The Besties Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 2

The continued discussion, the grand finale. The Besties crown the GOTY of 2025!

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I've got, now I have two cushions, one for my hemorrhoids and one for my lumbar. So what I've done is basically there is the hemorrhoid cushion and then the lumbar cushion sits on top of the hemorrhoid cushion. And basically, guys, what I've done is make another smaller chair. Do you understand? I'm not sitting on the chair's back. I'm not sitting on the chair's bottom. It's another tiny chair. Do you know what I mean?

• 0:25Griffin McElroy?

  What kind of, what kind of orthopedics are we talking about for the wrists, Juice? Cause I know that that's what, what, walk me through your cockpit, I guess, is what I'm wanting to know about.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, I, the wrists, the wrist support is bad and I don't feel like, you know, I've started exploring surgical options. It doesn't seem the time to mediate my behaviors. You know what I mean? I might as well just let the wrist go.

• 0:48Griffin McElroy?

  Let the wrist are shot.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  The wrists are cooked. Okay, I'm gonna have to get the side.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  But the butt, the butt is still, we can salvage the ass.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Science can't get in there with, with the, and give me a robot butt. They'll fix my wrists.

• 1:02Chris Plante?

  I'm gonna, uh, sorry. You said the, the hemorrhoid thing is beneath the other thing?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like, the lumbar would be in the back, right?

• 1:11Griffin McElroy?

  The lumbar is behind.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  The hemorrhoid cushion is just like this.

• 1:14Chris Plante?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Sitting on top of the, I'm not gonna do another visual.

• 1:18Chris Plante?

  It's literally a chair. You literally have created the child's booster chair.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Yes, it's a booster.

• 1:23Griffin McElroy?

  A juster, a juster chair.

• 1:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 1:27Griffin McElroy?

  A special butt.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Quiet, sell it. This is gonna be the biggest thing since you tried the juster chair. Come to the merch store for a hundred and fifty dollars.

• 1:36Griffin McElroy?

  Whoa.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:55Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the year. My name is Griffin McRoy. I don't know the best game of the year, but we're gonna fucking find out.

• 2:01Chris Plante?

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

• 2:05Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Ross Roshig. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Um, welcome to the besties. This started as a game of the year. Show that went all year long, if you remember that.

• 2:17Griffin McElroy?

  And then it turned into a game of the year show that only happened every month. And then it turned into one that only happened at the end of the year.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  And it can't be stopped and it won't be stopped. And we do pick the best game every year. And there is a Wiki page that lists all the games we've picked, except for the one year that we let a robot version of our boss pick. And that that year's kind of inconsequential and the Wiki seems pretty frustrated about that, but other than that.

• 2:39Russ Frushtick?

  I think, I think one year also the giraffe picked.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  One year the giraffe might have picked.

• 2:45Griffin McElroy?

  Was there a tie one year? Man, we gotta take this seriously.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Don't get it. Don't get into it. This is the point though. Chris Plant, what are we doing today though? Like, like in terms of game, what is happening today?

• 2:56Chris Plante?

  Baby, today we're picking the game of the year of 2026, the besties.

• 3:00Russ Frushtick?

  Wait.

• 3:01Chris Plante?

  Besties.

• 3:02Russ Frushtick?

  What did you just say?

• 3:02Chris Plante?

  Of 2025, baby. It's so simple.

• 3:05Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, no, no, no, that's Fable 4. Fable 4 is 2026's game of the year.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  You heard it here first.

• 3:12Russ Frushtick?

  You know how people get the date wrong after the year? Plant's getting a jump on it.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:16Russ Frushtick?

  His checks are gonna be way off.

• 3:18Chris Plante?

  I'm gonna go sit in the corner of my juicer chair.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:22Russ 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

• 4:04Russ Frushtick?

  jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wire Cutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L E E S A dot com promo code besties for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties.

• 4:43Russ Frushtick?

  Chris Plant, do you want to go through the, um, just as a reminder for people from last week, what we narrowed down to the final eight?

• 4:51Chris Plante?

  Yes, the final eight are Clear Obscure Expedition 33, Blippo Plus, Silk Song, Absolum, Death Stranding 2, Indiana Jones, Baby Steps, and Sektory.

• 5:03Russ Frushtick?

  And Indiana Jones, for what it's worth, was a fan pick.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  True.

• 5:07Chris Plante?

  I guess, correct.

• 5:07Russ Frushtick?

  So, thank you for contributing that.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Act like we don't listen. We do.

• 5:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Russ Frushtick?

  We do.

• 5:11Chris Plante?

  Which happens, like, this happened last year, too. We had, we had a few fan picks, I think, make it last year, so we're...

• 5:16Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah. I think Dispatch probably would have made it much further if it had not been up against Expedition 33 up in the, up in the top. I'm glad that one made the cut, too. Usually how we do this is we'll get down to a top four after these and then pull one up from the past contests in order to make a clean top five. I don't know if that's how we intend to do it this year.

• 5:35Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's a good idea.

• 5:36Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool.

• 5:37Russ Frushtick?

  It sort of helps narrow down the, maybe a bad matchup, if you will.

• 5:42Griffin McElroy?

  All right, let's get into it.

• 5:45Chris Plante?

  Okay, so first up, we have Clear Obscure Expedition 33.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  God, I'm so tired of these two being, being head to head in shit.

• 5:53Griffin McElroy?

  I know. Jeff, Jeff onstage at the TG, at the, at the Viggy's.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  The war you've been waiting for.

• 5:58Griffin McElroy?

  Making a meal out of it.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Sorry, Plant, go ahead.

• 6:04Chris Plante?

  I don't need to say it out loud. Everybody knows this is the showdown everybody's been talking about. You know, how does the French take on, uh, Japanese role-playing games compared to the, uh, Pee Wee Herman-esque Klaus Nomi 1980s TV show that may or may not be a video game? Classic conversation.

• 6:22Griffin McElroy?

  Only one of these, only one of these has the quizzard in it. I'm a big Expo 33 fan, you know this, but only one of these does have the quizzard. What was everyone's favorite Blippo Plus show?

• 6:32Chris Plante?

  How many people listening to this show who have not played Expedition 33 were like, "Oh, it must be Expedition 33 that's got the quizzard." The patrons are always hanging out.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  No, the Quizert was my favorite program on Blip on Blippo Plus and it was a quiz show where people sort of also role played D and D characters who they were very, very, very particular about making sure you got their names and attributes and everything right. Uh, it's a highlight, a highlight for me. Just Zappin for me, man. Every time Just Zappin's on, we, at my house, we gotta watch the whole thing. Yeah.

• 7:06Russ Frushtick?

  I was fond, there was like a McQuacken Group style talk show, whose name I don't recall, but I particularly liked that one. That was one.

• 7:13Chris Plante?

  I mostly just watched the Zest channel. I kept waiting. I was sure that I was gonna get something. Something was gonna come through that static fuzz.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  I, um.

• 7:23Russ Frushtick?

  How the fuck do we do this?

• 7:25Speaker 00

  I mean, thirty-three is a video game and Blippo Plus is not a video game. It makes comparing the two, beyond this normal exercise, which is always pretty crazy. I mean, this, this starts to strain, strain credulity.

• 7:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Hey, Justin, I have a serious question for you.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Go ahead.

• 7:41Russ Frushtick?

  What is a video game?

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:44Chris Plante?

  Can I be excused?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  By my definition?

• 7:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I wanna, I'm curious.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  I think for something for me, I guess the, the difference that I'm using here is that, there is no way to, as far as I understand it, one does not progress. Blippo is the same thing when it begins as when it ends, right? And it might like, change or evolve, but you are not progressing it. Right?

• 8:17Chris Plante?

  It is.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  So like by, by, you are interacting with it and it is interactive media, but I think a game, for it to be like a game, there has to be a, a bit more in terms of like, uh, back and forth between the player and the, the game.

• 8:35Russ Frushtick?

  Beyond just changing channels.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Beyond just changing channels, right? Like that's a passive, like way that we can interact with TV, but that's not a meaningful distinction that would make it a video game versus like, I really, this is a, this is not, it is a, I'm, and I'm not in any way limiting it. I'm just saying like, it, it is hard to compare because. It's such a different animal.

• 8:59Griffin McElroy?

  It's not like anything else on this.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Blippo succeeds so completely at being Blippo plus.

• 9:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:05Chris Plante?

  Yes, I, I think it's tough to say what is or isn't a video game, but Blippo is so unusual in that even really arty games.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Didn't seem hard when I did it. I did such a good job.

• 9:16Chris Plante?

  No, I want to go into it.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  I made it look easy.

• 9:20Chris Plante?

  Well, because it does progress. Like, that is why it's tricky. Like, there's a story that progresses. You unlock different chunks. You know, the ten pieces. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end up agreeing with you. I, I. It's just that, like, even an art game that doesn't have a goal, you still are interacting in a virtual space. And this is quite literally, you're just flipping channels. It is, it is a famili-, it is an entirely different medium that we are already familiar with. It is why the people who made Blippo have said that, like, this isn't really a game. They're not really game makers. It is like its own thing. Um, they made it because like, that's how you could make it right now.

• 10:04Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 10:05Chris Plante?

  With a game publisher.

• 10:07Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, so we're recording this the day after we recorded part one. So it feels like I've been defending, uh, Expedition 33, uh, for, for a long time.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  I think Expedition 33 is a towering achievement in terms of storytelling and like the kind, the ability of video games to.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  I don't think there's a good comparison tonally for a game that is made by Western developers that has the sense of, uh, scale and scope and like emotional weight that Expedition 33 is communicating a lot of the time. It is so, um.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  It's not just tasteful, it is using game mechanics and the idea of game exploration as a way of like communicating something like you are feeling things because of how this game is set up like you feel things because of the mechanics of exploring this world and like it's difficult because it's communicating that like narratively and I

• 11:12Russ Frushtick?

  Can you give an example of like uh how it's communicating it?

