Everything We Loved from Summer Game Fest

Summary

The Besties – "Everything We Loved from Summer Game Fest"

Date: June 12, 2026
Hosts: Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick

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Episode Overview

This energetic episode of The Besties dives deep into all major announcements, reveals, and personal highlights from a jam-packed Summer Game Fest 2026 week. The gang simultaneously tracks a live Nintendo Direct, recaps news and hands-on impressions from Xbox and PC Game Showcases, and shares their hype and skepticism around upcoming titles. Unsurprisingly, the discussion is chaotic, insightful, and full of playful banter—perfect for anyone struggling to keep up with this year’s avalanche of game news.

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Key Discussion Points & Highlights

1. Summer Game Fest’s Biggest Announcements

[04:27–16:34]

Final Fantasy VII Revelation

• The final entry in the FFVII Remake trilogy is confirmed as Final Fantasy VII Revelation.
  • Focuses on “disc two and three” content (the Great Weapons, Vincent Valentine).
  • Griffin: “In some ways, it’s the biggest news, I would say, of Summer Game Fest.” [05:05]
• The group remains excited but voices concerns over the open world and the “multiple timelines” approach from previous entries.
• Russ on gameplay tweaks: “This one does have airships and you can fucking jump off the airships and do a Fortnite thing.” [06:15]

Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake

• Long-anticipated remake is official, handled by the RE2 and RE4 Remake teams.
• Chris: “They really do have a lot of permission to go as far as they want with this one… the trailer that they showed looks closer to the kind of Resident Evil 7, 8 sort of stuff.” [07:41]
• Anticipation about modernizing aspects that haven’t aged well.

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2. Xbox Showcase: Surprises & Standouts

[09:11–13:11]

• Griffin claims the Xbox event was “pretty shit hot”, spotlighting:
  • Return of Xbox-exclusive messaging.
  • Gears of War E-Day and Halo Campaign Evolved remaster with new missions.
  • Spyro: A Realm Beyond—a visually impressive update for the classic series.
    • Griffin: “It’s weird to see Spyro moving around that fast with that many pixels and polygons happening for him.” [10:16]
  • Fable reboot with new tone and mechanics.
    • Cross-platform: Coming to PlayStation and PC.
    • Focus on "heroic reputation" rather than visual transformations from morality.
    • Russ: “I’m very excited about Fable... very curious to see if that studio... can do a not racing game.” [21:49]

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3. Persona Double Header

[10:42–14:50]

• Persona 4 Revival: Major visual overhaul and quality-of-life additions inspired by Persona 5.
  • Release Date: February 18, 2027.
  • “The battles... look extremely Persona 5.” – Griffin [11:13]
  • “This is my favorite game ever... this was like, shit hot.” – Griffin [14:50]
• Persona 6: Minimal teaser; stylized trailer with only "P6" logo. No gameplay.
  • Hosts express frustration over hype with little substance.
  • Russ: “Show me one guy.” [15:36]
• Small discussion on crossover references between Persona titles.

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4. Other Major Reveals & Trends

[13:42–16:59]

Virtua Fighter: Crossroads

• Developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Like a Dragon/Yakuza team).
• AA fighting game with robust single-player story; Spiritually reminiscent of Shenmue.
  • Chris: “Last time we got a big single player story... it was called Shenmue, my friends.” [16:14]

1666: Amsterdam

• Development saga: from Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Désilets, resurfaces with a demo after years of limbo.
  • Chris: “This game has been tortured... I need to see the final credits of this game to know that it is real.” [17:05]

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5. Nintendo Direct (Live Updates)

[01:12–19:33, 43:38–49:33]

• Kingdom Hearts 4 and an Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2 were announced during the recording—a rare live reaction moment.
  • Chris: “Holy moly.” (on Ocarina remake) [19:01]
• Other highlights:
  • New Muramasa from Vanillaware, also on Steam.
  • Fire Emblem: Fortunes Weave release date set for September 17.
  • Nintendo Switch Sports Resort reboot with 12 games.
  • Xenoblade Genesis announced for 2027.
  • Deltarune Chapter 5 and Final Fantasy Resonance (Brave Exvius reimagining).
  • Discussion of Switch 2 ports (Stellar Blade, Devil May Cry 5, Rayman Legends Retold, etc.).
  • Russ: “This is going to be a really good one, I think.” (on Orbitals) [44:20]

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6. PC Gamer Showcase

[26:30–28:32]

• “Pound for pound had the most games...” – Griffin [26:40]
• Notable reveals:
  • Cassette Beast 2002: New 3D installment.
  • Carcass Clad: Tank sim by devs of Mouthwashing.
  • Pipes.exe: Horror game themed on the old Windows screensaver.
  • Hack 95: Nostalgic hacking/card battler.
  • Multiple Dave the Diver projects.
• Focus on unique, inventive indie games over monolithic blockbusters.

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7. Hands-On Impressions from Play Days (SGF Event Floor)

[32:01–43:38]

Blood Dungeon

• Created by Nidhogg and Wheel World devs.
• Vampire Survivors meets Spelunky, crunchy retro visuals.
  • Russ: “It is... Vampire Survivors meets Spelunky... my extremely my.” [33:25]
• Demo available on Steam.

Star Wars: Galactic Base

• Described as a Star Wars roguelike racer—high confidence it’ll be a Besties future episode.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis

• Diverging hands-on impressions:
  • Russ: “Fully floor to ceiling new game... movement feels amazing… really impressive.” [35:45]
  • Chris: “One of the worst demos I’ve ever played... disastrous... bugs, unfinished, should delay it significantly longer.” [35:52]
  • Griffin reads a disclaimer on limited-use AI-assistance in development, with assets refined/finished by humans. [37:40]

Stranger Than Heaven (from the Like A Dragon team)

• Multi-era action game, starring Tupac and Snoop Dogg.
  • Unique ragdoll-style controls: “It’s not fully like gang beast, but it’s not not that in some ways.” – Chris [39:43]
  • Strategic, action-movie-inspired health and buff system.

Clutch

• Narrative-driven racing game set in France/Monaco from ex-Forza Horizon devs.
  • "Gorgeous... good acting... just a tremendous job.” – Russ [43:07]
  • Self-published, previously had Amazon funding.

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8. The AI in Games Controversy

[24:59–26:30]

• Crazy Taxi World Tour: Sega confirmed some use of generative AI.
  • Hosts debate transparency, industry communication, and player skepticism.
  • Chris: “This vagueness is so stupid.” [25:59]
  • Griffin: “It’s kind of the worst imaginable version of it...” [26:11]

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9. Quick Hits & Honorable Mentions

[23:17–24:51 & 51:56–54:22]

• Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse by the Dead Cells devs — “Side-scrolling 2D Castlevania.” (collective excitement)
• Vivarium: Ghibli-inspired “chill, life-Sim-type game.”
• Clockwork Revolution: InXile’s immersive sim, “looked kinda neat... like Bioshock.”
• Minecraft Dungeons 2: “Really interesting Diablo-like.” – Griffin [24:51]
• No Man's Sky: New competitive expedition with “turn-based battles for creatures,” likened to Pokémon. [53:01–54:22]
• Earth Defense Force 5 & 6 confirmed for Switch 2 (in Japan). [51:47]

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10. Culture, Other Games & Hardware

[52:00–58:53]

• Widow's Bay TV Series: Russ recommends (“fucking great and I’m so, so happy it exists.”) [52:20]
• Earth, Wind & Fire documentary directed by Questlove [54:50]
• Thor handheld: New portable Steam device, discussion of its quirks vs. Steam Deck.
• Game Native, Retroid Pocket 6: Excitement over new emulation hardware.

