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That's right, you, the JaiBon Premium subscriber. Seriously, without your help, we wouldn't be here. You know, we'd be able to do stuff like this or any of the other things we do. So just wanted to take a moment here to thank you for, you know, riding with us for all these years, whether you've been here all along or whether you're just coming on.
Thanks so much. And yeah, we hope you enjoy the following proceedings. Seems, greetings, and welcome to Giant Bombs, the Game of the Year, Diliteration Podcast 2018. How's everybody feeling?
Great. Great. Yeah. Remember everybody for video games.
Everybody, rarens who talk about the games of the year? I thought we were getting food. Oh, I thought we were getting food at the end of this 25-year-olds. We're going for food for thought.
Oh, I hope you ate a big bite. Food for discussion. It's going to be days. I'd not see I'll go bagel here.
They don't have those New York I found. I'm not sure some places do, but it's very hard to find. We can't derail game of the year this early. Give it to the game of the year.
Bagel of the year, Dan, go. What? Bagel of the year, go. Oh, I see I go.
It was a New York one. OK. Well, what's the water of the way? We're trying some new stuff with format this year.
We're changing things up. We've traditionally done somewhere in the ballpark of 20 categories throughout the week. We're shuffling some things around. We are reducing the number of categories to Tim.
Yes. In favor of just talking about the game. That's right. More discussion.
I mean, more celebration of this. If you think about it, like, yeah, the secret, not secret, important part about game of the year was always, like, those games that never stayed in the category, but someone had something to say about it. The ones that did not hang. Put it on and stick it off.
The ones about which APs must be said. Yes. So that's the actual value of this. It always has been.
So instead of having that, leaving that off to the side is like a thing that is kind of into a larger discussion. We're structuring it to kind of put a spotlight onto that stuff. Because that's the actual. That's why we're here.
Let's talk about the year in games. And there's some awards, because, you know, why not? Yes. But ultimately, it's just here to give us a spot to talk about the games that we cared about one way or the other this year.
Also, you know, I mean, when you're giving awards, it is a wiggling processing. You start with a list, and you start going after the games you want to cut. So there's a lot of sort of negative horse trading going on to remove stuff. So we wanted to have good open discussions about all the games we think matter this year.
Before we get it to the part where we're tearing each other down. Yeah, we tell each other why they're actually bad. Yeah. So how are we going to accomplish that?
You make a hit put together a list of what we think are the games that matter this year? Uh-oh. Which currently stands at, uh, a little over 80, I think, 70, 79? 79 games.
79 games at the moment. All right. Yeah. So we're going to do it chronologically by release.
So, yes, by initial release dates and no favor to being played. We're just going to talk through the year. And as we do that, maybe nominate a game or two for a category. Yes.
So as I mentioned, we will go through traditional categories at the end of the week. And as we go through these games, we are going to kind of casually nominate them for stuff. I mean, if we don't think to nominate it on the spot, we can absolutely act later. It's not a formal process.
It's just a nice way of saying, hey, I think that game looks really good. Let's put it in the best looking. What other things could we nominate for? Yeah.
So here are the categories. Biggest sandwich. Take a look here. I'll see you.
Here are the categories we will be hitting at the end of the week, later in the week. It will be building towards how long 60 to this man with list. The 10 awards are best style, best music, best debut, hottest mess, best moment or sequence, best story, best game as a surface, or ongoing game. Best looking, most disappointing, best game.
So that's where we'll be getting at our tight 10 later in the week. I believe we didn't, did we not settle on best ongoing game? I thought the start, I think. No, I thought we would.
I thought we would. I'll change that right now if we would. Yes, best ongoing game. OK.
And in the spirit of ongoing, this will be an ongoing process. Yeah. It's a living podcast. In a year, these awards might be up for best game of the year awards, we're still thinking about it.
Yeah, there's nothing formal or binding about any events. This is just, except at the end, at this point, these categories are pretty much what they are, but you know what I mean. Yeah. All right.
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Is taking pity on those poor games that are always released in the last three weeks of the year? And traditionally miss our cutoff? It's a follow-on from some of the stuff we changed over the year in terms of early access. Yeah, whereas last year, we were not considering games that were only available in early access.
We decided near the end of that process that this year would be the year that we would start to take that into account. Yes. As a result, there were some games that kind of got lost in the shuffle on both ends, where they were in early access to the time of our discussions, but then came out formally before the discussions were or before the discussions had aired. Right.
