The Nintendo Voice Chat 2025 Holiday Special - NVC ???

Happy Holidays at Super and in Friendos. Welcome to the Nintendo Voice Chat holiday special for 2025. I'm your host Logan Plant. Join by Jada Griffin. Um, back, baby. Seth Macy. Happy Holidays. And Rebecca Valentine. I'm ready to play video games. My pajamas on the couch all day. Holiday spare. Um, hopefully that's what you're all doing out there because this episode is dropping over the IGN holiday break. We told you last week was our final episode of the year. We'll psych. We're back with a special holiday episode, but it's going to be a little bit different. We thought it would be fun as to close out the year and talk about everything that's not Nintendo that we enjoyed in 2025. Nintendo is off the table, unlike usual, where we run a tight ship. We talk Nintendo exclusively. Nothing else. It's the complete opposite this week. We're going to talk about our favorite games, movies, TV shows, whatever from the year 2025. Hopefully you enjoy that as you're enjoying your holiday break. Let's start with a big non-Nintendo game this year, which is Clarebskir expedition 33. Everyone talked about this game everywhere else all year long. It won IGN's game of the year in a landslide. I think in our video, it says that it won 75% of the vote. So it was enormously popular and rabbi. I know this is one of your favorites of the year. It is my favorite of the year. Like hands down full stop. This is my game of the year. I love this game so much. I played it very early in the year, right? When it came out, I kept waiting for something to come along that blew me away like this did. And I played so many things that I loved. Silk song came so close. But no, this was it for me. I loved this game. I don't know. Do we need to explain it for people? Does everybody know what this is at this point? Maybe just a light explanation, but I think most people probably know. Turn based RPG, set in a world of like sort of weird magic and fantasy where this giant woman called the Painterous paints a big number on this big pillar in the distance and whatever number she paints everybody that age and younger just dies every year. Sorry, that age and older dies every year. And so the population is just steadily shrinking and people keep getting, you know, people are not aging. And so they send out these expeditions to try and take down the painters and stop her from painting this number every year. And that's the start of the game. And boy, does it go places? I loved it so much. Everything about it is fantastic. It's a fantastic turn based RPG. It has exactly the right number of systems. I'm like, I'm, this is so vibes based for me. But if an RPG has too many systems, I get so mad. And the amount of it is just arbitrary in my brain. It's why I don't play Xeno Blade because Xeno Blade just always crosses the line into no, this is too many different systems. I don't know Xeno Blade is this week. I have no idea what you're talking about. Oh my God. The Claire of Scare just hits the nail on the head. It's just like easy to grasp, but also doable. It's got kind of that paper Mario like timed button press situation. I know that is either. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Just kidding. And battles. It has phenomenal writing. These really, really cool characters that will stick with you who are acted by some really incredible voice actors, Jennifer English. You're incredible. The music is unbelievable. The soundtrack is I think one of the best video game sound tracks ever made. Probably I have it downloaded. I listen to it in the car all the time. Like a big nerd. And the story itself is just it's really good. I think I think when it came out, it was the little the ending is a little bit divisive. I won't spoil it. But I do think some people who if you've not played this before and are playing it now, there's definitely some people who will bounce off the ending and just really not care for it. I think it was really brave and cool. And I love weird things like that. So yeah, this this game just blew me away in so many ways. There's there's like little nitpick things I could say are wrong with it, but none of them matter. It's so memorable. I'll be thinking about it for years. This is also my pick for the year. Like hands down. This was a JTA game through and throughout big numbers popping up on screen. Ways to cheese not necessarily cheese systems, but strategies you can employ to do things earlier than you're supposed to. I found a spot where I could because if it's on all or nothing battle system, if you perfect Perry or perfect Dodge, you take zero damage. And you if you perfect Perry, everything in a combo, you reflect a bunch of damage back with a counter attack. It enabled me to go into areas that were 10, 20, 30 levels higher than me and just demolish people because I had built my party properly to where I could make use of counter attacks to do enough damage. The character Monoco is a complete and better vibe in by far my favorite character from this game. I know most people are be like, oh, it's it's Lunae or it's you know, it's my L. I love love all the characters, but Monoco. Monoco, that man is the man of memes. He has the best theme song. He has the best theme song. His he's blue mage battle style speaks to my heart of being able to do a little bit of everything. And just everything about this game just over and above board just like fantastic soundtrack, fantastic battle system. Enough in game challenge and bonus stuff to do. The storyline goes some really crazy places that are not like unexpected, but also is unexpected to a degree. At certain points, you get to beat up mimes. So like, there's so much. It's very French. It's so. It's so. It's so. You know, I taught me how to it taught me some French swear words, which is great. You know, it's just that. But yeah, it's got some it's just it's so good on every single, everything's every single like element of this game. That's being said, it's not perfect. It is very close to perfect. I it would be like a 9.5 in my book if we use decimal systems on the IGN scale, but just everything about it just kept me coming back for more and more and more and more every hour until I picked up the platinum trophy and I cannot wait to dive back into the DLC this holiday to play more of it. Like it's I purposefully did not delete it off my hard drive because I was like, I'm going to go back and play this like 50, 60 hour RPG I put that I put that I put double that into it. I think I put like 120-ish hours into this game, which is way above more than you need. I spent so much time just in the world vibing, just killing things and practicing combos and different chain attack chains and how I could do this and do this better. And then the end game boss, they're just so good, so good. And like I almost I thought Hades 2, I thought Monster Hunter Wilds was going to be my games for the year this year. This little, this little gem, little gemstone, just fantastic. So that's did you played at all? No, I still haven't forgiven the French for what the Normans did back in 1180. Big