Disk Cleanup
Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend feature delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "How tidy is your desktop?" and "What game will you never uninstall?"
SungWon Cho got into PC gaming through the children's adventure games developed by Humongous Entertainment. "Games like Freddi Fish, Spy Fox, those really stuck with me," says the YouTuber and actor. "I remember playing those at a pretty young age and just being obsessed with the characters, the dialogue. I don't really play adventure games now, but I did then."
Cho gained a following on YouTube through his viral comedy skits such as "a villain who unintentionally always does helpful things" and when you have a really good turn in a card game, building a channel that today has almost four million subscribers. Alongside producing his own videos, Cho has become a prominent voice in gaming and animation, with roles that include Ratatoskr in God of War: Ragnarok, Abby Saja in the Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters, and most recently, the narrator in Paramount's Golden Axe animated series. He also appeared in 2023's riotous comedy-drama Blackberry, which charts the rise and fall of the Canadian mobile phone company.
Cho stepped away from the mic to give me a guided tour of his Steam library, which he reserves specifically for games he wants to lock into: "If I know I'm going to be obsessed with a game, I like to play it on PC," he says. Truer words were never spoken.
On PC, I'm not playing anything currently. I think the last game I got really into on PC was Dave the Diver.
I knew Dave the Diver would be dangerous for me. I heard people describing the gameplay loop. With PC games, I feel like I need to prepare myself. With Dave the Diver, I had a stretch of time where I was like "Okay, I can just become obsessed with this game." My wife and I will take turns, and sometimes if we're really into a game it's like "Hey, you're not going to see me. Like in the evenings, you're not going to see me. This is what I'm going to be doing." And we are both totally fine with that.
I think the gameplay loop is very satisfying. You get the fish. You cook them up. The art is great. I was very impressed with all of it. I think it was just a joy to play through.
Hades 2. That was another one that I had to be prepared for in advance. I 100%-ed it. I played it for like 120 hours. I was obsessed. I love the Hades games.
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I specifically waited [until 1.0] because I'm not the type of player who likes to do early access. I like to wait 'till it's done so that when I dive in, it all feels new. I had not played any of it in early access. Oh, I forgot to mention, it is still installed, even though I'm not playing it right now. I'm just lazy.
I like the second one more. I'm not sure if that's a controversial take or not, but I really like the main character. I like the casting system that they added to it. The fact that there were two paths, going up or down, I thought that was fun. The new characters are great. Yeah, and I really loved the first one.
I also felt like the second one added more challenge. I enjoyed the increased challenge. Looking back on Hades 2, I just loved it.
Not sure why it's this one. I mean, it's a good game, VVVVVV. I think that's the oldest game I have technically installed, and I don't remember why it's installed. We played it on my Let's Play channel ProZD Plays Games, and I think I just wanted to check something about it. I forget how many hours I played. It's a great game.
The one that was closest to oldest was Civilization 5. I played a lot of Civ 5 … I actually have never played any of the other ones. I haven't even played Civ 6 yet. I think there's a delusional part of me that's like, "well, I'm going to get all the achievements one day." Which obviously I'm never going to do.
I'm the type of player who loves to 100% a game … I know not everyone loves achievements. They're kind of divisive. I enjoy them because they encourage me to try things I probably normally wouldn't try. Not to say that I couldn't try them anyway, but sometimes like "Oh, just play this game in a weird way just to get this little sticker".
I'm a person who loves checking off lists. I love checklists. Like some of my most played games, you'll see why I 100%-ed them is because it's that kind of game. Hades 1 and 2 are that. My favourite games to play on PC are ones where I can have, on my second monitor, just a list, or a paper list in front of me.
Which sounds torturous to some people, but for me, that's like my bliss.
Oh, that's an easy answer. Let me get the exact number of hours. Balatro. I 100%-ed it. 354 hours.
That is one of the best games of all time for me. I love that game. It consumes you. I refuse to play it on mobile because I know that's bad for me. With PC, it's like "Well, I can only do it when I'm at home." If I had access to that on my phone, it'd be really bad.
Probably the hardest achievement on that is [getting gold] with every joker in the game. I chronicled my struggle because I had one joker left, the fucking obelisk, which, I hate that joker. That joker sucks. But it's a rare joker.
There's a really funny image that went viral, where it's me in despair at my computer, hands on my head with the little win screen … I got so good at the game that I could beat it on the gold stake very easily, but then it became a hunt, and so I would get to the final part where I'm like "Okay, I'm about to win." And I would just start cycling through jokers, like "Where is this thing" and it would not show up.
The challenges in that game are also very difficult. There's a whole challenge section. Those got really brutal, and I would never want to do those again. One of the hardest ones is Jokerless, where you have zero joker slots. That's not fun. That was brutal. There's another one called Cruelty where big blinds just don't give you money—also miserable. Most of the challenges were fun. But there are a couple, some of the last ones, that were a slog.
I have a great answer for you, Nerts Online!
Nerts is a card game. I've played it in person and I play it online. It's basically chaotic, competitive solitaire, where you're all trying to get your cards in a pile as quickly as you can in real time by basically, you're playing solitaire in front of you and throwing cards in the middle, like into their piles. There's a free version of it, just called Nerts Online.
I will never uninstall it because it's so fun to play. I have over 100 hours. It plays quite well, considering it's also a free game. I'm very good at the game as well, and I have some friends who are also very good, so it's really fun to compete.
I'm not a multiplayer guy. I don't really like multiplayer games, but Nerts Online is the one exception because I'm a big board game guy … I much prefer single-player games. I think, one, I don't want to be depending on—this sounds petty—but I don't want to be dependent on trying to schedule with other people. I just want to play a game. Especially as we're all getting older, we're busy adults, it's harder and harder to find time.
Also, I've had some not great experiences with multiplayer games, where it's like if everyone else knows how to play, they leave you behind in the dust, that king of thing where [they're like] "We'll teach you! We'll teach you!" and then as soon as you start up, they just zoom off and you're like, "Well, fuck."
But even then, if I only have a limited amount of time to play games, I want to dedicate it to single-player … I just have so many games I want to play single-player that it's like, well, multiplayer games can just eat up your time if you're not careful. And not to diminish them, but I feel like, to me, they're less nutritious for my personal taste. I feel like I want to experience a memorable single-player thing instead of "Oh, I just kind of, not threw away three hours, but I played a bunch of this multiplayer game [and] I don't remember that much of it".
This will tell you a lot about me and how tech illiterate I am. I refuse to learn how to use Photoshop or anything like that. I have no idea how to use that stuff. If I need to edit and image, I use Microsoft Paint. That tells you how little I know or care about learning new technologies. I'm like "Well, this is what I know. I don't care enough to learn a whole new thing. I'll just use Paint." If I need to crop an image, I'll just open-up Paint.
Dude, I'm a disaster. Right now, it's shameful. I'm friends with Ray Chase and I was reading his, and he's like "Oh yeah, I only have one folder" or something like that. Looking at mine, it's disgusting.
When you're in my line of work, you often have to sign a lot of contracts, like PDFs and stuff. Looking at my desktop, it's just filled with random PDFs. I have random screenshots. I don't even look at my desktop. The desktop to me is just another folder and it's nasty.
You know what, I'm gonna tell you, right now, how many—oh my God!—I have, on my desktop, 260 individual files. Yep. It's just a disaster. Again, I'm lazy. I'm like "Eh, I'll do it later". If I need to post an image, I'll just save it on my desktop, and then it's just lying there.
Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.
Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt