The Besties - 2022's Most Anticipated Games

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

We're jumping into the next 12 months with gusto. These are the games we'll be watching, including some games that were on our 2021 list but didn't actually come out. Games discussed: Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, Rune Factory 5, Triangle Strategy, Elden Ring, Starfield, Skin Deep, Sonic Frontiers, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Stray, STALKER 2, Tunic, Cursed to Golf, Horizon Forbidden West, Wordle, Record of Lodoss War - Deelit in Wonder Labyrinth, Coral Island, After Life, Nine Days, Fortnite, the Analogue Pocket.   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've been finally close to catching up with the Blank Check movie podcast. With Griffin and David? Yeah, with Griffin and David, that's the one. And I'm in the Robert Zemeckis years. And Blank Check always does this because they track director filmographies. So you go through and like, I am so tired of situations like this morning when my father-in-law walked in on me watching Welcome to Marwen. Oh, shit. I have no explanation.

Yes, a few weeks ago, Travis walked in on me watching The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a movie literally no human being saw, not even Joseph Gordon-Levitt or his friend John Lithgow or anybody. But my father-in-law walks in to Steve Carell

adjusting dolls on the tv while he chain smokes and he looks at me like the greatest betrayal how could you be doing this what explanation could there be for you watching welcome to marwin so do you do you watch the movies before you listen to the episodes absolutely yeah every single time so you can join the join enjoy the conversation right so i can otherwise it's context contextless but yeah welcome to marwin just a regular wednesday morning watching welcome to marwin so you think i should be playing the games before coming on here uh i don't i think well this is a cursed intro because welcome to marwin is such a nothing burger that i don't even think our listeners are going to recognize the name of it to know that

it's a nothing burger it's a it's a it's a movie uh based on a true story and it's a robert zemeckis film starring steve carell who plays a man who was beaten and got memory loss as a result, and then spent his days taking cheesecake photos of World War II era dolls. He makes like a tiny town, right? Makes like a tiny town in his backyard. Yep. It's a true story. In a bad movie. it's a true story i don't know a bad movie yeah truly truly you know within the first five minutes when you see steve crowell's plastic face flying a world war ii plane and it's like oh man this is

a bad movie oh no oh no oh no how long is it oh no two hours oh god he got his oscar already right what's he doing did he get his i don't know i think did he did robert zemeckis make it that's where i don't get the movie is based off a documentary called Marwen Call. Welcome to Criterion Club, everybody. It usually comes at the end of the show, but this time it's coming at the top of the show. And Robert Zemeckis saw this and was like, you know what this really sad documentary needs?

Yeah. Sexy CGI ladies. Yeah. That's what it needs, baby. I like when you shoot the aliens and the points come out. Like sometimes I feel like I have to be the counterweight on this show. Yeah. Of just like bringing up.

Sometimes when you shoot the aliens, the points come out and your number gets bigger. I fucking love that part. Hey, you know what? We've come a long way since Marwen. Do you know that Robert Zemeckis has inserted his wife as sexy CGI characters in three separate films? Oh, good for him. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So it's Welcome to Marwen.

Yep. Beowulf. Correct. Polar Express. Polar Express? Sexy, sexy doll. Sexy burlesque dancer doll. No way.

Oh, fuck. I was joking. Yikes. Nope. 100%. Loves his wife. Loves her sexy bod totally cool robert with you bud good job man My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best Robert Zemeckis film of 1987. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the year. My name is... Whoa.

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know some games that are going to come out this year I'm looking forward to. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. We're just getting started, baby. My name is Ross Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. I want to know what happened to Griffin just then. Did a little hamster run across your desk? What were you reacting to, Ditto?

Little Ditto. Justin's saying that he knows the best game of the year. Well, I mean the best games are best in this case no dude you said it's all you already said you know the best you already know you're going to stop please you're twisting my words what are we doing here if you already know it like you're twisting my words okay what are we doing here justin well we're going to talk about this is a fun one this is going to be kind of like a a service to the rest of them and inhale this is an inhale like the xbox 360 it's an inhale that looks forward to 2022 and talks about what we are like really really excited about

and for in the coming year and i don't think we even talked about what this show is it's a video game club and just by listening you are a member amen gotta start strong sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce they bounce baby no that's a different that's bike check still um so uh let's take a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're going to tell you about what are What are we excited for in 2022? out in 2021 some of these i think we alluded to the fact that they probably wouldn't come out but uh i'm just gonna do a quick list here we've got god of war ragnarok which i think at one time had a 2021 release date that was overzealous if it if it ever did zelda breath of the wild 2 which i don't think ever had a 2021 but is currently has a 2022 but we'll see. Hollow Knight Silksong, which actually surprise released this morning. I don't know if you guys saw.

Whoa! Yeah, it's out. Congratulations, everybody. This is a joke. Yeah, it's a joke. Yeah, of course it's a joke. Not out. I usually hear about games coming out from Russ.

Yeah, you would have heard about this one because I hate that. That was so cruel. So many people are going to be mad at you. I know, it was actually really mean. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for Russ, everyone. Not at all.

Do you guys know what else? Can I tell you something else that is very exciting as we're talking about the year looking forward? I just want to mention this, a little table setting. This is also the year that the Besties will celebrate its 10th anniversary. We are six weeks away from the 10-year anniversary of the Besties. Yep. I can't wait. Can't wait.

And we have, in true Besties. Yep. I can't wait. I can't wait. Hey. We have, and we have, in true besties fashion, we have so much planned. So many great observances. Speaking of Hollow Knight Silks, I just want to say, Team Cherry,

what's up, man? It's just a fucking cartoon, baby. Let's take it so long. It's just a little bug cartoon. How many drawings do you need to do at this point? How many drawings of these little bug cartoons

do you have to do, dude? Come on. Well, they got to draw the sword, too. They got to draw the sword and the bugs. It is a different sword this time around, so I get it. Another game that made our list last year that I don't even think exists is Fable. Justin brought that one. Wait, you don't think, do you literally not think it exists?

