(upbeat music)
Greetings, and welcome to an LGR end of year thing.
Yes, it's 2019, 2018 is over with.
That's what end of year means.
And I'm just gonna do one of these videos
that it seems like everybody's doing this year.
I dunno, I haven't noticed it as much in previous years,
like doing a retrospective of your own channel's year.
And I kind of liked the few that I've seen
so I'm gonna do one myself.
I normally do something at the end of the year anyway.
Normally it's just me talking about the games
that I played.
I'm still gonna do that.
In fact, we're gonna have that towards the end of the video,
but for now let's just talk about some things
that have happened on LGR, because, man,
it's been one heck of a year.
First up, thank you extremely high amounts
for supporting the channel and watching videos,
subscribing, all that kinda stuff,
I don't normally push, like, please subscribe
or whatever because honestly I don't care
but it's been one of those things where
as I come closer to that magical million number
it's been kind of exciting to see it happen for once.
What does it actually mean?
Not much, really.
It's just a nice number, nice, big round thing
that people look at and go, yay, good for you.
So that's cool, it's nice to be there,
I guess I'll get a golden plaque or something,
I haven't heard anything from YouTube about that
so maybe I need to get in touch with someone,
I don't know how that happens.
It's been so long since I got my hundred thousand plaque.
Anyway, thank you very much for subscribing regardless,
because, yeah, it's a nice little thing that makes me think
I'm probably doing something right,
even though this microphone is really uncomfortable.
But yeah, as I was saying, numbers are cool.
Speaking of numbers, here's another one for you: 101.
That's the number one of videos
that I have released publicly on LGR this year,
or last year, 2018.
I say publicly because I post or upload
a lot of crap that goes through a bunch of iterations
and sometimes I decide it's just garbage
and it never goes up.
But 101 I think is the number of public videos
that I've actually finished,
I've got another 20 or so that I just never finished.
I'm hoping to get to those in 2019, we will see.
And for that matter let me just go ahead and say
a big, huge, massive thank you to everybody
on the LGR Patreon
for supporting, not only financially,
but just, with your advice and help
and pointing out when crap goes wrong,
because I upload things early over there,
and sometimes it's a week in advance,
or a couple of days, whatever,
people are always like, oh, hey, you missed something
or mispronounced something or you could have mentioned this
to make the video better, or what about this.
And that stuff has improved so many of my videos
over the past however many years I've been on Patreon,
but in 2018 in particular, I dunno.
So, yeah, thank you very much to you kind folks
for your watching things early and supporting the show
in all the different ways that you do.
You've been awesome.
Everybody's been awesome.
In fact, I'll just get to some of those awesome numbers.
So, check this out.
For the entire year of 2018
on LGR the channel got 73 million, 311 thousand,
186 overall views with an asterisk there
which apparently means that
some views were miscounted at some point
because of YouTube error.
There are asterisks beside every single one of these stats
I'm gonna be reading off, so, whatever man.
But anyway, this is close enough.
Basically 75 million views.
That's pretty wild.
I think that's, no, that's not the most
I've ever had in a year, 2017 had like 82 million.
So, I'm technically down on views,
but I don't really care.
That's way more than even makes some logical sense to me
like, I'm just amused that this many people
watch my stupid crap.
Like, it's just hilarious.
I talk about old computers and software and tech
and stories of companies that are long gone
and nobody cares about that.
The stuff completely irrelevant to anything going on.
Maybe that's why people really really like it,
I don't know.
Either way, thanks for watching and in such high numbers.
So, yeah.
What is, however, bigger than 2017.
So, the views, yeah, they were down
but the watch time is up, as is the average view duration,
so the watch time actually went up to 609 million,
117 thousand, 970 minutes for 2018.
And what that actually means is,
let's say if I have a 15 minute video
and you only watch five minutes of it,
that counts towards that watch time.
So, five minutes here and there, whatever.
However much people have actually spent
actively watching my stuff goes into that
and so that equates to 1,158 years and 48 days.
Good grief.
I guess what I'm saying here is,
my apologies for ruining productivity everywhere.
I mean everywhere.
We'll get to countries and demographics here
in a minute,
because I think that stuff is super fascinating.
But, yeah, average view duration is up
to eight minutes and five seconds
which is pretty crazy.
It's up 15% compared to the year before
so, maybe that doesn't matter to everyone
but it actually matters a whole lot to YouTube
in terms of pushing videos out and all that kind of stuff.
In essence, how much I get paid,
at least, that's how my understanding is.
Yeah, average view durations being higher is a good thing.
YouTube likes it, I like it, I guess that means
y'all like it too because you're watching my videos
for longer which is a good thing.
It's been pretty steady all year too.
I don't know if it's indicative of anything
I'm actually doing different, I don't know.
I don't feel like I am, but, hey, cool.
One thing that is up there: likes.
1 million, 828 thousand, 677 likes.
Dislikes are up too, yay! (laughs)
I got 31 thousand, 922 dislikes.
Awesome.
Comments are up, I mean everything pretty much
is up, which is good.
