0:00 - Start 5:55 - Best Doey Game 23:15 - Most Thinky Game 35:05 - Most Talky Game 47:30 - Coziest Game 56:36 - Best Plane Game 1:10:15 - Worst Title of the Year 1:24:15 - Best New Game That Seems Like an Old Game 1:40:48 - Most Up Its Own Ass 1:50:08 - Best Mechanic 2:06:33 - Best Echo in Echoes of Wisdom 2:13:15 - Thing We Forgot Came Out This Year 2:23:24 - Best Balatro Joker 2:34:10 - Best PLay With Buds 2:52:30 - Dan-Ass Game of the Year 2:57:08 - Mary-Ass Game of the Year 3:00:30 - Mike-Ass Game of the Year 3:03:30 - Jake-Ass Game of the Year 3:06:03 - Best Remake/Rerelease/Remaster 3:14:27 - It's Not Poop / The Most Ok Game of the Year 3:19:10 - Best Game We Played That Didn't Come Out This Year 3:27:23 - Most Fucked Fucker 3:39:15 - Best Game to Look At 3:49:14 - Game That Is Actually Funny 3:56:27 - Top 10 Games of the Year 5:01:29 - Ranking The Top 10 5:04:14 - Mary suggests a funny joke 5:08:20 - Mary throws Mike under the bus Congratulations to Total War: Warhammer 3
I'd like to request a category for next year: The Dan Rykert Noble Gentlemen Award for Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. Dedicated to those who are willing to step outside the bounds of comfort and safety to boldly explore new horizons for the sake of gamerkind .
Use to LOVE Giant Bombs GOTY discussions and hated that the old guard left. Now that I found this cast and learned they do an end of year debate, I am so happy!
Also to note, i think you guys need to get rid of the "get rid of one of yours and I'll get one of mine mindset". It should just be on a game to game basis. Just how I view it or it gets testy real quick
Me too - those old Giant Bomb GOTY deliberations were gold. These Fire Escape GOTY episodes are awesome too. If you like the general vibe/process of this stuff then I'd also recommend the GOTY episodes from MinnMax. They're called the Two Tens and Ben Hanson (the architect of them) has previously stated that the Giant Bomb GOTY episodes were a direct inspiration for how their end of year discussions work nowadays. I think they're the closest spiritual successor to the old Giant Bomb deliberations. They're great!
Such a fun and homey thing as usual, thanks for doing this! I think this year's lineup of releases ended up being more moderate than prior years for all but JRPG fans. So there were less big debates where everybody was highly invested, and more lone-ish defences of personal favourites, not to anyone's fault or credit. (I always love hearing Mike's argument for innovation over refinement, risk over consistency, The Sopranos vs The Wire thing... I totally agree.)
The argument against balatro in the thinky category is shallow. The fact that there is randomness introduces probability and planning ahead which will differentiate how far one gets and how often they win over multiple runs. From the math angle it's one of the most thinky games on the list.
nah having played both you don't understand the amount of notes i took. if it wasn't for steam's new notes feature i'd have filled maybe 4-5 pages of my notebook. lorelei wins easy. balatro being mostly pure additive and multiplicative numbers you can fairly easily intuit whether or not you can make the cut and beat the boss/ante
For the “Best New Game that Feels Like an Old Game,” I think it’s also worth noting that Crow Country feels way different from those older survival horror games thanks to no fixed camera angles, it’s just the isometric look the whole time. I know not all those games did that camera style, but the big ones definitely did, and it feels weird to call it a love letter when it misses that huge appeal of the genre. UFO 50 also only has like 5 actually bad games (Divers, Grimstone, Porgy, Big Bell Race, and Block Koala), 10 decent ones, and the rest are good, great, or amazing. Even the ones I dislike are very much like the time they are replicating, which has its own charm as you all mentioned. Enjoyed this for the most part, but that one part made me mad. I know you all couldn’t play everything, but UFO 50 has both depth and width to a majority of the collection which is not what was portrayed here. If you take the time to learn each game for more than 10 minutes, you’ll know what I mean.