I mean, I'm sure it exists, but I haven't heard anything about it. They shipped a game this year. That studio shipped like what some people think is like the game of the year. What? Forza Horizon 5. That's the same people? Yeah, Playground Games. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Justin, my sweet, you have burned your hand on the fable stovetop so many times. I know. I cannot believe you are looking at the fable stovetop right now going, I bet that's cold. I'm hitting the feeder bar and getting shocked. I'm like, soon a treat's going to come. You guys watch. And then lastly, I think it was listed in the rundown as nobody. I probably should have listened to the actual episode.

But I think you meant nobody saves the world, which is from the drink box team. Very cool looking top down RPG. Ispg which is the guacamole yeah that's fun yeah they make dope ass games so that should be coming out this year i am fresh do you include this kind of like so we get off okay next year when like half the stuff we talk about in this episode hasn't come out? I mean, I think we're already, we've already gotten off of last year's Mea Culpas because we didn't make any of this shit. Like, we're not making these games. We're not the ones laying

back with them. You know what? I think, looking at our list, I think there's only one game that I could see getting buffed. I think the rest will come out. I bet it's the same one we're all looking at right now on the same google doc i bet it's the same one we're all highlighting yep yep i think it yeah yeah you know what when i added it i thought this too okay let's move

let's move justin why don't you kick off with that disappointing stinker but i do want to say really really quick before we do it goes without without saying that all five games that I listed here continue to be most anticipated games of 2022. Right. So it's- We're just not going to double anticipate them. We're not going to double dip because you've had enough. Okay. Do you actually want me to start?

Yeah, let's do it. I don't mind you. Okay. You know what? Let me lead off with it. Please. Let me lead off with it. My first one is Starfield.

Which, by the way, have you guys realized does rhyme with garfield my first one is starfield presents starfield oh you know what i'm only gonna so garfield is the the next big game from uh bethesda game studios not to be confused with bethesda the uh the game publisher uh it was announced a long time ago at a game awards god when was that guys like two two or three years ago uh announced that no not probably not the game awards was probably announced at one of the bethesda um you know their e3 yeah little event that that was when that was when they had their little fucking imaginary of dr pararnassus press conference. They're like, Elder Scrolls 6 is here, baby.

We're all here. Planning their flag to say, we're not doing other things. I mean, y'all know why they did that, right? My theory. They needed money. Yeah, it was the public, hey, we have all of this stuff. I sure hope somebody comes and buys us. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

And Microsoft did. We've got wet four. Don't tease me about another wet. I would love that. Anyway, Starfield was announced. I'm looking here now at the E3 2018 press conference. Jesus Christ. I know.

And it had been publicly known for years before that. Not publicly known years before that. This game has been in development forever. That's true. Now, I don't know why it is so unthinkable. The last major

Bethesda Game Studios release was... I mean... Fallout 76? That's a different mean, I think it's a different team. Yeah, that was a different team. I think it's Fallout 4. It's Fallout 4 in 2015. Crazy. Why is it so unthinkable that after seven years,

they would have another video game that Todd's incredible vision for a star-filled future, Garfield, would be released to us, the gaming populace, are slathering into our what is the uh our our anticipation for this game continues to grow and it will be released in November of 2022 I I I actually think it will get released this year and I think there's reasons for the delays one I think it has the grand theft auto problem right which is like why would you ever release grand theft auto 6 when grand theft auto 5 is still the number one selling game year after year right like you're just collecting money so

then just keep working on it until you actually need it so i could see that you know they keep shipping skyrim they're doing just. They get all this free money. And I would say I don't think there's been any delays of Starfield. Not public delays. The only date they've ever announced is November of 2022, which is when it will be released. I also think that's the year that's currently on the calendar, though. And they showed a ship with

helmet in it and some rocks and gun on table show me what they showed in 2018 that's great what button does jump todd like it's the year the game comes out what button does jump no no no but show me show me the button that does jump they did I can at least see the game I can play. They did this with Fallout 4, though. And Skyrim. This is how they do the rollouts. They do not show gameplay more than a year out, generally, at least in recent years. Early on, Bethesda used to be like,

oh, Morrowind, that's going to be out in four years. Here's some dope gameplay. It's Morrowind. It's pronounced Morrowind. It's an imaginary village in Belgium where Steve Carell does his great photo shoots

all that said Bethesda Game Studios has I think I like their games a lot so don't get me wrong has I think never released a game that wasn't pretty

fucking busted at launch so even if it does come out this year which I think it will because he wants to take his time

probably gonna be a little bit busted and that's okay. It will be seven years. It will be. I just remember when I got in trouble for writing about the busted elevator and a fallout for, I don't even remember. They were very upset that I dared to talk about.

I got, I got stuck in an elevator and they, now, now I'm having, that's okay. They make somewhat busted games, but they're very big. Yeah. Hot Cry, he probably got stuck in an elevator and now I'm having to flashback. That's okay. They make somewhat busted games, but they're very big. I'll defend them on this one, Chris.

It's fucked up that you wrote about the only bug in Fallout 4. Some people have to just look for the negative. I know, it sucks. This is taking too long, so I feel it's going to be great. And it's coming out this year. We should do a bet, because I really do feel and it's coming out this year we should do a bet because I really do feel like it will come out this year

for sure I'm less sure about Elden Ring which is less sure of the quality not the release which is like two months away

no I mean yeah Elden Ring's coming out baby yeah sure yeah okay guys people played it uh huh

uh huh February this one's Nier. Nier? No, it's not Nier. It's the next From Software game. Their first in this sort of like, since Sekiro in 2019. So it's been about three years since the last one of these Soulsborne games from the original house.

