Pod Insights The Besties The Most Anticipated Games of 2026 About this episode 2026 may be the year of Grand Theft Auto 6, but we’re partial to the nearly 20 other games on our most anticipated list. You like RPGs? Prefer point-and-click adventures? Crave some tactics, life simulators, or deckbuilders? Whatever your interests, we have you covered!
Transcript 11,833 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Russ Frushtick? So I asked some of our patron members for their most anticipated games of 2025.
0:06 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
0:07 Russ Frushtick? That was a mistake.
0:08 Griffin McElroy? Uh oh.
0:09 Russ Frushtick? That was the first time I did that because it's not 2025 anymore. They're not.
0:14 Griffin McElroy? Oh my gosh.
0:15 Russ Frushtick? And I'm so fucking embarrassed.
0:17 Griffin McElroy? Did you get your ass fucking handed to you?
0:19 Russ Frushtick? We had like 30 or 40 people just unsubscribe right then.
0:23 Speaker 02 And it didn't say from Russ, did it? It just comes from the besties, doesn't it?
0:26 Russ Frushtick? It's just from the besties.
0:27 Speaker 02 They don't know which one of us is the clown.
0:28 Russ Frushtick? You're hung by my error and I don't know what to do. Um, I'm sorry.
0:34 Griffin McElroy? Were there people saying shit like?
0:36 Speaker 02 Were they trying to be fucking funny, dude?
0:38 Griffin McElroy? Were they like Death Stranding 2? And like, like saying games that came out last year to try to hurt your fucking feelings?
0:44 Russ Frushtick? They were. And I feel bad about it.
0:46 Griffin McElroy? Dude.
0:47 Speaker 02 Hey, listen, if you're one of those people, turn this off.
0:51 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
0:51 Speaker 02 Turn this off and go away.
0:54 Griffin McElroy? Don't be mean. If you're gonna be mean to us, go away.
0:56 Speaker 02 Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. Go away.
0:58 Griffin McElroy? You said you did this on the Patreon?
1:00 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I edited it.
1:01 Speaker 02 No, no, no. I'm gonna say, hey, if you're one of those people, thanks for supporting the show.
1:05 Griffin McElroy? Thanks for supporting the show. If you're a patron, you can razz Russ's ass until the cows come on his ass.
1:11 Russ Frushtick? No one was me and everyone was like, hey, by the way.
1:15 Griffin McElroy? Don't go away. You're like our audience. I love that. Yeah.
1:35 Speaker 02 My name is Justin McElroy and I, through the powers of psychic ability, know the greatest games of 2026.
1:42 Griffin McElroy? My name is Griffin McElroy and if I'm being 100% honest, my track record for knowing what the best games of the upcoming year are is absolutely fucking dog water, but I'm gonna try again anyway.
1:51 Chris Plante? My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I'm here to tell you about the best things that are gonna happen this year.
1:58 Russ Frushtick? My name is Ross Fraschik. I know the best game of the week.
2:04 Speaker 02 Chris, I'm glad you could escape from your terminal case of seasonal affective disorder to join us here on the besties. I hope the games of 2026 are able to pick your spirits up. Is the crop of games really as dire as you make it sound?
2:19 Chris Plante? Dude, I've been awake since 4 a.m. this morning. My kid woke me up and was like, "Hey, you want to read a book?" At 4 a.m. Who wants to read books at 4 a.m.? I want to play video games here. I'm back. I've had a joy. I've been touched by the gods.
2:35 Speaker 02 Welcome. That's the kind of energy you could expect right after this.
2:41 Russ Frushtick? This episode of the besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything. And I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience, because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress, because holy cow, that thing is incredibly
3:26 Russ Frushtick? comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L E E S A dot com promo code besties for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties.
4:02 Russ Frushtick? Before we dive into the list, I thought it'd be fun. I have the rundown from last year's.
4:07 Griffin McElroy? I'm looking at that too, man.
4:08 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Well, we got some choices. So let's, let's point to direct ourselves to Justin for a second.
4:15 Russ Frushtick? Justin didn't do great. You did successfully predict one game that came out, which was Outer Worlds 2. Congratulations.
4:24 Speaker 02 Was this predict or most anticipated?
4:26 Russ Frushtick? I guess you were anticipating Outer Worlds 2 coming out and then a bunch of games.
4:30 Speaker 02 So I'm dinged for being a dreamer that anticipates games that didn't quite cross the finish line?
4:36 Russ Frushtick? Here's some other.
4:37 Speaker 02 Cause I dreamed too big?
4:38 Russ Frushtick? Some other bad boys that didn't quite make it. We have Fable. We have Slay the Spire 2. We have Judas. Marvel 1943.
4:46 Speaker 02 Oh, Fable's funny. Is Fable among one from the year before?
4:50 Griffin McElroy? Probably.
4:51 Speaker 02 Pick of 2027, Fable.
4:55 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
4:56 Griffin McElroy? No, it's on there this year.
4:57 Russ Frushtick? Plant did pretty good. All these games I think came out and he liked them for the most part. Despolote, Death Stranding 2, Promise, Mascot Agency, and Atomfall. I don't think we played a lot of Atomfall, but the other ones for sure.
5:08 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
5:10 Russ Frushtick? How did I do?
5:11 Griffin McElroy? You had unannounced 3D Mario games.
5:13 Russ Frushtick? I fucked that up. That didn't happen.
5:15 Griffin McElroy? That's pretty bad. You also had Elden Ring, Night Rain.
5:17 Russ Frushtick? Wait, let's, let's take a second. In a million years, would you guess the fucking team that worked on Mario Odyssey was in fact just working on a Donkey Kong game where he eats a bunch of bananas instead? Like, never would have occurred to anyone.
5:28 Griffin McElroy? Was that not announced yet?
5:30 Russ Frushtick? No.
5:30 Griffin McElroy? I guess at that? I guess not. Yeah.
5:32 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, no one knew. Metro Prime 4, da da da, Doom, and Elden Ring.
5:38 Speaker 02 Sorry, Metro Prime 4? You think you're gonna skate by on that being one of your most anticipated ones of 2025?
5:44 Russ Frushtick? It was. It wasn't.
5:44 Griffin McElroy? It was. It can be anticipated and then disappointed.
5:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I'd rather anticipate something that doesn't come out than anticipate something that ends up being dirty dishwater.
5:52 Russ Frushtick? That's fair. Fair call. And then I did, I liked MGS3 Delta, which I had on my list. Night Rain scared me too much. I didn't play a lot of that. And then GTA 6 didn't come out. So whoops.
6:05 Griffin McElroy? Mine's not in the rundown for some reason.
6:07 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, Griffin didn't write his down. So there's really no way for history to know.
6:11 Speaker 02 You will never find it out. I'm excited about this year. I'm looking at our list and I feel confident that most of the stuff that we talk about today will come out in 2026.
6:21 Russ Frushtick? Yes.
6:21 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
6:22 Russ Frushtick? I think that's fair.
6:23 Griffin McElroy? I'm not as confident, but I appreciate that you guys are.
6:27 Russ Frushtick? Should we do a round robin?
6:29 Chris Plante? Around Robin. How about you kick it off?
6:32 Russ Frushtick? Okay, I'm gonna kick it off with a deep cut of Resident Evil 9 Requiem. It comes out February 27th.
6:38 Chris Plante? It will come out this year. Feel good about that one.
6:41 Griffin McElroy? What a fucking like staple. It's crazy to me how Resident Evil has become almost like the same way that I used to look forward to like, oh, the new Assassin's Creed. This year's Assassin's Creed game's coming out and it's gonna be a quality AAA title. For me, like, I don't know, I feel like that is what Resident Evil has become, which is really bonkers.
7:02 Russ Frushtick? What's really wild with Resident Evil is in addition to being like kind of a regular beat of either a year or two, every year or two, there's either a remake or a new one. They are very inventive. Like, they do really take curveballs with these games.
7:16 Griffin McElroy? Sure.
7:16 Russ Frushtick? Which Assassin's Creed, I think, got to a point where they-
7:18 Griffin McElroy? No, obviously, that's not the case for that anymore, but just every Resident Evil game that has come out, I feel like since 7, has just been kind of a club banger.
