What's up, everybody? Welcome to IGEN GameScoop, the final IGIN GameScoop of 2025.

I'm your host, Damon Hadfield, and joining me this week are Sam Claybourne.

It cannot still be 2025.

It is still 2025.

That sounds impossible.

Yeah, I've, what was the Gandalf quote? I've fallen into darkness out of all space and time and I have no idea. With lots of cookies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is, I'm here. That is also this week in between Christmas and New Year's, like my kids are off school. The days are so long. It's raining. We can't go outside anywhere. I know. That's been the,

that's been the big punk here in California. It's like, oh, bragging about nice weather and Keptemit. No, we're all stuck at home. Yeah, not at Christmas. But we still do have a good show for you today. A great show for you this week. We're going to look at some of our most anticipated games of 2026. I've got a really good list of games. So I've got my most anticipated

games. Also just some curiosities that are coming next year. And then there are a bunch of games that I was like, oh yeah. I forgot that. That's still on the way. Those are the ones I'm most excited for it. I've got a couple good extracurricular activities to share. But first, let's share what we've been playing over this break. I mentioned on the last episode that King was getting Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. And I was excited to play Galaxy 2 because I never had before. And I did. And I don't know, I'm not super impressed. It seems like it doesn't immediately grab me. Like it's not bad at all. But it feels very much like Mario Galaxy 1. And it is annoying to me that I don't have control of the camera. It's still the jenky camera. How bad are those Yoshi controls? That's the other thing. It's got the jenky n64 camera. And then the yoshi could, can I not just press a button to use my tongue? Like what? No, you cannot. You got to point the star. It's so stupid. Or the top. But the game itself, it's very fun, star it's so stupid or the you know it but the game

itself it's very it's very fun but it being so highly regarded and being high on our

top 25 games of the last 25 years list it's like I don't know it just I just

didn't grab me that way and I really do think it's not holding up well

because of the things you just mentioned but there it is a it's a 250 level

amazing 3d Mario game yeah it is for what mentioned. But it is a 250-level amazing 3-D Mario game.

Yeah, it is.

For what it's worth, which is a lot.

It is very clever.

I don't know.

Justin, do you want to say anything in defense of Mario Galaxy 2?

I mean, not without completely derailing us.

I mean, I think Mario Galaxy 2 is arguably the greatest

3D Mario game and greatest 3D platformer ever made of every single level is just a delight

of imagination with no idea repeated twice. It's so tight and so perfect. I don't know. I don't

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