The Besties Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 1

Summary

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The Besties — Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 1

Podcast: The Besties
Hosts: Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Russ Frushtick
Date: December 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

The Besties return for their annual Game of the Year tournament, setting up an epic bracket of 2025’s best (and late 2024’s) video games. With their signature mix of humor, sincerity, and deep game knowledge, Griffin, Justin, Chris, and Russ pit their favorites against each other, break down what makes these games special, and debate which ones deserve a spot in the next round. The episode sets up the “Elite Eight” through themed matchups—story, action, PlayStation Worlds, platformers, stress/no-stress, and more—while exploring what made these games memorable, innovative, or just plain fun.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Podcast Banter, Award Show Nostalgia & Game Awards Highlights (00:00–13:36)

• The show opens with the classic Besties banter about bizarre award-giving dreams ("bronzed versions of ourselves") and a riff about ‘The Bronze’ from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (00:00–02:40).
• They reminisce about past Game of the Year (GoTY) awards and joke about merch fulfillment failures.
• The group discusses their reactions to this year’s Game Awards:
  • Chris is hyped for Ace Combat 7 (“Can we give it a story that people care about?… ready for Ace Combat 7” – Chris, 06:37)
  • Justin can’t wait for Gang of Dragon, a Yakuza-like brawler starring Don Lee (07:19–08:03).
  • Order of King’s Clash Mobile Fury (“Clash Puzzle Melee. This is called 1000 Puzzles. 1000 Puzzles. 10 years in the making. No one gives a shit.” – Justin, 08:57)
  • Divinity and KOTOR returns are hot topics, but most agree KOTOR is unlikely to release soon (10:07–10:20).
  • Free Shepherd, a dog-sheep-herding sim, gets a spotlight for its wholesome setup (11:05–11:16).
  • Zany press events: Lenny Kravitz's awkward video game acting as a Bond villain leaves them in stitches (“Like James Bond, you are a cancer. But like any cancer, you can be stopped” – recounted by Chris, 13:19).
• The group quips about celebrity game promo appearances: “My kryptonite is seeing celebrities come out at the VGAs that… were told by their agent an hour before… but when they try, that’s what hurts!” – Justin, 15:15

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2. Setting Bracket Rules & Accessibility Caveats (16:05–19:15)

• Blueprints is deferred to the 2026 bracket due to unfinished accessibility options, especially colorblind settings. Russ expresses disappointment: “I intentionally didn’t play it because I thought it would be kind of a miserable experience for me” (17:20).
• The hosts emphasize the bracket is based on taste, not objectivity ("It is trying to be our game of the year, based on our conversations throughout the year." – Chris, 18:51). If a critically acclaimed game didn’t make the bracket, it likely didn’t click with the crew.

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3. Bracket Showdowns – Themed Matchups

Story Selection: Expedition 33 vs. Dispatch (19:13–38:38)

Dispatch:

• Interactive fiction/“cinema” game about a washed-up superhero inheriting the family business (superhero insurance/dispatching Z-list ex-villains).
• “Best example of interactive fiction in game form.” – Justin, 20:00
• Balances humor with heart, akin to The Boys meets Parks & Rec (21:30–23:08). Episode five’s bar fight sequence is especially funny (“pound for pound the funniest kind of like 10 minutes of video game that’s maybe ever been made.” – Griffin, 23:40).

Expedition 33:

• French JRPG-influenced game about mortality, art, and grief. “You are in [the action]… from the drop, is like, here is this compelling high stakes issue.” – Chris, 26:08
• Stunning art, tight reflex-based combat, unique characters, divisive but memorable third act.
• Some found its many systems overwhelming or repetitive, others praised its ambition ("I’m going to be thinking about the game for a long time." – Griffin, 27:36).

Outcome: Expedition 33 narrowly advances.

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Action: Absolum vs. Hades 2 (38:47–54:02)

Absolum:

• Innovative, roguelike-infused beat ‘em up with deep co-op play. “The best beat em up gameplay… ever made.” – Griffin, 41:17
• Progression and synergy systems echo Hades, with wild character builds and replay value. “Best co op game I played all year, like bar none.” – Russ, 41:17

Hades 2:

• Sequel to the genre-defining first game, starring witch Melinoë fighting Kronos.
• “Doesn’t feel as special as the first, but is even better mechanically.” – Russ, 45:26
• Some felt familiarity dulled its impact; still highly addictive and polished.

Outcome: After passionate debate, the crew votes for Absolum for its innovation and freshness, despite Justin’s strong support for Hades 2:
"It's obviously Hades 2. Guys, please do not let your innovation ruin this for you!” – Justin, 53:46

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PlayStation Worlds: Death Stranding 2 vs. Ghost of Yotei (54:10–65:18)

Ghost of Yotei:

• A vengeful, stylish open world samurai tale, refining and evolving its predecessor (Ghost of Tsushima).
  “You know the list. You have a list of people that you’re going to kill because of what they did to your family.” – Justin, 55:33
• Character depth, tactile mechanics, and immersive minigames praised.

Death Stranding 2:

• Hideo Kojima’s polarizing “walking” sim sequel, now more generous, less frustrating, and deeply rewarding.
  “It is constant in a way that made me finally, like, I hated Death Stranding One…I was running back packages that I found so I could finish up, you know, leveling up this one connection.” – Griffin, 62:39
• Emphasis on player creativity, improved tools, and open-endedness.

Outcome: Death Stranding 2 moves forward.

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Platformers Reimagined: Baby Steps vs. Donkey Kong Bonanza (65:18–76:16)

Baby Steps:

• Bennett Foddy’s open-world “walking simulator” where each leg is controlled independently—a metaphor on self-reliance, accepting help, and failure.
  “The intentionality that you’re taking in every single thing you do is incredibly satisfying to me.” – Russ, 66:49
• Punches above its weight by exploring self-loathing, isolation, and the challenge meta in player behavior.

Donkey Kong Bonanza:

• Open-world platformer where you can smash the world, co-op chaos, and collectible hunts—“only Nintendo could give you this much freedom.”
  “You mean I can smash everything? I genuinely felt that thrill of like, something new.” – Justin, 73:25

Outcome: Baby Steps advances unanimously, praised for its unique Mario-style party game moments and emotional depth:
“I can’t stop thinking about Baby Steps. And I did have a very unique experience playing it with Justin and Travis sharing the controls.” – Griffin, 75:39

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Stress vs. No Stress: Silksong vs. Wander Stop (78:43–84:46)

• Wander Stop, a meditative tea-shop game about rest, is lauded for its novel approach to progression and relaxation.
  • “It is telling a story about enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake, rest for rest’s sake. And I think that’s really, really unique.” – Griffin, 81:20
• Hollow Knight: Silksong moves on as a unanimous favorite.

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Stories, Part 2: Blippo+ vs. Citizen Sleeper 2 (84:53–94:43)

• Blippo+ is a playable multimedia art project, “a TV station from an alien planet.” (Justin, 85:33–87:32) “It’s not a video game. I don’t even mean that as a slight.” – Justin, 88:19
• Citizen Sleeper 2 builds on its predecessor’s survival-RPG structure—stronger tuning, better sense of place, but still sometimes overwhelming in systems.

Outcome: In a surprise, the eclectic Blippo+ progresses—“Blippo plus is—I mean it’s better than Blippo in basically every way.” (Justin, 94:15)

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Game From This Year vs. Last Year: Avowed vs. Indiana Jones (94:47–101:37)

• Indiana Jones: “On the theme park ride van Indiana Jones you’ve always wanted because it doesn’t give you back pain…” – Chris, 95:14
  • Notable for first-person approach, visuals (“Having light pour through the fabric into the windows of a Vatican office looks stunning.” – Chris, 97:15), and satisfying melee combat.
• Avowed: Strong side quests, creative fantasy, potent (if heavy-handed) COVID anxieties, but “never quite congeals."

Outcome: Indiana Jones moves on.

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Surprise Hits: The Root Trees Are Dead vs. Sectori (101:43–109:58)

• The Root Trees Are Dead: Obra Dinn/Her Story–inspired investigative journalism in a fictional candy dynasty. A game about “finding the tiny detail and digging deep on that” – Chris, 105:00.
• Sectori: The new Geometry Wars, now with seven distinct modes and a full campaign. “I'll never uninstall this from my Rog Isla X.” – Griffin, 107:59

Outcome: Sectori advances.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On recency bias and judging games:
  “There's also a recency thing that is truly tough to weigh because I beat Expedition 33 back in like April or something. And I finished Dispatch over like a breathless four day period a couple weeks ago. So it's still kind of super fresh in my mind.” – Griffin, 35:11

• On Death Stranding 2’s mood shift:
  “Either he let someone else work on it or he experienced his own Hallmark Christmas movie where he finally found love in his heart.” – Justin, 64:25

• On Baby Steps as art:
  “A lot of games aren't art. And I think Baby Steps actually might be so bold.” – Justin, 70:28

• On Donkey Kong Bonanza’s destruction:
  “Whoooa, you're gonna let me do this? The whole game. Like, it. Like, it seemed that. Like, whoa, that doesn't seem fair.” – Justin, 73:25

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Game Awards & Announcements: 05:11–13:45
• Accessibility, Rules, Caveats: 16:05–19:15
• Expedition 33 vs. Dispatch: 19:13–38:38
• Absolum vs. Hades 2: 38:47–54:02
• Death Stranding 2 vs. Ghost of Yotei: 54:10–65:18
• Baby Steps vs. Donkey Kong Bonanza: 65:18–76:16
• Silksong vs. Wander Stop: 78:43–84:46
• Blippo+ vs. Citizen Sleeper 2: 84:53–94:43
• Avowed vs. Indiana Jones: 94:47–101:37
• The Root Trees Are Dead vs. Sectori: 101:43–109:58
• Elite Eight Announced: 110:07

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The 2025 Besties Bracket—Elite Eight

1. Expedition 33
2. Absolum
3. Death Stranding 2
4. Baby Steps
5. Silksong
6. Blippo+
7. Indiana Jones
8. Sectori

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Stay tuned for Part 2, where the Besties fight it out for 2025’s Best Game. As always, “shouldn’t the world’s best friends pick the world’s best games?”

Transcript

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

This is just great podcast material. I had a dream last night. I wanted to share it with you, and I wanted to kind of talk through it.

[Justin McElroy]

Hold on, let me stop my recording.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, good.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, this could be the dream.

[Justin McElroy]

No, let me stop my recording. I'm not gonna make anybody listen to a dream. Hold on, Let me just. Yeah, delete it. Okay, I'm deleting.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Go ahead. Okay. Okay. So I went to sleep wondering how we would give an award to people for the bestie bestie. We used to give people the golden Marcus Phoenix.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think we did that once a long time.

[Justin McElroy]

We did it when we're actually physically to anybody. Right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I don't think they actually accepted it. I think that's the other problem. Yeah. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

That's my understanding of mythology.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sort of the bad boys of game podcast.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Yeah. Then I had this dream last night, and I did smoke before going to bed, that we would give people bronzed versions of ourselves. But in my dream, like, we were kind of dipped in bronze.

[Justin McElroy]

It was nice carbonite, Han Solo kind of thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. And a few questions came to mind. One, how much would it hurt? Two, do you think a video game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Which one of the four of us, they get.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, well, would they accept it? You know? Yeah. Well, also, which one's more valuable?

[Ralph Freshik]

Sure.

[Justin McElroy]

Is it ranked. Is it platinum, gold, silver, bronze? Is that what we're.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I mean, I think we could do that. I think we could do it, but do you think people would accept it?

[Justin McElroy]

I think it's platinum, gold, silver, bronze. That's four different colors of metal, Griffin.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, I know, but I don't want. But then who does the show if we sort of, like, freeze ourselves?

[Justin McElroy]

You're saying if we give away the whole.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, the Internet's a powerful thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We could keep doing it from our space inside the Bronze. You know, you put a little Bluetooth mic in there.

[Justin McElroy]

The Bronze. Is the Bronze. The name of the. Isn't the Bronze the name of the nightclub? And Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[Ralph Freshik]

That's where we'll record from now on. It's great.

[Griffin McElroy]

That'd be awesome.

[Justin McElroy]

We record from inside the Bronze. It's frequently updated. Interrupted by Vampire Attack. But that's life. That's life and city now, I guess.

[Griffin McElroy]

High schoolers going to a fucking warehouse rave every fucking day.