year. Distorted the English language with their borrowed words like Mutton and Beef. No, I don't know why I haven't played this game. It was I think something else was going on when it came out and then I just a lot of things were going on when that came out. Yeah, yeah. Oblivion was coming out at the exact same time. Oh, that's why yeah. Oblivion remake was grabbed the hold of me and did not let go. But by all accounts, this is exactly the kind of game that I want to play because my biggest complaint with every Final Fantasy since whenever they stop going turn based was that I like turn based combat and my RPGs so much more than I like action running around. And yeah, especially when it's interesting and fun and like a timing based turn thing, it sounds like way cooler. So I feel like eventually I have no choice but to play this game. But then it's like 100 hours. No, that's what I will that's what I will put into if Jada put in 120, I will put in you can do it all a lot faster. Like honestly, I spent so much time like as soon as I got something news, like, oh, let me backtrack and find everything right now. If you don't do that, like kind of crazy maniacal thing that I do with my games that adds 20 to 40 hours to a game. See, I get massive anxiety when I play games like that. And then I'm like, oh my god, what if I miss something super cool? And so I'll like just go and open every chest and clear up. Scare has a lot of that because its areas are very twisty and it doesn't have a map. So it's like, okay, which hallway do I pick here? I'm not sure. This is the right path and you do your best to pick one that's wrong, which I always really enjoy games like that. Okay, but a thing to know is it has a three act structure and in act three, I guess this is sort of spoilers, but you basically have the equivalent of a Final Fantasy airship and you can go anywhere and you can go back to everywhere except like the one prologue area. And you can go back and do everything. And then there's there's basically like at the start of act three, you can there's some stuff to do, but there's a point where you can basically go beat the game or do like 20 hours of side content. And the side content gets steadily more and more difficult. And I did a lot of it, but I did hit a point where I'm like, this is this is very hard. And if I practiced and put in a lot of hours, I could do it, but I need to move on. And so I had a stopping point. There's some stuff I didn't do, some bosses I didn't be. And I had a wonderful experience. So it's very choose your own level of difficulty by the end. If I go back to replay this, I'll be able to run through it in like 25 hours and probably maybe 35 to do everything I think now because I know when I can go back, what I need to grab at the time, like it I won't need that much time. I'll literally shave off 75% of my my hours off of this because I just I always get worried like you said Logan like when do Seth like am I going to lose the ability to get to the spot? Am I going to do I have to give this now? And so and I you that doesn't end up being the case with this one. So which very happy about this is something we expect maybe someday come to the Nintendo switch to keep it out for my 2026 predictions are to come for an answer. I love the fact also is it's like the physical edition that they put out they just put out is like full of like really cool collectibles and like fun stuff. And it's also 59 99 for like collectors edition of a game that is you know I've I've literally never heard anyone say anything bad about clear obscure until like the only the closest I've heard is that like after it swept the game wars people were like well that's not not really art direction. People need to learn what that means. That's our direction. I don't know what is some people really hated the ending like when it came out it was it was very I was actually kind of surprised that I was surprised that it swept as many game of the years as it did because I really the way people reacted to the ending I really thought that that would divide more people but I'm happy that people ultimately came away with a positive experience whether they liked the ending or not. It's I don't want to put people off it I think it's a brilliant ending but I do too. Yeah I've played through act one earlier this year and then a switch two came out and I did not have much time to play anything else elsewhere. I really love it too I don't know what that is. I really love it as well. I just love a game that commits to its theme so brilliantly in every aspect of itself even just like when you finish a battle in Expedition 33 and to continue as we continue and that's like a main theme of the game that's just little touches like that I think are just brilliant and I think that just the for those who come after is just a beautiful idea that carries through that entire game and applies to so many things in the real world it is brilliant it deserves so much of the praise that it's getting and I'm looking forward to finishing it hopefully maybe in in 2026 but plenty of other games came out despite what some of all the awards swimmers will tell you 2025 was tacked with a lot of games let's talk about some of our other favorites. Rob what's one that you want to shout out? Well someone's going to talk about it I put in a disgusting amount of hours into blueprints earlier this year. Well over a hundred if if you somehow missed blueprints combination puzzle game roguelike with the house that you're exploring that changes every every new day at resets and you basically build it as you go from a set of different floor plans where you put you put the room down you enter and then on the next door you're giving a choice of rooms and you put that room down and you're trying to solve sort of solve this mystery effectively your goal originally is to find the mysterious room 46 in the 45 room mansion that you have inherited but the the actual conceit of it tends to ends up being quite a bit more complicated as you see almost as soon as you get in because there's all these weird puzzles and there's all this family history and there's all this lore about the world outside of this mansion that you start getting exposed to. Blueprints is incredible you can you can beat this thing probably and about like I don't know it's very much varies depending on how much you under how well you understand its concepts very quickly but I saw people finishing this in like 10 hours no problem 20 for I think most people getting to room 46 and seeing basically the first credit roll but there is so much beyond that in terms of uncovering the mysteries of this mansion I love the puzzle box that is Blueprints. It's like this year's animal well is the life of you. Oh yeah it all fits together so well the the puzzles I think are very smart you know there's always some exceptions where it's like oh man that was a little bit too esoteric for me but for the most part they are all understandable on my own uh and I was really impressed with the way it wove a really interesting story in with this mansion puzzle. Like there's sort