The Besties - The Besties Game of the Year Spectacular - Part Two

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

THE RITUAL IS COMPLETE. Once again, we've weighed the merits of EVERY VIDEO GAME released in 2021, and named one of them the ultimate victor. May the Gaming Gods bless us with an even richer crop in the coming year, and also happy holidays, or whatever. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I'm not putting the pressure on myself to come up with a funny cold open for our very last episode of the year. You see, for breakfast, I like to take the egg and the steam and the steam and the egg. That's reductive. That's reductive. That's reductive. Let me try. I love wheat because it makes my poops better. Here's a little information about my poops. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

That's pretty close. Justin, here's a picture of my rotten toe that you've begged me to stop sending you, yet I continue to send pictures of the rotten toe. And I send them in a style like it is an automated service that I have subscribed to. Sometimes text conversations with Russ turn into a shock image,

like something awful forum thread. It's like, look at all the poop that my baby did on the wall today. It's like, duh. I know that you did not invite this at all. At all. It's good because this is all stuff that has not necessarily been highlighted on the podcast. So it's good that people understand that there are depths to me that aren't just that. By the end of this show, I want

the besties subtitle to be a full cataloging of the failures of Russ Frustic. Yeah, this is the one that Russ said in July when I was talking about his son. Russ texted's uh russ texted out of the blue and said it's pretty wild how big he's gotten it goes pretty fast and i said thinking he was talking

about his son i said yeah enjoy it as much as you can people always say that and but you should always do that all the time i think you know like try to enjoy it as much as you can and russ said yeah i'm trying to here's how far we've come. And then he sent me five time-coded pictures of his rotten toe beginning in September of 2020 and ending in July 21. It's almost healed for what it's worth. Yeah, great. We were all on fucking pins and needles. Yeah.

I'll be real. I'm just kind of sad. I thought he was only sending this stuff to me. I thought we had something special he's been you know what's fucked up he's been making me pay for it he keeps saying here's this text chain is my only fans and now paypal me five dollars

no free foot pigs I guess so my name is justin mccroy and i know the best game of the year i mean my name is griffin mccroy i'm not gonna say i know the best game of the year. I mean, my name's Griffin McElroy. I'm not going to say I know the best game of the year. That's the point of the whole episode. So I'm not like a psychic. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. And, you know, every game is a winner. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a video game club. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. We began our end-of-the-year battle last episode. If you have a list of that, you probably should. And we are now down to a final eight games. And we're going to pit them against each other.

And then again, and then again. So that's basically the flow. If you've never done a bracket before, that's how it goes. I'm sure all of our listeners have done some sort of sports bracket at some time in their life when i think our listeners i think sports brackets well i mean i i do sports bracket sometimes and i'm pretty big geek because it just turns all the guys into video game characters. That's true. It's like Drew Brees is the paladin, but he doesn't play anymore, does he? Unclear. Okay, this is the wrong crowd to ask.

He doesn't. I can assure you he's a commentator now. I know Chris Plant knows his shit. Guys, Chris Plant is secretly, and I know this because we share a text message chain with a lot of sportsos. Chris Plant's a secret sportso in a major way. He's not so sports.

He's not secret about it. He's not secret. I guess so. He's got like the outfits and everything. He's rubbing in everybody's face. Well, anyway, that's been some fun flavor. Now we're going to take a brief break and come back and talk to you about the best games of the year. Can I ask a question before we start?

Yeah. Do any of you actually have a game, and don't say it because I don't want to spoiler, do you have a game in your heart that you want to win that you think is a game of the year? Because this is the first year that I don't. I do. Yeah, I don't.

I have an inkling, but I would say most of these games I would be perfectly fine walking away having one. I would say there's maybe like three or four on here that I would be like pretty happy with. Is that a good thing? Like, I don't, I think that's a good thing. I think it's good. I was totally willing to go to the mat for like Animal Crossing

because I adored that game and thought it was like, like culturally important in the moment uh and that was like you know i i feel like i usually do have that for for at least one game let's kick it off first matchup metroid dread versus wildermyth okay that's hard right away well let me dofa i want to i want to clarify one very small thing because i i've took plant to task on one element that I was incorrect in the last episode. I claimed that there were only three handwritten campaigns in Wildermyth.

There are actually five. So I did diminish the amount of actual pre-written content that is in Wildermyth. I apologize for that. It's a dope-ass game. Someone talk about Metroid Dread and why it should win, and someone talk about Wildermyth and why it should win. I would love to do that for Metroid.

Okay, please. I just think it's a badass, a really, really badass game in a way that I would not describe Metroid games in the past. I would describe them as atmospheric with a sense of wonder and discovery with cool power-ups whereas metroid dread routinely had moments that had me like jumping out of my seat like heart-pounding you know uh moments that i don't i don't know that this this theory i did not know that this series could could evoke um it is like a really good action game it feels great uh runs at 60 frames right like it's it is butter smooth and i just from the moment i picked it up and started to like counter enemies

and like had my first uh you know interaction with one of the emmy robots um you know scratch it checks all the boxes that a metroid game needs to check of uh being clever and you know having a cool world to inhabit and explore but on top of that like it was some of the best action that a video game sort of provided to me for for the entire year yeah it's i think it's pretty maybe the most standout aspect of it there have been a number of games that have been made in 2d you know 2.5d but like that side scrolling perspective i don't think there's a game that feels better to move around the world in than metroid dread of those 2d games i think all of the all the power-ups like go into that like yeah you know you get like a phase dash uh that you can

like chain three times in the air so that like by the end of the game uh you are just sort of like your feet don't have to touch the ground you just like teleport through the air and speed dash and uh you know screw attack jump and like do all of these things. And, you know, the puzzles that utilize that stuff while like completely unnecessary, unless you're trying to go for a 100% run, which I very much tried to do. just such a slit game that is much more difficult than really any nintendo franchise is like willing to uh experiment with which with some really good boss fights um some really like tense stealth sequences that actually work and i and i also want to give it props for being very smart about how it handles its narrative uh metroid has screwed this up in the past with games like other m where it's like oh you want a ton of cut scenes with a ton of dialogue and a ton of internal monologue from samus that's what you're looking for no we are not we are

looking for samus to be a total fucking badass and crush the world under her boot and also you know have some feelings that's fine but you don't need to talk about all your feelings all the time you should just be a fucking badass sometimes you don't need to talk about your feelings all the time that's what metroid's really that's really yeah it builds it creates like a an arch nemesis that is like genuinely imposing and like without being like totally drowning in lore and like mythos shit where you can't follow anything that's going on right there's a little bit but like that's it's just enough in my opinion you hear the word chozo like five times and that's it you hear chozo and it's the rest of the games

you hear that and you're like the spicy meat we go yeah it's my favorite sausage okay wildermyth justin did you play more this week i did can you talk about it then because i i want somebody new to talk about it so i feel like this is an interesting game where a lot of people's experiences are going to be pretty different and i think that that makes it a little more um challenging to talk about but wildermyth uh what i sort of didn't get about it early on and what i what i kind of dig now is when you start playing wildermyth, what I sort of didn't get about it early on and what I kind of dig now is when you start playing Wildermyth, it feels kind of basic. It feels a little bit like my first adventure. Like the mechanics aren't that challenging or complicated.

And as a result, like it can feel sort of unfair. Like characters can get killed like pretty quickly um as far as i can tell healing is not like a big thing i don't if there's a healing person or way of doing that i have not discovered yeah it comes across later okay um but so that can feel very basic but i think what's cool about it is the the story uh and these events that you come across in Wildermyth are pretty unpredictable, and they It feels like things are happening that you are not prepared for, um, in a way that like feels un-video gamey, right? Because it can feel like things are unfair sometimes. Like, wait, I didn't want that to happen. But that feels closer to like the collaborative spirit of like a D&D where with traditional game design, people are making

something that is satisfying and fun to play moment to moment. And they have an arc that you want you to, that you want to go on. And I think Wildermyth is interesting because the game can kind of be pulling you in one direction and you can kind of pull in a different way. And that ebb and flow, I think makes for something that feels it can feel more chaotic,

but when things line up, it feels the moments, it feels, the moments where it lands, where it's like a satisfying story thing happens that you, to a character where it like feels good or like a character that is important to you manages to survive an encounter and then some weird story thing happens, it feels more satisfying

because in a way it feels more organic. It feels like, oh, this is just unique to me. And I really think that that's very cool and effective. It also does a really good job of when a character does die, which can happen, especially early. When I was playing, it happened fairly frequently. They can bring in somebody new and they sort of integrate them in the story in interesting ways.

