S2 Episode 024 - Top 5 Video Game Sidekicks

Two friends are discussing their plans to record a podcast episode. They decide to do a top five list of video game sidekicks. They each share their top five picks, including BB from Death Stranding and Claptrap from Borderlands. They also discuss Ellie from The Last of Us and Donald and Goofy from Kingdom Hearts. They express excitement about the concept and look forward to recording the episode. So, Noah, you're always quite busy on the weekend, no busy day for James today? I mean, there's definitely stuff I should be doing, but... Yeah, because when I got your message this morning, like, hey, you want to record? I was like, but it's the weekend. Yeah. I just think that I wanted to try to get recording done, like, soon. I don't know, because I feel like we have two episodes we're going to talk about today. Yeah. A little mini thing, and then the other one, it's, like, fresh in our memory. It's nice to be able to do that. And I want to talk to you about the next game. I want to announce it to you. Oh, shit. I don't know how I feel about that. Well, sure, then, let's get into it. You want to get into our little... You're like, yeah, fuck it, give me a new game. Our little mini episode. Daddy brought you a new game. Three, two, one. Dark Lord. Welcome back to Three, Two, One Backlog, the podcast where we sit down and play games from our backlog and then discuss them. However, we're going to be discussing something different today. We're going to do a top five list. So this will be interesting. I love this concept, I just want to say. This is exciting. Yeah. I've been wanting to... I even got paper notes. Ooh, sneak peek. Paper notes? Paper notes. Look at this shit. Ha! I got it. Yeah, I read it all, dude. I screenshot it. So, yeah, we were wanting to do... You were in a rabbit hole? Oh, yeah, dude. I was looking at... Did you ever play the game on PlayStation 2 called Black? I can't say that I have. It's a first-person shooter. Well, I was reading about it. I played it. I had it. I probably still do. And I was trying to look up what the... Why was it named Black? I guess it was like a Black Ops, something like that. But then there was never a sequel made, and then they did make a sequel, and it was made by another company. And I was looking up what... Do you see where this is going? What other company or what other games did that company make, you know? Yeah. And I was just like nine Wikipedia pages deep, 45 requests for Money Deep. Jesus. Jesus. Because Wikipedia is like, pay us, please. So why was it called Black? The guy was a Black Ops something or other. Oh. Terrorist or something. Anyhow, today we're going to do a little top five list, and we're going to start... Get off of that one, dude. We're doing a top five list where we talk about our top five video game sidekicks. Yes. And they can't be us. Interesting you say that. Oh, shit. So this is going to be a new format for us where we're just going to each run through our... We're going to do our number five spot. We'll talk about it, and we'll go down the list until we get to ones. We might have some honorable mentions. We might have some least favorites to talk about as well. I'm going to put mine in order. Ooh. Let me do... That's easy enough. Silly boy. What comes after two? Seven. You better not be lying to me. Okay. I know my number one. Me too, dude. It might even be the same. No, it couldn't be. It better... No, there's no way. I'm curious because I think that we're going to have at least... I think we're going to have two different... What am I trying to say? I think two of ours are going to be the same or are going to be on the list. Maybe not in the same order. Two? I got two, possibly. Okay. Yeah. We're going to have to fucking find out. Why don't we get into it? Let's do our number five. Who wants to go first? You should. You do yours first because I'm still ordering mine. Okay. So my first top sidekick is going to be BB, a.k.a. Lou, from Death Stranding. Oh. Which I thought was kind of interesting getting also some games... Keeping some games we played. But, yeah, I liked... You know, he ends up being... Or she, rather, ends up being kind of like a character in herself throughout the game. And it was, you know, cute little interactions and stuff. And I really liked the... I don't know. I liked the interactions that Daryl... That Sam had with BB in the game. It was a lot of, you know, cutesy little interactions and stuff. And I really ended up liking that game. And I think if they just made... That was a good answer, dude. Yeah. If they just made BB just like a static, you know, just baby in a tube with no personality and no interactions, I think it would have just not hit as well. So that's my number five spot. I love that, dude. That's good. I never... That never even crossed my mind. Yeah. BB. But that's a good one. I went with Claptrap from Borderlands. Only a number five? Not any higher? You know what's funny? Well, the reason... I mean, as we go through the list, I think you'll understand that they do. Like, you know, they're better sidekicks. But he, to me, is one of, like, a top character for that series. I love Borderlands series a lot. But he doesn't really do a lot. He's just hilarious. And, you know, what's funny is when I did this, I looked up, like, I wanted other people's point of views, too, just to get some ideas. I'm sure you did the same thing, look up sidekicks and worst. He was on every single worst sidekick list. Really? Yeah, dude. People hate him, I guess. But it's funny because he's so lovably hateable. He sucks. He sucks. No, come on. I love it. But, yeah, I love Claptrap. I feel like he is, like, he is the mascot for the series, and I love Borderlands. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. That's Saddens Bay. Spoilers. He's so funny. He is so funny. Yeah. Spoilers, he's on mine. Yeah, I figured. I love that, though. All right, moving right along. This isn't going to be a super long episode, but we wanted to have something different. I started out number five. Why don't you start out number four? Oh, good call. Okay, this is going to disappoint somebody, but my number four is Ellie from The Last of Us. Oh. She's good. She's cool. I know she eventually is not really a sidekick in, like, the later games, I think, but she's good. She's good. She's one of those characters that is in the game, does provide a little bit, but doesn't really ever get in the way, you know? Right. And, yeah, I thought she was, from a storyline perspective, really important, obviously, if you've seen it in the series or played the game. But, yeah, Ellie is who I picked, whatever her last name is. You know, that's, I was trying to go with games that I had played, but she was going to be on mine if I broadened it out. I have played it, so, yeah, I played the first one. Right, right. I didn't play enough of it to really count it for me, so that's awesome. Yeah, man. Who you got? All right, so I cheated a little bit. I have a duo of people. So I really liked the Kingdom Hearts games back in the day, so I have the duo of Donald and Goofy from Kingdom Hearts. I got to get our Disney plug in there. Sponsor us. They were just purely comic relief, and, you know, they would, like, bicker against each other and stuff, and they, because our, it's been a number of years since I've played Kingdom Hearts that I actually want to circle back so we can get a refresher on it. But I always remember the two of them bouncing off each other and just, like, you know, the interactions between them and your main character and, like, the enemies and stuff that were going on, they were just, like, a nice little treat. And being, you know, a kid when I was playing that game, it was just kind of, like, cool to see that kind of crossover between, like, a Final Fantasy-looking game and a set of Disney characters. Yeah. It's funny. I remember you liked that game a lot. You owned it. I did. I never played it, but, and it's on my backlog, actually. Yeah, yeah. Everybody loves that series, but it's funny because the whole Disney crossover was the reason I didn't want to play it. Really? When I was of that age, yeah. I loved Final Fantasy, but, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Just weird. It just turned me off from it, but. Hmm. I know it's a good game. It has to be a good game. I want to say I have a PlayStation 2 copy of it. I have the strategy guides for all of the earlier ones. Always. Multiple copies because I bought copies of it, and then my brother-in-law gave me his whole collection of guides, too, because he's, like, the same age as us. Right. And then I own, I think, like, the PS3 remake of it, and I probably have a copy of it on something else, too. I probably do. It's been remade 50 times. We're going to play that. That's the next game, dude. Oh, no. I'm just kidding. It's not. It's not. It's not. But. All right. So, you got number three now. I got number three. Go for it. We are going to go another game we've played on the podcast. Ooh. Our good old little robotic floating pal, B-12. From Spain. Bug, man. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dude. Can I change my list? Yeah, dude. For anybody that hadn't played Stray, the little robot B-12 that was floating around, doing all the interactions, had a straight-up existential crisis in the middle of the game, floating around drone. It was great. You know, it definitely added some, like, character to the game, instead of just, like, oh, it's just a cat and all this stuff. It was something to really break it up and give you some dialogue options in the game, and it was really fun to watch and play through. Damn, dude. That's good, man. I, again, that never crossed my mind. I feel like mine are going to come off as very generic. Nah, dude. Nah, dude. You're good. Nah, dude. My number three, which I feel like is going to be on your list somewhere, too, is Atreus from God of War. So, I put him over Ellie because he actually interacts. Like, you know, you hit square, whatever. Shoots an arrow. Does that kind of stuff. And I didn't want to put him higher on the list because he's kind of a shithead. He's an adolescent shitbag. So, yeah. But, I don't know. I feel like in the upcoming game that we haven't played yet, I feel like he's going to play a bigger role, hopefully. Eventually, maybe he will take over the God of War series or something. Yeah, I have been seeing some speculation stuff. Because we are going off of us only playing 2018. Dude, he's a side character with that main character energy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, dude. But, yeah, he was good. He was a good addition. And because of him, it allowed a lot more story expansion, too. Like, through Mimir and stuff. Because, obviously, Kratos wouldn't have talked to Mimir. Was that his name? Mimir? Yeah. Wouldn't have talked to Mimir at all, you know, if not for Atreus. So, he did add a lot to the series. Right, right. For sure. For sure. Yeah. So, for the rest of this little mini-episode are going to be names we've heard before. My number two is Claptrap. Fuck yeah. I thought, like, the Borderlands games were really fun. I like shooters. I like the art style that was. But it was never a game that I would, like, really go and play on my own. And I, when we would play those on our, like, gaming night games. Gaming night games? On our gaming nights. I enjoyed his interactions