The Besties - 2020 Game of the Year Part 2

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

We’ve gone from 16 and we’re down to 8 of the best games of 2020. Now we’re going to cull down these sweet, adorable baby calves until there’s just one golden cow remaining for the year. The final eight are: Animal Crossing: NH, Paradise Killer, Among Us, Ori 2, Spelunky 2, Monster Train, Kentucky Route Zero, and Hades. 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!

I know we're not going to talk about Cyberpunk for a while because we've got to wrap up all our Goaty stuff, but I did want to posit a question to the three of you. Oh. And that question is that, okay, like, I have, I believe, like, seven fillings and one crown, like, a fake tooth, like, in my head. Wait, wait, wait. Is this character customization or are you talking about Griffin McElroy? Me, Griffin McElroy. head and i also wait is this character customization are you talking about griffin mcroy and me griffin mcroy that would be wild if that was the degree to which character customization was available to you in uh no cyberpunk gives you three choices of genitalia no filling options i guess it does get let you pick your teeth anyway seven fillings and one crown and i also wear

corrective eyewear so i'm that's my baseline i'm wondering if i am the most cyberpunk of the four of us just with my level of sort of like uh you know uh wet wear sort of body mod cyber wear i i destroy you oh what yeah yeah i have i have steel plates on both hips from bone grafts and my jaw was broken so i have a steel bar in my jaw and then i have back retainers under both teeth i when i go through the uh the security i have to let them know that like my dude it's gonna go off like that's pretty cyberpunk. Here's my submission. I had a cyber surgery to have my semen not work anymore. That was a cyber surgery I had. Sure. If you ask me, it was an upgrade.

So I did get a cyber upgrade. Yesterday, I got two stims, stim shots in my wrist to increase my hacking abilities, which is to say, to treat my carpal tunnel syndrome. But still, increases my hack. You can't hack with the carp, baby. So those are two i got might be the winner yeah fresh do you do you have any any any upgrades uh when i was a small very nerdy

teenage child so glad you grew out of that by the way very little has changed uh i was uh they something called the herbst appliance was installed in my mouth. If you can Google it, you will be horrified. It is a freakish, racist situation that I think is outlawed in 16 countries now. But for two years

of my high school life, I had this situation. Dog, my man. This is the most cyberpunk shit I've ever seen. Bring bring it did it let you if i can describe this to you it looks like if you've ever seen a slow hinge on a door it looks like two of those in your mouth i've never seen anything like this russ you can i can i say something right now you i I want to sit here and apologize.

You've come so far. If I had known what you'd overcome, I don't know if plant is frozen or just looking at the pictures is heinous. Okay, listen, Russ, you are cyberpunk. The only problem is I don't know if you're cyberpunk so much as you're a transformer.

A robot in disguise. This looks more steampunk to me. This is... It's respon. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best games of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the year. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the year. My name is Ross Bartina, and I know the best game of the year.

50% thought you were going straight into Lion King. Always down, but never out. The besties will not, cannot be stopped. We are here again to wrap up this incredible year. Memorable year of video game entertainment.

We have so much to talk about. What do we have in store for uh this episode we have four just absolutely brutal rounds to get us to the final what four that's a semi-final yeah yeah and we'll have two more we'll have some more after that um uh one thing that y'all should know, for people who've been paying very close attention, we had our bracket. Getting to this point, the seating has been thrown out the window.

We're just putting up good head-to-head matches. We want you getting the best of it. I mean, trying to. It's not, given that we have as many games as we have, it's kind of difficult to do. Fresh put this together. So if it's bad given that we have as many games as we have it's kind of put this together so if it's bad blame him i'm just the hype man um and you know what we'll get right to that after the commercial break these battles are starting early and they're they're coming in hard um did we not okay so this is round two. Yeah. Of our original 16, we're down to eight.

Sorry, these games look familiar, and there's a reason for that. We've pitted them against each other before. Our first round is Paradise Killer versus Among Us. A listener pick, the sole listener pick to make it through our brutal Sweet 16. Yeah, and I would say, say like i think in the first 16 they were definitely as you know some matchups were like well we know this game is going to win

um but we can sort of move on very quickly because we you know but we'll give some respect to the other game that that uh has an earnest uh shot of being good Whereas I think here, we're really starting to get into I have no clue which of these is going to win. I have an inkling, but this is a pretty heady matchup, and we've got a few of them coming at us soon. I think we've got to move faster than that sort of level of

meta commentary from now on, okay? It's time. Fucking pick one right now, Russ. I've sensed the him and the hon. Pick one. from now on okay we're right where it's time fucking pick one right now russ i've since pick one my gut is probably among us uh out of these games interesting yeah so so again we talked a lot about paradise killer uh in in part one yes i'm not going to go in length about it and we talked a little bit about among us as well i you know i think among us falls into the category that pokemon go did a few years back which i remember doing a like a hard argument for pokemon go

which is to say it became and continues to be a cultural phenomenon uh you know we've talked a lot about uh hidden role games and why it is so good at that but really just the fact that um it has literally brought so many people together in this very shitty time to have fun with their friends in like in not in the same way that like, you know, you play a multiplayer game. It's like, oh, shoot that guy. Cod kind of multiplayer. This is like direct interaction with the personalities of people, you know, which I think I think is really meaningful and great. And I like the cute little guys. run around they do stuff justin you look like you have indigestion right now yeah i'm really i'm weighing this one i'm chewing on it because like i personally loved paradise killer

a lot it is so specifically my aesthetic and kind of thing that i enjoy i i but i actually think aesthetic and kind of thing that i enjoy i i but i actually think i'm leaning among us on this just because it's just been a very powerful thing to be able to turn on and like bring people together people of all different you know uh levels of interest in gaming people who know each other or don't know each other um we recently found out that um uh because of the ongoing unpleasantness sydney's sibling taylor won't be able to come in for christmas and one of the first things that we said was like was started planning on like the among us game we're going to play that evening you know what i mean like and that in this year specifically i'm not saying that's enough to like carry you but i don't think you could deny the sort of cultural impact and and i want to mention that specifically like

something that doesn't get a lot of attention but definitely should is how easy it is to get cross-platform games going to get multiplayer going like there's no barrier to entry there and that can easily sync the best possible game in the world and it's just like like that like so the fact that this indie indie studio came out with such a robust and like genuinely uh hassle-free online multiplayer experience that is catering to millions and millions and millions of people is is a staggering accomplishment yeah there's one other thing that i want to say in praise of it. They were making Among Us 2, and they stopped.