Like they feel like a sort of fresh infusion of energy and like story beats can happen to that person very quickly in a way that like endears you to them pretty quickly. Like so it doesn't just feel like a interchangeable, you know, cast of characters. You know, it tries to build the character and your connection to them uh really quickly yeah i think it's an amazing magic trick that they've i mean it's not a magic trick it's it's incredibly good writing and and smart game design that they've sort of made here um i i absolutely love those aspects of it um i still find it hard to sort of and i understand why but the art design is like super not for me um i understand it's built to be modular so you can really like slot in and out various things and it allows the system to work the way it should work which is like

pretty scalable and you can change encounters without changing a lot of the art but that is i think still the hardest thing to sort of get over because it does have like a almost a flash gamey era vibe to it even though there's a lot of depth to the writing and the gameplay touched on the writing it is exceptionally strong yeah it it walks a really interesting balance between like sort of um buttoned down high fantasy like tolkien-esque like you know the forces of evil are aligning against you and this stuff and then in the character interactions it strikes a much more humanist beat like it feels like real people that you know you know their backgrounds,

like, which is another cool element of this. Like you see these people come up from a farmer and, you know, somebody working at a shop or a baker or whatever, and you watch their evolution and like, it doesn't lose that in the character interactions, which is cool. Like it makes them feel like real people. Yeah. It also doesn't go into parody for like the humor moments or the lighter moments where, you know, that happens sometimes where it's just like, oh, this is just a parody of something else. But here it is humorous in the way, again, that Lord of the Rings is where they'll have that light moment of like Marion Pippin fucking around.

And it's like fun. It doesn't like distract from the overarching evil sauron story it's just like kind of a a way to have a breather yeah i think it it's not just that it doesn't do parody it doesn't do meta which i think is something that a lot of dnd fantasy stuff deals with right now sure um where it's like oh can you believe it? They're in this world, but they make some pun about Spider-Man or something. I don't know. Thank you, Grant, for that very thorough dissembling of much of my life's work. Really, really just sort of.

It's pretty cool, pretty cool. Pretty cool. You don't make puns about Spider-Man? You have not listened to our show. I guarantee you with 100% certainty we have made puns about Spider-Man? I can guarantee you with 100% certainty we have made puns about Spider-Man. Hey, look, you know what? You started the trend.

That's not true either. Some people just get to be first. You're right. Some people just get to make the mold, you know? It's hard for... I did not like the tactics element of the game. I did not think that that was... And maybe that's just not my genre

because I've had a lot of games that i've been super into that have been kind of i think about the banner saga a lot i don't know if you all played that that had a kind of i would say somewhat similar uh tactics element to it and for me like i have a very specific thing i want out of that and it looks like you know final fantasy tactics or fire emblem or something like that and i'm i i don thing I want out of that. And it looks like, you know, Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem or something like that. And I don't get that out of this game. And I find it just kind of after my like after a few encounters, I find it all to be kind of samey. See, I actually I thought that at first, too.

And the more I played the it was interesting because my connection to the characters and I think the way the game wants you to play started to align more. Where like in a typical game like this, I would send the warrior in by themselves to go attack the thing. Right. But in this one, I'm being like much more cautious about like, OK, we're going to move as a group because if we're close together, we'll be harder to hurt. as a group, because if we're close together, we'll be harder to hurt. And then, but you still have to like line up, you know, your, with your, your spellcaster has to have like line of sight to something that they can infuse with. And then that's, that, that was the one that really, I loved this, like right before we started recording, actually,

there was like a monster, a huge monster in a barn that was about to wipe everybody. And my spellcaster is like far outside the barn, but just managed to like infuse with a stone object in the barn. And then from that stone object cast a spell called discus, which like made us like, you know, blew off some of the stone to hurt the, to hurt the monster managed to kill it before it could hurt everybody else.

But it was like, it was just sort of by the skin of my teeth. And I actually liked the tactics more because I started really worried, like, because I got burned enough by people just like getting killed. Yeah. Yeah. I think also the tactics and the writing, I don't think either of them, I don't know how to say this. The writing is excellent.

The story is, when it works, it works amazingly. When it doesn't work, it's because it is a procedurally generated narrative. Same with the tactics. When it works, it's great. This is not Final Fantasy tactics. It is not designed to be the most in-depth tactics game ever. I think what makes the game special is both of those things are good enough that they can play with each other, and that is what the game is. I feel like I just went full Inception on my own brain, so maybe that didn't make any sense whatsoever. No, but I do think that we're at a point where we need to... Yeah, there's one other thing I want to say, because I don't want the slander lingering.

I understand why some people bounce off the art. Yeah, there's one other thing I want to say because I don't want the slander lingering. I understand why some people bounce off the art. For me, I really have grown to like the art. I like how much it doesn't look like everything else in video games and it has this kind of paper doll aesthetic. I find it really comforting in the way that I find colored pencil art comforting. It has old webcomic feel in the way that I find like colored pencil art comforting. It has old webcomic feel in a way that I, the art doesn't bother me as much because I used to read a lot of old webcomics.

So I think this game is really special. I spent some more time with it over the past week and I'm glad it exists because I, I have always sort of thought that it is genuinely impossible to capture the feel of actual tabletop pen and paper role playing games in a video game just because like of the level of how dynamic that experience is in real life and how it's impossible for a pre-programmed piece of software to accomplish that. But I think Wildermyth might just be the game that has come closest to date. I think if people like this

and they like how earnest and human and loving this is for its characters, the very first thing that they should check out is this podcast called The Adventure Zone. There's also an illustrated book. I'm just saying I think people will like it. I want people to check out your life's work. Because I think this is going to be actually pretty painful.

I don't know if it'll be a difficult debate because I really do feel torn about this. I'll tell you where I'm at personally is like I really, really like both of these games. I feel like Metroid Dread is more consistently successful in what it is doing, which like Wildermyth is a lot more uncharted territory. And as like, when it works, it really, really works, but it's got enough sort of missteps that I am willing to lean towards Metroid Dread. It kind of reminds me of Disco Elysium in that way,

where it's like, oh, this is all very cool. I'm like very into this and I'm so excited that it's happening and I feel like it'll inspire other people but like metroid dread is just like more consistently successful for me before we move forward with that logic if that's the logic that we're going to end up using across the podcast inscription is in for a world of pain well i i would just say like if that's the logic we don't need to get there.

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Vote with your heart. You can have any rationale for voting for something. I'm just saying, if we're going to have any consistency where it's like, it tried, but who, you know. There's no consistency. Okay. There's no consistency.

Okay. As long as I know that. We're different human beings. I want some expectations set where we say the exact opposite for that game. I think Metroid Dread rips ass and should be considered. Yeah, I vote for Metroid Dread as well. I'm sorry, Wildereth,

but it's one of the best 2D games ever made and I love it. Juice? Yeah. No, yeah, I think Metroid Dread. Look, Metroid Dread had the most levels so therefore it had more levels and can i say more guns more guns um okay i can i do halo infinite yes halo infinite is i was not expecting much from a new halo game uh and halo infinite i've detailed

on this podcast you can go listen to it uh the extent to which i love the uh the multiplayer of this in a way that like i never really expected to um but i have been so deeply entranced by it dozens of hours i mean i i absolutely love it the campaign i have now put a lot of time into And I – it's just so smart about finding like what is fun about Halo and what is good about Halo and then like letting you discover those moments like in the world in a way that like when you are – you have a grappling hook, right? And you're just like – you can just like grapple up a cliff, which feels very un-Halo, but it's like, it's fun with the mechanics that they have built. And when you come across a group of enemies, even if there's not like something around that you want, they're just so fun to like engage with. And that I just like, we'll stop and fight whoever, because it's like that pleasurable. I love the way that they have made an open world where the rewards feel consequential. I love that you can get multiplayer skins in the single player game.

That's so smart. Like it's a really nice unlockable and things to chase down if you feel like it. I think that having an open world, this is also like something that I, I think is very strong about Halo. Halo has for the past, several iterations had like equipment as a factor, right? So you, you like in this one,

there's a drop shield that you can drop wherever there's the grappling hook. There's a sort of like quick dash that you can use. And, and a couple of others. I think what is really cool is because the open world puts you into different scenarios that are not just like traditional video game levels, it really encourages you to use that equipment

because you are confronted with like a very different scenario from each encounter. Like there are times when wow i really am going to use this drop shield that i would not typically use in a single player campaign i'm going to use this drop shield because where i'm positioned and where i've encountered this fight it would make it a lot easier for me and like i think that having the dynamic encounters like that encourages you to mix up your tactics same with the guns like in single player i would traditionally in in halo games i would find a you know a few combos that i liked and stick with them um but here the different encounters that you run into and the way that you

encounter different weapons um it really encourages you to like mix it up like find the right gun for the situation that that you are in and i think that that makes all of it like a lot more satisfying. And I am so impressed with the way that they have taken what is cool about Halo and brought it into the modern world, I think is so, so cool and smart. And I really adore it. Okay. So you talked a lot about the campaign, which I want to talk about as well. Okay, so you talked a lot about the campaign, which I want to talk about as well.

