Reflecting on 2025’s Best Games Ahead of GOTY

The Besties chat about the games of 2025, advocating for their GOTY darkhorses that they fear will go overlooked. There’s no clear favorite to take home the Besties top spot. Hell, we’re not even sure what will make the bracket. And more great games are still being released every week.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Uh, we were running behind because of your tech issues, Russ, so we don't have time for a cold open today. So if you could just hit me with like a one liner that really, uh, nothing that's like a conversation starter, but just like an observation.

• 0:11Russ Frushtick?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Kind of like, yeah, just like a one sentence sort of just hit me with it.

• 0:16Russ Frushtick?

  Give peace a chance.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Okay, and here's the show.

• 0:23Griffin McElroy?

  I'd never, I'd never thought about that way before, Russ. That was huge for me.

• 0:28Russ Frushtick?

  It kind of opened your mind a little bit, a little bit.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  Came up with that?

• 0:32Russ Frushtick?

  It's good shit. That's me. That's all me.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Russ, kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

• 0:39Russ Frushtick?

  Imagine all the people.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Hey, man, you're turning me around today.

• 0:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dude. You're making me want to go out bang a pot out my window for doctors right now.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Dude, thank you.

• 0:51Russ Frushtick?

  For two weeks and then we forget.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  My name is Justin McElroy and I have the best games of the week.

• 1:13Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best games of the year.

• 1:17Chris Plante?

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

• 1:21Russ Frushtick?

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

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's like a video game club that just by listening to you become a member, a proud member. This year, we're going to be taking a look at the year in gaming. Sharing a very personal, our personal journeys, our personal stories of the year before we trounce all over that and really are disrespectful of each other's opinions and thoughts when the game of the year rankings begin.

• 1:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, this is our, this is our chance to talk about how hard this job is. And not a lot of game critic people are brave enough to do that. But sometimes, sometimes like Tears of the Kingdom comes out and you're like, easy street. And sometimes a million good games of a million disparate genres come out and then it's.

• 2:13Russ Frushtick?

  And you're like, I wish I was in a coal mine right now for Christ's sake. At least they have bird companions.

• 2:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure, dude. At least then I'd get a bird.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  We'll be right back after this.

• 2:27Russ 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.

• 3:11Russ Frushtick?

  Because holy cow, that thing is incredibly 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.

• 3:51Russ Frushtick?

  Guys, this device, speaking of the best of the year, the Atari Game Station Go has a Jaleko. I was realizing, I don't know how to say this, guys.

• 4:02Griffin McElroy?

  I always say Jaleko because it sounds like Jaleel. And that's just kind of where the root word of Jaleko vision.

• 4:10Russ Frushtick?

  Now, we're going to talk about an unorthodox year in video games. I think it's a very diverse year in terms of releases, I think. And I want to see where you guys are at with 2025.

• 4:24Griffin McElroy?

  I am. You go ahead. It's just fucked, gang. Yeah. This year, this goatee has been fucked since Jump Street. Let's like, just to like, lay out a few examples. And we've talked about some of this stuff already. Blueprints is in my top, it's top three, it's fighting for tops. I know that there are other people on the call who very much enjoyed it, and yet, one person on the call has been unable to play it because of frankly, pretty astonishingly like, bad oversight of accessibility.

• 5:00Russ Frushtick?

  To be fair, it wasn't an oversight. They did know even at launch that they needed it, but they still have not included it. I do have an update on that front for what it's worth.

• 5:08Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, do you?

• 5:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. So just to bring people up to speed, Blueprints, a first-person puzzle game that came out earlier this year, has a lot of puzzles in it. Some of the puzzles involve colors in some way. Me being colorblind, I can't do those puzzles with any sort of effectiveness.

• 5:25Russ Frushtick?

  Jason Schreier has recently spoken to the developer of Blueprints, and they are putting at the release of the colorblind thing into sometime in 2026. So it is still coming.

• 5:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but for the purposes of our, for the purposes of our discussing what the best video game release of 2025 is, that's going to do us no, no good at all. And then there's stuff like, I don't know, man, like Expedition 33 is one of my games of the year, and that is a 60 to 70 hour long French JRPG that not a lot of people here are gonna have time for.

• 6:00Russ Frushtick?

  It's the French part that really is, I don't have time for it. It's not the hours.

• 6:04Griffin McElroy?

  Probably the 60 to 70 hour thing. It's just why, I feel like every single game on my top 10 list is one, like, a niche indie game, and there's not really a two to that. I don't know why I said one, and I don't know, it just feels like there's not a consolidated, agreed-upon victor where you're gonna see it just kind of like sweep, sweep the goody lists around the, around the web.

• 6:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Previous games that we have loved on this show, Lonely Mountains, Citizen Sleeper, The Like a Dragon Yakuza series, Monster Hunter games, all of those had sequels in the first two months of this year.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  They just happened and like, we haven't even really gone back to them or thought much about them.

• 6:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I wouldn't say that the like a dragon game was a sequel. It was a weird pirate beat them up offshoot that didn't quite lighten my.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  I wouldn't want to argue about that.

• 7:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Should we just like, talk about our games? Should we talk about our personal walks with?

• 7:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but yeah, I would just to echo what Griffin was saying. It's, I don't think we've ever had a year like this. Where like, I'm looking at some of the lists of like preferred games and there's just like not as much crossover at all. Like there's no like, oh yeah, that's going to be number one or that's going to be number two. Like it just.

• 7:33Griffin McElroy?

  I think the one game that has the best chance of doing it is Silk Song, maybe. But even that is like, you know, that's a genre that a lot of, it is also inaccessible in its, in its way. And so.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Don't worry, it won't be a problem. Um, we should, uh, we should, um. Here's what I would like to suggest to you guys and I, Plant has only put out two games and that's a cowardice that I hope that he uh, is okay with. Um, but really it's very safe bets there. I'm going to ask you other guys and Plant you too. What do you think is your, the biggest ledge? That you're on?

• 8:09Griffin McElroy?

  Biggest ledge I'm on?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Here's what I, here's my question. I'm looking at a list of my games. I want to pick on my list, what I think is going to be the least supported. Where I think it's like, I'm on the biggest, I'm by myself the most.

• 8:23Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Just to see how it's feeling because we never have those kinds of conversations, right? Cause like some of mine, I was going back through my list and be like, fuck, actually that game fucked. And even just in 20 minutes ago, didn't remember that game fucked, but now I do. So it's there.

• 8:38Griffin McElroy?

  Do you want to start by saying what that game?

• 8:39Speaker 00

  Moroi.

• 8:40Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Exactly dude. Moroi.

• 8:44Griffin McElroy?

  M.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  O.

• 8:46Griffin McElroy?

  R.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  O.

• 8:47Griffin McElroy?

  I.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  It's one of the strangest games. I don't even know if we talked about it. Uh, it is poorly reviewed. It is a dark.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Kind of action puzzle combat thing with that is the tone is absolutely surreal. It's a, it's a game that is, okay, here it is, it is, has mixed reviews on Steam.

• 9:18Griffin McElroy?

  It also only has 33.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  It has 33. No one played it. But if you look at the trailer, you're gonna think dang, this looks really, really interesting. And that it is. So Moroi.

• 9:33Griffin McElroy?

  Moroi is your ledge?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Moroi is my ledge. I know that there's, this is not a game of the year game, but it is the one for me where I was like, man, I, I could have made a bigger, I think I could have done a little bit better spreading the gospel of Moroi. But anyway, M O R O I. If you want to try some of the interesting.

• 9:52Griffin McElroy?

  Let's get it up to 34 reviews.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Let's get 34 reviews.

• 9:56Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, mine's easy because it's, I think perpetually kind of been an issue with these considerations. Deltarune, chapter three and four came out this year and were really, really fucking exceptional.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:10Griffin McElroy?

