The Besties - Besties 2022 GOTY Extravaganza - Part Two

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

We continue the ritual of making the ritual slightly different every year, when we bring the final eight down to the final four, and then introduce another contender before we rank the final five. And at last we’ll have the answer to the burning question: what’s the second-best game of 2022? 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!

It's all come down to this. Wait, what are we doing today? I don't even remember. We're supposed to do the part two of the goatee, but then that means the game's year is over. And I'm not ready. Oh, no. I'm not ready.

There's so many games that we haven't even talked about. There's so many. Do we have to do the dramatic, like, you walk, like the store is all empty, and then you, like, turn out the lights for the last time and, like, walk out the door? Oh, that's good. And hit him with a class dismissed yeah he's not british he sounds mr

feeney's not british in my mind mr feeney is a british man yeah he did play john adams so yeah famous british guy john adams nearly british basically um so this week let's talk about i'm just going to scroll through some of the other games that came out this year trek to yomi i don't know what that is that one is chocobo gp oh man this week this week we're talking about babylon's fall a game platinum games release and then everyone got what they needed out of it within the course of a couple weeks, and then they took it down.

Now that I appreciate. Shaq Fu, more like Shaq Fun, you're gonna love this new fighter when Shaq finally kicks ass. Overwatch 2, it's got twice as many guys in it this time. We didn't talk about a lot of games this year, huh? We missed a lot. Yeah, we definitely missed Shaq Fu

for sure. Phil Hartman is back in Blasto. That's sad. My name is Justin McElroy, and I knew the best game of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I won't claim to know it because we haven't done it yet. year my name is griffin mcroy and i won't claim to know it because we haven't done it yet my name is christopher thomas plant and i can feel in my heart that the best game of the year is near automata baby my name is ross froschek and i know the best game of the week uh welcome everyone to the besties it's a video game club just by listening you remember we used to say it's a game of the year show listening you are a member we used to say it's

a game of the year show that goes all year long uh that's not really accurate anymore but it certainly is it is it is and it does just because we have reached the terminus of the year doesn't mean that the whole concept of the show has changed it has been going all year long rank we used to do you remember we used to oh god remember God, remember the way it used to work is that you would play a game and it would be the game of the year until a better game came out and then it would get dethroned.

The best concept. Such a good concept. It's a funny concept. We also picked four games in one episode and picked the winner of those four games every single episode. So much work. I'm so glad we do it this way.

So many bad games. So many games that we cared about. Anyway, this is the new and improved Besties. And we're finally done changing the format. I can't even say it. It feels like it, though, right? Is this our second consecutive

year doing the shit the same way? We're not doing the shit the same way. No, we're actually changing the final five things brand new. But I really like it. I think it's gonna work. Chris, can you run us through how we got here? Sure. Well, in the past, it was just like a traditional bracket, you know? The best games down to the 16 worst, whatever it was.

Now, we have inspired matchups. So, the last time we had, you know, story games going up against each other. And only one wins. And now we're doing that again. So this is like not traditional bracket. We're doing best possible matchups again. So it's not just however it would have transpired in the bracket that we threw up on our Twitter page. Realizing could have been a little clearer on that.

I'll take the L. You can make an omelet without breaking a few eggs a few idea eggs here here's the big change though uh we're gonna do this first round uh it is four showdowns eight games and when we get the the final four we're gonna take those final four we're gonna toss in a little spice with uh elden ring and then we're going to organize our top five we're not just gonna like keep these things fighting against each other because that's not compelling the the top five games they're all good they're they're all wonderful we should be celebrating them so uh i think it's about time

for us to get started with the first set of showdowns. Okay, we'll do that right after this brief interruption. Unless we don't have sponsors, in which case we'll just come right back. All right, let's get, there's no time to waste. I've been playing a lot of these games these past couple weeks, so I could be a little bit smarter in these discussions. Our first pairing is Kirby and the the forgotten land versus tunic this is the hardest one of the four for me of the four so much so that it so much yeah so much so that it may point out a fatal flaw in this uh this final four into final five sort of uh format which is to say

i think both these games should be in the final four, but they can't be. That's true. Because they have to... Because of rules that we made up. Well, I'm going to throw Frush onto the bus. I kind of thought we were just doing a traditional bracket, and now... No, but we... For the second part, I thought it would be

a bit more of a traditional bracket for the second part. No, this is going to be more interesting. This is going to be more interesting. No, to be okay no okay sure because i pit games that were similar against one another again you want you want the final five to be like kind of like a a melange yes a tasting menu rather than just being like three reading games would be a drag yeah sure okay Yeah, sure. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. The first is Kirby in the Forgotten Land versus Tunic. Yes. Man, Tunic is one of the most surprising games of the year in terms of like, both in terms of the fact that like,

I didn't really, it wasn't on my radar, but also the fact that like, it just constantly unfurls and reveals like more stuff to you that has been there the entire time that you just did not know about. We can talk a little, we can be a little bit more spoily in this. Yeah.

Okay. So just to be clear, I do not, I actively do not want to reveal the like bit. There's like a big mystery that extends throughout the entire game and i do not want to talk about that because okay well i won't say i won't say that i will say that there are mechanic there there are things that your character can do in tunic from frame one right yeah that you just don't know because you don't have the instruction booklet pages

telling you to do that stuff and when you find, like, if you hold this button for a certain amount of time, your character does a special action that you can use to solve a bunch of different puzzles. Or just as simple as, like, you don't know you can... I remember when I started playing this game, I was like, man, I run kind of slow. I'm just going to, like, roll around everywhere, because that feels a little bit faster. And you eventually get an instruction book page that kind of hints to you that if you just hold the roll button and move you will run yeah there's also like a whole level up mechanic that like is not even when you find the instruction booklet page it's like two fang times five fire it's like i don't know what that i i i guess so uh yeah you need to have a you need to be willing

to like play this game at its own level which is to say like can you be patient enough to not just look things up because i think the second you look things up a lot of the magic of tunic kind of falls out because you know you just lose that like thrill but i also don't want to like gatekeep it which is like oh you didn't figure this thing out. Right. But so much of the game is figuring it out more so than even like Fez or like a lot of other games that have tried this.