And they focused all of that effort into just making Among Us more like a living game. And I think that is great. It would be hard to have released Among Us what? They released it last summer, 2019? I think it's like two years old or something. To have that game be that old, and then finally people people come on board and you're pretty primed to be like oh you you enjoy that okay we're gonna charge you again like right now we're ready fucking 3d now

yeah every everything was like this just landed perfectly for us and instead um they they played it smart uh and i i think there's something like refreshing about it in the in the ish dev uh setting a solid example like i just to put up a i think among us is gonna win i i still think paradise killer i like better um because it it is just this type of game didn't we didn't get a lot of great entries of this type of game i feel like this year um and it's like my like juice said like my exact shit and unlike a lot of games that i played this year that i liked like paradise killer is one of the few that like as time went on the more i looked back on it like fondly like the more i realized like that was a truly singular like experience of the kind that is is my favorite kind of gaming experience.

So I think Among Us wins, but I also cannot recommend Paradise Killer highly enough. Agreed. Sounds good. Congratulations to Among Us. The furthest, I think, any listener, not that we've been doing them for very long, but this is a very impressive feat for a listener pick,

which is made into the semifinals. Yes. Next up. Animal Crossing versus Kentucky Route Zero. Not thrilled about this matchup, but my options were pretty limited, so sorry about that in advance. Let's talk about Animal Crossing.

We didn't at all in the last episode assuming that we would do it in this one uh i think a lot of the same things that we just said about among us we could say even more so about animal crossing because it is it this this franchise has always been its own thing as much as people can like say it's oh it's like cutesy sims or whatever like it's it is truly a thing of its own uh and it occupies i also think like among us like this space that non-gamers are excited about my uh my wife rachel does not play video games she was she started playing uh the 3ds animal crossing earlier this year and got a switch to play new horizons and it's a game that we play together all the time. My dad

got in on Animal Crossing his wife Carol got into Animal Crossing and I will go to parties. My wife never plays anything. It's astonishing. I go to parties that dad throws at his island and go to his little

amphitheater that he built where he puts on uh illegal productions of hamilton like it's it's it's fucking buck wild the the reach that this game has had and i it would not have had this reach if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic like i i truly think that that's probably true but it is it is uh juice called it the most important game of all time i think when we first did an episode where we talked about it and that's a that's a goof but i also like uh i i think a lot especially as we get close to the end of the year here like um how we are going to look back at the entertainment like media of of this year like walking looking back at like old

episodes of snl you know 10 years from now and thinking like oh god that was so fucking weird that like that is how we had to make things and enjoy things in this year where we couldn't like be in the same place together and when i think about how we're going to look back on animal crossing like that like it it genuinely makes me kind of emotional because I cannot, I cannot imagine like going without that experience. I going without playing, going to my dad's like Hamilton animal crossing productions online and feeling like as funny as it was like, you know,

being there with several of my, of my family and friends at the same time. Like it is a, it is a truly connective experience. The likes of which like, I don't think gaming has ever really had before. Um, yeah,

I, I, I also love animal crossing and I think it's a fantastic game. I think that they dropped the ball in the usual Nintendo ways of online connectivity. and there's the, the usual hurdles that you have to jump over there. There's some clever workarounds they did like with, you know, here's a code.

And anybody with this code can just come to your island. Or they can go to the Dream Suite and just go to an offline version of your island if you want to show them what you've done. Like, they've gotten better about that. And the constant content updates, I think, is truly impressive. I just, this is my game of the year, and I adore it. Yeah. Plant, you want to talk to speak to yeah i'll speak to that i i think all of that is true for the month of march um i think that my problem

with animal crossing and i and i love it is nintendo's failures and typical failures with online are so huge with this game that it prevented something i think like miraculous from happening like i think for a month we saw people just muscle their way through the headaches of getting online to enjoy this game and like okay i remember whenever we would get to have a polygon to get together it's like well i'm gonna have something else to do for an hour while i wait for people to load in and load out and do all that and this could have been truly like a the best game of all time sort of thing if the online was just basically as good as any other online game in existence in the past yeah imagine if it was like on the level of among us it would have been of course unbelievable on the

level of like power rangers battle for the crystals like anything any game anything at the bottom of the list so like anything above it is an improvement and that's that's what i find so frustrating about this game is i i agree especially during like march and April, it felt like this was just the most astonishing thing to happen in games. And then I fell off of it so hard because of these failures that it's a weird thing where if we end up giving it

the game of the year, it's not necessarily because of the game, it's because of the community. That's not to say the game's bad. It's because of the year. I don't personally agree. Sometimes it's the games and sometimes it's the year. Yeah. You know, for what it's because of the community that's not to say the game is bad it's because i don't personally sometimes it's the games and it's the year yeah i you know for what it's worth i do want to say like i think for the amount of time i probably played online with people maybe 10 or 12 times so enough but i think it's still i mean it's the best animal crossing game they've ever made that's i don't think a question yeah i think it is a pretty spectacular game.

It's a game I'm still playing. I play like once a month till I get fish and bugs and stuff, but I think it does hold up even considering the very, very shitty online. I think it holds up as a good top 10 game, but without the online stuff, it's like a chore simulator.

I think skipping over or pushing into the margins the the community aspect is is not a a fair way of talking about the game because it is kind of wild to consider the community that has come around this game a lot of it is not great but all of it is in response to nintendo's sort of failings uh things like nook nookazon and all of the things that make this game a roadblock like nintendo has weird like we don't want kids to play with grown-ups like things going on there but they also are like they put it in this walled garden where they are super careful about like item duping and like the reason the the online play is such a pain in the ass is anytime somebody joins

an island everybody on that island has to save their game right then and there and that happens every time anybody goes and leaves right because that way they can prevent people from you know aping the system and duping their items and shit like that and it's like so unnecessary it's animal crossing like who gives it this is not like destiny it's not like some like competitive multiplayer experience that's a wild way of doing that um but i i came back to the game in october i probably fell off in may after playing it really hard and then i came back in october and like tore my whole island down and rebuilt it uh like paying attention to like all these aesthetic communities that have come up around the game

like and and again every month they've been like putting in these pretty huge updates with like new recipes to craft and new big special events. Like, I don't think, I think there's a certain type of person, Chris, and I think that it's like fully fair that fell off because of the frustrations and maybe because of the repetitiveness of the experience. But I think the investment that I made in those first couple months was enough to make me keep coming back anytime they add something new to the game, which they have been more than any other game in Nintendo's history, I think, like really fucking good at tapping into. Justin looks like a statue. Justin has feelings.

I don't. I just don't. I had a fun time with it and I had more fun with it than I thought I would. And when everybody around me was playing it and talking about it, it was very cool. would and whenever around he was playing it and talking about it it was very cool um but like that that died down kind of for everybody around the same moment and i just it was like um that's just too much of it felt like tours and you have that moment with with a lot of games like this where you see the matrix and you're like oh my god this i don't care about any of this i'm just wasting my my life minutes um and and and that's been because the the group of people around me stopped playing

it as much and uh um but it's like not i don't know i i feel like maybe that's the fault of animal crossing maybe it's just the fact that like i have to play a lot of games for for this podcast so i don't know speaking of games we should talk about the matchup yes yeah i'll give a farewell to kentucky route zero because i think there's no way that y'all are going to let it survive this so even with justin mildly dunking on animal crossing his face says i could dunk worse on kentucky route zero let's not do it let's give it a nice i want to talk about my disappointment with kentucky route zero for the 10th time this year i just talk about it in part one a little bit so good good thanks for that i'll

let me go back and listen to it so i'll make sure i'm not disappointed um no i i think kentucky route zero is fascinating i think anybody like i wish more games tried for this kind of thing it is wildly inventive wildly uh ambitious um i think it was hampered by the length of the time it took to develop and the sort of shifting target, I think, for what the developers wanted to say and how they wanted to say it with the game. I feel like if the whole thing was made in the span of a year and a half or whatever, then it would feel a lot more consistent and cogent.

But there is something like very admirable about this sort of like shaggy dog story with like uh weird uh off roads into absurdity and an abstraction um i think it's very very neat and there's so there's so much of, too. I played it for the first time front to back this year, and it is between the side stories, which to me are the best part, I think, of the entire experience. Like, if you're looking for a story to kind of get lost in, which is, hey, it's a good time for that,

you can do no better than Kentucky Route Zero, because there's a fuckton of lore to sink your teeth into. I will say, also, I feel than Kentucky Route Zero because there's a fuck ton of lore to sink your teeth into. I will say also, I feel like Kentucky Route Zero was mainly me not meeting it halfway. I think that I did something

that I used to do with a lot of David Lynch stuff where there would be all these pieces and fragments of things that didn't one-to-one connect for me. And I was kind of hoping for a finale that you would have this one moment where you're like oh my god you know galaxy brain it all makes sense yeah you wanted the cryptex yeah exactly

and this wasn't that right which is again i don't it's probably more my fault or my expectations but um a very cool thing press you have anything before i do my eulogy yeah um i think it's a very good game to put if you happen to find yourself stuck in a giant snowstorm which i am currently living in i think it's like a perfect game for that it's like a really good alternative to like cozying up in like a comfy chair and getting all warm and cozy and just like having it absorb you um so i think you know but we talked a little bit in part one about how the like quote narrative didn't land with me but i do agree with plant that like the the vibe and like we you know art obviously it should make you feel something and it's certainly like when i think back i have a

have like part of my brain has like enveloped by the vibe that was kentucky route zero and i think that was very strong and remains very strong so um yeah that's all i had to say yeah so my eulogy is basically the opposite of justin's experience which i think is like obviously fair uh but for me what i like about this game is how long it took to make it and is how it evolved over the years i mean here is a game that literally was born in one recession and ended in another about the failings of america and how that target changed really year to year that you know for whether it is the economic housing crisis whether it is the opioid epidemic whether it is the uh rise of populism um all of these things are factoring into each episode.

And I think the fact that we have a document of this really, truly unprecedented decade in American history, and it's a video game and not a book or a movie or anything like that is incredible. I mean, people are always searching for video games as you know when are we going to have this moment of being an urtext of you know american history and like that happened it exists um you know whether or not everybody loves it or not is is a whole different argument but that is so special and i i don't want that to get lost on people

um that like we we got that thing um because it's pretty incredible so with that i bid it farewell we love you kentucky route zero kentucky road zero for what it's worth showed up in the very first game of the year conversation of the besties. Fucking fantastic. I know. Incredible. Absolutely amazing. And it almost won, but then we were like, we should wait for it to finish. Sorry, Kentucky Reds. Next matchup, I assume, will also be quite short.

Yeah, I think we can keep this pretty short just because we talked a lot about Ori and the Will of the Wisps and how great it is in part one. It's going up against Hades. Yeah, let's talk about hades thing because we also did the animal crossing thing to hades which is like oh it'll be one of our final two so let's uh do we really need to talk about it right now because we're gonna talk about it a lot more we have two more chances to talk about hades um i feel like if we don't talk about one and then

do talk about the other it gives a bias towards the one that we just talked about a lot like i forget all the good things say that hades is moving on we've talked about ori and the will of the wisp already i don't know okay well this will be a short yeah yeah uh ori is very very good and it's very good and i think it's one of the best one of these they have ori was already the first was so pleasant already yeah. Ori has chipped away all of like the little annoying things until it's just like, I mean, it is a delight. I mean, it is moment to moment explorations of joy, getting around the worlds of joy, the combats of joy, experimenting with new stuff is a joy. It feels so fun and free. And the level design of this thing is so impeccable.

I constantly had this feeling of, oh, I don't think I'm supposed to be here, but I'm going to keep going forward just in case. And that's like, they sustain that the entire game. The whole time. This sense of like, oh, I think I've messed up actually pretty bad. But you have it.

You've just gotten to where it is and it's making you feel this way. And I think that's phenomenal. I don't think I've ever had a Metroidvania make me cry before. Yeah. That's a first. Me neither.

I love Metroidvania games and this joins the pantheon of like Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow and Hollow Night that are like games I'm going to, I'm going to replay this game like frequently, I imagine, because that's what I, I've beaten Hollow Knight like three or four times now. Like this is, and this game joins that, that list, which is a very, very small list. And if you miss it this year, fix that. Fix that right now.

Yeah, I agree. So what do we decide? Are we going to dive into Hades now? But Hades is fucking amazing. So let's talk about it later. We're going to have plenty of time. Okay, yeah. Yeah, but spoiler alert, it's really good.

