The Wait For It Podcast
Hosted by MrEricAlmighty and PhilTheFilipino, the guys discuss all things in Pop Culture from movies, gaming, anime and anything in between. New episodes every Wednesday, all you have to do is...WAIT FOR IT!
The Wait For It Podcast
Up High, Down Low! - Video Game Protagonists
Join us for an electrifying conversation with Andrew and Dylan from Your Friendly Neighborhood Gamers on our latest episode of Up High Down Low, where we take a topic, and come up with a best/worst ranking list! For this episode, we rank our favorite 3 and our least favorite Video Game Protagonists, setting ourselves up to be judged forever.
Are there some protagonists that have changed your gaming experience? We share our personal gaming journeys and express our admiration for iconic characters like Ezio from Assassin's Creed and Alloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Our episode, however, is not just about the well-loved gaming characters. We also ramp up the intrigue by critically examining some of the more controversial video game protagonists. Mario may be an emblem for Nintendo, but does he really have a compelling personality? And what about Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog? We chew over their merits and flaws, and consider the potential for remakes or reboots of classic games. So prepare to gain a fresh perspective on your favorite video game protagonists, and maybe even find a new favorite!
Want to hear more about how we got into gaming? Listen to the interview we did with Your Friendly Neighborhood Gamers!
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Welcome to your go-to source for entertainment. Wait for it.
Speaker 2:Gaming. Wait for it, anime.
Speaker 1:Plus Ultra.
Speaker 2:Mr Eric Almighty and Phil Vafilippino yeah, they've got you covered, and all you gotta do is Wait for it.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, welcome back to the Wait for it podcast and welcome to our very, very fun bi-monthly series, up High Down Low. I'm your co-host, phil Smith, aka Phil the Filipino, and joining me is your other co-host, mr Eric Almighty Eric. Per usual, towards the end of the month, we link back up after doing some solo content and it's always fun to get back together for Up High Down Low, and this will be only the second time. On Up High Down Low we have not one, but two guests, and again guests from the Super Bracket Bros cinematic universe, so really excited about today's episode.
Speaker 4:And we find any excuse to get these two goons on Andrew how are you guys?
Speaker 3:It's been a while.
Speaker 2:It's been a while, though, how you guys doing I'm doing well, thank you. So thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:I'm a little bit sick, but I'm very excited to be here to bring some actual gaming content to this podcast.
Speaker 4:Listen, we already have enough imposter syndrome, you don't?
Speaker 1:have to feed into that.
Speaker 4:Okay, we liked games at one point.
Speaker 2:Wait, this is about games. I thought we were doing our favorite YouTube protagonists. Oh that's right.
Speaker 1:I was already talking about PewDiePie and Where's.
Speaker 4:Mr Beast gonna rank.
Speaker 3:Well, I thought we were doing top three, bottom three, fake Door Dash kitchens. That's what I meant. Mr Beast Burger is on. One is on my top and bottom.
Speaker 4:Actually to give you a little what happens when we don't send out a episode description or a layout.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, we just swing it here at this point, honestly, with these Whenever we have Andrew and Dylan on. So, yeah, super excited to have you guys here and, of course, as we mentioned, our audience most likely knows who you guys are, but just in case there are any brand new listeners, please let everybody know about Friendly Neighborhood Gamers and what you guys have been up to over there.
Speaker 1:Go back and listen to the Podfest Special if you have not.
Speaker 1:That's what you gotta do. We are a podcast and YouTube channel that talks about video games from the perspective of average gamers. So on the podcast we do interviews with other creators and people in the gaming community. We've had Phil and Eric on there. We did an interview with them. That was a lot of fun. We deep dive into games that we love that sometimes are current, Sometimes they're not. We've been doing some more kind of topic episodes, kind of diving in some more conceptual things about gaming and gaming communities and stuff like that lately. And that's the podcast pretty much, Dylan. What about the YouTube channel?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the YouTube channel. We have been releasing a couple of videos every month. We've been trying some new stuff this summer and are continuing to kind of try some of the new stuff that seemed to be working from this summer, to varying degrees of success. The YouTube algorithm is a mysterious beast. We are also putting up our podcast on the YouTubes now for the people that listen on YouTube music. I don't know who they are, but apparently there are some of them. So but yeah, it's, if you like what we do and you're interested in getting a shorter, smaller taste of it. Youtube is kind of where it's at.
Speaker 3:That's how we feel about the Pandora audience. We know we have a couple, but we don't know who you are.
Speaker 2:But thanks, thank you for listening to Pandora. I didn't even realize Pandora had podcasts. Yeah, fun fact.
Speaker 4:Pandora are number three, I believe, maybe maybe number two out of all the platforms for download. So they're out there.
Speaker 3:Shout out to you Pandora listener who is listening right now. We really appreciate it and, yeah, I'm excited again to have you guys back on. We obviously big fans of your show and you know, whenever Eric and I sit down to do our one video game content related episode, we're like Andrew and Dylan do this all the time, so we're we're very thankful that you know some experts are here to give us their lists and well, you know, usually I do these with Eric. So you know, in comparison it's okay.
Speaker 4:I didn't feel appropriate.
Speaker 3:That was we have a recording in a while. So Eric and I are either going to be very hostile or incredibly just I don't know lovable, or towards each other, I don't know Either way.
Speaker 4:So I think we know which way it's going tonight. Not off to a good start.
Speaker 3:Not off to a good start, but if you are brand new to up high, down low, eric, why don't you let everybody know what this is about and also what our topic is going to be, you know?
Speaker 4:if for some reason, they can't read, I guess because the name of the episode and, magically, on the episode, missing the graphic, the video description, the title of it and even just the fact that we brought on your friendly neighborhood gamers. Up high, down low is where we take a topic and we come up with a best slash, worst ranking list. So for this episode, we're going to rank our favorite three and least favorite three video game protagonists, setting ourselves up to be judged forever and again. This is our takes. So for some of us who may not be a gamer or a Sony bro, you know, go gentle on them, because they may not have played every game out there.
Speaker 1:Well, eric, you're in good company, because Dylan's also not a Sony bro.
Speaker 4:That's true, that's true, that's right, dylan's coming with us the next, the next meetup, so we're not even going to invite you and Jay.
Speaker 3:It's just going to be me, phil Dylan and Eli. How is Dylan going to shoehorn the protagonist of Hi-Fi Rush into his list? That's it.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you, as an Xbox fan, this list was a bit painful to make sometimes because I knew if I had played more PlayStation games, I'd probably put a lot of those guys on here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this was difficult. I've been kind of working on this the last couple of days, so it's going to be fun and, eric, as you mentioned before we even started, we've been very surprised at like how much we don't overlap when it comes to these episodes. So it was a lot of fun the Game of Thrones episode with them, like it was. It was great because we had so many different films on the list and it's going to be just like that for the protagonist. So, yeah, let's just jump right into it here, eric, and we'll hand it off to one of our guests here first and you know we'll start. We always start on up high, which is the positive side. There's never a clip for this on social media because everyone only wants to see the negative take. So hopefully you're listening to this episode and you're listening to the entire thing. So, Dylan, let's hand it on over to you and see where you landed for your number three pick of all time favorite gaming protagonists.
Speaker 2:All right, the up high portion of this list was difficult to make because there were so many good video game protagonists and so if you ask me tomorrow, I don't know that my like this one for sure would stay the same. But my number three that I settled on for tonight is Ichiban Kasuga from Yakuza 7, like a Dragon, he is the the main character. He is such like a dumb himbo guy that it's endearing he is. He just really wants to be a Yakuza, but he's so kind hearted that he oftentimes is not able to do that. And he's so loyal to the Yakuza that he takes the fall for his boss and goes to jail for like years and years and finally gets out. And they've all kind of left him, betrayed him, et cetera. And he's just. He just wants to be a cool dude. And every time I watch him do stuff and play as him, I'm just like he needs to be protected at all costs, because this, in this level of innocence and just like dumb good person energy just needs to be protected.
Speaker 1:So isn't he like? Obsessed with the Dragon Quest games? And that was the like shift to turn face gameplay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he is. He like went to jail as a child or not as a child, but like basically barely older than it, like probably early 20s, and got out like and now he's like 30s or 40s and so he's still kind of like in that mindset of like hey, like Dragon Quest is cool, right, like I'm going to imagine the world is this big Dragon Quest thing. So, yes, it's fantastic. So and he's going to be in the new, like the I don't know if it's an expansion for this or the new like Yakuza game, like that was at Microsoft's conference.
Speaker 1:That's the next sequel. That's like the main, like eight, I guess, mainline Dragon.
Speaker 2:Yakuza eight. So yeah, he's, he's fun.
Speaker 1:I want to see more of him. So you didn't see enough of him in that trailer. Well, that's true.
Speaker 2:You saw pretty much everything in that trailer, I guess.
Speaker 3:So again, eric, the appeal of having Andrew and Dylan on for us is we're probably going to come in. Just you know, have some franchises here that we just haven't played, that we're not familiar with. So I've always been wondering and always been curious, like how does one dive into the Yakuza series, how does, how do you do that, and where do you even begin? Because it's always intrigued me for sure.
Speaker 2:I would say just jump into the Yakuza seven. Like it's. It is a turn based RPG, so like it, it makes more sense. It's less like. I think most of the other ones, if not all of the other ones, are like beat them up type of games, which if you like beat them up games, like go for it. But this one feels much more like a traditional, like JRPG sort of video game and so and it's a lot of just like cutscenes and talking and like you know that sort of thing. But to me all of them were like great because it's Japan and like his crew of misfits is there. So so I'd recommend, if you want to try to get into Yakuza or just want to try a Yakuza game and see if it's for you, try seven.
Speaker 1:So seven was intended to be like a new jumping on point, kind of like a fresh start for the series, because that's why they've changed the name of the series to like a dragon moving forward now, and they changed protagonist and they changed the gameplay style like everything was new. So it is. And then, from what I understand, moving forward, they're going to kind of tie this story into some of the older games, like bringing curio into them and stuff.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it's, it's it. I think that Dylan spot on. That's like probably the best place to start.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Yakuza seven is the one that I think is probably the first one that I saw like clips of. I was like OK, it seemed like it was an accessible game to play. So that's good to know that that seven is the one to jump into, Eric, I mean, do you have any? I'm sure you've obviously come across the Yakuza series, but it just like me not knowing too much of it. Has it been something that you've ever been interested in or even looked into yourself?
Speaker 4:Never looked into. I mean, it's one of those series, one of many game series that I've never gotten into. It's like I don't know. I don't know if that's necessarily the area of gaming that I ever really dived into, so I would say no. But I have heard of the game and I've heard good things about it. I mean, this is one of those reliable franchises, it seems from a distance.
Speaker 2:And it's on Game Pass. So if you have Game Pass, it's free to check out Best deal in gaming. Best deal in gaming.
Speaker 3:Yes, deal in gaming. I do need to steal my Xbox back for my daughter because she's just using using it as a fortnight machine and I'd like to play some games on on Game Pass. That would be nice. I'm Eric, let's go over to you. What was your number three on your op high list for gaming protagonists?
Speaker 4:So the first two are pretty, pretty set in stone. It was this one that was difficult, so I went with a personal favorite. And this was when I was younger and I was really just like obsessively into gaming, right, and that character for me, a character I loved playing, introduced me to a series that I loved was Ezio from Assassin's Creed 2. And maybe not the best character you know, some characters have deeper relationships, personalities, all of that jazz, but Ezio was just a badass Like he was so cool and it was a franchise I didn't have a lot of interest in. And obviously in the second game it's one of the biggest ones and every time he came back up it got me into that franchise, into that gaming platform, and I have a lot of great memories playing that character. So a personal favorite maybe not third best all time if we're doing a best list but Ezio, assassin's Creed 2, is my pick.
