Metroid Prime 4 vs. Ooo: Showdown of the Search Action Games

Metroid Prime 4 is actually here! After a long development, including years of silence, the first-person Metroid series returns in the form of the Nintendo Switch 2’s big holiday release. But does it feel like a game from 2025 or 2015? Plus, Plante finally played the pseudo-metroidvania Ooo and can’t wait to tell you about this short, but sweet treat.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Chris, do you want to talk about how? Good cold open material here. Do you want to talk about how it took you two tries to count the six?

• 0:06Chris Plante?

  Nah, I don't know if that's, wait, yes, and, yes, and I would also like to talk about something else.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Something else? Yes, and another topic, but it's not that.

• 0:19Chris Plante?

  I don't, the problem is I don't have any, I don't have any good stuff. I'm freezing cold out here in California. It feels like it's like sixty-five degrees in my office. And, uh,

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Don't you still have the New York? Are you just like completely? Uh, have you become completely climatized to, to California now? Are you now? Cause you used to live in a real place, like real, real places, you know, with the weather and stuff.

• 0:42Chris Plante?

  No, big time dude. I'm one of those people now who I'm always carrying around a sweater. People look at me. I went down to San Diego, uh, this weekend, was walking on the beach, wearing jeans and a sweater. Felt like I needed a coat. Checked my phone, seventy-five degrees. What the hell's wrong with me? How'd this happen?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Unbelievable. California turns everyone into my wife. What is it about the sun out there?

• 1:07Chris Plante?

  So have you ever noticed how wives, they talk about the weather like this? I'm cold, but, but husbands, they talk about the weather like this. Ah, my hot.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Wore, wore the roses, more like wore the thermostat, am I right?

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  Hey guys, it's me Griffin. I just got here. I just sat down and just got here. I haven't been here before this.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Hey, it's me, New York Giraffe. I've been here the whole time doing a Justin impression. Hey! Hey guys, it's me Justin, I just got here.

• 1:38Chris Plante?

  A character that was never supposed to come back.

• 1:41Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, I'm gonna walk away now. You let me know when old MB is punched out.

• 2:03Speaker 00

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

• 2:05Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:08Chris Plante?

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

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, Russ isn't here, but the point is it's still the besties. It's a video game club and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. This week, we are talking about, they said it would never happen, but it is. We were talking about Metroid Prime 4 Beyond. Chris, what is so beyond about Metroid Prime 4?

• 2:33Chris Plante?

  Beyond my expectations that we would ever get to play this. Metroid Prime 4 brings back the mostly beloved Metroid Prime series. It's been in development for what feels like, I think, 500 years, but it's actually here. Does it feel like a new game? Or does it feel like a game that has been made piecemeal for 500 years? You're gonna have to stick around to find out.

• 3:02Chris Plante?

  I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who was 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 like it should work. Open, secure, and on your terms.

• 3:46Chris Plante?

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• 4:30Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 4:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's the latter. It's the latter.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  I didn't want to, yeah, it's the...

• 4:42Griffin McElroy?

  Can I set up Metroid Prime for Beyond? Because I suspect I had the most, I had the warmest response to the game of the three of us. I know Russ was looking forward to it as well, but he is, he's traveling today and could not be here. So we'll ask him about it next week. It is, the Metroid Prime series has a very distinct kind of vibe. It has a distinct kind of thing going on that was divisive when it first came out, even though I think the original Metroid Prime was pretty beloved. Metroid Prime 2 and 3, kind of like a little bit more middling, but still has its niche audience. And then that was 18 years ago that the last Metroid Prime game came out in 2007.

• 5:27Griffin McElroy?

  And this game was announced E3 2017. It was originally being developed by Namco Bandai, I believe, before like three years later, they announced that they were scrapping it, starting over with Retro Studios, the traditional developer of the series at the helm. And then that was fucking, what, four years ago that that happened? And now it's here. That's a little, that's a little history for folks who did not sort of follow the...

• 5:56Chris Plante?

  The journey.

• 5:56Griffin McElroy?

  The lore. Yes, the journey that got us here. I, I, I like the Metroid Prime series. I usually don't find it especially helpful when people like try to hypothesize about what happened behind the scenes. But my main sort of takeaway playing this game is that it very much feels like a game. That went through a couple different iterations and cycles and developers with support from different, it feels disjointed in a way that, I don't know, you can't help but think about how the development cycle of this game was impacted the final result.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:33Griffin McElroy?

  That is, that, that, is that the most positive thing we're gonna get talking about?

• 6:37Speaker 00

  No, I, you know, it's just, oh, man. Okay. So I struggled with this. At first I was looking forward to checking this out mainly because I wanted to try the sort of like mouse functionality of the thing of the switch two. So I printed out like a holder for the, for the mouse.

• 6:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's very slick.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Put the mouse in there and it, it, the, the moving around, the motion feels fine. I don't really like using the buttons as much as you have to. That doesn't feel very good to use the buttons on the mouse. Even though the mouse movement is good, the, the, the action, the shooting and stuff feels bad. It doesn't, it doesn't feel good. But I feel like I spent so much time fiddling with that and not knowing if like I was having, I wanted to have like the ideal experience, right? And I was thinking about that with this switch two specifically. I feel like it's kind of a good snapshot of where the switch two is at, right? Because

• 7:40Speaker 00

  I don't know what the ideal experience is for Metroid Prime four. And I was trying to figure that out what I, while I was playing it. And I feel like the switch two is kind of in that same position, right? Is this a game? And this, is this a world that is designed to be like put up on a big screen and immerse yourself in and really like get lost in the world? Or is this a game that is intended to be played on, you know, the switch screen? You know, is it intended to be played with a mouse and a, and a, and a controller? Is it intended to be played? It, it, it feels. It feels like that. It feels very much like, I don't know, you can kind of do whatever because we didn't have a lot of real concrete ideas about what this, what this should be.

