The Besties - The Video Game Required Reading List: 2005-2009 [The Resties]

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

This week, we launch a new mini-series: The Resties Required Reading List.  Our goal is to curate and contextualize a "must play" list of 25 games released between 1980 to 2020. These aren’t the best games or even our favorite games. They’re the games that should be experienced by everyone who wants a fundamental appreciation of the medium. They’re the games that will give you a richer connection with every other game you play.  Throughout 2022 and 2023 we'll publish new entries in the series, each episode focusing on a five-year period. Episodes will be sporadic and non-chronological. To kick things off, we've selected 2005-2009. Let us know what you think of the series and your personal reading list at @thebestiespod on Twitter. 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!

fresh i have a new game of the year 2022 are we like if we're just gonna change how the show starts every single episode because there's normally and we've discussed this previously yeah it starts with my name is ross oh your name is chris plant last i, my name is Russ, oh, your name is Chris Plant, last I checked. My name is Russ Froshtick. Welcome to the Resties. We're the best of the et cetera. And then you might have a prompt or some such. My name is Chris Plant. My name is Russ Froshtick.

And this is the Resties. We're the best of the rest. Pick the rest of the best. Crushed it. Nailed it. First try. And this week we're going to be talking about something I'm really excited about. Huge project for the Resties.

It is. It's going to span many episodes. But first, have you heard about the game of the year? My new game of the year? No. Okay. It's called Your Wife Gets COVID and She Goes to the Hospital. And then your son gets COVID and you don't have COVID.

But for four days, he demands you play Sonic the Hedgehog while screaming at you to teach him how dual stick controls work in Minecraft. Oh, so you might say, how is he playing Minecraft? Oh, because he figured out from the media, the mainstream media, that there is a Sonic in Minecraft. So now he has to learn how to control in a 3D space. Oh, sure. Hell of a game. Hell of a game. I mean, that sounds, not the first part about your wife, but playing Sonic with your son sounds like fun.

But playing Sonic with your son sounds like fun. Well, it is fun, except for I didn't appreciate that your child having to learn how to control two joysticks is like a big moment in frustration. Sure. For the growing gamer. And for that to happen while he is COVID positive. And in, I would say, like, not the best mood yeah it's it's a journey but you are right and that like i i said game of the year i will look back on this my my wife is now out of the hospital my son is you know kind of like it seems like cresting his fever is broken i will

look back on this as like one of my favorite memories is that bad no it's nice i mean it ended well so that's what they say that the harrowing moments if they end well become very nice good moments he can control in a 3d space now that's what you mean that's amazing well i was gonna say you know for us we all played goldeneye growing up goldeneye was like a baby steps dual analog sticks game. Because there's really only one analog stick. But it kind of taught you to use, you know,

looking around and aiming at the same time. And now these kids have to just jump right into the deep end of dual analog sticks and good luck. That's true. But thankfully they have us. Anyway, I have COVID as well. So everyone's in this big

party i probably do so we're just it's it's rest use code edition i just hope everyone listening at home is masked and uh you know isn't gonna get it through does it travel through sound waves it might no at this point no covid 22 might we i i don't know about COVID-19, but 22 might. Yeah. Also, we're saying we've had it very easy. It could have been so much worse. I'm extremely lucky. Very fortunate. Yeah. Everyone who has gotten it in my family has thankfully, while had a few grumpy days, has not had anything severe.

Knock on wood. Thank God. So, so yeah we're just goofing but uh yeah you know at this point even though i think we've both been enormously careful forever um sort of can't escape it yeah it might it might just be one of those things that just like like the wave in deep impact you just can't get away from it that just like like the wave in deep impact you just can't get away from what's that nicholas cage movie where the world just ends uh knowing the knowing that's a great film anyway i'm really glad that we could start here the besties known for those funny goofy intros the resties known for medical updates on both of us and very very grim. Very grim. But we

should talk about our actual topic of the day because it's a huge thing. I'm just going to set it up and then we're going to take a quick break. This thing is the Rusty's required reading list. The 25 let's say essential

games. The games that you should play from 1980 to 2020 and we're going to talk about it right after this plan it's important that we sort of lay out that these are not you know obviously the besties we've done best of such and such year we've done countless best of the best game of the year episodes we are not doing that here this is something different correct right these are the games that we feel you should play if you want to have a fundamental appreciation of video games um they're like they're the games that will make every other game you play richer because you will get either the references or the history or the inspiration of uh everything