This one's got George R.R. Martin in it. I've been saying kind of uh i'm not really learning much about it because i feel like i'm definitely gonna play it and i think i will definitely enjoy it so it doesn't really matter to me but it has been delayed many many times and um was not talked about for a while leading some people to think speculate perhaps that it was actually dead but it's not dead dead. Just the George R.R. Martin part of it seems to be kind of right. They originally made it sound like, oh,

you wrote the game, and now it's like, hmm. I mean, he was involved, I'm sure. He got an email at one point. I'm just fine with that. That sounds okay to this guy. I want to talk about Elden Ring just very quickly, because i haven't played it

but but people i've watched some gameplay and i know members of the press certain members of the press played it of the gameplay that i watched it looks like the sickest fucking shit i've seen it looks like sick shit it looks so fucking awesome while launching fucking magic arrows at a dragon yes baby do you want like a four in my mouth a ghost dragon head to appear above your own head and spew ghost fire at skeletons because you've got that too um it's it is basically breath of the wild meets dark souls and um i am so fucking hyped for it i hope it's good they don't generally these get it's been old i can't think of the last game of this type that they've fucked up so i'm confident but hey who knows who from software

yeah what was the last game of this type that they fucked up i mean not since like the playstation one era yeah so that's a good run is but it's a it is an open world game, more so than, well, I guess all Souls games have been open world games. Yeah, they are. Yeah, this game is hot. What's this last one, Juice? I've not heard of this game. This is a bit of a, it's not a cheat. I'm speculating here.

But the Skin Deep is the next game from Blindo Games. It was announced uh last year um but if you guys could just take a moment to watch some of this trailer that i'm about to drop in the besties room remind me who blend oh games is well blend oh games 35 loving quadrilateral cowboy i've loved every game that this this developer has made if you watch a little bit of this trailer, I really like Blindo games. And I was looking at the list, and there's a lot of stuff that I'm interested about, but I feel like if we have this platform,

I could highlight something that is a little bit more under the radar and may not even come out this year, but it was announced six months ago, and it feels like it's been long enough since the last Blindo games that I can release that I can kind of hope for it to come this year. Because I really love their work, and I'm very excited. The Quadrilateral Cowboy was the last big release. That was in 2016.

They had another one, Flotilla, which was like a space combat game that I will be honest, I did not check that out. Yeah, Skin Deep kind of looks like using like the Deus Ex, what are they called? Immersive Sim stuff mixed with the sense of humor that Blendo games tends to have in their stuff. It gives me big Void Bastards vibes. Yeah, I was thinking the same. But I mean mean not without all the like quite as much or maybe it's there i don't know this trailer may not have just shown it off but all the like crazy roguelike uh yeah stuff that that game anyway those are mine those

are my all right uh i'll do i guess i'll do my next because that's the order kind of yeah the thing is in uh destiny 2 witch queen comes out next month i am looking forward to that i don't know how much you guys are interested in it or been following it or even are playing it but i feel like destiny 2 is in a really fun spot right now how much have you been playing out of curiosity like right now i actually so i haven't played the 30th anniversary bungee they got halo guns now i know they have halo guns in it like they are they're they're just having fun with it um no i played a lot of the season immediately before that and basically got caught up uh the story is like interesting to a layman for the first time like i am excited to know what the story of uh destiny expansion is gonna be which is a unique experience for me um they're adding a a glaive weapon type it's been a while since they've added like a whole

new weapon type to the game um yeah i i it it's that game it has been a balancing act for so long and they have messed it up countless times and they have made like improvements countless times but it feels like it's like that game is really uh normalizing in a way like it is it is figuring out what the people who play it in enjoy and how to like uh reward them and not necessarily exploit them uh completely and that has been really cool to see and so you know why not why not throw a big chunk of of new stuff on there also anytime, anytime a new expansion comes out, like, I feel like all of my old Destiny 2 buddies, like, all get active again. And there's, like, a nice upsurge in, like, multiplayer gaming stuff. Because Destiny 2 is, like, really the main game that I do that with.

We're all going to play it for an episode. So you're going to have to give us a tour of Destiny 2. Yeah, sure. I am sort of in a weird spot right now with destiny because i haven't effectively haven't played it in like two years and i certainly know the basics of destiny very very well i spent many years playing it but there is this element of like do i want to learn all these new things to be able to whatever? That's the thing about Destiny 2 is that like,

if you hop in now, there's like, you can play through all of the different storylines of the past, like four seasons. There's a ton of content. And it is like not the most interesting stuff because it's like you are, um, the single player stuff has never been the most compelling.

Well, for these, like these were time gated events, right? That's how the seasons worked, is play this week and do these challenges and come back next week when there's new challenges. Playing those after all those weeks have come out is like marathoning a bunch of once time-gated events, and it's not that interesting. like uh rewards that are meaningful right now but maybe not you know you will get blue items on the first day of the witch queen coming out that outpace all that old no i understand so it's like it's not that it should not be that imposing i would say and also they've come up with like really good ways of you to like catch up on old exotics that you may have missed which is really

the only thing that like is worth going back and trying to be diligent about about collecting it sounds like watching reruns of like price is right where it's like price is right meant to keep you like engaged day after day but like i don't know if i need to go back and watch every episode of price is right yeah yeah i definitely i played it a lot there's still like one or two of the like old season campaigns that like i played a couple missions of and was like i am not interested in this so i am not going to force myself you know in the interest of having a uh something off my quest log to just play this thing i don't enjoy um but yeah that's that uh rune factory five anybody else give a shit about this game no we i feel like we did a rune factory episode a year or two ago yeah i

