The Besties - Breaking Down the First Half of 2022

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

We know that you, a diehard Besties listener, have heard us talk about all the great games that came out so far this year. But if you enjoyed all that jazz, you're gonna LOVE hearing us stack those games up against each other in our mid-year checkpoint special!Games discussed: Super Auto Pets, Wordle, Vampire Survivors, Nobody Saves the World, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Dying Light 2, Olliolli World, Horizon Forbidden West, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, Elden Ring, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Tunic, Star Wars Skywalker Saga, Teardown, Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Rogue Legacy 2, Citizen Sleeper, V Rising, Hardspace: Ship Breaker, TMNT Shredders Revenge, Neon White, AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - nirvanA Initiative 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 think I might have a juice problem. Like with our beloved co-host? No, no, no relation. Literal juice. Oh, okay. Sucking down too much of that sweet stuff? I mean, so people who listen to the show might remember that I had some acid reflux

and I stopped drinking orange juice for basically ever. I hate that I know that. I feel like people who've listened to you talk for more than 30 seconds know you have a problem with acid reflux. It's just endemic to your character, I feel. I switched to a pomegranate blueberry combo, which is very good. Not sponsored by the show, K.W. Knutson.

Blueberry. So don't go searching store shelves for blueberry pomegranate. It's very tasty. It's like one of those super, it's all pure. Anyway, regardless, I cut it because if one of those like super it's all like pure anyway regardless i cut it because it's if i drank it straight it'd be insanity so i cut it with water you know how much sorry how much it's usually like a a third to two thirds like a third juice to two thirds water wow that's that's a lot of cutting well okay so you know those scenes in

movies the like cliche scene with the alcoholic person, and they're pouring themselves a drink, and then they go to the fridge and then go back, and they're like, nah, this drink could use a little more. That's been happening to me, but with juice. Oh, so your proportion has been creeping up to more juice? Is this what you're saying? Okay, you can saying? Okay.

You can use a little. Naughty boy. A little top up. Yeah, just a little. I don't drink coffee. This is all I have in my day is the juice. Is your sugar water? I just never drank coffee. Do you not drink caffeine at all?

Occasionally I'll have a Diet Coke. Very occasionally. So that's just what we get on each morning record is just straight Russ. Is this straight Russ plus juice? It's okay. It's Russ and juice. Okay.

I want to pick an episode soon where Russ pounds an espresso and then does the episode. That'd be bad. Just rocking. Unlistenable. Let's do it next time we have to talk about a game that none of us really give a shit about. Let's get him all hopped

up on Goof Juice. Welcome to Besties and the Amp. It's me, the Amp, formerly known as Russ Freshstick. I'm pumped about this new Kirby John. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the first half of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the first six months. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and games are what I know. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best games of the first six months. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and games are what I know.

My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best games of the week. Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and the greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a game of the year show that goes all year long, and just by listening to you, my friend, have become a member. What do we talk about today, Chris Plant? Tell me all about it. For people who don't normally listen, which welcome, at the end of each year, we do a bestie of the besties. We figure out what is the best game of the year. You know, we get like a top ten going.

This is the halfway point of the year. So this is kind of us reevaluating everything we talked about, kind of getting our ducks in order for the first point of the year. So this is kind of us reevaluating everything we talked about, kind of getting our ducks in order for the first half of the year so that when we get to the back half of the year, we're ready to go. The one thing I'll say right here is no more video games are coming out in the back half of this year. Wow, is it really that dire? I mean, are you ready for Skull and Bones?

There's games. Stop it, Chris Plant. No more games. No, they said. Why would people keep listening to this show? There's no more games. We're just going to be talking about Hideo Kojima classics for the next six months. What about Stray?

Oh, yeah, you're right. Stray. Okay, you're right. I guess they got the cat game. They got the pirate game. We're good. I'm sure there's going to be some Call of Duty. Yeah, probably.

They probably got to do a Call of Duty. we're good there's i'm sure there's gonna be some call of duty yeah probably they probably gotta do a call of duty or maybe we just go back to talk about 13 sentinels a lot oh man okay now we're good let's do that right after the break what would you guys say was the first chronologically speaking first great game of of this okayologically speaking, the first great game of this year was Wordle. Not this year. Hold on one second, because I actually went through this list, and you guys are welcome to add to it if you'd like, but I went through the list

and included not only games that came out this year, but also included games that only, quote, hit this year. Okay, that's fair. And I don't know who just added Super Auto Pets, but I respectfully disagree because it was kind of a moment last year.

But Wordle was the first game that I think really popped off this year. Technically, it started in December when they added that Twitter feature to the boxes that everyone was sort of doing. Sure. And then it essentially blew up in january so i think wordle was the first big big game of uh 2022 i would

argue uh i'll i'll allow it i man i don't know any is anybody still playing word my wife still plays wordle she does did you i uh did you want to do a borat thing or it really felt like it it really felt like you were felt like it next girlfriend i don't know the way i can i can hear you smile through still plays wordle in a way that like half of your brain was like damn i missed a great boy yeah i missed it i missed it it's a good it's a really good puzzle game i think a lot of people sort of hit that moment of like, yeah, I've been there. But it takes a good month or two to get to that moment. marketing for it was beyond genius i mean the fact that i you start seeing on your twitter timeline these like multi-colored cubes and everyone's posting them and you're like what is happening like what could any of this mean i mean that was how i encountered a wordle and how i'm sure a lot

of other people did too it's a really interesting counterpoint to the way uh pretty much all other video games are marketed where it's like smashing you over the head with it this is a little bit like sword and sorcery that's what it reminds me of remember when sword and sorcery first came out oh my god yes for people who remember that kind of like