[Justin McElroy]

Straight Edge Rave. It's a great bar in town that doesn't serve alcohol.

[Ralph Freshik]

It's all genius.

[Justin McElroy]

And it's frequently attacked by vampires. No, no, no, dude, I swear. They have this place, right? It's a Big box full of teens, no beer, just teens. Wait, no, no. Yeah. In Sunnydale. I kid you not.

[Griffin McElroy]

I know you're thinking, I don't have an ID because I'm a vampire. It is not an issue here.

[Justin McElroy]

It's no problem. It feels like a. It feels like kind of a bait, bait, bait club.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right?

[Justin McElroy]

Well, in a sense, you are right. Yes, it is.

[Griffin McElroy]

In fact, there's one mean woman who comes and kicks us in the ass a bunch sometimes.

[Justin McElroy]

Just choose your night. Well, man, congratulations to Dishonored three.

[Griffin McElroy]

God, I wish.

[Justin McElroy]

My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the year.

[Griffin McElroy]

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the year, I think.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the year.

[Ralph Freshik]

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

[Justin McElroy]

Welcome to the Besties, which is a video game club where we have for many, many years decided on the best game of the year. And this year is no exception. It's just like every other year, we're going to be looking at all of the hot releases that came out at the end of last year or came out this year and had appropriate accessibility options. All the hottest releases of 2025 or late 2024 that are playable by all.

[Griffin McElroy]

Those of the show.

[Ralph Freshik]

Crushing it. Chris Plant. What is the Game of the year?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Well, the game of the year is a very special tradition where we pick the game that is the best of.

[Griffin McElroy]

The year and will it be good this time or.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think this time it's going to be pretty good. You know, there's no guarantees here at the Besties. That is the thing that we make sure we state at the beginning of every episode. No guarantees. Could be bad games.

[Justin McElroy]

No guarantees. Yeah, but I'm feeling no guarantees.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Confident that we are going to sell a lot of that new merch.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, great.

[Justin McElroy]

Actually, it's only like 60% of the people who order it get it, but it is like for those people that get it, it's good. Alienware sale of the season lets you unleash peak performance at big holiday savings. Save on select Alienware PC like the groundbreaking Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop, taking performance to the next level with the Intel Core Ultra processors. And even better, you can get it before the holidays. Plus you can save on all the latest accessories and displays like the Alienware 32.4K QD OLED gaming monitor. Visit alienware.com deals before it's too late. When I said no, the first, the best Game of the Year. I was lying.

[Griffin McElroy]

I know it less than I've ever known it.

[Justin McElroy]

I know less than I ever know. But before we get into it, let's talk about like our Guiding Light. Our Polaris is the Game Awards. As the Game Awards go so good. The besties, I've always said so does anybody want to talk? Did anybody watched the Game Awards, the biggies.

[Ralph Freshik]

Did anybody physically half a block away from the space watching on a television?

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, damn, they had the overflow.

[Ralph Freshik]

I mean, I didn't try to get in. It's very loud. I've mentioned this before, but it's very loud in that theater.

[Griffin McElroy]

So you didn't even want to come. You don't even care.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I was.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you in California for this?

[Ralph Freshik]

I was in California for this.

[Justin McElroy]

You flew to California to watch it at a nearby building.

[Ralph Freshik]

Bingo bango. I just. The luxury. The luxury to be that close to you.

[Justin McElroy]

Did you see the polar bears as you flew over them? Did they have a single tear coming out of their eyes as you blasted the climate so you could go to.

[Ralph Freshik]

An adjacent facility to Jeff carbon credits out the ass. I really made up for it. It's fine. The worth will be fine.

[Justin McElroy]

Closer my Jeff to thee.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. So the Game Awards happen and I don't know, for my money, there were a couple things that jumped out at me, but I thought it would be fun if each of us just call out one announcement or trailer that you saw that got you a little bit hyped up.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Highway to the Ace Combat 7.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, really?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, baby. You want to get Bandai? Namco says you know what? We're feeling real hot right now. We just keep on winning. We're going to see how far we can push it. Can we make Ace Combat a mainstream hit? Can we give it a story that people care about? And the answer is yes, you're damn fucking right you can. I am so ready for Ace Combat 7.

[Ralph Freshik]

Justin, you're a big Ace Combat guy, aren't you?

[Justin McElroy]

I like it in theory, but I haven't played a ton of it. I mean, I love that idea of taking planes too seriously.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And I.

[Ralph Freshik]

But not so seriously that you have to worry about landing gear and things like that.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes, exactly. I don't like that kind of nonsense. I like unlimited rockets. You know what I mean?

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure, I.

[Justin McElroy]

Hey, listen, my. My biggest announcement that I'm most excited about might surprise you guys, but I'm so in for game Gang of Dragon. I'm so excited to be a big boy strutting around Japan Punching everybody in the face as hard as I can. Yeah. Getting into it with a bunch of other bad boys. Just a big old boy running around Japan punching other boys in the face. I mean, I love Gang of Dragon.

[Griffin McElroy]

Bella punching ass in this fucking trailer.

[Justin McElroy]

There's a dude at the end of it. The initials of the game come up and it says, God. It's like, heck, yeah. That's my big boy. Let's go punch everybody in this.

[Griffin McElroy]

My big boy gets stabbed fully with a. Doesn't care. Doesn't give a shit. Too big to be stopped.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Love it. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Gang of Dragons.

[Ralph Freshik]

It's not. That's not Yakuza, notably. It's a different game.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's. It is a. I think a director who left Ryu Gagatoku in.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then he got that netease money and now can hire Don Lee to be the star of his big, big game. It's good.

[Griffin McElroy]

Looks sick. I mean, everyone's favorite unproblematic fave, Jonathan Blow's got his new shit coming. We're all stoked for. Yeah, dude.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, dude. I was really excited about that trailer. It was sick. I kept waiting for a Russian guy to come out and be like, it looks nothing like the ads.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, that's cool. I would love that.

[Ralph Freshik]

That game is. What is it called?

[Justin McElroy]

Order of King's Clash Mobile Fury. King's Clash Mobile Fury. I think it's King's Clash.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. Zombie. Go King. Clash King.

[Justin McElroy]

Clash Puzzle Melee. This is called 1000 Puzzles. 1000 Puzzles. 10 years in the making. No one gives a shit. Order of six Years. Dude, no one cares how long it took you to make 1400 puzzles. It takes a while. When you're living off your water. You purify from a big barrel outside or whatever.

[Ralph Freshik]

For people that didn't see the trailer, it is a. Like a Sokoban style, top down, block pushing game. Sort of like Lolo, I guess. Yeah, but it's for games.

[Justin McElroy]

It's sort of like Lolo. If Lolo took 10 goddamn years to.

[Griffin McElroy]

Make, it may have.

[Ralph Freshik]

The screen is like split in four ways and like there's four developers making each puzzle.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

Or something.

[Justin McElroy]

Say it again.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's like a Sokobong game. Don't need to explain it again. I want there to be more of the games I was stoked about, which was the New Kotor game and the New Divinity. The new.

[Ralph Freshik]

Oh yeah. Divinity will take a minute.

[Justin McElroy]

That's interesting. That's an interesting way that they have gone with divinity like we blew up. So don't worry about the numbers. Yeah, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I'm stoked for those two.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But when do you think that Coach War Game is coming out? 2030, 2034, 2037.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't really think it's going to come out anytime soon. Right.

[Justin McElroy]

It's not going to come out. But like it is fun to think about.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

They need to know that with Star wars games they can't just sort of reveal some eyes and a name and that Casey Hudson's up on it. I've been hurt so many times before by Here's a new Star wars game, here's a face of one of the characters and here's the name of a real life writer who is attached to the project. Catch ya Never.

[Ralph Freshik]

My chosen trailer, which was not revealed in the actual show itself, it was revealed in the pre show is called the Free shepherd and you're a dog herding sheep and it looks fucking spectacular. You're basically like in Iceland or somewhere herding sheep and that's all you do. And granted we did play a sheep herding game earlier this year and it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Left me kind of cold.

[Ralph Freshik]

The best. But it didn't have a dog that you were playing as herding the sheep. You had to be a person with a stick. And I think that is a notable exception. And I have very strong.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They also weren't sheep, they were herdlings.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. Was that what they were actually called, was herdlings? Yeah, they were like you were the herdling.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Anyway, who's to say big show, it's a small herd.

[Justin McElroy]

You had a small herd. You had a herdling.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm also excited for the new for loop the game from the left four dead folks.

[Ralph Freshik]

Oh yeah. Also Control two, whatever that's called.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh yeah. And Lenny Kravitz is joining First Light. Can't wait for that. Which. Hey, which as long as we're having fun. Which announcement made you guys laugh the hardest? Because Lenny Kravitz joining First Light Hit.

[Ralph Freshik]

I do want to offer some context actually for the Lenny Kravitz announ.

[Justin McElroy]

Is it going to make it more or less funny?

[Ralph Freshik]

More funny. Earlier that day, about three hours beforehand, there was a press event. I didn't get invited to this so I can freely talk about it. It was a press event for the announcement that Lenny Kravitz was coming to Hitman as one of the bad guys. Or is it the Bond Game? He's one of the Bond Game. Anyway, there was an announcement and part of that announcement included Milla Jovovich who also announced that she was coming to either Hitman or Bond.

[Griffin McElroy]

Cheers.

[Ralph Freshik]

And they were so serious about keeping this information locked down, even though they made people sign embargoes. They also insisted that everyone there put stickers on the lenses of their cellular phones to ensure that the information did not get out in those three hours between the game. Lord.

[Griffin McElroy]

Awesome.

[Ralph Freshik]

That was how important it was.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let me get my phone all dirty.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What was it like being there?

[Justin McElroy]

Let me cry.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I was not there.

[Justin McElroy]

Can you imagine?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, you didn't have to sit there. You didn't have to sit through the longest press event ever in which they showed a total of 20 seconds of video games. And then Milla Jovovich talked about random non video game stuff. Lenny Kravitz comes out before this. He seems completely confused as to where he is. And they show. It's the cruelest thing you could do to somebody who does not act professionally is show them acting poorly right before it with some dialogue that I will never forget. Like James Bond, you are a cancer. But like any cancer, you can be stopped if caught early enough. Which is why I'm going to cut you out and feed you on a platter.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like cancer. It makes your metaphors a little bit there, but a little bit of mixing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, dude. Lenny, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta push back on that script. You got it. Or maybe you did he mocap?

[Griffin McElroy]

Did he mocap for this?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

He's mo capped.

[Justin McElroy]

And they got zaps.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They got those. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

How many times do you think while wearing that big green suit covered in the little white balls, he had to bend over and it bent over and it ripped the pants of the suit.

[Justin McElroy]

Guys, come out with my ab. Guys, hold on, I gotta fix my.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Milla Da Jovovich was like, are those your abs? And Lenny, dead serious, is like, yes, they are. Like, I don't work this hard to be joked about my abs.

[Justin McElroy]

Special purpose. I. Yeah, man. Every time my kryptonite is seeing celebrities come out at the VGA's that don't that were told by their agent an hour before. And then that's not what I care about the most. I care about when they try. That's what hurts is weird. Like you see David harbor up there fighting for his life, even though you know the name Lily Allen is in the mind of literally every human being in the building. Yeah, no. Dave, tell me how excited you are about 40k coming to total war. Yeah, dude. Yeah, man, me too, dude. Hey, you know what I'm pretty excited about, Dave, is that nobody released an album about Me being a huge hunk of shit.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's my goatee.

[Justin McElroy]

That's my goatee.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is that.

[Justin McElroy]

That didn't happen to me. Jeff will catch him on the way down. Don't worry. Jeff will get him on the way down.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think it's time.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

Time has come.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We have one actually more caveat before we go. We have a game that we're not.

[Justin McElroy]

The galaxy needs racing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, well, yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I mean, that's not going to be.

[Justin McElroy]

On our galaxy needs racing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Hold on, Let Justin. Let Justin.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, no code.

[Justin McElroy]

Listen, it's gonna be really important next year that the galaxy needs racing. I'll be reminding you guys a lot if you forget about galactic racing. So the galaxy does need racing. Probably.

[Ralph Freshik]

Who believes that the galaxy needs racing?

[Justin McElroy]

I guess Sebulba and me.

[Ralph Freshik]

I mean, there you go.

[Justin McElroy]

I guess it's just the two of us right now. But it doesn't take more than that to start a revolution. You know what I mean? The galaxy needs racing. They can release two Tomb Raider games in one week or whatever. Me and Sebulba can start a revolution.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

All right, you ready for the caveat?

