The Besties - The Video Game Required Reading List: 2010-2014 [The Resties]

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The Resties Required Reading List strikes again! Our goal is to curate a "must-play" list of 25 games released between 1980 to 2020. Think of it like Video Games 101. This week, we've selected games from 2010-2014. Join us as we revisit the early days of our careers covering video games! Visit @thebestiespod on Twitter to see a full list of games from this week's episode. Previous picks -- 1985-89: Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, SimCity. 1995-99: Super Mario 64, Pokemon Red and Blue, Final Fantasy 7, Starcraft. 2005-09: Resident Evil 4, Wii Sports, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare; 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!

Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Ferocik, I'm trying to match your energy. Welcome to the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week we're talking about the Resties required reading list. It's back, baby. It's back, baby. It's back. And it's a good year. Or years?

Years. A batch of years. And Chris, by the way, you have such a merry vibe about you. I like this energy. Well, people are listening to this between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we're recording it Thanksgiving morning. Yes, indeed. Football is on in the background uh parades are happening

there's dog shows i saw a wonder bread float cruise by on the tv and i was like well it must be thanksgiving can so i'm i started prepping the turkey yesterday right you gotta brine it yeah and i came across what i think is the most frushed food i've ever seen oh interesting which is when you get the turkey yeah like right from the butcher there's you reach inside of it and there's just a neck and a bag of stuff yeah and if i had to imagine sure yes so what that is i think they're yeah giblets or giblets. Giblets, sure. Either. That to me, if I was trying to think of the protein of choice that would go with egg steam, that would live in the canon of your food.

Yeah. I could imagine every meal being a piece of like burnt toast, egg steam, and like a turkey neck. Ugh, just the neck? I don't even get the giblets yeah i mean when you would like mush them all together you pound them oh and then you would you would like kind of spread them over it like a delicacy so you think of gollum is what you're saying yeah you think of the appetite of gollum i think that's right i mean am i wrong no no pretty close i do eat fish a lot and gollum loves fish it's much mostly the heads yeah mostly the heads yeah mostly the heads no it brought me a lot of joy as i was you know armed deep inside

of my turkey uh just thinking about you munching away the happiest little boy in in the yeah that that would bring me a lot of joy um do you have any other pro tips for for uh people make i mean it won't be applicable for this year but i guess for next year for christmas for christmas yeah you can still do it um i i mean uh remember to brine at least a day in advance i don't even know do you just get brine in like a jar and so like what i what i did i don't know if this is right i'm just going off of a new york times recipe you chop up some lemon zest, right? Okay.

And you add a lot of coarse salt and pepper. And then you just mush it. Well, first you dry off the turkey. And then you mush it all over it. And then you put that in a big Ziploc bag, right? Yeah. Like a huge Ziploc bag. You put that in the refrigerator.

And then you come back like a day or two later. And there's just like all this goo juice. Oh. Like blood goo juice. Oh. That has been pulled out of the turkey. Like a Cronenberg movie. Yeah.

It's real nasty. And then you throw the turkey away and you just drink the juice. Oh, okay. Happy Thanksgiving. So what's funny is I thought when people say brining a turkey, I figured you'd have to like like get pickles throw the pickles away and just use the brine from the pickles and then pour that all over the turkey i agree with you until this time and i'm now wondering is the brine somebody can answer this for us the brine must be the juice that comes out of it right what's what what do pickles come in isn't that brine yeah but maybe that's the juice that's pulled out of it. Right? What do pickles come in?

Isn't that brine? Yeah, but maybe that's the juice that's pulled out of the pickles because you put all this... We have to talk about video games. We can't keep doing this. Okay, fair enough. Okay. We are going to talk about video games

and maybe a few more salt-based cooking pro tips right after the break. Okay, we're back. I i'm gonna do this real fast the resties required reading list premise for people who are just joining now our goal is to collect a list of 25 games from pac-man to modern day that's 1980 to 2020 are you saying it's come a long way since pac-man i'm saying it's come a long way since Pac-Man? I'm saying it's come a long way since Pac-Man. Okay. These are not the best games. They're not even our favorite games.

These are most definitely not like a list of 100 games that every gamer has to play. It's not that. You can find that on Google. These are the games that if you really want to care about games, if you want a fundamental appreciation of them, if you want to learn how to read them, if you want a richer connection with where things you like in games that you play in 2022 come from, where they originated, that's this. You know how when you're learning a language, they say, well, it's too bad you don't know Latin because that'd be really helpful. These are the Latin of video games. Yes, the Latin of video games. The video game is 101, the 25 games that we would put in a museum.

These are those games. So each episode, we focus on five years of video game history. We've actually done three of these episodes so far. We've done 85 to 89, which was Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda and SimCity. 95 to 99, which was Super Mario 64, Pokemon and blue and final fantasy 7 and starcraft and we've done 2005 to 2009 resident evil 4 wii sports call of duty modern warfare demon souls now we are talking about 2010 to 2014 the first well, I guess technically both of us were working in the industry in the 2005 to 2009. But this is like,

this is the meat of us, of the early part of our careers. We were around for all of this. So we're revisiting that. And you know what? Besties was around for a chunk of this. Yeah, 2012 is when Besties started. Yeah. So we've been really looking forward to it.

