The Besties Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 2

Summary

The Besties: Best Game Bracket 2025 Edition, Part 2

Podcast Date: December 26, 2025
Hosts: Justin McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick

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Episode Overview

In this lively and debate-packed episode, Earth’s “best friends” continue their annual tradition of whittling down the top games of the year through heated discussions, passionate defenses, and plenty of jokes. In the 2025 Best Game Bracket’s second round, the crew tackles their final eight, fiercely advocates for their personal favorites, and ultimately crowns their collective Game of the Year. As always, the chaos is steered by their group dynamic—equal parts insightful, unserious, and deeply invested in what games meant most in 2025.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Final Eight

[05:50]
Chris recaps the final bracket:

• Clair Obscura
• Expedition 33
• Blippo+
• Silksong
• Absolum
• Death Stranding 2
• Indiana Jones
• Baby Steps
• Sektori

“...We’ll get down to a top four after these and then pull one up from previous contests to make a clean top five.” — Griffin, [06:15]

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2. Expedition 33 vs. Blippo+

Defining “What’s a Video Game?”
[07:00–10:41]

• The group debates the validity of comparing the interactive “TV” experience of Blippo+ with the structured JRPG form of Expedition 33.
• Justin argues games should offer progression, not just “changing channels.”

  “For it to be a game, there has to be a bit more in terms of back and forth between the player and the game beyond just changing channels.” — Justin, [09:31]

• Chris/Griffin note that Blippo+ is unique and self-aware as something “not really a game,” complicating definitions.

Expedition 33 Praised for Emotional Impact
[11:19–17:36]

• Justin and Griffin highlight its storytelling, mechanics tied directly to narrative themes (like grief), and design touches (the use of lamps to secretly mark the “critical path”).

  “It is using game mechanics and the idea of game exploration as a way of communicating something... you are feeling things because of how this game is set up.” — Justin, [11:19]

• Some concerns about spoilers; this game delivers “huge, huge, huge shit with the story” that can’t be discussed openly (Griffin, [14:25]).
• Decision: Expedition 33 moves forward due to its group resonance and achievement, even as some hosts consider Blippo+ compelling but not easily slotted into “video game” discussions.

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3. Hollow Knight: Silksong vs. Absolum

Silksong’s Evolution
[18:04–27:50]

• Russ provides an enthusiastic rundown: a much-anticipated sequel that “felt like a reimagining of the original formula,” stronger narrative, and world-building.
• Praise for the sound and visual design; more digestible story than its predecessor.

  “There is a great story, and when I finished it, I felt like... I knew about 80% of the story. And obviously, there’s edges I didn’t fully grok.” — Russ, [21:33]

• Discussion of punishing early difficulty, which devs later dialed back (“They actually made the game easy... unlocking benches dramatically cheaper... more tools, more whatever.” — Russ, [24:05]).
• Absolum seen as a promising proof-of-concept for the genre but not on Silksong’s ambitious level.
• Decision: Silksong advances.

Memorable Quote:

“It looks really pretty... it wrestled with Catholic faith in a way I did not expect... and that song that one character sings... I love it.” — Chris, [27:02]

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4. Death Stranding 2 vs. Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones: Movie Adaptation Done Right
[29:16–36:56]

• Justin lauds how it translates movie pacing and Indiana’s introspective moments rather than aping action formula.
• Russ/Chris call out the risky opening (the “most famous Indiana Jones scene in history”) and Troy Baker’s astonishingly strong voice work.

But... Video Game-ness Gets in the Way
[35:40–36:56]

• Justin notes gamey collect-athons and outfit changes sometimes break immersion (“...starts to feel like Disney with the lights off...” — Justin, [35:40]).

Death Stranding 2: Kojima’s Masterpiece
[37:11–41:07]

• Across the board, it’s cited as Hideo Kojima’s best and most coherent game, satisfying both as a “strand-type” communal experience and a solo journey.
• Griffin: “I think it’s his best. I genuinely do.” [37:43]
• Russ/Chris discuss the joy and utility of the community-built world and smart onboarding for returning players.

Memorable Moment: The Ramp Launch

“Norman Reedus flies into the air about 600ft and starts doing fucking backflips and on the screen it says, extreme, double extreme, triple extreme every time you’re doing a backflip...” — Russ, [39:03]

• Decision: Death Stranding 2 advances.

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5. Baby Steps vs. Sektori

Score-chasing vs. Quirky Mastery
[42:40–55:27]

• Justin introduces Sectori as a slick, iterative take on dual-stick shooters (akin to Geometry Wars), lauding its huge player agency and “cinematic genius” in moment-to-moment play.
• Chris: “It feels like sitting down with a symphony... you’ve never played violin... just keep up, and you’re like, oh, I’m actually doing pretty okay.” [47:30]
• Baby Steps gets championed as uniquely challenging yet hilarious, with both slow, tactical sections and “absurd failure” moments (hats falling off cliffs).

“The player agency vibes and the feeling of player control... is similar [to Sektori].” — Russ, [49:14]

• Discussion centers on Baby Steps’ polarizing nature and whether its masochism is genuinely fun; it’s “holistic,” bridging challenge and acceptance of help.

Tiebreaker & Decision:
After a deadlocked, passionate debate, the hosts decide Baby Steps will advance (“Baby Steps sucks, but I’m outvoted, unfortunately. That’s the way it goes sometimes.” — Justin, [61:23]).

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6. Selecting the Fifth Finalist

Honorable Mentions and Final Arguments
[62:40–71:56]

• The hosts review Sektori, Dispatch, Root Trees, and Hades 2 as possible fifth finalists, focusing on long-term playability and holistic design.
• Strong debate about Hades 2’s early-access, slow-rollout nature and whether it affected its impact.

  “The only reason that Hades 2 is not higher on this list or already in this top four is because of the way in which it was drip fed out and evolved over time.” — Justin, [64:36]

• Dispatch praised for writing, but dinged for game systems being sometimes vestigial (“The game of the year does not have a turn off interactivity because it’s just getting on my nerves...” — Justin, [66:52]).

Finalists Settled:

• Death Stranding 2
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Expedition 33
• Baby Steps
• Hades 2

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7. Crowning the Game of the Year

[73:50–84:30]

In rare consensus fashion, all hosts simultaneously declare:

“Death Stranding 2.” — [73:53–73:57]

Why Death Stranding 2 Is the Besties GOTY:

• It’s a massive step up from the original, turning Kojima’s notorious narrative haze into something coherent, playful, and rewarding.
• Seamlessly fuses online and single-player experiences (“It engages with the fact that it is online in a way that doesn’t detract from, but rather builds up the single player experience.” — Justin, [76:19])
• Meaningful community, inventive traversal, memorable moments (coffin surfing, pizza delivery, shared infrastructure).
• All hosts express genuine satisfaction and pleasure while playing, agreeing it is “the game they will remember and recommend.”

Memorable Quote:

“It really does feel like one of our last auteurs in games... actually evolving... actually changing and wanting to stay relevant.” — Justin, [74:34]

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The Besties 2025 Top 5 Games (in order)

[83:55–84:30]

1. Death Stranding 2
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
3. Expedition 33
4. Baby Steps
5. Hades 2

“Thank you so much for joining us here today to celebrate the top five besties games... with a bullet, Death Stranding 2.” — Chris, [83:59]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Russ, on Death Stranding 2’s launch:
  “It’s also cogent, which is more than I can say about every fucking Kojima game ever...” [38:29]
• Chris on Baby Steps:
  “I think about this game constantly... the micro and the macro in this game are constantly in conversation with each other in a way I don’t feel very often in video games. It’s so holistic.” [54:05]
• Griffin on Expedition 33:
  “There are moments in this game that I think are going to stick around in the kind of consciousness of the gaming community... it does huge, huge, huge shit with the story.” [14:25]
• Consensus moment (naming GOTY):
  “It’s fucking crazy that the best game of the year is Death Stranding 2.” — Justin, [73:57]

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------|-------------------| | Final bracket introduction | 05:42 – 06:41 | | What is a video game? (Blippo+ debate)| 07:00 – 10:41 | | Expedition 33 in depth | 11:19 – 17:36 | | Hollow Knight: Silksong breakdown | 18:04 – 27:50 | | Indiana Jones vs. Death Stranding 2 | 29:16 – 41:07 | | Sektori detailed take | 42:40 – 55:27 | | Baby Steps’ unique appeal | 49:14 – 55:27 | | Deciding the top 5, picking fifth | 62:40 – 73:19 | | Announcing GOTY, ranking order | 73:50 – 84:30 |

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The Besties' Tone & Chemistry

The episode is quintessentially Besties: full of undercutting jokes, sidelong personal attacks, and plenty of contrarianism—but always rooted in clear affection for each other and genuine expertise. Critical discourse is balanced by absurdist asides (“I wrote a big monorail. It ruled.” — Justin, [85:15]) and memorable running gags about butt cushions and “boosting a juicer,” giving even non-gamers something to enjoy.

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Summary

This year’s Besties bracket show delivered both a robust GOTY consensus and some of the sharpest genre and design debates in the series. Death Stranding 2 was unanimously crowned for its rare balance of design ambition, narrative clarity, and communal play. The final list captures a spectrum of what made 2025’s gaming scene vibrant, with careful consideration for both artistry and fun. The Besties continue their reign—not just as “Earth’s Best Friends” but as some of the sharpest, funniest tastemakers in video gaming.

