The Besties - The Best Games of 2021's First Half

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

What are the best games of 2021 at the year's midpoint? With Frushtick away, we agreed to create an unofficial Top 8. We revisited some of our favorite games from previous episodes and also turned to y'all for recommendations. You didn't disappoint, providing tons of cool indie surprises. From Resident Evil 8 to Clap Hanz Golf, these are the top candidates for Bestie 2021. 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!

So which one was you think misses Russ the most? Cause I know for me, like I haven't stopped crying, I guess since he, since he told us that he wouldn't be on this episode. Like he texted us like, Hey guys, just had a baby.

Uh, so happy. The miracle of life. And I finally get it. And games don't really matter. And that's the secret that you learn when you finally have a child and you feel that happiness and joy in your heart. I just started crying right then.

And I really haven't stopped. Have you been in contact with him? Not at all. Oh. Not aside from that one text of him saying he would be missing. And I started to text him. I was like, hey, man, congratulations. Welcome to fatherhood.

It's such a big thing. And it's got a huge leap in your life. I'm so proud of you and so happy for you. But then I saw that The Mole was on Netflixflix and i started and i just started to watch the mole instead so i did not end up actually texting him to congratulate him i've been tech tech i've been texting him like a lot yeah to a point where i'm sort of like are you sure you're doing everything you need to do right as a father you know that's interesting yeah because i think he's already he's he's already dropped the ball just because of how much you've been tech you've

been right exactly i i actually have an explanation for that because i haven't been texting him at all but i have been taking care of him his wife and his child um i cut right there it is yeah yes he he has been changing his child's diaper but while doing that i've changed his diaper yeah yeah i know that you've allowed his son uh you've sort of been a wet nurse to him allowed him to sup at your teeth that's fantastic that's awesome i think that's lovely dude that's so hey a lot of dudes like you and me and Griffin wouldn't be so comfortable to let another man's young baby sup at their teat. And I'm so proud of you.

I'm proud of you. Hey, do you guys think it's wild that he named his baby Egg Sandwich? What? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the year. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best games of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the year. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the year. Russ isn't here. Jokes aside, congratulations

Russ. I think the three of us are joined in overwhelming joy for our boy Russ Fresh Dick. He's definitely listening to this show. He's definitely for sure listening 100%. First download download first in last out definitely um so this is the besties it's a uh it's a video game club and just by

listening you my friend are a member and uh we're so happy to have you we're uh gonna be taking a look back now uh we move so fast through all these huge releases of 2021 that we wanted to take a second, slow down, and just see where we're at right now. This is our idea. We kind of want to do an utterly non-binding because Russ isn't here. But if we were kind of making, and we don't even do the um the brackets like this but if we were to make an eight you know an elite eight right games that are out so far this year what would make the cut that's it that's what that's all we're gonna do so we're gonna go through the episodes we've done so far this year and probably you guys might have some other additions that would that we didn't

uh touch on so that would be uh I'd love to hear those as well. Let's take it all the way back to our first episode of the year. Who can remember the first episode? It couldn't have been a big one, huh? I should be looking at a list of it. It was a massive one. Was it? But it was technically a 2020 game strike it from the

record then just because we're tardy that doesn't mean that the no that every but but we didn't consider it for 2020 oh damn it and we're not going to consider it for 2021 oh is this cyberpunk it's cyberpunk baby um cyberpunk i feel like is a real clean miss and a whiff have have you guys gone back to cyberpunk at all god no no i didn't realize also it just made the news that it just got added back to the playstation network store i did not realize it had been off the psn store for a whole time did you see the video of it on running on a ps4 on a ps4 like a core ps4 not a ps4 pro yeah it looks like no more heroes like on the wheat where it's like we have a big actually we have a big open world but there

are no cars or people in it that's just all left yeah i'm into that um yeah yeah it's it's weird i mean i think from all of january the game that stuck out for that month was hitman 3 that is yeah definitely one of my i i because that game turned me on to the whole franchise which is awesome because of the way that it also encapsulates the whole franchise and you can go back and play all the hitman games uh with the like sort of hitman 3 style and mechanics uh that i mean that was the game that i basically played more or less all the way through february uh that that is that is high on the list for me for goatee contender at this point i think it kicks ass uh we after hitman 3 which i think definitely makes this list it's fantastic uh we dipped into some early access stuff that maybe we will return to

of the games that we talked about in this in this episode teardown ender lilies subnautica and everspace 2 subnautica below zero technically out have talked about it we'll return to later in this in this recap i think yeah i love how much this feels like a clip show but we don't have clips no it's a clip show without clips uh of those four i think ender lilies is the one i've been thinking about the the most uh because i think it's coming out very soon or is it out on switch it's out oh yeah it's out on switch this week. I have been playing it, and it was obviously not finished when we were playing it for this Early Access episode. And just the simple act of having that big,

very beautiful Metroidvania on the Switch is really scratching the Hollow Knight itch, specifically the Hollow Knight Silksong itch that has become a more or less a perennial rash. Just it won't go away until they finally acknowledge that that game exists again. But Ender Lilies, it's a good-ass Metroidvania. It's fantastic.