it's like how you know there was that movie where the train comes at the screen and everyone freaked out because they had never seen that before in like 1910 or whatever it's like one of those and then later on when you watch uh another movie with the train you're like damn i got the screen if i didn't have covid i would definitely have called out at least one movie with a train you're like damn i got the screen if i didn't have covid i would definitely have called out at least one movie with the train you would have you would have really nailed it unfortunately you did murder on the orient express how about that that is a movie with the train um so here's how it's going to work because again this needs to be manageable we want it to be a list of games that in theory you could play over a few years um or at least kind of pick up

right yes we don't want it to be this like massive endless list um so it's going to be 25 games and it's going to go from pac-man to modern day so that's 1980 to 2020 there are video games that came out before that we're not going to talk about tennisennis for Two. I understand it's an incredibly important moment for the history of video games. Without it, we wouldn't have video games. Good luck playing it in its original format outside of going to a museum. That's not how this episode is going to work.

Here is how it's going to work. We are going to do episodes that span five-year chunks. And from those five years, with each episode, we'll pick between one to three games. There will obviously be some chunks where, hey, only one thing makes it. There will be some where we use up all three. Not going to do any more than that. Otherwise, we will obviously go above 25 pretty quickly. So those episodes will be 80 to 84, 85 to 89, 90 to 94, 95 to 99, 2000 to 2004, 2005 to 2009, 2010 to 2014.

And here's the twist, 2015 to 2020, which is technically six years. But I wanted to do a round number. So like, yeah, I think people can live with it so so just to boil it down it is basically for those chunks of years that plant just mentioned there will be one to three games that we decide this is a game you should play if you want this foundational knowledge that will be very hard i'm just looking at this first group um because there are so many amazing games but we will try to be really picky um and and narrow that down yeah and and as we talk about these again we might not be picking the best games just don't want to hammer that home because a lot of times there will be things

here that are very refined versions of things that maybe did it better uh or think they are the things that did it better. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I would say that they're the essential, you know, text. Yeah. If we're talking Seaman 2 versus Seaman 1, Seaman 1 wins. Yeah, exactly. That is a great way of putting it. I don't know if Seaman 2 ever actually came out. Oh, okay. Cool. So our first episode today, right now, is going to be from 2005 to 2009. I wanted to start out with something that I feel like a lot of people who listen to the show, they'll be familiar with a lot of these games.

These are also games that, for the most part, they're games that you can still relatively easily play just through downloads on steam or various other places uh some of them you can't but for the most part they will be games that are accessible yeah and then for future episodes we're going to do these years in the order of our choosing it won't be chronological order we also didn't want it to be just like old old person games for three episodes straight so we're kind of saving you from yourself yeah we we will try to let y'all know which episodes we're doing in advance. That way you can kind of play along as we go.

Yes, and we will keep, obviously, a running document that maintains all the selections. So at the end, we will have the big list and we'll share that on Twitter and various other places. And very final thing with all of this, we won't be doing this all back to back to back to back no if big important games come up we're gonna take some time to do those this is like a big ongoing project so it'll be off and on uh and it'll be a journey for you to go on with us

but i don't know if we're picking journey i think that came out later yeah i think i think flower is on this list uh hey do you want to get started yeah let's do it okay i will read off the entries for this first year and we can kind of alternate back and forth that's not good okay so first year 2005 this is 2005 to 2009 yes but i'm just going off just 2005. Resident Evil 4. Wow. God of War. Yep. The original.

Guitar Hero. Yep. Shadow of the Colossus. Wow. Great year. Call of Duty 2. Yep. Animal Crossing Wild World.

Which I believe that's the first portable Animal Crossing. Was it? Is that right? Yeah. On the DS, yes, it was. And Geometry Wars, which might sound like the easiest one to write off, but I actually think is very important in the games industry. Wait, I added one. Oh, no, I didn't.

I incorrectly added one. Never mind. Forget it. Okay, okay, okay. How did that first group hit you is there a thing that stands out right away yeah resident evil 4 stands out right away to me interesting as a potential included thing i mean we've talked about resident evil a lot on the besties and as people are aware i consider resident evil 4 to be the absolute peak of the franchise

um i think we all can agree that it's at the very least the second best if not the best uh compared to uh resident evil village resident evil 4 is is incredible informative um the only other one i think on this list that i would consider is probably shadow the colossus which is an amazing game uh you know i don't know that I need to describe. Well, maybe I do. You're a little guy and you run around in this big open world that has essentially no enemies except for these giant rock monsters that you have to climb on. And just a beautiful, very creatively made adventure game

that is just terrific and was recently remade in the last couple years. Yeah, the enemies can be like the size of skyscrapers. Or parking garages. And you. Their bodies are the. Effectively the levels. Like navigating. Were there any in that group that you.