  But also how, how do you, how do you include that in a, a goody list? And I'm not like super interested in having the conversation of like episodic games. Because God knows we had enough of those when, you know, Telltale was still cranking out the, the, the hits and the jammers. But like I, those two games or two chapters represent like a huge fucking chunk of playtime. But it is also like the thing's not finished and it is a, a sort of sequel to Undertale. And if people didn't play the first and second chapters, then they're probably not gonna want to dip in just for three and four. Like it's a, it's, that is a weird case that I am very passionate about because those,

• 10:55Griffin McElroy?

  those two chapters had a, a big impact on me, but also like, I don't know, I don't think that there's gonna be a ton of space for it. Once we start bracketing these bad boys.

• 11:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I guess the closest that I would have on my list, which I think probably has a little bit of crossover for you guys is Baby Steps. Baby Steps is not a game that I think, I mean, I for sure didn't get nominated for game of the year at the game awards.

• 11:22Russ Frushtick?

  It doesn't really look like a big splashy game of the year fodder, but in terms of just like total scratching the internal brain itch.

• 11:31Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 11:32Russ Frushtick?

  That game checked a whole lot for me. I was completely riveted by that game.

• 11:38Russ Frushtick?

  And I hope more people get a chance to play it as it goes on.

• 11:42Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, that's one I want to return to because I played it a little bit for,

• 11:48Griffin McElroy?

  you know, to talk about it. And then we played it a bunch for streaming, but I never really put, you know, effort into finishing it. And I think that there's like an element of the game that is, you have to buy into is my suspicion. Like you really have to want to get up the, up the mountain and not be just kind of fucking around, which is the only way I've really interacted with the game.

• 12:12Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's narratively one of the most interesting games I played all year, like.

• 12:15Griffin McElroy?

  See, I haven't gotten fucking, all I've seen is like donkey dicks and like really funny improvised like cutscenes about, maps and, and.

• 12:25Russ Frushtick?

  And it's not, it's not like it evolves into like a massively high minded thing, but I, I found myself compelled to keep going. And even though I don't like, you know, Quop as a game, I don't think that's a fun or, or getting over it. I don't think those are fun games for me. But there was just something about the precision of this, the gameplay mixed with like the very funny and also interesting, cutscene stuff.

• 12:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Russ Frushtick?

  And it just like, has some of the most memorable moments over the year came out in Baby Steps for me. I, I just really adored it.

• 12:58Griffin McElroy?

  That's, that's one that's high on my list to spend a little bit more time with before we.

• 13:02Chris Plante?

  I think Baby Steps is a dark horse for like high, high up on the list. Um, I.

• 13:10Chris Plante?

  My like legends or games where I just know, I already know like this ain't happening. Come on, let's be real. The Hundred Line, maybe I can get Griffin to play that. Maybe.

• 13:22Griffin McElroy?

  I played it.

• 13:23Chris Plante?

  But.

• 13:23Griffin McElroy?

  I'm sorry.

• 13:24Russ Frushtick?

  The tone, the tone, Griffin, the tone said it all, baby.

• 13:28Griffin McElroy?

  I know the tone was too, I know the tone was too much.

• 13:29Russ Frushtick?

  It communicated reviewers tilt. It communicated fun factor. It communicated everything.

• 13:35Griffin McElroy?

  It's a, it's truly, it is, I, there's not a game this year that I spent more time trying to like than Hundred Line.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  That's an award we should have this year. I would love to do that award. Time, most time invested in a game that I ultimately could not enjoy.

• 13:50Griffin McElroy?

  The Denk on Rumpa stuff was like so great, like, and the vibe, the story, the writing, like, all that shit really, really works for me. And, but the like strategy, the tactics part of it did not, which was kind of the same thing I had with, um, what was that other? What was the Vanilla Ware strategy game that was like Kaiju?

• 14:09Chris Plante?

  Yeah, Unicorn Overlord?

• 14:11Griffin McElroy?

  No, no, no, no. It was the, uh, the, the.

• 14:13Russ Frushtick?

  Roden Sphere.

• 14:14Griffin McElroy?

  No, it was the sort of pseudo visual novel about teens that protected their town from.

• 14:20Chris Plante?

  Thirteen Sentinels?

• 14:21Griffin McElroy?

  Thirteen Sentinels. Yes. Uh, it was like, I had the same feeling sort of about that. So like, it's, I, I, I really like a lot of what that game's putting down. And then I also don't like a pretty big fundamental part of it.

• 14:33Chris Plante?

  Yeah. There's also stuff that's like, Caves of Cud came out technically in December of last year, but I wish I had figured out how to play it. Who knows when I'll ever have time to play that. Speaking of things that who knows when I'll ever have time to play, even though I think I really like it. And I know it's controversial around these parts, but Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I know Frash, you're on my side here. You can't wait to get back.

• 14:54Russ Frushtick?

  But you know who, who loves that game is Mr. Jeff Keighley and the Game Awards contingent, because it was nominated for game of the year and it is in the slate.

• 15:03Griffin McElroy?

  That is a, that is a truly wild one. And it is, this happens a lot, I think, with the four of us and, and probably other kind of like games. Podcasts where it's not like a whole big editorial board making the thing where like, it just so happens that three of us don't really like medieval. Fantasy recreation, which is like, fully, fully, fully what this game is doing.

• 15:28Chris Plante?

  Not fantasy though. Not fantasy though.

• 15:30Griffin McElroy?

  Not fantasy. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Medieval, historical recreation.

• 15:34Russ Frushtick?

  Unless you think fire is magic. It's not.

• 15:35Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yes, fine. Yes. I, I, I take back the fantasy part of it. But we, we played that, we played that to do an episode on it. And then like, me and Justin and Russ were all like, I do, it's, it is boring.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  I, I enjoy some fiction from this period. Essex Dogs, for example, would be right in line. I just thought, I found the shifting perspectives disorienting and controlling it did not bring me pleasure. That's all. It's a real rough hang. I bet if I had put another 10 hours in there, I bet, I think it might've, I, I think it could've gotten its claws in, but I just couldn't get there.

• 16:09Chris Plante?

  Griffin, do you have a ledge game?

• 16:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, uh, Delta Rune, uh, three and four was that for me?

• 16:14Chris Plante?

  Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

• 16:15Griffin McElroy?

  I, I think, uh,

• 16:20Griffin McElroy?

  I really like Q up, you guys. I really like Q up.

• 16:24Russ Frushtick?

  I would play Q up. I haven't played it yet.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Okay. I didn't know if that was gonna be a...

• 16:28Chris Plante?

  It's climbing my list for sure. I mean, I love that game. Uh, it's gonna be your thing big time.

• 16:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it sounds like it. I think I had a warmer reaction to Wonderstop than the, than the rest of the show.

• 16:43Chris Plante?

  It's on my list. It's on Justin's list.

• 16:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I could allow it.

• 16:46Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, is it? Oh, okay. Well, then I take it back. Nevermind.

• 16:49Russ Frushtick?

  I think I was the only one that was like a little cool on it.

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah. Fuck. Okay. Expedition 33. Is, is simply a game that you guys are not going to play more of.

• 16:58Chris Plante?

  Griffin, Griffin. I played a lot of that game.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Check, check my Steam.

• 17:04Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, no, I saw you playing it this morning.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Oh, baby. I've been, I'm 10 hours. I put another 10 hours in. It's great.

• 17:10Griffin McElroy?

  Are you grooving?

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's great. I just didn't, I liked it before. I just didn't have, I don't know. There's a lot of, guys, the pace of this show, the pace of this show is such that even games I like. Sometimes I gotta take a break from, and a game like this has a lot of moving pieces.

• 17:27Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  This is definitely one that I stepped away from and I had to like, get back on YouTube. I had to get back into the grind. I had to get back in the flow state.

• 17:33Russ Frushtick?