177 thousand something comments,
180 thousand something shares,
483 thousand something videos added to playlists,
so people adding to favorites
and other crap like that, so that's cool.
All that stuff is up across the board.
Oh yeah, and subscribers, I got 275 thousand this year.
274 thousand, 95 to be exact.
So, yeah, that's a nice number.
That's the most I've ever gotten in one year.
Over a quarter million, good grief.
So, yeah, here's where things start to get
really strange and fascinating, especially for 2018.
This is not activity I have seen before on LGR.
Okay, so, just looking at my top 10 videos,
let's just go through those and the number of views
that I received on each of these videos in 2018.
The number one viewed video on my channel in 2018
was Doom on a calculator, the T1-81 Plus games tutorial,
which got 1.249 million views.
Which is awesome, but that video actually
came out in 2017.
Well, it's just the algorithm I guess,
because it wasn't necessarily,
like when that video first went up,
just a bit of backstory on that, I just tossed
that video up because it was something quick that I could do
in an afternoon, I didn't have a video ready
for Monday so it was like, Sunday,
and I was like, oh crap, what can I put together,
and I didn't even script anything, I didn't do crap.
I just, I had a calculator, I remembered,
oh yeah, you can put cool things on here
and I used to do that in high school
and I already had the cables and the software,
all this stuff backed up from way back in the day.
So I just grabbed it all out of my digital storage
and put it in a video, and then it took off,
and I got picked up by friggin' every tech outlet
out there and a bunch of social media
and all the typical things where people share stuff
on the internet.
And it got good, few million views?
Two and a half million views in 2017.
And then this year it got another 1.2ish, so it's almost
up to 2.4 million views now which is just,
it's just being recommended, I guess.
It's showing up on people's home pages
from what I'm hearing and like, it's popping up
in the recommendeds all the time, even if they've
already seen it, so yeah, if I look at the graph
of the actual viewership over the years
it's just like, it keeps getting pushed out
every so often.
I don't know why.
Genuinely don't, but, hey, cool.
People liked that video, and in fact,
really interesting was that, I actually got contacted
by, I dunno, some PR firm or something
representing Bethesda and they used that video,
or a very small snippet of it
for Doom's 25th anniversary video
that they put up on a bunch of channels.
I know it was on the PlayStation channel, and a bunch,
I dunno, it was just all over the place
when Bethesda was celebrating Doom's 25th.
Part of my video was in that, like, oh.
That was a cool moment.
So, anyway, had to sign a contract for that
and all sorts of weird crap, but anyway,
they don't have any rights to it,
it's just one of those things.
But, yeah, so, number two video.
That was number one.
Number two, again, not a video from this year.
848 thousand views for the brand new IBM PC AT unboxing.
(laughs)
That, again, went up in 2017.
In March 2017.
That ended up I think actually being
about my most profitable video this year too, yeah.
That made a lot of money this year.
Like, more than it did in 2017 when it was uploaded.
Bizarre.
And again, I think it's just because,
not only are people watching a lot of that video,
so it just ended up earing more anyway
and it kept getting recommended more
and it's continually getting views, like,
just too many views for a video that, honestly,
I'm not too terribly proud of.
It's just me opening a computer all excitedly.
I thought it was a pretty low-effort video
considering my normal fare,
I didn't do a whole lot of research for it.
But, still, it took a few days to put together,
so I'll take it.
That definitely paid for itself pretty quickly.
Number three, let's keep moving on here, Gizmondo.
That's the first video that I actually made this year
that actually ended up on the top 10 viewed this year.
864 thousand views for the Gizmondo, that makes sense.
I expected that one to spread around a bit
because it's just a crazy story
of the Swedish mafia and crashed Ferraris
and a bunch of nonsense.
It's an awesome video, I'm still proud of that one.
Number four, the Samsung's first tablet.
That I was shocked that it actually went
and got that many views quickly.
That only went up in November
and it has 858 thousand views already,
and that was just something I was borrowing from someone.
And it actually took a long time to put together,
man, I probably had that thing for three months
trying to get it to work, and I was buying parts,
waiting for them to come in, ending them out,
reformatting drives, and there was a lot that went
into that video that didn't make it out of the video
because I wanted to make it more of a concise, like,
here's the thing, here's what it does,
here's why it's historically relevant.
I didn't want to make it a repair video
because honestly I didn't know what I was doing,
but I mostly got it repaired enough
to at least show Windows running on it and, yeah,
I sent the guy some extra stuff as, like,
apologies, I couldn't fix it completely,
but you know.
That was a really cool video to put together.
I'm glad people liked it.
Right after that, another recent video,
building a bigger, a bigger, (laughs)
a bigger PlayStation Classic.
Actually, a smaller and better-ish PlayStation Classic.
That got almost 800 thousand views
so that's really cool.
That was literally made just to cash-in, man.
That's all that was.
I knew people were gonna be talking
about the PlayStation Classic and I'd already made
my own alternative in 2017 so I'm just like,
I tweeted it out and I was like,
hey guys, do you want to see this?