of the mystery of who of where this kid's mother went. There's a there's a resistance fighter group. There's a bunch of different countries fighting each other there's an entire fake language in this game like like there's so much stuff that you just peel the layers back and every time there's a new layer and a new layer and a new layer and it really just this is a rogue like puzzle game it has a final boss basically like the equivalent of that that I that I saw and defeated and it felt so good oh my gosh this this was my game of the year until exhibition 33 came on came around this this was an incredible year for games. Yeah yeah it got nominated for us as well. Blue Prince was in our top six nominations this year. Mm-hmm best puzzle game for me hands down this year. I didn't play a whole lot of puzzle games but this one just this is probably the best puzzle game I've played in probably the last five years I would say for me like this one really got its got its claws into me and I think it took me around 20-ish hours to to get my completion and I did a good amount of the extra stuff but then I had to move on to other games so I didn't see all the bonus extra stuff that Rev is alluding to and a stuff she didn't allude to that I did experience in there there's just so many layers this game is it's it's literally the the shrek it's like an onion like it has layers there's so many it's a notebook game you want to blank yes like if you so many if you hear that and think oh no I'm fine I don't need a notebook shut up and get a notebook yeah seriously oh yeah yeah said this is notebooks. Talk to me about Ghost of Yote. Yote oh my goodness such a great sequel to one of the best PS4 games came out Ghost of Sushima. Ghost of Yote's fantastic follow-up the main character Atsu just a wonderful not a samurai but a just our kind of basically a Ronin. Ronin? Yeah she's just this kind of wandering mercenary who takes no guth from anybody you look at her sideways you're dying in a ditch somewhere um I absolutely love this great open world the art when you talk about art direction this was the thing that came really close to like for me for art direction versus Claire obscure just because everything in this game is just the colors are just so vibrant and beautiful the didn't you have these kind of darker areas and like just kind of that really sells the like dishevelled melancholy the like the just the terrible state some of these areas are in Atsu played by Erica Ishii's is just wonderful fantastic they had they brought back Kurosawa mode from the first one they also added they added Mikae mode which pulls the the camera in closer which makes it tougher to see other people around you but also ups the blood and muck and mud and everything so every cutscene there's like a there's like a little boy that you help early on and he ends up being like a merchant and every time I run into this little boy he is 95 percent mud from all the way up from his toes to like his nose is literally just mud covering him and it's fantastic and every cutscene I was covered in the blood of my enemies and some mud as well so I'm looking forward to playing it and actually seeing the outfits that I wear in a new game plus and then they also added Watanabe mode so if you're a samurai shampoo there is just you just want to play a game and five out this game is just a macula for that turn on the Watanabe mode for a little bit just cruise around there's like I want to say like three or four tracks that kind of like low five beats right yeah very low five beats you know the low five beats the study to you're getting that in yote while you're slicing people up the added yeah beats the slice to baby they added a bunch of new weapons like the kassari comma there is dual blades now just tons of really good stuff my only issue with this game it's my favorite PlayStation exclusive of the year by far it's everything I wanted and I think what everybody expected out of a ghost institution will follow up but I think that is where it kind of lies in its fault this year with because it didn't get make our top six nominations for game of the year I think it was first out I don't know that but I feel like it was next up I always for sure I want I want to say it was like right at the cusp for us because we were in a room yelling for a while at each other about what games and making very very coherent arguments uh just about like what games should and why this is our favorites and I think it's it took the route of something like Spider-Man 2 that came out you know the previous years and it was like it's everything Spider-Man was one was and everything Miles Morales was but there's just more of it and it's like it's what we expect to be in a sequel and I think that meeting expectations isn't enough anymore in a year like this where you have something like a clear obscure or a blueprint that is just coming out and just defying what you expect out of a genre out of a game like that and it's going not necessarily above and beyond but in a direction you don't because you don't expect it it's new it's a surprising thing and I love I love Sucker Punch Studios they are wizards such a small team that puts together such a massive project and amazing project like this but yeah like that is I think where it kind of fell short and I think it's going to fall short with a lot of things is like it's a little too safe but very very good yeah I I love I'll go ahead I was gonna say it's comfort food I love Yotai very much and I did feel what you're saying Jada that the first few hours I was like this just feels like Tsushima again and then I booted up Tsushima I'm like oh wow Yotai controls so much better platforming and climbing is better the horse feels better the combat is way better and I love Tsushima's combat but trading weapons instead of styles from Tsushima is just such a leap forward and I love it set up too of it does this thing in its open world with the bounty system where there's this there's this bulletin board with bounties that you collect and then you go out in the open world and hunt these people down and then go and collect your rewards and at the same time there's like four semi optional quests to go learn entirely new weapons that will greatly help you out in the main quest and sorry gonna make one Nintendo comparison today this is my free space I played this and I'm like I want this to be 3D Metroid I was like giving a board of bounties and new powerups to go collect by killing bosses to earn them and then I can go and use those arm cannon upgrades to kill different bounties around the world like let Sam as be a bounty hunter rather than just a glorified space marine no no they're like Sam this is a bounty hunter who loves fighting for the greater good like that's not really what about the other yeah this is part of the federation which is yeah exactly no I just think that it's a really great setup for a Metroid game I 1000 percent agree like I said it it did everything better than Tsushima every single piece of its DNA is better in that grade but yeah no I agree look and that would be that would be dope