And so this is just like, I guess, a little housekeeping in a way for some of those games. So they will be considered this year. Yeah, it's not a big change. There's only a couple that we plucked from mid-December.
Yeah, some things that kind of stood out in 2018 that maybe weren't released. Yes. But as such, we will be starting this list of 2018's games with a couple of games from 2017. Be warned, which, yeah.
The first game submitted by one Vinnie Caraville. I did submit this. It's a little game called the Gorogoa. Yeah.
For your consideration, Gorogoa was that a puzzle game that came out in mid-December last year, released on consoles this year. It's a puzzle game where you dive into pictures. I put it on here because I think this is a great representation of style. It's got a very novel mechanic that I don't think I've seen before.
You're kind of laying vignettes on top of each other to build a unified vignette. Let's say pictures. They're kind of like paintings, right? Yeah.
It's sort of layered too. So it's like one square. It might serve a certain purpose on the bottom right corner of the screen, but you can put in the top left corner. It's a whole other purpose.
That's sort of how you're solving these puzzles. But all illustrations, paintings, not photos. Yes. Oh, yes.
It is drawn. It is drawn. But you have a character who needs to move in kind of this. You're building a staircase from the lower right of the screen in a card or picture or painting and layer it on top of a picture in the upper left.
Now he can continue his way up onto a shelf. It's like you're kind of sliding the backgrounds around and shuffling them. And kind of going in and out of the making one thing from one background. It's like a little sliding puzzle.
It's very hard to explain. This is a game that's hard to explain. Because I had to think outside of myself these all certain puzzles. It was really neat.
It made me kind of force me to sort of approach puzzles differently. It's like a beautiful idea. I really enjoy the execution of it too. And they're like, transparencies?
Is it like that? Kind of like that? Yeah. It's kind of like, well, open into one world of one transparencies and maybe take a piece from that or change a piece in there.
And then it'll affect the other worlds within the transparencies. Right. It's something that you see in motion in execution. It's kind of arresting the first time you see it.
I've never seen that ever. Yeah. Yes. Right.
It's just like, oh, you just kind of stop and go, what are these four painting things here? And then you stare at it for another 20 or 30 seconds. Oh, my God. Right.
That is, yeah. That's very satisfying to like put all the pieces together. It just clicks in a way that is very nice. You want to, there's a thing we've got up here.
We can see what looks like. Motion, yeah. So I think Gorgoa, I really enjoyed it. I like the puzzle aspect.
But I think some of its strongest aspects, though, would be, let's say, in the category like Best Day View, Best Style, is where I would place something. like Gorgoa. I will make a note of that. I think it belongs to both of those.
narrative beats it has. It's like so kind of subtle and vague in the way I enjoy. Probably not worth putting it in that category, but I do like what it does with the story. Kind of how it trickles through in a way that you kind of have to interpret it yourself.
Cool, cool. Just finish it, because I played it when it came out and I thought it was very neat. I still went to the convention. This is really novel and awesome and I am dumb.
I played more than 45 minutes of it, but I don't think I finished it. I honestly can't remember if I did. It's a short game is a thing. I think it's I, you know, how long it takes a person to sell a puzzle obviously will vary, but I think the overall progression is only like a handful of hours.
I got through like a bunch of the chapters. In the world where I had an infinite time, I might have played through the whole thing, but like, you know, I got the gist, you know, like an hour ago, like this is very clever and very well produced. The things I remember about it are the visual style, the kind of, not even the best style and the novelty of the mechanics and those are the reasons I think that it would fit well in this category. Yeah, and also the reason that you felt compelled to put on this list is true.
That's what you can just talk about last year and now we have. All right. All right. The only other game from December of last year, Alex, yeah, it's been a long time coming.
It is. It's been a tough year for you. The game that was so surprising, it literally killed the best surprise category for this year. Yeah, by our progress in the world.
Yeah. So it came to PC right after we finished our deliberations, which is hilarious. So frustrating. Did you know that's code you had got it early or something?
Oh, it was an early access. It was an early access for a long time. Yeah. It started like early last year.
It was when early access. Boy, being you knew it was good. Yeah. By the time we were doing this, but the timing did not work out.
