The Besties - 2020 Game of the Year Part 1

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

It’s all been building to this! The boys come together with 16 games duking it out for the best games of 2020 (including 4 listener selections!). Who will live? Who will die? Who will cry? There’s only one way to find out! For the full bracket, check out TheBestiesPod on Twitter. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

how things been going russ i did the most responsible thing i've ever done in my life last night go on i thought it'd be a good idea to finish final fantasy 7 remake because i never actually did and i was at like chapter 16 i was so close there's only 18 chapters and like at nine o'clock at night i was like you know what i should beat this before we jump into the game of the year episode i should just finish it and it'll be fine and like how long are two chapters gonna go for oh boy uh so i started playing chapter 7 17 which is the second to last chapter and an hour and a half goes by and nine boss battles go by and i fight a robot about 16 times and then chapter 18 starts and suddenly I'm on a motorcycle. And I'm like, you know what?

No, it's not going to happen. There's no way I'm going to see the end of this game and not totally hate the game at the end of it. Because we've all been there. We've all had that moment where it's like, okay, I'm just going to beat this tonight. It'll be fine. Yeah. And it just goes. And it goes.

And it goes. So did I make the right choice i don't want you to spoil final fantasy but how long is that ending boy i remember it so vividly um let me think okay so chapter 18 you said it starts on the motorcycle yeah so okay so i think i can remember this so tim allen and will William H. Macy and Martin Lawrence and John Travolta are, they all ride their motorcycles. Yep. And they are going on sort of a,

sort of coming of age, old age adventure. Absolutely. And they get in all kinds of scrapes and there's love and then they bump into Ray Liotta and they mess that up. And then I get, and at this point I'm realizing

I am talking about the movie Wild Hog, so I'm gonna try and tie it back in, and then Sephiroth shows back, Sephiroth is there, and he hurts William H. Macy very bad. No. And then it ends on a cliffhanger. So part two, we gotta wait for part two. Part of that was real,

but I won't say which part. You gotta play the game to find out. Oh, that game was good. Yeah. This should be a cakewalk. I like the game. We'll talk about it. This should be a cakewalk.

This is going to be... Well, welcome to the best game of the year. Set them up and knock them down. This is an unconventional one. There's no theme song. It's just us. Oh, wait. Shh, shh, shh.

Guys, listen. Over the horizon, I hear it. The theme song. It's coming. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week here. Oh, yeah. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. Year. Oh yeah. My name is Griffin McElroy and we're going to,

and I know the best game of the year. Probably. My name is Christopher Thomas plant and I know the best game of the year. My name is Ross. My wife has a migraine in the other room and I feel really bad now. Welcome to. bad now welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment it's a game of the year show that goes all year long and it finally culminates in this this incredible uh game of the year spectacular where we talk about all the games from 2020, a banner year by anybody's metric,

and we choose the best one. That's it, folks. That's the whole bit. And how are we going to kick it off, Chris? Well, we've got a bracket. We're going to go through 16 games. 12 of them are picks that we we brought and four of them were decided by our listeners after a 32 seed playoff bracket very uh hey thank y'all for participating

on us destroying your twitter feed for about a week uh we appreciate you uh but yeah i think we're ready we we have a lot to talk about, so we should probably get right into it. Well, I'm not going to waste any more time. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's jump into an ad because I don't know. That's what I meant.

I feel like anything not commercialism is wasting time. Oh my gosh. I can't believe it's finally here. All the games. Lay it out for me. Somebody tell me how we're going how we're gonna do this yeah i haven't really been paying attention to slack per se so for people who don't watch march madness the way the bracket works right is like you have the one seed this is the top game and then the

first match is going to go up against the 16 seed which is the bottom game and these are usually blowouts uh in our case it is animal Animal Crossing versus the bottom listeners pick Star Wars Squadrons, which lets humor for all of, I think we have 15 seconds. Star Wars Squadrons, you know, space, flight, X-Men, TIE Fighters. No, it's a fucking, it's a really good game. I'm not saying it's not a good game. I'm just saying, you know, like, I'm sure the players at Appalachia State

are a great group of kids. No, we're not going to bury it. They get their chance to shine. Let's give it a chance. Rogue Squadron is a very, if you like, that sort of Colony Warriors style free-flying space shooter, it's a very competent one of those.

I don't feel like it's a very competent one of those i don't feel like it uh did a lot to sort of uh insert itself into the upper echelons of that but it's very neat and a very cool experience in vr uh if you can get that that was going to be my sort of dark horse argument is it's the coolest thing i did in vr this year the other facet of that is i didn't really do a whole lot of stuff in vr this year but that was the coolest one by a country mile. Yeah, I would agree with that. It did make me very, very sick. Yes.

So that should be considered. Listen, this has no commentary on whether or not Squadrons or any of these games are bad. The reality is we have to get through a bunch of these brackets. All these games are good. Some are going to get more love than others. And the one seed going up against the 16 seed, Star Wars Squadrons, hey, top 16 game.

That's very respectable. That's good, yeah. Definitely worth giving it a try. You know, you can go back and listen to our episode on it. But I think it's pretty decisive. Animal Crossing is moving on in this bracket. And you can play Animal Crossing with a flight yoke. It should be noted. Yes, that's true. Do we want to talk about Animal Crossing is moving on in this bracket. And you can play Animal Crossing with a flight yoke. It should be noted.