thought we all agreed to not give a shit about rune factory no i thought we liked it i love rune factory 4 um yeah it's the next rune factory game it's it's uh it is the it is the i'm sure like i feel like a lot of our listeners it's like the farming rpg right it's a farming rpg right it's the hardest moon but with action r RPG stuff going on inside of it. It's got, you know, you can marry villagers and give them gifts. It's got all of that good farming simulation shit, but, you know,

you also go out into the world and go through dungeons and craft weapons and do all this stuff. Okay, but let me throw this out here. Yeah. Haunted Chocolatier. Is that out this year though maybe almost no we don't know come on probably not that's fair of course i am excited for haunted chocolatier of of course also but uh rune factory 4 is a really special game i feel like and there's there's not a lot of games out there like exactly like it it

the way that it blends those two genres my two favorite genres and um i've been if you looked at the nintendo page for it uh for rune factory 5 yeah no so here it's like this new game and i i i agree i'm actually quite excited about this but like the the main image that i i remember seeing from it is just a character in like a not very good looking garden holding what is the single largest double tomato that has ever existed and that gets me real hyped that like that they they saw that and they're like oh yeah this image of a really ugly tomato this is what's gonna get people really good this is a a blonde child wearing a newsies cap holding uh a tomato that is bigger than he is sign me up from factory five i'm and then the

next one he's fighting a big snake cool um my last one is triangle strategy which is a fucking bad name for a video game and that's a shame uh but it is the uh sort of next game from the producer of bravely default and octopath traveler uh for for the switch it is a uh tactical rpg in the vein of a final fantasy tactics uh and i don't know it looks like final fantasy tactics but with that uh aesthetic from octopath traveler that like gorgeous pixelated diorama sort of vibe which was the only good thing about octopath traveler in my opinion um played a demo of it that was that was that was really cool uh and i i love uh strategy rpgs and uh this this seems set to be a pretty good one. In the demo, was the writing still pretty intolerable?

The writing wasn't great. They also have... There's been a lot of news since that demo came out of them saying, like, oh, shit, we need to change a lot of stuff. Yeah. So, I mean, the writing in these games is not... I know.

Extremely strong. That's what keeps me from being able to, like, get into them, generally. Yeah. But I love the art style. It is sick. This one's a question mark for me because it's like, we'll talk about this later,

but I've been playing Tactics Advance since I got the analog pocket and have been playing some OG Final Fantasy tactics on my phone. Nothing has captured the spirit of those games for me since those games came out, except for maybe like a fire emblem. And, you know, I'm hopeful that this can maybe do that a little bit. Do you think the story is based off the title?

As in like, the game was originally called something like Untitled Triangle Strategy Game. And now it's called Triangle Strategy. And do you think that they were just like, Triangle strategy sounds pretty good. It would be dope if it was just a tactical RPG game based on the, they might be giant song particle,

man. That actually, that could be, that could be a light. Yeah. Well, those sound great Griffin. I'm looking forward to it.

Tell me what the last, tell me what the last one was. Justin triangle strategy test test Triangle strategy. Test. Test passed. Just sounded, yeah, just like, it's good. Yeah, good job. I didn't make the game. I didn't make the game.

I'm playing Square Racers. It's going to be out soon. So while I'm finishing this sick-ass Square Racers run, we're going to take a quick quick break then we'll be right back Christopher Thomas Plant what's up tell me the three movies from the 40s that you're excited

about their Laserdisc release this year tell me which directors old balls I'm so glad you asked I have an entire segment on the red shoes that I've been wanting to tell you about. Okay, so I cheated. French noir erotica is back in a major way in Sonic Frontiers.

Sonic Frontiers and Kirby in the Forgotten Land. I'm combining these two because I'm curious if y'all can relate to this. I have a three-year-old going on four and he is obsessed with video games as in they exist on kids YouTube and he likes to watch them, which has been very strange watching him discover like streamers uh at a very young age let's circle back about this after the call chris i mean i need to come in yeah bro it's all roblox for my kids just all roblox all the fucking way down anyway open world games good for little kids who want to learn video games uh they can't just, like, lose automatically. You just find a nice, safe, open space.

Let them wander around happy as can be. So the idea of Sonic and Kirby, two games that I like as franchises, being something that I can play with my son sounds really good, especially Sonic. Sonic is huge with the kids. Did you all know this know this yeah sonic's big i wasn't prepared for it um my son they're wild about this blue guy he he goes everywhere with sonic tails and red sonic um they are all best friends um so yeah i i i think it's because their their taste has just not developed yet for

good games no i think it's because they haven't learned to feel um shame from uh bullies on the internet so they actually just like what they like um that's what i think you know because you got the three of us as being bullies on the internet that's a valid question i did i want to know for specifically for sonic frontiers what was the last good 3d sonic game was it colors the last good 3d one it was the one on the wii with the where you ran down a track and you collected rings. Sorry, say again? It was the Wii one and you ran down the track

and collected emeralds. I think it was called Sonic and the Story of the Emeralds. Mm-hmm. I think that was Game of the Year that year at the Game Awards. Sonic and the Secret Rings.

That was it. It wasn't the normal rings that he picks up that Dr. Robotnik stabs him and they pop out of his body. These ones he can't talk about. Plan A.

Oh, Plan A. Actually, actually, I do have the answer. It's right after Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations. Was that good? That's the last good one. Then came Sonic Lost World,

Sonic Forces. Not so great. What about the one where you made your own Sonic? Oh, yeah. What the fuck is this show? Keep talking about video games. Yeah, please.

We can't all just say Sonic the Hedgehog. Now everyone join us in 15 seconds of silence as we all just think about Sonic and his great gyms. His great blue mouths. Can I talk about Sonic and his great gems. His great blue mouths. Can I talk about my other game? Yeah.

