The Besties - Game of the Year Part 2

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

Time to decide the best video game of 2019. We've tabulated our votes, and we're even including a surprise bracket, as voted on by the fans. Here we go, folks. It's all led to this.The full list of contenders in this year's GOTY special include: Round 1 - A Short HikeWhat the GolfHypnospace OutlawOuter Wilds (Part 1 winner)Round 2 - Outer WorldsLuigi's Mansion (Part 1 winner)Astral ChainPokémon Sword and Shield Round 3 - ControlBaba is YouSekiroDisco Elysium 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!

any predictions for the jeff keighley presents the 2019 video game awards on spike tv i do actually so i've been expecting this for a while and i think now is probably the best time to introduce a new monster flavor like oh like what better time than jeff keighley presents the game awards in 2019 so you think kojima's whipped up something in the lab kojima and the boys i think it's probably blue blast i think that's what people are mostly expecting, but it really could go another way. Yeah, Green Grime has overstayed its welcome. I think it's time for Blue Blast,

the new Monster Energy flavor from Hideo Kojima and the boys in the lab. Wait, have you guys not tried Orange Oops? Orange Oops is banned actually in America. So the import tariffs on Orange Oops are sort of out of this world. I don't even think these are real flavors. God, Justin, play with us in the space, dude.

You never want to play. You always have to be Mr. Reasonable. I think somebody needs a cup of Red Ralph. Okay, we're done. My name is Justin McElroy, and it's all come down to this. My name is Griffin McElroy, and now is the final hour. My name is Christopher McElroy. Now is the final hour. My name is Christopher Plant, and I am the chosen one. My name is Russ Froschig, and I know the best game of the week.

Sorry. Magic is back. Welcome to the Besties, a video game book club, all year long, game of the year, king of the hill contest. We are continuing to break our traditional

book club format traditional being the three episodes we did before we did this one uh this is our game of the year wrap up part one is already in your feeds for you to enjoy we have now uh found ourselves in uh part two the final chapter so I'm excited to get started. We've introduced ourselves. We've introduced the concept. Let's talk about how things went last time, Russ. Yeah, absolutely. So last time we had two rounds of four games. And of those rounds, we found two winners, one for each round. The winner was outer wilds which i'm pretty sure i picked the right outer game in this case it's outer wilds which is the uh indie made uh space game that made me nauseous but is also very good apparently uh the other winner was luigi's mansion

three made by the venerable folks at nintendo and I am just vamping until Justin sits back in his chair. Sorry, my cat was trying to get into my office. Totally reasonable. You know, you almost didn't need to say that. Trying to bring the authenticity to the show. Almost anyone else could have spoken. There's four people on the show. I think we're trying to color the world that we live in

inside of the Besties universe. Now we know that there's a cat, and that's it. And that's it. That's all the ancillary characters. That's all of the characters that will ever be on the Besties other than the four of us and my unnamed cat, CJ.

So, let's tear into it. Oh, I have a special bonus treat that I cooked up for you guys. We had our listener emails section, and we're going to do those as a up for you guys. We had our listener emails section, and we're going to do those as a wild card lightning round. I'm ready. Can I tell you about my game first? Is that okay?

Yeah. Because here's the thing about my game, is I'm not going to do a great job explaining it, but if I go first, if I go first, then it won't be as embarrassing as if I go after everybody else. My game is called Baba is You. And I'll be honest with you.

I didn't catch the pun. You play as a sheep. So Baba is also you. E-W-E. Yeah? Oh. It only gets up from here. Yeah, this doesn't make me want to name it Game of the Year anymore.

Okay. So here's how it works. Picture an old-fashioned Atari video game, right, where it's just one static screen, like E.T. on the Atari, 2D, few colors. And on the screen, there are rules, like move E.T. up to collect skittles what are you like skittles reese's pieces right so move et up to get reese's pieces the game looks visually like that with the rules on the screen but where it is different is all the very simple tasks that you need to do cannot actually be done at the beginning of each stage you have have to use baba, the you,

to move the words around the screen to reconfigure the rules. So if baba is you, that'll be written on the screen, and flag is when, and you need to get to the flag, you could just swap baba is flag is when, and then you just win by existing

because baba is the flag and baba wins because flag is win. And then you just win by existing because Baba is the flag and Baba wins because flag is win. Yeah, it's kind of like if you guys played Reader Rabbit. There's a Reader Rabbit game where you would basically you'd have a blank in the sentence and it would be like, Reader Rabbit blank the barn. And you could put whatever you wanted in there, really. Like there was really no telling so like if you said like reader rabbit jumps off the barn dog would jump off the barn

but instead it's Bob is it a dog or a rabbit? it was dog like D-A-W-G yeah he's putting some Randy Jackson a little bit of that Randy Jackson flavor kind of a it's almost a programming game in a weird sort of way like it it's it's

bringing in like extremely basic game design into the the levels it feels like well until it became incredibly incredibly complex like programming which it does uh i adored this game but boy howdy did it like i think jump the shark difficulty wise like really fast yeah i would almost say that there are two games there's like the first 50 stages which are fun and i think the very traditional sense that everybody will enjoy it hey it's subverting how rules work in video games you can bend the game and then the rest of the game is about learning the actual language of the game and figuring out how to like use wordplay to break the game. So getting things to turn into two things at once, but then splitting them into

two new objects. There are literally puzzles in the back half of the game where stuff that you need to win are not there. And you have to kind of create verbal alchemy to create things to finish those stages. And I'll be honest, here's how I enjoyed them, watching them on YouTube with very, very, very intelligent people talking me through their solutions. I do feel like I like it conceptually and spiritually. And I think I've talked a little bit about this somewhere I don't know if it was on this show but certainly somewhere it did make me feel dumb

like multiple number of times and granted that might be an accurate portrayal of me but it made me feel dumb but the other thing that I like even though I like it spiritually and I like what it's doing I also really hate Sakoban games, which effectively it is a box pushing

game. Slide puzzles is a way to put it. It's like a slide puzzle. Yeah, Sakoban is like the nerdy way to say that. And they just like, I know what it wants me to do. I know that I need to get the word and over to the left side of the

screen. But to do that, I have to like, I hate slide puzzles. And I don't know, I felt like that took a little bit of the charm, even though I appreciate the need for it. It just kind of took a little bit of the charm away from it. And also the fact that like, okay, I worked really hard to get this word over there. And now it's not quite doing what I think it should be doing, which granted has to do with what Plant was talking about which is like learning the language of it yeah that's that's that's kind of where it lost me is like when everything sort of did what it said on the tin right like wall is stop if you move stop out of that sentence structure now you

can walk through walls because it doesn't stop you like trying to figure out the sort of physical nature of the world to make, to break those rules or to create the rules that you need. Like I loved that. And I could spend all day playing that. It's when they introduce thing like a thing like the teleport pad, right? And now there's this teleport pad and it has its own rules. Or now there's this new interaction of this is hot and this is melt. Or this is sink and this is melt or this is sink and this is this

is stop and if you push a stop over a sink then it fills it in so they both get destroyed there's certain things that aren't especially intuitive that then like it feels like you're not just trying to solve the these like physical slide logic puzzles you're also like having to like figure out how all of these interactions work and that was like a a third layer of like logic puzzling that didn't feel especially fair and and i was not really willing to put in the time to to crack it yeah i think it's we'll talk a little bit about goose game later but like i think it it shows really well and is like an amazing trailer. And I think a lot of the puzzles are genuinely like satisfying and really cool to play. But it also, I think, after a while can be rough.