If you die before that, die knowing that Hades is very good. Okay, here's a tricky one. Oh uh okay here's a funeral for a friend come on hey listen for real monster monster train come here well let's talk about the matchup because it's important yeah it's spelunky 2 versus monster train there it is and you guys can go ahead and talk about spelunky 2 if you want i need to tell Monster Train about the farm we're going to have with all the rabbits and how we're going to live off the fat of the land. And he's just going to keep thinking about the rabbits and staring off in the distance while you guys talk about Spelunky 2. Don't listen.

Don't listen, Monster Train. You're very good. Spelunky 2 fucking rocks. But Monster Train. I feel the same way about both these games actually because i did not get very far into spelunky 2 because it's hard as shit and i don't like playing games like that like glued to my tv so when it was announced on switch you beat sekiro six times griffin yeah but it's that's spelunky is a different kind of difficulty

than sekiro like entirely i think it's silly to to say that they're just similar monster train Yeah, but Spelunky is a different kind of difficulty than Sekiro entirely. I think it's silly to say that they're similar. Monster Train, turn around for one second. I think Russ is forcing Griffin into being more negative on Spelunky. You might have a problem, buddy. Just keep one ear open. Monster Train, I feel the same way about. If Monster Train was out on iPad,

I would have played the shit out of this game, but I didn't get into Slay the Spire until it was out on iPad, like I would have played the shit out of this game. But it's like I didn't get into Slay the Spire until it was out on Switch. Like I only played portable games for the most part this year. And if both of these games had been that, then I would have sunk my teeth into them way deeper. But hey, who knows next year, right? And Monster Train will definitely come out on Switch as well. But Spunky 2 is also just announced on Switch. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. We talked a lot about monster train i loved it i thought it was great but i think spunky 2 is something truly truly special i think i like spelunky one better so it's okay i don't know what to do with that well i think we can dive into that played Once you've played more Spelunky 2 when it's on Switch, your opinion might evolve. This might be a 2021 combo. Let's put this round on ice, and we'll circle back to it in 2021. No. No, okay.

I think Spelunky 2 is going to move on, but I'm going to, at length, talk about it in the next round because I have a lot of very strong feelings about Spelunky 2. All right. Oh, nice. Okay, great. Well, I'm looking forward to that. What does it look like after the break okay so after the break we

are left with four games among us animal crossing hades spelunky 2 those are two good pair-ups i like among us yeah that's how the pair-ups are gonna be too yeah i think that's fair um i'm looking forward to that it's gonna be fun but, I don't actually know if you'll hear ads here in a second. It may just be silence. Won't it be a little treat if you don't hear an ad and it just jumps right into fun? Yeah. That's something else we'll talk about after the break. Which may or may not exist.

Welcome back. A lot of great sponsors this week which one's your favorite uh justin what who's your favorite of the five sponsors this week just bed springs when you need bed springs for one discreet spring to replace and you want them artisanally made in brooklyn yeah there's no place better than just Bed Springs. For me, it was Pringos. They're not Pringles. They're gluten-free, and they are sent to you in a little box, a discreet box that says Pringos on it.

And they're not edible. No. They're coasters. And birth control devices. Okay, so we've got- NuvaRing presents Pringos. We've got two big matchups. Can we...

Let's do Hades versus Spelunky first. Yes, I love that. We didn't talk about either of those games. Yes. So how about Team Spelunky 2 goes first since we just sort of talked about it and danced about it. I'm going to talk about Spelunky 2. I've played more more spunky 2 than

anyone in the podcast according to steam i'm at around 85 hours in spunky 2 i have not beaten the game uh there is a true quote true ending to the game that i have not reached yet i've gotten very very very close but i have not beaten it yet um good wait are you talking about you've gotten very close on the co it's a spoiler but there it's cosmic ocean whatever yeah knowing the name i've not made it to cosmic ocean oh so you haven't gotten close you haven't even i'm not i'm never gonna do there's a super secret ending that i'm never gonna do it i mean i'd be the cosmic ocean suffice it to say uh spunky 2 um is unquestionably harder than spunky 1 there's no doubt about that um but i do think there is a lot more going on within spunky 2 that makes it the sort of game that uh can sustain my interest for 85 hours and not feel like I've seen everything.

Whereas when I became an expert and remain an expert in Spelunky HD, I basically had seen everything. Like I feel very confident that I've seen everything and essentially know what every scenario can really throw at me. Whereas I think Spelunky 2, what it introduces and why it's so harsh to newcomers,

like way more harsh than the first one is way more variability even though you can get to a point where you can predict a lot and you can be an expert this game there's a lot more that you can not predict and not expect if you don't really have like this

matrix like view of what is going on on the screen the simple example very early on the molds that everyone has talked about where they come crashing down through the ceiling. And in the first game, you could just stand in a corner and be chill and like, think through your next move and really like take it slow. And this game,

uh, I think constantly encourages you to adapt and be flexible and, and mess around, um, to the point where I think it has a lot more staying power in that way um i would also add uh the post game support has been very good they've released probably 16 to 20 patches since the game came out changing like very small like game feel things to like larger like there's an omeg boss fight that plays differently than it used to.

They've really, I think, been very tapped into the community to like follow this game. The last thing I'm going to say is they just now, now six, five months after release, added online play to the PC version. I have not tried it yet.

I was traveling when it came out. I'm desperate to try it, but I do think it will allow people to experience something that I think almost nobody very few people experience of a Sponky HD which is Sponky multiplayer is fucking outrageously fun it's so much fun the only way I enjoyed

the game was playing it with Russ and I will say this it was some of the most fun I had playing video games this year and that's why we had to play it just so people are aware we had to play it over remote play Steam so there was like a half second delay whenever i was and even then it was still a fucking blast literally russ whenever you want to play that like text me but i but that like double-edged sword it's a fucking shame that that wasn't there like it because it was a big selling point and then like yeah i think the week

ends before the game is going to be released it was announced like okay so this is not done and that's fine like work on it and make it good don't release some you know don't don't do a cyberpunk but at the same time like it's a it is a colossal disappointment that when i was playing this game when i was interested in it when i was like actively enrolled in the school of spelunky 2 to like try and learn learn the ropes the way that I wanted to play it was like not there that yeah that kind of sucks uh yeah because I think playing it solo I I Spelunky 1 I was totally down to learn all of its systems in this like really punishing roguelike format but the scale of Spelunky 2 is just too much for me to enjoy in the roguelike format. Like making it as far into that game requires a lot more work than Spelunky

