Reflecting on 2025’s Best Games Ahead of GOTY

Speaker 1 We were running behind because of your tech issues, Russ, so we don't have time for a cold open today. So, if you could just hit me with like a one-liner that really,

Speaker 1 nothing that's like a conversation starter, but just like an observation. Sure, sure, kind of like, yeah, just like a one-sentence sort of just to hit me with it.

Speaker 1 Give peace a chance. Okay, and here's the show.

Speaker 2 I had never thought about it that way before, Russ.

Speaker 1 That was huge for me.

Speaker 1 It kind of opened your mind a little very a little bit.

Speaker 3 A little bit.

Speaker 1 That's good show. That's me.
That's all me.

Speaker 1 Russ kind of makes you think, doesn't it? Imagine all the people.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 1 Hey, man, you are turning me around today. Yeah, dude.

Speaker 2 You're making me want to go out and bang a pot out my window for doctors right now.

Speaker 1 Dude, thank you for two weeks and then we forget.

Speaker 1 My name is Justin McCoy and I know the best games of the week.

Speaker 2 My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best games of the year.

Speaker 3 My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 1 My name is Russ Fruschik. I know the best game of the week.
Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

Speaker 1 It's like a video game club that just by listening to, you become a member, a proud member.

Speaker 1 This year, we're going to be taking a look at the year in gaming,

Speaker 1 sharing a very personal, our personal journeys, our personal stories of the year before we trounce all over that and really are disrespectful of each other's opinions and thoughts when the Game of the Year rankings begin.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 this is our chance to talk about how hard this job is.

Speaker 2 And not a lot of game critic people are brave enough to do that.

Speaker 2 But sometimes, sometimes, like, Tears of the Kingdom comes out, and you're like, easy street. And sometimes a million good games of a million disparate genres come out.
And then it's...

Speaker 1 You're like, I wish I was in a coal mine right now. For sake, at least I have bird companions.
Yeah, sure, dude.

Speaker 2 At least then I'd get a bird.

Speaker 1 We'll be right back after this.

Speaker 1 November 9th is the day after my birthday, and that means it's the official start of the holiday season.

Speaker 1 Happy holidays. That was a, I guess, a siren or a kazoo.
I don't know exactly. But it's gift giving time and let's just like, let's take, just take care of it.
Let's just get it over with.

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Speaker 1 Guys, this device,

Speaker 1 speaking of the best of the year, the Atari GameStation Go has a

Speaker 1 Jalico Jill. I was realizing, I don't know how to say this, guys.

Speaker 2 How we say Jalico? Because Jalico sounds like Jalil, and

Speaker 1 that's just kind of where Jalil is.

Speaker 2 The root word of Jalico vision.

Speaker 1 No, we're going to talk about

Speaker 1 an unorthodox year in video games, I think. It's a very diverse year in terms of releases, I think.

Speaker 1 And I want to see where you guys are at with 2025.

Speaker 1 I am.

Speaker 1 You go ahead.

Speaker 2 It's just fucked, gang.

Speaker 2 This year, this Goti has been fucked since Jump Street. Let's like, just to lay out a few examples, and we've talked about some of this stuff already.
Blueprints is in my top. It's top three.

Speaker 2 It's fighting for tops. I know that there are other people on the call who very much enjoyed it, and yet...
One person on the call has been unable to play it because of

Speaker 2 a frankly pretty astonishingly like bad oversight of accessibility.

Speaker 1 To be fair, it wasn't an oversight. They did know even at launch that they needed it, but they still

Speaker 1 have it. They have not included it.
I do have an update on that front for what it's worth. Oh, do you? Yes.

Speaker 1 So just to bring people up to speed, Blueprints, a first-person puzzle game that came out earlier this year, has a lot of puzzles in it. Some of the puzzles involve colors in some way.

Speaker 1 Me being colorblind, I can't do those puzzles with any sort of effectiveness.

Speaker 1 Jason Schreier has recently spoken to the developer of Blueprints, and they are putting

Speaker 1 the release of the colorblind thing

Speaker 1 into sometime in 2026. So it is still coming.
Yeah, but

Speaker 2 for the purposes of our discussing what the best video game release of 2025 is, that's going to do us no, no good at all. And then there's stuff like...

Speaker 2 I don't know, man. Like, Expedition 33 is one of my games of the year, and that is a 60 to 70 hour long French JRPG that not a lot of people here are going to have time for.

Speaker 1 It's the French part that really is, I don't have to have time for it.

Speaker 2 I think that's probably the 60 to 70 hour thing.

Speaker 2 It's just why I feel like every single game on my top 10 list is one, like

Speaker 2 a niche indie game.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 there's not really a two to that. I don't know why I said one.
And I don't know.

Speaker 2 It just feels like there's not a consolidated, agreed-upon victor where you're going to see it just kind of like sweep, sweep the goadie lists around the, around the web.

Speaker 3 Yeah, previous games that we have loved on this show, Lonely Mountains, Citizen Sleeper, the Like a Dragon Yakuza series, Monster Hunter games, all of those had sequels in the first two months of this year.

Speaker 3 They just happened. And like we haven't even really gone back.
to them or thought much about them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't say that the Like a Dragon game was a a sequel. It was a weird pirate beat-em-up offshoot that didn't quite

Speaker 1 lighten my

Speaker 1 arm. Arr you about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Should we just like talk about our games?

Speaker 1 Should we talk about our personal walks?

Speaker 2 Which,

Speaker 1 but yeah, I would just to echo what Griffin was saying, it's I don't think we've ever had a year like this where like I'm looking at some of the lists of like preferred games and there's just like not as much crossover at all.

Speaker 1 Like, there's no, like, oh, yeah, that's going to be number one, or that's going to be number two.

Speaker 2 I think the one game that has the best chance of doing it is Silk Song, maybe.

Speaker 2 But even that is like, you know, that's a genre that a lot of, it is also inaccessible in its, in its way.

Speaker 1 And so don't worry. That won't be a problem.

Speaker 1 We should, uh, we should, um,

Speaker 1 here's what I would like to suggest to you guys.

Speaker 1 And I, Plan has only put out two games, and that's a cowardice that I hope that he uh is okay with um but really it's very safe bets there i'm gonna ask you other guys and plant you too

Speaker 1 what do you think is your the biggest ledge that you're on like biggest ledge i'm on here's what here's my question i'm looking at a list of my games i want to pick on my list what i think is going to be the least supported

Speaker 1 where i think it's like i'm on the biggest i'm by myself the most absolutely just to see how it's feeling because we never have those kinds of conversations, right?

Speaker 1 Because, like, some of mine, I was going back through my list and be like, fuck, actually, that game fucked. And even Justin 20 minutes ago didn't remember that game fucked, but now I do.

Speaker 1 So it's there.

Speaker 2 Do you want to start by saying what that game is? Meroy.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Exactly, dude. Yeah.
Meroy.

Speaker 1 M-O-R-O-I.

Speaker 1 It's one of the strangest games. I don't even know if we talked about it.

Speaker 1 It is poorly reviewed. It is a dark

Speaker 1 kind of action puzzle

Speaker 1 combat thing that is the tone is absolutely surreal.

Speaker 1 It's a game that is... Okay,

Speaker 1 it has mixed reviews on Steam.

Speaker 1 It also only has 33 users. It has 33.
No one played it. But if you look at the trailer, you're going to think, dang, this looks really, really interesting.
And that it is. So, Moroy.

Speaker 2 Moroy is your ledge?

Speaker 1 Moroy is my ledge. I know that there's, this is not a game of the year game, but it is the one for me where I was like, man,

Speaker 1 I could have made a bigger, I think I could have done a little bit better spreading the gospel of Moroy.

Speaker 1 But anyway, M-O-R-O-I. If you want to try something interesting, get enough

Speaker 1 reviews. Let's get 34 reviews.

Speaker 2 I mean, mine's easy because it's i think perpetually kind of been an issue uh with these considerations uh deltarune chapter three and four came out this year and were really really fucking exceptional yeah but also how how do you how do you include that in a a goatee list and i'm not like super interested in having the conversation of like episodic games because god knows we had enough of those when you know telltale was still cranking out the

Speaker 2 hits and the jammers.

Speaker 2 But like I those two games or two chapters represent like a huge fucking chunk of playtime, but it is also like the things not finished. And it is a

Speaker 2 sort of sequel to Undertale. And if people didn't play the first and second chapters, then they're probably not going to want to dip in just for three and four.

Speaker 2 Like it's a, it's, that is a weird case that I am very passionate about because those

Speaker 2 two chapters had a big impact on me, but also like, I don't know, I don't think that there's gonna be a ton of space for it once we start bracketing these bad boys.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I guess the closest that I would have on my list, which I think probably has a little bit of crossover for you guys, is Baby Steps. Baby Steps is not a game that I think

Speaker 1 I mean, I for sure didn't get nominated for Game of the Year at the Game Awards.

Speaker 1 It doesn't really look like a big splashy Game of the Year fodder, but in terms of just like total scratching the internal brain itch,

Speaker 1 that game checked a whole lot for me. I was completely riveted by that game.

Speaker 1 And I hope more people get a chance to play it as it goes on.

Speaker 2 That's one I want to return to because I played it a little bit for

Speaker 2 to talk about it. And then we played it a bunch for streaming, but I never really put,

Speaker 2 you know, effort into finishing it. And I think that there's like an element of the game that is

Speaker 2 you have to buy into, is my suspicion. Like, you really have to want to get up the mountain and not be just kind of fucking around, which is the only way I've really interacted with the game.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's narratively one of the most interesting games I played all year.

Speaker 2 Like, see, I haven't gotten fucking all I've seen is like donkey dicks and like really funny, improvised, like, cutscenes about maps and

Speaker 1 hot white. And it's not, it's not like it evolves into like a massively high-minded thing, but I found myself compelled to keep going.

Speaker 1 And even though I don't like, you know, quop as a game, I don't think that's a fun, or getting over it.

Speaker 1 I don't think those are fun games for me, but there was just something about the precision of this, the gameplay mixed with like the very funny and also interesting

Speaker 1 cutscene stuff. Yeah.
And it just like has some of the most memorable moments of the year came out in baby steps for me. I just really adored it.

Speaker 2 That's one that's high on my list to spend a little bit more time with before we actually.

Speaker 3 I think Baby Steps is a dark horse for like

Speaker 3 high up on the list.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 3 my like legends are games where I just know. I already know like

Speaker 3 that this ain't happening. Come on, let's be real.
The hundred line, maybe I can get Griffin to play that.

Speaker 1 Maybe. I played it.
But I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 The tone, the tone, the tone, Griffin, the tone said it all. I know the tone was too

Speaker 1 it communicated reviewers tilt. It communicated fun factor.
It communicated everything. It's a game.
It's truly.

Speaker 2 There's not a game this year that I spent more time trying to like than the 100 line. And I, I tell you.

Speaker 1 That's what award we should have this year. I would love to do that award.
Time, most time invested in a game that I ultimately could not enjoy.

Speaker 2 The Denk on Rompa stuff was like so great.

Speaker 2 And the vibe, the story, the writing, all that shit really really works for me and but the like strategy the tactics part of it did not which was kind of the same thing I had with um oh what was that other what was the vanillaware strategy game that was like uh oh yeah Unicorn Overlord no no no no it was the uh the the goden sphere no it was the sort of pseudo-visual novel about teens that protected their town from 13 sentinels the 13 sentinels yes uh it was like i had the same feeling sort of about that so like it's I, I, I really like a lot of what that game's putting down.

Speaker 2 And then I also don't like a pretty big fundamental part of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. There's also stuff that's like Caves of Cud came out technically in December of last year, but I wish I had figured out how to play it.
Who knows when I'll ever have time to play that?

Speaker 3 Speaking of things that who knows when I'll ever have time to play, even though I think I really like it, and I know it's controversial around these parts, but Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Speaker 3 I know, Fresh, you're on my side here.

Speaker 1 You can't wait to get back to the game. But you know who loves that game is Mr.
Jeff Keeley and the Game Awards contingent because it was nominated for Game of the Year and is in the slate.

Speaker 2 That is a truly wild one.

Speaker 2 And it is, this happens a lot, I think, with the four of us and probably other kind of like games podcasts where it's not like a whole big editorial board making the thing, where like...

Speaker 2 It just so happens that three of us don't really like medieval fantasy recreation, which is like fully, fully, fully what this game is doing.

Speaker 1 Not fantasy though.

Speaker 3 Not fantasy though.

Speaker 1 Don't fantasy.

Speaker 2 Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1 Medieval

Speaker 1 historical recreation. Unless you think fire is magic.
It's not. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's fine. Yes.

Speaker 2 I take back the fantasy part of it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 we played that to do an episode on it. And then like me and Justin and Russ were all like, I do, it's.
it is boring not to teach.

Speaker 1 I enjoy some fiction from this period. Essex Dogs, for example, would be right in line.
I just thought I found the shifting perspectives disorienting and controlling it did not bring me pleasure.

Speaker 1 That's all. It's a real rough hang.
I bet if I had put another 10 hours in there, I bet I think it might have, I think it could have gotten its claws in, but I just couldn't get there.

Speaker 3 Griffin, do you have a ledge game?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, Deltarune 3 and 4 was that for me. Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I think

Speaker 2 I really like Q Up, you guys.

Speaker 1 I really like Q Up.

Speaker 1 I should play Q Up. I haven't played it yet.

Speaker 2 Okay, I didn't know if that was going to be

Speaker 3 climbing my list for sure.

Speaker 1 I mean, I love that game.

Speaker 3 It's going to be your thing, big child.

Speaker 1 It sounds like it.

Speaker 2 I think I had a

Speaker 2 warmer reaction to Wonderstop than the rest of the show.

Speaker 1 It's on my list. It's on Justin's list.
Yeah, I like it a lot. Oh, is that? Oh, okay.
Well, then I take it. I was the only one that was like.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Fuck.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Expedition 33

Speaker 2 is simply a game that you guys are not going to play more of.

Speaker 1 I played

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 3 that game.

Speaker 1 Check my steam.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, I saw you playing it this morning.

Speaker 1 Baby, I'm 10 hours. Yeah.
Put another 10 hours in. It's great.
Are you grooving? Yeah, it's great. I just didn't, I liked it before.
I just didn't have, I don't know. There's a lot of, guys,

Speaker 1 the pace of this show.

Speaker 1 The pace of this show is such that even games I like,

Speaker 1 sometimes I got to take a break from.