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Transcript

[A]

I've got. Now I have two cushions, one for my hemorrhoids and one for my lumbar. So what I've done is basically there is the hemorrhoid cushion and then the lumbar cushion sits on top of the hemorrhoid cushion. And basically, guys, what I've done is make another smaller chair. Do you understand? I'm not sitting on the chair's back. I'm not sitting on the chair's bottom. It's another tiny chair. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

What kind of orthopedics are we talking.

[C]

About for the wrists?

[B]

Juice? Cause I know that that's. Walk me through your cockpit, I guess, is I'm wanting to know about.

[A]

I mean, the wrist support is bad and I don't feel like, you know, I've started exploring surgical options, so it doesn't seem the time to mediate my behaviors. You know what I mean? I might as well just let the wrist go.

[B]

The wrists. The wrists are shot.

[A]

The wrists are cooked. Okay, I'm gonna have to get the side.

[B]

But the butt. The butt is still. We can salvage the ass.

[A]

Science can't get in there and give me a robot butt. They'll fix my wrist.

[C]

I'm gonna. Sorry, you said the hemorrhoid thing is beneath the other thing?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

The lumbar would be in the back.

[D]

Right.

[B]

The lumbar is behind the cushion, sits like this.

[A]

And then the lumber cushion is sitting on top of the. I'm not gonna do it in a little chair.

[C]

It's literally a chair. You literally have created the child's booster chair. Yes.

[A]

It's a.

[C]

Thanks.

[A]

Boosting a juicer.

[B]

A juicer chair.

[A]

A juicer chair.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Special button.

[A]

It's quiet. Is going to be the biggest thing since you tried the Jer chair. Come to the merch store for $150.

[B]

Whoa.

[D]

Whoa.

[A]

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

[B]

My name is Griffin McElroy. I don't know the best game of the year, but we're gonna fucking find out.

[C]

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

[D]

My name is Ross Horscheck. I know the best game of the week.

[A]

Welcome to the Besties. This started as a Game of the Year show that went all year long, if you remember that.

[B]

And then it turned into a Game of the Year show that only happened every month. And then it turned into one that only happened at the end of the.

[A]

Year, and it can't be stopped. And it won't be stopped. And we do pick the best game every year. And there is a wiki page that. That lists all the games we've picked except for the one year that we let a robot version of our boss pick. And that that year's kind of inconsequential. And the wiki seems pretty frustrated about that. But other than that, I think.

[D]

I think one year also the giraffe.

[A]

Picked one year off. Might have picked.

[B]

Was there a tie one yet? Man, we got to take this.

[A]

Don't get it. Don't get into it. This is the point though. Chris. Plant, what are we doing today though? Like, like in terms of game. What is happening today, baby?

[C]

Today we're picking the game of the year of 2026. The besties.

[A]

Wait, best.

[D]

Wait, what did you just say?

[C]

Of 2025, baby.

[A]

No, no, no, that's four. Fable 4 is Fable 24.

[B]

You heard it here first.

[D]

You know how people get the date wrong after the year? Plant's getting a jump on it. Yeah, his checks are gonna be way off.

[C]

I'm gonna go sit in the corner of my juicer chair. Okay, y'.

[B]

All.

[C]

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[D]

Chris Plant do you want to go through the Just as a reminder for people from last week what we narrowed down to the final eight.

[C]

Yes, the final eight are Clair Obscura, Expedition 33, Blippo plus Silksong Absolum Death Stranding 2 Indiana Jones Baby Steps and.

[D]

Sick Tori and Indiana Jones for what it's worth was a fan pick. True. Thank you for coming.

[A]

Listen, we do.

[D]

Yeah we do.

[C]

Which happens. This happened last year too. We had a few fan picks I think make it last year. So we're.

[B]

Oh yeah. I think Dispatch probably would have made it much further if it had not been up against Expedition 33 up in the top. I'm glad that one made the cut too. Usually how we do this is we'll get down to a top four after these and then pull one up from the past contests in order to make a clean top five. I don't know if that's how we intend to do it this year.

[D]

I think that's a good idea.

[B]

Okay, cool.

[D]

That sort of helps narrow down the maybe a bad matchup if you want.

[B]

All right, let's get into it.

[C]

Okay, so first up we have Claire Obscura Expedition.

[A]

God, I'm so tired of these two being being head to head in shit.

[B]

I know Jeff. On stage at the tg at the Viggies or you've been waiting for me making a meal out of it.

[A]

Sorry Plant.

[C]

Go ahead. I don't need to say it out loud. Everybody knows this is the showdown. Everybody's been talk. You know how does the French take on Japanese role playing games compared to the Pee Wee Herman esque Klaus Nomi 1980s TV show that may or may not be a video game classic conversation.

[B]

Only one of these has the Quizzard in it. I'm a big Expo 33 fan. You know this. But only one of these does have the quizzer. What was everyone's favorite Blippo pet?

[C]

How Many people listening to the show who have not played Expedition 33 were like, oh, it must be Expedition 33 that's got the quizzer and patrons are always hanging out.

[B]

No, the Quizzard was my favorite program on Blippo. And it was a quiz show where people sort of also role played D and D characters who they were very, very, very particular about. Making sure you got their names and attributes and everything right. As a highlight.

[D]

Highlight.

[A]

Just Zappin for me, man. Every time Just Zappin's on at my house, we gotta watch the whole thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I was fond there was like a Mugwakken group style talk show whose name I don't recall, but I particularly like that one. That was fun.

[C]

I mostly just watched the Zest channel. I kept waiting. I was sure that I was gonna get something. Something's gonna come through that static fuzz.

[A]

I.

[D]

How the fuck do we do this?

[A]

I mean, Army 3 is a video game and Blippo plus is not a video game. It makes comparing the two beyond this normal exercise, which is always pretty crazy. I mean, this starts to strain. Strain credulity.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Hey, Justin, I have a serious question for you.

[A]

Go ahead.

[D]

What is a video game?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Can I.

[A]

Are you saying by my definition.

[D]

Yeah, I'm curious.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Hmm.

[A]

I think for something. For me, I guess the difference that I'm using here is that there is no way to. As far as I understand it, one does not progress. Blippo is the same thing when it begins as when it ends. Right. And it might like change or evolve, but you are not progressing it. Right. It is so like by you are interacting with it and it is interactive media. But I think a game, for it to be like a game, there has to be a bit more in terms of like back and forth between the.

[D]

Player and the game beyond just changing channels.

[A]

Beyond just changing channels. Right. Like that's a passive like way that we can interact with tv. But that's not a meaningful distinction that would make it a video game versus like I really. This is a. This is not. It is a. And I'm not in any way limiting it. I'm just saying like it is hard to compare because it's such a different animal.

[B]

Like it's not like anything else on this.

[A]

Blippo succeeds so completely at being Blippo plus.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[C]

Yes. I think it's tough to say what is or isn't a video game. But Blippo is so unusual in that even.

[A]

Pretty good job. It didn't seem hard when I did It. I did such a good job. I wanna go into it. I made it look easy.

[C]

Well, because it does progress like that is why it's tricky. There's a story that progresses, you unlock different chunks, the 10 pieces. But I'm end up agreeing with you. It's just that like, even an art game that doesn't have a goal, you still are interacting in a virtual space.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Quite literally. You're just flipping channels. It is. It is a familiar. It is a entirely different medium that we are already familiar with. It is why the people who made Blippo have said that like, this isn't really a game. They're not really game makers. It is like its own thing. Thing. They made it because that's how you could make it right now with a game publisher.

[B]

I mean, so we're recording this the day after we recorded part one. So it feels like I've been defending Expedition 33 for a long time.

[A]

I think Expedition 33 is a towering achievement in terms of storytelling and like the kind. The ability of video games to. I don't think there's a good comparison tonally for a game that is made by western developers that has the sense of scale and scope and like emotional weight that Expedition 33 is communicating a lot of the time. It is. So it's not just tasteful. It is using game mechanics and the idea of game exploration as a way of like communicating something. Like you are feeling things because of how this game is set up. Like you feel things because of the mechanics of exploring this world. And like it's difficult because it's communicating that like narratively. And I feel like.

[D]

Can you give an example of like how it's communicating it?

[A]

Sure. Like when you are in the exploring through this environment, for example, you'll come across like a totem or like some sort of artifact that was put there to like honor the gods that were. That have been attacking you before.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That have been making life so difficult for you and the scale of the scale of that in the world that you are in and how small and torn down that is, and the scale of just like the level in the world that you're exploring and the way that the game is about grief and exploring the. Trying to find your way out of it basically, and how you navigate it. The thing that clicked for me the most about Expedition 33, and it's kind of a bummer that. Not kind of a bummer, but it didn't occur to me organically. I had to read it, but it. It made so Much more sense. The critical path is marked in Expedition 33 by light. It's marked by lamps.

[D]

I didn't know that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

If you see a lit lamp that is marking the way forward. Light is different sources. But like that is what is lighting the critical path. And if it's an unlit area, like it's not lit by those lanterns, then that is like more of an exploration opportunity. But if you want to get back into the main. I know, right.

[D]

But like would have been nice.

[B]

It still needs to be.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes. But right. It is like we also push against like instruction manuals and handholding.

[D]

I'm not asking for like a pop up that says go to the light to get complete the quest. I think there is a smoother way to convey that information than just like.

[B]

I love this game. I also agree with Russ's point that like.

[A]

No, I listen to Russ. Like I don't. I don't. I think that there is like stuff that is essential to it and stuff that is not essential to it that like I do think that they could. And I don't want to fall in that Dark Souls trap where it's like you're defending every single choice. It's like no, no, no, dude, no. You just don't get it, man.

