The Besties Besty of the Year 2024, part 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Besties Besty of the Year 2024, Part 1

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Besties
• Hosts: Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Russ Frushtick
• Episode: The Besties Besty of the Year 2024, Part 1
• Release Date: December 13, 2024

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1. Introduction and Bracket Formation

The episode kicks off with the hosts engaging in their characteristic humorous banter about the challenges of syncing their show, eventually settling on the continued podcasting format. Griffin introduces an innovative idea for their annual Besties Game of the Year (GOATY) list—a spherical, non-linear ranking system reminiscent of an artist's palette.

Notable Quotes:

• Justin McElroy [00:00]: “I think we should get into psych visual arts. Or especially not a sculpture.”
• Griffin McElroy [06:21]: “Here’s how it works. We do a bracket of 16 games.”

2. Bracket Structure and Rules

Chris outlines the structure of the GOATY bracket:

• Total Games: 16
  • 12 selected by the Besties hosts.
  • 4 chosen by the listeners.
• Format: Single-elimination tournament over two episodes.
  • Part 1: Covers the first eight matchups.
  • Part 2: Will narrow down to the final contenders and introduce new superlative awards.

Notable Quotes:

• Chris Plant [06:24]: “Here’s how it works. We do a bracket of 16 games.”
• Justin McElroy [06:36]: “Four of those games have been picked by you, the Besties listeners.”

3. Round One Matchups

The hosts delve into the first set of matchups, discussing each game's strengths and weaknesses. The initial four matchups include:

1. Astrobot vs. Rocky Planet

   • Astrobot: Praised by Russ as the best platformer of all time, surpassing classics like Mario and Sonic. The game is lauded for its consistency, joyful experience, and cohesive design.
     • Russ Frushtick [07:07]: “Astrobot has not been so consistently joyful and fun throughout the entire start to finish experience.”
   • Rocky Planet: (Discussion not fully available in transcript.)

   Outcome: Astrobot advances.

   • Justin McElroy [18:25]: “Astrobot feels a little bit more of a high watermark achievement.”

2. Animal Well vs. Prince of the Lost Crown

   • Animal Well: Celebrated for its innovative puzzle mechanics and deep exploration elements. It's compared to FEZ but deemed more thoughtful and cohesive.
     • Griffin McElroy [20:29]: “Animal well is just a platformer with a few ideas that it explores to the molecular level.”
   • Prince of the Lost Crown: A more traditional platformer praised for its balanced combat systems and engaging narrative but seen as less groundbreaking compared to Animal Well.
     • Justin McElroy [25:15]: “It's a lot more about building your skill set and finding combos that work together.”

   Outcome: Prince of the Lost Crown is favored by some but ultimately Animal Well does not advance due to lower personal enjoyment despite admiration.

3. UFO 50 vs. Fields of Mystria

   • UFO 50: An ambitious compilation of 50 NES-era games. Griffin praises its design and innovation, calling it a "genuine mind-boggling accomplishment."
     • Griffin McElroy [31:56]: “UFO 50 is a genuine mind-boggling accomplishment in game design.”
   • Fields of Mystria: An early access life sim compared to Stardew Valley. While promising, it's deemed not fully matured for the current bracket.
     • Chris Plant [29:57]: “Fields of Mystria will come back next year or the year after and be pretty.”

   Outcome: UFO 50 advances.

   • Griffin McElroy [34:40]: “This game is a genuine mind-boggling accomplishment in game design.”

4. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth vs. 1000X Resist

   • Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth: Celebrated for its community-focused gameplay and rich narrative. Hosts appreciate its positive portrayal of leadership and societal organization.
     • Chris Plant [39:47]: “Ichiban has this kind of gravity well that just pulls people toward him.”
   • 1000X Resist: A narrative-driven visual novel praised by Chris for its deep storytelling and character development but acknowledged by others as potentially overwhelming for some players.
     • Griffin McElroy [45:12]: “1000X Resist is an absolutely stellar narrative game.”

   Outcome: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth progresses.

   • Griffin McElroy [40:18]: “Please play both these games. They're fucking excellent.”

4. Mid-Episode Advertisement Break

At [05:14], an advertisement for Aura Frames interrupts the discussion, highlighting the product's features and a special promo code exclusive to listeners.

Advertisement Highlights:

• Product: Aura Frames digital picture frame.
• Promo: $35 off using code "Besties."
• Call to Action: “Visit auraframes.com and use promo code Besties at checkout.”

5. Ongoing Discussions and Host Perspectives

Throughout the discussions, each host shares personal insights and preferences, emphasizing the subjective nature of game rankings. They balance technical evaluations with emotional connections to the games, ensuring the conversation remains engaging and relatable.

Notable Dialogues:

• Griffin McElroy [08:37]: “I think in my mind it is. It goes a little bit higher.”
• Justin McElroy [27:04]: “I really, really liked Astrobot a lot.”

6. Announcement of Top Eight

As the first part of the bracket concludes, the hosts announce the top eight games that have advanced:

1. Astrobot
2. Animal Well
3. UFO 50
4. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth
5. SteamWorld Heist 2
6. Crow Country
7. Helldivers 2
8. Balatro

Notable Quotes:

• Griffin McElroy [89:52]: “Balatro should be in the Smithsonian.”
• Chris Plant [90:06]: “Wow, Heavy hitters.”

7. Closing Remarks and Teaser for Part 2

The episode concludes with the hosts expressing excitement for the next part of the bracket, where the top eight will face off to determine the ultimate Game of the Year. They also acknowledge and thank their Patreon supporters for their ongoing contributions.

Notable Quotes:

• Russ Frushtick [90:09]: “Wow, Heavy hitters.”
• Griffin McElroy [91:29]: “Join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?”

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Key Takeaways:

• Innovative Bracket System: The Besties employ a non-linear, spherical ranking system to evaluate and compare 16 games.
• Diverse Game Selection: The bracket includes a mix of established titles and fresh picks, reflecting varied gaming preferences among the hosts.
• Engaging Discussions: Hosts provide in-depth analyses, balancing technical aspects with personal enjoyment and emotional connections.
• Audience Participation: Listener-selected games add an interactive dimension to the ranking process.
• Anticipation for Continuation: The conclusion sets the stage for continued discussions and deeper dives into the top contenders in the following episode.

This detailed overview encapsulates the dynamic and thoughtful nature of "The Besties Besty of the Year 2024, Part 1," offering listeners and newcomers alike a comprehensive understanding of the episode's content and the passionate discourse surrounding the year's top video games.

Transcript

[Justin McElroy]

Holy crap. Guys. This is the cold open. But sometimes we're all so bad at counting our sink to sync the show. I don't think we should do a podcast anymore. Like, I don't think we were meant to podcast. I think we should get into psych visual arts. Or especially not a sculpture.

[Russ Frushtick]

Especially not a podcast that has counting in it. And.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, because the best be a sculpture is what I'm saying. Could it be a visual arts project?

[Griffin McElroy]

Now, hold on.

[Justin McElroy]

Audio. We're locked into the audio project. The besties.

[Griffin McElroy]

Russ has just raised a really interesting question, which is can you do a goatie list without numbers and counting in it?

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, man.

[Griffin McElroy]

And so it's more of a sort of free form. All the games land instead of on a line, a sort of sphere. A palette.

[Chris Plant]

Sure.

[Griffin McElroy]

Where they place on the sphere.

[Justin McElroy]

I like to think of video games as a palette. And we're all just artists with our brush. And we're just dabbing it in the Elden ring. That's cool. Dragon Dogma. And then we paint it. And that's the goatee. The painting is the goatee.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. And maybe there's not a goatee. Maybe it's just you look at the goat.

[Russ Frushtick]

No, there is. We don't. Yeah, there's gonna be a way. People are gonna be fucking pissed.

[Justin McElroy]

The thing that is there is still number one best cake. That's the only thing that's different about it. But if we could get this sphere.

[Griffin McElroy]

Idea going, then I think people could.

[Justin McElroy]

Just look at the sphere.

[Griffin McElroy]

When we're done with, you will clearly.

[Justin McElroy]

Be able to discern a numeral sign and then a one and then a triple. A video game released in the year 2024 in it. Like, that's the only thing, y'all. This year will be a clear number one best game.

[Chris Plant]

This is literally the plot of metaphor Refantasia. We have stumbled backward into it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Spoilers.

[Justin McElroy]

Hey, seriously, Plant. No kidding. That is the B, J, O T Y. The besties joke of the year. You will not make a besties joke. Not so glad that's what that stood for. J Dog.

[Griffin McElroy]

No.

[Russ Frushtick]

Griffin.

[Justin McElroy]

Now that's the BJ. O TY. Congrats. Late year entry. Griffin swoops plant with the BJ of the year. Unless there's some more great BJ's in this one. We'll see, baby.

[Griffin McElroy]

We only just begun.

[Chris Plant]

Besties, we are back here with the besties awards.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, we do this every year, you guys. Justin and Russ look surprised, but this happens every year.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Plan always sings the cult theme the cult that is the famous, the world famous besties. Game of the Year Theme opening welcome that tune can only mean one thing. And it's time for everyone's favorite time of year where the besties finally make it come due.

[Russ Frushtick]

We're not gonna fucking start the show with us saying our names.

[Justin McElroy]

No, not this time. It's a special. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the year.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm Griffin McCarran. The best game of the week. You know who we are. You're here for our Gaming of the Year show.

[Chris Plant]

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

[Russ Frushtick]

My name is Ross Rutger and I'm the best game of the week.

[Justin McElroy]

My name is Justin McIlroy and I know the best game of the year. We're choosing it this time with the besties. This is how many years of power, how many years of excellence?

[Griffin McElroy]

It feels like 11.

[Chris Plant]

This is 11 or 12, something like that.

[Justin McElroy]

We found it in 2012. This is our 12th year of excellence. We are going to be picking the best game of this year.

[Russ Frushtick]

I think we might have missed a couple years in there. By the way, it should be noted, I always.

[Justin McElroy]

No, we've always picked a best.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, really? We always.

[Justin McElroy]

There's a full list you can review.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm so glad.

[Chris Plant]

Yes. There were times where we picked multiple games and there were times where we deferred to, I think the Chris Krant bot.

[Griffin McElroy]

The Chris Krantatron.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

An unfeeling sentient video game criticizing device.

[Justin McElroy]

Which is honestly less funny in this world of AI now where we could create a Chris Granatron.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, my God. So much easier.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, it's gonna be. It's gonna be a neat one, I think. No clear front runners. No Elden's rings, which was a pretty anticlimactic episode, if memory serves correct. No breath of the wilds to breathe in. We got a clean slate.

[Justin McElroy]

If I could just ask, just as a thought experiment.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Justin McElroy]

You guys could look at the list of 16 games that we have and tell me how many games you would feel comfortable being number one.

[Russ Frushtick]

I need no interest.

[Justin McElroy]

How many. When you look at this, how many different number ones? Because I don't have one number one where I could be like, yeah, that's mine. I have.

[Griffin McElroy]

I got five. I have nine.

[Chris Plant]

I have nine this year. Nine, nine, nine.

[Justin McElroy]

If we pick the best get. If we get number one, you're like, yeah, sounds about right.

[Chris Plant]

Comfortably nine and I comfortably nine could.

[Justin McElroy]

Go, what a Year.

[Griffin McElroy]

What a nine.

[Justin McElroy]

What a year, guys. I got at least six. It's a good year.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, it's a good year. This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Aura Frames. And you know what? We here at the Besties love Aura Frames. It is a very, very cool, I would say the coolest digital picture frame you can buy. What's so cool about it is that my mom, who is not technologically savvy at all, can have it in her home and I can upload new photos to it and there's nothing she needs to do. She just keeps it plugged in and she'll see new pictures of her grandchild and be very pleased and I'll feel like I've done my duty as a son. I specifically added a bunch of photos from Thanksgiving and she was thrilled to see those just automatically pop up. Aura is very, very cool. To that end, you can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling Carver Matte FR frames by using promo code Besties at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code besties. This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply.

[Griffin McElroy]

Alright, so give me that structure, Chris.

[Chris Plant]

Here's how it works. We do a bracket of 16 games. 12 of those games have been picked by us, the besties. Four of those games.

[Justin McElroy]

We don't say it enough, but okay, experts.

[Chris Plant]

Four of those games have been picked by you, the Besties listeners. They show down in 1v1 matchups. We do this in two episodes. The first episode is eight matchups. That will fill up the entirety of the episode. All of round one. The next episode we will be actually whittling down to the true bestie of the year will also be handing out some superlative awards, which is new this year. And we're really excited for you to hear more about that. But first we got to work our way through this.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes.

[Chris Plant]

Beginning with round one. What a year for video games. Astrobot, also known as Russ Freshick, says it's the best platformer of all time. Better than Mario and certainly better than Sonic and Rise of the Golden Idol.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. This is what you want me to start on my.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, let's get some Astrobot knowledge from you, baby boy.

[Russ Frushtick]

Look back then. This is a few months ago when Astrobot came out. Actually, we're going to take even go even further back and say how excited I was after Astro's playroom came out and I Was like, damn, I hope they give them a full on platformer to do. And they've done it. Astrot comes out and there is not a single game on this list that was so consistently joyful and fun throughout the entire start to finish experience. I fucking loved every minute of this game. The music, the graphics, the art design, playing it, the actual platforming of it.

[Justin McElroy]

This. Can I ask a question? Fucking rules to clear to zero in on what you are saying about it. Because I trust you as we've established an expert. When you say it's the best platformer, are you saying that this is the best game that you would put into the genre of platforming or if you divorced all aesthetics and other non gameplay elements?

[Russ Frushtick]

No, I add it all together. I think they're all together. So like the platform, there's probably a better feeling. Let me just. Yeah, there's probably a better feel. Whatever. Like jumping from platform to platform. There might be a better game than that. I think as a whole, as a cohesive experience, no platforming has done platforming better than Astrobot has.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's so fascinating. That's so. That's really interesting. I don't know that I agree with that.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you being wrong? Do you have a sense that you're wrong? Like when you think I'm just. That's a innocuous question. I feel like that wasn't the name. I'm saying. How do you. Kidding aside, how do you. How do you say that over, like when you're adding a superlative like that. I'm not disagreeing. I'm like trying to think about it, like how do you weigh that against like Mario Odysseys? Mario 64, Mario Odyssey.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. I mean a lot of it has to do with consistency. I think all of the Mario games and there's a lot that are fucking amazing, we'll look at like Mario Odyssey, which was mentioned. And yet all of them have excess at times. Things that you don't necessarily want to do, but you have to continue doing. Because whatever you need to find a moon or whatever you gotta do, it's not all fucking straight bangers. As much as I wish it was.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

And that I think really for me, I always prioritize, like, give me the purest experience of this thing. Which is why I always blanch at, oh, you need to play 15 hours before it gets good. That is like the biggest curse to me because it's like, just give me the good shit.

[Griffin McElroy]

Don't hold it down. I'm so into this argument, Russ. I genuinely am because I agree with you wholeheartedly. For me, what this game accomplishes that is I think almost impossible to define is a vibe and a tone that is so pleasant and good and silly and clever in a way that I feel like when games try to go for it gets a little too twee for my tastes, sure. But this game feels so authentically joyful and I think that that is absolutely like it stands head and shoulders above certainly anything else that came out this year. But I think I would agree with you that I can't think of a platform that is this. That makes me feel this good from a visual and an audio and a sort of mechanical kind of standpoint.

[Justin McElroy]

Meanwhile, over at Rise of the Golden Isle.

[Griffin McElroy]

This is a late one. Did you finish it? Has everyone or I guess who played it?

[Justin McElroy]

I have not finished it. I am like halfway through the fourth of five acts. Case groupings, however you want to say it. Rise of the Golden Idol is, I think you could most accurately describe it as like a point and click puzzle game where you are. It is taking point and click adventure mechanics but distilling them to single like situations where everything's contextual. And rather than how items in the environment interact, it's much more about how the ideas represented by those items interact. So you're looking at a sort of tableau that's lightly animated. You are digging through all the clues and all the everything that you can find and then that's like one layer. And as you play the game what you're really collecting is words and ideas. So as you explore the world you might find like a test tube and you collect the word test tube. And then to solve the scenario you'll get basically what's like a Mad Libs where it lays out the story for you and you have to pull in the clues that you have collected in the world to lay out what actually happened in this story. And as the situations get more and more complex, there's more and more sort of like lateral thinking required that gets you to and sort of like less initial context presented where you are really having to establish a lot in order. Pretty much every scenario will also have like a one or two sort of like smaller bite sized puzzles that you're trying to solve. Like a lot of times it's like pairing names to faces. That's pretty common one in some you'll have to like pair for example. Like you'll have a diagram of different symbols and then you'll have to write what each one of those symbols means. And sometimes that's a clarifying thing of helping you to understand what's happening. Yeah, sometimes it's a way of like you proving that you understand what's happening without necessarily brute forcing it. But all these different like cases are telling a cogent super story across all the different cases and scenarios that are all these people interweaving and like, the story, such as it is like unfurls over the different cases and as you're playing them, you're seeing how they like jump around in time, how the stories interact, where the different layers of the the story are. Sydney doesn't play a lot of video games with me, but I downloaded this on my the Surface studio that I have that folds into an iPad and we did that with like a stylus and we played the whole thing together on a recent trip. And for somebody that doesn't play a lot of video games, but does love like puzzles and mysteries, it was fantastic. It's like such a good game to play together that way. And we had like a fantastic time. It's kind of its own genre at this point, heavily inspired by the return of the Obra Dinn and things like that. But it really does with this one feels like an even more sort of self assured, like this is what a Golden Idol game is. And I think it's just fantastic. The music is great, it looks great, it's so fun. It is so cogent and fair. By the time you get to the end of it, you don't even remember what the puzzle was. It's so clear what happened that it doesn't even feel like a puzzle. It's just like, oh, yeah. I just sort of like, yeah, I understand this completely.

[Griffin McElroy]

I just want to hammer home. I think the story of this game is one of my favorite pieces of storytelling. This year you will do a standalone little mystery and think like there's a mystery where someone has been killed in an aviary by a bunch of birds and you're like, what does this have to do with anything? What does this have to do with anything? There's a lot of those that just come completely out of left field and then two chapters later you figure out like, oh my God. Oh, that was telling me this. That was telling me this. You'll see a character watching this TV talent show that had nothing to do with anything and you realize like, oh, that's what that was doing.

[Justin McElroy]

The dance.

[Griffin McElroy]

The dance. Yeah. The whole story of this game really, really stuck with me. And I think it's fantastic and I think it's free. If you have a Netflix subscription, I think.

[Justin McElroy]

That's right.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think they have both of the Goldenel games. These are two completely different kind of, like, games.

[Russ Frushtick]

We really struggle to do these math.

[Justin McElroy]

Games, but one's better than the other. That's the besties, baby.

[Russ Frushtick]

I guess the question I had. So I played a ton of the original Golden Idol, but didn't finish it. And I was intimidated to start the new one because I wanted to see the end of the story of the first one. Mechanically speaking. Are there substantial changes to the second one, or is it kind of more of the same great puzzle stuff.

[Griffin McElroy]

Definitely more of the same. I would say the place where it kind of stands apart is each chapter has four mysteries in it, usually. And then once you're done with those four mysteries, there will be a little booklet that is like, here is everything that happened in this chapter. I think that stuff is a lot more fleshed out, and that is good because it really helps you to start putting the pieces together of, like, what this entire story is all about. And it is such a story that I kind of have been tempted to go back and replay it already, just now knowing kind of, like, what was actually happening the whole time.

[Justin McElroy]

I think that Sid and I will probably go back and play one together after we finish this one, which would be crazy.

[Griffin McElroy]

Did you do the DLC for one?