• 8:21Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I think it hews pretty close to the format, right? I think, and, and that's, that's, you can take that either way, right? I have noticed, uh, I would say a trend among people who have really, really liked the game that they really also really liked the other Metroid Prime games. I think it sticks pretty close to the formula with some variances that are kind of, uh, strange. Like one big element is that, uh, Samus has psychic powers, but the psychic powers, there's like one that you kind of use to drag around little, uh, symbols along tracks to like unlock certain doors or, or.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  They're kind of just psychic puzzle powers.

• 8:58Griffin McElroy?

  Little psychic puzzle powers, but then also it'll be like, you got psychic boost ball. And it's like, that's boost ball. Like you, that's boost ball. You got psychic.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Psychic beam.

• 9:08Griffin McElroy?

  Psychic double jump. It's okay. That's just double jump. Um, this, this, the franchise I think is at its best when it's like being very atmospheric and transportive. And I think this game does that pretty well. The individual like dungeons that you go off into, the game has kind of like a spoke and uh, hub format where you're going out into these different dungeons to collect keys that you need to, you know, beat the game. Uh, which I really appreciate how video game as game that is as an objective to have the ancient alien species appear before me and say, these five keys hidden in our five wonderful dungeons for you to explore.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  That, yeah.

• 9:47Griffin McElroy?

  That stuff is great. I, I genuinely think the dungeon exploration and puzzles and, and, and all that stuff is really, really great.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Really great.

• 9:55Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I think that, yeah, the atmosphere of it.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Really, really great.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  I'm asking, I'm asking you to clarify if you think the exploration and stuff in Metroid Prime four beyond is really, as you just said, really, really great. Cause that's what you said and I want to make sure that you feel that.

• 10:11Griffin McElroy?

  I think when you're in the dungeons, yeah, I really liked the, the design of the dungeons. I think is very, very good. I think that you're going through it and.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  I found myself enjoying it.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  A pretty, more than I thought I would. And I could, because I don't really enjoy, like, I haven't, I don't, I didn't remember myself enjoying the Metroid Prime series. It has been seventeen years. Like, it's been so long since the last one of those. And I, to me, playing this, it feels like it's basically successful in what it is trying to do, but what it is trying to do feels so out of step with where everything else in video games is at. It, it, it really, it, to me, feels like a fan project. And it, and I don't even mean that in a demeaning way.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  There's a lot of really incredible fan work that happens, but it, it feels like a tribute. It feels like a, like, a make-good, a send-off, a contractual obligation, whatever you want to say. But like, it is, it feels like, even though it is on modern hardware, with, with the newest console that exists, it feels like you are playing something that has been like, or at least to me, it, it felt like I was playing something that had been emulated to like upscale on the platform I was playing it on. It did not feel like a 2025 experience in any meaningful way.

• 11:39Chris Plante?

  The fan project comparison is so rich, because I think it goes a step further than an aesthetic level, or like a parody of the story. I think the actual feel of fan projects, which are often developed over the course of like a decade or longer, and it's a whole bunch of random people at different levels of talent. And it ends up feeling like a piece together, even the, the best fan projects can often feel like a whole bunch of great pieces, but not necessarily a whole, right? The way that a traditional video game does. And what's so strange about this game is it feels like it has been made over the course of years, quite literally,

• 12:22Chris Plante?

  in that there are entire sections that just feel different than other parts of the game.

• 12:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make. There was a core. If you look at this thing kind of piecemeal, I think when you're in a dungeon that is telling you sort of an atmospheric story and you're going through and there's a cool boss fight at the end and you get a power up and it's hitting like the loops that you expect and that you want from this type of game, like I think it's pretty great. And then you will go out into a desert that and on your motorcycle and you will just kind of like explore this pretty barren wasteland, running into crystals, fighting the same like two enemies over and over again.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Some parts are, some parts are sick. Like to get to hit Griffin's earlier point, some parts start to kick ass. Like the music will actually be better than you think it's gonna be. And it's kind of like, it feels pretty edgy.

• 13:13Griffin McElroy?

  When you're going, the second dungeon is like this factory, this manufacturing plant. And when you're like, working your way through the assembly line and like, like seeing like this bike that you're about to unlock, get put together, like that shit's really cool. Uh, but then like, there's a loading screen and then you're in like a kind of a different game.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Momentum on it. Like it can't get a head of steam going. Like it, it, you're, it feels like constantly so aware of the mechanics. Um, and so like.

• 13:41Chris Plante?

  I think, I think there is one cohesive thing that is very metroid that this game gets. And Justin, I'm just gonna repeat back to something that you said before we recorded, which is the, that feeling of going to an alien planet and like actually discovering it, that it's not just wallpaper. It's almost closer to like a museum or something. And it wants you to go there and feel like you are in a place that is not Earth, or not just another sci-fi place. So I mean, I was hoping you could expand on that a little bit of why that works for you.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  There, so like at first, and again, like this has been so, so long since I played one of these. Like I had forgotten how little of it is like shooting. Yeah. Like first person shooter is not even accurate. Like you can like lock right on. It's like not really the focus. And the mouse I think makes that confusing because it does feel like something you're gonna be like fine targeting, but that's not really what the game is. I had to kind of remember, and especially if you're here, like it's a game about scanning the environment and like understanding the environment better and like what you unlock narrative and puzzle wise through like that exploration and, and, and that aspect of it. And I think that like.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  When you remove the combat, the shooting, and you just leave the exploration part,

• 15:06Speaker 00

  that could be effective if it feels like an exploration, like some of the nature of like walking around and scanning something that's interesting and it has like a, an actual like zoological explanation for like why it is the way it is. Then it's not just a cool animation. Every time you see it pop up, you understand like, oh, that's why it popped up like that.

• 15:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  But you're also being led through this game by someone who is like telling you what to do next and where it is on the map and asking if you understand the instructions that you were just given because they will happily repeat them for you.

• 15:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  And that, if you have someone doing that, if, then they're leading you through the exploration. And if there's not exploration and there's not combat, I'm not sure where the game is.