Zelda-y adventure-y game you could tweet I think any quote in the video game oh yeah it was self narrated and so like at any time that you did anything and you got that little piece of self narration you could share it and then like out of if you didn't know what the fuck was going on you would see like uh it was a very shattered prose was very like uh how would you chris you're smart

about this kind of thing the the narration the writing in sword and sorcery was very um uh how would you chris you're smart about this kind of thing the the narration the writing in sword and sorcery was very uh i i would say it was social media friendly in a time when video game writing was not at that like cute yeah uh it's it's a good game i like i like wordle but then it sold out man wow i was actually I was actually going to say, here's what I was going to say. I think it was hindered by the fact that, like, it was at Wordle.com, and you had to search for it every day, or at least I did. I mean, you just go to Google, and then it would come up. I'm not saying it was, like, hard to find Wordle, obviously, Russ,

but I do think that it was just, like, one or two steps that the other imitators could kind of like start to get some territory that's very funny to me because that would explain also why the audience is older for it now because i don't know about y'all but my parents they do everything through google.com when they want to read polygon they go to google.com and search for polygon.com yeah did you all know that they removed the tweet function from sword and sorcery oh because oh yeah there's like an update where that little narrator pops up and says since our prior experiment in 2011 social networks have proven to be catastrophic for society so we now encourage

isolation and regretful i can't disagree with that yeah that's great that's fantastic uh okay that's an ancient game that we have talked about now i'm much more interested in talking about vampire survivors okay so this is yet another i'm so glad that you guys had like a late a late entry into this this this game um yeah this is a yet another 2021 game technically came out december 17 2021 but if you played it right then i'd be very impressed because i feel like it didn't start popping off until early this year um and has only gotten about it on the bomb cast like game of the year wrap up but i don't think they're better at it than we are okay and and now it's uh pretty terrific i don't know if you all have

kept up with it but they've been releasing updates i want to say once every few weeks that add like new characters new levels new features like it's really growing pretty astronomically from where it started at and it's fucking fun man yeah so satisfying and great and you know we've talked a lot about it it is a testament to the like almost like genre defining success of of this game that if you go on the ios app store the top i don't know in the top 100 paid titles like 11 of them are vampire survivors clones yeah and they are called shit like dracula outlast or something like shit. It could not be more of a just homonym of, or synonym of vampire survivors. That feels like appropriate though, right?

Like, cause isn't vampire survivors itself, like the art is just a knockoff pack of like Castlevania. Symphony of the Night. Yeah. I mean, it's not, you know, it's not traced. I mean, it's pixel art. It's pixel art and it's, and it's it's it looks pretty man this game fucking rips ass I could play it at any time I have it on the Steam Deck and it's just whenever whenever the mood strikes me it is always a good one I and I think they have missed a trick by not putting it out on iOS. If this game was out in a fucking portrait mode,

iOS format, that was just one stick. That's all you need is a one touch interaction game. Like I would play it constantly. I don't think it's, I think they are aware of it. I think they did not expect the juggernaut of success that came before them. And they're just scrambling to make it better. But yeah, fantastic game. Yeah, it's really fun really do we want to talk about super auto pet i mean super

i mean we can talk about it i do think there was a bit of a following behind it last year but i would say i know it clicked for y'all we could nominate it for our game of the year so we should probably talk about it yeah sure did you did you put it on here plant yeah i did yeah i mean griffin did you play it because this seems even more of a new game. I got deep into Super Auto Pets this year on iOS. Yeah, well, I mean, you can explain it really quick. Okay, it is a very, very, I would say, boiled down version of an auto chess game, which I guess I should clarify what that is auto chess is a

game where you draft uh characters uh to your team and usually that drafting process is like the sole form of interaction that you have with the game and there are things going on in auto chess like uh you know if you draft enough of a certain type of character, then, you know, they will get some sort of like team bonus. And then the battles happen kind of automatically. Hence the name Super Auto Pets. Super Auto Pets does the same thing, except all of the characters stand in a straight line. You can have five pets on your team and then each pet has like a an ability that it executes automatically in battle right so there's one

that uh i i think the elephant has an ability that if it gets hit it throws a rock behind it and damages the next part the next member member of your team by one damage, which then you can combo into things like the blowfish. Anytime it gets damaged, it shoots spikes out at the other team. And so you can kind of combo it out so that, you know, you turn your blowfish into a machine gun. That is like, that was the meta strategy for a long time. But there is, I don't know the exact number of pets,

but there is a huge don't know the exact number of pets but there's a huge variety of pets with different abilities and a nearly like infinite uh way to combo all of them together to create your own sort of strategy on the fly um it's really good it's perfect for ios it is it's all pvp um and that is usually not my jam, but it is very satisfying to put together just a juggernaut team and steamroll everyone else. So if you've not played Super Auto Pets, it's free on iOS. And in my opinion, the very best pets that you get

are on the free team, so there is really no need to drop cash on it unless you really enjoy it. You can play it on your browser too. It's playable everywhere. Is it cross? Does your progress cross over? Really, there's no progress to speak of. You get coins by doing good, and then with those coins,

you can put hats on your pets, or you can purchase backgrounds for your team. I'm pretty sure that does i'm pretty sure you log into an account and it just works wherever i was i was turned off by the lack of sort of like uh meaningful progression but the game is just so fun it is so like uh compelling that yeah and it's i think still in alpha beta it's it's not officially full released yet so i think that will happen this year um nobody saves the world i think this is like the first game of the year yeah justin take it yeah this was a really uh interesting uh it reminded me of like uh gosh okay so think sort of

from the perspective of zelda you're a sort of avatar, not the cool blue ones, just like a blank slate of a person who can take out enemies. And when you do, you are able to use their powers, basically. So you gain new abilities as you go through the game, which allows you to switch between. I mean, character classes isn't overstating it. abilities as as you go through the game which allows you to like switch between i mean character classes isn't like overstating it i mean each of the different roles that you take on has a different suite of powers and the more you use those powers so like uh i'm blanking on uh so there's like a mouse that can uh bite a bunch of times and is also small and can slip into smaller areas or the horse can gallop through obstacles and kick backwards if that's your thing and the more you use these forms like the more

powerful they get and you can upgrade them like the ones that you tend to use the most the more you upgrade them you'll unlock more stuff on the tree and more abilities and everything um i would say it kind of feels like if you were playing Diablo and you could just switch to whatever class you wanted basically at any given time, that's kind of what it feels like. And once you've significantly advanced them, you can start to cherry pick certain powers out of one form and use them in another form.