I do think for what it's worth, Switch is like the best platform for it because it's the sort of game that you can just like crack away at a puzzle while you're watching Netflix or something like that or on the subway. And it like really fits well for this style of game I also do encourage people to just watch it I mean this is like I think kind of my new refrain and maybe this is just me getting old but I think there is a value in appreciating games that aren't for you or that kind of go past what you want to invest in them because I think that's a big thing with this game, right? It's not necessarily that I think the design is poor. I think that it just becomes a different

thing that doesn't appeal to me as much. But watching people break through it, I mean, I actually love the game more having watched the later levels with like really great explanations of how they work. I'm ready to talk about a different video game. Tell me all about it.

I didn't like Boba's. There's my contribution. Anyway, I don't know why. I don't have an explanation. I didn't think critically about it too much. I've got a lot of kids. My game that I'd like to talk about is one that was kind of a late... This is the amazing story. I thought that this game was on our

Game of the Year list, so I played it to completion before I realized that it was not in fact on our game of the year list. So I decided that I would rectify that. A great shame. Disco Elysium is a CRPG to use a very meaningless genre descriptor. I've heard that applied to computer RPG and classic RPG. Oh,

both. I think at this point it's probably classic. Classic feels like more applicable. It was originally computer, but yeah. That just means you're walking around the world. You're a hard-boiled detective who has lost his memory and is assigned a partner to help you solve a murder in sort of a rundown shantytown. I guess you could say there's a labor conflict going on between dock workers and the dock owners that you have to try to navigate. There is the question of your missing memory that you have to sort of unfold.

And there's all manner of people with like their own individual problems that they need you to help solve very like structurally like pretty standard crpg stuff the thing that sets this game apart for me for one it's really really well written it's really it's really well written it plays with the fact that it's a video game a lot. I'm not going to like repeat funny lines here or whatever, but like trust that it is like, it is a game that allows you to be a sort of an unhinged person who says like really bizarre stuff and it leans into it and has accounted for you behaving in that way. In fact, as you, well, let me back up a little bit. There is a bunch of characters in this world that you interact with, but there are also just as many characters that are inside your head and they're

sort of impulses or parts of the psyche that are represented as individual characters, right? So there's one character called, I say character, but one impulse called electrochemistry that is about your need for and knowledge of like drugs and other substances. So when you encounter drugs in the world, electrochemistry will pop up sort of in your own head, in your dialogue, saying like, hey, actually, that would be amazing. Let's get some of that. Let's do that. And if you're higher in your electrochemistry skill, more dialogue options will become available to you and sort of like help to guide conversations, right? There's a skill called suggestion, right? Or empathy. And those voices will pop up when you're mid-conversation to say conversations right like there's a skill called like uh suggestion right or empathy and those voices will pop up when you're mid-conversation to say things like hey don't push this too hard they're close they're gonna break if you push this or try pushing on that try digging deeper

but those voices are like on constant skill checks yeah so whether or not you get that little bit of feedback or guidance is dependent on how high your skills are in that particular area. And the game actually does a dice roll, which is cute. Like, I like that a lot that you actually need to like roll a 2D6 and it needs to be over 14 or whatever. Justin mentioned this. It's like the skill check resolution is constant. check resolution is constant. The like way it is interpreted in game world is so fascinating because you'll see like all of your, I forget the exact like color coordination, but like all of your green skills are your motorics skills, which is like your hand-eye coordination. And so like,

if you see a green circle on some shelf and you click it, like that is some, you know, usually trivial like thing that you saw sitting on that shelf only because you're like noticing shit skill was up high enough yeah it's constant or you'll have like a little yellow circle above your head because like your brain just pieced something together and that might not be true if your intellect skills like weren't quite as as high so one one kind of big point though this game i think it sounds amazing and sounds like skills like weren't quite as as high so one one kind of big point though this game i think it sounds amazing and sounds like honestly like kind of the future of role-playing games but on the flip side it does sound like you have to read a lot and like books dude i i almost bailed on this

game because i i will say biggest like fault that this game has is and i'm not this is not a joke right okay very quick sidebar i personally as a and i and i would apply this to a lot of visual novels though not all visual novels i personally don't think interactive media is the best place for huge piles of text i feel like if if I'm into an interactive experience, that kind of shoves me away a little bit and forces me into a more observer position. And I don't feel like huge piles of text are best suited to an interactive experience

where I want to be influencing and impacting it. There are, like, politics is a big part of this game and racism. And there's a lot of characters that will go on fairly long tangents about their political views. And you just kind of have to get through it. And I was kind of role-playing, I guess I decided to role play as a character that was only sort of half listening when people talked.

That was kind of my whole style. I will say it accounts for that. It sort of half listening when people talked. That was kind of my whole style. I will say it accounts for that. It sort of allows for it, but especially early on when you're not super invested, you're meeting like a lot of characters. And I got to this point where I was like, please don't let me meet anybody else. Please, for the love of God, I can't take on anymore.

