Our Favorite Things of 2024 | Trash Taste #235
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- You boys ready? You boys ready to say goodbye to 2024? - Yeah, let's do it. - Hello and welcome to another episode of Trash Taste. I'm your host for today, Garnt. Joining me once again are the boys and we are just about ready to say goodbye to this year of 2024. - Mid-year if you ask me. - Mid-year? - It's been a bit of a mid-year. - Why? - Not a lot of stuff has come out this year.

- Sounds like a you problem. - Not a lot of stuff has come out. - You can't just say like, "Man, I played a metaphor. "It was a good game." No. - Hey, I enjoyed it and you didn't, so that's a you problem. - If I see metaphor on this three by three, I'm flipping this table. - It's gonna be on there. - I'd say quite a lot of stuff has come out. - It has been a shit year for everyone. - Yes, oh yes, clearly, clearly. Everything has been shit, it's been mid.

Even the memes are mid. - Memes have been mid this year. - What is the most popular meme this year? - If I know dude. - This is a Garnt question to throw out. - Do people keep up? - Why are you throwing questions out like this? - I was just wondering what's, normally there's like a few memes that I can remember over the year, but like, "Hoc Tour," is that like the biggest thing this year? That's the closest thing that comes to my memory. - Was that this year?

- Memes just make me depressed now. - This is the problem with memes is that like, it could have been a meme from like two months ago and I'll be like, it feels like last year. 'Cause every day it's like the internet is deciding like, no, this is a great meme. No, this is actually a cringe meme. And it's like, I don't have time to keep up with this shit. - Most memes are pretty cringe.

- But we are not going to be talking about what we don't like this year, 'cause we're gonna be talking about some of our favorite things. Not that even came out this year, but favorite things that we might've gotten into, watched, read. - Oh crap, I chose mostly things that came out this year.

- I mean, I chose most of the things. - Oh, I thought that was the point. Okay. - No, no, no, no. - It's just some, you know, this is us being a bit- - This is not the first time we've done this. - We've done this for like two years, Connor. - It said 2024 best of, and I was like, okay, it's gotta be the best of 2024. - No, it's your favorite things of 2024. - Yeah, yeah. - That makes me think like, yeah, it'd have to have come out in 2024.

- No, not necessarily. We literally did this last year and I believe the year before. It's just some of we're being a bit self-indulgent and we're being like some of the best things we discovered. - No, no, no, we're being retrospective. - Okay, that's a better phrase. - Okay, Joey. - We wanna share it with our lovely audience of the things we were into this year. - If you're a regular member of Trash Taste, then you will know that we,

- We normally do a three by three. - Yeah, they'll probably know as well. - Yes, so we have a three by three grid of some of our favorite things. Who wants to go first?

- Why are you looking at me? I guess I'll go first. - Okay, Connor. - I mean, I guess I'll go first. - Yeah, so. - I mean, I didn't do it to be like, you should do it. I was waiting for someone to say something. - This is all my favorite thing. Any questions? Anything you want to talk about? - Yeah, how often were you doing fucking rock climbing? - Me? I go like every two weeks. - Really? - Yeah. - Why have we never talked about this? - I told you I go rock climbing. - No, no, you said, I think you said in one episode that you've been like once.

- No, no, no, I go like every two weeks. - Really? - Yeah, I go with Felix like every two weeks. - Oh damn. - Yeah, so what- - I fucking scratched myself up the other day, fuck. - What got you into rock climbing or bouldering? - Felix. - Felix? - Felix was like, "Hey man, I'm thinking about doing rock climbing." I was like, "All right, I'm down." I like monkey shit, so I was like, "I'm down." And it's been very, very fun. I will say though, out of all the workouts I do, it is by far the most like painful afterwards. - Oh yeah. - Your arms are like,

- It's like here. - Yeah, then you're like, someone's like, "Hey, can you pass me the water?" You're like, "Ah." You like crumble, like someone pokes you, I don't know, your rectum. You're like, "Ah." - Do you normally use muscles that you don't usually use during workouts? - It's all like workouts, right? - Yeah, I'd say mostly, 'cause the one thing that you use, even when you lift weights, you don't do it as much. The grip strength here around your wrists

is like cosmic levels of gravity being forced on them. - Right. - Or in my case, my cake. I have to carry it up. But yeah, I've been doing it a bunch. - How good have you gotten at it? - I do like V5s, V6. I don't know if that means anything to you. - Do you want to explain? - Not for me. - For the audience. - For the audience. - Bouldering has a scale. They decided it has to be done with Vs. - Right.

- Where am I at? I'm at the higher end of intermediate, they say. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, V5s, V6s. I cannot do V7s, they are way too tough for me. And especially if it's a scale of like how easy. And you'd think that like I thought, 'cause I didn't know much about rock climbing before, or bouldering specifically in this case. I thought like if it was harder, it was just meant that like there was less rocks or something. But it turns out, I was like, actually, it's not that at all.

The hard ones like V7 onwards, they're like, they have no grip. You're like basically like hands against, it's fucking impossible. I don't know how they do it. - It's also like from my experience, 'cause I've been bouldering a few times with Felix this year as well. Some bouldering places also just like straight up lie. Where it's like, they'll say like, oh, this is a V5 and you're like, this is way too easy for a V5. And then you go to a V4 and it's like, this is V8. - I mean, look, I like pretty comfortable doing

but I can do some V6s, but then I'll struggle on some V4s. 'Cause like there's different styles, well not styles,

if it's just an overhang with very nice grips, it's like, all right, I can like strength my way through that. But sometimes it's like a very small technical one that I'm not very good at moving my legs around properly. - Yeah. Like the swing around and stuff. - Swings are tough 'cause I've got too much weight. So anything that revolves me around moving my weight. - You're bottom heavy. - Yeah, it's kind of tough, but it's been really fun. It's been pretty good. The sport activity I enjoy most outside of cycling.

- Yeah, I'm just enjoying it. I'd love to do some more stuff with it. - How much technique have you like learned with it? - Fucking nothing. - Or have you just like literally just caveman your way through of like trying to do this? - No, I mean, I think the big thing that I'm constantly trying to do is like, when you do bouldering, you always think like it's all about the arms, but I feel like it's so much more about legs.

and where you're positioning your legs constantly. - Right. - And moving your legs at the right places and not like flailing around is a really hard thing to get better at, but I'm slowly getting there. I'm getting better at it. - Because the whole technique revolves around like you're not supposed to technically carry any weight on your arms.

It's all in the legs. - I mean, sometimes you have to, but ideally you don't want to be using situations or find yourself in situations where you are like only climbing with your hands. Like you want to be climbing, like your feet should help you then your arms secure and pull you up. That's the idea, but it's just not that easy. I mean, it's fun though. It's really rewarding. I like it because it feels like a,

I get a pump. Sometimes when I go to the gym, you go there and you lift the weights, but you didn't lift the weights. You know what I mean? You just kind of did what you normally do. You didn't do a great job. You didn't get the pump you were looking for, but you didn't have the energy to go for it either. But it's still better to do it and then do nothing, right? Whereas rock climbing, you can't do that. It doesn't give you the option to like half-ass it. You will get a...

workout more than you intended always. And I like that because I'm bad at like lying to myself. I'll phone in my workout. I'll do five kilograms less than I can just 'cause I'm like, ah. - Still counts. - Yeah, 'cause in my head I'm like, it's better to do something. But then I'm like, man, you can't just fucking add the weight that you know you should be doing. And then whenever I go, 'cause sometimes me and Felix go to the gym as well and he'll be like, nah, you can do more. And I'm like, fuck you.

- You both are just like competitive toxic gamers at your peaks. - Yeah, but he's crazy, bro. He's in insane shape. I'm not so much. I just kind of like I'm athletic, but not like I don't take care of myself well enough to let my body fat is like too high. - Makes me think because Felix basically quit drinking, right? - Yeah. - Damn, it's just like, I think that's just,

- It is. - It's kind of most of it. - Yeah. - I refuse. - Giving it up completely is just something different. - You're too British for that. - Yeah, we're just too fucking British for that. - Look, I can cycle across the fucking country and still have a beer at the end of it. You know what I mean? - Yeah, it's knowing you have a beer waiting for you at the end of it.

- The only reason to make it through the day. - Sometimes that beer after like a hard day's work just hits different. - That's true, man. - That's true. - I just like food and drink too much. It's like, it's my passion in life. Speaking of food. - What the hell is that thing in the water? - Bro, this is Dap's famous hood joint.

- What is it? - Why are you guys not- - What the fuck is it? - I don't know what this is. - Dab's Famous Hood Joint. - I don't even know what I'm looking at. - Dude, it's this place in Kichijoji and I talk about it all the fucking time on stream. - Yeah. - I literally, me and Pete, it's like- - Oh, it's actually called Dab's Famous Hood Joint. - It's called Dab's Famous Hood Joint. And my goodness, the chicken and rice is something else. It is diabolically good.

- And he does like chili cheese steaks, which Pete loves, but I've never ordered it. I've only ever ordered the rice, chicken rice. He does it New York style. It's like turmeric rice. - Is this a chain or is this just one store? - One store, one store. - In KT Joji? - One store and I order chicken and rice like fucking daily. This, show the picture, I got a pic. Dude, it doesn't look like much.

- Yeah, it really doesn't. - It doesn't look like much. - I mean, as someone who orders lots of chicken and chicken over rice. - Sandwiches look too bad. - Sandwiches look great though. - He does like an omakase burrito too. But this has like been- - Omakase burrito? - That's what I get. - Show this is like Garnt's nightmare, click it.

That's what I get. - That's so much sauce. - Chicken and rice. And they sauce, but the best part is the chicken. - Yeah, that's kind of fire. - It's like a dry rub on the chicken. It's so tender. It's phenomenal. - I'm looking at those sandwiches though, dog. - Dude, the sandwiches also. Dude, this is my spot, man. If you come to Japan and you're missing some American food and you want some good shit. So it's an omakase burrito, so you change it every day. So you just get whatever it is in the burrito. It's just been my fucking spot.

- Did Pete introduce you? - Yeah, Pete introduced me. Pete goes there so often the guy was like, "Name a sandwich after you, Pete, if you want." - I'm looking at these sandwiches now and I'm thinking, you know what? Maybe quitting the beer might not be enough. Okay, maybe beer's half the money. - You saw how much sauce is on that rice, right? In a day now, if I order this, I don't need anything else 'cause I'm like,

- Yeah, why would you? Because you are done. Your calorie intake is just done. - Yeah, you don't need to have the drinkable mayonnaise 'cause I think you're drinking the mayonnaise right there. - He packs these things full. So the rice, it's like the perfect amount of sauce in the end. - Right, right. - See, I've been eating chicken- - I'm not complaining. - Yeah, I've been eating chicken over rice like almost every day as well because I think it's healthier than some of the other shit I've been eating. But mine's...

- It doesn't have any sauce on it. - So what, it's just, you just- - Just chicken and rice dry? - You just raw dog chicken and rice? - It's a dry rub. It's a dry rub.

- Dry rub, dry rubs are so OP bro. - With Japanese rice? No thank you. - Come on bro, come on. - No thank you. - Come on. - You gotta use that like the turmeric rice. It's so fucking fire. - Turmeric rice is pretty fucking good as well. - Yeah. - It's so good. - Yeah, I love my turmeric rice as well. - I order from this place maybe like three, four times a week. Sometimes they're not open though and it breaks my heart.

'Cause I'll hype myself up the whole day about it. I'm like, I can't wait. - That's a little too much sauce for me. - No, no, it's 'cause you can't see what's underneath, Garnt. - Yeah, but that's how you know it's good, when you can't see anything underneath. - It's like the weight of this package tells you everything you need to know and you get it and you pick it up, you're like, oh, this man cares. He cares so much. - Replace the rice with like hot chips and that's basically my diet during uni.