I'm excited to put a little bit more time into it because I just started this week. The other one that I would call out from that list for people who may have missed the episode is Teardown, which is a heist game, but the world is made of voxels. And you can destroy everything. So the entire hook of the game is to create these kind of lines throughout a city of destruction where you can rob an entire kind of, I't know factory or a boat town uh all within a certain amount of time because once you start the heist you set off an alarm and the clock starts ticking um that is one of those games kind of like hard space shipbreaker from last year where i am trying to put off going back to it as long as possible because i want to go back to it once

it's in like a really polished and final state. I'm glad I got to spend some time with it early on, but I think it needs a little bit more. The next game we need to adjudicate here, Little Nightmares 2, completely forgot about this little. Yeah. It was kind of cute though, I kind of dug it. I mean, cute is not the word I would use to describe it.

Yeah, I just mean in the sense that it didn't ask a lot from you, and I think that it was a pleasant little thing. Yeah, I enjoy a game like that. I don't know that it hits that top eight mark for me, but maybe it would be different if I had a lot of experience with the first one and was anticipating this game at all instead of it being just kind of like a nice little a nice little snack yeah i feel like there have been a few games like this this year that you know i feel like a hypocrite because we often bemoan the lack of like the mid-tier game yeah we've actually got

some in the form of little nightmares too and um what is it uh what's the two of us game it takes two it takes two yeah um and and neither of those super clicked with me i liked little nightmares 2 hey we gave them the besties bump we did the best we could we gave them the besties bump and that's huge for that's huge for even when we take like a huge shit on the games like the people who make the games are like wow the besties bump awesome thanks guys um cd project red like sent us emails like you guys really you guys and ron funchess were like so mean about our game but if we got that bump from you guys and we sure do appreciate it unfortunately the game was no longer for sale on the playstation store not purchased the game yes uh yeah i i i i enjoyed that game but it is it has not necessarily stuck with me uh and

similarly and this one's kind of a surprise to me i feel kind of the same way about the next game we covered which was the which was mario 3d world and bowser's fury that game i i played that game for like a few days and did enough to like uh talk talk about it on the show and i've even tried henry's like getting into games particularly mario um and i thought like hey this is the new colorful you know fun fun Mario game. I bet he'd be interested in watching it. And even that, like, I have not really returned to it. It's not, it did not make the splash

that I thought it would. I will say I was in a similar camp. And then after we recorded the episode, I went back and played more Bowser's Fury, which I really liked as a as an exercise like bowser's fury is a very smart fun way of like making the the experience of playing mario like structured in a way that feels meaningful and and it actually solves a problem that i have a lot of mario games where it's like i'm not someone who's deep into just like churn through the levels and you

know i'm not motivated as much by like get your best time or you know get the most coins or whatever uh but by putting this in a world where like you could unlock stuff and the world gradually changed the farther you progressed in it um it really sort of like made progress feel meaningful in a way that like a lot of mario games don't for me yeah for sure um a very quick positivity check for our dear listeners because i know people love listening to our show because we love we love those video games and it might sound like a little blue but there's a couple things that i think are like worth considering about about this year one we're coming here right now of a global... Russ isn't here right now. What?

Russ isn't here right now. He always bullies our spirits. That's true. Also, we're just coming out of a pandemic, so a lot of games got bumped. So there just weren't as many big games, and we'll see a lot more of those in the second half. The other thing, and we'll get to this

when we get to the reader mail, which thank everybody, thank you to everybody who sent stuff in. There were a ton of small games that were great this year. The top game, according to Metacritic, with a bullet, is a game called The House in Fata Morgana, which is a visual novel. called The House in Fata Morgana, which is a visual novel. It has a 98 on Metacritic, and I have not heard of this title,

let alone have I not played it. I wish I could get down to the visual novel thing. It seems like it'd be so fun. Just can't get there. So yes, that is a great point plant. And there's also a weird kind of calculus you have to do when you make a show like ours, where it's like, even if one of us is very passionate about something,

if it's not going to be something that a lot of people like the broadest segment of the audience are going to want to hear an episode about, sometimes it just doesn't make sense to do a whole episode about it. Yeah. Because, you know, we have to keep making the numbers. It's a real behind the scenes episode.

Yeah. We've got to, we've got it we got to keep churning out the huge numbers um you know what was so uh i doesn't make the list though because so far we got hitman 3 it's march so i'm like does it tentatively mario 3d world plus bowser's fury makes the list i i really enjoyed it so the next unique individual game of the this year that we uh we touched on was loop hero yeah this one's big this one's big for me love i really love me love me some love i've been i've been jonesing to get back into loop hero and i'm curious like if they have...