[B]

What's tough about Expedition 33 is like the. It's hard to talk about what works with the story without spoiling a big, big portion of the game. And I realize that that's a sort of like not a particularly helpful kind of discussion for our game of the year kind of deliberations. But there are moments in this game that I think are going to stick around in the kind of consciousness of the gaming community. If such a thing could be like one big block in. Like it can hang with the big moments of gaming history. Like would you come the Would you rather bit from Bioshock or Aerith getting killed? Like there's. We can't possibly spoil that. It does huge, huge, huge shit with the story that would be ruining the game to talk about in this particular game.

[A]

Yeah, I was kind of in and then once. I'm now definitely gonna finish it. Definitely after spending just a couple more hours. But Gryffon said push a little bit past where you're at and I'm.

[C]

Yeah, I think Expedition 33 should go through in the sense that we talked about this last year. This is our group list.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

And Bloopa plus. I love that game or whatever. And I should go back and caveat. I'm sure there are people who worked on it who feel it's more a game than just the writers. But Expedition 33, I really adored it when it started. And the reasons that I personally ultimately don't really love this game is. Is the. Would you kindly. Is the twist stuff, right? Is the narrative not working for me? But that is a personal taste thing, and I can recognize how quality of an achievement this game is.

[D]

I also don't know for sure if. Because the gameplay wasn't totally. I was liking the gameplay. And then it started getting a little bit tough to get through. As you just mentioned, if I had stuck with it and if I had gone through, I feel it's possible. And I don't know this for sure, but it's possible that the story, which I now know because I looked it up, because I knew I wasn't gonna play through the entire game. Yeah. When I looked it up, I was like, this is not necessarily landing with me, but I'm sure if I was actually playing through it, oh, sure. It would have had a much more of an impact.

[B]

I mean, that's. That's the rpg, specifically, the JRPG kind of formula is you are investing your time into these characters. You're being rewarded with experience and leveling and like, all those gameplay mechanics form a feedback loop with your emotional investment when the game works, when the game does a good job of it. And this game does a fucking fantastic job.

[C]

To be fair, I actually only read the ending of Xenogears, and I think it has a lot to say about that.

[B]

That's my white whale. I put Xenogears on every Android emulation device I own, and I have never. Someday, I've never cracked that nut.

[A]

Yeah, there is. And listen, I think the mechanics are cool and funky. There's also certain characters that I just, like, refuse to engage with because. Because, like, I don't get it. I'm not smart enough to do it, so I just don't use them.

[C]

Like, that's.

[A]

But I still. With all that being said, like, I just. I think Blippo plus is so freaking cool. I just feel like there's. There's so much that I would like to celebrate about Expedition 33.

[D]

Cool.

[C]

Okay, so Expedition 33, congratulations. You're moving to the final five. Next up, we have Hollow Knight Silksong versus Absolum.

[B]

Russ, why don't you do a Hollow Knight Silksong setup? Since we really rushed past it.

[D]

We really did. Hollow Knight Silksong is the sequel to Hollow Knight. Long Awaited, Long Rumored game that was in development for about seven years. The core gameplay, it's a search action game. You play as Hornet, who is a side character in the original Hollow Knight. And here Hornet has been displaced into another realm that is facing some sort of catastrophe, impending catastrophe. And there are religious forces and economic forces that are pressing down on this world and you have to sort of conquer this environment and overcome a number of like incredibly hard boss fights and challenges that I think Even though it's 2D, if you've played a Dark Souls game, if you played Elden Ring, like I think there's a lot of analogies there. The, the things that really stand out for me, visual storytelling, actual literal, like narrative storytelling. Because Hornet actually speaks in this. So there's a lot more dialogue and back and forth. Sound design through the roof. Maybe my favorite sound design game of the year. I was really bummed to see that it didn't get a nod at the the Viggies because it certainly earned that. And yeah, I mean it's just shocking to me that a game that was as beloved as Hollow Knight could somehow get a sequel that really felt like a reimagining of the original formula in a really ambitious way. The things that I was like nagging Hades two about a little bit in part one, I think Hollow Knight takes a lot more swings with the formula in a way that feels like a true sequel.

[A]

I don't have the as much of an understanding I finished the first one, but. But when you say like the formula, help me.

[D]

Sure. A lot of that comes in game in the form of gameplay. There's something called Crests which kind of feel like a class based system when you're equipping them. It changes the way your primary attack works and secondary attack and downstab whatever. You can equip tools that act as like secondary materials. It felt like an evolution from like early Castlevania games to Symphony of the Night where you're suddenly making much more choices about how you build your character beyond equipping some Crests, which is what the first game was.

[B]

The world is also, I think the world of Hollow Knight was great. The fact that Pharloom has multiple kind of structures and systems that are decrepit now, right. Because of the pseudo apocalypse that has befallen it. But like you are exploring the history of this place and seeing how it is connected up here. They gather the silk that they use to like extend their lifespan and gain power and it falls down into this, the city of Gramor where people gather it up and spin it onto spools to send back up. And you find those spools, you can collect it. But then the really poor bugs get sent down here, down to the very bottom. And then when they die, they get thrown over this bridge, and you start down there in the bone pile, and you are working your way up through the kind of like, caste system of this world. And I think they do a pretty good job of kind of making you understand that and feel that as you are, as you're going through it.

[D]

I would also say one other nuance to the difference between the original Hollow Knight and this game is when I finished the original Hollow Knight, a game that I absolutely fucking adored, I had no idea what the story was about, not even an iota of an idea. And this game, I think, rights that ship pretty dramatically. I mean, there is a great story in Hollow Knight, but I had to watch an hour and a half long YouTube video to understand it. This game, when I finished it, I felt like. And was correct. I knew about 80% of the story. And then obviously, there's edges that I didn't fully grok that are more hidden. But realistically, you come away really understanding this world, how it works, what the motivations are for all the characters, and it makes the conquering of the challenge that much more impactful.

[B]

I want to ask you, Russ, because I feel like you are the biggest sort of proponent of this game. Now that we're a few months out from it and the conversation has kind of settled a bit, and the game itself has received a couple of updates sort of addressing the difficulty stuff. How do you feel about the. The difficulty of the game in general and sort of like the curve that it. It puts before players now that we're, like, this far removed from it, I.

[D]

Feel unequipped to talk about it.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Because when I finished it, it was before the balance patches happened, or at least pretty close to that. I have heard that the game is more approachable, which I think is 100% the right move. And it bums me out that, like, I know, Justin, you had struggles with it, especially early on.

[A]

Yeah, it's tough like it. I really. I just felt like it is. It drilled down on the audience. It seemed designed for, like, a smaller subset of the audience to love it even more. You know what I mean? Which is like, that's cool. I just was on the outside of that kind of. Cause it was like the things that I like about the game, like the exploration and that kind of stuff. I got lost in The. How frustrated I was and, like, how difficult I was finding it to, like, make progress and stuff. So, like, that it just didn't. Which is, like, it just didn't click for me. And I know that I wasn't the only one, but I also don't. I don't know. It's just not the game, you know, Like, I don't know. I don't want to, like, you know.

[D]

Well, but I would. But I would add, not only. You're not the only one. I think the developers even acknowledged that you weren't the only one, to the point where they actually made the game easy.

[B]

Right.

[D]

Like boss fights early on and like punishments for death early on and unlocking benches early on. Dramatically cheaper to unlock. You know, you get more tools, more whatever. So I don't think. I mean, it's difficult, obviously, because I know the experience that you had was like, right at launch and that was the experience.

[A]

That's tough, man. But that's like. Yeah, it's. It's neither here nor there. I mean, it is. I'm really trying not to be, you know.

[D]

No, no.

[B]

My feelings about the game have changed a bit since finishing it, mostly because I think the difficulty is, like, it works against the game and I understand that it's a hard game and it's like part of the challenge and the triumph. That's all part and parcel of the experience of conquering this hostile world. And that's very, very. When I think back about the amount of time I spent farming rosary beads and the number of, you know, runs through the fucking hollow muck or whatever the fuck that awful swampy zone was like, that stuff was. So, I don't know, it seemed pointless. It seemed like a waste of time and not. Not enjoyable. And there was a lot. I think there was a lot of it, especially once you get to the. Once you get to the third act. And now the world is actually much more difficult to explore, much more punishing. There's so many moments in that game that are exhilarating and so many. Like, the progression of it is obviously great because you need every little aspect that you can get, every little inch of advantage that you can get over the world. But I don't know, there's some parts that just kind of seem clunky in terms of how the difficulty was managed. And that's a shame because I think it is, on the whole, a pretty masterful kind of game and definitely my favorite search action game that came out this year with a bullet.

[D]

Yeah, it's certainly up there for maybe.

[B]

All time for me, Absalom, I don't know, can really hang here for the reasons I kind of. I mean I love this game, but I also do still kind of feel like it is the. The we are going to think back on it when Absolum 2 comes out and be like, okay, so this, this was the proof of concept. This was the. And it's a good ass proof of concept. And I think folks who are really into beaten beat em ups are definitely eating good this year. But I don't know that it is on the same kind of level as a. As a Hollow Knight Silk song.

[C]

I just want to say three nice things about Hollow Knight Siltsong. One, I think it looks really pretty. Two, I like that it wrestled with Catholic faith in a way I did not expect.

[B]

Holy shit.

[C]

And number three, that song that. That one character sings at Ho ta do ta hi. I love it. Love it.

[D]

That was actually funny.

[B]

Did you hear Kirk Hamilton's instrumentalized version of it that he did?

[A]

No.

[B]

I can't remember if it was triple click or strong songs, but it was. That one got stuck in my head. It's a real earworm.

