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The 2020s have been packed with amazing releases, but many fantastic games get lost in the shuffle. Join us as we highlight the most underrated titles of the decade so far, starting with Trail Out and Pacific Drive.
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00:00If there's one thing that myself and Josh Brown absolutely adore, it is recommending to you all
00:04sorts of overlooked games. We never shut up about them. You can subscribe to the What Culture Gaming
00:08podcast to get a handful of them pretty much every week. But right here, we thought we'd break down
00:12the biggest ones that are the most overlooked games of the 2020s so far. Now I'm going to talk
00:17to your face about Trail Out. I've done this a couple of times, but I need the world to know
00:21more about Trail Out. This game initially released on Game Pass back in 2022. I feel like the world
00:25didn't care. I didn't know it existed back then. And then I caught a PlayStation trailer for it
00:29honestly just like a month ago or something. And then 2026 releases on PlayStation. This game is
00:35everything that I love about physics-based arcade racing. If you love the likes of Wreckfest from
00:39the last few years, or even all the way back to the arcade races, the Need for Speeds, the burnouts,
00:43the flat outs, etc. The blurs of the world. The split seconds of the world. It's a sequel to every
00:49single one of them mushed together. Just a lovely hot pot that I put my face in and I cannot
00:53get
00:53enough of it. So Trail Out is easily one of the most recommendable games that I'll ever come across.
00:57And I'm starting quite recent with these because like I said, the new version that's on PlayStation
01:01from 2026. The game already has a sequel confirmed, which is music to my ears. But it really is in
01:06the
01:06physics model. It is in the super weighty, the cars that you're unlocking, the fact that all of them
01:11feel quite different. Like if you're piloting a big Hummer, it's going to feel different to a
01:14smaller vehicle. And you can just barrel through the environments. There's also a ton of modes in here.
01:19One of them is even like a Mario Kart style thing where you've got weapons, you're using rockets
01:23against each other. Or you're trying to trade bombs before you explode. It's just every single
01:27thing you love about video game racing that isn't in the likes of a Forza. It's just, it's kind of
01:34heaven, Josh. You know what? This sounds like an arcade racer's dream. It's quite telling that we
01:38are kicking off a list about overlooked games, including one that we literally overlooked for
01:44four years until you got to it at the start of 2026 edition. It's so good! I blame Xbox for
01:49that,
01:49to be honest. I blame Xbox marketing for that. It was there the entire time. It was there the whole
01:53time. The source was right there. Speaking of racing games, Scott, I haven't got a racing game
01:58next, but my first pick is Pacific Drive. Now, this is a first-person car-centric roguelike
02:05experience that is very different to what you mentioned, but is also a car lover's dream.
02:11Essentially, the game revolves around this place called The Zone, this exclusion zone in Midwest
02:17America that has been quarantined because a bunch of supernatural phenomena is occurring within it,
02:24and you're tasked with driving this supernatural-style car. It's one of the few cars that
02:30are running in the area, and you start at your home base, which is aptly a garage, and you're able
02:36to spend the resources that you go out into the world and collect on this vehicle itself so you can
02:41equip it with better tires. You can have better steering. You can have an engine that doesn't
02:46require as much gas. You can get an extra trunk so you can carry more stuff, and it's about the
02:52process of upgrading this vehicle, taking it out into the world, trying to survive the many
02:57environmental horrors that are out there, be that extreme weather, be that a supernova that comes in
03:04at the end of each run, and you have to get to this wormhole to get back to your safety
03:09of the
03:09garage before you just essentially get exploded and lose all your stuff. Okay, just like I live in
03:14Gateshead. Yeah, it's like going to our old office every single day. Almost every day. It sort of feels
03:20like that. Yeah, you've got to put your radiation there. Supernova's coming in. Yeah, give me a Greg's
03:25coming back home. Exactly. So you're essentially going out to get your Greg's and try to get back in
03:29one piece. But it's a great formula. I don't really love roguelikes, but this got its hooks
03:35in me. The further you get into the zone, the more dangerous things get, but the more rewards
03:40you can bring back to make you even sturdier for those runs. I think the driving physics themselves
03:47are really weighty, are really responsive. There's a lot of peril when you're in this iron machine and
03:53you've got the entire world outside trying to take you down, and the only piece of peace
03:59that you can actually get is with inside this car, and you're hoping the steering doesn't go, you're
04:03hoping the lights don't go, you're hoping the engine doesn't flat out on you, you're hoping you don't
04:07have to remove a tire and get another one on, because you might not have brought one, so you've got
04:11to
04:11go scavenging. It is great. It is great when you're out in the world, and it is great when you
04:16get to
04:16come back and you get to customize your car and know, right, the next run is going to be even
04:22better
04:22because I'm well protected. One of the shiniest hidden gems that I haven't got around to, I saw the
04:27developers say that it's sold like half a million or something, so it is thankfully doing quite well,
04:31but like you said, it comes with word-of-mouth recommendations, and I think it's on PlayStation
04:34Plus now as well. It was definitely to begin with, but honestly, it's worth whatever price they're
04:40charging, like it's a good 20 to 30 hour experience if you want to do anything, everything, if not more,
04:45because it is roguelike in nature, so you can keep going out there. It's got a bunch of DLCs that
04:49I
04:49haven't played yet, but I'm really excited to jump back in. Before the next entry, today's video is sponsored by
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05:53My next one is a hilariously named game, Fist Forged in Shadow Torch, Josh.