My next game is actually about Big the Cat. It's called Stray. You're a cat in a cyber city and that's it. You're just a cat and you're trying to get out of the cyber city and there are like robot people but you're not a robot cat as far as I can tell. You're just a cat and you're getting you're trying to get out of the cyber city and there are like robot people but you're not a robot cat as far as i can tell you're just a normal cat and i just think

that we should have more games like tokyo jungle where you get to be an animal and kind of like a little bit of a scary city and just i don't know hanging out drinking some cream like cats do just being you who's who's the developer of that oh i know exactly who is off the top of my head without looking blue 12 studio is uh the developer in uh annapurna interactive publishing this one too uh they're also publishing that blindo games a game that uh justin talked about and i'm into this uh period of anna perna just throwing what looks like a lot of money at smaller developers to make beautiful looking indie games stray you know that you hear that uh what i just

described it as and you think i don't know maybe that's like a you know 2d sheepishly unity looking game not that unity games can't look beautiful they can i hear you indie developers um really hard it's just really really hard for this is hard um but this game looks like real good this game looks gory like it looks like you are literally a cat in a actual cyber city um is anybody else looking forward to this i mean it looks like one of those games where you just you know kind of go from point a to point b but everything around you is gorgeous it's it's tough i feel like uh i don't get down on like a slow sort of contemplative experience that i'm worried this game might might kind of fall into uh but also i feel like i do have an increased appetite for small games and this feels like it

might be that also i don't know it's tough to say i don't i've seen like 30 seconds of footage of this game i can't make a call i was just gonna say griffin's appetite for smaller games let's go back to his list destiny to the witch queen 19 000 hours room factor 5 factory 5 60 000 hours triangle strategy how many hours 50 no it's not about hours it's about like energy right where it's like those games are like pew like you're shooting or you're like picking tomatoes or you're like solving a triangle. First of all, I didn't realize

we were going to be cross-examining everybody's fucking picks. Fucking Phoenix, right? But also, I obviously meant I have an appetite for small games to fit around my diet of stupid big games.

Final Fantasy. Yeah. Yes, understood. What was your last game, Plant? Oh, my last game is Stalker 2, Heart of Chernobyl, which is a first-person shooter inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic and the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker.

I feel like this game has come out six times already has it not no stalker one 1954 on like a fucking little oscilloscope screen i do not know i thought this game came out already stalker one came out like 10 years ago or something and then like immediately two i believe like expansions came out for it and then a ton of games ripped it off so there's a ton of stuff that looks like stalker stalker is like i don't know stalker came out 15 years ago wow that's wild that is wild the like not generous version of this is like darker moodier fallout um but i think it's i think it i think it's personally more interesting than the series i don't think you need to be

apologetic about it stalker kicked ass it was a very fucking cool game that i think like got ahead of a lot of the grim like uh apocalyptic survival that survival vibe that like every other game had it had um it had like a really cool economy and progression to it but it also had these weird anomalies that just like existed around the world that were super kind of like pseudo magical but also if you got too close to one you would be irradiated and just die immediately like yeah there was a lot of there was a that game had a very cool vibe and i'm excited for this one it just it just feels like it's been aped so many times now yeah the world is very cool it's just like eastern european area called the zone which has been irradiated from all these experiments that have gone wrong and it's post

chernobyl it's like literally it is explicitly that it's it is and it isn't so stalkers are the people who go around the zone and they like observe the anomalies and they collect valuable artifacts the thing about chernobyl though is chernobyl happened in 1986 the stuff that this is based off of came like the book came out in 72 the movie came out in 79 so like it's it's this weird like prescient story that is like getting at a lot of atomic fears before chernobyl stuff i don't know it's i think that's like interesting that it's getting at something that's like both like historic and not yeah but also just i put justin to sleep it's like literally what happened you shoot the bad guys and points come out and you get stronger yeah there's a lot of blood yeah okay i'm gonna jump into mine really quick uh these are

my some of my most anticipated games uh we're gonna start with a little game called tunic tunic top down isometric um dark souls-y kind of game it kind of looks a lot like death's door which i also really liked in this case you are a cute little fox running around a very colorful world um this feels much more in the vein of like a zelda one than death's door which was kind of like a different flow this feels i think a little more open it's got some dark souls elements to it but i played the demo they've released a few demos over the years because it has been long in development.

It's one of those like very small, I think it's just a single person primarily working on it. And the demo that I played last year, I totally loved and just wanted more and more of it. Adorable art style and just a very welcoming world that i wanted to spend more time in so i'm super psyched about that it's it is soon um i think it's march march yeah march so it's been in development for how long again uh i don't know when it was first announced but at least three years if not longer longer. It was announced in 2018.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. I remember playing it at a Fantastic Fest in Austin a long time ago. Yeah, so that might have been the official announcement, but it's been, yeah, incredibly long. But I think it's going to be super sick. And it comes out kind of right at the tail end

of when we'll all be wrapping up with Elden Ring. So at that point, I think we'll be ready for a cutesy little Fox game. Yeah. Another game I wanted to mention is called Curse. This looks so freaking rough. Yeah, this is very much my vibe. It's called Cursed 2 Golf.

Oh my God, this looks so good. I almost put this on my list. It looks really good. It is a roguelike golf, side-scrolling golf game where you go through dungeons and find upgrades to improve your golf game. I love Garfield.

You love Garfield? I love Garfield RPGs. I love golf RPGs. And there aren't enough of them and when i'm promised one like i was with the last mario golf game i was very disappointed this one uh and uh golf story for that matter both sort of check that box and i'm oh i wonder i wonder if sports story is going to come out this year i think it it will, but that's another project that has been delayed a bunch. I think it will come out this year, and I'm also excited about that. The thing about this golf game that looks cool is that the golf dungeons are procedurally generated. I can't think of a golf game that has done that before, except maybe Desert Golf.