Like. So. I mean we're going to very quickly. Figure out what our I guess. Metric is for this. my gut first off was like well obviously guitar hero and shadow of the colossus guitar hero you know inspires this absolutely massive um trend in rhythm games and plastic instruments right and shadow of the colossus is just i mean known as one of the probably five art games mainstream art games you know games that make you cry but that said when i think about like the impact they actually left on the industry

i don't i'm not as convinced. Well, Guitar Hero specifically, while it did have this massive impact that lasted probably, I want to say, six or seven years, no longer, obviously. No one has plastic instruments in their house, or if they do, they seriously hate the fact that they have plastic instruments in their house. Those are great games.

I have a lot of fun playing them. But the moment has passed, so I do not think it is informing current game current day game development outside of like beat star on the ios and other like rhythm games like that so yeah yeah and then shadow of the colossus i feel like we've seen especially recently recently, more kind of indie or, you know, somewhere between indie and AAA studios try to emulate that core idea of like, what is a boss fight? Can giant bodies be levels or can levels be more than these kind of static things that we, you know, move around? you know move around um but it also it doesn't really feel like there was the like world of shadow of the colossus ripoffs uh down the line and again i'm not saying like that's not going to be this whole list i don't think the measurement of why a game is required reading is like did it

inspire a bunch of clones um it's more that i don't shadow the cost is impact is not as clear to me now as i necessarily thought it would be when i played it for the first time yeah i thought it was going to be revolutionary and now it feels like a really lovely game that i go back to in the same way i go back to a lot of indie games um that are emotional and resonate with me and have like one kind of really great hook um but not a whole lot more than that i mentioned geometry wars the reason that i would nominate that i considered it yeah is i mean to me that is the game that opens the door for downloadable games on video game consoles yeah well hexic as well we can't forget yeah yeah yes geometry wars and i think braid might be the other version of that

but geometry wars felt it just felt incredible when you could turn on your xbox 360 and just you could turn on your xbox 360 and then just download a game yeah um that seems so basic now but at the time was just kind of unreal um but whether or not like that makes it the game then the other thing is like animal crossing it's the first one yada yada and call of duty 2 i do think that is the moment that call of Duty becomes Call of Duty. I don't agree with that. But I mean, it's a great it is a great game, Call of Duty 2. But I think it Call of Duty 4, which we'll get to, is the more formative moment in the series. So, I mean, there's nothing nothing for me here is like a absolute yes.

Yeah, I wouldn't say absolute yes, but i am pretty confident in resident evil 4 i think it is the best uh uh survival horror like horror game best representation of horror uh it's like an actually genuinely fun game even today i know how you feel about it but regardless um i i think it's the high watermark of an entire genre um so i feel pretty strongly but we'll sort of see where we're at once we get through the full list yeah i think also that it effectively is the one good mainstream vr game yeah is like kind of incredible and telling there was also um oh my god i'm sure yeah i mean beat saber is very good yeah there are a couple uh you know half-life alex is an amazing vr game like yeah i wouldn't call that a mainstream game you know if like only like 500 people can share that's that is fair um okay i'm marking that as

a maybe and we'll kind of keep trucking along. 2006, you want to take this one? Sure. Leave it? On 2006, these are the releases. Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Elder Scrolls 4, 5, somewhere in there. Gears of War, The Legends of Zelda Twilight Princess, Elite Beat Agents, Wii Sports, and Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence. I'm sorry. I also added Gary's mod to this.

That's a good addition. I thought it'd be worthwhile. So let me comment on a couple things. First of all, you'll note that I added Metal Gear Solid 3 subsistence. And this is not the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3, so it seems kind of weird to discuss a game that essentially is like a re-release. But it made it playable. It made it playable.

Like this is, I mean, we were talking about high watermarks for the series. I believe that this is the highest watermark for Metal Gear Solid. There is better than the first game, better than five, you know, you name it. I think this is as good as it gets Elite Beat Agents. I don't know if we can add it. I'm sorry. I didn't say it. Elite Beat Agents. Yeah. It's just, I think, a perfect video game. It is a great game.