I think that's a barrier you have to push through i do want to mention and so we haven't really talked about this but as far as as much as i played there's like no combat in the game well is there i certainly haven't hit like a you know now time stops roll for initiative thing but there is you know you have a physique skill there can be punching and shooting there's not a combat system per se but there are skill checks right to beat someone in combat right if say you want to like deck someone you need a certain like role the way i look at disco elysium and why i think i agree with plant with it being kind of the future of role-playing games is that it removes the weird dissonance between your role playing as a character, but also you're this dude running around with 50 guns,

slaughtering an entire village of monsters, whatever. It feels like you're playing the non-combat portions of an actual D&D game, which I really do not recall ever seeing in a video game before in this way and as consistent as it is, which I think is really it's in it but it really has i don't want people to confuse it with like one of the more experiential games that you just sort of observe it's not like that the ones that people sort of jokingly call a walking simulator it's not that it's just the mechanics are built around the actual role-playing part of it i want to talk about one other thing because just because i think it's like really really interesting there's this thing in the game called the thought cabinet

yeah and this might have scared me away when i opened the thought cabinet like so cool if i if i explain the idea to you it will it does not do a great job of explaining it but what they basically are perks to use a gameplay term there are perks that that, well, I'll give you an example. You'll encounter ideas in the world, thoughts. If you decide to sort of like engage with those thoughts, there's a certain period of time where you choose internalize and there's a certain period of game time that will pass where you'll be thinking about this thought that you encountered, right? thinking about this thought that you encountered, right? Once it's done, once you're done thinking about it, it turns into something you've internalized, basically a perk that will grant you a plus to this skill and or a minus to this skill. In some case, there's one called like

actual art degree. If you talk to people about art a lot, eventually that option will come up and you'll think about like, did I have an art degree at the end of it you yeah i did so that's like and it's like a perk that you will continue to have there's um uh one uh what was the one that was uh about you being a uh like a really great cop like a rock star super cop, some kind of superstar. That's what it's called. If you, if you refer to yourself enough as like a hot shot, badass super cop, eventually you will get the thought in your head that you are a super cop. And what it does,

if you finish the thought, it lowers your logic skill one, but raises the caps for all your other skills because you've internalized the idea that you're an astounding cop and you have like more, you can become a communist that will open up. Like if you say communist stuff a lot, it'll open up the thought that you're, maybe you're a, a super communist. And then you'll like, not only can you develop that skill you will find dialogue

options or people are like all right buddy that's a bit much for me yeah like you can steer every discussion towards communism to a point where people get upset with you it's like really really really impressive a little bit like hard to get into but like well well worth it i thought it was just fascinating yeah it's a cool game we should move on to a new one right yes i can do mine go for it this was my favorite game of the year by a pretty enormous margin i beat it like six times i've never like gone so hard on new game plus shit as i did with sekiro shadows From, Activision, and their great games department that brought you Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation 1. Most notably, it's a From Software game.

They make the Dark Souls. You know them. You love them. Sekiro, From Software is probably my favorite active game developer today just because every single one of their games since Demon's Souls, like, I have been, like, all in on. And I was really worried about Sekiro before it came

out because there were a few things about it that seemed like they were kind of a departure, namely that, like, it was peeling away a lot of the RPG stuff that existed in Dark Souls and Bloodborne. It's not necessarily all about creating these very specific character builds. There's not a character creator at all. So it's not like, oh, well, I specced in pyromancy and dexterity weapons, and that's how I play the game, and it determines. And there's certain builds like, oh, if I go with a magic build, then it'll be easier for me to hang back and sort of pick off bosses and wait for them to die. Segarro is a very much like a character action game, structurally speaking. It still has this old stuff of, you know, bonfires you rest at and

enemies respawn and et cetera, et cetera. But like it has a control set and that's how you're going to play it. You play as the wolf. He's got, you know, a katana and he's got a prosthetic arm that you can load with different tools and he's got a prosthetic arm that you can load with different tools and he's got a grappling hook and so it's not like there's a lot of other stuff there's not a lot of like opportunities for for exploits against like anything there's no sort of cheap way to play the game i think that's why as many people bounced off it that's why i bounced off of it yeah because in in uh you know dark souls 3 you hit a boss and you get stomped on you can leave and go grind levels and go find some weapon and grind that up until

that's powerful and then you can go in with a team of three real life people like helping you out sekiro is just like yep you're gonna fight this boss again, and you're gonna do it, and do it, and do it, and do it, until you crack the case, and that is, in some ways, like, it makes it the most punishing game they've ever made, in other ways, like, they do have this mechanic, the eponymous mechanic, where once you die, you can resurrect once, and, you know, get a leg up, but that has its own inherent risks, because if you resurrect too many times then people in the world start getting sick there's there's all this different stuff the reason why it's my game of the year the reason i went back to playing it as many times as as i did and i say this very confidently trophies trophies baby it is the best way sword fighting has ever been interpreted in a video game. It is just fighting the most basic dudes

in this game feels so, so, so good. Fighting bosses, like whether it is a big, big, big ape, uh, who is a real asshole or just like, you know, another like samurai that you just have to, you know, duel with on top of, you know, a temple roof somewhere. It's thrilling and so, so challenging. The thing that they sort of like settled in on is you have a posture meter in addition to your health meter. And once your posture meter is like, you know, filled up, then you leave yourself open for a death blow. So it's all about like, you can go in and try and do the Dark Souls thing of just like blocking and dodging and waiting for your opening and getting in there and getting in

a couple hits before you dodge out. But if you do that, their posture meter is never going to dip down to a point where you can get the death blow. This game, like it very much punishes the patient approach. You have to always be engaged in the battle in there, swinging to break their posture, as well as, like, chipping away at their health. That, like, balance felt so good every single fight,

especially the, you know, the final incredibly, incredibly, incredibly difficult fights that this game puts out. I completely agree with the sword fighting i think the sword fighting feels amazing and i appreciated like the boss fight stuff the problem that i had is that the boss fights in souls games are the least my least favorite parts of souls games um mostly because usually the camera is can't really handle it like the camera was not designed to handle it. And also the difficulty, like you're right.

Like they are designed for memorization and figuring out the patterns and abusing them. And it's tremendously satisfying when you finally do it. But do I want to spend three hours on the same boss fight? No, probably not. Thankfully in Souls games, you have the backup option of just summoning people and making it easy. And granted, that is not an option here. You need to beat it legitimately to the point where I would much rather appreciate their like incredible world building and sword fighting and all that stuff on an easier difficulty.

I realize there's been a lot of drama about this over the last year but like yeah and we don't need to relitigate that uh just for me i would personally would have been more game to play through it if it was easier and and yeah i realize people want difficulty but did you bounce off of lady butterfly i feel like lady butterfly is the boss fight where shit gets very real very yeah that might have been i don't remember it's been eight months but yeah i'm sort of in between like i think i probably would have i got very close to putting this game down and never playing it again like i and and nothing against the game itself it's just like didn't seem like a good match for me as a person um

eventually for whatever reason i was intrigued enough that I kept with it. And that weird sort of like effect of loving it more because I had to work very hard to get good at it. I did enjoy for somebody that doesn't have like, you know, my track record with these sorts of games is a little mixed. What I did like about I normally very put off by the whole like get good sort of mentality what i did like about it in this game is that a lot of times in the souls games when people talk about getting good what they actually mean is to get a weapon other than the weapon you've been using for the entire game and level it up and learn how to use that the dragon in the tail for no reason and get the best sword for the first five years right and then it like, what I liked about this game is that I did have the stuff I

needed. Like, I didn't not have the huge hammer that kills him instantly. Like, I had the stuff I needed, I just kind of had to bang my head against it until I got the rhythms. And I watched, I mean, God bless a lot of the

very entertaining YouTubers that put up strategies for how to do good at the bosses. Like they were very those are great to watch. But I thought it was fantastic. Justin did DM me after completing the last boss fight with an exuberant like fuck that dude. Yeah. And that's the like that's that it's rich stuff.