[C]

That's a good stuff. I am not a Silksong person. I agree with what Griffin said yesterday. You look at the list of things here, Absalom feels the most like we're gonna see Absalom 2. That is the full version of what that thing aspires to be and it's going to be absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible.

[B]

I don't know, but I do think.

[C]

Silksong moves forward here.

[D]

I do want to say one last thing on Absalom before that happens. I don't like taking the nostalgia bait of most of these beat em ups out of the equation. I don't know that there's a beat em up. I want to play more than Absolom from a minute to minute.

[B]

Oh, dude, for sure. I mean it is going to stay alongside Sectori as an infinitely installed game on my Rog Ally X. I'm going to come back to. I finished it with Henry. I actually played through most of it myself on my computer and then I was like, hey, Henry would love this. Put it on the switch. And we played through all of it again and beat the game. And then it kind of like, I don't know, fell off a little bit after that. It's tough because the thing I have to compare it to is Castle Crashers, which we've been playing a shit ton of because of the Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out. And that one, like every time you finish the game it's like, holy shit, here's a new guy. You just unlocked a whole new guy. And also you can go on Steam Workshop and make that guy look like John Wick if you want to get crazy with it. So it's just like, I don't know, a content question. The gameplay, the core gameplay of Absolum is, you know, rules. But I think Hollow Knight is so fucking big, man.

[D]

It's so big and getting bigger. They announced dlc. Yes.

[C]

Okay, so that means Hollow Knight. Silksong, you move forward to the final five. Up next we have Death Stranding 2.

[A]

This one's for the dads.

[B]

Indiana Jones Dads only.

[A]

Dads only.

[C]

Who wants to take Indy?

[A]

Yeah, man, I'll take him in with this fight. The Indiana Jones and the Gray circle. Best circle if you want, if you like. I don't remember the name. Indiana Jones is a great circle. You guys like that? Great circle, great circle.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that sounds really good.

[A]

Rather than try to adapt the character Indiana Jones into a video game, it adapts Indiana Jones movies into a video game.

[D]

Oh.

[A]

Do you know what I'm saying?

[B]

I like that for sure.

[A]

It's like a meaningful distinction where if you, because if you, if you take Indiana Jones the character and make a video game about him, that's been done a lot, right? Because as Nathan Drake and all those and like they have the feeling of an Indiana Jones movie. But you are still playing as a. Basically a pitfall. You know what I mean? It's basically, Harry, you're running around, you're jumping, you're climbing, you're shooting dudes. This takes the character Indiana Jones and it centers him, but also the experience of watching an Indiana Jones movie with the walking around a beautiful historic environment and the sense of scale that that conveys and the sometimes like quiet introspection of like solving a puzzle and knowing that it could break bad at any second. And the music cues and like the visuals and stuff and all that things that feel aesthetically like Indiana Jones are brought into a video game. So it is not a shoot em up. It is not a run around and mow down as many guys as you can. It seeks to be true to the experience of being that character in a movie.

[D]

Not to mention the fact that the game opens up. It's such a fucking bold swing. The game opens up with you playing the most famous Indiana Jones scene in history, which is the opening of the opening of purpose.

[A]

Right?

[D]

It is so impressive. This works. That's them proving this will work.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Which it can't be overstated how tough this is, because some of the greatest video game developers of all time have tried to do this and failed. Uncharted in Tomb Raider, no Secret wanted to be Indiana Jones games. And they end up having you kill hundreds of people across it. And whenever people would ask about this, it'd be like, well, ultimately, it's a video game. You have to have it be a game where you shoot people and you do all that and you have to have the action and then like. And that's the only way to make a game that feels like this. And the reality is it never quite felt like Indiana Jones. What's so impressive about this is that it actually feels like being the person Indiana Jones. And even the way that they've written the story, the way they paced it, is that you don't have to mainline it. You don't have to get to the end of each quest. You are often in the beginning going around the Vatican, discovering these additional mysteries. And it feels more like a TV show where it's like, well, yes, I can get around. I can solve all of this. I don't have to rush to the very end where I think a lot of the Uncharted Tomb Raider, because the stakes are so high, because you're killing people, it is a full sprint from point A to point B, which just again, doesn't feel like how an archaeologist turned mystery solver would go about their life.

[B]

I mean, also, Troy Baker, like, it's easy to say, like, he does a very good, very convincing indie impression. I think he goes beyond. Pretty well beyond that. And that is, like, not doing a.

[A]

Lot more than Indiana. I mean, it's so much more, probably more Indiana Jones talking than Harrison Ford has ever done in his entire life. Almost certainly. Right. Exponentially.

[B]

And it's like, incredible. I don't know that I've ever seen that before. Where an actor or a voice actor has, like, taken on arguably one of the most famous character roles in movie history. Certainly and truly made it his own thing. Really stepped into it while being obviously sounding a fucking lot like Harrison Ford. Absolutely. I think it is one of the greatest voice acting performances.

[D]

Certainly on the level of, like, the Joker. Mark Hamill's the Joker.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. Like, pretty. Pretty iconic stuff.

[A]

Yeah. On that level, if. If Mark Hamill had already done it and then someone was like, you got to do it again, just like that. Do it like that. So people think it's Mark Hamill doing The Joker. Like, it's wild. It's a. It's a really wild performance. Good. Good on it.

[C]

It's a credit to the writers because that only works if you have a ton of dialogue that actually sounds like what Indiana Jones is supposed to sound like. And it gets the humor, which is a very slight humor. It nails it.

[A]

I feel like, for me, if I got a ding Indy for something, and I've spent a lot of time with Indiana Jones, but has been split up into a lot of segments, I feel like where Indiana Jones messes up is it still has too many compromises towards being a video game. And when that starts to bump, they will go. They will lean towards the Indiana Jones side of the needle before they'll lean towards the video game side of the needle. So, like, things like, there's 15 bottles around this world scattered around this world. You need to collect them. Like, that does not feel very much like Indiana Jones, but it's still in the game and you still have the stuff of like, well, I've got to change my outfit because this isn't what I'm supposed to be wearing. And the longer you're in those environments doing that sort of, like, middling shit, it starts to feel like Disney with the lights off, where you're like, okay, I get it. It's like this guy's doing this, and he does this turn a little bit. It's just like, it skews a little. There's just, like, a little bit too much, like, still feeling like they need to do that kind of video game stuff. Like, you want an excuse to hang out in those worlds and things like that. It just. The ideas that they have come up with for how you spend time in that world aren't especially, like, fun. And every time that I have played this game, I will spend, like, two or three hours. And it. I think I said somewhere that it's.

[B]

Like hanging out with you, watching sports with your dad.

[A]

Yeah. Was that on recording?

[B]

Yeah, I think you said that a couple episodes ago.

[C]

Saved.

[A]

Yeah. So that's. That's. I like it. It's just. It's. It almost feels more like. It's very impressive that they achieved all of it. And it is pleasant, but it doesn't quite get past that to where it's like, you really want to. I found it very compulsively playable.

[C]

I will somewhat contradict myself in that if you are just about to play this for the first time, even though you don't have to have that propulsion and the story works without Going from point A to point B. I do think the game works better if you actually do hit the point A to point B and then go back and do everything after that. Especially because the disguises are so central to pretty much everything and you get them by going through the main line.

[A]

I know this is a very Justin McElroy kind of thing, but I've been stuck at the beginning of the Himalayas area because you have to trudge through snow and it's so fucking boring that I make it like five minutes before I'm like, fuck, I can't, I can't. I can't do it. And then when I close it and I reopened it, it's like, ah, fuck, I'm back at the beginning of it. God, it's so boring. I can't do anything again. It Jones. I'm sorry.

[D]

I think.

[C]

You know where it's fun to charge through snow?

[B]

Is it Death Training? Yeah, I haven't hit any snow in Death Stranding 2. Is there snow?

[D]

It's, I would say, like 60% of the way through the game. There's a fuckload of snow.

[C]

A lot of snow.

[B]

Love to hear that.

[C]

Yeah, we.

[D]

We talked a lot about Death Training two in part one of this, and my feelings haven't changed. When I first played the game, it was scratching every fucking itch of inch of my brain in ways that they wanted to. Like, this was all, this is not like a whoopsie accident. Hideo Kojima did like a wacky thing and that worked out to be like a fun gameplay mechanic. Like, they just have dialed this game into just incredible levels of precision.

[B]

I think it's his best. I think it's his best game. Yes, I genuinely do, and I've been kind of slow to come to that. But, like, it does so much stuff that succeeds as a game. This idea of being a long haul kind of delivery man who is putting the world back together and building connections with people and like leveling up all these different areas. Like, all mechanically, it's so fun and so compelling. And also you have a little doll who is inhabited by a man and he is animated at a different frame rate than everything else in the game. Like, there's still so much really genuinely super weird shit going on. And it doesn't, it doesn't lose that. While kind of like, you know, heavily featuring good gameplay mechanics as well.

[D]

It's also cogent, which is more than I can say about every fucking Kojima game ever, including.

[C]

It might be the first one that you can understand on your first playthrough.