Also for “Best Mechanic,” Rakshasa’s revive system and Onion Delivery’s heal system from UFO 50 should’ve been in there. I also really liked the Frisbee, but that was not an overarching mechanic that fed into the other mechanics outside of late game secret hunting with the bubble wand. Those ones I mentioned from UFO 50 are very large parts of the games identity which is more important than a neat item (in my opinion). If anything the bubble wand or UV light wand was more impactful to Animal Well’s appeal of secret hunting or the insanely quick fast travel system with the flute. Those were amazingly well done.
25:20 Nah sorry, Mike, but that’s a load of fish paste. The beauty of Rise (and the original) is that the game requires *no* trial and error. If it’s come to that type of process-and I know you’re an intelligent guy-then you simply didn’t think hard enough. Sure, sometimes the answers don’t stem from the immediate case, but the ending of the first game, and subsequent DLC, sets you up to expect case-hopping to find the answers, if that was indeed the gripe you took when making that stance.
Man, Mary really couldnt come up with an arguement why Crow Country is top 10, other than its her cup of tea. Dan and Mike really wanted to hear a compelling arguement but it wasnt there, kinda just talked about the story of the game which every game has a story.
That analogy of "The Sopranos vs. The Wire" is pretty odd because the consensus argument is that "The Wire" is at its peak the single greatest show ever, but it saw a significant decline in its final season. "The Sopranos" is famed for its consistency
I was like "Dan's hyping up Astro Bot too much, it can't be that good" and then I went and I watched Dunkey's video for it and was blown away. I NEED to play this game. It looks like pure joy.
This is the GOTY I look forward to the most now!! Giant Bombs GOTY has been fucked trying to many things, friends talking about the games they love makes the 5+ hours fly by and is so much more fun to listen to
Great show! Appreciate how long it was especially when you're doing yard work. My only issue is Dan not letting go of something he doesn't like. It's really insufferable. Glad the others continued to intervene.
@@brucewayne404 it's a joke... the continued bit of it not being a dan game and him having played it for all of 12 minutes and stopping for a dumb reason and then having it win best dan game of the year
Hellblade 2 perfectly encompasses why Xbox failed. It's yet another Xbox console exclusive that was capped at 30fps, which is a joke in itself. But there's only one or two hours of actual gameplay. Just another miserable forgettable game, that was supposed to be a huge exclusive for xbox. They just can't compete against the fantastic games released by Nintendo and Sony.
Silent Hill 2 remake is also much more actiony then the original. SH2 OG you could really avoid most of the combat outside of a few scenarios, you can't really avoid most combat encounters in SH2 Remake, generally speaking. It's much more combat focused. It doesn't subverts things nearly as much as RE2 Remake, but it is definitely a much more robust game.
1000xResist's steam page uses a quote from Giant Bomb, and I don't remember anyone there ever talking about it. BECAUSE IT GOTY GUEST LIST!!! And they just credited it to "Giant Bomb"! That's just deceptive and sleazy.
I think it's so weird that everyone that is in the games review business hated plucky squire. But most normies all really enjoyed the game and I haven't met a person who didn't enjoy it...maybe they have lost the perspective with games..
I just don't get the Astro Bot hype. I like that people have a game to enjoy, but I played 30 minutes, was not interested, put it down and never thought about it again.
You're not alone. I'm mostly off of Giant Bomb these days because of him. Let my premium subscription lapse after close to a decade, and made it clear in the "why are you leaving?" text box that I'll look in on Premium again whenever Ryckert gets distracted by some other thing and leaves the site again. The one thing keeping me narrowly tethered to Fire Escape is that Mike and Mary don't give him as much rope, and essentially disallow his tiresome wrestling horeseshit that Giant Bomb decided to welcome with open arms.