for a Metroid really fun yeah yeah Seth how about you your favorite of 2025 it's hard I mean my heart wants to say ball pit that's probably the game that I played the most that's on switch that's on switch okay that's right I'm sorry but it's where my heart is I also initially had thought of Call of Duty because I love Call of Duty and this year's is very good and I injured myself uh what during the review um because I did not have an ergonomic setup that was I it was far from ideal in fact you could say not even that it was less than ideal it was distantly eat very far away from good so after my review I ended up my shoulder that I had spent three months like healing started to hurt again and I had to go on I had to go on a round another round of prednisone to bring the inflammation down in my shoulder so I haven't played it since because I'm a little scared but I that game is great and I know that people like don't care and they think Call of Duty is basic but I mean it is like who cares I know are basic I like them they're fun they're delicious my issue with Call of Duty is like I got really back into it last year and then this year they like they cut they they I went I went in big last year because they're like yeah we're gonna have this thing and you're by you buy this stuff and it carries forward and then they immediately just yeah retcon that to this year so it's like I'm not supporting that I invested into your ecosystem one year because you said you're going to carry it forward and you didn't even carry it forward one year you retcon to immediately the next year so no they they're like oh we're just gonna not you know probably not do skins and then I see like Nikki Glager is a skin now in you know in Call of Duty for some reason which is fine I'm not gonna buy the Nikki you know offense Nikki Glager I think she's a very funny woman it's just for me like and I know it's very like a weird thing I I invested no I completely get it because I have I have a sick Donatello yeah I bought all the Ninja Turtle skins because I love my Ninja Turtles and I was like it's like it's trying to be Fortnite but then it Fortnite came out as a new full price game but yeah but then they said hey no you can't use that skin anymore that skin's not like carrying forward yeah exactly would be like that yeah what the I also and I think and I and I'm hoping this I actually thought we were gonna get it in an outfit the last direct but I had forgotten about it until you mentioned earlier the Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake is amazing and that I think I like that one more than I think I like Oblivion more than Skyrim I think I just like that part of Tamriel yeah I I'd agree with that yeah I um the first time I played on Xbox 360 I put several hundred hours into that game it wasn't until the remake that I actually closed an Oblivion gate like I just wandered around doing side quests and exploring and finding things and never wild yeah it's exactly what I do it's that's why like my favorite games are you know tears of the Kingdom Breath of the Wild Red Dead Redemption Metal Gear Solid 5 I just love a game where you don't have to you don't have to do what you're supposed to do you can just go find your own adventures and uh to be sure to drive back to base camp to get miles to upgrade your chip you don't have to take the chip back and have it implanted in your arm and then uh go back again yeah I like that's it we won't get into that you don't have to get teleportation technology that can't teleport you I actually the first time I played on 360 I didn't know that there was a uh a quick or not a quick save a fast travel system until about 30 hours in I was walking everywhere walking and stealing hoshes it's because it's because you were over in cumbers so I just never popped up as an option for you could you not fast travel if you're over in cumbers? Yeah you know you can't I don't know I also just didn't know that it was or like I just didn't pay attention but yeah this is uh the remake's really great and it belongs on Nintendo Switch 2 uh it would be excellent on the Nintendo Switch 2 to have this game I should go back to it I started it and immediately switched over to exhibition 33 and did look back but uh I'm looking at this footage and I this is in winter I always get this strong urge to play Skyrim I don't I don't even actually like Skyrim that much I mean I like it a normal amount I feel like uh I don't know what a normal amount is but I I have this sort of weird nostalgia for walking around the world of Skyrim like music playing in the trees and you know just the sort of like Brooks running and things like that and I I should really go back to this one because I just get a just get a smart fridge and you can have that kind of ambience play from your smart pitch. Yeah I mean on the I have it on the Xbox and it looks great like the HDR they really did a wonderful job with the graphics um it I don't know if it still has problems I know that it did have like the longer you played like it started to run worse I don't know if they've patched that out now but yeah it's super fun just because there's so many like objects in the world it's remembering and stuff is that why it's just I think so maybe like it was just like yeah every flag once zero to one was just overwhelming it this is you left on the road here we the story that's so much better than the uh yeah all the dead bodies that you just like took their clothes off and left them there and they're in their skibbies their burlap draws but uh yeah my favorite kind of game is one where it says all right you need to go here and then there's 14 different things between there and here that you can do on the other side so that's that's a great one but so it's been a weird year for my game playing uh tastes how about you Logan yeah I'll shout out a game that I've heard no one talk about it all and it's so good and I I want to give it a little shout out and that is revenge of the Savage Planet which came out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox series earlier this year and it's a sequel yeah to sequel to the other Savage Planet game journey yeah to the Savage Planet I think and this is two-player co-op Metroid Prime Light seriously this game so cool you go to this planet basically the the setup is that you're sent by this rich company to colonize this planet but it's like a hundred year journey and by the time you wake up on this planet that company that sent you was gone out of business so you're stranded with with no way home it's very funny it is total satire comedic setup and then it is totally playable in single-player but it shines into player co-op the entire adventure is seamlessly playable with another person and you go to like five different planets and you collect upgrades and then you backtrack to unlock different routes you couldn't go in before and there's boss battles that are really giant like this huge worm we're seeing on screen and it's just a hilarious super awesome co-op time that for my money should be up there with like the the best multiplayer stuff of the year