- Is the name maybe a little dumb? Yes, Daps Famous Hood Joint. - Nah, I would argue that's a great name. - Yeah, I always fucking hype it up to whenever I'm streaming as well. I'm like, damn, I'm getting daps. I'm getting daps. It's just so good, man.

- It's definitely like 2000 calories though, but it is worth it. - I mean, is the guy running a Japanese or was he like, okay, okay. - Lived in America for a while. - Lived in America for a while, so you know it's. - It's phenomenal. I mean, look on the inside with the like, it's like red brick steps. There's no seats. There's just steps. - That's how you know. - Yeah, man. It's that New York attitude. Fuck you, you want a chair? - Yeah, yeah. - Fuck, I ain't giving you a chair. It's so good, you gotta go there.

- We'll go there. - They deliver man. - They deliver? - It's a game changer. - I'm probably not close enough to get delivery from that place. - This place is close enough. - Okay, okay. So going on to some of the other stuff.

on there as well, of course. Slay the Spire. - Slay the Spire, the board game. - The board game, which I mean, you introduced me to that and it is the best board game I have played thus far. - I mean, yeah, got me into board games basically. - Still need to play it. - I like board games. - Yeah, yeah. We talked about this briefly on Trash Taste, but Joey, you definitely need to play it. We have an extra like,

- You know, it says on the board game website, two hours, it's definitely like a three, four hour kind of like- - Yeah, it takes a long time. - Especially if you're getting through some of the latest stages, I think we really, really lucked out on our first playthrough. - We did luck out. - Because we managed to beat it. That's just because I got the perfect combo off on like the final boss. - Right. - We were fucked. - How close is it to the actual video game? 'Cause I've only played the board game. I've never actually played the- - Yeah, well- - Video game pretty much.

- Very close. I want to say like if you played the board game, you can play the game and vice versa. Some mechanics are slightly different, like vulnerable works slightly different. Whereas it used to be like, I think in the card game, it only takes one attack.

In the digital game, it's all the attacks that turn. There's very slight differences and also the numbers. In the card game, the numbers are a lot smaller 'cause obviously you have to count yourself and already the numbers get pretty big. In Slay the Spire, they can go up to like 700 damage in one turn. They can get really dumb. So it's basically just a simplified numbering system. It's phenomenal. If you like Slay the Spire, which everyone I know who has ever touched the game has loved that game, you will also love the board game. It is phenomenal.

If you can get someone to guide you through it as well, it makes it a lot easier. I mean, even for me, I don't really play roguelikes, but I have played card games before. And the biggest selling point for me was this is the first time you've just played where I've experienced playing like,

co-op card game. Normally when I think of card games, it's all like PVP against each other. But this one it's PVE and you are all coming together and you have to look out for each other as well. I think the goaded mechanic of this is if one person dies,

- That's it. - There is no continue. If one person dies, everyone's out of the game. So you are as invested as each other to- - You can't just be like, "Ah, fuck that guy." - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Even if someone is like giga throwing,

or building up for an attack that never came. Not gonna name any names. - We might've had someone who did that. - Might've had someone who did that. Not gonna name any names. He's not here to defend himself, but you know, sometimes you, but you gotta work together playfully. And I would like, I'd be interested to play the four player version as well. - Yes. - Because we did it with three players last time. - Yeah, four players is good too. - Yes.

- What else you wanna talk about? - This episode is sponsored by Shopify. Boys, I run a clothing brand. We sell internationally and that's the vision I always had for the clothing brand. But when we started off, I was like, damn man, how do you do e-commerce? How does people ship internationally? Thankfully, Shopify was there to help me out. - Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Home of the number one checkout on the planet. And they're not so secret secret with ShopPay that boost conversions

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/trash, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/trash to upgrade your selling today. That's go to shopify.com/trash. Back to the episode. - Well, you got to touch upon everything, right? - Yes. - I mean, what do you want me to go for? "Ballotro"? - "Ballotro". Do you think it's game of the year? Game of the year? I mean, it's on here for you. - Yeah. - It is on there for you. - I think it is. I don't know, I haven't played "Metaphor".

I'm sure if I played metaphor, I'd feel like that is game of the year. - No, I think you'd want to kill yourself. - Bro, Wukong looks like ass cheeks. - Does it? - I know close to nothing about Wukong. - I don't know anything about it, but I just watched people play it and I thought, wow, this looks so boring. - Really? What about it looks boring? - I don't know, it just looks like, it has that issue that I think a lot of games from China have where they look like weirdly over polished

but like the movement isn't quite as like slick as maybe something like Elden Ring. 'Cause I'm just trying to think of like a comparison. It's such to compare it to Elden Ring 'cause Elden Ring is like- - I'd say a closer comparison to- - Like Sekiro? - Not even Sekiro. I'd say a close comparison, if anything, is probably God of War. When I played through, so I've almost completed Wukong at this current point and Elden Ring was like a bit

It's a big point of comparison. And I'm like, this feels so wholly different to Elden Ring. And it more felt like an action RPG to the level of like something that is reminding me of like God of War. That's probably the closest thing. I'd say that my biggest problem actually is that it just, there's no map. - And the world looks really boring.

- When I see the world, I'm like, oh wow, cool. - Oh really? - At least whenever I opened up to one stream. - Yeah, pull it up 'cause I have no clue. - 'Cause like the big problem with me for like Black Myth Wukong is that it relies on

- It relies on a lot of knowledge of like Journey to the West. - Oh wow. - Because it is a sequel. It is technically like its own sequel to the story that happens in Journey to the West. - Oh, okay. - And if you understand the story, which, you know, a lot of people who grew up in Asia, this is part of their like core reading. They probably would have appreciated the story of this game a lot more than I did. - Well, it's just Dragon Ball. - Yes, Joey. Yes, it is.

- Thank you. It's Chinese Dragon Ball. - It literally starts off, the game literally starts off with Wukong on like the cloud. - Yeah, yeah. - And all the anime fans are like, "Oh my God, it's just like Goku. No fucking way." - I can't believe they copied Dragon Ball.

- I mean, it looks good. - I mean, this looks better than what I saw. - Yeah, I honestly- - I saw when I watched, 'cause I watched like two or three streamers play it. One of them was just in this like canyon sand area. - Right. - Yeah. - He's fighting like a frog. - Yeah. - And I was like, this looks lame as shit. - Yeah, I would say that my favorite part of the game is that- - This looks cool. This boss is cool. - Yeah, this looks really cool. - Like one thing that's very impressive is just how many bosses are in this game. There are basically no repeated bosses and every level has a ridiculous amount of bosses

That's all like all unique. Yeah.

- Anime fans will say this is Goku versus Naruto. - The movement when he's like fighting him, like doesn't look as weighty as I would like. - Yeah, so- - It looks kind of floaty. - Yeah, what I liked about it feels totally okay. So what I liked about Wukong is that it's feels a little bit more like you are in a martial arts film. It's much quicker and they're like- - Like they're moving on wires and stuff.

- Kind of like you have to react a lot quicker. So there's this perfect dodge mechanic where you leave behind a clone when you get like the perfect dodge. And when you hit that, that's super satisfying. With Elden Ring, it's much more like way more

weighty and crunchy. And you know, there are some attacks in Elden Ring where you have to like wait five business days for them to complete their attack. Whereas this one is more like pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. - Just like go in. - Yeah, you go in, you get a combo off, you dodge perfectly if you can, and then you get a few more combos off. And there's this one attack, if you can get enough combos off, that is very, very satisfying. And that's the charge melee attack. But I would say, you know,

The only reason I didn't like this so much was because I came out of "Elden Ring" to play in this and that's like coming from like one of the most goaded games of all time to playing what I think is a very good and solid game. I would like to see, I would,

I'm not crazy about Black Myth Wukong, but I definitely enjoyed my time with it. - Like, I don't know, when I'm watching this, I'm like, yeah, like when you stare at it like this, it looks good. But then when you're seeing like when he's being hit and stuff, he's just kind of like moving or floating out of the way. And it just doesn't look like anything carries weight.

- It feels too video gamey. - Well, it's like you looked at what like something like an Elden Ring looks like and how the boss fights play out. And you're like, oh, let's just replicate it. I don't know. It doesn't, I don't know. To me, I know it's very like, it's a very like whatever criticism. But it's just, to me, I look at it and I'm like, I'm okay. Like I'm good. - Yeah.

I don't know, I can't exactly explain it. I wish I could. It just doesn't look like it has that kind of full feel that I want out of a game like that. - Right. - And I would rather play funny poker game on this. - Funny poker game. - Yeah, genuinely, "Baltra" is amazing. Like it's so good. - So what was the mechanic of this one? - Have you played "Baltra"? - I actually haven't. - It would break you. We would never hear from you again. We would genuinely never hear from you again. - What is it? - It's like the most fucking addictive game of all time.

- I've heard that. - It's just like, you literally just make poker hands. So you get like eight cards in your hand and then you just have to make the best hand you can. You have discards, a set amount. You can only play like four hands a turn if you get a certain amount of points. But then along the way you get these jokers that do things where like,

if you play a diamond, time your thing by four. And then maybe later on you can get an enhancement that allows you to change some of the cards in your hands to diamonds. - Right. - So you can, it's just like, imagine like poker on meth.

- So it's a poker deck building. - It's poker deck building, but you're not playing against any other players. You're just trying to make the best hand you have from your hand. And like every turn, it depends on there's different modifiers, but generally you'll get to play four hands and you'll get to have three discards. You can discard any amount of cards in your hand three times. Then you're gonna make the best hands you can and meet the score to continue. And the cards are worth like, so an ace is worth 10,

Kings with 10 and then nines with nine. But then this multiplies. So there's different things. It's just...

It sounds so boring and it's one of those things where I'm like, just play it. Like just, it's impossible to make Balatro sound cool or interesting. - Is there a storyline? - No, no story. - I sleep. - No story. Like it is literally just trust me, bro, play it and five minutes will turn into five hours after you blink. - You are in debt to the mafia

and you have to play a game of Balotro in order to pay off your debts or you die, I'm awake. - No, no, but like legitimately like this, I feel like this is gonna itch like the mahjong loving part of my brain. - Can you Google like Balotro crazy combo or something? Just so you can just see the level of like shit stuff that goes on. Just you, yeah.

- Fibonacci combo is crazy. - Fibonacci combo. - So like all your jokers do things. So like in his hand now, and some of the bosses do different things. So all face cards are drawn face down, for example. - Okay. - Okay. - So you wouldn't know what they were. Then you have to kind of like suss out based on, you know, what's going on. So he's gonna play a full house and he's got some other jokers up top, which are, so yeah, that re-trigger each played two, three, four or five. So if he replays those, they score twice. - Right.

And then he's got like each played ace, two, three, five, eight gives an eight plus multiplier when scored. - Right, right. - Okay. - So you just like stack combos. - So now he's gonna, all of those cards are gonna times the multiplier, add an eight to the multiplier, which is that red thing. And then that other one's gonna trigger them twice. And so it's gonna, the combo is gonna go crazy. So when he plays it, it should do something. It should go like. - So what is the highest score you've got in this game? And what made you stop playing?

you just have to stop after a while. You just have to. I mean, your life will get consumed by it. - Yeah. - And so it's called like this and it's got some really nice sound design and it's just good vibes. Music's great. - I mean, it looks clean. - Yeah, it's just fine. - I like the stylized look of it. - Everything plays and then like when the combos kick, that was not a crazy combo. You can get literally to like the power of E. It'll be like E-08. Like, yeah, you can get some- - Damn.

Every combo came together for 130 million points. Maybe type in Balotro highest combo just so you can get like a feel. - I guess it's the 130 million. - Yeah, let's see the 130 million combo. This is a 26. - Where does he do it? - Yeah, where does he do it? Let's see. - 26 minutes long. - Okay, there he is. Okay. - All right, let's see this. Okay. - So he's just,

And then you can turn some cards into glass. - Where did the glass cards come from? - There's just so many different like things.