And they hadn't announced the release date yet. So it was like, okay, it's an early access. We don't we don't know when it's coming out early access. So we can't necessarily consider it.
Yeah. And it ended up getting cut. And you know, another thing that sort of is a touchdown for this year is that the PS4 version came out this year. And along with that came the New Japan Pro Wrestling license content, which was not there in the original PC release.
So this is still probably one of my favorite wrestling games of recent years. It's 2D. Yeah. It's still sprite based the way that the old games were.
I mean, they're cleaner sprites, but it's still the same basic look and same basic vibe of there are a million customization parts. People build the real wrestlers out of all those parts. And they have this incredible database of creations that, you know, on PC, at least it's like 50,000 things you can download on there right now. How many of them are just different versions of it?
Well, I guess now there's an official Kenny Omega. Maybe that's not a problem, but like, there's probably a million. I feel like it's like 30% CM Punk's. 30% Kenny Omega's 5% Benoit's.
That's true in any game that has or any wrestling game that has those creations that there would be a million takes on the same characters, but it's still like, I went deep. I went on like, you know, obscure wrestlers from like, you know, Japanese wrestling from the 90s that no one remembers. And there's usually at least like one version of them up there somewhere. The one thing I will say about this game is that they fumbled a couple of things this year.
The PS4 version came out way too expensive. It was $50 out of the gate. And then on top of that, the season pass role, the DLC was another $50, which is too much money for what that game is. And is that just more licensed wrestlers or is that like season mode, story mode stuff?
There's a Booker mode, which lets you sort of build out your own wrestling cards that has not come out yet. Yeah. And there is more new Japan content. There's like a whole separate story mode that will feature the Junior Heavyweight wrestlers that hasn't come out yet.
But you know, some of the stuff around that and also like the PC version kind of got left by the wayside for months while they were developing the PS4 version. I think that new Japan deal dictated that they had to get that PS4 version out at a certain time. And that kind of, the PC community was kind of rioting for a little bit around that. The PC version gets that concept eventually.
It was like two months late though. So that was kind of a bummer. But you know, they got there. And I think they're still working on developing that game.
And I still think, you know, despite those fumbles, it is to me still one of the best wrestling games in recent memory, certainly. And I played a ton of it this year. That's great. And I'm happy for you that you can now close the chapter in your life.
Yes. So I'm trying to think like if this belongs in a category, I mean, it's definitely, it made my top 10 list last year. It may still make my top 10 list this year, which I don't know if that's cheating or what, but that's probably going to be fair. Yeah, I put Dota number one, two years in a row.
Yeah. So I would maybe, I mean, I would float it for best game, but I feel like I may not have the support for that other game. That's a discussion for later in the week. Yeah.
But as your choice would you like to nominate? I would like to nominate for best game. How about ongoing? I mean, it's not like some of those updates are a little fumbled in a way that might.
Yeah. I mean, I think that their messaging around that stuff has not been great. And you know, some of that content hasn't even come out yet. So it's hard to really judge it.
I say that, like, you know, I think the way they handled adding the new Japan license was good. I think that story mode is surprisingly engaging. It's really cool to see that type of license content in a fire pro game, which traditionally just been like thrown together kind of not licensed stuff. Yeah, it's been trying to get around licensing laws more than anything else.
It's neat to see like, okay, we signed a deal with the devil and now we're they sold out. But they sold out to the right company. So ultimately, I think it worked in their favor. But yeah, I think I wouldn't put it for ongoing game because we still haven't seen all what that DLC is.
That's kind of where I would keep it. Okay, well, there's your best game. All right, sweet. All right.
All right. That was quick. All right. That wraps up December 2017 and brings us into this year proper.
And what a year it was. Yeah, some really good stuff. Yeah, really great video games here. First game we have on here from mid to late January is Subnautica.
Yeah, I think was in early access. Sure. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, for like a couple years. I remember doing unfinished with any. Yeah.
So I'm not going to is a is a good one of those. Yes. It is open world survival game under water. Sky type thing.
Well, yeah, sure. One big water plan. It is even more survival than that. Yes, it is.
I actually really want to play it, but I haven't seen it closer to a rust. Yes. Yeah. I was kind of sensed that it was like a harsh one of those.
So it's not as harsh as it could be. There's a mode options as well. For me, this is one of the only ones of the like this in Minecraft are the only ones of these games that I've actually enjoyed because this game in particular was very chill. Yeah.