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. You've got a caveat?

[Justin McElroy]

That's a caveat.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

There's a game that we're not talking about today, but we will talk about it next year, and that game is Blueprints.

[Ralph Freshik]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's circle back to that idea because I don't feel confident we're going to get to next year's goatee considerations and have the courage of our convictions to stand out there and be the only video game podcast on the planet that is weighing Blueprint. What if blueprints wins our 2026 game of.

[Ralph Freshik]

That'd be fucking sick.

[Justin McElroy]

Then that. That would be sick as hell. It's a good ass game. I feel very good about that. You know what, y', all, it is really like, I would like to get. I've been thinking a lot about accessibility this year. Like, not just that, but like, as we've been talking about the carpal tunnel stuff and like games being difficult to like, play, it is a, like, I don't know, you know, accessibility has always been an issue, but I feel like Blueprints really has helped me to put it in like a perspective. Like, you know, and I, I feel like even if it's not the, like, even if it's not the best way of like judging what all the games were this year, I feel really good about our decision to hold off on it because it does feel like such a notable thing. So I feel good about holding.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. Just for added context, in case there's people that just listened to this episode, not the subsequent. I still can't. I mean, technically I could play Blueprints, but because it's such a color centric game and there's no like colorblind settings or anything like that within the game, I intentionally didn't play it because I thought it would be kind of a miserable experience for me. They are working on a colorblind setting. It wasn't in at launch, which is a drag, but they are. They've said it's gonna come out sometime next year, so we've decided to punt that game. Now, granted, who knows, there might be 16 games that are better than Blueprints next year, in which probably not.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's pretty good.

[Ralph Freshik]

I don't. I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

All I saw was like, you walk in a house and you switch some rooms around. That's all I saw.

[Justin McElroy]

So that happens.

[Griffin McElroy]

But it's like, good.

[Ralph Freshik]

That is good context. Yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

There is certainly. Certainly enough to talk about this year, even without blueprints up in the mix.

[Ralph Freshik]

And I. The other caveat I want to say is this is a taste show, as really all game awards are, but especially for Goatee for besties, which is to say there are games on here that, like a lot of people considered to be their game of the year and more power to them. That's awesome. I don't think there was a single game that we. That was like, universally beloved or at least critically acclaimed by a big chunk of the audience that we didn't at least try. So if there are games on here that are missing, it's because we tried it and it really didn't click with us in a way that I think would be a compelling.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Listen, it's the Besties game of the year. This is not trying to be some objective thing. It is trying to be our game of the year, based on our conversations throughout the year.

[Justin McElroy]

So we've been in the game for a while now, guys. I think we've preambled enough, right?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

We did a whole episode of Pre. If you find yourself upset by our choices, just listen to the episode of sort of caveats that we put out a couple weeks ago.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, we did the caveat of rhyme out already.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Here are the games that are up for the award. Expedition 33 dispatch, Absolum, Hades 2 death rating 2 ghost of Yote, Baby Steps, Donkey Kong Bonanza, silksong, wonder, stop, Blippo plus Citizen Sleeper 2. Avowed Indiana Jones. The Root Trees are dead. Sectori we have the competition broken up into themes and we're going to start with the very first one right now. And that is the story selection, an emphasis on story. We have Expedition 33 against dispatch.

[Griffin McElroy]

Tough one to start with.

[Justin McElroy]

Ow.

[Griffin McElroy]

Very tough one because both of these are top fivers for me. So to get to knock off one now is gonna really sting. But that's the way it happens sometimes.

[Justin McElroy]

Dispatches. I think as somebody who cares, not cares a lot, but like I'm really interested in like interactive fiction. Not in like the visual novel sense, but in sort of like the interactive cinema sense, like interactive TV interactive, that kind of thing. And I think Dispatch is the most successful example of that ever. I think it's way more success for me at least.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Did you finish?

[Griffin McElroy]

Have you finished the.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm on. I finished episode seven. So I'm like pretty.

[Griffin McElroy]

You're on the feet.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I'm almost done. It's great. And like the story is and all, not just the story and dialogue. It's not like good for video games. It's just. It's good. And I actually found myself really digging the central mechanics. I wish. And I think that for me, I'll go ahead and like put this in. As somebody who really liked Expedition 33 2, the game parts of Dispatch fail it in a way that I think should keep it from progressing beyond this. As good as all the story stuff is, especially as you get late, you're playing a lot of like high stakes mini games that impact the story in a way that feels like not especially pleasurable, but like that. But in terms of like storytelling and like the performances, the writing, it's all like so worth like checking out if you enjoy that kind of storytelling at all. If you like stuff like the boys Invincible, you know, whatever, I think that you're really going to dig or even.

[Griffin McElroy]

For me, it is what it does different from those two examples from the boys in Invincible of being less. It's so weird because I feel like with superhero fiction you are sort of gauging whether or not it is a cynical take on that universe or a straightforward take on that universe. And this somehow kind of sidesteps it where like the superhero business is not told in this like grandiose kind of style as much as it is a workplace kind of comedy drama with characters that it kind of like focuses more on rather than their. Their plight.

[Justin McElroy]

I may have failed it a little bit by not just saying up front it is a Game about a guy whose dad was a superhero, kind of an Iron man equivalent with a robotic suit. The suit's damaged in a way that this guy can't be a hero anymore. But he's brought in to run a dispatch. And that's basically the company he works for is for like superhero insurance. You pay and superheroes will come and help with problems that you have. And your job as the player, since you don't have superpowers anymore, is to assign what heroes will go to which emergency. And because you are a new, new employee there, you are stuck with the Z Team, which is a bunch of former super villains that are trying to make it as superheroes. So you have like sort of the worst of the worst. And it's sort of. I mean, beyond that, it's kind of like Bad News Bears, you know, like in terms of like. Yeah, yeah, Mighty Ducks. Yeah, exactly. It's that. And it is a lot more, I think even though it's like edgy, for whatever that's worth, is a lot more humanist and positive than things.

[Ralph Freshik]

It felt to me like even a Mike Shure thing. Like in that spirit of parks and Rec.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not quite to that like coziness, but yeah, definitely. That's the vibe. Enemies to friends for sure.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

One of, I will say, probably the funniest game of the year. There's a lot of moments in this game.

[Justin McElroy]

If you're not counting the death span rerelease, then yes, yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sorry, no, I wasn't counting the death spank rerelease. I think that's cheating because like they already busted me up once and it's not fair for me.

[Justin McElroy]

I love it. Sorry, I'm laughing. I got unmute.

[Griffin McElroy]

Episode five has an extended bar fight sequence that is I think maybe pound for pound the funniest kind of like 10 minutes of video game that's maybe ever been made. It's just like nonstop banger after banger after banger joke. And I'm wild about this patch. Should I lead the charge on Expedition 33 here?

[Ralph Freshik]

Probably a good idea.

[Griffin McElroy]

Lay it out.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Keep that up too.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure. So Expedition 33 is a French heavily JRPG inspired role playing game that is about a team of expeditioners in a sort of fucked up, weird kind of post apocalyptic world. You start out in Paris, basically. Lumiere, it's called. And every year in this world, people of a certain age, once they reach that max age, they vanish into rose petals, effectively dying. And when the game begins, you start with one of these ceremonies and you lose someone very, very close to you, as does a lot of other people. And then the clock winds down and now it's 33 is the max age. You are one of the expedition 33 team members and together with a crew you go out to try to defeat the paintress who has inflicted this curse on the world. And pretty much right away shit goes, shit goes haywire. And then it's up to you to lead a very doomed expedition in more ways than one. It is a game about death and grief and loss, but it does those things with so much heart and so much style and with kind of just a unique tone and unique design and some really truly tight RPG mechanics. There's a lot of emphasis on reflex based inputs in your turn based combat to parry and dodge attacks, which becomes extremely vital. Really cool customization options. You're like unlocking these permanent little power ups that you're assigning to your characters. And great writing, great acting, just kind of fucking. There's a reason it swept the TGAs. Good call. Chris Plant, by the way, with that prediction because I think it is just a. I think it is a triumph from a very, very small team. You rarely get games of this scale and polish that kind of come out of nowhere from a non sort of AAA studio.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's also an RPG that grabs you immediately, which I think, yeah, jrpg, Western rpg, whatever you want to call them, that's a hard thing and a rare thing wherever. And to have one that just from the drop is like here is this compelling high stakes issue and and you are in the action is really awesome.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about the game for a long time. I think it does some stuff with its story in the third act that I think has been kind of divisive. And I'm not going to get into spoilers or anything here, but it very much reframes the entire story that you have been watching and sort of makes you think differently about all the characters that you've been spending so much time with. Although I have a few times I think misrepresented the game as being sort of JRPG length, it is actually a bit more digestible than that. I think you can really cruise through it in like 30 hours, which is obviously still a long time, but for a game of this genre, quite slight. I went much longer than that because I wanted to do all of the stuff because it really, really deeply hooked me. I found the story stuff interesting. I like when games take big swings and this one takes some pretty fucking Big ones. And yeah, I'm not sure how much time you guys spent with it. So I'm not sure how deep the river of affection flows.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I played probably, I don't know, around 15 hours. And then I did the old switch to watching the playthrough which happened to me was role playing games when I just want the story. And I probably regret that decision. Why regret it? And I don't regret it in that the gameplay seemed like it was getting more and more repetitive. I think I would have gotten very frustrated. But also the, the ending didn't click for me. Fresh eyes or hoops. I see you, you, you, you Furrowing. Furrowing.

[Justin McElroy]

Well, I mean I've played a lot of it and I just feel like I understand why we have to have these discussions but like guessing how you would have felt had you continued to play the game I don't feel like is a metric that we need to consider. Right. It already feels a little weird to like I yada yada the story. And it didn't really click for me. Like I don't feel like that really. That doesn't feel that substantive as a like point to break.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I guess what I would say is I had a feeling where it was going and I did not think I would like where it was going. And then I found out where it was going and I was very glad that I did not commit the rest of my time to it is what I was thinking.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's a lot of time.

[Ralph Freshik]

I'll speak for myself and say as Plant said earlier, immediately grabbed, super compelled by the story, the setting, the characters, like really well performed, great voice acting, things like that. I liked the gameplay initially, like the combat sequences. I liked the active combat stuff and the way that I like Mario, Paper Mario games, things like that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right.

[Ralph Freshik]

I felt myself getting drowned by the systems. There are so many systems going on where you're unlocking met whatever the fuck they're called, metals that then permanently unlock and then you can attach those to people and then those people can unlock other metal. It was like I was drowning in it. Which again would be fine. But the, the other issue I was running into is because I only had like let's say 30 minutes to like dive into a game and the lack of like a map when you're in a lot of areas. I would get lost and so I'd spend my 15 minute half of my time trying to figure out where to go next. I think it would probably be a much more fluid experience if I could sit down and like play for three to four hours straight. But I would say like the, the combat wasn't grabbing me in the way that that initial story beat grabbed me. And that's why I got to a point after about 10 or 12 hours where I was like, this isn't necessarily that compelling to me. I am interested to see where the story goes, but the gameplay isn't pulling me through. So at that point I really just watched an explanation of what happens in the story. I don't think I would have made it to the point of playing it had I played more realistically.

[Griffin McElroy]

I definitely bounced off around the point you're talking about and took a good long break from Expedition 33. I think when I realized that with enough adeptness at the reflex based stuff that the game throws at you, you can kind of sneak ahead of where you should be and get some stuff that is too powerful for you to logically have at that point in the story. And I really fucking like when games change. Yeah, that's another thing that it does is every main character that you unlock for your party has kind of a different mechanic that sort of changes the way that combat works for them. Like there's one who has a perfection systems so that the longer they go without taking damage, the stronger their attacks get. One of them can steal the. Steal the feet and legs of the enemies that they defeat to then transform into those enemies, giving them sort of a blue mage style vibe going for them. Once I had.

[Justin McElroy]

Guys, can I talk to Chris and Russ over here? That's not a character in the game. Griffin has been talking about the guy that steals.

[Griffin McElroy]

I love this too.

[Justin McElroy]

And like that's not part of it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Guys, his name is Griffin.

[Justin McElroy]

If you could give me one section.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sorry, sorry.

[Justin McElroy]

There's nobody in it that steals your feet. He keeps saying that like he smells.

