2026's Best Games (and What's Still to Come)

Midway through the year, The Besties share their top contenders. However, don’t make any bets on these being our final picks for our GOTY list, because the back half of 2026 is unprecedentedly dense with new releases. To set the stage, we curate our most anticipated games. Also, The Grinch 2.

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  I'm so excited to dive into the remaining big games to come out in the year 2026. We got a big fat list here. I'm so excited to unpack all this stuff with you guys. I can't help but notice a particular entry that I don't know who chopped this list together. I assume Plant.

• 0:15Russ Frushtick?

  That would be Christopher Thomas Plant.

• 0:17Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, so maybe Chris, I guess this question is for you, Chris.

• 0:20Chris Plante?

  I already know what you're gonna say. I already know exactly where you're going, cuz you think I don't know games.

• 0:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, well, it's just, you know, September's a big month. There's a lot of stuff to look forward to then. But beware, near the ides of September, September 18th, we do have The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas has made the list, and I'm not sure, it's sandwiched between the new Fire Emblem and the new control game. I'm just curious why The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas.

• 0:48Russ Frushtick?

  I'm also surprised that it was not dealt with in the first game. You think that would have been the primary focus of the first game with Saving Christmas?

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think Dr. Theodore Geisel left a lot of meat on the bone on that Roast Beast. So what is it about The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas that's got you all fired up?

• 1:08Chris Plante?

  Let's get some facts straight here, okay?

• 1:10Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:11Chris Plante?

  One, Grinch 2: Saving Christmas, I don't think it's a sequel to the quote "first game", as Russ Prashik said here. I think it is a sequel to the book, okay?

• 1:21Russ Frushtick?

  But in the book, he also saves Christmas.

• 1:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, he does.

• 1:24Chris Plante?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:25Griffin McElroy?

  After nearly dooming it.

• 1:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 1:28Griffin McElroy?

  His heart goes, he does it.

• 1:31Chris Plante?

  Second question. Are you telling me that you aren't curious? Is that what you're telling me? That somebody comes to you and they say, "I've got The Grinch 2."

• 1:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:41Chris Plante?

  And you're like, "No, I don't need to know anything else more than that. I'm good."

• 1:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I mean, that's not an intellectual property that I think has been shepherded particularly with a steady hand. It is not a seal of quality in my mind.

• 1:59Russ Frushtick?

  Let me mention this, just as an important factoid. It is described as an RTS MOBA. Does that make you more or less interested?

• 2:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so I main, I main max, I jungle max, mid max, in the jungle, uh, carry. I carry, I carry, uh, Lil, Lil Lou.

• 2:19Russ Frushtick?

  Cindy Lou Who.

• 2:19Griffin McElroy?

  Cindy Lou Who. Um, that's, and that's all the Grinch and Moba terminology that I can remember right now.

• 2:26Chris Plante?

  I am not trying to make you all look like fools here, but there is a long history of Grinch sequels. We have Halloween is Grinch Night, The Wubulous World of Dr. Seuss.

• 2:39Russ Frushtick?

  Are these games or books?

• 2:40Chris Plante?

  The, the, the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat. These aren't, these aren't games, these are the real official.

• 2:47Griffin McElroy?

  World of Dr. Seuss was an interactive theater experience. Um, and I said that as a joke, but that actually sounds pretty lit now that I think about. I would, I would fly to London for the punch drunk version of The Wubulous Grinch. It's featuring Benedict Cumberbatch.

• 3:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Griffin McElroy?

  As Grinch reprising the role. Damn, Plant, I was wrong. What an asshole am I? I'm so fired up about this green burglar.

• 3:16Chris Plante?

  I wanted to get your heart to grow three sizes too big, you know? And I feel like that's what we did here today.

• 3:23Griffin McElroy?

  Now, I will say that I, because of my son, I got about two and a half hours of sleep last night, and I am feeling extremely just pressurable. So you could get me fired up about just about anything on this list. Um, so I can't wait for the hard sell on Ace Combat 8.

• 3:41Russ Frushtick?

  Wings of Thev.

• 3:42Griffin McElroy?

  Looking forward to that.

• 3:44Chris Plante?

  Grinch 2: The Holiday of Thev.

• 4:06Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the year so far.

• 4:10Chris Plante?

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

• 4:15Russ Frushtick?

  Ma.

• 4:16Chris Plante?

  He took a huge bomb. You guys can't see the video, but Plant took a huge fucking bomb.

• 4:20Russ Frushtick?

  That was a big banger right there from Chris Plant. My name is Russ Froschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 4:26Chris Plante?

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home, interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. Just by listening, my friend, you have become a member. Maybe you already were a member. Maybe you've been listening for a while. Maybe you're a member of our Patreon. We only ever plug that at the top, but maybe people turn off this podcast before they get there. Patreon.com/thebesties. There's so much good stuff waiting for you there. This week, we are not going to be talking about one new game in particular. We're going to be talking about the best games of 2026 so far in the first half and then the second half. What we know is still to come, what we are looking forward to. It's going to be action-packed. It's going to, I mean, there's so many games to discuss, so much to get into. Not just The Grinch 2, but like other stuff too.

• 5:09Chris Plante?

  So stay tuned, because we're going to get into it right after this short break.

• 5:15Chris Plante?

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• 6:43Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 6:50Russ Frushtick?

  So it's important to remember as we talk about the best games of the year so far that these are indeed our best games of the year so far. This is not the Metacritic list. This is not your daddy's best games of the year. These are the weird besties best games of the year, which honestly like might have some dovetailing with some of the Metacritic scores.

• 7:10Griffin McElroy?

  Some of it, but true to form, there's also some shit that I feel like is not on any of our list that is like pretty hugely like your like your Crimson Desert and what have you. There's, there's, there's definitely some games out there that a lot of people liked a whole lot more than, than, than we did.

• 7:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Griffin McElroy?

  Can we start? There is one game. There's a single game looking at all three of our lists that is on all, all three of our lists. I believe it's just one game and that game is Pocopia. This is actually the only game that Plant and I share, which is very exciting. And I, man, I, that game has aged so well in my memory. I am so excited for DLC and to dive back into that one. I just, I'm, I'm still just absolutely wild about it. I don't play it anymore, but I would like to.

• 8:01Chris Plante?

  How, how far did you get into that game?

• 8:04Griffin McElroy?

  I finished the like campaign or whatever.

• 8:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I also finished the campaign. I thought it continues to be dynamite. I think my wife has played it more than I have. She continues to play it. They are currently having a Geraci event right now.

• 8:16Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, great. Yeah. The, the event thing was, I forget what the, the, the first event was for.

• 8:22Russ Frushtick?

  Skiploom.

• 8:23Griffin McElroy?

  Skip.

• 8:23Russ Frushtick?

  Jump Bluff, etc. Chirachi, they're bringing out the heavy hitters now. But I am also excited. They have DLC plan where you go under the water and stuff like that. But man, fucking crush that game. Continues to be the best non-mainline Pokemon game that's ever been made, in my opinion.

• 8:41Griffin McElroy?

  I would agree with that wholeheartedly. It is also, I think, a, you know, point in its column is that it is probably, I think it's the only Switch 2 game that I have played that made me consider getting a second Switch 2. So that me and Henry could play together.

• 8:56Russ Frushtick?

  You still haven't done that, right?

• 8:57Griffin McElroy?

  Didn't bite the bullet on that, no. And probably won't now that they're more expensive, right?

• 9:02Russ Frushtick?

  I think they might have gone up a little bit, yeah.

• 9:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so, uh, but yeah, man, damn, what a good one. What a good, what a great game.