Except for some parts, except for some part, you're suffocating. Well, so yeah, where you go too far out. Yeah, the whale scares you. There is a mode where you can turn off like the like food and water aspect.
Oh, yeah. I'll kind of a survival light. We should say, I don't think we mentioned this at the top. If you're listening to this, we will be talking about video games.
Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I forgot. Yes. We'll be talking about video games in detail in the depths.
We will spoil. There is there's a chance that any game we're discussing will be spoiled. We'll try to give you heads up if possible, but we're not going to hold back on that stuff. Yeah.
That's said, we're not going to go out of our way to spoil every game on this list. As we talk about them, like a lot of that stuff will probably be back loaded with the categories. Talk story. Right.
Right. The best story category will be very perilous, but it'll be tough to talk about some games without doing details like swimming out deep into. Yes. Some games, if like the ending is crucial to conversation, we will talk about it up front.
Right. But not, but not exhaustively. We're not going to talk about the ending of free game on this list. Sorry, I think I interrupted.
I was pretty much just saying that like, so the structure is really cool because you start kind of in this pod and you can't stray very far from it. So you're anchored down and you're just kind of exploring at first, you see some cool fish, you know, you see maybe a shipwreck out in the distance and it's a game that's very good. Encouraging you to slowly start exploring your surroundings more and more, whereas, you know, other survival games from me have been about, oh, God, I'm wondering around. I don't know where I want to set up my camp.
Everything's so scary. I don't know what to do. Kind of. I'm just overwhelmed by this world.
But there's something about some noggin, especially I think it's the fact that you start at sea level and work your way down. That made it more compelling to me. You just live in your ship when you start. So it's a base building game as well.
So you do build your sea base. Yes. And you also build vehicles, which is very good in blueprints and then kind of expanding out what tools you have and then eventually what buildings you have. I'm feeling air pumps and all this stuff.
You eventually have like outpost and set out here or you'll get a vehicle where you can breathe inside it. So it's a finite amount or whatever. You still feel like you can venture out more and more as you keep getting there. And that's a lot of fun.
The feeling that you're hitting like dark water, you know, gets very kind of nerve-wracking. The deeper you go, obviously, the physics of light don't allow it to go deeper. So it gets very dark, kind of scary. The pressure gets a lot higher.
And they use those systems well. And I think that the game, when I played in early access, didn't have a lot of these things and I'm glad they added it. They put in a breadcrumb trail of beacons that alert that'll say like, hey, there's a distress beacon happening and slowly but surely they get further out. And it kind of gives you this very simple breadcrumb trail to go, okay.
Usually when you go out there, you'll find a piece of tech or something that kind of pushes you along the tree a bit. That being said, there are points where I was like, I cannot find fucking gold anywhere anymore. I need more salt deposits or okay, I've got, I can build this base, but I'm just building 800 storage cabinets in a circle. I'm not sure what to do.
So I did hit that point in the game where, all right, I've almost got too much stuff here. You're kind of done with the breadcrumb trail. But then also the game takes some twists and this is kind of why I wanted to make sure we have a spoiler warning. You go on land for a bit and you start walking around on land and there's this whole other part of exploring a base on land that is not Nautica.
That is yeah, that is a Supra Nautica. And that gets weird. And that stuff happens that you're waiting to be rescued. Don't you eventually get onto your crashed ship that is like radioactive and stuff?
You can build out eventually. You can get in there. Always in the distance. You can see like, I do like having that landmark the whole time from there.
I need to be able to get there. Pretty much starting out looking at it. You're like, well, I got to figure out a way to get there. You're on, you're on an alien world.
You're on an alien world. There are no other people there. So you were on a big ship, but you're on earth as well. You're not on earth, right?
You were on a big ship. It exploded. Escape pods went and you're kind of trying to get together for a rescue operation, right? And throughout the course of that, that's where a lot of this narrative takes place.
But you uncover interesting twists and turns. The limited they might be, they do provide some interest. And I think that's what makes Nautica stand out a bit from a lot of early access to and also came out. And it's still working on it.
It doesn't sound like they're done. So the thing I'm most interested in that game is the VR sports that they had later. Has anybody played it in VR? I've got five sport, right?
I think it's both. I think all the heads of some PC. I bet some of that underwater stuff could be a bit different. Is it just the first first game?