And that's really, I think think the most compelling part of it is trying to build like someone who's, all the different bonuses, the different attacks, the different strengths sort of synergize really well into something that's like really, really devastating and can just rip through a bunch of enemies at once. I don't think I had gotten to that point when we first discussed the game.

But when it came out on Switch, I played it a lot with Henry. And it's kind of a double-edged sword because once you are able to sort of like fully customize the classes in that way, which then you kind of have to do in order to progress, right? Because then you'll get an objective on the knight

that's like, use this mouse power on the knight in combination with et cetera, et cetera. I really liked it. And it was also the point where Henry kind of dropped off because it introduced a little bit too much mechanical complexity. But still, it's a great game, I think, to play with kids or in any kind of big group format. It gets really hectic and fun.

Yeah, it's a great game. Okay, so now we are entering the like deluge of all the triple a game triple a games for the year like just back to back to back we got pokemon legends arceus dying light 2 horizon forbidden west destiny to the witch queen elden ring kirby all in a row um which one do y'all want to start with? Why couldn't these have been spread out still? I'm still bitter about it. Yeah. It's hard to plan.

Why don't we go- I feel like I would have spent more time with, certainly not Elden Ring. That would not have been possible. But I think I probably would have done more Dying Light 2. I remember myself kind of enjoying that. I really wish- I was enjoying it.

Yeah, I really wish Dying Light 2 had come out, I don't know, like now. Guys, what's wrong with you? Just go back and play the fucking game. You don't need to play it right when it comes out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We did need to, if you'll recall, because we did episodes of this dumbass podcast.

Yeah, but we played it, and then you could just go back. There's so much to go back into just like wander blindly back into Dying Light 2. I had like 80 different hang gliders that are littered across the city. Also, Fresh, look at the list of games

that keep stretching on beyond that. When do we have time to go back to Dying Light 2? More games just keep coming. Well, now, realistically, because there's very little coming out. Yeah, their Commissar Freshstick is like, you may return to this game for

another episode, then maybe we can play it again, but you dictate all the games we play. I don't have to. You guys can jump in if you want. Let's Uprising. Okay, let's go. Pokemon Legends. Uprising, that's it. I'm in charge. Arceus. I think I like this game the most of everybody here. Is that right?

I think that is true. It'd be great if it wasn't for the reading, but the most of everybody here. Is that right? I think that is true. It'd be great if it wasn't for the reading, but the rest of it was very good. The what? The text. It was just a very slow, talky... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, this feels like the first version

of a series of Pokemon games that are going to rule and probably be the dominant form of Pokemon games. That'd be awesome. Yeah, I mean, it has that Assassin's Creed 1 vibe gonna rule and probably be the dominant form of pokemon games that'd be awesome yeah i mean it has that like assassin's creed one vibe where you're like yeah there's something here but it's like really rough um and yeah it's open world pokemon and you can throw pokeballs at pokemon that's all i want that is quite literally all i've wanted from a pokemon game from day one and i got it and if everything else in the game is kind of a mess, I'm okay with it because I got the thing I wanted. Then it

happens to be in like ancient Pokemon land, and you get like all this wild backstory of Pokemon. That's gravy. I mean, really charmed by this game. Speaking of games, I need to make time to go back and finish. This is probably the top of my list. And it feels much more attainable or doable to go back and play this game than to go back and play Dying Light 2, which I would love to throw to Hoops. You want to explain this game? Dying Light 2 is interesting. I actually like that one a lot more than I liked the original Dying Light. It is a absolutely massive

open world game. I mean, like, the scale of this thing is truly unfathomable. Especially, like, a very good distance into the game, you unlock the real open world, I think. Like, after many, many hours,

it continues to unfold before you. The ways of getting around the world are very interesting. You know, you got your hang gliders and stuff like that, which are very cool. Cool day-night variants to where you're like really running around having a lot of good Christian parkour fun during the sun times. And then at night, it's quite a bit scarier. If I had I mean I think in the end for me this one was like

part of the reason I don't return to it I think there was just a little too much cruft, a little too much many things to pick up, too many like sort of slightly hollow missions and narrative that didn't really seem to be going anywhere so it maybe could have been scaled back just a tiny bit but I thought it was a lot more fun and engaging than the than the first

one i really liked running out around the world and and unlocking the different abilities and stuff like that it also had some um i would say not completely baked but interesting ideas about like the way your story choices and if you align yourself with sort about like the way your story choices. And if you align yourself with sort of like the lawful group or the chaotic rebel group would impact the sort of park or stunt opportunities around, around the world. So you'd have like more, you know, rope traps with this group and more,

you know, ways to get around quickly with this other group. And that part was interesting. It does do that thing, though, where it's like, well, if you want the really cool ways to kill the zombies, you're going to have to be friends with the fascists. Yeah.

You know, like, you just gotta. Mid-maxing is really the only thing that makes sense, I will say, which removes sort of like the, it makes it a lot more binary, I think, than they probably wanted to. I think they might have updated it in a recent, I saw a news post about that where they've added the allowance to do other trees. Yeah, I mean, this is a game where I wish sometimes that games

had like a TV-style episodic release format. I know that's kind of weird because tv has moved away from that but like if they had released just that first open world that you were in and then like halfway through the year they're like okay great everybody's played that everybody's caught up here's the big open world that would rule and i know i know that like that's very much of people who talk about games professionally way of looking at things but i do think like there's so much out that like letting people enjoy something and then talk about it with their friends and talk about it with the community and then take a breather and then come back rather than i mean elden i think the back half of the

elden ring has a similar problem like i don't think that would hurt. I think that would actually help. It is interesting, this idea of, like, episodically, like, rather than episodically revealing narrative, episodically revealing, like, the geography. I mean... The scale. The scale. I mean, like, it's sort of an MMO model.