Speaker 1 And a game like this has a lot of moving pieces oh yeah this is definitely one that i stepped away from and i had to like get back on youtube i had to get back into the grind i had to get back in the flow stape find your beret which was in storage enough yeah enough enough people were into it that i felt like i needed to like give this one another chance because i really like

Speaker 1 uh i really

Speaker 1 uh try to root for games that have a unique perspective and a unique aesthetic and this game is definitely definitely that and it's doing a lot of really fun gameplay stuff so yeah i've really been enjoying the time that I've been putting into that.

Speaker 2 That is also a

Speaker 2 what's the opposite of recency bias? Because the game came out, I think, in February, right?

Speaker 1 Expedition 33. Pretty early in the year.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 I played it and really dug it and got through all of it,

Speaker 2 but it was such a long time ago. And we've played so many fucking games this year.

Speaker 2 Did any of you guys do Root Trees or Dead?

Speaker 1 No. The Root Trees Area.
I remember us talking about it, but I haven't.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's on my

Speaker 3 iBack.

Speaker 2 That's my sort of like smarty pants deduction, other than blueprints, like deduction game of the year. It's basically a game about

Speaker 2 being nosy and using the internet to like do kind of investigative journalism to build a genealogical tree of this.

Speaker 2 giant sort of candy family, candy corporation family.

Speaker 1 And it ruled and I got really, really obsessed.

Speaker 2 Talk about a game where like you can't take a break from it because you'll forget every

Speaker 2 little connection and every little detail and every like site you visited. But it basically recreates a fake internet

Speaker 2 that you search you know information about this family on.

Speaker 2 I really really liked it because it required a lot more

Speaker 2 deduction and critical thinking than

Speaker 2 other sort of games that came out this year that were ostensibly sort of the same genre.

Speaker 1 Let me ask a question for the group. Yeah.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 And just, I think I know the answer to this, but let me just confirm. The goal of this game of the year specifically, when we have those episodes, is to come up with a

Speaker 1 besties game of the year. Right.
It is not an individual that happens to make it to the top. It's a uniformly agreed upon.

Speaker 1 So you wouldn't have a game, for example, at number one that one person hated, but everyone else hated.

Speaker 2 But that has definitely, definitely, definitely happened. That has for sure happened.

Speaker 1 I feel like it happened last year. I think last year, wasn't it Yakuza that won last year? Yeah, you just didn't really get anything.
I didn't hate.

Speaker 2 Astrobot that was last year's.

Speaker 1 Astrobot didn't get

Speaker 1 placement, which was regrettable, but I didn't hate

Speaker 1 Yakuza. I know that's crazy.
It was a fantastic game. I didn't hate Yakuza, so I didn't think that that was an off-base selection, but I do think that would be a stipulation.

Speaker 1 It's like you wouldn't have a game that someone actively hated in the top five. Our past five have been Hades, Resident Evil Village, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Like a Dragon and Pinwalf.

Speaker 1 So I don't know. I like all those.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, so I guess it's just a,

Speaker 1 I think, especially when we talk about games like Blue Prince, which is like, I'm just not going to play Blue Prince realistically. I'm just like,

Speaker 2 I don't know that there's a game on my list that everyone likes. Like, I don't know that there's a game that came out this year that the four of us like really, really, really liked.

Speaker 1 But that's my point. It's like, I didn't really, really like Yakuza.
So, guys, this is why why I really wanted to do this episode, right? Because

Speaker 1 when you're in

Speaker 1 the Screen Actors Guild,

Speaker 1 they want your opinions on the finest performances of the year. As an actor, as a screen actor,

Speaker 1 myself, I imagine.

Speaker 2 Technically, the trolls we did voices for were on a screen. were on have they go on screens

Speaker 1 well it's sag after so my television work is is part of it. That's the after part.
That's the after.

Speaker 1 They will send me DVDs of TV shows, which is always.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, the thing is, guys, I feel like there is not a good, I wanted a nice comparable thing to

Speaker 1 screeners being sent out, right? That you get the screeners that you may not necessarily have thought about.

Speaker 1 I wanted to take your all's pulse because I feel like it is going to be hard to find that common ground.

Speaker 1 And I feel like this is a good opportunity to kind of find those places where maybe there there will be common ground, but we just need to invest a bit more time.

Speaker 1 So that's

Speaker 1 coming,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, what that's that's stranding too?

Speaker 1 Straining too.

Speaker 1 I'm still talking about all the great. Hey, guys,

Speaker 1 Griffin, Russ, what are you guys thinking about Blippo Plus? Oh,

Speaker 1 you guys connected? Have you guys logged on to Blippo?

Speaker 2 That's the TV.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Griffin, here's what, okay, here's my advice to everybody. I highly, highly, highly recommend.
Put Blippo on a big screen.

Speaker 1 Give a kid the remote and get ready for a very, very enjoyable afternoon. Blipo is a cable service.
Blipo Plus is a cable service that is.

Speaker 3 From the planet Blip.

Speaker 1 From the planet Blip. Thank you.
Love that. Love it.

Speaker 1 There are several channels. There's many different channels.
Some are music videos. Some are shopping.
Some are recipes. There's interview shows.
There's like teen advice shows.

Speaker 1 All the shows are like 30 seconds long. The aesthetics are insane because they're all from alien planets.

Speaker 1 And there is a running like channel guide and schedule that you can at any point load up and see what's playing on all the other channels. There is like a...

Speaker 1 a fake internet fax system where you can like log on to message boards and stuff to to collect uh recipes or whatever. It is not a game in the traditional sense.

Speaker 1 Like I'm not even being like, this is not a judgment. Like you can, I don't think you can make a good case for this being a video game.

Speaker 1 But what it is, is like in terms of like interactive entertainment, it's like relentlessly creative in a way that is like really blows me away to think about, there's like an exercise channel that has choreographed dances for all these songs.

Speaker 1 And I think in my head about the people who had to like take time to choreograph dances to put on this channel just in case someone's flipping around and they happen to watch that thing.

Speaker 1 And that's what me and my kids and Sydney did for like an hour this weekend was turn Blipo on a big screen and just let the kids flip around and get kind of like hypnotized and leap in.

Speaker 1 What was it? What did it on Steam? I had it on the Steam Deck and I just plugged the Steam Deck into a Switch too.

Speaker 3 Like that would be a way to do it. Oh, is it really?

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's like an alternate reality Nickelodeon that you can get going on there. Everything was shot on real.

Speaker 1 There's a adult channel. There's a scrambled porn channel.
There's a scrambled porn channel that you would have to pay access to.

Speaker 3 The other option, if you do not want to play it with the kids, I think is another great way to experience this game. Is if you can't sleep, it's like 11 o'clock.

Speaker 3 You go into the living room, you put this on the TV, and you feel like you have accidentally time warped into

Speaker 1 isn't it on the play date? So it started on the play date, right? And there are still some references, like like

Speaker 1 in the in the Blippo Plus, there's still some references, which which I got on Steam. There's still some references to like, don't touch that crank or whatever, or like the device itself.
But

Speaker 1 what you miss in the Blippo, if you only played it on the playdate version, and I'm talking to

Speaker 1 no one right now. Yeah, lesson six.
But you didn't get the sense of like how lovingly recreated these like sets and the actors and the makeup. It's like a Game Boy camera level kind of like pixel.