And at that point I'd kind of already decided
that I wanted to make a video on it, but,
when I got several thousand responses on Twitter
about this little raspberry pie PlayStation
that I'd made in 2017, I'm like, yeah,
I'll go ahead and make a video on that
and put it up the day the PlayStation Classic comes out.
(laughs)
Yeah, it's one of those situations
where I'm blatantly chasing a trend.
I knew it was gonna be a disgust thing,
seeing how bad the official thing came out,
so I was hoping that would work.
And it did, yay! (laughs)
I'm good at my job sometimes.
So, yeah, next up.
Which number is this?
Number six, yeah.
The Sims 4 Seasons review, that makes sense.
Those always do well.
784 thousand views so far, and that'll just keep going
forever, like those Sims videos have really long legs.
People are always coming into the Sims and just looking
for packs and stuff once they buy it, and it's just
a perpetually popular series.
But the Seasons pack was awesome,
that was a really fun video to put together
just because I love the Seasons stuff, so, yay.
I'm pretty happy with most of the videos
that did pretty well this year,
as opposed to some other years where some of them
have been really confusing. (chuckles)
After that, Tech Tales, the Bonzi Buddy video,
that was cool.
720 thousand views.
One of the best performing Tech Tales I've had
in a long time.
Most of those don't do tremendously well.
They usually get some residual hits over the years
but that one did, let's see, when did that one go up?
That went up in February 2018.
So yeah, it took mostly a year, and it's, whatever.
The thing about Tech Tales is, I love making them
but there's such a massive time investment.
I think I did only two or three Tech Tales
this year because of that
and the time versus what people are going to do
with the video in terms of watching it and sharing it,
I just don't know.
But there's a lot of weird little stories
that I'd love to cover, but I just don't think
people would watch, or if they would watch
it wouldn't be enough to justify
the 60 or however many hours it can take.
Most of that's just research, because I do all
of my original research and stuff, going to libraries,
getting magazines and books and things like that,
so, it just takes a long time.
But anyway, glad that that one did well
because that one actually took a bit to put together.
There was an interesting story behind Bonzi Buddy.
Go figure.
So, number eight at the most views
for the year, 647 thousand views for that, Gateway laptop.
Here's another one of those that is from 2017
and it got a ton of views this year,
and I don't really know why.
That just has a lot of views overall and I don't know why.
It's just kind of a basic Gateway laptop.
But I don't know, I wanted a video that was something
I liked, and I did like it and I knew
that I could crank that out there
because I knew these laptops pretty well
and I just restored it, so it made sense
to make a video on and, for whatever reason, man,
that just took off, so, cool, people want to see
old laptops or something.
I'm really confused at a lot of these views.
Sorry, I don't have answers for all this. (laughs)
It's just, it's just working out.
Number nine, building my dream Window XP PC, yeah.
That's a good video.
646 thousand views, cool.
Tapwave Zodiac: The Failed 2003 thingy, yeah.
It was because that one did pretty well,
ended up doing the Gizmondo afterwards, that's right.
I borrowed the Gizmondo.
So, anyway, yeah, that was one of those
where I was hoping that it would really do well
because it's not a very well-known thing at all.
Neither is the Gizmondo, really, but the Tapwave Zodiac?
I mean, who the heck even remembers that thing?
Barely anyone.
So that's something that I wanted to shed some light on,
and I really just wanted to have a good video
out there for people
to watch that they didn't know about this thing at all.
So, even if it did well or not, it was kind of beside
the point, in my mind, so, I'm glad
that it did well.
So, okay, cool, that's the top 10.
That's not too shocking or anything, however.
When you sort by watch time, that's when things
get really interesting.
If you go by that and that's, again,
the most amount of time that people all together
spent watching videos on my channel,
the number one most watched was from 2016.
Building a 486 DOS PC.
Again, I don't know exactly what's going on
but obviously it's getting recommended to people
or people are just finding it
and it got over half a million views
and ended up with over 17 million minutes.
That's pretty nuts.
That's like 2.7% of my entire overall watch time
for the year, was that video from 2016.
So, that's a video with some legs.
Did not expect that one to have made it.
Number two is the Gizmondo again for watch time,
almost 12 million minutes watched,
again, makes sense, crazy frigging story,
you kind of just want to see it to the end,
or at least, that's how I made it.
I wanted you to stick around and see what happened
to this nonsensical device and the company
and the people behind it.
Number three for the most watched in watch time,
the IBM PC AT again, almost 11 million views.
I'm not going to say the watch time for the others,
you can see it though, I'm gonna put it up here.
Unreal 20 years later, that ended up in number four,
this is the only place in any of my big, main lists
of stuff this year where a game review showed up.
My game reviews honestly don't make a lot
in terms of revenue or just interest,
and comments or shares or anything,
people just don't look for that anymore
or they're not going for my channel for that anymore,
I don't really know, which is sad
because I started off doing that
and other things, of course,
this has always been a variety channel,
I've always covered tech and games
and other stuff, but I called it Lazy Game Reviews
and now it's just called LGR because,
I dunno, it means nothing. (laughs)
It's just a cool name or something.