like split fiction like avoidagers like this revenge of the Savage Planet is really awesome and no one's talking about it you know i i literally looked it up right now the collect the cosmic quarter editions on sale for 25 bucks on PlayStation i'm buying that to play with my partner over the holidays because this is what i had an eyeball on i've been wanting to i just hadn't pulled the trigger and this is going to be perfect for us to play over the holidays together and the fact that Metroid didn't scratch my that itch for me Logan saying that this makes me really excited to play this there's even scanning there's even a scan visor where you scan orange things to make them turn blue and collect them in your lockbook this is my favorite activity scanning orange is scanning faster or slower than prime four it it's faster it's faster there we go yeah i hate the prime four hey i love that game but anyways yeah but Savage Planet is it's just it's like Nickelodeon slime meets Metroid Prime i think it's the fast-firing describe it just super silly fun like enemies explode and then you get covered in green group and then it's all slippery and you're running around the animations are hilarious like the the way they run is just really over exaggerated you can do a sprint into a knee slide into a double jump into like a hook shot super good movement and i read some interviews with the creators talking about they want to get this on switch too because they said in their mind the Savage Planet games are like Nintendo games and they just totally hope so i think you're listening to the show and you like that style of game and you have a ps5 or xbox you should totally go grab that on sale because it's just it's fantastic this is a year for dynamic mess because like you were talking about ghost of yote having like this mud function you're talking about the slime Logan clear obscure had blood and oh yeah they're going around again but there's another game i was going to talk about that also has dynamic mess so which one is it baby steps oh yeah so much mud oh yeah let's let's hear about baby steps go then we'll move on because we do have to do a bit of a shorter show well i'll just go fast i'm playing it right now uh you play as this this 30 some uh year old man who gets mysteriously transported into a strange world uh and it's a it's one of those it's like quap yeah it's like quap it's it's very literally a walking simulator you lift up each leg by pressing the the corresponding trigger so right right trigger lifts up your right leg left trigger lifts up your left leg and then uh moving the stick uh will move those legs forward back whatever direction so you have to physically walk and take every single individual step and it is it is a game about walking places uh and boy am i angry at this game uh wow in a good way or no yeah i okay it is infuriating it's it i'm i hate it it piss it pisses me off it's it's incredible it's a great game i love it so much i am so this is this is one of the very few games where there's so much side stuff and i'm ignoring all of it because i just desperately need to get to the end of this game and it's so hard just to walk from point a to point b that like i don't i'm not gonna wonder all over the map trying to find this stuff i found there's a bunch of collectibles there's all these like hidden things i found a hat that shaped like a frog it's green it's a bucket hat it's got little frog eyes and a stupid little smile i am determined to carry that hat to the finish because every time i fall the hat falls off and i have to physically pick it up again and you know if it falls somewhere then my body falls in a different direction i have to go get it so i'm determined to beat this game with the froggy hat on and i'm doing great anyway baby steps is nuts and i i love and hate it and equal measure but i think it's really brilliant and don't ignore the fruit hanging for trees go find a dope go find the fruit that's tough to watch that is hard to guess i know i got one misstep to the bottom glutes though that's serious really good really good writing really well it's not even writing it's a lot of improv i think from the ball of this doing the voice acting uh but but sort of a pretty good story about like toxic masculinity really destroying a guy yeah okay that's good guy like me assessment well those are yeah we had a few others but we're going to move on because we also want to talk about our favorite movies tv shows or whatever else of 2025 let's use we have a few written down each but let's just pick one so we can get to our last topic as well reb what do you want to shout out here skit skit me and let someone else go so i just like step baby steps okay i was putting it on there for you um because i've really said forgot no it's not we got into severance this year not knowing much about it other than everyone like all anyone did was talk about it three years ago when the first season came out so we watched the first season and then we're like oh the show rules so hard and then we watched the second season and we were completely hooked it has like i don't want to i don't even want to talk too much about it because it'll just spoil this show if you've never seen it but like look if you have if you bought an iPhone if you got an iPad if you got AirPods like if you got anything apple you have a three month trial to apple tv just cash it in and then watch this show because it's it's it's amazing it's like it's one of the weirdest coolest shows that i think i've ever seen and i cannot wait to like figure out like what's going on i'm i'm worried that they might try to drag it on because it is so successful and lauded that they maybe they make a season too many but i mean there's there's a part in season two that was like so hilariously funny but if you said what it was it wouldn't be funny it's that one of the characters says this is the largest waterfall in the world and it's in the context of the show it is absolutely hilarious but otherwise it's impossible to describe that's the best kind of funny it's the best kind of funny and i i feel like such a like a i don't know like out of character to to like a show like this but i'm so glad i gave it a chance because it wasn't anything like what i was expecting i had no idea i thought it was just people working in an office and it was kind of like a drama like that i did not know that there was a sci-fi element to it so i love that show and i might have to cash in my three months because i hear pluralists on apple tv is also like really a clear issue going on right now i am not clicking with me yet as much as seven months i don't know but it's just an honorable mention smiling friends i don't know what that is oh my god it's an adult swim cartoon it's absolutely wonderful it's on its third season uh parker my 17 year old turn us on to it and it's it's kind of like oh my god it's kind of like the modern aquatine hunger force kind of like kind of vibe but i'd say better he's got game boy a game cube with super monkey ball that is cabin oh well okay i'm in you saw me you know me that's that's all i