Speaker 1:Well, you say like maybe there's not like as much depth there, but because Ezio is given three games that saw him at different stages of his life. Two he was a young man, he was a fresh assassin. He saw the murder of his family, he had Uncle Mario, but then in Brotherhood he grew a little bit and he developed as a person. He became kind of a leader to the assassins, rebuilding the order, and then in three he was like an older man, kind of at the end of his journey. So I do think there's actually probably a pretty good amount of depth to that character if you take all three games because they were allowed or they were able to really flesh him out, more so than a lot of the protagonists that only get one game granted. The games now are like 100 hours long, so you could argue that get just as much time, but yeah, and what was the name of the protagonist in the first one?
Speaker 4:Altair.
Speaker 3:Altair yeah.
Speaker 4:So remember, like who will make an appearance? Spilller.
Speaker 3:There is going to be some similar themes, okay, anyway. So yeah, remember I remember when Assassin's Creed came out I believe I was working a GameStop at the time and you know the hype for the first one was unreal and it's a solid game but, like Altair, is just not very interesting. And then the second one comes out and they hit the ground running with Ezio and you're like, oh, this is a very complex character. He's a character that's not the easiest to like either, and like in the very beginning too, you know he's a little bit of a smart ass, you know he's definitely very cocky. And then, like you said, Andrew, you know, over time, as they build that character up, definitely become, I think, becomes out, becomes one of the most fleshed out characters in the series. Also, you can make an argument in gaming overall at CO is. It belongs pretty high up there.
Speaker 1:He's extremely iconic, Like when you think Assassin's Creed, it's kind of his outfit and his silhouette that you think of first. If you've been playing them, you know since the beginning.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what about you, dylan, as far as your familiarity with the Assassin's Creed series?
Speaker 2:I haven't played a ton of them. I well, I've dabbled in pretty much all of them, but at CO is I didn't play a ton of two. I played the first game and then to I think came out while I was like in college or something like that, and so I didn't like play video games. I didn't have as much time in college to play video games as I would have liked and so I think to I kind of missed on and I came back to the Assassin's Creed series with Black Flag. So I really liked Edward in Black Flag, really liked like a kind of skipped, a lot of the other ones in between Black Flag and Origins and then like the newer trilogy origins, odyssey, valhalla I've dabbled in all of those. Haven't beaten any of them but origins just because it's such a massive time commitment at that point now.
Speaker 3:So I haven't played an Assassin's Creed in a while, just for that specific reason. Yeah, like if I'm going to commit that kind of time, it's not going to be into Assassin's Creed. Honestly, like it sounds disrespectful because the games are solid from what I hear, but like I'm just not going to put in that kind of I'm proud it's welcome to with just kind of like the whole, the whole storyline.
Speaker 4:It was just a lot Black Flag underrated in my opinion. I thought that was ton of fun. Especially on the water was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:But you never. We can play skull and bones in 2020.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, that'll be great, that'll be great. Did I? Did I lock that in our league? I got to go look, because now I'm confused.
Speaker 2:I think, I think you might have counterpicked it.
Speaker 4:Somebody counterpicked it for sure.
Speaker 3:I remember I think Andrew and I played like 20 minutes of the of the beta for skull and but not even a beta, a test build for skull and bones. I was like, no, that's enough of that, don't want to play that anymore.
Speaker 1:You can't worry about weekend and I'm good.
Speaker 3:Don't worry about me telling anybody, because I don't want to talk about it. Like it had like the things on the screen so that you couldn't share any of the any of the video or anything like don't worry, I'm not going to tell anybody, so you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 3:But I'll go ahead and go with my number three here next and, just like you, eric, this is the end. Dylan, it was like really difficult to come up with this and, and probably when we get to honorable mentions at the end, you know, I'll tell you guys some some characters that almost made the list and number three I went with certainly a newer character with with Aloy. Horizon is one of my favorite series for Midwest. I don't think is as good as the first game, but I think as far as just Aloy. And I also have a lot of respect and a lot of admiration for Ashley Burch to not only for her acting but also her voice, her voice acting. You know she's great in her Apple TV show with a quest, but I think Aloy is just a.
Speaker 3:Really, as time has gone on, they've done a good job of fleshing this character out. It's very interesting to see where they go in the third game and hopefully they don't jump the shark with that storyline and where that is heading. But I went with Aloy because I mean, for the longest time the Red Dead series, the first Red Dead Redemption was my favorite game of all time. Horizon Zero Dawn came around and then it kind of became like one A, one B. I really, really love that series and I think they've done a good job at again fleshing Aloy out as time has gone on, even though I know she's a little bit of a controversial figure figure. Whether or not that is for legitimate reasons within the male gaming space, it is a conversation to be had, but I went with Aloy for number three, eric. Were there any surprises that Aloy made it on my list?
Speaker 4:Honestly, it's the fact that it was so low that is. I'm very, very interested to hear what your top two are. I thought Aloy was probably going to go two, so it's not that much higher, but I don't know For Aloy. For you it feels like a big gap.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's fair. I mean I've definitely spoken very highly about Aloy. I've given up on trying to get you to play Horizon, so that's not worried about that.
Speaker 4:But I'm sorry, I just I don't know what it was. It just did not it did not grit me.
Speaker 3:You played it for like 15 minutes.
Speaker 4:So that's not true. That's not true. It was definitely at least 30.
Speaker 3:Andrew is my fellow Sony bro in here. What do you think about the inclusion of Aloy here on my list?
Speaker 1:It's very on brand for you. I think that I like Aloy a lot more in Forbidden West. I thought she was kind of a bland like nothing character in the first one. I think that's something we talked about when we talked about the game. I think they did a really good job of giving her personality in the sequel, Like she actually seemed to have some agency and some personality, Whereas in the first game she just kind of felt like a vessel for the side characters to talk to Preach.
Speaker 3:Shut up, eric.
Speaker 1:So so yeah, I think she's a great character. I think that if they continue down this like trajectory with her as a character, then in the next game she should be even better. But I do think she grew a lot from the first game to the second game. If we only had Horizon Zero Dawn to speak on, I don't think that she deserved to be in the top three, but I do think they did a really good job of growing and fleshing that character out in the second game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, definitely, I can definitely understand that. What about you, andrew? Where did you start your list, and did you have as difficult as the time as it seems like we all did?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, my difficulty was just like limiting it to three, but I'm curious to see if I'm stealing Eric's number one when I say Deacon St John. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3:Eric had time to look up.
Speaker 1:Who that is.
Speaker 4:Totally.
Speaker 1:I love that character. No, my number three is Amicia Darun. Do you know what games she's from? Eric and Phil.
Speaker 4:Love Amicia. That game One second how do you spell it?
Speaker 1:She is the protagonist of a Plague Tale of Anticents. Oh, I do Dammit no.
Speaker 3:An, a Plague Tale of Requiem. I didn't know, amicia, if you give me another second, ok, never mind, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I just think that this is a fantastic and you, you talk about performances like when you were mentioning Ashley Burch.
Speaker 1:The performance for Amicia is, I think, second to none in both games. I think it is a little weird that they went from a French accent to an English accent Between the two games. That threw me off a little bit. But other than that, like just because it's a stealth game and it's horror and it's got a little bit of that kind of like fantastical, like Twist to it. Like her, her range goes from Caring older sister to terrified to angry. She deals with a lot of like PTSD and stuff from all the people she had to kill in the first game.
Speaker 1:When she's in the second game and and the world is just brutal, dark, unforgiving. And they did a really good job of Expressing the toll that that would put on someone her age and then the character and then of course the performance behind it just did such a great job of conveying that there's not a lot of Sunshine and happiness when you kind of get to the end of the journey. But it's one of the like top tier, highest quality journeys and I think a lot of that is because of the characters, one of the things that surprised me playing the first game and one of the reasons I'm constantly like Recommending and evangelizing. It is that the characters were so much deeper and so much more impressive than what I was expecting from kind of a double-a game that you've never really heard of, and they really punched above its weight, and so that's that's why I went with Amicia for my number three spot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't know why we shouldn't have definitely known that a playtail would have made an appearance on Andrew's list. Innocence is the one I watched through.
Speaker 3:You know the all of the game, the entirety of the gameplay, and it's just one thing where it's like I wish I had Experienced this for myself, but I was still gripped because of how, again, incredible the storytelling is in the world building and, like you said, amicia has a character, and then her relationship with her brother and the mystery of it all and the no one is safe of it all as well when it comes to the characters that are there and I'd recommend is something I definitely still want to and need to dive into. I watched like the very beginning of it and I was like, okay, I'm gonna stop here, not gonna make the same mistake that I did with innocence. I'm gonna dive in and and play it eventually. Eric, I know a playtail is a game that obviously somebody Andrew has been in our ear talking about for a long time and you know we, we keep saying it, but eventually I feel like, yeah, we're gonna play it, right?
Speaker 4:I Mean it really should be an episode that we do at some point for the game room, where it happens and and it is in my play later on game pass. So there you go, you know. So I'm, you know, I'm excited, I'm ready, I just got a wreck.
Speaker 3:Is wrecking him on game pass or both?
Speaker 1:requiem is on game pass.
Speaker 3:Innocence was, and then when wrecking him came out.
Speaker 1:They took innocence off which I think I have innocence Okay.
Speaker 3:I think I downloaded innocence when it was free on place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was free. I'm pretty sure I have it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, not surprising all, dylan. Were you surprised by this pic by Andrew?
Speaker 2:No, I actually texted him like right before because I was trying to like kind of hammer out who my number two was gonna be and I asked Him are you doing Amicia? And he was like yeah, and I was like cool, now I can pivot, because Amicia was gonna be on mine if it wasn't on his, because she's a fantastic character. The acting like the voice acting and everything is so believable and Like she, she'd become like you get to the point where you're like wow, I actually like care about what happens to this video game character and like her brother and stuff which you know, not that it. You don't care about what happens to like Kratos and his son or whatever, but it's, you know, it's like oh, wow, I wasn't expecting that, like Andrew was saying from like this game, like Sony's poured so many millions of dollars into all their games for all, and so like You're gonna hate my number, two like this.
Speaker 2:You've got this. You know this double-a game that is, like Andrew said, punching way above its weight class.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I definitely think that three is much more triple a or not. The sequel is much more triple a than than the first one was. But I think anybody out there that enjoys the last of us and that kind of like brutal, unforgiving world and that specifically that kind of stealth puzzle box gameplay, this is a 100% recommendation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the very first time I ever heard of the game was the first game was in a game informer, like that's how long ago it was and coming across that yeah the concept, I was like, oh, that sounds, that sounds pretty interesting.
Speaker 3:And no bold comes out and it's, and it's fantastic. So, yeah, not surprising that Andrew went there with with number three, honestly, I could have seen you go higher with with a museum for sure. So I'll go ahead and kick us off for number two, since I kind of teased it there a little bit. Dylan's not gonna enjoy this one, most likely. So for me, I knew I had to go with a naughty dog character for sure. The question was which naughty dog character and I had to figure out which of the series is is easiest to go back and play, and that answers relatively easy which character makes me feel better overall as well, even though I love the other naughty dog characters that I think are gonna make an appearance on someone else's so you want a crash.
Speaker 3:So I went with crash bandicoot.
Speaker 3:So what with Nathan Drake? With the Uncharted series, uncharted 4 Really really solidified Nathan Drake, I think, really as a fleshed-out person, as opposed to, you know, the Indiana Jones Carbon copy that you know everybody that was comparing him to I can definitely admit that him being a parent at the end of the fourth game in the, in the prologue, was also a huge thing for me. In the epilogue, I mean, and yeah, I went with that. Uncharted 2, 3 and 4 certainly a couple, three of my favorite games of all time. Probably even now, upon after replaying it last year, 4 is probably just slightly ahead of 2 for me. But yeah, I won Nathan Drake for my number 2 over again some other Characters that make me feel a little bit sadder in the night First. So yeah, nathan Drake number two for me.