Do you want to just dig in right from the top? I think we got to just dig in. Okay. So 2010 is where we're starting. And this is the year to me where two things are happening that are extremely consequential. One is a gaming is consolidating we're starting to see like a few key franchises that just come out every year

we're getting less of those you know random activision games that you've never heard of and you'll never hear of again um less games like wet from bethesda um uh and it's also the very early days of uh indie games on console and what i would say kind of like this is the moment that provoked the gold rush on on indie games yeah um so some stuff just right off the top that i think stand out from this year super mario galaxy 2 maybe maybe my favorite mario game definitely top two or three. It's certainly up there. Mass Effect 2, I understand. Certainly the best by like a mile of the Mass Effect.

Of the Mass Effect games, yes. Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft 2. One that is not going to make our finalists, but I just think is an excellent. If we're going to put Pac-Man on it, Pac-Man championship edition DX is this year. Ironically, the best Pac-Man comes out 30 years after we, we, we begin our,

it is the best Pac-Man game ever made. I agree with that. And, and then on the ending side, we have limbo, we have super meat boy and we have cave story just to name a couple. Yeah. Um, which all super, I mean, super meat boy and we have cave story just to name a couple yeah um which all super

i mean super meat boy you know there's a video game documentary about it limbo you know we just had somerville come out this year and i understand they're from different studios but a lot of same inspiration and cave story maybe is the proto indie game in terms of taking a genre that the AAA space had kind of ignored in Metroidvanias and then reviving it. Yeah, I mean, I agree. You know, of the games that we're kind of looking at,

I think the story of 2010 is definitely one of indie games. Like, that stands out to me. Because even though there were a lot of very solid very impressive games that came out on the triple a side um it there wasn't anything like necessarily totally world-changingly brand new but the idea that like a game like super meat boy or a game like cave story or limbo could come out and make a colossal amount

of money and get released on like major platforms was a total sea change that continues to this day to see dividends like continues to make a huge impact you know this entire year this last year 2022 was saved by indie games because there were like six AAA games that came out, but tons and tons of great indie games that we've talked about on the show. So it feels to me like this is an area that we just need to like pay homage to. Yeah, I think kind of, I guess,

threading the gap between those two things, because there wasn't Activision and EA filling the space with the, you know, usual excess. I mean, they definitely had games. They had, they had other stuff.

Junkie games coming out at this time. Like it was still. Right. But I guess what I'm saying is it was, it was beginning to thin out enough that I feel like it's also the year that we saw Square Enix, I feel like it's also the year that we saw Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Sega experimenting and getting some things really, maybe not right, but really interesting. So this is also the year that we have Just Cause 2, which I think is one of the best open world games ever made. We have Deadly Premonition, Vanquish, which is an absolutely thrilling action game that is on Steam now.

I think there's just a lot more kind of experimentation outside of those major publishers. Yeah, the Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which we just recently talked about. Great example of like, here's an IP and we're going to take it in a completely different direction. Turn it into like a puzzle platform or physics-based co-op game. And like that's pretty, I mean, it was not a major, major release. It was a smaller game, but it was very creative and cool. And then there's also Demon's Souls. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait.

I thought Demon's Souls, didn't we say that demon souls was i guess it's technically 2009 i think i think i think we included in 2009 probably the japanese versus yeah i think that's what i'm thinking that's that's yeah because we would already have it we already have it on the thing so it couldn't be this year yeah that's that's that's correct so okay what do we want to start bolding here? I mean, I would say let's bold. I agree. Just Cause 2, I don't think it's going to make the cut, but I agree that it's really spectacular and does sort of create a certain kind of a genre in and of itself.

So that's fine. Civ V, Fallout New Vegas. I know that you have a lot of love for fallout new vegas but is it is um i would say for this well here's the thing here's sort of the legacy of fallout new vegas it is definitely the best of the 3d fallout games not even a question but i think it is very much informed by the original fall Fallout games in terms of the writing style and the structure. It was just sort of manifesting that concept into a 3D world rather than it being more of an action-y thing, which is what Bethesda Game Studios did with Fallout 3 and 4. So great game, spectacular, but I would point to fallout games if i was going to say something really stood out on the civ front i just am not really a huge civ person so i couldn't really

tell you i know people really like civ 5 but i wouldn't really know yeah i'm not sure if civ 5 is where i would um but i do think i mean i'm i'm looking at super meat boy super meat boy more than cave story was a financial like massive success cave story i want to say released as freeware right it was like a free game yes so this is like tricky because i believe cave stories first release is 2004 oh yeah i was gonna say it's so this is like the first time they sold it basically yeah basically yeah yeah so i i mean i think i think we need something on here that's representative of the indie game success and i think the two that jump out at me well three actually limbo super meat boy and plants versus zombies are like three juggernauts in terms of indie success um you know

i don't have the sales figures in front of me but i know they all did very very well uh and they're all amazing amazing games and so yeah i don't know yeah i i i think that's right i'm gonna i'm gonna earmark cave story too just because i think we should come back and talk about it a little bit more. But I'm going to say let's pass on Limbo. Let's keep Super Meat Boy Cave Story Plants vs. Zombies here. Okay. Just because I think you're right that Super Meat Boy and its connection with just the indie movie documentary and Plants vs. Zombies in terms of its transition from indie-ish to, you know, EA mega brand. It was owned by PopCap and then EA bought PopCap.