Speaker 1 But watching this on a T, like watching this on any size screen and seeing these things in like color and

Speaker 1 it's great. It's just you all have copies of it.

Speaker 1 You should just check these games because I totally out.

Speaker 2 I will definitely check it out. It sounds super fun.
I wanted to circle back. to one that is

Speaker 2 uh has been a frontrunner in a lot of other places sort of conversations about goaty that has had like a weird chilly reception here which is hazes too

Speaker 2 I have

Speaker 2 really gotten back into that game just in the last week, thanks to

Speaker 2 the AYN Thor. I've got it running on there through Game Hub, and it's a really nice size, sort of very, very portable Hades 2 experience.

Speaker 2 And I've just about caught up to where I was in my early access save and like fully remembering.

Speaker 2 why this whole formula kicks as much ass as it does.

Speaker 2 But again, this is like another weird case that is so unusual where we played the shit out of it last year when it was in early access.

Speaker 2 And then when the 1.0 dropped, like it didn't really set the world on fire for us because, or maybe personally speaking, it didn't set the world on fire for me because all the new stuff that was different wasn't so immediately apparent.

Speaker 2 And it just felt like I was doing the same stuff that I had done last night.

Speaker 1 Not only that, I think our first reaction to the game was in a very early state where there there were a lot of new mechanics that were in early access that were not well tuned so the like resource gathering and the way the sprint worked and a variety of other things

Speaker 1 i i'll i'll tell you i beat it the other day i beat hades too the other day great um so

Speaker 1 dude congratulations thank you i'm so proud of myself and others did you have god mode on

Speaker 1 it's fine i did yeah good for you that's the insane way to do it what is god mode more more games should have god mode by the way Oh, fuck.

Speaker 2 I forgot that was even. I got Griffin.

Speaker 1 Turn it on. It's so good.
God mode, for those that aren't aware, every time you die on a run, it adds 2% to your permanent damage reduction. So you will always, always, always be making progress.

Speaker 1 It's which PS is actually how all other video games work. They just call it different stuff and break it into 20 different things, right? That is God mode.

Speaker 1 They've just reduced all leveling to something you don't ever have to think about, period.

Speaker 1 So I beat it, and my general feeling of it is it's difficult for its placement, even though I thought it was a fantastic game, it's difficult for me to place it on my top five, for example, because to me, it feels like

Speaker 1 incredibly well made and incredibly iterative to the point of like,

Speaker 1 like I said this to Justin. I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this is how I feel.
Hades 2 feels like 20%

Speaker 1 better Hades 1.

Speaker 1 And to me, that doesn't necessarily feel like a sequel. That feels like an enhanced version or something like that.
Obviously, new story, new characters, new everything in the art is fantastic.

Speaker 1 I'm not diminishing it. I think it's a great game.
I had a really good time playing it.

Speaker 1 It does not feel like a special experience to me in the way that playing Hades 1 felt like a special new experience. And that's like a newness bias to it as well.

Speaker 2 It's a tall order to make a sequel to a game that is inherently kind of designed to put 600 hours into repeating the same runs over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because maybe that is sort of what is missing for me.
But that said,

Speaker 2 great.

Speaker 2 I am back into it now, but it took me quite a while to I love Hades too.

Speaker 1 I mean, I love Hades. I just feel like in the context of these discussions and this show specifically and the way this game was released and the way we all like

Speaker 1 ingested it, I don't know how it fits into the conversation as like a game that like because most of Hades I played in was last year. You know what I mean? It's like I don't yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't know how to have that conversation in a way that's fair to Hades and other games. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I really have been tempted. I would love to go back, but I've even like, I've tried some of the new weapons and stuff.
Like, I have, I have tried some of that.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's like, I know that I could start over.

Speaker 1 It just feels like, is that the good use of my, like, if I'm going to like try to be the best equipped to have a discussion about the best games of the year?

Speaker 1 Is like re-evaluating a big chunk of Hades to the best way to spend that time, you know?

Speaker 1 Also, fun fact, if you you do start over, it does save your god mode progress. So when I started over, it started me at like 25.
Oh, from early access? From early access.

Speaker 2 God damn it. I wasted so much fucking time not getting buff and strong and cool by dying.

Speaker 1 There is another sequel I wanted to call out, and I think we mentioned it briefly earlier, is Death Stranding 2,

Speaker 1 which is, I think, a different circumstance from Hades to Hades 2.

Speaker 1 Even though obviously they're very much in conversation with one another, the first and second Death Death Stranding, Death Stranding 2 feels like

Speaker 1 we fucked around and experimented and didn't necessarily land on something super approachable and maybe not even quite great in the first game, but very good.

Speaker 1 And the second game was like, now we're going to fucking hit it out of the park. And I think that's what they did with Hades 2.

Speaker 1 I thought, with Death Stranding 2, I thought they hit it out of the park. It's a fantastic game.
I beat it. That was one of the few games I beat this year, and I was really blown away by it.

Speaker 2 Death Stranding 2, I I think, is the definition of like a nod and smile game for me where it's like I played it and I really, really liked it.

Speaker 2 And I get why people are like so fucking fired up about it. And I love that Kajim is out there doing like truly weird shit that is even escalating on his own brand of doing weird shit.

Speaker 2 Like it's amazing to watch someone continue to step it up in that way. I don't want to play any more of it or finish it, but like, I am also not,

Speaker 2 I don't feel like I need to poo-poo it it or, or, I don't know, tear it, tear it down in some way. Uh, because I do think it's just a question of, it's just a question of genre.

Speaker 2 Another thing, Travis was asking us about, like, some of our choices

Speaker 2 earlier today and brought up Ghost of Yote, which is like a game that I think is really great,

Speaker 2 very, very well-made game with great performances and super fun combat. I don't really care for open world games so much.

Speaker 2 And so it is like an yet another kind of like outlier game that a lot of people really dug that I didn't just because of, I don't know, my own preferences.

Speaker 2 But I feel like that's most of the games for, you know, each of us this year.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I kind of wanted to dig into these big budget games. I mean, Destiny 2, Ghost Yote, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Avowed Outer Worlds 2.
Like, we haven't been talking about much of these.

Speaker 3 I think almost all

Speaker 1 they have been.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Whoa, that just took me on like a time.

Speaker 1 Avowed like was

Speaker 1 three fucking games this year, right? They did the, wasn't the Oblivion remake this year also? This was just okay. Oh, that wasn't them.

Speaker 3 That was but, but, but, but they put out the

Speaker 3 shrunken honey, I shrunk the kids game. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 1 obsidian

Speaker 1 access for it. Avald for me.
Oh, God.

Speaker 1 I think that I was trying to remember a valve earlier today.

Speaker 1 I had this image of like a ledge on a balcony.

Speaker 1 plant face I had an image of a soldier who was inside of a restaurant that I had to keep going up some stairs to go in to talk to a soldier at a restaurant like a vowed to me is the definition of like

Speaker 1 every single element of it is fine and for the love of God I don't know what it it does not have a single peg that can hang it into my memory like I can't do like it's I can't avowed like

Speaker 3 plant faces plant faces i mean yeah i mean i that thing is like grown, it's the opposite for me, and that it's like grown on me as this weird, oh my gosh, they made a big triple A game about the pandemic and about how miserable everybody felt and like what a weird ass game it was.