and it makes it just too punishing for me to get a blob of lava dropped in my head and then that's fucking it. So between Spelunky 1 and Spelunky 2, there has been like seven iterations of the like lowercase a accessibility debate in video games of like, hey, should you be able to have an easy mode on dark souls right and derrick you the creator of spelunky and spelunky 2 along with the rest of the team has always uh not always but has been involved in that conversation and talked about you know does spelunky change if you add those things right spelunky is so much about

discovery it is about not being able to just go and find all the things in it right away that to add some of those features could hamper the the experience right what i think is interesting is i think that's true i think you fundamentally have to set out to make the type of game that you want from the ground up to allow for that accessibility and i in some way feel like spelunky's design going into spelunky 2 was a trap in terms of further limiting its audience um because by going being more spelunky means being more difficult it means adding more secrets it means setting up barriers to finding those secrets and then the opposite is hades which feels like right a rogue light built from the ground up

to have the widest imaginable audience possible and that is options like the god mode which we talked about where you know you get more health each time you die is better damage resistance every time you die yeah but also the fact that like as you play that game it just gives you other types of games within it it's like oh hey it play that game, it just gives you other types of games within it. It's like, oh, hey, it looks like you're sticking around. Do you want like a home management sim? Oh, hey, it looks like you might also be interested in like a romance, like a light romance sim.

Like there is so much layering that if you don't like one part of the game, it's like no beef. We have a new thing that we're going to show you in like three or four runs after this. I think that is why that game has really, I mean, sadly for me, put like Spelunky 2 in its shadow because everybody has connected with this game. Once you try it, I mean, so many people.

It's not just accessibility the thing that i keep coming back to and i tried it whenever i have this thought i think i probably said it on the show before i try to think if it's true of any other video game i've ever played in my 33 years of life where it's not just accessible to anyone from the jump it's fucking super super fun like that first run it doesn't lock it. You start with a basic starter sword and shield with no upgrades, no idea of like what the, how to like build a build for yourself as you play.

And that first run is still awesome. Like it is still super enjoyable. I think I'm contrasting it right now because I'm trying to like break into Cyberpunk to see if there's anything salvageable or fun about that and like I'm so far into that game with this build I've been making it's not fun at all where Hades is just like here you go it's I have I have played um it's probably over 100 hours considerably of Hades I have beaten it I can't even tell you at this point probably 30 40 times i know i could

get these exact stats if i looked them up um it and every time i beat it i'm finding these justifications for why i want to play more like oh you know i would actually like to see how this little story thing ends or i would like to unlock all the weapons or whatever and every time i play it it's good it's every single time it's fun no matter what there's some there have been a few weapon aspects that i was like this isn't really for me i don't really like the this particular way of doing it but um you know i i it is and it's very smart about giving you these sort of threadbare justifications for continuing to play it's like we know it's fun but like if you want sort of threadbare justifications for continuing to play. It's like, we know it's fun, but if you want, why don't you see if you can get these two characters back together.

Or see if you can free this person or whatever. And it's just sort of this back of the mind, like, I'm not goofing around. I'm doing my job. But it just happens to be a very fun job. I think it is, and I've said this before, it's the funnest game ever made. Nothing's more fun than Hades. It's because it's constant. What is fun? It's that constant loop of learning

and then implementing what you have learned. Hades is giving you 30 different loops every time you're playing of like, oh, this is fun. You know, if I combine this with this, this is this this and you're doing that kind of calculation in your head constantly like there's never been anything that layers it on i'm gonna run this past y'all let me know if this is too crazy or too wild hades is destiny for people who don't have time and and by that i mean destiny you start it up right and immediately the second to second feel is good right the combat is good the very first time you

play it right destiny hades they're both about just rapidly acquiring power you get more and more powerful you take on the the the junk and you use all that junk to, like, go, I don't know, dress up or decorate things or have all your, like, silly non-combat things. The difference, though, between these two, Hades, single player, and runs take about a half hour to an hour at tops. Destiny, a part-time job. If you're doing it right, baby. Yeah, no, I think it's Hades with a bullet. I think, to push back against that plant, the only differentiation I would make

is that I feel like it is much more case of like, it's not just Link, it's like all killer, no filler. There's many parts of Destiny that are like, only filler. For a little bit of filler. Yeah, that's why I said people who don't have time yeah well time though i could have an infinite time and taties would still be a better use because it's more fun i would just say uh just before we put spunky to bed uh real quick i would say i just to echo what plant said earlier i do wish that there was a version of

that were that spunky was essentially split right where there's the like quote easy version and the like real hardcore spunky fan version and the easy version could like ease people into what is a spunky game unfortunately there is a varying difficulty but the easy version is really like hard to very hard and the true spunky version is next to impossible um and it's a bummer because i do think there's so much joy that can be generated by spunky 2 and i hope that online sort of flips that switch as well as the release on switch i think will help that it's just a drag that like you know even justin who eventually came around on it really had to like try hard to realize oh i get why sponky 2 is good um and i i want more people to have that experience but it's it's really hard to do that online multiplayer isn't just the best way to play the game it is

the easy version because if you die there's a chance that you could be revived by your partner but it's still hard as nails like me and russ never made it super far while we played it but like we got farther than i could get by myself because i didn't die you have a net it wasn't like on uh you know iron man mode where you just die the first time something bad touches you and and it was so much better i think that this game is going to be sort of relitigated once it's out on switch and once online multiplayer is i think it's just in beta now is what they're saying uh it's a totally different game and it's a way better way more fun game uh so i i think that it's gonna have its day in the in the sun uh also i i don't have the name in front of me i apologize to our listener because i'm trying to find it on twitter but one of our listeners beat cosmic ocean and I just want to give them an immense amount of credit

because I don't know how anybody does this. It is, I think, the single most difficult thing to do in video games. Oh, I found it. And the listener's name is Almighty Chad. Almighty Chad. Thank you. What a legend. You are a legend. A true Chad. Thank you. You are a legend.

A true Chad. I feel like we've talked about our last two games in this round among us in Animal Crossing. I feel like we've, we've given them both their due. I, for, and I,

and I think it's a perfect sort of pairing for this because I think these two serve very similar purposes for very different uh times in the year the the the distinction that i would place is that i feel like among us was better about connecting people all around the world and i feel like animal crossing was at least for me better at connecting people who are like in my immediate sphere. But these are both about connection in a year when that was really tough. It's way more, Animal Crossing is far more insular, both from the perspective of when I played this game, it was with our, you know, the people that me and Juice work with.