Everybody calls me that, nobody calls me Lazy Game Reviews,
so yeah, I just go by LGR now and that's fine.
I'll always be Lazy Game Reviews
in people's hearts, I guess.
But yeah, I really don't do game reviews
too much anymore and that's one reason why.
They don't really blow up except for
every so often, so, yeah,
I'm just trying to do the best I can
in terms of making stuff that's worth my time,
worth your time, what people are wanting to see,
what I wanna do.
It's a weird balance between all of those.
But anyway, I was happy to see that
at least make it number four in the watch time
because that was a fun video to make,
and I heard from all the developers behind it
and they were happy with it too,
so that's always a nice treat.
Number five though, the Tapwave Zodiac, yep,
there we go again, pretty high in watch time
and minutes.
Number six, Sims 4 Seasons.
Number seven, building the XP PC.
Number eight, the Microsoft Bob experience.
Now, this one, I was surprised to see it show up here
and see that it did as well as it did at all.
Ended up with half a million views.
I was hoping that it would at least get some good viewership
because it is Microsoft Bob, it's a little infamous,
and I try to make the story as interesting as I could,
but a lot of the video, I honestly thought
was a little bit boring when I was putting it together.
It's just really tough to know
what's gonna be intriguing or not
as you're making something, especially after you've spent
dozens of hours with it, and you're just like,
I dunno, this is starting to suck.
I kind of thought that one did, but I guess not
because people watched it a lot in terms
of overall watch time.
Most people watched most of the video,
so that was cool.
But yeah, number nine, the HP iPAQ,
another portable thing, just because I've been trying
more portable computing devices
and cameras and other consumer electronic
kind of gadgety things that are still computer-related
and tech and stuff, but, anyway, yeah.
The iPAQ, that definitely held some attention,
apparently, because they had a nice long amount
of watch time.
And then rounding out that top 10 is rebuilding
the LGR Windows 98 capture PC,
the lazy green giant, so, yeah,
building videos do well because that's
literally number one and number 10
and restorations and things like that
tend to hold people's attention, so,
you'll probably see more of those in 2019.
I dunno, I try not to let this stuff dictate
what I do too much because I honestly
don't understand half of it,
it's like, how does that one work
and this other one didn't?
It's the same content.
But that's not what the algorithm does
and that's not what people think and that's not what folks
are gonna click on, that's just not how it works.
So, I dunno, just try to figure it out constantly
and I look at this stuff all the time and get
really confused and sometimes really bummed out
and really excited at the same time, so, cool.
That's that.
Let's move on to some other stats.
Just a few more there because I think they're funny.
(laughs)
Like, for instance, the devices and the operating systems
that people are using to watch LGR stuff.
So I don't actually see a lot of YouTubers
talk about this too much,
but I find this tab just fascinating.
So the top five, which is the only thing
it lists here around the device type,
that makes sense.
Number one is computer, number two mobile phone,
and number three TV, looks like smart TVs and such,
number four is tablets, number five
is game consoles.
So, you, whatever.
Where it really gets interesting, though,
are operating systems.
And again, the top five or so makes sense.
You've got Windows, Android, iOS, PlayStation,
and Macintosh rounding out the top five,
followed by the other expected things
like Smart TVs and Xboxes and Chromecast
and whatnot, but, you start moving down a bit
and then you get to some other things that's jut like,
I was like, what is Tizen?
And that got 45 thousand views this year.
Apparently it's some sort of Linux-based
open-source operating environment.
I've never heard of it, it's on the list,
people are watching using Tizen, props to you.
There's 9,858 views came from Blackberry users.
(laughs)
I mean, cool.
If you have a Blackberry, you rock that.
Keep that going.
And then this one.
This one confused me the most.
252 views coming from RealMedia.
(laughs)
What even? (laughs)
This is operating systems, I thought,
these are RealPlayer, RealMedia operating system?
I don't know.
I really don't know what this is.
So if somebody is watching through RealPlayer,
if you are watching through any kind of RealMedia device,
there's 252 views, so, whoever you are,
salute to you.
You're an interesting person, no doubt.
And then lastly, the demographics.
This probably isn't terribly surprising, but you know,
there's a couple interesting little tidbits in here.
For instance, the average viewer ages
or even just the most common or stuff like that,
25 to 34 years old, male.
That makes sense.
I mean, that's literally me in demographic form
right there, so yeah. (laughs)
I'm making videos for myself, I suppose.
That should be no big surprise.
However, what may surprise you, maybe,
is the geography stuff.
So, if you had to guess, what would you say,
what's the largest territory that watches my videos?
Would you say it'd be the United States?
Well, if you would, then you're wrong
because it is actually just 46% of my views
come from the US, so, yeah,
that means 54% of LGR viewers
are from outside the US and it's divided
up into a bunch of countries.