So much of the game is figuring that stuff out that I think you just lose a large chunk of it. I think that it systemizes this kind of mystery in a way that Fez didn't. Yeah. Like where this, that was more of a layer beneath the layer. This is very much interwoven with the game itself

in ways that makes it harder to miss, I think, once you start pointing at those threads. Yeah. It is tough though, because I could definitely see someone not engaging with it on face value and not really getting what the hubbub is. And it's hard because you don't want to you know it reminds me of like immortality where people have kind of talked around like you know

there's this other thing that right like once you tell people what it is it's kind of like well that's not very fun like i wish you hadn't just told me but it's hard to sell people on it um i will say that even i i i agree that this game does kind of what fez did better than how fez did it uh but i will also say like take the level up example even once i found the instruction booklet page that was like here's here's how you can do it here's how you can make your character stronger which like full stop you have to fucking do this is a hard game y'all like it it is punishing uh it is the most punishing at the beginning it is a from soft game in that in that regard where like the beginning of the game is the hardest part of the game because your character doesn't have any of these upgrades

you just don't know how the systems work like right well even once i found that page right i still had to go online because i knew like it was some amalgamation of you have to use these items with fire. But there was some sub-menu that... I guess what I'm trying to say is that surprise and that sort of unfurling magic was very special and very cool when it panned out. And when it didn't pan out, it felt unfair sometimes. There is a compromise here in the menu. You can basically make yourself invincible,

right? That's true. So I think... Wait, is that like an accessibility? Yeah, it's an accessibility. Yeah, yeah, from the very beginning. So I think that that is like a nice compromise because we're talking about all the brain-teasing stuff. The combat,

as Griffin said, it's not just hard i found it like impossible i'm not impossible i was able to do it and i and i ended up not turning on that menu option because i'm a clown um but at the beginning it it really is pretty annoying and i i think having that there is is a nice way for you to focus on the fun brainy stuff of the game and not worry so much about the combat which gets does get better but it's not especially enjoyable shame and i had i turned that feature on and i had just as much fun like i should have yeah it it i had no issues with doing that like it still felt like i was having a very cool yeah experience and i and i'm a pro league gamer and I didn't turn it on, but that's also like,

it doesn't take anything away from my enjoyment of it for you to turn it on. You did it better. Right. Yeah. I mean, I did it better. That's can be confirmed,

but it doesn't bother me that you turned it on. Like I, I think 100%, the best part of this game is the puzzles is the uncovering how the systems work and not the combat, even though the combat is fine. It's definitely not the star of the show here. Griffin, you gotta talk about Kirby and the Forgotten Land

because this is gonna turn into a Tunic Love Fest. Yeah, sure. I mean, we talked about it last episode, so I'm not gonna lay down the brass tacks because that's dangerous. People could step on those and hurt themselves. Ouchie! Really bad.

I think it's funny that these two are up against each other because Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the opposite game in terms of like holding stuff back. Well, you know what? I say that. This game does sort of show you all of its systems up front, but then the extent to which it explores those systems is, I, I, I think a new paradigm definitely for the Kirby series, but also like for Nintendo, maybe like I, I Kirby has been such a kind of,

uh, lightweight game series from Nintendo. It always has been like this, like, Oh, that's, that's cool. I liken it to like,

uh, like Yoshi's woolly world and like all of those games where it's like, oh, this is a cute platformer. Not very hard. Not really going to stick with me. Certainly not going to show up in any like end of year lists except for Kirby's Canvas Curse. What was it? Yeah. That game Whip Task.

Yeah, that's cool. This game breaks so many of those, frankly, like kind of bad game design trends that Nintendo sort of leans on for this series and really, really, really explores everything to the logical conclusion of all of the different mechanics. Would that every Nintendo protagonist and franchise were as malleable as this pink glob of goo because it the way it is adapted here is is i wish every one of nintendo's series would have this like willingness to sort

of eschew all that has come before and just say like no this is the most fun version of this well i yeah you know we've seen that more and more i think the biggies you know the biggies breath the wild and to a certain extent Mario Odyssey I think they are re-evaluating what makes a X game in favor of something

that is more interesting at every meeting someone raises their hand and they're just like online stuff and that guy's fired and then they have to come up with something else

and then the person sitting next to them raises their hand and says bad online stuff and then Reggie's like, yeah. Promotion. Wait, Reggie? I'm never going to move on from that.

I think both of these games are spectacular. Wait, can I draw one more connection between the two? Yeah, sure. So, From the Eyes of a Babe is how I saw Kirby and the Forgotten Land. And I thought it did something very similar to Tunic, which is I zipped through Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I enjoyed it. It was really fun. And playing it with my kid, and I know we talked about this a little bit last week, but I'll hammer it home again here.

There is so much I didn't see because I didn't stop from the very beginning to actually enjoy it to like savor all of the side stuff in this game to like really appreciate the art all of like the hidden areas there's so much in this game that is hidden in plain sight and I understand Tunic is doing it in a much more thoughtful way and that is the entire heart of the game but I think I think it's telling that I'm seeing this game on so many top tens of people who have kids and I think it's rare I mean maybe maybe that is hey just a lot more people we know are having kids and that's why it's showing up there. Or maybe this is truly just a kind of like generationally good family game, and we don't get many of those. That's exactly it.

So I got an Xbox Series X a couple weeks ago just because every other version of Minecraft sucks shit, and it's the only game that my son wants to play recently. And I got on the Game Pass, and son wants to play recently uh and i got on the game pass and i started to download like a bunch of like family games and i think doing that really gave me a deeper appreciation for kirby and the forgotten land because it's hard it's hard to make it's hard to make that game it's hard to make that game that is like accessible and fun and deep uh but not too deep that it scares kids off like it is uh it is a game design discipline that i did not appreciate until i think kirby and the forgotten land uh because it is in my mind like certainly the best one it's the best family-friendly game that came

out this year but it also sort of gave me a whole deeper appreciation for the entire sort of genre and you know i think it's interesting because there are a lot of games that are less accessible if you don't have the time and energy to devote to them. There's a lot of games and franchises that I feel kind of excluded from. Like, I, enjoying them, there's things like, I'll give you an example. Like, Destiny was hard for me to get into because of the inability to, like, pause and walk away from it whenever I needed to, right? Like, it's not, there's other games, like, fighting games I would put in this category, like Call of Duty. It's hard for me to, like, hang with that because I don't have the time because I am somebody who's, like, balancing work and kids and all that stuff. And it's nice to have a game that's, like, you're not probably going to enjoy it as much as everybody else if you're not in that situation, right?

If you're not playing it with someone else, like it's probably not going to be as accessible and fun for you. And it's an interesting other side of that coin where I've sort of felt precluded from getting into a lot of series because of that restriction. It's nice to have a game that's sort of aware of it. Yeah. My vote is for Kirby for that very reason.

I think it's the best kid-friendly game of the year and maybe of the last, like, I don't know, probably on the Switch fully. Better even than, like, Mario Odyssey, which is a masterpiece but not one that my son has particularly taken to. I think Kirby is a masterpiece, but not one that my son has particularly taken to. I think Kirby is a very, very, very special game. I love Kirby.

My kids have had so much fun with it, and I've loved playing with them this year. But my experience playing Tunic is not one that I would trade for anything. I had such an incredible time with that game this year, and it's so tuned to the way I like to play things. I would definitely have to go to Tunic. Yeah, I'm with Tunic as well. Oh, wow. Chris Plant? Yeah, I mean, my heart is Kirby, but for the sake of this show, I will lean to Tunic. This is a shock. This is a shocking upset to me. I mean, I think Kirby is like top three games of the year.