Yeah. So like piloting a thing in VR is like the thing VR was made for, right? Sounds cool. Yeah.
You do get submarines. So that sounds super cool. There's a lot of scanning of alien, okay? Yeah, scan all the fish.
A lot of like picking up fish and finding out ways to use the fish as tools and stuff. Like, yeah, you drink the water from a fish because it sucks in water and filters out. A lot of making sounds of pipes of oxygen and stuff. Yeah, like a tube network, so you can, yeah.
It's a puzzle. Because it also is very much a survival game. Yes. It is not as rough.
I feel like I remember you prepping for it and it seemed like it took. But even that beginning stuff that takes a while, I really enjoyed it because it was very relaxing to me. It was like not super high stress. It wasn't super demanding.
You know, there wasn't a lot of, oh, I'm just like already overwhelmed by collecting 30 of this fish. It was just like, no, kind of grab what you can find and figure out what you can do with it as you go. Yeah, I didn't have that like Minecraft thing. If you play into like normal survival mode or whatever, it's like, oh, night's coming.
Now I gotta hold up and creepers are coming. It's just kind of like, well, I'm just going to keep doing this at my own pace and then. It's never the power to drown. It always will have the hunger and drowning stuff, but like you can take your time with like your how quickly your base is coming along.
It comes along pretty quickly. It is like a less rock and stick than a lot of those rocks. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. I'm not sure. I personally have a category for it on this. I don't think so.
Do you think any best moment for some of the things you find on land or maybe best debut? I might say best looking looking was maybe, but even there, I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, you've said your piece. So yeah, I personally don't feel that strongly about that.
The ambiance is very neat and almost almost in a style, but I don't feel that strongly about it. I will say that moment in the quick look that happened, which if you want to go see the quick look, you can see what that was. But there was a there's a story thing that kind of happened unexpectedly there. That was that was pretty fucking cool.
It sounds cool as hell. Yeah. There was a best surviving the category. I feel strongly about it.
You have just moved it on to my all day to playlist. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, it kind of falls a little off of like winning a big award to like you should check this out.
This is a good game that came into the expansion they're doing is like frozen. Oh, stuff. Great. Because I want to be trapped under.
Yeah. Lock it in. Yeah. All right.
Okay. Next on our list, Celeste. Talk about it. I was not too hot on this one.
Really? I'm not going to say I dislike it, but it was fine. But it feels like a pretty good one of those high workloads. Yeah.
It's like a good platformer. I found that the more I played, the more mechanics that unlocked, I found it a little I found it a little I was a little weighed down by like the wind and the goop. I think it feels so good to play in the beginning. Like the simple kind of challenging platformer is like very fun.
Wait, I was not asked if I heard you correctly. Were you flat? You know what? You had spikes.
Yeah. I don't think I'm okay with this at all. I think it feels very good to play. I definitely think it should be like on a list of time.
At least for my style. The thing I was going to say is like I don't dislike it, but I'm kind of with Dan. I just think it suffers by having been a lot of these before. Yeah.
But this isn't super meat boil. No, this game is incredibly fair. Yeah. But I think it's meat boil.
I love meat boil and fair, but I think it's always fair, but I also think meat boil is more overtly punishing. It's not a game about like slamming your head against a level. It's a game about looking at it kind of. Yeah.
So it does the brave thing of each world kind of has its own mechanic that you explore. Like the second one you're warping through the star fields. There's the one when you get the double jump. There's like the catapult lines.
I feel like each world. It's more puzzling than a meat boil. I think it's all about fast reflexes and this. Yeah, this is what I like to stand in and figure out what to do.
I think with the best platformers, whenever there's an optional thing, whether it's a green coin and a Mario 3 flander or anything, I want to get everything. I want to get everything. I want 100% every platformer because I'm just jumping around and wall jumping into an all that shit. This one, I didn't think that was good enough.
I would see strawberries and stuff in this game and be like, eh, that just seemed annoying. I'm not really going to go for that. It is certainly competent. It feels fine.
I just don't think it does anything to elevate itself above a meat boil. The one thing I think it really does stand out compared to those games especially is its story. When you play it through, it starts out. It's just a girl wants to climb a mountain and there's no real reason.
There's no real rhyme to it. She just says, it's something I have to do. It's like a vision quest. And then you get into spoilers, you said it.