It takes like half hour to get to the open world area of the campaign. And I think we talked a little bit about it when we initially talked about Halo Infinite, that that intro part, you know, is weirdly linear and there's not a lot going on. But once you get to the open world, it is like mind-blowingly fun to move around that world and use all the Halo tools and totally crush it there's something very weird going on in the halo campaign specifically regarding anything that isn't in that open world um both from a like level design standpoint just like you go through a lot of blue tubes in that game, like a weirdly large amount, just like very linear to be type levels that it just like feels tacked on to the point where I was like looking forward to going back to the open world and not doing story related stuff because it just didn't really fit.

It's fun to do shooting, but not when I like have very limited mobility in those areas. Secondarily, I think narratively, it's a pretty big failure. It does not tell a cogent story for Master Chief or Cortana or really any of the characters in this game. Look, I understand the limitations of Halo

as a storytelling medium. In my opinion, there hasn't really been very many super compelling Halo stories told, although I'm not a diehard fan. I don't read the books, so I apologize. But this game takes a lot of swings from a narrative structure standpoint, using flashbacks and stuff like that

to try to imply that there's something deeper going on here. But in fact, it all sort of just does not coalesce into a meaningful or impactful story. And honestly, by the end of it, I finished the campaign. By the end of it, it made almost zero sense. And I felt like it kind of cut the legs out from cortana who is a major character in the series that they more or less like not only sidelined but like totally diminished any growth or change that she might have gone through in the last game which i know

that people really didn't like but those are the areas now if you're just looking at gameplay i think it's a lot, a lot of, like I had a fucking blast playing it, but it's just some weirdness with the campaign that does sort of hinder it. It gives me a tremendous amount of hope for the future of Halo, because I agree with you.

Like, I think the grappling hook is now the equivalent of like Samus's ball power. Like it's iconically attached to Master Chief and Halo now because it feels so fucking good but there are definitely some hindrances I'm not saying that it you know

it's going up against Monster Hunter Rise here yeah which is it worse than Monster Hunter Rise no I don't know I don't know the story of the narrative of Monster Hunter Rise is really

I cried I cried a hundred times before we get to that the novelization of this is one that I can't wait for yeah for Halo Infinite though all of your problems, Fresh, in the single player, all of the problems with Halo Infinite

is that it's a Halo game. And in the multiplayer, everything good about it is that it's a Halo game. And yeah, the reason I say that with single player, all those tube levels you're talking about, go back and play any old Halo. Like, that is, is what a third half of the levels in those games that is true generic you're right but i think it is starkly different

from the rest of the game to the point where they it was it was like it was like if you took the breath of wild mechanics in the open world like breath of wild just played like that in the open world and then when you went into a dungeon it played like zelda one that's exactly that's my point that's what i'm saying is halo infinite when it's at its best it is a just a new game right i mean it's like a full reboot right and when it when it doesn't click is when it feels like it has to go back to being old school halo with you know these like boring hallways where it's more emphasis on shooting versus all the weird powers that you have and when it gets into the story I mean

I've been talking about Fresh's text messages he's had to listen to me talk about you know like probably two hours worth of YouTube videos that I've watched about Halo lore explainers to try to understand what the hell is happening and let me tell you it didn't make the game better

it definitely feels like i did two hours it's like so it's it's even people who know the lore back to front do not understand what is going on in this game which is like i don't even know who the story is for at that point and i'm not willing to i'm not willing to see that oh it's a halo game so the plot's gonna be bad because Halo Reach was fantastic yeah and I think the first Halo game has a good story I'm not saying that as an excuse to be clear that's not an excuse

I'm just saying it's a fact that's just a problem with Halo but talking about the multiplayer which I do think is separate I think why it works is because it does feel like it gets back to everything that I felt when I played Halo 2 on land in a college dorm, right? Yeah.

Like, it rules. The base conceit is that the war is over. We lost. Master Chief is the last like ember of resistance to this like this threat. And he is like building back up the forces of like the UNSC like by himself and like rebuilding sort of the army to fight the bad guys like that's classic and that is a a construct that i feel like is really smart for an open world halo i think it worked it would work if we had any inkling of like really what happened in that downfall to have any attachment to these people. They beat us up. We don't even know who these are.

I don't know who these are. Do you know what my dream would be? Is that the war was lost, flash forward a thousand years, nobody remembers anything, random person discovers Master Chief, and then we've reset everything, and Master Chief is going to help us save the world. Amen.

Which would actually fit into the Halo universe, because it turns out they've already done this. There was an entire timeline before the modern timeline that was its own weird alien human. I don't want to turn this into its own YouTube. So, part one. If I could just, before we move on to Monster Hunter Rise, I do want to point out one nitpick I have with Halo Infinite.

It is wild when I am in a car and I'm driving with my soldier buddies and I may accidentally ding one of their friends with my car, right? Because it's hard to drive the cars and you'll ding people from time to time. Sometimes they jump out in front of you. Yeah, I used to get them a little nudged. This happened to me and somebody in my car said, hey, watch out, dummy. And I stopped the car i i stopped the car

the car got out and i said excuse me i'm the master chief you need to calm down a little bit okay you're welcome by the way because i definitely freed you because i have to because i freed everybody you are welcome by the way you need to watch your tone with me please i'm going to ding some of your buddies that's that's that's saving the galaxy anyway monster hunter rise uh i i adore the monster hunter franchise i didn't it didn't really super duper click with me until monster hunter world which was the previous installment uh that came out on consoles that kind of destroyed the mold that monster hunter games had followed in the past which is there's a hub you go out to a level and you go through different loading zones to look for the monster and then you get them and get their foot or whatever and you turn that foot into a

sword or crossbow um which is great but we love that shit around here. Monster Hunter World smashed that apart and made it a much more sort of cohesive, open-world experience. That improved the formula, I would argue, in every imaginable way. The only problem being I had to sit in my computer chair to play it. Ugh, I hate that, because that's where I do my work.

Monster Hunter rise came out on the switch i think it's actually just now coming out on pc which is fantastic monster hunter rise takes so many lessons that that world brought with it uh that that improved the formula kind of mixes it in with some of the classic like monster hunter dna stuff that wasn't you know uh that wasn't terrible and combines it into maybe my favorite installment in the franchise but more importantly like it turned it into a super super super compelling uh mobile game at a point that i feel like was a very very necessary time in the world for that and then now someone else is going to take over because i have oh oh okay i just wanted to say a thing about mobile games i got that uh analog pocket finally came right i'm playing some classic

game boy games uh a little bit of that metal gear solid a little mario tennis uh mo games they've come a long way since Pac-Man. I don't know if you've really taken a moment to think about this lately, listener, but being able to play Metroid Dread and Monster Hunter Rise on a Switch, it's kind of mind-boggling that something this complex is just something that I can carry around with me and i i i don't know i feel like i kind of drift in and out of appreciating how incredible it is that that just works um yeah it's not like a huge praise for monster hunter rise here's the thing

about monster hunter rise i continue to just be heartbroken that i cannot get myself to fall in love with these games because i I think I would like them. I just, I don't know what it is. I like it. Yeah, well, I know what it is. I mean, it is probably the hardest popular franchise to get into. And the fact that I needed to prime the pump by playing a few hours of Monster Hunter World to sort of understand the basics before i was able to

watch a bunch of youtube videos to learn the combos such that i could be good at monster hunter rise and at that point it totally fully grabbed me and i was in love but it still has not even though people wanted world to be that thing it still has not reached a point where it is accessible at least at the outset it's definitely not um i i understand that people want depth i want depth from the combat and the gameplay but the tutorial to this game is just not so rough it's such a grind it's really tough to get into so i i you know i think that's still probably the biggest complaint that i have as much as you know i sunk 100 hours into that fucking game this year so i absolutely adore it but i think there definitely is a version of monster hunter that exists or

could exist that reworks a lot of the structural stuff while maintaining the gameplay stuff and still having it feel like monster hunter while allowing people that like don't dig into menus and like meta and like shortcuts for their equipment loadouts and various other nitty-gritty like that i think there's a way to streamline this and it just hasn't happened yet i love monster on the rise um even though i was pretty harsh on halo infinite storyline plant is right the monster on the rise storyline barely exists so it's hard not to uh consider them more or less equal on that front um and i think halo infinite is the probably the more special game i think there is a version of monster on the rise in a year or two that maybe elevates it to game of the year status but it is not quite halo infinite's level at this moment so i mean

halo infinite for me yeah for sure me too okay okay griffin just doesn't we don't care about he doesn't get a vote he doesn't get it doesn't matter he's getting a pizza okay i mean inscription forza horizon 5 i'll take forza if somebody can take inscription you do forza first point okay i'm going to talk a lot about inscription russ so it's probably good yeah i'll start and you could fill in okay so i don't think we're going to spend a ton of time on forza because it's a hard game to talk about in this capacity but the one thing I want to say is this team has been honing this game for a decade, and I think it's easy to underappreciate that.