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Sure, like uh when you are in the uh uh exploring through this uh environment. For example, you'll come across like a uh uh uh totem or like some sort of artifact that was put there to like honor the gods that were um that that have been attacking you before, right? That have been making life so difficult for you. And the the scale of the scale of that in the world that you are in and how small and torn down that is. Um and the scale of just like the level in the world that you're exploring. And the way that the game is about like grief and exploring the like like trying to find your way out of it basically and how you navigate it.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Um I the thing that clicked for me the most about Expedition 33 and it's kind of a bummer that like not kind of a bummer, but I I it didn't occur to me organically. I had to read it, but it it made so much more sense. The critical path is marked in Expedition 33 by light. It's marked by lamps.

• 12:22Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't know that.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you see a lit lamp, that is marking the way forward. It's light is different sources, but like that is what is lighting the critical path and they're like if it's an unlit area like it's not lit by those lanterns, then that is like a more of an exploration opportunity, but if you want to get back into the main. I know, right? But like

• 12:43Russ Frushtick?

  Would have been nice.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  It's still needs me like that is like yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I mean, yes, but right? It is like we we also push against like instruction manuals and handholding tutorials.

• 12:56Russ Frushtick?

  I'm not asking for like a pop up that says go to the light to get complete the quest. I think there is a smoother way to convey that information than just like.

• 13:04Griffin McElroy?

  I love I love this game. I also agree with Russ's point that like

• 13:07Speaker 00

  No, I listen, I said this to Russ, like I don't I don't um. I think that there is like stuff that is essential to it and stuff that is not essential to it that like I do think that they could and I don't want to fall in that Dark Souls trap where it's like you're defending every single choice. It's like, no, no, no, dude. It's no, you just don't get it, man.

• 13:25Griffin McElroy?

  What's tough about Expedition 33 is like the it's hard to talk about what works with the story without spoiling a big, big portion of the game. And I realize that that's a sort of like, uh, not particularly helpful kind of discussion for our game of the year kind of deliberations. But there are moments in this game that I think are going to stick around in the kind of consciousness of the gaming community, if such a thing could be like one big block in in like, it can hang with the big moments of, uh, of, of gaming history, like the would you rather bit from Bioshock or Aerith getting killed. Like

• 14:10Griffin McElroy?

  there's, there's, we can't possibly spoil that. Um, there it does huge, huge, huge shit with it with the story that, uh, would be ruining the game to talk about in this particular game.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was kind of in and then once I've, I'm now like definitely gonna finish it like that definitely after spending just like a couple more hours. But Griffin said like push a little bit past where you're at and I'm.

• 14:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I think Expedition 33 should go through in the sense that we talked about this last year. This is our group list, right?

• 14:45Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 14:45Chris Plante?

  And Blippo Plus, I love the, that game or whatever. And I should go back in caveat. Like, I'm sure there are people who worked on it who feel it's more a game than just the writers. But Expedition 33, I really adored it when it started. And the reasons that I personally ultimately don't really love this game is, is the would you kindly, is the twist stuff, is the narrative not working for me? But that is a personal taste thing and I can recognize how start of an achievement this game is.

• 15:19Griffin McElroy?

  I also don't know for sure.

• 15:23Russ Frushtick?

  If, because the gameplay wasn't totally, I was liking the gameplay and then it started getting a little bit tough to get through, as you just mentioned. If I had stuck with it and if I had gone through, I feel it's possible, and I don't know this for sure, but it's possible that the story, which I now know, because I looked it up, because I knew I wasn't going to play through the entire game.

• 15:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Russ Frushtick?

  When I looked it up, I was like, this is not necessarily landing with me, but I'm sure if I was actually playing through it.

• 15:50Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, sure.

• 15:51Russ Frushtick?

  It would have had a much more of an impact.

• 15:53Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, that's, that's the RPG, specifically the JRPG kind of formula, is you are investing your time into these characters, you're being rewarded with experience and leveling and like all of those gameplay mechanics form a feedback loop with your emotional invest, when the game works, when the game does a good job of it, and this game does a fucking fantastic job of it.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  To be fair, I actually only read the ending of Xenogears, and I think it has a lot to say about that.

• 16:16Russ Frushtick?

  Man, that's my white whale. I put Xenogears on every Android emulation device I own, and I've, someday.

• 16:24Griffin McElroy?

  I've never cracked that nut.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, there is, and listen, I think the mechanics are cool and funky, there's also certain characters that I just like refuse to engage with, because like, I don't get it. I'm not smart enough to do it, so I just don't use them. Like, that's, but I, I, still with all that being said, like, I just, I think Blippo Plus is so freaking cool. I just feel like there's, there's so much that I would like to celebrate about Expedition 33.

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 16:50Chris Plante?

  Okay, so Expedition 33, congratulations, you're moving to the final five. Next up, we have Hollow Knight: Silk Song versus Absolum.

• 16:59Griffin McElroy?

  Russ, why don't you do a Hollow Knight: Silk Song setup, since we really rushed past it?

• 17:05Russ Frushtick?

  We really did. Hollow Knight: Silk Song is the sequel to Hollow Knight, a long-awaited, long-rumored game that was in development for about seven years. The core gameplay, it's a search-action game. You play as Hornet, who is a side character in the original Hollow Knight, and here Hornet has been displaced into another realm that is facing some sort of catastrophe, impending catastrophe.

• 17:31Russ Frushtick?

  And there are religious forces and economic forces that are pressing down on this world. And you have to sort of conquer this environment and overcome a number of like incredibly hard boss fights and challenges that I think even though it's 2D, if you've played a Dark Souls game, if you played Elden Ring, like I think there's a lot of analogies there. The, the things that really stand out for me, visual storytelling, actual literal like narrative storytelling, because Hornet actually speaks in this. So there's a lot more dialogue and back and forth. Sound design through the fucking roof. Maybe my favorite sound design game of

• 18:12Russ Frushtick?

  the year. I was really bummed to see that it didn't get a nod at the, the Vigis because it certainly earned that. And yeah, I mean, it's just shocking to me that a game that was as beloved as Hollow Knight could somehow get a sequel that really felt like a reimagining of the original formula in a really ambitious way. The things that I was like nagging Hades 2 about a little bit in part one, I think Hollow Knight takes a lot more swings with the formula in a way that it feels like a true sequel.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  I don't have the as much of an understanding. I finished the first one, but, but when you say like you've been the formula, help me.

• 18:58Russ Frushtick?

  Sure. A lot of that comes in game, in the form of gameplay. There's something called crests, which kind of feel like a class based system. When you're equipping them, it changes the way your primary attack works and secondary attack and downstab, whatever. You can equip tools that act as like secondary materials. It felt like an evolution from like early Castlevania games to Symphony of the Night, where you're suddenly like making much more choices about how you build your character beyond like equipping some crests, which was what the first game was.

• 19:27Griffin McElroy?

  The, the world is also, I think, I, I think the world of Hollow Knight was great. The fact that Farloom has a, has multiple kind of like structures and systems.

• 19:41Griffin McElroy?

  That are decrepit now, right? Because of the pseudo apocalypse that has befallen it. But like, you are, you are exploring the history of this place and seeing how it is connected. Up here, they gather the silk that they use to like, extend their lifespan and gain power. And it falls down into this, the city of Graymore, where people gather it up and spin it onto spools to send back up. And you find those spools, you can collect it, but then the really poor bugs get sent down here, down to the very bottom. And then when they die, they get thrown over this bridge and you start down there in the bone pile. And you are working your way up through the kind of like caste system of, of this world.

• 20:26Griffin McElroy?

  And I think they do a pretty good job of kind of making you understand that and feel that as you are, as you're going through it.

• 20:34Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say one other nuance to the difference between the original Hollow Knight and this game is, when I finished the original Hollow Knight, a game that I absolutely fucking adored, I had no idea what the story was about. Not even an iota of an idea. And this game, I think, rights that ship pretty dramatically. I mean, there is a great story in Hollow Knight, but I had to watch an hour and a half long YouTube video to understand it. This game, when I finished it, I felt like, and was correct, I knew about 80% of the story. And then obviously there's edges that I didn't fully grok that are more hidden. But realistically, like, you come away really understanding this world, how it works, what the motivations are for all the characters. And it makes kind of the conquering of the challenge that much more impactful.

• 21:19Griffin McElroy?

  I want to ask you, Russ, because I feel like you're the biggest sort of proponent of, of this game. Now that we're a few months out from it and the conversation has kind of settled a bit. And the game itself has received a couple of updates, sort of addressing the difficulty stuff. How, how do you feel about the, the difficulty of the game in general? And sort of like the curve that it, it puts before players now that we're like this far removed from it?

• 21:46Russ Frushtick?

  I feel, uh, unequipped to talk about it.

• 21:49Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 21:49Russ Frushtick?

  Because when I finished it, it was before the balance patches happened, or at least pretty close to that. I have heard that it, the game is more approachable, which I think is 100% the right move. And it bums me out that like, I know, Justin, you had struggles with it, especially early on.

• 22:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's, yeah, it's tough. Like it, it.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  I, I really, I just felt like it is, it drilled down on the audience. It seemed designed for like a smaller subset of the audience to love it even more. You know, which is like, that's cool. I just was on the outside of that kind of, because it was like, the things that I like about the game, like the exploration and that kind of stuff. It, I got lost in the, how frustrated I was and like how, how difficult I was finding it to like make progress and stuff. So like that, it just didn't, which is like, it just didn't click for me. Um, and I know that I wasn't the only one, but I also don't,

• 22:53Speaker 00

  I don't know. It's just not the game, you know, like I, I don't want to like,

• 22:56Russ Frushtick?