7:27 Russ Frushtick? Yeah. I also like the fact that you can play this one in third person and first person, because I think the first person ones are too scary for me.
7:35 Griffin McElroy? Oh, see, I like that.
7:36 Russ Frushtick? I get too scared.
7:37 Chris Plante? I think the trick is the cadence, right? Because it feels like you're getting these all the time and it's overwhelming you like that Ubisoft Activision style. The last Resident Evil mainline came out in 2021.
7:50 Russ Frushtick? Right, but there was a remake.
7:51 Chris Plante? Cook.
7:52 Russ Frushtick? RE4 was the remake. I feel like they're just bouncing between those two.
7:56 Chris Plante? By having a variety of things to release and then them all being nice, it is a different vibe than, hey, here's Call of Duty and it's a version of the same thing, but by different people every year.
8:08 Russ Frushtick? So many companies, so many companies could take a hint from, from what Capcom's been doing with a lot of their franchises. Just in terms of like managing it and like, it's wild that there hasn't been a mainline one since 2021. I feel like that franchise is like every year, there's something really cool happening with it. And like, ah, man, think about how many franchises have really been kind of dug into the dirt recently. It's really nice to have something that's a little more dependable.
8:31 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
8:32 Chris Plante? Also, can I say for this game, I'm hopes up that they will figure out the internal pacing of the game. So you don't have to have the, it starts out as a horror game and it ends as an action game, which don't get me wrong. I like it, but I think that they want to fix this by having the two main protagonists. So that you can bounce back and forth. I think they played a little bit of Alan Wake 2. And they said, ooh, that's the sweet sauce right there. Let's let you, you mix and match.
8:57 Russ Frushtick? This is a predictions episode in some ways. Uh, you are going to be wrong. Cause I guarantee the final act of that game will be fucking rocket launchers out the ass.
9:04 Speaker 02 Shooting a rocket launcher.
9:05 Chris Plante? Oh, yeah, yeah.
9:06 Speaker 02 Sorry, did you say fucking rocket launchers out the ass?
9:09 Chris Plante? Because, yeah, dude.
9:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:11 Chris Plante? That would be something. Now that's innovation.
9:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:14 Russ Frushtick? Uh, Hoops, you want to go?
9:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, man. Fable is gonna come. My prediction is that Fable will be capital C canceled this year. That's what I think. No way.
9:26 Chris Plante? Wow.
9:26 Speaker 02 I, yeah, a hundred percent. I think Fable will be canceled this year. You're kidding. What makes you think that?
9:35 Speaker 02 What is Fable?
9:38 Speaker 02 Oh, you asked? I thought this was a hypothetical. Like, Fable is this brand name that doesn't mean anything to anybody that buys games right now. It did mean something, but it, as a brand, it doesn't mean anything, right? Yeah. I feel like everything we've seen of that game has been concept, has been like early thoughts, like the fact that you have to have it.
9:58 Russ Frushtick? But not gameplay.
10:00 Speaker 02 It's hard to tell.
10:00 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah. I just got, I'm, I mean, I can't, I can't prove that they're gonna cancel it. It just feels like it. Saying that like, I feel it in the air. I don't know that, ah, man, I just don't know that that's gonna come out.
10:14 Russ Frushtick? I mean, if they were gonna cancel it, it seems like they would have done it when they canceled all the other games last year. With the Perfect Dark and things like that. That's the only reason.
10:22 Speaker 02 But they also didn't, you know what they also didn't do, Russ? They didn't say that Fable will be out at this time.
10:28 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
10:29 Speaker 02 Which if I was canceling a bunch of games and I wanted to be like, don't worry about Fable. I would have at least given a quarter. You know what I mean? I just think they're gonna cancel.
10:37 Russ Frushtick? So this is you anticipating the cancel wait.
10:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is on your list. The cancellation of Fable, that's my bonus. Right. And instead I'm gonna pick the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time. Uh, which. Looks wild. It's it's already kind of like if there's a subgenre for like meta narrative within a game like I'm I'm already a huge sucker for that in in games. This is uh I mean, this is one of those where like my description is not going to do it justice because it there is uh the full nature of it is obviously being hidden by the trailers or whatever. It is ostensibly the remake of the last hour of a a classic video game, but it includes like judging from
11:21 Speaker 02 the trailer like uh fragments of the manual director's commentary and then like throughout the trailer, then you see like video clips of like the guys actually like making the game and there's some sort of like meta story that's bleeding into it. It kind of reminds you what's the uh there is no game. I think was kind of like uh kind of reminded me of that kind of vibe or like things like that where there is a meta layer outside of the game or the magic circle?
11:50 Griffin McElroy? The magic circle. I was trying so hard to remember the name of that game. Good pull.
11:54 Chris Plante? Every every medium needs its version of the greatest song in the world. This is just a tribute. Yeah, sure. You know, like I'm yeah, I'm very excited for this one.
12:05 Speaker 02 It was it looks really cool. It's look looks like Q1 this year, so hopefully that'll be soon because it was originally supposed to be November. So.
12:11 Griffin McElroy? Hey, if you enjoy one hour of JRPG gaming, may I interest you in 140 hours of JRPG gaming? Because they are doing another remake of Dragon Quest VII. Quick history lesson. Dragon Quest VII came to the States, Dragon Warrior VII, and it is the franchise's and perhaps genre's longest entry. It is sort of a time hopping sort of JRPG romp and it takes so fucking long to beat this game. There is so much content and so. So much story. They are apparently streamlining quite a bit of it and turning a lot of the mainline stuff into side quest stuff to make it maybe a little bit more accessible.
12:55 Griffin McElroy? But I don't know, it has more of a Dragon Quest, what was it, 11 aesthetic now? But I mean, that game I played through and finished for the first time on like a PS1 emulator running at like 10 times speed, because that was sort of the only way to cruise through it. But it is extremely charming and I think it would be a great, great, great game if, again, if they streamline some of that stuff.
13:24 Speaker 02 It's extremely charming. If you grind it down into little granules and puff it up your nose.
13:29 Griffin McElroy? You mush it into paste and then slurp slime it down. No, it has a lot going for it. It is just like so daunting. It is a daunting ass game. Even in the like Dragon Quest canon, it is like a lot to take on. But there's a lot of cool stuff there. So I don't know. I think it will be, they have such a, I think at this point, pretty solid track record with these Dragon Quest remakes. And I'm sort of interested to see like-
13:54 Speaker 02 When is fucking Rocket Slime coming back? That's all I want to know.
13:56 Griffin McElroy? Dude, don't tell me about it. Yeah, I would love a new Rocket Slime.
14:00 Chris Plante? They've really figured out how to create that feeling of nostalgia, the rose colored glasses thing. First with that 2.5D pixel stuff. But this, it's like, what if the strategy guides, that look was how the game itself looked? It looks so warm. I want to live inside this video game. I-
14:22 Griffin McElroy? It looks amazing, yeah.
14:24 Speaker 02 You will be.
14:25 Griffin McElroy? You will, yes.
14:28 Chris Plante? Sorry, son. Daddy has to go to the war.
14:31 Griffin McElroy? That's out February 5th, so that's out pretty soon. I should actually probably start reaching out to Square Enix to find out what the plan is for code for that because-
14:38 Chris Plante? Don't worry, my bud. I'm already, I'm already-
14:41 Griffin McElroy? Oh, thanks. I can always count on you, Chris Plant.
14:43 Chris Plante? I know, it's a priority.
14:45 Russ Frushtick? Chris, what are you looking forward to?
14:46 Chris Plante? I am looking forward to a game that I've already finished. I'm looking forward to Perfect Tides Station to Station. It comes out January 22nd. This game is absolutely incredible and I cannot wait for all of you to play it. Perfect Tides was the one that came before this. That is an adventure game, a point and click adventure, kind of in the style of the Monkey Island. But you play as an emo teenager living in a very small town during the emo boom of like 2000, 2001. This game is that same person is now going to be a freshman in college in New York in the year 2003
15:27 Chris Plante? and live in the Greenwich Village, which is basically exactly what my life was, moving from a small town and doing that in 2004. So it is, for me, pure nostalgia bait. But on top of that, it's just some of the best writing I've seen in a video game. Some of the best memoir writing I have enjoyed in years, games or not games. The author Meredith Gran, before this, did a webcomic called Octopus Pie. I don't know if any of you read that, but also just wonderful memoir writing. This is one of those games that you just sink into because it feels so lived in and so human.