And it was with, you know, Rachel and it was with my family. And I genuinely, that's my favorite way to play video games right uh destiny 2 wasn't so hot this year but that used to be my jam like i would play raids and stuff with my pals and and stay in touch that way for me that was animal crossing this year and i'm glad that i had a game like that uh but it's also insular in this fact that like the community is like completely bonkers and builds all of these systems to play together. And there's this whole black market economy and people like trading a hundred real dollars for a fucking digital squirrel or whatever. Like that stuff is wild and not always the healthiest.

But to me, it was a far richer experience than Among us was because of the people i was playing with but i also recognize that that is a me thing like that is uh i i probably wouldn't have gotten back into the game if if my wife wasn't playing it if i didn't want to like you know if i if i wasn't watching youtube videos of people who had gone so hard in these new ways to design the island and sort of inspired me like that that's that stuff was very personal in a way that among us i've never had as per we we played it with a you know a big group of folks and that was fun but um it didn't have the staying power that those online experiences with animal crossing had but i also don't think many people had those animal

crossing experiences partially because of the type of game that it is and partially because of Nintendo's, like, at this point, like, comical failings at making a competent online gaming experience. Yeah, I also wanted to call out, you know, I think it's reasonable because on its face and to a lot of extent, it is like a chore simulator. on its face and to a lot of extent it is like a chore simulator but what grabbed me about animal crossing and why i ended up playing it for much longer than i any other animal crossing game was the nature of it being a creative platform right and normally i'll like coast on the creative like little big planet i've never fucking made a level in little big planet i'll let griffin be a maniac and do that yeah but but in game, there was something about the approachability of the creativity where I felt like I could do interesting things and have people, like, get joy out of that. Yes.

So, for example, I was like, well, I've been collecting all these dinosaur bones. I have a lot of duplicates. I'm going to build a dinosaur park and, like, carefully arrange each of the like skeletons uh in like a really interesting way and plant bamboo and stuff like that i'm gonna spend two weeks collecting gnomes and then make like a giant gnome army with like a throne at the front of it and like those aspects i think were what i think helped the community like engage with it even when they weren't actively playing like the fact that tweets and stuff like that would spread because people just wanted to see like what can you do how to spend all this time in this game what are you going to do with it right

my favorite part about this animal crossing is how they added just like basic quality of live features like being able to like look at a map and then be able to arrange your island however you want. Oh, no, wait, they didn't do that. It's absolutely miserable doing all the things you talked about. The reason I didn't do it is because I was like, well, I don't have hours to, on graph paper, map out what I want this to look like, destroy everything, use my nook points to pull all this off,

and then manually rearrange everything like i am like a uh uh home interior decorator stuck in the resident evil one universe but you don't that you don't have to do that this is a weird argument to make because like you don't have you don't have to play it like that if you're complaining that like you can't play it like the sims then like yeah it's it's well then what, it's not that type of... Well, then what are the features there for? Well, here's my point that I was making, was that in the same way that I rely on Griffin to make LittleBigPlanet levels, other people can rely on my creativity in the game to get some enjoyment out of it, even if they're actively not playing it themselves.

Chris is saying, okay, if you wanted to organize your... If you wanted to do some urban planning and you wanted to like make a neighborhood right that you're sure all the the uh the uh inhabitant houses are located in you can't just open up a mac and drag and drop them you have to you know pay fifty thousand dollars and move the house and then wait a day for the next thing to to happen is that is that what you're saying i mean just doing any large scale the the pleasure of this animal crossing is that it is not just your house it is the whole island right right but the problem is doing that is uncomfortable and it is not accommodating to that experience to being able to do it quickly right like you have

to manually plant every flower yeah okay. Okay, to counter that, my recent play of the game has been a complete reconstruction of my island. I literally got out the shovel and destroyed every like hill. I terraformed the island back to flat and then I rebuilt it in the design of like a national park with a trail and everything.

And I had to move every single like neighbor house. I had to get back in the design of like a national park with a trail and everything. And I had to move every single like a neighbor house. I had to get back in the stock market to make money for all those renovations. And it took me a month and a half, but like you can't, but like to look at that time, Chris is laughing, but here's the thing.

You look at that time as like, God, that took way too long for me. Like that's the fun. Like it is a, yeah, a Zen like experience and a very pleasant experience to like do all that shit the fun like it is a yeah a zen-like experience and a very pleasant experience to like do all that shit so like if you to say that that is the annoying thing that you can't

skip over that stuff like that's that that's the game in a microcosm i feel like yeah i mean if that's not your jam at that point where it's like that's great for that that specific type of player yeah absolutely but that's me i mean but is it better than among us for crying out loud jesus um i don't bring you guys back to this i don't think so i think animal crossing is a better i actually think animal crossing is better than among us jesus yeah i think it's very close because i do think among us made something very special. I think Among Us got, I mean, I will say this animal crossing.

I think is a much more cohesive thing. I think Among Us to detract nothing from it, got extremely lucky in that, in, in the gut was very fortunate this year with the way that it sort of spread memetically. And this thing is, if you don't have kids that watch YouTube,

you don't know that among us is like, it's wild. It's Minecraft. It's like, there are lengthy, like a real life reenactment videos just in like people dressed up like among us characters like reenacting among us situations like it's bizarre my kid will watch let's plays among us with and has no interest in actually playing it um so yeah i i it's it's a phenomenal massive

smash but like uh i think that i i just think animal crossing is a little more cohesive i also like uh you know if there's a game night where me and people i know are playing among us that's rad but the like sort of seamless online multiplayer uh matchmaking stuff is kind of lost on me because i have literally no interest in playing this game if it's not with people i know and i know that that's that's there and you can do it, but I don't think the game is rich enough to like enjoy without the like personal aspect of lying to your friends.

To me, that's like the whole thing. As an old person, was sus a thing before Among Us? Yes, but it was derogatory. Ah. Yeah. It's had like a long history. I mean, isn't it still derogatory?

It's still not, it's not celebratory yeah yeah but it's much worse all right so are we animal crossing putting that yeah i think animal crossing takes it uh but congrats to among us listener pick for making it to the semi-finals yeah i mean that's a huge that's a huge uh accomplishment you can't you can't detract from that right i think we all knew it was going to come down to these two games. No, of course we did, but it's still nice

to see that kind of thing. So, Kentucky Route Zero versus 13th Central. Well, no, it's actually not that. Sorry. Juice, what are you doing? Nothing. I'm getting ready for the big finish. Okay.