05:59Oh, it's got an acronym.
06:01It does.
06:01Acronym alert.
06:04This is a game from a developer called Tie Games, and you might see their next game. It's called Zoo
06:08Punk. It was revealed at the Xbox Deb. I think it was one of the developer directs a couple of
06:12months ago. Extremely impressive little studio that don't put many games out. There's always a few
06:16years in between them. Like I said, their next game not coming until 2027. But Forged in Shadow Torch
06:21came out back in 2021. One of the meatiest Metroidvanias you could ever find. Very much
06:25a diesel punk aesthetic. But I just am pure gameplay as king kind of guy. I love Metroidvanias,
06:31and this just has such crunchy combat. Really fun unlockables. You're throwing enemies into each
06:36other. You're using this giant, ridiculous third arm to climb your way through these different
06:41environments. But it is the overall presentation. It is the feel of the combat and the immediacy of it
06:46as well, where you don't go more than just a few minutes, like I said, without an upgrade,
06:49without another enemy encounter. And I like the boss fights and everything as well. Quite a
06:53condensed experience. Like you know what you're getting with a Metroidvania, but it's not bothered
06:58about being overly challenging, like throwing blasphemous levels of boss fights at you or
07:02whatever. The forward momentum is what got me through this. And I think the name maybe put a
07:06few people off. Just thinking like, what the hell is a Forged? What's a Shadow Torch?
07:10Exactly. I've not experienced this, but I have caught plenty of fists in Gateshead as well,
07:14to be fair. I know you've got to watch out for them, especially the aggravated rabbits with the
07:17third arms. Especially those. They come round the corners. Straight for you, Greggs.
07:21The whole presentation though, overall, like it has this mature sensibility. The only thing
07:25that isn't going for a more, you know, humanoid story or human-based story is this idea that you're
07:30playing as these anthropomorphic animals, which seems to be the studio's thing. Zoopunk, like I said,
07:34that's coming up, also has this tale of this super hard lad rabbit with all of his blades and these
07:40different abilities that you can unlock. And it's the same thing in Forged and Shadow Torch as well.
07:43I just had a lovely time with it. I haven't seen a single soul talk about it apart from myself
07:47and
07:47the beautiful Dan Durkin back in 2021. So shout out to this game.
07:50I don't like Metroidvanias, but I'd give this a go. Up next for me, I need to talk about Stay
07:55Out of the House again. And if you are a follower of the What Culture Gaming podcast,
07:59you will have heard me bang on about both Pacific Drive and this game multiple times. I did a editorial
08:06that's on a YouTube channel specifically about this game because it blew me away. Puppa Combo is a
08:11lo-fi horror developer that has been making games for years now. And Stay Out of the House was the
08:16one that broke through for me. I noticed it on the start. It was about $3.99 and I was
08:22taken aback
08:23by its PS1 style polygonal graphics. It's very much a throwback stylistically, but it's presented from
08:29a first person perspective, which you kind of really didn't get back in the day. But it has that grimy,
08:35the industrial, lo-fi quality than a lot of PS1 horror had. And I was in just off the aesthetic
08:42alone. I did worry initially that that's all it would be, you know, for the sake of five pounds
08:47in the sale, I was happy to just get this retro throwback. But what I actually got was a fully
08:52fleshed out horror experience. I was so impressed by the puzzles in this game. I was so impressed by
08:57the cat and mouse gameplay that you have with the stalker enemy with it, as well as the level design
09:03and
09:03the design of this house that you're told to stay out of. But obviously you don't.
