The Besties - 2021's Most Anticipated Games

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

The Besties gang are back for a brand new year, thanks for sticking with us! In today's episode, we'll each bring 3 games (ahem, Justin) that we're pumped about in the new year. We're talking Breath of the Wild 2, Resident Evil 8age, God of War Ragnanok, Hollow Knight Silksong, and much, much more. 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 have a question. Okay. Okay. Do you think if I made a video game that involved collecting animals... Yeah. And I called them, like, Charm Salamander or Bulb Dinosaur, I could get hit by Nintendo? That's a good question, Russ. Did you say Bulb Dinosaur?

Bulb. Bulb Dinosaur. Bulb Dinosaur. Okay bulb dinosaur okay yeah i think you get hit under what stand like what statute says that like that's not gonna fly i mean they went after pita for making their game about like collecting chicken nuggets or whatever that's true so um i i've always known Nintendo to, you know, my dog Reggie over there is pretty litigious. He's free.

He's a, he's a ferocious. You think he's still pulling the strings over there? Even though Doug Bowser is replaced. You guys are out of your minds. If you think Reggie's still not pulling the strings over there, you know that. Okay. Joking aside,

you guys know that Reggie's still like in charge, right? You're laughing. You're're laughing but look at my face you know that reggie's still in charge over there have you seen him have you seen reggie have you seen have you physically seen him sure he's very large yeah i see day to day i see reggie exactly as much as i did before he left uh nintendo i will say that supposedly left nintendo i guess i i mean he may have left like whether or not he's there or whatever it doesn't mean like here's how it went doug bowser walked into the building shook his huge hand broke four fingers and reggie was like all right um well uh i guess i'll be in touch and doug bowser was like well what do you mean like i'm the one who's i'm i'm the now the king of nintendo and reggie just laughed like yeah doug sure and and do you think it's like a hologram

situation in doug bowser's office where just like a giant reggie head shows up or is it i don't even think he needs to see reggie i think he just knows that Reggie's there and so yeah it's it's it's all but official at this point that's right Spotify it's the one that got away baby tighter now huh oh Doug now that we're not on Spotify anymore I'm gonna start saying some shit we are still on Spotify we're just on other platforms as well. Yeah, but I mean, we should tell them we're not allowed. They are not allowed anymore. You can't have it there anymore.

No, they're great. We just didn't do a good job. Anyway, let's start the music. It's probably already started, isn't it? started did this. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best games of the year to come. My name is Griffin McElroy and I'm going to say some the year to come. My name is Griffin McElroy

and I'm going to say some things about some games that I hope end up being good and they're not garbage and then people play these clips out of context and it makes us sound like real jerks. Hello, my name is Chris Plant. I'm not a hero this week. I'm just not. I don't have any reason.

My name is Ross Brudging and I know the best game of the week. Yeah, year? I don't know. Coming My name is Ross Bronson And I know the best game of the week Yeah year I don't know Coming year We should mention Chris Plant is not here this week No I think people probably figured that out As good as your impression was Send Chris some good vibes

If you can he's fine His family is fine their health is fine But uh Just send Chris some good vibes everybody on internet yeah yeah everyone likes good vibes we've got uh an exciting look forward now not an immediate look forward because i don't know if you look at video game calendars as much as people who have to do a video game podcast do but it's um immediate future a little slow speak for yourself man oh yeah i don't know there's some titles there's some titles man in the immediate future yeah in like the next few weeks i mean

we're gonna talk about it well we'll talk about them maybe not this is this would be a good table setter we have set aside a few games that we want to that we want to sort of highlight and focus on but uh i mean just in january scott pilgrim versus the world the game complete editions coming out on every platform i am i fucking adore that game great game i'm excited for that one to come back out uh hitman 3 coming out in uh into january uh okay yeah no past that it is looking a little bit uh a little bit rough monster hunters somewhere in there uh monster hunters in march i believe february we do got persona 5 strikers bravely default 2 uh super mario 3d world plus browser theory that game is a jammer and i cannot wait for it i feel like nobody played it and it is one of my favorite mario games

uh yeah i mean there's there's i mean it's january february it's one of my favorite Mario games. Yeah, I mean, there's... I mean, it's January and February. It's always a little slow for games, but I guarantee that we will figure out some dumb shit to talk about. Yeah, I mean, that Stardew Valley... That Stardew Valley update's coming in January to consoles. Like, there's going to be stuff to play. I ain't worried about it.

But in terms of the year at large, I do think it's going to be a very big year and a very exciting year yeah weirdly i didn't think that was true until we started preparing for this episode and then i i there's a lot of sort of stuff that is sort of floating in the in the cloud right now that uh if it actually does come out this year it will be a very very dope year for games yeah the class that's an interesting sort of like coda for all of this discussion i feel like they're not coda but sort of a frame like a as a framing device like because and this is probably evident to anybody listening to this but because of the ongoing covid 19 pandemic um uh we have we i think a lot of this

is like shaking the eight ball a little bit like we you know you hope you hope that this stuff is going to come out when when the you know it was it was announced too and and everything but like we i have no idea how this has impacted game development like you've heard some horror stories already of you know people trying to like ship different games like cyberpunk 2077 and uh and what a nightmare that was so watching that took it out of you just to even sort of say the name of cyberpunk uh we'll get there folks we don't know like that episode we'll get we we saw what happened to games that were like at the end of their pipeline but like this year we are going to see like games that were sort of in the, in the, the, the heat of it.

Like the, the, the foundational development period. What happened to them when everybody had to start working from, from, from home or whatever. And I would also say like, I think there were a lot of games that would have come out last year.

Were it not for COVID. And I think those games are in a much better position this year. And we should start jumping in because we have a lot of games to talk about. Yeah, we should. We've each picked three games. So if we're being a little selective, that's why. We limited ourselves to three games each. But we will talk about a few more games in the reader mail section later.

And I'm going to start it off with one that may not happen this year, but I'm really, really hoping that it will. I'm hoping we have a fine choice. You suggested this one, and you were like, Griffin, you could take this one this is a huge one and i i am firmly in the camp that there's no fucking way on earth that this game drops in 2021 okay so so the game we were talking about is the legend of zelda breath of the wild 2 or whatever it's going to be called probably it feels like full-blown full-blblown, I have an uncle at Nintendo who says it's Zelda 2's coming out and this one's got Metroid in it.