[D]

Yes. Everything tracks. And a lot of that is editing. Like, a lot of it is. If you want to obsess about this stuff, you can dive into the in game Wikipedia about what the fuck chiral crystals are. But if you're just worried about the key beats of the story and the people that you're meeting, the game will convey that stuff very clearly in ways that, like, are very affable. There's a character named Rainy who is just like this delightful ray of sunshine, ironically. And you build this community of people that are, like, living on your core ship. And you want to go back there because you want to see scenes with them. Yeah, it's try to jump, by the way. Sorry, but this is a little bit of a later thing. You can build a ramp in this game. This ramps in a lot of different games. That's fine. You can build a ramp in this. And I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna. Why do I need a ramp? I'll build ladders and roads or whatever the. But someone else that I was connected to built a ramp in a spot that was near me and I was just running around. So I was like, what happens if I just run off of this ramp? And I sprinted directly at the ramp and Norman Reedus flies into the air about 600ft and starts doing fucking backflips. And on the screen it says, extreme, double extreme, triple extreme every time you're doing a backflip. And suddenly I'm on the other side of this river that I was trying to get across.

[B]

How does he survive the descent?

[C]

You land safely. The chiral crystals and the air bring you peacefully to Earth. I love it.

[B]

We can say this game is cogent until the fucking cows come home. It is still going to be like, how does that work?

[A]

Chiral.

[C]

Yeah, chiral crystals. I'm going to say a thing that's a spoiler for an item, but not for the story. So if you don't want to hear it, just Skip ahead like 15 seconds. You can do the exact same thing that Fresh is talking about, but instead of running and jumping off of it, you can ride a giant coffin as a surfboard through the entire game. A floating chiral crystals, fortunately, help it float. Coffin.

[B]

Awesome.

[C]

The game rocks. You can meet a guy who makes pizza, and he will teach you how to use a pizza dough. Training up like plastic, little flat, wobbly plastic to beat the shit out of bad guys. It's there if you want to find it. It's a valid part. There's Griffin.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

There is a Pokemon aspect of this game.

[B]

Jesus Christ.

[C]

Waiting to be discovered.

[B]

Now I'm starting to think this is a frog fraction situation where this shit's not actually in the game. But, you know, I'm probably not going to get to that point.

[D]

If you were to jump right in and start playing again, I think it would carry you through for.

[B]

That was the thing I was gonna say when I got back into it for being a little bit more informed for this game of the year discussion that in game Wikipedia, the story so far thing that it offers is truly, truly helpful, really, really great at telling you exactly what was going on in the story when you stopped playing it. I think it probably looks at your PS5 activity log and it's like, goddamn, man, it's been two months. Okay, so Chiral Christmas.

[D]

It does.

[A]

When you boot it back up after you haven't played for a little bit, it pops up text and it's like, here's what was happening. That's great, man.

[B]

It's so helpful.

[A]

I forgot about that. It's genius, man. I'm going to go back and play it today, guys. I'm going to. I'm reading the winds here. It seems like Norman Reed is funky ass is about to slide right up past Indiana Jones. Yeah, that's how I feel. That's what I'm starting to feel in the air, guys.

[C]

I think you're right and welcome to the pain. The pain is here. We have Baby Steps versus Saktori. Two games I think there's a lot of love for. It might be a perfect split down the middle of which one could go through. So. Hey, who wants to pitch Sectori first?

[A]

Shit man. Saktori is okay. I don't want to oversell it. Sector if you liked score Chase games dual stick score chase games not unlike and in fact quite similar to Geometry wars, then you will love Sectori, which has. Is a dual stick shooter just like those except that the. It has several different modes that you can that. That feel very, very different to play that are each using like slightly different mechanics. But I think what sets Sektori apart is that there is a lot of technique and there's a lot of ways in which you can. There's a lot of strategy in how you play moment to moment. For example, you're collecting these things called selectors and they are basically like.

[B]

Raising.

[A]

You up a ladder of power ups where the as it gets more expensive, the power up is better, but you got to cash it in at a certain point so you are basically saving up for a better power up or you know, using it earlier and the pace at which you use those, the ones that you decide to get, the times at which it is the best time to collect those and is like one small facet of how you can improve your odds of like survivability or collecting points and stuff. And that is there are so many mechanics like that in Sectori where it is not clearly laid out, it is not explained to you. But as you play more you can start to intuitively and like uncover some of these techniques in a way that reminds me more of like a Balatro or it is not this level of like discoverability. There's a lot more skill involved. But there is a way in which it reminds me of Balatro. When you realize that certain possibilities are possible. It really can blow the game wide open in a way where you don't know how you were struggling by before.

[B]

There's also the upgrade, the upgrade cards. You're like building a deck by choosing.

[A]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Different like types of upgrades that you will get like a handful of as you go through the campaign mode and those really spice things up quite a bit.

[D]

There's just like a lot of player agency which I don't think you see in these sorts of games. These arcade games tend to be, you know, the fucking Pac Man's of the world. Like I'm sure there's nuance to it for extremely hardcore people but realistically everyone else is just running from the ghosts and here it's like oh, I'm going to decide missiles. Actually I need an extra shield here. I'm going to spend it on that. Or oh, I'm gonna pick these cards because I think they're gonna synergize well together. There's just like a lot of ways you can kind of evolve your playstyle to fit what you're good at.

[A]

There is also a. This is not necessarily the kind of achievement that we typically recognize here on besties, but there is a stunning amount of information being conveyed to you in this game. Visually with like an incredibly complex battlefield, there is so much information and is like parsable. Like you can parse so much in a way that feels overwhelming but also like really can help to lock you in. You can get a sense of everything that is going on just from like the way the different shapes are drawn and move and colored and stuff. It still has that simplistic sort of Geometry wars line based style but it expands it in a way that feels like frankly kind of like Overwhelming sometimes from a sensory perspective in a good way.

[C]

It's hard to talk about it because it is subconscious. Right? Like when you are playing this game, it's not like you are thinking strategy, you are feeling whatever the flow is that you get into and you are evading things. But I will go back and watch video of when I played or watch other people play and it doesn't make sense. There is so much on the screen that how you could possibly know to dodge all these different things, manage all these different enemies, all the projectiles, and still accomplish your goals and get to whatever the power ups are or not use the power ups or do any of these things. Like you said, it's a tremendous amount of information that the brain in theory shouldn't be able to.

[A]

It makes you feel like a genius. Like it makes you feel because you are able to parse that. Like there are. So I would say at least two or three times when I'm playing this game, each run I have a moment where I'm about to fly between two guys and I think I'm dead. I'm cooked. Yeah, it's over. I sometimes I'll close my eyes. That's it, I'm done. And then, oh my God. Oh my God. I pulled it out. That's. That's. Every run has something like that. It feel it. It is that like thrilling every single time right away.

[C]

Like you very, very early on in playing this game, you feel that you're not training up to do that. You will feel it within the first half hour of playing the game. It feels like sitting down with a symphony. And you've never played violin. And they're like, you know, just keep up. And you're like, oh, I'm actually doing pretty okay. I'm right here.

[B]

And you get all the modes kind of build on each other too. Like they're different ones. My favorite is still gates where you're flying, you can't shoot. And the only way you have of killing enemies is by picking up power ups or flying through these gates that spawn in. So it's all about like not killing stuff as long as you can and then doing a huge fucking burst and clearing out the whole screen. And that teaches you how to avoid enemies. And every mode is just constantly building, so your skills are improving until you reach that sort of superhuman ESP level intuition. It's really, really, really excellent. I am shocked. This is not a much bigger game. Maybe it's just because it came out of when it came out, which was.

[D]

Like, I think it's timing and it's also. This is a game that doesn't necessarily stream great. It's really hard to parse if you're just watching someone play.

[B]

Yeah, maybe that's it.

[D]

It wouldn't necessarily be the most watchable game. I think it's just. And it's just like a marketing challenge.

[A]

Like, this is also depressing. Hard to market a game based on like. It's really fucking fun. It's like, just really like.

[C]

It's.

[A]

It's so fun.

[C]

Yeah. The good news is the developer thought that he was going to make $0 off this, was expecting it to totally bomb, and that he would have to go back to maybe working at a studio. And it has surpassed those expectations. So great.

[A]

Good. I hope we can do our part.

[D]

We'll see.

[B]

Baby Steps is sort of the opposite game.

[D]

It's actually. Can I make an argument for why it's not.

[B]

I want it so bad. Give me this argument, Russ.

[D]

Okay, so Justin was just talking about in sectori, you're making these like minute to minute choices and you kind of look at the field of enemies that are before you and you're like, there is no fucking way I'm making through this. But I'm just going to give it a shot because why the fuck not? And that is the feeling that I feel frequently when playing Baby Steps because you'll come upon a fucking sideways house surrounded by goo that makes you slip and slide and you are like, there's no fucking way this is going to work out. And for me at least I was like, that was fun to like try to like hammer my way through it. Now obviously very different games, but I do think that the player agency vibes and the feeling of player control that you have in Baby Steps is similar. I also think you make really funny choices in Baby Steps. We mentioned a few of them earlier and I mentioned, I think when we first reviewed this, I mentioned this moment, but I'll just call attention to it again. Pretty late in the game. You get to a cliffside, like a cliff face, and you're on top of it. And on the side of the cliff face is a plank. The plank is probably about 8ft long and at the end of the plank is a hat. And as you're playing throughout the game, there are many hats that you can collect. And if you bring the hats to like these save points campfires, you get like bonus scenes. And I was like, I'll fucking go for it. I'll go for the hat. Whatever. I've walked Along a number of planks. I realize how dangerous it is if I fall, but I'm not going to fall because I'm good at this. And I make it to the end of the plank, and I hit the button to, like, reach down for the hat, and I like, just the center of gravity tips in such a way that I fall ass over teakettle, down 200ft down to the bottom. And the fact that my immediate reaction wasn't, fuck this game, I'm never playing it again, but instead, this is hilarious. And, oh, now that I've fallen, I found this new area that I've never explored before and I didn't even know was here. And I'm going to have a new experience that I didn't have before. That is the, like, shit that gets me going, because I feel like I'm in total control of the experience.