Speaker 3 And that they, I don't know, I also just remember it as like as somebody gets overwhelmed by the open worlds in those games. As

Speaker 3 oh, they finally made a compact one where it was like every five feet you were seeing something. And yet at the same time, I remember liking it a lot.

Speaker 3 And I don't remember, I mean, I know why I stopped playing it. It's because we have a million other things to play.
That's a thing. But there are games every year that I do finish.

Speaker 3 And I don't know why that one wasn't one of them.

Speaker 2 That one didn't click for me. Outer Worlds 2 is one where the first,

Speaker 2 you know, couple of planets, the first maybe 10 hours of the game, I was so hooked on.

Speaker 2 And then the rest of the game was just kind of more of that and felt very very very fillery and really spoiled me on on on the game and kind of bumped it out of of consideration for me we you mentioned Donkey Kong earlier

Speaker 1 I think Donkey Kong is on my list my current top five at the moment

Speaker 1 I mean, I just had a blast and it felt like a very different thing than I had done in a very long time. Like it just felt like Nintendo strutting their gameplay design

Speaker 1 bona fides in a way that they hadn't previously, which I thought was really cool.

Speaker 1 I liked.

Speaker 2 I don't know why I didn't like that game more. And that could maybe be the tagline of 2025 for me.
It was a fun, kind of like

Speaker 2 silly game to play with Henry to just like smash shit up.

Speaker 2 But I wasn't necessarily compelled compelled to keep on digging into it to see what was gonna come next um and i feel like that is sort of uh the heat that i need to to keep me going on again

Speaker 3 i was never i was never on the dating apps i got

Speaker 3 i met sepi before all that but this year has felt like uh what i've always imagined the dating apps is which

Speaker 3 i'm getting eights and nines out of tens every other week everywhere and and then i'm like but you know what i bet that is what

Speaker 3 out there.

Speaker 3 I bet the next one's even better. Because I'm like,

Speaker 3 I'm looking at Kaizen,

Speaker 3 that factory game. I'm looking at Fantasy Life.
I'm looking at Star Vaders, Skin Deep, Despite.

Speaker 1 There are so many games.

Speaker 2 Monster Train 2 can hang.

Speaker 2 Absalom might be a dark horse for me because there's not many games on my list that everyone I think really vibed with. And that one, that one does everything it does pretty fucking well.

Speaker 1 I tried to get back into that one. I did, I like some of Absalom.
I didn't,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't think I got locked in the loop at any point with Absalom.
I kind of got it, but I didn't want to.

Speaker 2 It is, guys, I will be honest.

Speaker 1 And this is part of like, and this is part of what I think is worth discussing. And this is for me

Speaker 1 from my perspective this year.

Speaker 1 I am

Speaker 1 still struggling a lot with carpal tunnel syndrome. And it makes it hard to play controller games, controller forward games, or to hold like a Steam Deck or whatever for lengthy periods of time.

Speaker 1 Right. So a lot of my gaming has been sort of like in consideration of that.
It's been stuff that is like not controller focused and things that are controller focused.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to like be smart about how I'm spending that time and, you know, looking at other options like surgery and steroids and things like that.

Speaker 1 And I have gotten into a habit, I think, where once I sort of understand what a game is

Speaker 1 doing,

Speaker 1 even if it is like bringing me

Speaker 1 pleasure, like I'm enjoying it, I kind of check out a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, I think the games that have are on this list for me are games that like

Speaker 1 I kept returning to and revisiting and like seeing, trying to get a hang of like, how I feel about it.

Speaker 1 Because I kind of feel like a lot of games, especially this year, and Avowed is maybe one of those. It was very early in the year, so I don't really remember, but like,

Speaker 1 if I got it, if I kind of understood how I felt about it, I kind of tended to move on.

Speaker 1 Well, I think the big takeaway is we're fucked.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 2 I agree with what you're saying, Juice. I feel like that is the differentiator for me.
Is a lot of the games we talked about were

Speaker 2 I played until I felt like I understood it and had something to say.

Speaker 2 and the ones that i are on my short list are the ones that i i think i finished all of them uh except hades two i'm still still working on i think that's great for games though like that's that's where great for games everybody gets what they want this year truly truly truly that's awesome it's just true there's a lot of people and and not just that but i mean as a critic that like you know that's where i movies are you know like when when people are like man why do why does this obscure movie that is you know three hours long and really punishes you?

Speaker 3 Why is it beloved by critics? And it's like, well, there is so much out there that critics get to this point where it's like, I need something that hits different.

Speaker 3 I've seen the same thing a hundred times. And I feel like that's now what we can get with games.
You crave the difference. You crave the friction, which I think is.

Speaker 1 But you also, you also, there's an inbuilt.

Speaker 1 I think that there's part of you that wants to be impactful.

Speaker 1 And I think that there's definitely some subconscious part of me that feels like, you don't need me to tell you that the new Donkey Kong game is good. Most of the time,

Speaker 1 like if you start playing it, you're like, well, it's pretty good, but like, you don't need me to tell you to play Donkey Kong.

Speaker 2 There's always a lot of baggage around the Goti deliberation process: like, there are people who have a game that belongs in a niche genre that the four of us, because we're four human beings and not a million human beings, just like didn't play or didn't care for or whatever.

Speaker 2 And so they don't even get considered. And

Speaker 2 that reads as us sort sort of just saying like, well, it's shit when that is sort of not, that's going to happen to a lot of games this year.

Speaker 2 And so I feel like, I don't know, more than ever, I hope people can kind of temper their expectations

Speaker 2 because I don't, I truly can't remember a year where,

Speaker 2 you know, the top 10 lists that folks are going to be putting out are going to be so wildly different.

Speaker 1 This is why I'm hoping maybe, guys, there's some common ground that we just haven't spent the time on. You know what I mean? That it's there.

Speaker 1 We could just kind of find it if we just play some more video games.

Speaker 3 Before we go to the next section,

Speaker 3 usually this would be the time of the year where at least it's, hey, we have plenty of time to catch up on this stuff because nothing's coming out.

Speaker 3 Past four days, Demon School, News Tower, Kingdom of the Dump, Birdcage. Moonlighter 2 hit early access.

Speaker 1 You're fucking

Speaker 2 Kirby's. We haven't done that.

Speaker 3 In a Zoom 11, which we haven't talked about, but is blowing up on Steam.

Speaker 3 Marvel Cosmic Invasion, a new game from that's the tmnt people right is that yeah i downloaded that

Speaker 1 yeah yeah like there are so many games still coming out before the end of the game like one i feel like one of us and even if as i'm saying it i'm worried that it's me should like try a real good effort at dispatch.

Speaker 1 A lot of people seem to have dug that. I just like, it was so non-interactive that I was really struggling.
And then there was a mode to make it even less interactive than that.

Speaker 1 So that was like, it was tough. But I, I don't know.
I feel like that was warmly received by the people that got into it.

Speaker 1 If you, it seems like the log line is if you like old Telltale games, you're really going to like dispatch.

Speaker 3 It is blown up. 53,000 reviews on Steam already.
That's bonkers.

Speaker 2 That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's a lot.

Speaker 2 Is there, can we, can we, to wrap this conversation up? We have a little while before we actually do our thing.

Speaker 2 What's the game you're going to want to spend more time with?

Speaker 1 I want you guys to play a game about digging a hole. I did that one.
I played it.