Like that's about the level of speculation I feel like we're on with this one. Well, I actually think that, I mean, we'll talk about a few things. So one, part of the reason why I think it may and probably I would say 50-50 may come out this year is I do think they will release a Switch Pro at some

point and they want to release something like that with a big, big title and that, god damn it, is a big, big title. So that is something that I'm thinking about. I also like, I mean, it was announced what was it? Three? Two or three years ago at this point? That first

trailer? Really the only trailer. No way three years ago. Like maybe, was first trailer, really the only trailer. No way three years. Like maybe, was it Game Awards? It was during E3. It was like a surprise announcement during E3. It was definitely long enough ago that I was with human beings when it was announced. So I think we are getting close to it. It's possible it'll get pushed to like march of 2022 okay two it was

it was last e3 it was the e3 2019 so yeah i really don't maybe they've learned their lesson about announcing things super super early like maybe i mean hey there is there is actually precedent for that right like and we've seen that happen a couple times uh i think uh god one of the one of like the big nintendo get well big but like i think paper mario the new paper mario yeah that one was like three months early yeah and obviously there's a much bigger deal than that but i think you're right i think if it if it there are equal rumors i feel like that this this the the new switch is going to drop this year and it just seems logical like they they know how important a big beefy launch title is uh because it's what sort of catapulted the switch to success and they don't need to make

a new map they just need to add some dark clouds and make it a little gloomy and they're fine to pull a majora's mask it's fine add a moon to the sky that's falling and you're good majora's mask was a brand new map but that was fun. No, I think that there is a structured place. They didn't make it a new Tingle model.

Yeah, that's right. Those lazy jerks. Well, Tingle wasn't in Ocarina of Time. Oh, okay. Settle down.

I'm not the one saying wrong shit. We're settled. I'm very, very excited for that game. I'm really curious just structurally how they're going to do it

because they made the first game with four powers. I was very, very excited for that game. I'm really curious just structurally how they're going to do it. Cause they made the first game with four powers. I was like, four powers is not going to cut it guys. I'm used to getting a boomerang, a hookshot or sorts of shit. And they somehow pick these four powers to be the most universally adaptable powers for 140 some odd dungeons, um,

and puzzles. So I'm really curious if they like follow that model, playable Zelda. There's all sorts of like stuff that gets me super, super jazzed about this. So this is my number one. Just looking at like the scene, the breath of the wild scene,

which continues to like evolve. There's still like hot, hot tricks, like clips being, being posted online, like all the time i don't think they would change like a lot of that foundational stuff like i think it would be kind of silly to do that i think i think i i'm assuming breath of the wild 2 will be more

of a traditional zelda sequel than maybe we've ever seen because every zelda game like kind of reinvents the wheel right yeah um yeah i think they'll build on basically the framework that they did and like add a lot of like cool bells and whistles they'd be silly not to like that that breath of the wild was good in a way that sort of was even bigger than zelda like that that game was a new a new sort of genre unto itself and i i think that they're not going to just leave that behind totally now griffin did give me a little shit for mentioning zelda 2 in the context that we know so little about it which is true but we know even less about justin's game you mean i'd be called what i'm about to say

god of war ragnarok i don't know if it'll be called that or not uh there's another God of War coming out and they announced, let's see, God of War Ragnarok is I mean, that's what people are calling it right now. It's supposed to be released this year. And the sequel was teased at the

end of the first one, so you could call, I don't know if you want to call that an announcement or not. That came out in you could call, I don't know if you want to call that an announcement or not. That came out in 2018. So, I mean, three years feels good. I think they've also, I don't remember what the delays were like for the previous God of War,

but I feel like those teams have been pretty good about keeping two dates, maybe like six months delayed here or there, generally speaking i don't know i i feel pretty confident it is funny though this is maybe the only time where we know exactly why it's a working title because they clearly are still negotiating with disney to see if uh thor ragnarok is going to cause problems with this title like there's no other reason i can think but um i will be interested to see if Thor Ragnarok is going to cause problems with this title. Like there's no other reason I can think, but I will be interested to see, this is a factor I'd like to talk about with this one.

And I think it'll apply to, to others as well. Do you think that there will be a push to get games like this God of War sequel, et cetera, out more quickly while the last generation is still a going concern because i feel like there is a dead end not dead end but like there's this drop off where like you're not going to have a at the huge base of ps5 owners that you have right now with ps4 but you're also like it will feel

weird to release a huge marquee title that is hamstrung by the PS4. If you're not catering to that huge existing audience, I think they've got two to three. I don't know when it's going to cross over, but I think they've got two to three years before the PS5 as a platform becomes the, this is just all games come to the PS5 now, like no more PS4 games,

at least two to three years. No, but, but, but I, I don't think God of War two is going to come out on ps4 i feel like i feel yeah i mean i think i think it's going to be a huge game i don't know i may be talking completely out of my ass because i am pulling this from nothing and maybe they've even said that that is actually going to happen but

that was unsettled as far they have not said it's going to happen but they haven't said it's not going to happen that's recently is november so like it's it's going to happen, but they haven't said it's not going to happen. That's as recently as November. So like, it's an open question. That's what I'm saying is like, if it came out today, I think no question in my mind whatsoever it comes out on PS4, right? And this is of course like,

not factoring in the development of it or what have you, but like, I feel like if they were planning on releasing this in fall of 2021, like definitely would be a PS4 version. The base just isn't, it was a massive hit. Like the base just isn't there

to support it. But at a certain point, supporting that base versus how hamstrung the PS5 version would have to be. Here's one of my stuff. I don't know.