• 9:09Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 9:09Chris Plante?

  There's some more overlap for you, Griffin and Fresh.

• 9:12Russ Frushtick?

  We do have a lot of similarities. We are sympathetic.

• 9:15Chris Plante?

  And I like a lot, these are, these are edge cases for me, so I want to hear some of these.

• 9:20Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, a big one is Mina the Hollower, I feel like. That one is, that one's gonna, I feel like that one's gonna stick with me for, uh, for a while. Just really fucking exceptional. Tore, tore through it and 100%ed it and then wanted more, like, wanted more from it, which is always a great sign.

• 9:39Russ Frushtick?

  I think if you take nostalgia out of it, it might be better than any 2D Zelda game. I'm not 100% sure of that.

• 9:48Griffin McElroy?

  Sure, I mean, with Zelda in particular, you kinda can't do that because it's like you're...

• 9:53Russ Frushtick?

  And it, and it's forged the genre, so you really need to give it its flowers for that. I do acknowledge, but it is really fucking good, Jesus.

• 10:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, just, just, just an absolute joy to discover and, uh, and, I don't know, all of its systems are so clever and, looks and sounds so amazing. Uh, love, love, love me some Mina the Hollower.

• 10:14Chris Plante?

  I want to see mixtape on here for both of you.

• 10:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah!

• 10:18Chris Plante?

  Is it, how, how is it stuck with you, you know, with some distance? Is it growing in your heart?

• 10:25Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, I love a game that I, you know, does not overstay its welcome, and it doesn't. In fact, no part of the game I think overstays its welcome. I think it's like, uh, I, I try not to get too annoyed about the kind of like knee jerk, like, uh, it's woke bullshit, like that, that sort of reaction to it. Because like, I don't know, any criticism that you leverage against it about like, you know, oh, it's not a real game, and, oh, our characters are so no- like, all of that stuff is so, uh, it seems like only being espoused by people who clearly didn't play the fucking thing, because no part of this game lasts

• 11:05Griffin McElroy?

  for longer than like, two and a half minutes tops. Uh, how, how like, precious is your attention span that you can't hang for two and a half minutes of, uh, of, you know, flying around through a forest to a, you know, beautiful song? I don't know. I, I, I think it's amazing.

• 11:21Chris Plante?

  It's music video collections, and, and the best way, like, it is-

• 11:25Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking rules, yeah.

• 11:26Russ Frushtick?

  And an emotional impact, like, characters I deeply cared about, which is such a rarity, and usually when there are characters that people deeply care about in video games, you had to have played 40 hours of the game before they like, really started clicking with you.

• 11:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Russ Frushtick?

  And here, they're, they're getting to that place in 30 minutes. Like, they're getting there so quickly.

• 11:46Griffin McElroy?

  Just a pitch perfect, like, uh, rendition of this, like, last day of summer, this, uh, you know, right before the end of high school, everyone's about to mo- like, that whole genre is, I, I don't know, it's, it's, it's incredibly rich, and there's so many different movies that have done this so exceptionally well, and I can't think of a game that has even come close to doing it as well as this.

• 12:10Chris Plante?

  I think the cynic take for that game was like, the, oh, it's Garden State the video game, which honestly couldn't be further from the truth.

• 12:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Chris Plante?

  Where I've kind of landed with it is it reminds me of like, later years Richard Linklater stuff, of the like, School of Rock variety, where it's like, it's not quite-

• 12:31Chris Plante?

  As subtle as Dazed and Confused and how it's using music and like talking about teenage life. But it's still great. Like it's, it is like almost like a blockbuster teen movie that we just have not had in forever.

• 12:46Griffin McElroy?

  It gave it, um, the more I sort of sit with it, it reminds me of like if Michel Gondry had done High Fidelity. Like that, that is the

• 12:56Chris Plante?

  I like that a lot. Such a good description.

• 12:58Griffin McElroy?

  There's just so, it executes what it does so fucking well. And I, I do like, I think that on paper it sounds, I don't know. It sounds like a game that would be annoying. I talked about this when we talked about the game. Like I was not looking forward to this one because I thought like, uh, I don't know, man, that sounds pretty cloying, but I, I think it just, I think it fucking nailed it.

• 13:18Chris Plante?

  Mixtape would be on my list, but I felt weird having two of kind of in the same zone, even though going about it very different ways, games. I have Perfect Tide Station to Station, which I know I have sung the praises on the show a trillion times over, but for real, if you aren't playing this game, please, please give it a try. Uh, this is a game about a young woman who goes to college in Manhattan in the very early 2000s and, uh, pursues the life of a writer and all the messy ways that you can do that in college. It's a lot of her working through some truly, well, I would say atrocious boyfriends, but

• 14:02Chris Plante?

  sometimes she's the not very great one. Uh, it involves, uh, that feeling of reading a book on anarchy or political, um, freedom and philosophy in college and thinking that you have somehow been the person to discover it and not realizing that it's come years, many years before you and many other people have discovered these feelings. It's, you know, going to see one of your first big shows, uh, and wondering if you are or aren't with the person who you are there with. Are you dating? Are you not? It's all of these different feelings and it's also a bit autobiographical, um, in terms of what its creator, Meredith Grand, brought to the piece.

• 14:46Chris Plante?

  I think people can be put off by it in the same way as mixtape by the oh wow, this is very sincere and about a point in our lives that we often find uncomfortable and cringe inducing. I think it can also put off people because it looks like a point and click adventure. Do not let those things scare you away.

• 15:07Griffin McElroy?

  It is a MOBA. It's actually a MOBA hardcore, pay to win.

• 15:11Chris Plante?

  Free to play and it has great costumes. So with that in mind, I think you're going to love the new partnership with the Grinch 2, Saving Christmas.

• 15:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 15:23Chris Plante?

  Perfect Tide Station Station.

• 15:24Griffin McElroy?

  I need to check this one out. I have not given it its due diligence. This is one that I'm definitely going to put on the hit list before we get into the real deal deliberations.

• 15:33Chris Plante?

  It plays well on your Mac laptop and that is like a great place to play it. Or it's on Switch 2 now, 2 or Switch, I think, normal. So.

• 15:41Griffin McElroy?

  I want to hear more about Romeo as a Dead Man because I think I missed whatever episode.

• 15:47Russ Frushtick?

  We did Arrestes on it. That's where that comes from.

• 15:50Griffin McElroy?

  Everything I've seen from this game looks so batshit and.

• 15:53Russ Frushtick?

  It is definitely the weirdest game I've played this year.

• 15:56Chris Plante?

  Romeo as a Dead Man fucking rocks. Romeo as a Dead Man is the new game from Suda 51.

• 16:01Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 16:02Chris Plante?

  Yes, Grasshopper. They made games like No More Heroes before this. They made a lot of like seven out of tens, games where you like the ideas, but maybe the gameplay is too basic or busted or games with really interesting visuals, but then it has like this kind of weird, oftentimes I don't think they set out to be misogynistic, but they accomplished that unintended goal. Romeo as a Dead Man is a massive course correction. It is about a man who gets his head bitten off by, I believe, an intergalactic monster. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

• 16:40Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds right in my memory, yes.

• 16:41Chris Plante?