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Memorable Quotes & Fun Moments

• “This is going to be a fucking mess, guys.” – Griffin, tracking the live Nintendo Direct [01:12]
• “We're gonna crush it.” – Russ [01:21]
• “Show me one guy.” – Russ on lack of actual Persona 6 footage [15:36]
• “There was a lot of good. I’m just surprised at you, Russ, because that’s like your shit.” – Griffin on Russ forgetting Castlevania [23:43]
• “She's French. So that's really the tip off right there.” – Russ, on the untrustworthy old woman in Resident Evil trailer [08:17]
• “You got yourself Thor.” – Chris, showing off new portable gaming tech [56:19]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–01:12: Intro, recording during Nintendo Direct
• 04:27–07:08: Final Fantasy VII Revelation
• 07:08–08:48: Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake
• 09:11–10:40: Xbox Highlights (Spyro, Gears, Fable)
• 10:42–14:50: Persona 4 Revival & Persona 6
• 16:14–18:08: Virtua Fighter: Crossroads & 1666: Amsterdam
• 19:35–23:17: Stuntman, more Xbox and Switch news
• 24:18–26:30: Castlevania, Vivarium, AI in Crazy Taxi
• 26:35–28:32: PC Gamer Showcase highlights
• 32:01–34:11: Blood Dungeon, Play Days event
• 34:30–43:38: Tomb Raider, Stranger Than Heaven, Clutch (hands-on)
• 43:38–49:33: Nintendo Direct recap
• 51:56–54:22: Honorable mentions (No Man’s Sky, Earth Defense Force, etc.)
• 54:50–58:53: Culture, doc recommendations, hardware talk

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The Besties’ Final Take

The hosts agree: Summer Game Fest 2026 was one of the busiest and most exciting show windows in recent memory. While skepticism remains around early footage and overhyped teasers (Persona 6, Tomb Raider), there’s plenty to be buoyant about, whether you’re a fan of remakes, reboots, or genre-bending newcomers.

“Truly, I would… Pretty Big Year. I feel like these summer Game fest weeks are so weird because you don’t have the kind of corralling that happened during E3… sometimes it’s a light year, sometimes it’s quite heavy. And I mean, shit, man. We just talked for like, 45 minutes about all the new stuff. I think it’s incredibly busy.” – Griffin [50:59]

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For listeners or anyone overwhelmed by Summer Game Fest news, this episode is a perfect, spirited catch-up—expertly blending live reactions, critique, and ‘Besties’ brand hype.

Transcript

[Griffin McElroy]

This is a first. This is. This is a first. And it takes me back to my roots, gang. It takes you back to the joystick days where Nintendo doesn't tell anyone when they're going to announce all their shit. And so sometimes they do it right during the only scheduled recording time that we have for the besties. And so we're. I mean, the Nintendo Direct is happening right now as. As we're recording.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. I told Griffin that I could not multitask and speak and also keep an eye on whether they're releasing. I don't know. Banana. Guys. 7. So you're gonna have to tell me, Griffin, if anything noteworthy.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, I mean, I can do like, hello Kitty. Party land just announced 10-29-26. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna have it on in the background. So, like, if we're talking about other shit and you hear me get distracted, it's because I'm watching an adult man do virtual thumb wrestling for 10 straight minutes in the newly announced Wii Sports Resort for Switch 2. But, like, yeah, I mean, live blogging, guys, it's back in a. It's back in a big way and it's happening here at the Besties.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think this is the way to do it too. You know, like, you live stream by watching it, recording it, and then releasing it like three or four days later once everybody else has had a chance, you know.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

To get a bite of the pie.

[Griffin McElroy]

I am so Star Fox is coming out June 25th. I'll just keep this shit updated in real time. This is going to be a fucking mess, guys.

[Russ Frushtick]

We're going to crush it.

[Griffin McElroy]

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. And Nintendo just announced a new Muramasa and I am levitating.

[Russ Frushtick]

My name is Russ Freshik. I know the best game of the week.

[Griffin McElroy]

Welcome to the Best News, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a game of the Year club. And just by listening, you're a member. This week we've got news, news, news. It's freaking hard to follow all this stuff now that E3 has been gone for a decade. And so we're gonna do sort of the hard work for you, the work that I wish we had someone to do for us, which is we're gonna be talking about the stuff that happened at Summer Game Fest, the stuff that happened at the Xbox event that probably has, like, a cool name that I don't know. We're going to be talking about the PC Gamer Showcase. We're going to be talking about this Nintendo Direct that is happening right now, right this second.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And we're going to be wrapping up new Final Fantasy. And I can see Griffin's eyes just like why am I here?

[Griffin McElroy]

To see Resonance. It's, you know, it's a all, all Final Fantasy worlds combining. I think it's an iOS game that they're bringing to Switch to. I don't know, gang. It's going to be rough and ready this episode. It is. But that's the only way we know how to do it. Russ and Chris were live at some of these events.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm so fucking tired. I'm so jet lagged.

[Griffin McElroy]

I can't wait. It's gonna be a tired Shaggy episode of the Besties as we catch you up on everything that's coming up for the rest of the year. So we'll be talking more about that right after this. If you follow my other work, you're probably familiar with my father, Clint McElroy. You're probably thinking, hey, he's a semi professional podcaster, streamer guy. I bet he knows his way around a piece of technology. Wrong. Hugely incorrect. If you have a similar dad situation, you should look into Aura Frames. Aura Frames makes high quality, really, really lovely picture frames for all of your digital photos. And it could not be easier to get your pictures on this thing if you give it as a gift to someone else. You can preload your photos onto it before it even ships out to you. You can keep adding to the device from anywhere, anytime. You can upload videos up to 30 seconds long. There' smart photo cropping feature that sort of detects faces and crops the pictures on the device so nothing gets left out. It's really just kind of the best way to display a bunch of digital pictures in your house, especially as a gift for someone like your dad on this upcoming Dad's day, because you can manage all the photos and they don't have to do any of that like complicated techy stuff. Named number one by Wirecutter, you can save now by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $35 off their best selling Carver Mat frame with code besties. That's auraframes.com, promo code. Besties support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Where are we starting?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, I'm looking at this list and I see Final Fantasy Revelation at the top. Somebody tell me how that happened. What's going on here?

[Russ Frushtick]

Chronological. I Just thought that was the biggest announcement that happened during SGF process.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm not saying chronological. I'm saying I thought y' all were down on the last Final Fantasy series.

[Russ Frushtick]

Down like cool or down like.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No, not like, like, ooh, they could pull it back.

[Griffin McElroy]

They could pull, pull it back. You know, they could always. Yeah, sure. We had Rebirth, we had remake. Right. Shit. Wait, what was the second one?

[Russ Frushtick]

No, the second one was Rebirth. The first one was Remake.

[Griffin McElroy]

Remake, Rebirth, Revelation, and now Rev Revelation. Following the pattern.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, this is. In some ways, it's the biggest news, I would say, of Summer Game Fest. They announced the final part of the Final Fantasy VII sort of remake trilogy. Everybody knew it was coming, but we didn't know the name of it and we didn't know when it was coming.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

So it is called Final Fantasy 7 revelation. The sort of trailer was very focused on what I would call the sort of disc two, three content of Final Fantasy vii, which is the, you know, the great weapons, the ruby weapon, the emerald weapon.

[Russ Frushtick]

Also a handsome vampire.