Speaker 2:Yes, the Uncharted games are like on my long list of like Sony games to play right behind Spiderman and Last of us and God of War.
Speaker 3:Right behind all the Sony games, by all of the every single one of them not blood for. I played blood for guys.
Speaker 2:And that's. And then I just continued to play blood born for like a year and a half, so that I never moved on to a different Sony game.
Speaker 4:Progress well as somebody who's played 15 minutes of Uncharted 4, and Uncharted 4 only, I disagree.
Speaker 3:Want to hear it. You don't get okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, I thought we were all trying to get. So I guess that leaves it up to me then, because I hate who hates Uncharted I. Powered through the first game.
Speaker 1:It's it's aged, which is the worst one yeah and then I did play two and I got about halfway through three. I was of the mindset that I needed to play them in order to really appreciate four, but I wish someone would have told me, like, just start before and if you like this, then go back, because I feel like four, from the way people talk about it, is a league above the other three. Yeah, it is. So I still plan on playing four at some point. It just, you know, it gets shifted around in the backlog and hasn't happened yet, but I I liked to. And then three. I think I was just you know, something else must have come out that took my attention or way. I don't, I didn't really have anything Against these games, but I think it's one of those things where, like I hear them talked about so much, like you know, caleb from level playing field and he's been on our new show and he's been on this show Also part of this super bracket pros cinema.
Speaker 1:He loves uncharted and a lot of people I hear talk about it. You know they talk about it with you know such love and and as like one of their favorite series, and for me I just it may have been overhyped going in and so when I finally got around to it, especially being years later, I was like, yeah, this is fine, but you know it's just Tomb Raider with a guy dude Raider yeah dude Raider.
Speaker 3:Uncharted 2 was like the reason because you know, eric, we've talked about this before like we were just such, we were so committed to Xbox for the longest time. But then Uncharted 2 came out and I was like, oh, I gotta get a ps3. Like I literally borrowed someone's ps3 To play through Uncharted 2 and then from that moment on, you know, I was, I was hooked and you know, like you said, just as far as fleshing out the character and making him a lot more Likeable and less one-dimensional, yeah, for is, definitely you can. You can start off that, eric. I know, I know you wanted to play through all of them, but I mean, if you really just wanted to play a Solid, you know, tomb Raider-esque game, when I know you've liked the Tomb Raider series, you can play through. For there's literally a scene in the fourth game where he explains what happens to him, to his brother, in all the other games.
Speaker 4:Well, I already know the lore. I've seen the movie, so see the movie. What do you mean?
Speaker 3:does the?
Speaker 4:game have Tom Holland in it?
Speaker 3:No, it's good because it's good.
Speaker 4:Mark Wahlberg no.
Speaker 3:Okay it's. It's a non-spider-man Tom Holland project. That's why it's not any.
Speaker 4:That's a hot take is it? It hurt a little bit.
Speaker 1:Are you sure I can't say that I wanted to watch any of his other movies, so I can't, even we're not.
Speaker 3:We got to get sidetracked and talk about Tom Holland projects, but I can't think of another one right now other than so. That is how that goes, andrew. Let's go with you. Who is your number two on your up high list?
Speaker 1:My number two is etio.
Speaker 4:Okay. I did not see that coming. I thought etio was a stretch at three.
Speaker 1:I feel good now vindicated no, yeah, etio like I've been a fan of the Assassin's Creed series and I like all the crazy sci-fi, interconnected like BS story and lore that people complain about all the time, like I'm, I'm one of those Assassin's Creed sickos.
Speaker 1:So like I'm a big fan and two was two was where I started. Two was like the game that got me into it and etio was just One of those formative characters for me, one of those characters that was like a video game. Characters can actually have personality and be like characters and you know before that you had like your crash bandicoots and your stuff like that, where they were just kind of like mascots and they were just the, the thing you used to go through the level, you know. But around that time it was like this and GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption the first one it was kind of like games were starting to develop real characters and and so for me, ezio has always been like I mentioned earlier, when I think Assassin's Creed like it's, it's Ezio and it's it's usually like the Brotherhood era, but all three of those games are fantastic.
Speaker 4:Brotherhood is is slept on a lot, I feel. I feel like nobody brings up, everybody focuses on too. But Brotherhood was was good. I don't know about the, the third one, when he is older. I don't remember much from that game. I remember being excited for it. I think it was like Revelations or something like that but yeah, the Brotherhood and two are like staples in my, in my gaming, like history.
Speaker 2:Yep, just like to point out that our YouTube comment section has let me know that Andrew is a fake Assassin's Creed fan because he's never played the first game.
Speaker 3:so oh, okay.
Speaker 1:One of the fours, one of the fours, one of the fours, one of the fours. My opinion is invalid.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely sorry, andrew. We actually we're gonna throw your list out, actually, so yeah, we don't even need to know what your number one is. Give us your game record. Assassin's Creed also has an excellent movie, just like Unsharker.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, you don't have to go that far.
Speaker 3:I remember wanting to walk out of the Assassin's Creed movie. I saw it like by myself in Texas one day because I was bored. I was like yeah, you know, I like the games. And who was that? Who was it? Oh, michael Fassbender yeah how could you mess that up? Yeah, right, and, and I remember the Assassin's Creed parts are pretty cool, but everything outside of it is awful.
Speaker 3:so yeah, um yeah happy to see etio make an appearance again. A little bit higher on someone else's list, eric, let's go with you. Who is your number two? Is it etio again, did you put him into the?
Speaker 4:answer? Of course it's just etio. No, uh, surprisingly, uh, oh, I guess unsurprisingly for me. Uh, because Phil knows I'll play this game over and over. Uh, the first Bioshock is a classic. I never expected Bioshock Infinite to meet the hype that I had for it and this is kind of a two-person uh answer. But Booker and Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite are number two.
Speaker 4:I love the game again. I never expected it to be, and I don't know that I would say it's better than the first one. But to even hit close to the heights of the first Bioshock. And the first Bioshock doesn't really have a protagonist that has a lot of layers or depth and somehow that game and that story was still really special. But Infinite adds to it with two really well developed characters. I like the interactions with the characters and I like everything, the twists and the turns that we take with both of them, just from you know, top to bottom. Two characters that I love very much and they both complement each other very well. I really couldn't choose one. They're kind of both integral to that game. So Booker and Elizabeth, bioshock Infinite is my number two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one of those, one of the first games I remember playing where, like at the end of it, I just sat there kind of like shook, like my, trying to process what I just witnessed, like it really messed with my head and, yeah, that was. That's the only Bioshock game that I've beaten. I've started one but haven't finished it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too. I've never played two. I played parts of one, but Infinite is the first one I ever played all the way through and it's the first. This is a funny story it's the first game that I ever ended up owning through Redbox, because I never returned it. There goes $60 out of my pick because I played through it and I just I just ended up keeping it. What about you, dylan, with your? What do you think about this pick?
Speaker 2:From everything I know, it's a good pick. I Bioshock is one of the series that's kind of in my like my blank zone of as a gamer. Like I have started one and played one like up to like a zone or two in a couple of times and just like fall off it for some other game. I've never played two and I've heard great things about Infinite, but it's like, well, I, I want to play the first game first you know, and so I've just never made it to Infinite.
Speaker 2:But I hear that is good so it's on my list.
Speaker 3:I might have a Redbox copy laying around here somewhere if you want to borrow it?
Speaker 4:Let's hope not. I think Eric has it on.
Speaker 3:has a physical copy on every console he owns. I think so, every single one.
Speaker 4:He just yeah and then they brought out the collection. So like I've just been constantly piling that up on my, on my hard drive. But yeah, phil, no shot, you have that Redbox game. You literally will trade in the game.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure I traded in, because I already knew the money was gonna come out, so I just traded it in anyway, I'm sure for $3 a game stop. It was a great deal For probably $3 to buy a game I probably already owned at that time, probably Madden, is probably what I traded it in, for which?
Speaker 3:is not a great fire shock also getting a TV show. So, eric, we'll see, we'll get to revisit this list eventually and just talk about how each and every single one of these games we're talking about now has a terrible uh, two straight TV show or motion picture, whatever it's gonna be All right, let's get to Dylan's number two before we get to our number ones and, uh, you know, let's go from there.
Speaker 2:So I am gonna call an audible.
Speaker 3:Oh, first audible of the night.
Speaker 2:Yes, uh, jesse Faden from control. Oh shit okay, my number two. I really enjoyed control, uh, and I really enjoyed Jesse as a character. I thought like it helped that she was looking for her brother Dylan. That was kind of pretty cool.
Speaker 1:We really gotta save that guy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you probably should have added some more, some more really fluffed there before. You should have lived with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it you know it was. It was one of those cool things where it's like she's going in, like she is, is kind of like there's no nonsense, like just trying to figure out like what is going on here, like she's experiencing it's almost a little fourth wall breakie, where she's like experiencing this and she's almost talking to like you as the player and you're trying to like figure out, like what is going on here and she's experiencing it all and kind of giving voice to what you're experiencing as the player of like what, what is this? What is the oldest house? What is this? You know problem that we're doing dealing with the hiss, who am I now?
Speaker 2:Like they're saying I'm the director, um, and so just getting to see her kind of come from like this person off the street, uh, looking for her brother to like the director of the bureau for control, was really cool. And then, as you kind of go through, there are all sorts of like uh like files and stuff that you can read in the game, that kind of give you the backstory of like the, the stuff that happened to her and her brother, that kind of led them into like being a part of the control, like universe and everything which was really interesting. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do uh in the future with uh the, at least the universe. I hope it's her in it, because I think that'd be kind of cool to see her continue now that she knows what she's doing uh a little bit better so, yeah, what is the status of the control?
Speaker 3:Alan wake universe because, yeah, we've talked about control before, eric, in the our Alan wake episode, and control is a game that I never beat, but that's. I need to go back and play, especially since they upgraded it for for next-gen consoles. Um, but man, I was, I was definitely enthralled with at the time and then again with just life and you just fall off with with certain games. But, yeah, what's the status of the control universe? Are we waiting for Alan wake to, or is that? Yeah, that's the next thing, so Alan, wake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, alan wake two comes out next. There's like a maybe like off-shoots of the control game. That's like you're playing as like one of the like people who gets dispatched to like lockdown, uh, like these events that happen, and then they've they've said that they want to make control too. I don't think it's like I think it's been all hands on deck getting Alan wake two ready. So I don't know if they're. My impression is that they're probably trying to do like control to maybe next.
Speaker 2:But but I don't think they've really talked too much and we're we're in the like hype cycle of Alan wake two so yeah, for sure hear anything about it until after that and maybe, and you know, keeping in the theme of tv shows, I think Alan wake is supposed to be getting one.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much. So either at one point or still in development, yeah, yeah, um which we don't need.
Speaker 3:Uh, just, I'm kind of one of those I've been on record on the podcast saying. I'm kind of one of those snobs where I feel like if you're, if you're not going to play the game, then I don't really think you should be have access to the story. I mean, it's just the same thing with a book, like if I'm not gonna read the book, then I don't. I don't get the story, you know and I don't know. Again, it's a little, it's a. It's definitely gatekeeper, but and and the last of us kind of proved that wrong too.
Speaker 4:So what about for people that can't read whatever?
Speaker 3:I don't think that's fair oh, then I'm not saying, somebody here can't read.
Speaker 4:Like you, I can't confirm nor deny, but I'm just saying for the people that can't read I they need an advocate.
Speaker 1:I'll be that for kid well in the case of the Witcher, if you watch that show you don't get the story from the book.
Speaker 4:So sometimes there you go see unfortunate can't wait for Liam, am I right?
Speaker 3:yeah, andrew, what's your opinion thoughts on, you know, the control series and also Jesse?