  Who then gets his great grandfather, who has traveled back in time and is also killed, stitched onto the back of his cool jacket where he then proceeds to give his grandson advice as they travel. Through time and dimensions, fighting versions of his girlfriend, who may or may not be an intergalactic monster. Um, it's fantastic. And I'll just give one scene, just one scene that I like cannot get past. You have an entire level where you go to a mall in the 1980s and you're just fighting these like random uh ghouls and collecting various shit, very video gamey. And there's a boss fight and it

• 17:24Chris Plante?

  looks like this giant monster takes place in the mall atrium. You slaughter it and then it reduces itself to a man. And what you realize is it is a man who fought, I believe on the Confederate side in the Civil War, horrible racist man who has skipped through time from the Civil War to the 1980s Reagan America to bring all of his ideas there. And you finally get him in your hand. You're holding him above the ground, pawing his face like a basketball, and he's giving his evil speech. And you can listen to his evil speech about all of his horrible ideas, or you can just

• 18:02Chris Plante?

  press A and pop his head like a grape. And that choice to just not even hear the speech that's there, it is available, is one of the coolest moments I have felt in the video game in a very long time. It is full of stuff like this. It is every second surprising you. Um, and it is a game that just grows on me more and more and more. I think it is one of the most interesting games of the year. I also think it is one of the most acquired taste possible. It is like just drinking vinegar one moment and cherry soda the next moment. Uh, it is, it's something else.

• 18:46Griffin McElroy?

  Um, can, oh, I would like, I wanna, catching up on things that I didn't have a ton of time for. I want to hear about Pragmata because I think I missed that episode.

• 18:55Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, boy. Griffin, I genuinely think you would really, really enjoy Pragmata. Uh, it feels a lot like a 3D Mega Man. You are a Uh, kind of like a Dead Space looking, kind of like Isaac from Dead Space. But you've got like a little AI, uh, small girl that rides around on your back. And she has the ability to hack the various enemies that you're fighting in third person, normal, typical combat. I have, I actually haven't beaten this game, but it's the sort of game that I go back to and I play for like 30 or 40 minutes and have a really fucking good time in that span. Cool traversal, cool exploration, uh, very satisfying upgrade tree and, and just like overall structure I thought was really smart.

• 19:38Russ Frushtick?

  And just a really strong art design. Uh, you're, you're exploring this spaceship, but very much in contrast to like the Dead Space. And moon.

• 19:47Chris Plante?

  Moon colony.

• 19:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but very much in contrast to the Dead Space, like the griminess of Dead Space. This is like largely bright and almost welcoming, even though obviously there's evil lurking beneath.

• 19:58Chris Plante?

  It's humanist Dead Space because like even the Dead Space comparison, the way that the shooting in the game works is you aim at the enemy and then you have to solve this little line puzzle, kind of like snake. It looks like a slide puzzle. It is not. That's why I prefer.

• 20:14Russ Frushtick?

  It's very easy.

• 20:15Chris Plante?

  Love it. It's very easy, but in the same way that Dead Space makes you slow down and choose the limbs, the whole point is having to balance. Oh, I need to slow down to accomplish a supplemental thing, or I can rush the shots. Which one am I going to do?

• 20:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. No, it's, I think they did.

• 20:32Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I look sick.

• 20:34Chris Plante?

  It's great.

• 20:35Griffin McElroy?

  I do want to check it out. Does it run? Capcom has a pretty mixed lineage when it comes to games running okay on a Steam Deck or a Rock ally X. That's probably the.

• 20:44Russ Frushtick?

  The ally X will definitely run at a hundred percent. Did you play on Steam Deck?

• 20:47Chris Plante?

  I believe I played on Steam Deck. I remember it running well.

• 20:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think those, both with Resident Evil and that, I think, because they're all under the same engine, it's pretty scalable. So.

• 20:56Chris Plante?

  I don't know what it is about Monster Hunter that they can't fucking.

• 20:59Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, much more ambitious because Monster Hunter, especially the newest one was all streamed in like crazy open world shit. So I'm not surprised, but yeah.

• 21:07Chris Plante?

  I'm torn with Pragmata and Resident Evil nine. I have these like kind of competing, jockeying.

• 21:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you're the only one to put RE nine on the, on, on, on the list. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it.

• 21:17Chris Plante?

  They both have the same problem and they get to it in different ways. Pragmata, uh, much more ambitious, big swing, probably the beginning of a new franchise. And then, uh, it falls apart in the end. Uh, Resident Evil nine.

• 21:33Chris Plante?

  Just really play in the hits. This is the greatest hits album. You're getting all of the things that you've loved about Resident Evil and from the eight previous games. And then it falls apart at the end. And I don't know if this is just the forever AAA problem at this point, that you run out of budget. I don't know if it is that they know using analytics that most people don't make it past a certain point in the game. So you should put your weakest stuff there. I can't figure it out, but there is this symptom in these games where the best you can hope for, it feels like what the AAA game is for it

• 22:13Chris Plante?

  to make it 80% of the way. That is a miracle. But asking a game to be 100% or to be edited down just feels impossible. And for that reason, like neither one quite edges the other one out. Yeah.

• 22:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Resident Evil 9 is one that has soured more and more in my mind. The further off I get, the angry, the further I get from it, the angrier I get about sort of that game's uh.

• 22:38Russ Frushtick?

  Mostly because of the gulf, in my opinion, between the beginning or the first half and toward as it ends.

• 22:44Chris Plante?

  I've had to fully cut the final third of that game from my brain.

• 22:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Chris Plante?

  It is how I have come to peace with it. Cause I did love those first two thirds so much.

• 22:54Griffin McElroy?

  I have a few on my list that I don't think is gonna like hang in the goatee discussions. I mostly just went through my Steam play history for the year and looked at what I spent the most time with. One of those is berry berry berry.

• 23:04Russ Frushtick?

  Love it.

• 23:05Griffin McElroy?

  Incremental berry farming game. I fucking loved the, you know, few hours that I spent kind of being obsessed with that game.

• 23:12Russ Frushtick?

  There is another, I don't, I think it's called Project Pit or something like that. That is another incremental pit game.

• 23:19Griffin McElroy?

  Based game. Alright, sure. Yeah.

• 23:21Russ Frushtick?

  It's a trend.

• 23:21Griffin McElroy?

  Throw them at me. I gotta say this buyer two on here just because the early access stuff that's out there is so incredible. It's so good. And I really had to peel myself away from it to stop playing it so that I wouldn't, you know, fully spoil the thing.

• 23:35Russ Frushtick?

  I would, I would say probably not eligible in my opinion.

• 23:39Griffin McElroy?

  No, it's not. I don't think it's gonna be eligible. I, and I don't think I would. Place my experience playing this, you know, early access game up there with the best of the best for the year, but um, goddamn.

• 23:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Griffin McElroy?

  Really, really solid. And then the other one, I know you did play, uh, Russ was Mio, Memories in Orbit, which was a really cool Metroidvania, uh, set on this like very lonely, uh, desolate space station where you're this little, uh, kinda AI rabbit type critter who's like trying to figure out what went wrong. And there's a bunch of sad robots all around and uh,

• 24:10Russ Frushtick?

  Bit of a, bit of a slow burn, like a very slow opening, uh, which worked for me, but I think I'm a weirdo on that side. Like I like that, like you are totally weak and have nothing and then you slowly get powered up. But once it really gets going, cool momentum stuff, exploration, really cool art design through the roof, great. Um, I went back and finished that as well and, and, uh, I really, really enjoyed my time with it. So definitely worth checking out. I agree that it probably won't make the top goody list, but definitely worth checking out.

• 24:38Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, what does have a chance, I think, I mean, it'll definitely be in my top five and where it places, I don't know, we'll see where the cards fall, but, um, Mu, Mu Genics. Mu Genics is still one that I like. I'll never uninstall that from my, you know, my, my rog and it, it, it always should, when I'm like on a plane or something and I don't have anything like really pressing to play, it is always the one I'm like, I could get back into Mu Genics. But I feel the same way about it that I felt about Isaac, which is like, if I get back into Mu Genics, I can't dip a toe into those, like it's gonna take me a while to remember what my, you know, my fucking breeding pipeline was looking like, like what objectives I was like shooting for.