[Griffin McElroy]

A handsome vampire, yes, by the way, name of Vincent Valentine. Yeah, I mean, it looks cool. I really was pretty turned off by the multiple timeline stuff that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth did, but I don't know.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, but let me ask you this.

[Griffin McElroy]

I feel compelled to check it, to give it another shot, because I do. I mean, I love for argument's sake,

[Russ Frushtick]

if it wasn't for the multiple timeline stuff.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

I mean, for me, what turned me off of Final Fantasy the second one was just the, like, I have to chase a fucking moogle around a tree.

[Griffin McElroy]

The open world nature of it, I feel like was not great.

[Russ Frushtick]

But this one does have airships and you can fucking jump off the airships and do a Fortnite thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That may be it. Maybe they just kept going in that direction and they're like, no, you will. Eventually we will get on the same page here. If we just go more and more

[Russ Frushtick]

and more open world, we will catch that moogle eventually.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm not opposed to it being open world. I'm opposed to the open world stuff being, I don't know, the same fourth things over and over again. And not, I don't know, not really. That stuff was not my favorite. It was the multiple timeline shit that really kind of the way that they handled the big thing that happens in Final Fantasy VII at the end of disc one, I found to be kind of, I don't know, cowardly, I guess. But I will definitely be anticipating this one. Cause, you know, it Looks fun. It does look fun.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It looks fun. Hey. They're remaking Resident Evil Code Veronica, which, as with so many of these things, we've known vaguely they're going to do it. And the question was how? Because Resident Evil Code Veronica, the one that most people didn't play because it was limited to the Sega Dreamcast at first. It is also someone with things that are not great in terms of how it represents its characters. And it's also.

[Russ Frushtick]

I don't actually know even what that is in reference to.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't know anything about Code Veronica.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I am not going to get into it. But what I will say about it is that it looks like they're using this. Almost like a chance to do an entirely new Resident Evil game, which is in line with some of the things I have heard about this game. The trailer that they showed looks closer to the kind of Resident Evil 7, 8 sort of stuff. There's like, first person, you're going through a spooky apartment with an old woman. She seems so nice. Which is exactly how you know that you can't trust her.

[Russ Frushtick]

She's French. So that's really the tip off right there.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. Sorry. I am very, very excited about this. They have been picking at this idea of how far can we take these remakes. I think Resident Evil 4 has been the furthest extension of that. And unlike 4 and 2 and to some degree 3, they really do have a lot of permission to go as far as they want with this one. So I am very excited.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, it is the team that worked on Resident Evil 2 remake and Resident Evil 4 remake. So arguably those are the best ones.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. We're kind of hopping around here between sort of stuff announced at the Summer Game Fest. The Resident Evil or the Final Fantasy thing was the Summer Game Fest. For my money. I thought the Xbox Showcase was pretty shit hot.

[Russ Frushtick]

Griffin loves his green consoles that you can see through.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't even know where my green console is right now, so that is definitely not it. I do love that. Like, the big thing that Xbox kind of started out with was like, guess what, guys? Exclusives are back. To me, that felt like, oh, that's bad. I don't give a shit about, like,

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

we're gonna make you pay nearly $1,000 for our video game console.

[Griffin McElroy]

Do you want to play Gears of War E Day? Well, then find your Xbox.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, it is on PC too, so sure.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I guess that is. That is the one benefit that you do get with the. With with the Xbox side of things. But Spyro is also coming back with a new adventure. A realm beyond which I didn't anticipate. I guess I didn't know that Xbox would be the stewards of Spyro moving forwards.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I don't know. Is Spyro fully exclusive either?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's owned by Activision. That's what I was confused. Oh, I guess.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, we're confused.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It was a place for me and Toys for Bob. Toys for Bob. Let's. Thank you so much.

[Griffin McElroy]

Put some respect on Toys for Bob's name. No, I mean it looks fun. It's weird to see Spyro moving around that fast with that many pixels and polygons happening for him. Very excited for Spyro.

[Russ Frushtick]

Apparently the remakes that they released, they had a trilogy of the remakes and those did very well. And that was justification for why he was going to get his full on moment in the sun.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. Excited for that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

How did you feel about the Persona kind of double announcement?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, so, I mean, the Persona thing, we got a double header during the Xbox thing. The big one was, for me, Persona 4 revival, they showed off a lot. A lot. A lot of gameplay footage of that, which is great because they needed to because the way they revealed that game was like a total nothing burger. Now we get footage of, you know, running around Inaba. We get footage of the battles, which look extremely Persona 5. Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

What do you see as though, like, as someone who's coming at it, didn't play very much of 4. Apart from the visuals, what do you see as the biggest differentiator here?

[Griffin McElroy]

There's a ton. I mean, there's a lot of. I adore Persona 4 Golden, but 5 and 5 Royal introduced so many, like, incredible quality of life things that make that game a little bit difficult to go back to.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right.

[Griffin McElroy]

You have things like the baton pass system, which opens up a lot of doors for how, you know, Persona does its, like, one more turn. Hit the weak point. Combat. They've added a lot of stuff to that. Deltarune chapter five dropping June 24th. Thank you, Griffin, to the Nintendo Switch press conference. Oh, and fucking. Oh. Metaphor refund.

[Russ Frushtick]

Toxic too. Griffin is plugged into the Matrix while we're recording this episode.

[Griffin McElroy]

Guys, I'm fucking like.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I've got.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm like the alien secretary in Men in Black. Just like.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yep.

[Griffin McElroy]

Anyway, it looks incredible. It looks so good. Persona 4 revival does the, like, stylish, like all out combat scenes. Like, I'm so stoked. This is exactly what I wanted. And we got a release Date, which is February. February 18th, 2027. And it's coming to PC and Xbox and PlayStation 5. Um, so I cannot wait for that. February. February's gonna be a fucking. Yeah, I just.

[Russ Frushtick]

Q1 in general. Cause Q1 in general heaven is a January release. And then February has a bunch of shit. Yeah, it's good. I think all these games are like, oh, no, gta, let's get the fuck out of that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is exactly what happened, is all these games are getting out of the way of GTA 6. But then during just the Xbox press conference, like, there were a ton of huge Fable drops in February. Like, there were a ton of games that are dropping within about two to three weeks of each other.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I feel like it's like Sega. Capcom must be pissed, right? Because Sega, they've been releasing Yakuza, like a Dragon games in January, February, for a while now. Capcom, they've, you know, they claimed the quarter one release. Now everybody else is like, looks pretty nice. I see. I see that you actually sell your video games. What's that like?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I feel like July. We need a little more July action right now.

[Griffin McElroy]

The little July action would go down so smooth right about now. Yeah. It's funny because they're all getting out of the way GTA 6. But, like, what's the value in that if everyone releases the. All the other.

[Russ Frushtick]

They all should have talked.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like, I. Arguably, I think that is probably a much larger problem.

[Russ Frushtick]

Before we move on, I wanted to make sure that we Note that Persona 4 revival is a number that we've seen before, whereas Persona 6 is a number we haven't seen before.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, not entirely true. Like, Persona 6 has been, like, in the. In the war.

[Russ Frushtick]

No, but have we seen that number in a trailer?

[Griffin McElroy]

Have we seen the number?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You haven't officially seen that.

[Griffin McElroy]

I guess maybe not. We haven't. We get about one minute of not gameplay footage. Not really much of anything. Just sort of slow scrolling through a graveyard. Some, like, quick cuts through, like, I don't know, almost ransom note style. Like creepy faces and then just P6 appears on screen. That's it. That's all you get. That's all you get for. It's nothing. I need more than that for Persona 6 to get, like, stoked about that.