I think when Plants vs. Zombies came out in 2010, it was just still PopCap games, which technically was an indie. One other game I want to mention before we go to 2011 is Cart Life, which was humongous for a short period. It won basically every award at the indie games festival that it's

any games igf um and it's a really interesting game i recommend people check it out it is a tough game to play it is about the difficulty of life i mean I don't know a better way of putting it than that. And it's on Steam. You should really check it out. That said, I do not know if I could put it on this list just because it's strange in that it had this really big moment, and yet it is not a game that obviously was not like some financial success, but even creatively, I don't... It's not a game I see mentioned a like some like financial success but even creatively i i don't

it's not a game i see mentioned a lot as inspiration for other games um it does feel like it was kind of the last major like winning all these awards at the independent games festival but before indie games really like clicked from a like business financial whatever so it didn't hit a broader audience yeah yeah i i think that i think that is spot on okay 2011 bonkers year for the most influential games of all time in the same year minecraft dark souls skyrim kentucky route zero and i know that k that Kentucky Route Zero sounds like it does not belong there. But here's my argument for it. You know that saying about Velvet Underground that only like 100 people bought their first record, but all of them started a band?

That is how I feel about Kentucky Route Zero. Like, it is a game that just feels like such an inspiration for so much of the stuff we play today that is true but yes is it is it minecraft dark souls skyrim no no it's a very different thing with very different ambitions um just absolutely bonkers of a year in each minecraft dark souls skyrim those are effectively three of what the core five pillars of where games went over the following decade. Yeah, pretty much. And continue to get like that's pretty much where we're at building off of those games. Now, what makes this a little bit easier is we've already included Demon's Souls in past years.

Now, Dark Souls obviously takes a huge leap ahead of demon souls and being like one giant open world but i don't think it's so much of a leap that i think you would need to play both games for a required reading list which i think we talked about even on that episode yeah i i i i i agree um skyrim and mine i mean it's very hard to imagine a world in which Minecraft is not. Yeah, I agree. I think we can go ahead and bold Minecraft right now, and I'd be shocked if we left this episode and Minecraft wasn't of the three or however many we're carrying forward. It's probably going to be. Yeah, circle back up to its importance a little bit later.

Here's the thing about Skyrim. Skyrim, massive success, pretty fun game, continues to be sold to this day by Bethesda, has released innumerable versions of it. I do not think Skyrim evolves the model that was established, I would say, in Oblivion. Elder Scrolls Oblivion was the game that was established i would say in oblivion elder scrolls oblivion was the game that came before skyrim i think has so much of the dna like it definitely evolved the jump from like morrowind to oblivion was pretty significant like that was a huge jump i don't think the jump from oblivion to skyrim was that big So if I was going to point to an Elder Scrolls game that had a huge impact, it'd probably be Oblivion. So here's the question for that, though. Okay.

Is Oblivion especially playable these days? You think it would still be enjoyable? Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't think Morrowind. I mean, people will argue. I've tried playing Morrowind. It is brutal to play Morrowind. But Oblivion has almost all of the mechanics that

are going on in Skyrim there is some like quality of life stuff that they brought up I would say Oblivion is more interesting because they were more willing to let the player break the game because you can like make your own spells that do like wild ass combos where you can jump 300 feet in the air and then die from the fall damage they just like didn't really care if people broke it and it just feels like much more of an open experience because of that so here's we kind of have to create a new rule here oh oblivion we've already done that oh we missed that year 2009 we we we did it yeah just we it didn't make the cut i bet because we thought like i bet skyrim i don't know maybe i think it's just

a really competitive year i think it i think it was i'm gonna i'm gonna go back and add a color to our spreadsheet that's basically a hey maybe we need to come back to this at the end of it because i have a feeling we're to have to do some pickups. Okay, maybe. At the very end. Maybe. We can bold it for now. I'm still going to bold Skyrim for now. And we can keep going. Kentucky Route Zero.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to make the cut, but you can add it. Yeah. Any other games from this window that you want to shout out i know that portal 2 and bastion are like two games that you love i mean there's three i there's three on here that i love actually there's a bunch this is a this is like a right to the heart of ross frosch dick year for me batman arkham city i adore um bastion's pretty good i think portal 2 is probably my number one or two game ever okay and is also the game that i recommend for people that have never

played a 3d game that like uses an analog stick to look around portal 2 is like a perfect game um and i mean there's binding of isaac let's talk about binding of isaac for a second i know i know we've given it a lot of airtime in recent years but it's important to recognize that binding of isaac basically birthed the idea of like action roguelikes which is a genre that is so popular today that you cannot take two steps without falling on another action roguelike. You know, Enter the Gungeon and Hades and all those sorts of games owe so much to the groundwork that was set with Binding of Isaac. Now, it wasn't the first rogue game ever. Obviously, that was rogue.