  Find your beret, which was in storage.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Enough, yeah. Enough, enough people were into it that I felt like I needed to like, give this one another chance, because I really like, uh, I really, uh, try to root for games that have a unique perspective and a unique aesthetic, and this game is definitely, definitely that, and it's doing a lot of really fun gameplay stuff. So, yeah, I've really been enjoying, uh, the time that I've been, been putting into that.

• 17:59Griffin McElroy?

  That, that is also a, um, what's the opposite of recency bias? Because the game came out, I think, in February, right? Expedition 33?

• 18:08Russ Frushtick?

  It's pretty early in the year.

• 18:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I, I played it and really dug it and got through all of it. Uh, but it was such a long time ago and I've, we've played so many fucking games this year. Um, did any of you guys do Root Trees Are Dead?

• 18:23Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 18:23Griffin McElroy?

  The Root Trees.

• 18:24Russ Frushtick?

  I remember us talking about it, but I haven't.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's on my, I've, I've like five games.

• 18:29Griffin McElroy?

  That's my sort of like smarty pants deduction, other than blueprints, like deduction game of the year. It's basically a game about, um, being nosey and using the internet to like do kind of investigative journalism, to build a genealogical tree of this giant sort of, uh, candy family, candy corporation, uh, family. Uh, and it ruled and I got really, really obsessed. Talk about a game where like you can't take a break from it, because you'll forget every, every little connection and every little detail and every like site you've visited. But it basically recreates a fake internet, uh, that you search, you know, of information about this family on.

• 19:11Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I really, really liked it because it required a lot more, you know, deduction and, and critical thinking than, uh, other sort of games that came out this year that were ostensibly sort of the same, same genre.

• 19:24Russ Frushtick?

  Let me ask a question for the group.

• 19:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Russ Frushtick?

  Uh huh. And just, I think I know the answer to this, but let me just confirm. The goal of this game of the year specifically, when we have those episodes, is to come up with a besties game of the year.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:40Russ Frushtick?

  It is not a individual that happens to make it to the top. It's a uniformly agreed upon. So you wouldn't have a game, for example, at number one that one person hated, but everyone else absolutely loved.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  That has definitely, definitely, definitely happened. That has for sure happened. I feel like it happened last year.

• 19:57Russ Frushtick?

  I think, yeah, last year, wasn't it Yakuza that won last year?

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you just didn't really get into it.

• 20:03Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't, I didn't hate it.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Was it Astro Bot that was last year's?

• 20:06Russ Frushtick?

  Astro Bot didn't get placement, which was regrettable, but I didn't hate.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 20:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yakuza. I know, that's crazy. It was a fantastic game. I didn't hate Yakuza, so I didn't think that that was an off-base selection. But I do think like that would be a stipulation. It's like you wouldn't have a game that someone actively hated in the top five.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Our past five have been Hades, Resident Evil Village, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Like a Dragon in Pinwulf. So I don't know. I like all those.

• 20:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So, so I guess it's just a, I think, especially when we talk about games like Blueprints, which is like, I'm just not gonna play Blueprints realistically. I'm just not.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  I don't know that there's a game on my list that everyone liked. Like, I don't know that there's a game that came out this year that the four of us like really, really, really.

• 20:51Russ Frushtick?

  But, but that's my point. It's like, I didn't really, really like Yakuza.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  So guys, this is why I really wanted to do this episode, right? Because when you're, when you're in the Screen Actors Guild, they want your opinions on the finest performances of the year. As an actor, as a screen actor.

• 21:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Myself, I.

• 21:16Griffin McElroy?

  Technically, the trolls we did voices for were on a screen. Were on, have, they go on screens.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Well, it's SAG-AFTRA, so my television work is, is part of it.

• 21:26Russ Frushtick?

  It's the Astra part.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  That's the AFR. They will send me DVDs of TV shows, which is always really cool.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  But that thing is, the thing is, guys, I feel like that there is not a good, I wanted a nice comparable thing to, uh, screeners being sent out, right? That you get the screeners that you may not necessarily have thought about. I wanted to take your all's pulse because I feel like it is gonna be hard to find that common ground. And I feel like this is a good opportunity to kind of find those places where maybe there will be common ground, but we just need to invest a bit more time.

• 22:01Chris Plante?

  So, are we coming? Yeah. I mean, what? Death, Death Stranding 2?

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Stranding 2? I'm, I'm still talking about all the great, hey, guys.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Griffin, Russ, what are you guys thinking about Blippo Plus?

• 22:15Chris Plante?

  Ah!

• 22:17Speaker 00

  You guys connected? Have you guys logged on to Blippo?

• 22:20Chris Plante?

  Uh, that's the TV.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Griffin, here's, okay, here's my advice to everybody. Highly, highly, highly recommend. Put Blippo on a big screen.

• 22:32Chris Plante?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Give a kid the remote. And get ready for a very, very enjoyable afternoon. Blippo is a cable service. Blippo Plus is a cable service that is-

• 22:46Chris Plante?

  From the planet blip.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  From the planet blip, thank you.

• 22:49Chris Plante?

  Love that, love that.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  There are, it is, there is, there are several channels. There's many different channels. Some are music videos, some are shopping, some are recipes, there's interview shows, there's like teen advice shows. It's, they're, all the shows are like 30 seconds long. The aesthetics are insane because they're all from alien planets. And there is a running like channel guide and schedule that you can at any point load up and see what's playing on all the other channels. There is like a, a fake internet fax system where you can like log on to message boards and stuff to, to collect, uh, recipes or whatever. It is not a game in the traditional sense. Like, I'm not even

• 23:31Speaker 00

  being like, this is not a judgment. Like you can, I don't think you can make a good case for this being a video game. But what it is, is like, in terms of like interactive entertainment, it's like relentlessly creative, uh- In a way that is like really blows me away to think about, there's like an exercise channel that has choreographed dances for all these songs. And I think in my head about the people who had to like, take time to choreograph dances to put on this channel, just in case someone's flipping around and they happen to watch that thing. And that's what me and my kids and Sydney did for like an hour this weekend was turn Blippo on a big screen and just let the kids flip around and get kind of like hypnotized and lured in.

• 24:11Griffin McElroy?

  What did you put it on? What was it?

• 24:13Speaker 00

  What did you? It was on Steam. I've had it on the Steam Deck and I just plugged the Steam Deck into HDMI.

• 24:16Chris Plante?

  It's on Switch too, like that would be a way to do it.

• 24:18Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, is it really? Okay.

• 24:19Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah. There's like an alternate reality Nickelodeon that you can get going on there. Everything was shot on real.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  There's a adult channel. There's a scrambled porn, scrambled porn channel that you have to, would have to pay access to.

• 24:34Chris Plante?

  The, the other option, if you do not want to play it with the kids, I think is another great way to experience this game. If you can't sleep, it's like 11 o'clock, you go into the living room, you put this on the TV and you feel like you have accidentally time warped into a different reality.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Isn't it on the playdate? So it started on the playdate, right? And there are still some references, like in the, in the Blippo Plus, there's still some references, which, which I got on Steam. There's still some references to like, don't touch that crank or whatever, or like the device itself, but the, what you miss in the Blippo, if you only played it on the, the playdate version, and I'm talking to no one right now. Yeah, less than six. But you didn't get the sense like how lovingly recreated these like sets and the actors and the makeup and the costumes.

• 25:24Griffin McElroy?

  It's like a Game Boy camera levels, kind of like pixel.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  But watching this on a T, like watching this on any size of screen and seeing these things in like color and it's great. It's just a great experience.

• 25:35Chris Plante?

  You all have copies of it. I'm, I'm just, you should just check it.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Check it. Totally out.

• 25:39Griffin McElroy?

  I will, I will, I will definitely check it out. It sounds super fun. I wanted to circle back to one that is, has been a frontrunner in a lot of other places, sort of conversations about GOTY that has had like a weird chili reception here, which is Hades 2.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:57Griffin McElroy?

  I have.

• 25:59Griffin McElroy?