But I think in terms of like what we recommend for people to try and knowing our listenership, I think Tunic will be more interesting for our listeners. That's what we do here, man. We're not all going to walk away from this thing happening. That's why we're here. Also, somebody is already in the document before I even said that, highlighting Tunic over and over again. And that feels like... That feels leading. leading yeah it was like a mob boss i don't know who it is but i do

want to say as someone who is diagnosed as attention deficit disorder whoever is popping in and out of the document clicking maniacally whenever we record 100 also has add it's not me but i don't know who it is but it's very distracting know that about yourself please stop uh okay so congratulations to tunic cult of the lamb versus vampire survivors can we not even pretend vampire y'all okay i spent the last week since we last recorded playing a lot of two games one of them we'll get to later the other one was vampire survivors on my phone which i posted a clip in the besties uh slack room of me cracking that shit over my knee and drinking the fucking sweet i think it said you had been on the level for 99 minutes which i didn't even think was possible yeah i found a build that was uh basically on an unkillable infinite gold generating just

just leviathan doesn't death show up and just kill you automatically second death not always now wait is this is this okay i have to ask because i played uh an an astounding amount of uh the console version had you not play i mean i played no i had not uh i had not like finished all the levels when i played it on okay on steam deck okay uh and i have played a lot more than that on mobile because it is perfect for mobile it's honest to god like if you want to talk about like uh game accessibility which is not in the traditional sense but in the like can can anyone just get this thing vampire survivors on mobile is free and fucking phenomenal and it only requires one input i am never going to take it off of my

phone uh that's why that's my only hesitation i think i'd like that but I I've spent so much time on the console version like I can't I can't go back to square it's up to you it depends on like when was also the last time you played it fucking permission they have they have what I'm saying is they have updated the game a lot they've added a lot of secrets they've had a lot of characters they've added new weapons they've added new bonus stages they've added like a ton of shit so it it is also a game that I think you would not regret. I'm still like actively playing though. Like I'm seeing all this stuff.

I think Vampire Survivors is really, really excellent. I think Call to the Lamb does some cool stuff. But I don't think this one's even close. This one's primordial. I mean, this is like Vampire Survivors appeals to me on like the, it cuts right to the heart of whatever it is that makes me play video games and just jams a shunt in there and pipes it full of the true gaming goodness

that I, a gamer, enjoy. And it's also, I would say, it doesn't feel grindy. It doesn't feel like you're wasting time. Oh, really? Are we for real? I'm happy for this game to win, but let's not lie.

The game is profoundly grindy. As someone who started from the beginning on the iPhone, I have real mixed feelings about maybe the first five hours again it's been a while maybe the i want to hear about it yeah i don't know it's been a while it's we don't give games a pass on this for being boring for five hours that is not no you're right you're right and the problem is it's not boring it's just you you cannot compete until you grind grinding grinding grinding grind to get, to buy the upgrades that you need to be in a position to, like, play, quote, the real game.

And then once you do, I mean, there is not a time where Vampire Survivors, a game of it ends, and I look back and I'm like, well, that was fulfilling. I really got something out of that. It's like drugs. Like, it's like it's like drugs like it's like well that completely consumed me and and i need to take it off my phone because i like i i like zone into it so i i understand that concern that is something that like that is why i had to in a moment of clarity, delete Binding of Isaac from all my devices. I couldn't anymore, right? It had obsessed me to that point.

I do say Vampire Survivors for when – honestly, it's my exercise game. Like if I'm – I have an exercise bike. Make time go faster. And I need my brain to go away for a while so my body can do its grim work of trying to keep me alive another decade. I would push back against the idea that the game's not fun for the first five hours or that you haven't gotten to the real game yet. Because this is a – I think that it is definitely harder before you unlock all that stuff. But that's kind of like the bullet hell challenge of vampire survivors is gone for me uh partially because i'm fully jacked into the matrix one

with the machine etc but also because like i you know i can play as one of the like super secret hyper powerful characters now and just like nothing poses a challenge there's like 150 some things that you can unlock while playing the game and so with every run that i did any run that anybody does like you are constantly unlocking new weapons new you know uh accessories new things like that and and so like i you know what fulfills you out of a game is an entirely personal decision but i don't i don't think it's fair to say that like nothing's happening until you have put in these sweat equity well you can't compete you can't you can like you i mean i'm sure i mean there's no really hardcore player who can compete with a base level but you don't need to survive to 30 minutes or

whatever it is to feel like you're doing things in that game. Right. It should be hard to do. Like, if that is the, if making it to the 30-minute, you know, time limit of a stage is, like, it is, like, one of the unlock requirements for, like, a lot of different things. Like, that shouldn't be a given. Well, okay. But then I would say the, like, getting the weapons that are fun where are our screen clearing, that's hours and hours before you're doing that. For the hour. Unless you're like looking up guides, right? Certainly at launch, it was very limiting in terms of like what you could figure out on your own without looking stuff up. But I would say just to define the like grindiness of it, I think the core loop of this game, the like 30 second or even 10 second loop of this game is very, very strong and very fun.

And it's extremely, extremely hard to pull that off in such a tight simple game that only has one input like right i think we're getting into semantics which is i agree with everything you're saying i would just say the whole game is the grind i don't find that but i would say it can be fun but every every game has grind if you don't enjoy what you're doing right like right that's what i mean grind only makes sense as if is if you think like this is boring i'm doing this homework to get to the fun part i guess i mean to compare it to like a spelunky right or even a tunic that we talked about at the beginning there's like a lot of that game that if as you know more about the game if you if you started from the very beginning you would

have access to that game. And that is just, again, this is personal preference. That's the type of game design that I enjoy. When I can feel the artificiality of the game, that I am playing it, not because I'm good, but because the more hours, the more I give the game, the more power it gives me, that I'm paying it with my time. That's when i get that

same submit that you can make that same argument when the rewards that you're getting are knowledge based like spelunky you have to grind through the stages to get the knowledge to be able to progress farther right that's what you're getting so earned yeah for me that again for me that feels like earned like the the idea of like growing because i'm smarter better that's that feels like interesting i i'm not like arguing against it's kind of like you get down to these like sort of core things and it's like i don't know this is just right it's apples and oranges bump up against like who i am as a human being which is right yeah yeah yeah and again like i think i think it should go on i just is would be cautious because i i think that again when we say things like there's no grind i think

for certain players that would be seen as like just fundamentally you're right you're right i i think that it is a grindy rpge sort of entry into into this particular. I just think it does it maybe the best. I think that the many, many, many carrots that this game puts before you are all pretty delicious, except for the cat weapon. What the fuck were they doing? It sucks.