• 25:23Russ Frushtick?

  There is a free update that is coming and I'm gonna be careful about what I say cause I'm not sure how much I can actually say that I think will alleviate the onboarding issues that people might have in terms of jumping back into the game. So.

• 25:37Griffin McElroy?

  Well, that is, that is glad, I am happy to hear that.

• 25:40Russ Frushtick?

  That is what I'm waiting for. I, I finished it. I like got the quote true ending and then I haven't touched it since. I think I, it was like 175 hours. I played so much of that game. It was crazy. And I stopped and then I'm waiting for this update to come out that 'll, uh, I think provide, yeah, even more. But I think design wise. Unquestionably, I have not played-

• 26:00Griffin McElroy?

  The sandbox is fucking crazy.

• 26:03Russ Frushtick?

  I don't, like, I have not played a more ambitious design game in, uh, it's been so long.

• 26:08Griffin McElroy?

  So rewarding to play a game like this with like a sandbox this robust where you can tell, "Oh, this is, this is why it took so long to make this." Like, you can feel the, you can feel the hours that went into the thing and like, "Wow, I bet that was really hard to solve for. I could not at a million, billion years like come up with anything even remotely this like, interesting. It's, it's really, uh, just an artistic achievement." Uh, well, it's a creative achievement. Artistically, it still does very little for me, but I could play this game for fucking hours.

• 26:38Russ Frushtick?

  The music is spectacular.

• 26:40Griffin McElroy?

  The, the cats could just look like little squares, like little different colored squares, uh, for, for all I care. Um, I got one more on my list, uh, and this one was a huge surprise for me, which was, uh, the, the, the final DLC for Diablo 4, Lord of Hatred, uh, which I got back into, uh-

• 26:59Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, did you say final?

• 27:01Griffin McElroy?

  I'm pretty sure it's the final-

• 27:02Russ Frushtick?

  Have they said that?

• 27:02Griffin McElroy?

  Diablo 4, dude. I don't know, man. It's, when you look at the list, when you're like choosing where to hop into the story, it just shows you the three kind of like story arcs. It feels very final.

• 27:11Russ Frushtick?

  Sure, okay.

• 27:11Griffin McElroy?

  I will say it, it really, and it's the thing that I like the most about it.

• 27:15Russ Frushtick?

  You finally fuck Diablo, that's what you went-

• 27:16Griffin McElroy?

  You fuck Diablo and you have a half-demon baby and his name is Alucard.

• 27:20Russ Frushtick?

  So handsome.

• 27:20Griffin McElroy?

  So cool. Uh, no, his name would be Oliab-

• 27:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. Um, anyway, it's, uh, it's really striking, uh, cause I, I got back into it and I loved sort of all the changes that they've made to kind of the core game, even like not counting the DLC, just like the game itself is a lot more rewarding and fun and dynamic, uh, to play. But then I loved the story of this DLC and it made me go back and play the second DLC, the, uh, Vessel of Hatred, which I didn't like, and then I played it and I still don't like it. I think it was pretty bad. From like a story perspective, it was like kind of a huge nothing burger, uh, where not a lot of interesting stuff happened. And this one takes huge fucking swings from minute one and like does not let up. Um, and it is like, I don't know, it's the most invested I've gotten into Diablo,

• 28:10Griffin McElroy?

  uh, I don't know, as a, as a story thing, definitely ever. Um, but I, I've also just really enjoyed kind of dipping into it. It is the perfect exercise bike game for me now, where I can just like-

• 28:22Russ Frushtick?

  Do you play with controller or mouse and keyboard?

• 28:24Griffin McElroy?

  I play controller.

• 28:25Russ Frushtick?

  It's great on controller.

• 28:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's fantastic. Um, there's a new season starting, I think, here in a few days. I kind of fell off after finishing the, going back and doing the second DLC, but um, I got a couple of buddies who play and I'm looking forward to hopping back in. It's like, it's not, it's nice to have a social game. Um, now that, you know, Destiny 2 is not that gonna, you know,

• 28:48Russ Frushtick?

  Say it.

• 28:48Griffin McElroy?

  Being alive for much.

• 28:49Russ Frushtick?

  That's a good segue.

• 28:50Griffin McElroy?

  It's hard to say, it's hard to address.

• 28:51Russ Frushtick?

  Good segue to Chris Plant's, one of Chris West's pick.

• 28:55Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:56Chris Plante?

  You're gonna do it, right? Yeah, everybody, everybody's gonna hop on that marathon train now.

• 29:00Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I played it.

• 29:01Chris Plante?

  I know that you, and it's probably been growing in your heart, you've been thinking.

• 29:04Russ Frushtick?

  I did the Duolingo where I learned the language that is marathon. So I've been there, I've been through it and.

• 29:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I took, I took two years of marathon in high school, but I am not at all fluent.

• 29:15Chris Plante?

  That's, hey, that, that's fair. You know, I've really dedicated myself to it. Marathon absolutely rocks. I mean, I can say all the same things I've said before. Single player, rogue-like shooter that happens to be in multiplayer. A game that encourages you to be.

• 29:32Griffin McElroy?

  That's an insane sentence. That is a crazy.

• 29:34Chris Plante?

  It's, it is structured. That is how it is structured. It, you can play it like a shooter rogue-like. That just happens to have a whole bunch of absolutely merciless assholes running around. Um, I think it has really struck a chord with people who don't normally play these games. Because it is so trarin- transparent about the, the morality of the world that you are in. When you expect everyone to be predator and you to be prey. It just, it's honest in a way. And that sounds almost cynical, but I, I find it like a very zen-like game to play, which is weird considering how hardcore it can be at the same time.

• 30:18Chris Plante?

  Um, I, I love this game and I don't know how I or Bungie, though that's not my problem. Will convince more and more people to play it because I think it is kind of like you either want to play these sorts of games or you don't. And I think the challenge that they're running into now is how do we adapt this? To bring in a larger audience and how do we do that on a, on a set amount of time?

• 30:46Griffin McElroy?

  I don't want to get sucked in. We could talk about that for

• 30:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Griffin McElroy?

  The whole episode. Uh, and I, I want to make sure we leave time for the, the rest of the year stuff. But can you guys give me the sell on titanium?

• 30:55Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, Griffin.

• 30:55Griffin McElroy?

  I got this bad boy installed and I, I turned it on once and then I was like, I, this seems like it's going to be a lot.

• 31:02Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin, you would love titanium court. Specifically, the writing of titanium court is I think very much in line with your tone.

• 31:08Griffin McElroy?

  The aesthetic is fucking stellar. I'm really, really, really deeply into that, but I, I, I don't know. I played it for like 15 minutes, which was not, obviously not a fair shake, but.

• 31:16Russ Frushtick?

  You will not know what the fuck is going on for probably 30 ish, maybe 45 minutes. But that's okay. Cause you're just enjoying like the narrative and the art and just vibe with it. And then it will start clicking and I think you would absolutely love it. Uh, the thing, uh, just as a reminder for people that aren't aware, titanium court is a match three, uh, tower defense game with a, a graphic novel storyline where you've been transported into like a realm of fairies that hate one another and you're fighting with other fairies and eh, I don't know, man, it's really hard to pitch this game.

• 31:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Russ Frushtick?