With some licensed music? Licensed music? We don't give a shit about it anymore. Come on, baby. It's the Wild Wild West out here now. Here it is. The moment we've all been waiting for. The final countdown.

The best two games of the year, scientifically chosen by the besties, among us. Is gone. Spelunky, Dead and Buried. It comes to this, Animal Crossing and Hades. Competing for the top slot, the illustrious besties, Game of the Year. And congratulations to Hades. Does uh does anyone say anything about animal crossing before we um move on or uh i mean is that is where is everyone maybe i think this is how we usually do the final round before yeah i get into right and it's usually very contentious

it's almost always 2v2 yeah i mean i i well let's just do a hot take then let's see if it's gonna be what it's gonna be because we got other stuff to talk about we do i would still like to talk about phoenix rising and our show getting canceled in phoenix rising whatever pops up um i think i i i the memories that i have made as like corny as that sounds with Animal Crossing this year are are very sort of special to me and will continue to be and so for me Animal Crossing takes it but that is more a player experience thing than it is game thing because I think Animal Crossing does a lot of stuff really well and facilitates those those kinds of memories but it also for everything it gets right

it gets something almost always network wise wrong whereas like everything hades tries to do it knocks the fuck out of the park so i think hades is is a more competently made masterpiece of a game what's your favorite game i played it a lot but i i just, I can't get over the time that I had with Animal Crossing. So for me, that is my personal goatee. Okay, so Griffin is with Animal Crossing. I will say, and this will probably clinch it, I will say that I've got to give it to Hades. I have spent countless hours with Animal Crossing,

but to echo Griffin's point, I think if Animal Crossing nailed the network stuff, it would be a very, very tough situation where it wins hands down. Animal Crossing fails that stuff so spectacularly that it is really hard to elevate it above something that just, not only does Hades nail everything that it tries to do, whether it's narrative, voiceover, music, gameplay, whatever, but it essentially invents a new take on how a roguelike can exist in a way that is constantly evolving and not just like a hey

i'm two percent stronger thanks to this upgrade i got constantly evolving narratively constantly letting you uh chase new things learn new stuff about the characters i still have i still haven't unlocked a companion there's an entire button dedicated to summoning a companion i still don't have one yeah uh so you know i gotta go with hades uh as much as i really really love animal crossing yeah that'll probably clinch it right there i don't know that chris chris you're gonna do animal crossing chris so think of it think of the but think of tom nook here are the two things that i think both games gave me a lot of joy and gave people a lot of joy in a year like void of

joy. But I think they're two different types. I think Animal Crossing's joy was like, hey, life has been taken away from us. And here's like a replica or a facsimile of the real world that can help you transition into the

suck of just not leaving your house for the year and eventually i i think we all kind of just accepted that our fate and it was like okay well i guess we're just not gonna hang out in public spaces and for that i love it as this like transitionary experience but the when i think of animal crossing i don't know if this is like good or bad it is the pandemic to me like playing it you know like how you have certain music that you play during or that you was playing during a moment in your life and then you like go back and listen to it you're like who like this is just high school like i i cannot shake that um that's that is animal crossing for me hades i don't know if there was a game like it this year that made social media seem normal like people just completely um drooling over the sexy

gods and goddesses of hades um or just like fanning about whatever silly mechanic is in the game or showing their different builds um it really felt outside of this year it felt like something from like last year um and that i escapism is not the reason to play video games obviously we've celebrated a lot of things here that are not about escape um but wow was it's weird that a game uh about escape escaping hell um like kind of accomplished that exact goal um not to try i'm not trying to change your mind or anything but i also could argue that exact same thing for animal crossing and in fact i would argue that i saw more like social media stuff about animal crossing than i did about hades like to me that was the escape and that was the thing that people were sharing you know tweets about their design or their home or their new haircut or whatever the fuck like i think i think you

could leverage the exact same yeah but those people are dorks. Yeah, right. Yeah. A great point and well made. I just don't think any, it would be, I can't think of the last time I enjoyed a game as much as Hades. I mean, I really, it's been five years.

I don't know if there's anything that is close. It's definitely the funnest game ever made. And now it's the, I think, stop me if you disagree, but now I think it's the besties number one game of 2020. All right. Yay.

Great job. Congratulations. Also, man, what a good year for video games. If literally nothing else. I edited it out. I edited it out where you said after for video games, I cut that. Oh, no. So it's just, yeah, no, no, oh no so it's just yeah no no we cut that so it's just what a good year and then there's 20 seconds of silence yeah um so okay we

um i want to can i talk can we just talk about phoenix rising for two minutes because this would bother me it came out like a month or forever ago it's it's a really it's a very pleasant little uh uh assassin's creed meets zelda mainly zelda kind of thing meets hades meets nintendo 64 and i say that as a compliment like in a real way it is very old school and it's like yeah this is an honorable we should clarify what is this segment is it an honorable mention segment this is an honorable mention for immortal phoenix rising yeah i just wanted to get it in there before we got into the other stuff um i've i've finally been playing dragon quest 11 s and i also think this is the time of year that this is finally

fucking hitting for me i've tried to play this game five times and for whatever reason and now i'm like 30 hours into what are you playing on switch it's on uh i i think i'm gonna play on switch but it's on game pass i believe for both xbox and pc for people who are curious i've never played a dragon quest game before other than dragon quest builders and like so i was never really willing to understand what this franchise was about. And it's like, it's just a JRPG-ass JRPG, but it also invented a lot of that shit. And so watching it, I just reached the second act of the game

and it takes a narrative turn that focuses on my favorite character in the game in a delightful, delightful way that I won't spoil that like really surprised me. So it's just a it's a fun little sightseeing tour of just some wild places Dragon Quest 11

it's it's so it's such a slow starter yeah a painfully slow starter but it goes somewhere cool anything else I just started playing last night dicey dungeons on switch just just came out on Switch, and it is very, very good. It is my favorite dice-based RPG.