That seems like the kind of game that if they add a new character class or they add even some new cards to the mix, I will want to dip my snoot right back in there to see what's going on. It's also the kind of game that I wouldn't mind starting over, kind of knowing now what I know about how it works. It seems it's that... i think about that game a lot i think it's definitely up there for me yeah i've come to like i'm trying to train myself to appreciate games like this i i used to get really mad at games that i could feel were wasting my

time transparently and this is a game that like oh my gosh it it takes your time it puts it on the bonfire and it lights a match it just burns through your time um and it it has all the addictive hooks but i don't know i especially again kind of coming off the pandemic and dealing with my own anxiety um i think there's part of me that's like yo that's a that's a me problem not a the game problem like yeah yeah i need to learn to be able to like chill out and and be okay with like the idea of relaxing for the purpose of relaxing god it's really plant you know what bud i struggle with that every time like it's like i've been on the hunt right pretty much constantly for years but like certainly more this year as my anxiety has started to like be pretty bad for like it sounds so stupid to say

it now but like games where you like learn something right so like games where you are getting some sort of actual skill and not just like having playing a fun video game like it's not enough for me to just be like oh this is enjoyable and pleasant and i like doing it it has to be associated with guilt so like i'm like looking for like maybe there's something where it's like i'm also gonna learn like the metrics system you know like maybe something that can like teach me something while i'm also playing it yeah that's a defunction of that's a a fault that's user error fault in your stars yeah no i just like to bonk the dudes and watch the number go up so i don't know what i don't know what the issue is i think loop hero absolutely rips assips ass. I think it definitely deserves a spot.

I love Loop Hero. That was not... What I ended up doing was doing things while I was playing Loop Hero. And that's fine. I think that that's the way that... It's okay to engage with it in that way. So that's why I feel like

it doesn't necessarily waste your time. That's why I actually was going to say is that I feel like it is designed to allow for that sort of approach. Like if you want to go off into another tab and watch videos about woodworking, and then you're like, oh, fuck, I was playing Loop Hero. I'm dead.

Okay, I'll start over. It does not want to penalize that. Right after Loop Hero, now you're going to have to help me with this one, because I did not. It takes two. It takes two. I neither played this game nor listened i'm i listen i did not

listen to the episode really busy so busy don't really i'm not a podcast guy wow um a lot of people love this game i think so again the way this game works it's it is a co-op exclusive you play a married couple who hates each other and you have to learn to love again so that your child can apparently grow up in a home that is atomically correct can i say before you get into it i just want to say as an outside observer it seems like this is a weirdly divisive one like in a way that most video games aren't a lot anymore. It seems like that we kind of have a consensus for like, it's pretty good,

but it's not great. This one feels like has some very vocal, like critics and proponents. I think it all boils down to how much of a stomach you have for the story. Like, I think the gameplay itself is beautiful. I mean, the visuals are like very striking it has a lot of cool stuff you you're itty bitty and you're going through kind of honey

i shrunk the kids type of backyard and house um and for the most part it moves at a good clip um and the puzzles are are pretty fun there are a few moments that are like oh wow they've really figured out something new with co-op. And I think anytime you do something like that, it goes a long way towards making people who want more co-op games to get super hyped. Um, but I,

I find the story like truly awful. Like I, I find it like a, a profoundly toxic, um, experience. Is it awful? I don't know how to necessarily like,

is it awful in the sense of like the, the, the narrative doesn't function or is it awful in the sense of like, you feel like the lessons that it's defining are like pretty reprehensible. I think a few different things on a purely does it make sense in like Aristotelian structure. It's pretty solid. Whoa.

Competently written, right? But in terms of what it is saying about marriage and family, I find it doesn't work. In terms of how it is setting up like relationships between people, I don't think it works. between people i don't think it works um and then there's this like truly an annoying um book of love who i i i think i have come to understand why this character is in the game which is you would hate the characters you're playing as you would truly despise them if there was not something even more annoying than them but by putting this character there you're like cool like we can all agree that that guy sucks even more and that will that will bring us together like that is how we will find we will find love again um i also just the tone is so all over the place sometimes it feels like

it is a game for like five-year-olds other times you were like brutally murdering a toy while it begs for its life awesome i love that shit yeah it's wild it is one of those games that like honestly especially if it is on game pass or ea play or whatever yeah you should play it like you should play it because it's just it is one of those games like i just can't believe it exists and i think i honestly i probably would have even liked it better if I went into it just knowing, like, hey, this story, just ignore it. Skip the cut scenes.

Just play this to see all the absolutely bonkers stuff that happens. I think it would be really, not really, I think it would be enjoyable in that way. But yeah, the story just did not work so for now i think uh we leave it off the top eight but it sounds like it but i think this is a game that i would like i would like y'all to try before the end of the year and i for the the listeners like you know at the end of the year we always do a bracket that gets a few games into our final bracket based off of like listener preference and gets us to reconsider some games.