Do you want to talk about Cult of the Lamb just a little bit here? Honestly? We talked about Cult of the Lamb last time. I mean, it is, but it just kind of uh barely made it through to this point and i think that call the lamb is like very solid and if you're looking for like oh this would be fun and has a good sense of humor and a little a little dark great

great steam deck a kind of perfect steam deck it is for sure um yeah i i think if you want to hear more about that game you should go listen to the episode. I agree. I think we should just push vampire survivors through. Cool. Next up, God of War Ragnarok versus Nobody Saves the World. This is definitely the funniest of the matchups, I think, out of all these final eight. Is this, before we even get into it, is this going to be the one that makes our listeners the most upset when we get to the end of it because i think i know where this one's going i don't know i i here let me put out a quick data point and this is just to have something to talk about because we've talked about a lot

i finished god of war ragnarok uh this week i i i've been i've talked about my struggles with uh finishing that game and i finally did it this week um and do you feel like you're a better dad now um no the the pacing problems of this game are like completely i mean they are persistent throughout when you think that this thing is like getting to an absolute huge climax it's almost instantly like let's walk around in the ice come boy let's walk around the ice and talk about being sad and it's like that is like in the next 10 minutes is just people talking about being sad um i i don't know man it's one of those it's like by the by the force of the uh think, probably budget it was allotted and talent that was put against it and time, all that stuff, the narrative succeeds more than nine out of ten games just from sheer force of will, I kind of feel like. But in terms of, there's lots of well-written dialogue in it.

You know what I mean? And performances are strong. Yeah, the performances are strong yeah the performances are strong the dialogue is strong but the overall like way that the game works in concert with its narrative to deliver a message um is is simply not they i mean it's like just not on the level of the original the god of war last one yeah there are there are plot beats towards the end of the game that rely on like pretty major twists and surprises and uh you know mcguffins if you will that just like do not they

either don't feel satisfying or don't feel earned or are completely out of nowhere and they it feels like they were like oh we had no idea where to take this so we're just gonna like cut that off at the knees and end it there are emotion but i would also add there are emotional moments of this game um that do hit really strong like make me incredibly tied to these characters i just wish that the actual events the beat by beat events of the game was more interesting and i think those emotional moments are undercut by what justin was saying and we've talked about a lot the pacing issues the game the core game the the uh and when i say core game i mean like the gameplay what you're doing in levels and combat and stuff like that incredibly strong one of the strongest most fun

games i played all year no question about it but so much of the game is dedicated to that narrative. And I think the narrative really kind of falls on its face. And because of that balance, I mean, again, it's very similar to Last of Us 2 in that way. Because that game also focused a ton on narrative and had amazing gameplay. But because of the focus on narrative, if it landed with you, great. But if it didn't land with you, that's a big pill to swallow getting through that game if i could just say one last thing if we there is a video game trope that is like it in a lot of games once you start seeing it and i really wish we could cut it because you'd never see this in movies but games have this thing of

like to make this a satisfying ending the one thing we need to do is to go around to every tertiary character we've encountered and ask them if their minor drama has been completed or not. There's a sequence in this game where you're literally going from like little camp of tertiary characters that know each other and just like, well, good news, Kratos, my son isn't an owl anymore. This is true. I have to go. I'll never see you again and then they walk away it's like um it also does it just it it's mainly a problem of editing like this would improve greatly to just cut away the crap and nonsense and just leave the good stuff in the middle like it's it's it's it's very frustrating because those beats that land really land but it's just it's not transcendent in the way the first god of war was i've been thinking about that editing thing because a lot i know that we're all now older dudes who have you know responsibilities and we can't play a trillion hours of video games

and uh a feedback that i see both here and on polygon is hey maybe we just like long games maybe maybe you're just completely out of touch and one sure maybe the other thing though with the editing is i think games suffer that they don't have kind of media standards and by that i mean when you go to a movie you know it's going to be between an hour and a half and two hours and a half. Or three hours and 12 minutes in a gym. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Well, if it's a masterpiece and you've broken all the rules. And we're talking about Babylon, not Avatar. And you only answer to the void, the blue abyss at the bottom of the sea that only you can uncover. And this goes for all sorts of things, right? Like CDs and albums that have kind of like familiar set amounts of times or books. There are exceptions. But when you really go long, you have to earn it. And I think that there's a weird contrast with video games where a lot of these studios and publishers, they are measuring success not just on sales, but the time that you put into the game. that is like a key analytic that they care about and that is just a fundamentally bizarre way of caring about art like imagining like you know we we just made this movie is we made it 12 hours because we thought like well if you're at the theater that's you know 12 hours you didn't spend watching other movies yeah that's weird and and i think that is what we talk about when we talk

about editing here of why why is it so big what are what are they accomplishing with with the scope yeah and i would i would also add i think the complexity of game making obviously movies very complex as well but there is a standard of length there with game making in particular i think it what's so hard is that you do not see a lot of length there with game making in particular i think it what's so hard is that you do not see a lot of those editing problems until extremely late in the process when you've already paid when you've already paid hundreds of millions cost fallacy sort of exactly right so can let can we move on to nobody saves the i i am struggling with this round and i want to hear i we talked a lot about nobody saves the world in the last episode i should just stop saying that because fucking of course we did that's

how this works uh and i it does all of that like really clever diablo-esque stuff in a new way and was like a really fun multiplayer uh experience for me uh i I am struggling with this round. I'm wondering if I am in the minority here. You want Kirby to go forward, don't you? Well, yes, but only because I'm kind of milquetoast on both these games. Both of them kind of fell out of my brain in similar ways. I think God of War Ragnarok is not as good as the original God of War.

I think nobody saves- Well, it's better than the original God of War. Okay, fine. I think Nobody Saves the World is a great game and I'm glad I played it. But like, if I'm comparing it to either Kirby or the two remaining games on this list, I don't think either of these really cut cut the mustard for me you

know what here's the deal besties has always been known for its willingness to be malleable much like nintendo's pink mascot and in this case i am totally fine once again changing the rules and saying the last time just to be clear yeah we're never gonna do it again after this call me Mr. Birdseye it's frozen but I do agree

with both Griffin and whoever else has said it of between God of War Nobody Saves the World and Kirby Kirby is my preferred game

Kirby beats the shit it's not just a case of like oh my favorite my favorite like oh no my precious baby didn't get taken through I think Kirby just beats

the ever lovingloving shit out of both of these games. Well, okay, that's a wild thing to say, but okay, we will get, I'm fine with this change. None law, okay. I'm fine with this change. I just want to say one last thing, and I hope, and I'm curious if Russell is the same way.

All of this complaining that I'm doing about God of War Ragnarok is really it it feels nice to have a game that i can engage with on that level sure yeah like it it is nice to have something that is like critically interesting to talk about and it's not days gone you know right exactly like it's succeeding a lot more than it isn't it's just not it doesn't succeed more than its predecessor which i thought was astounding and like i i am in no way saying that it's not worth checking out i feel like they're probably issuing these to anyone who owns ps5 like yeah they're in a lot of pack-ins and stuff i it's really absolutely worth playing it's not a

waste of time i wish it was uh had a better handed editing but there's stuff in this game you should absolutely see for yourself because it's wild and a lot of fun yes i i think that gets it what we what we like about games is they make us feel something that we feel very very strongly and god of war ragnarok is one of those games where it's like it is a a plus video game video game. You know, you're going to have a great time spending your time doing that. But credit to Vampire Survivors here, even though it makes me very angry at times, it makes me feel that because it's doing something just bizarre and something that I do not come in contact with very often.

And it basically is so minimalist that it shows the, like, very skeleton of video games. And that's cool. And, like, that's fun to talk about and it's fun to think about. And I can't stop playing it even if it makes me angry. And the fact that I literally can't stop playing a game that makes me angry is wild. Sure. I also think God of war ragnarok was an impossible sequel to make like making the sequel to such a like revitalization and

self-critique at least two or three games like it feels like yeah i wish it had been this reminds me the heyday of episodic releases you know what i mean like i wish we had had that for this it would have been better uh okay we got it let's let's just say i'm fine with this kirby will in the in the battle between god of ragnarok and nobody saves the world the winner is kirby Okay, we got it. Let's just say I'm fine with this. Kirby will... In the battle between God of War Ragnarok and Nobody Saves the World, the winner is Kirby. It just eats it all.

It just eats it all. It consumed... Okay, here's what we do. Plausibility. Kirby the Forgotten Land absorbed one of these games. That's what happened. He became God of War Ragnarok.

I guess Nobody Saves the World thematically would be the game to absorb because it is kind of about that. Exactly. Yes. Okay. So he absorbed nobody saves the world and snuck into the end. I,

I'm man, uh, plan man, everyone. I'm going to, I'm going to take the, I'm going to take at least one of these and then plan could take the other one.

Oh, I was going to say, can I just step out? I don't smoke, but I'm just going to take a smoke break while plant just kind of monologues. No, I wanted to hear plant talk about citizen sleeper. Cause I don't feel like we got as much while Plant just kind of monologues. No, I wanted to hear Plant talk about Citizen Sleeper because I don't feel like we got as much

of his. No, no, no. We're all passing the buck here. Frush has been playing a lot of both these games. You finished Citizen Sleeper, right? Tell me your Citizen Sleeper thoughts. I played both of these games. I did not finish Pentament.

Congratulations. Thank you. You posted a screenshot of Pentament in the besties chat by the way that seemed like a like self parody almost of somebody making of somebody what darning yeah learning how to uh pull yarn into a spool and turn it into i don't know sewable yarn whatever i was doing that was a moment in pentament which i found very funny uh okay so i haven't finished pentament but i did finish citizen sleeper you might recall from last episode i was like a little bit and not really necessarily feeling citizen sleeper it took me about a half hour more before it started clicking and why it started clicking was i started to get like actual

humanist moments with the game where i was having i was meeting characters and like starting to care about their individual stories there was you know this father and his young daughter who they were trying to get off this space station and they were trying to like win this lottery that sounded like shady from the jump and you're trying to help them out and then you're like babysitting for the kid and the game is filled with those little side stories where you're really just like learning how this space station works and beats,

but in a really like humanist way that departs from, again, the first half hour of the game is like a lot of like techno babble, and you're trying to just wrap your head around the systems. And then once you do that, and it clicks, I think this game reaches these moments of like incredible, like emotional satisfaction very, very quickly for a narrative game, you know, within an hour or two, I was like bonded with these characters in ways that like, I mean, we'll talk about it in a second.

I've struggled with Pentament. I've spent probably, you know, Plant thinks it's less than this, but it feels like five or six hours with Pentament. much work to get to those moments that i feel like i'm kind of drowning in like 30 named characters trying to like make sense of who do i care about what do i care about like you're in one of those chapters of game of thrones where they're like delving into the history from 300 years ago and you don't know why you care and it's starting to like peek its head out where I was like talking to a woman whose husband was like died from like an accident and she was really bitter about it. And I was like, okay, I'm like starting to get this. But then you sort of like, okay, well, you got to go find someone to eat lunch with. And then I had a lunch and I don't know.

That's the divide for these two games. I think Citizen Seeker. We had a lunch. I mean, that's really like a lot of Pentament is like doing your day and then learning narrative from that. But like, I think Citizen Sleeper gets me to the place I need to be

from a narrative game standpoint much quicker and more methodically than I think Pentament is kind of languishing in that. I'm sure it gets there because I've read all the reviews. I read a bunch of Steam reviews that were like over the moon about it. I know it gets there.

I just don't know that I am the person to like go all the way with it. I think it's tough in the comparison because Pentament is doing a lot of stuff Citizen Sleeper isn't, but I also think Citizen Sleeper is... I mean, I think it is the best written game I've ever seen. Like I don't think there is a game where the writing constantly, all the characters, all the narration is evocative like with every second. Like if you're going to make a game that's reading, the reading better be this good.

Like if you're going to make a game that's reading, the reading better be this good. And there are so many stories in Citizen Sleeper that I like really impacted me. And the ways it sort of meditated on that central theme, I thought were just just amazing. Can I offer a counterpoint to Russ's whole argument about the human assertive angle connecting? Sure. Yeah, please. My character was like a hacker at the beginning. And my favorite yeah i was hacking illuminated script i was doing some quick i yeah i found some new chapters of matthew that were uh locked behind a firewall 69 holy shit um no in in citizen sleeper i played a hacker and so the game clicked for me when i met a sentient

vending machine and they'd have to help help terminate a rogue ai like for me it was just pure and all of the like yeah your characters you guys are having some real struggles just humans trying to get by in this space station i just want to go hang out with this fucking sentient vending machine and just talk about techno garbage for the next two hours. And that was my shit. That whole sequence is so fucking wild. Fucking amazing. So, like, it's got something for everyone. Even people who don't care about video game characters like me.

I think you're right that Citizen Sleeper is much more approachable. It is considerably more episodic in terms of, like, hey, this is the vending machine sequence. Or this is the babysitting sequence sequence or this is the babysitting sequence or this is the deep forest sequence. And I think just having a little bit of game, the Yahtzee type of stuff, it really does help a lot. And I think it is so generous to the player.

We talked about this a little bit, but it feels like life and death at all times. But the game really is watching out for you. Yeah. It is making sure that you're going to. While also presenting you with like challenging and meaningful decisions literally constantly. I was playing yesterday. this was the other game that i mentioned playing a lot of earlier i was playing yesterday and i was like helping somebody rebuild

their ship and the whole time i was like fucking broke and dying and starving uh i didn't have the money to like get the medicine i needed i didn't have the dice i needed to like sunbathe and recharge my batteries uh and then i helped this person finish their ship they're like okay we need one last component i'm gonna give you 100 credits to go buy it and i was like ah fuck like okay like yeah sure i would love to help you out with this can i go buy myself some a double quarter pounder like can i go and get some noodles for me to be a lot this This is an investment in your future. Because if I die from noodle deprivation, that's going to impact you in the end.

Real quick, I just want to say also, like, I've been playing a good amount of Pendiment. And it's really been clicking for me a lot more. I think that it benefited from kind of having played everything else that I needed to play. I think that it benefited from kind of having played everything else that I needed to play. And so I gave you really like if you want to get something out of this, you really need to slow down. And it's like not something that is a book that this is the kind of epiphany that I had talking with fresh yesterday while he was trying to work his way through it is pinchment is just experimental fiction. Like, there is a game in it in the sense that you are either seeing or not seeing certain amounts of information and how you pull information from people.

You're engaging with it in an interesting way. But it is not a game like anything else on this list. And I think that is why a lot of folks bounce off of it especially people who don't like read a lot of fiction and that's not big or anything yeah i think it just operates in a completely different wavelength than a traditional video game and even a story-based video game um i i almost quit here's here's the breaking I got to. I did not sort of realize, I did not have this epiphany that you have with Pendiment. And I was just trying to play it,

kind of to get through it, right? I just wanted to see what was happening in the game. So I spent the first half of the first act, like when you start a new chapter, you're supposed to go around and do a bunch of mystery investigation and then go eat with someone. Right.

He's like, I should go to sleep. And then he says at the beginning of the section, and then you do a bunch of investigation and then you go to sleep. Well, me, I was seeing that and just saying like, okay, I should find someone to eat with. And the next person I found to eat with, I was just like, Hey, they were like, you want to eat something? I was like, yes, that's good. And then it's like clock moves chapter ended.'s like oh man i should have done something else i guess i don't know and i i almost bailed on it because it was like one day until the murder is revealed i was like when are they going to tell me to investigate because i'm just going around

eating fucking almonds this is not going to work it's great so i almost bailed on it at that point, but I did manage to pull it back from there. It's really, we use the term immersive a lot for games that have a high graphical fidelity and maybe have some storytelling elements in that environment but i feel like pentiment is immersive in the sense that like you're being bombarded with so many facets of this specific point in history and time um that you can't help but kind of get lost in it a little bit like if you again if you take the time to like fight engage with it and find it interesting um just like even little things like when you do eat with someone, you like see the kind of food they might have had at the table and like choose which of that that you want to eat.

And that sounds like a small thing, but like in terms of like making it an immersive experience where you really feel drawn into this world, I thought was really, really commendable. Yeah, I just think it's the most adult game I've played in a long and long ass time. And by that, I mean, yeah, we will like everything that I relate to in this game is stuff that has to do with like my time at work or my time with my family or my responsibilities. There's a lot about this game that is making decisions is hard and you're probably not going to make the best possible decision if there is a best one and then because the game plays with time is having to live with those decisions and like

it's hard i mean i i did did any of you make it to any of the time jumps? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I mean, where the time jumps go, it is actually depression simulator at a certain point. Of, hey, time keeps moving forward, and current you has to live with the decisions of past you, and I hope that's okay, because it's going to be pretty rough. You know what? Tell me if this feels fair to you.

This game is excellent, but it's not fun. Oh, I mean, I thought it. I mean, and I think that that's like, I think we attribute, like we draw parallels between quality and fun pretty much constantly in games. But like this is one of those that like manages to be good and satisfying but not fun i i don't i i disagree but that's just personal taste like i this was the most fun i had this year playing a game i i was like completely enraptured but it's not fun in the sense of like no it's not like you're not there's not combat fun i guess guess, I don't know. For me, fun is like when I really, when a game ends or a session ends

and I feel better than I did when I started. For sure. That's like what really- But see, that to me is satisfying. Maybe we're in a semantic argument. Yeah, yeah. It's not fun in the, when I think of fun,

I think of like an addictive sort of, I want to do this mechanic again because I'm learning more about it. Yeah, you're thinking moment to moment, which a book just isn't, right? Like that's just not, and that's why I said it's a book. Yeah, I wouldn't describe Citizen Sleeper

as necessarily fun either. Yeah, though, Citizen Sleeper, again, because it is episodic and there is some gameplay to it. There's, it's more fun. You get a good role. Yeah, you get a good role, right? Yeah, I think Citizen Sleeper should win here. P win here pentagon is i mean these are quite literally my like number one and number two games

for the year um but i think citizen sleeper makes more sense i think it's the one that all of y'all connect with more i think there's more gaminess there and um yeah i mean it also just it got me at my core i did did all of you leave or so a big part of the game at the beginning is you are on the space station and you are trying to find a way out whether it's to escape a hitman or to find a new life or do any of those things did is that the kind of like approach that y'all took i'm not intentionally but i sort of that as i did more of the quests it sort of like ended up being the ending that i got and that felt right to me and i think people will probably like oh i'm gonna try to do every side quest ever and honestly you can kind of do 90 of them in a single run because it reverts your

save back to your last like major decision um but yeah no that that's what i i i stayed and i gave up so many so many opportunities to like go in different interesting directions and it was like one of the most exciting endings because it it hit me that oh i am i'm trying to run from something or things that I'm never going to escape. And like a video game where it's like, you know what? It's hard, but I'm just going to settle down and just call this home. What a cool, what a cool way to end a video game.

There's also, there are a lot of it. I experienced an ending to this game that is not what you're describing at i bet i yeah i was in the forest i'm not gonna i don't want to spoil it yeah it was yeah yeah we can talk about that later yeah yeah okay congratulations to citizen sleeper uh a dark horse i would say considering that i hadn't even really touched it before this these proceedings um i think others are in the same position let's take a quick break, and then we'll rank the top five games of 2022.

And who's this running in from backstage with a chair? We thought he left. We thought he was out. We thought he had retired, but he is running in. They're playing his entrance music, which is the chicken dance?

I never expected this. Whoa, wild. Let's talk about Elden Ring. Has anybody played it again? When was the last time everybody played Elden Ring? Yeah, it's been about six months for me. I haven't played it in six months. Probably about August.

Okay. This game done changed. I think actually when we recorded the first episode, they had just launched like the big Coliseum PVP update. Uh, but I don't know. It's not so transformative. Let me, let me, let me add to this. Even though I haven't played since, uh, yeah, probably like the summer, um, I have continued

to watch every lore video I can find every, oh, this is an interesting build video I can find. Yeah. Anything that YouTube wants to throw at me about Elden Ring, I will watch because it is so still top of mind. And a part of me is like, oh, I want to go back and play more of it. But then I'm like, well, I'm going to wait until maybe there's DLC and do like a clean run of it. It has remained with me for the entire year

and it is extremely hard to escape the fact and i said this early on when we first talked about elden ring to escape the fact that this is not my favorite game of all time it's just like really hard to not think that earlier justin i think it was you talking about god of war and you were saying you know you throw all of this talent all this money all this time at a game and you would hope that like it's going to be at least a certain quality right and then you compare that with a game like citizen sleeper where it's like basically a person and they brought just their absolute a game all their skill and they made something amazing. And they, you know, kind of defied the odds.

What is wild to me about Elden Ring is it feels like, what if you threw all that money, all that time, and all that talent, and everybody was operating at their best? Yeah. Everybody. Everybody. So everything in this game is top tier, from the design to the art to the way the different characters work to the combat. To the vibe. One of the coolest open worlds I've ever seen, if not the best open world. It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible.

There's something I want to talk about, and I don't know how in-depth we got to it, because I know we were being wary of spoilers, but Leondel, which is the capital city of the world, basically, and certainly one of your major goals when you start playing Elden Ring, is unquestionably, from a level design standpoint, the best level I've ever played in a video game, full stop, I won't even hesitate. hesitate you begin at like the upper echelons of the city and you just slowly work your way through this enormous fucking thing that you can see every inch of when you first start at the city you can you're overlooking the whole city and every alleyway and every like oh this giant fucking stone dragon you climb on that fucking dragon eventually you learn infinite infinite instances of like wait a minute could i just jump over that would that work yeah could i do that yes you can that's a much shorter way of doing it good job you eventually realize there's a whole under city sewer section that keeps going and going and going and eventually connects to the like under under city the ambition of this

game is fucking wild and the fact that it lands is fucking wild like unreal that they pulled this game off i am constantly blown away by it and the fact that beneath all this like game design stuff is a narrative that actually is like you know we were just talking about like we just want games that like make us think about stuff and feel things like a narrative that is very well hidden it's very hard to like access while you're playing the game but if you take the time you can access it and on youtube on youtube i want to say this i want to say this this is my biggest thing from my uh i've been replaying elden ring because the first time you know i ate that fucking game up and i think took out took down almost

every boss and like really really beat the shit out of it. But I didn't do, like, hardly any of the NPC side quest stuff. Yeah. Because it wasn't easy to find or track that stuff. One of the updates added map markers that show you where NPCs are on the map at all times. Oh. Yeah, that's great. So, like, I have been going through and trying to do as many of those I possibly can.

I have been going through and trying to do as many of those I possibly can. Like Alexander the Huge Jar has a really fucking fun storyline that I just straight up didn't see the first time I played it. There's a guy named Brother Corrin that you meet in the roundtable hold who's obsessed with this guy named Gold Mask. I met him my first playthrough and then never saw him again because he just moves out to some random part in the world and I just never found him. just moves out to some random part in the world and they just never found him. But now I was able to track him and I met this gold mask character who is just this weird, silent mummy who points at things.

And that's all he does. He's really fucking creepy. He looks like a re-dead from Zelda. And it has completely opened up a whole nother facet of the game to me. I think I've probably played about a dozen of these interesting storylines. Yeah, I started a clean save because I wanted to try a different build. What build?

I was going with a dragon communion builds or dragon spells. Arcane based. A lot of bleed damage. It's fun. Great. Yeah, it's good, man. It's a good game. I'd like to say something about Elden Ring.

I struggle with, and I know Plant does. I don't know how you other two feel about it, but I struggle a lot with guilt when I'm playing video games. I sometimes feel guilty about the amount of time I spend playing them, and I need something to justify it, I guess, because I don't prioritize it in the way I see my life. So I tend to find some other reason that I'm playing video games. it in in the way I see my life so I I tend to find some other reason that I'm playing video games um and for me a big thing used to be like multiplayer like like playing with other people even like leaderboard stuff um used to be big on iOS right you get a little bit of that sense of community um and that's not as like prevalent anymore for me um, but I feel like Elden Ring and other FromSoft games have done this, but I think other people who are playing and the experiences they were having and like the discoveries that we're making and being excited to like

talk to somebody about that wild thing you just saw. And Oh my gosh, they never even got there. And how do they find it? And like that sort of like the way it made me feel connected to people who are having a similar, but different experience. Not to mention the notes and the ghosts and stuff

like that which make a single player experience feel multiplayer in that way and fucking hysterical i i will stand by the fact that like while not intended maybe by the game maybe it is i think that the messages that players leave in from soft games especially a game as huge as elden ring is some of the purest most beautiful comedy that video games can deliver to the player whether it is just like someone saying like yeah jump off here try butthole try but try finger butthole uh but then the best is just like you come up on a corpse and it's just like behold mushrooms and you loot it it's just some mushrooms uh like that that shit gets me every time um let's i think we could talk for hours about this game we have already do you have

anything to add yeah sorry i just want to build off the justin thing really quick the justin you said that you know you feel guilt and things like that i'm curious if this is the same i don't feel guilt i just want to know that like i am getting something out of whatever i'm consuming and that like i'm controlling that it's not controlling me and that's again i think why i have trouble with vampire survivors because like it is in control and what is wild to me about this game is whatever i need at a time like if i just want to zone out, which is like a perfectly valid thing, and that's why I would play Vampire Survivors or watch like

some reality TV, it can do that for me. If I really, really want to get into the lore and like really think about it, I can turn on the YouTube video or try to figure it out in the game. If I want like a really good competitive challenge, that's there too. What's so incredible about this game to me is it's all seasons. Whatever I want, I can turn it on and I can focus on just that thing and it is delivering the best of whatever that is. And that's incredible. But yes, I'm happy to start ranking these. Elden Ring is going to be number one.

That was the first point. Can anyone make an argument for any of the other i wanted to start in reverse to add some tension there's no tension there's no we cannot pretend there's tension elden ring did not even have to compete to get to this point elden ring is better than these other four games it may be better than all other games let's just go ahead and put it at number one and then we'll move on. Fine. All right. So let's start in reverse for the rest of them.

Okay, perfect. Maybe that'll be easier. So is there any game on here that anyone is like, yeah, I like it a lot, but it's like, eh. Like Plant, for example. I know Vampire Survivor is probably not for you. Well, that one is Kirby for me. I mean, I've spoken about my love for Kirby,

but I don't feel like it needs to be high on the list it barely skated by before Kirby is maybe my number two game on this list so I would not agree with that necessarily I think Vampire Survivors is probably my five of these okay I think that that's a quorum I think that that's I could get there right like I definitely there it's doing a lot of great stuff, but it's not as much on the level that I want to engage with it. Yes. Okay.

I'm fine with that. So that leaves us with... Then I think Kirby is four. Kirby's four. I'm good with Kirby being four as well. Okay. That seems griftless.

I think the people who love, Tunic is just, then I think it's Tunic, and then I think it's Citizen Sleeper is number two. I think it's Citizen Sleeper and then Tunic. Yeah, I would put Tunic as number two. I think it's Tunic, and then I think it's Citizen Sleeper is number two. I think it's Citizen Sleeper and then Tunic. Yeah, I would put Tunic as number two. I think Citizen at three, Tunic at two.

Okay, so I would put Citizen Sleeper at two. I think it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was worried for a second we wouldn't have tension in the final ranking. All right. I could hear that argument. I think that...

Oh, man. I'm really glad I played more Citizen Sleeper, first of all. Thank you, Plant, for pushing that. Man, all five of these games... It's funny. This is, first of all, a killer top five games. The fact that these five games came out in the same year is incomprehensible. And arguable, thanks to Vampire Survivors, but yeah.

Ah, man. I think that the writing in Citizen Sleeper is next level, but I think that the magic trick of Tunic is so special and kind of unprecedented and to me that was more impactful than any of the storylines yeah i don't think there's i don't think anyone has done what tunic has done like that mystery and the and baking that into the entire structure of the game i can't think of a single game that has ever done that that is like a wild accomplishment that they did and and again like the uncracking the final mystery i was filling notebooks with like handwritten shit and i never ever do that um it was so satisfying and and special to me and i agree with what griffin said i think the writing of Citizen Sleeper is fucking through the roof fantastic um but it yeah Tunic feels more special to me it's really tough because I I think that

for me Citizen Sleeper is like in a perfect world this is the kind of game that I would want to be playing but a lot of times my own like lizard brain sort of like dopamine seeking self like can't get there um and i feel like this is the rare game that sort of rises above that to give just enough of that to keep you going through the story but also makes the narrative and the writing and all of it so, like so impactful and meaningful to me. Those lessons, the things that I took away as a human being are so much more vibrant than they are with tunic,

which is like a fantastic puzzle, but that's all it was. I mean, it, and that to me doesn't stick with me in the same way that a, a, like the, the stories and characters of a citizen

sleeper i think we've run into this issue before right where and and to like boil this down even further like you have a game that is almost entirely based around narrative and you have a game that's almost entirely based around gameplay and um it's so difficult to say like which is more important to you. And they're also both doing exactly what I want video games to be doing. Right. Like, I want them to. I want both.