Yeah, I was going to say Desert Golf. With procedurally generated like uh super stickman golf courses super stickman style golf courses that i think this game is gonna be fucking great yeah i'm pretty hyped about it um and the last game on my list is kind of predictable but i think it's worth mentioning horizon forbidden west yes uh this is the obviously the sequel to horizon something dawn breaking zero dawn there it is um and now you're in the west uh i really loved horizon the first game but i also found that the beginning of the game was very kind of drab like you're in a forest and once you you get to the desert area and the map opens up,

I was totally enraptured by it. But here it looks like you're spending most of your time in this tropical... I think you're in San Francisco or in around San Francisco, obviously in the post-apocalyptic future. But it's beautiful and colorful. And there are not many open-world games like this that nail combat as well as the first game did. So I'm super psyched to see how this one does with the combat.

And they're adding like Breath of the Wild style gliders and climbing and all sorts of other dope shit. I think it's going to be awesome. I will admit I'm a little disappointed that it is current and next gen and maybe that's like a snobby thing but i do worry that some of these games might be holding back a little bit because they also have to run on a ps4 but i guess we'll see. I mean, Halo Infinite was a blast. Yeah, but yeah, it doesn't, Halo Infinite does not scream to me as a quote next, even though I loved it, a quote next gen game. I think it's an extremely good, runs great,

which I'm sure Horizon on a PS5 will run amazingly well, which is good. But there is an element at which, like, you know, games like Ratchet and the Dark Souls, Demon's Souls remake... I know what you mean. It's not that you don't want, you know... What you're saying doesn't apply to every game,

but for a big, flashy, big-budget game, you want to see it be a big, flashy, big-budget game? I want to see, in the way that, like, God of War, when the God of War game was rebooted, it was like, oh, this is clearly pushing the hardware to his absolute limits and in the case of you know running horizon on a ps5 i'm sure it'll run it whatever 4k and 60 frames and it'll run great but it won't necessarily show me anything that i've never ever seen before in a game outside of gameplay and stuff you also wantursed to golf to really push the boundaries.

Yeah, that would be great too. If the golf could be more next-gen golf and less past-gen golf. It would finally be good. If you could actually feel the dimples on the golf ball, that's when golf games will finally be good. That's PlayStation VR 2 will allow that actually.

Do you guys have any games that you are wondering i mean we've discussed a few but uh any games you're like curious if they will come out this way this year like ones you're wondering about ones that one that i check in on regularly is ufo 50 yeah um that i i yeah exactly that is the exact reaction for an indie game, a collection of 50 different small games from a bunch of different indies that was, I think, Mossmouth is sort of like overseeing, was announced in August of 2017

and has been absent since. It was supposed to come out like three different years. I think they said it was coming out 2020, 2019, 2020, right? It looks really cool. It's really close, it sounds like. I think there's like a fiction behind it where it's like the UFO was like an unreleased platform or whatever. When it was announced in 2017, they said it was coming in 2018. So who knows? It's just won that looks fun and it's tough to get all 50 to be good

yeah they don't all have to be winners you know let's uh let's see what our listeners are excited about cool so uh first one up here uh from cuddly as a cactus uh all the ones everyone else these are things that people are excited for. All the games everyone else has, basically, but also Coral Island, a farm sim by a small Indonesian dev team. I know Rune Factory 5 in March will hold my attention for a good while,

but if Coral Island ends up as good as it looks, that'll be my FSOTY farm sim. I haven't heard of that. Coral Island looks good. It's another sort of farm sim Stardew Valley Harvest Moon style game. But with a

sort of more tropical vibe. I think, you know, it looks great. I think a lot of people are making games like these and it's a question of which ones are going to hit and which ones are not. But the art and everything for this game looks very slick uh this one's from b i heard rumblings of a new fire emblem remake in the works and if that's true on it's

on the top of my list um also even though i don't want to play it i can't wait to watch playthroughs of elder ring once it comes out that's relatable i think i will play elder ring until i get bad at it and then i will probably have to switch to a video yeah watching playthroughs of that game and most souls games in general is super compelling i love watching them even though i love playing those games it's it's they're great to watch um i hadn't heard about the fire emblem remake it doesn't surprise me because they have been doing a bunch of them um and i would be very excited if they did something like they did with shadows of valentia where they basically like did it with the new engine and the new graphics um and new kind of updated gameplay mechanics but kind of

is it too soon to do awakening or yeah no they would do like uh thracia one of like fire two or three or whatever they wouldn't jump ahead that far i don't think i could be wrong and then last one here from john uh mario movie the game it's inevitable synergy surprises hasn't been speculated on more i can't fucking wait for this movie y'all i feel like it's all anyways gonna talk about for a little bit it's it's the amount of scrutiny that my poor blue friend sonic underwent his trailer came out it was so bad that the people who made that movie said fuck guys we gotta change the whole damn hedgehoghog. Can you imagine when the trailer for the Mario movie comes out?

Can you imagine when the first trailer for the Mario movie comes out and you hear Chris Pratt going, it's me, Mario. How many people are gonna be like, that's not my Charles Martin. They're gonna wake Charles Martin up and say, hey, sorry, man.

Yeah, we fucked up. You got to do this whole movie again. Do you, it's going to be, it's going to be wild. Yeah. Yeah.

There, because we really hadn't established a voice for Sonic that was universally agreed. This is what Sonic sounds like. They nailed that in one. Like that. They did. He crushed it.

Ben Schwartz is it, right? That's, but they already did have a mario one big time everyone agreed exactly what he sounded like and i mean who knows you know heath ledger didn't expect him as the joker yeah that's all i'm saying the comparison yeah definitely yeah but he he's he was like likable and. Yeah, well, that is the other part of it. Wait, please, God.