09:08The whole thing starts with this prologue that isn't really indicative of the game to come,
09:11but is a great scene setter called Night Shift, where you play as a character in a gas station,
09:17essentially. You're doing the night shift and you have to do your normal jobs. You have to go mop up,
09:22you have to replace the stock. And the darker it gets and the fewer cars that come by, the more
09:28paranoid
09:28you get because you know there's a killer out on the loose somewhere. And it's mostly about the
09:33tension and the paranoia that comes with this specific section. But it sets you up so well,
09:38it establishes the killer. And then when you get into the house itself, just the puzzles that you
09:42have to do, like I mentioned, the tension of crawling around, the scream that the killer called the
09:47butcher, I think, gives when he sees you. It's like a pig shrieking or something. And then he beelines
09:53towards you, chops you to death with his little mallet, and you've got to restart from your last
09:57save point, which you do by collecting VHS tapes and putting them into a CRT television
10:03and saving your progress that way. Public Combo has made some excellent games in the past,
10:07and there were so many other horror titles I could have shouted out on this list, like Madison
10:11and Visage, but I've mentioned them so many times before. And this one is so lo-fi, so under the
10:17radar,
10:18that when it comes around to Halloween, every horror fan is going to play at IMO. It's just
10:21absolutely outstanding. And I can't believe how cheap it is and how well made it is and how much
10:27quality is in there. I adore it, man. We've talked loads over the years about the PS1 horror era,
10:32like across the 90s. And the idea of targeting that as a specific art style with like modern tech,
10:37like updating frame rates, whatever you want to do, that's a great way to go. Like if you have
10:41those memories of certain enemies in Tomb Raider, for example, or the old Resident Evils or whatever,
10:45there's something to polygonal horror that can be so viscerally affecting because your mind makes up
10:50the distance, adds the detail in, or whatever. And I think, yeah, stay out of the house isn't
10:53a perfect example of that. And you can also shoot an old lady in the head with a gun if
10:58you wanted
10:59to. No, don't do that. Stay out of the house. If you wanted to, you can do it. It's a
11:04very immersive
11:04sim is what I'm trying to say. You've got so many different experimental ideas that you can implement
11:09that will get you through the puzzles that when you think outside the box, you might think it might
11:14not work, then it absolutely does. My next game is a game that I've been begging Josh Brown to play
11:18for, let me check, four years now. Neon White, my friend. One of the coolest first-person shooters
11:26that has ever been made. A really cool scoreboard-chasing arcadey, like I said, FPS, but you're
11:31basically trading the idea of weapon pickups as you move through the environment. So you want
11:36to find these different cards, equip the weapons. They have very finite ammo counts, so you're balancing
11:40that against the different enemies that you need to take out and finding the perfect run through
11:43every level. Levels themselves take like a minute or something like that. Very, very short.
11:47And there is an overall story tying everything together. I think the game's soundtrack is
11:51exemplary as well. I don't know music genres as well as I should. I was going to do a beatboxy
11:56thing there, but I'm not going to do it. No, no, no, no. It's one of them. Thank you.
12:01And it keeps you going. I very much love unlocking the next level, but having that feeling of,
12:05let me jump back in. I can refine a few more seconds off my time. If you have other people
12:09who are playing
12:10it on your friends list, then it brings those times in so you know that you're always just behind
12:14someone else or just ahead of someone else. I just love the way it's put together. Like I said,
12:17I think it puts such a focus on pace and different ways that you can get through the environment.
12:21There are a lot of physics-based weapons later on as well, things that will propel you through
12:25the environment based on blast radius or splash damage. And you're forever keeping an eye on the
12:30next thing, the next thing, and then stitching that together the next time you go through the
12:33level itself. So Neon White exemplary, tuned to the most perfect engine of a game that you can find.
12:40By the way, if you want to keep locked in for something like Neon White's runs,
12:43we've also got a secret lab affiliate link in the description below if you want to get
12:48yourself one of these so you can lock in and beat his high score.
12:53Professional man. He's professional.
12:55Up next for me is Wu Chang Fallen Feathers. This is a Souls-like game that released last year
13:00in 2025 and kind of came out of nowhere for me. There are so many Souls-likes these days.