I mean, really, but without the year-long gap. I think that's what they're planning on doing with Halo Infinite, for what it's worth. Like, I think that's the long-term plan. I could be wrong, but... They should finish the end first. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. And then do some more stuff. Griffin, I wanted to talk to you about Olly Olly World, which came out on February 8th.

Fuck yeah. That's a great fucking game. That is a good game. I mean, it is not such a tremendous departure from the old Olly Olly games. I mean, the art, they changed the art style pretty dramatically. Okay, yes, the art style. I'm talking about sort of like mechanically,

structurally. Yeah. It is the same just like super flowy skateboarding with sort of minimal inputs that the series is kind of known for uh only with a uh how would you describe i mean it is it like self very like adventure time i think that style but in 3d yeah that's a fair way of putting it uh with a more sort of uh open not open world but a uh there is a bigger focus on

a story and setting uh there are like a bunch of objectives in each mission and they are genuinely like fun to try and hunt down and knock them all out uh maybe my favorite game soundtrack of the year so far amazing soundtrack super fucking fresh yeah uh and yeah i mean this is just another one of those games that i can play at any point at any time it feels like i think uh you know like realistic skate games like even skate or even the tony hawk games which aren't super realistic but have a basis in that can be a little intimidating for people and this feels like for the people that like skate culture and skate vibes this captures that really well without having to worry about like 3d camera and like you know hunting through a 3d map and stuff like that it's it's much more

direct it's also one of those games where you, the difficulty is determined by how hard you want to go with it, right? Like I am the sort that like has to complete all the objectives. And if you do that, it's quite a difficult game because it will take you, you know, a lot of tries to, you know,

ollie over all the birds on all the rails without hitting a single one of them and you get to the end and hit the last bird it's like well fuck and you get pants and you get new pants if you do that yeah uh but if you just play it you know trying to finish the levels and getting that that that good fresh vibe uh it it can do that for you too yeah um it's it's it is fantastic and i'm it is also i have loved both the ollie ollie games that came up before this and felt like nobody was really paying attention to them um and i hope that it makes me happy that ollie ollie world is like such an escalation in in quality and just in sort of fulfilling all the things that the past games have set out to do uh and that is that's always really exciting for a smaller somewhat new uh

you know series like this uh so i i can't recommend it enough i think it's fantastic um i think we can kind of zip through the rest for the first half of the first half of the year, because what we have left here is Horizon Forbidden West, which I know we do not talk a lot about on this show. But also, I don't know. Did anybody really vibe with this game? I like the environments and some of the story beats. I liked a lot. And I've liked the core gameplay a lot for a while but i think it did it's brutal because horizon the first game came out right around breath of the wild and horizon

the second game came out right around elden ring and that is just brutal i feel really bad for the death when it felt like it didn't learn its lesson from the first one which is like i mean it just feels so out of its time like it i mean it looks beautiful but it feels like just the most old-fashioned open world exactly like breath of the wild and elden ring are both big open world games that let you start doing fun shit and your own function like go in any direction you want like do do whatever you want any dumb thing you can think of go do it and that is uh revolutionary yeah for for for this genre and i feel the same way about horizon forbidden west that i did about zero dawn which is that like the moments of enjoyment that i get out of like

hunting a big dinosaur made of metal and doing sick dodge counters and all that stuff is interrupted by just unforgivably long chunks of dialogue and climbing up a big mountain going from climbing point to climbing point in a way that is just antithetical to fun. Yeah. Well, I just broke the land speed barrier varying from, I should go back and finish Horizon 2.

I don't need to play that again. I just went through the whole thing in my head listening to you talk about, especially I'm envisioning the the like scaling the wall and you push a button to see where you're supposed to push your character to yeah and holds for the thing it's like yeah yeah and then there's destiny to the witch queen which griffin i mean i put this on here because i felt like it was a fantastic expansion for i've played i think all the like big major expansions for all of destiny one and two uh and it is a sliding scale uh for like you know how successful it is at storytelling and introducing new uh mechanics and

weapon categories and shit like that and i think witch queen is like right up at the very top i think that it had like a pretty sick campaign with some pretty amazing like uh boss fights and introduced a lot of really cool stuff to the game but again came out three days before elden ring and so i finished that campaign in three days and they've had a lot of cool stuff since then and I'm stoked for the destiny community of which I was a member for a very long time but I have I have not gone back and dipped back into destiny 2 in a long time I have lots of my friends who I played with still are into it and are enjoying it but yeah I just want to put

it on here because it was a very ambitious uh expansion to destiny 2 and i think it succeeded uh just a whole bunch and then last for the first half of this episode elden ring we've done three episodes yeah we've done so much one thing i'm curious about has anybody gone back to like play it or replay it or anything like that i'm i'm slowly picking at it i don't know if i'll ever finish it but i'm slowly just kind of picking at it it holds up surprisingly well as a game that like i can play every other week or so and like still feel pretty good at it yeah once i beat it i i haven't uh gone back even though i keep wanting to because i'll see videos of like different builds and stuff like that. I know. But it feels like the sort of thing that I would return to either for DLC or like a couple years down the road when I could just do a fresh playthrough and really enjoy myself. That's it. Yeah, I put it on Steam Deck because I heard,

hey, it works really well on Steam Deck. And it sure does. And then I started playing it and got like, you know, an hour or so into my second playthrough and then went to do something else and saw that my play time on elden ring was 162 hours and i was like i don't actually want this right now that's a lot of time in a single year to uh you know put into this this video game that i've already beaten but it's really good though i'll tell you the one thing i will say about elden ring uh ahead of a lot of video game that i've already beaten but it's really good though i'll tell you the one thing i will say about elder ring uh ahead of a lot of other games that i've sunk a lot of time into i and this is something that i didn't realize until later uh now actually uh i don't

feel guilty about the amount of time i spent in elder ring i mean maybe in terms of like as a father it's a feeling but in but in terms of like, as a father, it's a failing, but in, but in terms of like, like, oh, I should have been playing other things or reading other things or doing other things with that free time. No, it's really rewarding. It is not junk food. It really does. It's all fucking filet.

