The Most Anticipated Games of 2026

So I asked some of our Patreon members for their most anticipated games of 2025. Yeah. That was a mistake. Uh oh. That was the first time I did that because it's not 2025 anymore. They're not. Oh my gosh. And I'm so fucking embarrassed. Did you get your ass fucked in hand and T.D.? Did you have like 30 or 40 people just unsubscribe right then? And it didn't say from rust, did it? It just comes from the best. It just comes from the best. So you're hung by my error and I don't know what to do. I'm sorry. Were there people saying shit like? Were they trying to be fucking funny, dude? Were they like, desk stranding, too? And like saying games that came out last year to try to hurt your fucking feelings? They were. And I feel bad about it, dude. Hey, listen, if you're one of those people, turn this off. Yeah. Turn this off. If you go away. Don't be mean. If you're going to be mean to us, go away. Wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You said you did this on the Patreon? Yeah, I edited it. No, no, no, no. I'm going to say, hey, if you're one of those people, thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for supporting the show. By the way, if you're a patron, you can razz rust his ass until the cows come out. By the way, no one was mean. Everyone was like, hey, by the way. Don't go away. Don't go away. You like our audience. I love that. Yeah. My name is Justin McAroy and I, through the powers of psychic ability, you know, the greatest games of 2026. My name is Griffin McAroy and if I'm being 100% honest, my track record for knowing with the best games of the upgabbing era is absolutely fucking dog water, but I'm going to try again anyway. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I'm here to tell you about the best things that are going to happen this year. My name is Ross Froshek. I know the best game of the week. Chris, I'm glad you could escape from your terminal case of seasonal effectiveness order to join us here on the festies. I hope the games of 2026 are able to pick your spirits up. Is the crop of games really as dire as you make it sound as I'm in a wake since 4 a.m. this morning. My kid woke me up and was like, hey, you want to read a book at 4 a.m. Who wants three books at 4 a.m.? I want to play video games here. I'm back. I've had a joke. I haven't touched by the guys. Welcome. That's the kind of energy you could expect right after this. Before we dive into the list, I thought it would be fun. I have the rundown from last year's most I'm looking at that too, man. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, we got some voices. So let's, let's put the director ourselves to Justin first. I can Justin didn't do great. You did successfully predict one game that came out, which was Out of World's 2. Congratulations. Was this predict or most anticipated? I guess you were anticipating Out of World's 2 coming out and then a bunch of games. So I'm dinged for being a dreamer. I didn't anticipate games. It didn't quite cross the finish line. Here's some other because I dream too big. Some other bad boys that didn't quite make it. We have Fable. We have Soyuzas Fire 2. We have Judas. Marble. Judas is Judas. Judas is Judas. Oh, Fable is funny. Is Fable a moment from the year before? Probably. I think of 2027 Fable. Yeah. No, it's on there. It's on there. The plant did pretty good. All these games I think came out and he liked them for the most part. That's Polote, Death Stranding 2, Promise, Masked Agency, and Adam Fall. I don't think we played a lot of Adam Fall. But the other ones for sure. Yeah. How did I do? You had unannounced 3D Mario. I fucked that up. That didn't happen. That's pretty bad. You also had Elden Ring Knight, right? Wait, let's take a second. In a million years, would you guess the fucking team that worked on Mario Odyssey was in fact just working out a Donkey Kong game where he eats a bunch of bananas instead? Like, never would have recurred to anyone. Was that not announced yet? No. I guess not. Yeah. No one knew. Metro Prime 4, Da-Da-Da-Da-Doon, and Elden Ring. Sorry. Metro Prime 4, you think you're going to escape on that being one of the most anticipated ones of 2025? It was. It was. It wasn't. It can be anticipated and then anticipated. Yeah, but I'd rather anticipate something that doesn't come out that anticipates something that ends up being dirty dishwater. That's fair. Fair call. And then I liked MGS3 Delta, which I had on my list. White rain scared me too much. I didn't play a lot of that. And then GTA VI didn't come out. So whoops. I'm not in the rundown for some reason, but I'm not. He's griffin' and write his down. So there's really no way for history to know. No, you'll never find it out. I'm excited about this here. I'm looking at our list and I feel confident that most of the stuff that we talk about today will come out in 2026. Yes. Yeah. I think that's fair. I'm not as confident, but I appreciate that you guys are. Should we do a round robin? Yeah. A round robin. How about you kick it off? I'm just gonna kick it off. Just a round robin. With a deep cut of Resident Evil 9, where I'm gonna come out February 27th. It will come out here. I like feeling good about that one. What a fucking staple. It's crazy to me how Resident Evil has become almost like the same way that I used to look forward to like, oh, the new Assassin's Creed. This year's Assassin's Creed game's coming out and it's gonna be a quality, triple A title for me, like, I don't know. I feel like that is what Resident Evil has become, which is really bonkers. It's also really bonkers. What's really wild in Resident Evil is in addition to being like kind of a regular beat of either a year or two, every year or two, if there are remake or a new one, they are very inventive. Like, they do really take curveballs with these games, which Assassin's Creed I think got to a point where they're... No, obviously that's not the case for that anymore, but just every Resident Evil game has that has come out. I feel like since 7 has just been kind of a club banger. Yeah. I also like the fact that you can play this one in the third person and first person because I think the first person ones are too scary for me. Oh, see, I like that. I get too scared. I think the trick is the cadence, right? Because it feels like you're getting these all the time and it's overwhelming. You like that Ubisoft Activision style. The last Resident Evil mainline came out in 2021. So they think there's a remake. I think they're just bouncing between those two. I have a variety of things to release and then them all being nice. It is a different vibe than, hey, here's Call of Duty and it's a version of the same thing. But yeah, so many companies could take a hint from what Capcom has been doing with a lot of their franchises. Just in terms of managing it and like, it's wild that there hasn't been a mainline once in 2021. I feel like that franchise is like every year there's something really cool happening with it. And like, yeah, man, think about how many franchises really been kind of dug into the dirt recently. It's really nice to have something that's a little more dependable. Yeah. Also, can I say for this game, I'm hopes up that they will figure out the internal pacing of the game so you don't have to have the, it starts out as a horror game. It ends as an action game, which don't get me wrong. I like it. But I think that they want to fix this by having the two main protagonists so that they can bounce back and forth. I think they played a little bit of Alan Wake too. And they said, ooh, that's the sweet sauce right there. Let's let you mix this is a predictions episode in some ways. You are going to be wrong because I guarantee the final act of that game will be fucking rocket launchers out there. Shooting a rocket launcher. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I'm not sure, did you say fucking rocket launchers out the ass? I did. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that would be something. Now, that's innovation. Yeah. Oops, you want to go? Yeah, man. Fable is going to come up. My prediction is that Fable will be Capitol C canceled this year. That's what I think. No, wow. Yeah, 100%. I think Fable will be canceled this year. You're kidding. What makes you think that? What is Fable? Oh, you asked that. Okay. I thought this was a hype of that. No, I'm saying like, Fable is this brand name that doesn't mean anything to anybody. That buys games right now. It did mean something, but as a brand, it doesn't mean anything, right? Yeah. I feel like everything we've seen of that game has been concept has been like early thoughts. Like the fact that you haven't been not gameplay. It's hard to say. Right. Yeah, I just got. I mean, I can't prove that they're going to cancel it. It just feels like saying that like, I feel it in the air. I don't know that, man, I just don't know that that's going to come out. I mean, if they were going to cancel it, it seems like they would have done it when they canceled all the other games last year with the perfect dark and things like that. That's the only reason I think. Yeah, but they also didn't say that Fable will be out at this time, which if I was canceled a bunch of games and I wanted to be like, don't worry about Fable, I would have at least given a quarter. Sure. I mean, I just think they're going to cancel. So this is you anticipating the cancel away from it? Yeah, this is on your list. It's just. It's just. Right. And instead, I'm going to pick the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time, which looks wild. It's already kind of like, if there's a subgenre for like meta narrative within a game, like I'm already a huge sucker for that in games. This is, I mean, this is one of those where like my description is not going to do it just because there is the full nature of it is obviously being hidden by the trailer. Whatever it is ostensibly the remake of the last hour of a classic video game, but it includes like judging from the trailer, like fragments of the manual directors commentary. And then like throughout the trailer, then you see like video clips of like the guys actually like making the game. And there's some sort of like meta story that's bleeding into it. It kind of reminds me of what's the. There is no game. I think was kind of like kind of reminded me of that kind of vibe or like things like that where there is a meta layer outside the game or the magic circle was that magic circle I was so hard to remember the name of that game. Good pull every meeting. It's version of the greatest song in the world. This is just a tribute. Yes, sir. Yeah. You know, like I'm very excited for this one. It was it looks really cool. It's like Q1 this year. So hopefully that'll be soon because it was originally supposed to be November. So hey, if you enjoy one hour of JRPG gaming, may I interest you in 140 hours of JRPG gaming because they are doing another remake of Dragon Quest 7. Quick history lesson Dragon Quest 7 came to the stage Dragon Warrior 7. And it is the franchises and perhaps genre's longest entry. It is sort of a time hopping sort of JRPG romp and it takes so fucking long to beat this game. There is so much content and so so much story. They are apparently streamlining quite a bit of it and turning a lot of the mainline stuff into side quest stuff to make it maybe a little bit more accessible. But I don't know. It has more of a Dragon Quest. What was it? 11 aesthetic now. I mean, that game I played through and finished for the first time on like a PS1 emulator running at like 10 times speed because that was sort of the only way to cruise through. But it is extremely charming and I think it would be a great, great, great game if again, if they stream line some of that stuff. It's extremely charming. If you grind it down into little granules and then you mush it into paste and then slurps and slime it down. No, it has a lot going for it. It is just like so daunting. It is a daunting ass game. Even in the like Dragon Quest canon, it is like a lot to take on. But there's a lot of cool stuff there. So I don't know. I think it will be, they have such a, I think at this point, pretty solid track record with these Dragon Quest remakes and I'm sort of interested to see like. Where's fucking rocket slime coming back? That's all I want to know. Dude, don't tell me about it. I'd, yeah, I would love a rocket slime. I've really figured out how to create that feeling of nostalgia. The, the most color glasses thing. First of that 2.5 D pixel stuff. But this, it's like, what if the strategy guides that look was how the game itself looked? It looks so warm. I want to live inside this video game. I love to see that. Yeah. You will be. I think you will. Yes, you will. Sorry, son. That's a fifth period. That's a fifth period to the wall. That's out February 5th. So that's out pretty soon. I should actually probably start reaching out to Square Eganics to find out what the play it is for code for that because. Don't worry my butt. I'm already, I'm already about to perform. Oh, thanks. I can't buy the game on the Chris play. I know it's a priority. Chris, what are you looking forward to? I am looking forward to a game that I've already finished. I'm looking forward to perfect tied station to station. It comes out January 22nd. This game is absolutely incredible. And I cannot wait for all of you to play it. Perfect tides was the one that came before this. That is an adventure game, a point and click adventure, kind of in the style of the monkey island, but you play as an emo teenager living in a very small town during the emo boom of like 2000, 2001. This game is that same person is now going to be a freshman in college in New York in the year 2003 and live in the Greenwich Village, which is basically exactly what my life was moving from a small town and doing that in 2004. So it is for me pure nostalgia bait. But on top of that, it's just some of the best writing I've seen in a video game, some of the best memoir writing I have enjoyed in years games or not games. The author married a