@@dcsoda1Obviously. That's my point. They can continue to erode and diminish what was once a good thing, because of posturing cool-guy apathy like yours.
0:00 - Start
5:55 - Best Doey Game
23:15 - Most Thinky Game
35:05 - Most Talky Game
47:30 - Coziest Game
56:36 - Best Plane Game
1:10:15 - Worst Title of the Year
1:24:15 - Best New Game That Seems Like an Old Game
1:40:48 - Most Up Its Own Ass
1:50:08 - Best Mechanic
2:06:33 - Best Echo in Echoes of Wisdom
2:13:15 - Thing We Forgot Came Out This Year
2:23:24 - Best Balatro Joker
2:34:10 - Best PLay With Buds
2:52:30 - Dan-Ass Game of the Year
2:57:08 - Mary-Ass Game of the Year
3:00:30 - Mike-Ass Game of the Year
3:03:30 - Jake-Ass Game of the Year
3:06:03 - Best Remake/Rerelease/Remaster
3:14:27 - It's Not Poop / The Most Ok Game of the Year
3:19:10 - Best Game We Played That Didn't Come Out This Year
3:27:23 - Most Fucked Fucker
3:39:15 - Best Game to Look At
3:49:14 - Game That Is Actually Funny
3:56:27 - Top 10 Games of the Year
5:01:29 - Ranking The Top 10
5:04:14 - Mary suggests a funny joke
5:08:20 - Mary throws Mike under the bus
Congratulations to Total War: Warhammer 3
thank you very much. much appreciated
The Return of the Judge! A highlight every time Jake returns to the role.
I'd like to request a category for next year: The Dan Rykert Noble Gentlemen Award for Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. Dedicated to those who are willing to step outside the bounds of comfort and safety to boldly explore new horizons for the sake of gamerkind .
God, I love these folks. Always a pleasure. Keep up the good work yinz.
1:40:50 I think Mary deserves her own award for her savage takedown of Dan all throughout the ‘most up its own ass’ category. No notes. Chefs kiss.
Judge Jake is genius, essential, and I hope he enjoys 2025 gaming more than he did this year.
Use to LOVE Giant Bombs GOTY discussions and hated that the old guard left. Now that I found this cast and learned they do an end of year debate, I am so happy!
don't forget to check out nextlander as well! It's like we have old giant bomb and new giant bomb at the same time thanks to the different groups now
Also to note, i think you guys need to get rid of the "get rid of one of yours and I'll get one of mine mindset". It should just be on a game to game basis. Just how I view it or it gets testy real quick
Me too - those old Giant Bomb GOTY deliberations were gold. These Fire Escape GOTY episodes are awesome too.
If you like the general vibe/process of this stuff then I'd also recommend the GOTY episodes from MinnMax. They're called the Two Tens and Ben Hanson (the architect of them) has previously stated that the Giant Bomb GOTY episodes were a direct inspiration for how their end of year discussions work nowadays. I think they're the closest spiritual successor to the old Giant Bomb deliberations. They're great!
Love Jake's appearance with the court music!😂
LOL it was Mary who floated the idea for replacing Astro Bot with COD but MIKE WAS LAUGHING AND AGREED
Dan is wearing the same shirt as last year
The way Dan and Mike recoil in fear when Dan says he is going to cut her game in the final. It's everything.
1:16:03 "Keep my ReFantazio out of your f***ing mouth."
Such a fun and homey thing as usual, thanks for doing this!
I think this year's lineup of releases ended up being more moderate than prior years for all but JRPG fans.
So there were less big debates where everybody was highly invested, and more lone-ish defences of personal favourites, not to anyone's fault or credit.
(I always love hearing Mike's argument for innovation over refinement, risk over consistency, The Sopranos vs The Wire thing... I totally agree.)
Agreed, I'm always happy to hear Mike give that take.
As someone who finished Rise of the Ronin, I can confidently say: It's Not Poop.
There is almost never a time where you turn down taking Blueprint in Balatro. It probably should be a legendary level, rather than rare.
The most important thing. About 21 minutes in, Dan says what the true game of the year is. Astro Bot is the game of the year, bar none.
47:29 nice, strong, believable drink of your can, Mary
"We are anit-long-winded" says the gentleman from the 6 hour Podcast. 😂
3:05:34 DOUBLE DEKKER?!
It's like Christmas in November!
that ranch story. what a good friend merrykish
BAMMER REFERENCE: 4:03:40
Mike drinking Hopalicsious makes me happy.
It's interesting to me that Dan bounces off of survival horror because they are typically both very doey and have puzzle solving.
Alone in the dark is actually a REMAKE of the very first game
FOR YET ANOTHER YEAR FIRE ESCAPE OVERLOOKS SLITTERHEAD DAMNIT I KNEW IT
The Elder Holes: Myrim. "I used to be an adventurer like you until I took an arrow in the butt"
The argument against balatro in the thinky category is shallow. The fact that there is randomness introduces probability and planning ahead which will differentiate how far one gets and how often they win over multiple runs. From the math angle it's one of the most thinky games on the list.
nah having played both you don't understand the amount of notes i took. if it wasn't for steam's new notes feature i'd have filled maybe 4-5 pages of my notebook. lorelei wins easy. balatro being mostly pure additive and multiplicative numbers you can fairly easily intuit whether or not you can make the cut and beat the boss/ante
For the “Best New Game that Feels Like an Old Game,” I think it’s also worth noting that Crow Country feels way different from those older survival horror games thanks to no fixed camera angles, it’s just the isometric look the whole time. I know not all those games did that camera style, but the big ones definitely did, and it feels weird to call it a love letter when it misses that huge appeal of the genre.
UFO 50 also only has like 5 actually bad games (Divers, Grimstone, Porgy, Big Bell Race, and Block Koala), 10 decent ones, and the rest are good, great, or amazing. Even the ones I dislike are very much like the time they are replicating, which has its own charm as you all mentioned.
Enjoyed this for the most part, but that one part made me mad. I know you all couldn’t play everything, but UFO 50 has both depth and width to a majority of the collection which is not what was portrayed here. If you take the time to learn each game for more than 10 minutes, you’ll know what I mean.
Also for “Best Mechanic,” Rakshasa’s revive system and Onion Delivery’s heal system from UFO 50 should’ve been in there. I also really liked the Frisbee, but that was not an overarching mechanic that fed into the other mechanics outside of late game secret hunting with the bubble wand. Those ones I mentioned from UFO 50 are very large parts of the games identity which is more important than a neat item (in my opinion). If anything the bubble wand or UV light wand was more impactful to Animal Well’s appeal of secret hunting or the insanely quick fast travel system with the flute. Those were amazingly well done.
Game of the year is the Astro Bot, hands down.
This was a year in gaming where I didn't really love anything. I found myself playing old favorites a lot.
I saw the pre show, Mike really let a giant fart rip, the camera shook.
Completely renovated in 1984 😆
25:20
Nah sorry, Mike, but that’s a load of fish paste. The beauty of Rise (and the original) is that the game requires *no* trial and error. If it’s come to that type of process-and I know you’re an intelligent guy-then you simply didn’t think hard enough.
Sure, sometimes the answers don’t stem from the immediate case, but the ending of the first game, and subsequent DLC, sets you up to expect case-hopping to find the answers, if that was indeed the gripe you took when making that stance.
Man, Mary really couldnt come up with an arguement why Crow Country is top 10, other than its her cup of tea. Dan and Mike really wanted to hear a compelling arguement but it wasnt there, kinda just talked about the story of the game which every game has a story.
That analogy of "The Sopranos vs. The Wire" is pretty odd because the consensus argument is that "The Wire" is at its peak the single greatest show ever, but it saw a significant decline in its final season. "The Sopranos" is famed for its consistency
GOW Rag was worse than Star wars Outlaws...are you high Dan? lmao Loved this as always but sometimes I am like wait WHAT?!
The dialogue in silent 2 remake is REALLY good. Like shockingly good.
I assumed "Honey, I Hate This Game: My ADHD Kicked In: What Was I Just Talking About?" was real. Disappointed!
Are you finishing the RE4 remake or nah
when the drinks wear off...
I was like "Dan's hyping up Astro Bot too much, it can't be that good" and then I went and I watched Dunkey's video for it and was blown away. I NEED to play this game. It looks like pure joy.
Rise of the ronin is the best game of the year, get good
This is the GOTY I look forward to the most now!!
Giant Bombs GOTY has been fucked trying to many things, friends talking about the games they love makes the 5+ hours fly by and is so much more fun to listen to
Great show! Appreciate how long it was especially when you're doing yard work.
My only issue is Dan not letting go of something he doesn't like. It's really insufferable. Glad the others continued to intervene.
Dan secretly playing Metaphor and revealing it as his GOTY - an all time bit!
I never thought I'd call spoilers on a podcast but damn dude, spoilers.
@@brucewayne404 this didn't happen
@@zgbutzler Oh, odd comment then.
@@brucewayne404 it's a joke... the continued bit of it not being a dan game and him having played it for all of 12 minutes and stopping for a dumb reason and then having it win best dan game of the year
@@aniforprez Ah, gotcha. I hadn't got to that part yet.
Yeehaw
Rough to watch people be wrong about Zelda for 6 hours.
Hellblade 2 perfectly encompasses why Xbox failed. It's yet another Xbox console exclusive that was capped at 30fps, which is a joke in itself. But there's only one or two hours of actual gameplay. Just another miserable forgettable game, that was supposed to be a huge exclusive for xbox. They just can't compete against the fantastic games released by Nintendo and Sony.
Silent Hill 2 remake is also much more actiony then the original. SH2 OG you could really avoid most of the combat outside of a few scenarios, you can't really avoid most combat encounters in SH2 Remake, generally speaking. It's much more combat focused. It doesn't subverts things nearly as much as RE2 Remake, but it is definitely a much more robust game.
1000xResist's steam page uses a quote from Giant Bomb, and I don't remember anyone there ever talking about it. BECAUSE IT GOTY GUEST LIST!!! And they just credited it to "Giant Bomb"! That's just deceptive and sleazy.
if i remember correctly, Jan played and really enjoyed it, maybe thats what it's referencing?
I think it's so weird that everyone that is in the games review business hated plucky squire. But most normies all really enjoyed the game and I haven't met a person who didn't enjoy it...maybe they have lost the perspective with games..
I am a normie and I was super disappointed with Plucky Squire
I just don't get the Astro Bot hype. I like that people have a game to enjoy, but I played 30 minutes, was not interested, put it down and never thought about it again.
Silent hill 2 not in the top 10 :D :D
Another episode of "The Dan Ryckert Show"... and im getting very tired of this...
Than you probably want to find something else to watch/listen to.
This is very much part of the show.
Dan being Dan is a pretty important part of the Fire Escape DNA
You're not alone. I'm mostly off of Giant Bomb these days because of him. Let my premium subscription lapse after close to a decade, and made it clear in the "why are you leaving?" text box that I'll look in on Premium again whenever Ryckert gets distracted by some other thing and leaves the site again.
The one thing keeping me narrowly tethered to Fire Escape is that Mike and Mary don't give him as much rope, and essentially disallow his tiresome wrestling horeseshit that Giant Bomb decided to welcome with open arms.
@@wittynicknameherehey bud no one cares
@@dcsoda1Obviously. That's my point. They can continue to erode and diminish what was once a good thing, because of posturing cool-guy apathy like yours.
it's November...
RIP UFO 50 and 1000xRESIST fans.
Never do GotY this early again.
I'm a be honest my dawg. This group was never gonna play and like 1000x Resist.
@@Blackout20211 That's some Dan attitude.