And when I say honing it, I mean, this is a totally different game than where they started. Forza Horizon 1 isn't really an open-world game. Horizon 2 had these weird barriers throughout the world that were, like, walled train tracks that really prevented you from feeling like you were in open space. Horizon 3 is this rough draft of really Horizon 5. They have a lot in common. But then instead of doing the, like, Austin Powers to Austin Powers 2 2 let's just do the same thing all over again uh ford's horizon 4 is this weird experiment like it it has they add seasons to the game and weather

that has a huge impact on how and where you drive they added all these silly cars they got rid of the not like the tropical setting and went to the UK, which I think was a choice. I don't like Forza Horizon 4 nearly as much as the other games, but a lot of those ideas have appeared in Horizon 5 so that 5 feels like the perfect mishmash of 3 and 4. And I feel like in the world of video games, if this were a action game or a shooter, like if this was Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, everybody would be talking about this because it'd be like, wow, this team, they've worked so hard for the past decade and they finally did the thing. All of these big ideas culminated into the you know assassin's creed uh for or uh call of duty modern warfare 2 that that

sort of point in a franchise and i think that is important that said do i think that is going to help it win the game of the year this year no but i do think it's some interesting history so i've made my defense i think for what it's worth you know even though it might not make it to the top of like game of the year lists this year or at least the very top uh it is i think when it came out halo has probably beaten it since but when it came out was like the most played xbox game ever like some outrageous stat because of game pass and a variety of other things so even though it's not necessarily from a critical standpoint the most exciting game to talk about

it has an enormous uh audience and fan base and and count me among that i said this last week um haven't gotten into a racing game in years and years and years, and this one totally grabbed me and was a blast. It's really just terrific and a super fun game to play. Did y'all put Monster Hunter Rise upon the altar while I was talking to Conn? Yes, it was sacrificed while you were gone.

I mean, you were outvoted regardless, but if you wanted to say something about Rise now, you could. And this has always been a show about numerical voting, if nothing else. Russ is about to give his impassioned uh description of inscription okay inscription uh i think we probably described it a little bit last week but a narrative card game with horror elements and uh weird secrets and puzzles and a game that is very much a puzzle box insofar as it starts as one thing in this case, like a Hearthstone style card game,

card battling game, and then sort of evolves into something that is a lot weirder and more interesting than that. Like an escape room. Yeah, it has escape room elements to it. It just has sort of like a secret to it. And again, I like hesitate to even know how much to say about inscription because I do think the shifts that it has are its best aspects because it does make a constantly for a more interesting narrative experience but i also have strong feelings about the latter half of the game as well so

um it is uh extremely extremely unique probably the most unique game on this list and one of the most uh interesting games i've played in the last few years not without its faults but also i think a game that most people should play at the very least. This is more color than an argument, but I was such a fan of this. I went back and played Pony Island, which I had not played. Pony Island is the first Daniel Mullins game. And I have not played the Hex yet, but Pony Island is interesting in the sense like it's a similar it seems to be that meta game elements with like shifting mechanics is what really interests him as near as i can tell uh and pony island is a game where you are playing as you're playing a sort of like extremely basic um platformer where you're a pony and you're like collecting i don't know you're shooting butterflies with it doesn't matter like it that that is how inconsequential the the main mechanical game of

pony island is and when the other narrative elements start to get layered on which include like basically the devil trying to trap people's souls in a computer it is like it feels sort of flippant or like almost uh i guess punk is maybe like the word i'm looking for it is like, it feels sort of flippant or like almost, I guess punk is maybe like the word I'm looking for. It's like, it razzes the main mechanic, like how stupid, I can't believe you ever cared about that. That's not what the game is. That's the joke, right?

What I think is cool about Inscription is that even when the mechanics shift and in the main mechanics and the meta mechanics, it all works together like it is all a cohesive thought and like the the way that you're playing with cards where characters are basically sort of what you come to realize are like sort of trapped in these cards is important to the meta narrative as much as it is important to the sort of like base mechanical thing and as it shifts that continues to work in concert with what came

before and after it's never sort of like yeah anyway it's all just a goofy game but what i'm really interested in is this it is all of of of a piece um and i think that like to to make the point they just did a dlc thing where you can play the first segment of the game which is this sort of like card battler you know not unlike uh slay the spire or what have you um and you can play that infinitely like which you wouldn't do like if it was sort of a joke the way that pony island is um but i i again like i said not an argument for against but just like i i think interesting color i i think we can just have a vote on this because i i think inscription is going to have more for us all to talk about in the later round i don't

i i got much further in this game over the past week i think into act act three if you want to call it that yeah which i don't know how much more is coming after that you're near yeah but i did not enjoy the core card game element of of the game after act one and i'm glad that i played through especially past act two because act three gets pretty fucking buck wild um and i'm glad that i played through especially past act two because act three gets pretty fucking buck wild um and i think that novelty of like what this game does and the sort of boldness of it absolutely earns it a spot on this list but like i i i did i dreaded every sort of like forced battle that you you have to do uh you know from from act act two on it really for you though does does forza win in this round oh no okay so then yeah let's let's okay that's right

let's move forward and then and then but yeah i i tend to agree with you griffin and i think we'll talk about that in the back half okay okay uh next round uh last one of of this i went series quarter uh unsighted versus resident evil 8 um i i feel like i've been the unsighted person is there i'll talk about resident evil if somebody else can take unsighted um i can take unsighted okay do you want to do that really quick because it it sounds like with the general... Yeah, I don't need to describe what Unsighted is. We talked about it last week. I think it is an exciting evolution of a format that over the years can get a little samey.

I think we talked about in the context of A Link Between Worlds, which sort of reworked the Zelda format on the 3DS. This does it in a completely different way, but I think does it in a really special way that will definitely stick with me. I have not finished it yet, but I'm extremely far into it. And it's terrific. It's just a really incredible feat by a very small team that is worth playing i don't i still don't love block pushing puzzles

of which there are a number but uh it's definitely a secondary point to the narrative strength of the game the combat is really really strong um i really like the art style. I think this game just does a ton right. And it definitely should be played by a lot of people. Yeah, I love Unsighted. Any other game they'd be going against would probably be making it further for me. Unfortunately, it's going up against the Resident Evil game in which you fight Dracula, Pinocchio,

the Little Mermaid, and Frankenstein. I don't know how anything honestly beats that. That, to me, is everything that I've wanted the Resident Evil series to do. Oh, yeah. Hey, you can't just lump Pinocchio in with the other things. What do you mean?

They're all monsters. It's not inherently a monster sort of person. Yeah yeah pinocchio is definitely a monster have you seen chucky it's basically that yeah pinocchio is a monster okay that why do you think he gets sent to the bad boy island and turned into a donkey yeah i guess you're right there's there's empirical proof that he is a bad boy yeah so actually and i should i should be clear frankenstein's monster not frankenstein yeah yeah yeah well but the monster is also named frankenstein so it's fine yeah that's true he names him frankenstein's monster frankenstein yeah okay um i i think resident evil it's gonna win this i think we're gonna talk about it more

later does that sound right? That sounds right to me. It is the best Resident Evil game, apparently. Yeah. I would agree. I would probably vote it over Unsighted, yes. That said, Unsighted is great, and I know a lot of people have not played it.

It is on Game Pass. People should really give it a try. It runs great on Switch,. Oh yeah, it does. It's a real good fit there. A little bit later in the game, it gets a little spotty now and then when things get busy, but it's still quite good. That's it for the semifinals.

Right? Or quarterfinals. We got Metroid Dread, Halo Infinite, Inscription, and Resident Evil Village. Are we going to make them all pair off again, or are we just going to do one big... No, we're going to do versus. One big melee. Okay, okay, okay. So yeah, next up

we will have Metroid Dread versus Halo Infinite and Inscription versus Resident Evil 8 right after this break. I feel like this is where it's going to get competitive. Do you? This is where it's going to get nasty. A little bit, yeah. I feel like this is going to be super easy. I feel like this is where it's going to get competitive. Do you? This is where it's going to get nasty. A little bit, yeah. I feel like this is going to be super easy. I feel like these two rounds,

I could tell you right now, Metroid Dread and Resident Evil 8 should face off. Yeah, see, I don't... That's interesting. Ooh, okay, this is why we do it the way we do it. This is why we do it. I don't know if it's going to be that cut and dry, pal. I'm just...

We'll see. Let's start with Metroid Dread versus Halo Infinite. Is there anything more that needs to be said about either of these games in a vacuum? Well, I think it's... Yeah, I could say that. There's no reality in which Metroid Dread is better than Halo Infinite. Okay, so that's just his opinion. Well, yeah, but this is all opinion, so I'm stating it as fact.