Speaker 2 I already did that one.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well,

Speaker 1 why is it on your lists? Next. Oh, Griffin, let me ask you about one that I don't see on y'all's list that I was a little bit surprised by.
It's Clover Pit.

Speaker 1 That seemed like a real Bessie's ass thing. And I really, it's not one that I'm like,

Speaker 1 I'm not super fixated on it in the way that I have been with like similar games, but I do find myself returning to it a lot. And I do kind of like enjoy the puzzle of it.

Speaker 1 And I like the aesthetic, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of games like that that came out this year. Ball Pit.
Ball X Pit is another one. I played so much fucking Ball X Pit, and it's not on my top 10 list

Speaker 2 because I think a lot of games came out sort of like that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I feel like they... were fun and cool

Speaker 2 games that I very much enjoyed spending those like sleepless nights staying up late and playing, but I do not think, you know, stand head and shoulders above others in terms of design or aesthetic or whatever else.

Speaker 1 Russ, you played Clover Pit yesterday. No, I actually didn't play Clover Pit, and I do want to play it.
It wasn't the game that I was thinking of playing more of.

Speaker 1 That is probably Expedition Trace Trace. I will play more of that.
I will say this. If you spend an hour with Clover Pit, you'll get it.

Speaker 1 Okay. I will also play Clover Pit.

Speaker 2 QUP is, I think, a similar sort of experience.

Speaker 1 To remind people, we are going to have to narrow this down to basically 12 that we'll bring, and then four will come from the audience.

Speaker 1 I have no fucking idea how we're going to do that, but God willing, it'll happen.

Speaker 1 The only other one where I felt like I liked Sort of C a lot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a lot.

Speaker 1 I like Wheel World a lot. I put those in like a similar group.
The only other one where I feel like if you guys had checked was the alters. Oh, I played a lot.

Speaker 1 You played a lot of the alters?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it didn't quite finish. I didn't even finish it.
So maybe it's not a good place on here, but I thought it was really interesting. It really stuck with me.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I would love people to play more of it is Despolote

Speaker 1 for sure. I played that.
I played that. And I don't think I played it.

Speaker 3 I'm going to stay on some Blake Manor for the folks who bounced off it. Maybe just a little bit more time with it because I liked that quite a bit, even though it's very recent.

Speaker 3 And then I want to go play more Baby Steps. Not that I think I need to, because I think my opinion is already so glowing, but I just really want to go back and play more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I want to play some more baby steps before we really talk things out with an intention to try and make actual progress.

Speaker 1 Any chance you guys might be thinking maybe Merge Maestro could be on here because it's probably the game I played the most this year. Baby! Ooh, baby!

Speaker 1 I forgot I had Merge Maestro and Merge Maestro best games I've ever played.

Speaker 2 Oh, damn, Merge Maestro.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you shouldn't have Merge Maestro. They had to.

Speaker 2 Damn, Merge Maestro, though. Damn.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I mean, that's a fucking good one, man.

Speaker 1 That's a banger. The drifter was this year, too? The drifter was sick.

Speaker 1 Did you guys play the drifter?

Speaker 2 The drifter is a classic LucasArts style point-and-click adventure.

Speaker 1 No, I didn't play the drifter.

Speaker 2 Kick-ass story.

Speaker 1 See, this is where we got it. We got to start.
We got to get some accountability going here. What are you...
Okay. Three games.

Speaker 1 Not one. I want to hear homework.

Speaker 2 I want to make homework games.

Speaker 1 I want more homework games to be like, like,

Speaker 1 but I want them to be potentially realistically in that 12. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Whoever's nominating has to think that these are like at least they're like top five, top 10.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I got to have other people agreeing on it.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say my top three if you guys don't feel good about my top three. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I want you guys to feel representative. I will play more Clover Pit.
I will play more Expedition 33.

Speaker 1 And if you think Drifter is the one to play, I can play more.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's going to hit top five for me.

Speaker 1 Just know that you're spending my time with my

Speaker 1 top five.

Speaker 3 Top five, I guess, top 12, right? Because it's like,

Speaker 3 do you think they could be in

Speaker 3 the top 12 that we're going to have?

Speaker 1 Russ, I think what you should do is just play blueprints. And when you get to it, just like...
I did that already. I played the first.
I didn't know that there were color problems until I hit it.

Speaker 1 And then I was like,

Speaker 1 how many green rooms are in this?

Speaker 1 Just like,

Speaker 1 don't, don't give up. I think

Speaker 1 the game.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 First of all, I think you should hate it.

Speaker 1 Justin, I think you should push through your carpal tunnel until your bones split out your right, exactly.

Speaker 2 And secondly, play Hollow Knight Silk Song until your hands wither into desiccated husks.

Speaker 1 I almost think we should.

Speaker 1 I think we just have to table blueprints until next year. I mean, I think it just has to be like.

Speaker 2 It might be my number one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just think we have to. But I don't even want to talk.
Legitimately, the besties conversation, I don't want to talk about it again until Russ has played it. Like, I really, I don't think it's.

Speaker 3 I'm very okay with that because I do think it's going to make for an uneventful thing, and it fills a slot that we know can't make it to the end.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
That's, let's, let's, I feel good about that.

Speaker 1 Okay, wait.

Speaker 3 So what are, what, what are everybody else's like, you, you have to play this?

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 2 I mean, Juice, do do you think you are uh

Speaker 2 truly obviously this factors into the uh carpal tunnel uh issues because it is an extremely demanding game but do you think you are uh well and done well shot of uh hollow night silks oh yeah so that wasn't as much the uh

Speaker 1 the carpal tunnel that was uh that was definitely part of it because that one is twitchy as all hell but the uh

Speaker 1 man the frustration of it and the way that i felt that it just felt bad. Like, I didn't like the feeling of I was getting so angry and like really, really frustrated.

Speaker 1 And I couldn't, and that's probably on me, but like, man, it really got in my head in a way that I did not, did not enjoy. And that's like not

Speaker 1 probably not, it's nothing to do with the game. Just like, I don't know.
It's how I felt. I, I get it.
Like, I'm, and I'm not gonna, I will say this too.

Speaker 1 I'm not gonna like stand in the way or try to like denigrate it because of my own personal whatever. It's just like, I found, I just found a lot of it pretty punishing and frustrating.
Yeah. For me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's, that's one on my list. There's a few on my list that I feel like didn't do a ton of stuff wrong.
And, and that is, that is one, but it is certainly a,

Speaker 2 uh, you know, a question of genre and, and, and preference yet again. Uh, there's no way anyone's going to play Deltarune chapter three and four, right?

Speaker 2 That's, that's, that would be.

Speaker 1 I mean, I would want I am, my instinct for that is to wait. I know, wait, to, until it's out, Like, that's my instinct.
Especially after we've kind of learned that lesson with Hades 2.

Speaker 1 It's like, hey, Moonlighter, I know how excited we are for Moonlighter 2.

Speaker 1 We should probably wait, y'all. Like, don't spend 40 hours in Moonlighter 2 early access.
Just wait.

Speaker 2 I have started to win it in early access. I did it with Grounded 2, where I played it and I saw sort of what they were going for and what was new and what was cool.

Speaker 2 And then I gave myself maybe an hour or two, and then I stopped immediately.

Speaker 1 So it was not to Hades 200. I think that's a good way to do it.

Speaker 1 Okay, again, to reiterate.

Speaker 2 I might come back to Death Stranding 2. It's been so long.