Having, I recently played God of War on the PS5 just to like test the back combat. Apart from like a little bit of performance stuff, that game still looks outrageously fucking gorgeous, like better than almost every launch next gen console game that came out because of the art design,

because of the just like vibe of that whole game and feels incredible too. Like it is a remarkable game. I think that team in particular is extremely, extremely good at pushing hardware, sure, but also using things like art design to kind of extend the life of hardware. And so I think you'll see that again i obviously think there will be a ps5 version that runs at 60 fps 4k all the bells and whistles but

there already was kind of two versions of god of war one uh which was ps4 pro or ps4 and also do you want to play in you know visual fidelity mode or do you want to play in, you know, visual fidelity mode or do you want to play in performance mode? So like there is already sort of a precedent for here's two different versions of God of War that look kind of with varying degrees of quality. Yeah, it is really, really hard for me to imagine this game i feel like i and maybe it's just because i feel like god of war one was such a good standalone thing that reinvented itself so boldly that i can't really think about what a i guess it's the same thing with breath of the wild like i just can't think of what what this is gonna look like in a way where you know they're gonna want to kind of recapture the lightning in a bottle a bit and i don't really know how they do that yeah unless unless what if they make him super like wildly violent bro dude again like we're taking him taking him back to his total reversion

everything worked out okay before so i'm gonna just go back to how i used to roll uh i think if you look at a game like assassin's creed, which I know we're going back in years, but like that's a good example of like, here's where, you know, we had this thing that worked in Assassin's Creed 1. We're just going to build on top of it and make it amazing and then a brotherhood even further in that direction. And I think that's what you're going to see with these games.

The core of it, I think the Metroidvania stuff is not going to change. I think the core combat is not going to change dramatically. I think they're just going to layer in awesome stuff on top of that it would be great just to have god of war without the like for me kind of crummy uh rpg like gear scored slot in gems for extra heavy attack percentage like if they can actually make that sort of meaningful uh i think that that would be uh uh you know cause for a new sequel yeah and i i don't think that was an uncommon complaint about it there weren't a lot of complaints about god of war but certainly the gear stuff was a

little weird and and didn't get interesting until the very end um so i could see that definitely getting modified but i'm super pumped about this game. Good pick, Justin. I am super pumped for Hollow Knight Silksong, which is of the games in this round, I believe the one most likely to come out this year. Although Silksong, I think, anticipators have been burned so many times now. It is so hysterical watching,

because Nintendo does the indie game Nintendo Directs like what monthly now I think yeah thereabouts and every single time it's like

no Silksong get out of here it's like well there's a lot of really cool no Silksong go but we got Spelunky 2

Spelunky 2 no I never played Hollow Knight what is Hollow Knight I did that's not yeah that's not true

yeah that's but a good fill inin hollow knight's just just about the best dang metroidvania that uh has ever been made best souls game ever made a really really i don't know about that a really good sort of souls souls like uh metroidvania game i i i don't know how to talk about uh hollow knight in a way that makes it sound novel necessarily it's just really good like it instills a sense of exploration and discovery better than any sort of like metroidvania game in this world that is so fascinating and um coherent uh with a plot that is like a souls game like you is there for you if you want to kind of dip into it and it's gothic and rich but you can also just like hit guys and get their points um it is yeah it just it does everything that i want from a you know action platformer like that really

really well so silk song is just kind of from everything we've seen looking like a a another take on that uh you're playing as a different character you're playing as hornet who was a sort of main supporting character from the first game and hornet has like her own moveset like the game has a bit of a different feel to it it's a bit more sort of acrobatic and combo based and um i think she has a hookshot there's a hookshot you can like there's a crafting system now where you make your own sort of like tools uh and that's like your main sort of character customization stuff that community has like done deep dives into i think edge just did a huge like interview uh like feature on on the game and so like there's

some new details coming out and all those details are so granular that i don't think they would like really mean anything to anyone who's not already looking forward to the game uh it just kind of is fuel for the this fire of anticipation of people saying like okay yeah that all sounds really cool just like the first game was really cool um yeah and i i think we've said this before on the podcast, but just to reiterate it, if you like challenging games and you have a switch, there is no better $15 you can spend on the switch than hollow night. I know it is a little intimidating for people that like, like slower paced games, but for people that like souls games,

stuff like that, best $15 you can spend bar none, not even a question. It's, it's, it's one of those, it's one of those games I wish I could purge from my memory and and go although i did replay it last year like going through all the dlc and stuff and it's it's it is one of those games that i replay probably annually because it

is it is so it is such a just like fun game to play with all of these great little secrets and um yeah it's like everything you want from a, from a Metroidvania. I would also mention in terms of a hollow night silk song, it is the one game on this list that could come out literally tomorrow. We know like it's the sort of game that I literally think that team will just wake up one day, send a tweet and be like, check the eShop check steam.

It's there right now, which is remarkable. and i it gives me a lot of hope jesus christ how how i guess it's 2021 now so like 2019 was two years ago but silk song was announced in february 2019 it feels like that's been in development no no i know but it feels like it's been in development for like a really long time like it feels like it's a they announced it in in like 2017 uh although that may have been actually before the original hollow knight came out yeah uh yeah that's true it could come out whenever that's why that's why people are so nuts about these nintendo directs it's like they assume each one is going to be the

sega saturn look under your chair like experience yeah hey r Hey, Russ. Yes. You know me. I'm an original Monster Hunter fan, but I'll let you have this one. I actually do like the Monster Hunter world a lot, but this isn't that. This ain't it. Okay, so I am not a Monster Hunter fan. Bold, by the way, guys.

Bold. I am not a Monster Hunter fan. The first and only time I've ever enjoyed anything in Monster Hunter was with Monster Hunter World. And I killed a T-Rex in his weird bird nest and all his raptor buddies jumped in. And that was amazing. I loved it. And then I ran out of bullets for my gun and started farming.