It's rich and delicious. Yeah. Like, that's that. It's rich stuff. It's rich and delicious. Yeah, I very much enjoyed Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, a video game by the developer of Crash Bandicoot. And Blasto.

I think it's my favorite game of theirs. I think Bloodborne was up there, but this is the first game where I have really had to engage with all the mechanics of combat as designed by FromSoftware and not just like hide in a corner and pop off spells and block and block and block and block and block. This was the one where, you know, there is progression, right? There are some things you can do to try and get a little bit of an edge. Like if there's an enemy that uses a lot of thrusting attacks, there's a counter skill for that that you can get where you just stomp their sword to the ground and open them up for for a death blow that feels good uh every

time that you do it that's an interesting mechanic too the first time that i saw that happening in like a video i thought like well i'm never gonna fucking do that i gotta find some other way to work around it and then you play long enough like no i am gonna have to learn how to stomp on their sword and stab them but once you did it like it there's just there's not a workaround like you have to figure it out you have to do you have to you have to like i never parry in the souls games i never like do the thing where you press the shield right before the hit comes in and you block it right i either block or i just dodge roll away you can't do like you have to be engaged and you have to be using all of its systems all the time in order to succeed and it was as soon as i like reprogram my brain like around that like

lady butterfly early boss fight period that the rest of the game really like smoothed out for me yeah which i thought was really interesting i i again i beat this game a ton because it's also a pretty fun game to speed run because it's really just mostly a series of bosses that you can kind of sprint to I think it is the most like satisfying game to play that came out this year it's also very like visually striking and you know it's a cool sort of setting and yeah let's move on rush fresh dick what's the last game in this round okay my game is one of the hardest games to search on google and it is control try typing control video game and see what comes up it's generally a wikipedia for a controller control is made by remedy entertainment they are the studio

that made alan wake they also made the regrettable quantum Break and the Max Payne games. Control, real quick premise, you basically are this woman who walks into a generic building in Manhattan. It's just like an office building, but it's completely empty and you don't know why it's empty. And there's a weird janitor there. And slowly but surely you get introduced to this world. The building is called the Oldest House. And it's a world that is really, really tough to summarize. But effectively, there's like a Lynchian mystery of weird objects going on where these objects,

these like very recognizable objects have like a ton of like energy and power around them, like metaphysical power. And there's been this science organization that's basically been studying them and understanding how they work. And it's sort of this like, really, just talking about the narrative specifically, for the time being, I think it's a perfect example of how to introduce a very complex world and universe in a very slow and methodical and thoughtful way to the point where when it starts you have no idea what's going on and it's everything's confusing and they're throwing words at you and you don't know but you're meant to be that confused like you are meant to be the outsider in this and as the game progresses you are slowly introduced to the reality of this world and how it

works and and what these terms mean it's just like you're learning a new language it's the thing remedy does like it's the thing remedy is good at i had trouble like sort of conceptualizing this game until somebody sort of floated that by me like like in alan wake alan wake has this like supernatural entity that is you know kind of the antagonist and throughout the game in like russ said like a very uh lynchian fashion like it very slowly rolls out like what the rules of this thing are and that's not like i don't think alan wake is a very fun video game mechanics wise but like that air of mystery i do not think there is another game developer that is as good at sort of uh uh you know developing that yeah and i would also say i don't think there's another developer

that is doing these style of games which i would definitely qualify as like triple a games that is also taking so many risks with the narrative and with the game maybe kojima is probably the only other developer that does it. Obviously, I think Remedy's narrative chops is a lot stronger than Kojima's, as we've talked about Death Stranding quite a bit. But I think the amount of risks that they're taking and the fact that they're nailing them, like, I think David Cage took a lot of risks. I don't think he's a good storyteller or writer. So I think the fact that they are taking these risks and nailing them in relatively expensive, you know, game design environments, this was not a $300 million game, but still like we're talking 10s of millions of dollars to make this sort of game. And to do it

in such a like, brand new IP risky format is is really exciting. I haven't I haven't even talked about the gameplay. Someone else can do that if they want to, but the narrative was really what struck me. I'll dig into that a little bit, but I think the closest comparison for people who maybe aren't familiar with Remedy games, because they are popular, but not, I would say, mainstream, is really The Matrix.

And I don't mean The Matrix like, oh, we're all living in a simulation. I mean, when The Matrix originally came out, and it's hard to even think about this now because it's so part of pop culture, but it started out so simple and humdrum and you're just in the real world, and then gradually it reveals this,

I mean, really what ends up being borderline cosmic horror. The enemy of The Matrix was so hard to conceptualize at that point this idea of oh we are a world or simulation within the real world oh there are these forces so much bigger than us and the environment that we live in itself is in some way the enemy

and I think the same thing is how I felt with Control where the evil the antagonist of this game, sure, they're like, I mean, it's a shooter. That's like the third person shooter. That's the very short way of saying it. There are enemies that you

shoot, but they are the least scary thing about the world that you're in. There are pyramids floating in a netherverse in sounds that just kind of, I don't know how to even describe them. Big refrigerators

you have to fight. Yes, and insects. I mean, everything the very mundane can become very scary, I guess is the point of the game. Kind of like PsyOps. I'll do a game, but it's kind of like PsyOps a little bit.

You got mind powers and shit you get third dudes and and you feel i this is one of the best one of the best superhero games it's not a superhero game but it feels like you are a superhero by the end of the game you get so many awesome powers and because remedy is so obsessed with physics like everything in the world is a physics object so you like have a force throw and you can just like lift the desk up and the desk has like all sorts of shit on it and that all goes flying and you're hurling stuff around and just oh god it's the best uh jedi game not called star wars like yeah getting those jedi powers yeah um i and maybe better than some called Star Wars alright y'all what's it gonna be what is the best

game of this round this round feels very stacked to me it does I tried to split them up but there's really no good way to split up all the games so I agree this is a very stacked round so we all agree it's Baba is You? Cool.

Okay. Oh, that is actually, thank you, Plant. You've given us a good entryway. It's definitely not Baba is You. Good game, but yeah. Yeah, I mean I would vote for Control. I know you two are pretty jazzed about Sekiro.