So, top 10 of those, you've got the United Kingdom,
that's 9.3% of my overall views,
Canada, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands,
Finland, Brazil, Poland, and Denmark.
I think that's 10.
So yeah, that's the top 10 of countries
that are not the US, and yeah, combine all the countries
together and that's 54% of my overall views
come from non-Americans, or at least people that are
located outside the US, and that's one reason
that I always like to try to keep in mind
more worldwide views in my videos and stuff like,
you know, I don't want to just tell a story about this
piece of software or this technology product
that was only popular in the US, I mean, I do that sometimes
but I want to try to keep in mind there were
other countries using these things too,
that's just one example.
Or, like, using metric measurements in my videos
instead of just imperial.
It doesn't make sense if most of my viewers
are not in the US, to use US style measurements.
So, I at least try to include in parentheses
a bunch of metric stuff whenever it makes sense
to do so, so yeah.
That's pretty much it for the analytics.
(chuckles)
Good year, good year.
A lot of numbers and stats and graphs and things.
There's a lot more, of course, in here,
but I think that's about some of the most interesting stuff
to look at, for the moment anyway, I don't know.
Once again, I wanna thank you very much
for watching, supporting the show, you know.
Where do I put this computer?
And just making things happen.
I seriously have you to thank for having, really,
my best year ever, I seriously consider it that.
Again, even though the views were technically down,
which I didn't realize until I started looking
at analytics at the end of the year.
Certainly didn't feel like it.
I felt like I was getting more interaction
and just all sorts of great fan mail
and viewer donations and just kind messages in the morning,
and a lot more hate too. (chuckles)
I got a whole lotta that, yeah.
Yeah, that certainly picked up this year.
But it was definitely outweighed
by a lot of the positivity and very kind comments
and really heartfelt, thankful stuff too
so I highly appreciate that.
And to all those of you who have said,
oh, you don't deserve your success,
you don't deserve all the donations, I agree.
It really just feels weird to me, too.
It's a bizarre thing to do this and it's strange
to not be able to go out with family and friends
and everything without getting recognized
and having stuff show up on your doorstep
you're like, that's too generous, but you know.
It's the business, it's the job.
Kinda wouldn't trade it for anything.
So, yeah, seriously, thank you.
You've helped me make this work
and I'm continually adjusting to make it work
for me too, because that's another thing
that I've had to change this year, is just
kind of making sure that I'm in a good place mentally,
and physically even, too.
I'm failing at both half the time,
but the other half I feel like I'm doing pretty good
and making improvements where I can, and adjusting
the content as well.
I want to make that balance of stuff that I'm really psyched
to talk about, but also that people are gonna
care about watching.
And not just stuff that's only gonna pay my bills,
but also is just gonna make people happy
and entertained and educated.
I want to make sure that everything is alright,
and sometimes that means covering fewer games,
sometimes that means covering more games.
It just depends and I'm trying to constantly figure it out,
like, I want to cover large releases,
the things that I've covered this year
that I've put off for a long time,
stuff like Oblivion and Unreal and Half-Life,
a lot of those because I've started cutting back
the amount of videos that I do.
I released 101 videos this year but a big reason for that
was because, in years past I've actually released
a lot more than that.
But this year after about the summer,
after I took that vacation, the first vacation I had
in ten years, I just decided, you know what?
I'm working too much.
I should really cut back
and try to really focus on stuff
that I think is gonna work better
as opposed to just trying to crank things out,
two videos a week no matter what the quality.
So, sometimes it works out, like the Doom calculator video.
That was just cranked out.
Other times it doesn't work out, like all the ones
that don't work out and barely reach
however many thousand views.
So, yeah.
Point being, it's a balancing act and it's hard.
It's harder than I ever thought it would be.
So, thanks for the support.
Alright, it's video game time.
Computer games and stuff.
I've played some games this year,
kind of a lot, actually, but,
I had kind of a list of the ones that stood out
as I was playing them, I just sort of add to this list
as I am playing through, there,
kind of make some quick notes and whatnot.
So this is that, and I just kind of want to
talk about those, because I think these are,
not all good games,
it's like in the years past, or at least last year,
where I was just sort of talking about games
that I'd played that I found
I had something to say about them even though
they weren't necessarily my favorites or something,
they're just games and I got some thoughts.
First up, the game that I first really dove into
in 2018 was Monster Hunter World.
This was interesting because I'd never played
a Monster Hunter game before.
I wasn't even interested.
For one thing, they were mostly portable games,
at least the ones that I'd heard of that were worth playing,
or they were older, for older systems,
or just something, there was something about them
that just never,
it just put me off, I don't know.
Monster Hunter World came out and I'm like,
I'll try that.
Man, I'm glad I did,
because that's a frigging neat thing.
It has the appeal of kind of a hunting game,
I'm into hunting games,
but it also has the appeal of a Pokemon thing,
or collecting and RPG stuff,
and there's some really involved combat that's just
highly strategic in a way that just amused me.
I loved mastering certain weapons and getting really good.
And just taking down T-rexes with a hammer
and stuff like that.
