What up, everybody? Welcome to a very special episode of IG& GameSoup. I'm your host, Damon Hatfield. And joining me this week are Justin Davis.

Scoop. Nick Lemone.

I'm back, baby. And Sam Claiborne joins us as well.

Oh my, you've caught me in my study today, Damon. It's so good to see you. It's so good to be here.

I wasn't expecting company. It does look great. It looks very cozy. Yes. I see the glow of the fire. The thrill of their recent adventures. Actually, I'm reporting live on the scene from outside Aletha, Kansas, which will tie into this episode's theme. Please take it away, Damon. Alatha, Kansas, a place, a birthplace of kings, they say.

That's what they say about the Latha, Kansas.

It's the most wonderful time of year.

Everyone, all year long, around the world,

waits for this moment.

It's time for the damey awards everyone has just been waiting with

bids to find out what's what was the kill gag of the year people have to know people have to know

so let's just let's just get right into it i'm gonna i'm gonna reveal my top five games of the year. Damon Hatfield's top five video games of the year, 2025. It's the one time of year that Damon gets to take over the show. Yep. I let you guys talk all year long. And then there's one episode that's just about all the stuff that I like okay here

we go my top five games the year coming at number five is the outer worlds two a

game I'm just about to wrap up at 50 hours I don't know you got that far in that

game yeah I'm past the point of no return I'm on the last sort of like final

stretch this was a slow burn it really grew on me it's isn't you know it's it's

like out of worlds one but it's so much bigger. It feels epic. It's like, you know, at 20 hours, it felt like it could have wrapped up, but then it just launches off in this whole other story arc. It's all good. I'm going to describe one of my favorite missions in the game. So if you don't want to know about a mission that's about midway through the game, feel free to skip ahead. But in this one, you have to get to this supercomputer to analyze this data that you have. But the supercomputer is in a facility that's guarded by enemies of the protectorate faction. And so you can call in another faction the order to help you clear out the base, but in return, they want you to let them take control of the supercomputer when you're done with it. So I was like, whatever, that's fine. But then the supercomputer, when you get there, it sends you on this long quest all over this ice planet for stuff that it wants first. And you talk with the computer a lot. And by the end of the quest, I kind of liked the computer. It's an AI. And then it started,

it started asking me like, what should we do next? What, you know, what should we work on in the future? In the future, how can we collaborate? So when I walked out and the order was there and they wanted to take control of the computer, I was like, actually, no, I think I'll keep the computer for myself. So I became their sworn enemy of the faction.

They all attacked me.

I had to kill everyone that helped me clear out the facility.

My God.

And now I'm an enemy to that faction. If they ever see me, they're just going to attack me on site. So, the AI. Oh, he's my, he's my friend now. Yeah. Nice. No, he's a giant supercomputer, but I can go visit him. And there's some side quests like you with him. The game warns you, the game warned you when this happens, says, you're an enemy of this faction now. They will attack you on site. You may want to reload a previous save or just enjoy the chaos, so I'm just enjoying the chaos. Nice. Wow, that's awesome. Also, I think the gun play feels and sounds great. Sounds great. I don't play a lot of first person shooters, but to me, they really put a lot of work into that and it shifts. It almost feels like a correction to Starfield. I mean, yeah, God, it's a much, much better game than Starfield, yeah. And how do you think it compared to a vowed, which I loved? I liked about quite a bit, but I never finished. Something else came along, probably Assassin's Creator or something, and I bounced off a vowed and never went back to it. But I did like to play this. What an endorsement. Made the top five Damies. Crazy. Moving right along. Coming right along, number four is Ghost of Yote. This is a game I was really, really hot on.

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