[Justin McElroy]

No, I didn't do that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Some of it's really, really good.

[Justin McElroy]

What I would say about what I think is so cool about what Griffin is saying about the story is, like, it is layered onto you in a way that is not, like, literally told. It is something that you almost sort of, like, absorb and find yourself understanding as you're playing through these levels. You're like, something in this is sticking in my mind. Like, I remember it, this game, I think, compared to the last one. For me, as somebody who bailed on the first one, I think that while the basic mechanics are the same, the, like, connective tissue between the different levels, there's, like, little, like, extra bits that you get outside of the quests themselves that are, like, little bits of information that contextualize on what you just saw. But I think it's much better at, like, pulling you into the next mystery rather than the other one. Kind of felt like once I finished.

[Russ Frushtick]

One, I often felt like you didn't have the momentum.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah. There's a loss of momentum. I think this one keeps the momentum. And I don't know how they're doing it, like, without, like, directly, like, looking at the ui, but I feel much more compelled to keep moving forward in this one.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay. Is there anyone here that thinks Astrobot shouldn't move forward in this matchup?

[Justin McElroy]

I.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's. It's asking me, like, what I think is more important. Right. Because I think Rise has a. I mean, Astrobot doesn't have a story, per SE.

[Russ Frushtick]

The PlayStation 5 gets stolen by aliens and you have to repair it.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. So that's. I remember that.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think Astrobot is more of an accomplishment from an artistic and like, I don't know, just ambition standpoint maybe, but. So I do think in my mind it is. It goes a little bit higher. But I do like rise. I want a million of these games. And so if that means we have to give them the goatee to get.

[Justin McElroy]

There, that's the price you gotta pay.

[Chris Plant]

Yep.

[Griffin McElroy]

Plant, where are you at?

[Chris Plant]

Oh, I mean, I'm Astrobot. It's no fault of Golden Idol. A recurring thing I notice when people really like Golden Idol is they say exactly what you said. Hoops. I love it. I was playing with somebody else.

[Justin McElroy]

I do think it's better that way.

[Chris Plant]

I think it is such a game changer and that I played both these games solo and especially the second time around, I found myself a lot more frustrated. I don't think that's a knock on the game. I think it is a game meant to be played with another person. The same way that when you watch a detective movie, there's always like Sherlock and Watson. I almost said that. Sherlock.

[Justin McElroy]

That's interesting.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

But, yeah, I think that is the missing piece for me. So it's purely on personal preference. It's Astrobot. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

We don't have a good way of talking about games like that. I think that, like, ostensibly single player games that are really better like as a shared experience, you know what I mean? It's not strictly a multiplayer thing, but I'm fine with Astrobot. I think this game, I think Rise of the golden island is frigging fantastic. I really, really liked Astrobot a lot. I could see where in terms of if you got to pick one, in terms of what's doing something that you want to like, celebrate and honor, Astrobot feels a little bit more of like a high watermark achievement is a really good way of putting it.

[Griffin McElroy]

All right, Astrobot, bump it, bump it up.

[Chris Plant]

Boom. Next up we have Animal well and Prince of the Lost Crown.

[Griffin McElroy]

Shit. Yeah, man. I'll talk Animal well, is that all right?

[Russ Frushtick]

Go for it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Animal well is. I mean, I follow video game donkey on YouTube. Enjoy his stuff quite a bit. And when they announced, you know, he was opening his own publisher and this was going to be the game that came out of it, it immediately, I think, just seized my attention. Just from a visual kind of standpoint. Because the game looks kind of unlike anything I've ever seen before.

[Russ Frushtick]

It looks like a light bright video game.

[Griffin McElroy]

It looks like a light bright video game.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like a super low, low fi, neon kind of gritty animal platformer. I have talked about this a lot when we talked about the game the first time around. The experience of playing this game at launch, before launch, in a group of, In a discord of fellow reviewers Was truly unforgettable. And I think the game definitely stands on its own apart from that, as evidenced by the fact that it's pretty widely renowned. Even outside of that discord. It is just a platformer with a few ideas that it explores to the molecular level to a degree where some of the basic puzzles, you solve them. You're like, okay, I get it. I get what this game is serving up. And then down the road you realize, like, oh, my God, like, this is the smartest. This is the smartest thing ever. I still feel uncomfortable talking about some of this stuff Because I think those moments of discovery are so important. And Russ will certainly bang this drum louder than I will. But having a moment, I'll say one. I realized at one point, hey, that bush looks weird. And then I got a barcode scanner app. I downloaded it on my iPhone and scanned the bush. And it turned out that it was a barcode with like a secret in the game for it. That is one of 50, like, really, really, really neat things that this game does. It has multiple sort of like strata that you can go into if you want to just play it like a platformer with some, like, kind of neat Metroidvania esque mechanics and exploration. That's cool. If you want to get deeper into it and, you know, try to find all the secrets, that's cool. If you want to find all the secret secrets that are like really crazy. Universe brain stuff. Like, you can also go that far into it. There's no game that came out this year like it. There's no game I can really think of maybe that have ever come out like animal. Well, and I think, yeah, I think.

[Russ Frushtick]

FEZ is like in the ballpark, but I think animal.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, FEZ is certainly in the ballpark. Yeah, I would grant that.

[Russ Frushtick]

But I think animal whale is doing that idea in a much more thoughtful and cohesive way also.

[Griffin McElroy]

Just such A labor of love. And that comes through in, like, every aspect of it, including if you find the developer notes, just like, just like incredible. I think the story about this game is really, really fantastic.

[Chris Plant]

Earlier Hoops mentioned, you know, like, how many games could you see getting our game of the year? Animal well, is not even on my top 10, maybe not my top 20, but I'm thinking about a game that I would be happy to like, literally take that crown as like, what it represents, like the besties and what it represents for a game of the year and where I really admire a game in what is that? And I think that's a testament to something as a, I don't know, a object of creativity that it's not really, for me, I didn't really enjoy my time with it. I admire the shit out of it. And I probably watched five hours of videos about it. Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. It's the epitome of my, like, no guides thing is Animal like, that is the core of that. Only because it. It goes to the point of like. I think the best things for me when I'm playing video games is the feeling of ownership. I made a choice or I discovered something and it wasn't like external force or whatever it is. And Animal well, is a game about having ownership over, like, the things you discovered. And some of them are like, very well curated and obvious and some of them are really, really hard to spot. And some of them, you absolutely need to team up with a group of a dozen people to solve it. Really is a lot of dope shit.

[Justin McElroy]

But. But in Prince, the purchase of the lost crown, you can shoot five arrows, which is way more than in any point. Animal well, let me tell you, this is. I'm so glad you want to underneath an enemy and then stab him in the back. You can't even do it in Animal well until you've played for like 10 or 11 hours and you get the sliding gem and the Murder Frisbee. I don't know.

[Russ Frushtick]

Murder Frisbee is from Animal well, for what it's worth.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. But there is also Murder.

[Griffin McElroy]

Both games have Murder Frisbees.

[Justin McElroy]

Sorry, they both have Murder Frisbees.

[Griffin McElroy]

Clear.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm glad this matchup. I mean, I made the matchup, so I'm glad it worked out nicely. These are totally interesting approaches to the same genre and I love both of them. Like, these are both.

[Justin McElroy]

Right. I didn't even really think of them being the same genre, but they aren't.

[Russ Frushtick]

They are effectively. And they're both. They're like Coming at it from two completely different directions. Prince of Persia is a much more guided, directed experience. It borrows a lot of the same tropes of unlocks and map discovery, things like that.

[Justin McElroy]

I do want to say like I don't want it to become like I don't want to cheapen Prince of the Lost Crown through the comparison because there is an amazing amount of work that has clearly gone into the flow of this game and making each like little tiny scrap of it feel like cogent and fun to get around. Like especially once you've gotten through a lot of unlocks like getting through this world and the different number of ways you can like approach like traversal and combat and like there are so many different like completely valid ways to go at it and it's like there's a lot of love especially for a game that like you could see a world in which a Prince of Persia game doesn't need to be. Doesn't get that amount of TLC because they're relying on you know, whatever power the brand has to keep it going. But it is really well balanced. It's a lot of just pure fun. I actually finished it just because it was like that enjoyable to play and stick with. But it is like it is not breaking a lot of new ground.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's familiar. It's definitely familiar for the genre and I don't think that's a bad thing. To Justin's point.

[Justin McElroy]

It's probably combat wise. I think it's a lot more fully fleshed out than a lot of search action games.

[Griffin McElroy]

Absolutely.

[Justin McElroy]

It's a lot more about building your skill set and finding combos that work together, stuff like that. Rather than finding a super weapon that like lets you blow through stuff.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, no, I think the boss fights were fantastic. There's great puzzles in this game. Animal well is like you're learning a new language from scratch. This is not that. But I do think this game takes a lot of swings that it didn't have to take in really smart ways. There's like amazing like you're making clones of yourself to like weigh down switches and spin around whatever other puzzles. The almost all the powers do something like interesting that I've never ever seen before and yeah, it's fucking spectacular.

[Griffin McElroy]

Also refreshing. When it came out I was not expecting it was one of those games that I feel like it happens a few times a year on besties where it's like what are we talking about next week? It's like oh, Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. And I'm Like, I don't know. I've never heard of that. I don't know what that is. But it's probably not gonna be very good because it's a Prince of Persia game. And those have a pretty mixed track record in my book. And then it blew my ass away how fun it was. And I don't know, I feel like it was just what I wanted right when I wanted it.

[Justin McElroy]

If you didn't expect that Prince of Persia game, I bet you super duper didn't expect another one three months later. That was a. That was the real twist that kept you guessing. Can we get that one into contention here? Just real quick, throw it in. Because it was a Persian prince of Rome, the rogue Prince of Persia is also very fun. It's surprisingly also weirdly good. I get as animal whale though, right? I mean, it's animal whale. I think animal. Well, is pretty genius. Even if I'm kind of closer to plant than you two, I definitely dig. Dig it.