  Really gotten back into that game just in the last week, thanks to the the AYN Thor. I've got it running on there through Game Hub and it's a really nice sized, sort of, very, very portable Hades 2 experience. And I've just about caught up to where I was in my early access save. And I'm like, fully remembering why this whole formula kicks as much ass as it does. But again, this is like another weird case that is so unusual where we played the shit out of it last year when it was in early access. And then when the 1.0 dropped, like, it didn't really set the world on fire for us. Because, or maybe personally speaking,

• 26:41Griffin McElroy?

  it didn't set the world on fire for me because all the new stuff that was different wasn't so immediately apparent. And it just felt like I was doing the same stuff that I had done less than

• 26:51Russ Frushtick?

  a year ago. Not only that, I think our first reaction to the game was in a very early state where there were a lot of new mechanics that were in early access that were not well tuned. So the like, resource gathering and the way the sprint worked and a variety of other things. I'll tell you, I beat it the other day. I beat Hades 2 the other day.

• 27:12Griffin McElroy?

  Great.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Dude, congratulations.

• 27:16Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you. I'm so proud of myself and others, even though I used God Mode. It's fine. I did. Yes.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Good for you. That's the only sane way to do it.

• 27:23Griffin McElroy?

  What is God Mode?

• 27:24Speaker 00

  More, more games should have God Mode, by the way.

• 27:26Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, fuck, I forgot that was even, I gotta turn that shit.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  Griffin, turn it on!

• 27:29Russ Frushtick?

  It's so good. God Mode, for those that aren't aware, every time you die on a run, it adds 2% to your permanent damage reduction. So you will always, always, always be making progress. It's great.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  Which, PS, is actually how all other video games work. They just call it different stuff and break it into 20 different things. Right? That is God Mode. They've just reduced all leveling to something you don't ever have to think about, period.

• 27:52Russ Frushtick?

  So I beat it. And my general feeling of it is it's difficult for its placement, even though I thought it was a fantastic game, it's difficult for me to place it on my top 5, for example. Because to me, it feels like incredibly well-made and incredibly iterative, to the point of like,

• 28:13Russ Frushtick?

  Like, I said this to Justin, I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this is how I feel. Hades 2 feels like 20% better Hades 1. And to me, that doesn't necessarily feel like a sequel. That feels like a enhanced or something like that. Obviously, new story, new characters, new everything, and the art is fantastic. I'm not diminishing it. I think it's a great game. I had a really good time playing it. It does not feel like a special experience to me in the way that playing Hades 1 felt like a special new experience. And that's like a newness bias to it as well.

• 28:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's a tall order to make a sequel to a game that is inherently kind of designed to put 600 hours into repeating the same runs over and over and over again.

• 28:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Griffin McElroy?

  Because maybe that is sort of what is missing for me. But I, that said, like,

• 28:59Russ Frushtick?

  It's great. I mean, it's a great game.

• 29:01Griffin McElroy?

  I am back into it now, but it took me quite a while to.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  I love Hades 2. I mean, I love Hades. I just feel like in the context of these discussions and this show specifically, and the way this game was released and the way we all like ingested it, I don't know how it fits into the conversation. As like a game that like, because most of Hades I played in was last year. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't.

• 29:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  I don't know how to have that conversation in a way that's fair to Hades and other games. I don't know.

• 29:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  I really have been tempted. I would love to go back, but I've even like, I've tried some of the new weapons and stuff like, I have, I have tried some of that. I don't know if it's like, I know that I could start over. It just feels like, is that the good use of my, like, if I'm gonna like, try to be the best equipped to have a discussion about the best games of the year, is like reevaluating a big chunk of Hades 2, the best way to spend that time, you know?

• 29:55Russ Frushtick?

  Also, fun fact, if you do start over, it does save your god mode progress. So when I started over, it started me at like 25%.

• 30:02Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, from early access?

• 30:03Russ Frushtick?

  From early access.

• 30:04Griffin McElroy?

  God damn it. I wasted so much fucking time not getting buff and strong and cool.

• 30:09Russ Frushtick?

  By dying, yeah. There is another sequel I wanted to call out. I think we mentioned it briefly earlier, is Death Stranding 2.

• 30:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Russ Frushtick?

  Which is, I think, a different circumstance from Hades to Hades 2. Even though obviously they're very much in confrontation with one another, the first and second Death Stranding. Death Stranding 2 feels like, We fucked around and experimented and didn't necessarily land on something super approachable and maybe not even quite great in the first game, but very good. And the second game was like, now we're gonna fucking hit it out of the park. And I think that's what they did with Hades 2, I thought, with Death Stranding 2. I thought they hit it out of the park. It's a fantastic game. I beat it. That was one of the few games I beat this year, and I was really blown away by it.

• 30:55Griffin McElroy?

  Death Stranding 2, I think, is the definition of like a nod and smile game for me, where it's like, I played it and I really, really liked it. And I get why people are like, so fucking fired up about it. And I love that Kojima's out there doing like, truly weird shit that is even escalating on his own brand of doing weird shit. Like, it's amazing to watch someone continue to step it up in that way. I don't want to play any more of it, or finish it. But like, I am also not, I don't feel like I need to poo poo it, or, or, I don't know, tear it down in some way. Cause I do think it's just a question of, it's just a question of genre. Another thing Travis was asking us about, like, some of our choices earlier

• 31:39Griffin McElroy?

  today, and brought up Ghost of Iote, which is like a game that I think is really great, very, very well-made game, with great performances and super fun combat. I don't really care for open world games so much. And so it is like, yet another kind of like outlier game that a lot of people really dug, that I didn't, just because of, I don't know, my own preferences. But I feel like that's most of the games for, you know, each of us this year.

• 32:07Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I kinda wanted to dig into these big budget games. I mean, Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Iote, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, like, we haven't been talking about much of these. I think almost all of these we have.

• 32:21Russ Frushtick?

  Man, Avowed.

• 32:23Chris Plante?

  Yeah?

• 32:24Russ Frushtick?

  Whoa, that just took me on like a time. Avowed, like, was, was this year?

• 32:29Griffin McElroy?

  They put out three fucking games this year, right? They did, wasn't the Oblivion remake this year also? This was just, okay.

• 32:35Russ Frushtick?

  Well, that wasn't them. That was.

• 32:36Chris Plante?

  But, but, but they put out the Shrunken Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

• 32:41Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah, Gran 2. Obsidian, okay. Avowed for me, oh god.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  I think that I was trying to remember avowed earlier today when I was, I had this image of like a ledge on a balcony.

• 32:56Russ Frushtick?

  A plant face?

• 32:58Speaker 00

  I had an image of a soldier who was inside of a restaurant that I had to keep going up some stairs to go in to talk to a soldier at a restaurant. Like avowed to me is the definition of like, every single element of it is fine. And for the love of God, I don't know what it, it does not have a single peg that can hang it into my memory. Like I can't do like it's, I can't avowed like-

• 33:21Russ Frushtick?

  Plant faces.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Plant faces. I mean-

• 33:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I mean, I, that game has like grown, it's the opposite for me in that it's like grown on me as this weird, oh my gosh, they made a big triple A game about the pandemic and about how miserable everybody felt. And like, and what a weird ass game it was. And that they, I don't know, I also remember it as like, as somebody gets overwhelmed by the open worlds in those games as, oh, they finally made a compact one where it was like every five feet you were seeing something. And yet at the same time, I, I remember liking it a lot. And I don't remember, I mean, I know why I stopped playing it. It's because we have a million other things to play. But there, there are games every

• 34:09Chris Plante?

  year that I do finish and I, I don't know why that one wasn't one of them.

• 34:12Griffin McElroy?

  That, that one didn't click for me. Outer Worlds 2 is one where the first, uh, you know, couple of planets, the first maybe 10 hours of the game, I was so hooked on. And then the rest of the game was just kind of more of that, uh, and felt very, very, very fillery and really spoiled me on, on, on the game, uh, and kind of bumped it out of, of consideration for me.