It was just, I don't know, I really liked it
and I was surprised how much I did, so I would say
I'm a fan now.
I kind of want to check out some of the others
but when I posted that, a whole bunch of people, actually,
were like, don't do it.
The last ones, they all sucked compared to World,
and I was like, I don't know.
It kind of sounded like a few of those
might have been pretty good, but.
Anyway, so, that was that.
It was a cool game.
Monster Hunter World, though I didn't,
Far Cry 5!
I liked that one too!
I kind of fell out of love with Far Cry
a long time ago, but 5 had some interesting things.
I spent a lot of time fishing for one thing.
It was fun to fish in that game.
And really just exploring the world,
it was rural, was it Montana?
Something kind of like that?
One of those northwestern states.
I guess everybody knows now because the next Far Cry
is all post-apocalyptic, so yeah,
at the end of 5, these cultists just blow it up,
it's just nuked, so, that was a thing.
I wasn't quite sold on the way the whole story went,
(chuckles)
but the villains were interesting-ish
and the combat was fine, it was Far Cry,
it was nothing to write home about.
In fact, I don't remember much else
except for fishing and falling off mountains.
I like doing both.
Next up, God of War.
Holy crap.
Now, this one shocked me in terms of just, like,
where did this come from?
Because I've played all of the God of Wars previously,
I liked the ones on the PSP, the PS2,
and I played God of War III and was kind of like,
eh, whatever, I was a little over it
by that point, so yeah,
I was interested to see a new one, a reboot,
and this one, it caught me by surprise.
When I first saw the trailer I was like,
what is this viking stuff and this weird
over-the-shoulder view, but then when I played it,
I'm like, oh boy, I need to play more of this.
And I just binged it.
I play the crap out of this game.
Love the story, love the characters,
love the triads, loved Kratos being dad. (laughs)
It's just a great game and I thoroughly recommend it.
Easily one of my favorites of the year
which is weird because it's a God of War game.
I never would have put one of those
on one of my favorite of the year lists.
This one easily makes it.
And then we got Yakuza six, which, (laughs)
I love the Yakuza games.
4 is probably my favorite still.
I was kind of disappointed in 5 but nonetheless
I was seriously looking forward to 6,
especially after playing 0 last year.
Then Yakuza 6 comes out and it's just, oh man,
it's so good.
Like, all the revamps to the engine, the more fluid
in-and-out of exploration and combat
and just the more open-feeling world
and the fact that it was a wonderful send-off
to Kiryu and just all these other characters
that have been such mainstays.
There were some of those points
where I was like, I don't want to deal with
this stupid baby anymore. (laughs)
Can I just throw the baby in the lake or something?
Anyway, I didn't do that.
You have to keep the baby alive and safe.
Other than that, yeah, Yakuza 6,
excellent friggin' game, though I still recommend
you playing 0 first.
Build yourself up to 6.
Yeah, another game I put on the list,
even though I'm not a huge fan of it, Fortnite.
It feels weird to talk about 2018
and not talk about Fortnite at least a little,
because this game blew up.
In fact, it as last year, I believe,
I was playing PUBG, or like, mentioning PUBG
in the end of the year video,
I was like, I bet 2018 is gonna be the year
of the battle royale or something like that,
and it sure turned out to be.
Man, there were a million clones of Fortnite
and then just Fortnite itself blowing up
at the end of 2017, I guess?
And then it just dominating in 2018.
Making like three billion dollars in profit
last time I heard, or maybe that was just for a quarter.
I don't even remember.
Either way, Epic is rolling in money
and it's insane.
Because this is Epic, right.
They used to be Epic MegaGames.
I played the crap out of everything they've ever made.
So, to see them go from Jazz Jackrabbit
and Jill of the Jungle, Epic Pinball, Unreal,
and then Gears and all these other things
that they've done, and then Fortnite.
I remember when that game was announced
by, like, Cliffy B and it was just some Minecraft-y looking
DayZ clone thing, I don't even remember
what it was, but I was not interested at all
and this, I guess really, is Fortnite Battle Royal,
you know that I'm talking about here, but.
Props to them for making something insanely popular,
I'll say that much about it,
I'm just not any good at it. (laughs)
I suck at Fortnite.
State of Decay 2, that's another one I played sometime,
like, whenever it came out, yeah.
It was fine.
I liked State of Decay one kind of a lot
so I was really excited to play the second one
and it had a lot of the same exact mechanics
and combat and gameplay
and everything like that.
In fact, it was pretty much just the same one,
just again, and then I realized that they kind of got rid
of all of the cool story stuff
that I really liked from the first one,
like very unique characters with little arcs
and missions and things that would come up
that had unique dialogue and some,
there's a little bit of that in here,
but it's not nearly as much as there was
in the first one, and it just felt like
kind of a throwaway zombie survival thing
as a result, with more of this open-ended, crafty,
zombie horror survival stuff
that we've seen a million times,
and it just ended up being very tedious.
And still, I like the State of Decay series.
I wish that they would mix up the best parts
of one and 2 and come up with three.