• 15:48Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 15:50Griffin McElroy?

  The dungeons are pretty linear. Uh, the, I don't know, like upgrade economy is not so exciting that it feels great to go back through an area you've been. And sometimes you go back through an area you've been and you have a new thing and that means that you have a new key to unlock this door and there's like a whole nother chunk of dungeon with like different stuff waiting behind it. That's cool. But like going back to get five additional missiles or 10 additional missile upgrade is like, uh, I don't know, not super, super thrilling so much anymore. Um, and it just, it really feels like this genre, the search action genre has, has, uh, evolved a lot

• 16:34Griffin McElroy?

  in a way that is not really recognized in this game, like using upgrades, upgrades being meaningful in a bunch of different ways, right? In, in, this is a super unfair comparison, but in Silk Song, when you get an upgrade, you can use it in combat, you can use it in traversal, you can use it in like all of these different ways. And in this game, it's like, well, now I have the fire beam, which means I can unlock the fire beam doors and I can burn down the things that are fire.

• 17:00Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I can't wait to talk about the tiny, tiny indie game. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Before you had a fire beam, you scanned them and they said, hey, later on, you'll need something with the fire beam.

• 17:11Griffin McElroy?

  Hot wink to open this one up.

• 17:16Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the the very tiny indie game that we're gonna talk about in the B segment does so much more with basically a single mechanic than than what this is thinking of the Metroidvania. The, this is probably a bullshit theory, but the addition of all of this help and all the support. It reminds me of when like famous movies like Blade Runner, when the studio loses confidence in it. And it gets too messy in the edit and they've trimmed it down and trimmed it down and they're not really even sure what it is anymore. And they're like, you know what you need to add? Voiceover. People aren't gonna be able to follow any of this.

• 17:57Chris Plante?

  And it's just, it's gone through so many notes and so many revisions that it needs that kind of superficial. We'll just tell you what's happening. We can't trust our own game anymore. And in that feels like so much of of this game sadly.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  It also feels, and again, I'm, this is editorializing, but I don't think it's, I'm stretching too much to say that Nintendo of Japan isn't necessarily like obsessed with Metroid. Like, I think that like you can see the passion for the project and the fact that it took them 17 years to do another one. But this to me feels like also really a bad, this is separate from the, I'm not criticizing the game now specifically here, but this feels like a really bad showpiece for the Switch 2, right? It is, it feel, it looks like, it does not look like a game that was real, like it does not look

• 18:56Speaker 00

  on par with other games released in 2025. It is just not.

• 19:00Griffin McElroy?

  You're saying like visually?

• 19:02Speaker 00

  I mean, especially playing it on a big screen when you look at some of the textures and stuff like that, it's like, it's, it's, it's not.

• 19:08Griffin McElroy?

  I think it looks, I think it looks, I think against certain parts of it, I, I played it on handheld and Switch 2. I didn't play it on a big, big TV. Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I mean, I, I, I didn't really notice it until I saw on a big screen. It's like, oh, yikes, like not, not great.

• 19:24Griffin McElroy?

  This is again, we're, yeah, right? That's, that is the only way that I do sort of play. I haven't docked my Switch to play games on it in quite some time.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  It's not just the aesthetics, the.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  It looks old. It feels outdated. The ideas feel old. It's not capitalizing on anything that makes the switch to interesting, whatever that that unique selling point is. I'm not sure Nintendo has told that story, but like Metroid is not is muddying the waters like I, to me at least, Plant, you follow industry stuff as well. Like, do you feel like that's that's a fair representation?

• 20:01Chris Plante?

  In terms of this not being the thing that you want to release in December for your brand new console?

• 20:08Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, we could almost feel like an entire B segment on, on, on the first year of Nintendo, or of Nintendo Switch 2, right? I think it is of a piece with a lot of very strange decisions that I think reflect the need to continue bumping the system back and back and back. And I think each game tells a different story.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  What would have been sick is Prime 4 a launch, banana nanza in December. Then you got now that's an exciting holiday season.

• 20:40Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, Prime 4 at launch.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Why not two bananas?

• 20:44Chris Plante?

  Why not just double bananas?

• 20:46Griffin McElroy?

  Many banana nanzas.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  I will say the things that feel like the things that there's, I will, to be fair, and this is like, again, if you're younger than me, you're you, you may not have like the, the, the same sort of like feelings because it has been so long since the last one of these came out. You know, there's a Metroids in between there, but like, there are still.

• 21:06Griffin McElroy?

  And the remastered, when did the remaster of?

• 21:08Chris Plante?

  Couple of years ago, yeah.

• 21:09Griffin McElroy?

  One, yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  There are some actions that just feel good to do in Metroid games, like hitting a bomb and then bouncing up on the bomb and then putting the bomb in a thing. That always feels nice.

• 21:20Griffin McElroy?

  Turning into a Morph Ball in general in Metroid Prime, I think feels pretty fucking cool.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  The way the field of view changes when you go from Morph Ball, like it's good. That stuff feels good. Like, I will say also, tell me if this, if you agree with this, it felt sluggish, like getting around the world, it felt slow to me. And I didn't get the, before you unlocked the bike, the bike suit or whatever, but like, just running around and even being the ball, it did not feel very fast.

• 21:45Griffin McElroy?