[Russ Frushtick]

Do these games ever have, like, crossover with the other games? Apart from, like, the weird wizard in the door? This is how a little.

[Griffin McElroy]

The weird wizard in the door. Spoken like a real Persona head. Yeah. I mean, in Persona 4, there's a sequence where you go back to the place from Persona 3. It's usually quite sparing if there is anything.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I think in Persona 5 in the subway you can see references to other characters, like how life has gone on for them.

[Griffin McElroy]

The thing in Persona 4 is the biggest one I can really think of. But yeah, Persona 4 revival can't wait. This is what I wanted was. So this is my favorite game ever and have been fairly disappointed by what they've shown off so far. And this was like, shit hot. Persona 6, whatever. I. Yeah, it takes so much more for me now, guys, than just a name to show off so far.

[Russ Frushtick]

I think that's gross, quite honestly, Griffin.

[Griffin McElroy]

Honestly, everyone should be that way if fucking. But if Todd Howard gets on stage and is like, guess what guys? Elder Scrolls 6. And then they show a forest and then it says Elder Scrolls 6 on the. We need demand more than that unironically.

[Russ Frushtick]

That happened eight years ago.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Crazy.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's what I'm fucking saying, man. Like, okay, Persona 6, great.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Literally how they announced the game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Get back to me when you can show me a guy.

[Russ Frushtick]

Show me one guy.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like show me a human being. A person.

[Russ Frushtick]

Well, Todd Howard is a person.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, fine.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We actually have at least two more games that started as the this thing exists and now we actually know what they look like. Virtual Fighter Crossroads, made by in some part at least the Ryu Gagotoku team or AKA the like a dragon Yakuza team. And it is a fighting game, but it is also a single player story. And the last time we got a big single player story that kind of was birthed from the neck of Virtua Fighter. It was called Shenmue, my friends.

[Russ Frushtick]

Wait, Shenmue came from Virtua Fighter?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I mean, sort of a lot of the same devs and like the combat was very, very Virtua Fighter sort of, yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

I would also add the Street Fighter. The latest Street Fighter game I think was Street Fighter 6 had like an open world city that you run around, do missions in while also street fighting.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, that's a good point, Russ.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

This looks more like. Oh, we actually want this to look like a AAA big budget story game, which I'm not entirely sure what that is gonna be like, but I. Forklifts, baby.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, forklifts coming at you fast.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So many races.

[Griffin McElroy]

I 1666Amsterdam. 1666. I'm gonna need someone to fucking remind me.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, Griffin, I'm sorry.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh man.

[Russ Frushtick]

Chris, plan bring us up to speed on 1666Amsterdam. Because this is very.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So a long, long time ago. I think it was after Assassin's Creed 2, Patrice Deseles, who is the creator, one of the original creators of Assassin's Creed, left Ubisoft and was like, I'm gonna make my own big vision of what we could do in an Assassin's Creed type of game. And that game was called 1666Amsterdam. And now, I don't know, like 13, 14 years later, we might actually. Well, we actually can play the game right now because a demo is available on Steam. This game has been tortured. It has been ups and downs. I think it's been canceled ish. Multiple times. And yet here it is. It appears to be real, but I think is going to launch in early access. When it does launch, I am. I mean this goes a step further, Griffin, than like even the demo is not enough to convince me, like I need to see the final credits of this game to know that it is real.

[Russ Frushtick]

Sort of how I feel about beyond good Neva, which still isn't canceled.

[Griffin McElroy]

Crazy man. That would be the biggest news story for me. The most sort of cathartic bit of news is that saying sorry guys, sorry to all of our space Space monkey supporters backers. It's just we couldn't. We didn't.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

A quick pause here, Griffin. Do you want to tell people what's happening in the Nintendo Direct right now?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I mean they just announced Fucking Kingdom Hearts 4.

[Russ Frushtick]

Seems like a bit.

[Griffin McElroy]

It looks pretty sick. I mean. Yeah. Talk about games that I. Look, I am surprised to feel fucking stoked for its is Kingdom Hearts 4. Hold on. They're doing their big like. And one last thing. Is it Mickey for the Nintendo Direct again? I told you we were going to be jumping around. This looks like Zelda. Yeah. This is going to be that Ocarina of Time remake, I think.

[Russ Frushtick]

Got to be.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay. The Ocarina of Time remake coming in 2026 this year. That's a surprise.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Holy moly.

[Griffin McElroy]

Switch to. I guess exclusive.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Gotta be.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They want you to buy that expensive hardware. Right.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm gonna turn this back down before I have to watch this man thumb wrestle again. Yeah. Okay, so we're doing things quite out of order, but they showed off the Ocarina of Time remake at the end of the Nintendo Direct press conference with basically kind of a new version of the first like minute of that game where you see Link wake up in Kokiri Forest. Very cool. Okay, so back to it. We got a new stuntman game coming. Stuntman Hollywood. Did we not talk about this last week? Was this not State of Play?

[Russ Frushtick]

No. Was it in State of play. I don't think so.

[Griffin McElroy]

I feel like. I don't know. I feel like I've talked about stuntman on this show.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think we did. Because I think we were like, oh, we kind of wish casted it into existence a little bit.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. Cause it's gonna have fucking 2 fast 2 furious. Actual film franchises. It looks so cool. I'm very excited.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Also apparently Jurassic park is gonna be it. But they were not allowed to talk about Jurassic park because Jurassic park was on a mysterious media blackout for like eight months where nobody could talk about Jurassic Park.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Very weird.

[Russ Frushtick]

But it's got like, what is it? Back to the Future and other franchises.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

If it's got a car in it.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, I needed.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm going to turn this Nintendo direct off because I do think they're moving into treehouse mode, which I appreciate, but I can't. I'm so distracted. I wanted to shout out a couple other things that you all didn't write down here. During. I think during the Xbox event, they announced Guild Wars 3, which, like, I think Guild wars is a very cool game franchise that I've played a little bit. If you've not played sort of an action MMO. Guild Wars 2 got released a long time ago and they released 1000 expansions for it and was very novel in how they handled like exploration and all kinds of stuff. Guild Wars 3 is going to be on, I think, Xbox, PS5 and PC and it looks very cool. I'm very curious to see what they are still planning to do with that franchise also. I can't believe you guys didn't put this on here. Fable. They showed off a lot of. Including a new sort of more, I would say, dramatic arc than the Richard Ayoade trailers that they have had so far with Hailey Atwell. Is that her name? Playing a character? I don't know. They showed off a lot of gameplay footage, a lot of how the hero reputation mechanics are going to work.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. I'm very excited about Fable. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm a little bit bummed that they're doing the thing where it's like you're talking to someone and then you say something rude and there's like a speech bubble that says they think you're rude. Which I think we could probably add to.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't know, man. It's. So what that game is about, managing your heroic reputation is like the core game.

[Russ Frushtick]

I guess that's their solution because you don't. I think the idea is you're not like growing horns and shit if you're evil.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

So it's all just like actual like how you are in the world. And so the only way to I guess visually represent that is like speech bubbles that say you're rude. But it was a little on the nose. But as a game, I'm very excited and curious to see if that studio which has previously really just done racing games, can do a not racing game would be very interesting.

[Griffin McElroy]

And two other things about Fable, it's cross platform. It's going to be on PlayStation 5 and PC as well as Xbox. I don't know. Was there another exclusive thing was the Halo campaign Evolved, which was another thing announced during the Xbox press conference. A sort of remaster of the original Halo campaign with some additional missions. The tone of that trailer was bizarre to me. It was very. I don't know, silly I guess is the word I would use. Campy. Almost campy. It felt a little out of step with what I've come to expect from the Halo franchise.