[B]

Man, this is really. This is maybe the hardest one yet.

[C]

I feel like I. Yeah, I adore baby steps. It might be my personal game of the year. I don't know. It's kind of tied. I think it is a hard one to sell to people. It's so dumb to say, like, it's an acquired taste, but, like, more than I think any game that is at this point on the list, it is. Either it resonates with you or it deeply doesn't, because it does ask so much of you. And I think it does have this kind of masochistic streak, or at least it feels like a masochistic streak if you're not on its wavelength. For me, I don't think it is that at all, because I think it is constantly telling you, if you don't like it, quit. That's the whole point. But that's a hard sell, because then if you quit the game, you're not gonna want to put it at the end of your list.

[D]

I also wouldn't even necessarily call it masochistic. It's actually pretty, at least in comparison to games that Bennett has made previously, but also in comparison to games like Spelunky, for example, more often than not, if you fall in baby steps, I would say 90% of the time, if you fall in baby steps, you will fall one inch to the. To the floor. You will. You know, there are moments, and these moments will be very clear to you because you're crossing over a river or going across a chasm, whatever it is, where you know that the stakes are much, much higher. But those moments are rare. And I think this is the one area that I think this game does better than other previous Bennett Foddy games is you have the pacing of moments of tension, short moments of tension, followed by long moments of like, exploration. Fuck around.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

The most difficult part of baby Steps for me was not the, like, falling and losing progress as much as it was like three or four times so far while I've been playing the game. I feel like I have had no fucking idea where to go. And that, like, I will walk along a big long ridge looking for any kind of ingress and find absolutely find nothing and not realize, like, oh, actually over here there's like three boulders that you can. That you can get up. That stuff is infrequent, I think, but to me, that is the main difficulty. That's the thing that makes me bounce off, is just walking around and feeling like, okay, well, I don't know how to progress when I fall and lose progress, it's like, okay, I know what to do. I know what I should have done differently. There sucks when I lose a hat doing that and then it floats away down a river. But that's neither here nor there.

[C]

I'll say one more thing because I have a feeling I'm kind of playing for the five spot really, for baby steps. I think about this game constantly. Just like the little things, the way that the game builds to this idea of why can you not accept help and when will you accept help and when will you take the easy route? And again, you can think about that at the very end where there is an almost impossible path up the side of a mountain or literal stairs, you can take one or the other. Which one are you going to take? And there is an instinct in video games to say, I'm going to take the hard thing because that's the challenge. That's the whole point. I shouldn't take the easy thing. And yet at the very beginning of the game, when you are walking up a muddy path, you on a micro level are going to think, what is the easiest way for me to get up this? You're not going to think, how could I make sure that I choose the hardest version? You're not going to think, well, I want to climb up the wall now. You're going to think, well, I want to get to the next point of the game. And it is this weird thing where the micro and the macro in this game are constantly in conversation with each other in a way that I don't feel very often in video games. It's so holistic, this video game. Yeah, something special.

[D]

I took the stairs by the way, in case you're wondering, I tried the hard path once. I gave it a good go and I was like, eh, whatever. I fell and I took the stairs.

[C]

It does make fun of you either way too. There's a cutscene that triggers either way to let you know, like, what are you doing? I think Sectori goes through. I think it is a game fit.

[D]

I don't think we need to. We can. Or Justin. Actually, Justin hasn't weighed in on Baby Steps. If there's anything.

[A]

Ah, yeah. I've said my piece about baby steps. I mean, I'm. I. I've been pretty clear about it. I think Baby Steps is cool as hell. It's not Sector. It's cool, though.

[B]

But actually, it's not.

[A]

Sectori is like the best video game of the year.

[C]

You know what I mean?

[A]

Okay, so can we bring it to a vote? To an official legal vote?

[C]

Yes. Okay.

[A]

Secretary.

[B]

I'll have Sectori, please.

[D]

It would be baby steps for me.

[C]

It would be baby steps for me.

[A]

Now we're cutting Frankie.

[B]

Now we got it.

[A]

Now we're.

[B]

How have we made it this far without a deadlock? That's crazy.

[A]

Baby Steps sucks. Here we go. I would recommend Sectori to almost anybody, pretty much. And I think that Baby Steps, there's a lot of people that maybe don't need that in their life. Maybe don't, shouldn't, shouldn't get into Baby steps. And I think that it's so cool what it's doing, and I think that. I think it's really cool what Blippo plus did in a similar vein, I think that's very cool. But in terms of, like, what I want to award, this is, like, the attention to design and, like, the work that went into that. Like, this is the kind of thing that I want to award. The fact that it kind of spread through the four of us like wildfire, then I get other people hooked on it, and I just really. I think Sectori. That's the kind of thing that I would feel.

[D]

Okay, so we need to be careful here because I think everyone here loves both games, so we need to be mindful that this doesn't turn into a.

[A]

That's why I made the joke about it, Russ. But please, your paternalism is going down a lot smoother.

[B]

Can I say this? Let's push them both through. I think this could be a fourth and fifth situation, or I do think.

[A]

That it's worth trying to choose between these two in case there's a different game that we want to pull up.

[D]

I think that makes sense.

[A]

Personally, it may be Baby steps. It may be Sectori.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

But I think in the spirit of the. We don't want to let ourselves off the hook too much.

[B]

The conversation has been so focused on which one reaches out to a broader audience. I don't know if that's the thing that we want to. It may be the only kind of unifying thing. Since these are two pretty dramatically different games, I am more interested in like our take on them rather than how well they can attract other audiences, other folks. I really like both of these games a whole lot and would be fine with either of them taking, you know, that fourth position.

[D]

Yeah, I would. I would also say that I don't. You know, I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think they're. That even though it's on its surface, I don't think they're that far apart insofar as I think they are both before anything game design games, like, I don't think they're. Even though Baby Steps have. Has a lot of narrative beats to it. I don't think it's primarily a narrative game. I think it's primarily a gameplay game. Yeah. And both of these are both player expression games in terms of how you take a challenge and conquer it. Obviously in the case of Sector, you're doing that over the span of three seconds every loop. But Baby Steps is much more of a slow paced, methodical thing. But I do think there is a connection there.

[C]

When I look at what we've already picked. We have Expedition 33. We have Hollow Knight Silksong, we have Death Stranding 2. Sectori does fill a spot that we don't have filled on that list. If what we're trying to do is kind of like round out the different types of games.

[D]

I don't think we are.

[A]

We've never done the fun one. The fun one. One Fun one. Here's what's stuck in my head. Plant. I think you're right. I also think though that that is the thing that we should talk about when we're at a five position. Right. It's like making a list that feels whole. I can't get past this. This has been bouncing. My head is like, I love Sector. For me, Sector might be some most fun I've had this year. I don't know if it's my game of the year. It's like some of the most fun I've had this year. I can't shake the feeling to which it is A better mousetrap. And I do think that if you don't have the familiarity going in, it may not hook in the same. It may not fire off those same neurons, you know what I mean? And I think that maybe that is part of the story we're seeing play out with like, it not making a huge. A more huge splash, but like, it does seem like if you don't have the affinity and I swear to God, some weird geometry wars, like neurons must be kicking back there, like kicking around still, which is kind of weird. But like, I don't. I. I don't know that it's. It's not taking the level of swing that Baby Steps is taking and succeeding in a. In a lot of different ways. In a way that's like they made something that was fun to watch streaming, which is kind of the only way to get something in front of an audience these days, in a sense, but also is a meaningful experience to have on your own. I think that's pretty cool. I mean, I don't know. I think that's pretty neat.

[B]

I'm willing to. I think I would change my vote to Baby to break the log jam. Change my vote to Baby Steps.

[A]

Oh, good. Baby Steps sucks, but I'm outvoting, unfortunately. That's the way it goes sometimes. Okay, so there's four games that are definitely in the top five. Those four games are Expedition 33, Hollow Knight, Silksong, Death Stranding. Two baby steps.

[D]

And let me just say that is a Ross Rushed list right there. Way more than last year.

[B]

Yeah, man, I got fucking knocked down last year. Come up.

[C]

It's.

[A]

Dude, it's a funky year, dude. I wish lies of P2 came out this year, man. Can you imagine? Lies of 2, lies of P. The sequel came out Lies of P the Squeakle. This time. Geppetto's back. Like something be the funkiest year ever.

[D]

I think we need to take a break before we start narrowing down what our final five is.

[A]

Sounds good. There's four games that are definitely in our top five, as we said.

[B]

Yes, those games are.

[A]

Okay. They are Expedition 33, Clair Obscure, Expedition 33, Hollow Knight, Silksong, Death Stranding, two, Baby Steps. Those are the four that are definitely in it. There's a fifth slot that is in competition with our other nominees.

[B]

I think we can pull up anything, right? If we all can sort of agree on it.

[D]

Yeah, I'm not pulling up anything that got knocked out in an earlier round or this round for that matter.

[B]

Just looking at the list, I think first of all Sectori. Just because we were so, so torn on it, obviously. I think it stands a pretty good shot. Dispatch. Dispatch is maybe the front runner for me. For the. For that number. For the fifth. For the fifth spot. I really, really. It not only is like, my favorite story, I think, in a game this year, or maybe just my favorite sort of writing and acting in a game this year. I. It's been forever since I have played a game like this, and part of that is just feeling burnt out with the genre. I think this does so much cool stuff and it's just so.

[D]

I don't even think the genre existed.