grand before this did a web comic called octopus pie. I don't know if any of you read that, but also just wonderful memoir writing. This is one of those games that you just sink into because it feels so lived in and so human. I have had three, four conversations with my wife about kind of reflecting on our life together in our time in New York that we've just never have had before because this game was making me think about things that I had kind of forgotten about being in my 20s. And for a game to like give you that is not a thing that you get very often. So I am really excited for everyone to play this. No, that does sound nice, but it's Pikachu building you a house. That's a cute question for me. Oh, I'm trying to remember if that probably is going to be in the DLC. Okay, understood. Well, right at the jump, March 5th, Pokemon, Pokkopia, Pikachu's building a mother fucking house for you. Two code. You don't have to worry about it. It's got plumbing and everything. It's a code. It's very concerned about that. He's very diligent. You wouldn't think. Pokkopia is unironically my most anticipated game of the entire year. It's going to blow this house the fuck up. It's going to absolutely take over. Now I think we can all acknowledge that Pokemon Legends EA is not a great game. It has unfortunately been the game that I played most probably the last month because my son is incredibly piled on it. Thankfully I do have more optimism for this game because it is developed by the team that did Dragon Quest Builders, one in two, which were both games that I really, really enjoyed. It also looks like Dragon Quest Builders, which is a huge, huge check in the plus column. Yeah. Assuming that they don't muck it up in some way, I'm very optimistic and it looks fucking great. There's a new version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about. You play as a ditto masquerading as a human being and that asks a lot of sort of existential questions that I'm ready to really dive into. The Pikachu also looks dead and I don't know what the story is there, but I'm very invested. Justin's laughing at the Snorlax. There's an version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about. It is one of the best things that I've ever heard. He's just trying to like, on my tombstone. Enjoy. I'm happy with that. Yeah. I mean, not since his Gigantamax form and Pokemon, in Pokemon Sword and Shield, where he had the big tree on his belly, that was really cool. Yeah, now he's covered in boss. Yeah. God, it's so cool. God I love Snorlax. You know what else I love? Little Gators. Yeah. I'm sorry about the fun as well. Yeah, for the same reason over here. Yeah, little Gator game in the dark. It takes the little Gator, the beloved little Gator, from the first little Gator game, which if you haven't played it, what do you hate, Charm? Why do you hate Charm, is it? You should play it now, because this is DLC. Yeah, this is DLC, it's probably DLC. Yeah, see, you got time. Little Gator game, The Ridge, it was about, it was basically, a big fantasy game that you set up for your sister to play, and then to prove how fun it is, you had to play the game that you created for her. And it is a beautiful little story about growing up, but it's also a really fun, open world sort of thing with a great aesthetic where everything's sort of DIY. And in the dark takes that same idea, but like into the caves below. A new adventure below the surface, as it's advertised, it looks really cute and fun. And I can guarantee you it will be a joy. I just, this is a, a sure bet. There's new characters to meet. There's a little gator. It's going to be great. It does seem like you would, I can't even fathom how they would screw it up because all you need to do is like add new fun tools and continue the like high tradition of the writing and mission accomplished. And it's like this. Like that. And I'm like, magma maga, dude. Let's go. Okay. That'd be bad. So where's Pac-Man noise ever? Oh, we, we hate that guy. So what everyone hates is one Pac-Man. I'm looking forward to a game that I've just realized after loading up its information page. It is coming to the Nintendo Switch one and is backwards compatible with the Switch too. In the second half of 2026. So we're, that's pretty wild. It is Tomadachi Life living the dream. Just based on what we've seen from it, maybe it doesn't need all the incredible raw processing power of the Switch too because it does look like a 3DS game, specifically the 3DS game Tomadachi Life. But I love Tomadachi Life. It is a really very, I would say, light on mechanics, social sim sort of thing. That leans way more on absurdity and kind of like setting up these comic situations. In the original, you could have your me's that you had made, like live on this island together. Go on dates, which was weird if you based them on your real friends. And you could have them sing songs that like you wrote the words to, but it would match it to music that was already in the game. And there's so many fucking hysterical like things that came out of that. And I think Tomadachi Life living the dream, despite the fact that it is on a nine year old video game console sort of natively, I think is in this streaming era going to absolutely take the fuck over all your feeds and stuff. It also is going to have more me maker sort of options to put on your characters, including ears. For the first time ever, we're giving these guys some ears. So yeah, it's such a silly game, but I really think it's a game that we are all going to be seeing a lot of when it comes out. Actually quarter quarter two, 2026. Yeah, I never played the original. It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around it, but it's bonkers. It's not like, um, so me to be, it was the other kind of similar one that came out that was very much a dragon quest. That was like the RPG RPG where you could customize every single character or download me's like from online. That is like more of a game than Tomadachi Life was. Tomadachi Life was there was very little in the way of progress or, you know, uh, many mechanics to really get your hands on. Kind of tangential here, but, uh, how you feeling about that animal crossing update? Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I'm excited. That's out January 15th. Um, I have been on and again off again with that game. Henry picked it up last year, and so we both got pretty, pretty into it for, I don't know, like three or so months, and, uh, honestly, if I'm being completely honest, my feelings being complicated about it are that I want to play it on switch two, but I can't do that without destroying my son's island. So like my only option to, uh, to do that would be to buy another switch to, so, uh, why can't you just, why, why? Because you can only have one island per switch despite the fact that I own the game on both cartridge and digital so we can play. Oh, he's, he owns it on, he's playing it on switch two. He is playing it on switch two on, on my account, but we only have one switch two, and you can only have one island per switch two. So you share the island, Griffin, with your son. He would be so pissed off if I did. Do you, are you kidding? If I touch any, well, I would also, and he does not want Griffin to screw it up. I would also add you have the ability now, there's like a free mode where you can like fuck around with islands without, like impacting the main island. Cool. Cool. That doesn't address the issue at hand, which is that I would have to buy a second switch to, but like all the content is coming to the switch one version aside from like, you know, the weird webcam stuff, and I think you can only do 12 player multiplayer on the switch two version, but all the stuff that they're adding about, you know, the mode Russ mentioned in the like hotel where you decorate rooms for people bringing in more of that like, happy home designer sort of vibe. I don't know, I think it, I think it looks cool. I think time will tell whether or not it, it sucks us back in or not, but I, I think it would be, yeah. I think it's pretty likely it probably will. Uh, plant you want to do one more then we'll take a break. Yeah, yeah, I'll do one more. I, I, I can't wait to play pragmatta. I mean Resident Evil 9 don't, don't joke it. It's probably my like top of the Capcom game. So pragmatta is more of a crisp plant style video game. What if I told you there was a third person shooter, but whenever you wanted to shoot the robots, you had to also do a hacking mini game at the exact same time with the other side of the controller. Why yes, that game does exist and it's called pragmatta and it also just looks beautiful. So you're doing this hacking game. You're trying to avoid the robots that are coming at you. And once you nail that perfect hack, the robot plays open like a robo fish and you see it's glowing blue like internal organs and you blow them up and there's goo everywhere and then you have a little girl who just hangs out with you who has the power to hack. Not just hang out. It looks like Isaac Clark from Dead Space has like a little girl on his back like a back. Like a newt from like aliens. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Sorry about Donkey Kong, but Nancy's situation. It is. Yeah, I mean basically the same. Yeah. It's just the first banana like. Let's think a quick break. We have some more coming at you after. If you have a child or other family member who likes to play games on your iPad sometimes, you're probably well aware that a lot of those games do want to charge you $8 a week for you to do them. And you may think that's ridiculous. Why would a game that pretends to be a slime that you touch? $1 $8 a week. I can't answer that for you. What I can tell you is that you should probably be using rocket money to catch that stuff in the dragnet and make sure that you're not spending money that you don't even know about. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. Modeters you're spending and helps lower your bill so you can grow your savings. Obviously the subscription catching thing is enormously useful for someone like myself. But if you need help sort of keeping all of your different accounts in a single place, a single dashboard so you can kind of get a whole idea of your financial health. Rocket money can do that too and set budgets for things and automatically categorize your transactions. You can see where your money is going. There's a lot of stuff that rocket money does to help you with your money. And I've used it countless times in the past. Can't recommend it enough. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com slash besties. That's rocketmoney.com slash besties. One last time rocketmoney.com slash besties. Okay. There's one that I'm incredibly worried about. But I hope I end up liking it. Okay. It is the duskbloods. Yeah. I don't for sure. I don't know how I feel about this game because duskbloods for those that don't know is the switch to exclusive game from from software makers of Elden Ring and all those other games that we all love. And but and it like looks night rain. What? I get it confused with night rain. That's a different game. Night rain. It's just the two syllable kind of dark words. That's what is the one that kind of looks like blood but like when the trailer showed at the Nintendo event, it kind of was like, oh my god, is there a new bloodboard happening? Because aesthetically it does have some of those notes to it. But it also they've said it's like multiplayer centric or PVPVE. And that's the stuff that our like characters. Love that blood called the blood sworn. Love cool. Cool. Very cool. I just don't know because it's got a dedicated. It's kind of wild that there's not a lot of I don't know to announce a switch exclusive from soft game that looks extremely bloodborne coated. It seems weird how little kind of stuff there is out there about the game. Yeah. I don't know. I also get worried that like is this them? I know they've made statements about this but are they continuing to push into more multiplayer centric stuff? Which quite frankly doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as it does there like mostly single player stuff. So I am cautiously optimistic about this one and definitely very curious. I'm looking forward to which broke which I'm almost certain I brought last year as well. However, it was delayed from being a winter 2025 release to a 2026 release. And that like span makes me feel like it's fairly likely it's going to come out at some point at some point this year. It is a social sort of sim life sim game from Chucklefish who I always get the relationship. They publish a lot of stuff. Initially I think they published Stardew Valley. Yes. They also I mean gosh risk of rain they published time spinner eastward there's like a lot of honestly pretty great in indie games. They also develop star bound and war groove. So which broke is like their next thing. And it is sort of a magic looking isometric Stardew Valley like it looks like where you live in a town called Mossport where there's a which college or wizard college and you just do all the different life sim stuff and build relationships and all that. The game just looks like stunning. It looks phenomenal. Maybe the last isometric pixel art is it's it's so detailed and God I don't I don't even know how to sort of describe the look that it has going on. But it yeah it it seeing it in motion. I think it was featured in a Nintendo Direct like towards the end of last year like it looks crazy. How how there is something about the isometric view that I think really supports like makes it feel more real in some ways than like a Stardew. Yeah. Which is obviously flat. I mean great art and Stardew but like this is feels like the SNES approach. Yeah. It's a Stardews closer to like GBA. I just think Chucklefish has a great pedigree and this is like a genre I like and it looks spectacular so I'm really hoping this is the year where it finally comes out. Yeah. On the Stardew Valley note I was curious when that haunted chocolate tier game was coming out from a concerned ape. Google