[Griffin McElroy]

Them and the stink is his magic power. He says, he says, zutalor, I need more stank.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, he says he puts it in his stinky cheese. And that's like offensive to French people too. And Griffin keeps insisting there's a guy that steals for eating.

[Griffin McElroy]

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So that character's not there, but what about the one that steals my nose? That's not negative.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, David Cage is in it. There's a fully rendered David Cage. He says the lore. I put the stink of the.

[Griffin McElroy]

I want to give major props to how this game has changed the face of sort of cosplay norms at conventions because God damn, guys. Anyone that you go to now, you are just going to see Roving packs of mimes out for a picnic is what it looks like most of the time. And I do love that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I want to go back to the I'm sure there are people just like you Hoops who are like, you didn't play the end of the game. Your opinion is invalid. I want to say one, all the games that we're talking about here rock.

[Justin McElroy]

I didn't say no, I don't think so.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No. But I'm not. Okay. I won't put those words into your mouth. I think that's a fair thing for people who are listening to feel. What I want to say is all the games here are good. The trouble I had with this game is not whether or not it's good. The music just absolutely rocks. The writing is all there. I have consumed so many stories about what is grief and then I've also consumed so many stories about what is art and I don't like Mario rpg.

[Griffin McElroy]

And there's a lot. Yeah, this is not going to hit you where you're at.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Made it so that like I am just not the ideal candidate for this game. It doesn't mean any of those things are bad decisions. It means right. I found myself about halfway through being like, oh, this is playing to all my weaknesses. And I felt validated.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I, you know what's hard is I not hard. But this is just a contextual point and I feel like this is a lot of this year. I bounced off Dispatch so hard at the beginning. It was like almost instantly what Fresh said about Dragon's Lair, that's. That's exactly how it felt. But worse. Like.

[Ralph Freshik]

Like.

[Justin McElroy]

Cause it felt like I wasn't having any impact on it. It was like the most boring quick time events ever. Like it really. It really was a. It felt like a slog. And it wasn't till I did this with. With Expedition 33 too though it wasn't until I returned to it and kind of met it on its own level, like met it where it was at like that I really started to get into it. And that's kind of shared trait between both of these. I think that it was a precarious.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

For me of that like Dispatch. It was. I thought it was one thing. I thought it was the boys. And then as I got through more of it and the pilot, which I do not think does it a lot of service and I found that more cozy hangout with your office workers vibe that it really sung and the more I played watched, the more it grew on me.

[Ralph Freshik]

I mean to boil this down, I'll speak for myself. And you know, I played a lot of both of these games. Dispatch is the one that was like, we'll leave a longer mark for me. I want more of Dispatch. Whereas I stopped halfway through Expedition 33 because I wasn't super enjoying myself. So that's really. That's just a personal preference thing that I'm at.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's what all these are going to be.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah, I mean, realistically, that's what all these are.

[Justin McElroy]

We've tried to get facts more as a part of this, but it doesn't work. We can't figure out a way to do it. It doesn't work.

[Ralph Freshik]

So I will defer to you guys and where your heads are at.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's honestly close for me. I really fell in love with Dispatch. I really, really.

[Justin McElroy]

They're both great.

[Griffin McElroy]

It hooked me in a major way. And there's also a recency thing that is truly tough to weigh because I beat Expedition 33 back in like April or something. And I finished Dispatch over like a breathless four day period a couple weeks ago. So it's still kind of super fresh in my mind. I think they both do a really great job telling a really great story with mechanics that are really strong for the genre that they represent. I think I would give it to Expedition 33 personally, just in terms of scale of achievement, scale of ambition a little bit, but it's not a blowout in my mind.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I really like Dispatch a lot and Expedition 33. You know, both of these have some pretty big Asteri next to them. I guess I would go with Expedition 33 just because there are so many. I really love the time I spend with Dispatch. I find Expedition 33 like hard to shake. And it's hard to shake in a way that like, all the things I want video games to do, like, look different and make you feel like you're exploring a different place and like do things that other video games are not doing. I feel like Expedition 33, it just like tries to buck convention so hard that it makes it really engaging. And I find it like the aesthetics and the music and everything, it really sticks with me. But I would go Expedition 33 for that.

[Griffin McElroy]

It seems like we have a split here.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I would actually probably go Expedition 33 3. I'm not in love with either of these games, but I think I appreciate Expedition 33 more. I guess, like Dispatch was a solid, like, yeah, that was a nice time for me. And in the end I left it happy. Expedition 33, I was really wowed by the first 10 or so hours.

[Griffin McElroy]

And then no one, no one leaves that game happy. I guarantee you that no one leaves Expo 33 like now, whistling at a jolly tune.

[Justin McElroy]

I think the. I. I want to go on a limb here and say the next dispatch thing, whatever happens next with that is going to be really big. I think the game parts will be fleshed out. I think that the cast. I think it's going to be really, really successful because I think the people who really. And Expedition 33 probably too. Right. It'll probably be a grip before we see Expedition 32, but which I assume the sequel will be, by the way. Guys, this might have helped you guys. With Expedition 33, the numbers are going down. And if you're someone like me, that would be so confusing for 12 to 15 hours if you couldn't understand why all the numbers of the other expeditions that you kept finding were higher. But then once you figure out that the number is going down, a lot of the story makes more sense.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh yeah, that does check out.

[Ralph Freshik]

I do want to mention that one of the expeditions just was super strong.

[Griffin McElroy]

Guys, I was gonna say the next game should be Expedition 60, which was where they got so strong that they like punched through this invisible invincible barrier and they were all shirtless the whole time.

[Justin McElroy]

I want to do Expedition five. Expedition babies. You know what I mean? It's just five. We're gonna get her this time. Let's go get the juice boxes. Okay.

[Ralph Freshik]

Congrats to Expedition 33. Dispatch, you're in the toilet.

[Griffin McElroy]

The next one, honestly, guys, is the one I'm dreading, I think the most.

[Justin McElroy]

Don't worry, it's not gonna be bad.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Next up, we've got action absolute versus Hades 2.

[Griffin McElroy]

Just action these games have. They're the only two action games of the whole year.

[Justin McElroy]

Finally, games with action.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'll start with Absalom. Unless Russ or Chris.

[Ralph Freshik]

I can do it. Yeah, you go, go, go.

[Griffin McElroy]

A surprise game from the developers of some of the best beat em ups that have come out in recent memory. I'm blanking on the name of the studio at this exact moment.

[Justin McElroy]

Quantic Dream.

[Griffin McElroy]

Quantic Dream. You really got him. That man lives in your head.

[Justin McElroy]

Fucking.

[Griffin McElroy]

He's thought free.

[Justin McElroy]

I think about David Cage eight times the time and it's always during this show. That's what the hard thing is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Dadimu. And Guard Crush games.

[Ralph Freshik]

And Supamonks.

[Griffin McElroy]

And Supamonks, yes. Guard Crush games made Streets of Rage 4. Just like a lot of really great lineage in this genre. Basically kind of the inheritors of this genre, I would say, doing something completely new in a new world. A beat em up fantasy game that does feature a lot of Hades esque roguelike elements. You have your character each run you go through a world where you're making sort of like branching, you know, paths to go to different levels, leveling them up, earning unlocks that give you sort of permanent upgrades. But each run you are getting these, these aspects that add certain special things to your, you know, beat em up light and heavy attack, special attack kind of skill set. For instance, there is a water type kind of aspect where you can trap enemies in little bubbles and knock them backwards and deal more damage as they fly backwards through the air. There is a thorns aspect where you are creating these daggers that you can throw whenever you do certain moves. And there's lots of different little ways that your character is going to be different every time you play the game depending on the choices that you make. I think that stuff is very, very cool and I know has been somewhat divisive behind all of that stuff. I find the beat em up gameplay of Absolum probably my favorite. Probably my favorite beat em up gameplay. I think it is, I think it's the most fun, tightest beat em up game that has ever been, that has ever been made. I have had so much fucking fun playing that game. Even though it only goes to two players, which is I think slight compared to, you know, I've been playing a bunch of castle crashers with Henry. That one goes up to up to 4. I think that the shit that you can do in this game, the combos you do is so fucking slick.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think it's the best co op game I played all year, like bar none.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, the progression hooks are really great. You really, really feel every run like, okay, I got this stuff that's gonna like add new aspects to the game next time I play or new special skills for my favorite character. I think it is a bit, it feels a bit first drafty to me. By which I mean like more than any other game this year, like this is the one I'm excited for the sequel to where we can get more than. I think there's four characters in there and I feel like I've seen kind of the tricks that they have compared to the other game that is up for contention right now. I spent way more fucking time with Hades too, but the time I spent with Absalom, man, I, I really, really, really enjoyed also a game that I could play with Henry a lot and that's always like, you know, good, good, good stuff for me.

[Ralph Freshik]

Second Frog wizard in this game, for Christ's sake.

[Griffin McElroy]

He's my least favorite of the characters.

[Ralph Freshik]

Go fuck yourself, Chris.

[Griffin McElroy]

I know there's ways to Frog Wizard. Okay, okay, that's cool. I like the one who looks a lot like Taako from the Taz graphic novels. There's so much fucking wild stuff that you can do with her. But yeah, Absalom. I want everyone to play this game mostly because I want there to be a sequel and soon. But also because, like, I think if you even have a passing interest in beat em up games, this is the best one that's ever come out. So.

[Ralph Freshik]

Agreed. You want me to do Hades 2?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

Hades 2 is the sequel to Hades. It's the same studio that worked on both.

[Justin McElroy]

Excellent start.

[Ralph Freshik]

Thank you. Same studio that worked on both games. The notable Quantic Stream, notably, we can't.

[Justin McElroy]

Keep talking about Quantic Dream. They haven't made a game 100 years. Are they making one right now?

[Ralph Freshik]

I don't know, but I'm sure it has.

[Justin McElroy]

Great.

[Ralph Freshik]

Fresh.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Tell us about the character in Hades 2 that'll steal your toes. Okay, be serious.

[Ralph Freshik]

You're Willinoe, who is a witch raised in this coven, basically a member of the family of Hades. And all of the other family members have basically vanished and been kidnapped or whatever. And it seems that Kronos, the Titan of time, is the new big bad that is keeping all of your family members locked up. And you got to go chase them down. I love this game. I know Griffin played quite a bit of it as well. Did you finish it, Griffin?

[Griffin McElroy]

This is the thing I never finished Hate. I didn't finish 80s one, but you.

[Ralph Freshik]

Got to the end of a loop.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't finish Hades 2. I beat Hades 2 about 15 times, which was insufficient for Hades too, to give me the goods.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think the. This to me is a.

[Justin McElroy]

When you say beat Hades, do you mean see the real ending of.

[Ralph Freshik]

There's a credits.

[Griffin McElroy]

There's like a.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes, I know.

[Griffin McElroy]

Listen, I know.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm asking. Yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Ralph Freshik]

To see this, I don't think it's necessary. For what it's worth, I think you can have an experience that feels cumulative. At the end of, you know, 20 hours, maybe 25 hours, you'll see most of the content.

[Justin McElroy]

Although if you stop playing Hades after 25 hours, my hat is off to you, my friend. Your willpower is stronger than mine.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think for me, this game feels like a. I don't mean this as derision, but it does not feel like a full sequel to me. It doesn't feel like a full reimagining of the Hades model. It feels like we were building on the incredibly strong foundation that was set in the first game. I think it's better than the first game. I know there's some objection to that across the board. Some people feel like the first game is better. I think this better game is better. I don't think the narrative is better, but that's neither here nor there. I think artistically and in terms of the gameplay, I find this a little more compelling. But I think the challenge that I keep running into with Hades is that it doesn't feel special to me in the way that the original Hades felt special. It felt like new territory. And honestly, we probably, as people that have to play a lot of games, might give too much credit to games that are doing something brand new. But quite honestly, like, that's who we are because we have to play a lot of games. So when there's something that stands out and is doing something really special, we kind of give it its flowers. As the children say. Hoops.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You've had a long journey with this game, so I really want to hear your thoughts on it.