so much that it, like, made that, just the whole thing more fun. When I could see him in the scenes and stuff. I just, I love the comedy they put behind him. And I just, it made the series so much better for me. Yeah. You know what? He does serve a purpose. He opens doors. You always need one. Heck yeah, dude. So, that's good. Okay. I saw, I did see that. I had to give him a little bit more love. I'm glad that you liked it. Like, I'm glad that you like Laugh Trap as well. He's great. It's just, I'm glad that we can share that appeal. Because it's either love or hate with that guy. I'm interested to know if other people in our friend group like him or hate him. They got to like him. You got to, man. He's so lovable. Sometimes. All right. And down to our number one. No, I got to do my number. I got a number two. Oh, you have a number two? I haven't done a number two, yeah. My bad, my bad, my bad. So, this one I knew would not hit your list. But Otacon. Who the hell is that? He is Hal Emmerich, Dr. Hal Emmerich from Metal Gear Solid series. Oh. So, he doesn't, you don't ever really play as him or anything like that. But you save him in Metal Gear Solid, the first game. And then he pretty much assists Snake through everything going forward. Like all of the other games, he is that fucking guy. You know, so, I don't know. I don't want to go too into detail, and I'm not going to attempt to explain the Hideo Kojima series to anybody here. But he just never falters from being like a genuine good sidekick. And it's through multiple game series, and he helps other people as well. You know, he's just an all-around good dude. So, yeah. If you've played the series, you get it. If you've never played the series, you're fucking awful. You're not on my top five. But I've never played the series. Uh-oh, dude. No. That's all right on my list. So, you want me to do my number one? Yes. What you got? Dude, now I feel like I'm going to upset somebody. So, I put this is anybody that knows this knows this, but I am a big fan of the Donkey Kong series, always have been. And Donkey Kong Country 2 is my favorite one of the series, and it's called Diddy's Kong Quest. And the funny thing to me is that the whole game is about, you know, it's Diddy's Kong Quest. You're going on this journey to try to save Donkey Kong who has been captured. And the sidekick of that game is Dixie Kong. And she is better in every way than any other Kong in the entire, like, she has, like, this hover ability. So, she can, like, slow fall. Yeah, yeah. And it's just overpowered as shit. In a platforming game, like, a slow fall ability is super good. It's just, I don't know, she is the, I love platformers, I like Donkey Kong, and she is the best character in that series by far. So, she gets the number one sidekick. Right on. For being literally better than the main characters of that series. Do you remember, it was a couple months ago, my wife and I were out playing some of the old, like, Nintendo classic games on our Switch. And we were doing, I think we were doing one of the Donkey Kong games, and we were, like, texting you, like, what's the lineage of all these people? Yeah, I'm not even sure. Is Dixie your dating last name? No, I think they're cousins or siblings or something. It's something weird. Interesting. But, yeah, that, for anybody that doesn't know it, go look up the Kong family tree. It is, it's a wild ride, dude. I'm going to look that up later. All right, and like I said, for me, number one, another name we've already heard, I got to give it up to Artreus, man, from 2018. I think with that game, I was liking it coming from the perspective of being a dad. And I liked those interactions. And whether he was a piece of shit or not, I think he definitely added a lot to that story. And he also had some functionality in the gameplay, which was good. And looking ahead to, I've played a tiny, tiny bit of Ragnarok so far. You motherfucker. And, I know, like 20 minutes. Okay. And I've been hearing things of, like, different YouTubers and stuff saying, like, you know, oh, when we get our Artreus game or whatever. So I don't know if things have been rumored or confirmed or not. It seems like it inevitably is going to happen. Yeah, it's probably going to go in that direction, yeah. So I'm interested to see where they take that character for sure. But, yeah, I'm going to give it up to Artreus. I definitely liked his addition to that series. And I'm excited to see where it goes. Fair. Like I said, I was definitely trying to go off of games that I've played. So I was kind of limiting myself a little bit. Right. Yeah. So I do, when I made this list, I do have some honorable mentions that didn't really make my list. I've got two of them. Same. Do you want to give us yours? You want them just back-to-back? Yeah, dude. Yeah, I went with Cortana from Halo because she's kind of always there. But she doesn't get top five because she's kind of a piece of shit too. Also, it's the worst part of Windows. Yeah. Turn off that on Windows immediately. And another, this is weird, but Coco Bandit from Crash Bandicoot. Oh, yeah. Coco Bandicoot, whatever her. Yeah. Yeah. So she's like, I think in the third game, maybe the second one, she's in like two levels tops. Right. But they were like the funnest levels, dude, because they were very like shooter. There was like one where there was like a shooter where you're like in a spaceship. They were just the funnest levels you had to play as her. And that's it. Right on. What you got? All right. So mine are goofy, man. So my honorable mentions, my first one is you and me. No. You are the best sidekicks, dude. Not for the reason you think. It was the player with the controller in Death