Please, God, give me that trailer today. I think it's going to be very, it's going to be a social moment at the very least. It's going to be fun to be online. I mean, like, you remember when Rockstar used to do, like, this is the page that you go to and leave it, and it'll just, like, automatically update. I need everybody i need

that kind of heads up like i i will be furious if i log on to twitter and i see like all the top 10 trends are about the mario movie and i've missed even a second of discourse because i need my take to come in hot and hard i wanted to be early it's got to be in a direct, right? Oh, fuck. That's even the best. One last and one last special treat for our most dedicated fans. Oh, shit. It's Odyssey 2. No, dog. No, it's Mother.

It wicked isn't. They should change the name of the movie to Mother 3. It's going to be great. I'm very much looking forward to it. It's irritated everyone. everyone what you mean everyone in america no sir everyone on the planet is irritated by mother three starring chris pratt we've we haven't talked about the games we've been playing in so long can you please do that we're real quick uh wordle a lot of people are playing it but a lot of people aren't playing it,

which I found out by tweeting a score today. It's a daily word game that is basically like mastermind, but with letters instead of colors, if that means anything to you. It's a five-letter word. You try to guess it. You find out how many of your letters are right and in the wrong place, completely wrong, or right and in the right place, and then you try to guess it, and then you can tweet your score.

And you get six guesses. You get six guesses to try and do it. Six guesses. It's extremely simple, but it is really great. If this has not already happened, I assume someone is going to release an app, steal it, and release an app version where it's not just one a day and you can pay for puzzle packs i'm sure like just like what happened with threes

i'm sure will happen with this but get in while it's still the og wordle uh the website is weird so to search for wordle w-o-r-d i feel like people have seen the tweets, which is just like a bunch of squares, and some of them are different colors, maybe. Can you explain what exactly that is? Yeah, so when you make one of your guesses, there's a color code of green, yellow, or gray. And green means a letter is right and in the right place. Yellow means it's the right letter in the wrong place. And gray means it's a complete miss. And so when you see those tweets

with the different colors in them, what you're basically seeing is a visual representation of that person's guess. So if you see two greens and two yellows, then you know they got two right letters. I mean, it's basically like their history of the game that they had that time. And you can tell from looking at that little box

how they did that time. What if you can't tell the difference between green and yellow um so it just squares to me can you i really can't tell i can't i literally can't see it someone had to tell me that they were different colors well you call me and i'll and hold the phone okay to your screen and I will help you. Okay, sounds good. They should have a mode for people who are... Oh, there's a colorblind mode. Just click on settings. I want to talk about the game that I was playing a bit of.

It's called... Buckle up. It is called Record of Lotus War Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. No. I'm muting him. Hold on. Let me mute him. No, I want to hear everything about Record of Lotus War, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. No. I'm muting him. Hold on.

Let me mute him. No, I want to hear everything about Record of Lotus War. Record? Not Record of Lotus War. Record of Lotus War, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. Okay. So I opened the Steam page. The art does look very good.

It does look dope. Record of Lotus War, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, is a Metroidvania, very much in the style of Symphony of the Night or Metroid Dread, what have you. I'm sure that there is a storyline, maybe it pulls from an anime called Record of Lotus War that I'm not familiar with.

I don't know any of that stuff. I mean, five five second rundown record of lodos war was a long-running dnd campaign uh by by some folks in like i don't know the 80s that they turned into a a manga and then anime and it turned into like this whole huge fantasy franchise got it and so now deedlet is in wonder labyrinth and you i guess have to escape the wonder labyrinth i think is the next step um yeah it has some like interesting like combo mechanics where you're switching between two different styles and as you charge up one style it like powers up the other style and there's like a back and forth uh what are those games uh you know like um ikaruga where

you're switching back and forth between two colors um it looks shit hot like go watch some great art tons of like different weapons and great animations the storyline i really do not give two fucks about but um if you like um kind of throwback retroback Metroidvanias in that style of Symphony of the Night and its ilk, check out Record of Lotus War, Deedlit, and Wonder Labyrinth. Now, I want to go back and apologize for reacting poorly to the name of this game because this is much better than Call of Duty Modern Warfare. That's true.

There's more going on here you at least know who is involved and what the type of labyrinth is that they're stuck in you know what i mean that's true and and who documented it yeah that's right um chris do you want to talk about uh old movies you want me to talk about old game boy games you talk about old game boy games and i can go quick yeah uh yeah i got one of the analog pockets. I think, Juice, you didn't get one, right? I bought one. It'll be a while.

I've been going back and I have a pretty extensive specifically Game Boy Advance collection. I got some color games in the mix too. I've been playing that thing and boy howdy, it is the best Game Boy that anyone has ever made. Let there be no doubt about it.

I've played and also created quite a few Game Boys at this point, and, well, they just went ahead and made the best one of them yet. And it was, I would say, well worth the wait. wait um if you did not follow any of the like analog pocket saga it is uh it is a pretty comprehensive handheld gaming uh piece of hardware that plays cartridges uh from the game boy game boy color or game boy advanced era but there are also adapters for i I think, WonderSwan, Game Gear, probably other stuff that I can't quite remember off the top of my head. Links? Some links bullshit, yeah. There's a dock that you can plug it into so you can play it on a bigger screen. But it just looks amazing.

screen um but it just it looks amazing uh it has it has stereo sound which doesn't you know of course it does but then you remember that like no game boy had like two speakers on it even when game boy games had stereo sound they had no way to transmit state right and so like playing games with the volume turned up is like oh shit this sounds amazing um i i've been big in the like refurbishment and upgrade of different like game boy models for a while and i i have very much enjoyed doing so but analog has like has has knocked it out of the park um whether it is worth the price for you or whether it is worth what I think is now a year-long wait to get on the list, for one, is up to you. Of course, there's also scalpers, but they are charging, obviously, a pretty outrageous surcharge to get your hands on one of these things. But I have barely put it down. I've been playing a lot of Tactics Advance.