If everybody who listens to the show likes it, I'd be happy to revisit it and give it another shot. Sure. Really, really like this game. The next one is not so secret, though, and I feel like this is one that's a walk, and that's Monster Hunter Rise. Yeah, baby. That one's just gonna get on there now griffin you can finally kind of kind of drop your pants and do whatever i don't have a metaphor yeah i don't whatever the metaphor is it's not gonna involve me

no uh no this game absolutely is so good it's so good i can't believe how good this game is i with every new update they keep adding new monsters and that is enough to like bring me back in and get me crawling towards some new armor set or some new thing um it's just every weapon is so tight and this was was, I, I, uh, I played like three main weapons in monster hunter world, which I played hundreds of hours of. And then in monster hunter rise, I am playing completely different weapons because it's all fucking good. Like it's all very,

very, very good. And, uh, this is, this is my game of the year by a pretty huge margin at this point. I think it could be unseated by something that hits in a different way. Something maybe a little bit more narratively satisfying because God knows Monster Hunter Rise didn't scratch that itch since it didn't have an ending when it came out.

But it condenses down everything I like about Monster Hunter and then put it on the switch in a time where like that was all i could really play i think it came out like a few days before gus was born um so like there were definitely a couple nights in the hospital where i just didn't sleep because the baby didn't sleep uh and it was it it's i like monster hunter rise a lot i think it's very good i don't know that there's much else to say about it no it's good i know if russ lot. I think it's very good. I don't know that there's much else to say about it. No, it's good. I know for us, I think it's probably up there for Russ also. Absolutely.

I know he would support this decision. If you've never played a Monster Hunter Rise game, and the question is always like, is this the one? Here's what I'll say. No, but it's never coming. It's not going to get better, folks. That game's not, it's, you know what? They say time in the market beats timing the market. Ooh, that's good, Juice.

That's very accurate for Monster Hunter 2. Just go ahead and fight the bullet. You're not going to time the perfect entry point for this. For me, it reminds me of the Dark Souls games where I don't always finish them but the more i play them the better prepared i am for the next one and it seems like i've heard that with like monster hunter 2 where people are like oh yeah world was the one i tried i kind of got into it um and then they tried you know rise and suddenly they're like oh okay now i definitely

get it right yeah for sure i think that makes a lot of sense it took me a few to get into it but i never thought of that before but it it makes sense that it's like kind of cumulative maybe you can't enjoy the first one right it's like the assassin's creed of like you're just getting the basics you're not gonna have fun yeah but next time that tracks my first one was like monster hunter 4 ultimate on the wii u and i was like Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the Wii U. And I was like, this is nothing. And then the next game I played, I think, was Monster Hunter World.

And that was the one that I liked. Or Monster Hunter Ultimate. One of the 3DS games. Okay. I think we can skip Outriders. I think we all agree that that is. I have heard that that game got a patch recently that is. I don't know that it addressed sort of the technical things.

Outriders whips ass. And it's definitely going on this list. Are you kidding me? know how much outriders i played guys no i'm gonna have to go ahead and say that it's a lot of outriders which is very is a very fun game um that is very stupid this is shocking to me it's unthinkably stupid it's a great you know not unlike loop hero i mean they're basically clones of each other basically not unlike loop hero It's a great, you know, not unlike Loop Hero. I mean, they're basically clones of each other. Basically. Not unlike Loop Hero. It's a game where I can, like, do something with my good brain

and let my reptilian brain, like, shoot aliens or whoever you're shooting. Right. I just remember it being pretty fun. I haven't dipped back into it because it had a lot of weirdness with your gear getting deleted and stuff like yeah that's that's the update that i've heard is that they've uh they've opened up the like fun weapon fire hose and did the like opposite of the thing that uh these always online games do the opposite of uh holy shit well oh anthem where anthem was like oh people are having fun you're having too much

fun get those guns out of there uh they're doing the opposite so i'm i'm i'm curious to dip into outriders um then we talked about grand theft auto for like 100 years can i put outriders on that well yeah i'm gonna put outriders in front of me we can always take it off yeah uh this this meaningless list that we're using to structure this segment yes can always take it off yeah uh this this meaningless list that we're using to structure this segment yes we can't take it off uh pokemon snap i didn't like at all but i bet you guys probably did not i not particularly i really enjoyed it i think more than everybody else on the show but i haven't gone back to it yeah um and i have i don't really have any desire to go back to it do you feel differently about it returnal which was the other game that we discussed this week so i i have not

actually played much returnal because i have been waiting for that is another game that i have on my wait till all the patches get added right because there was a lot of drama around saves and actually being able to save your game and i figured i would wait that one out how about y'all i had a very interesting experience with returnal that not very interesting but uh i i played it a lot and got extremely frustrated it is a very frustrating game it is it is the kind of game you talk about that like oh i've wasted my time that sort of game, you talk about that like, oh, I've wasted my time.