[Russ Frushtick]

I wonder if that's because they've seen some struggles doing the ultra serious sci fi, hard sci fi thing. And I think when people think back to the original Halo campaign, like they just remember like having fun in co op maybe.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right. So yeah, it's kind of a rock between a rock and a hard place, whatever there. Because like if you go the campy route, you kind of end up going into the mcu. Like I'm disgusted and embarrassed with myself, which is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, not sure I want to go quite that far. Other Xbox things, if I can just run down. I have the list here of like other announcements because it was, it was quite, quite dense. We had state of decay 3. Okay. Curious about that. We got a lot of Castlevania, Belmont's Curse, which I can't believe didn't end up on this list gang.

[Russ Frushtick]

Because that, yeah, I was mostly focusing on real stuff that like mostly hadn't been announced yet.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, no, I guess that's. That is fair.

[Russ Frushtick]

But don't judge me, Griffin. It's okay.

[Griffin McElroy]

There was a lot of good. I'm just surprised at you, Russ, because that's like your shit.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm extremely excited for that game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, me too. The creators of Dead Cells are making a new full blown Castlevania game.

[Russ Frushtick]

Side scrolling 2D Castlevania.

[Griffin McElroy]

So good.

[Russ Frushtick]

Fuck yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

So good. So good. Vivarium I thought looked really neat animated, like a, I don't know, kind of a 70s anime. Yeah, 70s anime. Like early Ghibli, like Castle of Cagliostro, sort of that far back but very chill kind of life. Simi type game looks very lovely.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We had Clockwork Revolution.

[Griffin McElroy]

Clockwork Revolution looked kind of neat. Looked like BioShock.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That seems like it's the other big console exclusive. This is the new game from Inxile. Yeah. And I think they're probably first major game since being acquired by Xbox.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

We got Modern Warfare 4. All right. Minecraft Dungeons 2. They showed off a lot of gameplay footage of which Henry and I played the shit out of the first Minecraft Dungeons. It was a really interesting Diablo, like. And we really sunk our teeth pretty.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I'm extremely excited for that one.

[Griffin McElroy]

And then of course, there's Crazy Taxi World Tour. They're making a new Crazy Taxi game with the Offspring. And all of it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They did all of it.

[Russ Frushtick]

We should note on the Crazy Taxi front, they did kind of step in it from a just overall standpoint, because they did, I think, have to announce that they used generative AI to some extent in the creation of that game.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't see why do you need generative AI to make a new Crazy Taxi?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Let me be clear. Bad. So, so dumb. I think that we're gonna see studios just like, not say that they're doing it because the companies like Steam and Xbox that request that you say what AI you use. They need to be much clearer about what they're actually asking for. Cause I think that there's like, studios who are using genai in code and not mentioning it. And then there's like, studios like Sega where they're like, yeah, we're kind of using it for, like, reference. And then we have like this whole press thing that we're still in, where people are like, what do you mean by that?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Do you mean that it's like concept art? Do you mean it's something.

[Russ Frushtick]

Is all the vo generative. Like, that's. These are.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, like, what are these things that you're doing? And they need to be specific. Not that that's like going to convince people to get the games. But like, this vagueness is so stupid. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Just so. Yeah. It's kind of the worst possible. It's the worst imaginable version of it. Cause I'm just gonna assume the worst, I think, if you don't.

[Russ Frushtick]

If you're not. But to answer the question, they are using it for the cars and that's. I mean, sometimes they have five wheels, sometimes they have three, but multiple fingers.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Let me be clear. This is not actually happening. Don't sue us. Sega?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. The PC Gamer Showcase. Did you guys watch that or attend that?

[Russ Frushtick]

I didn't physically attend it, no. You want to bring us up to speed?

[Griffin McElroy]

I would say pound for pound it had the most games in it and there's. I mean I would encourage you to go back and watch some of the trailers because it's a ton of games that I had never really heard of before or did not know sort of existed. They're making a new Cassette Beast which is a very cool Pokemon like. But this one's going to be sort of 3D. It's called cassette beast 2002. And then there's just like a ton of games that look very cool like Slash Zero and Virtuous Sledgehammers. The next game from the. Oh no. What was the carcass? There's a new game from the mouthwashing that looked very cool. Yeah. Carcass Clad is a tank sim from the mouthwashing devs. All right. It looks cool as shit. I don't know that there's a ton of big sort of news pegs that came out of it. Just a ton of like neat looking games. Into the Wind, which looks very shit. Chris, what's the Airplane Miyazaki movie that you have a tattoo inspired by?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The Wind Rises.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, it looks very much Wind Rises esque as sad. Oh, there's I think two new Dave the Diver games.

[Russ Frushtick]

There's a spin off Dave the Diver

[Griffin McElroy]

game and then there's in the Jungle dlc. Looks very cool. Yeah, not a ton of. They're making a game called Pipes Exe which is a horror survival game based on the Pipes screensaver from Windows. Also There was a Hack 95 game called Hack 95 that also is very, I don't know, nostalgic old Windows type thing. But it looks like a card battler hacking game. Looks cool. Not a ton of. Like I said, you're not getting. There's a new Ocarina of Time remake. But the, you know, the stuff that they did have to show off. There was a lot of stuff I was interested in. Control resonant for folks who are, you know, stoked for that.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm very.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Do you want to tell people about the stuff that we saw on the floor now or you want to take a break and do that?

[Russ Frushtick]

Let's take a break and we'll jump into some of the stuff we saw on the floor and then I think there was some of the.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, we can cover some of the Nintendo stuff.

[Russ Frushtick]

Some of the other Nintendo stuff that happened.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

All right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Take a quick break and then we're going to do some hands on precious.

[Russ Frushtick]

This episode of the Besties is sponsored by ProtonVPN. Okay, you know when you're like googling, you're just like going around looking things up, whatever it is, and then suddenly every single ad that you see is related to things you've searched. Or for example, you're traveling, let's say you're in another country and you try to watch something and suddenly it's just blocked. That is where ProtonVPN comes in. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the Internet like it should work, open, secure and on your terms. Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise, creating a safer, faster and more open Internet for everyone. If that sounds good to you, it is very, very easy to get started. Right now ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to protonvpn.com besties, that's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P N.com besties for 70% off your two year plan, that's proton.com besties.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I have a problem where I will subscribe to a horror movie streaming service. Just like really weird esoteric ones, at least you know, like 1am in the morning on the weekend. Which is not a great habit if you want to remember that you subscribed in the first place. Which is why I am very thankful for today's sponsors. Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. So if you, like me, are signing up for things and forgetting about them, which I understand, I feel a little bit embarrassed about, specifically when it is trashy horror streaming services. I'm sure you're subscribing to much more interesting and healthy and worthwhile things. Well, you can still cancel them if you don't want them and you don't need them. Rocket Money just makes that so easy. It also helps you set budgets and goals. It'll give you these personalized insights through reports that make everything about your spending really clear and helpful in a way that just kind of winging it that that's not going to work. Their automated savings features also help you grow towards goals with a set it and forget it approach. So you can stop spending money where you don't want to. You can start saving money for the things that you really want to go and buy and spend that cash on. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. [e-mail] Besties that's RocketMoney.com Besties RocketMoney.com Besties.