13:06Every time you watch a State of Player or an Xbox Developer Direct or a Summer Games Fest,
13:10you're inundated with a lot of games, with a fantasy setting, with stamina meters, big bosses,
13:15the FromSoftware style that we all know and love. I'm sick of them. Some people are sick of them,
13:18I'm even getting sick of them as a super fan, but Wu Chang Fallen Feathers is absolutely one that you
13:23should play. It's not only one of the best games in the genre not made by FromSoftware,
13:27it's kind of one of the best action games that I've played over the past couple of years.
13:31It's kind of on par with Lies of P, which would have gotten a shout out here,
13:35but I feel like that's a little bit more well-known. Wu Chang is very traditional Souls.
13:40You don't even have a jump button necessarily, but the combat is weighty, it is satisfying,
13:45it is responsive, there is great boss design, there is so much variety in the levels themselves,
13:50and those levels do have that winding, labyrinthine, recursive design that makes some of the best
13:57Souls games so memorable, because you just want to explore what's down that nook, what's down that
14:03cranny. Is that the appropriate term? Oh, there's plenty of nooks and crannies.
14:08There's plenty of nooks and crannies as well. Possibly a ravine every now and then.
14:11Yeah, there's some ravines. You get abilities that allow you to explore other parts of the map as
14:15well that you might not have been to before, but it just nails the fundamentals.
14:18Are there any crevices? There might be some crevices.
14:20Get in, good. Yeah, some optional crevices.
14:22Thank God, it's about time. It nails the fundamentals in a really satisfying way. It's the full package IMO,
14:28it's about a 30 to 40 hour experience, and it was so good that when I wrapped credits,
14:33I wanted to jump back in immediately, and I did jump back in immediately to complete the new game plus,
14:38and to do some of the NPC quests that I didn't get to the first time around.
14:42I know it's had some controversy since it released, because they actually censored some of the content
14:47at the request, I think, of maybe even the Chinese government, because it is a Chinese set and developed
14:52game. So you can't outright kill some of the bosses because they're based on real mythological figures
14:59from China, I think. So they did patch that in. I know there was a bit of backlash to that.
15:04I can't
15:04say whether that tarnishes the game at all, but I'm sure those boss fights are still incredibly
15:08satisfying. Just you might not be able to kill them outright anymore, but still, the full package
15:13is there. And if you are a Souls fan, or even if you're a lapsed Souls fan who has kind
15:18of been out
15:18the genre for a little bit and is wanting a really good one to get back in, I definitely recommend
15:22this alongside Lies of P. I do love the outside of FromSoftware Souls games that we're starting to
15:28get, like Wuchang Fallen Feathers, Nioh 3 is exemplary. Yes. Like where FromSoft have gone down
15:32a specific route, releasing something every couple of years, it's a lot more, I don't know, considered,
15:36and a lot more deliberate in regards to fighting bosses. Like you have the more action focus
15:41that's starting to come back in, which I love to see as a spectacle fighting, spectacle fighting
15:45lover. Yeah. As a word of- string of words for the- Marvel's Midnight Suns, my friend. Oh! One
15:52of
15:52the finest experiences that would grace your consoles. I get why it was so hated when it first
15:57came out. I also get the fact that it's called Marvel's Midnight Suns, but the Midnight Suns
16:02with a U is different to the Midnight Suns with an O, so then all the comic people were like,
16:06what the hell are you guys doing using this turn? That's not the Midnight Suns! I totally get that,
16:09but the gameplay is where it matters. This idea of this card-based strategy game made by FireAxis,
16:14the dudes that made XCOM, just one of the most enjoyable strategic games that you can come
16:18across. I love the overall presentation. There are bits and pieces of what assumedly would have
16:22been a monetization grind left in here. Like I said, part of the backlash was the Midnight Sun stuff,
16:26but there was a lot of consternation around the idea that they were going to do card packs and
16:31recurrent spending and all that stuff when the game was first revealed. That backlash is what
16:35overshadowed the game entirely and led to a drop in sales, etc. But I do think the strategy that's
16:40on show is awesome. I think the idea that you're being dealt this deck of cards that can
16:44have everything from environmental interactions to the different hero powers that you have,
16:47and chaining those moves together with your companions or against multiple enemies,
16:50and just trying to think, how much can I do per turn? It's something that the Mario and Rabbids
16:55games have as well, where it's not necessarily about one person that you're playing as doing
16:59one move and then moving on. It is about chaining everything together, and the game's presentation
17:03is awesome. And like I said, you can bring in the environmental attacks, you can trigger different
17:07explosives, you can send the dude flying into someone else that then triggers their special.