That sort of broken part of my brain that feels like games have to be edifying in some way, they can't just be fun. It is not uncommon to have like an hour and a half run that just gets undone in 15 seconds of bad luck. And that is absolutely infuriating. To a point where I was like, I can't play this anymore. I'm not doing it. I'm going to stand up and walk away.

I'm deleting the game from my PS5. I can't deal with it anymore. But then, like, fast forward to a month later, and I'm like, it was kind of fun. Yeah. I might just dip back in and just real quick see if I'm, somehow magically better at it and the skill loss was so bad that it was like it was so much worse than when I had quit playing which is I

Jeff Gerstmann on Giant Bomb said the exact same experience where he's like I tried to dip back in it had gotten so much harder because the skills were so much worse that it was like impossible to get back in so like kind of frustrating because like I like a lot of the things that Returnal is doing. The guns are cool.

The story is kind of interesting. It looks great. I just wish it was a little bit more accessible for me, a commoner. Yeah, this came out while I was sort of on paternity leave. And we had a very difficult time with our second child, and in many ways still are having a difficult time with him. And so this was the opposite of the kind of game that I was able to play at the time.

So I have not dipped into Returnal because I was kind of waiting for it to get patched. And then guess what? Other games started to come out that were very good. So I just haven't taken the time yet. I'll speak for Frosh on this hey I'm walking here bagels um I liked it it was too easy I beat it all real fast and all you gotta do is get the one good weapon and that's that sounded like a recording of him far off yeah yeah Russ is so

irritatingly good at video games just when you think you're like making a little bit of progress, it's just like, yeah, I beat it. I moved on to the DLC and it was too easy. I played Binding of Isaac with him because that was a deal after he played Nier Hanamata. And I was like, I don't have much time for this. He's like, don't worry. We'll play co-op and I will literally just run you through the game.

So he just like literally dragged me through a run of that game like an hour. It was great. Great game. Is that new? That new stuff is out. I think out on Switch too. The next one we had was kind of a recap thing.

We talked about Subnautica Below Zero, which I think is very cool. A baby, baby, baby, baby. A baby, baby, baby. Are you really skipping the best game of the year? Oh, you're right. I miss Resident Evil. Resident Evil 8 is absolutely a slam dunk.

I think we called it the best Resident Evil game ever. Yeah, we've talked about how it's the best Resident Evil game for three episodes, so I don't know that we have to belabor the point necessarily. It's a good-ass game. I just want to put it on because it is absolutely good. You told my dad. Dad was looking for something to play.

Dad somehow was playing the... Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. The remake that just came out. Yeah, and he's like, how's this? And Griffin's like, it was good on PS2. Dad's like, okay, not new, huh? And Griffin's like, you should check out Resident Evil 8. No, Travis is obsessed with Resident Evil 8 like you should check out resident evil 8 now travis travis is travis

is obsessed with resident evil 8 you should check out resident evil 8 and dad's like do you mean is this a trick do you mean resident evil like from 1996 dad this is a franchise that has been going on for 25 years so dad just like became aware the first resident evil is like! Never play this again. I hope he played it. He might like it. I think that this is like it's so fucking good. It's really good. I kind of want to be

playing it now. It's really great. So the games of spring had Subnautica Below Zero, for real, for real, Nier Replicant, the Mass Effect Trilogy Remaster, and Clap Hands Golf, which i think we should put on the list because if we didn't russ would be upset i know he's deeply into it but he's not here so i'm also that me game me it's also very good yeah i mean that was the next that was a different

episode yeah oh you mean across all of that yeah Yeah, I mean... I would like to say that probably Subnautica does not make it because I feel like I really... I think it's very cool. I don't think it's different enough from the first Subnautica. New Replicant unquestionably makes the topic. Unquestionably is on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, baby.

It is extremely good. I know that we've had up and down conversations about it is it is extremely good like i i know that we've had like kind of up and down conversations about it and it has its flaws but compared to the stuff that we're talking about it is very good and a number of people on twitter have asked us to do an actual neo-replicant episode i think we might hold that until frosh is back since he he did all the muscle work of playing automata but we'll get around to that eventually. Griff, you're not like... No, I mean, tell me when we're going to do that,

and I'll finally do my near time. Just go ahead and start playing it. It's a fun video game. Yeah, that's cool. Replicant is fun. I mean, Replicant is fun. It's like a little bit... It's not like hard or weird or inaccessible or anything.

It's just like, it's just, I don't know. It's just a good video. I think you'll enjoy it. Griffin. Once you get started. I think I will too. I think I will too. For sure.

Uh, clap hands golf. Is it? I don't know. Clap hands golf. We can leave off because we're going to talk about something else at the end of the episode. Wow. Okay. What about this me thing?