• 34:41Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we, you mentioned Donkey Kong earlier. Uh, I, Donkey Kong is on my list, my current top five at the moment. Uh, I mean, I just had a blast and it felt like a very different thing than I had done in a very long time. Like it just felt like Nintendo strutting their gameplay designs, uh, bona fides in a way that they hadn't previously, which I thought was really cool.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  I liked.

• 35:07Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know why I didn't like that game more and that could maybe be the tagline of of 2025 for for me. It was a fun, kind of like silly game to play with Henry to just like smash shit up and uh but but I wasn't necessarily compelled to keep on digging into it to see what was gonna come next. Um, and I feel like that is sort of a the heat that I need to to keep me going on a game.

• 35:37Chris Plante?

  No, I was never, I was never on the dating apps. I got Steffi before all that, but this year has felt like uh what I've always imagined the dating apps is, which I'm getting eights and nines out of tens every other week.

• 35:53Griffin McElroy?

  Everywhere.

• 35:53Chris Plante?

  And and then I'm like, but you know what?

• 35:55Griffin McElroy?

  That is what dating apps is like.

• 35:57Chris Plante?

  I bet, I bet, I bet the next one's even better. Cause I'm like, I'm looking at Kaizen, um, that that factory game. I'm looking at Fantasy Life. I'm looking at Star Vators, Skin Deep, Despero. There are so many games.

• 36:12Griffin McElroy?

  Monster Train 2 can hang.

• 36:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, Absalom might be a dark horse for me because there's not many games on my list that everyone I think really vibed with. And that one, that one does everything it does pretty fucking well.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  I tried to get back into that one. I did. I like some of Absalom. I didn't uh, I don't know. I don't think I got locked in the loop at any point with Absalom.

• 36:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  I kind of got it, but I didn't wanna. It is, guys, I I will be honest and and this is part of like, and and this is part of what I I think is worth discussing. And this is for me, uh, from my perspective this year. I I am still struggling a lot with Corporal Tunnel Syndrome and it makes it hard to play controller games, controller forward games, or to hold like uh, Steam Deck or whatever uh for for lengthy periods of time, right? So a lot of my my gaming has been sort of like in consideration of that. It's been stuff that is like not controller focused and things that are controller focused. I'm trying to like

• 37:17Speaker 00

  be smart about how I'm spending that time and you know, looking at other options like surgery and steroids and things like that. And I I have gotten into a habit, I think, where once I sort of understand what a game is is doing.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Even if it is like bringing me pleasure, like I'm enjoying it. I kind of check out a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, I think the games that have are on this list for me are games that like I kept returning to and revisiting and like seeing, trying to get a hang of like how I feel about it. Cause I kind of feel like a lot of games, especially this year. Uh, and Avowed is maybe one of those. It was, it was very early in the year. So I don't really remember, but like I, if I got it, if I kind of understood how I felt about it, I, I kind of, I tended to move on.

• 38:09Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I think the big takeaway is we're fucked.

• 38:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Russ Frushtick?

  I'm excited.

• 38:14Griffin McElroy?

  I, I agree with what you're saying, Juice. I feel like that, that is the differentiator for me is a lot of the games we talked about. Were, I, I, I played until I felt like I understood it and had something to say. And the ones that I are on my shortlist are the ones that I, I think I finished all of them, uh, except Hades 2. I'm still, still working on.

• 38:35Chris Plante?

  I think that's great for games though. Like that's, that's where I-

• 38:38Griffin McElroy?

  Great for games. Fucking everybody gets what they want this year. Truly, truly, truly. That's awesome. It's just, there's a lot of people-

• 38:44Chris Plante?

  And not just that, but I mean, as a critic that like, you know, that's where I've, movies are, you know, like when, when people are like, man, why do, why does this obscure movie that is, you know, three hours long and really punishes you? Why is it beloved by critics? And it's like, well, there is so much out there that critics get to this point where it's like, I need something that hits different. I've seen the same thing a hundred times. And I feel like that's now what we can get with games. You crave the difference. You crave the friction, which I think is good.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Well, you also, you also, there's an inbuilt. I think that there's part of you that wants to be impactful. And then I think that there's definitely some subconscious part of me that feels like you don't need me to tell you that the new Donkey Kong game is good. Most of them are. You know what I mean? Like if you start playing it, you're like, well, that's pretty good, but like- You don't need me to tell you to play Donkey Kong.

• 39:33Griffin McElroy?

  There's always a lot of baggage around the goatee deliberation process of like there are people who have a game that belongs in a niche genre that the four of us, because we're four human beings and not a million human beings, just like didn't play or didn't care for or whatever. And so they don't even get considered. And the that reads as us sort of just saying like, well, it's shit. When that is sort of not, that's going to happen to a lot of games this year. And so I feel like, I don't know, more than ever, I hope people can kind of temper their expectations. Because I don't, I truly can't remember a year where, you know, the, the top 10 list that folks are going to be putting out

• 40:18Griffin McElroy?

  are going to be so wildly different.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  This is why I'm hoping maybe guys, there's some common ground that we just haven't spent the time on. You know what I mean? That it's there, we could just kind of find it if we just play some more video games.

• 40:29Chris Plante?

  Before we go to the next section, usually this would be the time of the year where at least it's, hey, we have plenty of time to catch up on this stuff because nothing's coming out. Past four days, Demon School, News Tower, Kingdom of the Dump, Birdcage, Moonlighter 2 hit early access.

• 40:46Griffin McElroy?

  You're fucking.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  What?

• 40:47Griffin McElroy?

  Kirby Air Riders, we haven't done.

• 40:49Chris Plante?

  In a Zoom 11, which we haven't talked about, but is, is blowing up on Steam. Marvel Cosmic Invasion, a new game from, that's the TMNT people, right? Is that?

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I downloaded that.

• 41:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, like there are so many games still coming out before the end of the year.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Like one, I feel like one of us, and even as I'm saying it, I'm worried that it's me, should like try a real good effort at Dispatch. A lot of people seem to have dug that. I just like, it was so non-interactive that I was really struggling. And then there was a mode to make it even less interactive than that. So that was like, it was tough, but I, I don't know. I feel like that was warmly received by the people that, that got into it. If you, it seems like the, the log line is if you like old Telltale games, you're really going to like Dispatch.

• 41:41Chris Plante?

  It is blown up 53,000 reviews on Steam already. That's bonkers.

• 41:48Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy. Yeah, that's a lot. Um, is that, can we, can we, to wrap this conversation up, we have a little while before we actually do our thing. What's the, what's the game you're going to want to spend, spend more time with?

• 42:02Speaker 00

  I want you guys to play a game about digging a hole.

• 42:06Griffin McElroy?

  I did that.

• 42:06Russ Frushtick?

  I played it.

• 42:07Griffin McElroy?

  I already did that one.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:08Griffin McElroy?

  It was fun.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Why is it on your list? Next. Oh, Griffin, let me ask you about one that I don't see on y'all's list that I was a little bit surprised by is Clover Pit. That's, that seems like a real

• 42:19Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  besties ass thing. And I really, it's not one that I'm like, I'm not, I'm not super fixated on it in the way that I have been with like similar games, but I do find myself returning to it a lot. And I do kind of like enjoy the puzzle of it and I like the aesthetic, but I don't know.

• 42:34Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I, there's a lot of games like that that came out this year. Ball Pit, Ball X Pit is another one. I played so much fucking Ball X Pit and it's not on my top 10 list. Uh, because I think a lot of games came out sort of like that. And, uh, I, I feel like they were fun and cool ga, games that I very much enjoyed spending those like sleepless nights, staying up late and playing. But I do not think, you know, stand head and shoulders above others in terms of design or, or aesthetic or, or whatever else. Um.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Russ, you played Clover Pit, yes?

• 43:09Russ Frushtick?