But yeah, hard to add here. The only thing that sticks out to me is like, yeah, we should really include this would be Garry's Mod or Wii Sports. Yeah. Wii Sports, again, is tricky in that the revolution it produced was a disaster, largely. Yeah. Wii Sports, again, is tricky in that the revolution it produced was a disaster, largely. Yeah. But here's my counterpoint for it of why it's, like, historically just so significant. So Wii Sports comes out and it invites tons and tons of people into video games, right? and people into video games right this is a point where there is a massive cutoff in people over the age of like basically 20 who don't know how to use a video game controller um which again i

understand might sound kind of severe but it's just true at this point and it brings uh so many people either into video games for the first time or back into the video games and then it sets up what is about to happen over the coming years which is like gta4 coming out like that sort of well and even like the app store like renaissance of like all these people that played wii sports and that was their first video game are now like addicted to candy crush and all sorts of shit so like and then yeah the other thing it does is by basically inspiring this trend in motion gaming that leads to the creation of the connect which hey the connect obviously rest in peace the technology in the connect is what inspires the technology in your phones that allows you to do the kind of like fake uh uh what is it

like focus shift focus on your phone it is what does your face ID um the technology that came from motion gaming is extremely important not to mention VR um yeah and VR yeah so I

do feel like it even if the we side of things maybe wasn't as important as everybody hoped it would be uh we sports gets wheeze in the living room it introduced it brings people into video games and it inspires technology that is like just tremendously important yeah um and then i just want to real quick talk about gary's mod so gary's mod came out in 20 2006 it's a very weird not really a game thing where you basically have access to all the model character models originally that were in half-life 2 and you could essentially like pose them and create scenes using all of the physics objects and character models and like kind of let your creativity run wild and an entire community sort of built around that and became a whole huge thing that still kind of exists today.

Like there are still people making Gary's mod content and it's, you know, 15 years later. So I think it's worth considering and i agree resports absolutely is also worth considering yeah i'm i'm marking both those for our kind of final deliberation um okay 2007 gosh video games are about to explode um 2007 is mario, the Orange Box, which includes Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, the updated Team Fortress 2, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare, Rock Band, God of War 2, Mass Effect, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, and Peggle. stalker resident evil 4 wii edition i wrote that one and peggle um i think we could probably remove resident evil 4 wii edition i did want to call it out because it is but considered by many to be the very best resident evil 4 release although i think the vr version might have trumped it at this point yeah i think i think that's fair yeah i would also say I think the orange box is cheating. Okay.

Because it's three extremely good games in one, like, deluxe pack. Yeah, let's just say Portal. I would probably just say Portal, yeah. Okay. This is just a bonkers year. To me, this is... We should just talk about this year for a second. This to me feels like truly the sea change for video games, and we're going to see it play out even more severely in the following year. video game list basically before this you know 2000 to 2006 and then 2007 odd words just a tremendous change before 2007 you would look at it and it's like madden would be there every time

in a baseball game and like you could feel them filling the list um there would be you know re-release packages yeah um and then here i mean this is just a a greatest hits list of all time every game we just mentioned here could be in like a video game hall of fame um whether or not i love all of them is kind of beside the point. But there's a reason that we like dedicated entire season of the besties to bracketing off this just this year. Because I mean, it's just astonishing. And I think that there's a number of reasons for that. I think studios are suddenly getting much bigger.

The money going into video games is getting a lot richer. I think Microsoft finally getting a lot richer um i think microsoft finally getting a grapple in the video game industry with xbox 360 is inspiring that there's just more places to play video games um and i mean you mentioned this earlier but we are on the cusp of social gaming of you know facebook gaming and in ios and there just seems to be an interest in video games in a way that i i can't think of really any precedent in video game history that you know not not like pac-man fever like that i don't i'm not making that comparison this is a genuine cultural moment yeah yeah i would say you know there there are really two games in here that jump out to me

as definitely definitely worth considering for inclusion uh and those would be portal and bioshock uh oh interesting yeah not call of duty um yeah maybe call of Duty as well. Yeah, probably Call of Duty as well. Yeah, for me, Call of Duty is the one that stands out because... Yeah. I mean, it's the biggest video game franchise of all time. Sure. And, you know, if you're not going to say Call of Duty 2 is the game that makes it that way, Call of Duty 4 definitely is.