[Justin McElroy]

There was a time when I was doing updates. Remember I was doing like three updates? Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's about as recurring as a bit as you get here on. Yeah, right.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. You know it. I have returned to it past couple weeks as I've been trying to like, freshen up everything in my mind. It's great. But I did have a very long journey with this game where I started playing it when we first got access. And I played a lot and each time there was an update, I would like go back in and play more. And I am somehow, I'm to some extent a victim of that because it's harder to remember what's new and what's not new and what I was working on. And the meta becomes almost impossible to keep tabs on. Like, I'm not going to go in there and mess with my Arcana anymore. I've got a 30 out of 30 bill that I'm just going to leave forever. So I don't know if I'm going to spend the. The amount of time I honestly. You hit on the head, Russ. I think the biggest problem with Hades 2 is that Hades 1 is a fucking amazing video game that everybody I know spent a bajillion hours with. And it's like it to like to even do more with Hades 2. Like it. It's like they nailed it so hard with Hades 1 that I don't know what a Hades 2 would would feel like. That would feel like a, you know, worthy successor to that. Like, I just don't know that there's as much room there for because to grow because Hades one was so good.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Absolum feels to me closer to a sequel that I would expect from Supergiant games than Hades 2. And by that I mean they have until this point, never done a traditional sequel and they've always built on whatever they learned from the previous game and then moving it into a different genre and doing something that will surprise you. And I think Absalom is very much borrowing from Hades the way it is avoiding the repetition of the beat em up genre by incorporating these little story changes that hit you at the various branches of your smart journey throughout it. Right. And similar with how it has incorporated Hades style in roguelike growth character progression over the course of a mission where Hades 2. I went back and played it this week. And again, this is the thing you say about a fantastic game. I was more scared of how much time I was going to sink into a thing that I was enjoying like well enough. There's nothing about it that is like, wow, I love this. And at the same time there's nothing really wrong with it and I want to keep playing it, which is great for most people who want to play video games and not great for making a bracket that, yes, as we do, tends to favor something new and surprising and interesting and challenging.

[Griffin McElroy]

I adore Hades 2. I spent a fucking lot of time with it and I think more than maybe the rest of you, it sounds like. I think it is a real accomplishment to make a sequel to Hades and have it be as rock solid as this is. I think it does enough stuff new from Hades where I've spent more time. I've beaten this game more than I beat Hades. I've had way more runs and I've gotten way more into the progression hooks, which are really, I think, rock solid, really strong. It's a tuning thing for me where I hit a wall after beating sort of both routes of the game, you know, a half dozen times each where I felt like I was having runs, where I was spending like, you know, a half hour and then didn't really get anything to show for it. And I can't when I am playing a game that is so progression hooky as this. Once that starts to happen, it's like way, way, way off for Me, I feel like I wanted it to move a little bit, be a little bit more generous, I guess, I suppose, with the progress. But yeah, for me it's Absolum in this category for the reasons Chris outlined. It's just so new and so exciting. The world is so weird and cool and the characters are great, y'.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

All.

[Justin McElroy]

I just think Absalom's boring. When you play it, it's boring. I mean, every run with Hades 2, you're like, new strategies, new ways. These things build on each other. And like you go into Absalom, you're pounding on the attack button and you know, you do the special and there's like regular beat em up stuff you can grab and there's some. They introduced some like clash mechanics and stuff. But I was. When I would finish a run in Absalom, I would think, all right, I'm good. Because like, for starters, the upgrades that you get after a run don't change the things that you're doing that much. They don't change the feel. You can get a different, like, ultimate power that you can unlock. But a lot of the. A lot of it is you're unlocking choices rather than like upgrades to your power where you like, feel considerably more powerful. And for me, like, the runs just felt so samey that when I finished one, it was like really a struggle to get myself to do another one. Just because I had no appetite to get back in and do it again. Just because the gameplay is so repetitive.

[Ralph Freshik]

I didn't get a repetitive sense necessarily, but I did get a sense that I think the game is designed specifically with Co op in mind. And I think that's when it shines the brightest, because it ends up moving a lot faster than you would have an experience playing solo.

[Griffin McElroy]

You do unlock a currency at a certain point that gives you pretty flat upgrade upgrades to the aspects where it's like, this one is now stronger or the really smart thing that it does is you unlock synergies between the different paths that are unique. So it'll be like, okay, now every time you hit someone and you trap them in one of these bubbles, it is also going to set the ground on fire where they land, which will then activate this synergy. It does some of that stuff, but that does get back to my core sort of thing with Absalom, which is like, I wish there was more of that progression stuff. I wish there were more choices, I wish there were more characters, I wish there were more levels.

[Ralph Freshik]

And the thing that stood out for me for Epsilon wasn't necessarily the gameplay, which I found super fun, but like, whatever. I've played beat em ups before. This is definitely a very good one of those. The thing that stood out for me was the constant level of surprise that I was having on runs where you would run into an NPC and they'd be like, yo, we're, we're doing a heist of this castle over here. And suddenly you're in a totally different fucking environment that you haven't been in before, doing some, like, side mission. And I don't. You don't really get those surprises from much of Hades too. Like, you'll do runs, you'll go to familiar places. The surprises will come in, like, dialogue that you'll get like fun dialogue from the NPCs you meet. And occasionally you'll do. You'll get like, teleported to like, Hades or whatever, but largely, like, you're doing the same runs a lot. And I do agree with Justin that there's more variety in the, like, way you can set up your build. But for me, I found a build that worked. I figured out which cards were best most synergistic with that build, and every single time I did a run, I used those cards for that synergy. So it did end up feeling very samey in the end as well.

[Justin McElroy]

In Hades.

[Ralph Freshik]

For Hades. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. But the builds you are doing in every run of Hades are completely different. I mean, like, you are building completely different skill sets that are changing the way that you play. And that's just like, only if you're.

[Ralph Freshik]

Willing to change weapons, which I like. I felt comfortable.

[Justin McElroy]

No, no, because the boons. Completely different. The boons will change your playstyle. You don't have.

[Ralph Freshik]

Not if you pick. Sorry to get pedantic, but if you pick specific treasures that guarantee a certain boon that you know is ideal for your weapon. I was picking the same boons basically every single run.

[Justin McElroy]

So I will agree with Russ that if you pick the exact same options every single time, there will be some repetitive nature to your game. Russ. You know what? I'm sorry, Russia, you're right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Thanks.

[Ralph Freshik]

I'm just saying there is dead on for certain weapons. There's like an ideal, more productive way to get through levels.

[Justin McElroy]

Not a dude. I understand wanting to win an argument, but like, in terms of gameplay variety, it sounds silly. Like Hades is completely different every single time. I agree that you choose a different. What?

[Ralph Freshik]

I agree with you that Hades 2 has more variety. I agree.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Let's do a vote. Let us do a vote on this. One absolute versus Hades 2 hoops. Where are you at on this?

[Justin McElroy]

It's obviously Hades 2. Guys, please do not let your innovation.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Griffin, where are you at?

[Griffin McElroy]

Ruin this for you, Absalom. For me with a bullet.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Interesting.

[Ralph Freshik]

Me too.

[Griffin McElroy]

Wow.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm Absalom. I'm sorry, Hoobs.

[Justin McElroy]

I mean, guys, it's fine.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's going to happen. It's going to happen soon.

[Ralph Freshik]

Everyone's babies are going to die. Every matchup. I guarantee it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Next.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Next up, we have PlayStation Worlds. We have Death Stranding 2 verse is Ghost of Yotei. Who wants to. Damn.

[Justin McElroy]

That's a good. Thematically, that's a weirdly good pairing. Where they fit in the lineage of their own franchises. It makes a lot of sense.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Who wants to take Ghost of Yotei to kick it off?

[Ralph Freshik]

That seems like a. Justin.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, man. I really liked the predecessor to this game, Ghost of Tsushima. I didn't like it enough to stick with it. Ghosts of Yotei, I feel like it would be easy to say especially I feel like open world Japan in this era we've been really inundated with and I think it'd be easy to kind of write this game off. And I think it is so aware of how hard it needs to fight to be worth your attention. And I really dig that. Ghost of Tsushima, it's an open world revenge story where you start running. You start like knowing what you need to do. You know the list. You have a list of people that you're going to kill because of what they did to your family. The character that is played by Erika Ishii, who did a really amazing job, nominated Vigi. A nominated performance. She feels like a real angry person that is really focused on this one thing. And there's a lot of characters that have revenge stories in video games that you don't buy. And I really buy it with her. Like you. You root for her and her the way she is going after the revenge. It feels very plausible. It draws you in right away. It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful to look at with minigames that I don't know if they're everybody's bag, but I think they are. I. I still very clever. Like this Sucker Punch is doing their funky. Their funky game controller stuff. I dig that kind of nonsense. But yeah, man, it's just like it's a very, you know, it, it's. It's a very generous sort of game. I feel like they're giving you a lot to like look at and experience a lot of the story. Beats are very cool, and they do, like, really. Not just the, like, gimmicky stuff, but, like, I love this. This one thing they do where you're learning a weapon, and to. To practice using the weapon, you have to do this, like, complicated button combo that is sequenced.

[Ralph Freshik]

It reminded me of Quantic Dreams game specifically.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

It's a.

[Justin McElroy]

It's a very Quantic Dreams sort of moment. Thank you, Russ. But as the montage continues, the button sequence that you have to do to perform the cut gets easier. So, like, you are physically getting better at the button presses and your character is getting better, but it is like, it's using mechanics to tell a story in a really, really smart way. But in that case, the whole game is sort of.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The initial combo is awkward. So using your hand in the back.

[Justin McElroy]

It feels uncomfortable in a weird way.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That just feels uncomfortable and feeling like a big thing in this game. The same thing with the use of the touchpad, where it really wants you to. To feel tactile.

[Justin McElroy]

The game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

When you were writing the kana or kanji or whatever.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think Atsu is my favorite character of a game this year. I think the way that the world sort of reacts to her as this instrument of vengeance is really interesting. While also she is so at times outmatched by the people she's hunting. She is not this, like. Everyone thinks of her as this invincible spirit of vengeance incarnate, and yet she gets her ass, like, kicked a lot. Like, there is a human vulnerability.

[Justin McElroy]

She reminds me of the bride a little bit to Kill Bill. It's like her superpower is like the relentless, the sisu. Her unwillingness to die, I feel like, is her superpower.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's funny because we'll talk about him more later, but I got more of an Indiana Jones thing where it's like, you are plucky and you are gonna keep fucking fighting, but you are not invincible. And I do really, really enjoy that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I mean, similar to the Kill Bill thing, they did the work. And Ghost of Tsushima took inspiration from Japanese action cinema, and it had, like, curacao mode in that one, and it has it here again, too. But I think this story of revenge, it really feels like they went back and watched all of the great films from the 50s through the 80s. They. They get that the appeal is not, just, as you said, hoops, that this is a, you know, basically a superhero. But these characters are usually just normal people who have to, by the grit of their fingernails, make this work to get their revenge. And I think it gets that. I also just want to go back to one other thing you said hoops about it, knowing that it had to distinguish itself for better or worse, depending on what you want from this sort of game. But we've played these open world games so much that we are refining, refining, refining, refining the gem until we get the tightest shine. And that is what this game is. There is a bit of diminishing returns for open world games, but holy moly, have they really refined every little detail down to simple things like when you need to kind of travel back in time to learn stories, you hold down the touchpad and you just zip right to it. It doesn't have a loading thing that creates this barrier to make it instantly less enjoyable. Every little detail is there and it's.

[Griffin McElroy]

Almost all optional too. That stuff. You are investing in this character with your time and you will want to do it, which is.

[Justin McElroy]

Sorry, Death Stranding 2. Could we speak to that too so we can compare these two?

[Ralph Freshik]

Sure. Death Stranding 2 sequel to Death Stranding I'm not going to fucking try to summarize the storyline. I think the gist you can get from it is this is a very new. Well, Death Stranding 1 was a very new approach to an open world game where you are sort of crafting the open world in such a way that it makes it easier to traverse. And in turn, as you're connecting new areas of the map, you'll see other players creations within your world. Guest Training two basically smooths out a lot of the very rough edges that the first game kind of leaned on. The first game would frequently be awkward and overwhelming and didn't make a lot of sense. And player hostile. And I think this game goes through those periods, but really only very early on.

[Justin McElroy]

And then when you said, sorry, Russ, when you said player hostile, I was reminded of how much time you spent playing the first Death Stranding.

[Ralph Freshik]

Oh, I actually really liked it. But you.

[Justin McElroy]

I know, I know, but it's like there's something deep in the psyche. It's like it was really mean to me, but I still liked it. But it was like it was super hostile. Definitely. But I could have been it in.