[Chris Plant]

All right, next up we have UFO 50 versus Fields of Mystria.

[Griffin McElroy]

Ooh, is this our first audience pick in Fields of Mystria?

[Chris Plant]

Yeah. And I think the only, like, in progress game on the list.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, early early access.

[Chris Plant]

Early access.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, right, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. Can I be honest? That's kind of. I really, really like Fields of Mischie. I think what they're going for kicks ass. And the game definitely got its hooks in me. It is hard for me with a game that is like a life sim like Stardew Valley. Like, I know I'm going to put a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of time into this. And so there was part of me that felt like I should just wait for full release, which is not fair, I think, when it comes to talking about these games. But I did put, I mean, probably 20, 30 hours into Mystria. Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Which was a lot.

[Chris Plant]

Fields of Mystery, I think will come back next year or the year after and be pretty. It'll make it far in the bracket. I don't think this year is that year. I will say for folks who are thinking about trying it, if you are looking for a Stardew Valley like game that I think has a lot of the rough edges polished off, which is wild to say about a game that is one of the most successful of all time, you can start playing it right now. And they've added updates even since we talked about it on the show. It is a very complete game, but it almost hurts knowing what they have yet to add. Right. They have been clear about Saying this game is going to be that much better. So I am really glad it made our sweet 16. I think it certainly already earns a spot there, but I agree that it has a little bit more time to cook.

[Justin McElroy]

I do, I do. I do want to mention this point because we are having the early access conversation. There is a notable absence from this list, I think in the. In the place of Hades 2. That's a game that I've been playing a lot because I continue to want to keep up with it. But I think that is a game that, from talking to the other three, definitely something that we're going to return to once it's a little closer to like done done. From what I understand, Mystery is a little closer to what it, you know, feature complete than Hades 2, but we will definitely be returning to Hades 2. I don't think Hades 2 won goatee the year it was released.

[Griffin McElroy]

Did it?

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, I think Hades.

[Justin McElroy]

It couldn't have been.

[Griffin McElroy]

But was it 1.0 Hades or was.

[Justin McElroy]

It the early access it was released? No, it couldn't have been because it was release during the game awards.

[Chris Plant]

You're right. Yeah. It was released on Epic Games Store during the Game Awards.

[Justin McElroy]

Epic Game Awards during the Game awards. So it would have been following early access.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I. Can I talk about UFO 50?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yes, please.

[Griffin McElroy]

Do you like Too much?

[Justin McElroy]

We all agree.

[Griffin McElroy]

Maybe harder than any game I've ever talked about on the Besties or maybe ever played before. I fucking slingshotted around the circumference of this one and came back so, so hard.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you saying the besties got it wrong? Griffin? Are you saying this one the besties got it wrong?

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm not saying the besties got it wrong. I am saying that this is a game that more than any game I've probably ever played before, it will sink its teeth into you if you. If you approach it with curiosity. If you approach it with like an open mind and you approach it with sort of like a faith in the game's ability to have kind of innovative ideas in all of these really ancient looking packages. UFO 50 is 50 games, not mini games. Pretty much full size, full size games. NES era full size NES era games. And that is like. I think the reason I was pretty quickly turned off by it is that I don't actually have that much affinity for NES games. I think that most of them aren't particularly fun to play. I think a lot of them have not held up especially well and lean on difficulty curves that are insane as opposed to meaningful Ideas that would keep you coming back for the length of a full game. I think UFO 50 at first blush does that stuff too. But also I am now I've gotten the cherry on 31 of these bad boys now and I just kind of keep coming back for more. It has gotten me to play genres of games I don't like. I'm not interested in that I get into very, very deeply because they are pretty approachable here. Once you kind of give them a chance and try to learn it once. I sort of shed the idea of like this is too complicated for me. This is too hard for me. Putting that idea out of mind and thinking like this game was designed and there are ideas that I can approach it with that will help me succeed at this game has been a truly exciting and empowering journey that I have gone on with this game. And I could speak about each of the 31 games that I have gotten the cherry on so far and why they all kick ass. But I think that this game is a genuine mind boggling accomplishment in game design. Games design. And I just like it so much.

[Chris Plant]

I hate to take away more UFO 50 conversation, especially from Russ Rushnick, but I think we're going to be talking about this game quite a bit more in the next episode. So how about we give UFO 50 the old congratulations and move it on to the next round.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. I will also say it's 50 games. So good luck everybody.

[Griffin McElroy]

Good luck. Everyone else good luck.

[Justin McElroy]

Cause it's got 50. That's when Wario needs to pop up like, wow, I got you. I got 69. Wow. Fuck that. Fuck. I love Wario so much.

[Griffin McElroy]

What if the next next Micro Games.

[Justin McElroy]

What?

[Griffin McElroy]

I think a WarioWare game is just called Wah 69 and it's 69 awesome micro games.

[Justin McElroy]

It is so funny. What's the next matchup?

[Russ Frushtick]

We have like a Dragon Infinite wealth vs 1000X Resist plant. Can you confirm if it's 1000X Resist or Times Resist? Because I've heard both so often.

[Chris Plant]

The X in these things is just silent. So it'd be like 1000 resist. Like spy family. I like it might be 1000 resist.

[Griffin McElroy]

But telling me the name of that animated show is Spy Family and not Spy X Family, Correct?

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Shit man.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Godzilla Kong. That's the name of that movie is Godzilla Kong.

[Chris Plant]

Godzilla Kong.

[Justin McElroy]

Can I say a quick word about like dragon infant wealth?

[Chris Plant]

Please?

[Justin McElroy]

I didn't ever finish one of these guys before. I've played like four of these guys and I get like 10 hours into and I'm like, this is cool, but it's just like. I don't know man.

[Russ Frushtick]

What do you mean by these guys.

[Justin McElroy]

These yakuza games, Formerly Yakuza Games now like a dragon. These are these fellows. I keep playing them and. Cause like there's a lot of things I like. I love the idea of virtual tourism, you know what I mean? Like, sure, I like the idea of being in another environment and exploring it and like picking up some cultural stuff and it's a cool environment to be in. But I eventually just kind of get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that is in these games and the idea of like missing certain things and the idea of like, I think being overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that you need to keep track of. Especially when it's like a culture separate from yours, I think gets kind of overwhelming. They also can get pretty talky, etc. Etc. This is the first one that I finished and I've. I finished it a lot. I finished a lot of parts of it that you didn't need to finish, but I did finish those. I think that once I sort of got into the wavelength of this thing, I will say one, it is really generous and open hearted in the way that it designs games and mini games and combat and all of it really. It's a very player positive. Like wants you to have fun, wants you to be engaged, doesn't want you to like, I don't know. It's very open hearted and generous in the way that it'll lay out entire stories that it didn't really need to give you, but it will give complete stories where one was not required. Right? Like nice stories. It'll make complete games like the. I'm thinking of Dondoku island. Like complete games inside the game when you really could have gotten away with something that was a lot more bare. In the same way it's got a protagonist who is genuinely one of the like best heroes I think we've had in games in a long time. It is so nice to play a character who is not an anti hero and is not cynical, cynical or any of it and is like really like someone who genuinely has morals and ethics and just wants to do the right thing. And it feels good to be in a game and be able to be a person like that. It feels nice to be in a world where people are like happy to see you and where you are not like the most important person in the world, you know. Like the world does not hinge on Ichiban. He is pursuing his morals and what he thinks is right because they are his morals and what he thinks is right, not because destiny has told him he needs to do it. He's just a good person. And I think that's a really powerful message and a really engaging message and I just loved it. Builds to, I think, one of the most moving, like, endings to a video game I've ever seen. I adore this game. I adore it. And I, by the way, I don't know that I'm necessarily going to play the next like a dragon game to come. I'm not like now I get it. You know what I mean? But this one, I got a lot and I think it's really lovely.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, I feel like Ichiban and kind of like dragon games in general are about a great community organizer more than like a superhero. He has this kind of gravity well, that just pulls people toward him. And so much of the solutions are not I solved it, but like, oh, I brought the other people involved who could help solve this problem. And that is such a refreshing change of pace and such a better use.

[Justin McElroy]

It's kind of like a Ted Lasso.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Open world RPGs in a real sense.

[Chris Plant]

It's so smart for open world game though, because you're going to have all of these people. The whole point of open world is that you're in this space with a ton of people and a ton of community. So whenever you make it about one person, it just feels so. It's seeing this huge world through a pinhole.

[Russ Frushtick]

And you compare it to GTA where everyone around you tends to either like double cross you or is trying to screw, you know, you're trying to screw them over. And you compare that tone to this. And it's really nice, this game.

[Justin McElroy]

People try to screw you over and you refuse to accept it.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Because you know that deep down they're actually a pretty good dude. And then they think about it for 10 hours and you go off to your own island and you come back later and they're like, hey, you were right.

[Griffin McElroy]

I am a good dude.

[Justin McElroy]

I came to give you this bat. It's on fire. Kick ass.

[Chris Plant]

I'm gonna turn some diapers into snow and change the lives of the people around.

[Justin McElroy]

Hey, P.S. how's your pervert collection coming? That's pretty good.

[Chris Plant]

Depends on which pervert collection you're talking about. The one that fights or the one that farms. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Or the one you take photographs. There's a lot of different types of perverts.

[Chris Plant]

Hey. 1000x resist. Thank you.

[Griffin McElroy]

Actually Chris, the X is silent sometimes.