Stranding. It's a little abstract, but like because your character, Sam, starts like having interactions with the camera that we, in a stupid little way, we become a side character in his story, like his inner thoughts and him talking to him. You fucking love Hideo Kojima, dude. Oh, my God. We have to play Metal Gear Solid. You and me. My second one, we got to, dude. Which one? There's like 50 to choose from. The first one, the PlayStation one. It's a series. So you don't start, we're not going to start with the Nintendo ones, because the storyline is not there. But we have to play the first Metal Gear Solid, the first three games I feel like are necessary. Right. Are they all, even the Nintendo ones, were those Hideo's as well? Yeah, but they're like top-down Nintendo games. I don't think the story is really there. I feel like the story is touched on in the series enough to understand it. Right. Yeah. Okay. Really, you want to know Solid Snakes. He is the main character. That one follows his father. Right, right. Quotation marks. The second honorable mention isn't from a game. It's more just like calling out Nintendo and some bullshit. Is Yoshi. I love Yoshi. I feel like he didn't, so here's the thing. In the games, he just became like a mount. From the games I played, there was not really any personality to him. But it was when they started doing other media and movies and shows and all that stuff, that would give him a little bit of personality. But I wanted to call out the 2023 Super Mario Brothers with Mr. Chris Pratt and everybody. They gave Yoshi no love. He was just like, no. Well, they showed a bunch of Yoshis running by in a field, and that was it. That's trash. And it was so bullshit. So I just wanted to call out that Yoshi didn't get any love in that fucking movie, and I wanted to give him some love, just give him some recognition for not being put in that movie. I posted a picture for you in Discord. What you got? It's from the newest remake, Super Mario Brothers. It's actually what introduced that Yoshi. There you go. So, dude, one thing, Nintendo sucks about that. I have to rant a little bit. Nintendo is so bad about giving a shit about anything other than Zelda and Mario. Donkey Kong, I suck at caring about anything other than Donkey Kong, but he was a huge character in the game. I'm sorry, he was a huge character in the movie, but no love afterwards. I think people like him. And then the same thing like you said with Yoshi. He's so minimal, even in the games that they're coming out with now. He's barely in them. In Mario Wonder, he is a playable character through start to finish, but he's basically the easy mode. He's invincible. Because every game that I played where you get a Yoshi or you get a chance to ride one of them, it was a really fun part of that game. It was the best levels, right? Yeah. So I really wanted to just kind of toss him some love. Have you seen the memes of people just sacrificing Yoshi as a second jump? Yeah. Mario flies through the fingers extended. So I have a worst sidekick that I can think of. Baby Mario in Yoshi's Island. I never played. He sucks, dude. So it is Baby Mario, and Yoshi is the main character of it. And your main attack is the tongue, and then you swallow things and make an egg, and you can throw an egg as a projectile. But if you get hit and take damage, Baby Mario floats away in a bubble, and you have to chase after him. You get ten seconds to catch him, and he just fucking cries, dude. You can picture the chaos. If you get hit without Baby Mario, he just kind of spins and falls down and adds two seconds to the recovery. But if you can picture the stress of that while there's a baby just wailing, crying. That sounds terrible. I can still picture. I haven't played that game in 20 years, and I can very clearly picture the horrible noise that comes out of that baby. Oh, man. You did tell me ahead of time that you were going to have a worst, and I was trying to think, and I could not for the life of me, using games I have played and remember vividly. I couldn't really think of any that stood out as, like, God, that was the worst. But I will pull from my wife's favorite series, which is The Legend of Zelda, with Navi just, like, Let's head! Let's head! over and over again. So I'll go ahead and give it there. Probably one of the worst sound bites ever conceived for a character. You know, I thought, so I don't know if the general consensus, I want people to comment, but I don't know if the general consensus of Navi is good or bad, but I can't stand him. That little fairy alone made that game unplayable for me. Yeah. Okay, so I have played that game a fair amount, but I can't stand that guy. Yeah. Can't stand him. All right. Cool. Well, I think that was fun. There was something new for us that's going to go kind of in our regular schedule stuff, which you know because you're listening to it in our regular release dates. So thanks so much for listening. That's going to wrap us up here. Stay tuned for our next episode. It's going to be Cocoon coming out in two weeks. We will see you next time, guys. Take care. Thank you. See you. Maybe again. Bye-bye. Hello. Hey. Thanks, Navi. Hey, everybody. Just want to take a minute to mention that we had a blast with this top five list. If this is something you enjoyed and want us to do more of, let us know on social media. You can find us everywhere at 321 Backlog. If this gets any traction, we'd love to add some Patreon polls and voting to kind of help choose our topics. We've even tossed around reading out our patrons' top picks for each category that we feature on an episode. But anyway, that's it for this episode. We appreciate you listening, and we will see you next episode.