Yeah, it is not junk food. It is paying you back for, for all of the time that you're sinking into it in a major way. Um, yeah, I, I imagine I imagine i will this is gonna be one of those games and this is true of like um especially the first dark souls because it's on switch i've gone back and replayed dark souls the first one like quite a bit uh and i think elden ring is going to sort of uh become the heir apparent to that throne of just the game that i replay on a annual basis yeah uh just to like try out all the different builds and you know different sort of quest lines that i didn't really seek out

the first time through um just just just the best still the still the best game of the year in in my mind uh best game of the year but there's a lot more to come, huh? That was a setup for going to the next segment. But you gotta say something about like, but first, time for Colgate. Colgate sponsors.

Okay, so that was a pretty packed first quarter, I guess it would be. And now we're diving into, that was even just the first two months. That was January and February. Just wild. The game I have put the most amount of hours into this year. By far, by far, Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I didn't know that you were so into it, Plant.

Well, my son is extremely into it. My son started playing video games, you know, Plant. Well, my son is extremely into it. My son started playing video games earlier, I don't know, not that long ago. Introduction point was PBS Kids, then Sonic the Hedgehog on iPad. Are they getting that Donkey Hody or those Daniel Tiger games?

I need to do that. It's mostly just been the PBS Kids. My kids get deep on the Daniel Tiger and they're learning not to punch me in the balls. I need to do that. It's mostly just been the PBS kids. My kids get deep on the Daniel Tiger, and they're learning not to punch me in the balls. Oh, that's cool. I love that song that he does. When you're gonna kick a grown-up in the balls,

take a second and punch the wall. Love that one. And it's weird, because it's like, Daniel, I don't want them to do that either. I guess it is better than them massacring my testicles, but the walls don't need to be punched either. There was a whole set. There was the one season where it was all different variations of that. Like, if you're going to spin kick your mom in the balls,

take second and answer her calls. Yeah. Because she's calling you. Is this for a 30 year old uh but but you're saying mosey's gotten oh yeah so i i was like man i really want to see if i can get him to play a switch game so i was like you know kirby is a fun game and he's like no it's not i was like well kirby is actually sonic's best friend oh no and he was like oh shit that is blasphemy has a best friend so for a long time it was i can't wait to play kirby sonic's best friend and then now now he he realized that actually

kirby and waddle dees are kind of best friends so he likes to go to the waddle dee town here's here's the thing about this game i play kir Kirby and the Forgotten Land, you know, before him. Kind of zipped through the first few worlds. I'm like, you know what? Cute. They did it. Nintendo, cute game. Kirby, you smash stuff.

You turn into things. Great. Next game. He plays it and just relishes every second of it. And I realize, hey, you know what? There's a lot more going on in this game than uh some old schmuck like me takes the time to appreciate uh like he goes has an adventure and after every level when he finally beats it and he saves his friends the waddle dees he needs to return to the

waddle dee town to see that they are happy in their new home. And then he goes and watches a movie at the movie theater. He goes to bed in the Kirby house and sleeps because Kirby has to nap after saving the world. He role-plays it in a way that I just would never have done. And it's so cool that Nintendo added all of those little details that allow a kid and their imagination to actually to role play as Kirby. Yeah. What a charmer. It also this was Kirby's whole deal from the start.

Right. From Dreamland on Game Boy on is they wanted to make like a platformer that was accessible to people who lacked some of the vocabulary for not just platformers but like games as a whole and i think that you know the the games have i think leaned too far in that direction from time to time uh specifically for me like i have not really gotten that deep into a kirby game god really since like the superstar like six in one pack on super nintendo uh but this game has stepped up henry's like interest in games and his ability to play games this is a 3d platformer and that is like you know a pretty big mechanical step up from any of the other games

he was playing which worried me but for one thing you hop in there with the with the spear waddle d and you can help out when things get a little bit thorny um but also just like it is approachable in a way that is great for kids and then it gets like it can get pretty mechanically like challenging yeah if you do like there is a there is a hell mode boss fight in this game that is super difficult and like beating that uh playing two player with my son is is maybe the most satisfying boss fight of the year. Sorry, Elden Ring. Radon is in second place right behind Chaos Elphalus. Man, it is fantastic.

We are still playing this game on a weekly basis. So yeah, good job, Kirby. I would encourage you, if you played it, and you're like oh this is cute to stick it out and then just like see how deep into the like uh you know phantom worlds and challenge modes and all the shit that you can do in this kirby's powers get hilarious yes kirby becomes like the bringer of death yeah and there's there's a uh i think i've talked about this on the show before but there is a bayonetta style like which time slow down thing that you can do

if you dodge and attack at the right moment which you have to utilize constantly in order to like beat some of the like boss rush super challenge modes that is so satisfying it's so mechanically satisfying in a fucking kirby game like it that is not something i'm used to i think this is the best kirby game of all time and i i am in love with it it is spectacular um another oh my god excellent game tunic tunic is tunic uh which was the adorable isometric zelda-like fox game that gives you basically no guidance whatsoever and no instruction manual and you slowly piece together how the game works as you explore the game uh given the fact that we have to play a lot of games and we're all busy and you know they're kids and there's stuff to do it is

very very rare that i play games and if i'm stuck for more than like five or ten minutes i won't just look up a thing and tunic i picked as a game one of the few games where i would just going to beat it without looking anything up and i filled a notebook of notes and like theories and runes shapes and shit like that. And piecing that game together was so satisfying and amazing. And, um, I really, I was just opening the notebook cause I've,