[Chris Plant]

Thank you. Sorry. I'm glad that we have somebody who's an expert on the show. Thank you to everybody who voted for this to get into the 16. Once again, a game that I am so glad is on the 16, once again, not a game I can recommend going any further as the biggest fan of the game on the show. For people who are unfamiliar with it, it is an absolutely stellar narrative game. Maybe the best story I played in a game this year. I think I compared it at the halfway point to the works of Ted Chang, who wrote the story that would be Arrival, the movie. These are sci fi stories that are much more about people and the decisions that we make and how the big questions of sci Fi force us to, like, reckon with uncomfortable truths about our behavior. And this one, the best way I could summarize the premise without spoiling too much is imagine if Covid had happened, but it killed or was set to kill everyone except for one person. And what would it be like to be that person and all the responsibility that comes with it. And now more so worse, what if that person was a teenage girl? And all of where your brain is at when you're a teenager that. That suddenly comes into conflict with something that is so greater than you and kind of where your ego is as a teenager? It's a really good question. And where they go with it with the game is wild. It's also dealing with a whole bunch of other things like immigration and protest and really the past five years of kind of global culture. So much to put into one video game. Caveat or not caveat, I would say bonus real anime vibes. And I think this is what often intimidates people or scares people away. The trailers for this game, I think are a little intimidating. You want to say what just happened? Sorry, no, go ahead.

[Justin McElroy]

The listener at home won't appreciate this, but the moment Plant said real anime vibes, Griffin literally stood up from his chair, spun around, and spread it out the door. I think he's answering his front door.

[Russ Frushtick]

But he's doing a big.

[Chris Plant]

I think he's spamming pre order. He's like, oh, I need a new. I need a new pillowcase.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm going to GameStop. I'm gonna run. Don't walk to my local Gamestop tonight.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's worth considering. About a month ago. Cause I knew how highly Chris Plant loved 1000 resist. I asked him. I was like, hey, so I have to play this game, right? And I wasn't super eager. Mostly because it's really rare that visual novels ever click with me. And he specifically told me, you probably shouldn't. And I appreciate that for him. And I also appreciate how much everyone who voted loves this game. And I probably in a different time and a different space where I had a lot of time and a lot of reading time, I would take the time to do it.

[Justin McElroy]

But this is not one of those. How long are 12 hours?

[Chris Plant]

12 hours, yeah. And it plays well on Steam deck. I think this is just the difference between where we were when we started the besties and where we are now. We always believed in subjectivity, but I think there was deep down a part of us that believed whatever our favorite game was was objectively the best. And now I am at a point where I can realize I can really love this thing, knowing it is a relatively small portion of the audience that will love it as much as I do. When there are games on this list like the one that this one's up against that are on the flip side, I actually think it's a crime if you do not play like a Dragon. Infinite Wealth. Even if it is not my favorite game of the year, maybe it is to not play it. I don't know what. I don't know what's up. Like, yeah, there's something there for everybody. In my opinion.

[Griffin McElroy]

You have sold me on 1000 Exorcists. I have it downloaded on my Steam deck. I've not dipped into it because I don't know what kind of mood I should be in to approach this game.

[Russ Frushtick]

It does seem depressing.

[Chris Plant]

It's a good winter season game. I think it would be great for us to revisit maybe in the slower January if. Folks, there's no such thing as slow. We have like five games that we could be talking about right now that we're gonna have to talk about January 1st.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

Anyway, let's move like a Dragon forward, listeners. Please play both these games. They're fucking excellent.

[Russ Frushtick]

So, okay, so those are the first four matches. We've got four more matchups coming after the break. Stay tuned.

[Griffin McElroy]

Us gamers, we know all about subs and doms. By subs, of course, I mean subscriptions for different gaming services. And by doms, I mean DOM from Gears of War. But sometimes the subs overwhelm us, don't they? We subscribe to games that we forget we are paying for every month and we're not playing them anymore. And they're just eating our wallet like a bunch of wallet hungry moths. Well, no more, I say, because Rocket Money is here to help you out. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. I have used Rocket Money more times than I can count, and every time I do, it catches something for me, whether it is an MMO that I don't play anymore or some iPad game that I bought for my son and it requires a subscription. For some reason, I. No joke. Lots and lots of subscriptions have been canceled for me because of Rocket Money, and I've saved a ton of money. In fact, Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to Rocketmoney.combesties. that's Rocketmoney.combesties One last time, Rocketmoney.com I see four different cursors in this fucking Google deck right now.

[Chris Plant]

That is a sign that I'm.

[Justin McElroy]

They're all gone now. All the games are gone.

[Griffin McElroy]

More.

[Russ Frushtick]

More games. More games. Yeah, you, boy.

[Chris Plant]

Get me the finest game. The finest game, sir. That'll be 50 pins. You heard me. The finest game.

[Justin McElroy]

Wow. As you started inhabiting both of those characters Plant, you really weren't leaving a lot of meat on the bone for the rest of us. You were both Scrooge and the little boy. It was impossible for I was trying to get in there. There's just no room on the wall. I guess I could be like, yes, I still have that bird. I'll open up my shop on Christmas Day.

[Griffin McElroy]

We got Tactical Breach wizards, and we have Steamworld Heist, too.

[Chris Plant]

Shit.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Shit, man.

[Chris Plant]

Good.

[Griffin McElroy]

Good matchup year.

[Chris Plant]

For a genre that does not get maybe as much love as some people would love in the besties, it doesn't matter when games this good come out because hot Damn.

[Justin McElroy]

SteamWorld Heist 2. I know this isn't the order we have them written on here in. Yeah, but I'll say that that's another one that's exactly like Infinite wealth where I've played, I think almost every Steam world game, which is across many, many genres. Right? And this one is so good that I just didn't want. I got it and I understood what was happening and I just couldn't stop playing it.

[Chris Plant]

Wow.

[Justin McElroy]

It's just that. It's just so fun. I didn't really care what's happening can.

[Griffin McElroy]

You put a name on that juice? Can you figure out what it is?

[Justin McElroy]

SteamWorld Heist 2.

[Griffin McElroy]

What is it that SteamWorld Heist 2 does? Cause I also know this is not a genre you particularly love.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes. Okay, so SteamWorld Heist 2. I think a lot of tactical games are very much about running math and doing equations. I feel like in terms of I've got to figure out a really smart way of doing this and if I don't do it a smart way, it'll fall apart quickly enough that it's not going to be fun anymore. Yeah. For me this game felt a little bit more like worms where even when the things didn't pan out right, like if I miss a shot with a laser, that's a bummer, but maybe my laser went and hit a gas tank that's behind another guy and that exploded and blew this other guy to hell. And all the characters in this, you know, if you don't, if you don't haven't played this specific subgenre of steamworld. It's a 2D tactics where you are going into a mission and usually stealing something and then exfiltrating or like killing something and exfiltrating. Turn based. You go in with a crew of usually like I think one to four. Four is about as big I think as you ever go in with and.

[Griffin McElroy]

You sort of a platformer perspective.

[Justin McElroy]

Platform perspective. And each person member of your crew, there's like sort of different roles that they can play. They can pick up skills from the different jobs and sort of like blend them together as they become more advanced. So you're going in with like, you know, a close up weapons expert and you know, somebody who's a little bit more about explosives and somebody who's more of a sniper and then they can cross train in the different ones.

[Russ Frushtick]

The cross training shit in this game is outrageous. The fact that you can pull any skill from any other character and spend resources to like make any character a part sniper, part dasher, part whatever, melee guy, like all that stuff is so.

[Justin McElroy]

Smart and it didn't feel like you had to. When you would get a character to a certain point, you didn't feel like you had to like ditch them and start playing someone else to level them up because you could just sort of like start pushing them in a different direction. The real limiting cap is the gear that you have, right. For like how many shotgun guys is not about like how many characters you have, but more like how many good shotguns do you have that you could send them in with, you know well.

[Griffin McElroy]

And that the structure of the game also incentivizes you to use everyone. Because if you can go out and beat a bunch of missions without having to go home to home base, like, you get this streak multiplier. And so you want to use. Use everyone you have, and so you gotta. But it's so quick and so easy to make each character what you want them to be and play the game how you want to play it. And I think that is really the accomplishment of this.

[Justin McElroy]

It's also got great, great, great music. I don't know the game this year. The music I've enjoyed more. Although there's a lot of really good contenders on this list. I think the story, it's all pretty sharply written. It's pleasant. All the character designs are really good, and they are ev. Like you know what character you're looking at almost instantly. Like, you get their whole vibe from the design. I just think. I think it's fantastic.

[Chris Plant]

That last bit that Griffin said about the streak multiplier, I think is the kind of star of the game for me and the year for me of getting me interested in things that I normally wouldn't, which is I was motivated to learn why the game is actually fun and try all the things where I feel like often in games like this, we can talk about with metaphor and RPGs or same with, like a dragon. I find a solution that works well enough and it gets me through a chunk of the game. And eventually I hit a barrier. And during that time, I never learned the rest of the game. So suddenly I just don't like the game anymore because it's not working how I thought it was, when in reality the game's like, why aren't you doing blank, blank and blank? This teaching you to try so many things early on, I think is what saves you later in the game. And again, the same thing with metaphors, job class, and Infinite wealth character progressions.

[Justin McElroy]

I think this game does a really good job of letting you get super duper comfortable with one or two characters and then nudging you to try others because, like, you can never get too frustrated because in the back of your head they're like, well, I can bring in my guy. I got this one guy who's a level 5 sniper that could just come in and level this entire fucking board. Like so. But I'll let him sit on the bench while I level up these other dudes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's. Let's hear about Tactical Breach wizards.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I can speak to it. Yeah, you know, I was talking earlier about holistic games, games that kind of cross shut every angle. And I think there aren't many games that do it as well as tactical breach wizards on our list this year. In addition to being like a really excellent isometric tactical game, which has elements of like into the breach that has that vibe to it. It's also just so smartly written. It was the narrative that clicked most with me for the entire year. I was so invested in the small number of characters that you're interacting with because they are written humanistically, they're funny, they're like deeply depressing at times, but in a very kind of welcoming way. They're very like exposed, I would say. And all of this is happening among missions that are like, interesting and thoughtful. Like, how am I gonna overcome this unstoppable force of like 60 enemy guys in two turns using all the powers that I have at my disposal? It is really quite a feat. I. I adored this game.

[Chris Plant]

Great defenestration, right? A lot of defenestration in that game.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah. You do knock a lot of people out of windows.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah. I think the writing is what stood out to me with this game. I mean, the puzzle solving in the combat is great. You're right. It's hard to pick anything that's like, not working. But the writing has really stayed with me in what has me wanting to go back to finish it. I made it probably like three quarters of the way through.