16:11 Chris Plante? I have had three, four conversations with my wife about kind of reflecting on our life together in our time in New York that we've just never have had before because this game was making me think about things that I had kind of forgotten about being in my twenties. And for a game to like, give you that is, is not a thing that you get very often. So I, yeah, I'm really excited for everyone to play this.
16:38 Russ Frushtick? No, that does sound nice, but is Pikachu building you a house? That's a huge question for me.
16:43 Chris Plante? Ooh, I'm trying to remember that. That probably is going to be in the DLC.
16:47 Russ Frushtick? DLC, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, understood. Well, right at the jump, March 5th, Pokemon Pokopia, Pikachu's building a motherfucking house for you. Two code, you don't have to worry about it. It's got plumbing and everything. Two code? Yep.
16:59 Chris Plante? He's two code.
16:59 Russ Frushtick? Very concerned about that.
17:00 Chris Plante? He's very diligent. You wouldn't think.
17:03 Russ Frushtick? Pokopia is...
17:05 Russ Frushtick? Unironically might be my most anticipated game of the entire year.
17:09 Griffin McElroy? It's gonna blow this house the fuck up. It's gonna, it's gonna absolutely take over.
17:13 Russ Frushtick? Now, I think we can all acknowledge that Pokemon Legends ZA is not a great game. It has unfortunately been the game that I've played most probably the last month because my son is incredibly pilled on it. Thankfully, I do have more optimism for this game because it is developed by the team that did Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2, which were both games that I really, really enjoyed.
17:37 Griffin McElroy? It also looks like Dragon Quest Builders, which is a huge, huge check in the plus column.
17:43 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, so assuming that they don't muck it up in some way, I'm very optimistic and it looks fucking great. There's a new version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about.
17:53 Griffin McElroy? You play as a ditto masquerading as a human being and that asks a lot of sort of existential questions that I'm, I'm ready to really dive into.
18:00 Russ Frushtick? The Pikachu also looks dead and I don't know what the story is there, but I'm very invested. Justin's laughing at the Snorlax.
18:07 Speaker 02 There's a new version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about. It is one of the best sentences I've ever heard.
18:11 Russ Frushtick? You can put that on my tombstone.
18:13 Speaker 02 Find joy, you know?
18:14 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, I mean, not since his Gigantamax form in Pokemon, in Pokemon Sword and Shield, where he had the big tree on his belly. That was really cool.
18:23 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, now he's covered in moss.
18:25 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, god, it's so cool. God, I love Snorlax.
18:31 Speaker 02 You know what else I love? Little Gators. Yeah.
18:36 Russ Frushtick? I'm psyched about this one as well, yeah.
18:37 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, for the same reason over here.
18:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, Little Gator Game: In the Dark takes Lil, the Little Gator, the beloved Little Gator from the first Little Gator game, which if you haven't played it, what do you, what do you hate charm?
18:51 Griffin McElroy? Why do you hate charm, weirdo?
18:53 Speaker 02 You should play it now because this is DLC, so you're gonna wanna play.
18:56 Russ Frushtick? This is DLC.
18:57 Speaker 02 So you got time. Little Gator Game: The Ridge was about, it was a, basically a big fantasy game that you set up for your sister to play and then to prove how fun it is, you had to play the game that you created for her. And it is a beautiful little story about growing up and, but it's also a really fun, open world sort of thing with a great aesthetic where everything's sort of DIY. Uh, and In the Dark takes that same idea, but like into. The caves below, a new adventure below the surface as it's advertised. It looks really cute and fun and I can guarantee you it will be a joy. I just, this is a sure bet. There's new characters to meet. There's a little gator. It's gonna be great.
19:42 Russ Frushtick? It does seem like you would, I can't even fathom how they would screw it up because all you need to do is like add new fun tools and continue the like high tradition of the writing. And yeah, mission accomplished.
19:53 Speaker 02 And as long as like, it's like, no, no, like MAGA MAGA dudes, let's go.
19:59 Russ Frushtick? That'd be bad.
20:00 Chris Plante? It's the worst Pac-Man noise ever.
20:04 Speaker 02 Oh, we, we hate that guy. He's the one, everyone hates this one Pac-Man.
20:12 Griffin McElroy? Um, I'm looking forward to a game that I've just realized after loading up its information page. Uh, it is coming to the Nintendo Switch one and is backwards compatible with the Switch two in the second half of 2026. So we're, that's pretty wild. It is Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream. Just based on what we've seen from it, maybe it doesn't need all the incredible raw processing power of the Switch two, because it does look like a 3DS game. Uh, specifically the 3DS game Tomodachi Life, but uh, I love Tomodachi Life. It is a really very, I would say light on mechanics, social sim sort of thing.
20:54 Griffin McElroy? Uh, that leans way more on absurdity and kind of like setting up these comic situations. Uh, in the original, you could, um, have your me's that you had made, like live on this island together, go on dates, which was weird if you based them on your real friends. Um, and you could have them sing songs that like you wrote the words to, but it would match it to music that was already in the game. And there's so many fucking hysterical like things that came out of that. And, uh, I think Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream, despite the fact that it is on. A nine-year-old video game console, sort of natively, I think is in this streaming era,
21:36 Griffin McElroy? going to absolutely take the fuck over all of your feeds and stuff. It also is going to have more Meme Maker sort of options to put on your characters, including ears. For the first time ever, we're giving these guys some ears. So yeah, it's such a silly game, but I really think it's a game that we are all going to be seeing a lot of when it comes out, actually quarter two, 2026.
22:04 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I never played the original. It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around it, but...
22:08 Griffin McElroy? It's bonkers. It's not like, um, so Metopia was the other kind of similar one that came out. That was very much a Dragon Quest.
22:14 Russ Frushtick? That was like the RPG one.
22:15 Griffin McElroy? RPG where you could customize every single character or download me's like from online. That is like more of a game than Tomodachi Life was. Tomodachi Life was, there was very little in the way of progress or, you know, uh, many mechanics to really get your hands on.
22:33 Chris Plante? Kind of tangential here, but uh, how are you feeling about that Animal Crossing update?
22:38 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I'm excited. It's out January 15th. I have been on and again, off again with that game. Henry picked it up last year. And so we both got pretty, pretty into it for, I don't know, like three or so months. And honestly, if I'm being completely honest, my feelings being complicated about it are that I want to play it on Switch 2, but I can't do that without destroying my son's island. So like my only option to, uh, to do that would be to buy another Switch 2, so.
23:11 Russ Frushtick? Why can't you just, why, why?
23:14 Griffin McElroy? Cause you can only have one island per Switch, despite the fact that I own the game on both cartridge and digital, so we can play it together.
23:20 Russ Frushtick? Oh, he's, he owns it on, he's playing it on Switch 2.
23:23 Griffin McElroy? He is playing it on Switch 2 on my account, but we only have one Switch 2 and you can only have one island per Switch 2. It's this insane.
23:29 Russ Frushtick? So just share the islands, Griffin, with your son.
23:32 Griffin McElroy? He would be so pissed off if I did. Are you kidding?
23:35 Chris Plante? Guys, he's pretty specific.
23:38 Russ Frushtick? Well, I would also-
23:39 Chris Plante? His island, and he does not want Griffin to screw it up.
23:41 Russ Frushtick? I would also add, you have the ability now, there's like a free mode where you can like fuck around with islands without-
23:46 Griffin McElroy? Yes.
23:47 Russ Frushtick? Like impacting the main island.
23:48 Griffin McElroy? Cool, cool. That doesn't address the issue at hand, which is that I would have to buy a second Switch 2 in order- But like, all the content is coming to the Switch 1 version, aside from like, you know, the weird webcam stuff. And I think you can only do 12-player multiplayer on the Switch 2 version. But all the stuff that they're adding about, you know, the mode Russ mentioned, and the like hotel where you decorate rooms for people, bringing in more of that like Happy Home Designer sort of vibe. I don't know. I think it looks cool. I think time will tell whether or not it sucks us back in or not, but I think it would be-
24:22 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
24:23 Griffin McElroy? I think it's pretty likely it probably will.
24:27 Russ Frushtick? Plant, you wanna do one more and then we'll take a break?
24:28 Chris Plante? Yeah, yeah, I'll do one more. I can't wait to play Pragmata. I mean, Resident Evil 9, don't joke, it's probably my like top of the Capcom games, but Pragmata is more of a Chris Plant style video game. What if I told you there was a third-person shooter, but whenever you wanted to shoot the robots, you had to also do a hacking mini-game at the exact same time with the other side of the controller? Why, yes, that game does exist and it's called Pragmata. And it also just looks beautiful. So you're doing this hacking game, you're trying to avoid the robots that are coming at you, and once you nail that perfect hack, the robot flays open like a robo-fish,
25:10 Chris Plante? and you see its glowing blue, like, internal organs.
25:16 Chris Plante? You blow them up, and there's goo everywhere, and then you have a little girl who just hangs out with you who has the power to hack.
25:21 Russ Frushtick? Not just hang out. It looks like Isaac Clarke from Dead Space has like a little girl on his back like a backpack.
25:27 Chris Plante? With like Newt from like Aliens.
25:29 Russ Frushtick? Yes.
25:30 Chris Plante? Yeah.
25:31 Griffin McElroy? Cool. Sort of a Donkey Kong Bonanza situation.
25:33 Russ Frushtick? It is.
25:34 Chris Plante? Yeah, I mean, basically the same, yeah.
25:36 Griffin McElroy? This is the first Bonanza-like.
25:42 Russ Frushtick? Let's take a quick break. We have some more coming at you after.
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27:01 Chris Plante? plan when you go to protonvpn.com/besties. That is P-R-O-T-O-N-v-p-n dot com slash besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.
27:24 Russ Frushtick? Okay, there's one that I'm incredibly worried about, but I hope I end up liking it. Okay. It is the Dust Bloods. Yeah. I don't- For sure, dude. I don't know how I feel about this game because Dust Bloods, for those that don't know, is the Switch 2 exclusive game from From Software, makers of Elden Ring, and all those other games that we all love. But- And it like looks- It's not Night Rain. What?
27:50 Speaker 02 I get it confused with Night Rain.
27:52 Russ Frushtick? That's a different game.
27:53 Speaker 02 Night Rain was.
27:54 Griffin McElroy? Night Rain, it's just the, the two syllable kinda dark words.
27:58 Russ Frushtick? Dust Blood is the one that kinda looks like Blood, like when the trailer showed at the Nintendo event, it kinda was like, oh my God, is there a new Bloodborne happening? Cause aesthetically it does have some of those notes to it, but it also they've said it's like multiplayer centric or PvPVee. And that's the stuff that like.
28:15 Speaker 02 Vampire like characters. Love that. Called the Bloodsworn? Love that. Cool, very cool.
28:22 Russ Frushtick? I just don't know, cause the.
28:24 Speaker 02 Yo, it's got a dedicated.
28:28 Griffin McElroy? It's kind of wild that there's not a lot of, I don't know, to announce a Switch exclusive from soft game that looks extremely um, uh, Bloodborne coded. It seems weird how little kind of stuff there is out there about the game.
28:45 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
28:46 Griffin McElroy? Uh, I don't know.
28:48 Russ Frushtick? I also get worried that like, is this them, I know they've made statements about this, but are they continuing to push into more multiplayer centric stuff? Which quite frankly, doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as it does their like mostly single player stuff. So, uh, I am cautiously optimistic about this one and definitely very curious.
29:09 Griffin McElroy? Um, I'm looking forward to Witchbrook, which I'm almost certain I brought last year as well. However, it was delayed from being a winter 2025 release to a 2026, uh, release. And that like span makes me feel like it's fairly likely it's going to come out at some point, uh, at some point this year. Um, it is a, uh, social sort of sim, life sim game from, uh, Chucklefish, uh, who I, I always get the relationship.
29:39 Speaker 02 Familiar.
29:40 Griffin McElroy? Well, they, they publish, uh, they publish a lot of stuff.
29:44 Russ Frushtick? Um, initially, I think they published Stardew Valley.
29:46 Griffin McElroy? Yes, they also, I mean, gosh, Risk of Rain, they published, Time Spinner, Eastward. There's like a lot of like, honestly, pretty great indie games. They also developed Starbound and Wargroove.
30:03 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
30:03 Griffin McElroy? So Witchbrook is like their next thing. And it is sort of a, you know, magic looking isometric Stardew Valley like it looks like, where you live in a town called Mossport, where there's a witch college, a wizard college, and you just do all the different life sim stuff and build relationships and all that. The game just looks like.
30:26 Russ Frushtick? Stunning.
30:26 Griffin McElroy? It looks phenomenal.
30:28 Russ Frushtick? Maybe the best looking.
30:28 Griffin McElroy? The isometric pixel art is, it's, it's so detailed and, God, I don't, I don't even know how to sort of describe the look that it, it has going on. But it, seeing it in motion, I think it was featured in a Nintendo Direct like towards the end of last year. Like, it looks crazy how, how.
30:50 Russ Frushtick? There is something about the isometric view that I think really supports, like makes it feel more real in some ways than like a Stardew, which is obviously flat. I mean, great art in Stardew, but like this is, feels like the SNES approach versus Stardew's closer to like GBA.
31:07 Griffin McElroy? I just think Chucklefish has a, a great pedigree, and this is like a genre I like, and it looks spectacular. So I'm, I'm really hoping this is the year where it finally comes out.
31:20 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
31:21 Chris Plante? On the Stardew Valley note, I was curious when that Haunted Chocolateer game was coming out from Concerned Ape. Googled it. This is the headline that I saw, the first one that I saw. Fresh, can you read that out loud?
31:33 Russ Frushtick? Sure. Concerned Ape hopes to release Haunted Chocolateer.
31:40 Russ Frushtick? Dot, dot, dot.
31:41 Chris Plante? What do you think comes right after that?
31:44 Speaker 02 Well, I would say you don't need anything, right?
31:47 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
31:47 Speaker 02 Cause he does hope to do that.
31:49 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I think Concerned Dave is pretty much hoping for that.
31:53 Chris Plante? Within the next five years is how that ends. Within the next five years, that could be never. Next five years?
32:00 Russ Frushtick? Good, good for them, making a probably accurate assessment.
32:05 Chris Plante? Yeah, I want to play it now, though.
32:07 Russ Frushtick? No, I'm good. There's so many games.
32:10 Chris Plante? Yeah, you're right.
32:10 Russ Frushtick? I have, I have like such a zen approach to all this stuff at this point, maybe because we just have to play so many games for besties. That like, fucking delay it forever. If Silk Song never came out, I would have been fine.
32:21 Chris Plante? Well, no, because it's good.
32:23 Russ Frushtick? It is really good. It is good.
32:25 Chris Plante? Well, I mean, I'll build off this and then I'll throw back to you, uh, hoops. I have Fields of Mistrya, which is technically an early access right now. And if you are looking for a Stardew Valley like, uh, with more emphasis on romance and kind of an anime aesthetic and also a dragon you can date.
32:46 Chris Plante? It is a delight. It launched in early access with so many quality of life features that I had wanted in Stardew Valley. And I enjoyed probably the 15 and 20 hours that I put into it. And then have not gone back to it until it gets out of early access. It's been there for a while. So
33:06 Russ Frushtick? Great dog.
33:07 Chris Plante? Very excited to go back to this one.
33:09 Russ Frushtick? Really good dog.
33:12 Chris Plante? Juice.
33:14 Speaker 02 Russ, why don't you do one? You got, you got two left, Russ. You got two left. Let me do mine real quick then, because I got two left too, because my next one's Fable. Now hear me out, guys.
33:22 Chris Plante? Interesting.
33:24 Speaker 02 I want to, I want to try to cover my bases. So let me say that I'm also very much anticipating the video game Fable.
33:31 Chris Plante? Okay.
33:32 Speaker 02 I'm a big fan of the entire franchise. I really like Richard Iwade. Uh, I like everything they've shown so far. I think it's a kind of first person adventure thing that could have a huge impact.
33:44 Russ Frushtick? Wait, it's a first person game?
33:46 Speaker 02 As long as I've spent on it, I think it's gonna be really good.
33:47 Chris Plante? Did you say it's a first person?
33:49 Russ Frushtick? Did you say it's a first person game?
33:51 Speaker 02 No, I don't know. No.
33:53 Russ Frushtick? You said that.
33:55 Russ Frushtick? Check the tape.
33:57 Speaker 02 Check the tape. In the, in the trailer. You know, there was.
34:00 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, this is a trailer.
34:01 Speaker 02 I think it's for a first person video game.
34:03 Russ Frushtick? No fucking way.
34:04 Speaker 02 Dude, they just uncanceled it. It could be anything.
34:12 Speaker 02 Uh, so that's mine. Fable. Russ, what's your next one?
34:14 Chris Plante? Oh, before we go any further, are we, because we always forget that we're not a video show. Justin is wearing the, the official Besties Fable, I Never Doubt It Would Come Out t-shirt. Are we planning on selling those or is that a little like?
34:30 Russ Frushtick? We made one only because Justin was the one who demanded it and it's only in.
34:34 Speaker 02 I have owned it for four years.
34:38 Speaker 02 It is moth, it is moth eaten at this point.
34:43 Speaker 02 It is problematic somehow. There's like problematic designs. That's how long I've had it. It's like, there's things that the, the popular culture has soured on.
34:52 Russ Frushtick? Okay.
34:52 Chris Plante? Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
34:54 Russ Frushtick? I've got two more. I'll do a quickie and then I'll do a slightly longer one. So, uh, one of them is Mina the Hollower. This was a game that was supposed to come out in October of last year. This is from the Yacht Club Games, folks, who made Shovel Knight. Uh, and it's basically inspired by one of my favorite games of all time, Link's Awakening. I don't fucking think I need to say anymore, so I'm not going.
35:12 Speaker 02 No, it looks so fucking good. I'm, this is, I'm hanging a lot of hopes on this one, I think, being a, a contender. Cause it, it, man, it looks so good.
35:21 Russ Frushtick? The other game that's coming out this year is Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, which is a new mainline Fire Emblem game. The last one that came out was Fire Emblem Engage, which was a game that had pretty good gameplay, but story wise and character wise, awful, uh, in my opinion. But before that was Three Houses, which I think a lot of us enjoyed, uh, and was kind of a high watermark. My understanding is Fortune's Weave is either a far sequel or far prequel.
35:52 Speaker 02 It's related somehow.
35:53 Russ Frushtick? It's connected. There's some like crossover, certain characters appear again, whether they're dragon people or not, who knows? But my hope is that the high watermark of storytelling quality and like overall feature quality that was introduced in Three Houses will continue here. Uh, and if it does, I, I will be over the moon thrilled because, uh, that is one of my favorite franchises. And, um, I would love to see another like really great installment for that franchise.
36:22 Griffin McElroy? I've got two. I'll do a small one real quick. Delta Rune, Chapter 5. I'm so fucking
36:30 Griffin McElroy? in, in. Is this, how many total chapters are there supposed to be? I think that might be up in the air. I think seven was the original sort of intention. But they are coming out at a pretty good, decent clip at this point. But I played through, you know, the four available chapters for the first time last year, because three and four came out sort of together. And it's so good. It's so fucking good. And has me truly like waiting for, like, excited to see like, what happens next. Henry is also like hugely, hugely into it. And so that is very exciting, too. It's gonna be weird when I go back and play all these, like, for the first time at once?
37:14 Griffin McElroy? I think, I think there's a ton of people who are going to do just that. And I think it'll be totally digestible. Is it gonna be weird because there's like Rubuzella references in Chapter 1? Yeah, there's, yeah, no, I don't know that there's a lot of timely references being made.
37:31 Griffin McElroy? Apparently, Chapters 6 and 7 are gonna be like the joke, like the 6-7 joke. That's like one big one that they've already kind of. That's good. And that's gonna still be around. So that's great. Yeah, for sure. My other one is, and this was featured last year in our most anticipated games list, which was Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, which was supposed to come out last September. And then in September, during the Tokyo Game Show, they showed off a bunch of new footage of it, some gameplay footage, and then delayed it until 2026. And it looks incredible. Gosh, I love Professor Layton games. They are sort of go-to games for, for me when I got my hands on the Thor and started goofing around with like 3DS
38:13 Griffin McElroy? emulation stuff. Just because like, there's really nothing else like it. A puzzle sort of fiction game that gives you a bunch of brain teasers that I just love to kind of chew over. The aesthetics are out of sight. It is more kind of like animated and feels much more alive. And the, like, I don't know, 15 minutes or so of gameplay footage they released last year, just, it looks delightful. And I can't wait to get my hands on it.
38:43 Speaker 02 Dude, I'm going insane about Vampire Crawlers.
38:45 Russ Frushtick? I don't know what this is.
38:47 Speaker 02 Wait, are you kidding me, dude?
38:48 Russ Frushtick? I don't know.
38:48 Speaker 02 Hey, get, hey, brace your frigging ass, man. Hold on a second. I'm gonna send a link. You ready?
38:55 Russ Frushtick? Okay.
38:55 Speaker 02 Just let me send you a link. Don't get weird about it. Okay?
38:58 Russ Frushtick? Okay.
39:00 Speaker 02 Okay. I don't know how to send a link from Steam.
39:02 Chris Plante? Gamer alert.
39:04 Russ Frushtick? I mean, I can look it up.
39:05 Speaker 02 Steam, and you look up Vampire Crawlers.
39:07 Russ Frushtick? It says Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wild card from Vampire Survivors.
39:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, listen to this.
39:12 Chris Plante? Yeah, this is a good name.
39:13 Speaker 02 It's gonna sound like you're dreaming, dude, but listen. From the somehow triple BAFTA winning creators of Vampire Survivors. Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wild card from Vampire Survivors. Turns the snowballing thrill of Vampire Survivors into a turbo turn-based, card-driven blobber. That's in all caps. I don't know what that means. Build busted decks, explore familiar dungeons with a new perspective, and unleash world-ending combos. Take your time and be tactical or play turns as fast as you humanly can. The outcome is always accurate.
39:43 Russ Frushtick? So this is-
39:43 Speaker 02 Are you kidding me?
39:44 Russ Frushtick? Vampire Survivors x Bellatro, basically.
39:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:48 Chris Plante? Seems like it.
39:49 Russ Frushtick? That sounds fucking incredible.
39:51 Speaker 02 I mean, unreal. I'm losing it over here.
39:54 Russ Frushtick? That's great.
39:54 Speaker 02 I'm losing it. That's the goatee.
39:56 Chris Plante? Uh, I got two to wrap up.
39:58 Speaker 02 It's a bodie. It's probably the bodie.
39:59 Russ Frushtick? Might be the bodie.
40:00 Speaker 02 The bogody.
40:02 Chris Plante? Two to wrap up on my end. One that I think probably actually won't come out, and one that hasn't even announced yet. Uh, Control Resident. Very excited for this. Very excited to go back to a Remedy game that is action-based. I, I have finally started replaying Alan Wake 2. A game I bounced off of despite thinking it would be extremely my thing. And I am enjoying it more, but it's still just slow. Control, that game, is fast. You get all that good weird energy, and you also get good, fast action. This one looks kinda like, uh, Previous Control meets like a Devil May Cry? Style game.
40:37 Russ Frushtick? There's melee. Yeah, it's more melee-centric.
40:40 Chris Plante? Into it. Very, very curious about it. That said, don't think it's gonna come out this year. I just don't believe that. I don't.
40:46 Speaker 02 I, I, I. Yes. That energy, yes. I feel that. Plant. I, I absolutely, there's just something about it, huh? There's just.