And it kind of sets in motion a lot of the competitive multiplayer stuff i know halo is a piece of that too um but it's just huge bioshock is a game that at the time again in this kind of our games art conversation felt more important to me than it does now um it's not a bad game like by any stretch of the imagination but there have just been so many games before it and after it that i think do the same ideas better i i don't know i i feel i know obviously bioshock was inspired you know by system shock and and and uh the games that came before it i do do think that Bioshock hit this level of, you know,

artistic, but also like a mature storytelling perspective. And then obviously like the, you know, the big hook of the game. I don't know. The first time I saw Bioshock, it felt like a new thing entirely in a way that like,

I very rarely had that experience and haven't had that experience since because it just felt like oh, this is like a shooter, but it is treating it with a level of sincerity and also seriousness that I just don't see in

video games very often. Yeah, I do agree with that. I do remember the first time I played it that it blew my mind in that way yeah it just felt unmatched in a way in terms of storytelling i guess my big question mark for it is yeah but what about now like is that yeah but don't you think there are games now, like, let's look at Dishonored, for example. Like, don't you think Dishonored owes at least some of its roots to Bioshock? Yeah, but again, this is another genre that's dead. It's like, yeah, I don't know. But I get your point.

Yeah, let's mark it as a maybe. Okay. And we can come back to it just because I know. And just to talk about Portal real quick, because I do agree Call of Duty as a maybe. Okay. And we can come back to it just because I know. And just to talk about Portal real quick, because I do agree Call of Duty is a maybe as well. My hesitance on Portal is that I think Portal 2 is in every single way the better game, but I realize that's not the list we're talking about.

Mm-hmm. There is like a genre of first-person puzzle games that sort of came out of portal and also the like i think the idea that you could have like this level of like mature humor in a game was pretty rare um you know games uh that had jokes in them previously relied on kind of silly, goofy, fart humor, stuff like that. So, I don't know. What do you think on Portal? I mean, I'm going to put it as a maybe, just so that we can kind of compare it. Because I think we're going to get to a point where we're going to have to have a larger conversation.

Yeah, it's hard for me to imagine we don't pick three games from this chunk because it is such a oh yeah it's a powerhouse powerhouse series of five years but yeah especially when there are chunks like i think like 80 to 84 where we will pick one yeah um as much as i love a lot of those classic games we're gonna pick we're gonna pick one those classic games, we're going to pick one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We're going to definitely have to put three games on this. So 2008, Grand Theft Auto 4, World of Goo, Metal Gear Solid 4, Braid, Fallout 3, Smash Brothers Brawl, Gears of War 2, Persona 4, Fable 2, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Burnout Paradise, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, which I know does not seem like it fits there, but I think it's one of the greatest racing games ever made, Street Fighter 4, Audio Surf.

And I did not include a ton of games. A ton. I'm sure that there's somebody screaming at me right now about Mirror's Edge or something else that didn't make this cut. Yeah, that is a lot of games um i mean gta 4 has to make the maybe list right yeah yeah sure yes i mean from what it was like in new york when when that game came out yeah it was it was a bizarre there had never been any 3d recreation of a real place that came that close to the real place, it's insane. Yeah.

And specifically being in New York because of that. I mean, the day it came out, I remember cutting class and walking from one GameSpot to the next. GameSpot? GameStop. There we go. And there just being a humongous line at every one of them. GameStop. There we go. And they're just being a humongous line. Every one of them.

And then finally I bought a reservation off of a friend. And then just to get into the store for that was a huge, huge line. I mean, it was such an event. And that was know everybody was buying everything online so you know that could be happening today and it's just invisible because people have their amazon order coming this is kind of the epitome of this list though because i do think as like critically the game has not aged well at all um it's in my opinion one of the least fun grand theft auto games there is yeah uh but it did sort of lay the groundwork for what gta is now not just dca but also like like high-end open world games all yeah sort of this they this watermark was set by gta 4 so it is. Ubisoft as a company does not exist as we know it today without this game coming out in 2008.