I've completely missed it. missed now i don't know the meatopia charts sorry no way no uh and then i think then we did our resident evil series and then the whoa what ratchet and clank right yeah i think is is definitely on there also i think that's great i've i think i've almost beat it i stuck with it i think i've almost beat it um it's really good yeah it's just like so fun to play and the playing of it is very good it's just very enjoyable to play i feel you know what i will say this i a tip if you've not gotten into this game which a lot of people probably haven't and will eventually because they're they can't get a freaking ps5 um i think i probably paid too much attention to leveling up weapons um because nothing the game asks you to do demands very

leveled up weapons right and so i i think i probably played with weapons i didn't enjoy as much in the hopes of like grinding them up to their maximum level and i wish i just like stuck with the guns i like, because this is not, it is not required that any of these guns be leveled up. Just play and have fun. Cause it was very fun. I just dropped in Slack, the games.

It looks like we have 11 on this list and we can take off. Oh, we're going to take off clap hands again. This is not legally binding. I did not have, I feel like Ender Lilies. I mean, I, we're going to talk about that at some point right like i mean it's out now like it just came out on switch and and i started playing it it's like it's like one of those okay okay cool uh so a hitman 3 tear down

but maybe tear down we take off that leaves us Let's actually just talk about what we know we're going to keep. That'll probably be easier. Hitman 3, for sure. Hitman 3, Monster Hunter Rise, Resident Evil 8, Nier, Ratchet & Clank. Loop Hero for me. Loop Hero. I would like to include Loop Hero in that list.

The only two that I have as sort of question marks then are Bowser's Fury and Outriders are the other two. I just don't have the experience. I feel like Ender Lilies is too new. Teardown is too early. And we might go back to check those out. This is, again, a completely meaningless thing. It's meaningless.

Yes. It's absolutely meaningless. But not any more or less meaningless than any other ranking that we do on The Best of Us. Right. That's fair. I love Clap Hands. I don't want to scare anybody away from playing more of that game. But there is a little game called Mario Golf coming out at the end of this week.

We're going to talk about it next week. By the time this episode comes out, the game will be out. So you can now say that this game you've been secretly teasing is so dope has been Mario Golf. I think we actually cut that from last week's episode. Oh, did we? Oh, okay. Yeah, because they were worried about us. It was so obvious what game you were talking about.

Yeah, I am extremely into Mario Golf, and I'm really looking forward to talking about it. Let's leave clap hands, then. Let's give it this moment. You know, if it's about to be obliterated from memory, then let's give it this shining moment. Well, is there room for it? I think so, if we bump Bowser's Fury or Outriders.

Those are the two. I think bump Outriders, because I was alone in that, and put clap hands on there. Okay, I like it. I like it. I like it. All right. Yeah, this is a good list. So, yeah, if you want to play like your heroes, the besties,

the games from the first half of this year, the eight games from the first half of this year, but except for not Russ's opinions, Hitman 3, Mario 3D World Plus Passage Fury, Loop Hero, Monster Hunter Rise, Clap Hands Golf, Resident Evil 8, Nier Replicant, Ratchet & Clank, Rift Apart. opinions him and three mario 3d world plus passage fury loop hero monster hunter rise clap hands golf resident evil 8 near replicant ration clank rift apart good not bad you know what not a bad year for it's been slow i'll say but there's some really good stuff on there yeah for sure um i think that we should see what the our friends at home are talking about maybe after a quick break because i bet they know some stuff we don't our friends at home have also played games that we didn't

tell them to play which feels like a betrayal i guess yeah you know what i mean like we're the taste makers i thought we had an agreement um but they're like the fifth bestie. You know, they're bringing that extra bit we need. And we needed their help this year because if you look at our list, not enough indie games. And we've got some good small game recommendations on the listener mail. Absolutely.

I'll dive into these right now. The first one is from Cameron. Monster Train's last Divinity expansion has now pushed it into being my second most played game of all time. Otherwise, the roguelite slot machine game, Luck Be a Landlord, is a lot of fun, and Alba was

a charming experience that I 100%ed in an evening. I am 50% certain that Cameron is Justin, because this just sounds like another excuse for Justin to talk about Monster Train.

Monster Train fucking rules. I did not know there was an expansion out for it. Yeah, I'm going to go play it now. Monster Train rules, Grifflands rule, those two games both rule. I got a new, hey, if you like those,

I got a new one of those coming up for you at the end of the episode so stay tuned these other two sound really good and i haven't played them but they sound i know russ has been banging the alba drum for a while uh right that's one he's discussed i might grab that on switch um roguelite slot machine luck be a landlord that sounds good i haven't i haven't checked that out it sounds good uh up after this we have from rain cloud uh backbone finally released this year and i am in love with it the combo of detective furry and gritty aesthetic has me hooked and the twist was unexpected uh did any of you get to try this game no help me understand this i've never of it, but Google says that it was released in 2019. I think that might have been when it popped up on Steam early.