need to get to every side of the scene i was like do that slogan right there that's awesome yeah cool well i have my favorite show of the year hands down was the rehearsal on hp o max that's Nathan fielder's show right now and man my fiance and i just binge everything Nathan fielder this year because he it is just so different and funny and i love dry humor and it is he's just hilarious and the rehearsal is nearly impossible to explain what this is it's a comedy social experiment like deep investigation into fielder's psyche that just gets mixed in there randomly and in this season he is he's investigating airline crashes and what causes what what goes wrong in the cockpit that causes commercial flights to crash and it's actually extremely fascinating but then all the time he's like oh but this is an HBO show and HBO told us we had to make it entertaining so then he'll do random things like host an american idol style singing competition for all of pilots to be the judges and it's just it is just hilarious and all feeds into the experiment it which is it does yeah it's crazy it's so well thought out the finale i will not spoil it because you have to watch this show but the season finale of season two of the rehearsal is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever and the whole season builds to it and the way that it just pulled off it is beautifully beautifully shot it is tense it's just we were in awe watching this episode of tv just like i've never seen anything like that and a tv that's what i like the most is like let's get something i've never ever seen before that's just so wacky and out there and uses HBO's millions of dollars in amazing clever ways like rebuilding an entire airport terminal including the restaurants that are there and the gates and hiring actors to play the part so it looks like an airport terminal to run the social experiment in it's amazing and you've got to watch it yeah i absolutely agree i love the rehearsal and i want to throw in if you have not seen season one i actually do recommend doing season one first yeah i think it does see season one is very different but it builds the conceit of the show from the ground up so by the time you're in season two it has earned the level of weirdness that it starts at yeah and and progresses further season one is a little more like problem of the week style for for the first half of it and then by the second act second half of the season he's running a whole social experiment where he is basically like pretending to be married with this to this woman and raising a child together and it's anyway just swapping out babies every like 30 minutes oh my gosh yeah and that's what's so funny is that they they go behind the scenes of like all the production limitations of this like a well child actor is going to only act for two hours at a time so they're like trading babies through the window when they're not in the nursery to make sure the mom actor doesn't notice that it's a different child it's just yeah it's brilliant yeah it's really good uh i did i how about you i guess i'm up uh whoo uh you know what i would i'm gonna give my shout out to sinners because i absolutely loved sinners this year just a fantastic movie just through and through michael bjordan's performances um as smoke and stack just freaking fantastic this movie just could not have come at a better time this year for me i absolutely loved going and seeing this theater so i think i saw it twice in theaters and just watch it again at home as soon as it hit digital like this game this movie is amazing uh but the one show i want to i want to talk up is another hbo max show and that's the pit um and oh my or is that is that hbo yes it is okay is it i can't keep track anymore it's hard to keep track of now um but either way um yes hbo max the pit fantastic i am usually not a huge medical show person because i get a little squeamish around blood um this show does a good job of a not showing too much of it but showing enough of it to make it because it's a hospital ER room this show is essentially ER like the long time running show ER mixed with 24 like keeper southerly 24 so literally the first season is like 12 hours of a shift in the ER that is literally it's literally every episode is an hour of the of their of their shift and there are so many big events that happen in this one day 15 episodes excuse me um it's just crazy how many like things happen in the span of 15 hours in an ER room in one shift for a bunch of people there's some people who are there on a second shift there's some people that are have you know uh just coming in into the craziness and trying like oh my goodness what if i stepped into all right let me put on some gloves let's go to work um this show is just fantastic the whole ensemble cast is just electric like they just are so good um you've got the grizzled veterans you've got the newbies coming in you've got just it's just it melds so well together and and the best part is season two is out in like two and a half three weeks so we get to see what what you know the next shift is which is going to jump some period of time i believe believe they're jumping like a month or two later into their lives but like that is so it's so just amazing i cannot wait for the pit season to there has not been a show another show this year that was i can't wait for the next episode to drop i'm waiting on hens and needles for this next episode to drop because i need to know what happened to this kid what happened to this person who did this thing and i'm just i'm not saying giving any details because i don't want to spoil any bit of it because it's all great nice pairs well with the pendulum i hear oh my gosh thank you red red how about you what's your pick i wasn't sure which one i was going to pick but i'm actually going to steal one back from you that it's something you would yeah i want to talk about the chair company yeah crazy show i have never seen anything like this so it's it's Tim Robinson if you are familiar with him Robinson cringe comedy is is his thing but like i feel like just saying that sort of reduces down what he does to just sort of a caricature i think you should leave as a fantastic sketch show that gives you a good idea of the kind of work that he does and i actually think having a background understanding of the kind of comedy he does helps unders helps make this show even better so it follows his man named ron uh boring office job wife two kids living just sort of this fairly mundane life uh in the first episode he's up on stage to give a big presentation he sits down in a chair and it breaks and collapses under him and everyone laughs at him and that's the start of this ridiculous show where he goes down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories as to what is going on behind this this company that made these chairs and and and why it broke under him and why it's actually a horrible conspiracy that's that goes so deep and and all this other stuff uh the thing about Tim Robinson is most of his like sketches and other comedies involved a fairly normal scenario where