  Well, but I would, but I would add, I don't, not only you're, you're not the only one. I think the developers even acknowledged that you weren't the only one to the point where they actually made the game easier, like boss fights early on and like punishments for death early on and unlocking benches early on. Dramatically cheaper to unlock, uh, you know, uh, you get more tools, more, uh, whatever. So I don't think, I mean, it's difficult, obviously, because I know the experience that you had was like right at launch and that was the experience.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  That's tough, man. But that's like, yes, it's neither here nor there. I mean, it is, I'm, I'm really trying not to be. I, you know,

• 23:35Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, I,

• 23:36Griffin McElroy?

  My, my feelings about the game have changed a bit since, since finishing it. Uh, mostly because I, I think the difficulty is like,

• 23:48Griffin McElroy?

  it works against the game and I understand that it's a hard game and it's like part of that, the challenge and the triumph. Like that's all, that's all part and parcel of the like experience of conquering this hostile world. And that's very, very cool. But the, when I think back about the amount of time I spent farming rosary beads and, uh, the number of, you know, runs through the fucking hollow muck or whatever the fuck that awful swampy zone was like, that stuff was so, uh, I don't know. It seemed pointless. It seemed like a waste of time and not enjoyable. And there was a lot. I think there was a lot of it, especially once you get to the

• 24:31Griffin McElroy?

  once you get to the third act and now the world is actually much more difficult to to explore, much more punishing. There's so many moments in that game that are exhilarating and so many, like, the progression of it is obviously great because you need every little aspect that you can get, every little inch of advantage that you can get over the world. But I don't know, there's some parts that just kind of seemed clunky in terms of how the difficulty was managed. And that's a shame because I think it is, on the whole, a pretty masterful kind of game and definitely my favorite like search action game that came out this year with a bullet.

• 25:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's certainly up there for maybe all time for me.

• 25:16Griffin McElroy?

  Absalom, I don't know, can really hang here for the reasons I kind of, I mean, I love this game, but I also do still kind of feel like it is the, we are going to think back on it when Absalom 2 comes out and be like, okay, so this was the proof of concept. This was the, and it's a good ass proof of concept. And I think folks who are really into beat'em ups are definitely eating good this year. But I don't know that it is on the same kind of level as a Hollow Knight Silksong.

• 25:53Chris Plante?

  I just want to say three nice things about Hollow Knight Silksong. One, I think it looks really pretty. Two, I like that it wrestled with Catholic faith in a way I did not expect.

• 26:03Griffin McElroy?

  Holy shit, yeah.

• 26:04Chris Plante?

  And number three, that song that that one character sings.

• 26:11Chris Plante?

  I love it. Love it.

• 26:13Russ Frushtick?

  That was actually really good.

• 26:14Griffin McElroy?

  Did you hear Kirk Hamilton's instrumentalized version of it that he did? No. I can't remember if it was Triple Click or Strong Songs, but it was, that one got stuck in my head. It's a real earworm. That's a good stuff. I am not a Silksong person. I agree with what Griffin said yesterday. You look at the list of things here, Absalom.

• 26:37Chris Plante?

  Feels the most like, uh, we're gonna see Absalom 2, that is the full version of what that thing aspires to be, and it's gonna be absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible.

• 26:49Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know.

• 26:50Chris Plante?

  But I, I do think Silk Song moves forward here.

• 26:52Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to say, uh, one last thing on Absalom before that happens. Um, I don't like, taking the like nostalgia bait of most of these beat'em ups out of the equation. I don't know that there's a beat'em up I want to play more than Absalom from like a minute to minute.

• 27:08Griffin McElroy?

  Oh dude, for sure. It's, it's, I mean, it is going to stay, uh, alongside Sektory as an infinitely installed game on my, on my Rogue ally X I'm gonna come back to. Um, I, I, I finished it with Henry. I actually played through most of it myself on my computer. And then I was like, hey, Henry would love this. Put it on the Switch and we played through all of it again and, and beat the game. And then it kind of like, I don't know, fell off a little bit after that. It's, it's tough because the thing I have to compare it to is Castle Crashers, which we've been playing a shit ton of because of the, the Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out. And that one, like every time you finish the game, it's like, holy shit, here's a new guy. You just unlocked a whole new guy. And also you can go on Steam Workshop and make that guy look like John Wick if you want to.

• 27:52Griffin McElroy?

  Get crazy with it. Um, so it's just like, I don't know, a, a content question. The gameplay, the core gameplay of Absalom is, you know, rules.

• 28:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Griffin McElroy?

  But I, I think Hollow Knight is, is so fucking big, man. It's so big.

• 28:05Russ Frushtick?

  And getting bigger. They announced DLC.

• 28:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 28:09Chris Plante?

  Okay. So that means Hollow Knight Silk Song, you move forward to the final five. Up next, we have Death Stranding 2.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  This one's for the dads.

• 28:18Chris Plante?

  Indiana Jones.

• 28:20Griffin McElroy?

  Dads only.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Dads only.

• 28:24Chris Plante?

  Uh, who wants to take Indy?

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. I'll take him in with this fight. Um, the Indiana Jones and the gray circle.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Best circle, if you want, if you like, I don't remember the name, Indiana Jones, the Great Circle.

• 28:40Chris Plante?

  Great Circle, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Great Circle.

• 28:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that sounds really good.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Um, rather than try to adapt the character Indiana Jones into a video game. It adapts Indiana Jones movies into a video game.

• 28:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 28:55Chris Plante?

  That's really good.

• 28:55Russ Frushtick?

  I like that.

• 28:56Chris Plante?

  For sure.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  It's like a meaningful distinction where if you, cause if you, if you take Indiana Jones, the character and make a video game about him, that's been done a lot, right? Because there's Nathan Drake and, and all, and all those and like, they have the feeling of an Indiana Jones movie, but you are still playing as a, basically a pitfall. You know what I mean? It's basically a little hairy. You're running around, you're jumping, you're climbing, you're shooting dudes. This takes the character Indiana Jones and it centers him, but also it, the experience of watching an Indiana Jones movie with the walking around a beautiful historic environment and the sense of scale that that conveys

• 29:37Speaker 00

  and the, the sometimes like quiet introspection of like solving a puzzle and knowing that it could break bad at any second. And the, the music cues and like the visuals and stuff and all that, that things that feel aesthetically like Indiana Jones, um, are, are brought into a video game. So like, it is not a shoot them up. It is not a like run around and mow down as many guys as you can. It, it seeks to be true to the experience of like being that character in a movie.

• 30:06Russ Frushtick?

  And I've. Not to mention the fact that the game, the fact that the game opens up, it's such a fucking bold swing. The game opens up with you playing the most famous Indiana Jones scene in history, which is the opening of the.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Purpose, right?

• 30:20Russ Frushtick?

  It is so impressive. This works, like that's them proving this will work.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:25Chris Plante?

  Which it can't be overstated how tough this is because some of the greatest video game developers of all time have tried to do this and failed. Uncharted and Tomb Raider, no secret, wanted to be Indiana Jones games. And they end up having you kill hundreds of people across it. And whenever people would ask about this, it'd be like, well. Ultimately, it's a video game. You have to have it be a game where you shoot people and you do all that and you have to have the action. And then like, and that's the only way to make a game that feels like this. And the reality is it never quite felt like Indiana Jones. What's so impressive about this is that it, it actually feels like being the person Indiana Jones. And even the way that they've written the story, the way they've paced it,

• 31:10Chris Plante?

  is that you don't have to mainline it. You don't have to get to the end of each quest. You are often, in the beginning, going around the Vatican, discovering these additional mysteries. And it feels more like a TV show where it's like, well, yes, I can get around. I can solve all of this. I don't have to rush to the very end. Where I think a lot of the uncharted Tomb Raider, because the stakes are so high, because you're killing people. It is a full sprint from point A to point B, which just, again, doesn't feel like how an archaeologist turned a mystery solver would go about their life.

• 31:47Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, also, uh, Troy Baker, like, it's easy to say, like, he, he does a very good, very convincing indie impression. I think, I think he goes beyond, pretty well beyond that. And that is like not-

• 32:02Chris Plante?

  He's doing a lot more than Indiana. I mean, it's so much more, probably more Indiana Jones talking than Harrison Ford has ever done in his entire life. Almost certainly, right? Exponentially.

• 32:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And it's like, incredible. I don't know that I've ever seen that before where an actor or a voice actor has like, taken on, arguably, one of the most famous character roles in like, movie history, certainly. Uh, and truly made it like, his, made it his own thing, really stepped into it while, while being obviously, sounding a fucking lot like Harrison Ford, absolutely. I think it's, I think it is one of the greatest voice acting performances.

• 32:41Chris Plante?

  Certainly on the level of like the Joker, uh, Mark Hamill's the Joker.

• 32:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, absolutely. Like, pretty, pretty iconic stuff.

• 32:47Chris Plante?

  Yeah, on that level, if, if Mark Hamill had already done it and then someone was like, you gotta do it again, just like that, do it like-

• 32:55Speaker 00

  That so people think it's Mark Hamill doing the Joker like it's wild. It's a, it's a really wild performance. Good, good on them.

• 33:01Chris Plante?

  Credit to the writers because that only works if you have a ton of dialogue that actually sounds like what Indiana Jones is supposed to sound like. And, and it gets the humor, which is a very slight humor. Uh, it, it nails it.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  I feel like for me.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Uh, if, if I got a dang Indy for something and I've, I've spent a lot of time with Indiana Jones, but it's been split up into a lot of segments. I feel like where Indiana Jones messes up is it still has too many compromises towards being a video game. And when that starts to bump, they will go, they will lean towards the Indiana Jones side of the needle before they'll lean towards the video game side of the needle. So like, things like there's 15 bottles around this world scattered around this world. You need to collect them. Like that does not feel very much like Indiana Jones, but it's still in the game. And you still have the stuff of like, well, I've got to change my outfit because this isn't what I'm supposed to be wearing.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  And the longer you're in those environments, doing that sort of like middling shit. It starts to feel like Disney with the lights off. You're like, okay, I get it. It's like this guy's doing this and he does this turn a little bit. It's just like, it skews a little, it, it, it is just like a little bit too much, like. Still feeling like they need to do that kind of video game stuff. Like you want an excuse to, to hang out in those worlds. And things like that, it just, the ideas that they have come up with for how you spend time in that world aren't especially like. Fun. And every time that I have played this game, I will spend like two or three hours and it. I think I said somewhere that it's like.