17:11I think there's a lot of strategic experimentation happening here, and I wonder if it's something
17:15that Fire Axis might have done anyway until they got the license and they then made it more of a
17:20Marvel game. Like I said, the card-based side of it, all of the monetization practices were stripped
17:24out of it. I don't know if there's any monetization stuff left in there. I didn't pay a cent more,
17:29a penny more than just buying the game. So I just find it to be one of the most recommendable
17:34strategy games on the market. It's super cheap these days, and the DLC is awesome,
17:39and I'm so Marvel fatigued out. But in terms of their power set, there's almost no one better,
17:45especially when you start comboing stuff together.
17:47Every time you talk about this game, and you've mentioned a lot of great games,
17:50no doubt already, but this is the one where I kick myself and I never got around to playing
17:54it. And I still really want to because it sounds like it's just so good at what it's trying to
17:59do. And as a huge Marvel fan who hasn't actually really got that Marvel fatigue and always loves
18:03an excuse to jump back into this world, every time I watch some of the cutscenes, I watch the
18:07characters hanging out at their base and then obviously going into the to the battles themselves.
18:11It just looks like a perfect combination of that genre and the superhero genre.
18:15Yeah, I love their sort of persona adjacent hanging out at the academy, everyone's making friends,
18:19social circle stuff. That's another thing that made other people run a mile because it's that idea of
18:24do you want to attend Blade's Book Club? I mean, I do. Do you want to go skinny dipping with
18:28Wolverine?
18:29Yeah. And so those things are in there. That's maybe not what you were expecting going in. I do
18:34think that side of it is just fun. It's quite sweet. It does feel like a bunch of adults writing
18:37a story that would work for the TikTokers of the world. But the gameplay is what matters. Gameplay
18:42is always king. And that's the thing that you'll be spending three quarters of your time doing.
18:46But also I have a soft spot for taking the in-game photo mode pictures and putting them in picture
18:50frames and adorning my dorm with them. So just because I'm best mates with Wolverine,
18:54don't worry about it. Do you think he sits there like with the Wolverine?
18:56Exactly. That's how I sit there. Yeah. That's me looking at a copy of Midnight Suns,
19:00knowing that the world won't play it. And me going, it's good. It's really good. It is.
19:05Maybe we'll get a sequel. Someday. I don't know why he's got this voice now.
19:10It's never going to get a sequel. Next up, I'm being a little bit cheeky,
19:13Scott Tailford, because I'm including Hunt Showdown 1896. I always get the number wrong.
19:18Don't worry, though. You've not missed 1895 of these games. This is just a version of Hunt
19:25Showdown that relaunched itself essentially in 2024. Now, the original Hunt Showdown came out in 2018,
19:31but this was a huge upgrade to the engine. It cut off support for the older consoles and is
19:36essentially kind of a stealth sequel in and of itself, which is why I'm including it, even though
19:41we had such a short list of games from the past five years we wanted to talk about and we
19:45couldn't.
19:45So if you do like this video, please let us know because I'm desperate to do another one.
19:49If you want a top 100 that takes us the afternoon, we could do it.
19:51We could do that. We could do it. That's something we can do.
19:53But Hunt Showdown 1896 is one of my favorite multiplayer experiences definitely of this decade
19:59and certainly of this generation so far. It is an extraction shooter, which I don't normally go for.
20:05It's kind of balanced around 2v2 or 3v3 team combat, but I played it entirely solo.
20:12And don't be wrong, it was difficult, but I was able to put up with it and was able to
20:18kind of
20:18get through some situations where I was completely outnumbered because the car shooting is so good.
20:23It is a game that makes you absolutely paranoid. It is an immersive title with very little in the
20:28way of HUD. If you shoot someone, you won't know if you hit them until you go and investigate and
20:34see
20:34the blood they left behind or their body on the floor. If you're lucky, it takes a couple of shots
20:39to
20:39take someone down. You have, because it's set in 1896, you have old school cowboy style revolvers,
20:45repeaters that take a long time to reload, a long time to shoot. But that risk reward is balanced
20:50because if you do get that headshot, you're taking them out immediately. And the gameplay,
20:54these stealth gunfights in this game are unbelievable, man. Like when you're in one of those tense
20:59situations, you're trading bullets. You don't know if you tagged them. They don't know if you tagged you.