And I was like, I can't sit in front of my PS4 farming seeds for bullets for four hours and started farming. And I was like, I can't sit in front of my PS4 farming seeds for bullets for four hours and basically quit there. That was like the end of me playing monster hunter world. So why I mentioned monster hunter rise is because I think this will bridge the gap to me potentially because I can play this game. This is a switch exclusive monster hunter game using a lot of the mechanics that were introduced in World, for example, the big universal areas

rather than having individual tiny zones. The hookshot style traversal, like vertical traversal stuff, yeah. Right, so I think it introduces a lot of the stuff that modernized the Monster Hunter franchise that made it much more approachable, while also being on a platform that i can sit on my couch and watch like fucking sabrina or whatever on netflix and grind out uh you know seeds for my dumb gun uh so i i think this will start clicking for me i also i also

really like the art style of this one for what it's worth but it is it is returning to the more classic monster hunter like format right like it looks more like monster hunter you know generations uh on on 3ds you mean visually speaking or monster hunter world both right like i'm very excited for this game too like right now it is probably my you claimed it but probably my most anticipated game that we like know when it is coming out because i really really like both kinds of monster hunter but it is it is like justin said pretty bold for them to like release monster hunter world which like buoyed capcom as a company like it was so successful that it was this new era for the entire company and now they're like and now we're

going right back to that to the old ways a bit well what's gonna be old about it i don't i in terms of like the gameplay like i haven't seen anything that like feels like a reversion i mean i think it's maybe i'm basing it mostly on on looks but um they're they're i don't know world was just such its own, such its own thing. Like Monster Hunter World was unrecognized. And maybe you need the context of playing the old games and the, and Monster Hunter World to kind of get this. Justin could probably like,

you played Generations, the 3DS game a bit with us, and then you played World. Like it's two completely different sort of experiences. If you enjoyed World, I would not necessarily think that would translate perfectly to this new thing. But at the same time, it was a very thin line

Monster Hunter World was walking. Like, I don't see there's a lot of like, I'll scoop up anything these dudes make. Like, I don't think that that is the case. But I still think it looks really good. And I do think that like it being the first original, I think Generations came out on Switch. I know it does because I have it on Switch.

But like my favorite thing about Monster Hunter games is the first, like right when it comes out and everybody's playing it and everybody is like going on hunts and shit together and discovering like all these, like it's going to be really, really exciting to do that on Switch. The one thing that may be interesting to see

is if Rise, if even though it's mechanically different if by playing monster hunter world the fun game monster hunter world i managed to pick up enough like ephemera and world like logistics of how monster absolutely yeah absolutely that that maybe it won't be as much of a burden to like go back into it, even if it's different. Yeah, I think that's... That didn't make sense, but if you've tried to play Monster Hunter eight times, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know 100% what I'm talking about. Yeah. So this one's... I don't know. This game is not coming out this year. This is aspirational. You know what I mean? My list is like,

be the game you want to see in the world kind of deal. This is an aspirational list, but I put on Fable. What have we seen? And then I'll go now. I guess now it's my turn. There's literally nothing to say. What is it?

What have we seen of Fable? Playground? Who are they? Well, they're the car people and they'd been doing Forza and then they're like, we would love to draw a sword. And someone's like,

go for it, call it Fable. What do I know? Well, first they drew a sword on a car and they're like, nah, that's, I mean, actually that's,

that's actually incredibly rad, but the world's not ready. Yeah. Fable, we don't know a lot about. It was, do you know it's being developed by Playground? Very long rumored

before it was actually like, fully like confirmed, actually happening, which happened, when did that happen? I don't remember. It was July of last year. So

we don't know about this game. There have been rumors that it is an MMO that this is actually like a fable like a if not an MMO like a very online focused uh entry into the fable universe they're just the the title screen that they released in a very short teaser trailer just

kind of called it fable so i don't know um there's not a lot to know about it and honestly if i'm just if i'm gonna be honest i don't love the odds of it actually coming in 2021. Yeah. If I'm being. It will come out this year if it is an on-rails shooter, which at this point it might be. It might be. Who knows?

They've done it. They're bringing Kinect back just for this one. One last ride. But I did want to mention it just because like, I love this franchise. I mean, legitimately the Fable franchise was like, I kind of, there's this generation of games around like early 360 days that were growing up with me as a games journalist. Like that, that I kind of like were, it's sort of that sweet spot between like 06 and 2016, like those 10 years i was like really uh writing about games a lot and i feel like fable is one that we talked and obsessed about constantly and i i really i have so many complicated feelings about that franchise i don't love where it ended up by three and

obviously like stuff like legends and whatever that bash whatever the yeah the other the other ones were um not my not my favorite favorite entries in that franchise. But I am still very excited. It always seemed to me like the idea of a lighthearted fantasy action RPG is like, and the world itself is all very good. very good. I feel like Peter Molyneux, for all his strengths, got too enamored with certain parts of a game and not necessarily making like a coherent,

cogent game. And sometimes he, that was like hugely successful. And sometimes it was like not. But my boy loved his farts. He loved it. He did love farts and they're so funny. They are, yeah.

I like it when you eat a baby chicken and then you make a fart and then a big door is like, you've solved my puzzle. Come on in and get this sword. It would be the only thing to like light a fire under my ass to try and find an Xbox Series X at this point. I still feel no urgency to get on the hunt,

but if I knew Fable was coming, I would probably put a little bit of muscle behind it. So just to give a super quick, I know we need to move forward, but the very quick sad timeline of Fable, right? 3 came out in 2010. Oh, wow. Okay, so we're talking about the last 10able, right? 3 came out in 2010. Oh, wow. Okay, so we're talking about the last 10 years, right?

Fable 3 came out in 2010. Fable the Journey was a on-rails... Peter Mullen, you made me sign a wall to say that Fable the Journey, a Kinect game, was not an on-rails shooter, but the NDA on that has expired, and I can exclusively reveal it definitely was, Peter.

There was a literal wall. That's not even an exaggeration. None of that story was made up. They did Fable Anniversary in 2014, which was all the games. There was, in 2013, Fable Legends, which I mentioned earlier. That was like the

gauntlet style like uh what's what's the name for that genre even i don't know it was can't it was canceled um it's not it didn't really happen oh that's right there was gonna be like a dm mode for that game right exactly there'd be people uh hacking hack and slash there were people like hack and slashing their way through like shit. And then there'd be one person like running the, the enemy side of it. Here's a farting door. 2018, we had Fable Fortune, which was a.