The more you play with it, the more you realize it's about dealing with your life with a mental illness. It's about accepting the dark version of her that follows her around. And she's chasing it off and trying to keep it away. And then there's phone calls with her mom where she's worried about her.
She's like, I know you've been having some issues lately. It's the beginning of Night in the Woods when there's illusions. So there's something going on more here than it seems. But when you hit that, I think it's in the sixth chapter where you second the last one, where you confront the dark side of you and you realize, this is part of me.
I have to use it as a tool rather than trying to suppress it that you kind of start to realize, this is about dealing with anxiety or depression. This is about you can't run from yourself. You're literally running away from yourself in certain chapters. And it comes to get, I like the characters, I like the old lady.
There's the guy who runs the hotel, the ghost guy. He's really good. He's really good. I was surprised that A, this game has a story.
And B, that I was so attached to it. I feel like by the end, it's not over the top. It's not like, hey, look at this thing. The characters are kind of fun and interesting, even on its own.
It works before you get to the twist, basically. And I thought it was really cool that it had, well, A that has cool unlockables, like the B side stuff, like that's all really good shit. But then also options for, it's like additional, are they just levels? So the remixes on levels with also remix on the music, which I'm right now going to make this game for music.
I was going to say music after this for sure. It tells it's a story as well. Yeah, I personally would. I think the debut is also one for this game also really does a lot of really great stuff with the accessibility.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Like if you find it too hard, like you can really tone it down in ways that like, and I actually really like the way it handles it in game. It's like, hey, we try to design this to be hard, but like, you know, we feel the difficulty is like a core part of the experience, but hey, look, if you just want to experience the thing, yeah, I think that that's awesome that it's like, we are going to make this accessible for everyone and not shame you for it. I thought that was a cool way to handle it.
Yeah, I thought that was really great. Do we think is there enough support for it for like a best game? I feel like there's no people here that don't have to have that out there. It'll probably be on my list.
If anybody wants to add it, we can just add it. Let's add it. I think it feels good to play. I can appreciate why a lot of people like it.
I didn't finish it, and I had some issues with it later on. I found it like kind of weighed itself down a little bit, but I really liked it a lot. I think there's a lot of cool stuff. Okay, so we said best music.
Do we think best debut? Yeah. Yeah. Do we think best story?
Again, we don't have to debate that. I'm just saying like, are we adding these characters to make sure that we have it listed? Do we want to do it for like a best style? Yeah, there's no one here.
I mean, it's the Cow Revol, you know. But then there's the kid in here. It's like a little hitting. I think maybe for best moment or sequence, they have the little hidden version of it that you can find.
Oh, the new version. Yeah. I think it'll be a cool moment or sequence. I agree with that.
What's on there? Cool. Okay. All right, I have written it down.
The new version was really good. Yeah, that's just better. Oh, no, no. Ooh, that's fine.
I'm with you. Like, I totally respected it and I thought it was anything bad about it. I just had maybe just a little fatigue with hard platformers. Yeah, there's better ones.
I just don't like it with your controller. So that's pretty wrong. Yeah. Okay.
What's next? Oh, boy. We got a big one. I don't like that.
Go to one. He's stupid, but he's a hero. That's right. A bad dad.
Wait, is he a dad? What if I go? Oh, yeah. Go to son and go home, go home, go home, go home, go home, go home.
But then you get team, go home. What if I don't have the same person, but different versions? That's fair. That's fair.
Super Saiyan. What if I got a new game with like six or go? Six. Oh, yeah.
We've had we've had those for years, Brad. Oh, there's a go in there? But what if we made one of those games actually good? Yeah.
Oh, my God, you guys. It's so nice to have a good Dragon Ball game. Like it's really good. There have been decades of terrible ones.
I've gone back to that E3 where they showed the trailer and maybe we're just staring at it zoning out. And then you are looking at it and you're like, wait, this actually looks good. We're like, what the hell? Why'd this guy turn this guy to chocolate?
It's just crazy time to have to like, oh, the time before and the time after. It should be clear. We're talking about Dragon Ball fighters. Yeah.
Yes. The Ark says three on the three fighting game, featuring all your favorite Dragon Ball guys. The game that outmarveled Marvel. Yeah.
Not all my favorite Dragon Ball guys. Dragon is not in there. It's not in there. No, they don't put Mr.