everyone is reacting normally except one person in the room is generally reacting in a way that is ridiculous or disproportionate and that's where the he the humor comes from usually he's the one who's being ridiculous but the chair company i think works one because everybody in this cast at some point behaves in a completely absurd way even if it's just for a few moments and also it asks the question okay but what if there was something to this what what if he actually wasn't overreacting and this was serious and it just gets weirder and weirder with each new episode and the finale is the strangest thing i've ever seen i can't explain it i don't know what happened i don't even know if i like it or not but i'm deeply intrigued and they're doing it's coming back they're telling us i can see that i'm not sure how i feel about that like i kind of think maybe they should have just ended it there and let it be this weird and explicable show but also i trust enough that they baby had a plan here and that season two will be pretty good so yeah i don't know watch the chair company it's great yeah Tim Robinson is either you he's your favorite thing ever or you can't stand him and i think for 50 50 down the middle on this panel i absolutely love Tim Robinson he's great i have nothing against the man i just don't think that uh i want to try one of the shows it's not a sketch show because his just the way that the guy is is hilarious like he just looks funny the way he talks is funny i just don't think that i think you should leave his funny i think you've all realized yeah that's what i've heard the other day yeah they sketches for me they generally they rely on a premise and then they just repeat the crux of that premise until the sketch ends without like a punchline or pay off it never feels like they pay off and that's what bothers me about structurally whatever now it's an escalation for sure it's escalation with no pay off or no punchline and that for me just does like it's funny but the i don't know it's like uh yeah i'm gonna give this show a chance though because it looks very funny and i want to see a show that's not a sketch show so there well that's a lot of the media that we really liked this year but let's talk about some some other stuff we enjoyed in 2025 as we wrap up here because i mean Seth and and rab i know that you're both kind of into martial arts right now yeah i i broke this down because i picked up i took take one day i was a is a teenager way back in the day and i really loved it and then i became an adult with a desk job who does not move and who who gets out of the chair at the end of the day feeling very crunchy uh and so in in October of 2024 i picked it back up again and i started back from the beginning from from a little white belt who knows nothing and i've been doing it consistently for the last year and i just think it's awesome uh it's it's really fun to go to a space a couple times a week and basically get a workout that also has like very targeted goals where i feel like i'm improving um i i think i wanted to bring this up i guess because i in my class i sometimes like there's so it's it's a family school like there's classes for little kids there's classes for adults there's classes for everybody like whatever so i run in and out like as i'm going in and out i run into a lot of parents of little kids who are like taking the class and a lot of them have asked me you know like about getting into it in my 30s because most people start as kids and they keep doing it or if you're an adult doing taekwondo at my school usually it's because your kid is doing it you're doing it as like a bonding activity but they were sort of blown away that just like an adult would decide to take this up and commit to it and so i just want to encourage everybody in the new year if there's a class you're thinking about taking whether it's like a physical fitness thing or like an art thing or whatever or if there's some new skill you want to get or or literally if there's just something in the world that you want to try that you've never done before go do it like like give yourself permission to go do it even if it seems daunting or you feel like it might be unusual like like just go do it you'll probably be happier for it yeah that's really cool yeah Seth are you back are you back at it or are you still all back i'm back baby i am in it to win it i spent most of the summer where uh doctors orders i couldn't couldn't go but like right by started actually in october 2024 i've always wanted to do moitai i thought it was the coolest but i thought yeah there's unless i live in like a city i'm never gonna i'm never oh look at that the the Brazilian jiu jitsu play is down the road for me is now offering moitai twice a week and then it became three times a week we do two classes and then we do sparring on saturday and it is freaking best thing i've ever done i started at how old am i now i forgot how old i am i started it almost i was like two weeks away from being 47 i'm 48 now i started i started martial arts at 47 years old if you don't think you can do it you can absolutely do it if you think well i got to get into shape first martial arts will get you into shape yeah i'm just sure i'll use an excuse it will 100% also if you're worried like you're gonna get there and people will be like oh look at this like the group like is so supportive and everyone at the school that you just two people and the moitai people they're just like they're so into watching you grow wanting you to be better helping you out like it's such a judgment free zone it's the best it's i don't care what martial arts you do like if you want to do a keto go do a keto it's gonna just you're gonna find a really cool community of people who are supporting you and helping you get better you're gonna get into shape you're gonna feel better um and also like it's kind of rad to know that if somebody steps up to me i could probably kick their ass now like that feels really great um to be fair i have six foot two and i weigh out uh 210 pounds so that generally speaking doesn't happen very often to me i'm five foot three and look very nice so yes like like i have i have talked to me in the supermarket face so yeah uh money marriage between rod and south next year yeah it's gonna be it's gonna happen oh my god Seth you actually inspired me to go to start doing it like you were one of the reasons that i picked up that class because you were talking so much about your ham radio course and how much you loved it and i'm like miss wish out there doing like stuff in the real world and like meeting members of his community and enriching himself and becoming like a more well-rounded person i could do that yeah yeah it's cool this you know it's the dichotomy it means i am radio in boy tie yeah that's awesome it's really cool for both of you are doing that jid anything you want to shout out before we wrap up here yeah i to i joined a i took on a myself a different sort of art i went into the magical arts of magic the gathering oh yeah i used to play magic way back in the day with friends and then i just