Let me pull it up really quick. You are, yes, Steam. I was born on January 1st, 1964. That's definitely true. This is like, it is a pixel a pixel, uh, noir aesthetic. This looks incredible. Yeah, it looks awesome. It looks like you're like a raccoon detective in this very beautifully lit pixel city.

Dang. Y'all, I think we need to play this game. It's rated M for sexual themes, strong language, and use of drugs. That's my shit. Hell yeah. I am. That's my thing. Gonna give that a try uh thank you raincloud uh okay after this here is the game that i am embarrassed that it has taken me this long to play uh from keenan chicory a colorful tale has been such a great game for me while the gameplay isn't really much to write home about the presentation is spectacular uh the music from at curain incredible the writing humorous and heartwarming

definitely my favorite adventure game of the year i have heard so much good stuff at curain is is lena is lena rain the uh composer for uh uh celeste just just in case it mentions a twitter tag and not a the name uh cool after this we've got um from uh our boy frankenstein uh cruelty scott cruelty squad is a bonkers low poly cyberpunk immersive sim developed by one dude and released earlier this year it's rough around the edges guys real quick just go just look at something of this quick holy god here look i'll link you here look at the thing i'm looking at shit yes holy god oh my god oh my god absolutely yeah this is um justin can you describe what you're seeing it looks like if it looks like if you

it looks like there's like 420 meme like a deep fried meme a deep fried meme yeah it looks like those like 420 meme, like. A deep fried meme. A deep fried meme. Yeah. It looks like if you took Chex Quest and put it in a haunted microwave for an hour and then took the disc out. This looks amazing. Yeah, I'm going to go download this.

This looks unhinged. It's described as an immersive power fantasy simulator with tactical stealth elements in a sewage infused garbage world oh god that's a cruelty squad that looks great thank you boy frankenstein uh after this we got uh katherine said an airport for aliens currently currently run by dogs is one of the funniest and most heartwarming games i have ever played uh this looks great i i have been like meaning to check this out forever and i have a feeling this will be a game that we talk a lot about quite a bit in the second half uh of the year

we also got from the smallest possible e overboard by inco studios it's a short visual novel style murder mystery game, but you're the murderer and you have to wiggle your way out of it. The gameplay is looping short runs through an eight hour day with dynamic characters, conversations, and outcomes. It's super neat.

This game is on Switch, y'all. And like, I really need to prioritize this. I have a big road trip coming up and I'm downloading it ahead of it. Because Inkle, for people, Justin, you're a big road trip coming up and i'm downloading it ahead of it uh because inkle for people uh justin you you're a big inkle fan right um hold on i'm clicking the the to see i like yeah i i think that they have done some really cool stuff i've not played all these but like uh they did 80 days it's like a triumph the sorcery games are very very cool but yeah these are sort of like visual novel interactive visual novel more interactivity than visual novel usually uh indicates i think but

yeah uh did you this just came out on switch i think right it's it's i i think it came out on uh what personal computers a little bit ago but yeah i've never played this i'm sitting here feeling like a lot of my the ways that i used to find out about video games have have failed like i don't i'm not hearing about these great games i'm very frustrated this is the first time i'm hearing about i mean thank god for y'all i guess um tweet at me more with your fantastic game recommendations yeah um lastly here going under which released a work from home expansion in january this is by aggro crab games great design gameplay music but from shikidom shikidi is is the recommender here it asked the question of what if hades was less sexy and edgy?

Hmm. What if weapon durability mechanic in Breath of the Wild was more fun? One of those sounds good. Some questions that I have not pondered before, but sure. Yeah, this looks good too. Hey, everybody, thank you. These are,

this is, I'm finally hitting a point where I can start really putting time into playing some honest-to-God video games again. And now I feel like I have a big, delicious platter of games to dip into. Yeah, it's very exciting. Y'all, what else have you been playing? I got one real quick.

Talked about Monster Train. Talked about some of those other ones. I want to highlight Roguebook, which is from the creators of Faria, one of the dudes who did, or Richard Garfield. One of them dudes. One of those guys that created Magic the Gathering worked on Rogue Book. And it is a deck building game where, oh boy, the big evolution here in terms of these types of games,

there is a deck building game. You have two characters that you're playing and you choose which two you're going to take out with you at the beginning, similar to Monster Train in that regard. And each character has different decks that do different stuff. There's a character that's more like block focused.

There's one that's more like uh attack focused whatever and you learn how to like use their skills in conjunction with each other in ways that their skills like can kind of play off of each other um the thing that's really interesting about rogue book is normally in these games the path that you go through on each discrete adventure is pretty linear. There may be like one or two different paths you can take. Roguebook is on a hexagonal isometric map that you use ink to reveal. So exploration of the map is also like part of the gameplay mechanics. There are like towers that you can find that will blow open a wide area of the map.