I am pretty jazzed about Sekiro. Yeah, I know Disco Elysium isn't going to make it just because y'all didn't get deep enough into it. Highly recommend, though. Please try and enjoy. I enjoyed the, I think the concept, like we've said it a few times now, like, I hope this is the future of RPGs. It does stuff

with CRPGs. Griffin, its corpse is on the road. It's gone. We have driven past. Please, root for your ninja now my sekiro is just good it's the best feeling fighting game ever it's what i i made this point when we were um like playing and talking about star wars uh fallen order which is trying to do kind of a souls thing uh that the sword fighting just did i can't sword fighting in video games is going to be ruined for me after sekiro i dropped a gif in the like our slack room uh of just some

like dope hitbox porn uh in one of the boss fights and it reminded me just like how slick as shit this game was and so sekiro and control i think are very similar in that they are the culmination of everything that their studios were trying to do. I think all of FromSoftware's games led to Sekiro and they nailed it. I think Remedy did the exact same thing with everything from Max Payne to Alan Wake to

Quantum Break to this. The difference that I would say is Sekiro did it with the help of Activision and Remedy I don't think that should matter. I just think it's interesting that Remedy is Sekiro did it with the help of Activision. I don't think that should matter. No, I just think it's interesting that Remedy had a piece on Microsoft partnered with 505 Games,

who everybody's familiar with, IL2 Stramovic. They brought us so many big jammers. I'm saying that I think it's more incredible that Control exists. I put them at equal levels. I think they're both, honestly, two of the best games of the year, if not the decade.

But I think since they're equal on that level, if I'm thinking degree of difficulty, I think it's kind of a miracle that Control exists. I had a bevy of performance issues with control uh and uh on the um i guess on that what i play it on xbox one i guess probably probably playing on xbox one uh i had a lot of performance issues with that and i would also say that um control takes a much longer time to get going on like the fun. Like it is a pretty slow start. I would say for control where I feel like Sekiro kind of gets gets right into it. Does the progression stuff in control ever?

It didn't really click for me. I didn't finish it. But like you find these little upgrades that you can slot in and none of the upgrade. And this is like this is my biggest pet peeve. I talked about this last, last besties when we talked about like God of War and stuff like that. The addition of these really shallow RPG mechanics on games that like don't really need them. So like, oh, I found a boost that makes my gun recharge 3% faster.

Like, I don't care. That's not exciting. I would, I would grant that the like weird meta behind control like under the under the surface like outside of just like the weapons you find and the powers you get is does not work it's like one of the few things in the game that like feels very oh god i forgot about all that shit i hated that all so i'm just gonna add this i do not personally care who wins this round i get any round for that matter that russ thanks so i think you guys yeah i'm fine giving it to sekiro i will care a lot more in the finals

because there is a game that i will fight for a little bit harder i love control i think it's spectacular um but i am willing to uh concede that you guys like sekiro more so fantastic it's sekiro we're gonna take a break now and then we'll come back with a uh super speedy lightning round but I am willing to concede that you guys like Sekiro more. So fantastic. It's Sekiro. We're going to take a break now and then we'll come back with a, uh, super speedy lightning round of your submissions. Okay. So I have wild card seeds here.

What I did was we opened up your, you didn't know you were voting and I didn't know you were voting until I decided that you were in fact voting listeners. Uh, I asked for you. We asked for you to tell us your number one game of the year with a little bit of information about why it was your number one game of the year. And I have pulled all of your submissions into a bracket. First, I want to pour one out for the games that only got one vote.

You proud soldiers. Please keep carrying on. Ace Combat 7. AI. The Somnium Files. Ring Fit Adventure fit adventure which is dope it's pretty good i actually started playing that it's pretty good it's very good uh observation bloodstained dmc5 marvel ultimate alliance as kyle says here's kyle's plug for his him kyle the sole voter of marvel ultimate alliance game of the year he says you get to spam hit ninjas robots and other weird bad guys as daredevil

or captain marvel because they punch the same that's that is my that is my son's game of the year because you press one button and you make spider-man do the big kick that's pretty good i have broken it into actual brackets here where the games that got the most support are up against the ones that got the least support, just like in real sport, as I'm led to understand. And we're going to just blow through this and get one weird wild card winner that will go into our final bracket.

We're not going to take too long. Here we go. First round with 27 votes. Untitled Goose Game. lot it's our number one seed a lot of people liked Untitled Goose Game very funny gifs a lot of good gifs it's up against Cadence of Hyrule

which rules dope game dope game shit I forgot that came out this year oh it's a shame we have to say goodbye to all of our listeners but Cadence of Hyrule just the small local college that came out this year. Oh, it's a shame we have to say goodbye to all of our listeners, but Kiddens of Hyrule, just the small local college just destroyed Duke.

Cinderella story, Kiddens of Hyrule. It should have been on our list somewhere. Fucking rules. It kicks so much ass. I never actually even played Untitled Goose Game.

I watched a lot of videos of it, and it seems hysterically funny. Great guess. But the- Congratulations, Kiddens of Hyrule. Moving on. Next up.

It's a lightning round. Hold on. What didn't you guys like about Goose Game? It's not a great stealth game, which is to say it's not a great game. It's really fun to watch. The memes are delicious. Okay.

I think that people liked it because it's funny, not because it's good. Yeah, I think you're right. That's my hot take. Round two. With six... Well, okay. No, well, it it doesn't really matter the order does not matter uh round two with no i've got it i've got it right with six supporters death stranding okay oh yeah this was almost on your final list justin and then you forgot that disco wasn't there this was almost

well it's not it's not that it's also like we just talked about death stranding a lot so i wanted the opportunity to talk about it. The list is meaningless anyway. Thank you. Let's see. What did people say about Mario Maker 2, which is our other competitor for this round? Super Mario Maker 2, says Adam, because it's an infinite game. Even if you have to play 999 piece of shit garbage levels made by stupid assholes who should go to Mario jail for every one level that isn't fucking awful trash. I love it.

Strong plug for Mario Maker 2 up against Death Stranding. Here's the thing. Death Stranding should have been the winner, but the buzzer beater came in literally this week with Mario Maker adding Link and all the Zelda features, which completely changed the game. It's wild. Griffin, do you want to explain some of those features really quick?