it this is the headline that I saw the first one that I saw. Fresh can you read that out loud? Sure. Concerned ape hopes to release haunted chocolate tier. No dot dot dot. What do you think comes right after that? I would say you don't need anything right? Yeah. As it does help to do that. Yeah I think Concerned ape is pretty much hoping for that. Within the next five years is how that ends. Within the next five years that could be never. Next five years. Good good for them making a probably accurate assessment. Yeah I want to play it now though. No I'm good. There's so many games. Yeah you're right. I have like such a Zen approach to all this stuff at this point maybe because we just have to play so many games for besties that like fucking delay it forever. If so long never came out I would have been fine. Well no because it's good. It is really good. It is good. Well I mean I'll build off this and then I'll throw back to you who I have fields of mystery which is technically an early access right now. And if you are looking for a Stardew Valley like with more emphasis on romance and kind of an anime aesthetic and jumping dragon you can date. It is a delight. It launched in early access with so many quality of life features that I had wanted in Stardew Valley and I enjoy probably the 15 or 20 hours that I put into it and then have not gone back to it until it gets out of early access. It's been there for a while. So great dog. I'm very excited to go back to this one. Really good dog. Juice. Russ why don't you do one? You got two left for us why don't you? You got two left. All right let me do mine real quick then because I got two left too because my next one is Fable. I hear me out guys. Interesting. I want it. I want to try to cover my bases. So let me say that I'm also very much anticipating the video game Fable. I'm a big fan of the entire franchise. I really like Richard Iawade. I like everything they've shown so far. I think it's a kind of first person venture thing that could have a huge impact. Wait it's a first person. I think it's going to be really good. Did you say first person? Did you say it's a first person game? No I don't know. No you said that. Check the tape. Check the tape in the trailer. You know there's a first trailer. I think it's for a first person video game. No fucking way. Dude they just uncanceled it. It could be any... So that's my Fable. Russ what's your next one? Oh before we go any further are we... Because we always forget that we're not a video show. Justin is wearing the official besties Fable. I never doubted it would come out t-shirt. Are we planning on selling those or is that like kind of... We made one. It only because Justin was the one who demanded it and it's only in hell. I have owned it for four years. It is both eaten at this point. It is problematic somehow. There's like problematic designs. That's how long I've had it. It's like there's things that the popular culture has soured on. Yeah maybe yeah. I've got two more. I'll do a quickie and then I'll do a slightly longer one. So one of them is Mina the Hollower. This was a game that was supposed to come out in October of last year. This is from the club Games folks who made Shovel Knight. And it's basically inspired by one of my favorite games of all time. Links of Awakening. I don't fucking think I need to say anymore. So I'm not going to say. No it looks so fucking good. I'm hanging a lot of hopes on this one I think being a contender because it man. It looks so good. The other game that's coming out this year is Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave which is a new mainline Fire Emblem game. The last one that came out was Fire Emblem Engage which was a game that had pretty good gameplay but story-wise and character-wise awful in my opinion. But before that was Three Houses which I think a lot of us enjoyed and was kind of a high watermark. My understanding is Fortune's Weave is either a far sequel or far prequel. It's related some. It's connected. There's some like crossover certain characters appear again whether they're dragon people or not who knows. But my hope is that the high watermark of storytelling quality and overall feature quality that was introduced in Three Houses will continue here. And if it does I will be over the moon thrilled because that is one of my favorite franchises and I would love to see another really great installment for that franchise. I've got two. I'll do a small one real quick Delta Roon, chapter five. I'm so fucking in on board. How many total chapters are there supposed to be? I think that might be up in the air. I think seven was the original sort of intention. But they are coming out at a pretty good decent clip at this point. But I played through the four available chapters for the first time last year because three and four came out sort of together. It's so good. It's so fucking good. And has me truly waiting for excited to see what happens next. Henry is also hugely, hugely into it. So that is very exciting too. It's going to be weird when I go back and play all these for the first time at once. I think there's a ton of people who are going to do just that. And I think it'll be totally digestible. Is it going to be weird because there's like Ruvuzello references in chapter one? Yeah, there's yeah, no. I don't know that there's a lot of timely references being made. Apparently, chapters six and seven are going to be like the joke like the six seven joke. Oh, that's like one big one that they've already kind of. That's good. And that's going to still be around. So that's great. Yeah, for sure. My other one is and this was featured last year in our most anticipated games list, which is Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, which was supposed to come out last September. And then in September during the Tokyo game show, they showed off a bunch of new footage of it, some gameplay footage and then delayed it until 2026. And it looks incredible. Gosh, I love Professor Layton games. They are sort of go to games for me when I got my hands on the Thor and started goofing around with like 3DS simulation stuff. Just because like there's really nothing else like it of a puzzle sort of fiction game that gives you a bunch of brain teasers that I just love to kind of chew over. The aesthetics are out of sight. It is more kind of like animated and feels much more alive. And the like, I don't know, 15 minutes or so of gameplay footage they released last year, just if they look delightful. And I can't wait to get my hands on. Do you know what I'm saying about Vampire Carollers? I don't know what this is. Are you kidding me, dude? I don't know. Hey, hey, brace your fricking ass, man. Hold on a second. I'm gonna send the link. You ready? Okay. Just let me send you a link. Don't get weird about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. I don't know how to send a link from steam. Good game, Merleur. I mean, I can look it up. You go to steam and you look up Vampire Carollers. It says Vampire Carollers, the Turbo Wild Card from Vampire