If they do that, I'mma be like darn happy
because I really liked the concept
and the feel of those games.
There's something about just going
into these abandoned areas and taking over a house
or a fire station or a gas station,
things like that, and building up these resources
and just sending your people out
to do different things, and, I do like the idea
of it having these people that you've got
to take care of.
It's kind of like a little life sim,
slice of life simulator.
Octopath Traveler, now that was a game
that surprised the crap out of me.
I've never been huge into turn-based JRPGs,
much less anything of this sort
of pixilated style and everything.
I dunno, that was just not me growing up
and I never was able to get into them growing older,
but then in the past few years,
something just clicked in my brain,
and I'm like, these things are cool! (laughs)
there's something about this turn-based combat
and this style of storytelling
and how in-depth it can actually get
by really not showing a whole lot
but just doing a lot with what little is there.
Anyway, it's deeper than it seems
is what I'm trying to say
and I ended up playing this a ton
on my vacation that I took. (laughs)
It was just good.
I loved playing the different paths of people
and then the combat, man, like figuring out the weaknesses
and things that you've gotta break,
it was really engaging.
Good stuff man.
Good music too.
Next up, another Switch game,
or I played it on the Switch a whole bunch, Dead Cells.
I'm a huge fan of games that are, well,
I guess you'd call them roguelites or Metroidvanias
mixed with a little bit of permadeath
and all that kind of platforming nonsense.
They can be overdone but this one, I thought,
did it very, very well
and the combat was wonderful.
Just a very nice, satisfying way of doing it.
I was very much into Rogue Legacy
and Risk of Rain, things like that when those came out,
and I really enjoyed the crap of Dead Cells too.
Dead Cells one, not Dead Cells two.
I do want Dead Cells two.
But yeah, just the way that you would progress
through these same places every single time
and get new stuff every time and figuring out
your optimum loadout and your gear
and unlocks and keeping your stuff as you die,
it's just, risk versus reward thing,
it's fantastic if you're into that style.
Donut County. (laughs)
Speaking of style, this game is full of it!
It plays a lot like some of the ideas
of the Katamari Damacy type of thing,
but you are a hole.
You play a hole.
Or really, something controlling a hole.
And you go around sucking things up,
and small hole gets bigger, and it's just,
the thing that makes it great, though,
is the art style, the fantastic music,
and the story.
Just the way it's written, it cracked me up,
it was one of the more modern or something,
I don't even know what you'd call it,
but there was just a lot of chatspeak.
It felt more grounded in a bizarre, surreal reality
than a lot of these other games that I've seen
that attempt this type of writing,
this one nailed for me.
And it's short and sweet, you can finish it in like an hour
or something, but.
Great game.
And, again, fantastic music.
One of my favorite soundtracks of the year.
Spider-Man, oh!
Oh yeah, yeah.
This game really makes you feel like Spider-Man.
It does, though.
I've always liked the Spider-Man games,
I've just never loved them,
but I do like it when it feels right
and this one feels pretty much perfect.
The animation, the swinging style, the combat
and all that stuff, it's so fluid and so pretty
and so doggone fun to look at
and I'm just enamored the entire time I was playing it.
It's another one I binged like I did God of War.
Just, beginning to end, a few days,
I'm just like, I cannot stop, this is so engaging.
And again just the representation
of Spider-Man himself, it's awesome.
I don't know what else to say about that.
People talked about it at the time.
It's just way too friggin fun and I loved it a lot,
and it's good.
Cool.
Red Dead Redemption II.
Again, what do I even say about this game?
It's been talked about to death,
it's been memed to death, it's a Rockstar game.
It's got that level of insane detail
and compulsive, oh, we've got to put
all these things in there,
and then they just can't stop themselves.
It's kind of overkill
but it's amazingly awesome overkill. (laughs)
I loved Red Dead II
and I hated it at the same time, like,
it's one of those games where I was so happy playing it
and then by the time I got to the end I'm like,
oh yeah, I'm glad I saw that to the end,
but I'm really not looking forward to playing it again,
and I haven't picked it up since finishing
the main story, so.
But anyway, I loved Arthur Morgan as a character,
I loved seeing Dutch's gang being all crazy and stuff
and how they got crazy to the point of leading up
to the first Red Dead Redemption,
it was really an awesome experience with maybe,
probably the best, yeah,
I would say it's probably the best narrative
I've played all year, but there's so much
tedious garbage and stuff that just got old.
It was just like, I don't need
to see this animation again.
And so, either you commit to that fully
or you just, you're not going to enjoy the game.
So, I committed to it fully for that time
I needed to finish the game,
but I'm pretty much never gonna go back to it.
And forget online, I'm just not even, (laughs) no.
Pokemon Let's Go.
That's another one that I just decided to dive into
because changing tastes or something.
I played Pokemon Go when that came out
on mobile and stuff, a couple years ago I guess,
and quite enjoyed that, I've never really been
into Pokemon stuff before but I enjoyed that
for what it was, super simple,
going out into a real world location
and all that augmented reality crap,
and then this one sort of takes those mechanics
like throwing the balls and all that kinda stuff,
and the art, animation things from that,
and then mixes it with I think,
what is it, Pokemon Yellow?