Halo Infinite, like, and, you know, you always struggle with this, right? Because you're really kind of talking about two games, but it is two games in one package. And I think that, like, the campaign, if it was just the campaign, I would probably lean towards Metroid Dread, but I have had, I think the Halo Infinite multiplayer is such a victory and like such a massive leap forward and like a revitalization of a franchise that has languished for, I mean, over a decade, I would argue, like creatively, if not, if not commercially. Um, I, I think it is such a smart reinvention of it, uh, and something that people will be playing for a very very long time uh for reasons that i have detailed extensively

um but i i love it and i think that it is um such such a triumph i agree with with justin uh i i'm shocked that anybody else would be on the halo side but i I do want to note that Halo Infinite dares to ask the question, when Scorpion says, get over here, what if he said, get over there? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. The grappling hook, we have talked about in an open world, like getting around since,

but you cannot discount, it is the biggest like mechanical evolution. Like I can't think of a good comparison you know you you talked about the ball and like it is almost kind of like that in the sense that this is such a the game is so much about positioning and like where you are at in relation to the enemies and having the ability to like yeah instantly reposition yourself in a way that's more advantageous there it makes every death feel fair because it's like well you're right i should have fucking moved like i don't know why i didn't i could have grappled hooked away from that but i just kind of like gritted my teeth

and tried to go through with it i can't think of another franchise that has a an edition like this that so fundamentally changes the entire franchise ah I think Breath of the Wild. I think of a lot. Me? Fair. Okay. I mean, really what this boils down to is this. Halo Infinite obviously has a lot of great things.

It has some not great things. Whereas I think Metro Dread is basically baller from start to finish and now i'm not saying that is a reason to make the choice but it is there is a consideration to be made about like do you include everything and some of it might work and some of it might not work versus do you just focus on the stuff that you know you can crush out of the park i'm staunchly in metroid dread's corner in this this uh battle but i also think like there are things that people did not

like about metroid dread um and the biggest one i can think of is like it was it was pretty easy to get lost in that in that big map um which for a lot of people playing a metroidvania game like that's that's uh a tough wall to scale and can sometimes sort of bring the whole thing to a stop i got lost a couple times but for me it was never so so bad that i felt like well screw this game i quit forever but do you also feel you know i think without that element that potential to get lost don't you feel like it um kind of feels like you're being dragged by the note you know we talked about this in death loop like dragged by the nose to like point to point yeah i think metroid dread

hits a point where the the the thing opens up a lot more than like really any metroidvania that i have played before right hollow knight is probably comparable i would say uh yeah i would say so uh because a typical metroidvania game like you go you beat the boss you get the the check you get the double jump you get the grappling hook you get whatever you need to get to get through the few locked doors to get to the next section to get to the next box boss to get to the next power-up uh metroid dread you know does that but i think it disguises it better than than most games in that genre to where like i felt like my path through the game was different from from other people's like i you know you could you could potentially

find your way into like a a teleportal that you you know maybe somebody else playing the game did not find and it let you access like a whole world of things that otherwise you would not be able to find uh which was really, really exciting to me. Yeah, I think the peaks of Metroid Dread are higher for me than the peaks of Halo Infinite. I feel that way too. I also think like, this is a tough thing, because I didn't care for the campaign of Halo Infinite. But I thought the multiplayer was was really fun, although I never really felt like I got pretty good at it. So it's, like, also a question of what's better, like, a really, really solid single-player campaign versus, like, a really, really fun multiplayer sandbox. And that's, like, you know, apples and oranges.

With a really solid single-player campaign, too. I mean, it definitely has its missteps, but like we can't just be like, well, and the campaign is whatever, but the multiple, because the campaign of Halo is really cool. I mean, there's like all the, we just spent a lot of time talking about like how the open world

has all this interesting stuff and how it makes all the weapons more relevant and the tactics and all that stuff. Like I, you can't discount that. Yeah. It doesn't feel like a campaign to me though i don't know if this is even a knock but it feels more like i have fun playing in the halo sandbox but the thing moving me through that like the the story or whatever it is moving me through that sandbox i do not find personally compelling you're saying that you need some like bird people yeah the great the great great narrative of of metroid dread

that we all know and like adore so much i think it's a good story i mean i think there's also metroid dread is also like there there's like it i said it was accessible in a previous episode to people who like hadn't played the franchise from a narrative perspective, but like it could do a lot better at like onboarding people. I mean, I think if you look at, you know, we had, I don't want to turn this into a debate about accessibility, but like, we definitely talked about Metroid dread sort of like you have to meet it on its terms and it is not doing a lot to sort of like make sure everybody has fun playing playing metroid dread and i think that you would be very well within your rights to get frustrated by some of like the the ways it expects you to like attack hidden walls to move forward on the the critical path or you know the

the way that you can get kind of lost and and have to move around the world before you're kind of figuring out the next thing you need to do um it's not like it's this seamless, you know, thing that just like carries you from the beginning to end. Like there's some real roadblocks that I think could turn some people off. Huge thanks to our special guest contributor, David Jaffe on today's episode. I just wanted to say, I think you do great work. Thank you, thank you Griffin for picking up my hilarious David Jaffe right now. But yeah, that's obviously like I'm not on, I have not been on

Team Jaffe for quite some time. But like, I think it's an illustration of the point like that, I think that it's fair to think you could get

turned off by some of the difficulties. I think Halo feels like a step one where a year from now or whatever it is halo infinite is going to be like the game that is just like totally dominant on every front but it does continue to feel for me like it is very much a work in progress which honestly they haven't denied the multiplayer is that is

an in no way accurate like the i mean the multiplayer is in beta like they've been pretty open about that and it definitely has some issues but it's like incredible now like it's incredible now it's fantastic the progression is is kind of a mess but like they will fix that stuff but the the core mechanics are are i think i think we should have a vote. I don't have a whole lot of religion here. I do lean towards Halo Infinite, but... I mean, I'm for Metroid Dread. I think Russ is also. Yeah, I am too, even though I like both of these.

You know, it feels to me like Halo is well on its way to being the game, but I don't think it's quite there yet. I did not feel particularly compelled to keep playing the campaign of Halo Infinite. Like, I got into the open world stuff and was doing some of that and just didn't feel like this is a thing I want to put more time into. I'm very frustrated by the fact that we all finished Metroid Dread. And it feels like that that that i am now having like this debate with people that have not i'll tell you where i'm uncomfortable is that like i really liked metroid dread and i'm i can't sit here and make argument like i've made

the best argument i can against it but i don't have a lot of arguments against it i think it's great like i just feel like halo infinite is going to like is a sort of we have not had a great like multiplayer game in this style for for for a while and i i feel like it is so smart and so powerful in the way that it like reinvigorates this franchise uh it makes it relevant again um that i I think is really worth celebrating. It's so fun. I mean, I handed the controller to Griffin when we were in Seattle

and he instantly was like, got it. Like the multiplayer was just like fun already, mid-match, hand the controller to somebody. It's just great. Can I feel comfortable voting on Griffin's behalf? What's that? I was just wondering if Justin felt comfortable voting on your behalf

since he handed you the controller. I'm sure he would. I'm sure he would. I'm going to throw a little bit of a wrench in the works and I don't know

if this is a negative or a positive. Oh no. My understanding is that Halo Infinite multiplayer specifically builds very much on the positive response

to the multiplayer in Halo 5. Even though the campaign was universally hated, people really, really liked the multiplayer in Halo 5, even though the campaign was universally hated, people really, really liked the campaign in Halo 5, and this takes a lot from that. Again, not a bad thing, but...

No, no, no, no, no. Metroid Dread doesn't build off of anything. No, Russ makes a great point that the problem with Halo Infinite is that they took the good lessons from the last Halo game and retained them. Start again, cowards.

Make him a wizard. The history of video games has no precedent for such a thing. Why do you decide to do a podcast with an even number of people is the question. I know, right? It's our curse.

We need to get the Chris Granatron. Oh my gosh. Metroid Dread wins because I don't want the logjam and I'm okay with both of these games. I think- Let me just text Chris and see where he's at. No, there are two people here who I think are very passionate about a choice

and then there's one who's very passionate about the other. You know what? I will let it go just because I feel like I am happy with Metroid Dread. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed Metroid Dread and how smart it is. I really adore it. So I am okay with that, and I will – so we can move forward. Okay. Inspiring.

What an inspiring sacrifice, Justin. Yeah, yeah. I feel like I did. And I also want to keep a little in the tank. Yeah. I didn't even get that. I didn't get that hero moment when you all killed Monster Hunter Rise when I was talking about my toilet to a content.