But rogue was a turn-based RPG. Riding of Isaac, obviously an action game, but it manifested the rogue mechanics within an action environment. So I think it's definitely worth bolding, and I would make some arguments for its inclusion, but we can kind of get there at the end of the episode. Just another game to mention

that is not going to make the cut, but people should check out, Driver San Francisco. Yeah. One of the episode um just another game dimension that is not going to make the cut but people should check out driver san francisco yeah one of the most batshit ambitious ideas from a period where ubisoft was really trying new things there was this this kind of window in the early assassin's creed days where um ubisoft put creativity above all else, including fun sometimes or like games working. So you would have a game like Driver San Francisco, which was effectively Google Maps meets a TV series called Life on Mars, which was popular at the time. And you drive around San Francisco, but at any moment you can cast your body out or your, I guess your spirit. Yeah.

You like turn into a ghost basically. Fly up into the bird's eye view of the city. And then you can transport yourself back into the body of any other driver in the city effectively. So you have missions where, you know, you need to need to stop a somebody who's trying to get away from bank heist or whatever and you could just i don't know teleport into a semi driver and then block off an intersection have them crash into it yeah uh very very very clever um this is also the same period where they had a sean white skateboarding game where you could create neon green glowing rails wherever you wanted um was like i don't know almost kind of augmented reality is how it would seem today

um a really cool time for that publisher that is kind of long gone yeah um okay i feel like we have some good good stuff from 2011 yeah 2012 this is how would you describe this year well this is i think you know we're two years after i think the real indie explosion and we're starting to see i think the indie world become a more mature like you know just as a mature business like people are obviously developing with the idea that hey we, we could actually make some money if we like really polish this up and make it feel like a really full project. So we have games like Hotline Miami, which obviously was like, so this next era of indie games. But we also have like really bizarre stuff like frog fractions which like people taking it in like a totally different direction um man yeah candy crush i guess came

out that year too yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean this is also the year of walking dead which i remember the telltale game yeah the telltale game thank you at the time that that it felt revolutionary that they were going to release a story-based game and it was episodic and it was actually making good on something that kind of alan wake had set up a couple years before yeah and and i mean i mean it just took over kind of i was i guess the critic sphere of gaming uh it ended up winning surprise uh the game awards then i think they were called the video game awards then or something yeah and uh yeah it was shocking and the whole the whole reason it won really was like oh this is the future this is what games are in the future and both yes and no it won no and that telltale just didn't work out um a lot of the

talent from that walking dead game went and did other things um in the episodic structure has never clicked but the idea of kind of living games is is kind of the evolution of it that we see i don't agree i i you don't you don't you don't think I don't agree. You don't think there's any? No, I don't think there's. Here's the difference here. So we have episodic games like Walking Dead where the idea was like you'd play whatever, a three to four hour experience every three months, let's say.

With living games or, you know, games of service or whatever you want to call it, the idea is generally there's like a core game and that core game experience gets gets added to with new features and new content whatever but you can always go back to the core game that exists i i think that's a very different thing than just like releasing oh yeah no i i think they're yeah i think they're different and again this is might be me galaxy braiding i think they're yeah i think they're different and again this is might be me galaxy braiding i think they're different but i think the hope with the games like episodic games like

walking dead right was that that window would get shorter and shorter you know the walking dead originally i think was even the episodes were supposed to come out much closer together yeah um and it turns out that it's just hard to develop like that but the hope was we can release video games where you want to tune in every week like you do with a movie yeah and i think things like fortnite and final fantasy 14 and other games are accomplishing that they just realized that there was a better means of doing it yeah yeah and a better structure for the type of game that would allow for something like that um you mentioned uh a lot of the indie games and candy crush this also feels like a huge year for mobile um and i guess portable we have persona 4 golden coming out on vita this year

um which to me i there have always been great mobile games and portable games but for me that felt like the beginning of oh i am getting console experiences on the go yeah that's really more of a vita celebration it is a persona 4 golden even though that is a good game yes though i think it's it's the fact that that game i mean there was a lot of games on vita that did not even come close to that quality right you know like uncharted was on vita and it felt you know they made some compromise yeah for sure um but yeah we have that we have super hexagon yeah um just the like kind of breath we have gravity rush which is maybe as much responsible for that as persona for golden just in terms of wow they made an exclusive that is an open world game yeah year

walk is another really strong mobile game yeah i mean some really cool stuff and animal crossing new leaf yeah one of the best uh animal crossing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just a great year overall. And it feels like, again, like, I feel like we keep saying, like, oh, it's a culturally significant year. But it is just bonkers how, I feel like we got really lucky when we started working in the industry.