  No, I would fully, fully agree with that. I found myself praying to find some sort of, you know, spot, shine spark or whatever it was called from, uh, yeah, no, I, I definitely feel the same way, especially once you start backtracking. And, and this is where like, We haven't even talked about like the side characters, which like plenty of people have certainly talked about the side characters and the way that they are written and the fact that they are talking to a voiceless golem in the form of Samus Erinn, the whole game, which is like very weird. I think like criticisms about the writing and performance aside, it's, it really detracts from the atmosphere of exploring this strange alien

• 22:29Griffin McElroy?

  planet to have a team of plucky side characters who either tell you what to do, or you will find an upgrade out in the world. I found the fire chip. I found the ice chip. Cool. Now I can do these elemental shots. Once I returned to base camp, which was in the first area that I explored, there's not like a teleport, fast travel thing. I'm gonna have to hop on the bike, tool on back there. I can skip some of this area to get back to the middle, talk to Miles. He's like, cool. Now you can do fire shot. Get back out there Bronco. It's like, that's nothing, guys. That's absolutely nothing. And from what I understand about how sort of the desert exploration becomes a mandatory element to finish the game, like that, that is a problem that is only intensified as, as

• 23:14Griffin McElroy?

  it goes on. And it just, it, it's a game that feels like there's just a few really, really bad ideas behind it, which is rare that that is like the thing that is holding it up. Like, I think from a performance standpoint, it's good and competent and everything. It's just, there's some ideas in this thing that are perplexingly bad.

• 23:36Chris Plante?

  How, how about this? How about we take a break? And then when we come back, I want to tell you all about Ooh, a game that I think is pairing with this better than I ever could have imagined. And also, I want to use that time to dig into Justin's question about what is the Nintendo Switch 2 after its first year? Because I think there's a lot of meat on that bone, too.

• 23:58Griffin McElroy?

  All right.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:59Griffin McElroy?

  Well, let's talk about that right after this.

• 24:04Russ Frushtick?

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• 24:48Russ Frushtick?

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• 25:26Chris Plante?

  Okay, so I want to get into the Nintendo Switch 2 stuff. But I do want to tell you all a little bit about Ooh, because you have set me up so nicely.

• 25:35Russ Frushtick?

  How am I spelling this?

• 25:36Chris Plante?

  O-O-O.

• 25:39Russ Frushtick?

  That's bad S-E-O right there.

• 25:42Chris Plante?

  But it's how you're gonna feel when you're playing it.

• 25:45Russ Frushtick?

  There's an umlaut over the first O that's so important.

• 25:48Chris Plante?

  That is, that's so true. So what if I told you you could now just go play Metroid, 2D classic beautiful Metroid, and you are in the ball form dropping bombs the whole time? You like dropping bombs, popping yourself in the air and dropping more bombs? Well, don't worry. That's the whole game, because you are a little dot, a little caterpillar of bombs. And-

• 26:16Chris Plante?

  It is being compared to Metroidvania for that reason, but the game isn't really like anything else I've played. The other comparison I've heard is Animal Well, kind of. It is a game in theory about discovering secrets, but really I think it is a game about having a conversation with a video game developer. Because it is all about learning exactly what they want you to discover at the pace that they want you to discover it. So you are in a little screen of a little puzzle and you need to go from left to right and there is a little wall. Well, you can't jump. Well, you realize that you can place a bomb and you can stand on it and it will fire

• 27:00Chris Plante?

  you up. Congrats, you've learned how to effectively jump. You have hit another wall. Where do you go? You place a bomb and you realize that you can destroy invisible walls. Congratulations, you may now progress. It is three hours of these incremental discoveries over and over and over again. There will come points where you get into a room and you simply cannot go any further. So you decide that you're going to take a fork in the road because there's no way to solve the room that you're in after you've bashed your head against it for 15 minutes. And you will go down this different path and you will learn effectively the answer to that room that once seemed impossible. It

• 27:44Chris Plante?

  is going to gradually teach you piece by piece how to actually go back to that room and solve it. So it is just literally, I don't know how to say it, it's like a story game. It is telling you the answers to all of its puzzles bit by bit by bit and then sending you backwards to places where you simply could not go through now with this new information so that you can know how to open a new path. So I guess I'm saying it out loud, that's very Metroidvania. Super Metroidy. Except it's so linear because again, it is.

• 28:19Chris Plante?

  It is like reading a book. You are being told the, the story of this game in a very linear fashion from beginning to end. There is not like a scenario where you're going to diverge from that path. The playthrough is the playthrough is the playthrough unless you're, you've already know everything and then you're speedrunning it.

• 28:38Griffin McElroy?

  Which I'm looking at the game. I bet the speedruns of this one are going to be pretty, pretty zany.

• 28:43Chris Plante?

  And, and the other thing that makes it not feel very metroidvania is you get another bombs. You end up having two bombs and that's pretty much it. It is not about getting a whole bunch of different powers. It is about manipulating those powers to the furthest extent, to the point that you are discovering things that you would assume don't work in a game that looks this retro actually do work. For example, one of the things that you discover relatively early on is you can leave the bomb in one screen and then go to another screen. So if you leave it in one room and you go to another room, the bomb will stay there. Well, there might be a switch that you need to use in one room and then you'll travel all the way

• 29:23Chris Plante?

  across the world and then that will open a door in a room far, far away. Or you might need to, it's describing is, is describing puzzles. It's tedious.

• 29:35Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 29:35Chris Plante?

  But discovering it for yourself is really phenomenal. Um, I'm utterly charmed by it. It looks very cute. Griffin, can you describe what it looks like if you're looking at it right now?

• 29:47Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I mean, simple kind of graphics. I would say animal well, or what it's really giving me is V V V V V V V V V. I don't know how we, how did we agree back when that game?

• 29:58Chris Plante?

  I think it was one more. Was it one less?

• 30:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that, that, that kind of art style. Um, very, very charming.

• 30:06Chris Plante?

  Yeah, almost Atari-esque in its simplicity. But what, yeah, it just feels nice, especially at the end of the year to play something that is a bit short.

• 30:14Griffin McElroy?

  And Baba is you maybe Baba is you.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, a little more colorful, but yeah. Yeah. That's not the one I'm thinking of. Yeah.

• 30:21Chris Plante?