[B]

No, I don't think so.

[A]

Right.

[D]

I don't think it's a telltale game in that way.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, it feels like something else. Yeah. I think Dispatch is definitely in the running. I think Root Trees is definitely in the running, at least for me. I'll speak for myself.

[B]

Hades 2.

[D]

Not for me, but I know other. Justin, maybe for you, you might.

[A]

Yeah. But if I was. If I was 1 to 1 versus 3 there, I'm not sure it makes the most sense to me.

[B]

No, I love Hades 2. I played a shit ton of Hades 2.

[A]

Yeah, I love Hades 2 too.

[D]

I mean, would you love it more than Saktori?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

More than this bad man?

[A]

No. Well.

[B]

I think.

[A]

Let's get this down to a top three.

[B]

Let's get this down to three. Let's get this down to three. Runners. Runners up in this elimination match that we can sort of pick from.

[A]

I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah.

[B]

Hades 2, I think.

[A]

Sectori.

[D]

Dispatch.

[B]

Dispatch.

[A]

Dispatch. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I love Root Trees. I don't. I don't like it as much as the three games.

[D]

I'm fine with that.

[A]

Three games. My argument for Hades 2 is that if Hades 2 had come out in a different way, in a different way of being released in a different, like, it would be. It simp. Like, it just would have dominated a narrative this year in a way that these.

[D]

Meaning. If it just came out, like, if.

[A]

It just came out, like, with a normal release and it didn't have this long tail. We are bound sort of like the way we cover games and the way we, like, interact with games. Like, we have to handle it in a way that, like, other people don't. Our editor, Rachel, held off on Hades 2 stuff the entire time, and it seemed insane to me. And then she had, like, a fantastic experience and I feel jealous.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The only reason that Hades 2 is not higher on this list or already in this top four is because of the way in which it was sort of drip fed out and evolved over time. Like it simply succeeds as a thing. It's. Dispatch fails several times. Dispatch succeeds wildly when it hits. There's a lot of ways in which Dispatch fails, especially in this. How much of it feels random in a way that's really unsatisfying. Whether or not you.

[B]

Your.

[A]

Your missions succeed is often just up to chance. And that feels.

[D]

Some of it is. Is like thumb on the scale. Like they want a narrative beat to happen so they make it.

[B]

Yeah. Some of that happens behind. Some of that happens behind the scenes.

[A]

Yeah. But some of it is like you lose when you shouldn't have. And the odds were really, there's an achievement.

[B]

There's an achievement for that if you lose a mission with like 75% chance success. But for me, the thing that drives me crazy about the sort of interactive part of Dispatch, I actually kind of liked it. Like I ended up having a team that I felt very invested in. And the game asks you to make some pretty huge choices. Like you. Your roster is going to look different from my roster based on the decisions that you make throughout the episodes. And I found myself like really getting invested in the team for that reason. But it is. I mean, it sucks to lose those challenges. And the game doesn't really do an awesome job of kind of telling you, like, oh, that's okay. It doesn't actually matter that you blew that. It doesn't matter that that challenge didn't go your way because it's not gonna impact the story at all. And the story is really what this thing is doing. Wow.

[A]

Also one. I mean, not for nothing, but if we're trying to pick the best games of the year, the fact that there is just a button for like turn off a lot of this because it's just annoying. Like that' not the game. The game of the year does not have a turn off interactivity because it's just getting in my nerves. Like, that's not the game of the year. Right.

[D]

That's a fair point.

[B]

It. It's a fair point, man. I'm just. I struggle with it because I do. I think just it's writing is so fun.

[D]

Good.

[A]

It's so good. Alien Earth.

[B]

What?

[A]

Alien Earth.

[D]

He's. He's saying a TV show is.

[A]

I'm just saying, like, like there are incredible stories. You know what I mean? Like being communicated. I like dispatch a lot. I 100% really like dispatch, but I love it because I love this story and a lot of the other Stuff I'm kind of tolerating the interactivity.

[D]

I think for me, at least elevates it a little bit. Not a lot. I think the story, the cutscenes are what elevate the entire project, which again, doesn't feel as gamblers.

[B]

I am convinced. I would agree with that. It is a game that I love despite its flaws.

[D]

So that brings us to Justin with a pistol in his hand, deciding between two of his best children.

[A]

Why don't you three?

[C]

Justin, Can I make a change?

[A]

How about this? I don't care. I like them both.

[C]

You three choose when we make a list. I love when I can look back five years from now and be like, yeah, that feels right. In five years from now, I will have Sectori on my Steam deck and I will still be playing it whenever I have a flight and I forget to download something new. And I can't say that with any confidence about almost anything else on the list. And I think that is very telling. There are very few games that live in my conscious and on my Steam deck and as my habit like that. They are spelunky, I think fresh for you. That's like a binding of Isaac. And I think the games that come to mind whenever I say something like that are games that I would definitely want on my Game of the year list.

[B]

But Hades 2 has everyone's so hot. Everyone in Hades has two. They're taking baths and stuff and taking baths and stuff. And it's like, wowza.

[A]

I will also say I don't have to be theoretical with what you're saying about Hades 2 plant because I have had these two installed on my devices permanently. Yeah, 100% straight up. Played it yesterday. Still kicks ass. I like them both. I just feel like. I feel like we did Hades to a little dirty. It's so fun. It's fun every time. And I think I would rather it's fun in a lot of really cool ways too. It's like it really does embrace, you know, a lot of different playstyles in a way that it must be really hard to balance. I mean, must be like impossible to balance. But I'll be really happy either way, genuinely. I think they're both great.

[D]

I really like them too. I think in my brain I probably enjoyed Sectori more. But I also only played Sectori for eight hours.

[B]

That's what I'm struggling with is like the purity. The purity of Sectory and the kind.

[D]

Of like, I don't know well and the nuance of sectori. Whereas Hades 2, again, is. Is building off of.

[B]

But I've spent more time playing Hades 2 than maybe any other.

[A]

Okay, so not to put my thumb on the scale too much here, because I am trying to let you gentlemen figure this out, but I do think that with sectori, once I had sort of, like, risen to the top of our personal leaderboards, my desire to kind of play it diminished pretty quickly, like, when there were no more worlds to conquer. In a sense, like, there wasn't. It doesn't do a great job of, like, incentivizing you with its own mechanics. It kind of, like, the score chase thing is definitely a huge part of it. But, like, once I'd sort of figured that stuff out, I didn't feel a big desire to, like, get back in there and tear it up because it was so demanding to set some of those high scores. And, like, I legitimately don't know if I can top it.

[B]

It's funny because, like, that was very much the Geometry wars, like, Geometry Wars 2 on XBLA. I played constantly because I wanted the top score of, like, you know, all the old Joystick crew that we used to play with. But that was back when they only made, like, 20 video games a year, and now they make a trillion.

[A]

It was illegal to make more than 20 video games.

[B]

And I have two kids. And so, like, the idea of fucking clonking down and doing 100 runs of gates Mode is not. Not really in the realm of possibility for me.

[D]

I would also say that when I beat the campaign of sectori, I had the same vibe that Hoops did about his arcade score chase, which was I beat the campaign, and my desire to keep pushing for other things kind of diminished pretty quickly.

[A]

It had to be hard, though, looking at my scores. It's like, what's the point? You know what I mean? Like, you had to be like, how am I going to get up up there in Olympus? Speaking of.

[B]

I think Hades 2, it's funny because I still feel like I liked Absalom better from a sort of comprehensive standpoint. But I also. I think that the argument is sound for Hades 2 to join the top.

[D]

Yeah, I think so.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Hades, yeah, man.

[B]

We have to have one of those every year where, like, someone leapfrogs around a matchup that it lost the first go round. It was a rough matchup.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so do we feel good about that as a top five?

[D]

I think so.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Okay, so that is Expedition 33, Silksong. Death Stranding 2. Baby Steps. Hades 2.

[A]

God Baby Steps. The only original.

[C]

Wow. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

[D]

Wait expedition.

[A]

There's been 32 of those motherfuckers.

[C]

Are you kidding me? I'm just glad they finally got it right.

[A]

They finally, finally got it right. I didn't even notice the other ones, man. They've been churning these things out. There's a lot of Eastern European stuff I can't keep tabs on. I guess they just been. Them and Frog warriors have just been cranking these things out.

[C]

So.

[B]

I know.

[A]

I know what the game of the year is going to be, and I think it's.

[B]

I do, too. I do, too.

[A]

It's fucking crazy that that's going to be the game of the year. Should we do that?

[B]

Should we. This is unusual. Should we start at the top.

[C]

At the same time? Yeah.

[A]

I'm going to count to. I'm going to count to four, and then if we could all say the game, the number one game of the year according to the besties. Because I. I think we're going to get it in one guy.

[B]

We say it after four. You say it after one.

[A]

Why are you counting? I'm going to say, no, not after four. That's crazy. I said that because there's four of us. So, 1, 2, 3, and then just say the name. Okay.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah, okay. Okay.

[A]

One, two, three.

[C]

Death Stranding.

[B]

Death Stranding 2. That's crazy.

[A]

Fucking crazy that the best game of the year is Death Stranding 2. It's.

[D]

And you know what? You know what's really crazy? Go back and listen to the Original Death Stranding 2 episode When I fucking called it.

[A]

Did you?

[B]

Did you really?

[D]

Yeah, I said. Well, at least for me, I said, this is my favorite game of the year when it came out.

[A]

Now, listen, when I went back and played it, I gotta say, guys, I said in the chat, Maybe Death Strain 2 is the best video game of 2025.

