Like, look, that's a legitimate criticism, but that also appeals to certain people in a certain way of like, yeah, like I want to play just a little bit more old school feeling action adventure. And so I think that's going to be a perfect time like even if there's really like one of those situations with this, it's not a bad start to the game, but it does get better. Like it's not bad. I'm not saying like get through the first four hours, but like the game becomes more of what you expect it to be later. So it's not surprising, but it's like great. Yeah, I mean, I totally world it's gorgeous. It is so awesome looking. Yeah, I totally get it. And I just we don't it's that feeling of like, you know, this type of game just goes away before you know it. Like, you know, a decade ago, everything was open world action adventure RPGs. And now those are actually kind of not around that much anymore. You know, right? So, you know, the ground shifts under your feet and I am excited to get into Metroid Western Bioware style RPGs just went away. Yep. Nick, what are your plans? Yeah, I just finished act two of Baldur's Gate three. I'm at 84 hours right now. So hopefully you're going to try and roll credits on that game by the time. Is this your first time going through it? So I only got to act one when I played the game at one point. Oh, bro. So and I didn't. Yeah, I know. So now I'm like, I'm all in. I'm I got my forgotten realms books behind me. I'm learning about the monster of the day. And apart from that, though, I'm going to try and roll credits on Metroid Prime 4 as well as the secret game that we're all playing. I will have to tell after the show. Tell me, I don't know what you're referring to. It's not going to be that impressive. Just Nick, but act three, man, I whenever you get that show green lit, send me send me messages because I just I can't like, well, first of all, act three is also another hundred hours. No, like it's so it's almost like it is kind of a criticism. Like it's too big. It's too big and too long. I love it. I don't want it to end, man. Yeah. So I mean, you're you're going to be it's like every single house has, you know, a murder in the basement and a side quest. Like it's a giant city that takes no shortcuts and no, like it's unbelievable how big it is. And like, that's why it broke everybody's, you know, that's why Act Three was broken for like a year and a half. Like I assume this is the city of its namesake Baldur's Gate. Well, yeah. Yes. Although, you know, I mean, yes. You get an airship and an act three and get to cruise around. But that's sick. I will be home for the holidays here in LA and my wife's family is coming here. So we'll have a full house and I'm making the ham, which really just means warming up. Yeah. And then Kingo is getting Mario Galaxy one and two. And I'm actually looking forward to that because I've never played Galaxy. Hey, I just redid the guide for those and they're really nice now. Cool. And they have sortable tables for getting all of the the stars. And those are like not straightforward in those games. So recommend checking. Introduce strategy. He is also getting the limited edition Astro Bot PS5 controller. He's going to be really stoked about that. Nice. And then every year I like to spend at least one evening playing games that I got for Christmas as a kid. So that's cute. Curl up on the sofa with one of my one of my retro gaming handhelds and play Super Mario Brothers 2 and a Kari Warriors and Festus Quest and bad dudes. And of course, Splatterhouse. All done. But everyone out there in Scoop Nation. I hope you have a very happy holidays. Thanks for hanging out with us all year long. We're only taking one week off next week. We'll be back the week after that. But everybody stay safe and have a play lots of really fun games over the holidays. That is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Joe. We're working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is Aijin Gamescoop and we're out. I'm not sure if I can read it. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can smell that book that Sam's holding his hands. 100 percent. The pipe actually tastes spicy from like ancient nicotine. I believe it was. That's cool. Justin, we're all playing the original. Bro, is it still fun today? OK, I got it. I got it. Yeah, that's rad. That was really fun. Happy, happy Christmas, everybody. Have a good time. Yeah, Christmas. I'm going to have a hard guard right now, Damon. Oh my gosh. Yep. Jealous. Yep. See you guys later. Bye. Since yesterday was the 10th anniversary of Force Awakens, I watched it with the kids. It's a great movie. I would not say that. It's fundamentally flawed. It gets the whole trilogy off on the wrong foot because right from the get go, there's just another empire, just another rebellion. It's like, well, it's all the remake stuff is so bad. Like, why are we just retreading all the stuff? It starts on a desert planet. Like, why did we do this? It moves along at a great pace, especially that first hour. It's just like, you never get a chance to catch your breath in a good way. It's just bouncing from Kylo to Po to Ray to Finn. And there are really great moments sprinkled throughout the movie. So I just got on Facebook memories, like all of the Alamo Draft House, Marquis and Chit Show up seeing that. Yeah. We were all there. That might have been the last time. That might have been the last time Jamie hung out with any IGN people. Wow. Because it was all like, we had kids and then it was like, I'm never going to see these people again. Do you, so, uh, McCaffrey name dropped this game, Gate Guard Simulator. Did you watch that trailer yet? Mm-hmm. I can't wait. It sounds awesome. It's pretty funny. The trailer is pretty funny. So the gameplay seems like, based off the trailer, that it's like papers, please, where you are a gate guard of a medieval castle and then people are coming in and trying to get in the castle, except it's like silly and like someone's trying to like smuggle, you know, someone. There's a clip in the trailer. There was someone's trying to smuggle, um, uh, like rabbits in and then you can take the bribe or not take the bribe to like let them let the rabbits in the city. I hope there's dialogue options like who goes there? What the heck? We're Night's Fist bumping back in the day. Yeah. It's like, uh, the poor gate guard at the Village of Bree. Yeah. I know. He's totally smashed by the gate. Yeah. I think when the Hobbits are yelling at him, he's like, all right, little. Yeah. I'm sorry. I made a hobbit. I made no offense. I like the second little door, the little hobbit door. That's such a Peter Jackson thing. It's so, yeah, yeah. So I think this game looks great. Yeah, no, no, get out of here, duck. Oh, my gosh, she's got a pox. any punches are in the face, Jesus, rabbits, my rabbits, no rabbits. Okay, I think he said no rabbits. Yeah. And like this trailer went totally viral on IG. Be a big hit? Yep. I mean, maybe, but like it's a good, it's a good like I'll play it for one evening game. Yeah. This is one where like it really depends on if the people like wrote this that no English really well too. Oh, do you guys want to know the top five most popular IGN reviews of the year are? I just put this together. This is a combination of O and O and YouTube numbers. Mm-hmm. So number five is Donkey Kong Bonanza. Mm-hmm. Number four is the Sassus Creed Shadows. Three is Doom the Dark Ages. Two is Kingdom Come Deliverance. And one is Clear Obscure. Yep. Is this the show? Are we doing this? I was going to say, what happened to Jobert? I did a 10 count and then we didn't hear from him. It's okay. You were enthralled with our small talk with our chitchat. This is our zip-zap-zop. Dude, this is how we get loose. Wibble, Wibble, Bibble, Bam. Okay. Minutes start in character, so you could either go to a wide or wait for me, but introduce me last. Okay.