The fact that this was a more involved adventure, RPG-ish
Pokemon game that was more reminiscent
of the Game Boy stuff and all the things
I remember seeing growing up but just never played,
yeah, I was interested.
So I picked it up, and I liked it.
I got the eevee edition because eevee is great.
(chuckles)
So, yeah, it's a fun little game
and it just made me happy to play.
Like, it was nothing super involved or in-depth,
I would love to play a more involved, in-depth one,
so maybe I will sometime.
But Let's Go was like, yeah, that's a good time.
Kind of the same thing with Smash.
Smash Ultimate or, you know, whatever.
That one, something Smash on the Switch, and it's good.
It's a Smash game. (laughs)
I've never been terribly into them.
In fact, I actually haven't played one
since the 64 game, sorry.
It was kind of overwhelming at first
because it's like, holy crap,
there are like 60 people to unlock?
But then I just embraced the unlock and kind of the grind
of that, so to speak, but it didn't feel too grindy.
I actually thought it was very well paced
in the way that it was constantly giving you stuff
to work for and unlock and then repeat challenge,
other fighters that would pop in,
and then there's that whole adventure mode,
spirits, darkness, evil, Nintendo characters thing.
Wow, I don't even remember what that's called.
But you've got the map and stuff and you're going
and getting all the different characters back
that have been evil-ified by the snappening
of the Nintendo universe. (laughs)
I don't remember anything of what that's called
but you're collecting spirits and stuff.
I thought that was neat too.
I liked all the extra modes that it provided.
Because honestly, I just think of Smash as the main,
the brawling mode or whatever, playing with friends.
That's the only reason I picked it up.
I wanted to play with my friends.
I did that but then I realized, wow,
there's a lot more you can do here.
The last one I'm going to mention here
even though I've played a whole lot more
than this, Dusk.
I talked about Dusk and the episode one
a while back, just briefly going over that
and giving my thoughts, and I absolutely loved it,
and now that all three episodes
are out, three episodes for now,
anyway, it's everything I've wanted in a 90s FPS tribute.
All the feeling and just the design, everything
from games like Quake and Blood and Duke 3D
and Redneck Rampage and a little bit of Half-Life
and Sin and Unreal and all these kinds of things
tossed together, and it still manages
to be it's own thing, like it looks
like its own thing and it looks right.
There's a lot of options in the options menu
that make it look correct.
The soundtrack is wonderful, my friend Andrew Hulshult
put that together, it's like this kind of Quake-like,
kind of Doom-like, it's just,
I don't know, it's a wonderful mix
of a lot of my favorite stuff from the late 90s
in terms of PC FPS, and yeah.
Maybe if they ever do a Big Box I'll do a review
of it at that point, or something.
So, anyway, yeah, there's a lot more I could talk about
but those are the main ones
that I've wrote down.
Oh, crap, I almost forgot,
(laughs)
I totally skipped over Forza Horizon 4
when I was looking at my list,
I don't know how that happened
because this is seriously one of the games
I have played by far the most in 2018.
That's just standard, I pretty much always do,
these Forza Horizon games have just gotten better
and better in many ways, so I now very much
prefer them to the actual Forza Motorsport games.
And then they added all that weird card
progression system lootbox limited junk
in the seventh one, and I don't know.
Hopefully, the eighth one will be better.
Either way, the Horizon games have continually improved,
for the most part.
This one's definitely got a lot more going on
in terms of things like the seasons
and more dynamic weather and all sorts
of good stuff, but I'm as not a big a fan of the map
on this one as I am some of the previous
but it's still pure freedom and joy
making all of these cool car customization things,
and like, buying houses and all that stuff,
like, yeah, check it out.
I got a house.
I got a lot of houses.
It's just turning into more and more
of this car fantasy role-playing type experience.
It reminds me a lot of Test Drive Unlimited
and a bunch of other racing games of the past
that sort of stuck together
in a very enjoyable package
with a fantastic amount of vehicles
and, I just love these games.
I will be playing this until the next Horizon comes out.
That's just what I do.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I've rambled a really long time,
so let's just get this going.
Get this going, where are we're going?
We're not going anywhere.
I'm sitting here.
This is all I'm doing tonight.
I'm out of drink, too.
Well, yep, I've got a flag on Windows 98,
this is a wonderful screensaver,
I always like tossing bitmaps and stuff on there.
It makes me happy.
Hope it hasn't been distracting. (laughs)
I put that on a whim and I was like,
I know what'll be good in the background.
I'm bad at backgrounds.
I've been trying to put together a really cool LGR set
for years, but it'll never happen,
it seems like.
So anyway, I just throw stuff together
for every time I need to do a video like this.
So, I hope that was entertaining
or at least tolerable.
Thanks for watching and thanks for all the support.
2018's been an awesome year, but I'm ready for 2019.
See you then.