[B]

It's not my. I have a weird thing where it's not my personal game of the year, but it feels right to be the best.

[A]

It's so good.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So good.

[D]

And you know what? It's redemption.

[A]

It doesn't need it. You know what it is? It's not just good. I've been playing this man's games for so long, and the fact. I mean this genuinely. I don't know why it happened. Maybe he offloaded mortar design. I don't know why, but this really does feel like one of our, like, last auteurs in games. One of the only auteurs and games actually kind of evolving, like, actually changing and like wanting to not just like wanting to stay like relevant and wanting to like engage with the audience in a way that he like. I think it's kind of kept people at a distance. And I feel like this is a game that's really like, really a lot more about connection, you know, than the first one was thematically. This one feels very open hearted to me.

[B]

The first True Strand type game, I.

[A]

Would say for that Griffin. It's maybe the second True Strand. Yes.

[C]

It also is kind of the answer to the little tiny questions we have about the other games. It is a sequel that is doing a lot more than the original game. It is dramatically improving the original game. It is a game that is taking the challenge of the original game and making it more conceptually interesting. It has a story that is coherent from beginning to end and I find very fulfilling. And it is even saying many of the same things that Baby Steps is saying about working with other people and taking support and being open to what is given to you. It's a very. It's a game about community, which. It's a good vibe of a game.

[A]

I feel good when I play it. It's good. And you know what it is? It's also like, it engages with the fact that it is online in a way that doesn't detract from, but rather builds up the single player experience. And I feel like so few games have figured out how to do that in a smart way. Like you got some soul stuff that does it, but it's rare and this one really does well.

[D]

Soul stuff also has the trolley shit like, oh, here's a note that doesn't mean anything, but here everything that you find in the world that is placed by another player is in some way useful.

[B]

Yeah. And also it feels. I love that shit where you know why someone put that thing there. I'm on a run and I'm on this route that I designed and right when my tricruiser runs out of battery, someone has built a battery tower here because they did the same thing. That's cool. Cool.

[A]

It's cool.

[C]

Did any of you play when the servers went offline between the review period and release? Yes.

[B]

I mean, that's the bulk of when I played it and why I didn't have a great time with it the first time I played it.

[C]

It was such a wild experience because if you played a lot before the servers went offline, you got a real taste of how much the thing was helping you. Yeah. But kind of assumed it wasn't kind of Assumed that was just the game. Kind of assumed it was all your work. And then it gets taken away and you're like, oh, I have done nothing. Yeah, I have created four small roads and I rely so much on the help of others, I am helpless.

[D]

It actually makes me worried because someday I just hope they have a plan for the day. Then the servers get turned off, then.

[B]

The game won't be fine anymore.

[D]

I mean, it's still fun. I played when the servers were offline and it was like a fucking grueling experience. It was not the broad, appealing experience that I think most people have, but I loved the like, I'm gonna fucking ship these metal pieces anyway. This game fucking rules.

[A]

It rules Death Stranding 2. If it makes one person play Death Stranding 2, then that's not enough. And that's not a good reason to do this podcast. But if it makes 100 people, maybe, maybe.

[B]

I see someone has put Hades two at five.

[D]

I didn't put it there.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

I put it there just because it'll get shifted around. But it was our fifth one and usually we put it there. But I'm fine with it moving wherever.

[A]

It can go wherever I would be fine with it. Feels like to me that and Expedition 33 are probably going to be 4 and 5. I'm not sure where you all want to do that, but to me as much as you all, I think Expedition 33 did really well to get here. But there's a lot of ways in which I think Expedition 32 is going to be the best expedition ever.

[D]

I like Hades 2 more than Expedition 33, for what it's worth.

[A]

That's kind of where that feels right to me.

[B]

I mean, I would not agree with that and I can make a pitch for it, but again, it's such a personal thing. This is more than any other game this year. It's gotta be. Your preference, I think applies to Expedition 33. And like, I don't know, man, this is maybe my favorite genre of Games is JRPGs. There's like a reason I go back and replay all those old Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games and it's truly unthinkable that this studio came out of nowhere to deliver such a. Such a kick ass version of that thing.

[A]

Griffin, at the holidays, will you explain to Grandpa Dan why a game is a French Japanese rpg? Because this is a French Japanese rpg. But I do want to have that conversation with Dan. Like, you don't understand. No, yeah, it's not an frpg. That's nothing. It's a fjrpg.

[D]

Maybe it will be something. Maybe it'll be something.

[A]

Maybe it will be something. But it's gonna have to be different than this. Cause this is a French Japanese role playing game.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

The things that you guys bounced off of about Expedition 33. I simply, I don't because of the fact that I like this genre so much. Like that's the stuff I like and to me I think that's the only game on this list where that is true. Like Dispatch, the only game you like. Things that don't. Well, no, I'm saying like the things you disliked about Expedition 33 were things that I liked about Expedition 33. The stuff that didn't work in Dispatch. We all kind of agree, like, oh well, that didn't work so much. I think it's a bolder and way more innovative and more exciting game than Hades 2. I would agree with that. I think Hades 2 is a fucking kick ass game and it does such a good job of building on Hades one. But doesn't necessarily, I don't know, doesn't do it in a way where I'm going to be thinking about it for a while and I'm going to be thinking about Expedition 33 for a really, really long. I beat it eight months ago and I'm still thinking about that game. So I would put it higher than 5 but.

[C]

Not a fan of that. I personally would also. But that's because.

[A]

Yeah, let's do that.

[C]

Hades 2 just didn't really stick with me.

[A]

So it feels I like them both.

[C]

I feel weird leaving it out because I just could not get myself to lock into that.

[A]

It's Hades 2. I feel I don't have a good vocabulary for how I feel about Hades 2, honestly, because it's so singular. I spent 150 hours for the first Hades. That's too much time to play a video game. That's not the fault of Hades 2. Do you know what I mean? Like it's not Hades 2's fault. The Hades one was so cool. It's not that that I've had a belly full of it. Not just like I don't want. I feel like for my life maybe I'm full on Hades. You know what I mean? Like unless you want to bring some other people in there and let's do like a co op thing.

[D]

I may be just like, I think they're done, dude.

[B]

If it was co op that would have been enough. I feel like to break the mold a Little bit. I think this would be a kick ass co op game.

[D]

I think that is a fair way to describe it is it does feel. I think it does extend beyond the mold of the first game. But not to the point of it being a full sequel, at least for me.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I think Hades 2 at 5, Expedition 33 at 4. I mean I liked Expedition 33 better than baby Steps and songs, but I don't think it's going to get up higher than that.

[A]

So. Expedition 33 at three. I like all those threes, you know. Expedition three three. Three, three three. I love.

[B]

And what's in the four? What's in the four spot?

[A]

And four you get baby steps. And in two, you get silk song.

[C]

Say this again?

[D]

Yeah. Why are we doing it in that weird order?

[A]

Death Stranding number one. Number two, silksong number three. Expedition 33, number four.

[B]

Baby steps.

[A]

Baby steps number five, Hades two, baby steps, Expedition 33, silksong. Death Stranding two.

[D]

I mean, I'm good with that list if you guys are.

[C]

I think that sounds like our list, like as a group in terms of like where it kind of averaged it all out.

[B]

That does seem like a good averaging of our.

[A]

Yeah, that's kind of how I. Yes, that is. Yes.

[D]

And we did somehow find one game that we all fucking loved. So mission accomplished on that front.

[A]

Thank you.

[C]

Which is a rare kind of incredible.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Someone write it then, I guess.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Chris, Plant, do it.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Go down from the mountaintops with the tablet and tell them what they say.

[C]

Thank you so much for joining us here today to celebrate the top five besties games. The besties besties of 2025, not 2026. Those games are at number five, Hades two. At number four, Baby Steps. At number three, Claire Obscure Activity. Expedition 33. At number two, Hollow Knight. Silksong. And at number one, With a Bullet, Death Stranding two.

[A]

Two. Wait, no, wait.

[C]

On the beach.

[A]

On the beach. Death Stranded two on the beach. And we're gonna read all these other stupid ass subtitles. Nobody just have a normal name. Nobody just have a normal name. You gotta have a colon. How are you gonna have a colon on your first game? Clara Maskira.

[D]

Come on.

[A]

Come on. Better than that.

[B]

That feels good, man. Hey, that went a bit smoother than I thought it was gonna go.

[A]

Thank you.

[D]

It went okay.

[C]

It's good.

[A]

Thank you. Who would have thought? Fucking consensus builder. The small town governor from Ohio. Just enough people can agree on. It's really our system at work, isn't it? That's stranding, too. Just funky enough that all of us could be like, I guess.

[D]

Yeah, man. For sure. For sure.

[A]

I wrote a big monorail. It ruled.

[D]

I think we did it.

[C]

Did it.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Any honorable mention? Any honorable mentions?

[A]

You're talking about every game.

[B]

No.

[D]

Okay, we're good.

[A]

That's going to do it.

[D]

I wanted to thank some folks over at the Patreon who've been lovely this year in supporting us. These are just a couple, but there's been tons. Elliot G. David R. Ollie H. Killer Andreas are just some relatively recent or existing subscribers. Thank you very much. Speaking of subscribers, next week we are taking a short break, but the subscribers have chosen to elevate a bracket episode. We do monthly bracket episodes over at the Patreon, and they've picked one from this year that will be delivered beneficially to all members of the besties community. So that will be hitting your feed this coming Friday. So get pumped for that. And then we'll be back the week after that for most anticipated games of 2026.

[A]

All right, that's gonna do it for this year on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Sam.