I've been using the notebook for outer wilds and I was looking through it and it like brings me a lot of joy to look back at that. And it's incredibly well crafted. And so if you have the patience, uh, do yourself a favor and just sort of try to figure it out for yourself. It'll be very, very cool. I talk a lot when I talk about games

about the idea of the hand of the creator, like being able to feel the presence of the person who made the game with every choice being like a deliberate one, like that sense that no matter what you do it's something that was anticipated and intended and i and there's a real level of trust there because if you don't have that sense you start to feel like well i what am i supposed to be doing here what do you want me to be doing what did you anticipate me to be doing and is it a waste of my time to

follow this this you know particular red herring. And I think that this, this game more than so many others I've played, everything's intentional. Like you, every single, I mean, to the point where I mean like every frame of this game that you can look at is like,

it means something like there is a, that is deliberately placed. Every pixel of this game is deliberately placed for you to, to experience it. And that is, it's really stunning. I, I will say,

but my one thing with it is that it is so, um, it has a lot of sort of Fez DNA where it's, it is, uh, because the game doesn't explain itself and it's up to you to kind of unravel it. I feel like I would need to start

over yeah you probably would like definitely to to get back into it it's not a long game i think it's like eight to ten hours but i will do that yeah because i i love great i want to play play more of it but uh it's it is a little bit daunting knowing that i'm gonna need to probably just pick it up from the start what what is cool i I would say this real quick, is that it is designed— A million dollars. Nope, that's not cool. What? A billion dollars.

A billion dollars. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. I would say it is designed, if you know stuff already, even if you think you forgot it, chances are as you start playing it, you'll remember. Yeah, sure. And there's no, like, you just start doing that thing. It's like Outer Wilds in that way

where you can, you know, Metroid Brainy is the genre as coined by Nick Sutner. That's great. But, you know. Metroid Brainy, that's great. They did a new Star Wars game too, right? Yeah.

I mean, pretty good year for games you can play with your kids. Yeah. Nobody Saves the World, Kirby, and this new Star yeah. Nobody saves the world. Kirby and this new Star Wars, those are good hangs. Yeah, I know. There's not a ton to say about it. It's real good.

It feels like playing Star Wars. I will complain about that. I will say that there should be multiple Princess Leia's. That would make my mornings a lot easier if I didn't have to navigate that. There's Bo-Katan. My daughter's every day. Bo-Katan. Never mind. It's a star wars character that's also you know are you talking about kit fisto okay anyway it's a great game yeah fresh teardown teardown uh teardown 1.0 came out in april of

2022 it's been in early access forever i didn't pick it up until it went to 1.0 really i played a little bit in early access but earnestly started playing it on steam deck and basically the last like three weeks of my life whenever i had some free time i was playing teardown on steam deck such an amazing satisfying like non-linear open thought kind of game where you're knocking shit down and but like with purpose so if you have only like three bombs and you need to like take this wall down how are you going to do it in such a way that it doesn't destroy the car that you're trying to steal behind that wall those sorts of like logic puzzles um man this game is so fucking good i i just adored it and

i hope more people play it because there are just not that many games about like physics destruction that also have like a purpose behind them a la red faction gorilla did this just come out this year oh it went 1.0 this year 1.0 right yeah okay yeah yeah and 1.0 added or i think they added like a whole second half to the campaign they added a bunch of features and so it's it's in a really good shape right now yeah stanley parable ultra deluxe uh i i i really like this game uh the first stanley parable came out you know like what almost a decade ago is that right a long time ago and it is a you know what is it walking simulator that serves as a piece of criticism of game design at that point and i i like that game a lot i find it is quite

cynical and maybe even a little bitter um and its criticism is largely pointing at the artifice and mechanisms that like exist to just get a game shipped like oh they're ticking time clocks or whatever to to get you to go do a thing thing. We're pulling back the curtain and you're seeing how a game works and isn't that silly? I also think it's just kind of a little depressive. There's some sensitive stuff in there dealing with

self-harm that I'm not a fan of. Ultra Deluxe feels like what happens when somebody who has gotten older and has had more experience with the world and has had time to like assess their own creations and their own success makes a game about that so ultra deluxe feels like a work of criticism about their own game and like the community around it and the criticism around it and like why why it should or

shouldn't exist and it rules i think it's a deeply positive and um empathic and intelligent game i think it's honestly quite smarter than than the original stanley parable there there is an extended sequence where you walk through an environment reading steam reviews of the first game it's yeah it's fucking it's hysterical and brilliant and i i it it left a huge impression on me chris i'm gonna chris i'm gonna hit you've inspired me i'm gonna hit you with a big uh big idea you ready stanley parable ultra deluxe is to stanley parable as god of war is the god of war oh see i thought you were gonna say stanley parable ultra lux is to stanley parable what near automata is to near

uh not i mean not that far off i i really that it's it's a great point though and it is you know what's i i was thinking about this is what this is the sort of game that Portal 3 would need to be if they made another you know like it is so in conversation with itself and like you hear the expression in the arts

a lot about like kill your little darlings like this game takes like anything that was memetic about the first Stanley Parable and, like, you watch them disassemble with their bare hands. Like, it is really uncanny and I think pretty, honestly, kind of bold in a weird sort of way. Like, to return to something like that and, like, really look at it straight in the face. I don't know. And it's, you know, it's not just like a chin stroker.

I mean, it's pretty funny and there's some good gags and good gameplay stuff, but not gameplay stuff, but you know what I mean? Clever, clever, clever things. Rogue Legacy 2. They did it. Fuck yeah, baby. They did it.