• 34:42Chris Plante?

  Hanging out with your, watching sports with your dad?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. That, that was that on recording?

• 34:47Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I think you said that a couple of episodes ago.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's, that's, I like it. It's just, it's. It almost feels more like. It's very impressive that they achieved all of it and it is pleasant, but it doesn't quite. Get past that to where it's like, you really want to, I found it very compulsively playable.

• 35:08Chris Plante?

  I will somewhat contradict myself in that if you are just about to play this for the first time, even though you don't have to have that propulsion and the story works without going from point A to point B, I do think the game works better if you actually do hit the point A to point B and then go back and do everything after that. Especially because the disguises are so central to pretty much everything and you get them by going through the main, the main line.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  I know this is a very Justin McElroy kind of thing, but I've been stuck at the beginning of the Himalayas area because you have to trudge through snow and it's so fucking boring that I make it like five minutes before I'm like, fuck, I can't, I can't, I can't do it. And then when I close it and I reopened it, it's like, ah, fuck, I'm back at the beginning of it. God, it's so boring. I can't do it. I need to get it. I'm sorry.

• 35:57Chris Plante?

  I think climbing. You know where it's fun to trudge through snow?

• 36:01Griffin McElroy?

  Is it Death Stranding 2? Yeah. I haven't hit any snow in Death Stranding 2. Is there snow?

• 36:05Russ Frushtick?

  It's, I would say like 60% of the way through the game, there's a fuckload of snow.

• 36:09Griffin McElroy?

  A lot of snow.

• 36:11Russ Frushtick?

  Love to hear that. Yeah, we, we talked a lot about Death Stranding 2 in part one of this. And my feelings haven't changed. When I first played the game, it was scratching every fucking inch of my brain in ways that they wanted to. Like this was all, this is not like a whoopsie accident. Hideo Kojima did like a a wacky thing and that worked out to be like a fun gameplay mechanic. Like they just have dialed this game into

• 36:40Russ Frushtick?

  just in incredible levels of precision.

• 36:44Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's his best, I think it's his best game. I genuinely, I genuinely do. And I, I've been kind of slow to come to that. But like, it does so much stuff that succeeds as a game. This idea of being a long haul kind of delivery man who is putting the world back together and building connections with people and like leveling up all these different areas, like all mechanically, it's so fun and so compelling. And also. You have a little doll who is inhabited by a man and he is animated at a different frame rate than everything else in the game. Like, there's still so much really genuinely super weird shit going on and it doesn't, it doesn't lose that while kind of like, you

• 37:27Griffin McElroy?

  know, heavily featuring good gameplay mechanics as well.

• 37:30Russ Frushtick?

  It's also cogent, which is more than I can say about every fucking Kojima game ever, including Death Stranding One.

• 37:36Griffin McElroy?

  It might be the first one that you can understand on your first playthrough.

• 37:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. Yeah, everything tracks. Um, and a lot of that is editing. Like, a lot of it is, if you want to obsess about this stuff, you can dive into the in-game Wikipedia about what the fuck Kyro crystals are. But if you're just worried about the key beats of the story and the people that you're meeting, the game will convey that stuff very clearly in ways that like, are very affable. There's a character named Rainy, uh, who is just like this delightful ray of sunshine ironically, uh, and you build this, uh, community of people that are like living on your core ship and you want to go back there because you want to see scenes with them.

• 38:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Russ Frushtick?

  Um, it's, and you guys try to jump, by the way, sorry, but this is a little bit of a later thing. You can build a ramp in this game. This ramps in a lot of different games, that's fine. You can build a ramp in this and I was like, eh, I'm not gonna, why do, why do I need a ramp? I'll build ladders and roads, whatever the fuck. But someone else that I was connected to built a ramp in a spot that was near me and I was just running around. So I was like, what happens if I just run off of this ramp? And I sprinted directly at the ramp and Norman Reedus flies into the air about 600 feet and starts doing fucking backflips. And on the screen it says extreme, double extreme, triple extreme every time you're doing a backflip. And suddenly I'm the, on the other side of this river

• 39:03Russ Frushtick?

  that I was trying to get across.

• 39:04Griffin McElroy?

  How does he survive? The descent.

• 39:06Chris Plante?

  You you land safely. The Kyro crystals in the air bring you peacefully to.

• 39:12Griffin McElroy?

  I love it. We can say this game is cogent until the fucking cows come home. It is still gonna be like, how does that work? Kyro Kyro.

• 39:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Griffin McElroy?

  Kyro magic.

• 39:21Chris Plante?

  Kyro crystals. I'm gonna I'm gonna say a thing that's a spoiler for an item, but not for the story. So if you don't want to hear it, just skip ahead like 15 seconds. You can do the exact same thing that Fresh is talking about, but instead of running and jumping off of it, you can ride a giant coffin as a surfboard through the entire game. A floating Kyro crystals, fortunately help it float coffin.

• 39:49Griffin McElroy?

  Awesome.

• 39:49Chris Plante?

  The game rocks. You can meet a guy who makes pizza and he will teach you how to use a pizza dough training up like plastic, little flat, wobbly plastic to beat the shit out of bad guys.

• 40:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:03Chris Plante?

  And it's just there. If you want to find it, it's it's a valid part. There's Griffin.

• 40:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Chris Plante?

  There is a Pokemon aspect of this game.

• 40:12Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 40:13Chris Plante?

  Waiting to be discovered.

• 40:15Griffin McElroy?

  Now I'm starting to think this is a frog fraction situation where this shit's not actually in the game, but you know, I'm probably not going to.

• 40:20Chris Plante?

  Just playing, yeah.

• 40:20Griffin McElroy?

  Get to that point.

• 40:23Russ Frushtick?

  If you were to say, if you were to jump right in and and start playing again, I think it would carry you through for.

• 40:28Griffin McElroy?

  That was the thing I was gonna say. I when I got back into it for, you know, being a little bit more informed for this game of the year discussion, the uh, that in game Wikipedia, the story so far thing that it offers is truly, truly helpful, really, really great at like telling you exactly what was going on in the story when you stopped playing it. I think it probably looks at you like PS5 activity log and it's like, god damn, man, it's been two months. Okay, so um Kyro crystals.

• 40:56Chris Plante?

  It does. And when you boot it back up after you haven't played for a little bit, it pops up text and it's like, here's what was happening. That's great, man.

• 41:03Griffin McElroy?

  It's so helpful.

• 41:03Chris Plante?

  I forgot about that. That's genius, man. I'm gonna go back and play it today. Uh, guys, I I'm gonna I'm reading the winds here. It seems like Norma Reedus' funky ass is about to slide right up past Indiana Jones.

• 41:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 41:17Chris Plante?

  That's how I feel. That's what I'm starting to feel in the air, guys.

• 41:21Russ Frushtick?

  I think you're right.

• 41:23Chris Plante?

  And welcome to the, uh, the, the pain. The pain is here.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 41:28Chris Plante?

  We have baby steps versus sectory. Two games. I think there's a lot of love for it. It might be a perfect split down the middle of which one could go through. So, uh, hey, who wants to pitch sectory first?

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Shit, man. Sectory is, uh, okay. I don't want to oversell it. Sectory's, uh, if you liked score chase games, dual stick score chase games, not unlike, and in fact, quite similar to Geometry Wars. Uh, then you will love sectory, which has, uh, is a dual stick shooter, just like those. Uh, except that the, it has several different modes that you can, uh, that, that feel very, very different to play. Um, that are each using like slightly different mechanics. But I think what sets sectory apart is that there is a lot of technique.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  And there's a lot of ways in which you can, um, there's a lot of strategy in how you play moment to moment. For example, you're collecting these things called selectors and they are basically like, um, raising you up a ladder, a ladder of power ups where they, as it gets more expensive, the power up is better. But you gotta cash it in at a certain point. So you are basically saving up for a better power up. Or, you know, using it earlier, um, and, and the, uh, pace at which you use those, the ones that you decide to get. The times at which it is the best time to collect those and is like one small facet of how you can improve your odds of like survivability or, or collecting points and stuff.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  And that is, uh, there are so many mechanics like that in sectory where it is not clearly laid out. It is not explained to you. But as you play more, you can start to intuitively and like uncover some of these techniques. In a way that reminds me more of like a Bellatro or it is not this level of like discoverability. There's a lot more skill involved, but there is a, a, a, a way in which it reminds me of Bellatro. When you, uh, realize that certain possibilities are possible.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  It really can blow the game wide open in a way where you don't know how you were struggling by before.

• 43:49Griffin McElroy?

  There's also the upgrade, the upgrade cards. You're like building a deck by choosing.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:54Griffin McElroy?

  Different like, uh, types of upgrades that you will get like a handful of as you go through the campaign mode. And those really spice, spice things up quite a bit.

• 44:05Russ Frushtick?

  There's just like a lot of player agency, which I don't think you see in these sorts of games. These arcade games tend to be, you know, the fucking Pacman's of the world. Like, I'm sure there's nuance to it for extremely hardcore people, but realistically, everyone else is just running from the ghosts. And here it's like, oh, I'm going to decide missiles. Actually, I need an extra shield here. I'm going to spend it on that. Or, oh, I'm going to pick these cards because I think they're going to synergize well together. There's just like a lot of ways you can kind of evolve your play style to fit what you're good at.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  There is also a, this is not necessarily the kind of achievement that we typically recognize here on Besties, but there is a stunning amount of information being conveyed to you in this game visually with like, in an incredibly complex battlefield. There is so much information and is like parseable, like you can parse so much in a way that feels overwhelming, but also like really can help to lock you in. You can get a sense of everything that is going on just from like the way the different shapes are drawn and move and colored and stuff. It still has that simplistic sort of geometry wars, line based style, but it,

• 45:15Speaker 00

  it expands it in a way that feels like frankly, kind of like overwhelming sometimes from a sensory perspective in a good way.