Because I think they're worth highlighting. Right. So if you play Mario in the 8-bit sort of like visual set, you can get the Master Sword as like a power-up for Mario and he just fucking turns into Link and now he has a bow and arrow he can shoot. He can block stuff with his shield. He can pick up and throw bombs. And so all of these different sort of mechanics

that you can use to gate stuff off from regular Mario, now you can bounce a spiky ball back at the thing that threw it or you can jump in the air, shoot an arrow to activate a platform that you then land on or you can blow up a wall with a bomb that you just pull out of your pocket

instead of having to like use some sort of bomb. You can do a butt stomp with the with the Master Sword like it changes shit so completely. Mario should have just been doing this from the beginning. What was he thinking? I have now spent time with this update and I feel a little guilty that I chose Pokemon as my third game instead of this because this

update is like out of control. Tough nuggies. So it's Death Stranding? No. It just got Death Stranded on the side of the road. Mario. Miyamoto-san said, here, I don't fucking know anymore. You guys finish it for me. And you guys are like A plus.

Best game. Better than Kojima opening up a van. Fine. Mario, congratulations Mario. So proud of you. Everybody cares. Third round. Borderlands 3 with four votes versus putting up a fan fine mario congratulations mario so proud of you everybody cares third round borderlands three uh with four votes versus sayonara wild hearts with three easy okay here's what i'm gonna say real quick about sayonara wild hearts is a rhythm game i mean yeah i mean the level of interaction is is very limited but i i think it's also colton says i just want to get a few more reader impressions in here colton says catchy electro pop songs paired with gorgeous 3d

animation a neon cyan and magenta aesthetic and a short play time made for densely packed rhythm game that feels like playing through a music video that i just want to keep replaying it's colton it feels good to play i think it looks great and then aj says borderlands 3 has a canon non-binary character and a gay couple that lives through the story. Listen, the bar is low. And as much as they may have fucked up otherwise, they have never backed down on these characters despite shitty fans and goddammit, I appreciate that. Notable.

Noble and notable. Did any of us play Borderlands 3? I played a few hours of it at a preview event. I already have 100,000 guns in my home. I just couldn't stand another million in there from borderlands which shoots guns out of your dvd it's borderlands i'm sorry not to diffuse it but like i didn't it didn't feel like that really any much of a departure from the game that came out seven years ago also here's the thing whichever one wins i'm

gonna be honest is not gonna win in the next round so sure i so let's congratulate cyanar wild hearts for at least doing something and also free with apple arcade and i think it's a really really great like yes it's a great it's a great with a controller though don't play it on a touchscreen okay last round and y'all were fucking wild for this one huh uh fire emblem three houses yeah this was almost on my top three to be perfectly honest people were wild about it uh 23 of y'all uh thought that this was a very good game david said fire emblem should be game of the year because edelgard smashed the iron fist of a corrupt religious institution the status quo of arranged marriages and the harmful notion that

only people with magic crests matter all in one fell swoop i don't know what any of that fucking means but it sounds good to me yeah it's a good game i i really enjoyed it i played it through twice um it's a great fire emblem game and um yeah i really liked it but i kind of fell off because running around the school and you find a handkerchief and then you talk to 40 people saying is this your handkerchief is this your handkerchief the school and you find a handkerchief and then you talk to 40 people saying, is this your handkerchief? Is this your handkerchief? What about this?

Is this your handkerchief? It's called fucking Persona, Griffin. You love Persona. And that's that same shit with the school. Okay. And I'm actually going to put it up against Ring Fit Adventure. Okay. Wait, what was it supposed to be up against?

It was Zelda, right? We had a lot of like single vote. Okay. You know, actually, I'm sorry. Wait, what was it supposed to be? It was Zelda, right? We had a lot of single vote... Actually, I'm sorry. There was a number two with two votes that actually should be in this round right now, and it's Kingdom Hearts 3. Oh, no.

Here I go. Here I go. Here I go again. Kingdom Hearts 3. We're doing a year-end wrap-up episode, I think, next week. Yeah, but we're not going to be talking about specific games in that so oh well then kingdom hearts three is like the worst game i've ever played in my entire life it's the worst game i've ever finished in my entire life were you satisfied with the arc of mickey by and large that's all i want i wasn't satisfied with any of the arcs and and like it was not even an issue of me not understanding the story is an issue of that

the story was bad and the game felt bad and you mashed buttons until you turned into a carousel or a big lion and it just it uh i wow i've never gone into the end level of a game with more sort of disdain for it than i did this one uh and but that dlc maybe that's what's gonna make it all sort of click together who knows i knows and the answer is no uh so fire emblem sure sure yes which one had donald duck squawking out this might be a good place to find some ingredients every 15 feet. Was that Fire Emblem or was that Kingdom Hearts 3? Was he sedated?

It sounds like literally every 15... This might be a good place to find some ingredients. Okay, I can't do this anymore. Cadence of Hyrule versus Mario Maker 2. Mario Maker 2. Mario Maker 2. Fine. Cadence of Hyrule.

Oh, fuck me. I thought this was supposed to be quick and easy. I'll give him... We all liked Cadence of Hyrule. Only half of us liked Mario Maker 2. Cadence of Hyrule. Cadence of Hyrule. Deal. Fine. Okay. Round two. Sayonara versus Fire Emblem.

I guess Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem versus Cadence of Hyrule. I'll die. I will fucking die. Thank you. Yes, correct, Chris. Does anybody else know the right answer? I love both of the games, so I don't feel bad. Yeah, I do too. You didn't love it in the sense that you kept

playing it until you had completed it. So love seems like a bit of a strong word for you, Griffin. Griffin. Griffin. Griffin bailed on this game that he loved. Yeah, I think Fire Emblem. For the record. I think Three Houses, yeah, fine.

I think Three Houses is a step down from the 3DS Fire Emblem games, and I think that Cadence of Hyrule is a wild step up from Necrodancer and all those. I feel good about that. I think the story is better, but we did it. Okay, so congratulations,

Kingdom of Hyrule, the wild card winner. We could have a third Zelda game win Besties Game of the Year. This is possible. Spoilers, there is no way. There's no way, but it's possible.

It's not possible in the traditional sense. Was there any... Do we have time to talk about like is there do you guys have any before we decide game of the year do you guys have any other honorable mentions for 2019 anything that you want to champion anything you anything you spent time with that we have not discussed uh card of darkness and grindstone were two like excellent mobile games that i continue to play a A ton of as well as Pokemon Go. The first 90 stages of Grindstone.

Until it actually becomes a game about grinding. At which point... No, thank you. But it doesn't matter because it's on Apple Arcade. What? You played 90 stages of that game? Yeah, and then after that, there's a lot more and you actually have to grind to play that. Okay.

Yeah. Just quick games of service update. Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy 14 both got expansions with Shadow in the title and both of them pretty fucking good. Good job, everybody.

Keep them going. World of Warcraft saw that and was like, our next one's in Shadow 1 too. No. I beat you, World of Warcraft.