  No, I actually didn't play Clover Pit and I, I do want to play it. It wasn't the game that I was thinking of playing more of. That is probably Expeditish Trace Trace. I will play more of that.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  I will say this, if you spend an hour with Clover Pit, you'll get it.

• 43:21Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. I will also play Clover, Clover Pit.

• 43:23Griffin McElroy?

  Q up is, Q up is, I think, a similar sort of experience.

• 43:27Russ Frushtick?

  We, I, to remind people, we are going to have to narrow this down to basically 12 that we'll bring and then four will come from the audience. I have no fucking idea how we're going to do that, but God willing, it'll happen.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I, the only other one where I felt like, I liked sort of Sea a lot. Um,

• 43:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that was fun.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  I like Wheelworld a lot. I put those in like a similar group. The only other one where I feel like if, if you guys had checked was the Alters. I really

• 43:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I played a lot.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. You played a lot of the Alters?

• 43:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it didn't quite

• 43:57Speaker 00

  I didn't even finish it. So maybe it's, it's not a good place. on here, but I thought that was really interesting. It really stuck with me. I don't know.

• 44:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah, my, my, I would love people to play more of it is Despilote for sure.

• 44:10Griffin McElroy?

  I played that.

• 44:11Chris Plante?

  And

• 44:11Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think I ever talked about it on the show.

• 44:13Chris Plante?

  Blake Manor for the folks who've bounced off it, maybe just a little bit more time with it because I liked that quite a bit, even though it's very recent. Um, and then I, I want to go play more Baby Steps. Not that I think I need to, because I think my opinion is already so glowing, but I just really want to go back and play more.

• 44:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I want to, I want to play some more Baby Steps before we really talk things out with it, with an intention to try and, you know, make actual progress.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Any chance you guys might be thinking, maybe Merge Maestro could be on here because it's probably the game I played the most this year.

• 44:42Griffin McElroy?

  Baby, oh, baby.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Cause I feel like Merge Maestro might be one of the best games I've ever played.

• 44:48Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, damn, Merge Maestro.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:51Griffin McElroy?

  You shouldn't have Merge Maestro.

• 44:53Chris Plante?

  But they had to.

• 44:55Griffin McElroy?

  Damn, Merge Maestro though.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 44:59Griffin McElroy?

  Damn. Um, yeah, no, I mean, that's a fucking good one, man. That's a banger. The Drifter was this year too.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  The Drifter was sick. Did you guys play The Drifter?

• 45:09Griffin McElroy?

  The Drifter is a classic LucasArts style point and click adventure game.

• 45:13Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I didn't play The Drifter.

• 45:13Griffin McElroy?

  Kick ass story.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  See, this is where we got it. We gotta start, we gotta get some accountability going here. What, what are you, okay, three games, not one. Only your three games.

• 45:24Griffin McElroy?

  Three homework games.

• 45:25Russ Frushtick?

  I want these homework games to be like, but I want them to be potentially realistically in that 12.

• 45:31Chris Plante?

  The other, the other, whoever's nominating has to think that these are like, at least they're like top five, top 10.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  I gotta have other people agreeing on it. I don't, I'm not going to say my top three of, if you guys don't feel good about my top three.

• 45:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Cause that's where I, I want you guys to feel represented.

• 45:47Russ Frushtick?

  I will play more Clover Pit. I will play more Expedition 33. And if you think Drifter is the one to play, I can play more.

• 45:56Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if it, I don't know if it's, uh, gonna hit top five for, for me.

• 46:00Russ Frushtick?

  No, that you're spending my time with my, I could be spending it with my child.

• 46:04Chris Plante?

  Top five, I guess, top 12, right? Because it's like, do we think, do you think that it could be in the, the top 12 that we're gonna create?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Russ, I think what you should do is just play blueprints. And when you get to just like,

• 46:18Russ Frushtick?

  I did that already. I played the first, I didn't know that there were color problems until I hit it. And then I was like, oh, how many green rooms are in this?

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Just like. Don't, don't give up.

• 46:29Chris Plante?

  I think. That's the thing. Hate the game.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  What?

• 46:32Chris Plante?

  First of all, I think you should put.

• 46:35Griffin McElroy?

  Justin, I think you should push through your carpal tunnel until your bones split out your, out your.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Right, exactly.

• 46:40Griffin McElroy?

  And secondly.

• 46:41Chris Plante?

  Play Hollow Knight Silksong until your hands wither into desiccated husks.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  I almost think we should, I, I think we just have to table blueprints until next year. I mean, like, I, I think it just has to be like.

• 46:53Griffin McElroy?

  It might be my number one. I.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just think we have, but I like, I don't even wanna talk, I legitimately, the besties conference, I don't wanna talk about it again until Russ has played it. Like, I really, I don't see the point.

• 47:05Chris Plante?

  I'm, I'm very okay with that, cuz I do think it's gonna make for an, an eventful thing, and it fills a slot that we know can't make it to the end.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  That's, let's, let's, I, I feel good about that.

• 47:18Chris Plante?

  Um, okay, wait, so what, what, what are everybody's else's, like, you, you have to play this?

• 47:24Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I mean, do, do, do you think you are, uh, truly, obviously, this factors into the, uh, carpal tunnel, uh, issues, because it is an extremely demanding game. But do you think you are, uh, well and done, well shot of, uh, Hollow Knight Silksong?

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, so that wasn't as much the, uh, the carpal tunnel, that was, uh, and that was definitely part of it, cuz that one is twitchy as all hell. But the, uh, man, the frustration of it and the way that I felt, uh, that it just felt bad. Like, I didn't like the feeling of, I was getting so angry, it like, really, really frustrated, and I couldn't. And that's probably on me, but like, man, it really got in my head in a way that I did not, did not enjoy. And that's like, not, probably not, it's nothing to do with the game, just like, I don't know, that's how I felt. I, I get it, like, I'm, and I'm not gonna, I will say this too, I'm not gonna like, stand in the way, or try to like, denigrate it cuz of my own personal whatever.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  It's just like, I found, I just found a lot of it pretty punishing and frustrating.

• 48:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  For me.

• 48:30Griffin McElroy?

  Um, yeah, that's, that's one on my li, I, there's a few on my list that I feel like didn't do a ton of stuff wrong. And, and that is, that is one, but it is certainly a, uh, you know, a question of genre and, and preference yet again. Uh, there's no way anyone's gonna play Chel, Delta Rune, Chapter Three and Four, right? That's, that's, that would require you to-

• 48:51Russ Frushtick?

  I would want, I'm, my instinct for that is to wait, to, until it's out, out. Like, that's my instinct. Especially after we've kind of learned that lesson with Hades 2, is like, hey, Moonlighter, I know how excited we are for Moonlighter 2. We should probably wait, y'all. Like, don't spend 40 hours in Moonlighter 2, early access, just wait.

• 49:10Griffin McElroy?

  I have started to win it in early access. I did it with Grounded 2, where I played it and I saw sort of what they were going for, and what was new and what was cool. And then I gave myself maybe an hour or two, and then I stopped immediately. So it was not to Hades 2 myself.

• 49:22Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's a good way to do it. Okay, again, to reiterate-

• 49:26Speaker 00

  I might come back to Death Stranding 2, it's been so long.

• 49:30Russ Frushtick?

  You might have a tough time jumping back in.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  Man, it's, dude, I feel like I feel the exact same way about Death Stranding 1. I know that if I had just kept playing Death Stranding 2, I would have liked it, Russ. I know I would have. I only stopped playing because we had to play other stuff. But I can't go back, I can't, man, I can't.

• 49:46Chris Plante?

  I will say, Death Stranding 2, way more accommodating, and if you go back to it, it'll be even easier than you remember it, after like, a half hour at most of picking at it. These games, it brings you back in.

• 49:58Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I'll add it to my three.

• 50:00Chris Plante?

  I, I probably prefer Death Stranding 1, but it is not a welcoming game. Death Stranding 2, it's philosophically, like, Kojima's saying, I want this to be easier for you.