40:57 Chris Plante? You can feel it.
40:58 Speaker 02 You know?
40:58 Chris Plante? You can feel it. You're feeling the like coming.
41:01 Speaker 02 Meanwhile.
41:02 Russ Frushtick? I think it's gonna come out.
41:04 Chris Plante? AP Thompson, co-creator of last year's Consume Me, has a new game coming out. And all I'm gonna say about this game, cause it's not announced yet, is you can go follow AP on Blue Sky, I guess, right now, and hear more about this game. Ads coming out, and you will be like, wow, I was there at the beginning. I was the person who went to the show at the tiny little punk rock club when it was just five people drinking out of solo cups. And then when it is, you know, at the biggest stage, you will have that moment for you. This is, I'm giving you this gift. So you will want to follow what is coming from AP Thompson this year.
41:44 Griffin McElroy? Is it going to be a sequel to Tony Hawk's Pro Dater? Will it be Tony Hawk's Pro Dater 2?
41:48 Chris Plante? Griffin, I thought you like had signed the embargo.
41:51 Griffin McElroy? Oh, damn.
41:53 Chris Plante? Damn it. It's gonna be awesome. There's so many good games. We didn't even talk about, like, we have another, a list here that has another, I don't know, probably like 20, 30 games.
42:02 Griffin McElroy? I can't believe none of us said Grand Theft Auto 6. It felt a little obvious, I think.
42:06 Chris Plante? Yeah.
42:07 Griffin McElroy? For all of us, like, you guys know that one's coming out November 19th. You don't need us to talk more about that.
42:12 Chris Plante? I don't know it's coming out November 19th, honestly. I don't know.
42:15 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
42:18 Chris Plante? Nobody said Romeo was a dead man? I can't believe that nobody, I mean, Justin, I was counting on you to be the Suda 51.
42:25 Speaker 02 Ah, I like Suda in theory a lot more than I like Suda in practice. I always get, I get to like knowing chuckle with him before I'm like, yeah, I really wanna play.
42:34 Griffin McElroy? I like Suda as a, I like Suda like as a person. Like, yeah, he's a good hang, actually.
42:42 Chris Plante? I mean, the galaxy needs racing, and I will continue to say that a lot.
42:46 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. Yeah, sure.
42:48 Russ Frushtick? Griffin, I noticed you snuck in, maybe for the historical record, Half-Life 3.
42:53 Griffin McElroy? I didn't put that in.
42:54 Chris Plante? Oh. Sorry. I just thought maybe if we ca, if nobody noticed, then maybe we would come back next year and you'd be like, Griffin?
43:02 Griffin McElroy? No, you know that I didn't put that. I would have included the hyphen. I would have capitalized life.
43:07 Chris Plante? I was in a hurry.
43:09 Russ Frushtick? I yeah, uh, oh, God.
43:12 Griffin McElroy? Did you not say Mugenics, Russ? Because the name of it makes you.
43:16 Speaker 02 You didn't want to say it out loud?
43:18 Russ Frushtick? No, no, no, it is coming out. It's coming out in like a month. We have a bunch of read, we have a bunch of reader mail picks and that is one of them. So I was gonna read them through.
43:27 Griffin McElroy? Oh, okay, okay.
43:29 Russ Frushtick? Was there any other fun jokey picks that anyone wanted to make?
43:32 Griffin McElroy? No.
43:33 Russ Frushtick? I'm stuck, I'm fucking psyched about the.
43:34 Speaker 02 Do you think there'll be a Half Life 3, though?
43:36 Russ Frushtick? Uh.
43:37 Griffin McElroy? Jesus Christ. Come on, dude.
43:39 Chris Plante? I do, but I don't.
43:39 Russ Frushtick? I kinda do.
43:40 Speaker 02 I do think they will. The fact that there's not makes me think that there will be.
43:44 Russ Frushtick? Put it on my list.
43:45 Speaker 02 You know what I mean? Like the, the fact that there is it, I think Half Life 3 will launch alongside the, the, the.
43:51 Russ Frushtick? The Steam machine. That's the thing is that they always, whenever they launch new hardware, they always launch with software. It tends not to be a whole fucking sequel to a game people waiting 30 years for.
44:00 Speaker 02 They can't say it because it's gonna be the biggest thing in the world.
44:03 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
44:04 Griffin McElroy? So huge.
44:04 Speaker 02 It's gonna be so massive when it drops.
44:06 Russ Frushtick? Could be, could be interesting. Uh, okay, some reader mail picks that people wrote in for.
44:10 Speaker 02 Just like somebody try to get Jeff Keighley on the phone. And if he's like, I can't, I can't right now, wink.
44:18 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, you hear Gabe sharpening knives in the background.
44:20 Speaker 02 Exactly.
44:23 Russ Frushtick? That's very true. Okay, some reader mail picks. We have Evan G. wrote in, uh, Rhythm Heaven sequel.
44:29 Griffin McElroy? Yes.
44:29 Russ Frushtick? I forgot what's happening. That's pretty exciting. Gooseitress wrote sulfur 1.0 release. I really like sulfur. I don't know if you guys have played it. First person rogue light on Steam. Cool, uh, kind of adventure timey art style to it. Very into it.
44:47 Griffin McElroy? This is cool.
44:48 Russ Frushtick? Elise mentioned Tomodachi Life, which we already talked about. Nikki mentioned Assassin's Creed Hex and the AC Black Flag remake. Black Flag was probably the last Assassin's Creed game I actually enjoyed playing. So that's pretty good.
45:02 Russ Frushtick? Hex is interesting because like I would be down to have actual magic in one of these games. That seems like a cool introduction, but again, I'm cautious about anything like that.
45:12 Griffin McElroy? Man, a Black Flag remake getting you back into Assassin's Creed would be a huge twist for, for the year 2026.
45:20 Russ Frushtick? Yeah. Shumahill wrote "The Incident at Gallery House", which apparently is like a Oberdin style mystery game.
45:30 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, I think it's Galley House.
45:32 Russ Frushtick? Oh, sorry, Galley House, you're right.
45:36 Russ Frushtick? Mark S., Ace Combat 8, that seems like some Chris Plant and maybe Justin shit. Justin, do you like Ace Combat games?
45:44 Speaker 02 You know what? I do. I haven't played one in a while, but there is something about that. It made me kind of want to go back and play an Ace Combat game. I like it. I like Ace Combat.
45:53 Griffin McElroy? There was one we got into, I remember. I can't even feel like it was like five or six.
45:57 Speaker 02 It was back when we were playing more like Colony Wars and stuff like that. Like, I don't know. I have to go back and that's a franchise I like in theory.
46:06 Russ Frushtick? Olivia G. mentioned "Fields of Mystery" release, which, or full release, which we talked about. Kellen R., Mugenics. I am very excited about Mugenics. I hope you guys get into it. I'm, I haven't really, I played like an hour in a preview build ages ago, and I really liked it.
46:23 Griffin McElroy? But that is the new Edmund McMillan game?
46:27 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, the new, from the creator Binding Isaac and Super Meat Boy. It is an isometric tactical strategy game with cats.
46:37 Griffin McElroy? Okay.
46:37 Russ Frushtick? Would be the best way I could shortly describe it.
46:41 Russ Frushtick? And they also breed and have like aspects to them. And then Thunder Ruth mentioned "Densha-Tak", I guess is probably the best way to pronounce that word.
46:53 Griffin McElroy? Oh, yeah.
46:54 Russ Frushtick? I don't know what I'm looking at.
46:56 Griffin McElroy? It's a subway fighting game. Densha means like the train.
47:01 Russ Frushtick? Okay, so yeah, so you're a train and you're riding on a Ferris wheel as it's going through the ocean.
47:09 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, that's great. Can't argue with that.
47:13 Russ Frushtick? "Flip, trick, and grind your train in a fast-paced off-the-rails ride through colorful Japanese dystopia." That does sound like fun.
47:22 Griffin McElroy? Sounds great.
47:23 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, it looks like Jack Hunt Radio, kind of.
47:26 Griffin McElroy? We want to do some honorable minchies?