Because it was this just absolutely wild change point um where there's just more stuff coming out more people making games and just way way way wider variety yeah um we should i know put some put some stuff down yeah i mean of these i uh part of me wants to put journey on there i wrote the review for journey for polygon interesting little side note journey was the very first 10 that polygon ever gave now we don't give scores anymore but it was the first 10 and in the intro paragraph of the journey review i basically said that if you were going to send you know how they sent that plaque into space with the satellite so that if aliens found it they'd know if you were going to send a video game into space

send journey because it's a game with no dialogue it's all visuals it's very easy to pick up the controls and have an emotional experience based on what's going on great music great visuals everything um i don't know it it it has dna in later like experiential adventure games you know we talked about somerville i certainly think there is like a similarity there um journey is great and yeah kind of jumps out at me immediately yeah i i'm i'm gonna i'm also bolding candy crush saga yes i know i get it talk about it it's it's it's just so tremendously important um there are very few games that we're talking about as part of this reading list that is like currently still very mega successful microsoft wants to buy activision blizzard in the large part for candy crush saga

like and they're all of them you know about call of duty and playstation and yada yada yada sure but king is like the crown jewel of of of that deal it is the thing that makes a lot of money and doesn't seem to have the headaches yeah that the other publishers have and i don't know what to do in terms of indie games because again there's just so much i mean frog fractions dear esther um dysphoria you mentioned your walk 30 flights of loving analog hate story um i mean there's they are amazing indie games but i don't necessarily think that one of them is sort of the you know yeah the carry through dear esther is maybe the only one that i would maybe i'm gonna pull it just because so for people who don't know did you play dear that was was, I don't want to diminish it, but a walking simulator, right?

Yeah. Well, I think that's why I would consider it. It, to me, kind of sets the template for the walking simulators. Which, again, I don't think even is a knock on it. There are a lot of great games that have been inspired by that. And now just those moments where you know you get to play last of us and your character actually puts their gun down yeah um it kind of goes back to that and um some other games by a studio called tale of tales um okay 2013 The Last of Us, Flower, Fez, Dota 2.

Again, we're in the thick of a lot of big stuff. How would you describe this year? 2013 was sort of, you know, I think this felt like the maturing of, I guess this era was the, what, 360 PS3 era. maturing of i guess this era was the what 360 ps3 era and we are now starting to see like the kind of the heights or the capabilities of what these pieces of hardware were capable of like what what they could pull off so the last of us obviously an example grand theft auto 5 obviously an example of like people didn't think that the place 360 and the PlayStation 3 could handle a game like GTA 5, which continues to this day to be mondo successful and basically hasn't been followed on any financial level. Red Dead 2 is not as successful as GTA 5, not even close. So certainly worth a consideration.

Yeah, I just think it's like a maturing of of those consoles yeah this to me is also the year where i see indie dev is like making money um or at least finding a means to make money i i think the i i think the audience has grown such that it's not just two or three indie games that are making money. It's like, let's say, a dozen or two dozen that are like really doing well. And people are used to seeing indie games on their consoles or on their phones. Just the branding of indie as an idea is getting traction. So we have stuff like Sports Friends, which could have just never been released, ever. That is a pack of games, of indie games, that includes Johann Sebastian Joust, which you would play with your Move controllers, and which I think both of us are just humongous fans of.

Johann Sebastian Joust is maybe the most well-known installation game, like a game that you would actually see in museums. This is also the year of Spelunky HD, which is hard to imagine not on our list, and Towerfall. But then stuff like Flappy Bird bird right like which is an indie game and which made just an astonishing amount of money before its creator pulled it off the internet um yeah it's well i mean antechamber gone home again games that are just very small teams that are making gobs and gobs of money. And great games.

These are not games that are just cash in. Like the most disgusting thing imaginable. They're actually very creative, interesting, and well done games. So I know that Grand Theft Auto V will just be something we talk about. Have we included a GTA game yet? I don't think we have. I thought we did three. Did we include three?

Let me check. You should be wrong, but... No, we have not included a Grand Theft Auto so far. I mean, I think that falls in the Skyrim category, which is to say, like, I think we kind of need to, if we haven't included it. Did we not do the arrow when gta 3 came out and we just no we didn't we haven't done that yet yeah because

because it's like right after 9 11 okay right so at this point yeah you know i think that's probably what's gonna shake out there because i think gta 3 had way more of an impact, but we can certainly consider it. Other games on here... Yes, Blunky... I mean, I love Towerfall. I know. Towerfall, just to reiterate, the best local

multiplayer game I've ever played in my life and continues to be. Just is. It's better than Smash Brothers. It's better than Mario Kart. It's better than Smash Brothers. It's better than Mario Kart. It's fucking fantastic. But that formula of like, that emphasis on local multiplayer games has continued to be more and more rare because those games just,

like it's harder and harder to get people together in that way. I mean, to be fair though, it is also the game that launched the Ouya, which has gone on to be, you know, the most important video game console of all time. Yeah. Dota 2 is, you know, their last of us.