Survivors. Yeah. Listen to this. Good man. It's kind of sound like you're dreaming, dude. But listen, from the somehow triple BAFTA winning creators of Vampire Survivors, Vampire Carollers, the Turbo Wild Card from Vampire Survivors, turns the snowballing thrill of Vampire Survivors into a Turbo Turn-Based Card-Driven Blober. That's it, all caps. I don't know what that means. Build busted decks, explore familiar dungeons with a new perspective, and unleash world ending combos. Take your time to be tactical or play turns as fast as you humanly can. The outcome is always accurate. So this is... Are you kidding me? Vampire Survivors X, Bellotro, basically. Yeah, that sounds fucking incredible. I mean, unreal. I'm losing it every here. That's cool. I'm losing it. That's the goady. I got Chuterapop. It's the boady. It's probably the boady. It might be the boady. The bogey. Chuterapop on my end. One that I think probably actually won't come out and one that hasn't even announced yet. Control resident. Very excited for this. Very excited to go back to a remedy game that is action-based. I have finally started replaying Alan Wake 2. A game I bounced off of, despite thinking it would be extremely my thing. And I am enjoying it more, but it's still just slow. Control. That game is fast. You get all that good, weird energy and you also get good fast action. This one looks kind of like a previous control. It's like a Devil May Cry style game. Looks good. There's melee. Very. It's more melee-centric. Into it. Very, very curious about it. That said, don't think it's going to come out this here. I just don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I... Yes. That energy? Yes. I feel that plant. I absolutely. There's just something about it. There's just... You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. You're feeling it like coming. Meanwhile, I think it's going to come out. AP Thompson. Co-creator of last year's Consume Me has a new game coming out. And all I'm going to say about this game because it's not announced yet is you can go follow AP on Blue Sky, I guess, right now and hear more about this game. As coming out and you will be like, wow, I was there at the beginning. I was the person who went to the show at the Tiny Little Punk Rock Club when it was just five people drinking out of solo cups. And then when it is at the biggest stage, you will have that moment. This is... I'm giving you this gift. So you will want to follow what is coming from AP Thompson this year. Is it going to be a sequel to Tony Hawk's Prodator? Will it be Tony Hawk's Prodator too? Griffin, I thought you like had signed the embargo. Oh, damn. Damn it. It's going to be awesome. There's so many good games. We didn't even talk about like... We have another... A list here that has another bio, probably like 20, 30 years ago. I can't believe none of us said Grand Theft Auto 6. It felt a little obvious, I think, for all of us. You guys know that one's coming out November 19. You don't need us to title. No, it's coming out November 19th, honestly. I don't know anything. I'm supposed to say that Romeo was a dead man. I can't believe he did nobody. I knew Justin. I was counting on you to be the suit of 51. I like suit in theory a lot more than I like suit in practice. I always get to like knowing Chuckle with him before I'm like, yeah, I really love 12 free. I like suit as a, I like suit as like as a person. Like, yeah, I'm an interesting guy. He's a good hang actually. I mean, the galaxy needs racing and I will continue to say that a lot. Yeah, sure. Griffin, I noticed you snuck in maybe for the historical record, Half-Life 3. I didn't put that in. Oh, sorry. I just thought maybe if we can't, if nobody noticed, then maybe we would come back next year. Now, you know that I didn't put that. I would have include the hyphen. I would have capitalized life. I wasn't a hurt. Yeah. Oh, God. Did you not say mu genics rust because I was going to say it out loud? No, no, no. It is coming out. It's coming out like a month. We have a bunch of reader, we have a bunch of reader male pecs and that is one of them. So I was going to read them through. Okay. Okay. Let's do it. Was there any other fun, jokey pecs that anyone wanted to make? No, I'm just like, I'm fucking psyched about the, do you think there be a Half-Life 3 though? I can't. I'm on you. I kind of do. I do think that they will. The fact that there's not makes me think that there will be. Put it on my left. You don't mean like the fact that there is it, I think have like they will launch alongside the steam machine. That's the thing is that they always, whenever they launch new hardware, they always launch with software. It tends not to be a whole fucking sequel to a game. That's why they can't say it because it's going to be the biggest thing in the world. Yeah. So it's going to be so massive when it drops. It could be interesting. Okay. Some reader male pecs that people wrote in for just like somebody try to get Jeff Keely on the phone and if he's like, I can't, I can't right now. Wink. Yeah. You hear Gabe charging knives into background. Yeah. Exactly. That's very true. Okay. Some reader male pecs. We have Evan G. wrote in rhythm heaven sequel. Yes. I forgot what's happening. That's pretty exciting. Gussetress wrote sulfur 1.0 release. I really like sulfur. I don't know if you guys have played it. First person rogue light on steam. Cool. Kind of adventure time. The art style to it. Very into it. That's cool. Elise mentioned Toma.jl. Which we already talked about. Nikki mentioned assassins Creed hex and the AC black flag remake. Black flag was probably the last assassin's great game. I actually enjoyed playing. So that's pretty good. Hex is interesting because like I would be down to have actual magic in one of these games. That seems like a cool introduction. But again, I'm cautious about anything like that. Man, a black flag remake getting me back into assassins Creed would be a huge twist for the year 2026. Yeah. Shama Heel wrote the incident at gallery house, which apparently is like a overdid style mystery game. Yeah. I think it's galley house. Oh, sorry. Galley house. You're right. Mark S. Ace Combat 8. That seems like some crisp plant and maybe Justin's shit. Justin do you like Ace Combat games? You know what? I do. I haven't played it in a while, but there is something about that. And maybe you kind of want to go back and play an Ace Combat game. I like it. I like Ace Combat. There was one we got into our member. I can't remember. It was like five or six. It was back when we were playing more like colony wars and stuff like that. I don't know. I have to go back and that's a franchise I like in theory. Olivia G mentioned feels a mystery release, which are full release, which we talked about. Colin R. Mugenics. I am very excited about me, Genics. I hope you guys get into it. I haven't really played like an hour in a preview build ages ago, and I really liked it. But that is the new Edmund Millen game from the creator of Binding Isaac and Super Meat Boy. It is an