[Griffin McElroy]

When you say the floor, like what is the floor? It's not like the LA convention.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, correct.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's not the floor. SGF has their like press conferences of course, and that's pretty typical. And then there's Play Days, which is a press and industry only event that happens in downtown la. And it's basically an alley, like a cool venue. It's a nice alley.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. It's an alley that goes into the back rooms of multiple venues. Like, and then all of the buildings in the alley are actually part of the same space. It's very strange.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is that where they used to do EA play? Did they do EA play there once?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes, I think they may have done that there. Yes. They had done Activision events there in the past. But it's a good way for all the different places for SEGA to have a building that you can go into. And for Square Enix and for Bandai Namco. I don't know if Square Enix actually had one. We saw so many big budget games. But first let's talk about a game that looks like it was made in Ms. Paint and was the most fun that I had.

[Russ Frushtick]

This was the game that I recommended to literally everyone that asked. And it's a cool one because it also has a demo right now on Steam.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Do you want to do the pitch?

[Russ Frushtick]

The game is called Blood Dungeon. It is made by the team that made Nidhogg and most recently Wheel World.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't know that that was the same team.

[Russ Frushtick]

Same team.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, cool.

[Russ Frushtick]

And the. The Blood Dungeon is. Buckle up. Vampire Survivors meets Spelunky. It is a side scrolling platforming game wherein you're. It's also an auto shooter and you're trying to level up and earn perks and rewards. And it uses a very similar crunchy look that Nidhogg had for the graphics. And it's very weird and bizarre and my extremely my. It feels like a very besties bestie kind of game. It looks sick. So I'm very excited for that and honestly. Yeah, go, go play it. Blood Dungeon is available on Steam as a demo right now. I think it's planned for the summer release which is very exciting for me. It's jumped up my list.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We saw three big budget games that I would say are all. We will see how they go. And we also saw one big budget game that is I think going to be great. That is the Star wars racing game. Not worried about it. Looks like it's a roguelike. Don't need to tell you much more than that other than we will definitely be covering it on the show.

[Russ Frushtick]

That's galactic based.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Bigger question marks around Tomb Raider, Stranger Than Heaven and Clutch. Three games that could go any which direction do you want to start with Tomb Raider fresh?

[Russ Frushtick]

Sure. It is a remake of the original Tomb Raider game. And by that I mean the one that came out in like the mid-90s. It's called legacy of Atlantis and it is okay. So I went in expecting like they're gonna, you know, up res it and add fancy lighting and blah blah blah and they're gonna make it really pretty. And what they actually did was make a fully floor to ceiling new game using the framework of like hey, Laura is in her element. She's a practiced adventurer, notably not an archaeologist because she does not give a about smashing pots and dropping giant gears into the water. But she does Tomb Raid and she does it quite well in this game. And I was really, really impressed with what they have going on. Cool puzzles, lots of physics based stuff. The combat feels really good, the movement feels amazing. It really feels like they've full on made a like new Tomb Raider game which is weird because they actually have a sequel coming out that's like supposed to be the true reboot of the game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I am stunned.

[Griffin McElroy]

So what is the hesitance of this?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is my hesitance. I thought this was one of the worst demos I've ever played in one of these announcements. Really it was, I would say disastrous and I kind of can't believe that they showed it. But it sounds like maybe it's very hit or miss. This was one of the buggiest. Oh, completely unfinished. They have delayed this game. I think that they should consider delaying it significantly longer. When I was playing it, my character would jump and just float. When we would do looking for puzzles, I would try to finish out puzzle sequences and I would do the jump that it wanted me to and it would not connect multiple times. So then I would wander thinking there was a different answer for the puzzle. The people who were giving the demo had to instruct people how to get through the levels. Basically they were running from one person to the next trying to help them know that no, that puzzle actually can be Finished that way. You should try it again and again. There were paths that they clearly had cut this out from a more open world demo. I mean it was top to bottom. I could not believe that they were showing it at this early of a stage.

[Russ Frushtick]

Wow. Yeah, I literally did not have. I mean, here's what I'll say. First of all, I'm really good at games, so there's that. Keep in mind, I'm really good at games. But yeah, no, I didn't experience bugs. I found the just visuals really impressive and I thought the puzzles were interesting. So yeah, I'm surprised. But you know, to each his own, I guess.

[Griffin McElroy]

I just googled Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis bugs and the Google AI result said that maybe it's because you're playing older existing titles in the franchise, such as the Tomb Raider 1 to 3

[Russ Frushtick]

because they had bugs in them. Like actual bugs.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Actual bugs. I think that's.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's probably also. Also a result from this search is that it has AI generated tools were used during the development to support some early exploration, temporary development content. Any AI assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team. So maybe you're getting some of that lln like, you know, Cyber Dream.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I am glad to hear that you had a good experience of it. Because what's tricky when you get a messy demo like this is like you kind of can't tell what is going to get fixed and what is just bad design. Like, am I not able to go in this direction because it's not working? Am I not able to go in this direction because they're invisible walls that are going to frustrate me with the real game? So I am glad to hear that. I will say the thing where I was more positive is Stranger Than Heaven, which is the new game from the Like a Dragon team. I think it is set in the Like a Dragon Yakuza universe. It is set across five different periods. I think like 30 years, 40 years, something like that.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Starting in like the 1910s. Like it's distant past. Yes. Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Because every video game over a certain budget needs to make at least one decision where you're like, well, that makes me queasy. This game stars Tupac, which is, you know, strange because he's dead and also because I don't think the people who run his estate are necessarily seen as great stewards of his vision. But that's up to everybody else. What I do know is the fighting in this game is fascinating.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Very interesting. Not like most of the Like A Dragon games. The way it works is you have your right bumper and trigger assigned to your right arm and your left bumper and trigger assigned to your left arm and leg.

[Russ Frushtick]

Left arm and leg?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. And it's not fully like gang beast, but it's not. Not that in some ways. And you are like really like somebody like will grab one arm and then you're like punching somebody else with your right arm.

[Russ Frushtick]

That shit. I have never seen anything like that where you'll kick and someone will grab your leg and you're on one foot and you're punching away other guys with your other hand and foot and falling to the ground. And it is. It is an amazing feat that they pulled that off.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. This looks fucking sick guys. Is Snoop Dogg. Snoop Doggs in this game?

[Russ Frushtick]

Is also in it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

What's going on?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It also has like is. I'm not trying to do the Everything's Dark Souls but it requires you to use your health items in a way that require way more strategy than these games have in the past where you are backing away from a character, taking a moment to recover, taking a moment to apply a buff or something. And I found that super interesting because if it is trying to do just great action movies and specifically great Japanese action movies that okay, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to plan. I'm going to see what you are planning to attack me with and then we're going to get back into it. I don't know. It just felt very cinematic in a way I dug.

[Russ Frushtick]

There's a guy that you fight in the middle of it. Well, you fight a number of like a wide range of enemies. But one of them is like legitimately 10ft tall and looks like he weighs 500 pounds. He's just enormous and muscular and huge. And then you fight. The hardest guy in the demo is a guy that looks about 110 pounds and has no shirt and comes at you with what is it? A sword or something. And it basically turns into like a 1v1 intense samurai combat battle where you're just trying to like stay alive. And this guy's a fucking beast. So it cool. It does seem very fromsoft in that way in ways that like I don't particularly love the combat in the real time yakuza games and this made me more interested in it.

[Griffin McElroy]

What is Clutch?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What is Clutch?