• 45:21Chris Plante?

  It's hard to talk about it because it is subconscious, right? Like when you are playing this game, it's not like you are thinking strategy. You are feeling whatever the flow is that you get into and you are evading things. But I will go back and watch video of when I played or watch other people play. And it doesn't make sense. There is so much on the screen that how you could possibly know to dodge all these different things, manage all these different enemies, all the projectiles and still accomplish your goals and get to wherever the power ups are or not use the power up. Or do any of these things. It's, it, like you said, it's a tremendous amount of information that the brain in theory shouldn't be able to.

• 46:01Griffin McElroy?

  Makes you feel like a genius. Like it makes you feel because you are able to parse that. Like there's so, I would say at least two or three times while I'm playing this game, I each run. I have a moment where I'm about to fly between two guys and I think I'm dead. I'm cooked. This is over. I, sometimes I'll close my eyes. That's it. I'm done. And then I, oh my God. Oh my God. I pulled it out. That's thrilling. That's every run has something like that. It feel, it is that like. Thrilling every single time.

• 46:30Chris Plante?

  Right away. Like you, very, very early on in playing this game, you feel that you're not training up to do that. You will feel it within the first half hour of playing the game. It feels like sitting down with a symphony. And you've never played violin and they're like, you know, just keep up. And you're like, oh, I'm actually doing pretty okay. I'm right here with you.

• 46:48Griffin McElroy?

  And you get, all the modes kind of build on each other too. Like they're different ones. My favorite is still gates where you're flying, you don't, you can't shoot. And the only way you have of killing enemies is by picking up power ups or flying through these gates that spawn in. So it's all about like. Not killing stuff as long as you can, and then doing a huge fucking burst and, and clearing out the whole screen. And like that teaches you how to avoid enemies and every mode is just constantly building. So you are, you, your skills are improving until you reach that sort of superhuman. ESP level like intuition. Uh, it's, it's, it's really, really, really excellent. Uh, I am shocked this is not a much bigger game. Maybe it's just because it came out of when it came out, which was like fairly recently.

• 47:32Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's timing and it's also, this is a game that doesn't necessarily stream great. It's really hard to parse if you're just watching someone play.

• 47:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, maybe that's it.

• 47:42Russ Frushtick?

  Wouldn't necessarily be the most watchable game. I think it's just, and it's just like a marketing challenge. Like this is.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  It's also depressing hard to market a game based on like, it's really fucking fun. It's like just really fun to play. Like it's, it's so fun.

• 47:53Chris Plante?

  The good news is the developer thought that he was gonna make zero dollars off this, was expecting it to totally bomb and that he would have to go back to maybe working in a studio. And it has surpassed those expectations. So.

• 48:08Griffin McElroy?

  Great. Good. I hope we can do our part.

• 48:11Russ Frushtick?

  We'll see.

• 48:12Griffin McElroy?

  Baby steps is sort of the opposite game.

• 48:15Russ Frushtick?

  It's actually, can I make an argument for why it's not?

• 48:18Griffin McElroy?

  I want it so bad. Give me this argument, Russ.

• 48:20Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so Justin was just talking about Insectory, you're making these like minute to minute choices. And you kind of look at it, at the field of enemies that are before you and you're like, there is no fucking way I'm making through this, but I'm just gonna give it a shot, because why the fuck not? And that is the feeling that I feel frequently when playing Baby Steps. Because you'll come upon a fucking sideways house surrounded by goo that makes you slip and slide. And you are like, there's no fucking way this is gonna work out. And for me at least, I was like, that was fun to like, try to like, hammer went my way through it. Now, obviously, very different games, but I do think that the player agency vibes

• 49:02Russ Frushtick?

  and the feeling of player control that you have in Baby Steps is similar. I also think you make really funny choices in Baby Steps. We mentioned a few of them earlier and I mentioned, I think when we first reviewed this, I mentioned this moment, but I'll just call attention to it again. Pretty late in the game, you get to a cliffside, like a cliff face, and you're on top of it. And on the side of the cliff face is a plank. The plank is probably about eight feet long. And at the end of the plank is a hat. And as you're playing throughout the game, there are many hats that you can collect. And if you bring the hats to like, these save points, campfires, you get like bonus scenes. And I was like, I'll fucking go for it. I'll go for the hat, whatever.

• 49:46Russ Frushtick?

  I've walked along a number of planks. I realize how dangerous it is if I fall, but I'm not gonna fall because I'm good at this. And I make it to the end of the plank and I hit the button to like, reach down for the hat. And I like, just the center of gravity tips in such a way that I fall ass over teakettle, down 200 feet, down to the bottom. And the fact that my immediate reaction wasn't, fuck this game, I'm never playing it again. But instead, this is hilarious and oh, now that I've fallen, I've found this new area that I've never explored before and I didn't even know was here. And I'm gonna have a new experience I didn't have before. That is the like shit that gets me going because I feel like I'm in total control of the experience.

• 50:30Russ Frushtick?

  Um, man, this is really, this is maybe the hardest one yet. I feel like.

• 50:35Chris Plante?

  I, yeah, I, I adore Baby Steps. It might be my personal game of the year. I don't know. It's kind of tied. I, I think it is a hard one to sell to people. It's so dumb to say like it's an acquired taste, but like more than I think any game that is at this point on the list, it is either it resonates with you or it duh deeply doesn't because it does ask so much of you. And I think it does have this kind of masochistic streak, or at least it feels like a masochistic streak if you're not on its wavelength. For me, I don't think it is that at all because I think it is constantly telling you, if you don't like it, quit. That's the whole point. Uh, but that's a hard sell because then if you quit the game, you're not going to want to

• 51:19Chris Plante?

  put it at the end of your, uh, your end of year list.

• 51:23Russ Frushtick?

  I also wouldn't even necessarily call it masochistic. It's actually pretty, at least in comparisons to like games that Bennett has made previously, but also in comparisons to games like Spelunky, for example. More often than not, if you fall in Baby Steps, I would say 90% of the time, if you fall on Baby Steps, you will fall one inch to the, to the floor. You will, you know, there are moments and these moments will be very clear to you because you're crossing over a river or going across a chasm, whatever it is, where you know that the stakes are much, much higher, but those moments are rare. And I think this is the one area that I think this game does better than other previous Benifati games is you have the pacing of moments of tension, short

• 52:07Russ Frushtick?

  moments of tension, followed by long moments of like exploration, fuck around.

• 52:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Griffin McElroy?

  The most difficult part of Baby Steps for me was not the like falling and losing progress. As much as it was like

• 52:20Griffin McElroy?

  three or four times so far while I've been playing the game, I feel like I have had no fucking idea where to, where to go. And that like I will walk along a big, long ridge, looking for any kind of ingress and find absolutely, find nothing, uh, and not realize like, oh, actually over here, there's like three boulders that you can, that you can get up. That stuff is, is infrequent, I think. But to me, that is like the main difficulty. That's the thing that makes me bounce off is just walking around and feeling like, okay, well, I don't, I don't know how to progress. When I fall and lose progress, it's like, okay, I know what to do. I know what I should have done differently there. Sucks when I lose a hat doing that and floats away down a river, but that's not here nor there.

• 53:06Chris Plante?

  I'll say one more thing, cause I, I have a feeling I'm kind of playing for the five spot really for, for Baby Steps.

• 53:14Chris Plante?

  I think about this game constantly, just like the, the little things. The way that the game builds to this idea of why can you not accept help? And when will you accept help? And when will you take the easy route? And again, you can think about that at the very end where there is an almost impossible path up the side of a mountain or literal stairs. You can take one or the other. Which one are you going to take? And there is an instinct in video games to say, I'm going to take the hard thing. Cause that's the challenge, right? Like that's the, that's the whole point. I shouldn't, I shouldn't take the easy thing. And yet at the very beginning of the game, when you are walking up a muddy path,

• 53:57Chris Plante?

  you on a, on a micro level are going to think, what is the easiest way for me to get up this? You're not going to think, how could I make sure that I choose the hardest version? You're not going to think, well, I want to climb up the wall now. You're going to think, well, I want to get to the next point of the game. And it is this weird thing where the micro and the macro in this game are constantly in conversation with each other in a way that I don't feel very often in video games. It's so holistic, this video game.

• 54:26Chris Plante?

  Yeah, something special.

• 54:28Russ Frushtick?

  I took the stairs, by the way.

• 54:30Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 54:30Russ Frushtick?

  If you're wondering. I tried the hard path once. I gave it a good go and I was like, eh, whatever. I fell and I took the stairs.

• 54:36Chris Plante?

  It does make fun of you either way, too. There's a cat scene that triggers either way to let you know, like, what are you doing? Um, I, I, I think Sectory goes through. I think it is a game bit.

• 54:50Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think we need to, we can, or Justin, actually, Justin hasn't weighed in on Baby Steps if there's anything.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah, I, I've said my piece about Baby Steps. I mean, I'm, I'm, I've been pretty clear about it. I, I, I had Baby Steps as cool as hell. It's not Sectory. It's, it's cool, though.

• 55:08Chris Plante?

  But Sectory is actually, it's not Sectory.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Sectory is like, best player game of the year. I was like, you know what I mean? Okay, so can we bring it to a vote, to an official legal vote?

• 55:20Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Okay. Sectory.

• 55:24Chris Plante?

  Um, Sectory, I'll tell, I'll have Sectory, please.

• 55:27Russ Frushtick?

  It would be Baby Steps for me.

• 55:29Chris Plante?

  It would be Baby Steps for me.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Now we're cooking, Frankie. Now we got it. Now we're cooking.

• 55:33Chris Plante?