Yes, that's true. Do we want to talk about Animal Crossing? Or are we just going to kind of hold off to talk about it later? We'll have plenty of time to talk about that game. Okay, yes. We have a very interesting matchup coming up. This next round is going to be spicy. I'm excited for this one.

So this is a 7 seed versus a 10 seed. Okay. This is Final Fantasy VII Remake versus Paradise Killer. one so this is a seven seed versus a ten seed uh okay this is final fantasy 7 remake versus paradise killer now paradise killer is interesting because we actually have never done an episode on paradise killer we've mentioned it as part of honorable mentions yeah um and uh but we've never actually done an episode and i think it was kind of a late breaking one i only played it recently because it was going to be one of our picks for game of the year and i was absolutely blown away by it i thought it was really just super ambitious and different and funny and well written and um a really incredible incredible game uh what's the like 30 second elevator pitch description of this game

it's a murder mystery game uh with a sort of aesthetic and uh gosh if you want to say structural uh nod to stuff like um oh deadly premonition yeah and and uh phoenix right mechanically there's definitely that hunt for clues and present evidence and that kind of thing. And with some tonal nods to like Lynchian type influences, stuff like that, with also a thick coat of neon vaporwave. Yeah, it's vaporwave. It's like very Fighters, Megamix, Saturn, Sega Saturn Saturn all the way down to the music yeah uh it's also open world with like a actually genuinely kind of fun world to explore and

look for you know collectibles and shit if that's your jam but it has it has a tone and a story that is kind of like vaporwave cosmic horror that I'm like really very very very into uh this this this round is genuinely tough for me it's confident it's really confidently told too it's a very bizarre story that is that is very confident the way it tells it and trust that you will get the story as you're playing through the games are ambitious in weirdly different ways too like remake tries a lot of stuff that you would not expect, like, a big studio like Square Enix to take swings like that with what is maybe its, like, most beloved story of all time. But Paradise Killer is a, you know, a much more indie production that I think tells maybe even a larger story in the context of, like, this murder mystery structure. story uh in the context of like this this murder mystery structure yeah i i think that like the the difficulty you know when they're rating like gymnastics and they give bonus points for like how

difficult the thing is that they're pulling off paradise killer's story um the challenge of like having the like most buck wild you know lynchian's a good description because we're dealing with like a lot of like paranormal metaphysical like trippy head shit but having that be like a cogent interesting engaging story with good characters is like so hard to pull off and twin peaks is like a really good example of that working and i think paradise killer manages that same feat in a really incredible way. I also just like the world aesthetic. It has like a up-res like almost I say this, it might

sound as like a neg, but it's not meant to be. It almost looks like a Minecraft world, but if it was someone spent like 900 hours designing it and like carefully placing all the little pieces and like making it feel, as Griffin said, like fun to explore and really interesting. I also think Paradise... Oh, sorry also think paradise oh sorry sorry i just got one more thing because i please please

please survive this or not but uh it it is part of the trend that uh hades is also a part of which everybody in this video game box like yeah everybody's house is sexy. Including skeletons that are literally just bones. But they still know how to pose. They still know their angles. I would actually like to say, this may be a little bit of a surprise, because I played both of these, enjoyed both of them. I thought Final Fantasy VII did some incredibly interesting things

that we have never seen before in terms of a remake. So smart, So cool. Really, really dug it. I personally though, just would love to elevate paradise killer for just like the, the sort of like nailing it on the first try, the originality,

um, the aesthetics, all of it is so cool. And I really loved it. And it really stuck with me. Uh, and I would personally push for uh paradise killer so let's talk a little bit more about final fantasy 7 then because if if it's gonna get

bumped we should we should talk about why it's good uh i i agree um largely with that but i will say what final fantasy 7 did in terms of a remake as you were saying really there isn't a comparison um and you talk about degree of difficulty god of war is maybe like the closest like in terms of like revisiting the it doesn't do the same thing of challenging its own history and narrative it does though and it never pretends to be a remake it got a sequel like final fantasy 7 every person brought their expectations of what they wanted that game to be i mean there are millions of people who have spent what a decade two decades thinking about what they want that remake to be yeah and that they one made a thing that pleases all the hardcore fans but two adds all of this stuff and then becomes yeah a pretty sharp critique of its own shortcomings

um in a variety of ways and sets up whatever part two is as something that will be wholly different and unexpected that basically says like okay you got your fan service now we're going to do our own thing from here on out yeah that's wild i i still can't believe that how this game did not piss everybody off um because it feels like it was destined to the thing i keep coming back to with final fantasy 7 remake which i had i genuinely adored i thought the combat like all the things they did to sort of evolve the kingdom hearts style uh turn-based but also like real-time combat stuff was really really smart and genuinely fun to play uh and the story like watching them subvert it as somebody who holds that story as like you know in a very important story in my formative years uh watching

them subvert that was really really cool but i also feel like it fell into the trap at times uh i i caught myself a lot going like, well, I just got to fucking pound through this part so I can get to like the next part of the story. Like the side quest stuff, I thought were not particularly inspired. And I caught myself running up and down the same stretch of ruined highway,

trying to like find a fucking dog or whatever. Like stuff like that just felt like a waste of time. And it is really hard for me to overlook that compared to a game like paradise killer where it's it is a tight little fucking package where you are it is it does what it does and then it gets the hell out of the way yeah i think i love that people like when i think back to final fantasy 7 which literally i was just playing last night but when i think back to like all the times I was playing Final Fantasy 7 I think back to the cutscenes and the story and those like epic moments and the like amazing dance sequence

and oh god like so many great great moments what I don't think back to but I was reminded last night is how much of that game is like kind of busy work like there's a lot of like as Griffin said either side quests or even like just a lot of like here's a lot of like as griffin said either side quests or even like just a lot of

like here's a very basic maze and you're gonna slowly walk through this maze for a very long time and flip switches and i hope you like that because you're gonna do that six or seven more times and that is just a drag and i don't think it's enough of a drag to ruin the game i think it's a spectacular game i am so so pumped for two. I'm honestly pumped to just finish part one, but I'm very close. I love talking about video games with you guys, but we have got to move faster. We must go faster.