  But that feeling of just like talking with a game developer through the game where you constantly, it almost feels like they're like playing jokes on you when you can't figure something out. And they're like, oh, don't worry, we're gonna explain it to you. Again, that's where it's different from the Animal Well where it's so dense for the blueprints. This, you're gonna find it out in 10 minutes if you just give it a moment. So I want, I want people to check it out. But now, I want to get into this question about the Switch 2 in this year because it's a strange one. What do you all think of the Switch 2 after, what?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Hey, I'll say this, this is the most time I've spent holding it since July. And I still don't like holding it. It's quite big. It's quite big and flat. And I don't think, I don't find it to be a comfortable experience. Once I switched over to the Pro Controller, I was a lot happier.

• 31:16Griffin McElroy?

  Man, it's, it's really weird. I play it a lot, but that's mostly playing older stuff with Henry on it that now looks and runs better. Right? I think all of the, a majority of the new releases that came out this year, apart from Donkey Kong, have not hit in the way that I was sort of expecting them to in, in this house. Pokemon Legends Z A, we, we dropped fairly quickly. This one was never really Henry's jam, but I, I, all of the stuff that we have been playing has been stuff like the Switch 2 edition of Tears of the Kingdom. Hell yeah, it's great, it's amazing, it's really good.

• 32:00Griffin McElroy?

  Castle Crashers, yeah, sure, like, yeah, we'll play that, that old jam. But in terms of sort of killer, at first party killer apps, like, I don't know that there is one yet.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Well, but, but Anza is, is a high quality product, I'd say. I mean, I

• 32:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's probably the, the best of the original stuff.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  And I bet that Animal Crossing will be a big deal.

• 32:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  People seem to be pretty buck wild for that guy when he, when he arrives next month.

• 32:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I I'm I'm so torn because so much of it.

• 32:38Chris Plante?

  Everything feels like it has a caveat, like Mario Kart World is an excellent game that happens to be the sequel to maybe the best kart racing game ever. And it's hard not to constantly compare it to it because when you turn on your switch, you get to choose which one you're gonna play. And the further we get away from Mario Kart World, the more often I kind of would rather just play Mario Kart 8, especially after all that DLC. There's so much good stuff in it. And then Bonanza, I really, really enjoy, but it is the weird thing if it constantly reminds you of the Mario game that you're not playing. Whenever I boot it up, I I don't know. Everything feels like it is.

• 33:21Chris Plante?

  Nintendo has an ability often to nail it, that it is, it's wow, this is not only what I expected it to be, it surpassed it. That's the Zelda thing, right? That's Super Mario Galaxy. And it's weird that there is not a game this year that feels like that despite it being the launch year. And if anything, there are games like Metroid Prime 4, which feel like they had been on the shelf for a long time. And it is filling a release calendar need rather than like

• 33:51Griffin McElroy?

  A creative sort of

• 33:52Chris Plante?

  Serving an audience.

• 33:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 33:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I think the most disappointing thing for me is like, I don't know what the fuck is next, like, I don't know what's next. Is there usually they have the the lineup at least far enough out that you have an idea of like, what's what's next year gonna bring? I guess like

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Of the stuff that's confirmed, right? You got Animal Crossing will be January. And then you got, it looks like Mario Tennis Fever on February 12th. I mean, there's a bunch of other like third party stuff, but then there's and there's a bunch of Resident Evil stuff out that month, like it expanded.

• 34:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  And then

• 34:34Griffin McElroy?

  I guess I'm thinking like first

• 34:35Speaker 00

  First one after that, but yeah, I mean.

• 34:39Griffin McElroy?

  Not a lot.

• 34:39Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I think it's tough because they, that, that isn't so unusual in that they kind of like announce a lot and then they empty the bag and then once the bag is pretty much emptied, they announce the next bag full of stuff. But it feels more frustrating when there hasn't been like a good thing in, in, in a while.

• 35:04Griffin McElroy?

  Well, and also I'll say like Metroid Prime 4 was the thing in the back of the bag for a while, right? Like it was the, if you were to say what's, what's the, what's the big game that's going to come out for the Switch next year? I would have said like, well, Metroid Prime 4 is still coming and, but now it's out and like, I don't know.

• 35:19Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know what the sort of shadow lineup behind the seed, the, by the seeds is going to be.

• 35:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's very, it's very strange. Well, that can actually toss us in. We have a few questions from the mailbag that relate to this. Should I go into those?

• 35:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, please.

• 35:39Chris Plante?

  Okay, so the first one, this one is from Wiley. I'm still mixed on how to feel about the new Animal Crossing update coming out at the end of the month slash early January. I love the franchise, but we were already told there wasn't going to be any more free updates. I was hoping that at least they stopped supporting Animal Crossing New Horizons to release a new one within the first year of the launch of the Switch 2, which is now clear isn't the case. And this goes on. What, what's the logic going on with this? I'm grateful and excited, but I can't get myself even as a super fan to launch the game to prep for this.

• 36:13Griffin McElroy?

  Um.

• 36:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, what, what did happen? Cause I, I kind of assumed that there would be a new Animal Crossing 2.

• 36:20Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, you would think, man, it's a, it was the biggest shit ever in, and a cultural sort of moment that is sort of un-reproducible. It would seem like you'd want to strike while the iron was pretty hot and I'm sure that they will get some new eyes on it when they launch the Switch 2 version and they put all this DLC in the game, but like. At this point, hasn't everyone kind of played it? That's gonna play it, maybe? I don't know. It seems like it.

• 36:47Chris Plante?

  The comparison is Mario Kart, right? Because this is kind of what they did with Mario Kart before Mario Kart World, where everybody expected Mario Kart, the new Mario Kart, Mario Kart 9, to come out, and then they just released level pack after level pack after level pack after seemingly being done with it. So this isn't completely unusual, how effective it is, and especially what we just said about Mario Kart, which is like, that kind of cut some of the enthusiasm I had going into World. You know, you're giving people a taste of the thing, but not the thing. Yeah, it's a strange choice.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  I also feel like, and we touched on this a bit before, but I feel like Nintendo is really struggling to tell a story of what the Nintendo Switch 2 is, and why it is. And I feel like things like this, this Metroid Prime thing, just kind of complicate that more. I mean, you think about the things that were supposed to be distinguishing factors, like, I bought the camera. You know what I mean? I bought the camera, and there's a chat button on the controller. Like, none of that has even been... I mean, the one, they charged for the thing that had the new stuff on it. It's like, every decision about it is like so not seeming to care of people, not care, because obviously that's wild, but like,

• 38:12Speaker 00

  not seeming to be able to put together a story as to why you would want to buy it. I guess.