21:03You don't know where one of their teammates has gone. Has he tried to sneak around you? Is he in
21:08the bushes over there? Is he going to snipe me? I don't have any clue. It puts you in that
21:11mode,
21:12thanks to the immersive graphics, which are kind of second to known. It's maybe one of,
21:16if not the best looking games I've ever played. It's incredible every single time I boot it up.
21:20And thanks to those visuals, thanks to the incredible audio design, it just puts you in this state of
21:25paranoia where you're creeping around like the bayou or whatever it is. And you're trying to not get shot in
21:31the
21:32head and you're trying to ruin someone else's day. And the way that it kind of puts you in this
21:36mentality of predator and prey is amazing. Like it can switch in an instant. You can be hunting
21:42someone. They might be able to fend off your ambush and then suddenly you're running across
21:47the map and you're trying to lose them in the shrubbery as well. But the idea of tracking someone
21:51and thinking like, I know they were over there, which way would they have gone? And you're kind of
21:56on someone's heels the entire map while they're trying to run away from you. That game of cat and mouse,
22:01it's unbelievable. It might even sell you on extraction shooters at a hole. The presentation
22:05is great. The setting is great. The weapons are chunky and fun. I also did an editorial on this
22:10game as well because I just needed to shout it out. It's been around for a while. But with this
22:14relaunch, it was just the perfect time to jump back in. I adore it. If you like slow-paced shooters,
22:20if you like that risk-reward element, give it a go, man. It's such a great combat system.
22:25I would die immediately. You would, yeah. You'd get shot in the ass. My last pick is one of my
22:29favorite games of the decade overall, the 100-line Last Defense Academy, which is a beautiful mix
22:34of various social aspects that have been in the likes of the Danganronpa series. It is the same
22:38developer, the same head of the studio, and all the kinds of bonds that you might make in something
22:41like a Persona, mixed with another one of my favorite genres, the grid-based strategy genre, and
22:47basically tells the story of various young individuals that get whisked away to this Last
22:51Defense Academy to try and fend off different waves of demons. Everything is kept very mysterious. I
22:56love how anime AF the entire presentation is. One of the characters has a pumpkin for her head,
23:00and the pumpkin moves and talks and all that kind of stuff. She looks really cool.
23:03But it is the, I guess it's the mystery pull. It is the gameplay unlocks. It is the synergy between
23:08all the different characters that I really love. And it is straight back in regards to the
23:12presentation. Like you are clicking on ostensibly like, you know, full-size profile photos to then
23:17go into dialogue. The game does have like a hundred endings as well, which the developers
23:22said was this massively ambitious idea that they had at the beginning. Could you make a game with
23:25a hundred different endings? And all sorts of different branch path things happen in the
23:29background without you necessarily realizing. And then obviously the game serves up one of those
23:32endings later on. Last year, they revealed that the game's sequel was already inside the game itself,
23:36because after the first hundred days of the game have passed, there is another hundred days that
23:40you can get stuck into. And so it's very much bang for your buck as well. It reminds me a
23:43lot of
23:44Demon Slayer, where the idea of, you know, you take a whole bunch of youths and they all have
23:47different powers. And in Demon Slayer's case, they're all ranking up to become one of the
23:51Hashira. In Last Defense Academy, you're sort of unlocking this power based on this
23:56hemo anima, which literally means that you have to stab yourself with a weapon and just hope for
24:00the best. Something then comes out of you a little bit like Persona, and you blend all those aspects
24:04together. And I think, at least for me, you have a supremely gripping story where, like I said,
24:07everything is very mysterious, reveals come. The game is told day by day, so you get a little bit of
24:12a
24:12reveal every couple of days. But you can also indulge in the combat and the exploration of
24:16the environment that you're in. Try and find out more about the Academy. And why is there this weird
24:21mascot with a brain that you can see? This little puppet dude who's trying to tell you everything
24:25that's going. He's got a little pork pie hat on. I don't trust him at all. All of a sudden,
24:28he goes missing. What's going on? So it has all those kind of aspects. But like I said,
24:32gameplay is super tight. And if you like over-the-top anime, the way that the likes of Demon Slayer
24:36has
24:36gone over its seasons, or just anime seasons in general, then I think Last Defense Academy has so much
24:41charm to it, backed up by the strategic layer that I found to be incredibly intoxicating.