So it sounds like Paradise Killer is the winner here with the hope that, hey, Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2. Hopefully we see you in, what, 10, 15 years? Great. Can't wait. By that point, Final Fantasy XVI Remake, Chapter 1 will be out, which I'm so stoked for, I can't wait. Up next, we have Hades versus Doom Eternal,

which, let's see, where does that fit on? That is, Hades is a two seed doom eternal a 15 seed another listener's pick um i i feel bad in some way for these listeners picks because they are going up against really the best of the best well if we if we liked them a lot they would be on our list right i mean it's kind of the nature. But they are going to get their Doom. Yeah, Doom is cool. Doom is good. I don't think that for me, Doom was quite as

expertly crafted as the first Doom in 2016. It never really clicked for me in the same fashion. Let me hop on Doom Eternal because I reviewed this game and I think I liked it more than most of the population. Doom Eternal, I like more than the original Doom because Doom Eternal, to me, feels like what I wanted Doom to be all along.

Just rolling around a heavy metal album cover. Like, it is, that is the one goal that they set out to create. cover like it is that is the one goal that they set out to create and it feels so much like the giant big open environments the platforming as controversial as it was soaring through those spaces just it ruled man like the the especially the the focus on the divine um also another addition that a lot of people didn't like that I loved you having your own planet spaceship thing that you get to decorate with a whole bunch of like hideous doom gear and electric guitars

and what is it Funko Pops it was hilarious I also want to give a nod to the fact that they managed to actually unify the doom canon in an incredible kind of way like they actually made sense to connect they connect the original doom game to this doom guy and how they all kind of intertwine which is just like something that

i never asked for i never thought anyone could possibly pull off and actually do a pretty damn good job i was like weirdly looking at Wikipedia pages on Doom characters to see how this all tied together so that was pretty dope I like the game I think it's a very good popcorn game you know I think overall like

I didn't mind the platforming as well I think as Plant said the aesthetic I think is very very strong and I also think they made a lot of smart changes from the original, the 2016 remake, to basically get rid of, like, a lot of the, like, I don't know where I'm going, I'm totally lost, like, the maze-y stuff that I think that game kind of messed up. I think one villain ruined this game oh yeah for most of the audience i i that that one boss that makes it more about um effectively like punch out style the shield timing the shield guy yeah

completely is is antithetical to the pleasure of the game of creating a flow and i i would love to know how many people who do not like this game really the thing is that they got to that point and they're like throwing my hands up i'm just done i'm just gonna walk away from it that and there was i think they patched it but there was a moment where you had to go swimming in toxic water um that was like great two moments in this otherwise just rip roaring good time that uh make you want to punch your monitor it's out on now. I've been thinking about picking it up on that because I never put a whole lot of time into it. I can't imagine how it could possibly run.

Doom 2016 played actually really well on Switch. But big open environments is the thing that I'm like. I guess it'll just look like mud. Mud? That's from the film Mud. Anyway, Hades beats Doom Eternal in Battle from the film Mud. Anyway, Hades beats Doom Eternal

in Battle of the Hells. Yeah, it feels like this is another one that we're just going to dive into deeper as it gets a little... because I think we all knew that Hades was going to get through this round pretty much. There's going to be a Hades Animal Crossing round, and that one's going to be about half of

whatever episode it lands on, I imagine. It's probably going to get nasty. Yeah. Up next uh and this is going to be the last one before halftime this one i think is going to be interesting number five kentucky route zero against number 12 astros playroom wow okay wow hold on is this tough the game i actually think it's versus uh tech demo and yet i do know that russ rushick is gonna give me grief about how this tech demo is the real bee's knees because the controller the controller no this is i part okay so i reviewed kentucky red zero and i liked it a whole heck of a lot. And I actually reviewed both of these games as a matter

of fact. Well then Russ should just be able to tell us which one's better. Here's what I'm going to say about Kentucky Route Zero. It is a narrative game that narratively over the long term has not necessarily stuck

with me. And that's a sad thing. I think it's more of an experience as you're experiencing it and has not, I mean, it's been whatever, six months since I reviewed it, and has not long-term stuck with me narratively. I don't know that it has that long-term life to it. I think aesthetically amazing. I remember specific moments.

But for a game that is ostensibly like it's a, you know, an interactive novel game and a very good one, I don't know that the story landed for me enough to really have it stand out. Meanwhile, Aftersplayroom, granted, there is a recency bias here. I did play it very recently but i do think it was the game and still to this extent like i've played a lot of next gen games at

this point because of those enhancements that they've made specifically with the controller but also it's an incredibly well-made platforming game it feels like a an experience that i've never had in a platforming game before like it felt like a truly new experience for me um which is so so rare and and something that i really think elevated it beyond stuff that like nintendo has pulled off so so that is why i am leaning towards astro but i do want to say this in support of russ i've worked with russ for over a decade and he i think honestly has some of the best opinions on video games on the planet that's unfortunately this is the worst opinion he's had oh geez um it's uh truly uh i mean embarrassing um it will

be probably included in his obituary as you know that stain which really can't be written soon enough i mean we just keep saying it on this show. But here's the deal. Astro's Playroom is a very cool tech demo slash hagiography of the Sony brand. Also, you have to play as a spring and

aim yourself to jump. And that's... For like five minutes, Chris Plante. Oh my gosh. And then the next one, you get to play as a gorilla and you have to swing your arms the the game very very cute it does this game standalone is like a great platformer in history yes no it's not a tech demo it should be noted it's not a tech the mechanics are not fun the the the general jumping is okay it's very pretty kentucky route zero that it has not stuck

with you I mean let's just be real this is a statement about you not the game it's the best no what I'll say is I I'm not surprised it hasn't stuck with you but I think that is not because it's a narrative game but because it's not a plot game I think like I like Godard films right because I'm an asshole um I couldn't tell you what happens in any of them, but I can tell you how they made me feel. We talked about Lynch earlier. I think that's kind of a similar thing. I think what they were going for,

it would be shocking if you remembered the plot especially well because there isn't a lot of plot. There isn't a lot of vibe. Justin, I see you making faces like you're trying to process either a big idea or a big poopy maybe a little bit of both um no i think um okay so my two arguments if if we want to get into the weeds on it one i thought that kentucky route zero did not stick the landing for me i really liked everything it set up to that point uh uh i think kentucky route zero was hampered in part by and i feel like this is a fair knock uh the way it was released uh in in that format where

this game has been coming out for years and i feel like just because it's done at this point like we've discussed it previously on this show and many different iterations and I feel like the way this game was released hampered the enjoyment of it and I feel like this fifth episode of it for me like in no way sort of

stuck the landing in a way that like resonated with me at all. I even, even removed from a narrative that would stick with me, which this game was never about narrative. I spent the last, especially like the part with the,

the farm and the, and you know, all that different stuff. I spent the end of this game, just sort of wondering how I was supposed to feel or like what it was trying to communicate with me. And I felt very distant in a way that i really jive with early on um and uh it's better than astro's playroom which is a

game for babies so that's where i am at i don't care y'all y'all's condescension towards astro's playroom makes me want to defiantly put my vote behind Astro's Playroom. Oh, I was kidding. Astro's Playroom is very good. I really liked it. I like playing it with my kids. It's cool to see all the Sony history stuff. The controls are fun.

I think it plays well. I think calling it a tech demo is honestly extremely, extremely reductive in a way that like calling Kid Egg Route Zero a visual novel would be full of reading for Poindexters. I would say this. I agree with everything that's been said. And I also think that if a perhaps stronger title

was up against Kentucky Route Zero, I would lean towards that because I agree with everything Justin said. That style of storytelling that is not plot, not even plot centric. Like the plot is not necessarily even an objective. I think of the thing is, is not my jam.

And then I just bolded Kentucky red zero before we decided. I think we know where this is going. And I agree with juice. I thought the ending of act five, the final chapter was was very affecting and everything up to that i was kind of waiting for the thing to start like i was kind of waiting for like the the the tying up of all the loose ends of the previous four chapters and the shit that i actually cared about to start and then it kind of didn't and then i the credits rolled

and i was like oh okay well there's some really really cool moments in there but and the and also the boss fight was bullshit the gym should have glowed the entire time because how are you supposed to find it uh a salon desk so i i uh fresh could have uh won this round if he had remembered uh that gravity rush appears in astro's playroom that's oh got that uh the visual novel beats the tech demo um but don't worry there'll be more uh time to litigate visual novels later in this very episode no uh is it time for halftime juice baby we're there no one's hearing us talk because they're listening to ads for sheets in what is perhaps the most improbable maybe worst game conversation i'm actually going to write this one least productive game conversation of 2020 we are going to be pitting Microsoft Flight

Simulator against Among Us and these two are always I feel like they're basically spiritual sequels to each other at the same time Microsoft Flight Simulator seed for Among Us

listeners pick seed 13 I think that's the top listeners pick yeah okay this this may this is the listeners pick that i resonated strongest with for me it's not a competition i fucking spent a lot of time playing among us this year and it's a really fun ass game and there is a reason why it is the sort of cultural phenomenon that it is and i had way more fun playing it than microsoft flight simulator wow so much more fun than i did playing flight simulator it's out of control the fact that you can download this shit for free on your phone and play it and it is by far the most competent

uh mafia werewolf style game that you can play online other than i i think that you get into hidden role games are like my favorite genre of games it's what i back in the before times like loved playing shit like coup and and werewolf uh with with my pals uh and but but digitizing that is tough i think the best you ever got was assassin's creed uh asymmetrical multiplayer where one player had to like blend in with the crowd but even even that was not pure in a way that the mafia werewolf hidden role style game works. Among Us does it. With all of the little things that you don't think about as being how to make that asymmetrical format work in a digital environment where you can't necessarily see each other's faces and uh having that instead seen through the lens of gameplay objectives like and and just little things like the vents in the ground