- Yeah, you can see like the combos get done. - Yeah, I mean, pretty much- - It's just fun, it's just good shit. - Pretty much what everyone has told me is that this is a ridiculously addictive game. - Yep. - Even Sydney played this for a little bit. - Yeah, everyone I know who doesn't even like video games, I'll be like, "Try Boutro on this thing." And then they'll come back in two hours. - Is this on the phone? 'Cause I feel like this is- - It's on phone. - This is the thing that you make. - This is a perfect mobile game. - Yeah, this is made for like mobile games. - It was, everyone who had a Steam Deck played this basically. - Right.

- Yeah, look at that guy, he has 30 quintillion. You know what I mean? The combos you can get are like insane. - It's an hour long video. - Yeah, look at that. He just fucking got a quintillion casually. You can just skip ahead a little bit. - Yeah, I think it's right at the end there. - Yeah, right at the end I'd say.

- We are, yeah, most replayed, most replayed. - Okay, so look at this deck. He's built a full deck of aces, which you can do. You can add more aces, you can get rid of cards, you can add cards. - Jesus. - Yeah, you can get like really dumb. So the combos go fucking ridiculous. But to beat the boss, he has to get five point eight quintillion.

- This is because they can go on endless. So normally there is an official end. - Right. - Yeah. - Yeah, there is an endless- - Damn, he lost. - Yeah, he lost. Yeah, so it's really fun, really addictive. And it was just fun. I mean, like I've consistently been having more fun with indie games lately. - Yeah. - Like I play league, I can't talk though, but- - I'm sure league's not on your- - Oh, fuck that. Fuck that. No, fuck off, guys.

- But Ballad Show is just really fun. And then- - And then the next thing you got addicted to, you talked about this as well. - I don't wanna get too into it. It ruined my life for a while. It's an amazing game. - Are you out now? - I'm out, I'm out. I beat it. - Oh, you can beat it? - Yeah, I built a particle accelerator.

And I, what else did I build? - Out of context it sounds insane. - Well, I went from building an ironing factory to building particle accelerators and dark matter generators. - Hell yeah. - And then I opened up time travel and portals and shit. - Yeah. - So I just kind of, you know. - So is there like a end screen? - Yeah, 'cause so your, yeah, there's an end screen and cut scene. 'Cause you're basically, you start from nothing. Your goal is to build,

you just kind of told, "Hey, build some stuff." Then they're like, "Okay, build a space elevator." - Yeah. - Build this giant space elevator. And then like, "All right, now for the next part of the space elevator, we need all this stuff, which will take you like 15 hours to get." So you're like, "Oh, okay." And then you build it and they're like, "All right, for the next part of the space elevator, we need this." And it does that like five times. - Yeah. - And then you finally have built everything. And then you get to build,

the rocket that sends off to the next set of builders on another planet somewhere. Spoilers. - Damn. - Very good, very good. I won't get too much into "Satisfactory." All I will say is that if you,

- I think you will like this game, you will love this game. It is like Minecraft, like turned up to 11. - Damn. - Wow. - Yeah, it's way, way more. - I mean, I don't know man, Garnt can barely play Minecraft. - Yeah, yeah. - We'll see. - That's true. - You gotta give it a go though, Garnt, apparently. - Okay, I guess the last game on this three by three, Power, surprised us on that one. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - I played Power the fuck ton this year. - Really? - Yeah. - Did you ever talk about it?

- You talked about it briefly? I don't think you talked about it for that long. - I played it for like 60 hours. - Damn. - Oh shit, okay. - I put a lot of hours into it. I liked it a lot. It was a lot of fun actually. And then it's got a little sauce box that came back and then supported the charity. - Yeah, I saw the animation for the charity as well. - That was so fucking sweet. So they were just all, like the whole team was so sweet and really nice. And so, yeah, I just thought the game was really fun. It was very, very buggy and messy, but I still had a lot of fun with it.

- Is it just like the combination of just like, fuck it, we're just gonna put this mechanic in it? - Well, yeah, the game, the whole like Pokemon with guns, there wasn't that many guns in it. Some of the pals have guns, but not all of them do. Some of them have rocket launchers, that's different. But the main thing I liked was just you had to build a base as well. And there was a base building mechanic and all the pals worked for your base. And that was really fun. And then like finding all the new,

was like just awesome. It was actually fun to explore. It was so fun. I had a great time. I got super addicted to this game when it came out. And so I think it was easily one of the things I enjoyed most. - All the games I can see on here, I'm just like, oh, they have a one and done addictive gameplay loop that you just keep doing, keep doing, keep doing the same thing. - Yeah.

- Yeah, because like I didn't actually play Power World in the end. - Me neither. - So I didn't know if it was like a meme. - No, it was actually really good. It was really good. It's really popular in Japan now as well. - Oh really? - It's done really well in Japan now. - Okay. - At TGS this year that when I went, it was the biggest booth there. - Right. - Which was like insane. - It's cool to see them doing very well. I think that they've crushed it.

And the game's great. I mean, look, the reviews don't lie. People playing it. - Didn't it make like half a billion dollars in revenue over its lifetime? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, they had, I'm not sure if they had the all time concurrent player count for like a while. - I think they did. - Yeah. - But yeah, they've had like a pretty consistent player base since then and they've been a really cool community. Just the game's awesome.

- That's been cool to see. Even with all the bullshit lawsuit stuff happening, like it's cool to see everything that's been going down. - I mean, I think just judging from what their reaction is, I don't think even they knew it was gonna be this big. - I mean, I went to their offices and met them all and they're really sweet and it was really, really wholesome 'cause they,

I remember the articles came out and they were like, yeah, the guy who designed the guns was like a Konbini worker. And I met him, he spoke English and he was like, yeah, I love guns. And I was like, how did you learn English? He goes, oh, I just like super interested in like American culture. - Yeah, like guns. - Yeah, I was like, is it true? You were working on this while you were like Konbini? He's like, no, no, I just, they like found him off of Twitter.

'cause he would post his gun modeling on Twitter and they found him and they were like, "Hey man, come work for us." And that's how it came about. It's all wholesome stories. - Humble beginnings. - Yeah, it was just a great, it was a good game as well. I liked it a lot. - I mean, from the looks of it, some of the game mechanics is just so weird 'cause sometimes I look at the things in Power World and I was like, this doesn't feel like- - There's so much jank in it. - Yeah, sometimes it doesn't feel like a cohesive world. It more feels like,

hey, we just put this in because we think it's cool. Like the fact that you can like catch people. - Yeah, so much. - Yeah, yeah. - You can cut them up. - Yeah. - That's what I love. I just think that they just said like, it kind of felt like a, can I do this? And you can always do this. - Yeah.

Shogun was really good this year. Phenomenal TV show. - Yeah, we had some amazing TV shows on here as well. Did we talk about Shogun when that came out? - I don't think we did. I think we just joked maybe about how I looked like John Blackthorn. - Yeah, because I found out through Shogun from all the trash taste memes about Connor being John Blackthorn. - Mariko's up. Mariko, we must help them. I want my men returned to me.

- And then I watched Shogun and I realized, oh, he is John Blackthorn. - I still never got around to this one actually. - Yeah, I mean, I think this was a super impressive series. One thing that I've really, really enjoyed about Shogun was just how they handled like translation and interpreting. - Using it as a plot point.

- Yeah, and kind of like using it as a plot point for, okay, there's this kind of like trust system because John Blackthorn doesn't speak Japanese. So he has to trust other Japanese people to translate what he's saying as accurately as possible. But you can see the difference between what John's saying and the difference between like the subtitles

and just understand Japanese as well. It's like, so, you know, John says something that's like five sentences long and then Mariko is just like, yes, he liked that. Yes, he agrees. - It's just amazing show. I don't know about season two though, about how they're gonna do anything with it. - Are they doing a season two? I thought they were just- - Yeah, they're doing season two.

And I thought this was just going to be a mini series. - It was so good. It was so, so, so good. Really loved the show. I'm glad it won like a million awards because it deserved it. - Yeah. - Another show, "The Penguin." - Penguin. - Which actually surprisingly, one of the shows I enjoyed the most this year. - You were raving on about this one. - Dude, it's so good. No one talks about the show, I guess because it kind of got buried on HBO and not a lot of people watched it. But Colin Farrell,

My God. - Colin Farrell fucking kills it in this one. - I've never been more like impressed by a performance genuinely. Like it's so good. - 'Cause when people were recommending "The Penguin" to me, I saw, I looked up, I just Googled it. - Like superhero. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just like, oh, Colin Farrell. Oh, okay. And I watched like, watched the first episode and I was like, when does Colin Farrell show up?

I did not realize that Colin Farrell plays the penguin because he looks, not only he looks different, he sounds so different as well. - So this penguin takes place directly after the events of the Batman movie, the new one, which Colin Farrell is in as well, but he's not in it that much. - You see a little bit of him. - Yeah, you do get to see him,

But this, and in the TV show, there is no superhero stuff. There's nothing to do with superheroes. - This is a mafia series disguised as a Batman. - Yeah. It is so, so, so good. I don't want to spoil anything, but just watch it. You will be grateful. Colin Farrell's performance in it is,

- Yeah, I mean, honestly, if you just want a good, if you like mafia stories and gangster movies and shit like Sopranos, Godfather, Goodfellas, all that kind of jazz, this is right up your alley. And I don't think just Colin Farrell, I think Sophia Falcone was such a great fucking character as well. And just seeing,

- Seeing her evolution as the series went on as well. I thought there was some absolutely fantastic fucking episodes in here. - Please, if you watch one TV show this year, watch "The Penguin." - How many episodes is it? - It's 10 episodes. - Oh, okay. - So it's a- - No, it's eight, right? Or is it 10? - No, it's 10 episodes. - That's eight. - Eight, it says. - It's eight? - Yeah, it's eight. What are you talking about? - Wait, am I thinking of-

- Oh, I'm thinking of Shogun, aren't I? - Shogun has 10. - Okay. - Oh, okay. - Eight episodes, damn, okay. But every episode- - And it has an amazing ending.

- I haven't finished it yet. I'm very, very close. I'm very, very close to finishing it. - Well the last episode is a 9.6 IMDb. - Oh shit. Okay. That's the thing because I was like, I didn't hear anything about the penguin. I didn't hear anything about the penguin right up until the last episode. - It's so good. - And I will say that they have so far they have like set everything perfectly for a grand finale. So it's good to hear that it has a banger ending.

I don't know, HBO just like knocks out the park. - I do, I don't know how they always do this. They always just make the best TV shows. - Yeah. - It's been, yeah, it's been great. - I mean, I just think they have like the fucking right staff members working. - I know man, it's crazy. - Just to craft the perfect TV show.

- So good, please watch "The Penguin." - Yeah, this is kind of just like, I don't have too much to say about it. It's kind of like talking about "Breaking Bad." It's kind of just like, yeah, it just has amazing writing, amazing casting. - It just speaks for itself. - Amazing acting, amazing everything. - Yeah, so everything's amazing. - Yeah. - Amazing, you should watch it. - Okay. - Go back to the three by three and the last thing is "Arcane." - Yes. - I was thinking, you know, 'cause I had a last, like a spot to fill and I was like, "Ugh, fine, it could be 'Arcane.'"

It was either that or like "Dun to Dun" but I was like, "Eh, "Dun to Dun" hasn't finished yet. "I don't know where it's going." I've really enjoyed, I'm up to date on "Dun to Dun" and I've absolutely loved it and it's probably my favorite anime this year which is so generic to say. 'Cause I've been watching "Aub" as well, "Aub" is really fun but "Dun to Dun" is just, it's so good. - "Dun to Dun" is fucking amazing. - I wanna talk about that now. I wanna talk about "Arcane." - Let's talk about "Arcane."