kind of stopped and started collecting Pokemon and then scalpers became too much of an issue over the last like half a half a decade and so i was like i was like you know what i'm gonna go back to magic there if they announce final fantasy that is that is the most clear signal to go back to magic and find all my old cards so i did that a lot of bunch of cards i've been playing in a bunch of tournaments at my local shop over the last couple months i've actually won two promo cards by placing top eight in my tournaments awesome i just recently won this oh let's go like unit from final fantasy ten at the wedding oh that's great so please top eight for that one and then i also placed top eight a couple months ago um and i got the squal uh cool oh yeah oh that's cool hard um and so like the only way to get these cards are by going to your locals and playing at your local um shops and so i've been going into that and i most weeks i go and i'll play like one or two um like Saturday and Sunday i'll go and play our Friday Saturday i'll go and play in tournaments and i'll usually go like two and one or one into i had a one week weekend where i just did not play very well went oh and three and felt really bad and then i was like it's alright i know what i i know what i did wrong i learned i saw what other people did i picked it up um and you know it's you know kind of to you know rebs reb and sets point of like being uh it feeling like daunting going out like i'm in a a chat group on online with a bunch of other girls that are that play magic and like i see a lot of them that are just like it's like real nervous about going and playing the shop because it's it's still very much feels like a boys club a lot of the time um and so i'm but i like i encourage just to go out like i don't know like obviously go you know be safe about going take a friend even if they're just there to chat and watch while you play but it is just i've found such a great local community i'm now playing in like three or four pods where we get together every other weekend like every three to four weekends i have like i meet with a different group of people to play commander which is a hundred card deck format and i've just been building crazy decks i started with zero decks built at the start of this year and now i have 16 different decks that i built uh and i'm that's a lot of cards it is a lot of cards uh like i don't i've got like 20 binders full of excess like bonus of other cards to build more decks from i can't wait like avatars all in right now like i built an iron uncle iron deck it's so much cool stuff um and then we got an digit turtles next year i can't wait for digit turtles but uh that's what i'm saying like magic is great it's very you know it's a little bit of pricey but there's good ways to go about it to not spend a super ton of amount of money and have fun yeah cool i want to play with you next time i come out thank you actually i've got it i've got to message you because i i have some other people that want to play with you as well so let's go so i want to spar with you jada so i'll get that i'll get that i'll get that i gotta get back on my training for that that's coming in the beginning of the new year as well oh yeah well i won't go too deep into this because we do got to go but my year was dominated by the seahabble mariners as it is last every year baseball just my my love it was an incredible year it was unforgettable i mean just on an intendo side alone it was amazing but i'll walk away just as much with the the stuff that happened with the mariners this year because i love the mariners more than basically anything in the world besides my friends and family like the mariners are right up there and and this year they got eight outs away from making their first full series ever they didn't it was absolutely heartbreaking but i'll never forget the ride and they from 2001 to 2022 the mariners did not make the playoffs it was the longest drought in north american professional sports at the time that they broke it and it happens to overlap with basically my entire life until they finally made it in in 2022 i was so young the last time they'd done it so my generation of mariners fans was just brought up through year after year of heartbreak and disappointment and failure and just having this little run of success now it has just been unbelievably rewarding and i was at the ballpark the night that they won the division for the first time since 2001 and i went out to a bar afterwards with with a friend of mine and a bunch of his friends that i had never met before and we just spent the entire night sharing like really deep cut favorite baseball games we'd been to over the last 20 years and it was amazing and these are not like iconic moments these like really little random things but when you're in like this circle with mariners fans like this they're just like i would share a story and someone in the circle be like oh i was there i was in this section i was like oh i was in this section we were like two sections away from each other and didn't even know it and this was like 13 years ago is just is just incredible and getting to go to play off games with my my parents and my sister and my best friends who we talk about the mariners more than anything else like it was it was amazing and i hope they make it next year because it was absolutely soul-crushing when they didn't but yeah i was easily one of my favorite parts of this year. I'm be sharing for you guys next too. That's so awesome. Yeah for real. Yeah hopefully they can do it they're the only team to have never made the world series it is truly pathetic but i wouldn't change it for the world it is in the most dogs. It's a really good experience. It's a really good experience in my life. It's never made it they suck and yeah it's it's true you you learn to deal with disappointment and failure when your baseball team is absolutely miserable. So yeah thanks thanks for letting me share about that but that is a bonus episode of Nintendo Voice Chat in the books we're normally here talking Nintendo every Friday with audio on your favorite podcast app in a video on the iGN games channel on YouTube we really hope you enjoyed this special holiday gift to all of you super-dinventors out there because we really appreciate your support all year long and wanted to give you something fun to listen to over the holiday break. If you like the show please tell a friend or leave us a review rating or nice comment wherever you're listening and helps us out so much we'll be back in early January to set up switch two sophomore year with previews predictions and a lot more. I have an absolutely ridiculous segment planned for our first show of the year that i'm extremely excited about. Thank you so much jade at Seth and rev for this week and for every week and thank you for tom fillin in behind the scenes this week but for now that is all the time i've got i got it back to playing revenge of this average planet on my PlayStation 5. Have a great week we'll be back next time with more Nintendo voice chat the only place you can get the thing