like there's just enough data for you to try and manipulate when you are the the imposter that it just it perfectly perfectly does the the hidden role shit like i i think it's a great game i also think it does the smart thing of like you mentioned the assassin's creed multiplayer like no someone who's never played a video game before is never ever ever going to be able to play that but this is designed so approachably and like easy to grok in like three i could hand my mom my phone and she could play like the that is a very difficult thing to make a great game that is also enjoyable to anyone and i did actually do what you're describing around thanksgiving uh as a way of just like getting people connected uh me and sid's family who are having thanksgiving dinner

at our house uh got on a zoom call with uh sydney's sibling taylor who's in who was in new york and we all played among us and it's wild how there were completely varying levels of experience on the game it scales no matter who's playing it it still works it's the bit lands no matter what my father-in-law is actively terrible at games and was able to play it off because he's better at lying than he is at video games like and and and i i it's just so impressive to have a game that's like also by the way the other thing i will say is that i like hidden role games a lot but as a party game especially when you're playing with like family or people who uh can take it very seriously it can be a very fraught genre to play because you're basically accusing people of lying constantly with no basis

and it can get like very grating and stressful what's the it's so smart how people are removed from the conversation if you get killed by the person you are removed if you actually know the truth you're removed from the conversation and there is basis for all this stuff where a lot of it it's like people acting sneaky in the real world and this is like an in-game um uh mechanical thing i wanted to say one last thing is that i also think in and this is a conversation i think we're gonna have about animal crossing too like in this year where i actually didn't have a lot of like great online multiplayer experiences like i fell off of destiny and final fantasy and the stuff that i usually play for that like social thing i think it's amazing that there's this free game that everybody's

been having a lot of fun playing we did a stream uh with uh some some uh other like online content creator folks and folks that honestly like i didn't know especially well i was on that stream russ was on that stream i was talking specifically about russ uh and like for it was it felt like i wasn't anxious i wasn't nervous which is like something that i'm getting personally here but like i'm not great in that particular environment but having i honestly think about it like pub g where it's like oh i feel comfortable just kind of shooting the shit because we have this like you know social game to to as as the kindling my favorite gaming moment of 2020 was watching justin's face as i murdered him and then watching him not be able to say anything about it was absolutely the best really tasty and i could

just and then earlier we had a played among us and so it really set the tone for the evening go for it plant microsoft flight simulator is going to lose so i'm going to give it its its fair due um if it was a different group of people microsoft flight simulator could be the number one like as a technical achievement i think it's by far demo maybe it's not a demo it's a full game it doesn't come for free and you don't have to play as the the monkey or the spring um microsoft flight simulator i mean i i still can't believe that it exists that only microsoft can effectively take all the cloud computing all of az, all of the mapping technology that it has, and then also the video game stuff and create a believable replica of the entire planet. And that they keep updating it constantly is incredible.

That said, it is the opposite of Among Us in practically every way in that to get into it is incredibly difficult. Right now, it's only available on PC. Especially at launch, it was very hard to get up and going. You needed a pretty beefy computer. Is that not the case anymore? Is it more, like, runnable on shittier machines? Not that it, I mean, I can't, I can't speak directly to that. I just mean that it like it loads when you want it to.

Didn't do that right away at launch. But at the end of the day, it is a flight simulator. It is made for people who want just that thing. And while I don't think that should be a huge knock against it, thing and while i don't think that should be a huge knock against it i think you all are right that like what among us did during this year is more valuable i guess to the audience than what microsoft flight simulator did but again it doesn't make sense as a comparison they they are both the game of the year in two different conversations for sure do you guys think if among us wasn't it there was inevitably going to be a game like among us that that popped off

this year where like we needed i mean animal crossing was that for a while i guess so like we're gonna just like we were going to coalesce around some sort of accessible online multiplayer game this year and It's happened before. I think Blaseball, which we'll talk about later, I don't think it pops off in the way it did if it wasn't this year. I think people are just so hungry for community this year.

Alright. Among Us, the first listeners pick win. I would call that a surprise because I didn't know that I felt so strongly about Among Us until I started talking about it. Here's next up.

Oh boy. Number nine seed. This is a very close one. A number nine seed, Ori and the Will of the Wisps versus a number eight seed, Griftlands. Can you talk about your seeding process very quickly? Yep. What was your seeding process very quickly what was your you you want me to how the fuck do you do it bud how did i do it uh yeah how did you

how did you arrive at these cd obviously the listener picks make sense because they weren't on our original i think the seating is good i think it's been good no no i agree with it i'm just curious because we hadn't discussed it i'm'm curious. Like what the, what the rationale was. I, I, I, yeah, I,

I used a variety of things. Uh, how much we talked about the games on our podcast. Um, how much people who listen to the show ping us about the games. Uh, and then, uh,

I, a little bit of secret info called, I have access to polygons,gon's top 50 games of the year. So I have a general consensus of how people feel about things. He also polled all the Conference USA coaches. That's not to say this is a mirror of that, because I assure you.