isometric tactical strategy game with cats. Okay. It would be the best way I could shortly describe it. And they also breed and have like aspects to them. And then Thunder Roof, Thunder Roof mentioned Dench Attack. I guess is probably the best way to pronounce that word. Yeah. I don't know what I'm looking at. It's a subway fighting game. Dench, I mean, like the train. Okay. Yeah. So you're a train and you're riding on a Ferris wheel as it's going through the ocean. Yeah. That's great. Can I go that flip trick and grind your train in a fast-paced off-the-rails ride through colorful Japanese dystopia. That sounds like fun. That's great. Yeah, it looks like Jekar and Radio kind of. We want to do some honorable minches. Oh, yes. It's been quite belonged break since we've done this. Yeah, man. Let me be choosy. There's a lot of things we want to talk about. I got really pulled into Satisfactory, mostly at the behest of our brother Travis, who I believe is loved 300 hours on the game at this point, which makes a lot of sense. I can see how it is. Saddest factory, more like. Saddest fact. Oh, really? There is a genre I've never really dipped into this factory game genre. But saddest thing to have, because it's a little bit stardew Valley, right? Not even a little bit at all. So what sets it apart from a stardew Valley or any of the other kind of open world survival craft games that I do really, really enjoy from like your minecrafts are enshrouded or the runescape dragonwilds that came out last year. It has a look of stuff like that. You land on an alien planet. You have like one or two tools and you have to go around and like find iron and collect wood and then you use that to make a thing and then you use that to make a thing. Where Satisfactory kind of like sets itself apart is that it becomes about sort of setting up automation, literally building factories and it gets so detailed in how you are able to do that. And I'm talking about like running conveyor belts and building power grids and creating sort of like supply chains because you'll get a recipe that's like here's iron plates. If you combine that with screws, now it makes advanced iron plates. So you need a line in your factory making screws and a line making those plates and that runs up to the next thing which runs up to the next thing. I'll try to build a space elevator that you are sending parts up for a project to save humanity. It's really, I'll tell you what it is kind of hitting for me is that idle game kind of it does seem like that. Because you are unlocking things to make getting the thing faster, unlocking things to make sort of processing larger and larger and larger quantities of the thing that you were really struggling for an hour ago. And I don't know, it's really genuinely, it's right there in the name, it's very satisfying to like put together like a nice little nice little thing for yourself. So I've been very hooked on that. I've reached a point in the game where to move forward, I would have to do so much kind of refactoring of this factory that I have built over the course of 20, 25, 30 hours, which I know is a drop in the bucket for like the sickos who are super into this game. And I don't know that I have that in me, but I don't know, it's been it's been really, really sucking me in satisfactory. So yeah, I've considered it over the years, but I also deeply am worried of the time it would take for my life. That's the other thing is like, I don't know, we're in sort of a slow period right now. So like my time can be spent on a satisfactory, there were definitely, there will come a point where there's, there simply is not space for it. Yeah. I took the break between a game of the year and now and played through Dark Souls 1 and got all the achievements for some fucking reason and I thought how do you, where did you find yourself? Where was your headspace? Well, I got it. It's Dark Souls 1. Well, it's because I had previously done this for Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 at various times over the last several years. And I was like, I feel like I need to do one and I'd never gotten all the achievements in one before. So I went through and I did it and it was the delight. That game is great. It's so much fun. And what's cool about it when you're doing all the achievements is when you do a new game plus and then a second new game plus each time that you run through the game, you do it at like 10x speed because you don't have to level, you don't have to, you know where all the paths are. I'm running through Sends Fortress without like attacking anyone. Shit like that. Yeah. So Dark Souls 1 can fuck off. I will not go back. I've played all the other Souls games. I'm not going to go back to Dark Souls 1. The the curse mechanic. If nothing else. Well, they they dig nerf the curse mechanic for what it's worth. They did nerf in what? In like initially when the game came out, the frogs would show up and you get cursed and you have to go get the red stuff. It would have your health and then if you got cursed again, it would have your health again, etc. Now you can only get cursed once. So you're only at half health once. Realistically, I think Dark Souls 1 more than any of the other games needs to be played with a guide. I think 2 and 3 to some extent you could get through without. There's so much weird shit where it's like how do you get to the ashy lake? Well, you got to go in that tree. The fuck are you talking about? And the tree doesn't have a visible door. Oh, and guess what? Three of them visible doors. You actually need to roll through two invisible doors to get through the tree and then you get diabolical. I know exactly how far I've ever made it in that game. It's the the orange steam and orange steam and smell. Yeah, I've never that's as far as I've made it. I did the whole thing where you remember that stupid thing where you shoot the dragon's tail. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I already get the man. Should I go back and play dark soul? Yeah, you should. Maybe I should go back and play Dark Souls. I don't know. I really don't want to get good at it. I want to see them smog. It's really not worth you. You don't even need that's the thing is like so much of these games is like if you especially if you're using a guide, the games get pretty fucking because you just summon like I summon fucking solar and he helped with me with the orange line and smog and it was easy. Yeah, so I think the first time I was playing through it, it was like early in the and I don't know that I never I don't think I was like letting myself do that kind of thing more. I think I would do that today. Oh, yeah, I take every fucking advantage the game throws me and it's way more fun. The other thing I would say is just fucking yeah, roll with it. Don't worry about like the pride of it because the game will fuck you either way and you'll end up having a really delightful time. Great characterization. A lot of the quests you can't do without a guide like impossible to figure out where solar is going to be next