Inscription versus Resident Evil Village is the this is gonna be another spicy one i feel like okay so we did we kind of skipped over the inscription part of it okay um last uh round so i'll be more pointed so we also we're not going to talk about specific story beats but we'll we will be talking about the quality of the overall game. And we can talk about acts. If you've played the game and we say Act 3 or Act 2, you're going to know what we're talking about. There's a reason why they just released DLC

where you can replay Act 1 over and over and over again is because as a game, it is by far the most fun part of inscription, in my opinion. Yes. I don't know if y'all feel differently, but I do think as a game, the game gets less fun in act two,

gets a little more fun in act three, but the narrative sort of carries it, which I was really like very interested to see where the narrative was going. And that, I think, helped buoy moments of the game that I thought were, like, a little bit, although they were creative, like Act 2, not the most fun game to play. Right. Let me, I feel like I can talk about this without spoilers. talk about this without spoilers in act one you are playing a very clever and unique uh you know tcg uh against a genuinely unsettling opponent who like i wanted to know everything about and then also who i wanted to beat the living shit out of and so once you and who also didn't seem interested in playing like who who was obviously in control of everything.

Yes. To a point where it made, like, any victory you could eke out, like, an anomaly. Totally futile. It felt like you pulled one over. And it takes place in a minuscule environment that is filled with, like, mysteries and puzzles that you want to figure out, if only so you can get a slight leg up on this monster, right? And the card game is great. I thought the card game was very, very smart. You basically have to sacrifice your cards in order to play other cards and build walls to block attacks from your opponent. And the game can end like in a second because you you have one

bad turn the enemy hits you with five points of damage you're dead so so the matches are very very fast you can also get a one turn ko and it feels very very good when you manage to swing that um but but that is the main like mechanic of the card game there's special little rules for certain cards which is very hearth stony but like you can grok it all really fast and then in act two i'm not going to get into like the narrative of what happens but it then layers basically three more sort of card games on on top of that like three different card games worth of rules on top of that and that and and while those rules are similarly not that hard to to master it it it makes all of the work that i did in act one of like figuring out like how to

be good at this game feel like totally not totally but almost entirely pointless yeah also it feels like you're they want you to try those other card decks, but I just got one at the beginning and then just swept through that entire section. It's all I cared about. To put a pin in it, then Act 3 comes and does the exact same thing. And, like, it... Act 3 is more successful than Act 2.

Act 3 is more successful mechanically, but, again, it's like, wipe it all out. You're playing a new card game now. And, like, on paper, that's pretty cool because, you know, it's... Like, the narrative of paper that's pretty cool um because you know it's it's like the narrative of the game in the world of the game it's always changing and so like it makes sense that that should happen but when you're playing it and you are getting that that feeling from the the you know trading card game loop of i'm i am figuring this motherfucker out

and then to have that taken from you not not once, but twice, like it's, it is so defeating. And I think that maybe just speaks to the strength of inscriptions, like narrative and like cleverness that that is enough to make me keep playing it. Even when the mechanics of the game are, I feel like fighting against me. Unfortunately,

then the ending happens. And then the narrative is, I like fighting against me unfortunately then the ending happens and then the narrative is i like the ending oh my god oh my evil village uh yeah go for it plant me sure i kind of did it last time i mean yeah it's the best the best resident evil game i mean you're the main character is a stick of butter, like, taking a bath in a glass of milk, and I love him. And I want to... The characters in this game. Like, in a game where much of its legacy is defined by, I'm sorry, but, like, how laughably bad the, like, writing and performances and just characters in general art i'm sorry resident evil devotees but like there's a lot of there's a lot of cruft in there um i think that this game

comes with like a big cast of really cool yes like interesting fun well-performed well-written characters which like really helps to repel um to say nothing of like the hub structure which feels great like it feels so cool for a survival horror game to have that like relative safe space that is then like also degraded and dangerous and in different ways like i i i think that it really is like uh uh recently the um uh the actress who played lady d the the um the giant woman uh won for best performance at the at the game awards and it's like that's that's where resident evil village is at like compared to performances and writing that were so bad right i would love to see i would love to see nemesis get up there to receive his game award. Like, thanks, everybody.

I really shouted, stars, a lot. And people loved that. And I did a good job yelling. Thanks. Couldn't have done it without you. That's pretty good, Griffin. Stars. It is. Maggie Robertson, by the way.

I wanted to credit Maggie for her fantastic work. It is not. Yeah, it's definitely worth paying attention to the fact that, like, although towards the end, they start, like, getting like getting into like a little bit more lory stuff just like a little sprinkling of it 95 of the game is you know a pretty coach i mean it's silly but it's a pretty cogent storyline like i get what's going on yeah the only lore though that i feel like is necessary to understand for eight is seven which which, great news, 7 is the other fantastic Resident Evil game. Griffin, guess what?

What? I didn't play 7, and I followed 99% of that game. Oh, okay. That's great. I think it adds to it. I think it adds to it. I think they designed it to be approachable. Also, this is how I wish games like Halo Infinite operated with their lore, which is get you fully invested in its own discrete story.

And then by the time they do stop dropping, you know, little pieces of the larger lore across the universe, you actually want to know what's happening, right? Like you feel like, well, I'm already, you know, pot committed. I really care. Yeah.

It's so, when did this game come out? January? February. February, I think, yeah. It's so funny because the more we talk aboutuary february february i think yeah it's so funny because the more we talk about it literally right now in this moment the more hyped i'm getting because that game the tone of resident evil village the like relentless almost like b-movie like level horror that it delivered that tone abso-fucking-lutely did it for me like it the the pinocchio and frankenstein and dracula and all that it that is completely accurate because that game it does not

take itself seriously really at all until maybe the last like you know fifth of the story or whatever and the rest of the time it's just like a a non-stop uh like really schlocky but really well-made story that uh i i could not put down yeah but we talk i mean so there's uh our friends at the into the aether the like wonderful video game podcast have been talking about camp lately in relation to like halo infinite and how halo infinite at its best feels campy um but it doesn't manage to like stick to it resident evil village to me is like the definition of good campy video game where it is all silly but everyone involved with it it's taking the creation of it very seriously all the performances are like earnest performances the writing is intended to be good writing it just happens to

also be quite silly because you are a human god who's trying to collect the body parts of someone you love like yeah you know it's it what you're doing is is inherently weird but the the the way it propels forward is like told as if it were any other story and it does as campy and silly as it is it also got some pretty good scares out of me it got we can talk a lot about the baby about well that you can talk a lot about like lady dimitrescu uh and like how memed she got but then when she starts like turning you turn a corner and see her with her big ass claws uh like nine feet taller than you are that's good that's it that'll get a that'll tighten up the old butt cheeks y'all it i'm starting to get the sense that resident evil might win this if that's the

case we might want to have a vote that way we have some stuff to chat about in the final round yeah i know you're saying uh yeah i you know honestly guys i i inscription is my favorite game of the year um but the complaints about the mechanics especially in the in the second act are like very legitimate i i let the fact that i loved everything it was doing to sort of like color that but i very much was like it went from loving the mechanics to sort of like powering through to see what the story was going to do next um and i think that's a completely uh uh legitimate legitimate i would play obviously like the change in world and all the stuff that inscription does like that's the magic trick like that's the reason why it is like i think getting a lot of goatee uh heat right now but also to

rival that i would play like a full length act one of inscription because i i thought that was so fucking cool and and great and scary and unsettling and smart uh and i you know some of those adjectives would go on to describe the other acts, but I think you will see way more narrative driven card experiences in a couple of years inspired by this. I would not be surprised. I agree. I think inscription rules also,

I, I, I've soured on the story at the conclusion quite a bit. And I, this is just a thing for indie games. I really wish indie games, if they're going to have live action video, cast people that I assume are not your friends. Because I know I said it before.

I can't get over the idea of there's like such a pivotal role in this game. And the actress is extremely talented. But it makes no sense. I don't understand why this company hired somebody in their 20s um and it like really breaks the game for me in a truly bizarre way it is funny because i find i completely agree with you i also find it like weirdly charming in the like it is film school kind of way but it it does seem also i mean that's a part of the reason that i found the end entertaining is because it was so ridiculous yeah but i get it thanks to steven spawn for like introducing yeah i know like that was literally my first exposure he's like i've been playing this neat thing and i i instantly like uh got

got into it and bullied everybody else into getting into it too uh all right resident evil what what a wild showdown this last thing is i was not necessarily expecting this nor i uh metroid dread versus resident evil village yeah i was really hoping that halo i'm sorry okay let's do it. You were hoping what? Halo was going to pull it out. I mean, do you want to go? No, no. Just so Resident Evil could trounce it? I'm just messing with you, Dustin.

I'm sorry. Here's what I would suggest. Let's take a pause before we finish the head-to-head because we just talked about these two games in depth. Let's take a pause before we finish the head-to-head, because we just talked about these two games in depth. Let's give a little breathing room and just talk about the rest of the year, some other stuff that popped for everybody. I could start real quickly, because I mentioned Kingdom of Two Crowns that I've been absolutely obsessed with.