It's a super not. It's not at all. But I do have a general idea of where I think these things fall. All right, here we go. Ori Will-the-Wisp versus Grifflands. One of the rare I'm walking into. I don't actually know I need to pray on this why don't I talk about

Ori and then Justin will talk about Grifflands and we'll go from there so Ori the Will of the Wisps this is the sequel to Ori in the Blind Forest sorry one more time Ori and the Will of the Wisps it's a mouthful it is it's a mouthful a lot of W's in there or so this sequel um to one of

my favorite metroidvanias of all time an absolutely gorgeous game and i think ori um follows in a lot of ways it kind of follows what doom eternal like that same kind of model where they took the core gameplay that worked really really well and then kind of went in slightly different directions throughout this game this becomes more of a um more of an rpg um i think it it borrows a lot of elements from a lot of different games rather than just being like a straight platformer metroidvania um it continues to be absolutely stunningly gorgeous like seriously play this game if you can on like a really nice tv uh i think it got updated for xbox series x if you happen to have that um it is absolutely like just picturesque and also has like a great score and also like narratively story wise like there are about

four or five cut scenes in this entire game and every single one of them makes me cry like a fucking baby like tears pouring out of my eyes like an anime and that is really I don't think it's emotionally manipulative I actually think it's because they are very smart with

how they use their limited time to tell the story of this game. I was super, super blown away by it. I thought it was really excellent. And I also put it on Switch, which is a pretty telling experience. Like the fact that this gorgeous, amazing game that has emotional impact is I'm playing it in my hands. Like that's crazy. emotional impact is i'm playing it in my hands like that's crazy i wanted to add because you didn't even touch on my favorite part which is that it has maybe the most fun locomotion of any

metroidvania i've ever played yeah the way that you string together a double jump into you bounce off an enemy projectile and swing off of a lamp and dash through a hole and then do a dive through the water and burrow through like you do all of this shit in one smooth combo it feels really really good uh and it's worth the price of admission in my my opinion grift lands is a rogue light i will say it is designed to be played multiple times to experience the fullness of the story and to make different decisions in it. Where you are a grifter or a con person who is trying to make their way in a alien world, I would say. There are currently three different characters that you can play and each have their own very unique style. But the actual gameplay mechanics for both are split into two different uh sort of paths there is combat and negotiation um you're building decks for each of those you have a

negotiation deck and a combat deck and you are like a lot of deck building games you're building a a deck that uses energy for each card that activates different abilities or different defenses against your enemies, whatever. Uh, and, uh, each one of those is very different for each of the characters. For instance,

the newest character Smith that was just released, uh, in combat, they drink a lot and the different drinks have different bonuses that apply, but also leaves them with an empty bottle in their deck. And that empty bottle can be shattered to draw a new card. You can get a weapon that shoots empty bottles. You can hit someone with if you get six empty bottles, you have attacks that do more because you're smashing empty bottles over their head.

And also and so that's the combat. And each one is different. mashing empty bottles over their head. And so that's the combat, and each one is different. There's a character who has two pistols that have varying levels of charge, and whether or not they're charged up or not charged up, you do different amounts of damage. And it's really about building.

I just want to ask specifically, because as someone who's played it, it's a tough game to jump into. I think it can be a little overwhelming. I want to ask you specifically, like, what about this game sets it set? Like, you play a ton of deck building games, I know. So, like, what is it about this game that makes this one special? One thing that, okay, so the cool stuff about Griftlands is, one, the other half of the mechanics is a negotiation, which I've never seen done particularly well or particularly gamified, where it's like an argument and you're playing different cards

that can build up an argument or tear your enemy's arguments down. And that is a very cool way of making concrete something that is very ephemeral. But the real thing that I really dig about it is the story of the game in each of them is so different on each play that I have, you know, it's never really that dull

because you can make different decisions every time. And the decisions that you make have real lasting effects on the world. You can make characters hate you and then you can get gameplay bonuses or deficits from that. You can kill a character to get rid of those

curses or deficits but then another character will hate you probably because they like that first person. You can make people like you and they'll help you out in combat maybe or make people love you and they'll give you bonuses. And it's really about making mechanical a lot of narrative stuff that other games sort of make more ephemeral.

And because that narrative is so mechanical, it really makes it weightier. It makes these decisions more than just like, I'll see what the story does this time. There's a real impetus if you want to get to the end. And it's not super easy. A real impetus for caring about that narrative.

So this was my impression. I'm curious, other people as well. You know, I've played a lot of card games as well, like these sorts of deck building games. And the ones that I get into, and we'll talk about another one a little later, the ones that I get into are ones where I feel

like I understand everything that the game is throwing at me. I'm not good at it. Like I'm not making the best choices when I'm picking cards and stuff like that. That's fine. But I understand why, generally speaking, why things are happening and like what what resources mean what etc i feel like grifflins does not do a great job of welcoming new people

to its systems to the point where like the second that like it's showing you a video of how the systems work is like not a great sign for them doing that whereas a game again we'll talk about it but monster train i think it's like the perfect example of like how to introduce mechanics hearthstone does this amazingly well even slay the spire i think is more welcoming because it starts off very narrow and then widens um whereas grifflans i think there's a lot it does it does a lot at you always chris griff what did you guys think briefly i think mechanically it's interesting i think the best thing that grif lands does is like you said like it it connects every aspect of the world and gameplay in a way that i've like

never really seen in a game before this like really intricate web of this decision you make here will affect something you know an hour down the line in like a really important way. And it's also different from the sort of, you know, telltale game style of like, they will remember that. Like it is more subtle and realistic, I think than that.

For me, I think I just couldn't really groove with the narrative roguelite genre just as a concept like i had i was going through the story and like i loved the characters and haven't like got really far and then my character died and then unlike slay the spire where it's like oh okay i just lost the deck i'll start over and this one it's like i just had that story going and then the story you know just stops just kind of stops and it's, you know, that's fine. Maybe it feels even better when you do finally get through the story.