Don't remember that. Collectible card game that you can't play anymore. Cool, cool, cool. So that's Fable. January 2018 is when rumors started surfacing about this particular title. So, yeah. They were staffing up in January 2018. I'm actually going to revise

this and say that I've wasted everyone's time and it definitely is not coming out this year. Cool. Alright. That was a fun segment. That's a bad segment. I've wasted everyone's time. I'm going to do mine because when we were picking our games this one really screamed um it's a bad segment i've wasted everyone's time i'm gonna do mine because looking through the when we were like picking our games this one like really screamed at me in a way i was not

anticipating and it kind of made me realize that i love resident evil now did it scare you when it screamed it scared me scared me very badly uh resident evil village is is supposed to come out this year or resident evil 8 uh and the i and the two l's look like a look like uh eyes and they come out to the v so it looks like eight and it's fucking badass yeah what do you think the game is actually going to be called do you think it's just resident evil eight i think it's resident evil eightage is what it's going to be called and people are going to um go go wild for it no i i never cared about this franchise like i never really i played them i adored uh the strongest i ever felt about the games was resident evil 4

wii edition which i will go to my grave saying is a is a masterpiece it is great and like five came out and it was shitty and six came out and it was shitty and then there were resident evil what mercenaries like the 3ds games i i had so completely written this franchise like off and i think i'm probably not alone in that but even when i was like into it it wasn't like a it wasn't like the type of game that i anticipated seven i thought ruled and then every all the remakes that they've done since then have been like appointment game playing for me uh and so i find myself like kind of surprised that I watched the trailer for Resident Evil Village, like the long two and a half minute new trailer and was like like frothing at the mouth excited for this game. And it's just kind of a surprise to me that and maybe this is less about me and more about the fact that Capcom has like so completely saved the Resident Evil and and injected new life into it and uh i i just

i'm over the moon i can't wait i don't know but it doesn't seem like you two are as uh and we've talked a little bit about resident evil 7 before specifically with regards to me and not being able to play it because i'm too scared and i'm a baby and i'm scared there were some mannequins in a house and the mannequins moved and I was like, nope. And then I turned the game off and I've never played anymore. I hear there's a fight with a car, never saw it. I hear there's a rocket launcher at some point,

never saw it, too scary. It's a good ass game, man. You mentioned all that stuff. I'm like, yeah, that rules. Yeah. Too scary. You have to like cut your hand off like in the first like 10 minutes of that game.

That game fucking rips, man. I do like the third person ones though. 8 is going to be a sequel, a direct sequel to 7 also that takes place. And you are playing as Ethan and it's in first person again. And yeah, I just I think the reason I'm excited is because it's not very often that like i i maybe it never happens that like a franchise this old and that has this many releases in it all of a sudden becomes a super super hot property again and and for me like it is exciting to have this you know this third heat i have the types of games that i like i like you know uh big big rpgs and i like uh games of service games and shooters and stuff

like that this is so far outside of my usual uh like genre i prefer and that's that's that is thrilling to me um and it's uh it's actually supposed to come out this year which is a you know an improvement over a lot of the stuff we've talked about so far. I do want to mention though, if you, just as a life advice thing, if you find yourself on a lore page related to the Resident Evil franchise,

you've gone wrong. Go. Something terrible has happened. You need to throw your computer out the window and hide in a closet for 50 hours because there's no coming out of that. No, the way I would suggest you do is you play four because four is a carnival ride with clowns literal clowns in it and uh nothing makes any sense and it doesn't really give a shit about what happened with the rest of the resident evil series and then don't play anything else until seven and then seven like is again like you don't you don't need to know anything else if you hear the name wesker run get the fuck out of there if you hear the name wesker or uh even

the word stars maybe would be a good code word for you to ava ava uh raccoon city if it's in raccoon city the game's gonna be shitty is a good that's not true that's not a good idiom oh gosh um let's take a quick break uh you're not gonna hear any ads probably because this is we don't you might you know you might in the future this in the future in the far-flung future you might hear an ad here who knows i don't know anyway this is a new this is lays cyber chips then. Because it's 2036 when the besties has become financially soluble again. I don't know what the fuck this next... I feel like maybe this next round is like where we're getting a little bit silly with it. Well, I did front load the biggest,

most well-known games at the head of the show because by now people are in the flow. Oh, yeah. They're feeling it. They love our voices. The timbre of Justin's voice is just too entrancing, which isn't to say these are bad games. That's what you're saying.

We've hooked them. We've hooked them, which isn't to say these are bad games, but I would say they're not maybe as well known as Zelda 2 or fucking Resident Evil 8. Yeah. But I am extremely, extremely looking forward to my game, which is called Returnal.

Terrible name. Sorry. Terrible name. Who's making that? It is the Housemarque game. That's fucking wild. And it is... Returnal's a good name.

It combines return and eternal into one word, which is Returnal. And it actually does apply to the topic of the game. But I want to talk about Housemarque real quick. So Housemarque, there are not that many indie developers that I can blindly just buy their games when they come out and know that they're going to be good. Housemarque is one of those studios that just makes hit after hit of games that i really really like um uh reso gun uh incredible metroidvania offland uh outworld sorry outland what was that game called outland they've made like a ton of really good games and returnal what was the one that was like there was red and blue it was like that uh oh my god it was like uh it was like that one dreamcast shooter where you could switch between the black

and the white to like do this do you know what i'm talking about what was that fucking called yeah i i'm blanking on it ikaruga ikaruga right but then that's right yeah wow good pull russ they didn't make ikaruga but but they do use that um yeah wow good pull russ they didn't make ikaruga but but they do use that um mentality for a lot of their games where it's a lot of like bullet dodgy stuff so this new game returnal which is coming to ps5 uses like that same mentality but in the context of a 3d um rogue light where you are like a space person spaceman a space lady i'm not sure exploring an alien planet um and when you die you come back to life basically at the start of the experience but presumably there is some carryover in terms of abilities and stuff like that um they have not

shown a ton of this they've showed some gameplay which looks really cool the gameplay has shown that they are bringing back that red and white staple of their games in terms of dodging bullets and all sorts of stuff. But honestly, the only reason that it's on this list is because I have a lot of faith and trust in their work as developers. I think they make excellent, excellent games.