• 38:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I don't know that I need that story anymore, just because I feel like with, between like, you know, putting Bad Side on the Rogue Ally X, and like playing around with all these retro Android handhelds, like, I feel like I just want to play the games, any game on the machine that I kind of want to play it on. And I think that sales pitch isn't bad for Nintendo, because the Switch 2 is a pretty capable, like, gaming rig, right? And it is of a good size for the power that it brings, and it has all the first-party Nintendo stuff on it anyways. I think that the pitch that they have kind of shoehorned themselves into giving is like,

• 39:00Griffin McElroy?

  this is going to change the way you play games forever, or this is, this is, uh, we've entered a new era of gaming. And I don't think it has, I don't think it has that, certainly. Uh, it does all this cool stuff that the Switch did and it runs games pretty fucking well. But that's, I don't know. I guess it's harder to put a story together. That's just sort of that.

• 39:19Chris Plante?

  Which is industry wide, right? You know, that's the Xbox, wondering what it is. That is PlayStation five, selling a gajillion units, but then also seemingly having zero enthusiasm around it. You know, it's just, it's just a machine. And now this, it is, I think maybe that's why it is a bummer is Nintendo has always been the last hope of. Well, they get it. They get that the thing is as much a toy, as much of a novelty as it is a video game console. And so far this just feels like another thing to play slightly better looking.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. They're also with the size, like as somebody who fools around with a lot of handheld consoles, the size of this thing, it, there are so many devices out right now that are, that feel more fun and are more pleasant to use and look at and feel like, uh, more exciting and, and, and pocketable. Like than the Nintendo Switch two, you know what I mean? Like Nintendo doesn't have an offering that feels like, you know, I was looking there, there. I went digging for Mario Paint because I wanted to show my kids Mario Paint. I didn't realize that it was on the Nintendo classics. I went looking, there's a bunch of stuff on there. It's like a hundred NES games, like a hundred SNES games, a bunch of stuff on there.

• 40:40Griffin McElroy?

  It's like, it's in the virtual boy in, in February.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Dropping that. That could be a compelling little thing, you know what I mean? Like you could still make a small device that there's a story, like there's a reason for it to be, you know, like I, this still feels like a weird half measure. Like you have a library, like you could make a fun way of, of experiencing it. But it's, it's just not this. I don't know.

• 41:05Griffin McElroy?

  How much of this, I feel like we are still definitely in the window. Where you can attribute some of this to like COVID shutdown sort of impacting the entire bottlenecking sort of an entire sort of generation for a couple of years there. I wonder how much of this specifically, like the weird launch lineup of the Switch 2 is is sort of because of this. I think some of I think some of it's gotta be.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  They've always been a conservative company and there were a lot of question marks between this and the tariffs, between COVID and the tariffs, I think.

• 41:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  They had a lot of reasons to to play it safe, but as a consumer, that's not really your problem, you know, like it's.

• 41:48Griffin McElroy?

  No, sure.

• 41:49Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the other, if we were giving excuses is the reality of most consoles don't have great first years. But Nintendo is.

• 41:58Griffin McElroy?

  Switch one did.

• 41:58Chris Plante?

  But Nintendo is the exception. Yes, like Nintendo almost always has a game that is an all timer in it in its first year. I have one more Nintendo related question. This one is from Patrick. Question, I held off on playing Metroid Dread until I had my Switch 2 because of the performance issues. Now I have time to dive into one of two Metroid, Switch 2's Dread or Prime 4. What would you recommend for someone who hasn't played either? I think I know the answer to this.

• 42:25Griffin McElroy?

  I I think Dread might be my favorite Metroid. That or Super Metroid, obviously, is the other like big contender, but I think Dread kicks ass. I think Dread is a great fucking game. That does like the Metroid stuff so well that the sort of antiquated parts of its of its formula, I feel like aren't as big of an issue because it like feels so good to explore that world and find cool power ups and parry evil robots and shit.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:53Chris Plante?

  Hoops, I have a final question here that I was like, oh, it's perfect. This one's for you. It is from JM. So I need you to be honest with me if you wrote this question for yourself.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Before I even hear it that I don't think it was me.

• 43:09Chris Plante?

  Looking forward to the holidays. One type of game I know I'll be checking in on our idle incremental games in between holiday events and various family activities. Would love to hear any recommendations from you besties about idle games that have kept your interest. For me, Revolution Idol and Cell's idle factory incremental have both stayed on my phone for a while. So from one JM to the other, what idle games should people be keeping their eye out on?

• 43:37Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, there's Wizard Tower. Wizard Tower, I think that came out this year. That's, uh, that's one of my favorites. Uh, you, you, uh, manage a little wizard tower as it grows and you, uh, build different rooms that increase certain currencies and eventually you fight the, the gods of the sky with your wizard magic. Uh, it's a good one. The Norp Analog, I believe it's called.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  That's a good, that's, I don't know if you count that as an idle game. That's like right on the line and that's like kind of really interesting idle game because it does start to border on requiring something of you. Like it requires something, approaching like thought and strategy and, and that kind of thing. Uh, Norbanalog is one that's actually, I think worth, worth checking out. Um, I'm sorry. The game is called Tower Wizard, not Wizard Tower. Universal Paperclips is an idle game where you learn something.

• 44:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 44:35Chris Plante?

  We, we liked Cauldron. Does that count?

• 44:38Griffin McElroy?