• 50:11Griffin McElroy?

  I'm gonna say, my three, Baby Steps, Death Stranding 2. Is there a way to just really poop sock Death Stranding 2 and just like, get to the, get to the stories?

• 50:19Russ Frushtick?

  You don't need to beat it, you just need to, I, uh-

• 50:22Griffin McElroy?

  I've played it enough to get it, but like, I-

• 50:24Russ Frushtick?

  You should put, I mean, it depends how much Mexico-

• 50:26Griffin McElroy?

  What was the last thing you saw?

• 50:27Russ Frushtick?

  Or, yeah, what was the last thing?

• 50:28Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I'm in Australia and I'm like, I don't know, uh, halfway through the, I don't know.

• 50:35Russ Frushtick?

  Just try, just try it, Griffin, and see if, after 30 minutes, you feel like-

• 50:39Griffin McElroy?

  I'll get back into that, and I, I'll give, uh, Donkey Kong Bonanza. I might start a new save file on Donkey Kong Bonanza and-

• 50:45Russ Frushtick?

  Play it solo.

• 50:46Griffin McElroy?

  Do it solo, yeah.

• 50:47Russ Frushtick?

  It's chaos, I mean, it's fun chaos with a kid, but it's not a game.

• 50:51Griffin McElroy?

  No, yeah, it's, it's hard to really find the critical path and stay on it when it's-

• 50:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Griffin McElroy?

  Like, your main way of interacting with it is to shout exploding words at rocks.

• 51:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Griffin McElroy?

  That's, yeah.

• 51:04Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I think we should take a break.

• 51:06Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Russ Frushtick?

  And briefly talk. And well, yeah, it's gone. We've gone a while, but we do need to briefly talk about a little bit of Valve news and then we'll get into honorable mentions. So let's take a break.

• 51:20Chris Plante?

  I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who is traveling because you'll be, I don't know, in Paris or Tokyo. Look at you, big shot. And you'll want to watch your shows and you won't be able to. You'll need a VPN. But now I recommend a VPN for everybody, whether it is your security or whether it is you live in a state where maybe you can't have access to pretty basic websites without weird security checks and all sorts of other headaches. Proton VPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the internet

• 51:59Chris Plante?

  like it should work. Open, secure, and on your terms. Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster, and more open internet for everyone. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around blocked sites, or just keep your activity private on public Wi-Fi, Proton VPN has you covered. It is easy to get started. Right now, Proton VPN is offering our listeners

• 52:31Chris Plante?

  70% off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com/besties. That is P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com/besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Okay, what did you guys, how did you guys feel when Valve announced said they're not gonna talk about a new Steam Deck and then instead announced three different pieces of hardware?

• 53:08Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so-

• 53:09Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty cool trailer they put out, like, "Everyone loves Steam Deck. Fuck them."

• 53:13Russ Frushtick?

  Fuck Steam Deck.

• 53:13Griffin McElroy?

  Check this shit. Check this shit out.

• 53:17Russ Frushtick?

  You know that McMahon meme, that guy's an asshole, but there's that meme where-

• 53:22Griffin McElroy?

  Is it McMahon walking down the-

• 53:23Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, it's the one where he's falling backwards in the chair.

• 53:25Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:26Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so that's how I was when they showed, so they showed the Steam machine and it was like, "Oh, wow, impressed." And then the second one, they showed the Steam controller and I was like, losing my mind. And then they showed the VR, I was like, "What the fuck are you, why, guys? Why are you still making VR stuff?"

• 53:42Griffin McElroy?

  Wait, really?

• 53:43Russ Frushtick?

  Dude-

• 53:43Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, the Steam Frame is the thing I'm most excited about of all.

• 53:46Russ Frushtick?

  It looks cool, I'm excited about it, but like-

• 53:48Griffin McElroy?

  The fact that it, you know, has the wireless sort of dedicated streaming setup that you can do from your PC-

• 53:54Russ Frushtick?

  That is, that is-

• 53:55Griffin McElroy?

  On your machine, and also has like, a pretty beefy amount of shit, like, computer-wise baked into it, and also does like, the Pixel Eye tracking, sort of like-

• 54:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, let me, let me, let me table set.

• 54:07Griffin McElroy?

  It seems incredible.

• 54:08Russ Frushtick?

  Let me table set, because we didn't do that. For the people that aren't aware-

• 54:10Griffin McElroy?

  You're right, you're right, you're right.

• 54:11Russ Frushtick?

  There were three, three big announcements from Valve that happened last week. The first thing they announced was something called a Steam Machine. They've done a Steam Machine before, but this is a re-attempt at the concept. In this case, it's basically gonna be running the software that is currently running on the Steam Deck. It's going to be six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, whatever the fuck that means, and it's gonna have a glowing light in front of it. The gist is basically, they want a set-top PC that is as easy to use as a gaming console, and this is their approach to it. It's something that I think Xbox, uh, Microsoft and Xbox have dreamed about for years and years, and still haven't accomplished, and this feels like they're eating their lunch. That was announcement one. Announcement two was a Steam Controller. Steam Controller, uh, looks a lot like, they've done one before, one of those before too.

• 54:56Russ Frushtick?

  That original one did not have two analog sticks, which was insane. Uh, this one has two analog sticks, it also has two trackpads, uh, very similar to the Steam Deck. It also charges on a magnetic puck and can do wireless connectivity through a magnetic puck. And I'm losing my mind excited for that because right now I've gone through so many fucking Xbox controllers while playing PC games that I just want one that's not going to consistently break. So I'm very excited about that. And then the VR thing, Griffin, if you want to run it.

• 55:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's called Steam Frame and the big thing it seems to be it is giving you a lot of options as far as how you are going to play games on it, whether that is connecting through this, it comes with a dongle that basically creates a private, you know, network connection to your gaming PC or your Steam machine that it will then kind of like, you know, beam the games over with, I'm assuming, reduced, you know, input lag because it has this dedicated connection or it has, you know, I forget the chip, it's I think a Snapdragon of some stripe.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

• 56:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, that can handle like, you know, a lot of stuff and, and the fact that, you know, the Quest VR or not Quest VR, the original, like the most recent Steam VR thing, first of all, is, was always sort of a like higher end, I think wired kind of like connection, but you had access to your Steam library and that's very, very cool because it's not like this wild shitty closed environment like the Meta Store, but the Meta Quest has been my preferred sort of VR thing because it's standalone and, you know, well-designed feels nice. It's just like the ecosystem really sucks. And to see them, I'm, it looks like

• 56:51Griffin McElroy?

  really, really going for what the, the Quest has been doing is like, I don't know, that seems like enough to get me back into VR and that alone is like already pretty exciting. So yeah, the Steam Frame is the thing I am most, most looking forward to.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Did you watch Good Russ at Retro Game Core had a really interesting video talking about all these announcements, but his context for the Steam Frame was really, really interesting. And I'm, and he would explain it better than me because I only half kind of understand what I'm about to tell you, but. As Griff was mentioning, that that chip, the Qualcomm 8 Gen 3, whatever it is, that's the same chip that's been used in a couple of Android handhelds. And that is the chip that is going to be running Steam on there natively, right? So it's built on the ARM architecture. So once that translation layer is there, where the Steam games are running on that

• 57:49Speaker 00

  architecture, theoretically with that work being done by Valve, then those Android handhelds that everybody has could ostensibly just become Steam machines. Like, because that's the exact same chip.

• 58:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that part of it, I think, is super exciting.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  That's really interesting. And that's not what they were touting, and it's not what they were pitching. But when he mentioned that, I was like, wow, that's a really interesting, like, facet of this.

• 58:14Griffin McElroy?