I don't... I think we can skip those. Yeah. I mean, it's like, they're great games that... I think there are other games that have had a more profound influence there are games that were influenced not as much games that are influencing um final fantasy 14 is also the other one that i'm like baby that's the mmo right it won't go away yeah it's m It just gets bigger. It is the game that, you know, has effectively countered World of Warcraft, which for a while felt like could not happen. We should keep going.

I know we have one more year. One game that I'm going to recommend two games that we will not talk about further. Starseed Pil pilgrim and eight, six, eight hack. These games are fantastic. Absolutely. Are they still accessible?

Um, they, who a star seed pilgrim definitely is. You can play it on steam. Um, and I think honestly, I think star seed pilgrim came came out earlier but i think 2013 is when it came to steam 868 hack is also on steam great um you both i mean indie games through and

through they are the type of games that did not get nearly enough attention um when they came out um and yeah you know what they were the games that would have won the IGF three years earlier before these massive investments in indie started happening. 2014, final year for this chunk.

Destiny happened. Yeah, there's Destiny. We've had a lot of great years. This feels like, you know, everything kind of catching up to itself. Just like too much ambition, you mean? Well, now we're getting the sequels. Oh, sure.

Now, like, Assassin's Creed is like, I don't know. Pirates. Black Flag. Dragon Age, I don't know. Inquisition Black Flag. Dragon Age, I don't know. Inquisition. Binding of Isaac, why not have a rebirth? You're just adding words to the original, yeah.

I mean, Binding of Isaac was a reboot. Black Flag, in its defense, I think really reimagined what an Assassin's Creed game could be. Oh, I love that game. Amazing game. Don't have any need to recommend it to people. No, no, sure. At this point. I mean, yeah, Smash Bros. for Wii U. One of, an all-timer video game title.

Just the name alone. Diablo 3, which had just a notorious launch. Terrible launch and then became a very, very good game. And there's other stuff. Titanfall, which, a game I like, but a game that launched without a single player campaign in a time where that was just unheard of, especially at its price. You know, there's some stuff here that I love, like Mario Kart 8, that, you know, would go on to have better versions with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. And then Hearthstone and divinity original sin which yeah i mean i mean hearthstone of the ones that we're looking at right now hearthstone feels like it has

probably the biggest impact because it was it was the first time that a computer uh card game or like a video game card game really like blew up in a really broad mainstream way. Obviously, Magic the Gathering had been successful for many, many years, but I feel like there wasn't the equivalent card game success on the video game side. don't prove that and now we're seeing the remnants of that with marvel snap with uh slay the spire with 16 other you know card game uh card games that are like that so certainly worth considering hearthstone okay it won't make the cut but i do want to know maybe i'll save it for our favorites thing at the yeah and then definity original sin, credit to it being the D&D type game before this D&G boom that has just taken over the world. I don't think it's going to make the cut, but hey, it's a great game.

It is very good. We're making it. Do you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break and then we'll recap all the games that are in our shortlist and then we'll cut down the shortlist and get to the meat of it.

Sounds good. I'll talk to you in a minute. And we are back. Welcome back, everybody. We're going to start cutting some games down. We're going to start cutting some games down and we're going to talk about only the best ones. So we need to get down to like three or four dots.

We're going to do well. We're going to do well, because I'm going to cut mercilessly. Great. I'm going to cut right away. Right. I think we need to cut Just Cause 2. Okay. I think there are, even though we love it, there are other open world games that came before

that allow you to fuck with the environment. Not to the extent of Just Cause 2, but certainly there are similarities. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. I think I would probably maybe cut all of these. Game story, Super Meat Boy, Plants vs. Zombies. Yeah, and I'm going to tell you why. I think there's going to be a game in 2011 that's basically going to check the box of what we're trying to do with these games.

Kentucky Ride Zero, got it. Successful indie games, and it's probably not going to be Kentucky Ride Zero. Yeah, I'm starting to get the sense that you're going to find a way to get Binding of Isaac. I think it's going to be... Binding of Isaac does so much for us. We've talked previously about certain games like StarCraft that do the esports thing and the RTS thing. Binding of Isaac

does the birthing the action roguelike genre, essentially. So Spelunky doesn't make the cut then? That is a fair question to ask ourselves we should absorb that question in a second but let's talk about binding of isaac for now binding of isaac does the action a roguelike thing okay it also uh proves out the idea of hey indie games can be massively successful even when they're very very small um and um yeah so it does so kind of wears two hats there here here's my counterpoint minecraft also does some of this