And it's timely, because just this this month they released Norse lands, which is a complete, it's really cool what they're doing with it. There's several of these, by the way, where it's like the game has been completely reskinned with like a different, different, this is obviously takes it to like a Norse setting. So your little dudes that you're recruiting, the structures that you're building, it all looks completely different. And there are some like interesting little mechanical changes, which are small enough that people who weren't, you know, deep into the game probably wouldn't appreciate.

So it's not really worth detailing here, but I just finished the main thing and like instantly went and started a Norse lands campaign. And it's like mechanically not that different, but the core mechanics are so good in kingdom two crowns. I'd really love for you guys to try it. Not,

I'm not for any game in the rear reason, just cause like, I think it's really genius. But, but that it's like a $3 upgrade, I think for the, for the Norse lands content. And it's just like a really cool way of like breathing new life into

something that I wanted to keep playing, but in like a new setting and new things to discover. And it's beautiful to look at and in a way that's like similar to, but not exactly like kind of like a super brothers kind of vibe. That's sort of like beautiful, slightly Gothic um you know retro look uh i i just think i i love it if you if you were looking for something to play on most platforms i think at this point uh it's well we're checking can i just say like in that same context i'd love to see these smaller games from indie studios just getting this like long-term support to the point

of like hey if something works and maybe the audience is not like tens of millions of people but the audience is pretty big we're just going to keep giving you updates over time and some of them are paid and some of them are free you look at a game like dead cells which has a new expansion coming out or i think it's coming out in january i think it might be out okay or it might be out um stardew valley 2 yeah yeah or stardew valley or like so many of these games are sort of building on this model of oh we made this popular game we're gonna keep it at the top of the sales charts because we're constantly going to be giving you reasons to boot it up again and it's awesome i i'm like so charmed by it which is sort of a good segue

because uh i don't think i've played any game other than binding you know more than binding of isaac this year and um you know we've talked about a lot in recent weeks as griffin has sort of gotten into it but talk about a series that has been doing that for 10 years at this point. Of updates. And just like layering in. Ways to sort of scale up. The original format. And this. Repentance is 20 bucks. But also well worth.

The amount of content you get for that. Is outrageous. Yeah to give you an idea. So in the original game. Or at least the last update before repentance came out, there were 15 playable characters. This is a little bit of a spoiler, but I think it's worth knowing. Repentance adds 15 more playable characters. They're all very creative twists on the original characters, but giving you an entire hundreds of hours of reasons to go through and replay these levels

with new characters in addition to adding new chapters and stuff like that and that i think is will continue to be the future of gaming where we have this successful thing or this popular thing and we just sort of cultivate it like a seed and it just grows out from there and lives way longer you know binding of isaac when it first came out was a flash game that we thought was gonna be whatever you play for a month and that's it and now we're 10 years later that's incredible and so exciting so yeah fucking i'm sharing a game that i haven't played uh i don't know if any of us have played it did have any of you played before your eyes haven't even any of us have played it. Have any of you played Before Your Eyes? Haven't even heard of it.

This is our big miss of the year. I apologize to everybody who is hoping for us to talk about it. We will talk about it next year, I'm sure. Before Your Eyes is a game that you control with your eyeballs. You use the eye tracking

to control the game, and when you blink it uh effectively like when i understand ends the scene and moves on to another scene or services some sort of input again i haven't played it um this is the game that i saw making a real last minute run on a lot of game of the year lists from people i respect um like jacob geller and yeah i'm looking forward to playing it uh i i wish i had more to say about it cool yeah right oh cool i mean yeah this is the cool thing about video games right like there there will always be a game like this every year for us that we missed just because there is so much out there um but like that that rules especially since january is usually pretty slow so i i look forward to having

something new to play over the holiday i i would argue another one we missed uh which has shown up on virtually every other game of the year list is chicory uh that game which yeah that one that one kind of slipped yeah in the cracks i feel like it's one we would have gotten i started playing it on pc and um like didn't really get it i feel like uh but then it literally just came out on switch last week uh in like one of those indie world surprise drops and it's really good and uh really well written and has a lot of really cool stuff to say about like like uh imposter syndrome which i think is a thing that is relatable to pretty much all internet content creators uh like i was looking for something more than just like oh

you run around the world and you can paint stuff if you want to um but now i love running around the world and painting stuff like i will take time to like color in a person's house just to make it you know for no reason uh unless there's some sort of side quest associated with it it's just a little and special game the one that i can't believe like i didn't bring to this list is hitman 3 uh which i adored like i talked about how excited I was to finally like get into this franchise that I'd always wanted to get into and how successful Hitman 3 was in virtually every way.

And I just, there's probably some things now that were on my top five that I submitted for our Game of the Year approval that thinking back, I probably enjoyed Hitman 3 a bit more than that. I don't know if it resonated with anybody else, too. I don't think it would make it very far in these considerations,

but Hitman 3 fucking rules. Yeah, it was on my top five list, and I completely agree with you. It's fabulous. You know, I think I talked about it in the context of Deathloop last episode, specifically the idea of, like, where Deathloop can be very locked down and limiting in terms of how you do things hitman 3 super duper not um

and yeah i was just like really amazed by how much creativity how much freedom you're granted um in in that game uh it's really quite spectacular and also has seen a number of content updates since launch, which is also really exciting. Yeah, Hitman 3 rocked. One of my favorite games of the year. All right. We've put this off enough, I think. Okay. Metroid Dread versus Resident Evil Village.

Should we just do a heads up vote right now just to see which way the wind's blowing? Let's do that. Just because we're curious. I said that and I don't actually know which one of these I want to vote for. Okay, take a second. I'm going to count to three and then everybody's going to say the name of the best game of the year.

Okay. And not a description, which obviously is the best game of the year but it's no longer in contention one two three resident evil village that's that's gonna be a this is gonna be a show we have to do more show now um now there's more show man i really i oh part of this i'm gonna say this part of this is i still feel pretty strongly that, and maybe this isn't fair, Resident Evil 4 is the best Resident Evil game ever made.

False. And that I've only been more confident of that as I play the VR version, which is spectacular. I really, really loved Resident Evil Village. That's a shame because Metroid Dread can't win now because there have been other good Metroidvanias. Yeah, that's true. It's a huge knock against Metroid. And you know what? They used a lot of the stuff from the last Metroid game

that was good when they were making Metroid Dread. Okay, I'm going to talk about Village. Come on, guys. Just make her a wizard. Let me knock down Village a little bit. Yeah, go for it, Russ. I think two of the environments in village and there are not that many maybe three if you count the actual village itself are like i think the

castle is spectacular i think the haunted doll cabin spectacular i have no enthusiasm for like walking through a cruddy dock or a broken down village or a factory full of Frankensteins. Yeah. On the flip side, though, it's really cool to run through rock tunnels for fucking 12 hours. And sometimes they're covered in metal. I mean, we all love exploring the rich tapestry of the caves and metal rooms of Metroid.

Yeah, that's not fair. Metroid Dread has a lot of biodiversity. Yeah, there's a hot place and a cold place. No. Oh, yeah, I love that. How about the ancient civilization that has been locked down that you wander into and accidentally do a very unfortunate thing that then changes the rest of the environments for the rest of the game?

I don't think that's a complaint you can leverage against Metroid Dread. I think Metroid Dread's world feels like extremely alive. Yeah. But that's also, I disagree with Russ entirely

also about his criticisms for Resident Evil Village. Each one of those is like its own little horror movie. Yeah. And I think that the environments work perfectly

for what tone they're going for. I kind of wish it was more colorful quite honestly like they took a little bit more risk like even harder on it yeah sure oh man resident evil village is good though it's really good remember when you have to find the the sad fish person and they're just so sad and then you know that it's not gonna go well it's by far my least favorite part of the blow them up remember how gonzo it is that there's like you're like finding baby parts in jars guys you know how you know how one of the major triple a releases of the year is about finding baby parts in jars you remember that it's a wild strange thing it's wild it's so well written it's so well performed narratively the story lands so much more than

resident evil which are sorry harder than metroid which like i'm sorry it's not about anything like it's there there's not even like a theme or a narrative point that it's making there is a i'm not saying that every game has to be like about something but like resident evil is saying interesting things about family and the nature of family we're like i yeah i think so yes what are you of course i that didn't hit me very hard but let me just say metroid dread kind of is the culmination of all of the metroid games so far like all the mainline metroid games so far you can laugh i mean it is it's no i i know you're right i'm sorry i'm i

just it's just to say that doesn't have a story is like is is like patently false i feel like like it's not that it doesn't it i am making the point that like okay here's what i'm saying that stories the way that i'm using the term stories tell you something about like the world or the human condition or something they have a point of view that is expressing the author's perspective on something i'm saying that like you will finish metroid dread and not at any point question anything about anything and then you can finish resident evil and like have like actual thoughts or maybe, I'm not saying it's like a heartbreaking work of staggering genius or something, but like it does have like thematic elements that are about something. And I think that that is

laudable and makes the time that you spend with it like more meaningful because it's not just about, you know, the mechanics there's, there's, know the mechanics there's there's you know there's more going on okay for what it's worth metro dread does have thematic elements about legacy and family and uh the idea of like conquering your past and like if you really want to like go down that road i do think i think it's more pointed in resident evil village like it's more obvious but because you know samus says like three lines in the total of metroid dread but it you know it's definitely there i think for metroid the thing that separates it is you don't you don't need to have played the past resident evil games in order to feel that to play resident evil village

i think in order to get that from metroid dread you have to know like the history of the x parasite and the origins of her chozo suit powers and like yeah that probably helps all that stuff and in either case i don't think the story is like i would play either of these games right like read a book but this is thank you thank you chris that's a good point let's all remind ourselves that video game stories are all trash compared to literally the worst book you could imagine. The worst book has a better story than the best video game. I think we can all agree on that. Okay.