[Russ Frushtick]

Clutch is a game. Clutch is a game that was made that is made by the some of the former members of playground games. Most notably the folks that made Forza Horizon and they spun off into an independent studio and they are making a narrative racing game set in the south of France, Slash in Monaco with like full on like actual story compared to the story that's in Horizon games, which is like we're having a party and come out and race your cars and wherever. This is like an actual narrative, a story of like a brother and sister as they like make their way through the racing world.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We were trying to figure out how the money works in getting this game made because this game looks like it doesn't just look like an EA game, It looks like EA's biggest game of the year.

[Russ Frushtick]

And to be clear, it is not published by ea. It is currently an independent, technically independent game. Although obviously they have a shitload of money.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We know it had like self funded at first and then some other funding. We know at some point Amazon was funding it, but then Amazon changed directions. Whatever the case, it looks gorgeous. And when Fresh talks about this story like real actors giving good performances and

[Russ Frushtick]

like me actually caring about the scenes, which is just very bizarre for a racing game. Like I'm so used to not caring. And they did, yeah, just a tremendous job. I'm very curious to see how this comes together. They are currently still without a publisher and I don't even know if they're ever going to have a publisher. They might just release it themselves at this point. There was some weirdness with where they had money from a ton of money from Amazon for a time and then they didn't. So right now I am very interested. Yeah, very interested.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's run down the Nintendo Direct stuff. There were a ton of announcements of games that have been out for a while to switch to.

[Russ Frushtick]

I don't know if this was announced already, but. Chris, Plant, did you see the Dragon's Dogma news that was in this trailer?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Of course I did. They truly have something for everybody. They said they do.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Plant, you got your Dragon's Dogma 2 and now you can play it portable. You also got a new Muramasa which, you know, you see things that you just assumed they would never make. Why would they make another Muramasa? It does not seem to be Vanillaware. It is marvelous. But I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. I am excited about it. But then they have plenty of stuff for both the you2 nerds.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yes, sure they have Orbitals, which is a game that was previously announced, but they did give it a Release date of September 3rd. Orbitals is A. I heard this. I can't. I don't remember who I can give credit to for this, but it's a Hazelight Hazelike, I should say, because Hazelight Studios most notably made It Takes Two and getting whatever the other ones were that we half hated. And this game follows that same rule of like, it has to be played in co op, but it uses like 70s anime aesthetic and just really cool puzzle solving and visuals. And I'm very, very excited for this one. This is going to be a really good one, I think.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. So, yeah, a bunch of port announcements. Stellar Blade, Devil May Cry five, we got. The new Rayman Legends retold game was announced for Switch 2.

[Russ Frushtick]

The other notable thing is they announced the release date for Fire Emblem for fortunes weave.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, September 17th. They showed off a ton of gameplay footage. It looks really. I mean, it looks.

[Russ Frushtick]

Based on what they showed, it really continues to look more and more in line with three houses, which I think is probably the pinnacle of the franchise versus the previous one, I think Fire Emblem Engage, which felt more like a. An off entry for them. And this feels like a bit of a return to form. There's four, like main characters and you pick one of them. So presumably they all have their own story arcs and people they meet and all sorts of stuff like that. Looks really fucking good. I'm very excited for Fortune Suite.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Happen with just one more Muramasa update because I know people are just, you know, aching for. Is being made by Vanillaware.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, thank God.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And Marvelous will be publishing and it will be on Steam, which I think is the first Vanillaware game on Steam.

[Griffin McElroy]

Wow.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Big day.

[Griffin McElroy]

Love it. Pocopia DLC coming in August. It's underwater. They're adding like a whole new underwater Biome and a bunch of new Pokemon that you can encounter down there, which is great. I love that. It's weird to see Magikarp, like just fucking flopping around on land. You feel bad for them when you see that. Xenoblade Chronicles. All the Xenoblade Chronicles games are getting switched to upgrades with like new features and mechanics and stuff. They also revealed Xenoblade Genesis, which is the next Xenoblade title coming out next year. I'm not like the world's biggest Xenoblade guy, but I thought it looked really cool. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

With 12 games, including thumb wrestling, which they showcased the most. But you also have like, you know, ping pong and twin prop plane flying and a bunch of stuff it looks like a great sort of carrying the torch of Nintendo Sports Resort.

[Russ Frushtick]

It did a little make me want to there to be another pilotwings game which I think is actually set in the same island if I recall. So maybe someday, but at least we have a plane, so that's something.

[Griffin McElroy]

Final Fantasy Resonance, according to this thing I'm reading is a sort of reimagining of Final Fantasy Brave Exuvious, which was the live service mobile game, but they are sort of doing it in the HD2D sort of engine. It's coming to switch on October 22nd. I never really gave a shit about Brave Exuvious, but that's cool. I guess Duskbloods showed off a little bit.

[Russ Frushtick]

Let's remind the people what Duskbloods is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Duskbloods is the new FromSoft game that is going to be Switch to exclusive I believe very, very brief sort of feature here in the Nintendo Direct. But they did reveal that there's going to be a closed network test sometime this.

[Russ Frushtick]

How do I get in that?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I don't know.

[Russ Frushtick]

Get me in there.

[Griffin McElroy]

They didn't really show off any more than that. Dragon Quest the Withered World New Dragon Quest Monsters game. It looks great. It looks adorable. I've never really gotten too deep into a Dragon Quest Monsters game, but it looks great. It's coming December 3rd. Like I said. Deltarune Chapter 5 coming later this month they showed, gosh, a bunch of third party games. The one that stuck out the most to me was Final Fantasy 14, the online Final Fantasy game coming to Switch 2 August 2026. I will be very curious to see how that goes. Kingdom Hearts they're re releasing every Kingdom hearts game on Switch 2, so you're not going to have to do the weird cloud version from the original Switch. You can transfer your saves over if you do have those cloud versions of the Switch versions.

[Russ Frushtick]

But are they removing Cloud from the game though?

[Griffin McElroy]

Cloud is going to be in the game.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

That whole collection is coming October 8th. And then they showed off Kingdom Hearts 4 with like a lot of gameplay and stuff. Genuinely. It looks very cool. It was the same thing of, you know, Sora kicking the ass of big heartless guys in the middle of a modern city. It looks way less sort of cartoony than Kingdom Hearts has. Much more sort of realistic.

[Russ Frushtick]

That's what I was looking for from Kingdom Hearts is an ultra realistic gritty retelling.

[Griffin McElroy]

And then yeah, new Ocarina of Time remake coming this year apparently.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, so on the. On the remake real quick. I don't know how I feel about this, mostly because I think Ocarina of Time for me and I realize everyone loves it, but for me is not one of my favorite Zelda games. It's actually pretty low on my list. Mostly. Mostly because I find it kind of rigid compared to a lot of the later games like Majora's Mask and things like that. So I am curious to see if, in addition to, like, revamping the graphics, they take steps to maybe modernize some of the experience in that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's the appeal of all these, like, potential Nintendo 64 remakes. Right? Is that the games? It is the generation that aged the worst.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yes, that is true.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I think that there is potential there for them to do something with it.

[Russ Frushtick]

We saw Nintendo do a very good job remaking Metroid 2, which they turned into Metroid Samus returns on 3DS. So I would love to see that approach, which is to say, hit the beats. That's fine. Moomoo lamp. Whatever the the place is. Moomoo Land. Where's the.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Kakariku, you've got the windmill, the music.

[Griffin McElroy]

Jesus Christ.

[Russ Frushtick]

All that stuff. Fine, hit the beats. But I want to see, like, the equivalent of what Capcom's doing with the remakes. That's what I want to see.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Moomomand2.

[Griffin McElroy]

Moomoo land2? Why not?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I think Lon Lon Ranch.