  But, but it's incredibly funny and well done. And I am personally, to spend more time with it, I am personally hoping and waiting it comes to a mobile device.

• 32:02Griffin McElroy?

  Cause I think that's another thing. Yeah.

• 32:04Russ Frushtick?

  But.

• 32:05Chris Plante?

  I would not, I, I think you can wait just a little while longer, Griffin. I have a feeling that you will be able to play it on mobile quite soon.

• 32:13Griffin McElroy?

  If I could put this on my iPad, yeah, I would, I would get fucking totally done.

• 32:17Russ Frushtick?

  I feel like you know something and you're not telling us.

• 32:19Chris Plante?

  I don't remember if I know actually, that's why I'm being cautious.

• 32:23Griffin McElroy?

  I did a, I did a meow in Eugenics. So now I get to scoop directly about the upcoming, uh, um, let's take a quick break and, uh, a good, good weird list. Like looking at these games, this is fucking crazy. Actually I'm looking at this list and it's a really wild collection of games. I don't think I would have spotted a lot of these as being like contenders, uh, for me, but I, it's, it's been a cool year and there's a lot of great stuff to come. So let's take a break and then we'll dive into that.

• 32:52Russ 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,

• 33:36Russ Frushtick?

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• 34:13Russ Frushtick?

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• 34:54Russ Frushtick?

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• 35:05Griffin McElroy?

  Should we just kind of go month by month and sort of shout out what's moving us? Cause there's like 40 games here and I don't know if we are gonna be able to do all of them.

• 35:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there's a ton of games and I do think we can be pretty light on each of them. One thing I would ask is, how likely is it that some of these games are gonna make our final list? And we could be dead wrong.

• 35:25Griffin McElroy?

  That's fair. Yeah, that's a good question.

• 35:27Russ Frushtick?

  But it'd be interesting to explore that as we go, because yeah, it's a lot of games.

• 35:31Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if it'll make the list. I am so excited for Splatoon Raiders. This is an extremely timely one for me. Henry has been reading non-stop Nintendo manga and got into Splatoon through that. We played Splatoon 3 afterwards and got into the Side Order Rogue-like DLC, which is really fucking fun. This might be one that makes me get another Switch 2 if we get super dug into it, because this is like a Rogue-like, progressive, sort of multiplayer-based thing, not competitive, but like cooperative, sort of like the Salmon Run mode, which I really enjoyed from past Splatoon games.

• 36:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I watched some gameplay of it and it looks very, very different from normal Splatoon, which is encouraging to me because I've never really gotten into it. I am curious-

• 36:15Griffin McElroy?

  It's what I really liked about Side Order is like the gameplay of Splatoon is so fun, but like the hooks were never quite there for me. I didn't give a shit about buying new clothes and stuff. But having, you know, you're getting all these different upgrades that are sort of like permanently unlocking more options and stuff for you to take into matches. I don't know, it just, it looks rad. It looks really good.

• 36:32Russ Frushtick?

  100%. The game that's jumping out to me in terms of this list, well, again, there are some strong candidates. I don't know that they're like goatee candidates, but like-

• 36:41Griffin McElroy?

  That's July 23rd, by the way. We should shout those out where we can.

• 36:45Russ Frushtick?

  We have two weeks in a row of Nintendo games coming out, which is kind of crazy, exclusive Nintendo games. Star Fox comes out basically when this episode drops. We haven't played it yet, but I'm incredibly excited about Star Fox. I love Star Fox 64, and so seeing like an updated version of that, very exciting. And that's followed up immediately thereafter by Rhythm Heaven Groove. I don't know how long it's been since the Rhythm Heaven game, but I fucking love those games.

• 37:09Griffin McElroy?

  11 years.

• 37:10Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god.

• 37:10Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy.

• 37:11Russ Frushtick?

  11 years. I love those games, so I'm very, very excited for-

• 37:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Rhythm Heaven Groove, I loved what they showed in the last Direct, like all the different kind of like multiplayer, kind of like mini-game style modes. It looks like a hoot.

• 37:24Chris Plante?

  I have a week of chaos. At the beginning of August, we have Fields of Mistry as full release.

• 37:32Russ Frushtick?

  That's the 1.0 release. Crazy.

• 37:33Griffin McElroy?

  Can't fucking win.

• 37:34Russ Frushtick?

  I think the only game that I've ever played that was like, this might be better than Stardew Valley.

• 37:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dude. It looks fantastic. I don't know about all that. That's crazy.

• 37:40Russ Frushtick?

  It's getting there. It's getting there.

• 37:43Chris Plante?

  That's August 3rd. August 4th, Beast of Reincarnation.

• 37:46Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know what that is. That's the Game Freak.

• 37:49Chris Plante?

  Yup. Game Freak's huge swing, triple A, action RPG video game.

• 37:57Griffin McElroy?

  Princess Mononoke ass like, uh, yeah. It looks wild. Watch it. Watch a trailer for it. I almost wish we hadn't told you who made it. Cause if you watch a trailer for it, you're like, oh, well, this looks like.

• 38:07Russ Frushtick?

  It looks like a Sony Santa Monica game.

• 38:09Griffin McElroy?

  It looks like Black Myth Wukong. It looks like, like any kind of like character action game, highly polished type shit, but Game Freak making it.

• 38:15Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my God. So weird.

• 38:17Chris Plante?

  The same day, Big Walk comes out.

• 38:20Russ Frushtick?

  For Big Walk.

• 38:21Chris Plante?

  Big Walk is so, so interesting to me because it is.

• 38:24Griffin McElroy?

  Multiplayer sort of hiking game?

• 38:26Chris Plante?

  Yes. It's made by House House, the people who made Untitled Goose Game. And Untitled Goose Game, a huge hit in 2019. Uh, benefits, well, I don't want to say benefits. It finds success during the pandemic. Let's put it that way. As more people are playing video games. The weird thing about Big Walk is they announced this in December 2023. People are like, wow, what is this game? There's like not really clear purpose and you're just like four friends kind of solving puzzles, wandering around, chatting. And then over the following years, Friendslop becomes an entire subgenre.

• 39:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Chris Plante?

  So the thing, this game.

• 39:03Russ Frushtick?

  For people that aren't aware, that aren't plugged in are multiplayer goofy multiplayer games that people play on streams and things like that.

• 39:10Chris Plante?

  Yes. So this studio that was kind of like the upstart now has become the, oh, we were making a really polished game and a whole bunch of people made. Not, not ripping it off at all, but made versions of this thing before our thing actually came out. And I think what will be interesting about this game is how do people feel about really polished?

• 39:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Chris Plante?

  Friends slop. And I say that as a term that I like friends slop. I think it's a great term. I think it's a kindness.

• 39:39Russ Frushtick?

  I also haven't seen this.

• 39:40Griffin McElroy?

  Parenthesis complimentary.

• 39:41Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 39:42Russ Frushtick?

  I also haven't seen this kind of friends slop where the idea, it's not like climb a mountain necessarily. It's like, it's a weird like exploration, like treasure map kind of game.

• 39:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Russ Frushtick?

  Is my read of it.

• 39:54Chris Plante?

  I was, I was seeing a clip where somebody fell in a pit and they had to then acquire a bullhorn to be able to let people know that they had fallen in the pit.

• 40:04Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 40:05Griffin McElroy?

  Which is great. The means of like communicating via semaphore like at a distance. It looks, it looks great.

• 40:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Chris Plante?

  Um, and then the last thing for that week, I'll just add really quickly is Marvel to cone fighting souls. It would not be a summer in video games if at least one fighting game didn't come out that made me think this is going to be the one that gets me into fighting games.