47:27 Russ Frushtick? Oh, yes. It's been quite the long break since we've done movies.
47:31 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, man. I had to be choosy. There's a lot of things I want to talk about. I got really pulled into Satisfactory, mostly at the behest of our brother Travis, who I believe has logged 300 hours on the game at this point, which is, makes a lot of sense. I can see how it is. Saddest Factory more like.
47:54 Griffin McElroy? Saddest fact. Oh, really? There is a genre I've never really dipped into, this like factory game genre. But Satisfactory.
48:03 Griffin McElroy? I mean, you kind of have because it's a little bit Stardew Valley, right? Not even a little bit at all. So what sets it apart from like Stardew Valley or any of the other kind of like open world survival craft games that I do really, really enjoy? From like your Minecrafts or Enshrouded or the RuneScape Dragonwilds that came out last year. It has a look of stuff like that. You land on an alien planet. You have like one or two tools and you have to go around and like find iron and collect wood. And then you use that to make a thing and then you use that to make a thing. Where Satisfactory kind of like sets itself apart is that it becomes about sort of setting up automation,
48:44 Griffin McElroy? literally building factories and it gets so detailed in how you are able to do that. And I'm talking about like running conveyor belts and building power grids and creating sort of like supply chains because you'll get a recipe that's like, here's iron plates. If you combine that with screws, now it makes advanced iron plates. So you need a line in your factory making screws and a line making those plates. And that runs up to the next thing, which runs up to the next thing. All trying to build a space elevator that you are sending parts up for a project to save humanity. It's, it's really, I'll tell you what it is kind of hitting for me is that idle game kind of itch.
49:27 Griffin McElroy? It does seem like that, yeah. Because you are, you are unlocking things to make getting the thing faster. Unlocking things to make sort of processing, you know, larger and larger and larger quantities of the thing that you were like really struggling for an hour ago. And I don't know, it's really, it genuinely, it's right there in the name. It's very satisfying to like put together like a nice, a nice little, a nice little thing for yourself. So I've, I've been very hooked on that. I've reached a point in the game where. To move forward, I would have to do so much kind of refactoring of this factory that I have built
50:08 Griffin McElroy? uh, over the course of, you know, 20, 25, 30 hours, which I know is a drop in the bucket for like the, the sickos who are super into this game. And I don't know that I have that in me, but um, I don't know. It's been, it's been really, really sucking me in satisfactory. So.
50:24 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I've considered it over the years, but I also deeply am worried of the time it would take for my life.
50:29 Griffin McElroy? That's the other thing is like, I don't know, we're in sort of a slow period right now.
50:33 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
50:34 Griffin McElroy? Uh, so like, uh, my time can be spent on a satisfactory. There were definitely, there will come a point where there's, there simply is not space for it.
50:42 Russ Frushtick? Yeah. Um, I took the break, uh, between, uh, game of the year and now and played through Dark Souls one. And got all the achievements for some fucking reason. I thought.
50:56 Griffin McElroy? How do you, where did you find yourself? Where was your headspace? Where you were like, I got it. Uh, it's Dark Souls one.
51:03 Russ Frushtick? Well, it's because I had previously done this for Dark Souls two and Dark Souls three at various times over the last several years. And I was like, I feel like I need to do one. And I'd never gotten all the achievements in one before. So I went through and I did it. And it was a delight. That game is great. It's so much fun. And what's cool about it when you're doing all the achievements is when you do end new game plus and then a second new game plus, each time that you run through the game, you do it at like 10x speed because you don't have to level. You don't have to, you know where all the paths are. I'm running through Sen's Fortress without like attacking anyone, uh, shit like that. Uh, so.
51:40 Griffin McElroy? Dark Souls one can fuck off. I, I will not go back. I've played all the other Souls games. I'm not going to go back to Dark Souls one. The, the, the curse mechanic, if nothing else.
51:49 Russ Frushtick? Well, they, they nerf the curse mechanic for what it's worth. They did nerf.
51:54 Speaker 02 In what? In, in, in like.
51:56 Russ Frushtick? Yeah. So initially, when the game came out, the frogs would show up and you'd get cursed and.
52:02 Speaker 02 And then you'd have to go get the red stone from the little bird.
52:04 Russ Frushtick? It would have your health. And then if you got cursed again, it would have your health again, et cetera. They, now you can only get cursed once. So you're only at half health once. Realistically, I think Dark Souls one, more than any of the other games, needs to be played with a guide. I think two and three, to some extent, you can get through without.
52:24 Speaker 02 There's so much weird shit where it's like, how do you get to the ashy lake? Well, you gotta go in that tree. The fuck are you talking about?
52:32 Russ Frushtick? And the tree doesn't have a visible door. Oh, and guess what?
52:34 Speaker 02 Invisible door.
52:35 Russ Frushtick? You actually need to roll through two invisible doors to get through the tree and then.
52:38 Speaker 02 Diabolical. I know exactly how far I've ever made it in that game. It's, it's to, um,
52:44 Speaker 02 uh, the, the, the Ornstein and.
52:46 Russ Frushtick? Ornstein and Smog.
52:47 Speaker 02 Yeah. I've never, that's as far as I've made it. I did the whole thing where you, remember that stupid thing where you shoot the dragon's tail a hundred times?
52:55 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, sure.
52:55 Speaker 02 And you get the.
52:56 Russ Frushtick? Man, I'm, should I go back and play Dark Souls?
52:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, you should. It's really good.
52:59 Russ Frushtick? Maybe I should go back and play Dark Souls.
53:00 Speaker 02 It's really good. I don't know. I really don't want to get good at, I want to see it in Smog. It's really not worth it.
53:04 Russ Frushtick? You don't even need, that's the thing is like, so much of these games is like, if you, especially if you're using a guide, the games get pretty fucking, cause you just summon, like I summoned fucking Soler and he helped with me with Ornstein and Smog and it was easy.
53:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:17 Russ Frushtick? So.
53:18 Speaker 02 I think the first time I was playing through it, it was like early in the, and I don't know that I never, uh, I don't think I was like letting myself do that kind of thing more. I think I would do that today.
53:28 Russ Frushtick? Oh yeah. I take every fucking advantage the game throws me and it's way more fun. The other thing I would say is just fucking, yeah, roll with it. Don't worry about like the pride of it. Cause the game will fuck you either way and you'll end up having a really delightful time. Uh, great characterization. A lot of the, uh, quests you can't do without a guide, like impossible to figure out where Soler is going to be next. And how he's not going to die at the end of this fucking quest. So I had a lot of fun. The other thing I wanted to mention is Pikmin 4, which is a game that I played probably 10 hours of before we, when we did our episode, and then put it aside. But I really enjoyed it. It was just, we didn't have time to play much more of it. Did you finish it? Uh, I have not finished it yet, but I've been playing with my son,
54:12 Russ Frushtick? who mostly watches, but it does have a very good co-op mode where he can like throw rocks at shit. And it's great, like really enjoying it. And there's an easy mode where it like takes a lot of the stress of like, Pikmin dying out of the equation for the most part. And Ochi's very cute. And he has space sickness, which is a problem. And so I'm, I'm closing in on the ending, but it's been really, really delightful. And, and I'm dying to see either some DLC or just like a Switch 2 update, because right now it's running at 30 FPS, which is a drag. But otherwise it's great and looks beautiful. And they did a great job on that game.
54:49 Chris Plante? Y'all, I only played games that brought me intense joy. Went back and played some Sonic racing cross worlds. Ichiban is in there. Joker from Persona is in there. SpongeBob is in there. They've just been putting everybody in that game. Cream the Cat is definitely in there, buddy.
55:06 Griffin McElroy? You can't reference a joke that we did in our recent bracket episode for patrons only, here on the main, here for the normies.
55:14 Russ Frushtick? That won't be live for three weeks.
55:15 Griffin McElroy? That won't actually air for another two weeks.