But I really had a roadblock where I did not feel especially inspired to start over, which is like, that's what the roguelite genre is all about. So, yeah. It's fair. You know, honestly, I love both. Plant, do you have anything? No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, I'm sure they're both great. Sometimes games don't click with you, and it just happens to be that neither of these games click with me. I'm going to... You know what? I appreciate getting it onto this list, but I will be honest. I think there's enough love for Ori on this

that I'm not going to put up a fight, and I love Ori a lot, so I feel great about that. Cool. Cool. So... Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm going to be the plant in this next round.

Yeah, this is going to be fun. That means not kidding. The next round is number three seed, Spelunky 2, versus number 14 seed, Blazeball. I will say this. The Blazeball community, hello. Welcome to the podcast. It's good to see you.

Love those Kansas City Mints. Passionate, passionate, passionate group of people. Some of the most passionate people who voted in our poll and outright slaughtered any game they got in their way uh if you enjoyed ghost of tsushima i apologize now um because boy did they let their feelings be known um i like both these games a lot i really really enjoy blazeball i think i was the one who brought it to the podcast. Before I get into it, though, does anybody have any feelings about Blaseball or should I carry this torch? No, you can go ahead.

Please go for it. So I think kind of like what Griffin said about Among Us, that there was a need for a game like this. And I think Blazeball connected with a bunch of people, especially people in the arts community, who needed something to rally around collectively. I think it connected with people across the entire country who were looking for effectively like zine culture, right? For people who don't know what Blazeball is, I realize I should give that really quickly.

Blazeball is an entirely numbers and text-based game in which you bet on these fictional baseball teams. Those games are simulated, and then you see the results. That is like the most boring version of it. but it's obviously much wilder than that. The community can adjust the rules via a voting process. Truly bizarre things can happen to your players or the officials, like they get incinerated or they drink demonic blood god and become strangely powerful. The actual rules of baseball itself can be modified. It is all very cheeky and fun. And the best thing about it is all of these fan communities kind of formed around each team.

So you would have fan art just for one specific baseball team, right? You would have indie garage bands that made baseball EPs. indie garage bands that made uh placeball uh eps uh it i mean it got really intense and it still is really intense as i mentioned um it's fans i think they feel an ownership of the game in which i don't think fans of any game on this list feel and in quite the same way. Because like, literally, they do own the game, like the game, the visuals of the game, the sounds of the game, the feeling of the game doesn't exist without them. Because effectively, what was so brilliant about Blaseball in its design is by not having any of that, it allowed the fan base to create all of it. It's really, really, really fantastic. That said, and I'm sure they're not going to be happy about this, Blaseball fans. Blaseball to me feels like the rough draft of

something truly excellent, and that is like whatever this team does next. I think baseball is great i as somebody who cared deeply about it found it nearly impossible to follow um without like making it a part-time job uh you you have to really really really really invest yourself in the community to but that's like that's part of it that's part of it right like sure it is but of course it's a fair criticism like i this is way up my i'm somebody who like i love sort of and i know this isn't this but like the sort of arg vibe of like there's this whole narrative behind the game and uh all this stuff is happening and like i made a decent effort it doesn't help that like i don't i i don't care about sports at all uh so just the idea of betting on anything and caring about the outcome is not is a little foreign to me but aside from that like

i don't i tried like if you go to blazeball.com right now it is not clear at all how one begins or if even one can uh play this game called Bladespawn. I wanted to be part of it, and it was hard because it left me feeling like, oh, man, I really am on the outside of this. And I wish there was a way to be on the inside of it that didn't require me to be in a Discord community and all these things. Right, yeah. It seems really cool, and I'd love to be involved but like it's not i just don't have and again as an act of art that's the thing that i ask the listeners to think about with all of this you could create a type of bracket in which any of these games are

number one like if it was about technical stuff it would be micro microsoft flight simulator if we were talking about like art you know, what is the artistic value? I think things like KRZ and Blaseball would have a higher spot on it. But that is just by nature of what we do with this show, which is we are recommending a game for everybody. But what do we want to give everybody? More than any other game on this list, though, I will say it is the most fun game I'm not playing this year. Like, it is the most fun.

We get on Wonderful, the podcast I do, we get emails all the time of people talking about Blaseball. And all they do is they talk about, like, some wild shit that happened this week on Blaseball. And I see that, and I'm like, that's fucking great, man. And even though I'm not playing it, like, I see that stuff. And I'm super, super glad there is a corner of the internet that i'm not playing it like i see that stuff and i'm super super glad there is a corner of the internet that i'm not a part of where like all of this fantastical stuff is is taking place in this like entirely like crowdsourced way i think it's i think it's it's 2020s eve online yeah uh yeah that's fucking very accurate can we we, and there's Spelunky too, which will win this, and congratulations.

We'll talk more, yeah. We have got to move a little bit quicker. Yes. Okay, here's the bloodbath. So it's Monster Train versus 13 Sentinels. Okay. Yes. I'll talk Monster Train.

You just talked about Griflands, which is another card game, so let me take a shot at it. Yeah, please. I'd love that. So monster train is another deck building game. The difference here, you know, is basically you're summoning these monsters. You control a bunch of monsters and they're in this train and you're summoning monsters to basically defend the train against invading heroes.