  Cauldron, I think, no, I mean Cauldron has a lot of interactivity. There is like different modes that, uh, sort of more focus on the idle stuff going on in the game, but regardless, you're going to have to play like the five different mini games in order to like, get yourself to the point where you can sustain yourself that way. Um, I mean, I like Melvore Idle. I'll, I'll return to that one from time to time. That's the RuneScape based one that was then purchased by the, I believe it was acquired by the developer of RuneScape because it was just so RuneScape-y.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  I feel like, uh, a lot of the things that made ILO games hooky have been like adopted into real games. Like there's been a lot of that has been like brought into the mainstream.

• 45:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Um, cool. Well, that's, that's pretty much it. Uh, whoops. Y'all got any, any, um, other, other stuff you've been enjoying?

• 45:34Griffin McElroy?

  Some honorable mentions even?

• 45:36Chris Plante?

  Some honorable mentions you might say.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Don't be afraid.

• 45:38Griffin McElroy?

  Don't be afraid to say it.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Uh, I really have enjoyed Pluribus. Uh, I know that it's gotten plenty of people, uh, pushing it, but, uh, it is.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  I read about Pluribus on my gushers.

• 45:55Chris Plante?

  What?

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Wow, talk about Pluribus, huh?

• 45:59Griffin McElroy?

  What are you doing?

• 46:04Speaker 00

  What are you doing?

• 46:05Chris Plante?

  I want to know more about this.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, I, the government just seems really angry lately. Um, I don't know, I really, it's a, uh, it's a show, uh, I, you know, if you, if you, if you, anything you learn about it makes it less enjoyable, I think that it's, it's, it's much better to go in, uh, without knowing the details, but it is a sort of post-apocalyptic story about, uh, one woman who finds herself kind of left behind in a sense, but rather than physically being gone, people are sort of mentally joined together and she finds herself on the outside and how she processes that and what it means and the mystery of how that all happens, uh, is what

• 46:49Speaker 00

  the show kind of delves into is created by Vince Gillian, who did, um, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. And while it is not connected to the, those, those stories yet, no, it's not, um, it is, it does have a similar setting and it looks, uh, I would say similar, if more, if more cinematic, um, it's, if you like the vibe and the tone and the pacing of those shows, I think this is another one that you will very much enjoy.

• 47:17Griffin McElroy?

  I've been playing Rhythm Doctor, uh, which just came out, I believe in early access, gosh, just a couple of days ago, actually, December 6th, uh, and it is a one-button, uh, Rhythm Heaven-inspired rhythm game, uh, that a studio called Seventh Beat Games has been making for a really, really, really long time. I think this game was first launched as like a flash game back in 2012, uh, and they've just kind of been like iterating on it and adding to it for a long time. There's like a community of people who are just crazy about this game, uh, because it is very faithful to the Rhythm Heaven formula, um, and it's made by people

• 47:59Griffin McElroy?

  who kind of like know how to make a good version of that. Uh, you play as an intern at sort of like a Sort of a hospital and you run a remote defibrillation device, uh, which is the sort of, uh, story reason for why you are hitting, uh, your spacebar in time with the music. Um, but the music is really fucking great. And the way that they kind of like task you with, uh, keeping up with different rhythms. Like it starts out with, you have to hit it on every seventh beat. Uh, and then it'll switch to like, okay, now it's going to do sort of a swing thing. Uh, it introduces those ideas in a way that feels really good. Uh, and then sometimes just goes absolutely insane. There's boss fights in the game where

• 48:44Griffin McElroy?

  it will start to do weird shit with the screen or like it'll switch it to windowed mode and then move your window around your desktop monitor, uh, if you're playing that way. Uh, it's, it's, I don't know. I never really stuck with the rhythm heaven game that much because it was, I don't know. I found them sort of too punishing, even though I like hard rhythm games. Uh, and this seems more accessible, very like lovingly crafted, charming story and writing and the music's great. And, uh, it's, it's, it's a great, it's a perfect little, uh, bite sized game that you can just kind of pick up and play a couple of songs of. And, uh, I've really been liking it a lot.

• 49:22Chris Plante?

  Uh, I'm perpetually interested by the year of too many games and what that, uh, causes to happen. Example of the year of too many games, two games inspired by rhythm heaven came out just yesterday.

• 49:37Griffin McElroy?

  Crazy.

• 49:37Chris Plante?

  Rhythm doctor and also bits and bops, a game by Tempo Lab Games that is also more rhythm heaven. And it's beautifully animated. It is a full, rich, cool game. And I don't know how we got two rhythm heaven inspired games on the exact same damn day.

• 50:00Griffin McElroy?

  Day. Yeah.

• 50:00Chris Plante?

  I will also just second that Pluribus is absolutely fantastic. I do not watch much TV and I.

• 50:11Griffin McElroy?

  Here he goes. Fucking.

• 50:12Chris Plante?

  Obsessed with it. I love it.

• 50:15Griffin McElroy?

  TV you watch. That's what I want to hear more about. Come on.

• 50:18Chris Plante?

  I I'm sorry, I do other things like the podcast, which you should do.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  And if you love listening to podcasts. TV. If that lobster guy that Yorgos Lanthimos would have stopped making so many damn movies, Chris Plamton would be able to watch Better Call Saul, you know what I mean?

• 50:34Chris Plante?

  No, thank you. I don't need any more of his stuff. I'm good.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Did you hear Chris living talk about?

• 50:40Griffin McElroy?

  Chris living's been about it, yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  He's trying to help Emma Stone discover her clown.

• 50:50Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, man, it's really good shit. How can I can we do a quick check in on our our sort of goody backlog playing?

• 50:57Chris Plante?

  Oh, man, I've been playing some of that root trees.

• 51:00Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking intense, guys.

• 51:01Speaker 00

  I've been playing a lot of Indiana Jones Great Circle.

• 51:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's a good one. We gotta go.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Good one. You know what that one's kind of like?