Speaker 1 You might have a tough time jumping back to that. Man, it's, dude, I feel like I feel the exact same way about Death Stranding 1.

Speaker 1 I know that if I had just kept playing Death Stranding 2, I would have liked it, Russ. I know I would have.
I only stopped playing it because we had to play other stuff, but I can't go back.

Speaker 1 I can't, man. I can't.

Speaker 3 I will say, Death Stranding 2, way more accommodating. And if you go back to it, it'll be even easier than you remember it after like a half hour at most of picking at it.

Speaker 3 These games, it brings you back in.

Speaker 1 Death Stranding 1

Speaker 3 I probably prefer Death Stranding 1, but it is not a welcoming game. Death Stranding 2 is philosophically like Kojima saying, I want this to be easier for you.

Speaker 2 I'm going to say my three, baby steps, Death Stranding 2. Is there a way to just really poop sock Death Stranding 2 and just like get to the get to the story?

Speaker 1 You just need to beat it. You just need to.

Speaker 1 I played it enough to get it, but like, I you should put, I mean, it depends how much

Speaker 2 what was the last one? I mean I'm in Australia and I'm like I don't know uh

Speaker 2 halfway through the

Speaker 1 just try it just try it Griffin and see if after 30 minutes you feel like I'll get back into that and I I'll give uh Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Speaker 1 I might start a new save file on Donkey Kong Bonanza and play it solo.

Speaker 1 I mean it's fun chaos with a kid, but it's not a game.

Speaker 2 No, yeah, it's it's hard to really find the critical path and stay on it when it's like your main way of interacting with with it is to shout exploding words at rocks.

Speaker 1 That's yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, I think we should take a break.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And well, yeah, we've gone a while, but we do need to briefly talk about

Speaker 1 a little bit of Valve news, and then we'll get into honorable mentions. So let's take a break.

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Speaker 2 Fangamer designs and sells apparel toys, books, and more for many of your favorite games.

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Speaker 1 Okay, what did you guys, how did you guys feel

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 Valve announced

Speaker 1 they're not going to talk about a new Steam Deck and instead announced three different pieces of hardware?

Speaker 1 Pretty cool trailer they put out.

Speaker 2 Everyone loves Steam Deck.

Speaker 1 Fuck them. Fuck Steam Deck.
Check this shit. There's three.
Check this shit out.

Speaker 1 You know that McMahon meme? That guy's an asshole, but there's that.

Speaker 1 No, no, it's the one where he's falling backwards in the chair. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so that's how I was when they showed. So they showed the Steam machine and it was like, oh, wow, impressed.

Speaker 1 And then the second one, they showed the Steam controller, and I was like losing my mind. And then they showed the VR.
I was like, What the fuck are you? Why, guys, why are you still making VR stuff?

Speaker 1 Wait, really?

Speaker 2 Oh, dude, the Steam frame is the thing I'm most excited about.

Speaker 1 It looks cool. I'm excited about it.
It's cool.

Speaker 2 The fact that it, you know, has the wireless sort of dedicated streaming setup that you can

Speaker 2 see on your machine and also has like a pretty beefy amount of shit like computer-wise baked into it.

Speaker 1 And also does like the pixel eye tracking sort of like yeah let me let me let me table sets incredible let me table set because we didn't do that for the people that are right you're right you're right there were three three big announcements from valve uh that happened last week uh the first thing they announced was something called a steam machine they've done a steam machine before but this is a reattempt at the concept in this case it's basically going to be running the software that is currently running on the steam deck it's going to be six times more powerful in the steam deck whatever the fuck that means and it's going to have a glowing light in front of it the gist is basically they want a set-top PC that is as easy to use as a gaming console, and this is their approach to it.

Speaker 1 It's something that I think

Speaker 1 at Microsoft and Xbox have dreamed about for years and years and still haven't accomplished, and this feels like they're eating their lunch. That was announcement one.

Speaker 1 Announcement two was a Steam controller. Steam controller looks a lot like, they've done one of those before too.
That original one did not have two analog sticks, which is insane.

Speaker 1 This one has two analog sticks. It also has two trackpads, very similar to the Steam Deck.
It also charges on a magnetic puck and can do wireless connectivity through a magnetic puck.

Speaker 1 And I'm losing my mind excited for that because right now I've gone through so many fucking Xbox controllers while playing PC games that I just want one that's not going to consistently break.

Speaker 1 So I'm very excited about that. And then the VR thing, Griffin, if you want to run it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's called Steam Frame. And

Speaker 2 the big thing seems to be it is giving you a lot of options as far as how you are going to play games on it.

Speaker 2 Whether that is connecting through this, it comes with a dongle that basically creates a private network connection to your gaming PC or your Steam machine

Speaker 2 that it will then kind of like

Speaker 2 beam the games over with, I'm assuming, reduced,

Speaker 2 you know, input lag because it has this dedicated connection. Or it has, you know, I forget the chip.

Speaker 1 It's, I think, a Snapdragon of some stripe uh that that snapdragon uh

Speaker 2 eight gen 3 yes uh that can handle like you know a lot of stuff and and the fact that

Speaker 2 you know

Speaker 2 the quest vr or not quest vr the original uh like the most recent steam vr thing first of all is

Speaker 2 was always sort of a like higher end uh i think wired kind of like connection but you had access to your steam library and that's very very cool because it's not like this wild shitty, closed environment like the Meta store.

Speaker 2 But the MetaQuest has been my preferred sort of VR thing because it's standalone and,

Speaker 2 you know, well designed, feels nice. It's just like the ecosystem really sucks.

Speaker 2 And to see them, I'm,

Speaker 2 it looks like really, really going for what

Speaker 2 the quest has been doing is like, I don't know, that seems like enough to get me back into VR. And that alone is like already pretty exciting.

Speaker 2 So yeah, the Steam frame is the thing I am most looking forward to.

Speaker 1 Did you watch Good Russ at Retro Game Core had a really interesting video talking about all these announcements, but his context for the Steam Frame was really, really interesting.

Speaker 1 And he would explain it better than me because I only half kind of understand what I'm about to tell you. But as Griff was mentioning, that

Speaker 1 chip,

Speaker 1 the Qualcomm 8 Gen 3, whatever it is, that's the same chip that's been used in a couple of uh android handhelds and that is the chip that is going to be running steam on on there natively right so it's built on the arm architecture so once that translation layer is there where the steam games are running on that architecture theoretically with that work being done by valve then

Speaker 1 those Android handhelds that everybody has could ostensibly just become Steam machines. Like, because that's the exact same chip.
Like, no, but but that part of it, I think, is super exciting.

Speaker 1 That's really interesting. And that's not what they were touting.
It's not what they were pitching. But when he mentioned that, I was like, wow, that's, that's a really interesting facet of this.

Speaker 2 I'm excited about all three of these.

Speaker 2 The price could be, the price is like the make or break thing for me because

Speaker 2 I don't know. That's the whole question with like, well, why doesn't everyone make a little cute little GameCube sized box that's six times more powerful than a Steam, uh, than a Steam Deck and,

Speaker 2 you know, has an adorable little custom LED light strip. Well, I mean, if it costs a lot of fucking money, like that's why.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, what was the Vive? Was that the Steam?

Speaker 1 HTC Vive was the headset.