Yeah. So I agree. Of this list, the other thing that I would definitely consider including. I would consider including World of Goo. I would consider including. I know you're going to include Persona and that's fine you do that no i'm i'm actually not i love persona but i i sooner include a dragon quest at a different point i'm gonna just temporarily include burnout paradise even though i think it's gonna get the boot i will include your motor storm and i would also

include street fighter 4 yeah i think that's right i i uh middle gear solid 4 is the i think the worst middle gear solid game which is not actually that bad i think it's pretty good game it's uh it's a fun movie um i think brawl great smash brothers i don't know if it's the one that I would want to include here. I mean, Fallout 3, though, again, Fallout 3 and I think GTA 4 are similar in that way, because this was Bethesda showing that

they could handle a different franchise, but effectively they are using the Skyrim model, even though it is a different sort of thing. Yeah, I think i will be more likely to include skyrim later yeah and fallout 3 here yeah um because i think skyrim is when it becomes a or elder yeah yeah thing yeah um um okay fuck world of goo is really for those i don't know if it's gonna make the cut man, World of Goo is like one of the best indie games ever made, bar none, not even a question.

It is like so incredibly well done. I don't know. And it was on Wii and eventually iOS. Yeah, it's great on iOS. Yeah. It's probably the ideal platform, iOS. Yeah, and I think that's what made it special was like oh a real game yeah you're playing a real game on on a portable system um okay very quickly 2009 video games they're here

uncharted 2 okay modern warfare 2 assassin's creed 2 batman arkham asylum after many delays um demon souls who uh monkey island plants versus zombies flower trials hd red faction gorilla dj hero which i'm including just because i like it and borderland i had to ready for this i was at mtv at the time mtv wanted me to fly to abiza to interview dj tiesto for dj hero of course and i know nothing about electronic edm whatever edm and i needed to google a lot about tiesto and listen to a lot of his music to actually do the interview so that is really the only connection I have to DJ. That's good to know. They made a sequel to that game.

Did they? Who could have imagined? Good for them. Yeah, I see that you've highlighted Batman Arkham Asylum and Demon's Souls. Yeah, honestly, let me pause for a second and say that I think there is one on this list that i will fight probably harder than any other game in this entire list and that's demon souls for maybe obvious reasons but in case they're not obvious demon souls was the birthing of the souls genre uh i mean you could technically go back to their earlier games but this is the time when it really like coalesced and um every aspect of

elden ring can be seen in the original demon souls it is wild how much has continued on almost untouched a lot has been changed but a lot has not so i mean definitely yeah and the best ps5 game still is just a remake of demon souls yeah that is true that's kind of incredible um yeah i i i agree with you i i think demon souls is so essential that i feel like we can even just put it in before we go to the break sure you want to yeah let's do it okay so we only have two games so now we're only down to two uh we're going to take a quick break, drink some water, rehydrate. Pedialyte. Check on our families.

And we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. So we know that Demon's Souls is here. And I want to give it just a minute to let it breathe. Because this is, you know, a privilege for this game, considering all of the great games that we've named. I do agree with you. It is, I don't know, this might be the most influential game of everything that we've talked about so far. Certainly of the last two decades, I think Demon's Souls has defined a lot.

I think Demon's Souls has defined a lot. Yeah, because we mentioned this with things like Wii Sports or Bioshock or I'm trying to think of other ones here. Games that shadow the classes, games that were important and were artistically satisfying, but maybe their trend died off a little sooner than we expected. Yeah. Or they just didn't pick up at all. Or the Grand Theft Autos, which I think inspired, obviously, the entire Ubisoft open world formula that we see in Far Cry and in Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs.

Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs. What's wild about Demon's Souls is that it has inspired some interesting changes to a ton of different games. And not just straight up rip-offs. It's just changed how health works in video games. Or how saving works. Or how world design works in terms of how you memorize spaces. And then on top of that that the people who made it have effectively had a spotless record ever since then um just making better and better versions of the game i know some people are going to argue with us about deep or dark souls 2 i disagree i think

they just kind of keep learning and growing and getting better so yeah it was technically a different team that made dark souls 2 so we don't necessarily need to put that on their shoulders. I'll still stand up for it. I know. Okay, so it's on the list. Other stuff. Are there some that you're looking at? To remind everybody, here's what we've saved as like,

oh, we probably need to sneak these in. Resident Evil 4. Gary's Mod. Wii Sports. Portal. portal bioshock call of duty 4 modern warfare grand theft auto 4 world of goo burnout paradise motor storm pacific rift street fighter 4 right off the bat i'm taking off motor storm pacific rift i love it uh burnout paradise on its own would be able to replace it as the racing game in this category i think i'm also going to take off gary's mod yeah i was

going to as well yeah just because i can't recommend it as a required there's just no analog to it it hasn't really defined anything that has come after it it's like yeah thing well and i i like if this is a list that we're going to give for people to actually go out and try i i just don't think it would be like helpful that's true to go and try it yeah um i think it's super important but i just i couldn't recommend putting in people's hands i'll let you cut some now okay i'm gonna cut some uh i'm gonna cut the original portal okay goodbye portal great game stellar uh fuck maybe i want to keep it Okay. Goodbye, Portal. Great game. Stellar. Fuck, maybe I want to keep it. No, I'm going to cut GTA 4.