Speaker 1:I really like control. It's a a really fun game, really unique universe. The gameplay was a blast. I don't know that Jesse necessarily stood out to me as a character like I think she's good. Just it was more so the world she was in and the ability she was given and stuff like that that drew me into it. But I also Dylan knows this I like my first time I played through the game, I just kind of like played through it. I didn't really immerse myself and like read all the lore tidbits and really like learn everything there is to learn in that game. So I kind of just had like a fun action adventure gaming session and so there's a lot of weird trippy stuff that I didn't fully understand.
Speaker 3:But yeah, she definitely isn't a bad character, but yeah yeah, I need to go back and finish that game and I definitely intend on doing it. So, yeah, again, a great, great pick and happy to see control get some love here on our list. So let's get to number one with our up highs and, eric, I think we'll go back to back. Let's let our, we'll let our guests wrap up their number ones, but let's go first, since we also know who our number ones are. Assuming that you haven't changed yours, I have certainly have not changed mine from when we uh our Thursday thought recordings, just to give you guys a little back or a little behind the scenes, we record all those at the same time. So sorry for spoiling it for illusion. You know, it's not like we're wearing the same t-shirt the entire time yeah, no, it's totally, totally fine early plug.
Speaker 4:You could have known that if you were a patron, uh, patron so patreon's like, like our patron briar shout out to the fire.
Speaker 3:He got an early shout out. So let's, I'll go first. I'll go with my number one here. Um, and I kind of I think, alluded to it a little bit earlier as far as this series, um it again.
Speaker 3:With red dead, I could have gone Arthur Morgan for sure and um, the thing with, and I could have gone that that route, because my number one wouldn't be the character they are today and the man and the father and human being, without Arthur Morgan, who is an incredibly important character and probably and definitely somebody that was just right outside of my list. Um, you can make an argument, if we did a top five, he might be on there. But I want with John Marston man again, it's, it's a bummer that rock star is just shoehorning these rereleases under the ps4 and the switch, because it is going to be the first time a lot of people play this game and they're gonna get exposed to John Marston. I mean, obviously, if you played red dead two, you've seen him, but like the John Marston, uh, that became this icon in gaming and he's a character that obviously is incredibly flawed. Um, but at his core, I think, as with a lot of the people within the van der linden gang, I mean like half of them. I would say they are good people and I don't look at John Marston as like somebody that I necessarily look up to, but I look at him as somebody that who's definitely doing his best and understands, um, you know what, sometimes you got to do some right, sometimes you got to do some wrong, and red dead redemption was definitely one of those experiences.
Speaker 3:As far as the hype train, I mean, I was working a games out by the time and game and former had given it a 10. You know something that was like I things that I had never seen before. As far as ratings, you know what was the game? Trailerscom I don't know if you guys remember that website. They gave it a 10. It was wild. Like the hype for this game was insane and, uh, red dead is, um, certainly an experience that it lends itself to. You can go back and play it at any point in time and John Marston is a big part of that. So it was a I won't say easy choice for me for John Marston, but I knew he was going to be in my top two. Uh, so he ended up in number one and uh, yeah, john Marston, red dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he, like you said uh, if, if your list had been you know five, these other people would have been on it. John Marston would definitely have been in my top five.
Speaker 1:So yeah, talking about another game that I just kind of sat there at the end like shook, like what just happened, except this time I was like crying yeah, yeah, I'll probably be one of the people playing the remastered, so that's a no, just yeah, let's do it, that's fine, yeah, it's such a bummer, especially when, like the rumors for the longest time were that they were going to remake it in like the red dead two engine.
Speaker 1:They already had like half the map or whatever. Yeah, but yeah, I know it's even I went back and replayed it like I had the backwards compatible like 360 copy and I went back and replayed it a couple years ago and it still holds up. It's such a, it's such a fantastic game and it's mostly due to the characters because, you know, the gameplay is the same classic rock star gameplay that we've had since forever, so it really does get lean on that the characters in the world building yeah, it's um like, like I said just, uh, I am excited that people are going to be experiencing it for the first time again.
Speaker 3:I just wish we were getting that remaster that we were relatively sure that we were going to get. And lo and behold, rock star did some rock star things. So yeah, we'll see what happens with GTA 6, I guess.
Speaker 2:As far, as that goes, we could still get the remaster, the xbox series x and playstation 5 version of it uh based on how they released GTA 5 several times, that's true that is true, although I mean they, although they completely abandoned red dead two.
Speaker 3:So yeah, we'll, even though, like there's nothing to do, it's still fun to just go into that world, and whether it's online or in the story mode. So yeah, and they don't recognize that that community is just starving for content and we'll pay for it. Honestly, they probably pay for it and they're just like, well, we got grant the thought of stuff to do. So, uh, eric, it is wild that, like at that time, you know, I was so obviously obsessed with that franchise, and still am obsessed with the franchise, that you have never gone through it. Right, have you played any of red dead? No, that's so, not even 15 minutes.
Speaker 4:I know it's, uh, it's a shame, which is, which is sad, because, like, I do have fun with like grand theft auto games. I think I just think, like like with grand theft auto 5 and and maybe this is just me being mad at rock, rock star, but yeah, I think I had a 50 completion to GTA 5, oh yeah and then I played online when it first came out and it corrupted my story file, so I never went back to it and I think, just out of pure hatred, I just, I just stay away, I just stay away.
Speaker 3:So again, maybe at one point but yeah, it hurt my feelings well, eric, let Andrew and Dylan and the rest of our audience know where you went.
Speaker 4:So, with your number one pick for a pie, I don't know if either of you guys would have picked this, so I'm gonna confidently go for it.
Speaker 4:Um not Dylan no, no, I'm just guessing so, uh, my character is from a little uh franchise called the last of us, okay, and that character is actually Ellie. And Ellie is interesting because I it wasn't a character like I immediately fell in love with, but between the two games she's just such a complex character. I love the journey that we've taken so far and it's that gray line that she crosses as a character that makes her really compelling. So the more I've thought about it, the more I've kind of like leaned into wanting a trilogy with this character. I mean, she is the main character of the series. I think she deserves that swan song and I don't know I just I've really grown with that character. The show helped with that too, as far as just everything she has to offer. So Ellie from the Last of Us is my number one.
Speaker 2:Nice, that's all I have to add my as a much less person. I can't really speak to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what are we thinking, andrew?
Speaker 1:I mean, I figured the Last of Us would would pop up at some point and, with the show being recent, you know, that's probably what got Eric back into the, in the mood for the Last of Us. He saw the show. So now Ellie is a very interesting character. I mean, that is one thing about Naughty Dog.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of I don't vibe with a lot of their gameplay choices, but they're really good at creating layered characters that in the Last of Us, the case of the Last of Us, like you don't really fully like any of them, but you're invested in all of them and you're interested in all of them and their stories. You know Joel being the same way, abby, all of them, like they're all very flawed, but you can kind of understand each of their perspectives, and so I do. I do think that as far as characters go, they're they're pretty, pretty hard to beat. As far as quality, you picked Ellie from the first game, or both games, because you can't play her in the first one except for, like what, the DLC, right? Well, I guess there's the chapter at the end. So that's the level OK.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's probably the loophole. But I mean, if I had to pick, I'd probably say the second game, because she has the growth from the first one and everything she has to endure in the second game.
Speaker 4:I mean, I definitely I don't want to go back to the Last of Us to any time at all, not like in the future and I can't it's tough, but I mean that's part of that, that's part of the relationship to a character that you know, especially right now, in gaming you don't really get to experience a lot, and I think that's something really special. And in the second game, you know I really enjoyed it, but the more that it sat with me and I get to think, I always think about that game and I think about moments from that game and that's made me want more from that world. And you know she's definitely a top character for a lot of people. For me happens to be my top one right now.
Speaker 1:This is kind of unrelated. Do you guys think that they'll recast her for season two in the show, as like in season one? Because who they got to play in season one did a really good job, as like young Ellie. But do you think that they could pull off the kind of older and more crazy Ellie that we got in part two?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, Bella Ramsey is really good.
Speaker 1:I think she can do it she could do it.
Speaker 4:I do want them to take their time with it. I don't think they should have to rush it so.
Speaker 3:I don't know coming out anytime soon. True it's not.
Speaker 4:it's not coming out anytime soon and I'm curious how they're going to handle it, because I don't think they're going to handle the second game in just one season. So I think, we're going to have some time and I think they'll be able to have a little bit of grace with the first part of that game and then the second part of that game, if they do decide to split the second game into like two seasons.
Speaker 3:Dylan, just because you're obviously in the in this and not necessarily play the Last of Us, but I assume you know what happens in the Last of Us Part Two, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know all of the like the main story beats, not like one to one, but yeah, I know, I know the big stuff, so yeah, yeah, and Eric, you've made this point before.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can make an argument that Ellie is barely a protagonist, especially in the second game. So she's a very, very, very interesting character. And also, you know, as I mentioned, as far as putting a naughty dog character on my list, she definitely got some kid's consideration, as did Joel. So but, yeah, I am good with that pick here on on my end. Eric and Andrea, like I said, I know you voice your, your concerns when we had, you know, playstation episodes. You know about the, the gameplay choices when it comes to naughty dog, but certainly their characters are always, are always, top notch. But let's get to y'all's picks here. For, for number one, dylan, let's go with you. Where did you land number one up high list Protagonist, like video game protagonist.
Speaker 2:Yes, so mine is the prince from the Prince of Persia series. Oh, I am a big fan of the Prince of Persia series and well, what it was, not so much what it has become, Ouch. But I remember playing through that game like on the original Xbox, and just like the prince is like the sarcastic, like smarmy, like dude, like telling the story to like the princess and you know kind of like embellishing it, playing it up like very charismatic, and then like he gets very emo in the second game and then he comes back and he's, you know, like still kind of his sarcastic, like telling this story, you know, fighting against like the dark side of himself versus like the good side of himself. And I just really enjoyed him as a character, really enjoyed him like the games themselves. There are other iterations of him, like there was another version on the 360 that was like shell-sated and stuff and like that was a pretty cool one.
Speaker 2:And I'm just a fan of the Prince and I would love to see Ubisoft put out a game, let alone more Prince of Persia games, just in general. And so I was excited when I thought that they were going to remake it because, like the Prince of Persia Sansa time is old enough at this point Like it's backwards compatible on the Xbox series X and stuff, so like you can play it, but it's old and so I feel like a lot of people trying to get into it wouldn't be able to really like appreciate a lot of that game for what it was, because it feels old. And so I was excited when they were remaking it because I was like finally they're going to like update it, make it a little bit more streamlined, a little bit more modern, you know, put some modern sensibilities into it. I also need to stay on theme and you know Jake Gyllenhaal played the Prince, the Prince of Persia movies, so you know fun, fun fact, a movie I don't hate.
Speaker 4:Yeah, don't hate that movie like everyone else hates it.
Speaker 2:Of the video game movies. I wasn't mad at that movie. It wasn't like it hit enough of the Prince of Persia vibes to be like. You know what they did, ok, so yeah, fun.
Speaker 4:Other fun fact I also love what I've gotten from Prince of Persia. The Sands of Time is a great game and I remember playing the Forgotten Sands, which I don't think is like up there as far as great Prince of Persia games, but I remember having a ball with it. So I think that's a great choice. An iconic character that doesn't get enough love, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:They've like put out so many bland I won't say so many, but they put out a good amount of bland Assassin's Creed characters. They can't give us a good like a new Prince of Persia game. Like Prince of Persia is so ripe for a remaster or a reboot based on the gameplay, like a brand new generation of people like getting to play that game for the first time would be fantastic, and then you would get the nostalgia crowd in, like it makes all the sense in the world but it just sits, sits, dormant and it doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 2:Well, they got to pay the guy who came up with Prince of Persia.