[Russ Frushtick]

I think it's a good example of how a game can introduce very complicated concepts throughout and still make you make sure that you're not losing the thread because you literally at times are connecting threads of all the different plot points using this like, giant board.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Which has been used in a couple games recently. And I think it's a really smart solution.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, there's both.

[Justin McElroy]

We should have had a best. We need to get that best murder board.

[Chris Plant]

That can be one of our superlatives next week.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Right.

[Chris Plant]

And I thought the moment to moment dialogue is really good in that it is a move away from the Whedon esque kind of like cheeky action dialogue. And I don't want to dunk on that too hard. There was a moment where everybody loved that and I'm sure all of us briefly were into it, but the times have changed. And this reminds me of like a return to the. Y'all remember that movie the Rock and like that era of Jerry Bruckheimer where.

[Griffin McElroy]

It'D be like this movie's way more. This game's Way more self aware than the Rock is.

[Chris Plant]

I don't know about that. You have Nic Cage playing an action star at the time, which he had never done, or Con Air. My point is it's movies where they are being earnest with their story, but the characters have this kind of like laissez faire attitude that makes them seem both funny and cool and approachable and likable while still being somehow grounded and not like, oh, these people don't actually even exist in this world.

[Justin McElroy]

It's really nice to have a game like this where it doesn't feel like it needs to jump out and punch you in the nose and say, this is what the tone of this thing is. Because it doesn't immediately say, this is all a joke. This is a goofy thing that you can dismiss because Tactical Breach Wizards is obviously tongue in cheek a little bit. And I think the tone is similar. And then it lets you kind of decide like, I don't know, how much of a joke do you think it is we're taking seriously?

[Russ Frushtick]

And eventually this narrative goes to places that are like really tackling incredibly heavy themes of religion and totalitarian regimes and, you know, refugees and things like that.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's really, it's very impressive.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I really like both of these games. I think for me, SteamWorld I think does enough kind of different stuff. I'm very, very big into progression systems in games and I think the way Steamworld handles it is truly, truly genius. And so that kind of like kindling kept me coming back a bit more than I think Tactical Breach wizards did. But I imagine this will be a pretty split vote.

[Justin McElroy]

It's so hard. I know that we don't want to. I don't want to get into denigrating either of these games. I will say for myself personally, I know that I would have loved, I was loving like all of the narrative aspects of Tactical Breach wizards. And I think that had I pushed on through, I probably would have really. I think I really would have clicked with that a lot. So I'm having to kind of do a little guesswork here just because mechanically it just didn't grab me in the same way that SteamWorld did.

[Russ Frushtick]

I mean, I. Between these. I love both these games too. So it's incredibly difficult for me between these games. Of the ones that, of the one that'll probably like stick in my memory the longest, it's probably Tactical Breach Wizards because of the narrative. I didn't think the narrative in. I didn't like the Net personally, like the narrative in Steam World I thought it was a little eh. But I do like the gameplay probably more in Steam World, so it really is just. It's kind of arbitrary. I love both of these games, but I guess I'll.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, I would lean Tactical Breach Wizards, but my. I'm so close and the arguments here are so strong and passionate for Steamworld that I think we move it along to the next round.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, I would probably feel differently. I'm fine with that. I would probably feel differently if I had like finished the narrative in Tactical Breach Wizards, which again, to Justin's point, I really want to do, but I haven't finished it yet. And it probably could have used a few more like progression hooks to carry people along. So I'm cool with Steamworld being the.

[Chris Plant]

I do hope that we get a sequel to Tactical Breach Wizards. Not that everything needs a sequel, but it feels like a game that. Similar to SteamWorld Heist 1, you know, where just a little bit more is going to like take it over that edge.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

What a game though.

[Justin McElroy]

Good game.

[Russ Frushtick]

We have another very thematic matchup here. We have Crow country, which was a reader pick, and the Elden Ring DLC Shadows of the Erdtree.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'll hit Crow Country.

[Russ Frushtick]

Cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

That shit rules, man. I forgot that game came out this year. I didn't actually. I think it was in the top 10 that I submitted for our own sort of like perusal. But it did come out, I think pretty early in the year, man. Crow country is a. It is a PS1 inspired, Resident Evil inspired survival horror game set in an amusement park where something absolutely horrible has happened. And it is kind of up to you to figure out.

[Justin McElroy]

Is it tank controls? It looks like tank controls.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, you can change it. You can make it tank controls if you want it to be. There's several different control schemes. It is set in an amusement park called Crow Country. And I mean, when you start the game, you know nothing. You know that something bad has happened, there was an accident, and you are there as an officer of the law and you are there to find somebody. That's about it. That's about all they give you. And as you go through the game, it makes you second guess basically everything. I think the narrative of this game is very, very cool. I think the way this game kind of like suspends you in a state of unease the whole time is a really, really cool kind of vibe that it accomplishes. I really love this genre of games and I think that Crow country doesn't just really nail what made Resident Evil 1 and 2 feelings like, as revolutionary as it did when those games first came out, I think it does a better job in some cases. Really great writing, really great puzzles, a lot of really great secrets and hidden things to go around and collect that make your character that small percentage stronger that they need to balance out the economy of this survival horror genre.

[Russ Frushtick]

Just visually, I don't think it looks like anything else that I've. I mean, I guess it kind of looks like Final Fantasy 7 more so.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think the comparison I made is it feels like the ghost sector of the gold saucer in Final Fantasy 7 a little bit, but at the same time, like, it does get genuinely quite scary at times, which I appreciate. And the story takes all kinds of twists and turns. I think this game flew way, way, way under the radar for some folks. I think it kicks ass and I think it is one of the more memorable games that I played this year. But again, it also kind of hit me right in the sweet spot of the exact genre I like executed to the top of its form, while also kind of like doing this PS1 era stuff better than a lot of other games that I've seen. Attempt it.

[Russ Frushtick]

Something interesting just for people that should be aware. If you like the puzzles of these sorts of games but don't like the combat, there is an option to play through this game without any combat at all and just puzzles, which is kind of an interesting approach.

[Justin McElroy]

What is this? Not?

[Russ Frushtick]

It just removes enemies from the game, so you're just left with exploration.

[Justin McElroy]

So it's just like a house. Just like somebody's house.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's like someone's house.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, my house has no enemies. It's like my house.

[Chris Plant]

I'll add that where I think Tunic was a game that was trying to recreate the feeling of importing a game and also going through an instruction manual. This feels like a game about what it was like to see and read about and see the guides for games like Resident Evil back in the day. So the actual visual of the game, yeah, it looks like a game from the 90s, but on top of that, it has kind of visual artifacting layers that look like screenshots of a game from the 90s. So it doesn't. It looks like it is being almost filmed off of a crappy 90s TV or a photo had been taken of that screen. There are actual, like guides, items placed throughout the game that feel like stuff you would see in the pages of those sorts of magazines. I think it just does a great job of creating the holistic experience of playing this sort of game or really remembering the experience of this sort of game versus, you know, when you go back and you play Resident Evil 1. And while it's still fun, it is not your memory of sitting down with a game pro next to you and a bottle of cherry Coke when you're a kid.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, no, it's very much hitting that for me. I don't know if somebody who was born after, who was not of gaming age in the year 1997 may not like it might not hit with them as well. But it really, really. It felt like a game that was made for me. And I like it's. I mean. Yep, you got me. You hit my goatie list for that very reason. Crow Country. Well done.

[Russ Frushtick]

We also have. In this category we have for this matchup, we have Elden Ring Shadows of the Erdtree, which was the DLC to Elden Ring. It is the only DLC that we have in our bracket. I think that's okay. I played a ton of this DLC. I have 50 hours of the deal, something like that. I think when it first came out, there were very reasonable critiques about the structure of this dlc. Specifically the idea that you had to find these esoteric items to make yourself arbitrarily powerful enough to fight the boss and good for fromsoftware because they heard that note very loud and clear and rebalanced a lot of that stuff such that you only have to find a couple of the items which if you're playing the game, you will just kind of stumble upon as a matter of course.

[Justin McElroy]

But if you bought it on the.

[Russ Frushtick]

Disc, but if you bought it on the desk.

[Justin McElroy]

Screw.

[Russ Frushtick]

I don't even know if they had it disc for this game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Probably not. How would.

[Justin McElroy]

I cannot imagine. Right.

[Russ Frushtick]

This game is. Granted, it's a lot more Elden Ring. If you played Elden Ring, a lot of this is going to feel familiar to you. But it is also at times a refinement of what Elden Ring was doing. There are moments in this game that hit harder than anything that happened in Elden Ring. There is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Can you give me an example of one of those moments without spoiling it?

[Russ Frushtick]

Cursed you bail. There's a moment where you fight a dragon on top of a mountain. That is the coolest fucking thing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh yeah, you do fight. Yeah, that dragon fight is pretty kick ass. Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

I apologize for the attempt at the best voiceover performance I've heard all year was from the guy who says curse you bail. I hereby vow you will rue this day. Behold. A true Drake warrior. So fucking cool. Yeah, the game is filled with, like, really, really cool moments. That do dope shit to the point where I really do kind of wish that it was just released as a standalone because I think it has a weird relationship with the main game and the baggage that, like, your character brings from the main game. I just. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to make people go through a very esoteric process of accessing the DLC and kind of juggling through every. All the gear that you've already found when. I don't know. I feel like it would have been a better experience to have a standalone, but as a game, it rules. I had a blast.

[Griffin McElroy]

I asked you that, Russ, because I genuinely, you know, as we got closer to this episode and, you know, it hit the VGA goatie, like, nomination, like, I started to think about it and I feel like I can't remember that much about. I beat it. I, like, played through all of it. I did all the bosses. I explored the hell out of it. And I feel like I don't remember a ton about it. And I don't know if maybe that's. Maybe I rushed it. Maybe if I rushed through playing it.