I guess they're like you know meant to be like counter your monsters and it uses uh similar mechanics to like hearthstone stuff like that where uh you know the monsters you summon have health and they have attack ratings and various other abilities the variance here unlike a game like hearthstone where it's just like cards on a board you are literally placing these monsters in various places in the train itself and deciding, okay, I'm going to put this monster at the front of the line to act as a defender for the rest of the monsters on this floor of the train. And so there's a lot of tactics in terms of placement and strategy in terms of like, okay, how am I going to like arrange my monsters on each level? You know, I mentioned this in Grifflands, but I think Monster Train is incredibly, incredibly good

at easing you into these mechanics that are different. They're very different from like a lot of other deck building games, but it's super approachable and digestible. And I think more digestible than even like Play the Spire. It's pretty welcoming insofar as like this, I think a lot of room to screw up early on in Monster Train.

And you can feel like, okay, I'm making progress and I see how I can succeed. You'll get stomped later on, but that's fine. You know, I found it immediately charming and like really like, I felt like I was really accomplishing something when a strategy that I planned ahead for

played out exactly how I wanted and I crushed a guy. So I think it's terrific. So, to be straight, does 13 Sentinels even have a chance of getting through this? How hard should I go here? I would give it a beautiful farewell to farewell to a friend can i say because i tried to put a little bit more time in a 13

sentinels the realization i had and i think that might just be because i have been playing some old visual novel stuff on the vita lately if it had just been that like if it didn't have the uh strategy element of it and instead just told this like wild sort of time jumping uh open-ended story i would have been i think more into it that's but i i just really didn't like the strategy parts of it okay go for it here we go 13 sentinels is the best game of the year and you're watching it get robbed in real time by a bunch of just fucking buffoons um but that's okay we love them i mean all of us make mistakes so i'm going to tell you a little bit about why you should give this game a chance um 13 sentinels is a video game about video games

but also about like movies and fiction and how kind of dangerous they can be and how they can be really appealing as escapes but they've become these little bubbles where we get a little too comfortable and uh we don't really pay attention to all the shit that's going on outside of our life and here is where i'm going to spoil 13 sentinels like i'm going to spoil the whole game so if you don't want to hear it click ahead for like three minutes okay i justin is taking off his headset as if he's ever going to play this game truly ridiculous um so 13 sentinels is a sci-fi game uh set across multiple timelines right uh the past like the basically world war War II, 1985, and a little bit in the future. Justin, I'm still spoiling it. And you're trying to figure out why do these

different timelines come together? Why do they overlap? And why do they need to fight these, like, alien kaiju things in the future, right? Twist. That's not what the game is about at all. The world is already over. The apocalypse already happened. You are on one giant flat spacecraft. And all of these supposed timelines are just four recreations that exist side by side by side with one another.

And it's all happening effectively at the same time and uh the people and who lived in the world and who lost the world created more or less a simulation to try to revive society and the kaiju that you are fighting are not kaiju they are bad code uh from a video game that literally just was used to like cut a corner like using github um to program things um so the whole thrust of the game is not about the you know how do we fight off the apocalypse in the end it is the apocalypse happened. How do we find a way to keep going? Like, how do you get by? And like these stories, the game is full with all of these cliche stories like, you know,

there's ripping off E.T. and ripping off the Matrix. And the point is these stories are intentionally there. They're there because these are the stories that the people who designed this remember from their past and think that these are like important stories and will help these people develop and the whole arc of the game is you can get sucked into these stories you can get distracted by them you can make this your like reason to exist or you can realize like hey these are here to teach us but at a certain point we got to like put these stories behind us and go and actually do the work and it rules that that is incredible that that a video game did that is amazing and that's

why the rts stuff is so important because the rts is a video game it is why it looks like a video game um it has a purpose uh and it is fun i recommend putting on the easiest setting so anyway i know the game is not going to go further. I think it should, but I understand. Can I just ask one question? Yes. So I didn't play a ton. I played like the first couple hours.

Do they justify the like kind of iffy sexualization high schooler thing? Pretty iffy. I would say, you know what? It's iffy. I mean, the sexualized high schooler stuff, I mean, would say you know what it's iffy it's i mean the sexualized high schooler stuff i mean welcome to vanilla where games i i don't i don't think it certainly doesn't get worse i would also say there's some stuff with there's a non-binary character that i was really worried about in the beginning of the game that ends up being like one of my favorite

romances in the game um that's great uh so if there's like stuff that you're a little suspect of at the beginning um i would say don't worry so much for the most part that doesn't stick every landing there's one character who for whatever reason always stands in a way they can see both her chest yeah that's when my wife walked in the yeah my wife walked in the not like she's like what are you playing and i was playing saying Tush is more offensive than anything in the game. One other thing for people who are listening to this and want to hear more, our pals at Into the Aether, that podcast, they did a full three-hour episode on this game.

It is probably the only substantial thing of criticism I've found on this game. So if you are playing it and you're looking for more i really recommend you go and check that podcast out uh yeah but monster train though is that is that do we still feel good i'm i'm i am willing to be swayed by plants impassioned defense he cares much more about this than i care about monster train no i but it's monster train okay so this is normally when we would do reader mail or honorable mentions, but y'all twist. This is just part one of the game of the year episodes. So we're going to do those things at the end of next week's episode,

which means it's time to say goodbye. Oh, well, goodbye. Thanks for listening to our podcast. Be sure to follow us for free on Spotify. We're so thankful to Spotify for making this show a possibility. You can share the link to this show. It's besties.fan. You can email us about your favorite games of the year.

Mail at besties.fan. Oh, we got the Besties pod is our Twitter handle. There's a link to our mailing list there. But that is going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, be sure to join us again next week for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!