When you finish regular battles, you'll get a little bit of ink that you can use to maybe create a path over to another area that you see that you'd like to explore. But basically, in addition to... And then a lot of these times, these wide open areas, you'll just find, like, a healing potion or some gold or something that is, like, uniformly positive. So you want to be able to explore as much of the map as you can because you're finding things all throughout the map that are increasing your skills. cards and like getting more cards as a way of like marking progression it's also enticing you into battles by with this promise of like i'll be able to reveal more of the map and uh become like more able to take on the challenges that lie ahead um it's a very very very good one of those uh came out june 17th so it's pretty new rogue book all one word rogue book i'll make it brief because i feel like i'm turning myself into uh just sort of a character uh there's there's a meme in the final fantasy 14 community

and it's like copy copy pasta of have you played final fantasy 14 the award-winning mmorpg with a free trial up through level 60 and the beloved expansion uh heavensward i'm turning into that guy but i am i missed a lot of that game because i'm a pretty late adopter of it uh two of my favorite final fantasy games ever are final fantasy tactics and final fantasy 12 uh both of which are set in the same world of Ivalice. Vagrant's story also takes place in there. I've always really liked that stuff. And there is a whole side story, a whole expansion of Final Fantasy XIV set in Ivalice that is essentially an expansion onto the story of Final Fantasy Tactics. It builds on the actual canon narrative of of final fantasy tactics in a way that

is like so rad i just finished it up uh yesterday and uh that yep it's a good ass game and that's it i get a quick uh play time check from you griff on final fantasy 14 uh i've been playing it in a little half hour chunks so it's not as it's not as terrible as you think it would be because i'm not here's the thing i'm not playing it like a number though uh probably like uh like 10 hours nothing big uh probably like five or six hours uh i'm not what's great is i haven't gotten hooked into like the uh the end game loot grind shit like i'm just playing story missions and stuff like that which are fairly respectful of your time uh and uh yeah having a having a good time with it i i i to see two of

my favorite final fantasy games that don't get a lot of sort of lip service uh become sort of playable in this way again is is i want you to say i want you to force us to do an FFXIV episode so I can justify playing. Hey, baby, Endwalker comes out this fall, wrapping up the whole Hydaelyn sort of storyline. I think we're all better. Oh, man, even saying that, you saying that one sentence was enough to turn me off of the idea of playing this game. Oh, no, you don't want to hear about the Convocation of XIV

and their summoning of Zodiar. Oh, my God! Justin. Chris, save me! Listen, no, there's a- Talk about a game for jocks. it's important to admit when you're wrong and this is me admitting i was wrong we spent like a couple episodes talking about the zelda games and i was a little bit sour on breath of the wild because that game really pushed me

away at a certain point years ago when the weapon durability stuff got to be too much and all the cooking and yada yada yada y'all i restarted my save this week i finally did it went back in regular regular mode or uh master master mode yeah i'm playing regular mode i'm i'm trying to have fun um i mean i think oh my gosh i restarted it um and so far, it is magical, man. Of course, this isn't a surprise. It's a great game for everybody, but there really are some games that, and we talked about this with Monster Hunter,

where knowing the basics going into it from the top just makes it more welcoming and accommodating, and you know how to, I don't know, make the most of your time in that world, and that is my vibe with Breath of the Wild right now. I'm just like blasting through it. Everything just works. A lot of the things that were, I don't know, maybe it was cool that they were a little

puzzling back in the day now just kind of makes sense and it makes it easier. And I'm really, really, really, really enjoying it. and i i'm really really really really enjoying it um so yeah i that is a reminder again that our opinions are fluid so maybe it takes two is gonna come back in the second half of 2021 i can feel it maybe never know uh well that's gonna do it for us for this week uh russ has been playing parenting he's been playing dad i'm sure he's doing a great job at it. Next week, Chris Plant set it up. Next week, we're playing Mario Golf Super Rush. And I am so hyped to talk with you all about it. Justin, it's an action game.

There's an entire area of the game that is like Breath of the Wild, but golf. It's wild. Here's my dream golf game someone at the beginning of the game bowser comes out and he's like i have an announcement golf is illegal all golf clubs are swords if they started like that i'm like okay now i'm into it now i'm in like the goal of it is to play golf at the end because you use your swords to get your golf clubs back. Yeah. So where can people find us, Justin? You know, anywhere.

They've found us already. Certainly. If they're hearing this, they found us. Please help us to share the show. Support some of these smaller games that we talked about this week. That's a cool thing you can do. Check them out if they sound like something you would enjoy um you know that's a tough tough beat trying to be an indie game developer so get out there and support all those uh smaller games

um i i realized earlier that was dismissive of indra lilies i've just barely played it i'll probably continue to play it it's really good um yeah it looks good i'm not i'm not dismissing it uh that is going to do it for us for this week oh we're at the besties pod on twitter you can follow us there if you want that's where we do a hell of have a lot of these discussions so it's a good place to follow us uh that is going to do it for us for this week so until next time my name is justin mcelroy uh and be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!