[Russ Frushtick]

I think it might be also a consequence of, like, it melds with your memory of Elden Ring and it can.

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, I don't know. Maybe. But I remember a lot about Elden Ring. Of course, I did replay Elden Ring to get ready for this dlc. Yeah, I remember some of the bosses being very, very cool. For me, it. I feel like, unfortunately, like, the things that stick out in my memory are the things that I did not like about it.

[Justin McElroy]

Well, we don't need to get into that. No. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm not saying. Yeah, I'm not going to.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't like either of these, but you don't hear me going, no, I didn't play Crow Country. I might have liked it. I don't know. For those of you who have played, where are you leaning with these?

[Griffin McElroy]

I would honestly go Crow Country. I have just so many. There are so many things that the Elden Ring DLC did that I wish they had done pretty differently. And these are two different things. Completely different scale, different ideas. But I don't know. I feel like Crow country hit more often than it missed.

[Justin McElroy]

As someone who played some of the Elden Ring DLC and also didn't play any of Crow country and also doesn't want to say negative stuff, I would say that Crow country should probably go on through.

[Russ Frushtick]

I'm cool with that. I loved Elden Ring, but I would agree. I don't think it did enough differently from the original Elden Ring to justify a repeated presence.

[Justin McElroy]

Now, Russ, if we're going to start talking about negative stuff about it, you want to open those doors. Allow me. I got lots of stuff if you want to.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's keep going. Let's keep rocking.

[Russ Frushtick]

Congrats, by the way, to the readers for pushing Crow Country.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, maybe before next episode, you guys could try Crow Country a little bit.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, that's a really good idea. I will play it. I will play it.

[Chris Plant]

Okay, next up, we have two twos. We have Dragon's Dogma 2 and we have Helldivers 2. Dragon's Dogma 2. What a game. If you like living the D and D experience. And by living, I mean you like to go to shops and not always have money for what you need. You like to go on a quest and actually have to walk every step of it.

[Justin McElroy]

You want to go adventure. You can't right now. You're too tired. Just walk the whole way. It's the adventure.

[Chris Plant]

You gotta lay down, take this horse cart. That'll get you there faster. Except while you're as.

[Griffin McElroy]

Just kidding.

[Chris Plant]

You were attacked and everybody you know and love was killed.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's a fucking.

[Justin McElroy]

It's like you should have taken your horse's road. Why did you take a cart?

[Griffin McElroy]

It's like the Oregon Trail. It very much is. There's a lot of stuff that happens between leaving and getting rich.

[Chris Plant]

I love this game so much. I love how many memories I have of this game and how often I felt like a true hero in that, like, I got by by the skin of my teeth, quite literally. It was dark out. I thought that I had finally reached sanctuary after just the most brutal slog towards a glowing castle. And only when I got to the front of the castle did I realize, oh, it was glowing because it's infested with skeletons. What a gift, this game. I love it. It is going up against Helldivers 2. And I would love somebody else to honor this game, which I also liked a lot.

[Griffin McElroy]

I stand by this. They're gonna come out with a Dragon's Dogma 2. Dark Arisen. I pray to Christ they will come out with an enhan of this game.

[Justin McElroy]

Or they'll make an Oregon Trail game. I actually want that. Now imagine it's like, well, nope, you died again.

[Griffin McElroy]

Back to Boston Helldivers 2. I can't think of a lot of, like, big multiplayer zeitgeist that I got swept up in at least. And Helldivers 2 is probably the peak of that. It came out like in February, right?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

This is like, pretty, pretty early on. I loved the original Helldivers. I didn't play a ton of it, but it was so madcap and so silly. It was like if overcooked was a twin stick shooter. And when I found out that this was going to be like a over the shoulder third person shooter, I was like, I don't know how those ideas translate.

[Chris Plant]

I think we were kind of bummed, right?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

Because we had played a fair bit together in Austin. Really got into the first one.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. The idea of, like, I have this Gatling gun and I turn around in a circle and I gotta dive under it every time. How is that gonna work in three dimension? Well, it does. Cause there's so many ways you could kill yourself and other people with Helldivers 2. And it is.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's so much funnier than the first game.

[Griffin McElroy]

So, so, so fucking funny. I don't know why I bounced off. I guess I played it for a couple weeks, right. And with games like this, I have this unfair expectation of like, if it doesn't sink its teeth into me for two to three months, like a destiny does. Like it's maybe.

[Russ Frushtick]

I looked at my play clock for Helldivers. People talk about the fact that, oh, Hell Divers two was a moment, flashing pan, whatever. I looked at my play clock. I had 75 hours played in Helldivers 2.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, that's wild.

[Chris Plant]

I'm checking you play Metaphor Refantazio in Helldivers 2. I love this. That rules.

[Russ Frushtick]

And it's just because that experience of like the. That 30 minute, however long a mission takes somewhere, that loop, you know, point you were just talking about that, like, feeling of like, surviving by the skin of your teeth. The entire game is designed around that same mentality. And you're constantly doing that loop over and over again because you're fucking out of ammo. And a giant fucking pterodactyl appears out of nowhere and you have to shoot it with a rocket launcher and it's your last shot before you die and you do a crazy diving move. Like those experiences happen time and time and time again. And it was so great to get people together again. It felt like a throwback to like my college days when I was actually playing multiplayer on a regular basis. You mentioned such a delight.

[Justin McElroy]

You mentioned the loop. And I. And I think that that's actually one of the things that I thought was really cool about this game is that you. For me, at least for the amount I played it, I never really got the sense of the loop. It feels so dynamic that you're constantly sort of swinging. It never feels. To me, at least it never got, like, mechanical. It always felt like the situation was always sort of spinning wildly out of control and you're just barely kind of keeping up with it. But it always felt dynamic, you know what I mean? Like, things were shifting so quick. The weapons that you have access to feel like such momentum shifters that it's very cool to have the ability in a game to know, like, I'm going to input one sequence and I'm turning this entire thing around. If we could just hold on for, you know, a few more seconds.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah, it has that D and D feeling of like, if I can make this roll. Even though you're not making rolls, you're actually aiming. Like, I can be the hero of the moment and if I don't, we're all fucked. Like, we all do.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah.

[Russ Frushtick]

Fresh.

[Chris Plant]

You did a good job here with this matchup because they both are kind of chasing similar things in terms of creating a story that you are telling yourself.

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

I do think Helldivers 2 is much better at getting to that with more players and faster. Dragon's Dogma 2. I mean, yeah, we joke, but, like, I wouldn't be surprised. You're right. There probably will be a better version of this game released in the next year or two. I would not be surprised at all if we got that.

[Justin McElroy]

There will be a. Okay, there might be a version of this game released, Dragon's Dogma 2, that we would say is better to play. I guarantee there is this tiny sliver of Dragon's Dogma 2 perverts, excuse my language, who are getting exactamente what they want from Dragon Dogma 2. And if you change a stitch of it, they're gonna go solve every single one of them. A guarantee they're getting it exactly how they like it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, sure.

[Chris Plant]

Can I spoil where Dragon's Dogma 2 goes at the end?

[Griffin McElroy]

Absolutely not. Don't you dare.

[Justin McElroy]

Please. I won't play this game with something you're going to dare. They're going to fix it. Like Griffin.

[Chris Plant]

Okay.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. And I'm sorry to Vance. The nasty dogs. They'll be left cold.

[Griffin McElroy]

Let's advance Helldivers 2 and get the next one, because this next one's gonna fucking suck.

[Chris Plant]

Oh, no.

[Russ Frushtick]

I don't know how this happened. I didn't know what to do.

[Justin McElroy]

This got to the end of games.

[Russ Frushtick]

I ran out of games.

[Chris Plant]

I ran out of you. Okay, this is. Go ahead.

[Justin McElroy]

Balatro versus metaphor refantazio.

[Chris Plant]

This fucking sucks. This is like.

[Griffin McElroy]

This could be the final round.

[Justin McElroy]

Similar games, like, you can't really come up with.

[Russ Frushtick]

Are there clowns? I'll do metaphor refantazio. Yeah, that's the closest I can think.

[Chris Plant]

You're the clown.

[Justin McElroy]

I'll do metaphor refantazio. You guys do.

[Russ Frushtick]

Oh, God.

[Justin McElroy]

Balatra. Let me start with Balatro, please. Okay? Because I've been playing Balatro again on my phone.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

For no reason. I don't have any reason to play it. I've done the things I've done before in Balatro. I'm doing them again on my phone, guys. I'm probably playing hands. I've done exactly four. I don't care. Balatro is. In 20 years, we will have conversations about the best games of all time. Balatro should be rushed into that conversation. Balatro should be in the Smithsonian. Balatro is a game where you play poker and you collect incredibly powerful jokers and enchanted cards to play the devil's poker. And you play poker with gods. You go up to the cosmos and you play poker so hard, you're not even using cards anymore. And I'm not really joking. You go beyond cards at a certain point, but it is also a poker game that your grandpa could maybe get at first until it makes him insane from all the numbers that it has in it.

[Russ Frushtick]

It's the only poker game that'll make you worse at poker if the more you play it actively worse at.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, poker. It'll make you. It'll make you better at poker until you start saying, like, so five of a kind beats no. Well, how many points is flush house? What do you mean I can't get a flush house?

[Griffin McElroy]

I am reminded of the conversation we had about Hades when it first came out, which is what that game did great, is that it's fun instantly. And the first time you do the tutorial of Balatro, and then it's like, okay, you know how to play now, so go for it.

[Justin McElroy]

Do you want to do this for a million years?

[Griffin McElroy]

Do you want to do this forever and ever and ever? The answer then is yes. And then also you keep unlocking shit and everything. You unlock, like, you see these different avenues that you could take a run down, and then you get excited about, like, oh, shit. Can you imagine if I ever got those two jokers in my hand at the same time? And then you do, and then all of a sudden, Just Hulkamania runs wild.