• 40:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure. I'll buy a fight stick. That's when it gets you really good. When Marvel versus Capcom three came out, I was like, this is it. I'm getting a fucking one of those, whatever they're called, hoary fighting sticks. And then I played it for like an hour, got my ass destroyed. It was like, oh, that's right. I still suck shit at these. Um, I'm going to talk about EverQuest Legends during the honorable mentions this week.

• 40:44Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, boy.

• 40:45Griffin McElroy?

  Time for that. So, but that's out on July 28th. Uh, I just saw the list, wanted to shout it out. Uh, I would say the next one on here that I am very much looking forward to skipping forward just a little bit is the new fire emblem.

• 40:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, man.

• 40:56Griffin McElroy?

  Fortune's weave. Uh, I was looking forward to it before this last Nintendo Direct and after this Nintendo Direct. I don't know, man. It looks so much like three, three houses.

• 41:04Russ Frushtick?

  Have they confirmed time babies?

• 41:06Griffin McElroy?

  What's that?

• 41:07Russ Frushtick?

  Are there time babies in this one?

• 41:08Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if there's time babies in this one, but it, uh, three houses is, I, I think my favorite of these, of, of this entire franchise. Uh, and it looks like this shares a lot of its sort of DNA and, uh, I don't know. I'm just.

• 41:21Russ Frushtick?

  I think it literally shares the wor-, I think it's set in the same world as, uh, three houses, actually.

• 41:27Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I didn't.

• 41:27Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe not the same time period, but.

• 41:29Griffin McElroy?

  Stop highlighting the Grinch two saving Christmas. What? Stop it. Whoever's in the Google Doc highlighting the Grinch two.

• 41:34Chris Plante?

  So next up, I actually wanted to pick this game, um, the Grinch two saving Christmas, uh, plays the Grinch in jungle, jump through snowy 3D worlds, collecting ornaments to make your tree smirk go brighter with every step.

• 41:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Chris Plante?

  Um.

• 41:47Griffin McElroy?

  If you make me late for my son's orthodontist appointment because you took too much time talking about the Grinch two saving Christmas, I'll never forget you. Is anyone, is anyone looking forward to Marvel's Wolverine?

• 41:57Russ Frushtick?

  I am, I think I'm gonna have a very, very good time playing that game. That's a very talented studio making that game.

• 42:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 42:04Russ Frushtick?

  And I wanna see what that studio, which has basically been making open world games for a very long time, can do with like a very linear, action-heavy, uncharted kind of vibe. So I'm very curious. It is not-

• 42:17Griffin McElroy?

  Everything I've seen from it does absolutely nothing for it. Like, I, it's astonishing to me how much it is this like, well, this is gonna be the big, like, first-party sort of Sony jam of the year. And it's like, this, this is, not that it looks bad, it's just, I don't know, it does not seem like it fits that particular bill.

• 42:35Russ Frushtick?

  I just wanna see how it curveballs. Like, I need more of a curveball than just, oh, you're fighting melee, but you've got knife hands. Like, I need more than that, and I need more than, hey, it looks amazing, which I'm sure it does. So-

• 42:46Chris Plante?

  I would set expectations to what you saw in the trailer.

• 42:50Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, great, yeah.

• 42:51Chris Plante?

  I think, I think that's probably a reasonable place to set it. Okay. Keep that.

• 42:55Russ Frushtick?

  What are you basing that on?

• 42:57Chris Plante?

  I'm basing that on everything that has been talked about this game. It is an action game that is aspiring to be a go-from-stage-to-stage-cutting-things-up.

• 43:06Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 43:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And I love that, but I don't know. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I don't, I'm not gonna die on this hill. I just, it, I don't know, has done nothing for me.

• 43:14Russ Frushtick?

  I will tell you the game that I will drop everything to start playing, and that is Control: Resonant.

• 43:18Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 43:18Russ Frushtick?

  I fucking love Remedy stuff. It's so weird. And I adored the first Control game, although I had critiques, specifically in the upgrade system and all meta stuff, but in terms of art design, universe, just overall vibe, I was so fucking in, and I loved Alan Wake 2, and the studio keeps throwing curveballs. I don't know for sure that there won't be a moment in this third-person action game where it doesn't just jump into being like a fucking, I don't know, team-based MOBA or whatever. Like, you just don't know what they're gonna throw at you, because that studio is so weird. So I'm incredibly excited. It looks super fun. That's September 24th.

• 44:00Chris Plante?

  Do you think they're the same character? Do you think they're actually not just brother and sister, that they're actually just one person?

• 44:05Griffin McElroy?

  Whoa.

• 44:06Russ Frushtick?

  Whoa, heavy. It could be, you never know.

• 44:09Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, I'm also really looking forward to Minecraft Dungeons 2.

• 44:11Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:12Griffin McElroy?

  Wildly out of left field, but I, Henry and I loved Minecraft Dungeons. We played that one a lot. It is an extremely clever kind of, uh, you know, take on the ARPG Diablo style format.

• 44:25Russ Frushtick?

  There are a lot of things that Minecraft Dungeons 1 does, in my opinion, quite a bit better than Diablo 4.

• 44:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so, and, and I think that it is easy to conflate this with the like Dave and Buster's arcade game of Minecraft Dungeons.

• 44:38Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't know that existed.

• 44:40Griffin McElroy?

  There is, and it's called the same thing, and it's like, it does a whole thing with like, you can print out cards when you like buy credits in the game. And then you can scan those cards in to like get, the, the actual one is just a sort of Diablo. The actual one is just a Diablo one, but like, had really clever stuff where you're finding gear and there's like three different like gear slots that basically choose your abilities for you. And it's all like, you know, Minecraft coded, but just like really, really, really great progression and customization.

• 45:05Russ Frushtick?

  And fun physics, where like shit just like flies all over the place and that.

• 45:09Griffin McElroy?

  And also like accessible so that a nine-year-old can play it, but also like crunchy enough that a 39-year-old could like get, get pretty invested in it. So, yeah, if this one lives up to it, I'm, I'm looking forward to it.

• 45:20Chris Plante?

  Y'all, everything we've discussed so far, plus Silent Hill, Townfall, and Onimusha is the back half of September. Then there is the October Gauntlet, which we're gonna get into. I was of the belief that people were not in their right mind, avoiding Grand Theft Auto entirely, which is going to drop in November. And now I think I did.

• 45:40Griffin McElroy?

  The number of games that are like, let me just give it, let me just get it here.

• 45:45Russ Frushtick?

  There are not many.

• 45:46Griffin McElroy?

  Let me just get it here real quick.

• 45:47Chris Plante?

  We're, we're recording this the same day that the first like big batch of, oh, the price of, of Grand Theft Auto was announced, along with a ton of screenshots. And the degree to which that consumed everything on my social media feed. Um, and people being like, you know what, actually, I think I do like Grand Theft Auto. You know what, I think I'm gonna go back and play Grand Theft Auto V. Has me thinking, it really is going to be all-consuming in that way.

• 46:16Russ Frushtick?

  I have no doubt.

• 46:17Chris Plante?

  In that it is wise to dodge it, but with all that said, October.

• 46:21Griffin McElroy?

  What is the price?

• 46:22Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, it's eighty dollars.

• 46:25Chris Plante?

  For a download key.

• 46:27Griffin McElroy?

  Alright.

• 46:28Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, and they're gonna sell it.

• 46:29Chris Plante?

  $100 with, with bonus. Oh, the second I saw it, I saw those new costumes and I was like,

• 46:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I'll drop $100. That looks pretty, that looks pretty sick. Um, what are you going to make time for in October? Because there's a million games coming out.