Speaker 3:Jake Jelenholm.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well yeah, so yeah, like they've they've talked about it where it's like well, assassin's Creed is our IP, so we can just make a new one. But right, assassin's Creed, we have to pay the original creators. So like, we're not going to do it.
Speaker 3:So I think I'm like Assassin's Creed Sands of Time we're like well, son of a bitch Like that's.
Speaker 1:Well, we do have the 2D Prince of Persia game that's coming out in January. That looks pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that looks interesting. I don't know they're putting a lot of like.
Speaker 1:It looks like they're putting a lot of care into it. So if it does well, it could be like kind of a stepping stone into like bring the series back yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would be great. I love, love that pick. Like you said, eric, a character and a series deserves more love. And you know what? We're going to look back in 2024 and say it all started right here on this podcast episode.
Speaker 2:Yes, we're going to take credit for it.
Speaker 3:And there you go, and then they're going to have to pay us for that. So, Andrew, let's get with with your number one, number one on your up high list video game protagonist. Where did you go?
Speaker 1:So there was a character that I thought there was no way that the developers would be able to make me like better than John Marston, but they did it, and Arthur Morgan takes the number one spot on my list. There's just some kind of to me right now.
Speaker 2:I'm, my mind is blown.
Speaker 1:Well, there's just something about like his growth and like just him as a character. They intentionally make you not like him, like as a person. And then you get to watch his journey and watch who he becomes and what he is as a member of the gang, and then you know you throw in the whole TV wrinkle and it's just like shocked me the first time I played through the game and I was just like, wow, I've not seen this coming and I know this can only like end one way and so, yeah, just an incredible game. Like I was already a huge fan of the first game and I thought, yeah, there's no way that, whatever this guy is, this new protagonist, that I'm going to like him as much or even more than John Marston. But but they did it and I do think it helps that John Marston was a bit of a dumbass in Red Dead 2.
Speaker 1:He's a moron, he, he was like. You got to see him make a lot of his younger mistakes that he references in in the Red Dead Redemption, and so it kind of helped put him into a little bit more perspective. And when you saw him up against Arthur Morgan, who seemed to kind of have it all together, at least on the outside, but, yeah, no, just an incredible character. And Dylan, yes, geralt is in my honorable mentions. Ok, yeah, I was my wife, so sure yeah, I was I was like.
Speaker 1:I know his top one is Geralt of Rivia, and then I had to get Amicia in there, so you know we should have coordinated ahead of time, because I definitely would have thrown Amicia if you hadn't.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and you can kind of make a little bit of an argument like it's with you know, John Marston being my number one, that he's just an extension of Arthur Morgan. You know we don't get the John Marston that we get in the first Red Dead if not for Arthur Morgan. And, like you said, andrew, when they throw in the TV angle and I remember that coming up and my heart sunk, like it like because you know this is what's going to happen and yeah, it doesn't make it game.
Speaker 4:It didn't make it any less devastating either.
Speaker 1:Yeah when it when it happens, even though you know it's coming and you're God and it makes replays so interesting.
Speaker 1:When you play the game, like knowing how the story ends and how things progress, you kind of pick up on all these little things that were there the whole time but you just weren't paying attention or didn't you know know to think about them because Rockstar puts so much care into, like their worlds and their characters. I think them and Naughty Dog are probably the two like unmatched when it comes to that character and world building.
Speaker 3:Red Dead is probably the only series that I go like. Videos will pop up on YouTube and it'll be like 30 secrets that you've never seen, and it's legitimately 30 things I've never seen in the game before, like usually it's just the same video over and over again, from whatever game it may be, but in Red Dead it's always something like you can have a conversation with this person. Look at the nut sack on this bear, you know. I mean like, something like.
Speaker 2:I've never seen that before Exactly. That's really really detailed.
Speaker 3:So, eric, I mean you got to just take a couple of months and just play through both games, man, because they're incredible. You won't believe it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that last point with the nut sack on the bear got me really interested. For some reason, I think I'm going to pop that game in time. The amount of work that went into the horses.
Speaker 3:Bear Bear Janet Ailey has come up a lot because we've been talking about what's it called. That's about to come out on what's the cocaine bear. Not cocaine bear, no, the Dungeons and Dragons game that's coming out.
Speaker 4:That's already out of PC. Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate, yeah, we've been talking about.
Speaker 3:Bear Janet Ailey a little bit too much recently. I don't know, that's a weird.
Speaker 4:It's a weird time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but yeah again, you got to take time and just play through the Red Dead games. Maybe we'll just not talk to you for two months until you finish them and then.
Speaker 4:That's not going to help anything. It's like you, but yes. But look, I mean listen, we had one overlap for the up high. That was a pretty good, pretty good turnout. I'm really excited for this down low. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we have high potential for some overlap, but I think there's going to be some interesting ones here.
Speaker 3:This is where, again, the TikTok clip is going to come from, and I'm just going to have to stay off of it for a little bit. So yeah, let's transition.
Speaker 4:Yeah, see what hot takes down low and see what happens here.
Speaker 3:Eric, you want to kick us off? With your your number three. Let's go ahead and have you go first. Yeah typically your favorite part of the episode.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, this worked out because we had already mentioned him and talked a little bit about him. So we'll kind of breeze through him like I tried to breeze through the gameplay of the first Assassin's Creed. All tie here is number three. Just so boring. I remember playing the first game and remembering Phil mentioned the hype to it. I remember the hype to that game. I just walked away really unimpressed. That's really what it was. I can't remember a lot about the character. The word brooding is like popping in my head. I don't know how accurate of a description that is. He just was so bland and just boring and he wanted. He's literally the least interesting to me, the least interesting Assassin out of all of the games that I've played. So all tie here number three, and I feel like it was. It's not even close. It's a pretty easy choice.
Speaker 3:Has he popped up since Revelations? Well he's not, unless it was in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was in Revelations in like a meaningful way. He may have like been referenced or brought back up in like some sort of DLC for one of the newer games or something, because they have like Valhalla kind of brings Desmond back in a certain way, so like they do kind of dabble in the past, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head that was like significant. That involved all tie here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like we talked about, like the hype for the first one was crazy. That's the what's one of the first collectors additions I ever preordered, because you know, I was making my own money around that time. And then the game came out and I was like, all right, this is getting pretty repetitive. It's cool, I guess.
Speaker 3:But, it wasn't wasn't what I thought it was going to be. But, eric, I'm not mad at you at all for putting that all to air. He's like the one we we probably think about the least, and there have been some, if you ones to since then, so I don't blame you for putting them up. For putting all to air at number three, dylan, how about you? Where did you go for? And again, which is maybe going to be the more controversial side of this list for all of us, yeah.
Speaker 2:So number three, the bottom of this list, is really tough to make because I was trying to. I was like if I don't like a video game protagonist, I pretty much just stop playing the game I don't like continue to play it. So my number three is capitalism. As myself for Jurassic World Evolution, because, what a choice because the the people. They want to see a T Rex Phil, they want to see the T Rex. And I don't have the money to safely enclose a T-Rex, but damn it. They want to see the T-Rex.
Speaker 3:Oh God.
Speaker 2:And so capitalism just drives me to put that T-Rex in an unelectrified cage and just eat the lawsuits that come with it. Man, it's worth it. I'm making more profit than I'm losing to lawsuits. So so, that is my number three Is the capitalist Jurassic Park director in Jurassic.
Speaker 3:World Evolution. You're just going to have to look at a Struthiomimus for like a couple more days. I don't know what to tell you, we got to bring your family back so I can get more money. I can't house this T-Rex right now unless you want to yourself die at this park. If that's part of it, then fine, yes.
Speaker 2:I can't afford enough bunkers to protect you all. You're just going to have to like I'm cutting corners left and right here, guys.
Speaker 3:It's one of the reasons that I have so many hours on the first Jurassic World Evolution is because I would replay the campaign and you just have to wait. You just have to wait until you get enough money. The campaign is pretty much non-existent in GWB2, so there's not really much to do, but in the first one I would play through it over and over again just rebuild the park. But it takes forever to get the substantial amount of money to proceed, especially in the first island.
Speaker 2:Not if you cut corners, though it's maddening. So that's true, yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean listen, if you guys just want to, if you want thrills, I'll give you thrills, but don't you know, you feel like there should be some kind of waiver as far as that goes? Yes, andrew, what do you think about Dylan's number three, pink?
Speaker 1:It's almost like he hasn't seen the movies.
Speaker 2:It's true, you know it's going to happen. That was the point. That was the point of the movies.
Speaker 1:I've never played these games, so I really don't have much to add.
Speaker 2:It's basically Zoo Tycoon, but you're not properly enclosing your alliance.
Speaker 3:Basically. Also, they just added a new feature where guests won't react to any of your dinosaurs that are just running around so you can have just like a free roam park if you wanted to do it. I'm still very much in tune with the JWE community, so they just released a marine species pack.
Speaker 4:So I put a lot of money into it.
Speaker 3:Eric, I don't think you're ever going to get into the park builders, so that's, that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 4:I used to love roller coaster, tycoon that's about, and then the Sims. But like I, kind of, once you grow, grow out of it, it's hard to go back. So I just I never, I never went back, yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, the whole reason I wanted gaming PC is to play Planet Zoo. So again concerning it's been, $1,200 and like, and I will put this lemur right here Andrew, what is your number three? I'm your download list.
Speaker 1:My number three. So this, the bottom, was tougher for me than the top. So for number three I went with just kind of a meme in the world of video games. I have watched these games been played. I have not played them myself because they're scary and I went with Ethan Winters.
Speaker 1:Yep as just a name that is constantly thrown out when talking about just terrible protagonists and like so many videos and and memes made about him and the way he reacts to things you know, like having his hand chopped off and whatever, and yeah, just the cheesy stuff he says yeah, exactly, so I thought he was a pretty safe pick. I had a couple like honorable mentions that we'll talk about later that could have swapped out here, but yeah, three was the most flexible spot for me on this list.
Speaker 3:He's in six and seven seven and seven and eight, seven and eight, seven and eight. That's right. Yeah, six was the one that they had to be like. Ok, no more of these, we need to. Yeah, he's the two first person ones.
Speaker 1:And they like go out of their way, even in the DLC for eight, where it's like third person or whatever, or where you're playing as his daughter, to still never see his face.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really I've also never played either one.
Speaker 3:I played through five because it was co-op.
Speaker 4:We played through five.
Speaker 3:That was fun. Was that you and me? Yeah, that was you and me. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. I don't know if they're going to. Maybe that one will get the remaster treatment. I don't know if we want to see him punch rock 2024.
Speaker 1:We do, we definitely do yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I've heard obviously great things about the games themselves, but Ethan himself not. Not great, eric, what do you know about Ethan Winters?
Speaker 4:I've only heard about him. I never played he doesn't punch rock no no. So already a count against him. But no, I've heard of, I've heard of the character and I have seen him on lists. So like previous lists that I've looked at for like top and bottom protagonist kind of doing some research in advance of the episode, he came up at least once or twice, so not surprising to hear that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not really really good pick there. My number three is another recent character and I'm interested to see what kind of reactions I get, because it's probably recency bias and the fact that I found this game a little disappointing. The more time that passes and I don't know what's going to happen in this third game I am hating at Reyes more and more each and every time I get a chance To spend time with him.
Speaker 3:I hated all the atreus sections in Ragnarok. He's a little shit in the first game already, so the fact that he has some of the actually the most unlike, unplayable and unlikeable parts of Ragnarok I was just so upset when I had to go back to playing atreus in Ragnarok. So if that trend continues, he might be higher on this list eventually.
Speaker 1:You know when he's the protagonist.
Speaker 3:Right when he was just gets God of War, atreus in the third, in the third game. So yeah, atreus number three for me.
Speaker 4:Interesting. I just seemed a little surprised. I didn't see it coming. I didn't know you hate him that much, that much. I can't wait to hear your honorable mentions.