Both of these games treat the player with so much respect. Like, so much. Give them so much credit. Yeah. And they're both exactly what I want their specific branches to be doing. So that's really tough. Yeah. I mean, I'm fine.

I think Tunic is a deeply besties number two, so I'm fine with that. I think it just, the reason it's hard for me is I really, really obviously love Citizen Sleeper. Tunic, I just didn't. It feels like it was a game made for me, especially all the stuff of like here's what it felt like to import video games in the 1990s yeah that's what this is as a video

game and that should be like my sweet spot and and it never fully clicked with me so it's hard for me to like build a you know any mental defense for it because on top of it just being separate games, I also just, it was fine. It was not my favorite game. I like all the other games on this list much more. I will, you know what, I'm willing to meet their plant based just on the fact that I did finish Citizen Sleeper less than a week ago. And I feel like there may be some recency bias there in influencing because I know how much I loved

Tunica as well. So, I'm fine with Tunica too. Are we, is this a lock? I think we're locked. I think we did it. I think we did it.

All right. Wow. Let's do it in reverse. All right. Now we have the tension of memory. Okay, number,

number, number five. Vampire Survivors. Yay. Oh, we should all try to say the names of the same character. Okay, number five. Vampire survivors. Yay. We should all try to say the names at the same time. Yeah, that'll sound... Is that what we're doing? No.

Number five. Vampire survivors. Vampire survivors. You had to do it or it doesn't work. Number five. Vampire survivors. Vampire survivors. Number four.

Kirby. The forgotten link. Subtitle. Number three. Citizen sleeper. Number three. Citizen Sleeper. Number two. Tunic. Number one.

Elden Ring. Yeah, congratulations. I like this. This is a really... You're right. I actually do like this system. Yeah, and this is a very cool list. This will be even more fun

when there's even a shadow of a doubt as to what and when the problem is that's not gonna happen next year well i don't know maybe maybe starfield you know maybe starfield is gonna make that there's a like no joke there are a ton of games this is actually a good segue to what we're gonna tease for when we come back but there are a ton of games coming out next year because all the games that you've wanted to play have kept getting delayed and now they might actually come out next year so there will be a lot of competition it is not a one horse game at this point yeah um yeah man i can't believe final fantasy 16 comes out next year how fucking bananas games are great do i have to play that one How fucking bananas.

Games are great. Do I have to play that one? Yeah, that one looks good. I'll play that one for all four of you. Okay, good. You're like Kaiju. Yeah, I was about to go down this whole list of 2023 games, but I guess that's what our next episode's about. That is the next episode.

All right. Anybody playing anything else? Oh, man. Did you have time to play other things? I've been playing a cool little thing on ios called after place um i just kind of randomly found it on a uh an ios gaming thread on reddit i think um and it is uh like a 8-bit sort of uh uh zelda-like adventure game that is, I know there's a lot going on in it narratively. I haven't really dug deep enough to sort of get the broader picture,

but it is perfectly tuned to play with one hand on the iPhone, which a lot of these games have that sort of cumbersome fake dual stick thing going on. And this is really made to play with like one thumb on on the ios and it looks cool the music's cool the writing's good um it's called afterplace i think it's like four or five bucks um i just downloaded this game so i don't want to go too deep into it because i can't pretend to know a ton but uh i got uh chained, which I've seen a lot of people talking about as being like this late end of year goatee contender. It is a 16-bit RPG sort of in the vein of kind of a Chrono Trigger-y feel to it with mechs.

So that sort of Xenogears element on top too. Mechs, so that sort of Xenogears element on top too. Gorgeous, gorgeous looking game with some really cool ways of kind of evolving the turn-based battle system that we are all so used to at this point. And it was a Kickstarter, I think, game. And everybody who has played it is just like head over heels in love with it. I just downloaded it. I played maybe an hour. It is very, very cool. But it is just like head over heels in love with it uh i just just downloaded i've played maybe an hour it is very very cool but it is also an rpg so i feel like that that's not even roughly uh not not remotely enough time to be able to say any kind of definitive statement about it but it's out on consoles it's out on switch it's out on steam i've been playing it on steam deck

it runs great um so if that's your that's your jam it feels like this this would definitely be up your alley i've been chained echoes is the name of that again because it is not a good memorable title it could be anything actually bad i've been playing undermine uh on steam deck which is a roguelite one of the ones where you're a minor uh and it's a rogue light uh you it's it's very similar to binding of isaac but you are unlocking things that make you more powerful at the end of each run um and you it's top down uh it's more melee attacks than like range attacks like binding of isaac is but uh there's randomness you pick up relics that like oh this makes your uh pickaxe do fire damage sometimes and stuff like that it is fun i like it it is hard to play other games

after playing by other games that are like binding of isaac or even like rogue legacy that aren't that as good as that and i kind of think undermine is a little bit in that category it's still super fun. And I would say it's like, it's just been out for a while. Yeah. It's been out. It's been out for a while.

Uh, I saw it on a list of someone's, um, favorite roguelikes to play on switch. It was a Reddit list. Um, so I picked it up and, um,

it is very, very good, but, uh, again, it's, it's hard to compete with like rogue legacy two and, and,

uh, Binding of Isaac. This sounds like something I would love. And then I just looked it up. And yeah, I played a lot of this. I've been playing Yakuza 0. This is the time of the year where we can go and finish up games that are not stuff we're discussing on the show. And I had a big long run of Yakuza during the summer, but didn't get to finish it.

So now I'm going back and doing that and what a game what a game would you okay I never finished any Yakuza game but I have like a dragon on my Steve deck I feel like that's the one that would sing to me the most yes it is the one you should play

okay cool Russ thanks the following people for reviews yeah I'm gonna very slowly anduss thank the following people for reviews yeah i'm gonna very slowly and carefully thank the following people for writing reviews we have bo vice dis bliss drc 4077 and 11 dollar sign logan thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts thank you to everyone else who has written reviews across the entire year and across the entire history of the show we greatly appreciate it and we really appreciate everyone talking about the show and sharing it and here are the games we talked about kirby and the forgotten land tunic cult of the lamb vampire survivors god of war ragnarok nobody

saves the world citizen sleeper pentament and undermine yakuza 0 ch Chained Echoes, and Afterplace. We're back on January 6th with our most anticipated games of 2023. But until then, be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? We did it! Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Besties!