State right? Yeah. Right? Seriously.
You don't open with the showstopper. That's why. It's a hard balance. It's not, you know, he's got a powerful in there.
He could make the town, brother. So here's my argument in favor of this game. I don't give a shit about Dragon Ball. And I had a blast playing Dragon Ball fighters.
That game was super fun. It looks awesome. It doesn't like the fan service elements. I mean, seems like it is great for the people who love that stuff.
Even in a single player, like, which I normally write off of fighting games, there was some fun fan services stuff there. Yeah. It's like a new plot. You know, it's about, they're making clones of Goku and all of them.
And you've got to go fight the clones. That's why that story falls apart. It becomes the biggest drag in the world. I mean, I didn't finish it at all.
I felt like I heard not great things. I like some of the early moments. But if you can, if there is a category for like, okay, story, but worse story going through it. Like, okay, the mode is not great.
Not like the technical aspects of the mode. But like, it's kind of an awesome, they do a great job with an original tale in a Dragon Ball Z game, because those never happen. Like, you always get the same retelling of every saga. And it's voice acted well.
It's animated well. And the cut to a new character who kind of fits. And then you fight clones for like 82 battles. That is like, this sucks.
This is the worst. And you're just chewing through it. That bar was terrible. But the part where you fight.
It's good. And now it's not wrong. Like, they out marveled Marvel. Yeah.
And in time, when Marvel versus Capcom Infinite exists, this actually did a much better job of being that crazy over the top three on three fighter that... Big jumps. Marvel wasn't that Evo. This was.
Yeah. And on top of that, it had the hypeous finals of anything at Evo. It's really good. That speaks to the game really well.
Yeah. You know, it's easily accessible. You know, it's got characters that everybody knows and loves. Or at least familiar with it.
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of the accessibility, I think it's auto combo stuff. It's really solid in this game.
I feel like it's not unfair. Yeah, it's not unfair. It's not overpowered. It is beautiful to look at.
Yeah. It is beautiful. It's been making amazing looking games for a while. And then...
This is still among their top best work for sure. Yep. Those are where they fly in. And then they're like this.
Oh, yeah. And then like the natures where they go off to the mountains. Yeah. Yeah.
Those are so good. I do my grievance with it. And I like a Dragon Ball Z game that lets you start as a base level character and then power up during the match by using a super meter into your super standard. It's like a power level that goes up.
Yeah. It's like a power level that goes up instead of having to pick the individual. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's a little weird.
So it's pretty much one to have done that. But they're not sure. But think about it in terms of... OK, gameplay.
Because I like popping to the next one. Here comes the TVZ. I think about it in terms of like, there was a long period of time there where you didn't really see Goku use some of the moves he used early on. So pre-super Saiyan Goku, he'll learn the Kaiokan.
And do that sort of stuff. And maybe he's more of a speed character, a spirit ball. But then later on, he kind of moved away from that into some deeper shit. Yeah.
So there's I think there's enough difference there to where either it would be a really complicated stance change that would be kind of like weird to do. Or at some point, you're like, actually, we're just going to break them up. So if you want this version of the character, we're going to balance it anyway to make it, you know, if it's a fighting game, you have to. Yeah, it's tough.
I understand the problems and designing it. But I think there is something I still really enjoy about popping into the next, like how the meter go are also totally fucking right. The cartoon knows it as well. Like you want to see that palm until you get to three, and you're like, this hair looks terrible.
What the fuck is that? Does the power of that go up as his same level goes up? OK, so it's not just 50 damage, whether he's level three or maybe Goku. We're not talking about the game.
And then the game is balanced. No, I'm talking about Dragon Ball. What I'm talking about, Dragon Ball. But in the game, and I feel like this is stuff actually that you might appreciate now.
Like you can do the assists on the kamehameha with Gohan to come in and do the smaller sun ones. They do the thing. They do the thing. They totally do that as well.
And like, there's a lot of stuff that's really good. There's a lot of that kind of fan service and kind of small things. And like, when you start a match, if you have Gohan on point and you're fighting against the team of Cell, they do the intro where he kills Android 16. And he's like, do it for the nature, the bird, the cell.
Like his head is like on the ground or else. That's great. You can pick the right background. Like, there are certain semblance of characters and backgrounds that get you extra moments.