  How have we made it this far without a deadlock? That's crazy.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  Baby Steps sucks. Here we go.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  Um, I would recommend Sectory to almost anybody.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Pretty much. And I think that Baby Steps, there's a lot of people that maybe don't need that in their life. Maybe don't, shouldn't, shouldn't get into Baby Steps. And I think that it's so cool what it's doing. And I think that they, I think it's really cool what, uh, Blippo Plus did in, in a similar vein. I think that's very cool. But in terms of like, what I wanna award, um, this is like, the, the, the, the attention to design and like, the, the work that went into that. Like, I, this is the kind of thing that I wanna award. The fact that it kinda spread through the four of us, like, like, uh, uh, wildfire.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Then other, get other people hooked on it. Uh, and I just really, I think Sectory, that's the kinda thing that I would, would feel.

• 56:34Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so we need to be careful here, because I, I think everyone here loves both games. So we need to be mindful that this doesn't turn into a.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  That's why I made the joke about it, Russ, but please, your paternalism is going down a lot smoother.

• 56:47Griffin McElroy?

  Can I say, can I say this? Let's push them both through. I think, I think this could be a fourth and fifth situation, or, or.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  I do think that it's worth trying to choose between these two in case there's a different game that we want to pull up.

• 57:02Russ Frushtick?

  I think that makes sense.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  It may be Baby Steps. It may be Sectory. I don't know. But I think in the spirit of the, we don't want to let ourselves off the hook too much.

• 57:13Griffin McElroy?

  The conversation has been so focused on which one reaches out to a broader audience. I don't know if that's the thing that we want to, it may be the only kind of unifying thing since these are two pretty dramatically different games. I am more interested in like our take on them rather than like how well they can attract other, other audiences, other folks.

• 57:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Griffin McElroy?

  I really like both of these games a whole lot, um, and would be fine with either of them taking, you know, that, that fourth position.

• 57:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I would, I would also say that I don't, you know, I, I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think they're that, even though it's on its surface, I don't think they're that far apart, um, insofar as I think they are both before anything, game design games. Like, I don't think they're, even though Baby Steps has, has a lot of narrative beats to it. I don't think it's primarily a narrative game. I think it's primarily a gameplay game.

• 58:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Russ Frushtick?

  And both of these are both player expression, player expression games in terms of how you take a challenge and conquer it. Obviously, in the case of Sectory, you're doing that over the span of three seconds every

• 58:20Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 58:20Russ Frushtick?

  loop, but Baby Steps is much more of a slow-paced, methodical thing. But I do think there is a, a connection there.

• 58:28Griffin McElroy?

  When I look at what we've already picked, we have Expedition 33, we have Hollow Knight: Silk Song, we have Death Stranding 2. Sectory does fill a spot that we don't have filled on that list. If, if what we're trying to do is kind of like round out the different types of games.

• 58:44Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think we are.

• 58:45Griffin McElroy?

  Enjoy.

• 58:45Russ Frushtick?

  The fun. We've never done.

• 58:46Griffin McElroy?

  The fun.

• 58:47Russ Frushtick?

  The fun one.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  One fun one. I, yeah, guys, here's what I, here's what's stuck in my head. I, I plan, I, I think you're right. I also think though, that that is the thing that we talk, we should talk about when we're at a five position, right? It's like it making a list that feels whole. I can't get past this. You know, this was about bouncing in my head is like, I love Sektory. For me, Sektory might be some of the most fun I've had this year. I don't know if it's my game here. It's like some of the most fun I've had this year. I can't shake the feeling to which it is a better mousetrap. And, and I do think that if you don't have the familiarity going in, it may not hook in the same, it may not fire off those same neurons, you know what I mean?

• 59:31Speaker 00

  And, and I think that maybe that is part of the story we're seeing play out with like it not making a hu, a more huge splash. But like, it does seem like if you don't have the affinity, and, and I swear to God, some weird geometry wars like neurons must be kicking back there. Like kicking around still, which is kind of weird, but like, I don't, uh, I, I don't know that it's, it's not taking the level of swing that Baby Steps is taking and succeeding in a, in a lot of different ways. In a way that's like, they made something that was fun to watch streaming, which is kind of the only way to get something in front of an audience these days in a, in a sense. But also like, is a meaningful experience to have on your own. I think that's pretty cool.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I don't know. I think that's pretty neat.

• 1:00:17Griffin McElroy?

  I'm, I'm all into, I think I would change my, my vote to baby, to break the log jam, change my vote to, uh, to, to Baby Steps.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Oh, good. Sektory rules, Baby Steps sucks, but I'm out. Fortunately.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  That's the way it goes sometimes. Uh, okay. So

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  there's a, there's four games that are definitely in the top five. Those four games are Expedition 33, Hollow Knight Silk Song, Death Stranding 2, Baby Steps.

• 1:00:48Russ Frushtick?

  And let me just say, that is a Russ Fruschek list right there. Way more than last year.

• 1:00:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:00:53Russ Frushtick?

  I got fucking knocked out last year.

• 1:00:55Griffin McElroy?

  This is your comeuppance.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Dude, it's a funky year, dude. I wish Lies of P2 came out this year, man. Can you imagine Lies of 2, Lies of P, the sequel came out, Lies of P, the squiggle, this time Geppetto's back, like something, be the funkiest year ever.

• 1:01:10Russ Frushtick?

  Um, I think we need to take a break before we start narrowing down what our final five is.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Sounds good.

• 1:01:18Chris Plante?

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• 1:02:46Chris Plante?

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• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  There's four games that are definitely in our top five. Yes. Those games are. Okay. They are Expedition 33, Clair Obscure Expedition 33, Hollow Knight, Silk Song, Death Stranding 2, Baby Steps.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  Those are the four. They're definitely in it. There's a fifth slot that is in competition with our other nominees.

• 1:03:16Griffin McElroy?

  I think we can pull up anything, right? If we all can sort of agree on it.

• 1:03:21Russ Frushtick?

  I'm fine with pulling up anything that got knocked out in an earlier round, or this round for that matter.

• 1:03:24Griffin McElroy?

  Just looking at the list, I think, first of all, Sectory, just because we were so, so torn on it. Obviously, I think it stands a pretty good shot. Uh, Dispatch. Dispatch is maybe the frontrunner for me for the, for that number, for the fifth, for the fifth spot. I really, really, uh, it not only is like my favorite story, I think, in a game this year, or maybe just my favorite sort of writing and, and acting in a game this year. I, it's been forever since I have played a game like this. And part of that is just feeling burnt out with the genre. I think this does so much cool stuff.

• 1:04:06Griffin McElroy?

  And, uh, is just so delightful.

• 1:04:11Russ Frushtick?

  No, I don't think so, right? Like, I don't think it's a telltale game in that way.

• 1:04:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Russ Frushtick?

  Like, it feels like something else. Um, I, yeah, I think Dispatch is definitely in the running. Um, I think Root Trees is definitely in the running, at least for me. I'll speak for myself.

• 1:04:26Griffin McElroy?

  Hades 2?

• 1:04:28Russ Frushtick?

  Not for me, but I know other, uh, Justin, maybe for you, you might.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, but if I was, if I was one to, one versus three there, I'm not sure it makes the most sense to put it up.

• 1:04:38Griffin McElroy?

  No, I love Hades 2. I played, I played a shit ton of Hades 2.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love Hades 2, too. Um, I mean, I-

• 1:04:44Russ Frushtick?

  Would you love it more than Sectory?

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Russ Frushtick?

  More than Dispatch?

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. No, well.

• 1:04:51Griffin McElroy?

  I think let's get this down to a top three. Let's get this down to three. Let's get this down to three runners, runners up in this elimination match that we can sort of pick from.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  I'm sorry. Okay, yeah. Hades 2, Sectory.

• 1:05:06Russ Frushtick?

  Dispatch.

• 1:05:07Griffin McElroy?

  Dispatch.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  Dispatch. Yeah.

• 1:05:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I love root trees. I don't, I don't like it as much as.

• 1:05:12Russ Frushtick?

  I'm fine with that.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Okay. My argument for Hades 2 is that if Hades 2 had come out in a different way, in a different way of being released, in a different, like, it would be, it, it simp, like, it just would have dominated a narrative this year in a way that.

• 1:05:32Russ Frushtick?

  Meaning if it just came out like.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  If it just came out like with a normal release and it didn't have this long tail. We are bound sort of like the way we cover games, the way we like interact with games, like, we have to handle it in a way that like other people don't. Our editor Rachel held off on Hades 2 stuff the entire time and it seemed insane to me. And then she had like a fantastic experience and I feel like.

• 1:05:53Griffin McElroy?

  Jealous, yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  The only reason that Hades 2 is not higher on this list or already in this top four is because of the way in which it was sort of drip fed out and, and evolved over time. Like, it simply succeeds as a, as a thing. It's, Dispatch fails several times. Dispatch succeeds wildly when it hits. There's a lot of ways in which Dispatch fails, especially in this, how much of it feels random in a way that's really unsatisfying. Whether or not you, uh, your, your missions succeed is often just up to chance and that.

• 1:06:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but some of it is, is like thumb on the scale. Like they want a narrative beat to happen, so they make.

• 1:06:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, some of that happens behind, some of that happens behind the scenes.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, but some of it is like you lose when you shouldn't have and the odds were really against it.

• 1:06:40Griffin McElroy?

  Achievement, there's an achievement for that. If you lose a mission with like 75% chance of success. Uh, but for me, the, the thing that drives me crazy about the sort of interactive part of Dispatch, I actually kind of liked it. Like I ended up having a team that I felt very invested in and the game asks you to make some pretty huge choices. Like you, your roster is going to look different from my roster based on the decisions that you make throughout the episodes. Uh, and I found myself like really getting invested in the team for that reason. But it is, I mean, it, it sucks to lose those like challenges and the game doesn't really do an awesome job of kind of telling you like, oh, that's okay.

• 1:07:19Griffin McElroy?