[Ralph Freshik]

Hindsight when I think this game actually led leans on that a lot and even the sequel leans on that a lot specifically. So you'll be in this environment where let's say you're climbing this giant snowy, perilous mountain and you've got basically very few tools and you're trying to lug this giant weight up and you eventually make it to the top of the mountain, you connect the area, and then suddenly you can set up two zip lines from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain. And the thing that you struggled with and, like, suffered through for those 30 minutes now takes 30 seconds. And that fucking loop only gets bigger and more expansive as this game goes along.

[Griffin McElroy]

It is constant in a way that made me finally, like, I hated Death Stranding One. I think that the stuff it throws at you to make your life easier is a hundred times more generous and more enjoyable than Death Stranding 1. So much so that, like, I was running back packages that I found so I could finish up, you know, leveling up this one connection so that I could get whatever this upgrade to my Tri Cruiser is. And it gives you that stuff so fast. I kept playing it. I had reached. I didn't finish it because for both of these games, I simply don't play my PS5 that much. If these were on Steam Deck or Steam, I would be cranking through for sure. But I got to the monorail system that you can unlock in the game, and that felt like, oh, okay. They really want you to enjoy playing this game, and that's great because I really enjoy the insane story stuff that it does at every turn.

[Justin McElroy]

It feels like a lot of games say this, But Death Stranding 2 really does feel like you can play it how you want to play it. It is like, the first game was like, we have a very specific kind of idea for how this should be. And what's interesting for me About Death Stranding 2 is by giving you more weapons and more. And, like, making it a little. Some of these decisions a little bit easier and less punishing.

[Ralph Freshik]

You can actually shoot people without them exploding, which was a thing, and you.

[Justin McElroy]

Can shoot without them exploding, which is such a treat. They do that. And then I found myself deciding to do things in an annoying way because it seemed fun, right? I found, like, I know I don't. I know I could get, like, the tricruiser and, like, just run over there, but it looks like it would be. I think it would be kind of fun to take two. Two ropes with me and, like, a ladder and just fucking go do it myself. And the. The sensation of setting out with, like, looking at a map and saying, like, I got two big gaps I got to think about and packing that stuff. There's nothing in video games like it. Like, nothing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

The sense of preparation and setting out on an adventure and, like, really knowing the things that you have in your bag. And like having a tangible sense of what that is and not being constantly.

[Griffin McElroy]

Not being constantly fucking interrupted by invisible monsters that will kill you and ruin your.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes, exactly right. You can go have your.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's so different.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

All that, all that shit I chalked up to. Oh, that's just Kojima's like vision in the first game. I was like, well, I don't like that. That vision sucks. I don't like it very much. The extent to which that stuff has been trimmed back here is I think shows fucking tremendous growth from Hideo Kojima.

[Ralph Freshik]

Or he was working on another game and someone else came in was like.

[Griffin McElroy]

We can fix that shit quick, quick.

[Justin McElroy]

Either he let someone else work on it or he experienced his own Hallmark Christmas movie where he finally found love in his heart. You know, like Hideo, it doesn't have to be like this. You know what I mean? Like you can be kind, like you can still find joy. You know what I mean? You were the guy who let people fight with the sun.

[Ralph Freshik]

Remember?

[Justin McElroy]

Remember Bokta, please.

[Griffin McElroy]

I feel like for me it's death stranding too. Just because it's this.

[Ralph Freshik]

It is weird. It is for me as well. I think Goziah, I have a lot.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

More to say about it, but I'll save it for the next round.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I think this is just part one.

[Justin McElroy]

Go see it. Sick though. Like, if you like it, you'll love it. That's what I say about go see it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And it'll grow on you the more you play it. It is a good game, just us to have in the background throughout all of next year.

[Justin McElroy]

It's also one that I find myself returning to this and death stranding. Actually I will like return to for a few hours and just like experience the world again because it's killer.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Next we are reimagining the platformer with baby steps, the craziest matchup plan and Donkey Kong Bonanza.

[Ralph Freshik]

No, Justin, you say it's the craziest matchup but both characters are barefoot so it is worth considering.

[Justin McElroy]

That's a great point, man.

[Ralph Freshik]

Maybe that's.

[Justin McElroy]

You think Bennett Foddy was like, I just hope my game is better than Donkey Kong Bonananza. That's my main competition is that as long as it's a better video, it's a more successful video game than that.

[Ralph Freshik]

I'll do baby steps if you want.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, please.

[Ralph Freshik]

Baby steps. You play as a arrested development man who is living in his parents basement and gets teleported to a magical other land where all he has is his onesie that he is wearing and his feet. And you control the feet individually. You control each leg individually as you move through this world, which is an open world environment that is filled with perilous climbs that you must take using this very interesting mechanic. The reason for me that it stands out, it is one of easily one of my favorite games of the year is the intentionality that you're taking in every single thing you do is incredibly satisfying to me. I think Death Stranding does this with tools and with like gear upgrades and like transforming the map itself and baby steps. Your every little 1/2 or 5 second loop is you making a choice of where you're going to put each footstep and making a choice of am I going to go fast or slow, Am I going to take this risky path versus not. And I found it endlessly compelling and super genuinely fun in ways that I've never found a Bennett Foddy game fun before. I find them torturous generally and this was just incredibly satisfying to me.

[Griffin McElroy]

It crystallizes a moment from getting over it in a way that is able to distribute much more frequently, which is like in getting over it, which was the game where you remain in a cauldron using a hammer to push yourself along. You would like be going along and then you would hit something where it's like, there's no fucking way. They want me to like plant my hammer on that balloon and do a single jump. This game will throw stuff at you where you'll be walking around a desert area for a while and then see an empty swimming pool and you think like, if I go in there, I am not going to be able to get out. So I really want to know what the fuck the game's going to. And sure enough, if you go in that swimming pool, it rewards it with some truly hysterical interactions with the characters of the world. I kept playing this game because Russ was such a staunch supporter of it. And I really wanted to see what the emotional kind of payload of the game was because it seemed so silly. And I did get to a point that kind of took my breath away a little bit. I have not finished the game, but the way it kind of explores, I don't know, self loathing and isolation and like how loneliness makes you so self reliant to a fault is like, I've never played a game that wanted to really talk about that before and I think it's easy to write it off as like slapstick. There's a lot of talking about how bad you have to Piss. And there's a lot of donkey dicks. Holy shit. The part I reached yesterday was just like, I can't believe how many dicks my computer is rendering on my screen at one point. But, I mean, it punches above its weight class, I think constantly and really was very, very surprising. I think I'm gonna keep playing it and finish it, which I've never done with a foddy game before, either.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It and Death Stranding, on top of both being games about walking, are games about accepting help. And Death Stranding, I think, is very much like the New Deal, like, how do we all work together collectively? It results in these kind of messy interlinking highways that maybe don't look great, but they, you know, make it so much easier to get around. Baby Steps is bonkers because it is a game about our unwillingness to accept help routinely. It is telling you there is an easier path, and yet you can challenge yourself to the point that there is a option at the end of stairs versus the hardest imaginable path towards the end. And so many people online are like, bragging about taking the harder path, which is its own weird meta commentary of, you know, a performance of toughness, of strength. And I think what's good about the game is it doesn't say that's inherently bad. It is routinely actually giving you options intentionally to make it harder. Because it's saying, well, maybe what you take from it is that it's fun. Maybe you do want to step into the swimming pool. Maybe you do want to dive off the diving board, knowing that it's going to throw you to the bottom of the mountain. But it is also kind of constantly reminding you, hey, maybe you should take this energy outside. Maybe you should turn the game off for a while if you like the challenge in the game. Maybe take a little bit of that out into the real world.

[Justin McElroy]

But, like, it is, man. I can't think of another. Too many other video games where I legitimately can say that they are open to interpretation. And I don't mean that like, in a narrative sense, right? Like, I think that there are multiple valid reads on baby steps, right? Like, I hated playing baby steps. Like when I by myself, when I would get through a section and be making really good progress, and I take one misstep and I'd hit a mudslide and I'd slide all the way down a hill and be back where I started 20 minutes ago. It's like, personally, that made me feel like shit. And I was like, fuck this, dude. I'm turning it off. That's like a valid. I feel like that's actually. You know what I'm saying, Like that's a valid baby steps experience, which I feel like pretty confident saying because I also played with my brothers and had like a really fun time and we played for a long time and I feel like we had a very valid experience with baby steps. Right. I cannot think of it because at first it kind of pissed me off. Cause I was like, you know, if you don't want me to be playing video games so much, then why are you making a video game? But that is. Does feel like the point. And that's like a little bit. That's fucking cool, man. I like that a lot. That's something else. That's pretty brave, I think, to put something out there like that that really is like a lot of games aren't art. And I think baby steps actually might be so bold.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I also love how it kind of fits into Bennett Foddy's sort of canon because it is commenting a lot on Bennett Foddy games because all of that is so intrinsic to it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I don't mean to keep the ball rolling, but we've been talking a lot about Donkey Dongs. Can we talk about Dong?

[Justin McElroy]

What about Hans?

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, kudos also to Nintendo for making a game that is pretty much a new kind of platformer. I don't know that I've ever played one where you can smash the whole fucking world if that is what you choose. I will start by saying that I played it wrong at first. It has a co op mode that is intoxicating to play with the child where you can just become a bazooka. A little girl bazooka that can sing at mountain faces and crumble them before her will. I played a lot of the game like that and had a great time and also did not get why people were so fucking wild about it.

[Justin McElroy]

You accidentally turn on no clip as you started playing. You're like, yeah, exactly. What's the hubbub?

[Griffin McElroy]

But going back and playing it a little bit more. Since we sort of did our setup episode for this, I have really, really been enjoying my time with it because it is fun to hunt for treasure as a gorilla who can go wherever the fuck he pleases. And I think that it does such an. It invents a new way of the collectible hunt that is so like core to the the open world platformer genre.

[Justin McElroy]

Feeling that it's only Nintendo that I only recall from Nintendo games usually. But there's a sense when you start playing this where it. At least that I had. Where it's like, whoa, you're gonna let me do this? The whole game. Like, it. Like, it seemed that. Like, whoa, that doesn't seem fair. Like, whoa, you mean I can smash everything? Like, I genuinely felt that thrill of like, something new. Like a new way of interacting with it that made me feel like, this doesn't seem right. I'm normally not allowed to do all this stuff. We're gonna cut me off. And the fact they didn't was like, really exciting. I found that really energizing.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. Occasionally. That doesn't always pay off. Like echoes of wisdom. That Zelda game where you play a Zelda was like. It was. It didn't quite work. But in this case it felt like they came up with an idea and they just executed on a really great way. I. I always think about DK Bonanza when I'm looking for, like, how do I kill the next 20 minutes if I want to? And I have my Switch right there. I'd rather be playing DK Bonanza. It is like the Go to Fuck around game on that platform.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

And I wish there were more of them.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm really encouraged by what it means.

[Griffin McElroy]

For the rest of Switch 2 games.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

For the rest of Switch 2 because it's also. It's an ugly game at times in a way that Nintendo games aren't. And by that I mean when you are inside of a tunnel that you've created and. And it's doing this weird clipping effect where you can see. You can't see. It doesn't have that. That need to be absolutely perfect that I expect from most Nintendo games for the better. It has privileged the fun above all else without the game actually breaking. And it really wants you to be able to read the situation. I think that is really cool. And I'm curious where Nintendo goes from here because it seems like they know that that is the world that we live in now. It feels like it's growing up on Roblox. Broken is almost expected or assumed. Yeah.

[Ralph Freshik]

I think even with Tears of the Kingdom, like, that feels like their design is pushing in that direction. More and more of player freedom versus like a lockdown experience.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm here for it, man.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. That's 100%.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's, let's. Let's vote.

[Ralph Freshik]

Well, for me it's baby steps. I really like DK Bonanza a lot. But baby steps will stick with me for quite a while.

[Griffin McElroy]

I would agree with that. Actually. I like DK Bonanza also, I just, I can't stop thinking about baby Steps. And I did have a very unique experience playing it with Justin and Travis sharing the controls like that was. It became a party game at that point, which is what it's not supposed to be. But I enjoyed my time with it solo, going back and seeing some of the story stuff as well.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I mean, I'm Baby steps.

[Justin McElroy]

I will say fuck baby steps, which I believe is a better game than Donkey Kong Bonanza. That is my personal feeling of Baby Steps. I think it is better. I think it is a fucking truly, truly cool thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yep.