Speaker 3:Ragnarok in general was pretty. I was relatively not diss. I mean, disappointed is a strong word, but like I'm not going to go back and play it again, put it that way. I'm not going to go through the first one three times, but I'm not going to go back and play through Ragnarok. So Andrew thoughts on on atreus getting some hate from me here.
Speaker 1:I knew you didn't like him. I don't know if we've ever gone like in depth about it. I thought he was annoying in the first game and some of that was some pacing where, like he went through like all the phases of like childhood and teenager and like being angsty and angry, like felt really quick.
Speaker 4:One more trip yeah.
Speaker 1:I thought he was better as a character in Ragnarok. I thought, like you know, he actually had some of his own agency. He had his own like kind of goals and things in mind that he was trying to do. I definitely agree that, while I liked it cinematically and what it did for the story and what it allowed for, like some of the transitions when you could, when you had to play as him, I definitely, every time I had to play as him, was just ready to get back to Kratos.
Speaker 3:And there's definitely and we've seen this in all the games that we've played there are definitely moments where you can slow things down. I mean, that's just how storytelling works. But I just didn't enjoy that, and I think it's definitely more the gameplay of Atreus as opposed to the character himself, because, yes, like you said, he's definitely is more more integral than he already was in the first game and has a lot to offer. But I just really just like those sections so much and the thought of it just made me put him on this list here. So, dylan, what have you heard about Atreus on your end?
Speaker 2:Apparently he's pretty annoying so I've played a little bit of the first God of War About 15 minutes. Yeah, about 15 minutes Cut offs pretty much and like he's fine in that, like he hasn't grinded my gears too too much, but also I haven't gotten super far into that game, so you know it is what it is, but yeah, he's, I can see how he would be very annoying.
Speaker 3:Just don't take the hammer and the axe away from me, man. I just don't want to be a wolf, I want to be the God of War. So that's why you ended up number three on my list. Let's get into number two here. Let's see what order will go in this time. Let's go with Dylan. Let's go ahead and start with you, who was number two on your download list.
Speaker 2:I put Frank West from.
Speaker 2:Dead Rising here, not a bad pick which version? Pretty much any of them. He's kind of a tool in any of them, but he's just like I don't know. He like he's not terrible, but we I had to put somebody for like the lows and he was kind of just like a self-righteous, like self or not self-righteous, self self-serving prick in like all of the Dead Rising games that he's been in, which is necessarily like a bad thing.
Speaker 2:I just thought he was kind of like a douche as a protagonist and so it was just kind of like oh, okay, yeah, like I'll pick Frank West because, like I was trying to remember it's been a while since I played the original one I was trying to remember how much of the original one he caused, like you know, in like a 28 days later, 28 weeks later, sort of situation where it's like it's the, it's the protagonist family that basically like does all of it and causes all of the issues. And I'm like, is Frank that? And I don't think he quite is to that level, but he definitely like messes up a lot and causes a lot of the events of the games and he's just kind of like a like annoying asshole throughout the entire game.
Speaker 3:So is he worse than the guy in the second game? I mean, at least the guy in the second game is like trying to like the Zombrex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, trying to get the cure for his daughter or whatever it's like that. That, at least like Frank, would definitely be like no, I'm going to like take this cure and take it from you, even though you have a daughter, so that's. That's. That's Frank as a person.
Speaker 3:So the Dead Rising series is a series I looked at, certainly with rose color glasses, for a while, until I went back and replayed them, I'm like this isn't very fun. No, I'm not enjoying myself when I got because that was like was it a launch title for the 360?
Speaker 4:I can't remember it was okay.
Speaker 3:Or very close to it for sure. So it was one of the first games I got.
Speaker 4:Who played the hell out of it.
Speaker 3:Like you're just kind of yeah, so you're just kind of like oh man, look at all the zombies on the screen and you have the. You know the time limit was cool, but like going back and playing and I'm like this, I am not enjoying this.
Speaker 2:It feel there's been a lot of updates to gaming that left Dead Rising in the past. And yeah, like, because I remember playing it at the time and I was like, yes, it's pretty fun, and I played it again like all the way through, probably a few years ago at this point, maybe four or five years ago, and it was a little bit like this is an older game, you could tell. And then, like I was playing through a bit of two and it's just like, oh yeah, like this is like it's fun to an extent, but it's also just like there's so many like little pieces to this where it's like it's not a true, like open world, whereas like if it came out today, you would be able to seamlessly go through all bits and pieces of it all at once.
Speaker 2:And then there's like just a bunch of like little annoying things that the game does. That really just kind of stack up, I think so.
Speaker 3:Andrew, what are your thoughts on on Frank West and what's your familiarity with him?
Speaker 1:Next to none. I played a little bit of two way back in the day and the time limit stress me out. And then three, I think was a launch title for the like Xbox one.
Speaker 4:And I played that wasn't.
Speaker 1:Frank, that wasn't Frank, but I played that one all the way through. And then Frank came back for four and I played that one all the way through, but I couldn't tell you a thing about it, except it was like at Christmas time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of when you said four was. I think that was a Christmas, right? Isn't he like in the sand outfit? Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't remember anything about him as a character from that game and I don't know that they leaned into that in that game. At that point it was like hey, this is open world and we have all this. We've kind of discovered that this series is about like driving a golf cart through a thousand zombies while you have a lightsaber that you're hacking them to death with, like it's a street fighter helmet.
Speaker 3:Exactly what do you mean, guys? He has a camera. What are you talking about? Like you know how Ken's job is just beach, like Frank West job is just camera, like that's all he does. Yeah, not a, not a very good one, and it's a game. That's like the opposite of what we were talking about. Prince of Persia, I don't. I don't want to see Dead Rising come back.
Speaker 3:You know, I don't. I don't think we need it, Even if they were to update it. I mean we just got through Dead Island to Eric and I mean that was it was fun, but like I don't want to, if that wasn't, if that wasn't co-op, we would not have played it Right Like it was fine.
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 3:So I think the second game had co-op. I mean, we didn't play it, but yeah.
Speaker 4:And did rising's fine. I mean, Frank almost made my list, but he's definitely an honorable mention. He was an honorable mention. Yeah, and just because he is an asshole, but he's also a little forgettable in the grand scheme of you know, protagonist.
Speaker 3:So that's a good pick, and this was also the peak of the zombie craze. Yeah, you know so and then, but they kept going after that craze and pretty much like died off. So, yeah, that's a that's a really, really good pick. Andrew, who was your number two down low side.
Speaker 1:My number two is any Far Cry protagonist. You can even talk about Far Cry 3, which is like the best in the series, the one that really kind of skyrocketed in popularity was a really fun game. Everybody remembers Voss, the villain, but you play as like this rich frat theater, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who just shows up on the island and all of a sudden knows how to like use AK's and stuff. Yeah, it was, and they've all basically been like that. The most recent one, I tried to play Far Cry 6. And it's just like man. Listening to Danny talk is just annoying. Listening to these characters interact is just irritating. Like I don't care really about the story, I don't care about the struggle. I want to like sick my alligator on dudes and infiltrate bases and whatever. But then I have to listen to the, the protagonist, give commentary through everything I'm doing and it's like man. I almost kind of want to play this game with just like no volume and music in my headphones or something. So you can basically copy paste this to any of the Far Cry's. I started with three, so I don't know if, like two and one were a little different, but that was a different era of gaming for sure. From three forward they've basically been the same game and they've all pretty much had bad protagonists.
Speaker 3:You know, one of them had woolly woolly mammoths in it. Yeah, I was going to push back.
Speaker 4:I was like I think you must be forgetting about Blood Dragon, because that was a grand time Dragon was excellent, that was.
Speaker 1:DLC for three that people loved so much that they like kind of spun it out and started selling it individually.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of stuff that made a show on it, right, or they're making a show.
Speaker 1:I think they're making a show.
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 1:I think that's what they're doing with everything, apparently, as this episode goes on. But that's the kind of that's like where Far Cry is at its best, like when it leans into that stuff, when they're talking about like because Voss was so successful, you have to have like this really dark and evil antagonist that you know you're trying to overthrow and they try to build all this tension. But it's like the gameplay loop of these games is silly. That's why people are playing them, so let's just lean into the silly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've been playing through. We've taken a break on it, but our friend Jordan, who designed our logo and has been on the show too. We've been playing through six and it's a lot of fun. I couldn't tell you shit about what's going on Exactly. I have no idea what's happening. I know Jean-Carlo Esposito is in it.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And he's actually really good. But it's weird because, like you think they would put because there are good villains in this. I can't remember the name of the villain in the fourth one, but I know he's. He's really solid.
Speaker 3:Pagan Min Yep, really really good. They put the same amount of time into their protagonist that they do their antagonist, because like that would make the villain that much more meaningful. But yeah, like I don't know, I don't care about what Danny has to say about you know, whatever the name of the island is in six, I couldn't tell you. I remember one part happened in in the while we were playing the story and Jordan reacted like very emotional she's like oh damn, that's crazy. And I was like what? Like? Because I was on my phone not paying attention. And that's how it goes with the Far Cry games yeah.
Speaker 3:Dylan, what do you think I mean? Or what are the Far Cry games? Have you played?
Speaker 2:If any. I've played a bit of all of them except six, I think, and like the starting with three. But yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's basically the same assessment as Andrew, where it's, you know, like yeah like, the villains are typically pretty charismatic, pretty interesting, but the, the protagonist could just not. You know, they could just be like a Gordon Freeman, not speak at all, sort of guy, and I would get just as much, if not more, enjoyment from the game, because that, you know, I don't remember it from like three and four, but, like, as the games went on, the protagonist got more and more chatty and it doesn't need that please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, brody specifically talked way too much. And then for them to get rid of Voss three, four. So the way through the game was, you know they had the the balls to do that. So, yeah, no, I wouldn't really be able to tell you anything about any of the heroes in Far Cry. What about you, eric Heroes?
Speaker 4:Heroes no Again. Blood Dragons, where it's at. I'll put that above everything. Again, I think there's only exclusion.
Speaker 3:My favorite show, Stranger Things. There is a Stranger Things expansion in Far Cry 6. And again, it's pretty fun because when you lean into the silliness of it it's a good time. So, like, just do that. I didn't play the post-apocalyptic one that happened after five. What was that one called that?
Speaker 1:was Far Cry, it wasn't number New Dawn. New Dawn or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I heard that had kind of like silly villains.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it was OK.
Speaker 1:But it does seem like Blood Dragon, the caveman one, and then, yeah, the like the one you're talking about, new Dawn. It seems like they do when they do their little spin offs, get a little bit more kind of wacky and creative with it, but for the main series they seem to try to take it too seriously for what it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm writing a woolly mammoth was top notch, so that was good stuff. I'll go next here, eric. Here's. Here's the clip, because I'm God I was. I thought about just leaving this, even though these are my true feelings. Ok, I understand the importance of this character historically in gaming.
Speaker 4:Not a good sign. Not a good sign when you're starting that way. Ok.
Speaker 3:But I don't like really any of their games apart aside from one. All the rest of them. I'm first off. I'm terrible at platforming. Ok, I'm really really bad at it. I don't think it's very fun either. I also think he is a little bit of an idiot too for constantly finding himself in these situations to do this one thing over and over and over again. I don't like any Mario games. Ok, the movie. The movie's fine. He's also a moron in the movie, let's be honest with you. He's pretty stupid in the movie and I just don't, I think, when your dumb sidekick brother has the best game and the way she's mentioned.
Speaker 3:I think there's a conversation to be had. I have never liked really any of the Mario games aside from Mario Kart. I didn't own a Super Nintendo's and I'm really bad at that too. Which is what's going to come up in the comments for TikTok is how bad I am and I'm not a gamer because I don't like Mario. I didn't have a Super Nintendo. I didn't really like Mario 64. I got it for for GoldenEye. I wasn't playing Mario 64. I didn't own a GameCube and I barely touched my Switch, so I put Mario number two. Knowing the consequences, here we are. Go ahead and say whatever it is that anybody needs to say.