Goodbye. Oh, wow. Yeah, no. That feels like a big cut. I mean... How about we keep that? I think we should cut maybe World of Goo before we cut that. Okay, you're right. Because I think like World of Goo, we can start comparing these to other things.

I think Wii Sports fills that void. Okay. Resident Evil, Wii Sports. I'm going to cut Bioshock. I think Bioshock is like a game that I would put on my like 50 games that are fun to play. I would cut Burnout Paradise

and Street Fighter 4 before I would cut Bioshock. Okay. I mean, sure. Let's get rid of those. Let's get Bioshock. That removes all of the 2008 games except for GTA 4, which still lives. Batman Arkham Asylum I'm considering cutting. Yeah.

I mean, I enjoy this game a lot. I think... Actually, I prefer it to the sequels. The only reason I would cut it is because I think it's a nice Metroidvania. And I think we're going to include some better Metroidvanias.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's fine uh man this is really hard okay so so that takes us down to resident evil 4 yeah wii sports bioshock call of duty 4 modern warfare gta 4 okay i'm gonna fight wii sports a little bit. Also, you know what? I'm going to cut GTA 4 because I think GTA 5 has actually had an even

more significant cultural impact because of things like GTA Online. Yeah, that's certainly true. I also think it just frees us up. Yeah, okay. I'm kind of kicking the problem down the road. Yeah, this is tough. But I think... Because GTA 4 is so tricky because

then it's also like well do i include gta3 gta4 is also like i wouldn't want to force someone to fight gta4 yeah that's true glacial yeah that's that's very true okay um so again here's where we're at with all those cuts resident evil 4 w, Wii Sports, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 Model Warfare, Demon's Souls. I think Wii Sports has to stay. I'm going to try to fight briefly against Wii Sports, even though I 100%

acknowledge its cultural impact. It's not that good of a game? Half of it is great. it is a magic trick it's not a game it's a magic trick effectively like it is basically like fooling you into thinking that you're good at the sports that you're playing when you're really not that's not a problem almost all video games are about fooling you into thinking you're good at the thing that you're doing in the game when you're actually not. So that would actually prove my point, though, because I think that is the majority of casual social games at that time.

Sure. And that's how you get people into video games. So I think that kind of only makes me feel more passionate about it. Yeah. I mean, the only other aspect here, and I know what you're going to say in response, but it's kind of a downgrade, is it's certainly hard to play the original Wii Sports

because who the fuck has a Wii lying around? I realize you can play Wii Sports, or sorry, Nintendo Switch Sports, which we just talked about on Besties, which kind of does the trick, but... I don't think, I think i think when i say uh you know it has to be available to you again i'm comparing it to tennis for two which has to be playing on like a doppler device or whatever like in a submarine yeah you need to break into

norad to play tennis so i'm i i think um yeah i think keeping it. Okay, so, well, I'm not marking it just yet. Formative games, shit. Yeah. I'm not saying that I like Call of Duty more. No, I know what your point is. It's really hard not to include it. Yeah, I know. You're right.

We should include it. Yeah. You're right. Call of Duty 4 needs to be on this list. So what that leaves us with is Bioshock. Yeah, I know. You're right. We should include it. You're right. Call of Duty 4 needs to be on this list. So what that leaves us with is Bioshock, I don't think there's a way in hell Bioshock survived that three. Okay, you can cut. You're right.

Because there are earlier games that sort of define what Bioshock is. Resident Evil 4, he's like a very ringer term, is like Apex Mountain to me. You're right. It's like the top the top the top of the top right like it's it is at its peak i mean i get it that you know if we're not if we're doing it by formativeness it's funny because resident evil 4 from a game design standpoint informed resident evil 5 it informed resident evil village it didn't really inform uh the reboot of resident evil um and it hasn't in i don't know if it's informed that many other horror

games i don't play them generally because they're scary so i'm not an expert i'm about to make this so easy for us okay great i did the math wrong if we do all of our chunks 80 to 2020 right 1980 2020 yeah and we awarded three games in each of those chunks we would get to 24 games oh great so that means we can actually probably award between three like more let's say three no i think well but then there's going to be years where we don't yeah so i i think i think we can we'll change this to between two and four that sound good okay fine yeah because boarding just one in a year feels weird or in a period yeah okay so that that that means we can keep Resident Evil. I love that. I feel good about that.