[Justin McElroy]

That made me want to die.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's take a break.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Justin McElroy]

This time of year you got a lot of money going out. You got presents, you have all these different things you got to consider with your money. There's not just the gifts, there's like entertaining all this other stuff. You need a little help managing your money. Might I be so bold as to suggest Rocket Money? Rocket Money is a service that is going to help you get a handle on your finances in a lot of different ways. To give you an example, one of the most popular ones, you can ask Rocket Money to check out your financial history, look at some of your transactions, look for subscriptions that you may have forgotten about and help you find and cancel those unwanted subscriptions and help you lower your back bills and help you save more. Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 billion, including 880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features. And that's wild. Rocket Money has saved me money. It saved a lot of folks. We work with money and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket money. Go to Rocketmoney.combesties today. That's Rocketmoney.combesties Rocketmoney.combesties.

[Griffin McElroy]

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[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Next up, we have stress versus no stress. We have Silksong versus Wander Stop. I think that we should just say some nice things about Wander Stop because we all know where it's going, you big shots. I get it, I get it, I get it.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think that's probably true. I really want to hang a lantern on Wonder Stop though. It is a cozy game that sort of shakes a lot of the expectations you have about cozy games. You talk about like video games in conversation with how you feel while you're playing video games. Wonderstop does that better than Baby Steps or any other game that has come out in my recent memory. You play as a warrior who has had to retire after a streak of losses has sort of got in her head. You go seeking the training of this legendary fighter and instead get lost and tired in the woods. You cannot escape from these woods and keep finding yourself waking up in front of a tea shop. And so with the kindly owner of the tea shop, you run this business growing plants that you then turn into delicious teas for the eccentric customers that come by. What it does special is it constantly resets and you are not making progress. You're not unlocking a stronger, you know, fire to boil water with. You are not becoming better at planting things.

[Justin McElroy]

You're not even really building a lot of like long term relationships.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like no, except with the tea shop owner. And you will get sort of returning customers after these like constant reset points. But what it is, but it's not.

[Justin McElroy]

Like a Persona kind of thing where that's another. It's not treated like an unlockable or something that you like. You get it or you don't.

[Griffin McElroy]

There is no mechanical incentive like whatsoever, full stop. There is no leveling. There is no unlocks. That is changing fundamentally your core interactions with the game. In doing that, it is trying to tell a story about rest and it is trying to tell a story about self care through kind of like meditative rest and leisure. And it couldn't tell that story while also offering you special level ups and things other than you help someone out and she runs a little shop and every time you help her out. She's like, yeah, take something. And the things you take are like art you can hang on the wall that has absolutely no implications beyond just that.

[Justin McElroy]

It is.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, goddamn. It really goes hard in the last few chapters of the game in how it kind of, like, talks about work and how people think about achievement and being their best and how hard you are on yourself when you are kind of like, thinking about your life solely that way. There is a moment in this game that is so beautiful and devastating and really brought me to tears, which I. I don't know. I think the game does a pretty good job of setting you up for that kind of emotional resonance. And then, gosh, it really, really. It really sticks the landing. And I think it does it in a way that a lot of people would find extremely relatable. And so for that moment and that scene alone, like, that is why it can totally hang in the goatee consideration. But it is also, like, there are no hooks, right? There's no progression hooks. It sort of eschews this entire piece of the puzzle of what I think about as, like, making a game that I really, really like because it is telling a story about enjoyment for enjoyment's sake, rest for rest's sake. And I think that's really, really unique. But it also, like, I don't know, it's up against Hollow Knight Silksong, which is like the opposite game, where you are fighting and dying and getting stronger and losing progress. And it hurts in a way that is different.

[Justin McElroy]

Also.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, the soundtrack is my, like, go to working music now, which is maybe ironic. It's a really, really great game that you can get through in a few hours and get the story. And I think everyone should do that.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I really liked a lot of what Wonder Stop was going for. I think that. And I think I felt like engaging with it was very pleasant. Aesthetically, I will say that I didn't necessarily agree with everything that the game is saying. It's definitely a game that has more of a perspective. It has more of a perspective than Baby steps. You know what I mean? In a sense that, like, I definitely feel like Wanna Stop is coming at you with an opinion. And I feel like, yeah, Baby Steps is more of, like, the start of a conversation. I don't agree with a lot of what, like, Wanderstop is saying in terms of. I'll just say this. It felt preachy a lot of the time. You know, it felt like lots of people relax in different ways. Right. And I feel like people relax with lots of different kinds of video games. Right. And it just seemed weird. It seems like a weird contradiction, I think, to like, yes, I am trying to relax right now. You know what I mean? Like, I'm. And I don't necessarily agree with what you are saying about what we owe ourselves and what we owe each other. And so like I'm not really being engaged by the mechanics. And narratively it was kind of like leaving me cold too. Which I think is the danger of having a game that has a message is that if the message doesn't connect, it really. It just kind of left me cold.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think Silksong, we have a lot to get through still and not a ton of I. I think Silksong is better. I think Silksong is amazing.

[Ralph Freshik]

Does anyone object to Silksong? Moving on?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No. I really enjoyed Wander Stop. But I think you can go back and listen to our episode if you want to hear more about that game.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yep, cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

Silksong is fucking great.

[Ralph Freshik]

We will get into it in part two for sure.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, next up we have the stories. Part two, Blippo plus versus Citizen Sleeper 2.

[Griffin McElroy]

Justin, what the fuck is Blippo Plus?

[Justin McElroy]

Shit, man. Blippo plus isn't a video game. Why is it on this list even.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

More than just test the boundaries.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's not a video game. It's on Steam. You know what I mean? But it's like, okay, Blippo started on Playdate, which is a crank powered. Not powered. That'd be sick, wouldn't it?

[Griffin McElroy]

That's an. We don't know that. When you're cranking it. It's not getting.

[Justin McElroy]

It's a crank powered. No, it's a little portable video game system that has a crank where you interact with it. There's still some references. If you see references to cranks in Blippo plus, it's because Blippo plus is an adaptation of Blippo original that is a full color. I say high definition, but that's probably miss. Gives you the wrong idea. It looks like watching cable or more accurately like broadcast TV in the 80s, if it was from space, like the late 80s, mid 90s era of that beginning stages of cable TV started that no one listening to this remembers, but it feels like your own space TV station that is showing these brief 15, 30, like sometimes minute long TV shows that you see in like a channel guide. And these TV shows are all, I would say, abstract in nature. You. You can kind of understand what's happening. For example, there's like a. An American Bandstand, kind of like dance TV show for teens where they play, like, the latest music. It's the same song every time. The song's nonsensical, and the dancing is unlike anything that you can relate to as, like, from our world. But the entire thing is like, that. It's this, like, bizarre abstract art project. Like the. There's a lot of love and energy and time and attention being poured into each of the little episodes that you're combing through. And the fact that you could miss it at different times, it makes it feel very alive. My kids had a really good time just kind of flipping through it and, like, watching some of the different channels. It's really kind of like something you let wash over you. But as an experience, it's really, really unmatched and extremely, extremely cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

It reminds me a lot of, like, Meow Wolf, specifically the Denver location where you are in sort of an alien. You hop on a elevator that lets you out into an alien world. And that is so much. Very quickly, the game becomes a TV station from an alien planet that knows Earth is watching. And that is. That's when the game kind of clicked for me. And when it sort of felt like it was directly talking to me, it became much more sort of absorbing. There's, like, not. I'm trying to think of what interactive elements there are. There's Femto Facts sort of channel where you can go and look at message.

[Ralph Freshik]

Boards and stuff like that.

[Griffin McElroy]

But I really was charmed.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. It shouldn't progress farther in this. Like, it's not a video game. And I really. I don't even mean that as a slight. It is an interactive thing that is not like Wanderstop's a video game because you can get to the beginning and the end of it right like that. Just because there's not challenge. It's still a video game. This is not a video game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I don't know if the creators of Blippo plus would even argue with that. In fact, I don't think they would. I don't think they would. I spoke with.

[Justin McElroy]

It's just. You can't upload it to Logo TV or Oprah tv, so you gotta put it on Steam.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I'll talk Citizen Sleeper 2 real quick. I think it's gonna walk away with it, but it is somewhat similar to the Hades conversation for me because it is doing a lot of the stuff that Citizen Sleeper did really well. It is a game about being a sort of Android replicant in a cold and unfeeling Version of outer space, far flung future, where sort of corporate entities have destroyed the galaxy time and time and time again. And you are sort of a scavenger, as is everyone else of those, those fallen sort of dynasties. And it is a universe that does not give a shit about you, except for the one person who does think that they own you, who is constantly hunting you. And with that pressure, you are going through a variety of space stations and putting together a crew and running odd jobs to buy supplies to keep your ship fueled and keep your belly full so your stress remains low. It is very, very classic pen and paper RPG inspired. Very much Blades in the Dark, I would say is the vibe that it is giving me more than anything. Where you have dice that roll at the beginning of each cycle, which is like a day, and then you apply those to certain activities. You have better chances of success if it's things that you have high stats in. And then as you are going through the new big thing Citizen Sleeper 2 adds is you also have a crew that lives on your ship with you that goes out and does quests like odd jobs that are sort of these very, very self contained loops that once you figure out kind of how to do those, the game is fantastic. It doesn't do an amazing job of kind of like making that particularly evident. I had to restart this game because I kept fucking losing over and over and over again because I just didn't really know how to get through those little quests, how to get through those missions and was failing sort of a lot. And so I do think it struggles in the same way Citizen Sleeper 1 did with kind of like getting across how you're supposed to really be playing it somewhat optimally.

[Ralph Freshik]

And there are also chunks of Citizen Sleeper 2 and 1 for that matter where you're like supposed to lose. Like it's basically an auto fail.

[Justin McElroy]

It's tonally, I think appropriate. You are supposed to be like beaten down. But I ha. But that feels bad, you know what I mean? It's like it doesn't feel good.

[Ralph Freshik]

I want to win a trick once in a game and be okay. But if it keeps happening, it can be a lot.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I think Citizen Sleeper 2 is better tuned for that. Citizen Sleeper 1, you get so strong by the end of it that like everything is easy. And Citizen Sleeper 2 never really gets to that point. I have not finished it, I've made it quite far into it. But the tone and vibe of this game is unparalleled. It's fucking incredible sci fi storytelling, incredible world building Very pulpy, noir inspired, which I think gives them a little bit of flexibility in not having the characters be these very fleshed out, you know, entities going through these huge kind of like, emotional changes throughout the thing. They are very taciturn, kind of beleaguered space survivors like yourself. But, like, I don't know, that's part, again, of the. Of this, of this story and the tone that they are trying to capture. And I think they capture it really, really well while also having some. Some more engaging, you know, interactivity than. Than the first game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I love both these games as companion pieces, and I think if you are playing one, you'd be well off to play the other. Almost like right alongside it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Second screen activity.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Blippo is a game about how you protect and maintain a utopia. And Citizen Sleeper is a game about how you make space for yourself in a dystopia. Citizen Sleeper is a game all about stress. It is a game of literal stacking, ticking clocks, and there is a right way to play it. Blippo plus is a game that's the exact opposite. You can wander around and you will do no wrong, and there is no harm.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's vote.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Can I just say Citizen Sleeper. I wish they would stop doing the dice thing. I think it's like one level of abstraction too much, and it makes it harder for me to understand the many, many, many, many, many mechanics. I don't know why the dice has to be part of it. I find it. I find that to be just the.

[Griffin McElroy]

Random result sort of element of it, or like five actions per day and.

[Justin McElroy]

The adding of, like, dice. I understand that the die are, like, metaphorical, but once they start layering on, like, glitches and stuff like that, I just don't find screwing with the dice that satisfying. It just feels like another way. Like it feels like a complication more than a fun mechanic.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You'd almost prefer a visual novel.

[Justin McElroy]

Something where it's like, yes. I don't understand why I have to under. It's like another. I don't know, it's dice. Dice in the game. You know what I mean? Give me a health bar, a sword. You know, there's no dice.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, right. So let's vote. Fresh.

[Ralph Freshik]

Mine's probably Blippo, but that's again, just a taste thing. I just like playing Blippo more. But I also acknowledge it's not really.

[Griffin McElroy]

A game for me. It's Citizen Sleeper too. I liked it quite a lot.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm probably Blippo on this one.

[Griffin McElroy]

Blippo.