• 46:44Russ Frushtick?

  October, easy pick in October, and I'm sure Griffin is with me on this Castlevania Belmont's Curse.

• 46:50Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck yeah.

• 46:51Russ Frushtick?

  This is the game coming from the Dead Cells team, but it is a full-on 2D Castlevania Metroidvania search action game. Looks fucking stellar.

• 46:59Griffin McElroy?

  Looks so sick.

• 47:00Russ Frushtick?

  I am so in for it. I have such high hopes for it. Uh, so I think that, that one's gonna rock.

• 47:04Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, Rayman Legends Retold. Adore Rayman Legends. One of my favorite kind of, uh, uh, platformers of the, I think I played it on Wii U with my wife, uh, and had a great time with it. Just a really, really solid kind of fizzy multiplayer-based, uh, platformer with lots of stuff to find and, uh, lots of really cool kind of specialty levels where, you know, you're running to the beat of a song now, or you're like, uh, you know, it, it just throws a lot of stuff at you and it's just so competent and so fun. So I'm, I'm looking forward to diving into that one.

• 47:34Russ Frushtick?

  Before Chris Plant talks about, uh, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thev, I just want to call out, uh, Star Wars Galactic Racer, which I saw at SGF and is probably the closest I've seen to a Burnout game maybe since Burnout.

• 47:48Griffin McElroy?

  It looked, I saw a video for this today, this morning of a pod race and it looks so good. It looks so fun and good. I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to that one.

• 47:56Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it also resembles Motorstorm and Onrush too. It's kind of like a dream combo of those games.

• 48:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Chris Plante?

  Also, apparently it has an entire story about Subulba. So, you know, that alone.

• 48:10Griffin McElroy?

  I've been wanting to unpack.

• 48:10Chris Plante?

  Um, speaking of great stories, Ace Combat: Wings of Thev. Uh, thank you for setting me up, Frush. The beginning of the game, as far as I can tell, is you are co-piloting with just Tom Cruise, uh, in Top Gun, who then proceeds to, uh, kick the bucket. And then I think is somehow spiritually trapped inside of your head and is now your co-pilot. Video games rock, and this series is finally gonna have its moment, and I am so excited.

• 48:43Russ Frushtick?

  The only thing, I think, as a way to wrap this up, the only thing that is not on this list, but it is notable to call out, because it does not have a date yet, is the Ocarina of Time remake. Because they have said it is coming out in 2026, but they have not given a date. So we would imagine it's gonna come out sometime in this, obviously, fall period, but something to keep in mind.

• 49:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, I'll also call out Nintendo Switch Sports Resort.

• 49:06Chris Plante?

  Hell, yeah.

• 49:06Griffin McElroy?

  I really, really liked the Wii Sports Resort, and the vibe of that game was really rock solid, and it seems like they're going to recapture that quite nicely here. I don't like swinging around the Joy-Con 2s as much as I enjoyed swinging around a Wii Moe, but, you know, I bet it's gonna be fun.

• 49:27Griffin McElroy?

  Should we do some reader?

• 49:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Griffin McElroy?

  Obviously, we didn't cover everything. This is not comprehensive.

• 49:31Russ Frushtick?

  No, these are just some of the stuff that jumped out at us. It's a good list. It's gonna be a good year. I'm very excited. We do have some reader mail. We can go through it pretty quickly. I did last week ask for recommendations for action RPGs that I might get into, given the fact that I liked kind of what Avengers of Elliot was doing, but needed a little bit more. Brian wrote in to recommend Alabaster Dawn. It is a pinnacle top-down RPG, and pretty much all he was thinking while he was playing Elliot was that he'd rather be playing Alabaster Dawn, which is an early access still, but it is half the price of Elliot, so that's a good sign. So I'm gonna check that out. I haven't played it yet.

• 50:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it just came out in May. Yeah, I might check this out, too. It looks fun.

• 50:15Russ Frushtick?

  Another one, Smells, wrote in to recommend Sea of Stars, which I have indeed played Sea of Stars. I liked it, but I was not immediately grabbed by it. I think if I played more, it probably would have grabbed me, but I didn't necessarily have the attention span beyond like the first six or seven hours. But I liked what he was doing. I thought it was good.

• 50:35Russ Frushtick?

  The last one comes from Spencer. Y'all need to play Tombwater. It's a great little indie darling. Eldritch horror meets Zelda with great exploration and power curve. It comes in with built-in accessibility features that meet you where you want to play, which is great. Love that.

• 50:52Griffin McElroy?

  That sounds cool. Oh, God. Sorry, Steam just autoplay'd a trailer for it and it's scary. It scared me. The sounds were scary. But yeah, this looks cool.

• 51:01Russ Frushtick?

  Should we jump into honorable mentions?

• 51:03Griffin McElroy?

  Hell, yeah, dude. Okay, EverQuest Legends. Let me just talk about it. Let me just, let me just get this off my chest. Our whole family played EverQuest growing up, back in like the dial-up era. Pretty early adopters. My brother, Justin, played it. You may know him from The Besties. Played it with like his college buddies. And so it was like on our computer and I got sort of hopelessly into it, even though it was way too hard for me to like understand. I just loved kind of poking around in that world and not really playing it in the correct manner, despite the fact that I didn't know what I was doing. I still got really, really deeply sunk into it. EverQuest Legends is a sort

• 51:41Griffin McElroy?

  of re, a new take on EverQuest. It looks and feels very much like that classic EverQuest thing. It is not sort of like a spit-shine EverQuest 2-style type thing. Like, it looks and feels a lot like the original EverQuest.

• 51:56Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, are they basically doing what they did with WoW Classic but for EverQuest?

• 52:00Griffin McElroy?

  No. So WoW Classic is basically like, okay, we're gonna make it feel like you're playing World of Warcraft back when it launched, right? And there's some like quality-of-life stuff that they adopted, but for the most part, like, it's a pretty traditional, pretty faithful thing. EverQuest Legends is, what if they made EverQuest for dads? It is EverQuest for dads. It's EverQuest for dads who are in their 40s and don't have time to, you know, fucking sink eight hours farming lower guk to try and like get drops for... So it does a few things to make it a little bit more accessible. They've tuned up like the, you know, the lewd and experience and all that stuff to make that go a little bit faster. The big thing that it does that I think is so fucking cool. EverQuest was a game that

• 52:45Griffin McElroy?

  basically, it was hard and it necessitated groups. It was almost impossible to play this thing solo. There were maybe a couple of classes where you could squeak by, but it was really designed to be played in groups. And... Just by virtue of that, there was a sort of habit that formed around the hardcore players of it called multi-boxing, where you would either have three different accounts all running at the same time on your computer, or three different computers, playing three different characters that you could party up together that could like play together, right? Insane, right? But it was a way that people found of playing the game and having it sort of be on their turn. EverQuest Legends does is when you make your character, you pick like your race and your primary class, but then you also pick a secondary class, and you get access to like everything that it does. And then once you reach level 10, you get to add a third class into the mix.

• 53:29Griffin McElroy?

  So the character that you have, like the power fantasy is really, really insane, because you can make a character who, you know, can have the heels from the cleric class and the like charms of like the enchanter class, but then can also like tank stuff as a warrior or as a paladin like, and there's 16 different classes, I think, in the game at launch, and the amount of kind of like theory crafting going on around like, wow, okay, so if you can make a party in one character, like what, what kind of crazy combos can you come up with? That is already like a really, really rich vein to kind of dive into that makes the game a lot more accessible to play solo. There's other stuff too, like there's difficulty levels.