It's been on Steam for ages. I believe Terry Kavanaugh made it. But it's just incredibly well-made, really approachable. You can hand it to anyone, and they can jump in. If you like Slay the Spire stuff like that but I think much more welcoming than those sorts of games so highly recommend I was going to talk about Immortals

Phoenix Rising until last night when I was just not feeling it so much anymore and I wanted something a little bit faster so I switched to this hot sweet game called Crackdown 3 and y'all Crackdown 3 pretty good you ever had that experience where you go back and play a game way after you've had like all of your expectations for it and then you can

just be like you know what i enjoy this very much for what it is um also it has uh keys to the city mode has been added uh so if you were an original crackdown one fan, uh, now is definitely the time to try it. Uh, assuming that you are, I did that. I did that.

I used to do that with Superman returns on the, on the Xbox. Like I knew how bad it was. I was like, I don't know. Superman. I also, I also think some of us have been playing cyberpunk,

but we'll probably do a whole episode about that. Cause holy shit, there's a lot to talk about, but I did just want to mention, for all of its incredible, incredible flaws in so many different places, I did get the, I'm driving a truck and then I just started T-posing through the roof

with both my butt-ass cheeks hanging out. And that is the game of the year, baby! Fuck Hades! Driving with a truck while you T-pose through the roof with your butt cheeks hanging out is the fucking best thing I've ever seen in a video game before. The game's not good. It's not a good game.

But I T-pose through the roof of a truck with my butt cheeks hanging out like, I gotta go stop the cyber corporations. Look at my butt cheeks as I phase through the roof like a ghost and I'm crucified to nothing. It does beg the question, what are you using to steer? I guess my cyber knees. Who knows? the question what are you what are you using to steer i guess my cyber knees who knows not my cyber butt cheeks because i can see those and soak in everybody moon in the corporations fight the system okay so we uh used to do the besties for a long time for vox media uh the show ended partially because griffin and i left pog on and and it was revived at the end of last year by Spotify. They paid us to do the show for them as an exclusive.

And I will always be very appreciative for their trust in us and their support of us and really making it possible for us to make this make sense to do. As a weekly thing. We hadn't done weekly in six or seven years. You would not be listening to this right now

if it weren't for Spotify's investment in the show which was huge. So we are so grateful to Spotify but here's a short version folks. We fucked up. We didn't do a good enough job getting people to listen. And they were not interested in continuing that particular relationship.

It's Sunday. They said something about good money after bad. They said something about Joe Rogan and the numbers not matching up. Poor boy, Joe. You know what? It's fine. But we did sell ourselves to them as four cool Joe Rogans, which was all right. There are very much no hard feelings but we did have to

have some tough conversations uh about like what does this mean for the future of the besties we're being very honest this is what we decided with we're just telling you the exact truth like i would tell my dad i should tell my dad um so we are uh here's what we're thinking. We are not going to quit doing the show right now. We're not going to immediately look for some other podcast network to pick up the leavings of the besties. Here's what we are thinking of trying. And, fellas, please feel free to jump in or correct me as you see fit. But it has been exclusive to Spotify since it came back.

We have put it out anywhere you can get podcasts, including all the previous episodes. And we want to give it a little bit to figure out what kind of audience there is for the whole show when you're not listening to it exclusively on Spotify. We don't know what that'll look like yet. We don't know what the future of the show will look like, what our options will be for continuing the show. It really depends on you all and this next chunk of time and how it goes, because we don't know. It's very hard to get that kind of data, like what exclusivity, how it affects your overall listenership. And so that's the deal.

We love making it. It has to make sense for us. We're all people with families and stuff, and everything you're doing professionally is time. You're not doing something personally. So it's got to make sense. professionally is time you're not doing something personally. So it's got to make sense. And I trust that you all,

if you are passionate about the besties and you can help us spread the word in these coming weeks, it can continue to be a part of our lives and a part of your lives. And that is the outcome that we would all very, very, very much like. So please, I guess the call to action here is please spread the word about the besties. This is the,

this is the moment. Tweet, share it, review it on iTunes would be hugely helpful. Anything you can do to help get the word out there. And then we'll revisit here in a little bit. Yep. And figure out a plan. Yeah, just to verification, it's not going to be tomorrow. We're not going to shut the show down in January or anything like that we're going to give it a few months of

doing this thing a few months no sir two seven weeks is my max with you guys for free yeah so you know that is our intention is so we will be back in January it's

important to note we're looking to return January say what is the date we'll be back January 8th we're doing it for free we'll return whenever the fuck we want to that's true but we will be back on January 8th we don't have an end

we'll figure it out but it'll be a looking ahead to 2021 and what the our most anticipated games are a nice special thing we will also in january have a cyberpunk episode if i can get the game running uh fingers uh being chewed at the thought of it but yeah we're gonna let it get a few patches before we uh yeah nah man i want that raw uncut t-post butt cheek shit man play it play it fucking now if you're gonna play this game play it now while the fun stuff is still in there

because there's nothing more fun than that in the whole game i guarantee it my problem is you have to pay for it that's a good point y'all i've i have had things happen to me in this game that I have genuinely thought that my computer was creepypasta haunted like that copy of Majora's Mask. Things that are beyond the scope of your regular video game bugs and begin to tend towards the supernatural. So anyway.

Yeah, thanks for everything. Thanks for hanging out with us for this past year thanks again to Spotify seriously sorry we didn't do a better job hope we haven't burned all those bridges thank you to the fans specifically for supporting the show as they have yeah it's not your fault it's our fault for not making a better show I think we can all agree on that

right I felt comfortable with that Bessie's has always been like our little engine it's our fault for not making a better show i think we can all agree on that right uh i feel comfortable with that bessie's has always been like our a little engine that well it tried really hard couldn't quite always but the way that the audience has like stuck with us and and and grown this this year has been uh really really sort of delightful to see uh yeah all due respect the bessie's is the opposite of the little engine that could it is a little engine that sometimes stops for no real reason and then restarts again uh and no one knows why or how but we're happy to do it whenever we are able to um that's gonna do it for this week

oh i want to say also a huge thank you uh that he is thanked in the in the closing of the show but I do want to say thank you a big thank you to Jelani Carter for editing this podcast for the past year it could not have been a light lift no or an enjoy sometimes when I edit our shows I enjoy listening to a funny joke here and there

but I cannot imagine that this one is a breezy edit a recreational edit i would i would say i also want to i shouted out props to ben hosley who produced the show uh throughout the year it's been and ben is awesome and and you can listen to blank check i mean you know what don't because they already have too many listeners so listen to something else um uh okay that's gonna do it for us thank you so much uh and be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!