  I'm excited about all three of these. The price could be, the price is like the make or break thing for me. Because, I don't know, that's the whole question with like, well, why doesn't everyone make a little cute little GameCube sized box that's six times more powerful than a Steam deck and, you know, has an adorable little custom LED light strip? Well, I mean, if it costs a lot of fucking money, like, that's why. And, I don't know, what was the Vive? Was that the Steam?

• 58:47Russ Frushtick?

  HTC Vive was the headset.

• 58:49Griffin McElroy?

  Vive was the, that was a premium expensive experience compared to certainly the earlier Quest models, which were not as powerful, not connected to the Steam ecosystem at all. Steam Frame runs SteamOS like natively. But again, if it's like a $1,300, $1,400, like, premium piece of VR hardware just for the deep

• 59:12Speaker 00

  I can't imagine. I mean, it's, I mean, yeah, you're, it's true. I can't imagine it's gonna be in that, that next

• 59:19Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know, I'm just saying, that's the big thing that could swing the pigeon one in the other direction.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  While I was watching it, and I'm not, I don't follow the industry as closely as y'all so anymore, but while I was watching it, to me, I felt like it was a direct response to where Microsoft is at currently. And specifically, the false start that Microsoft did into handheld gaming with this Asus Rogue thing. I feel like, to me, I heard that announcement as, hi, we don't have to talk about Steam Deck 2 because Microsoft absolutely screwed the pooch with this guy. So we don't even have to worry about that.

• 59:55Russ Frushtick?

  And guess what? I installed Bazlight on that handheld and it's great.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Got to. And here's, now here's the ecosystem that Microsoft ostensibly wants to build rather than create hardware. Like, we're gonna do that right now with a box connected to your TV that is actually going to make good on the promise that Microsoft is saying that it wants to eventually make good on, minus Game Pass, right? But other than that, like, Steam is saying like, okay, Microsoft is seeding this. It feels like, to me at least, Microsoft is seeding a lot of this territory and Valve seems just like perfectly willing to kind of step in and be like, okay, we will fill this gap. Yeah. At least that was my interpretation, watching the video, that it's just like, I cannot, I don't see where

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Microsoft fits, like, in any reality at this point from a hardware perspective.

• 1:00:49Griffin McElroy?

  Man, truly, I feel like-

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  Oh, and by the way, Call of Duty sucks this year.

• 1:00:54Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like playing Hades on Steam on the AYN Thor as much as I have makes me feel truly like this, like, post console, post separate ecosystem future that we've been like, it's coming. Like, I do feel like it's here. And I feel like a big benchmark is going to be when SteamOS is simply available to put on whatever the fuck you want to put it on. It just kind of seems like at that point, it's, it's, it's sort of, that era of games is sort of over. And that's kind of great because I prefer the flexibility

• 1:01:32Griffin McElroy?

  and choice and constant lightning fast iteration on this stuff. Yeah, it's, it's really, it's a wild time to be alive.

• 1:01:46Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, any honorable mentions before we wrap the show?

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:01:55Chris Plante?

  I know.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  I'm like gamed out, man. I wanna go like look at a sunset or something.

• 1:01:59Chris Plante?

  I have more stuff. We're gonna talk a lot more on Resties. Like, I wanna talk about Birdcage and Inazuma Eleven. Y'all, you gotta play Birdcage. I will just say that. Birdcage, uh, for people who have even a mild love for like Ikaruga, that Saturn era of, uh, Shoot 'Em Ups, it is really something special.

• 1:02:22Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I had a THC soda at my brother's house and then played morsels until 1:00 in the morning.

• 1:02:31Griffin McElroy?

  Which was a, which is, uh, was a cool way to do it. That game's out. It came out, uh, the 18th, I believe.

• 1:02:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we're gonna be doing a Restie specifically on that, but you could give the basic.

• 1:02:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, it, it kicks ass. It's sort of a nuclear throne inspired, uh, you know, twin stick sort of shooter, uh, top-down, uh, situation where you're a tiny little mouse exploring a world of garbage and food and junk and guts and farts and burps. And it's very like, uh, Toe Jam and Earl. Uh, the aesthetic of it is truly deranged and also like I could not look away from. Uh, and you collect these little more, these cards that have morsels on them that allow you to transform into basically different characters with different like, uh, you know, abilities, different things they shoot out and you can level them up. Uh, and when you

• 1:03:22Griffin McElroy?

  level them up enough, they die of old age and become a new morsel. Uh, and like, it doesn't tell you fucking anything. It doesn't tell you anything. It's like you pick up a thing and it's like, oh, you got a fuzzy that, uh, increases your tofu. And it's like, I don't know what the.

• 1:03:39Russ Frushtick?

  I got a, uh, pop-up that I was just kind of vexed by, which said, I had two choices. Uh, option A was shuffle all of your morbs or shuffle all of your fuzzies. And I knew what neither of those things were.

• 1:03:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it doesn't. Tell you any of that shit. I don't know if it's good or not yet, but I was sort of ensorcelled by it for, for an evening. And I, I, it looks truly, I mean, watch a trailer for it. It looks fucking crazy. Like it looks so good. Uh, and the sound design is like really, really next level. Uh, I, I don't know if like the roguelike hooks are gonna get me yet. Cause I haven't really spent enough time with it, but, um, first, first blush is, is quite positive one more.

• 1:04:22Russ Frushtick?

  Justin?

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Um.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  I finished Bride and Mate, a, a romance fantasy duology about, uh, vampires and werewolves. Very sexy stuff, really well-written, uh, great, great. Uh, if you're, you're into supernatural romance. Uh, it's a cut above a lot of the stuff I read this year and, uh, highly recommended. If you don't, I will, there, there is some werewolf anatomy that becomes part of the copulation. So if you think that that's gonna be something you're not feeling, you know, if maybe scent glands and, and their explorations is something you're into.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Maybe look elsewhere. Maybe look for something a little more pedestrian, but, uh, the first is called Bride. And the second is called Mate. They're interesting companion pieces. I don't know if there'll be anymore.

• 1:05:22Russ Frushtick?

  I've continued playing Pokemon Legends Z A with my son, who is.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Za!

• 1:05:28Russ Frushtick?

  Pokemon Za, uh, with my son, who he, he loves it. I enjoy it, but I enjoy more. Going out and trying to catch the Pokemon that he is interested in. And he keeps asking questions about which ones evolve into mega stones, which it occurs to me now. That he can't, can no longer go back and play any of the old ones, cause none of these are gonna evolve into mega versions anyway. So I think I ruined him on that front, but as a kid watching game, he's been very, very into it.

• 1:05:58Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's it. I wanted to thank a few folks over at the Patreon, which is at patreon.com/thebesties. We have Zulu the Dog, we have Ina de Queer, we have Megan F, and we have Papa X Chief, Pop X Chief, in our parlance. Thank you for being patrons of the Besties. We have a new Resties coming at you on Tuesday, so watch out for that. New bracket episodes, all sorts of good stuff like that. So coming at you real soon. Also, make sure you're on there, because we're gonna be doing voting for game of the year. So you can suggest the four fan votes. I think we did it. What are we doing next week?

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Uh, next week...

• 1:06:44Griffin McElroy?

  Poyo, baby!

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:06:46Griffin McElroy?

  Poyo, baby! Can't wait, baby!

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Poyo?

• 1:06:50Griffin McElroy?

  We're doing Kirby Air Riders.

• 1:06:52Russ Frushtick?

  What does that have to do with Poyo?

• 1:06:54Griffin McElroy?

  That's what he says.

• 1:06:55Russ Frushtick?

  Kirby says Poyo?

• 1:06:57Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty much exclusively. He says like, three things.

• 1:06:59Russ Frushtick?

  I thought he says, "Hooooo!"

• 1:07:01Griffin McElroy?

  No, that's his breathing sound. He has asthma, and it's fucking rude to really hang a lantern on it, dude.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Kirby sucks.

• 1:07:13Griffin McElroy?

  That was the name of the cartoon that they made back in the 90s.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  With X?

• 1:07:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Be sure to join us again next week for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?