55:20 Chris Plante? Also, Dragon's Dogma 2, went back and played some of that. Still just an absolute stunner of a game. Death Stranding 2, I, uh, I did this thing where I didn't fully finish it back at the end of last summer. Got into the mountains and said, you know what? I'm gonna come back. I want to be able to enjoy this. I've been putting so much time into building all this stuff. I want to come back and I'm gonna finish just the story when I'm ready for it. Go back into it. You know what I've done? Put like another 10 hours just building random roads in.
55:49 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, man.
55:50 Chris Plante? Who knows when I'm gonna finish, finish this game. But right now with the season, being able to just go around in the snow, feels good. Give me a taste of winter that I'm not getting in California.
55:59 Russ Frushtick? So nice.
56:01 Chris Plante? And yeah, and Alan Wake 2, as I mentioned, which I'm, I'm, I'm trying to give that a fair, a fair shake ahead of control.
56:09 Griffin McElroy? Juice?
56:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm gonna say two things. The first is Hundreds of Beavers is a movie I watched on a whim, and it may be one of the best movies I've ever seen in my entire life.
56:19 Griffin McElroy? Wow.
56:19 Speaker 02 You guys ever seen Hundreds of Beavers?
56:21 Griffin McElroy? No. I'm so, I'm hugely aware of it and have not, not made time for it.
56:26 Speaker 02 What about you, Plant?
56:27 Chris Plante? I showed one of the first ever screenings of it, and I also brought him back out, the director, and he dressed up as a beaver and then dressed up one of our interns at the theater as a beaver, and then tackled the intern. And for a moment, I saw the, our theater's legal status in jeopardy, but unfortunately, everybody was okay. It's the best.
56:48 Speaker 02 It's an incredible silent film about a, black and white, about a fur trader who, well, he is, he is an applejack salesman who accidentally burns down the factory and finds himself in a sort of, the movie is a parody of The Revenant. It is about this guy trying to survive in the wilderness while he is trying to eat food to stay alive and then win the heart of a woman he meets by impressing her father by bringing him, quote, "hundreds of beavers." So it is a slapstick comedy about him trying to kill hundreds of beavers and stay alive. And the gags in this movie, I mean, if you like things like Buster Keaton and, you know,
57:32 Speaker 02 Three Stooges and that kind of like broad slapstick comedy, like you're already gonna like this. But it's also like, the, the, the guys who created the film were inspired in part by Let's Plays. So his structure, when he is in the wilderness, is very much like watching a Let's Play, right? He starts off with nothing and then manages to get enough to, for like a couple beaver pelts, and he buys the smallest knife, and then he uses, and he uses that tiny knife to get enough beavers to buy the next thing from this like fur trapper.
58:05 Chris Plante? Yeah.
58:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, yeah, exactly. And it's like, that is, the movie is structured like that, but it is like, uh, they filmed it for a hundred and fifty grand in, in the wilderness and then it made, you know, like, I don't know, two million dollars in the box office or whatever, but it is, uh, you can see it on Amazon Prime is where I watched it for free, but it's incredible.
58:23 Chris Plante? And it looks better than so many movies that cost a fortune. It looks-
58:28 Speaker 02 It's one of those things where like, you watch the first couple of minutes and you're like, there's no way it's gonna be a whole movie like this. Like, they can't, no one could do a whole movie like this. And then it is an entire movie like that. It's a joy to watch and really fun to watch with kids, too. Like, my kids were entranced by it. They laughed the whole way.
58:43 Chris Plante? It's also on Canopy, uh, the library streaming service. So if you-
58:47 Speaker 02 Oh, cool.
58:48 Chris Plante? Uh, if you're not paying for any of the streaming services, you can grab it there.
58:52 Speaker 02 Um, the other thing I wanted to mention is Exo Win 9X. And I know, okay, I know how that sounds. That sounds like some nerd ass shit is what that sounds like. Yeah, I know. It sounds like some nerd ass shit. If you don't know about the Exo Project, uh, it started with Exodus. Get it? And here's the deal. If you want to play old, uh, console games, that's really easy. Because the old consoles are easy to emulate. You have a, an engine that you can write and it runs on a computer and then you put the ROMs in the thing and it runs. But old PC games in throughout the DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 era, it's a lot harder because you have infinite combinations of hardware. These things could run on different permutations of software, operating system, whatever. So with the Exodus, the first addition of this took
59:37 Speaker 02 a lot of DOS games and then made them playable through one unified front end that is powered by Launchbox. And they're, and they're sortable by topic and they all work. They all run. Windows, then there, there was that Exo 3.1 that is an expansion to that that folds into it. And now they have really, which is a bunch of Windows 3.1 games. And now they have released Windows, uh, it's Exo Win, uh, 9X, which is the Windows 95 and 98 version of this same idea.
1:00:18 Speaker 02 So when you download this, there's a torrent file, um, and the torrent is 262 gigabytes. Holy shit. Yeah, man. What's in there? It's every game. But it's- So many Windows 95 and 90X games. I'm sending you guys. Oh, it's. I'm gonna drop. Okay. There's a full list there. Yeah. There are, uh, there, they have favorited, like highlighted a lot of like the weird things that like, there's games on here I've never heard of, games I never played. I get, I played a game called, uh, Nine, The Last Resort, starring, that was narrated by William S. Bros and starring Jim Belushi. Whoa.
1:01:02 Speaker 02 There's, uh, versions of myths on there. There's two Star Trek FMV games that I've been trying to play for literally 15 years. I've been trying to play these games and they just work. Fucking Math Munchers Deluxe. Dude, Star Trek Borg is on here, which if you don't know Star Trek Borg, it is basically like an interactive Star Trek episode, a one man John Delancey show, just as Q, letting you like play out different possibilities within the Borg, uh, world. There's the Goosebumps FMV game is in here, Neverhood's in here. Logical Journey of the Zoom Peenies. Yes, um, uh. Bill Nye Science Guy, Stop the Rock.
1:01:45 Speaker 02 There are, uh, there are a few of these games. Oh, Cosmetology of Kyoto's in here. There are a few of these games that you could get onto gog.com and buy, and if you can, I think you should. And there's some of these games that you could get on Steam. There are not a ton of them, but in terms of a preservation project, it, it is astounding. It knocks me out. The fact that there are so many games on here that I don't, that would be so hard to play otherwise, and it is an incredible piece of history, um, and incredible effort in preservation. It's, it's really astounding. And what's amazing is all these Exo projects nest within each other. So you could have like, I mean, I, I have, what I have done is have one hard drive. It's like a thumb drive, an SSD that I have all of these
1:02:27 Speaker 02 on one thing. So I can plug it into a computer and I have like the entirety of this project. Uh, it's amazing. It's really fantastic.
1:02:37 Speaker 02 Yeah dude, there's so many on here.
1:02:39 Russ Frushtick? Looks sick.
1:02:39 Speaker 02 And what's cool is they are not all installed. So like you find the game you want to play and it installs it. On like that expands it. That's the size should be a lot bigger than it is because there's a lot of like as you get into this era. Um, you have less and less copy protection because it was assumed that the games being on CD would be copy protection enough, right? But there's like, they're getting, they get big. Um, and uh, yeah, it's a fascinating thing. Yeah. Seek, seek it out.
1:03:08 Russ Frushtick? Okay. Take us home, Juice. I think we did.
1:03:09 Speaker 02 Okay. Thanks for listening to our podcast next week.
1:03:12 Russ Frushtick? Patreon.com slash the besties. We have to call out some friends.
1:03:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:15 Russ Frushtick? Do it then, coward. We have Matt H. We have Jesse H. We have J F. And we have Claire. Thank you for being patrons. Thank you to everyone else for being patrons. We have a new bracket episode apart from the bracket episode that went up on the main feed. There is a patrons only new, brand new bracket, bracket episode that went up. Uh, and there's a new one coming, obviously in the future. We also have Resties coming out. Uh, it's all happening. Uh, so thank you for being patrons. Patreon.com slash the besties.
1:03:42 Speaker 02 Thank y'all.
1:03:42 Russ Frushtick? What are we doing next week?
1:03:43 Speaker 02 Thanks. Next week, we're going to be talking about uh, an entirely different video game. Uh, Terminator 2D No Fate. So join us for that. And so much work next week on the besties. Be sure to join us again for that on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?
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