[Ralph Freshik]

Wow.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Blippo changed your mind? You decided it's valid, it can keep going.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's now it's on the list. You fell for the classic. My classic maneuver. I thought I made it look like I was supposed to lose, but in fact I won. It's a Citizen Sleeper too. I really like Citizen Sleeper 2 and I think if you like the first one, you're out. I really like that one. But Blippo plus is. I mean it's better than Blippo in basically every way.

[Griffin McElroy]

So that's a huge improvement. More than one bit. So that's like great for it.

[Justin McElroy]

Huge, man. The colors, Duke.

[Griffin McElroy]

The colors. The colors are huge. What's next?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Next up we have a game from this year versus a game from last year we have avowed versus Indiana Jones.

[Justin McElroy]

Shit, man. Shit, dude.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah, we did, we did actually bring back something from December of last year because it came out.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Can happen. Blueprints can come back next year.

[Ralph Freshik]

That's right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Okay.

[Ralph Freshik]

Indiana Jones Jones. If you want what you want to do. Indiana Jones plant.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I. Yeah, Indiana Jones. Let's. Indiana Jones. People who are famous for making first person shooters said, you know what, the thing that we're best at the S and the FPS, the shooters, we're going to cut that part out. We're going to make a first person game that's way more adventure. You're going to do some puzzle solving. You're going to have Troy Baker doing one of the single greatest impressions of a still living actor ever accomplished. And you're going to beat the living snot out of people with your fist as you kind of go through a, I don't know, like a Indiana Jones film. The puzzles aren't especially difficult. The combat isn't especially difficult. Once you accept that the stealth is not really going to punish you. It's not super difficult. And suddenly you're on a ride. You're on a great. You're on the theme park ride Van Indiana Jones that you've always wanted because it doesn't give you back pain because the car moves too hard. I have gone back to this game more recently and let me tell you, it is really, it's a hell of an achievement. It looks so beautiful and we don't tend to be the people who privilege graphics, but let's do it for just a minute. This game looks unlike pretty much anything else out there. It is, right?

[Justin McElroy]

It creeps you out when you go into caves. It's creepy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

It's like you go and you're like, oh, I don't like this. It's like I'm here for 10 seconds. It's yucky.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Fryshtik has constantly asked me, why does ray tracing matter? Is this really worth it? And that is right. Most of the time. Most games I don't know why I need ray tracing. You know where I need it in a game like this? Where there is not a lot of human made light, there's not electric light. In a lot of the situations you're having a natural light in, you need God rays.

[Griffin McElroy]

In the Vatican City you must have God rays. You must.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Having light pour through the fabric into the windows of a Vatican office looks stunning. Being in the cave and having the light bounce from the entrance looks incredible. Having fire flicker underground and in these tombs it looks absolutely spectacular.

[Ralph Freshik]

Also great melee combat which is such a rarity. You really do not.

[Griffin McElroy]

I do like how extremely heavy and weighty and butcher bay like all of that stuff feels.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, let's talk about a Valve.

[Griffin McElroy]

I feel like that might be you Juice.

[Justin McElroy]

I. Dude, I have made my contempt for a Val known.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh really?

[Justin McElroy]

I cannot. I've tried to play a Valdez 10 times. It is the RPG that will not stick in my brain. I don't know why it's on this list.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My case for a valley plant.

[Ralph Freshik]

You really.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I really enjoyed this game and I think that there are two games that basically came out this year about COVID and I think that is Expedition 33 and avowed. And in terms of hitting that anxiety, Avowed worked a lot better for me personally. It is a game where you are exploring this fantastic land that is more, I don't know, influenced by marine biology than you would expect from many fantasy settings. And you are dealing with the fact that there is some sort of thing spreading across civilization and people are deciding whether or not to quarantine. To a degree, what I like about this game is not just that as a heavy handed story about COVID but the individual stories, the one off moments, the side quest I found really, really rich and really engaging and felt really personal. Like I could imagine someone deciding to write the story about you going and finding the birth control from the warehouse that's on a seaside port and you're fighting to find out why the people in this, these group of like courtesans want to capture that from the government. That's all really cool. And then there's the density of it, which I found great. There are so many open world games where you spend a lot of time going from point A to point B and that can be rewarding. It's, you know, a Zen sort of thing. This game is not that every few steps you are discovering something new. It feels like they took a traditional Bethesda game and really smushed it down and made it compact while still feeling like a livable space, which I think is an accomplishment. And then the very last detail I'll add is I personally felt like the combat was quite solid. Whether you ended up going with like the various guns that they have or the magic, which I think is some of the coolest first person magic that I've felt in a game where you're casting these really, really bold spells. I thought it all just. It worked. If there is a hitch against this game, it's that I don't know if for any of us it really ever came together. All these solid pieces kind of are they all. They never quite congeal in the way that I would hope.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I just needed a character to really hook me and I just kind of didn't get that with the story sort of at all. I enjoyed the combat.

[Justin McElroy]

I agree.

[Griffin McElroy]

The magic is fucking cool. The spells you unlock very quickly are not just like fireball or bigger fireball. It's like.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, they really change the way you.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. And that stuff is really neat. I think the world of Pillars of Eternity, which is the series that this is kind of like building off of, is super duper unique in how, like you said, how kind of weirdly nautical a lot of the stuff in the world is. It just. It just didn't. It just didn't come together for me. It didn't click for me.

[Ralph Freshik]

But yeah, I think it's a stronger game than the other. Obsidian put out three games this year. Grounded 2 and this, and Outer Worlds 2. I think this is the strongest of the three, but I still think that there are elements that. I think the individual side quest stuff works really well for me. But as we've said, the cohesiveness of the whole thing feels a little bit hit or miss.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. It just doesn't quite quite come together.

[Griffin McElroy]

I would say Indy for me.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah. I would also vote for Indy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's fun. We can talk more about Indy in the next.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm mostly just excited for this last conversation we have for this.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Oh, man, this one's tough.

[Griffin McElroy]

I.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay. The first and last surprises of 2025. The first surprise from January, the root trees are dead. And the last surprise, Sectori, from just this month. Basically end of November.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'll do root trees, if that's okay. The Root Trees are Dead is a new age investigative journalism game. You are tasked with.

[Justin McElroy]

Not crystals and stuff. What, like crystals and stuff?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes, there's sound baths that you'll take. No, you are sort of a detective in an office with a computer. And that computer could take you to a fictional version of the Internet that you are going to have to use to learn all about the root tree family and its long history. They are candy magnates. And when the game begins, there's been an airline crash that has wiped out the kind of like last living core members of the root tree family. And so it is your job to put together the genealogy of the root trees by searching terms in this fake Internet sort of her story style. You are looking for certain keywords. You are going to different. You know, you might learn the name of a periodical, right? So you'll search one member of the family and be like, in this interview with Business Times, they said, and you're like, oh, okay, so I'll go to this periodical search and search Business Times. And I'll be like, yeah, that's a magazine now. That is now unlocked. That has been added to your kind of like list of search engines for all this stuff. It does that a lot. And you will have to use all of that stuff to sort of put together the puzzle. Does a very clever Obra Dinn thing where it only locks in after you've like gotten a certain number of entries correct. So you can't just kind of like guess your way through, try and figure out who, you know, who goes where on this big sprawling family tree. And then once you sort of solve all of it, it throws this whole second quest at you that is way, way, way harder than the original, where you are like more going through the company's history rather than just the families and trying to figure out who all of these illegitimate fathers are, which is fucking real hard because they've tried to cover their tracks. Just really impressive how much they put into the fake search engines of this game. And it's so satisfying to unfold another piece of that to like, then realize, like, oh, shit, I can go back and search all these other terms that I kind of ran into a dead end on. Now that I know that I have this other, like, you know, newspaper that I can look through.

[Ralph Freshik]

This is the game when over the last couple months people have asked me what game I should check out, especially people that don't play games very often. This is the game I recommend. It runs on a shitty Mac or whatever computer you have pretty much yeah. And it's immediately grokable by people that don't understand video games because you're just searching stuff. I mean, everyone knows how to Google and effectively you're googling within the systems. I was just blown away by this. A little overwhelmed. I have been using more of the hint system, which I think has helped, but there is a certain mind, like a project management mind that I think would find this incredibly sticky and awesome.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And a journalist mind.

[Griffin McElroy]

This is like you just came to this, right?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Holy smokes. If I ever teach my journalism course again, this would be the day one thing that I would ask everybody to play. Because it's not the end of journalism, but it is the beginning of. Of researching a story, which is you have a suspicion and you just start searching, you just start pulling threads and those threads lead to more threads and you keep pulling and pulling and pulling. The way to get a bigger picture is to just find the tiniest little detail of information that you didn't know and then to dig deep on that and then to find the new tiny detail and then dig deep on that. And the way the onion of this game is so. It's so many layers deep. I really, really, really was smitten by the game. And the writing itself is great. Yeah. The story is really compelling. And great music, a chill, jazzy soundtrack.

[Ralph Freshik]

That I actually think is free on Steam if you just download that. Really very, very, very fucking good.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sectori is Geometry wars, but new and with more shit and also a campaign mode. And I don't know how hard we have to go on Sectori since it is so fresh and so new. But it's. It has been so fun getting caught up in a score chase game in 2025, which I don't know, I have gotten quite as like hooked on since Geometry Wars 2. Probably on Xbox Live Arcade. We don't need to get so much into the minutiae, but I think it's fucking amazing.

[Justin McElroy]

We'll have plenty of time to discuss Sectore.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Well, yeah, Sectoria just a little bit more is a game about discovering how to play it. And in the same way that Fresh is always like, don't look at the guides. The guides will ruin the experience. He is right, specifically in this case that I took a lot of enjoyment of discovering how its bonuses work, how the systems work, how there are better ways to play it, how there are optimal ways to play the game, and that there are many. There are kind of different strategies that you can take to get through this Geometry wars type game. I Also, just think, we've used the word generous in the past. This is a generous game. The sheer number of modes in this game that could be standalone games, that could have been dlc, that could have been sequels, is ridiculous. You could just play any one of these modes and you would be fully entertained. I spoke with the creator of the game last week and was surprised to learn that most of those modes were produced in, like, the final few weeks of the game's development because they feel so fleshed out. But, yeah, wow, what a video game.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'll never uninstall this from my Rog Isla X. I will keep it on there forever and keep coming back to it to play because it's. It tickles the brain in a way that is truly, truly satisfying.

[Ralph Freshik]

Justin, you're ranked 19 in the world. How do you feel about it?

[Justin McElroy]

Used to be. Used to be me and my big mouth told all the listeners about it. Now I'm not anymore. I don't know. It probably was not my. Our individual power. I don't know, man. It's great. And you know what? There's like, six different modes, and they all function in different ways.

[Griffin McElroy]

Seven if you count the campaign.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a good point.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And I think everyone is, like, super interesting and engaging in a world where, man, I just feel like it's tough for a game like this to get Oxygen anymore in, like, an era that I'm. I would describe as post social media. I feel like it's tough for a game like this to kind of, like.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Get.

[Justin McElroy]

Get kind of ahead of steam, but I think it's fucking excellent.

[Ralph Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's vote.

[Ralph Freshik]

Oof.

[Justin McElroy]

Sec.

[Griffin McElroy]

I like. I like root trees a lot. I think Sectori is my favorite.

[Justin McElroy]

I think root trees is fantastic. I played a third of it, and I wish to gosh, I could go back and finish it, but I would have no idea how I'd begin approaching that at this point. It really. It was neat, but I just. It wasn't quite the same as Sectory.

[Ralph Freshik]

I'm so split that I honestly, like, don't care.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm kind of on the same. Like, I like. Yeah, I. I think it's. Sectory wins by the fact that we have.

[Ralph Freshik]

I love them both so much that I do not care which one advances because they're both so great. So you guys go for it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sector, then let's push it up.

[Justin McElroy]

Congratulations, Sectori.

[Griffin McElroy]

All right, what's our top eight? Chris, can you run us down the list that we'll consider next week.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. Our top eight are Expedition 33, Absolum, Death Stranding 2, Baby Steps, Silksong, Blippo, plus Indiana Jones sector.

[Ralph Freshik]

I fucking love this list. I'm so happy.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, me too.

[Ralph Freshik]

This is good.

[Justin McElroy]

These are a lot of good video games, guys. Lot of good video games. This is gonna do it for us for the Besties. We are gonna be with you next week to settle this once and for all. That's gonna do it for us, though, for this episode of the Besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's Sam. Besties?