- So Joey, you might not wanna hear this, but they did keep the opening. - They kept it? - They kept the opening. - Kill me now. - Joey's like instant one out of 10. - Instant one out of 10. - But I'm gonna spoil it. I'm gonna spoil my list because Arcane is on my list as well.

And it is fucking incredible. Is it as good as the first season? - No. - Unfortunately not. I think there are- - It's like asking like Van Gogh doing a masterpiece. It's like, is it as much of a masterpiece as his previous masterpiece? - Yeah. - No, but it's still pretty close. - Right. - Yeah, if I had to sum up "Arcane" season two, I'd probably call it a flawed masterpiece.

Because I think like, okay, you know, taking my criticism out on like the writing and some of like the pacing of like the later episodes for an animated series, there is, I think one thing that comes close to this and it's,

- Yes, family guy. No, the only thing that really comes close to arcane on like a technical level is probably into the Spider-Verse because I can't think of, and that was a film mind you. I can't think of another animated series that even comes close to touching just the raw,

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visual fidelity and artistic expression in some of the scenes in Arcane. - I mean, the little that I did watch of season one, like the visuals were just constantly impressive. - Yeah. - For sure. - I just wish they had like another episode or two. - I don't even like, people are like, oh, I wish you had like season three. And I'm like, I don't even think it needed an extra season. 'Cause I don't think- - She needed like an extra episode or two. - Yeah, like an extra- - Just to let like the battle, the big battle at the end.

- Yeah, yeah, just to let some of the character moments breathe a bit more and let some of the battles just kind of like play out and it's feel like more natural. - It was good watching it 'cause you're watching Arcane and it hits such a high point halfway through the season, I felt like with a couple of big reveals and a couple of good character moments. And you're like, this is amazing. And then you had you like,

there's no way they can wrap this up in three episodes. Yeah. You get like, you get to this point where they've set up so many amazing things, but you just know, it's just, it's going to have to, something's going to have to be. Yeah. And unfortunately it does feel that way when you get about, you know, near the end, you're like, yeah, I, it was good. I don't think like, like you said, a whole season would help, but just another extra episode or two, just to help the show breathe a bit and pacing towards the end, especially. Yeah. It would have really have, I think cemented. This is like one of the,

like an absolute masterpiece. I mean, it still is. - Yeah, like I said, I think the biggest thing is that there just wasn't a character that came close to touching Silco in terms of like an interesting character. Silco was just like on another level in season one. - I thought Ambesa was really good in this. - I thought Ambesa was- - The voice actress. - Yeah, I thought she was interesting, but in terms of like having an,

interesting character on the same level. No one really comes close to Silco. And there are like a few antagonists in Arcane that, you know, and best is one of them. There's another one as well, which you can probably guess if you know League lore, that kind of just like comes out, but you know, nothing reaches, no one reaches the pure amazing writing. - Silco was definitely at the high point, but the animation. - The animation, I think they actually stepped up. - Yeah, they actually really.

- That was impressive. 'Cause I thought season one was already godlike, but there was some sequences in season two that fucking dropped my jaw to the floor. I think there was one in episode three where there's like this big fight and multiple fronts happening. And it's done to like, one thing I love about Arcane is like the musical numbers. Whenever a musical number comes on, it is such a goated fucking sequence. 'Cause what they've done right, is it almost feels like an

an AMV, but it's not an AMV. You know what I mean? - Right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because obviously this team had worked on the cinematics before and with cinematics, you have to like condense storytelling to a very, very short time span. And they've taken that skillset and they've applied it to some of the most amazing fucking sequences that add on to the story that has already been told. - I thought Echo's character arc was phenomenal

- Yeah, I really liked Echo's character arc as well. - There's so many good things in the show that, I mean, it deserves the praise and I am very excited for the,

next League of Legends shows. 'Cause the world is objectively fucking cool. - Yeah. - It's just, can they reign it in and make a good product? - What world would you want to see next? - Dude, I would have loved like the Shadow Isles or Bilgewater, but we're getting, of course we're getting fucking Ionia and fucking Demacia and Noxus. 'Cause we've got to sell Lux and Ahri skins, motherfucker. We've got too many of the shit.

- Bilgewater would have been so much cooler, bro. - Bilgewater would have been fucking hot. - Give me a fucking like- - Shurima as well. - Shurima would have been sick too. - Yeah, that would have been sick. But I am looking, I think- - Noxus will be cool. Hyonia will be cool. - I think Joey's like, "I don't know what you guys are talking about." I think Demacia would be cool. I think there's a lot of potential in-

Silas's story, 'cause he's the fucking Kingslayer man. - Silas's story is cool. - Like Silas's story I feel like has so much potential to be something like fucking epic. - I think a Jyn story would be good. - Jyn would be cool as well. - There's this character that is voiced by the same guy who voices Raiden I think in Metal Gear. His character is that he's obsessed with the number four. So he shoots four bullets then reloads and then he talks like a psychopath, like a calm one.

and everyone loves him. 'Cause he's always kind of like whisper talks, but he's just, everyone loves him. He's very stylized. I think everyone just, yeah, everyone loves his character a lot. - And he's very flamboyant. He's all about showmanship. So he's a serial killer, but he's a serial killer

basically wants to make a fabulous scene. - He's really fun to play. He's very fun to play as well 'cause he has the four and the fourth shot is like a big, like a beauty, it's got this meaty sound effect. - Yeah. - When you hit it, it's so good. Yeah, it's so good. Everyone loves Jin. - Yeah. - Jin's cool. - But now we got some more Lux and Ahri skins. So let's bring another fucking TV show for them. - I mean, I'm excited for more.

whatever they're gonna call it. Probably won't be arcade. Probably would be a different opening this time as well. - Yeah, please. - Can we just fucking bury Imagine Dragons? We don't need it. - No, dude, it's crazy. Imagine being Imagine Dragons. You locked into like the sweetest gig of all time. - Right? - It's like weekend at Bernie's. They're like reanimating Imagine Dragons to keep making them make music. - Oh, do you think Linkin Park's gonna do the season two opening? - I hope not.

- I can imagine that happening. - I don't want that. - I'd rather than, I'm not even thrilled with that. - The only thing I actually hated about season two was the moment where they did like, someone goes, "Heavy is the crown." And they stopped playing the . I was like, that is so cringe. It's so cringe 'cause you know what happened. The exec came in and was like,

can you just put this song in somewhere? 'Cause we kind of got a thing of like, can you just throw it in? It felt so forced. - Right. - It felt so, so forced. - I feel like- - And I hated it. - I feel like it was less forced and less cringe than in season one when literally Imagine Dragons just turned up and sang their song. - Okay, that was cringe. - What? - And sang their song. - Yeah, Joey, you should watch it. - So you haven't gotten that far yet, Joey, but there is a sequence in season one

- Where Imagine Dragons just in the universe. - Okay, they don't just go like, "Here it goes, it's Imagine Dragons." They're just in the background playing the fucking song, right? It's not that bad. It was so cringe. - This is a go to church. - It's so cringe 'cause you just know that the executive came in and was like, "Please, you have to put the song in it. We will fucking, we'll not meet our quarterly demands." You know what I mean? I just fucking, I hated it. - I mean, I feel like in season two, at least it was like on theme to,

what was happening on screen. - Barely, barely. - It was barely, okay, barely. But it was like less of a, pulled me out less than just fucking suddenly out of nowhere. Let's introduce the band. - I hate that shit, man. I hate that shit so much. - I love that opening, never skipped it once. - Industry plan. - I never skipped it once either. - All right, let's move on to Garnt. - All right, let's move on to my one. What you got? - Oh.

- I try to not include anime on here as I normally talk about the best, my favorite anime that comes out as my job. So there's only one anime on here and that's because I can't really talk about it on my final best year of list. - One Piece fan letter. - That is One Piece fan letter. And basically the reason I'm probably not gonna include it is just 'cause it's like a 20 minutes short film. But in terms of like a short film, this is,

everything that I fucking love about storytelling. It's telling an interesting story within a very short time span where you get invested, you get that emotional outcome and it's just a beautiful, it's just a beautiful piece of work. If you haven't,

you probably will not understand this, but for any One Piece fan, this is the best kind of fan service that you could get. - Right, what is it about? - Okay, so One Piece fan letter takes place during basically post White Bear War.

- Okay. - Okay. So it basically, people keep calling it filler and I'm like, it's an anime original story. Okay. It doesn't mean it's filler, but it's a story about several characters, but all of them are just normal people living in this world of One Piece. Right? - Yeah. - So you have the main girl there who is basically like a mega fan of Nami and all she wants to do is meet like the straw hat crew. - Right. - And through,

And then you have some other characters who are basically like just normal grunts in the Marine.

And you basically see what it's like just to be a normal fucking person, just to be a fucking cockroach. - Yeah, just washing the world to just like destroy itself. - It's like what the hell? - Yeah, yeah. And there are just like some amazing sequences in this that just really humbles you to just what the fuck is like, how crazy the world of "One Piece" is. There's this one scene that really stands out where it's like,

it's right in the middle of the White Bear War arc. And we follow these two brothers who are just fucking fighting for their lives in the middle of this war, right? And they see just admirals tearing shit apart and just the White Bear gang just like invading stuff like that. And there's this moment where I believe like either like a massive tidal wave comes in or like a fucking huge ice block just like falls down middle of the war. And you're like,

I'm an, as a normal person, what the fuck are you meant to do? - What am I doing here? - Yeah, and it was like such an amazing piece of storytelling 'cause it was almost like, you know, kind of like you are just like watching two people being completely helpless against people who are like completely overpowered in this world. And it's just the story of like this guy trying to find, desperately trying to find his brother who he has lost on the battlefield.

- It like weirdly humanizes the NPCs of the world. - Yeah. - Right. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's cool. - Yeah, it was such an interesting concept just to see what is it like to live in one piece and not be one of the names characters. - Like going to Shibuya during the Shibuya incident. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, right? - It's like, oh hell no. Oh my God. - Hell no. - Is that a panda? What the fuck's going on?

- That's fun though. - It's like genuinely- - It's just 20 minutes long? - It's just 20 minutes long. - Oh, okay. - So is this like an indie animation or like- - So it's from Toei Animation. I believe they just made it. So it's one of the, I think one of the best animated pieces of work One Piece has done as well. - Right. - And it's like movie level animation. It has like its own unique art style as well. - The world of One Piece is like almost like the Marvel Cinematic Universe now. So I wouldn't be surprised if they, you know,

try to be like, let's try and do some side things. - Yeah, yeah. Because what watching this made me realize is,

the world of one piece is so vast that you could make a series like, something like the penguin, for example. - When are we gonna get the crocodile? - No shit. - That would actually be so good. - Just imagine a Baroque works anime that takes place in the world of one piece. - Dude, that would be so fun. - This made me realize- - The one with all the assassins? - Yeah, the one with all the assassins. - So you wanna be number one?

- You gotta work your way up. Ain't that easy. - It made me realize there is so much potential for just interesting storytelling in the world of One Piece that isn't just being a fucking suited up pirates that can solo like an army. - Yeah. - For sure. - And this was an amazing concept. Any One Piece fan, highly recommend you watch this.

- It's only 20 minutes. - Sounds like even I could enjoy it. - Huh? - Sounds like even I could enjoy it. - Yeah, I think even you can enjoy it. - I read a bunch. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm surprised you put "Three Body Problem." The TV show? - Yeah, the TV show. - I've never heard of this. - I've never had a quicker loss of a chub in my life than this show. - Oh really? - This started off so strong and then became so bad by the end of the season, I felt.