[Griffin McElroy]

Lon Lon Ranch? Are you trying to get to Lon Lon Ranch?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, they sell Moomoo milk at Lon Lon Ranch. It's confusing. And I think that more or less brings us up to the.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think that's it. Yeah, man. Truly, I would Pretty Big Year. I feel like these summer Game fest weeks are so weird because you don't have the kind of corralling that happened during E3, where everyone kind of had to work around each other. And so sometimes it's a light time, a light year, sometimes it's quite heavy. And I mean, shit, man. We just Talked for like, 45 minutes about all the new stuff. I think it's incredibly busy.

[Russ Frushtick]

It was one of the busier, like, series in the last few years, I think, because these are now all the games that, like, kicked off during COVID are, like, actually coming out. So it's very crazy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I can't believe they didn't include this in the Nintendo direct in America, but Nintendo Japan direct, they've just confirmed that earth Defense Force 5 and 6 are coming.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, thank God.

[Griffin McElroy]

I can't imagine why they didn't why they.

[Russ Frushtick]

That game has a ton of bugs in it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, too many bugs.

[Russ Frushtick]

Real quick, should we do some honorable mentions before we wrap?

[Griffin McElroy]

I would love to do that.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Russ Frushtick]

I know planets watching it, but. Griffin, are you on the Widow's Bay train?

[Griffin McElroy]

Don't. I want to watch Widows Bay, but my only TV time is at night from the hours of 8:30 to 10:00pm and convincing my wife to watch a very. A show that looks pretty spooky in that window is. Is it. It is a tough.

[Russ Frushtick]

I did notably watch it while traveling for work. So yeah, that was probably the only way I was able to pull it off. But man, that show is fucking great and I'm so, so happy it exists. It's really very special.

[Griffin McElroy]

I really want to watch it very badly. I will at some point, probably by myself while traveling or something. But yeah, it looks great. I've been playing no Man's Sky a bit. I kind of wrapped up my time with Diablo 4. I feel like for this season really, really enjoyed it. I went back and played the last DLC mostly because I was annoyed that I had played the first chunk of Diablo 4 and the third chunk of Diablo 4 and had not finished the. And it really can confirm my sort of feelings that it was not great.

[Russ Frushtick]

Do the new features get introduced to the old dlc?

[Griffin McElroy]

Not really, no. Not in any. I mean the seasonal features are all there. Right. But like, I don't know, the war plan thing doesn't really unlock until you finish the whole kit and caboodle. But I got through it very, very, very quickly and now I don't know, the new season launches, I think next month and I might dip back in just to be there when the whole thing starts but. Very cool. But I've been playing no Man's sky because they have added one, a new expedition which are like their time sensitive kind events. This one introduces the Swarm, which is like a new type of enemy and it like segments the player base into three teams and you're all kind of competing in this like galactic war against this new threat, the Swarm. It's very cool. But the thing that is most cool is that they have added turn based battles for the creatures that you collect as your pets. Yeah, and it's like full Pokemon. Like every creature that you find has an elemental type based on like the type of planet that you found them on. There's like. It's pretty meaty, man. It's. There's a lot of ways to kind of like upgrade and customize your individual, you know, Procedurally generated creatures. It's that that game is celebrating its 10th birthday this year.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's also cool because all this stuff, presumably, is going to be introduced, or at least some of it's being made in the new game, which is Light no Fire and then bringing back into no Man's Sky. So they are, in a way, beta testing Light no Fire in no Man's Sky.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, Very, very excited for that to, you know, to materialize a little bit more. The last thing, haven't finished it. Rachel and I watched most of it last night. There's a new documentary about the band Earth, Wind and Fire, directed by Questlove.

[Russ Frushtick]

I thought that came out in September.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't know, man. I watched it last night.

[Russ Frushtick]

Let's keep it going.

[Griffin McElroy]

This is a band that I love, right? Like, my mom and dad were both really into Earth, Wind and Fire. Listened to a lot of it growing up, and, like, you know, everyone loves the classics of Earth, Wind and Fire, but I didn't know anything about them, nor did I ever kind of, like, put in the effort to learn more about them. And it is a. I mean, it's a pretty wild story. Mostly about Maurice White, who was the leader of the band, and his kind of constant struggle between making, like, the fucking funkiest music ever and also seeking an extra planar level of spiritual enlightenment. Like, the name of the band Earth, Wind and Fire, I did not realize was based on, like, his, you know, his zodiac chart and the raw elements of the universe. And, like, I don't know, man. There's so many stories about, like, they go out on stage for a concert and then they just sit in lotus position for 8 minutes and make the audience watch them meditate. And then they stand up and just fucking tear the house down. It's. It's really great. Haven't finished it yet, but really came out of nowhere and has really ignited in me more appreciation for this band. Cool plant.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You got yourself.

[Russ Frushtick]

Thor.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

He's got Thor, baby. I put in an order months ago, and I knew it would take forever to get here, so I used that time to sell all of my old emulator handhelds.

[Russ Frushtick]

Good for you.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And reduce my life to one. And, hey, you know what's pretty cool? That I think fresh you, maybe both of you, were telling me about Game Native.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, yeah. I haven't messed with you.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Holy moly. That is why I got this thing, because I wanted to have something where I could play Steam games on the go that I didn't have to worry too much about. I I could throw it in my backpack and this thing plays. It's bonkers. And to be clear, does it load up, reload on it?

[Russ Frushtick]

Can you just download Steam games right natively, like, or do you have to right there?

[Griffin McElroy]

I think there's a compatibility. This is the one thing about it that does annoy me is that there is a compatibility layer that needs to run sort of online in order for the games to run on the Thor. And I have had a lot of issues with playing a game on it, like Mugenics and then putting the thing into sleep mode. And then when I turn it back on, the compatibility layer has crashed and it does not, you know, it struggles to like guarantee a cloud save in that instance. I've lost a lot of progress in times like that. So I have, I have. It's incredible how well it works. It is just like there is this one limitation, which is that, you know, traveling with it, not having Internet access, putting it in sleep mode, like that stuff can kind of fuck it up. It is not quite steamos native shit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I will report back on my journey this week as I'm flying around and seeing how that goes. I also know that there is the ARM version of Steam that runs. That's going to run on this. Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

It hasn't seems like it has come out yet, is my understanding.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's not out. That'll be it. That'll be the fucking. That'll be the game. I finally got in my retroid pocket six that I ordered three or four months ago. Four or five months ago. It was a long time ago. And it's going to run that stuff really, really well when I can guarantee that I'm not going to lose a bunch of progress all the time. That's it. Big week. We're going to be. We got a Patreon. If you've never checked it out. Patreon.com thebesties you can go there and support us and the show directly. And when you do that, you also get access to our monthly bonus episodes, our bracket battle episodes. You also get access to episodes of the Rusties where Chris and Russ talk about other games that we don't cover here on the core show. And yeah, do you want to thank some backers?

[Russ Frushtick]

I do. We have Olafur. Sorry if I pronounced that wrong. Michelle, Buddy and Jaxer, if that's how I'm gonna pronounce it, I will thank you for being backers and thank you to everyone else. You really make the show possible, genuinely, and we greatly appreciate you if you

[Griffin McElroy]

can't get enough Bessies, go to patreon.com thebessies because there's a lot more there waiting for you. Next week we are going to probably be doing a grab bag and also talking a bit about Adventures of the Millennium Tale, the new sort of Mana inspired 2D, HD, 3D, whatever the acronym is. Game from Square. So we're going to be talking about that and probably a bunch of other games too, next next week. So please join us for that and join us here every week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties.