The Besties - Boldly Going Where No Hedgehog's Gone Before in Sonic Frontiers

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Sonic Frontiers, the open-world iteration of Sega's fast rodent simulator, is kind of a mess. But is it the fun kind of mess, like when a can of spray cheese explodes in your car, and it's gross and everywhere, but man it'll be a great story later? Let's talk about it, and also a random assortment of other new releases! Also discussed: McPixel 3, Somerville, Pentiment, GOTY Award Nominees, Reservation Dogs, Andor 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'm worried for our audience. Oh, no. Why? Because last Besties, I talked about the merits of freezing bread. Oh, okay. But I don't think I ended it because I feel like I'm worried that people are just eating frozen bread. Was there a bit? I don't really want to talk about frozen bread two intros in a row.

We've never had a part two to a cold open. If it had gone to my head, I wouldn't have thought it'd be that one. You know? I'm just worried. I mean, I think there was a part two to the egg steam bit, which was true. That was a true story. Yeah. That wasn't a bit.

That was your life. Which is a bit in a sense. I'm just saying, toast the bread. Don't eat it frozen. That's going to hurt. Was this a bit in a sense. I'm just saying, toast the bread. Don't eat it frozen. That's gonna hurt. Was this a problem? Were you getting complaints? People were concerned on social. They had

further questions. They had frozen the bread and they didn't know what step two was. They just started mashing it into their eat hole. Also, make sure it's sliced. If you freeze bread and it's unsliced, it's just going to be one big block of bread. That's a problem.

See, I think that makes for easier slicing, though, maybe. You know, that just sounds like a choke tablet. Like, you're going to put that in your mouth and that's going to be the end of it. People are going to say, how did they go? And they said, well, they put a whole slice into the eat hole because a video games guy

told them to do it my daughter charlie eats a piece of toast for breakfast every day and i made the mistake of i was feeling a little bit feeling a little bit generous feeling a little bit sweet and one would be like oh how about this i'm gonna melt a little ghee a little clarified butter oh my whoa she ate it she was like this is fucking outrageous uh-oh i've not been doing it like this the whole time now every morning this this human wakes up and is like i'll have toast with clarified butter please absolutely not you'll get the i can't believe it's not butter spray just like every other morning yeah you'll get the frozen choke

stick uncle russ says it's better for you to eat the frozen wheat loaf My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I wouldn't go that far, but I did play a few video games this week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I have so many games to talk about with you this week. My name is Russ Rushing. Now to the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, which is a video game club that just by listening to you, you are a member. We talk about everything in the world of interactive entertainment, be it business, religion, hirings, firings, the latest scoops. But today we're going to look at video games specifically.

the latest scoops, but today we're going to look at video games specifically. A bunch of great new ones that have been released. Too many to talk about, but not quite big enough to merit their own episode, so we just got a bevy of sumptuous video game treats for you to enjoy. Normally I'd ask Chris Plant more on the topic, but if Chris Plant needs to explain the idea of variety to you, you are more lost than I thought. No, no, I want to hear Chris Plant explain the concept

of variety to me. You know, like a smorgasbord. Like a smorgasburgie. Thank you. And that right after this break, and we'll talk all about them. Should we start with the game that we mentioned that we were going to play and did play? Yeah, I played it.

Yeah, it's Sonic Frontiers. How scared are you guys to talk about Sonic Frontiers? I'm good because I am a hardcore Sonic fan and I live in a hardcore Sonic fan household. Okay, cool. So I'm coming from a place of honesty and if people have trouble with that, you know, it's not like I don't have my bona fides, you know.

Yeah, you know how Barbie lives in a Barbie world? Chris Plant lives in a Sonic world. Okay. It's true. My kid dressed up as Sonic, you know. Mine did as well. No, I mean every day my kid dressed up as Sonic. Oh, okay, sorry. Okay, I don't know how much we need to set up Sonic Frontiers.

Very much, you need to set up Sonic Frontiers. There is no reason to assume Sonic fluency. Okay, fair. This is the open world Sonic game. It's like if Sonic Team played Breath of the Wild a couple times and then was like, why not why why not Sonic do this and but took an Ambien before they did they took six or seven Ambien uh and then they got sat down at their laptops and they're like all right guys let's let's punch up the graphics

on level three uh let's just wing it is what they said we going to wing it. It is an open world 3D Sonic game. Except when it isn't. Except when it's not. There are levels that you dive into to get Vault Key, to get Chaos Emeralds. And those are played more like traditional Sonic levels. Sometimes side-scrolling, sometimes not. This game really they are they're

just doing everything they're just doing all the all the stuff all at once or trying to rather uh and a lot of it doesn't work at all and some of it does kind of work which is more frustrating to me and then sometimes it is genuinely fun to kind of just turn your brain off and play Sonic the Hedgehog. Okay. I'm not a big Sonic guy. I haven't played a lot of the games. So I'm not like, I don't have a big stake in this. I do like the Sonic movies.

Sure. Is that worth anything? I don't know. I gotta say, though, I was kind of charmed by the open world segments of this i feel like there are like it it's not gelling super great but they're like really interesting building blocks in the way that they have sonic fighting enemies in this game that feel a little bit more akin to the way you see sonic in the movies where he's using super speed in a lot of different ways not just like it's a really interesting like like for example there's a you can hold the y button and run in a circle and

it's sort of like a damaging circle and you can use the circle to like find uh hidden stuff and things like that and that feels cool it feels cool to like if you got a big enemy to like run a circle around them um to kind of like tron you're like creating like a little like i don't know a silo wall yeah sure it's a good name and you see sonic when he attacks people he'll like combo attacks with his fist not just like keep doing that dumb bounce over and over into them again. And even like the kind of like finding lines in the open world that like can get you to more rewards and power-ups.

It feels to me as somebody who's not, again, not super invested, like this is like a really promising alpha for a direction that if they wanted to like put the time and money into it, could be like a really cool Sonic experience. I am not surprised that you are the person who kind of likes it, because I figured it would be you and me.

As people who love the little bitty puppies with the little broken legs, this is definitely in that zone of game. Can I give you like my my sonic feel what i think makes a good sonic game okay so i think the trouble with sonic is really there are like two games in every sonic and they are like inherently in conflict one is the game about like movement and it's super forgiving and it's really loose and really fast and it's like wow what if you just ran through a roller coaster or a skate park and you can do anything? And the game is like about expression and movement, right? It's just watching Sonic go across the screen as fast as humanly possible, doing loop-de-loops and jumping through the air.

But relatively, I would add, and tell me if you think this is incorrect, relatively limited interaction during that process. Like most of it is just like watching. Relatively, especially in the older games. Yeah. And the reason that I've always assumed that they don't do this for the entire game is it would be really expensive to make this back in like 2D days. Totally. Because you can make like one level like this.

And then it's like, oh, wow, that took a ton of effort and people beat it in 20 seconds. Yeah. Right. So there's that. Then the other half is the like platforming games, which are unforgiving. You like hit brick walls, which kill your momentum. Then you have to rebuild momentum. You have to memorize levels effectively if you want to have fun, which stinks.

And whether if it's like 2D, you're worrying about what's in front of you because you can't see it and if it's in 3d you're just worrying about like managing the camera yeah so right those two things that are like opposed with each other so if you think like good versions of this because there are good ways to do this i think neon white which we played earlier this year is like a good idea of how you could do this i think things like steep and ssx other good examples but then if you want to go the platform route mario's just like mario is right there and like he's not gonna beat mario yeah so i i think the trouble with sonic is like it's it needs to go in my opinion fully into the movement area or like hire better people to split the different not better people that's mean uh more yeah more more time maybe you know like new leadership

because there are games like um i think of like joe dynamite and action hank yeah i think those are games that we kind of could say this is this is the thing i keep coming back to and playing this game first of all i want to say this is this is the most I have enjoyed a Sonic game in a very long time, despite the fact that I didn't love it. I think that the open world stuff, you're right, is fun and beats the objectives in each of the little platforming levels that you do. And trying to chase those down is kind of fun. But it is not fun to run around in a 3D space where you're going too fast for it to feel very good. And they haven't really ever ever ever figured that out the side scrolling levels and the tech can't hold up and the tech can't hold up you mentioned

neon white like that game was thrilling it was it was fast in a way that was thrilling this game doesn't even approach that and then you talk about those side scrolling games like action hank and all those like all about flow uh i mean arguably like ollie ollie world yeah sure even something like you know you step outside the platformer genre games about games like hyper light drifter and katana zero and hotline miami like those are games about being fast and and getting this like visceral thrill out of it sonic can't fucking do that in this way and and it drives me crazy that they keep trying to make this game when sonic mania was the best one so far because it was like the only context in which this fast spiked child works uh and i thought

open world would be better for this right like i thought not that i think every game should go world, but I thought having all of this space and freedom to move, like, you think of games like Crackdown, right, that are really built on open worlds with, like, momentum, or, again, any racing game that's downhill. ever being good is they still do the most annoying thing in a sonic game that is so antithetical to the joy of a sonic game which is you are zipping through and the first half hour of the game you're having so much fun and then out of nowhere you hit a jump pad that throws you backwards yeah like haha do it again and i don't want to do it again fuck like why why put a thing in the game that exists there just to annoy the player and that is that's the worst thing about sonic games and i and i see it with my my kid who loves them having a game that's for kids where there is literally a design element that exists for no reason except to be irritating yeah is a wild choice in the year 2022 also the the open world stuff in this game falls apart pretty

quickly whenever you hit an invisible wall yeah or a hologram that's like you're not ready for this shit bro or instant death water it's death, it's, there is some promising stuff in the open worldness of it. It doesn't, you can't hold it up to, I mean, guys, literally any open world game that has come out in the last five years and say like, they have got it figured out.

It's, it feels much closer to like, if like Glover had been the thing that set the tone for open, like for 3D games. And then people were just like, I don't know, this like this good enough level of quality is going to keep going for decades. And then the end point would be Sonic Frontiers. And I know that we're like being harsh on this game. I'm not. It's fun.

Well, I think it's fun, too, in some some ways but like i feel like really disappointed i was fresh can attest to this i was like legitimately looking forward to this game i couldn't wait to like finish up my somerville review to play this game and for it to be like this frustrating disappointing has been like i don't know it's been kind of a gut punch it really feels like a half measure it really feels like they got like they didn't have the confidence to just make this game and i just don't think they're gonna ever have the budget to make a like the game you're we're all talking about which is like a breath of the wild or even you know one step below that because i mean like there's other i mean here's what here's I don't know anything about making games I don't know anything about budgeting games I do know that if you didn't do

all the bad parts then you could have put that money into good parts right if you didn't do any levels then there's definitely money and time there that you don't have to fool with anymore here's here's my the silver lining on this Sonic games have always existed effectively for a modding community that makes as good if not better games. And this game, honestly playing it, feels like somebody made modding tools and then this game itself is a modder's game. It feels, even the look where there's just grind reels all over the place it looks like a not like a triple a game it looks like a fan it looks like an upscaled playstation 2 game plant you said it looked like an unreal engine like test lab yeah yeah they were just grabbing assets wherever they could but but but but but and this is the huge good news is we know

that this community makes awesome things and we've already started to see like wild, wild shit with the modding community for this game. So I think like in a year, the stuff that people are going to make with this game or even just make this game better, which is what they've done with I believe Generations and Colors, which are

already good games. I'm excited about that. I'm just yeah. What if sonic was green what is sonic what if there was an evangelion character in it which is a real mod um let's let's yeah let's talk next next game more games okay i'm gonna talk about a total shift in focus we're gonna talk about mcpixel 3 now wait i missed mcpixel everyone might be asking at home for those that played the original mcpixel where did mcpixel 2 happen when did it happen when did it come out it didn't come out no i in and in one of the truly bizarre coincidences it is being

released in basically the same week as goat simulator 3 which is doing the exact same gag yes very strange coincidence but ignore that don't worry that the tldr you don't have to stress that you missed one of the mcpixel installments um if you played the original you'll probably feel pretty familiar but uh for people that didn't mcpixel is imagine like a point and click adventure game on like hyper speed uh instead of having like these slow like oh i'm gonna use the hook to you know click the thing and lift the box whatever and you spend like an hour trying to figure out a puzzle every mcpixel scene is basically 30 seconds long more or less and happens at absolute light speed and is just chock full of like basically physical comedy um i'll give you an

example you're in a house and there's a fire that breaks out in the house and you can click the fire you can click someone else on the other side of the fire and you can click a um like a water tank and if you click the fire i think you fall into the fire and just die instantly if you click the guy you kick the guy in the balls and if you click the water tank you just take a drink of water and the way to solve that problem is you keep drinking water for the 30 seconds until you feel like you've had enough water and then you click the fire and then you pee on the fire and then the pee starts coming out so quickly that your entire house fills with pee and spurts out all the windows and then you win the level and that that's the successful. It doesn't matter.

It couldn't matter less when you solve it or don't. It doesn't. The goal is not to how cleverly. It's just to see the different things. Yeah, it's about how many gags, essentially, can you find within these scenarios. And there are dozens and dozens of scenarios that are all extremely quick but they are like surprisingly chock full of uh variety and

very unexpected moments like you really never know when you click something what exactly is going to happen and that is really funny too if you're like uh trying to interact with something and then mcpixel does the worst possible inner like like you want to help someone and he kicks him in the balls you want to uh uh you have a fish and you click on the bowl but instead of putting the fish in the bowl he puts his whole head in the bowl it's so stupid i was like i remember there being a lot of crotch kicking in this game i just googled our review from polygon and i wrote it in the the opening line is mcpixel is the crotch kicking simulator of 2012 so i'm glad that after 10 years my dude has not changed yeah honestly this just feels like they had more time and uh energy what's

devolver now right well it's published by devolver but it's the same developer sauce is the developer um and uh it just feels like they were just throwing in tons and tons of these scenes and like layering in like ridiculous like unlockables that you can find. And there's a running gag with a guy named Steve. Like you need to find all the Steve gags. I don't know why. I worry that like in describing it, people might think this is like postal, like that tone.

And it is so far from that. This is more, you know, it has like a Monty Python vibe to it mixed with like i don't know fucking gallagher rust in peace gallagher uh it is or mcgruber or well certainly so it's inspired the idea is it's supposed to be inspired by macgyver so he's in these all these macgyver scenes where he there's a bomb in front of him and he's supposed to disarm the bomb. And the way he does that is by eating the bomb like it's a cake and then pooping out the bomb

and then the bomb exploding in his toilet. It is, yeah, it's fucking wild. There just aren't very many games that are like this. It's like a WarioWare kind of jammed up to a thousand. And so if you're looking for a game that's like genuinely funny, like I found myself vocally laughing, which almost never happens in video games,

bam, McPixel 3 is very, very good. I would also just check out all of Sauce's games. His website is sauce.gd, S-O-S dot G-D. And I mean, just somebody who makes tons of really interesting stuff a lot of it not stuff that i think like really goes on sale i assume it's mostly done like itch um but yeah what a

great game creator yeah very creative uh really doing stuff that no one else is doing anything else oh yeah there is something else uh i i played somerville i think i'm almost finished with it um it is it's not terribly long and i know that you all talked about it on resty so i'm not going to do too big of a deep dive it's it's from the the some of the folks who made limbo and uh inside and only it's war of the worlds and it's that same sort of very contemplative, puzzle-solvey, side-scrolling kind of exploration adventure game. Juice, did you play it?

I knew you guys have played it because you talked about it on Rastuse. I kind of chose between the two and I installed and started Pentament instead. I liked Inside. I don't think as much as everybody else did. I loved Limbo. This game has a pace and a vibe.

The vibe is amazing. And all of the world building and stuff that they do of like you know the alien apocalypse uh is is very very neat it is it is just a it's just a bit too slow for me i don't know uh i realize that's not a very uh erudite comment about the game because it's not like it ain't that type of game um but you play as this dude who gets these kind of powers to change his environment using different kind of polarized colors and it none of the puzzles have been like particularly difficult and so it's been a lot of very slow trudging across a blighted wasteland until I reach a puzzle that's not very hard. And then you keep on going like that.

And I've been waiting for like something more to happen. And you do unlock kind of a couple other powers other than the one that you sort of start out with. But it really it really is, I think sort of a, a tone, tone piece, right. In the same way that inside and limbo was, but it's not a very fun one for me. I guess little nightmares is the other like analog, right.

And I know you really like the line bears. I did, but I mean, that game was, you know, scary and it was, I think much game here. Much game here. This is, I like this game a lot, that game was, you know, scary, and it was, I think— Much gamier.

Much gamier. Like, this is—I like this game a lot, but it is—it's like a playable movie. There's very minimal game here. And, I mean, there are puzzles—Griffin, after the first half, even the puzzles, like, disappear for the most part. I think the game is much more interesting in the second half. But, yeah, if you're not vibing with it, I do not think you necessarily need to keep going. It's just, yeah, there's just not that much that happens in it.

Like, they hooked me. Like, the world and the presentation of the game and everything they're going for. Like, y'all got it. Like, I'm down. the presentation of the game and everything they're going for like y'all got it like i'm i'm i'm down and i have played it longer than i think i i would have um had it not been for that hook of like oh i gotta know like what is going on in this world i have to know like is is this uh dude gonna you know find his dog again like all of this stuff like that that's the hard

part you did that and i'm into it it's just the the just nothing fucking happens and i i it's on game pass right now i hope it gets added to playstation plus whenever it goes on to that platform because it is the perfect like subscription service type of game it's only a few hours yeah and i think it is going to be a bit more divisive than limbo and inside like this and if you like it you know it's again like a movie you can kind of like start it and if it vibes vibes and if it doesn't i i think I might just watch like a YouTube video of the inning. Because it's, I don't have a lot of gaming time these days. Especially this last week we were on tour.

And this game does not run great on Steam Deck. I had to, I tried playing it. And then I stopped and played the rest on my PC. Which is wild. It doesn't seem particularly intensive. Yeah, and the weird thing is it's much better on a tv too that was i played i played it through the first time on steam deck and it's weird how for an indie game with like the very kind of um not simple low poly sort of low poly look it actually wants to be on a big tv it's the aspect ratio is extremely wide yeah

um which again does not there's your quote for portable for the box right the aspect ratio is so well except that the wide aspect ratio really showcases how long this fucking walk from right to left is gonna be be through this forest. And sometimes you have to stop because a purple ray tries to disintegrate. It's, yeah, I was disappointed. I thought it was going to be hot shit.

Cause I love this, this, these developers lineage, but not, if people want to read the review, I, this is the rare time I did a review at polygon. So I'll make sure to link that on Twitter.com.

The perfect place to put all your important content. Yeah, it'll definitely be safe there. I've played Pintment, which so far is the most stridently boring game I've ever played, and I'm kind of fascinated by that. It's unwillingness to be captivating in any way, shape, or form. And I will continue to play it because a lot of people really liked it I know it's there I'm like impressed the scope and scale

of like nothing interesting in it whatsoever it's so cool yeah I've played like 30 minutes of Pint of It am I being unfair? it's like the most vegetable ass it's raw broccoli. They didn't even saute it for you.

The reviews were so positive that I am genuinely- I know, that's why I know this is in no way a critique. I'm really looking forward to it. This feels like the game that I'm going to be the asshole who just will not stop talking about it. It feels like a dare. It really feels like, oh, really? There's like no voiceover and it all-

Okay, seriously, it's all voiceover. It's set in Bavaria in the 16th century. Oh, man. All the drawings look like, like. It's like medieval art. Medieval art illuminations would block printing. Marginalia. I don't even know it.

If I knew enough about this game to talk about it well, I would probably be interested. Not smart enough. Not me and Juice ain't smart enough.. If I knew enough about this game to talk about it well, I would probably be interested. Not smart enough. Not me and Juice ain't smart enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm going to finish the whole fucking thing. Guaranteed. Because I don't like myself very much sometimes.

I just did a bit where you have to choose your city of origin. Fuck, that sounds thrilling. I can't wait to get there. That sounds really captivating. It's pretty early on. And then it's like's like wow do I want to be from Flanders where I will be able to speak a little bit of Dutch and recognize some of the cultural touchstones from Flanders and it's like move aside Elden Ring hey guys hey guys but man 69 here I've got a new build for a pigment you want to go with the

Flanders route guys this one's broken want to go with the Flanders route? This one's broken, guys. This one's broken. This one's broken. Go with Flanders, and then when people say Flanders shit, you're going to totally get it. You'll have the gold camo quill within a day.

Okay. We'll circle back on pentamint because it also seems like the most interesting game of the year, but it's fucking, yeah, it's books level boring at the start. Let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about more video games. So the Game of the Ward nominees were released.

It's wild to think that we are at a place where that is worth considering, but I think that these awards have earned it by continuing to be classier and better every year they still you know don't seem to care a lot about the actual awards parts but i think it's an interesting uh touch point so i'd like here's what i want to go go through i want to go through this list real quick and you guys just tell me yes or no if it's right or wrong okay sure okay this we're gonna start with

oh man they have so many categories yeah we're gonna have to narrow down some of these categories because it's gonna be too much best i mean i'll delete all esports um best adaptation i don't know if you watched it's like the hedgehog 2 the movie obviously yeah that movie rules that movie rules best multiplayer we oh man call Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Multiverses, Overwatch 2, Splatoon 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Treader's Revenge, that last one seems a little wild, but...

That's what I would have picked. Yeah, me too. Best family, Kirby and the Forgotten Land. My family's pretty good, I don't know about you. Yeah, my family kicks ass. No, no, no. Your family sucks. Good year for family games, I gotta say. Kirby and the Forgotten Land,

Lego Star Wars, Skywalker Saga, Mario and Rabbid, Sparks of Hope, Nintendo Switch Sports, Splatoon 3. I mean, it's Kirby by far. Yeah. By a pretty huge margin. As a family game, yes, definitely. Okay, best role-playing.

Elden Ring, Live-a-Live, Live-a-Live? Live-a-Live? Live-a-Live. Yeah, they got Ring, Live-a-Live, Live-a-Live, Live-a-Live? Live-a-Live. Yeah, they got it. Live-a-Live. Pokemon Legends, Arceus, Triangle Strategy, Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Yeah, that's going to be Elden Ring by the first of them. I mean, it's weird, though, in this category, right? That's not, in the way that these are role-playing games, would not classify that's the problem with these categories any category really that's

the problem with any category genres are bullshit um best action adventure a plague tale requiem i really like the first do you guys ever get into those i like the first one i didn't get into i didn't play the second one but i struggled with the second one we did a recipes on it but i've gone back and played more of it, and it gets a lot better. It gets a lot better. Yeah, I liked what I played. Wow, this...

See, this category, I can see why, actually, now that I said that, they didn't put Elden Ring in this category. Action Adventure is Plague Tale Requiem, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Stray, and Tunic.

So these are like third-person adventure-y action games. Yeah. I don't know. It's arbitrary, right? Yeah, totally arbitrary. Frush, are you going to say Tunic? Because I bet you're going to say Tunic. I mean, of those, it's probably Tunic.

I love Tunic. I think Tunic's going to get probably blanked in the awards, which is a real shame because I think it's fucking spectacular. But I think it kind of shows its hand very late. And I think a lot of people just didn't have the patience to do that. This action is Bayonetta 3, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, Neon White, Sifu, and Shredder's Revenge. This actually boils down nicely.

I think the games that most of us love, I mean, I know Neon White was very beloved by us on this podcast. this actually boils down nicely i think the games that most of us love i mean i know neon white was like very beloved by us on this podcast i think those sort of games will get really crushed in these awards as winners i don't think you're gonna see a lot of like those sort of shocking winners i think you're gonna see more i mean i could be wrong i'd like I'd like to be wrong, but. It feels like in years past, Indy is, you know, Indy. I mean, big Indy has like done well. And I don't think of this year as like a major like AAA year. And yet I'm looking at this and I think like,

even though it's just a few games, I think AAA is going to like crush. Yeah, it feels like there were seven major. I mean, there were more than that, but it feels like there were seven major AAA games this year and like dozens and dozens of pretty amazing indies and that this list is very triple a heavy yeah uh i gotta say though when you look at those best indie categories i mean it has been an embarrassment of riches best debut indie they got neon white norco stray tunic vampire survivors uh norco's. The other ones are good.

I didn't play Stray. Did you guys play Stray? I played Stray. Yeah, but I like Stray. You would like the first hour of Stray, and then it turns into a robot talking game. Sorry, Stray lovers, but I liked the first hour, and then it stopped being about the cat.

Jess, I think you would like it because it is a very kind of classic adventure game. The biggest weird choice is it has actions, like instant death action sequences kind of scattered throughout. Yeah. But the cat's cute. Honestly, it might be a good game to play with the kids.

Best indie, Call of the Lamb, Neon White, Sifu, Stray. Did you guys play Sifu? It was cool. I actually did. I played a little bit. Neon White is one of my games of the year. Wait, you didn't mention...

Sorry, what is the full list of best indies? That's best indie, not best indie debut. Call of the Lamb, Neon White, Sifu, Stray, Tunic. So Vampire Survivors is not there? No. Vampire Survivors is like... It's wild. Vampire Survivors is not being there or on Game of the Year.

It feels like they want to make two categories because it should just be the same five games. It does seem... There is a participation trophy aspect to this where it seems like they were trying to include more games rather than necessarily the games that should win. Under the games for impact, I'm not going to read all these,

but they have I Was a Teenage Exocolonistist that should be in best role-playing games for sure it's much more role-playing game than than elden ring is best performance okay now i'm mad oh no you're you can't tell me he's not on there now oh we have two nominees we have two nominees from god of war ragnarok oh perfect say his name Say his name. Sonny Suljic and Christopher Judge. Fuck off. That's weird. I mean, come on. They did an okay job, but they were not Richard Schiff. They spelled Richard Schiff wrong.

That's weird to me. I'm furious right now. I'm furious. Give it to Ashley Burch, obviously. Because you didn't have Richard Schiff. Ashley, I love you. I would have given it to Richard Schiff every day. All day, all day.

Nothing against your performance. He's God tier, literally. Yeah. And they got Man Engaged from Immortality, which is actually another fantastic pick. Oh, fuck, yeah, that's really good. It's really, really, really, really, really good. I agree, but if you're going to do anybody from Immortality,

why is Sherlotta Mullen, the person who played the one? Yeah, the one was the best performance. That seems wild. She was phenomenal, and I got excited every time she came up, but the main role of that game was impossible. She's doing 10 different things. Yeah, it's impossible. Audio design, score and music. These are not bad categories.

It's just harder to debate. Was there, sorry to go back. Was there anything from the Quarry in the best performances? Best performance? I don't think so. Quarry is innovation and accessibility. It got one not there. That's surprising.

Okay, so we don't get like too weighed down here. Last few are... Narrative Direction Game of the Year. Yes. Again, it's like they mixed up

the labels on these. Narrative Direction is basically like best story, right? That's more or less... Yeah, and it's Plague Tale, Elden Ring, God of War,

Horizon, Immortality, which is awfully weird when you know like citizen sleepers just like sitting there and not not not on this list i don't i don't understand it i mean those are very narrative heavy games that you just listed yeah there yeah yes because that is how we measure success. I'm not saying they're good, but it's not like they picked McPixel or something like that. No, I agree. Like I could have picked that these would be the like best story

and best game awards at the beginning of this year. Just because you knew that they were going to be spending. They were going to have the biggest marketing budget. Except for immortality and even that is like oh yeah it's the indie game that is all story so there's that there's always one of those i think there is an element and this might just be an issue with the voting process of just like the most familiar and or popular games are always going to be the games that people vote for even if they're like the second or third on their list and those are the ones that are going to get always going to be the games that people vote for, even if they're like the second or third on their list. And those are the ones that are going to get boiled up to make the final cut.

Okay, here's the wildest thing for me. Did we do game of the year? No, I was going to ask you. No, I want to do one on game direction really quick, just because it kind of breaks my brain. So game direction is Elden Ring, God of War, Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Immortality, Stray. And I want to like pull out Immortality. Yeah. I think

a lot of people voted for this because it's easy to see how direction happened because it's a movie. It's a movie. Right? But if you think about this as game direction. It's two different disciplines entirely. Yes. Yes. And as game direction of making sure

that people actually experience this story and like can parse it and do any of those things. But the whole product, the combat. The entire product. Everything. Right, yeah. This seems like the one spot where I wouldn't put it. I would almost be more likely to put it for game of the year than I would put it for game direction because I think its biggest problem is its game direction. Plus, you know, with Elden Ring, you had the steady hand of George R.R. Martin on the tiller the whole time.

Who showed up on a Zoom call for 15 minutes and then got paid. I feel like nobody has, like, the insight required for this category to be a thing, right? Like, when you're talking about movies, you can feel, like, the auteur a lot easier in in most movies where like it feels like one of their things like i mean immortality feels like a sam barlow ass sam barlow game for sure but like i don't know how god i don't know how the direction on you know uh horizon went like i don't know i have no insight i look at like this is more how how we just like, can you feel the edits in it? Can you feel the decisions not to do things? Can you feel where things got cut?

Can you feel? Oh, man, just by you saying that, Horizon Forbidden West deleted itself from the list. And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. That's what I mean. The fat? Oh, no, we got lots of that. I think Elden Ring is like the clear winner here because you can feel a guiding hand. You don't know, like, who did it, right?

But, like, you can feel decisions getting made where with God of War and Horizon and even Stray, I would say the opposite. You can feel that somebody's just like, yeah, okay, let's just keep, we'll pile things on and we think that'll lead to some version of the good thing that we had in our mind. But I would also add, like, to the point of us not really knowing Justin's point, like, so every game director, depending on the project, you know, the way different studios work, you really have no insight into the process of, like, oh, maybe the combat team or the narrative team had way more control and the game director was just, like, thumbing up, thumbing down. It can really vary.

So that's why I'm like... Oh, yeah. But I mean, like, at up thumbing down it can really vary so that's why i'm like oh yeah but i mean like at least with this we can guess i think audio design having that go to a critic vote let alone a public vote which is what the game awards is doing now chaos yeah there's no audio design is something that i feel feel like i could actually like judge you don't think so i no like there's no i we can sense like hey that sounds good but like how audio design works and like a lot of great audio design is meant to not be noticed sure be invisible yeah that's like unless you were real unless you were pulling out those sennheiser you know like studio mode listen really closely i i think most of us were like yeah that game was loud and it felt so

loud yeah i mean that's the reason why the Oscars break it up. They only have, my understanding is the editors are voting on the nominees for editor, right? Sorry, I have to talk about this game on your list. It's wild. It is. Okay. I want to say, blanket statement, I'm not detracting from anything that is on this list. Okay?

I know that there are- All are good games. All good games, all games always defenders we got a plague tale requiem elden ring god of war ragnarok horizon forbidden west stray and xenoblade chronicles 3 absolutely to me half of this list is baffling like i legitimately don't understand how you come to these six games well again i i would point to the possibility that the lists the nominees were generated based on games that most people played and so then you end up you really think that xenoblade chronicles 3 would fit that yeah

from from the type of outlets and streamers that put this together i do yeah i mean you know it has a huge fan base. It does. I mean, it's not me. I don't love, you know, play Chronicles, but, like, it does do very well. So if you are under that mentality, I think it probably— Okay, but if you're using that metric, right, everybody was playing Vampire Soraka. So, well, I think that's the problem, right? I think people don't feel comfortable giving this award or nominating games that do not

look like what they believe to be a game of the year. Fair. Yeah. And I think that's the problem with, again, this award show. It's closer to the Golden Globes, you know, where it's just nominating popular things and the system that's in place for it just kind of encourages that it's a it's a it's a bummer but it is what it is it is what it is it's also worth saying that like if you want a more straight-laced like you know uh gdc awards

like right all the igf all that shit is which like much more representative much more representative but also super boring i'm not gonna watch that no thank you and even that's not great too because that's voted on by people in the industry so it like sometimes feels a little bit like a popularity contest like each of these is going to come with its own problems except for our show which i think perfect perfect no notes we're gonna pick great games and that's why you've been tricked into listening to an advertisement for uh our end of the year special all this stuff is dumb like all awards are dumb right we understand this like it is it is bizarre that we have this the Oscars are dumb it's all dumb I just feel like for me as a someone who likes

gaming I want to see game of the year honor things that have like pushed beyond, like push things forward. Right. That have like taken where we were at and like taken a step forward. And I feel like I've, I feel like horizon forbidden West was like came out and was almost immediately forgotten. Right.

Like this isn't, it is not just extremely familiar like territory i you know i didn't like we've talked about this i did not like uh it takes two i did i thought the narrative was a total fucking joke but at least it was something that was new like it felt new the problem with it takes two is it's really hard to separate from the fact that Jeff and the creator of It Takes Two seem to be best buddies. Sure, it was uncomfortable. I'm not implying anything. I'm not suggesting that there was tampering.

We can't start talking about It Takes Two in fucking November 2022. I'm just saying it in the context of it won last year is all I'm saying. Yes. It's weird to see this and not, and again, I don't like vampire survivors that much personally. To not see it on this list is baffling to me. How did Plague Tale Requiem get in here? Yes. How did it get in there?

Seriously. I mean, maybe it came out right when the nominees had, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff you need to factor in. That one I cannot, like, I could justify a lot of these before i get again like i'm not and they're all good games these are all good games there's just there were so many good games i'm not saying even saying it's like better or worse but it's like when i'm looking at a list of game of the year games it's wild that that is is one of them i haven't played it maybe it's great i don't know anyway um we should we should wrap up i'm just gonna throw out a quick read or mail thing because I think it's a good service that we can provide. Yeah.

From Tricerabeth asked, what Sonic game is best to start on if you've never played one before? And Shelby asked, if you didn't grow up playing Sonic and don't have nostalgia for the property, is it worth playing? Is there any Sonic worth playing if you don't have nostalgia for it? Sonic Mania all day. Yeah. Is is the easy is the easy and only answer i i have had a long journey of loving and then turning against sonic and now loving it all over again i agree sonic mania is a great great great great great option if you want to try a 3d sonic game i think sonic generations is probably your best bet maybe colors and sonic generations is a great choice for a 3d sonic game because half of it is of 2d so like you know at least you're gonna play half of a good game and if you want like just good

like sega stuff maybe this is pure nostalgia so you won't like it in that case. Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, or either of those racing games, are two of my favorite kart racing games ever. Like, hold their own against many of the Mario Kart games. Yeah, they are very good. And I think that's a great way to get into this type of stuff. Straight up, don't play any of them. You're fine.

You got limited minutes. Play anything else. Comfy goose. All right um any honorable mentions really quick uh i've been watching reservation dogs which is on fx and is really fucking good i've heard great uh it was produced by tyke by taika watiti uh sterling harjo is like i believe the lead creative behind it, but it's essentially a story about four indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma who kind of get up to shenanigans on the reservation. The like tone of it is if you'd like, like Atlanta, maybe. And I don't know, it just feels, it doesn't really prescribe to like the other comedies slash dramas that I've seen.

It's incredibly well acted and performed and production values are really good. There's like magical realism going on. And it's all over the place. But if you're looking for like a really creative, funny, but also really moving show, I'd highly recommend it. If you want funny and moving, I also recommend Bochi the Rock on Crunchyroll. If you've been looking for an anime about a high school girl who's a little introverted

and doesn't know how to hang out in the world but then discovers that she needs to be in a rock band, I've got the show for you. Sounds good to me, man. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. There's so much good stuff on Crunchyroll this season. Marvel Snap.

Yeah. Hey, guys, everyone, we just had a tour. Everybody is playing Marvel Snap. Every single person was playing Marvel Snap. I almost pushed you all to do another. Like, can we do another? Because the meta, guys, the ever-evolving meta. The meta's done, different.