- So I've kind of come to like a realization for example, where I was like, I was like, you know, I too watch Shogun this year. I too watched the Penguin this year. And you know, I've come to realize that say like a similar take to what I feel about Breaking Bad where I can say, I can objectively say these are amazing fucking shows. These are amazingly written, amazingly crafted.

But I'll be honest, I'm probably going to forget about them or forget the exact like- - What the fuck are you saying? - Because there are some sometimes, sometimes there are certain things and ideas that stand out to me, right? - Yeah. - And to me, the three bodies problems

stands out to me just because the ideas presented in the show, it's not the cleanest show in the world, right? But the ideas presented in this show are just so fucking interesting. - Yeah, that's why I got so hooked on it. I thought the concept was like amazing. - Do you wanna explain the concept? 'Cause I've never even heard of this before. If you can. - How can I explain it without spoiling it?

I mean, it looks side five. - Do you know what the three body problem is? - No. - It's, you know, in planetary orbits, it's said that it is like impossible, I believe, to figure out the orbit of a third planet in a two planet orbit. - Oh, okay. - I could be saying this wrong. I'm not very good at this stuff. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Right, right, right. - To my understanding, it's so difficult to calculate that. - Right.

- Oh, three points of masses. - Yeah. - So how three bodies- - Because it becomes really chaotic. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, okay. - So even now we can't predict what the movement will be when you have three bodies in the system because if the initial conditions are just slightly off that very,

vastly changes the behavior. - It's like chaos theory. - No, this is literally chaos theory, right? Where we can predict it up to a certain point, but unless you know the exact initial conditions, you cannot predict the three bodies problem. But this show basically takes all of the interesting ideas that you hear about in sci-fi, in, you know,

Is this a spoiler? I can't remember what's a spoiler in "Three Bodies" and what isn't anymore. Instead, I'll just tell you the first episode, right? - Okay, okay. - Because- - I just still love the, "My Lord, my Lord, my Lord." - I can't stop fucking thinking about it.

- I mean, it is cheesy, but like- - I know, I love it. - I loved it because there were like so many interesting, obviously this was like, let's take all the interesting thesis papers and just try to make a TV show around it. - I remember the first episode, but you should explain it, so you explain things good. - Okay, the first episode, right, is for some reason,

a lot of scientists in the world suddenly are just dying. A lot of them are committing . Some of them are just mysteriously dying off and no one can really explain why. So there's this one scientist who is working on, I believe, a new technology, micro threads, that is like a new nanotechnology. And one day she has a countdown that appears just like, kind of like just- - Like Death Note.

- Yeah, like Death Note. It just appears and she doesn't know what it means, right? - It was counted down, I think like two days. - Yeah, it's kind of like two days. She doesn't know what will happen, but with the new cycle, she can kind of guess what's going on and she's not sure how to deal with it. And one day she randomly meets someone who seems like she's in like part of a mysterious cult or something. And she talks about the countdown and she's like,

okay, what you need to do if you really want to be a true believer, right, is...

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This is the sound of your ride home with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes. Brought to you by the FDA. At this point in time, just look up at the sky and the sky will look back at you, right? And so...

It all builds up to like what will happen at this point in time. So the episode ends when she looks up and she can see like the night sky and

and the entire sky just starts flicking on and off. Like a literal- - All the stars. - Yeah, all the stars just start flicking on and off, on and off, on and off. And you're just like, what the fuck is happening right now? - Right, right. - Right? And so a lot of season one is like building on this mystery of like just exactly what's happening

what the fuck is going on with this world. It's kind of turning into chaos, into anarchy. And there are so many like twists and turns with where the show goes. But what I will say is a lot of the twists and turns

are based on hypothetical scientific theory that I fucking fall asleep to. - Yeah. - You know? - It's the science of it all is it really kind of make belief interesting if you're into that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like actually based on real theories or this is just theories that the show made up? - I think there's like, they take an element of truth and then twist it. - Right. - Yeah. - Okay. - But like they take some really interesting concepts that are real concepts and then kind of like

- Yeah, so let me say like one of, maybe one of the theories that is contained in this, have you heard of the dark forest theory? - Yes. - Yes. - I don't know what that is, so you can explain. - So the dark forest theory is, you know,

- What's that paradox where we don't know why we're alone in the universe again? - It's not a lens's law, what's it called? It's like, yeah, it's this paradox of if there is intelligent life out there, then why haven't they contacted us? - Why haven't they contacted us? - Fermi's paradox. - Fermi's paradox, that's it. So this is the dark forest is one of the hypothetical solutions to the Fermi paradox, which is the question is why,

if we are not alone in the universe, why have we not been contacted yet? And the dark forest theory says that one of the solutions to that is that no one wants to transmit themselves, broadcast their existence to the wider world, right? Because they know that if they broadcast their existence, there's probably going to be a deadlier being

that will snuff them out. 'Cause we know from humans, if we see something or if we see an animal or an object or anything that is stupider than us, then that doesn't end well for the less intelligent being. Either they get snuffed out. - I think it's called the 99% problem. - Yeah. - It's all something like that where it's like,

chimpanzees and humans are 99% genetically similar. And it's that 1% difference that makes the difference between humans and chimpanzees. And it's like, well, if only 1% of difference,

than like who knows what's out there in the universe. - Yeah. - I mean, it was a cool show, cool ideas, but there was so many problems. - It sounds right up my alley. - Honestly, that's what I'm saying. - The show runners were Game of Thrones ones. - Oh, okay, okay. - The brothers? - The brothers, yeah. - The brothers who fucked Game of Thrones. - Right, okay. - So half the cast is Game of Thrones. So you're watching the show, you're like, "What's this guy? What's this guy?"

- I will say, and I know this is like a whatever chrism, the CGI in the show is so bad. - Oh really? - It's diabolically awful. - Damn. - It's shit.

- It's actually impressive how bad the CGI is for a top budget, like modern- - How bad are we talking? Are we talking like live action Japanese, like Japanese production live action anime bad or? - Dude, the CGI is just, yeah, like all the Reddit. - What was with the CGI? - Yeah, it's just weird, man. It looks really like, it looks like it's like 15 years old, like the CGI. And there's some core scenes that really rely on it.

it just makes them like there's like one scene that would be like really intense. Yeah. And it's kind of ruined because the CGI just kind of makes it dumb. Yeah. I agree. The CGI in this is not the greatest. The boat CGI was so bad. Oh yeah. I couldn't help but just laugh. It wasn't fun. It wasn't bad at all. Yeah. Sorry it wasn't like scary at all or like horrible because

- The boat scene just came out of nowhere, I'll be honest. - I didn't mind the idea of it. - I didn't mind the idea. It was just weird. The vibe of it was weird. But I would say like I said,

I very much enjoyed "The Penguin." I very much enjoy "Shogun," but sometimes you just watch a series that is just right up your alley for the type of ideas and the type of ideas presented in it. And this was it for me. This was everything that I want in a TV show. Mind-breaking ideas with put into a drama. Wasn't the cleanest, but I really, really fucking enjoyed it. - Is that the fucking footy?

- He's at the footy. - So I got back into following football this year. - Water cooler conversations unlocked for life. - Yeah, so I mean, so my journey with football

is obviously I lived in England. So by osmosis, I needed to know a lot about football and I did for a long time. Then I moved out of England and I've lived out of England for like, it must be a decade now at least. And one of the hardest things that made it, one of the things that made it hardest to follow the footy was that the time zones.

And also- - Watching highlights is lame. - Yeah, watching highlights just doesn't do it as good. And also no one around me really talks about the footy as well. And it seemed like my bubble in the anime sphere, no one really cared about footy. - True, you never got into the footy?

- Nope. - Yeah. - Because my parents like forced me to. So I kind of like pushed back and liked video games. - Fair enough. - Yeah. - But I felt so pressured by everyone to like it. - Right, right. - Yeah, and- - Pretty much. - Yeah, this year it just felt like, it feels like, I don't know how, 'cause I feel like footy had already reached peak popularity, but footy now is like, football has just like kind of like,

gotten into even like a lot of popular culture outside of just England and Europe. And part of the big reason I got back into it was I watched Ted Lasso, which was a fuck, I've already talked about it, but such an amazing TV series. Basically Onizuka takes charge of an English football team. That's the best way I can describe it. Teaches them life lessons as opposed to teaching them football tactics and somehow it works.

And also the euros was this year as well. - And you watch Mr. Beast collab with Ronaldo. - And of course Ronaldo. I mean, here's the thing. That's the thing, right? It seems like football in general has just,

even Americans are now starting to- - Yeah, I have noticed that. - Yeah, and there's a few reasons for that because America right now, Messi is playing for the MLS, which is the American League. America is doing everything it can to-

to make football more popular. And, you know, in some ways there are some wild fucking ideas because modern football is nowhere near the same football that I grew up with. It has gotten far more, far more globalized than the premier league in general. It's just leagues beyond popularity of any other league right now to the point where there were talks of like some premier league matches taking place in America. And that's, Oh no.

- It blows my fucking mind that this is number one, even a conversation. - Is it allowed? - Huh? - Is it allowed?

And I hate that idea personally. I hate that idea. But the fact that we're getting to that point where, you know, Americans are starting to embrace football in general, that blows my fucking mind. And also there was a time when the team I supported was sucked. Well, it was good, but then it sucked. So the team I support is Arsenal.

Yes, there's a Man United fan. And I can't imagine being a modern Man United fan. Let's be honest, that's just embarrassing.

But yeah, so I just got back into following football and it seems like there are more spaces now where I can just talk about football and people know what the fuck I'm talking about. - The safe space is getting larger. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. - One thing that I've realized I've missed so much from football and I wish that sports did this and I wish they didn't take the American model, relegation.

- Relegation and-- - Oh, they still have relegation? - Yeah, no, I wish other sports did it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Because in America, it's all franchise. Your team will never, you come last, no punishment. - Yeah, exactly. - 'Cause I think, and again, with eSports, they took the American model, which was really sad. 'Cause I feel like we lost out on a lot of cool narratives and a lot of genuine interest in sports in favor for this more consistent team base. Whereas, look, the Premier League is the most expensive league in the world.

- By a long shot actually. - That's not even close. And they can maintain a relegation and promotion system. And it's that kind of like fairy tale story that we all kind of like get really excited about where a team can promote, kind of have this once in a lifetime run and win the league, which you can't have in America. You'll be like, "Damn, this team won." It's like, yeah, 'cause they had a franchise spot where they put 500 million into it. There is no aspect of it that is kind of organic, I feel like.

- Because like, yeah, to add onto that, 'cause like when I say, you know, I've been talking about the Premier League quite long stream and people ask me, "Oh, why aren't you a Brighton supporter?" Because Brighton are pretty fucking good right now. At the time of recording, they're like fifth in the league. And I, you know, the reason I said was when I was into football, when I got into football,

Brighton was not even in the same division. They weren't even in the division below. They were in the second division, like two divisions below. Brighton was my local team and Arsenal was like my premier league team. - I mean, yeah, you have your, in the UK everyone has a local, everyone has their team. But I feel like it's also mainly what your family. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, I mean, I got into Arsenal

And I remember talking to some of like the anime men about this though, 'cause they're like, they're into football. And it was, made me feel old when I was like, the reason I got into Arsenal and one of the boys asked, "Oh, is it because of the invincible era?" Where it's like, this is like peak old, you know, in the old days, Arsenal and Man United were like the top two rivalries. And there was this one season when Arsenal went unbeaten.

And that was my era of Arsenal and that's what got me into Arsenal. And he was like, "Yeah, I know that 'cause my dad was into Arsenal for the same reason." And I was like, "Oh my fucking God." - It's crazy 'cause I don't keep up with the Premier League. So there's some teams I'm like, "I do not recognize Brentford."