And this one looks really, really sick. It also looks wildly unlike anything they've made yeah before like have they made a 3d game like i mean a reso gun is arguably 3d but i know what you mean like a like an actually through not like a 2d yeah like a third person action rpg 3d yeah it's it is uh it it is yeah it doesn't look like the other stuff they've made this one has a release date too yeah uh what is it march march march 19th yeah so it feels like with every game and i think very few studios are as risky as they are especially for the size of their studio they really just like try to tackle a new different genre that they're interested in

which is super risky as a developer like it's much easier to just go with the safe stuff um but i'm i'm always really impressed with their work and. Like it's much easier to just go with the safe stuff. Um, but I'm, I'm always really impressed with their work and I think it's going to be incredible. It looks really good. I mean, it's a PS it's PS five exclusive and it really looks like it's taken nice, uh,

nice advantage of things. Yeah. This game does look wild. I'm watching it. I watched the announcement trailer, which, uh, I forget where that came out,

but it was pretty boring uh the gameplay trailer looks hot as hell this game looks like uh this game looks very very chaotic um yeah yeah okay you've convinced me this is the this is the first one that like i didn't know anything about in this episode that i'm now like oh okay all right um i got one you may not heard of yeah yeah sure elden ring baby what you... You just changed it. Justin changed it. It's coming. What was it before? What was it before?

It's coming. You changed it. Doesn't matter what it was before. Russ, I don't remember what it was. I'd have to check the chat. Oh, it was Deathloop. I can't believe it didn't include Deathloop. Deathloop looks sick.

It looks really good. Deathloop looks sick. Elden Ring. I thought you guys liked Souls. Why would you pick a game that's definitely not coming out this year? I like games that exist. Elden Ring. I thought you guys liked Souls. Why would you pick a game that's definitely not coming out this year? I like games that exist. Okay, so Deathloop is coming out May 21st.

You, it's, I don't know. Elden Ring, though. Fuck the haters. It's coming, baby. Okay, what is it about? This is me, Doug Bowser, exclusively announcing, as per my boss, Reggie Fils-Aimé, said that it is coming. Elden Ring is coming.

George R.R. Martin is just signing his name on the dotted line. He finished it. He's sincerely me, George R.R. Martin. It's done. Can I? It's gold. It's Elden Ring's gone gold.

I don't care about all the, what you've heard in the past. The fact that no one talks about it anymore. This is from today. This is a news story from today. new rumored elden ring leak has sprung online twitter's uh i'm not gonna read their name claims the title's map will be larger than any dark souls games despite the change the leaker also claims that elden Ring will maintain Soulsborne gameplay. Oh my gosh. In a new story. This is huge stuff, baby.

It's big and it's going to be like Souls games. It's big. It's going to be like Souls games. It's coming in this calendar year, 2021. Give us a date. This will be fun, Juice. What fucking day is this game going to come out? October 31st.

Don't be scared.'s only halloween the release date awesome elden ring a real game that is coming i mean i'll be honest with you guys and i know we're gonna talk about a few more there's a there's so much good stuff that we can look forward to in 2021 and then ultimately be disappointed when it doesn't come out this year but there's a lot of games to be disappointed about their inevitable delays. I don't know why I can't be excited about Elden Ring, which I'm very excited about.

What worries me about Elden Ring seems like the type of game that may just not come out. Like if they want to shake me for my firm belief that Elden Ring is like fucking vaporware, they need to show me something from it or talk about it because if the news now is rumored twitter user says that the map's gonna be bigger like now they're a confirmed twitter user they've got some chat marks right there uh can we explain what this game is though for for people that don't know what the hell it is? Yeah. From Software, the studio behind Dark Souls and Demon's Souls and Bloodborne and the one

sick ass ninja game. Remember that one? Sekiro, baby. I remember it. No, not that one. The better one. The one where you rode on missiles and stuff as a ninja. What?

Oh, that ninja game. Yeah. It was the best From Software game. You're a ninja. What? Oh, that ninja game. Yeah. It was the best FromSoftware game. You're a ninja. I don't remember. That rode on missiles? Yeah, it was like a Ninja Gaiden off-ramp. Like not Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden game. Ninja Blade. It was Ninja Blade. I don't remember that at all. It kicked ass. That was the good FromSoftware. They lost their way on Ninja Blade. Six out of ten on

steam hey it's good it's a very good game um but uh yeah this is from from software and they've george rr martin is the guy who uh uh did known known deliverer of of entertainment materials punctual punctual gentleman George R.R. Martin okay fam I'm on the official I'm on official website Far Cry 6 is back

Far Cry is back and Justin just changed it Giancarlo Esposito is in it and I think that this is going to be the franchise where they really

regain their footing yeah can't wait to see what a huge open Ubisoft world is going to look like with these new consoles and that is coming this year i heard that far cry 6 is gonna have a bigger map than far cry 5 uh-huh but still have right it's still gonna have the far cry gameplay

i'm i just wanted to say i'm on the official elden ring website right now here's what is on it words a new world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin. Cool. Watch trailer or subscribe to their mailing list. That's fucking it.

Maybe if you subscribe to the mailing list they mail you the game. This is not a game. It doesn't, it's not real. It's fake. Justin's changed it again.

He's changing it again. And she is headed out west. And she is going to take down all the dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and robotic woolly mammoths that just get in her way uh aloe is bringing them all down in horizon forbidden west my third most anticipated game of 2021 uh i i can't really uh throw too much shade here because my final game that I'm bringing today is we have like a minute and a half long trailer for it

and no nothing else. I don't know what this is. I don't even know what game this is. Oh, baby. My last game is Solar Ash, which do yourself a favor, watch that trailer right now if you haven't.

It is the new Heart Machine Jam, the studio that made Hyper Light Drifter. Oh. Which is a game that is very near and dear to my heart. Rad ass action game uh top down sort of action slasher game uh with music by disaster piece quite possibly my favorite video game soundtrack of all time i think if you look at like my past couple of years like spotify top

of the year history like tracks from hyper light drifter always make it in the trailer for solar ash it is not a like top-down sort of 2d action game it is a uh 3d action game that honestly uh we don't know anything about but it looks a lot like it has a lot of the same vibes of as hyper light drifter to the point where people suspect that maybe it's in the same universe possibly um and the music is sort of as creepy and weird as it is in Hyper Light Drifter. I'm not sure if they tapped Disaster Peace again for that. But this trailer, like the only trailer that we have for it, like is very atmospheric and vibe heavy.