Speaker 4:I love it. I love it. This is great, easy content. I did all your work for you.
Speaker 1:I just need to take a moment of silence for Phil and his opinions.
Speaker 2:I'll jump on board with Phil on this one Like.
Speaker 2:I mean to me Mario does fall more into like the the mascot sort of thing and so like he doesn't really have a whole lot of personality in my mind and so it's like, yeah, it's not a very interesting protagonist I could see ranking him low. I also have like none of the nostalgia, like Phil, for any Mario games. I've never really played a ton of them because the ones that I have played I have not enjoyed and so it's just kind of like outside of, like Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door I could, and like Mario's like spin-off games where he's golfing or he's racing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're soccer. He's like playing a board game. I'll play that.
Speaker 2:I'll take those all the time, but like an actual, real Mario game. Yeah, he is a boring protagonist. The game itself is not the particular style that I enjoy, so, yeah, I'm on board with this.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Dylan. That won't make it to TikTok, so it's only going to be me. Yeah, I appreciate it. For anybody that is listening to the episode, yeah, I just I'm not with it. Man, I'm not the biggest Nintendo fan already, but and this is another series I haven't really dove into but there are like the Metroid series or the Zelda series I'm going to. I want to play those before I ever go back and play any of the classic Mario's or even the current ones. The only one that kind of interests me is what's the one on the on the Switch? Is it where he's like you can be a T-Rex? Yeah, that one Odyssey. See, there you go, it's got dinosaurs in it. So there you go, you draw me in More dinosaurs and then maybe I'll play. I'll play more Mario games. I'm a pretty simple guy, guys.
Speaker 4:That's, that's crazy. Yeah, no, I'm definitely going to make sure to clip that in the worst way possible. So I'm very excited very excited for the opportunities that are here and it's fine, thank you.
Speaker 3:I'm replying. No, don't Stop, you can't control. Well, you can just delete the comments from my personal account.
Speaker 4:So I'm going to need to yeah. All right, Does that leave me next for two?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Mario is just video gaming and out.
Speaker 4:Oh, again going to clip this. That's probably. That's actually probably what's going to start the clip. Just you know it'll be that and then it'll go into the actual rant.
Speaker 3:Just helping you out, man, thank you.
Speaker 4:So I had a hard time with this one. I could. I could put someone else here. That's an honorable mention but I'm going to go with this character because I really just hate this character any time they're on screen. Now, they're not necessarily the protagonist of the franchise, but they do have their own solo games, so they I would consider this to be a protagonist, and one of the main ones is your show man.
Speaker 2:I was just explaining. Don't worry, people are still jumping on film in the comments.
Speaker 3:Exactly Paying attention. They're just looking up my social media to tell me to go jump off.
Speaker 4:So Sonic the Hedgehog is a pretty big franchise and there's a character by the name of Tails.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God.
Speaker 4:And I hate, I hate Tails so much. I've never liked anything about this character. Anytime you've had to play as Tails, it's a bad time. It's the atreus of Sega, it's don't. I don't love this character. It even extends to the movies Spoilers if you're not caught up on the movies. But you know the little cameo for Tails too. I just don't. I don't care anything for this character. So maybe a hot take, maybe not, but Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 2:I feel like you could say any Sonic the Hedgehog character. It'd be like yeah, this deserves to be near the bottom of a list.
Speaker 4:So literally any character that's not Sonic or Knuckles or Shadow like yeah, pretty much everybody else shadow yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean.
Speaker 4:I mean Shadow. I'm not going to act like I'm like we saw Sonic two together right. We did.
Speaker 3:Do you remember the kid yell when he saw spoilers? Shadow is in the post credit scene for Sonic too. What Sorry guys he, this kid, yelled in the movie.
Speaker 4:He's so excited we looked over Shadow. Is that what that sounds like?
Speaker 3:OK, that kid was me at that age, or I like Tails man, but I think that's really mostly just because he could fly in the game, because I had a game gear. When that's the Sonic game, the first Sonic game I played was on the game gear and flying a song. I mean Tails, sorry, but yeah, I mean he is. He is a little bit of a. He's a whiner for sure. So it's interesting to very iconic franchises landed on our list. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, tails, he's a little bit of a dork, so I don't I don't hate it. All right, guys. So this is all led to this. With number one, I'm actually going to go first here, because we've already touched on this series a few times actually, so I'll go ahead and kick it off, because it's all continuing to tie back to the first Assassin's Creed game.
Speaker 1:Desmond, I want Desmond.
Speaker 3:At one point remember we were like, yeah, I want Assassin's Creed in the real world, in current times. And then I got to know Desmond. I'm like I don't want to play as him, though. I want to play as someone cool. And Desmond is just a he sucks man. He's got no charisma, he's got very no like ability. Doesn't he end up? Isn't he the? The reason he ended up getting killed? Didn't he basically get himself killed? I'm trying to even remember how, doesn't he? He kills the girl at the end of what was that Assassin's Creed?
Speaker 1:The. I mean it all had to do with, like, stopping the world or something, but yeah, and he chose the girl he's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, desmond is along with I almost said atreus, along with Altair is a big, obviously the reasons that this got off to such a rough start and they had to do quite a bit of work. But yeah, desmond, just he sucks man and I I don't want to see him ever again. I don't want to see a live action version of him. I don't care who plays him. You can cast Pedro Piscol as Desmond Miles. I don't give a shit, I don't ever want to see him ever again.
Speaker 1:Well, don't beat Valhalla.
Speaker 3:Oh is he in Valhalla.
Speaker 1:He, he makes a comeback in a sci-fi, roundabout way.
Speaker 3:God, not that I would play them to understand what's happening. I would just play them because they're good games, but I don't. Of course he does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those I played through all of Assassin's Creed one and the worst parts of Assassin's Creed one were any time it pulled you out of doing cool stuff in like the movie in Jerusalem, to force you to walk around slowly in some like sci-fi, like sterile environment as Desmond, and it was just like OK, yeah, I remember booting up to this as quickly and being like, why am I playing as a, as a dude in a lab?
Speaker 1:Like because it starts out as Desmond, like right out the gate. And I had no context for these games. All I knew was like the Assassin's stuff. And I was like, yeah, this is, this is really weird. What did I put in the right game? And then you know, eventually it picks up. But yeah, then they keep yanking you back out to go do stuff as Desmond, and that continues in your room until three I think, and then Black Flag. You get to be like a Obstergo employee or something.
Speaker 3:They still yank you out for whatever reason, but yeah, erwin, did you expect this much Assassin's Creed representation on both I?
Speaker 4:didn't? Jordan is going to have a blast listening to this episode. Yeah, she wants us to play the franchise again. So bad. But we've mainly been shitting on it outside of Ezio, so yeah, yeah and not, not great. Not great at all.
Speaker 3:Well, andrew, let's have you go next year with your number one on your download list. I want to see if anybody is is going to replace my Mario clip on TikTok, which would be very helpful. I'd appreciate it if anybody could help me out here. I don't know if you're going to do that or not, but what's your number one?
Speaker 1:Now my number one will probably only potentially trigger one person, and I went with the entire cast of the quarry except for, maybe, dylan because, they're just the biggest group of like dumb stereotype which is intentional for what the game is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it still was like I. There's maybe one or two of these characters that I care if they like live or die, and they're all like constantly saying the cringiest things and doing the dumbest things, which is fun if you're in the mood to just like laugh at it, which when we played it that was kind of the mood we were in but, like, just as characters and as protagonists, they're all pretty bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's fair. Like I really love that game, but there are a lot of characters in it who and a lot of just like points in it where you're just like oh gosh, like this is like cringy B movie crap right here, and like that's fine, because like that's that's what I'm here for, but also like sometimes it's just like oh, you said that you did that. Like not, not great?
Speaker 3:Is the quarry in any way related to until dawn? Is it the same universe or anything, or are they just? It's the same studio, studio.
Speaker 1:But, if it's same universe it's like a Easter egg type thing. It's not like an obvious, like they tie them together in the story or anything. Yeah, I've not played the quarry.
Speaker 3:I think it was also a game that was very recently one of the free games, so it isn't like in my library. So I have added it there. Can't you play through the quarry like with with?
Speaker 2:multiple people. Right, you can. Yeah, it's like a good game to play. That's how we did it. We played it with yeah, we need to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah we played it with like seven or so people. So another plug If you check out our library of episodes on our podcast, we did, we did our quarry episode with everybody who did the play through. So, like my wife was on there, a few people that like don't normally come on the show as much were on that episode because we all played it and so we all shared our experiences with. Is that a good way to play it? Is, you know, did we all feel like we got equal time with the controller in our hands or not? Did we enjoy the experience as like? As like a movie night type thing? Was it too long for a movie night type thing? So if you're interested in hearing our impressions, we have something for that over there. But that is how we did it. We did it over what?
Speaker 1:like three nights and yeah, I think it was that was the best part for me was doing it as a group and having fun. Yeah, experiencing the, the horror and the cheese together. I probably would not have played that game by myself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because those are unique experiences and, eric, I mean we're always looking for and now that we have more people in our circle that have playstations now and and consoles, it's definitely something that I think we should check out because I have heard it it's a good game for for a group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, especially like is October's coming up. It's a fun, little like Halloween experience.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's. We should definitely add that to our to our list, because I think it would be a fun time. Could? We've been throwing around the idea of the Texas Chainsaw Mastery game and it just doesn't seem like for $40 you're just not going to be worth that.
Speaker 4:It's going to be free, so that's right. Game pass the best dealing gaming.
Speaker 3:See, the issue is us trying to convince people in our lives to get Xboxes. They already have playstations. They don't want to buy Xbox Series S's, which is only two ninety nine guys, it's so bad.
Speaker 4:It's so bad. But again, we also don't. You literally just said how you pawned it off to your daughter. I don't play.
Speaker 3:That's true. I haven't used it in a long time.
Speaker 4:I don't play mine like it's got the best dealing gaming, but we don't want to play on it. It's just really Xboxes. It's so much trouble, it's just insane.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, we'll have to, but again still need to add that to our list. Eric, let's get to your number one pick here Down low. Where do we go, who? Ok, this is concerning it's not even close.
Speaker 4:It's not even close, it is number one by a mile. Aiden Pierce from Watch Dogs, that's Rex Phil will tell you. I was excited for this game. I was looking forward to it. I don't normally get games on release. I got it on release. I was ready. That game sucked and that character sucked. If Altair is boring, I don't even have words to describe Aiden Pierce. It just didn't like the character in any way. No redeemable qualities. At least Altair is kind of cool looking. Tails serves a purpose. Aiden Pierce he's got a jacket the worst, the worst, not even that good of a hacker. So honestly, aiden Pierce, watch Dogs and not even close. I hate this character the most. Eric Eric.
Speaker 3:Pre-watch dogs is the reason Eric no longer pre-orders games, so that's a fair assessment.
Speaker 4:Actually, yeah, and I did not play. I didn't play much of that game.
Speaker 3:I don't normally just drop games. Yeah, bought at full price Release day, hated it. Never picked it up again.
Speaker 4:I think I just gave it back to GameStop, I think I just walked it. It was like no, thank you, no, not even traded it in, just gave it to them it was like I don't want this.
Speaker 3:So, wow, yeah, yeah, aiden Pierce was was a honorable mention for me. It's, it's interesting how that that franchise is gone and then it went to like the kind of cool hipster style guy in the second game, and then in the third game there's no protagonist, you can just be whoever the fuck you want to be, which didn't really work either. So it's, it's a game that has like such a identity crisis, and also you can make the argument that Aiden Pierce is in that grade of a hacker because the main character in the second game has to save him at one point in a side mission. So, yeah, I don't know what you guys thoughts on the Watch Dogs series and Aiden Pierce.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never played that series because I always looked at it and I was like, yeah, it looks interesting, but it also I've heard it's not great, it should be, it's just kind of like yeah. I'll get around to it eventually, maybe, and it still hasn't happened.