• 51:10Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 51:12Speaker 00

  It's kind of like watching a football game with your dad. When it starts, you're like, frick, this is friggin awesome, man. I'm gonna do this forever. And then after three hours, you're like, yeah, I get it, you know?

• 51:31Chris Plante?

  Oh, boy. Oh, boy. This is gonna be a good conversation this year.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Three times in this game where I'm like, hell, yeah, why didn't I play? Oh. Yeah.

• 51:40Chris Plante?

  That's okay. I remember. That I have just gone back to it and I think I might be in a very similar journey.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  It was for me this time. It was when I started slugging through snow. I said, good day, Dr. Jones.

• 51:55Chris Plante?

  That'll do it, too.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  Um, tip my hat to you, good sir. Farewell on your adventures. I will be cutting my own path through the snow here.

• 52:05Chris Plante?

  I am ashamed that I took so long to really dig deep into Root Trees Are Dead, a game that is so clearly my shit. And people had recommended it to me and I think I had even said like, I'm gonna get around to it. I'll get around to it. I'll get around to it. I finally did and I'm so excited to talk about it during the show because it is, it's just.

• 52:28Chris Plante?

  Journalism, the video game. And by journalism, I mean, uh, not sureing exactly what you're looking for. So just Googling random ass people's names and praying that it gets you at least some thread to pull on.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Root trees are dead is exactly how I do tech support for my in-laws. It is literally just like, what is the error code?

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Okay, here's the best I got.

• 52:51Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, uh, kudos to them for like coming up with a new form of that type of, of, of game.

• 52:57Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Griffin McElroy?

  Because I, I think that that's obviously.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Do you remember, and there was this beautiful period in the early web? When games would do this, like on the actual internet, things like Mrs. Since January and Evidence Last Ritual where they would like all the, the, the interwebs, the inner, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Like the intranet of the game would be uploaded onto the actual internet. So like the, the answers would be searchable, like on your real web browser. Um, but now it's a hell. The whole thing is, there's no bees to, to search. Uh, anything else?

• 53:31Griffin McElroy?

  I, uh, I finished Dispatch.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 53:34Griffin McElroy?

  Which I really fucking liked.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Laundry game, laundry game of the year. I have really been pacing it to laundry.

• 53:40Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Oh, it's perfect, dude. It's perfect. You're enjoying it every once in a while. You set down the, the shirts, you beep, boop, beep. Back to folding. It's amazing.

• 53:49Griffin McElroy?

  Where have you, where have you gotten? Can I ask?

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Finished yesterday, I finished episode six, I think.

• 53:57Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Two or three episodes left.

• 53:59Griffin McElroy?

  Five, uh, the, the bar fight is in five, right? The, that might be the hardest I think a game has made me laugh in a sort of, in a sort of solid two minute long chuckle. Uh, chuckle party. It's really fucking funny.

• 54:15Chris Plante?

  I'm, I'm in, I just finished episode three, so I'm slowly catching up.

• 54:20Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I've also been playing some more Death Stranding two, which has been tough to get back into. Um, but, uh, I, I, I think would also be a great laundry game just for some of the cutscenes. Uh, but it's, it's, it is stuck on my PS5. He's right. He's right lodged in there and they won't let him go. They won't let Norman go. But I, I do like that game quite a lot.

• 54:43Griffin McElroy?

  I also played Baby Steps more because Russ is so wild about it. And I had to replay stuff that the three of us played while we were streaming. And so I like got caught back, uh, yeah, me and Justin and Travis. I got caught back up to that point. And now I took a little break because that was, that was sort of spiritually exhausting. But now I've gotten to some of the new stuff.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  I don't know that me going back and I don't know if me going back and playing more Baby Steps by myself is giving Baby Steps a fair shake or not. I really don't know what is the fairer thing to get to Baby Steps. Like, I, I don't know what will.

• 55:18Griffin McElroy?

  Because we played it in such a wrong way.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  I don't know, but I also with the game itself, I don't know if it's the kind of thing where the more you play of it, the more you're like, I am loving this more and more. I don't know.

• 55:30Chris Plante?

  I, I really don't know what the, not just the game of the year, but like the top five is going to look like for us. Because I think we're all spreading out.

• 55:39Griffin McElroy?

  We're, it's all over the fucking map.

• 55:41Chris Plante?

  We're all over the place in terms of like, I don't know. I put together my, my top 10 and I was like, I don't think half these games y'all like. Which is like, good. I think that makes for a good conversation.

• 55:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Chris Plante?

  But I don't know how we're going to pull it together. I'm excited.

• 55:57Griffin McElroy?

  It almost feels like we're going to need like a, a bracket rubric, uh, in the way that we do for our bonus, uh, episodes on the Patreon feed. But have it like boil down to like arbitrary tiebreakers, like which one has the most letters in the title of the game.

• 56:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:15Griffin McElroy?

  Which one can you throw the farthest?

• 56:18Speaker 00

  So next week will be our game of the year. That'll be kicking off next week.

• 56:22Griffin McElroy?

  That's true.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Crazy. Is there anything you want to try to spend time with before the next time?

• 56:28Griffin McElroy?

  More Death Stranding, um, more, oh, Citizen Sleeper 2 made the.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to play more of that. I ducked back into that.

• 56:35Griffin McElroy?

  I really, really liked that one. I bounced, I bounced to play something else and it's a, it's a good candidate to return to.

• 56:41Chris Plante?

  I also think that they might've. Balanced it a little bit more. I think that was an issue for us when we played at the beginning is it was maybe a little too unforgiving. So I'm, I'm, one of those games I'm glad that we're revisiting late in the year.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  What were the other audience picks for the four?

• 56:59Chris Plante?

  Indiana Jones.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Root trees. Indiana Jones, Root Trees.

• 57:03Chris Plante?

  Citizen Saper 2. And then of course Dispatch. Hey, should we wrap things up?

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you so much.

• 57:10Chris Plante?

  We gotta get back to playing video games.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, we got a lot more games to play. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?