And it takes place in this shattered world. And there's big, weird, glowing gods everywhere. But the main gameplay hook that they show for 10 seconds is your character is like almost gravity rush style just kind of rollerblading all over the place it's fucking rad like i it's it's one of those things that yeah it does look very jet grind radio i i uh i'm not going to be able to describe it uh as well with my words here than you could get just from watching this very very short trailer but yeah uh announced last summer i think maybe last spring um it used to be called solar ash kingdom but i guess they changed the name for reasons

beyond yeah published by anna perna like oh i this is my uh outside bet of just like surprise like hit i feel like that was true for Hyper Light Drifter. Hyper Light Drifter came out of nowhere and was one of my favorite games of the year. And I suspect Solar Ash will also do the same thing. Dope. And mine is actually, my third one is actually not a game, but a movie. Nobody from the creators of John Wick starring Bob Odenkirk. And it's an action film

coming out this year and I am excited to be back in the cinema watching it and enjoying it. Can't wait. What are our friends at home looking forward to? Yeah, we have some reader mail.

First comes from The Tone Wolf on Twitter. I'm excited for the Mario 3D World's re-release. Played the original solo while living overseas and feeling a bit isolated from friends and family. Not unlike

the way a lot of us are feeling right now. The re-release's inclusion of online co-op feels like the way to retcon that experience. Completely agree. I did not play the original really at all because it was on the worst Nintendo console ever made, the Wii U.

So this is going to be... Virtual Boy is worse than Wii U, Russ. Yeah, I know. I'd be careful there. One of them was super red. It should be noted. I, over a course of like three or four different sessions, played through this entire game with my wife, Rachel,

and our two friends, Justin and Bristol. And it was some of the most fun I've maybe ever had playing video games because we don't play video games altogether like that. And this game is a it is a fun, tight Mario 3D World platformer with also the this injection of wild, chaotic energy of just at any point you can pick somebody up and, you know, throw them to their to their doom. Like it is it is one of those games where you have to be like, guys we're down to two lives best behavior please uh it's it is so fun i'm excited for more people to get to like experience it like that cool um we got one here from uh tiny dinky daffy so very excited for turnip boy commits tax evasionasion because Anarchy is Fun. That's not a real... Is that a real game?

I've never heard of that. Let's see. Turnip. It is a real game. Uh-oh. Oh, this looks cute. Looks cute. It's coming out this year by Graffiti Games, who you will, of course, remember from things

like Adventures of Chris, Cyber Hook, Joggernauts. This looks good. I'm looking at a trailer right now. It looks slick. It's cute. All right. That's a publisher.

They also called out the developer is Snoozy Kazoo. Snoozy Kazoo. You'll know from Blue Fire and Bite the Bullet. And that's all I know. Love the name, Snoozy Kazooie. It's coming to Switch. Nintendo, or Turnip Boy

commits tax evasion. They also, they also mentioned the Stardew 1.5 patch coming to Switch which should be happening soon. It just dropped on PC

which adds more stuff. I have heard, I have tried to remain in the dark about that because I'm really excited for it but it sounds, like people are

talking about it like it is like an expansion to Stardew Valley. Sounds enormous. It like a ton of stuff makes me sad um and they also mentioned you wish you liked it you wish you were into starting no i've really i've tried i've really tried it i feel like left out of the stardew thing i'm like really really really try harder it's nothing to get okay they also mentioned diablo 4 which like

i'm also on the fence about but boy howdy it's hard to get it's hard to feel like great about looking forward to blizzard and their their their slate of uh ambitious products i don't think diablo 4 is happening this year we might see a beta i can see like it's playable i mean it's people have been playing it yeah uh so i i would not be surprised if this was like a this this this fall sometime in october spooky hell date release date this will be the halloween release game if anything um the next email next twitter is from cabi jenkins uh the binding of isaac needs more talking time uh yin's mentioned it a lot but never really delve into it uh for those who don't know it that's a fair uh mention i play

a ton of binding of isaac i don't know if anyone else here does i have dipped in not to the point where like i've actually gotten into it in the way that i feel like you have to get into a rogue like game like this to like understand like what all the different upgrades are but i imagine they're asking because there's dlc yeah so there's an expansion happening there's an expansion coming out on march 31st called Repentance, which has been in development for like two years. It adds like an insane amount of stuff to the game. I have recently once again picked it up.

It's the game that I've played most on Switch. I'm at like 250 hours played on Switch at this point. That's amazing. That's too much. I think you're right. Probably true. But it is an amazing... Don't check my Hades play time.

It's a roguelike with tons of items in the way that Hades has probably 50 to 60 potential upgrades. I think Binding of Isaac is up to 500, 600 potential upgrades. It's expanded so many times already. The Switch version includes like all of this different expansion content um i have always been fat i watch speed runs of it

like i'm interested in the community and the game itself but for whatever reason like i've never felt like investing the time and energy but fuck me yeah i mean if we're all still locked up in march like maybe this is the time might be it might be uh last tweet comes from baker high so so excited for the new ratchet and clank as well as the horizon zero dawn sequel since they aren't out yet i'm okay still not owning a ps5 until they are totally reasonable ratchet and clank absolutely reasonable ration clank uh jumped way higher on my list than i thought it was after playing astro uh we've talked a little bit about that, but just like imagining a Ratchet and Clank game with haptics and trigger fun

stuff and like all the visuals that the PS5 is capable of. I think that game could be really, really sick. Yeah, they are. They are very good at taking advantage of Sony hardware, like leave, like squeeze it, wringing every drop of juice out of it. So, and, and Ratchet and clank is just like perfect for that. We're going to, we're going to chug through this real quick.

We got some honorable mentions, some other stuff we played, uh, Russ, what you've been, what have you been up to this week? I thought we were doing other, uh,

uh, most anticipated stuff. And I put in here the analog pocket, which is the, uh, handheld, which is still not here. Justin's sorry about that.