I beat World of Warcraft because I don't want to play it anymore. Okay. Okay. So, no. I don't think anyone else it anymore. Okay. So, no. I don't think anyone else has any other ones.

There's lots of good games. Do you have one? He did a face that says, definitely not. What about Dragon Quest Builders 2? Very good game. Very good. Yeah, that was actually a very... That's a relaxing experience. Somebody just needs to tell people that make JRPrpgs to like i've been here before i know what a does and how it

swings a sword just just accept that it's okay you could we could move on beyond that it's very good divinity original sin on the switch like there was a ton of fucking good games this year yeah divinity came out the switch version is very good but effectively that was like a last i will say say the most interesting thing to me about this year is that none of it like looking at the reader feedback none of the games had like incredible critical mass over the others there wasn't like some clear

like Untitled Goose Game is a joke game that a lot of people liked because it was like silly and it brought them a lot of joy in a year where they needed it which I can completely get but there wasn't a Zelda or a God of War. Yeah, right. Yeah, because it's all those

big, big studio games are working on next gen for the most part. Next gen, yeah. Okay, so do you guys want to do this in rounds or do you just want to talk about the four games and pick the best one? Yeah, let's do the four and then we can start peeling them off.

Cadence of Hyrule, thank you for joining us. You brought us a lot of joy. You were a fun game. Let me say something without being dismissive of it. Kins of Hyrule is better than Luigi's Mansion? No, that's false. It is, actually. Here's interesting. I have some data

here. I'd like to rifle. Hold on, I got my date. Let me get my papers in order. It says they say it's better than that. Okay. Say your name out loud. If you have completed the game Luigi's Mansion 3. Oh, come on, man.

I'm on the last level. We all love this game. I'm on the last level. One of the best games of the year. No, no, no. We all love this game. This best game of the year. Of the four of us, which one of you has completed it the most would you say this like fucking

absolutely manageable not extremely long nintendo game that we all love and adore how much how many of us have completed it to completion what if at the end luigi becomes like like starts professing the the benefits of the white race? Like, you have fucking no clue. Before we play this game, how many games did I finish at all this year? Probably not many. Not many of them.

Because you're not a real gamer. I'm here to try the wonderful journey of so many video games and then to hop off when I feel the right time has come to try something new. I just think that me and Justin's votes should count as double since we're the only true gamers on this podcast. What about Cadence of Hyrule? I beat it, yeah.

Yeah, I beat it. Griffin, Chris? 100% of that shit. I didn't beat it. I'm still playing it. Okay, so what I'm saying is Luigi's Mansion this is not an unfair argument. If you are playing through a game and you get to a

point where you're like, eh, I get it. You don't then say, yeah, I get it. It's one of the best games of the year. Anyway, I don't want any more of it. I was playing Luigi's Mansion last night, Justin. Literally last night. Also, pause. Again, I want to hammer this home. Griffin McRoy finished Kingdom Hearts 3.

Put it on a t-shirt. It doesn't finish long. I have to agree with Chris here. Finishing things doesn't mean shit anymore. I will say finishing something doesn't mean you like it. Not finishing it does mean that it's not one of your favorite things of the year. It means you are a grown-up who doesn't always have time. I think that's what it means.

Yeah, I disagree with the point you make. But three of the four of us made time to finish the great experience of Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts is three hours long, Dustin. Yeah, it's a short one. Maybe if Luigi was shorter, we could play the entire game. Okay, but all right, that's fine they're both let me just say kids of hyrule real quick has maybe the best zelda soundtrack ever oh yeah no doubt it's fucking wicked that's should we should we do gut check all count of three and then just say the game that we're thinking of. Wait, wait, wait. List all four for our wonderful listeners. We have

Outer Wilds, Luigi's Mansion, Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice, the newest game from Activision, the studio behind Crash Bandicoot, and Cadence of Hyrule. Okay, and then we'll do one, two, three, and then on that four beat, we'll say what the winner is.

Okay, are you ready i'm gonna count it down one two three outer wilds second row shadows die twice the newest game from activision the studio behind crash band what did you say russ i said luigi's mansion what did you say chris outer wilds i will say the problem with this from my voting to cadence just so we're all completely maybe the problem with my voting is this outer going to switch to Cadence just so we're all completely... Maybe... The problem with my voting is this. Outer Wilds I physically couldn't play because it made me vom.

And Sekiro made me too scared because it was too hard. So really there are only two games in here that I played extensively. And of those two games, Luigi's Mansion was definitely my favorite. This is... This is such a weird year it's a weird year it's such a weird year i said that last year too but last year seems like you know wait what was last year wasn't last year breath of the wild or

is that two years ago no it was two years ago last year was red dead and god of war those were the two games that like we're trying to think of like most most places are picking that was depressing um beloved unenjoyable game uh yeah i don't know guys sekiro was just uh it was it was my number one with a bullet but that said uh i think that i think it would be disingenuous for me to pick cadence just because i did really really like it but it didn't make like a yeah it wouldn't be in my top five it didn't make a such an impression which i think you could figure out by whenever it made the lightning round list i had forgotten about that game's very existence um okay well let's shuffle it off just fair space i would also um mr luigi can is also dismissed from class he may leave the room none of us

liked his game enough to keep playing it we all stopped i love that game that's not okay wait okay stop one second what if this was i know that it's not a hundred percent? If this was, I know that it's not 100% comparable. Oh, no. If this was a discussion about movies or books or paintings, and we're like, I'm going to do three quarters of the painting. Let me finish this thought, please.

Okay, fine. I know where you're going. And then you can have, if you're like, I looked at three quarters of the painting. I got it. Flowers, sky, whatever. Best painting of the year.

If you were reading a book and you're like i don't know i got through 20 or so chapters i get it man loves woman etc etc best book of the year movie i don't know i got an hour and a half in and there was like tyler durden was like this guy's friend or something i don't know but i loved it best movie of the year uh it's it's to use that analogy justin it would be like if russ went to watch the sekiro painting and a big big man just picked him up and put him in a garbage sekiro does not have to meet the standard of completion because it is challenging luigi does have to meet the standard completion it's not's not challenging. It just gets boring after a while, and

everybody stops playing it. I completely disagree with Justin. I just want that on the record. But I do agree that we can now jettison Luigi into space, because I do think this is going to be between Outer Wilds, which is the game that people will remember, I think, for a long time, and Sekiro, a game that is probably the

best made game of the year. Like I think it's just very clean and well executed. It's for gamers is what you're saying. It's for gamers with a capital Z. Yeah. I love that control. I'm not like the biggest fan in the world,

but I love that it, I love that remedy. I don't know who keeps doing it, but I do love that remedy gets to keep doing this. It should not have happened again after quantum break right they should have been making a fucking did you just throw control back in the are you quick expansion like slipping control back into the final round ah just talking about control anyway this outer wilds uh oh man So if I had to pick between these two, knowing what I know about these two,