Speaker 2 HCC Vive was the, that was a premium expensive experience compared to

Speaker 2 certainly the earlier Quest models, which were not as powerful, not connected to the Steam ecosystem at all. Steam frame runs Steam OS like natively.

Speaker 2 But again, if it's like a $1,300, $1,400 premium piece of VR hardware just for the deep enthusiasm,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's, I, I mean, yeah, you're, it's, it's true. I can't imagine it's going to be in that next.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I'm just saying that's the big thing that could swing the

Speaker 1 other direction.

Speaker 1 While I was watching it, and I'm not, I don't follow the industry as closely as y'all, so anymore, but while I was watching it to me, I felt like it was a direct response to where Microsoft is at currently.

Speaker 1 And specifically, the false start that Microsoft did into handheld gaming with this ASUS ROG thing. I feel like, to me, I heard that announcement as...

Speaker 1 Hi, we don't have to talk about Steam Deck 2 because Microsoft absolutely screwed the pooch with this guy. So we don't even have to worry about that.
And guess what?

Speaker 1 I installed Bazite on that handheld game. Got to.
And it's great. Got to.
And here's. Now here's

Speaker 1 the ecosystem that Microsoft ostensibly wants to build rather than create hardware.

Speaker 1 Like, we're going to do that right now with a box connected to your TV that is actually going to make good on the promise that Microsoft is saying that it wants to eventually make good on

Speaker 1 minus Game Pass, right? But other than that, like Steam is saying, like, okay, Microsoft has is seeding this. It feels like to me at least, Microsoft is seeding a lot of this territory.

Speaker 1 And Valve seems seems just like perfectly willing to kind of step in and be like, okay, we will, we will, we will fill this gap. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's at least that was my interpretation watching the video. That it's just like,

Speaker 1 I cannot, I don't see where Microsoft fits like in any reality at this point from a hardware perspective.

Speaker 2 Man, I truly feel.

Speaker 1 Oh, and by the way, Call of Duty sucks this year.

Speaker 2 I feel like playing Hades on Steam, on the AYN Thor, as much as I have makes me feel truly truly like this like post-console, post-separate ecosystem future that we've been like, it's coming.

Speaker 2 Like I do feel like it's here and I feel like a big benchmark is going to be when SteamOS is simply available to put on whatever the fuck you want to put it on.

Speaker 2 It just kind of seems like at that point, it's, it's, it's sort of this, that era of games is sort of over.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of great because I prefer the flexibility and choice and constant lightning fast iteration on this stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's, it's really, it's a wild time to be alive.

Speaker 1 Any honorable mentions before we wrap the show?

Speaker 1 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 1 I know. I'm like gamed out, man.
I want to go like look at a sunset or something. I have more stuff.

Speaker 3 We're going to talk a lot more on resties.

Speaker 1 Like I want to to talk about Birdcage and Inazuma 11.

Speaker 3 If you want to play Birdcage, I will just say that Birdcage, for people who have even a mild love for like Icaruga, that Saturn era of shoot-'em-ups, it is

Speaker 2 really

Speaker 3 something special.

Speaker 2 Um, I had a THC soda at my brother's house and then played morsels until one in the morning, um,

Speaker 2 which was a, which is, uh, was a cool way to do it.

Speaker 1 That game's out.

Speaker 2 It came out the 18th, I believe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to be doing a resty specifically on that, but you could give the basic.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it kicks ass. It's sort of a nuclear throne-inspired,

Speaker 2 you know, twin-stick sort of shooter, top-down situation where you're a tiny little mouse exploring a world of garbage and food and junk and guts and farts and burps. And it's very like

Speaker 2 toe-jam and earl.

Speaker 2 The aesthetic of it is truly deranged, and also, like, I could not look away from.

Speaker 2 And you collect these little more these cards that have morsels on them that allow you to transform into basically different characters with different, like,

Speaker 2 you know, abilities, different things they shoot out, and you can level them up. And when you level them up enough, they die of old age and become a new morsel.

Speaker 2 And like, it doesn't tell you fucking anything. It doesn't tell you anything.
It's like you pick up a thing and it's like, oh, you got a fuzzy that increases your tofu.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I don't know what the fuck. I got a pop-up that I was just kind of vexed by, which said I had two choices.
Option A was shuffle all of your morbs or shuffle all of your fuzzies.

Speaker 1 And I knew what neither of those things were.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it doesn't tell you any of that shit. I don't know if it's good or not yet, but I was sort of in sourcehold by it for an evening.

Speaker 2 And it looks truly,

Speaker 2 I mean, watch a trailer for it, it looks fucking crazy, like it looks so good. Uh, and the sound design is like really, really next level.

Speaker 2 Uh, I don't know if like the roguelike hooks are gonna get me yet because I haven't really spent enough time with it. But, um, first, first blush is quite positive on Morse, Justin.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 I finished Bride and Mate,

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 romance romance fantasy duology about vampires and werewolves.

Speaker 1 Very sexy stuff. Really well written.

Speaker 1 Great, great. If you're into supernatural romance,

Speaker 1 it's a cut above a lot of the stuff I read this year. And

Speaker 1 highly recommended. If you don't.

Speaker 1 There is some werewolf anatomy that becomes part of the copulation.

Speaker 1 So if you think that that's going to be something you're not feeling, you know, if maybe Scent Glands and their exploration isn't something you're into, maybe look elsewhere.

Speaker 1 Maybe look for something a little more pedestrian. But the first is called Bride, and the second is called Mate.
They're interesting companion pieces. I don't know if there'll be any more.

Speaker 1 I've continued playing Pokemon Legends ZA with my son, who is Zah.

Speaker 1 Pokemon Zah with my son, who he loves it. I enjoy it, but I enjoy more going out and trying to catch the Pokemon that he is interested in.

Speaker 1 And he keeps asking questions about which ones evolve into Megastones, which it occurs to me now that he can no longer go back and play any of the old ones because none of these are going to evolve into mega versions anyway.

Speaker 1 So I think I ruined him on that front. But as a kid watching game, he's been very, very into it.

Speaker 1 I think that's it. I wanted to thank a few folks over at the Patreon, which is at patreon.com/slash the besties.

Speaker 1 We have Zulu the dog, we have Ina Dequier, we have Megan F., and we have Papa X Chief, Pap X Chief in our parlance. Thank you for being patrons of the besties.

Speaker 1 We have a new Resties coming at you on Tuesday, so watch out for that. New bracket episodes, all sorts of good stuff like that.
So coming at you real soon.

Speaker 1 Also, make sure you're on there because we're going to be doing voting for Game of the Year. So you can suggest the four fan votes.

Speaker 1 I think we did it. What are we doing next week?

Speaker 1 Next week. Pollo, baby.
What?

Speaker 2 Pollo, baby. Can't wait, baby.

Speaker 1 Pollo?

Speaker 2 We're doing Kirby Air Riders.

Speaker 1 What does that have to do with pollo?

Speaker 2 That's what he says.

Speaker 1 Kirby says pollo?

Speaker 2 Pretty much exclusively. He says like three things.

Speaker 1 I thought he says,

Speaker 2 No, that's his breathing sound. He has asthma, and it's fucking rude to really hang a lantern on it.

Speaker 1 Dude,

Speaker 1 Kirby sucks.

Speaker 2 That was the name of the cartoon that they made

Speaker 1 back in the 90s. That's funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Speaker 1 Besties