because minecraft is an extreme indie game that is true it is It is an extremely indie game. It's like hard for us to even comprehend. But this is a game that is being posted by mostly like three or four people. Yeah, a very small group. A very small group of people on the forums before it's official. Yeah, you don't need to convince me that Minecraft is an indie game. I mean, it isn't anymore, but it definitely was an indie game. Yeah, I guess I'm more for people who are listening. No, you're right i think i think it's really hard you know when you go into target and you see like minecraft's toys and like cookware to understand just how small this game was um yeah okay so so and and

i agree i think minecraft needs needs to be on this list yes no question about it i'm gonna say we don't need skyrim i don't think we need skyrim don't worry you will have played it probably even if you don't have it on this list because it's literally inescapable and i would also say like if you've played an open world rpg in the last 20 years you've essentially experienced skyrim in a lot of ways like well that could be a case for it no no but i don't but i would say i do not think skyrim birthed that formula i've gone back and i have added a new color to our spreadsheet for oblivion as a potential pick-me-up game when we get to the end of like okay forming our finalist um so definitely keeping minecraft kentucky i do not think you necessarily should include no i mean it's going to be we'll get back to it in a second but not for this list

let me not totally remove binding of isaac because i want to come back to it just in looking at the other games that are on this list i want to make sure that okay okay we have something there um journey a great game absolutely no need for us to keep it, in my opinion. That's fine. Candy Crush Saga, now we're getting into, like, some tricky stuff. Where it's, like, a game that I don't think I... No, but let's explore Candy Crush Saga. Why is it being included?

Is it being included because of the game or just the business around the game? Hmm. being included is it being included because of the game or just the business around the game because if we're going to include just the game i would look to like a game like bejeweled for example or other earlier match three games that's a good point that's a good point candy crush saga obviously basically defined how to make fucking gobs of cash with those games by making it like kind of addictive formula and i don't think people need to play that to have an appreciation of like this is like an art form i think they get like that if i was going to make a list for just video game journalist you know like potential critics and reporters i would put this on it because i think it should be like studied but i don't think it's necessary for admiring games yes so let's remove it i sort of feel the same way about the deer and well not the same way about your way about uh yeah i i don't think we need to include dear esther even though it is uh quite good and and i agree it does have a lot of dna later on um grand theft

auto 5 i would remove it because i think again we're going to talk about gta 3 and i think gta 3 is the game the counterpoint here is gta online yes that and that's fair but i do think the model of gta online owes more to like everquest to some that's fair yeah yeah i was you're right the like the role play and stuff that's happening there is yeah done long long before this um let's come back to the spunky question is yeah the greatest let's just come back to it a final fantasy 14 i think we can lose because of again like everquests and it really is just an mmo i mean it's a very successful mmo but it's an mmo and then hearthstone yeah give me a reason to remove hearthstone because i'm i'm struggling to come up with one i mean we can only have 25 games yeah but i think we're doing pretty well

if we're gonna carry forward how many three in this chunk chunk? Let's see. Right now, we would have, if we keep it, that would be four. And how many chunks do we have altogether? We have eight chunks, right? So eight times three is 24. So we're already, we can't have too many. Okay, here's what I'm going to say. And this is going to create some drama. Are you ready?

Some Rusty's drama. I think we definitely include hearthstone i think we definitely include minecraft i think only one between spelunky and binding of isaac should live because they are both wait for it action roguelikes i mean it's easy for me okay Okay, let's hear it. It's Spelunky because I think Spelunky is like one of, if not the best piece of game design ever. I agree with that. But how much later, how many later games have pulled from Spelunky versus Binding of Isaac? But this is where I would say it's the exception to the rule i think oftentimes we we want both right like a game ideally it's a it's a great game it's doing really interesting things it's great design and it was influential like you know again because we're trying to make this such a narrow list yeah that said i think the like my in my opinion

the greatest example of game design that is such it you know sure it's it might be lower in other categories but because it is number one in that category i think it makes the list i i think every everybody should play this game yeah um. I think it gives people an appreciation of what games can and should be. Now, the problem with Spelunky is that even though you're right, everyone should play that game. The multiplayer is bad. Well, no, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say so few people, even after having played the game, will still leave that experience understanding why the design is so good

because so few people have the patience to get through what is unquestionably one of the most punishing gameplay experiences I've ever had in my life. And I don't mean by punishing like it's just unfair because it's certainly not, but you don't understand that it's not unfair until you're like a hundred deaths in. But by that same logic, I have not been able to get into Binding of Isaac.

And it's a game I think I would love. Yeah. So, you know, like there I think I think both games have things about them that are. That's that's fair. That make them tough entries. I. I respect Binding of Isaac I would

but I just think I mean I don't look I don't have any real skin in this game I'm very happy with both or either one of those I agree like it should only be one of them you know it's just a conversation so realistically like it ends up being spunky or

it ends up being by the basic i don't it's fine i i and here's the answer to your can you appreciate it you can just read derrick's book you know just go just read the book you can just read the book who doesn't love books who doesn't we we love books we love i will tell you why i'm fine with it being spunky. Because if you're going to play a Binding of Isaac game, don't play the original Flash one, play Binding of Isaac Rebirth, which came out in 2014.