  It doesn't actually matter that you blew that. Um, it doesn't matter that that challenge didn't go your way because it's not going to impact the story at all. And the story is really what this thing is doing well.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Also, one, I mean. Not for nothing, but if we're trying to pick like the best games of the year, the fact that there is just a button for like turn off a lot of this because it's just annoying. Like that, that, that's not, that's not the game. The game of the year does not have a turn off interactivity because it's just getting in my nerves. Like that's not the game of the year, right?

• 1:07:51Russ Frushtick?

  That's a fair point.

• 1:07:52Griffin McElroy?

  It's a fair point, man. I'm just, I, I struggle with it because I do, I think just it's, the writing is so fucking good. It's so good.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Alien Earth 2, man.

• 1:08:02Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 1:08:03Speaker 00

  Alien Earth 2.

• 1:08:05Russ Frushtick?

  He's saying a TV show is also compelling to watch.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  Like there is, there are incredible stories. You know what I mean? Like being communicated. I, I, I like Dispatch a lot. I a hundred percent really like Dispatch. But I love it because I love this story and a lot of the other stuff I'm kind of tolerating.

• 1:08:24Russ Frushtick?

  The interactivity, I think, for me at least, elevates it a little bit, not a lot. I think the story, the cutscenes are what elevate the entire project, which again, doesn't feel as.

• 1:08:35Griffin McElroy?

  I am, I am, I am convinced. I, I would agree with that. It is a game that I love despite its, uh, despite its flaws.

• 1:08:41Russ Frushtick?

  So that brings us to Justin with a pistol in his hand, deciding between two of his best favorite children.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  Why don't you three?

• 1:08:51Chris Plante?

  Justin, can I make a case?

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  How about this? I don't care. I like them both. You freak juice.

• 1:08:55Chris Plante?

  When, when we make a list, I love when I can look back five years from now and be like, yeah, that feels right. In five years from now, I will have Sektory on my Steam Deck and I will still be playing it whenever I have a flight and I forget to download something new. And I can't say that with any confidence about almost anything else on the list. And I think that is very telling. There, there are very few games that live in my conscious and on my Steam Deck and as my habit like that, that they are spelunky. I think Fresh for you, that's like a Banning of Isaac. And I think the games that come to mind whenever I say something like that are games that I would definitely want on my game of the year list.

• 1:09:40Griffin McElroy?

  But Hades 2 has, everyone's so hot.

• 1:09:46Griffin McElroy?

  Everyone in Hades 2 is so hot. And they're taking baths and stuff and it's like wowza.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  I will, I will also say, I don't have to be theoretical with what you're saying about Hades 2 plant. Cause I have had Hades 2 installed on my devices permanently. I, yeah, a hundred percent. Straight up played it yesterday. Still kicks ass. I like them both. I just feel like, uh, I, I feel like we did Hades 2 a little dirty. Uh, it's so fun. It's fun every time. And I think that I would rather, it's fun in a lot of really cool ways too. It's like, it really does, um, embrace, uh, y- y- you know, a lot of different play styles in a way that it, it must be really hard to balance. I mean, must be like impossible to balance. Um, but I'd be really happy either way.

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  Uh, genuinely, I think they're both great.

• 1:10:39Russ Frushtick?

  I, I really like them too. I, I think in my brain, I probably enjoyed Sectory more, more, but I also only played Sectory for eight hours.

• 1:10:48Griffin McElroy?

  That's what I'm struggling with is like the purity, the purity of Sectory and the kind of like, I don't know.

• 1:10:55Russ Frushtick?

  Well, and the nuance, and the, and the nuance of Sectory, whereas Hades 2 again is, is building off of.

• 1:11:01Griffin McElroy?

  But I've spent more time playing Hades 2 than maybe any other.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Not, okay. Not to put my thumb on the scale too much here, cause I am trying to let you gentlemen figure this out, but, uh, I, I do think that, uh, with Sectory, once I had sort of like risen to the top of our personal leaderboards, my desire to kind of play it diminished pretty quickly. Like when there were no more worlds to conquer in a sense, like, there wasn't, it doesn't do a great job of like incentivizing you with its own mechanics. It kind of like the score chase thing is definitely a huge part of it. But like, once I'd sort of figured that stuff out, I didn't feel a big desire to like get back in there and, tear it up because it was so demanding to set some of those high scores and like I legitimately don't know if I can top it.

• 1:11:47Griffin McElroy?

  It's funny because like that was very much the Geometry Wars, like, uh, Geometry Wars 2 on XBLA. I played constantly because I wanted the top score of like, you know, all the old joystick crew, uh, that we, that we used to play with. Um, but that was back when, uh, they only made like 20 video games a year.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:07Griffin McElroy?

  And now they make a trillion.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  It was illegal to do more than 20.

• 1:12:09Griffin McElroy?

  And I have two kids and so like the idea of fucking clonking down and doing a hundred runs of of Gates mode is not, not really in the realm of possibility for me.

• 1:12:19Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say that when I beat the campaign of Sektory, I had the same vibe that Hoops did about his arcade score chase, which was I beat the campaign and my desire to keep pushing for other things kind of diminished pretty quickly.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  It had to be hard to look at my scores. It's like, what's the point? You know what I mean?

• 1:12:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  You had to be like, how am I gonna get up there in Olympus? Speaking of.

• 1:12:43Griffin McElroy?

  I'm, I think Hades 2, it's funny because it, I, I still feel like I liked Absolut better from a sort of comprehensive standpoint, but I also, I, I think that the argument is sound for Hades 2 to, to join the, the top.

• 1:12:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I, I think.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. I hate it. Yeah, man.

• 1:13:02Griffin McElroy?

  We have to have one of those every year where like someone leapfrogs a ma- around a matchup that it lost the first go around.

• 1:13:10Russ Frushtick?

  It's a rough matchup, yeah.

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  Okay, so do we feel good about that as a top five?

• 1:13:15Russ Frushtick?

  I think so.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:13:16Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:13:18Russ Frushtick?

  So that is Expedition 33, Silk Song, Death Stranding 2, Baby Steps, Hades 2.

• 1:13:23Speaker 00

  Oh, Baby Steps, the only original.

• 1:13:27Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, yeah, you're right.

• 1:13:28Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:13:29Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, Expedition.

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  There's been 32 of those motherfuckers.

• 1:13:32Griffin McElroy?

  Man, are you kidding me?

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  I'm just glad they finally got it right. They finally got it right. I didn't even notice the other ones, man. They've been churning these things out. There's a lot of Eastern European stuff. I can't keep that song. I guess they just been, uh, them and Frogware has just been cranking these things out. Um, fuck.

• 1:13:51Russ Frushtick?

  So.

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  I know, I know what the game of the year is gonna be and I think it's fucking crazy.

• 1:13:57Griffin McElroy?

  I do too.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  Guys, it's fucking crazy that that's gonna be the game of the year.

• 1:14:01Griffin McElroy?

  Should we do that? Should we? This is unusual. Should we start at the top?

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  And then work our way back.

• 1:14:06Griffin McElroy?

  All at the same time?

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna count to, I'm gonna just count to four and then if we could all say the ga- the number one game of the year according to the besties. Cause I, I think we're gonna get it in one, guys.

• 1:14:15Griffin McElroy?

  We say it after four. You say it after.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  One, two, I wanna say, no, not after four. That's crazy. I said that because there's four of us. So one, two, three, and then just say the name, okay?

• 1:14:25Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. Okay. One, two, three.

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Death Stranding 2. Crazy, fucking crazy guys. Fucking crazy. It's so crazy that the best game of the year is Death Stranding 2. It's fucking sick.

• 1:14:40Russ Frushtick?

  You know what's really crazy? Go back and listen to the original Death Stranding 2 episode when I fucking called it.

• 1:14:46Speaker 00

  Did you?

• 1:14:46Griffin McElroy?

  Did you really?

• 1:14:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I said, well, at least for me, I said, this is my favorite game of the year when it came out.

• 1:14:50Speaker 00

  Now, listen, when I went back and played it, I gotta say, guys, I said in the chat, maybe Death Stranding 2 is the best video game of 2025.

• 1:15:00Griffin McElroy?

  It's not my, I have a weird thing where it's not my personal game of the year, but it feels right to be the, to be the best.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 1:15:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  So good.

• 1:15:11Russ Frushtick?

  And you know what?

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  It's redemption. Like, it doesn't need, it, it, you know what it is? It's not just good. I've been playing this man's games for so long. And the fact, I mean this genuinely, I don't know why it happened. Maybe he offloaded more to design. I don't know why, but this really does feel like one of our, like, last auteurs in games, one of the only auteurs in games, actually kind of evolving, like actually changing and like, wanting to, not just wanting to stay like relevant and wanting to like engage with the audience in a way that he, like, I think it's kind of kept people at a distance and I feel like this is a game that's really like,

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  really a lot more about connection, you know, than the first one was thematically. This one feels very open hearted to me.

• 1:16:03Griffin McElroy?

  The first true strand type game, I would say for that.

• 1:16:06Speaker 00

  Griffin, it's maybe the second true strand, yes.

• 1:16:10Griffin McElroy?

  So.

• 1:16:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Chris Plante?

  It, it also is kind of the answer to the, the little tiny questions we have about the other games. It is a sequel that is doing a lot more than the original game. It is dramatically improving the original game. It is a game that is taking the challenge of the original game and making it, uh, more conceptually interesting. It has a story that is coherent from beginning to end and I find very fulfilling. And it is even saying many of the same things that Baby Steps is saying about working with other people and taking support and, uh, being open to what is given to you. It's a very, it's a game about community, which I, it's a good vibe of it.

• 1:16:55Speaker 00

  It's a really, it is, it's a good, and it, you know what it is? It's also like. It engages with the fact that it is online in a way that doesn't detract from, but rather builds up the single player experience. And I feel like so few games have figured out how to do that in a smart way. Like you got some soul stuff that does it, but like it's, it's rare and this one really does.