I just had started playing Golden Sun, really for the first time, and that game is absolutely phenomenal. Have you ever played Metal Gear Solid, Game Boy Color? So good. The Babble Island or whatever it's called? Ghost Babble.

Ghost Babble, yeah. Yeah, I don't have it. I need to get my hands on it. It is so good. I was just talking to Chris Grant about it, and that is the game that he has also been mainlining. It looks so pretty on that screen. I do want to mention,

so I got one, and I got one with a screen protector, but I was so confident that I would fuck up the installation of the screen protector that I called a local phone repair place and was like, hey, so can I have you install a screen protector? place and was like, hey,

so can I have you install a screen protector? And they're like, oh yeah, sure, what phone? I was like, well, it's this weird old Game Boy thing. And they're like, bring it in. Yeah, I bought a screen protector. I do not think it was necessary. This thing has a fucking sheet of Gorilla Glass that is like the width of my pinky on it

that I do not think could be, I don't think a lightsaber could scratch it. So yeah, it's bigger than I assumed it would be. It's about the size of like a DMG Game Boy, like original Game Boy in terms of width and height uh obviously not depth it is skinnier than that and lighter than that but um uh i can still pocket it in a big pair of jeans in my jinkos yeah yeah i love it i it's so exciting to go back and play those old games uh it also it it has other shit on it it has like a synthesizer i haven't messed around with it has a beta suite

of tools including save and load states which it does on using car it's not emulated right so i don't know how that works but it works really well using save states with a cartridge not sure how that oh it's it's chris grant tried to it to me from what I understand. It like takes a picture of like where the electrons are at inside of the cartridge across the entire thing. It's wild, but it works really well. It has sleep mode, which is a game changer for like,

there was no, there was a sleep mode in that like software based sleep mode where like the screen would turn off, but the game boy would remain on and still run out of battery. And you turned off the game boy everything was lost but this doesn't have that this just has a proper sleep mode on it that has made playing rpgs on a game boy way more palatable um yeah if if this is your shit like go ahead and put in an order for it and try and forget about it for a year until it shows up. I'll go very quick. I have two movies, but I want to have a video game pairing

because there are some people who expect me to name these movies, and then there are some people who are like, Chris, just tell me a video game. So Afterlife, it's a Japanese film from the late 90s, and Nine Days, which is a movie that came out last year, film from like late 90s and nine days which is a movie that came out last year both are about kind of like the liminal space of like between death and also being born they're great and i think you should watch them both uh they like really gutted me um and then uh the pairing, video game-wise, is Fortnite. It's a game by Epic Games, and it changes week to week.

And actually, I really did start playing it late last night because Frushik was like, hey, we should give this game a try again. You know what? Fortnite? Pretty good. It doesn't have Afterlife or Nine Days characters in it, which feels... Weird.

Some days. It feels like everybody's in it. Yeah, it feels like a pretty obvious gap. Do you want to know something funny? I tried to play it on my Switch, which I've never done before, and I logged on to Fortnite, downloaded it, booted up the game, and it logged on i logged on to fortnite downloaded it booted up the game and it logged me

in which is bizarre because i've never logged in and then it started telling me like we're removing this from your account we're removing this from your account there was like 40 different things skins and v-buck packs hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things that apparently, this is great, a hacker used a fake account and that was connected to my Nintendo, and they connected to my Nintendo account. What?

And bought, I mean, bajillions of dollars worth of crap. I refuted the charges, so that didn't go through, but I can't you can only connect one epic account to one nintendo account yeah so like i cannot i'm stuck with this weird hacked account on my switch i cannot log into like a different like i can't connect my actual epic account. Wild. Yeah, it's really great. Is there any dope

shit still on there? I will not be playing Fortnite on Switch. No, it's basically like completely spoofed. Yeah. And empty. Wild. That's fun. But I mean, you can play on other consoles. Be fun. But just cannot play it on Switch. Which I don't even know who would fix that, right? Epic can't

because that's a Nintendo thing. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm going to call Shigeru Miyamoto and ask him how to fix my Fortnite. Cool. Well, that's pretty much it. I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. We have

JawThumb1, Rylan the Giant, TrevDaddy77, SneepPeep, and Paul from Bloomington, Indiana Thank you And thanks to everyone else who has written reviews We have a ton of games we could choose from for next week

Just in the last couple of weeks Gutsy the Guinea Pig was released on iPad Arcade Archives Mutant Knight is out on Switch. You got Super Pac-Man. I mean, what, Freddy Fish 3? You wrote the episode idea. What did you have in mind for next week?

We'll get to it next week. We like surprising our listeners. Okay. We should, before we wrap, just very quickly, light speed recap all the games we've mentioned oh my gosh okay yes so stuff that we talked about we talked about uh justin's recommendations were elden ring starfield and skin deep skin deep was that game from blindo games uh griffin's recommendations were destiny to the witch queen rune factory 5 triangle strategy

those are separate things i said them like they were one i uh am looking forward to sonic frontiers kirby and the forgotten land stray that's the game of the cat and stalker 2 heart of chernobyl um and then fresh's uh things were tunic, Cursed to Golf, which looks awesome, uh, and Horizon Forbidden West. Oh, and then Wordle, Record of Lotus War, Deedlit and Wonder Labyrinth, Afterlife, Nine Days, The Analog Pocket, and Fortnite. Uh, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you've enjoyed yourself. We hope you have a great 2022 and that is going to do it for us

so 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 10 years baby Besties!