The meta's different now, so everything's different. I used to- We will talk about it so much in the end of the year. I used to roll with a zoo deck that would drop a bunch of cheapo one-cost cards until people started to use Killmonger, which destroys every one-cost card on the board. And then I unlocked Killmonger, and now I am the hater. And I am still just drunk on this power when I see people just like dropping fucking

Rocket Raccoon Ant-Man. Squirrel Girls. Squirrel Girls was like, oh, that's real good, that's real good, that's real good. Me, my friend. Me, my friend, Michael B. Jordan, he's gonna fuck you up.

I wanted to very quickly mention, and this surprised me, my dad had to really push me into this one, but it was Andor. Oh, yeah, I've heard it's very good. It's honestly, like, really, I think that Star Wars TV has been better than Star Wars movie,

by and large, or at least more compelling to me, special exception here to Boba Fett, the book of Boba Fett, which like all books should remain closed. But Andor is like a really interesting like ground level Star Wars show, like very much about the power dynamics

between like common people living in this world and like how it feels for them to be under oppression from the empire like what that actually means um it's got smaller stories you're saying way smaller yeah way smaller but also like more human right like more relatable um and it's tough right because i think every star wars show because it's star wars i feel like they kind of have to like market it like it's epic right yeah so like so you there i think that's what took me so long to get into it because it's like it's not marketed which like what it is which is sort of like a

kind of cool episodic not procedural but like much more so than, you know, any other Star Wars product. And they have to market it like it's episode nine or whatever. Like you had to say like, yeah, it's like a cool little thing that just happens to be in Star Wars. It's made by the dude who made Michael Clayton. And for real, it feels like they just wrote a,

like a movie set in New York. And then like Lucasfilm saw the script and was like hey what if we just put this in star wars and like yeah i guess we could change like mob dude into droid like is that enough like yeah sure to give you an example of like what this thing is in the very first episode like 10 minutes in he's being hassled by these two uh guards who aren't don't even work for the uh the empire the contractors yeah their contract they're they're a company like a corporation and there's these two guys that are hassling him and they're trying to shake him down for money and in the process of defending himself he accidentally kills one and that is like the inciting event for like oh fuck

like i am i am absolutely hosed i have to do something and you're watching the two sides of like the investigation into it the apathy on the behalf of the corporation of the two people that were just killed the one guy who's like kind of fixated on catching whoever did it and and or trying to like stay ahead of you know all this while i'm still trying to do everything he's trying to do. It's really, really compelling. And what's interesting is like the movies, the newer movies, like peaked a little tippy toe into this idea. You think of like that first scene with Finn where, you know, his stormtrooper buddy dies and he has blood on his helmet.

And you're like, whoa, there's like humans behind this thing. And then it turned into like a superhero movie basically like more or less but to see that be the focus the like small story focus rather than there being like an all-powerful whatever boba fett in unstoppable armor mandalorian unstoppable armor as much as i love that like we just want to see variety i think she hulk was a great example of like variety in the marvel universe where it's something that is completely different from anything else you've seen in this packaging and i was like completely smitten by it so it's i will say i'm i've just i've just started watching yesterday i watched a couple episodes and it's a pretty slow burn. Yeah. Yeah.

Does it pick up? Because I do like the tension that they are building, but they are building it a little bit slow for my tastes. It gets much faster, in my opinion, much better. I have heard as much. There's flashbacks that you are dealing with right now. Yeah. That stops after, I think, three episodes. Okay.

And then the show, it's the juice. I would warn people, because I received this warning, and it does not start super high octane. And that's by design to accomplish some of this character-forward stuff. But I'm glad to hear that it picks up a bit. I think that's it.

I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Anna Rod, We Are Young and Naive Still, that is all one name, Scorch Leet, and Dewey Ocelot. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts.

We so appreciate it. It's great. What are we doing? Oh, recaps. Recaps. Oh, God. What did we talk about, Plant? We talked about Sonic Frontiers, and then we talked about McPixel,

and then we talked about... McPixel 3, specifically. Yeah, thank you. What else did we talk about? We talked about Andor. We talked about Somerville we talked about Intimate

very briefly we talked about Reservation Dogs Bogey the Rock, Marvel Snap and all of the Game Awards nominees we did it proud of us I'm proud too let me check the rundown it's hard to say next week yeah i'm a little confused because

someone just changed it is it are we not doing pokemon next week hmm who changed it sounds like something justin would do so he doesn't have to play my actually keyboard is glitched so i actually i'm really looking i'm fucking stoked for pokemon i gotta be real we are doing pokemon scarlet and violet go fuck yourself justin juice I think there's some stuff. And you know that they made it so you don't actually have to do the fights. You make the Pokemon go in and do the fights for you. I won't get fooled again. Yeah, they do look so cute this time, too.

Okay, let's wrap it up. Why don't you just draw a nice picture instead of being sad on the podcast, Justin? And you can mail that in to someone who cares. Justin. And you can mail that in to someone who cares. That's gonna do it for this week on the Besties. Next week I'll talk about Pokemon and maybe this will be the one, folks. I'm 42 years

old, but this is gonna be the Pokemon that finally brings me into the fold. Or maybe I'll just subject you to more pediment chat. It's hard to say. I'll be sure to join us again for that and so much more on the next episode of the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!