[Justin McElroy]

And you have these. There are these revelations that you have about how Balatro works that are as much a like, unlockable item as you would find in any search action game. And you'll have these realizations as you're playing. And it's like, for example, there is a card. This is going to seem very obvious, but I'm using obvious example. There is a joker where clubs and spades are counted as the same suit and hearts and diamonds. So it's basically reduces it to red and black. And you're like, well, wouldn't that make it too easy to get flushes? It's like, yeah, it does. So you should probably do that. And then the game a little bit later is like, oh, by the way, if you play any flushes right now, I'm gonna fucking kill you. But wait, you told me flushes were like, so easy.

[Chris Plant]

Remember?

[Justin McElroy]

It's like, yeah, I tricked you into just doing flushes and now you're sunk.

[Russ Frushtick]

And you should have read ahead.

[Justin McElroy]

You should have read ahead and seen what was happening. Cause of course I was. And you forgot again, didn't you, that you can look at what the last blind is. You forgot again to check. Stupid.

[Russ Frushtick]

What's great about Balatro is that it is the first time there's been a game that other people normies can play that explains why I love Binding of Isaac without making them having to learn Binding of Isaac.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, that's a really good point, Russ.

[Russ Frushtick]

It is an onboarding for this genre in ways that no other roguelike has ever been able to accomplish.

[Chris Plant]

All right, what do you think is better? Moby Dick or chess? You know, I think it's. I think it's a good question. You know, this is the worst possible showdown lays bare the broadness of video games and how absolutely silly the futility of the exercise we have. That is probably the best mechanical. If you made a fine machine game of the year, maybe of even more than that as hoops is getting to versus a game that is about feelings and stories and characters and ideas. Not to say it doesn't have mechanics. It does. And I think they're quite good. But what makes Metaphor Refantasio special is the people you meet along the way. Right? And I think that makes it damn near impossible to talk had any integrity.

[Justin McElroy]

This is the exact point where we would retire the exercise. Like this is the exact point where if we had any integrity as creators, we understand the dissonance. We get it. Let me be at the end of the integrity. That's why we would say, like, we shouldn't do. We should open up the vault door, walk outside, see the daylight, and we.

[Chris Plant]

Don'T have the integrity jump.

[Justin McElroy]

We won't do that.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, it won't happen.

[Justin McElroy]

Well, we're acknowledging the dissonance. We're looking at it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Can I just lay out Metaphor Refantase, please, just to make a case for it? I think Atlus has done this type of game a lot of times now. Right. Like all the Persona games, I think of some of the Shin Megami Tensei games, like, this formula is something they've messed with a lot. I feel like Metaphor refantazio is as close to nailing it as they have ever gotten. Persona 4 Golden's probably my favorite game of all time. Other entries in this franchise are in my top 10. I think the way that metaphor refantazio allows you to customize your characters to the nth degree and build a party and engage in combat in ways that feel meaningful to you, I think the stories that it tells with each of its characters, I think the options that it gives you on how to spend your time, all of this stuff is literally firing on all cylinders, better than they've ever, ever, ever done it before. And they do it in an original fantasy world that tackles really heavy real world concepts. And the story is also about that pretty explicitly. It is a game in conversation with itself, which is a really annoying way to describe a game, I understand. But the fact that they were able to accomplish that much narratively in this enormous fucking framework is, I think, a staggering accomplishment. This was a year of RPGs. I can't believe how many great RPGs we got this year. And this was kind of the pinnacle for me. I have trouble comparing it to Infinite wealth, which is maybe not a super fair comparison because they are like, about as diametrically opposed as two games in the same genre could be. I feel like there's some pacing issues with the game that hit pretty hard when you spend 80 hours with a thing. But I think that what this game does right is really, really fucking spectacular.

[Chris Plant]

I think there are a number of people too who maybe have held off on this game because they know it's about democracy or racism or other complex issues and avoided it under the assumption that it would not handle those things well. And what really knocked me over with this game is that it does raise questions like, hey, you know, like, what is the point of a democracy? How can it be used? And it doesn't come away with, like, easy answers. A big part of the game is there's a setup of a book in the game, a novel that two of the main characters return to again and again. And this idea of, like, can fiction and can art improve or change the world? And it's so easy to imagine the most facile, annoying RPG ass conclusion from that. And the game resisted at every turn. And that's what will stick with me. This is a game where I will remember every character. I will remember every town I visited. I will remember every beat of the story.

[Griffin McElroy]

It is also a game that I feel like will have its own atlus side sequel. Persona 4 Golden Persona 5 Royal. And that will probably fix some of the. There are parts of this game that feel like they ran out of time and so they omitted, like, an entire dungeon. Like, there's some pretty. There's some gaps that. And I adore this game, but there are some parts of it that made me very, very frustrated.

[Justin McElroy]

So wait, Griffin, you're telling me that in this 80 hour game there are parts where you're like, why all the rush?

[Griffin McElroy]

Honest to God, Justin, slow down. The midpoint of this game, this thing.

[Justin McElroy]

Is turtling out of control at the.

[Griffin McElroy]

Midpoint of this game. I would stick with it for as long as it want, as long as it would have me.

[Chris Plant]

Absolutely. We always adjust the rules in situations like this. I think this would be a good situation where we could pick a winner or whatever. But I really think both these games are going to be in the top five. It feels really, really weird to force a decision now and not say that for the top five thing. I also think the really challenging part for us as a group to, like, make that decision and it'll be easier when we're slotting it into the top five is the dark side of this conversation is if you are not the type of person who can invest. Who invests yourself in this. So for me, like Balatro, I admire it when I am playing it. I'm so locked into it. And then I feel just like almost gross afterwards because it feels like it literally is like a parasite that takes over my mind. I feel a lost control when I play that game.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you saying you have Pac man fever?

[Chris Plant]

I'm saying I have a case of Pac man fever. I think it's hard for me to do that. And I know the same thing goes probably for some of us with metaphor, where it's like, this is a waste of my time.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. So we can't do that. So Balatro is better than. So it goes through. I mean, we're not going to. We're not going to send it through with a pat on the back because you guys like it. It's not as good as blot. That's not how this works. It's a system. We have a. We have a system of laws.

[Chris Plant]

I think the problem is the system would be a tie.

[Justin McElroy]

But no, it's not one of them. One of us didn't like at all. And we all like Balatro. So Balatro I goes on through. Right.

[Griffin McElroy]

I. I feel I'll even let Balatro lose.

[Justin McElroy]

But I'm not gonna sim two games through, guys. Come on.

[Russ Frushtick]

Well, we've done bonus bracket episodes. We do carry stuff forward.

[Griffin McElroy]

We could drop.

[Justin McElroy]

Not from 16 to 5, guys.

[Russ Frushtick]

That's true that we've never done that. You know, I think that the argument. Here's the argument. My brain, and I think Hoops's brain to some extent, is not the proper shape, shape and size to absorb a game in a fun way, like a metaphor. Refantazio. To the same token, like, I also struggled with Infinite wealth, which is a game I think we all loved, but, like, didn't click with me in the way that everyone's here did. The question, I think, is, is the besties game of the year list the besties game of the year list or is it, you know, I mean, is there, like, bigger.

[Griffin McElroy]

A bigger, broader thing? Yeah, no, that's always the thing. I am fine with Balatro. I'm fine with Balatro moving forward. And metaphor not moving forward. I'm uncomfortable with metaphor. REFANTASIO Coming in 16th place or whatever. I don't think it deserves that. But it's also not my favorite game like this this year.

[Justin McElroy]

Can we make a, like, a concession here? If we get to the end and we still feel this way, then we can absolutely bump it up. I don't think it. I don't feel good about saying right now it gets a stay of execution if it wants to come back from Exile Island.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

After it's been.

[Griffin McElroy]

But it does have, like, the list.

[Russ Frushtick]

Is not where it should be. I think.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, we'll get down to four and then there's always adding one more.

[Justin McElroy]

So there's just. Here's what I'm saying is there is a lot of really good games on this list. And I am uncomfortable saying it is in the top five right now at this point. That's fine because it isn't. That's the only reason, though, other than no other reason.

[Griffin McElroy]

Looking at my sheer playtime at Balatra across the Three platforms I have played it on now it's. Yeah, like. Yeah, let's do Balatra, too. I'm fine with that. That's a good fucking game, man.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, Balatro. Congratulations.

[Griffin McElroy]

All right, top eight. We got Astrobot, we got Animal. Well, we got UFO, 50, Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, Steamworld Heist 2, Crow Country, Helldivers 2, and Balatro.

[Russ Frushtick]

Wow, Heavy hitters.

[Griffin McElroy]

And we're going to put pit them all against each other next time.

[Chris Plant]

I can't wait.

[Justin McElroy]

Let's try to play. I will. I want to try to. I feel like I've spent a good amount of time with all these in the top eight. I probably need to go. Except Crow Country. Yeah, that is a. That is an audience selection that I can cop to. But it did get through, so I'm going to give it. I'm going to give it a shot.

[Chris Plant]

We should revisit Helldivers 2 to see where it's at.

[Justin McElroy]

That's actually a pretty fucking good idea to plant because it was marred early on by a lot of technical. Yeah, technical hiccups for me. Um, and the fact that there wasn't. Is there transportation now? I understand there's bikes. That's all I ever wanted.

[Russ Frushtick]

There are mechs.

[Justin McElroy]

Mechs. Fucking great, dude. What?

[Russ Frushtick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Game of the year, easy. Okay.

[Russ Frushtick]

Okay, so we have our top eight. We're going to be doing part two next week, which is very exciting. I'm pumped to narrow it down further. To that end, I want to thank the patrons who have been with us through the year. Thank you so much. We have a new bracket battles episode, which is live currently, but I wanted to thank these patrons. We have Killer Andreas, we have Kevin, we have Matt, and we have Holly. Thanks, y'all. We really appreciate you. You can go to patreon.com thebesties and sign up if you haven't yet. We have a ton of great content there waiting for you, and I think that's gonna do it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. Justin had to leave to go pick up his kids because this episode is ungodly long. So join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?