Justin didn't get that pre-order. so let's move on. Or Justin. Well, neither did Frodo, the actor who played Frodo, so it's okay. But yeah, no, very excited about that handheld that no one can get. It's a great use of your time, Russ. Good use of the listener's time, good use of your time. Everybody feels good about it. Yeah, I really like

the part where you forgot Elijah Wood's name. That was really the cherry on top of uselessness it would have been dumber actually because then there had to be a certain percentage of the audience who was like what was his name i want to spend some time thinking about that thank you for robbing me of these life minutes for us uh i uh i i finished dragon quest 11 which is a completely out of left field one of my favorite games i've i've played in years uh for i guess i guess like uh some of the longer final fantasy games like 30 hours is where the game starts to get really good that's where you really hit the sweet spot what i want to talk about though is uh i just i i persona 5 royal came out last year i didn't really dive too deep into

it despite the fact that i love the Persona games. Got it on my PS5 and I was on my like my little iPad mini and I was like, I wonder how remote play works on PS5. And the answer is fucking flawlessly, like eerily very, very good. The best. It is super good. So I've been playing Persona 5 Royal on my iPad

in the living room on my PS5, which is all the way upstairs in my office. And it is like, I'm not kidding. I feel I do a lot of remote play stuff, both on Steam and on PS4. And this is virtually lag free remote playing on PS4 from the same side or sort of orientation from like downstairs in my living room all the way upstairs to my office which are opposite into the house it would constantly have these like hiccups where uh you know the little caution triangle would appear and then like maybe it would disconnect me maybe it wouldn't this is just like i'm i am playing an ios version of persona 5 royal it. It is so, so incredible.

And like, you know, me and Juice aren't traveling and touring for the shows anymore. But once we are, the idea of being able to kind of do that on the road and not having to lug a bunch of shit around with me and being able to play whatever I want on my PS5 is very, very exciting to me.

I wanted to briefly mention Dicey Dungeon because Russ turned me on to it. He thought, hey, Justin, this would be extremely your shit. And Russ turned out to be as he so often is when recommending games to be 100% right. So very briefly, it is a roguelike, whatever that term means anymore, adventure game where you play as a die there are different uh classes of die there's a rogue a warrior an inventor a witch etc etc and you're making your way through a dungeon uh fighting enemies collecting treasure etc but the way you do combat is that you have different spells or equipment and each one in order to trigger it

requires you to roll a number on a selection of dice that you have and you increase the number of dice you have available to you as you level up so if you have a sword that requires you to use even numbers then when you get a six you can use that on your sword to do six damage. Or maybe you have one that like odd numbers will generate a shield and they get increasingly complex from there. Extremely complex. I would say like there's a reusable one that where it's a maximum of three and it's a claw and you do poison with it, et cetera, et cetera. And every different die has different, basically like the entire way you play is completely different.

There is, for example, a robot where rather than rolling out all of its dice at once, you have a maximum number you can hit and you can keep rolling dice until you go over. If you go over, you lose all your dice. So there's a gambling aspect with the robot, which is cool. The whole thing is very neat because it takes, what I like about it, is that it takes the min-maxing idea or the optimization pleasure that you get from building a deck. But that's too complex for me, really.

I don't usually like doing that. That boils that down into you have four or five dice. How are you going to use them most efficiently to get the maximum impact out of each turn? And figuring that out in each round of combat, every round requires you to take at least a second to be like, okay, wait, if I play this here,

then I can save this for this, et cetera, et cetera. And it is so pleasurable with every round of combat. It's very cool. There's not a lot of progression per se. It's more like there's a structured, like episodic system basically. And each episode that each different die can go on has very different rules to it.

Like there's one where doubles automatically disappear, or you roll the same number on every dice but it increases on each turn, etc., etc. But Dicey Dungeon is so good. Yeah, it's wicked. Terry Cavanaugh made it a super great developer and highly recommend it.

It's on Switch, it's on Steam. Both really good platforms for it. Plant isn't here, as we mentioned he will be back soon but the uh he will he did want to call out the game with the most numbers in its title ever ever released and it is near replicant version 1.22474487 three nine everybody trips off the tongue uh as we will how will we fit it on our game of the year trophy uh as we know uh chris plant loves near i don't know a ton about near but as i understand it this is when near first came out there were two versions one version came to the u.s one version did. This is the version that didn't, I think, but is now getting

universally re-released for everybody. I don't know anything about it. Chris Plant, I'm sure. That's the kind of expert analysis you turn to on the besties. We're so happy to have you here. I mean, I had all the numbers, Justin. That alone is... You got the numbers right. In order. Next week we're going to be talking about Cyberpunk

2077. Russ has been trying to keep us from doing an episode about it so he doesn't have to play it, but his luck has run out. I have a 1080 graphics card. It's not going to be pretty. It won't be pretty no matter what. Baby, baby, baby.

It ain't going to be pretty. You're going to get a bad experience with this one. So we'll be talking about that next time. If you have thoughts on that, you can send them to... Who would have thoughts? Who would have thoughts that no one's talking about that next time. If you have thoughts on that, you can send them to... Who would have thoughts? Who would have thoughts? And no one's talking about this game. Who has thoughts?

Mail at besties.fan is our email address on that. And also you could hit us up on Twitter, the besties pod on Twitter. We should mention, you can now, if you haven't yet, if you've been listening maybe on Spotify and now you've switched to a different platform, do yourself a favor and subscribe. That would be doing us a favor specifically, but it's...

No, it's a favor for them too. They're getting content. Yeah, absolutely. And ratings and reviews and iTunes and places like that are very, very helpful. I also would like to put you to work over the next couple of months because it's going to be a little bit slim pickings on the major releases. So if you play something that you're like deeply passionate about or you hear a lot of people talking about it you'd like to know more

you want to just highlight something bring it to our attention whatever tweet at us at the besties pod or mail at besties.fan just let us know like hey this is amazing and you guys shouldn't miss it because it's so funny even though I say like yeah nothing's coming out you still load up the switch and there's like 50 different games that just got released and yes all of them are

match three but still here we are i'm not i mean goose aside i didn't know about this turnip boy game and now i'm watching a trailer for it that looks really fucking great so it beats recording a podcast griff yeah absolutely um thank you so much for listening uh to our show thanks for sticking with us please help spread the word and that's going to do it for this week so until next time for all these other guys my name is Justin McElroy

be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Best games. Besties!