Now, almost everything in Binding of Isaac Rebirth was informed by Binding of Isaac, which came out in 2011. But that's sort of just like a pro tip for me to you, play Binding of Isaac Rebirth. Okay. So we have, we have three and where are they minecraft spelunky hd and hearthstone which we we cannot end this episode without an explanation of why hearthstone made the cut. I mean, I already... It kind of snuck in there. No, I already talked about it. I mean, how many... Like, that was the successful,

you know, card game video game. Like, there were a couple, like, there was a Pokemon card game video game, whatever, there was a Magic one, but, like, nothing had broken out in the way that Hearthstone broke out. And a lot, I think, of games that came after it owe themselves and their success to Hearthstone. Now, obviously, Hearthstone broke out and a lot, I think, of games that came after it owe themselves and their success to Hearthstone.

Now, obviously, Hearthstone owes its success to Magic the Gathering. But as a video game, I think it really did kind of break new ground. I think that's fair. Is that the only Blizzard game that we have on the list so far? No, StarCraft. We also have StarCraft. Oh, yeah, we do have StarCraft. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

And Diablo Immortal, of course. We need to do some favorites, because because the Binding of Isaac thing, I think I need maybe two picks as favorites. Okay, okay. So you're going to put Binding of Isaac there. Yeah, I would pick I mean, if this is just a

games you should play list again i would reiterate you should play bionic isaac rebirth you know and then i have to say like well you should really play it with all the expansions because that's really when the game sort of like really coalesced into something that's approachable and the game that like justin griffin are now addicted to is the one with all the expansions that's uh by any of isaac repentance but yeah just play any of them i mean they're great but i but i do have one more that um is yeah probably the perfect we make the rules perfect mobile game i don't i can't think of a mobile game that is better than this game and it is desert golfing yes that's a great

choice desert golfing is the only game i have on my phone that has like carried you know it came out in 2014 it's now eight years hence and whenever i like run out of internet or if i'm in the subway and the internet shuts down whatever it is i will turn to desert golfing it is a soothing meditative satisfying experience that uh really has no peer except for maybe golf on mars which was the sequel from the same developer that added like spin shots and stuff but generally speaking desert golfing is still a very perfect experience and i strongly recommend it i i love that um my second one since we're getting bonuses this episode is gravity rush um just because it's a joy it's such a happy game i mean i it's really a choice between this and Gravity Rush 2.

But it was kind of ahead of its time, both in having a female protagonist and effectively a major console exclusive. I understand it was the Vita, but it was a big play by Sony at the time. And it felt for a minute like this was going to be a big property

for them. Maybe it still will be. I think they're trying to adapt it into a movie. Yeah, i could see that certainly they're probably like an anime right it seems so fit for an anime it should it should be so many things it's got a cat what more do you need yeah but the whole the whole way of getting around this open world is by shifting the direction of gravity so you effectively fall wherever you want to go you want to go over a skyscraper you aim gravity in the opposite direction, you start falling up and then you shift it sideways. Now you're falling sideways.

Just a great game. So many great things that we didn't talk about in this episode. I feel like we didn't give time to like device six or papers please or ho-ho-cum or frog fractions or the original near, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles did

you have a second one second favorite oh oh kentucky root zero oh yes of course i mean yeah sorry i i i just kind of assumed um if you want to hear me talk about that listen to the podcast any episode probably have done it um uh any any other stuff this week uh you've been enjoying um no i i've after several people are recommending including justin i'm i'm now on the andor train i'm three episodes in and uh enjoying it it's like born identity without the karate born identity meets uh michael clay might you say a little tony gilroy fan oh yeah it's almost like the uh creative mind behind those two franchises have come together and make a space movie space also has the first jewish mom in star wars which i've never seen before

uh breaking new ground there um and it definitely rang close to home so good for them um i i speaking of jewish moms i saw the fablemans oh and what a movie what a picture my brother took uh my eight-year-old niece to that movie and her response at the end of it was it was too long wow that's yeah that's a choice i would not have done that um i would not have done that um but yeah it's great and then more more and more pentiment i'm i'm probably i don't know maybe halfway through and what a game i i would love to do a spoiler episode on that at some point. Yeah. We'll see if anybody else plays it. I mean, I'm like an hour in. Nothing has happened significantly. Okay.

Apart from like borrowing books and then getting in a fight with a nun. Things are about to happen. Yeah, I realize there are things that are going to happen. You know what it is? Uh-huh. We were talking about how boring the game is which to some extent it is it's mostly just because all you hear is like birds chirping

and like a quill on parchment paper it is so like puts you in a state in the way that like 2001 A Space Odyssey does and you require white noise to go to sleep so I feel like it's kind of triggering something in you that you know

I just don't have. I just listen to, you know, death metal. Cool. I think we did it. I think we did another episode of the resties. Anything before we go? No, that's it. Perfect.

Well, thank you all again for joining us this holiday season. This has been another episode of the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. Resties.