- Yeah, the Premier League is totally different, but I have been getting into Brighton actually. Brighton are like the hipster pick of the Premier League because, well, which is on brand 'cause they're the fucking hipster city in general. But for the amount of money they spent compared to all the other,

they are way over performing and they continue to over perform every year. And that's based on like they have their scouting system is like on a new level. - As someone who knows nothing about soccer, I don't even know what the fuck. - Let me sell you on Brighton. - Oh my God. - Right, 'cause the reason I talk to you- - The fuck am I walking? - The reason I talk to you, the reason that I can talk to a lot of Japanese people about Brighton is because- - Japanese player. - There is a Japanese player, Mitoma.

who if anyone in Japan knows football, they know Mitoma. - Okay. - He has the most fucking anime-esque backstory I've ever heard in my life, right? - Okay. - So this guy, right? As a kid, he was offered professional training

with the team he was playing with, right? And he was like, "No." At 10 years old, as a youth, he's like, "No, I'm gonna turn that down. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna go to university."

And what he does in university is he studies sports science. So he studies and majors in sports science and his final year's thesis was the art of dribbling. And so he takes everything he learned in university, 'cause the reason he wants to go to university was to literally study football and study the science of football. So he takes everything he learns

And then he comes back and he just crushes the pro league in Japan, gets signed by Brighton. And it's now like one of like,

Yeah, he's one of the best dribblers in the league. This is a man who got up there by fucking studying. That is... - That's cool, it's anime as fuck. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm glad you like football. All right, what else you got? - Yeah, all right. That was just me wanting to know about football.

I mean, obviously in the middle there we've got- - We spoke about Elden Ring. - Elden Ring, so- - Yeah, I mean, I wanted to speak, I didn't want to speak about Elden Ring in particular. I just want to say like- - Banger. - Banger. This particular, my favorite boss battle of all time. That's- - Yeah, you like that? - I fucking love that shit. - I fucking hate that stupid attack. Fucking hate that dumb ass attack that I could never fucking block.

- I mean, that sounds like a skill issue to me. - It is a skill issue. - Because I have never had a, so it took me, I think it took me 15 hours to complete this boss. - God damn. - Me too. - So yeah, millennia, it took me 15. - Clocked in, clocked in, clocked out. - Yeah, 15 hours to defeat this boss. And that was like the fastest 15 hours of my life. - It's just fun trying. - Yeah, yeah. I literally, so I streamed this and I stayed up till 5:00 AM.

I was like, I think I figured her out 10 hours in. But then you figure out a boss, but then the other half of it is just execution. So I was 10 hours in and I was like, I can do it, I can do it. The only thing that stopped me was that Sydney literally needed to come down. That sounded bad.

- Why did you pause there? - Sydney literally needed to come. I had to help. I had to go and help. - It's not the stream, it's the stream before this. So Sydney literally needed to come down and was like,

"Honey, can you come to bed please? It's 5:00 AM." - Oh my God. - It's 5:00 AM. - I've actually dodged that shit. That's fucking tight. - Yeah, and so, you know, this was the second stream when I woke up and I did it in like three tries afterwards. But I think the biggest thing I liked about this mechanic was she has a lifestyle function. And a lot of people hated that.

But I think that's the reason I really, really fucking like this boss. Because to me, this boss was like the epitome of like get good. - Yeah, you have to dodge. - 'Cause you have to dodge. You have to learn the attack patterns. Some bosses you could just- - Nice parry. - Oh my God. - Oh yeah, I also did it the hard way 'cause I had to like parry her all the way. - That parry was disgusting.

And the reason I fucking loved every second of this was because of that lifestyle function. Because some bosses are kind of like cheese by just tanking more damage and just out-damaging them. With her, I literally just, as the Souls fandom says, just get good and just learn everything and execute it perfectly. Right.

And that's what I did. And there was, there's not been anything that's been more satisfying for me than just this boss battle. And I would kill anything, kill for this experience again. - I would come. - I would come for this experience again. - I'm glad you enjoyed it. What else have we got in the three by three?

- So what else do you wanna know about? - What is Damie Lee? - Damie Lee, so I fell down a weird rabbit hole in YouTube this year. - Nice. - Fell down the architecture and city planning rabbit hole. - Ooh, exciting. - Yeah, I remember you talking about this earlier. - Yeah, yeah. - Nothing gets me worked up like architecture. - I have to really credit Damie, is it Damie?

Is it Damily? - I think Damily. - Okay, I really have to credit Damily for this because she's a YouTuber who does basically video essays about architecture. But how she got me into it is she does this really fucking interesting thing where she uses the weirdest and wildest architecture you can find from popular media. Like she analyzes,

she's an architect herself. So she's clearly, clearly very knowledgeable in the subject. - I've seen these videos. - Yeah, I've definitely seen a few of these. - Yeah, so she will analyze maybe the architecture in June and how the buildings really characterize the city that they are trying to portray in the world. And she talks about it in such a fucking interesting way because I,

do not give a shit about architecture. I never gave a shit about architecture. And I always find it amazing when I find a content creator that can make me give a shit about something that I have absolutely no interest in. And I think she has a really good balance between, you know, really obviously real architectural knowledge where you can learn something, but tackling topics that are just interesting. - Are approachable. - Yeah, that are approachable, that anyone can understand.

And after watching her, I fell in this weird rabbit hole of like city planning and urbanization. And now I am- - That was not on my bingo card for you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And now there are like some topics like, talk to me about super blocks and why every city should have super blocks. - What the fuck is a super block? - What the fuck is this? Okay, let me tell you- - No, why did you ask that question? - Let me tell you about super blocks, Connor. It is-

It is a system that almost any city can integrate to get less cars on the roads, right? And giving more power to pedestrians and people walking around. So basically you take a portion of the city and you just make a block out of it, right? And then you take that block and you're like, okay, only very few cars can drive through the roads

of this specific block. And then you plan around public transport to be within, to get to and from that block, get rid of parking in that block. And so what that means is that people can just start walking around again. And it sounds so simple and yet I kind of realized

Some of my favorite parts of like going to a festival or something or going to events is whenever they cordon off like the roads and you could just walk around on the roads, there is more space for like businesses outside. It just feels warmer and it feels more like a community. That is what the super block structure is trying to emulate basically. - Okay. - And

- I've never seen Gantz be this passionate. It's really cute. - Like walkable cities. - Yeah, it's like even beyond walkable cities, it's obviously walkable cities, but having spaces within that city that are just basically mainly for the pedestrians. So basically making, you know, having like a park zone, but instead of like having just like the grassland be walkable, it's like this entire city area be walkable.

- I mean, I'm totally for that idea. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's most well known in Barcelona because that is a city that is literally built with blocks. But the idea of super blocks can pretty much be integrated anywhere.

We'd love to see more of this stuff. So this is a really weird tangent. - You love what you love. - We share what we love. - I don't know where else I would get to get the opportunity to talk about shit like this. - Don't you ever fucking make a super block ever again on the show, okay? I'm fucking leaving if you bring up that. - But yeah, like I said, you can thank Damie Lee for gaming down this rabbit hole.

- Shout out Damien Lee. - Shout out Damien Lee, amazing content creator. - "Memories of Matsuko." - "Memories of Matsuko." - I've heard of this. I don't think I've seen it though. - "Memories of Matsuko" is a film that I actually rewatched. So I watched it like ages ago, but I rewatched it this year and I think it's now on my three by three of like my favorite films of all time. - Damn, oh wow. - I'm rewatching it. It is,

- It is a film that's basically shows the life story of Matsuko. It's a fictional film. So it's not like a biography or anything like that. But it shows the life story of this girl, woman living the most depressing fucking life of all time. Every man she meets betrays her, gets her more depressed. - I think I've seen this.

- Yeah, this looks really familiar. I think like maybe like my mom's friend or something was like really big into this film. - They didn't remake this, but it basically shows her life story. So it's like a really, really depressing story, but it's told.

in the most lighthearted, happy way you can imagine. - Japan is so good at that. I think I saw a whole video on it. It's like, they're really good at doing it in their films and music. I think it's called positive melancholy or something. - Yeah, yeah. - Where it's like, it feels lighthearted, but then when you actually think about it, it's like, nah, this shit's mad depressing. - Oh no, this shit- - I don't know how they do it. - This shit has it all. Like fucking-

abusive relationships, betrayal, sex work, drugs. Pretty much she goes through the checklist of everything bad that can happen. - She's doing a live speed run. - She is doing a live speed run of just like,

of just ruining her life. But it's like you say, it's told in such a happy positive way. There are these like weird musical numbers where they kind of go into like, you know, 80s city pop. There's like 90s R&B, go through like her life in like prison and shit like that. When she joins a soap land. And I don't know what it is about the emotions in this film, but-

I fuck with it. - I'm sold man. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I had to, like the closest thing I could think of in anime is the scenes that Hideaki Anno loves where it's like an Evangelion, where it's combining the most traumatic shit with like some soft, like weird ass music that comes with it, musical music that comes with it. And that mess of emotions you get when you combine the two, that is this film,

- Right, it's like you don't know how to feel throughout different scenes. - Yeah, you don't know how to feel during different scenes and it ties everything together right at the end because you know what's going to happen 'cause the film starts off not even from her perspective, but it's from her,

her nephew's perspective and her nephew visits her house because he finds out her aunt has passed away. - Right. - And so you know how the film is going to end. It doesn't have a good ending. - Right. - But holy shit. I fucking cried so much during this, man. - I'm sold, I'm sold. - This to me is a masterpiece film and very few films can make me feel the emotions of this film. - 2006. - Yeah, 2006. - I'm down. - Yeah.

- So just a few things left. - "Late Night with the Devil." - "Late Night with the Devil." - So spoiler, this is also on my three by three. - Oh shit, no fucking way. - This movie is fucking shit. - Hell yeah, man. - It's so good. - Hell yeah. - Did something happen with this film? 'Cause I was gonna watch it, but then I saw a bit of controversy around it. - I have no idea. - I don't know. - Okay, okay. I feel like, am I crazy? Am I imagining this? But I wanted to watch this and then,

I just never heard about it. - Yeah. - Now I'm gonna hear about it. - This movie's rad. - It's so cool. - I mean, I had, I get, I watch horror films via osmosis because I am married to Sydney. So Sydney shows me a lot of horror films and I like one out of every film that she shows. One per year. Last year, I think it was like the menu. This year it was "Late Night with the Devil." And it basically follows this,

fake late night TV show, right? Follows this guy who is desperate for views, desperate for ratings. And the concept of this late night TV show, and it's shot exactly like a late night TV show, is that he invites- - From like the '70s. - Yeah, from like the '70s. He invites this girl on who is apparently possessed by the devil, right? And the way this film plays out, there are two real parts of this film. There is,

you are, there is the TV show side of things where you are literally viewing this like you are watching a 17th late night TV show. But every time they cut to commercial, you see it flips perspective and you see everything happening behind the scenes as well. - That's cool.

- And the quality like improves like a 2020s film. And it's like widescreen, but like during the actual like programming it's in like letterbox and like old 70s type of show. - And the more that the film goes on, the more that things just seem off, like more weird things keep happening and it keeps building up and building up. But because the main character is like, so he like needs the ratings, like he like,

he forces the show to go on no matter how weird things get. And the tension just builds and builds. And you get to a point where sometimes one of my favorite things that they added to this is they added this skeptic character

who is basically like, let's say Darren Brown, but just 10 times more of an asshole. And he has this segment where he starts like hypnotizing the audience and hypnotizing people just to prove that everything weird that's going on is being faked. This girl is not possessed. - And there's like some kind of logic to everything. - Yeah, there's a logic to everything.

and things just keep getting weirder and weirder until everything just comes together. - Okay, I'm hyped. I'm sold. - It is so trippy. - If you like analog horror, this is it. This is analog horror as a film. - I mean, I'm not a huge horror guy, I think I've said in the show, but I'm very much down to give it a shot. - I'm absolutely not a horror person either, but out of all of the ones that I was,

forced to watch because he also loves horror films. I watched this during like the October, so like Halloween month. - Yeah. - And yeah, this movie was so good. - All right. - Yeah. - I'm sold, boys. - Such a cool, unique idea for a movie as well. - Yeah, it's so trippy. It made me feel sad 'cause I finished this and I was like, I wanna see more films that are like this. - Yeah. - And it's so hard to find something that was like,

that gives me a similar feeling of this kind of like analog horror of this reality, you know, TV show reality versus weird shit happening behind the scenes. But yeah, highly recommend it. We all hate horror. I do not like horror at all. And this was great. - This one was good. - I watched a lot of horror films.

Most of them non-consensually. - Can I watch it before bed or is it too scary? - I don't even know if I'd pee in my bed. - I watched it before bed and I had no poop in my pants. - I don't even think it was like scary, scary. It was just unsettling. - It's creepy. - It was creepy unsettling, which is the kind of horror that I love. - Yeah, me too. - It's really unsettling. - It's just like the kind of bat shit insane horror. - If it's on both your three by threes, I mean, I have to watch it now. - And finally, this is my yearly

- Oh my God. - Trails. Really yearly reminder for Trails to Azure, which is the latest Trails on my list. - All right, how many Trails games have you made it through so far? - When did this journey start? Like a year ago? - Two years ago, I think. - Two years already? - Yeah, it's been two years. - Fucking hell. - I have averaged two to three games per year. So I played two games this year. - Damn. - And Trails to Azure,

- It's fucking great. I've heard from a lot of people that this is one of the peaks of the series and I can wholeheartedly say that this was fucking amazing. And this is my favorite one so far and everything this has made playing through all of the games previously worth it because this was- - How many hours you put into this series? You can just throw a number, estimate. - Well, how many hours on average per game? - Probably like 50.

- 40 to 50? - Yeah, sounds about right. - 40 to 50 hours per game? - And you've played how many of the games? - This is the fifth game in the series. - As a fellow JRPG player, I am proud of you. - Yeah. - That's such a- - So I've put like 200-ish. - 10 days straight. - 200-ish hours into this game series. I'm not going to stop, but-

Suffice to say the amount of twists and turns within the series, I think this arc that was presented in the series is the cleanest arc because it's only two games and you're following far less characters. So the writing is a lot tighter.

And there is a certain point in this where literally everyone in the previous games like comes together along with future characters for the games as well. And all they do is they come together and they have a meeting. And it was hype. It was hype. - Like, yo, it was that guy from that game. - It was,

They come together, have a big old massive meeting. And I was like, yo, this shit hype, man. Just seeing these characters interact with each other. And it was basically like the reverie from One Piece. If you know that One Piece arc. And yeah, that is my yearly reminder that I'm still playing Trails. And if you're not playing Trails,

- I'm not talking to you Connor, I'm talking to the people who will want a payoff that is worth investing 200 odd hours. - Yeah, I'm really kind of upset that you said that because it's just like, every time you talk about trails, I'm just like, I have to resist. - Like I have to trust you that it's good and that's too much. - I know, I know, I know. But there is a certain group of people that will get what I'm saying and I'm saying this shit is worth it. This shit is worth the investment. - I'm saving this one for retirement.

- The shit, everything you've heard One Piece say about One Piecing it being worth the journey, this is the exact same thing for JRPGs, man. - All right. - Shit, man.

- All right, Joey, what do you got? - All right, some of this is not surprising. - Yeah, some of this is pretty self-explanatory. So I won't take too much of your guys' time. So from the top, so Metaphor Re Fantasia, obviously my game of the year personally, freaking amazing JRPG. Probably one of my favorite JRPGs of the past, I'd say five years. - Is it better than Persona 5? - I think it's better than Persona 5, personally speaking.

- Better characters, better writing. - Yeah, I think just like, it's what, I made a second channel video on it, but I think the one thing, one immediate thing for me that made me realize I prefer this game over pretty much most, if not all the Persona games is that like the Persona games, there's always at least one character where I'm like, I hate you. You know what I mean? Whereas like with metaphor,

Even though there's quite a large cost of characters, every single at least playable character for me, I was like,

you're like really well-written and just like a fun character to like interact with. And you know, for a game like this, where it's like all about interacting with your characters and stuff, like you kind of need that. - Yeah. - But you can't get lost in Shibuya Station. - You can't get lost in Shibuya Station, unfortunately, but you can get lost in a fantasy world. So that's pretty cool. - You can't romance your best girl. - Yeah, that's true. You can't romance any of the characters in this game.

- Either way, yeah, it was amazing experience. Again, I put like 90 hours into this shit. - Does every game need romancing? - No. - No, it really doesn't. I'm actually kind of glad they didn't put romancing in this because there's already so much that the game throws at you in terms of like things to do. But I feel like the romance aspect would have almost distracted me from the actual story of the game. - I feel like romancing is often a very like,

it feels like an unnecessary mechanic added in games a lot of the times. Because you're not really romancing, you're just like, I'll press this one and...

- Well, I mean, in like the persona games with romancing, it's not just a matter of like, oh, let's go on date and like press a couple of buttons. It's like, you know, there's a little bit more to it, but yeah, I'm actually kind of glad they didn't put it in there because I think it would have just been a bit too distracting. - Right, right. - The story's already strong enough. - Yeah, exactly. - Why distract the player? - Yeah. And like, you know, with like a lot of like the persona games, you know, it's all about like interacting with the individual characters and getting to know them as you like,

advance through the main story, you can also go through each of the characters stories as well to get yourself stronger in the game. And all the characters backstories were just really well-written. They weren't mind blowing, but for JRPG standards, I think they were really, really good. So yeah, I really want Metafor to be game of the year, but I know that's not gonna happen. - We can hope. - I'm just glad it was even nominated and that's a W for us.

Obviously Pokemon TCG pocket. - Oh my God, you're addicted to Pokemon. - I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm also including just like the physical Pokemon TCG 'cause Aki and I got back into it this year. - What made you guys get back into it? Or was it just like something natural? - I always wanted to get back into it, but I was like, I didn't really want to just like do it by myself. So I brought the idea up to Aki and she was like,

- Yeah, I've been thinking about getting back into it too. So we're like, all right, let's go. And now it's great. It's like, whenever we have a day off now, we just like walking around somewhere or just like find a card shop and just like spend time there. It's good fun. - I feel like you're just like collecting is just in your blood. - I do love collecting. - You just love collecting stuff. - I do. - You're a hermit crab, man. - I know. - You're just grabbing shit

- I know, it's like I collect Pokemon cards, manga, records. - I don't have like collected GameCube games for like one time and I've never had that thing in my brain that's like, I should just get everything.

- Joey just needs a set to complete something. - That's why I like, for example, with like animal crossing, right? Like most people's like focuses are like, I wanna make like a really pretty town and you know, like all that kind of stuff. I'm like, nah dog, I wanna get all the fish. I wanna get all the bugs. I wanna get all the paintings. I wanna collect everything. Fuck what the town looks like. I don't give a fuck about interior design.

I want that completed one. I want to see that 100% and then I'll be satisfied. - I wonder what part of the brain does that? - I don't know. I really don't know, but it's eating my budget alive. - Yeah, because like every time you get a new place, you're just like, I have more room to fit stuff into this. I'm like, oh, this room would be perfect to put all my shit in.

- That serves no purpose. - You're just gonna need to like get new places with more and more. - You're gonna have like the best fucking man cave. - Oh my God. - When you're like that age. - The moment I'm able to make a man cave, dog, it's gonna be the man cave of man caves. Every man will walk in and just instantly nut. I'll be like, oh, it's so good. This is such a good man cave. - Oh my God, so much useless stuff. - Everything is here. - Is it gay to nut in your friend's man cave?

- Everything is here and it serves no purpose. So yeah, is that I put gym up there because I was like running out of ideas. - Okay. - But to be fair, I mean, it's still going, still going strong. I've been doing CrossFit now for shit, 10 months now. - Nice. - 10 months? - Yeah. Fittest I've ever been, which is good. So I want to keep that up. Trying to go at least twice a week.

But yeah, no, it's been good. And it's like, it's actually been so like reen, like it made me realize, like I always thought like working out and shit like that would just like tie me out. - Yeah. - But now- - It gives you more energy. - Yeah, it gives me energy now and it's great. Like, and I used to think like, oh man, I need to do like gym at like the end of the day so that I could recover. - Yeah. - But like, yeah, I'm still slowly getting to the point now where I'm actually doing it in the mornings and it's fucking awesome.

So yeah, I'm gonna keep going for that. And I will, I guess, I don't know if I'm gonna show like progression photos or whatever the fuck. - Are you taking progression photos? - Not right now 'cause I'm not really satisfied with where I am at the moment. - You took a before photo. - I took a before photo, yes. And I look horrible.

- Horrendous. Like I look back at that now and I was just like, God damn, who is this guy? But yeah, I'll get there one day. - I mean, look, it's a journey, right? I think the best thing about exercising is just helps your mental state. - Oh, 100%. - Yeah, it's good to hit these goals, but it's also, you gotta do it for the rest of your life. - Yeah, exactly. - It's all about like, how do I just get into the habit of enjoying this and not hitting X pounds? It's like, all right, if I get into the habit of enjoying doing this,

have a lifelong hobby that is fulfilling and helps. Yeah, for sure. No, 100% agree. So I'm hoping like I can just like keep that up in one way

But also like, I'm also like at the same time trying to just get into the habit of just working out on my own accord as well. So I've been like for the last like couple of months, I've been slowly getting to the habit of just like, if it's like a, if there's like a week where I'm like not going, then I'll just do like 20, 30 minutes of just like how things are. - Yeah, I mean like you're just doing anything. It's just the most important thing. - Yeah, it's just like getting that habit going. So like, I'm trying to build that up, but yeah, I'm getting there. - Glad to see it's going well, man. - Yeah, I'm getting there.

Anything else that catches your eye? We don't have to talk about late night with the devil. We've already talked about that. - What is flowers for the algernon? - Flowers for algernon? - Oh, oh, oh. - Yeah, so this is a book.

- A book book? - I know. - A book book? - Like no pictures? - No picture book. - Not even like a light novel book? - Not even a light novel book. - There's gotta be like a coloring page or something. - No coloring page. - Just words? - Just words. - What the fuck? - So this year I've like really gotten back into like just reading.

'Cause I kind of missed that. And like one of the things I wanted to do is like obviously go out and like actually read new books as well. But one thing I've really wanted to do is like go back and read like the classics, if you will. 'Cause I've like done it with like anime, I've done it with like movies and stuff, but I never really did it with books. So I was like, okay, you know, I'll take this time to like go back and like read like the books you need to read before you die kind of books. And this is one of them I'd heard about the

the name of this book for the longest time, but never knew anything about it. And I think out of all the classic books I read, this might be like the one where I was like, wow, this one is crazy. - Okay. - Amazing. So basic synopsis is like, so it's told from, the book is kind of structured, not in like a regular way, but it's kind of written like a diary entries.

from a character, it's the main character, Charlie Gordon, who is this kind of mentally disabled character. And it starts off,

it goes in chronological order and the book is written like he has written it. So because he is a mentally disabled character who like kind of has like speech problems and like, you know, has a very, very low IQ. It's written in a way where it's really difficult to read at first. So like the, all of the, the vocab is off. All of the sentence structures are off. Like, it's like you're reading an actual person's diary. But then,

they do this experiment on this mouse called Algernon, where it's like an experiment to try to raise a creature's IQ. And it works on the mouse.

- So obviously we gotta try it on Charlie. - So the scientists go, okay, Charlie, would you want to become like the human experiment for this thing? And he does it and it's really cool because as the book progresses, he learns more words and his sentence structure gets better and he's able to actually express what he's feeling and seeing and doing in a much, much more fleshed out way. - This should use this on the people in my League of Legends lobbies.

- Yeah, for real. - So you're reading this and you can see as you're reading it and progressing through the story that like, oh, he's learning words and he's learning to get better at writing and expressing himself. And that reflects on how you experience the actual story because it's all told from the perspective of these diary entries. But then they later on, they find out that Algenon the mouse

suddenly passes away and shows like a depletion of its IQ suddenly drastically before dying. So Charlie, our main character sees that and is like kind of becoming self-reflecting on, oh, that's probably gonna happen to me. So what am I gonna do with my life? And it's basically just like this really interesting human drama about this character put in this like very, you know, unique situation. - Oh, they made a movie about it.

- They made a movie about it. - Oh, okay. - So the book is from the 50s, I believe, 1959. Yeah, so I was debating between this one and another classic book called "Fahrenheit 451." - Oh, okay. - I would say both are on the same level. "Fahrenheit 451" is also an amazing book.

So I've been kind of, yeah, been dabbling in a lot of reading. - It looks fun. Well, depressing, but fun. - Yeah, this is mad depressing, but also it's just like such a cool way of storytelling. And it's like a really unique way of storytelling that I found like insane that like, you know, someone from fucking 60 years ago figured this shit out and it hasn't really been done since.

So yeah, I can see, I finished the book and I was like, okay, I can see why people are like, yeah, this is a certified hood class. Yeah, it's very, very good. Very good book. - You've ascended, Joey. - He's lifting, he's reading. - Yeah. - Bro, I put fucking food on my list. - God damn. - I'm in my glop era. So yeah, very good book if you're interested. - Joey's actually becoming cultured, not ironically.

- Unicorn Overlord, we spoke about this a little bit, right? - We spoke about this. This is like made for Fire Emblem lovers and I fucking love Fire Emblem. This is like Fire Emblem on crack and it's so goddamn good. I probably put as many hours into this as I did metaphor.

- Does it take that long or is it just 'cause you liked the game so much you were like, "I'm gonna stay another 40 hours." - No, it actually took that long. Well, I also did play around with it a lot as well because there's just so much customizability in this and there's so many ways to tap. So basically, do you know how like a basic Fire Emblem game works? - I've beaten.

- Okay, so you play farm. - One third of the houses. - Yes. - Oh, okay, okay. So like, you know that like it's, you know, based on a grid system kind of thing and it's like- - I know this genre for real time strategy. - Real time strategy, yeah. So this is a real time strategy, except if you took away the grid system and it's like, you know, fully, you can just move anywhere type of thing. And instead of one unit, you have a group of units that move together. - Okay, like little armies. - Like little armies. And instead of it being turn-based, it's in real time.

It's kind of like a battalion wars. Kind of.

But what you can do is you can stop time essentially. And you can take your time to like strategize where to move characters and stuff like that. But then once the time starts again, then everything moves all at the same time. So all the enemies move together, all of your units move together. - That looks cool. - And there's so much strategy involved in this because- - This is like my kind of game. - Yeah, and also the moment you engage in a battle a lot like "Fire Emblem," it's all automated.

- Oh, hell yeah. - So essentially you need to figure out, you need to go, okay, we're going up against these certain enemies in this block. So what characters do I need where not only will I be advantageous in the fight, but also I can strategize it by using each unit's like speed meters or like comboing with different talents and stuff like that and different skills and to like cause the most amount of damage as possible.

And also, God damn, like this is another like Atlas game. Cause Atlas just keeps fucking winning. - Well this is from the same makers as 13 Sentinel. - Yes, this is made from, yeah. So this is VanillaWare working with Atlas. So the art style was all VanillaWare stuff. - That looks cool. - It's really, really cool. Really good fun. And my God, VanillaWare were fucking cooking because any waifu you can imagine, they have it. Like literally every genre of waifu

- Exists in this game. - All right, that's good to know. - So they knew what they were doing. - All right, sure, so no more. - There's like a giant muscle mummy character who is fucking like, God damn, she's like seven feet tall. - Fuck yeah. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right there, the left one there. - Oh God damn. - Oh my God. - She's muscle mummy as fuck. - Oh my God. - Yeah, great story, great gameplay. - Joe, you've already convinced me, you don't- - Yeah, this has been on my to play list forever. - You just said I can have any kind of woman. - Any kind of woman, any kind of man you want to.

- You can swing it anyway and you can romance them. - So there you go. - I don't want to do that. - But yeah, this was like just a great fucking game. Really, really enjoyed it. - I'll check it out. - Yeah, give it a go. If you even like Fire Emblem at all, definitely give this game a go.

What else is there? - All right, through by three, we have Scallops Hotel. - Scallops Hotel. So this is an artist, music artist that I really heavily got into. So this guy kind of like goes,

He has like five different names because I don't know why the fuck you do that. Scallops Hotel is just one of them. He was called Milo at one point. He was called Rap Ferreira at one point. He was called Nostrum Grosses at one point. Like he just has like all these musical things, but he's a rapper. Okay. And, but the way he raps is really,

in the sense that it literally sent like, you know when people who don't like rap music say like, oh, it's just like them talking over a beat. This is literally a dude who just talks over a beat. - Okay. - I would say it's more closer to like slam poetry in a weird way. And he obviously takes a lot of influence from like slam poetry because like the shit he raps about is just like,

what the fuck does any of this shit mean? Like I literally need to open up a genius like annotation on like every single line. Cause it's just this like really heavy, heavy poetry. - Yeah. - But it's like really relaxing stuff as well. It's like kind of like, it's like if you listened to someone doing slam poetry over lo-fi hip hop.

That's the only way I can describe this guy. - That's the most Joey thing of all time. - Like, what do you want to describe? - That has zero appeal to me. - When you were describing, oh, people who don't understand rap or don't know rap, I'm just like, yeah, that's me. That's me. - And of course he's called like Scallops Hotel. It's the most fucking Joey thing. Yeah, I like Shoe Cum. - As you were describing the concept of this, I'm like, this is like,

- Seven layers down of like understanding. - I am fully aware that I'm putting this on a three by three and there are gonna be maybe three people watching this episode who are like, "That sounds sick." - I'm sure a bunch of people paused and listened to it and were like, "Eh." - They're like, "The fuck is this?" - But it's about connecting with those three people. - I completely understand this is as like niche of a rap sub genre as you can get, but like I really fuck with it. - Does this genre have a name?

- I actually don't know. I would say it's like maybe conscious hip hop. - Slippity sloppity.

- You're just making shit up. I was being facetious. - Nigerian street music. - Gotta rap for it. - I was being facetious just to see if Joey will come up with a name. - Yeah, alternative hip hop. - Okay, okay. - Yeah, I'd say. - Okay. - Little bit of conscious hip hop in there as well, but like- - Sometimes I hear music genres, I'm just like, you're just putting words together. That's just the genre. - Wait, what do you mean? Conscious hip hop is a real genre?

- Look it up. - I have never heard of- - Anyway, whatever. So yeah. - We're making shit up at this point. - Yeah, look, his occupation is a rapper, producer, philosopher and poet.

- Okay. - So that just goes to show what kind of person this guy is. - That's someone that maybe Joey would enjoy. - Yeah, I really like this guy. I know a couple of my friends who like this guy as well, but he's very, very niche in that sense. But I fuck with him, really, really good rapper. And also just like a massive fucking catalog. Like this dude has only been around for like maybe 10 years, but he's released like fucking 20 albums or some shit. So he's a hardworking boy. So yeah, if you want something different, check that out. - Check it out.

- All right, what else do I have? I guess the nonsense pop-up, 'cause that was like a huge part for this year for me. Went so well, thank fuck. - Oh yeah, oh yeah. - Would you ever think about doing it again? - In Japan? - Yeah, I think I would. Again, I've talked to- - Who's such a- - I mean, look, it was a lot.

I didn't realize how much work it took to do something like that. But yeah, I definitely would like to do it again 'cause it was a cool experience. Maybe somewhere in the US maybe next. - Ooh, that'd be exciting. - We'll see. - LA? - Yeah, maybe LA or New York. - Finally we'll get Joey to go to America. - Yeah. You wanna get me to go to America? Let's open up a pop-up for the audience. And then the last one I have on the bottom right is a TV show called Sanctuary.

which is like quite a, I think it's like already a few years old, but it's essentially like, it's as you can see from the picture, it's a sumo show. And it was like really big, especially in Japan. I think it was last year or the year before, if I'm not mistaken. Last year. - God damn. - Last year. - TV mini series? - Yeah. - Nice good ratings. - But this show is fucking awesome. It's so goddamn good. It's like if you took,

like the most like hardcore Yakuza, like delinquent anime, but made them get invested in sumo. - Right, right. - It does look like I would enjoy this. - And I know a lot of people who had,

absolutely zero interest or zero knowledge on sumo who watch the show and are now massive fans of sumo. - Okay, sure. - Because like from what I heard actually the Japanese sumo committee actually green flagged this show.

to be like, yes, obviously it's like quite dramatized, but like the actuals like technicals that go into it is very close to reality. - Right. - Yeah, I think it's a film, any sumo stuff is quite difficult. - Yeah. - 'Cause they're pretty protective over sumo. - Very much so. So if that like super protective, you know, sumo committee is like, yeah, this show is fucking awesome. Like we approve of this, then like it's really, really good.

The director of this is like a really famous director in Japan. He did a bunch of like Yakuza based like TV. Like he did the fable, I think it's called. - Oh, fable? - Yeah, fable. - I know that. - Yeah, yeah. So he's the guy who directed the live action fable. - Oh, shit. - And I think he did the Tokyo Revengers live action as well. - This is all like delinquent stuff. - This is all delinquent stuff, yeah. - The fable is more like assassination. - Yeah. - But definitely.

that kind of like sub genre. - Yeah, so like the main character is like this like mega, mega delinquent who like loses all hope in his life because like his mom is like cheating on his dad and his dad basically like gets into an accident trying to like pay off debts and stuff like that. And so it's like repay for his dad for doing that for him. He's like goes to Tokyo to try to like make something of himself. And then he discovers Sumo and he's like,

- But it's really cool because at first he absolutely like hates the sport, spits all over it, like has no respect for it at all. But then the more he like actually becomes better at sumo, the more he learns to actually appreciate the sport for what it is. But where by the end of it, he like becomes like one of the best in his league. But yeah, really, really, really good show. - Oh, "Like a Dragon" he does.

- Oh, he did "Like a Dragon." There you go. Yeah, he did TV series for that as well. So yeah, he does all of the like Yakuza delinquent. - That's cool. - And the action sequences in this are fucking awesome. He literally, yeah. He literally does like, there's so many scenes where like he does like a Zack Snyder bullet time, like type of like, you know like the shit in "300"? It's like that, but in delinquent fights and it's really, really good.

So really short as well. - Yeah, I was gonna say, you said Zack Snyder. The poster looks like Sumos if they were shot in 300. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I was gonna say, why are they oiled up? I'm like, oh no, the shadowing is just like super intense and all. - It's literally 300 if there was . - That is fucking awesome. It's so good. So yeah, there you go. That's my three by three. - Let us know what you guys thought about our three by threes down below. Who had some good takes? Maybe you can tell us about something that you discovered this year that was also amazing. - Yeah, what did you like in 2024? - Exactly.

- Hey, look at all these patrons though. - Look at all these patrons. - I'm sure they have a lot of things that they would like to discuss down in the comments, share it with the community. And hey, if you wanna support the show and check out monthly, monthly, weekly, Patreon exclusive content, we have a brand new one for you guys that you can go check out right after this episode. Hey, if you wanna check that out and support the show on the process, then head on over to patreon.com/trashtaste. Also follow us on Twitter, send us some memes,

on the subreddit and if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. And I think next week is the final episode of 2024, I think. So don't miss out on that. We'll see you guys then. - Bye.

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