24:46So to round off this list, Scott, I've got to talk to you about Pentiment. This is a game that
24:49I slept
24:50on for years and finally got around to playing at the start of 2026. And it was one of those
24:55where I
24:55was just kicking myself thinking, why did you not play this before? And why have you not been shouting
25:00from the rooftops about how good it is for the past four years or so? This is a smaller title
25:06from
25:06Obsidian. It is a side-scrolling adventure game, almost, with very consequence-heavy dialogue
25:13options. You are essentially this painter called Andreas, who was in this small town in the 1700s,
25:20the 1800s, back in the day, back in the Bohemian times, post-Roman era. And you're at this abbot
25:28working with the priests, and you're learning how to be an artist, essentially. You're doing an
25:32internship there, essentially, from back in the day. And while you're there, someone in the town
25:37kills a nobleman who is visiting. And it's up to you, being kind of this third-party investigator,
25:44to figure out who actually did the murder. And one of your friends at the abbotry,
25:50one of the priests, is kind of being fingered for it. He's an old man, he's a lovely man.
25:55Stop laughing over there! Stop laughing at the word fingered! This is an alien
25:59covenant all over again. One of the old men gets fingered for it.
26:05No way! I know, right?
26:07And you want to defend him, because it's pretty clear that he probably didn't do it, or did he?
26:13Cabris. But he seems like a nice guy. So you have to go all around this town,
26:16you have to talk to everyone, you have a time limit to do so, you have a day-night cycle,
26:20so you've got to still do your duties as an amateur artist. And you've got to have tea with people,
26:25have lunch with people, try to get information out of them, try to figure out who did what and why
26:30they would have done it, and then present enough evidence to plead the case at the actual trial
26:35that eventually happens. But it blends in so much from history itself, like the context and why
26:41someone might have done this, and the different class hierarchies that are on display, the discrepancy
26:49between wealth and poverty, and on top of so many other just fascinating themes that are so well
26:55portrayed in the game. It's one of the best written games that I've probably ever played,
26:59I loved it so much, and without spoiling too much, because I definitely want people to play it,
27:03there is a moment where the game reveals itself to be bigger than it is, and it drives home just
27:09how
27:09much your choices actually matter. And when you're in those moments where you're having a trial,
27:15and you're kind of pointing towards someone who might have done a murder, but you're kind of not
27:19sure, but you kind of are, and it's on you to essentially sentence this person to death,
27:25it stays with you long after the game is over. It's done in this old art style of the time,
27:29where it mimics the paintings and the illustrations of that era, so it's 2D, but it's so lushly brought
27:37to life. Admittedly that was one of the reasons I didn't play it at launch, because I didn't like the
27:41look of the art style, but it made me so interested in it when I finally did it, and it's
27:46considering
27:46the amount of cast members it has, it's an entire town of people you can talk to,
27:51every one of them is memorable. Every one of them you get to know, every one of them stands out,
27:55and it is such a great ensemble piece, and I am still thinking and ruminating about some of the
28:01choices that I made in that game, and the lives I potentially ruined. So if you're into RPGs,
28:06if you're into story-focused games, don't let the art style put you off, I promise it will win
28:10you're over. It's an absolute marvel, and I would definitely recommend the no-clip documentary about
28:14the game. It'll make you appreciate it even more. They did an excellent job interviewing all the
28:18developers and stuff. So yeah, old-school Obsidian, old-school RPG, old-school adventure game. Vibes,
28:24amazing. If you're a calligraphy and font freak like myself, then it's absolute heaven as well.
28:29Every single character has different fonts based on where they are, like you said, in the class system.
28:34Also, last thing for this, I think it was written by Josh Sawyer?
28:36It was? Yes, of Fallout New Vegas fame. So if you want a little taste of what that man is
28:40up to
28:40in the modern day, and you're looking at everything else that Obsidian's doing, going,
28:43where's my sawyer? I want a little bit more of the sawyer sauce. It's in there. Don't worry about it.
28:48Honestly, I love recommending games. We will probably do this in the future. Let us know what you think
28:51down in the comments below. If you have any other games of the 2020s that deserve their flowers and
28:55deserve to be shouted out and gushed over, please let us know. Please also subscribe to the channel
28:59for more lists just like this, and we'll catch you all very soon. Goodbye.
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