I would pick Outer Wilds. Interesting. Welcome to the Rumble. I think Outer Wilds does something that no other game has ever done ever. Sekiro does something, a very refined version that the same studio has done many times. That's a novelty bias that it doesn't account for quality uh

i mean again i can't comment fully because outer wilds made me vomit so i it's this this is uh one of these was my like road dog in terms of just like i want to be a cool samurai and do dope ass fights and kill a big gorilla and the other one gave me uh existential dread so like one of the one of them one of them scratched a which do you think serious question which do you think you're gonna remember more uh clearly in five years that's a tough question because i uh just sort of got my gaming PC hooked back up and I have this uncontrollable itch that I'm going to give way to to buy Sekiro on PC so I can play it again on high-ass definition settings. And I will still go back and replay. Now, high-ass definition actually just affects the polygons.

Of the butt, yeah. Of the butt. and the light of the butt uh i i don't know i think that i will replay sekiro in a way that i i haven't really gone back and uh replayed but sekiro is designed to be replayed i mean i don't know that that's sure yeah but i don't think that that discounts it right like it's in the same way that i still go back and replay ocarina of time i think that i am going to go back and just replay Sekiro because it's just fun to play. How do I get that big Goron sword? What?

Oh, that's not in the... You've been mistaken. Oh, okay. But Outer Wilds does... It introduces... It's sort of in the same way that we talked about Obra Dinn last year. It's kind of a new kind of gameplay formula i would argue uh that is a huge success on top of the like narrative things that yes i'm gonna put forward

an idea for the value of this this very prestigious award that will influence really the uh the direction of the industry for decades to come uh I think when we throw the prestigious besties, bestie, behind a game, we are also championing it and introducing it to an audience that maybe would have missed it the first time. I would say I think Sekiro is doing just fine. I think the people who care about Sekiro, they've had their time with Sekiro. They love Sekiro. I think there are a lot of people who

maybe us giving Outer Wilds the bestie bestie is going to be what gets them over that hump, makes them go buy that vomit bag, put it next to them on the couch, and play the greatest game of the year. I don't care about that.

A valiant effort. It's a sweet effort. Well'm well here take my vote out of it no i'm fine with outer wilds i'm okay i'm i'm genuinely fine like putting putting a vote down on outer wilds i think that sekiro was my number one outer wilds was probably my my number two and we can all agree that it was my speech that won everybody over. Outer Wilds is really interesting, and I think that they had enough serious missteps in where it ends up in terms of what point... This is not about finishing the game. This is about the way the mechanics have been designed

to make progressing through it really challenging and kind of inscrutable like there's a lot of stuff that i would have liked to have seen from outer wilds um and too many of the elements were so frustrating uh in a way that like i think uh i don't know it put me off of of actually like the the entire experience because it seemed to in fact like if you're doing all this other interesting stuff, why do I have to fuck around with spaceship controls? It's funny because that's my feeling on Sekiro. It's like, kind of like what Fresh was saying is,

and I know that's not a fault of the game design. But the mechanics of Sekiro are the experience. That's true. The experience of Sekiro is like, is the idea of mastering these controls. The lack of clarity is a huge chunk of the experience in outer wild well that's also yeah i mean you could leverage that at literally any from soft

game uh and i would argue that secro is the best about that because again like these are the tools there's not like a bunch of other shit that you have to i remember the first time i played through dark souls i don't think i upgraded a weapon and i beat the final boss and then like got on youtube and realized like oh my god like that's actually a huge part of this why didn't they ever really lean hard into that i think this year might fall down to the passion and it seems like the passion is most on sekiro's side yes i think i think that is true and i'm fine removing my given the fact that like i genuinely physically couldn't play one of the games and was just a little bit too scared to play the other game, I'm fine removing my vote from the equation,

which is to say, I think just with Griffin and Justin voting, it probably is Sekiro no matter what Plant says. Sorry, Plant. It's okay. So congratulations to Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, the newest game from Activision, the studio behind Crash Bandicoot. A lot of good games this year to go out and enjoy. All these games are well worth playing.

Yeah, and just to say this real quick, I am genuinely really thrilled with our entire list, including the submissions that the fans made. There's a lot of awesome games in this list. Except for the three of you that voted for Breath of the Wild. Sorry, that was a few years ago uh we're not gonna put galaga up here but the i don't know it's like an awesome list and i'm really happy with it and i think even if your favorite game wasn't the game that was chosen you should still i'm sure be very happy with any of the four games that were in the finals or really any of the 20. Hey, did we bring up Link's Awakening, though?

Did we talk about Link's Awakening? No. No, we're not adding games. Start over. Start the show over. Start over. Here's the thing. This year, I think we all had fun.

We all seemed like we still like each other. It was some fun sparring, like gentle sparring on the mat. Next year, Bloodbath. Next year, New Consul's come out. Murder. Big boys come out. Next year, some huge games. I hope you all are ready to bleed.

What's that sound? Woof, woof? That's Master Chief, the big dog's back, baby. Real games will be out next year, folks. Don't worry. Enough of this twee bullshit. The real big boys of video games. Master Chief would have stomped

Sekiro's ass. Next week we're going to be talking about our highlights and lowlights of 2019. If you've got one you'd like to share with us in a sentence, send it to mail at besties.fan. We should mention this is not like the game you liked or disliked.

It's more about events or moments like E3. Moments, trends. VR. How do you feel about VR? Stadia. Did you all see that the Stadia version of that new Darksiders Genesis, the Stadia version is $10 more expensive. Worth it! Than the...

But Justin, you can play it anywhere. We will be back with you again next week. Don't forget, we are coming up on the end of the year after uh year's end episodes of the besties will only be available on spotify all you have to do is follow unless you're free you don't need a subscription or a paid account uh you can uh do it for free and yeah the exclusive episodes start on january 3rd we're gonna kick things off in january with a big uh most anticipated of 2020 episode.

So that's going to be only on Spotify. And here's another thing, just a quick thing that you can do. You're enjoying the show. Go on that Twitter.com. You can send a tweet to us. You know what? Put Spotify on there and let them know how absolutely grateful and just wonderful you are. Thank you, Spotify.

For getting us on this platform. I'm sure that their social media manager will love this and it will help us stay on the wonderful place that is Spotify. And I think I've said it before, but literally the show would not be... Weekly, it probably would not exist

without Spotify. So thank you, Spotify. And thank you to you for listening. That's going to do it for us. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter.

And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!