I think I got to new game plus six on this one. So just great great just fantastic i and what a huge turnaround because i did not like the i think alpha or beta or whatever that we talked about was it last year or yeah last year earlier this year um it's it's fantastic years ago i'm sorry it was two years ago you're kidding it It was 2020. That is wild. Yeah, it's come a long way, baby. So it's got all the Rogue Legacy stuff. It's a Metroidvania action platformer that has a sort of strong roguelite lineage about it,

where you go through these runs collecting resources, and then you spend those to buy permanent upgrades for all your characters, and unlock new classes, and unlock new armor, and unlock new gems that allow you to, you know, siphon life from your enemies, or get an extra double jump, or whatever. It has so much of that stuff, so much of that stuff. And playing the game and exploring the, you know, the environments and trying to, you know, make progress and beat the bosses, like all that is so good. But so many of my runs were not about that as much as they were about like, I'm going to get as much fucking money as i can get my hands on and i am going to uh you know try and create a build that can beat some of these um you know special chest room challenges and there's just so much to do and

then when you beat the game the the way that it handles new game plus is so brilliant where you get to basically customize where the difficulty increases um and and then you sort of like build your own new game plus out of that and it's not just hey things are harder like there is new armor and abilities and stuff to unlock in the higher tiers of the game like it really is built around you continuing to play it after the credits roll and it i i man i'm not playing it so much anymore but for maybe a month uh the first month that i had the steam deck it was non-stop uh it's it's amazing it's a very very good game uh My personal game of the year so far, Citizen Sleeper. Did anybody else end up making time to play this?

I will, but I have not yet. I'm so intrigued by it. A game like this is kind of a hard sell for me, I feel like, in that it looks like a slow burn. Is that accurate, or is it in my office? I i mean it's slow in that you have to read so like there's that part um but yeah i mean the way it works is it is a story game it is i don't know kind of like a tabletop game and that you roll dice and then you use those dice to make decisions so like having a six means that a decision you make will definitely work out.

Having a three means, hey, kind of a coin toss. Having one means it probably won't work out and it will actually hurt you. Do you want to use that coin? Maybe there are other ways you could use that die to get something else accomplished. It doesn't matter. There's no risk. But the whole game takes place on a space station you are a effectively somebody's consciousness has been downloaded

into you and you are being used for like forced labor and you have escaped your facility and you are on this station kind of hiding out and it's about you trying to make a life for yourself. And you at the beginning have nothing going for you. I mean, you have no money, you have no shelter, it is, it feels really, really, really challenging. And that's why I would say it's not really a slow burn. Because at the beginning, it just feels like a miracle that you are staying alive from day to day. But what makes this game really special to me is there are no bad choices. It can feel, I would worry about people playing it and feeling a lot of pressure of, oh, am I making the right choice?

Am I going to lose? You know, am I going to have to replay a story game? And the answer is no. The writing on it wants you to have a beautiful experience. And I think it has a very, I don't want to say optimistic view of the world because it's a really grim borderline dystopia that it's set in. But it has a lot of faith in you as like the player. So it's always kind of giving you the benefit of the doubt and the decisions you're making, even when you make decisions that are kind of ugly, to survive it, it's compassionate to why you have to make that decision. An example of that would be like,

you have, you know, caught somebody and you need to turn them in and you could either like, let them go free and you would have no money and barely be able to eat or you could like take the bounty um and like kind of suck up your pride and then you're in like good condition and if you take the bounty the game gets it like it gets why you need to live um and why you loving to see another day is like kind of monumental for all the other people who rely on you. So yeah, I just think it's a profoundly beautiful game. I really I'm going to force y'all to check it out before the end of the year because I think y'all will like it a lot and it runs great on Steam Deck. I just want to say a quick piece about V Rising it's

a survival game where you're a vampire and it's fun to live in a little vampire community with other vampires that are just trying to build up their keep and get out there and make their way in the world by recruiting that's the word I use

humans to serve you in your vampire castle and recruiting horses that you that can live with you and um you get lots of resources and stuff and uh the difficulty is kind of uneven it's still in early access i look at the um i just put a uh link to reddit in the um uh bessie's room there's a new mod uh that they've been working on but i think it's in a pretty polished state at this point um where it's a first and third person uh mod where you can zoom all the way in to like just be the vampire that is doing the the stuff it looks like the legacy of of came game i'll never get but um

i i kept with it not everybody did it didn't click for everybody uh but like it's a very i would say it's like pretty chill if you don't get hung up on the difficulty curve stuff not hung up on advancing just hung up on like like our friend mckay who who works with this, she's very into design and she has like this incredible, incredible castle that she has worked very hard on. And if that's your kind of vibe, then I think it's a really neat game. This video you have sent us is just this person massacring horses, which like,

I guess, I mean, you got to know your brand, I guess. Yeah. Right. Who put in a hard space, hard space ship breaker. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I did. I mean, you gotta know your brand, I guess. Yeah, right. Who put in Hardspace Shipbreaker? Oh, sorry, yeah, I did.

I mean... What? Chris Plant? Did you all play this game? I haven't had a chance. I played it pretty early. It was not quite done. I think I played this one too early. It wasn't quite done baking, I think, when I checked it out.

Yeah, I mean, I think you would like this a lot, having, like, Teardown. This is a game where you checked it out. Yeah, I mean, I think you would like this a lot, having to tear down. This is a game where you just break stuff. You are in space, and you, I mean, this isn't sleeper-esque, in that you are in just tremendous debt to a corporation, and you pay that debt off by breaking down old ships and junking them for parts. But the fun of it is that's extremely dangerous to do. Like there are explosive parts of ships.