• 1:17:15Russ Frushtick?

  Well, soul stuff also has like the trolley shit. Like, oh, here's a note that doesn't mean anything. But here, everything that you find in the world that is placed by another player is in some way useful.

• 1:17:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And also like it, it feels, I love that shit where you know why someone put that thing there. I'm on a run and I'm on this route that I designed and right when my tri cruiser runs out of battery, someone has built a battery tower here because they did the same thing. That's cool.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  It's cool.

• 1:17:41Chris Plante?

  Did any of you play when the servers went offline between the review period and release?

• 1:17:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. I mean, that's the bulk of when I played it and why I didn't have a great time with it the first time I played it.

• 1:17:52Chris Plante?

  It was such a wild experience because if you played a lot before the servers went offline, you got a real taste of how much the thing was helping you.

• 1:18:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Chris Plante?

  But kind of assumed it wasn't, kind of assumed that was just the game, kind of assumed it was all your work. And then it gets taken away and you're like, oh, I have done nothing.

• 1:18:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Chris Plante?

  I have, I have created four small roads and I rely so much on the help of others. I am helpless.

• 1:18:17Russ Frushtick?

  It actually makes me worried because someday, I just hope they have a plan for the day then the servers get turned off.

• 1:18:23Chris Plante?

  I think that they.

• 1:18:26Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's still fun. I played when the servers were offline and it was like a fucking grueling experience. It was not the broad appealing experience that I think most people have, but I loved the like, I'm going to fucking ship these metal pieces. Anyway, this game fucking rules.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  It rules. Death Stranding 2, if it makes one person play Death Stranding 2, then that's not enough. And that's not a good reason to do this podcast, but if it makes 100 people, maybe.

• 1:18:51Griffin McElroy?

  I see someone has put Hades 2 at 5.

• 1:18:54Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't put it there.

• 1:18:55Chris Plante?

  I put it there just because it'll get shifted around, but it was it was our fifth one. Usually we put it there, but I'm fine with it moving wherever.

• 1:19:02Russ Frushtick?

  It can go wherever.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  I would be fine with it feels like to me that and Expedition 33 are probably going to be four and five. I'm not sure where you all want to do that, but um I to me it as much as you all. I think Expedition 33 did really well to get here, but there's a lot of ways in which I think Expedition 32 is gonna be the best expedition ever.

• 1:19:29Russ Frushtick?

  I like Hades 2 more than Expedition 33 for what it's worth.

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  That's kind of where I I would I that feels right to me.

• 1:19:38Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I don't I would not agree with that. And I can make a pitch for it, but it again, like it's such a it's such a like personal thing. This is more than any other game this year, the like it's gotta be your preference. I think applies to Expedition 33 and like, I don't know, man. This is maybe my favorite genre of games is is JRPGs. There's like a reason I go back and replay all those old Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games and and it is it's truly

• 1:20:13Griffin McElroy?

  unthinkable that this studio came out of nowhere to deliver such a such a kick ass version of that thing.

• 1:20:23Speaker 00

  Griffin, at the holidays, will you explain to Grandpa Dan? Why a game is a French Japanese RPG? Because this is a French Japanese RPG, but I do want to have that conversation with Dan. Like, you don't understand. No, it's not an FRPG. That's nothing. It's a FJR.

• 1:20:41Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe it will be something.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Maybe it will be something, but it's gonna have to be different than this because this is a French Japanese role playing game.

• 1:20:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the things that you guys bounced off of about Expedition 33, I simply. Don't, because of my, the fact that I like this genre so much, like, that's the stuff I like. And to me, I think that's the only game on this list where that is true. Like Dispatch, the things that don't. Well, no, I'm saying like, the things you disliked about Expedition 33 were things that I liked about Expedition 33. The stuff that didn't work in Dispatch, we all kind of agree like, oh, well, that didn't, that, that didn't work so much. I think it's a bolder and way more innovative and more exciting game than Hades 2.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  I would agree with that.

• 1:21:29Griffin McElroy?

  I, I think, I think Hades 2 is a fucking kickass game and it does such a good job of building on Hades 1. But doesn't necessarily, I don't know, doesn't do it in a way where I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. And the, I, I'm going to be thinking about Expedition 33 for, for a really, really long time. I beat it eight months ago and I'm still thinking about that game. So, so I, I would put it higher than five, but.

• 1:21:58Chris Plante?

  I personally would also, but that's just because.

• 1:22:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, let's do that.

• 1:22:03Chris Plante?

  Hades 2 just didn't really stick with me. So it feels, I feel weird leaving it out because I, I just could not get myself to lock into that.

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  It's Hades 2, I, I feel.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  I don't have a good vocabulary for how I feel about Hades 2, honestly, because it's so singular. I spent 150 hours with the first Hades. That's too much time to play a video game. That's not the fault of Hades 2. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's not Hades 2's fault. The Hades 1 was so cool. It's not that, that I've had a belly full of it. Not just like, I don't want, I feel like for my life, maybe I'm full on Hades. You know what I mean? Like, unless you want to bring some other people in there, unless do like a co-op thing, I, I may be just like, good.

• 1:22:47Russ Frushtick?

  I think they're done.

• 1:22:48Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, if it was co-op, that would have been enough, I feel like, to break the mold a little bit. I think this would be a kickass co-op game.

• 1:22:56Russ Frushtick?

  I think that is a fair way to describe it, is it does feel, I think it does extend beyond the mold of the first game, but not to the point of it being a full sequel, at least for me.

• 1:23:06Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. I, I think Hades 2 at 5, Expedition 33 at.

• 1:23:13Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I liked Expedition 33 better than Baby Steps. And Silk Song, but I don't think it's gonna get up higher than there.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  Expedition 33 at 3. I like all those 3s. You know, Expedition 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. I love it.

• 1:23:27Griffin McElroy?

  And what's in the 4, what's in the 4 spot?

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  And 4, you get Baby Steps, and then 2, you get Silk Song.

• 1:23:37Chris Plante?

  Say this again?

• 1:23:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, why are we doing it in that weird order?

• 1:23:41Speaker 00

  Death Stranding, number 1. Number 2, Silk Song. Number 3, Expedition 33. Number 4, uh...

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Uh, hell.

• 1:23:48Griffin McElroy?

  Baby Steps?

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  Baby Steps. Number 5, Hades 2. Hades 2. Baby Steps. Expedition 33. Silk Song. Death Stranding 2.

• 1:23:59Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I'm good with that list if you guys are.

• 1:24:02Chris Plante?

  I think, I think that sounds like our list, like as a group. In terms of like where kind of you averaged it all out.

• 1:24:10Griffin McElroy?

  That does seem like a good averaging of our, yeah.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  That's kind of how I, yes, that is, yes.

• 1:24:16Russ Frushtick?

  And we did somehow find one game that we all fucking loved. So, mission accomplished on that front.

• 1:24:21Speaker 00

  Thank, yeah.

• 1:24:22Russ Frushtick?

  Which is a rare commodity.

• 1:24:23Chris Plante?

  Kind of incredible.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. Someone write it then, I guess.

• 1:24:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:28Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 1:24:29Griffin McElroy?

  Chris, Chris Plant. Do it.

• 1:24:30Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 1:24:31Griffin McElroy?

  Go, go down from the mountaintops with the tablet and tell them what they say.

• 1:24:35Chris Plante?

  Thank you so much for joining us here today to celebrate the top 5 best used games, the best used besties of 2025, not 2026. Those games are, at number 5, Hades 2. At number 4, Baby Steps. At number 3, Claire Obscure Expedition 33. At number 2, Hollow Knight, Silk Song. And at number 1, With a Bullet. Death Stranding 2.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  2, wait, no, wait.

• 1:25:09Chris Plante?

  On the Beach.

• 1:25:10Speaker 00

  On the Beach. Death Stranding 2, On the Beach. We're gonna read all these other stupid ass subtitles. Every, nobody just have a normal name. Nobody just have a normal name. You gotta have a colon. How are you gonna have a colon on your first game, Claire Obscure? Come on. Come on. Better than that.

• 1:25:25Griffin McElroy?

  That feels good, man. Hey, that went a bit smoother than I thought it was gonna go.

• 1:25:30Chris Plante?

  Thank you.

• 1:25:31Griffin McElroy?

  It went okay.

• 1:25:31Chris Plante?

  It's good.

• 1:25:32Speaker 00

  Thank you. Who, who would've thought?

• 1:25:35Speaker 00

  Fucking consensus builder, the, the small town governor from Ohio. Just enough people can agree on. It's really our system at work, isn't it? That's straining to just, just funky enough that all of us could be like, I guess. Yeah, man, for sure.

• 1:25:51Griffin McElroy?

  For sure.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  I wrote a big monorail. It ruled.

• 1:25:54Russ Frushtick?

  I think we did it.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Did it? Okay. Wow.

• 1:25:58Griffin McElroy?

  Any honorable mention?

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:25:59Griffin McElroy?

  Any honorable mentions?

• 1:26:00Speaker 00

  Talking every game.

• 1:26:01Griffin McElroy?

  No, okay.

• 1:26:02Russ Frushtick?

  We're good.

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  That's gonna do it.

• 1:26:03Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to thank some folks over at the Patreon who've been lovely this year in supporting us. Uh, just, these are just a couple, but there's been tons. Uh, LG, David R, Ollie H, Killer Andreas are just some, uh, relatively recent, uh, or existing subscribers. Thank you very much. Uh, speaking of subscribers, next week, we are taking a short break. Uh, but the subscribers have chosen to elevate, uh, a bracket episode. We do monthly bracket episodes over at the Patreon and they've picked one from this year that will be delivered beneficially to all members of the Besties community. So that will be hitting your feed this coming Friday.

• 1:26:46Russ Frushtick?

  So get pumped for that and then we'll be back, uh, the week after that for, uh, most anticipated games of 2026.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  All right. That's gonna do it for this year on the Besties. 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?