I'm not saying that it's a failing of Metroid Dread, right? But it is like if Halo was still in this, we would have to bring the multiplayer component of Halo into it. And that wouldn't be something that Metroid Dread is trying to do. We're just talking about why things are more or less successful. I think that's right. And I liked, especially as a parent, I like games that are talking about what that means. That put baby parts in jars. As a parent.

Metaphorically, metaphorically about how you can't protect your kids from the world and how you would do anything to try to do that and in the end you can't like i think that it it's a very powerful beat especially for a game where the like big narrative arc previously has been about like fuck that guy's so big and he can walk through any wall and i hate it like i think that's a big victory the the multiplayer mode for village hasn't come out yet right the reverse thing i don't think so that's a separate game that's a separate thing no i think i played mercenaries but that's not multiplayer yeah yeah yeah um yeah i mean i look i i I would agree that the narrative elements in Resident Evil Village are

more obvious I don't think that's where Dread's strong suit lies I think Dread just from like a game feel perspective from a boss design perspective Metroid Dread has some of my favorite boss designs I've ever seen in a

game that like fucking flappy Bird shit in the middle of a fight. That was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. It hits peaks on those boss designs that are spectacular. The cut scenes, like, after you finish a boss fight are universally fucking badass of Samus, like, showing... Like, Samus doing stuff that stuff that like i really wish halo would absorb more which is you don't need to show that much to really emphasize um how cool this character

is right and i think halo struggles with that sometimes where it's just like well we're just gonna have master chief say i'm gonna finish the and that's it. And you could say less and still leave an impact. I love both these games. The thing that keeps me going back to Metroid Dread, and Russ just made me think of it, is like anytime you take down one of these fucking Emmy bots that chase you around, and especially when you, like for me,

beating the final boss in Metroid Dread, which took me maybe 20 tries yeah uh gave me a sense of like exhilaration that like you know a really good souls game can do when you beat a really well-designed boss in one of those uh that metroid evil or resident evil village didn't like necessarily do I didn't find that game particularly, like, challenging, which takes a lot of the sort of scares out of it. It feels like more of a movie and less of a game to me, Resident Evil Village. It felt like beating it was an inevitability. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is sort of up to you

and what you're looking for from games. We've moved beyond good and bad. I think at this point it's about like, what is landing for you? I mean, I feel like I like, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be a,

a negative or positive. It's just sort of, you know, why I like the feel of conquering something that I know is fair, but still difficult, which I think much more dread is that a resident of a village. I mean, you could jack up the difficulty all the,

all the way if you want, but it's not like a necessarily super balanced experience. And the mechanics can't support that, right? It's not like, it's like, Halo is a good example of like you, you know, it's kind of it feels different,

but it's still a very satisfying thing because it's okay for you to scale that difficulty and they've thought about that i don't think that uh resident evil has sure yeah but again but but but that is also not a great thing like in terms of accessibility right because you can pick up resident evil village and potentially tune it to the place where you can experience all that this game does have to offer you and it has a lot to offer whereas that is not that is not a possibility for metroid dread which is true i would say a pretty big mark against it

um so real quick i'm gonna go through our previous gaudy winners if that's okay with you and then we can see how this you know how these two feel coming after that that list does that work sure yeah okay yes so this is uh off the the best you've subreddit they ever written down uh so i hope it's all right uh 2012 our first one we gave it to dishonored yeah that's good game 2013 we gave it to the legend of zelda a link between worlds very metroid dread-esque i would say yeah 2014, we give it to Dark Souls 2, and there's a parenthetical here. New York Giraffe put in the tiebreaker vote over Hearthstone.

We can't do that. What a weird year. Yeah, what do you... Oh, it gets weirder. 2015, an inconclusive tie between Bloodborne, Rocket League, and Undertale. What a bunch of shitheads

although you know what if I were to sit here right now I don't know I mean not Undertale obviously or Rocket League I guess I do 2016 Stardew Valley

which yeah that sounds great easy oh god let's not 2017 Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild great

yep 2018 Return of the Obra Dinn yes god that's a good video game let's make that hey come on bud let's have another game come on come on 2019 sakuro shadows die twice beating out outer worlds which outer wilds i'm sorry outer the right choice beating out outer worlds which outer wilds i'm sorry outer the right choice outer wilds anyway 2020 i did that do you know i did that to somebody i met someone in seattle who was on the who worked at um obsidian and i fully was like yeah man i love the outer outer wilds they're like well that's not ours 2020 was hades yeah okay so knowing all

of that yeah it seems pretty obvious resident evil village great we've done it okay i i can't i really want to cross i love both of these games i know it's it's it's i resident evil is like edging it out because i love a lot of the the stuff that it's do i just i really i think the world is so cool and beyond the theme like the characters that you meet like the duke is like one of like to take again like the merchant who has been kind of a joke in previous games to make them like not only like sort of more mysterious but also relevant plot relevant in a way that actually feels like i loved when that when that bit lands like i i thought was so cool and like i really uncharacteristic for resident evil game like the way the narrative kind of like evolves and, and surprises you constantly.

Like, I really, really loved that. Um, I, I, I just thought that the, the,

the narrative of resident evil, like clicked with me so hard. Um, and you know, I'll do it. I'll switch. Yeah. I think I,

I, I love both of these games. And when I think about them both, it's like two old ass franchises that are moving in the best imaginable direction I feel like great year for that Halo 2 right like really good year

for that and I think Metroid Dread is an exceptional game that does everything it does really well and challenges me in a way that I found like really really cool but also really well and challenges me in a way that I found like really, really cool. But also it's a reason why lots of other people could not get into it.

I think Resident Evil Village succeeds in, in pretty much every, every like direction it tries to go and is like a much more sort of accessible experience that accessible, not only in the sort of mechanical way, but also in the narrative way. Like, I think you could pick this game up and play it. And if you like any horror movie at all, like have a real ball with it.

And also, I think it would be pretty novel for us to give Resident Evil Village the game of the year. Not because I'm not seeing a lot of people like remembering how fucking great that game was. 2021, the year of the mom and dad gamer. I mean, yeah. Metroid Dread. Sure. Halo Infinite. fucking great that game was 2021 the year of the mom and dad gamer i mean yeah metroid dread sure halo infinite well no no no oh wait we forgot about game of the year it takes two um all right resident evil village i'm i'm cool with that i think metroid dread will always be the game of the year in my heart but you know i i do love resident evil village and it it wouldn't be besties if someone didn't leave a little bit disappointed.

Right. That's what Chris reminded me of going through the Game of the Year list. It's like, man, we've given a lot of fucking stellar games second place. Yeah. Yeah. So congratulations. Can we say it? Officially.

Officially. Congratulations to Resident Evil Village, 2021's Game of the Year. And God, Griffinin i'm so glad you flipped because i was like 10 seconds away real real nail biter there for me personally thank you so much to the following people for writing these reviews on apple podcast doodad three four five will golly hue mystery wizard reby and b stefieri uh thank you for writing reviews thank you to everyone else who has written reviews of the last uh past couple weeks as well as the last year hugely appreciate it um it's great to see we always it helps us a lot and uh it encourages

us to continue doing the show and uh to recap the games that we talked about today, Metroid Dread, Wildermyth, Halo Infinite, Monster Hunter Rise, Inscription, Forza, Horizon 5, Unsighted, and our besties, bestie game of the year 2021, Resident Evil Village. We also had honorable mentions for Kingdom Two Crowns, Norselands, Binding of Isaac, Repentance, Before Your Eyes, Chicory, and Hitman 3. That is it. What a year. Another year in the books. We're entering year 10. Wild. Yes.

We are going to be on vacation next week. We're all getting together, going to Cabo, baby. And we'll be back on January 7th with a new episode. We're going to be talking about games in 2022 that we're stoked out of our boards for. Be sure to join us for that. And be sure to always join us for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!