Speaker 1:So I saw Aiden Pierce come up on a lot of lists when I was, you know, trying to craft my own and I liked the first Watch Dogs game and I don't remember having an issue with Aiden. I don't like he didn't stick in my mind, I don't like he didn't stick in my memory as anything special. Mostly what I remember about the first Watch Dogs was just Ubisoft flat out lying to people about the game that it was going to be and then the game that we got. But I thought it was a fine like open world game. I thought the hacking was kind of fun. I beat it, I play, I played it. I beat it.
Speaker 1:Never, really I've never had the itch to go back, really like to had a lot of fun with two. I thought it was. It did it stepped up everything from one in all the right ways and then three just couldn't get its hooks into me. I think, yeah, having no protagonist didn't help it. It was interesting gimmick at first, but then it was like I don't really care about any of these characters because none of them are. They have about as much depth as you know, like Far cry characters, something with no depth, yeah exactly Another Ubisoft franchise.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that actually was under consideration. For me was, was Watch Dogs three characters like any, because you can be anybody in the city, and like I got the idea, but they they should have made like they should just go on the GTA route if they wanted to do that like, give us multiple protagonists, just give us three or four to choose from, not anybody in the city, which was, yeah, I just found myself giving up on it eventually.
Speaker 1:So yeah, which became like yeah, like four or five archetypes Right. Once you kind of saw through that, it was like OK.
Speaker 3:I just looked for the one that could call on the drone and because you're just looking for, perks.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you're just looking for the perks for the job you need and yeah, and the game didn't really feel that fun to play, like the movement, the driving, everything was lesser than so many other games that have come out, so yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I beat the first one as well. Couldn't really tell you much about it, but I still. I again, I enjoyed it for the most part, but it wasn't necessarily because of because of Aiden. And yeah, like I said, the series is just kind of trying to figure out what it wants to do and where it sits and where it's going to go next. But, dylan, that leaves you for your number one pick for your least favorite video game of protagonists, who you got.
Speaker 2:Geralt, and I'm so my my least favorite video game protagonist is also one of my most disappointing, because it is Jack Marston from the end of redemption, because I loved John Marston and playing up through that game.
Speaker 2:And then the end of the game happens and you have to play as Jack Marston for the last little bit of it and like theoretically, I was telling Andrew this theoretically you could play just as long or more as Jack Marston, but no one did, because he's so annoying and he sucks. So that is my least favorite, because I got to the end of that game and I was like I just want to spend more time in this world but I cannot stand Jack Marston. So yeah, I'm going to just play as I'm going to play.
Speaker 3:the undead nightmare DLC where I can place John Marston. Start the game over.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, they handle that so much better in Red Dead 2.
Speaker 2:For some way yeah because you got to play as John's right.
Speaker 3:For someone that spent so much time with Arthur and John for him to turn out awful with his shitty mustache, stash and his stupid acne. Like I know, there wasn't any skin care routine back then, but he looked terrible.
Speaker 1:His voice was so irritating. There's no redeeming qualities to go on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there is a theory that he's not John's son, because everybody kind of had a turn essentially with with Abigail. So there is a game theory out there that he's not. So maybe we can say he's Micah's.
Speaker 1:You still have to play as him.
Speaker 3:It doesn't make him any better, but yeah, but if he's Micah's, then we know why he's shit. So I guess we can. We can go with that. But, eric, there's a little bit of a spoiler for you for the epilogue of Red Dead, for the original completely ruined it for me.
Speaker 4:I'm not going to play because of you guys.
Speaker 3:You can just you can just skip it, you can just YouTube what happens. It's not, it's not important, but yeah, there were some repeats as far as franchises not necessarily characters, so that was that was really great. It's interesting how so much even something like something that's outstanding, such as like a Red Dead or even what the Assassin's Creed series is done, can also birth some really, really bad characters. So we appreciate you guys helping us do that today. Eric, what do you think about all of our lists here this evening? I'm glad we were able to do this again. It's honestly, up high, down low is probably my favorite series, and then when we get to bring in guests, it just makes it that much more fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would. I would say that this is a great example of how everyone's opinions are different and they should be valued, except Eric's the Mario pick. The Mario pick is pretty bad.
Speaker 3:So in and out, not that's all Same thing, same thing.
Speaker 4:Well.
Speaker 3:Andrew Dillon, thank you so much for your time here this evening and putting these lists together, and we can't wait to see what's next, obviously for the show. Also, twenty twenty four Super Braggart Bros retreat, wherever that is going to be.
Speaker 4:We got the Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3:Well, one. Obviously one of their hosts is back state side, so we're hopefully going to make that happen, but let us know, of course, one more time where they can find the show and also any future projects or episodes that you're working on. Let our audience know.
Speaker 4:And your honorable mentions.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, honorable mention before we do all this talk about. I was like I totally forgot my bad. Get here. There you go. Let's do honorable mention up high first.
Speaker 1:OK, so my up high honorable mentions were Geralt Spider-Man and Miles Kratos and Sonic the Hedgehog OK, yeah, Kratos was definitely on my my honorable mention Listed.
Speaker 3:anybody have Commander Shepard as?
Speaker 2:an impossible Commander.
Speaker 3:Shepard, yeah, I had Shepard and Marcus Phoenix as far as honorable mentions.
Speaker 1:I thought about doing yeah, Phoenix, as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, marcus Phoenix was on for mine, isaac Clark was up there, peter Parker for the Spider-Man game, lara Croft actually from this recent trilogy, kratos, of course, joel, and then I just have a personal thing for a star killer from the Force Unleashed.
Speaker 3:I really love that character. Sam Sam Whitmore was great, especially in the first one.
Speaker 4:So that's, that's my honorable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the ones for my honorable mentions that haven't been mentioned were Eddie Riggs from the what's the game called, and I'm blanking on the name.
Speaker 1:I'm also blanking. It's the Jack Black Heavy Metal Game.
Speaker 3:Like brutal legend.
Speaker 1:So Eddie Riggs was great.
Speaker 2:The whole GTA 5 crew, but mostly Franklin I loved Franklin in that game Talion from the Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War series and Calcestus I'm a fan of Calcestus.
Speaker 3:So we are meeting his voice actor next month. We're excited for that, oh nice.
Speaker 4:Yeah, be at a calicomicon, that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So we're excited to see him. Yeah, those are some. Those are some solid ones, eric, did you have any other? Did you have any other? I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time. If I probably had played through the entire series, I think Clementine might have made my list as far as the Telltale Walking Dead series. She's on a lot of lists. I think she probably would have, but I have never played it through. And then Max Payne from the third game, because I never really played one or two, but I really enjoyed Max Payne. Yeah, the 360 version, so that was definitely up there. But how about some honorable mentions on the down low side? What did you guys? What did you guys have?
Speaker 1:So for down low, I had any protagonists from Need for Speed.
Speaker 3:Andrew had one smart with his list man. He was really smart with some of his choices. That's. That's good, Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I had the, the guy I think his name was like P six or something from Atomic Heart, so a recent one on there.
Speaker 3:But he was just Did you ever play through Atomic Heart, Eric? You were so excited about it.
Speaker 4:I was, and then I just didn't, I just didn't happen.
Speaker 3:Got it, got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's not great, I had Aloy from the first game.
Speaker 3:OK.
Speaker 1:And then I had Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 4:Wow, I didn't know there was so much Sonic in here. I'm got Sonic.
Speaker 1:Sonic made it to made it to both lists for me, because he's both equally terrible and iconic.
Speaker 4:So yeah yeah, you can be both for sure. The only, the only one I had that was even mentioned, like I wanted to mention it all, was Master Chief.
Speaker 3:I was going to say Master Chief from Halo four and five, just any Master.
Speaker 4:Chief, really, he's not not an interesting. He's very iconic for someone so uninteresting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wish, I wish I could say something in Master Chief's defense, but I can't. Like he's not like outside of give, I'm going to give the covenant back their bomb Like.
Speaker 4:I can't really think of another thing, although I haven't seen the Halo TV series, so my opinion could show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe he fell in love with an AI so takes off his helmet, yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know if this counted, but I did consider Tom Nook that you don't play as Tom. Yeah, he's still a piece of shit, Slub Lord, I thought about. I thought about throwing him on there. Yeah, I thought about. Even though he does punch rock. I thought about putting what's his name from Resident Evil 5 on there just for some of those ridiculous moments.
Speaker 4:Chris Redfield.
Speaker 3:Yeah the. Resident Evil 5, specifically Chris Redfield. But yeah, those were a couple that I that I considered.
Speaker 2:Well, who's the, who's the? I'm going to kill chaos guy, isn't he terrible, jack, something.
Speaker 1:None of us have played that game.
Speaker 2:Which game? I thought you played that game.
Speaker 1:No, I haven't played it I will eventually, when it's like free, oh yeah, it's like Neo but Final Fantasy, so like I'll probably like the gameplay of it, but I'm not going to pay it more than like ten dollars to play that game Probably.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, those were some. Those were some of our honorable mentions on both sides. Anybody else have anything else to add? Any other characters? Awesome, just wanted to make sure I didn't miss it again because I wanted to speed ahead through that part. That was. That was definitely my bad. So now please let our audience know where to find the show and then any future projects you guys are working on right now.
Speaker 1:So the easiest way to find us is our website, fngamerscom. Everything is there, but we're also on, like all the podcast platforms. We're on YouTube, so really easy to find. As far as future projects, we're going to have our Final Fantasy 16 episode coming out in the somewhat near future. We've got more neighborhood watch episodes, more topics. We've just got a bunch of stuff that we're doing. We recently have done some of the bigger games that have come out this year. We did our Diablo episode, we did our Tears of the Kingdom episode, so a lot of the heavy hitters have been covered. But we're going to keep on keeping on as the releases keep coming this year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's. It's crazy to think we're already here in in August and there's still so many titles to to get through, and not even taking into account the backlog that we have, especially Eric so yeah, not even taking into account the fact that some of us have to play both Red Dead games Wow and a sharded game and.
Speaker 4:I'm going to get there eventually. Let me get there. I'm at peace. Let me do it.
Speaker 3:Well, again, all those links will be in the show notes. And if you want to support both shows, one of the best ways to do that, head on over to whatever podcast platform it is you're listening on. Give both shows five stars, a plus thumbs up, whatever it is that they do that they do on that specific platform. We really appreciate it. You also find the link tree link to our show in the show notes. You'll find all of our social media pages where you can tell me to go fuck off what for what I said about Mario. You can go ahead and go do that. You can also find all the rest of our episodes, which is which is in there, and you can also find a link to our Patreon page if you want to support us a little bit more, and Eric will tell you more about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so on Patreon, patrons like Briar are supporting the podcast. And listen. If you're listening at this point, why are you not on there? But if you can't support, us like comment here it's always Mario.
Speaker 4:We have right. Like comments, shares always appreciated, but if you're willing to go the extra mile, you can get certain video episode versions of our content. We also have early access and additional exclusives over there. You can also support us directly through our buzzsprout page If you go to the website and, again, all of the links will be in the show notes. With that being said, my name is Mr Eric Almighty. That is my co-host, phil the Filipino, and both of our wonderful guests, andrew and Dylan, keep in mind for the Wait For it podcast. We release new episodes every Monday and Wednesday and all you got to do is wait for it.
Speaker 3:So I heard you're looking for a go to source for entertainment Wait for it.
Speaker 2:Gaming, wait for it. Anime.
Speaker 1:Plus Ultra.
Speaker 2:Mr Eric Almighty and Phil the Filipino. Yeah, they've got you covered, and all you got to do is wait for it. This is the Wait For it podcast.