• 54:12Griffin McElroy?

  So you can just change the difficulty level that you're playing at, and it puts you in like a different server. You can have private instanced versions of every zone in the area if you don't want to like fight for, you know, mobs against other, other players. There's just like a million little things that it does that are so clever and are all truly designed to make it be an experience that feels very much like EverQuest, but is just a lot more approachable from someone who does not have as much time on their hands, who, who, you know, maybe wants to play it solo sometimes, but can play it with friends too, and wants to have like a power fantasy of like a character who can kind of like do it all. It also does the Final Fantasy XIV thing where you can like switch those classes at will

• 54:54Griffin McElroy?

  whenever you want to, and just have like one character that you're like unlocking all this different stuff and like leveling up all these different classes. But yeah, I've been playing the closed beta, the open beta for pre-orders. Starts July 1st and then the game launches July 28th and I just, I can't wait, man. It's been really fun to come back to that world as an adult and have it be so tailored for kind of where I am at in, in, in my life right now.

• 55:18Russ Frushtick?

  That's a good pitch. I was, I went in expecting to just not care at all, but that is a very good pitch.

• 55:22Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know how much it's gonna land if you didn't play EverQuest, right? Like, it is hard for me not to be the most nostalgic about this thing that I adored when I was too young to really understand it. Now that I can understand it, it's like cool to, to circle back to it and have this like really approachable version of it.

• 55:40Chris Plante?

  It's interesting just to hear about a version that's approachable and seems to respect your time to some degree, considering the legacy of EverQuest at that time was this will devour every part of your life.

• 55:53Griffin McElroy?

  I think you can still definitely play it that way if you want to. I have spent a lot of time watching EverQuest YouTubers like about their builds and like the different stuff they figured out how to do with the hybrid class system. And like, these are, these are channels with like, you know, these videos have like 400 views on it. Like, this is not like a, I don't know, a community that has stayed huge and robust through the years as other MMOs like WoW specifically have come around and eaten its fucking lunch completely. So like, the people kind of coming back to it are very much, I don't know, I feel a kinship with them where like, I, I have kids now, I can't fuck around with this thing like I used to.

• 56:32Griffin McElroy?

  What, what should I do? And I don't know, it feels like this has revitalized this ancient sort of civilization in a way that I, I don't know, I think is sort of, you know, sociologically interesting at the very least, but I've also, I've really been having fun with it.

• 56:46Russ Frushtick?

  Cool. I will give a blueprints update. We are in this point where the game is narrowing, which is to say we are running out of some threads to pull, which is making runs a little more challenging. That being said, just last night, we opened the safe in the office and it was the greatest moment of my fucking life.

• 57:10Griffin McElroy?

  Good, good stuff. Love that stuff.

• 57:11Russ Frushtick?

  Just having that mo-, because we've tried a thousand different codes in that fucking office safe. And just having that moment of finally being like, what if, oh, and trying it and having it open was like, just like utmost fantastic celebration. So.

• 57:27Russ Frushtick?

  Still hanging in. We've still got a few more threads, a few more candles to light, if you will. But we are, it's getting to be a harder game than it was, I think, several days ago.

• 57:41Griffin McElroy?

  Have you done, I promised not to spoil anything, because it's pretty, I don't know, not hidden stuff, but like, have you done the chess kind of puzzly stuff, like the chess pieces?

• 57:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yes.

• 57:54Griffin McElroy?

  Like, okay.

• 57:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Just relatively recently, just out of, but yes, we have done that with the chess pieces.

• 58:01Griffin McElroy?

  The stuff you can crack into with that, I don't know, that is.

• 58:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it did seem to open a lot of possibilities as well, those things that you unlock. So that is very exciting. It's great. It's great.

• 58:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Plant?

• 58:12Chris Plante?

  I am still playing Persona 3 Reload, and I am now fully obsessed with this game. I am, I guess, two bosses in. I have done midterms or whatever. I am, I'm in the game. What I am so impressed about this entry, more so than even Persona 4 and certainly a Persona 5, is it gets you into the game loop so fast compared to those games. You are going out, adventuring, choosing what fun stuff to do, fusing personas, all within the first five or so hours, maybe even faster, which I understand five hours is not, it's

• 58:56Chris Plante?

  not fast, but compared to Persona 5, it just feels so much more open-ended. It feels like every day you have at least two or maybe even three moments of choosing what to do with your time. And yeah, it is, it is something else. I've heard that it has a long and protracted end game, so I'm a little worried about that in terms of me committing to it, but having it on that Thor and being able to just snap the screenshot and throw it in my bag and pick at it in between errands is a game changer. And also, it just feels comfortable to play in bed. Because it doesn't weigh a lot.

• 59:39Griffin McElroy?

  You have enticed me. I didn't play a ton of Persona 3 Reload. And you have made me want to circle back to it, but I'm also now like running the math on like, okay, Persona 4 Revival comes out in like eight months. Is that gonna, am I gonna be able to finish this thing fast enough where I'm not gonna be so burnt out on Persona by the time that comes out? Cause I don't want to spo- I'm probably too scared to spoil that.

• 1:00:06Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Griffin McElroy?

  I am curious.

• 1:00:08Chris Plante?

  The other thing that's just so great about it is having finished Metaphory Fantasia and now fully finished one of these games. It is like a Souls game or a Monster Hunter. Once you have seen the end of one, you are so much better at playing and enjoying the games. And it feels like the secret language has been unlocked.

• 1:00:27Griffin McElroy?

  I can't fucking wait for Revival to come. I can't wait for people to play that game with like the new actually fun like RPG systems that they've figured out how to do in the last, you know, 15 years or however long ago that one came out.

• 1:00:40Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. I think we did it. Wow, that was a lot to cover. We have a new episode of The Resties that is up. We dove into a bunch of other Steam Next Fest demos. So you can check that out on Patreon. If you're a subscriber, it's patreon.com/thesties. We have some new subscribers that I want to call out. We have Megan G, we have Eric R, we have Matthew D, and Doug H. Thank you for being subscribers and thank you to everyone else for being subscribers. Chris Plant, do you want to recap everything we've talked about?

• 1:01:09Chris Plante?

  Absolutely not. You can go read about that on besties.fan, but I will say the honorable mentions.

• 1:01:15Griffin McElroy?

  Pocopium, Mina the Hollow, Mugenix, Mixtape, Diablo 4,

• 1:01:18Chris Plante?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:01:19Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking Pragmata, Titanium Court, Perfect Tides, Romeo's a Dead Man, Rhythm Heaven Groove, Star Fox, Platoon Raiders, Fields of Mystery, Beast of Reincarnation, Big Walk, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, Marvel's Wolverine, Fire and Love Fortunes, We've The Grinch 2, Saving Christmas, Control Resonant, Minecraft Dungeons 2, Rayman Legends Retold, Ace Combat 8, Wings of Thev, Star Wars Galactic Racer, Castlevania Belmont's Curse, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, Ocarina of Time Remake, Granthof.06, EverQuest Legends, Persona 3 Reload, Blueprints. Holy fuck. Well done. Coward.

• 1:01:50Chris Plante?

  Anyway, you can go read about all those on besties.fan. It's a free newsletter available to you right now.

• 1:01:55Griffin McElroy?

  It's Star Fox is next week. Meet back up with Slippy and Peppy and Falco in the game. We're gonna get nasty on the arena.

• 1:02:02Chris Plante?

  That's so good.

• 1:02:03Griffin McElroy?

  Please join us. Please join us again. Mount up in our wing force and we'll do, we'll do the damn thing next time on the besties. So join us for that, won't you? Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?