Whew, thank goodness for bad math. Okay, so here's the list. This is required reading, and then we're going to have a little bonus segment after we finish this. Resident Evil 4, Wii Sports, Call of Duty 4, and Demon's Souls for this segment. And I think

what we're going to do now is Plant and I are going to get to pick one that's just like a personal pick that carries forward. Yeah, but before we do that, I just want to say thank you to and let me check this username JizzBlasterDan No, it isn't.

User JizzBlaster No, it isn't. That's not his name. JizzBlaster dan no it isn't user jizz no it isn't that's not his name blaster dan or her name her name um who asked on the best use subreddit if there was a there was oh yeah so it's reddit so it's a reddit oh yeah yeah yeah sorry i probably should have emphasized that from the top i don't think Twitter allows those names. That kind of inspired us with this. And I'm, like I said, this is just a fun project. I love being able to talk with you about kind of video game history, especially this period, which I guess is, this is like kind of our overlap when we were working together for the first time. Yeah.

Okay. So those are the games. What is is your you said one pick from this period that is like if you're making yeah so for the listener this is the if they want to know the russell frushtick this is going to be the one game from this period that defines who you are as a person as a critic like yeah it's probably it probably is bioshock just from a taste standpoint it bioshock really matches and checks a lot of the boxes that i find really interesting in game design from like player agency to writing to environmental design um so yeah it's bioshock uh i'm like i'm very torn i want to say elite beat agents but that's a weird pick because i don't like rhythm games

outside of that pretty much when miku games it is really the only game i've ever seen where um a little girl's father dies and then comes back as a ghost to ensure that she has a great christmas so it's that's worth considering i mean it has one of the best performances of uh september in any medium yeah it's i i think it's probably red faction gorilla yeah i think and that does match uh that does have chris playing yeah and i i think like it gets it what i would eventually realize i want from open world games which is this breath of the wild type of system more so than the ubisoft model of you know very rigid go here and do that or like the horizon zero dawn i think it's never going to get credit for this

and i'm not drawing a direct line between red faction gorilla and breath of the wild and um elden ring but i think it starts a conversation amongst a lot of game developers about how open world games can work and i think it is a contrast with um gta4 i don't think it's like an accident that the same publisher of red faction gorilla would also go on to create the saints row series uh which as games are generally better than yeah just as like a gameplay experience is better are more playful and allow for you to kind of make the game for yourself at times again nothing compared to modern stuff but certainly less rigid than gta 4 so i think yeah in terms of my taste i love that i just still think it's incredible that you know not that long after um 9-11 and the wars uh that we got a game where you play as a guerrilla terrorist

like fighting effectively an imperial power pretty pretty wild uh and one of those great examples of what you would see in b-movie cinema in the like 50s and 60s i guess 70s too where they're taking on really challenging ideas and saying things that can't be said otherwise by putting it in something that's kind of silly and easily dismissed. See, also Total Recall. What a great film.

Obviously, and also set on Mars, so there you go. That's true, that's true. That's it. Do you have any recommendations this week? Fuck. Yeah. Well hydrated

and take Tylenol every six hours. How about that? No, I think that sounds good. Yeah. What do I got? I played something.

I mean, I played more. I finished Citizen Sleeper. I really want people to play it. It's just incredible. Yeah, I want to play it. And, oh, geez, I don't know. I've been listening to a lot of The Watch and The Big Picture. I mentioned Ringer shows earlier, so I should probably shout them out.

Enjoy both of them. to ring their shows earlier, so I should probably shout them out. Enjoy both them. One of the hosts from The Big Picture is back from parental leave or paternity leave. That's maternity leave, all of the above. Actually, true for both of them because two of the hosts were out

within the last calendar year. Anyway, it's a great show about movies. If you enjoy listening to me talk about movies, you would enjoy listening to them much more. They are brilliant, and I think folks will like it. And that is it. Cool. Well done.

We did it. We survived. Oh, man. Are you tired? Because I'm tired. Yes, I'm fucking tired. Cool. Well, that is it.

Thank you again for listening to the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. I am Chris Plant. He is Russ Frustic. Until next time, we'll see you later. Bye. Resties! Oh, yeah, Resties.