You know, you can cause the ship to collapse on you. So the fun of the game is figuring out, well, how am I going to break this down without killing myself by accident? It's great. The story is great. It has like a very cool folksy soundtrack um and yeah yeah the only thing that i was a little concerned about and i can't confirm if this is a problem or not is motion sickness because a lot of it takes place in zero g and those sometimes set me off

i don't think it will because it has a lot of points of reference yeah yeah points of reference yeah you're surrounded by a giant ship can help yeah so that's good to know i'll definitely give it a shot it's been on my in the back of my head as a shortlist game to play but i haven't had a chance yet cool team and tea time cowabunga dude i mean one of the best beat-em-ups ever made probably good good ass beat-em-up just just fantastic we have talked about this fairly recently though it's a very good it's a very good beat-em-up and and talk about a kind of a bumper crop of games to play with younger kids yeah this is another great example i mean a game where you can high five and give your kids some of your health. Like, come on.

If only that could happen. Metaphorical for my entire existence. Just high fiving away my life force. We also just talked about Neon White, which I know. Justin, have you gotten into that? I know three of them. Yeah, man. Remember, I was like boasting about my.

Oh, yeah. I love that game. That's a great game. Like that's you know what I like boasting about my story. I love that game. That's a great game. You know what I like about it? Ten minutes. You got ten minutes? Get in and have a lot of fun and then get out. It's not like that demanding. It's a very chill

thing. This is my honorable mentions for this week because it's all I have been playing, but I just finished it and I'm proud to say I aced every single level. Wow. I aced every single level. Wow, look at Griffin. I aced every level, got every present. I devoured this game. It's a goatee contender for me, for sure. I knew that would be up your alley.

Yeah, yeah. Good call, everyone. Last game, AI The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative, which everybody's been playing. Now, just going by the title, who added this one? Oops, this wasn't you? I mean, why are you talking about it? I don't know who added it. There's nothing about clicking in the title. I don one uh i whoops this wasn't you i don't know who there's nothing about clicking in the title i don't think it was me uh i like that somnium files implies sleepiness

uh oh sure i mean that this game might do that two-thirds of the way through the title uh it is a sequel to the original the ai ai the somnium files and it is uh the latest game from uh oh my gosh griffin the the developer that you like they make all the the spike chunsoft well i mean yes but also the team made uh zero escape um and it is spike chunso yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i've just tried i think it's the director's name team i downloaded the first one onto my steam deck to play while i'm while i'm traveling because i once i found out that it was by the same dude who did zero escape i was obviously right right on board nice um yeah it's just a good mystery detective visual novel um could you just watch it probably i i would say

that it is interactive in the you know just enough sense to sell it on a video game store um but that said i'm really enjoying it i it has just killer art design uh the story is parsable i can follow it which is nice and i think it has some really clever ideas i read um oh emily saint john mandel the the she wrote um station 11 what she she wrote another book that came out this year that I just read, Sea of Tranquility. And it is kind of exploring the simulation theory. And it's okay, not my favorite. This game is also exploring the simulation theory. And weirdly, I think has more interesting ideas. Is it written with as much grace as a novel?

No. Is there some awkward fan service? Yes. Am I having fun also yes i think that's basically it do you have any suggestions from uh people that we uh of games we might have missed they're very quick uh sorel uh said i think 20 minutes till dawn kind of flew under the radar it's a more active take on vampire survivors and it's delightful i checked that out on the steam page and it does look quite good um cameron said slay the spire downfall is now my second favorite deck builder of all time behind monster train is that but above the original slay the spire it is a truly an equivalent quality expansion but it's fan made

entirely free and adds seven characters an entire new mode wow yeah wait it's fan made is that holy shit fan made mod uh expansion to slay the fire people are gaga about this on steam uh okay well that's my afternoon i gotta go actually right now uh and bye everybody bye emily uh recommended paparazzi a great and quick feel good game for when you need a break from the world of humans the game was constantly putting a smile on my face it is as the title implies a puppy paparazzi game uh and then honorable mentions really quick fresh you're back on the outerer Wilds. I am playing Outer Wilds, the main game for the first time ever on Steam Deck. It's tremendous.

I'm extremely close to beating it without looking anything up. It's been as satisfying as Tunic was. So don't spoil it if you see me on Twitter, but hopefully I'll be able to report back next week and say that I actually beat it. I downloaded. I'm so excited. Yeah, I downloaded the Capcom Fighting Collection, which has a bunch of Darkstalkers

games on it and some other kind of forgotten arcade games, but it also has Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo Edition. And wow, does that game rule. Very cool to open an old puzzle game and then immediately kind of have your

reflexes back in it. And beating that with Sakura felt great. Not gonna lie, felt pretty great. This is very... I mean, you know if you want a game like this, but the creators of You Must Build a Boat and

some of those other joints, you know the ones, they made an infinite clicker. I think called Infinite Island. Is that Luca Redwood? Is that his name? It's 88 Games Limited is the creator of this. But they are back with, instead of, you know, it is a relaxing game where you collect pets and go between islands and get

gifts for your pets. And it's a iOS. Oh yes. It's a, it's right there for you whenever you need it. Uh, fresh. Do we have people we want to thank?

Yes. Thank you to following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcast, Tanner, Tramer, gold, beep, boop, bop, one, one, one one one paul likes music james zha and mozart's goats thank you for writing reviews on apple podcasts and thank you to everyone else who has written reviews and spread the word

about the show we really greatly appreciate it and to recap the games i'm gonna do y'all a solid we're not going to name every game that we talked about this episode. They will be in the episode notes. So just swipe over to the episode notes while you're listening to this. Wait, I have to write those. You're putting all the work on me. Oh, no. Copy-paste.

Just copy-paste it from our doc. That's good. I didn't even think about that. That's good. And then next week we got something that we can't tell you about yet but it's going to be great yes true oh boy wait

just wait just wait that's going to do it for this week until next time be sure to join us again next week for the besties because you're the world's best friends with the world's best games. Besties!