and how he's not going to die at the end of this fucking quest. So I had a lot of fun. The other thing I wanted to mention is Pikmin 4, which is a game that I played probably 10 hours of before we when we did our episode and then put it aside. But I really enjoyed it. We didn't have time to play much more. Did you finish it? Or I have not finished it yet, but I've been playing with my son who mostly watches, but it does have a very good co-op mode where he can like throw a lot of shit and it's great like really enjoying it and there's an easy mode where it like takes a lot of the stress of like Pikmin dying out of the equation for the most part and Ochi is very cute and he has space sickness which is a problem. And so I'm closing in on the ending, but it's been really really delightful and I'm dying to see either some DLC or just like a switch to update because right now it's running at 30 FPS, which is a drag. But otherwise it's great and it looks beautiful and they did a great job in that game. Y'all I only played games that brought me intense joy went back and played some sonic racing cross worlds. Ichibon is in there. Joker from Persona is in there. SpongeBob is in there. They've just been gotten air. In that game, cream the cat is definitely in there, but you can't reference a joke that we did in our recent bracket episode for patrons only here on the main, here for the norm. It won't be live for three weeks. Actually air for another two weeks. Also, Dragon's Dogma 2 went back and played some of that still just an absolute stunner of the game. Death Stranding 2. I did this thing where I didn't fully finish it back at the end of the last summer. Got into the mountains and said, you know what, I'm going to come back. I want to build and enjoy this. I've been putting so much time into building all this stuff. I want to come back and I'm going to finish just the story when I'm ready for it. Go back into it. You know what I've done? Put another 10 hours just building random roads in. Who knows when I'm going to finish finish this game. But right now with the season, being able to just go around in the snow, feels good. Giving me a taste of winter that I'm not getting in California. Now I'm going to wait to as I mentioned, which I'm trying to give that a fair shake ahead of control. Juice? Yeah, I'm going to say two things. The first is hundreds of beavers. Yes, a movie I watched on a whim. And it may be one of the best movies I've ever seen my entire life. Wow. You guys ever seen hundreds of beavers? No. I'm so I'm hugely aware of it and have not not made ties for it. What about you, Plant? I showed one of the first ever screenings of it and I also brought him back out the director and he dressed up as a beaver and then dressed up one of our interns at the theater as a beaver and then tackled the intern. And for a moment, I saw the the our theater's legal status in jeopardy, but then, unfortunately, everybody was okay. It's the best. It's an incredible silent film about a black and white, about a ferd trader who, well, he is he is an Applejack salesman who actually burns down the factory and finds himself in a sort of the movie is a parody of the Revenant. It is about this guy trying to survive in the wilderness while he is trying to eat food to stay alive and then win the heart of a woman. He meets by impressing her father by bringing him quote hundreds of beavers. So it is a slapstick comedy about him trying to kill hundreds of beavers and stay alive and the gags in this movie. I mean, if you like things like Buster Keaton and you know, three suitages and that kind of like broad slapstick comedy, like you're already going to like this, but it's also like the guys who created the film were inspired in part by Let's plays. So his structure when he is in the wilderness is very much like watching a Let's play, right? He starts off with nothing and then manages to get enough to for like a couple beaver pelt and he buys the smallest knife and then he uses and he uses that tiny knife to get enough beavers to buy the next thing from this like first factory. Yeah, it's yeah, exactly and it's like that is the movie is structured like that, but it is like they filmed it for a 150 grand in the wilderness and then it made, you know, like, I don't know, $2 million in the box officer order, but it is you can see it on Amazon Prime is where I watched her for free, but it's incredible and it looks better than so many movies that cost a fortune. It looks it's one of these things are like you watch the first couple minutes and you're like there's no way it's going to be a home movie like this like they can't no one could do a home movie like this and then it is an entire movie like that. It's a joy to watch and really fun to watch with kids too like my kids were entranced by it. They they laughed the whole way. It's also on canopy the library streaming service. So if you're cool, if you're not paying for any of the streaming services, you can grab it there. The other thing I wanted to mention is exo win 9x and I know. Okay, I know how that sounds. That sounds like the third. That's what that sounds like. Yeah, I know it sounds like some nerd-ass shit. If you don't know about the exo project, it started with exodos. Get it? And here's the deal. If you want to play old console games, that's really easy because the old consoles are easy to emulate. You have a an engine that you can write and it runs on a computer and then you put the ROMs in the thing and it runs. But old PC games and throughout the DOS Windows 3.1 Windows 95 era, it's a lot harder because you have infinite combinations of hardware. These things can run on different permutations of software, operating system, whatever. So with the exo exodos, the first edition of this took a lot of DOS games and then made them playable through one unified front-end that is powered by launchbox. And they're and they're sortable by topic and they all work. They all run Windows. Then there was an exo 3.1 that is an expansion to that that folds into it. And now they have really, which is a bunch of Windows 3.1 games. And now they have released Windows exo win 9x, which is the Windows 95 and 98 version of this same idea. So when you download this, there's a torrent file and the torrent is 262 Google bytes. Holy shit. Yeah man. What's in there? Every game. But it's so many Windows 95 and 90 x games. I'm sending you guys the game. Oh it's game. But okay. There's a full list there. Yeah. There are, they have favorited like highlighted a lot of like the weird things that like, there's games on here I've never heard of games that I've ever played. I played a game called 9, the last resort star that is narrated by William S. Bros and starring Jim Belushi. There's versions of myths on there. There's two Star Trek FMV games that I've been trying to play for literally 15 years. I've been trying to play these games and they just work. There's start. Math Munchers Deluxe. Dude Star Trek Borg is on here, which if you don't know Star Trek Borg, it is basically like an interactive Star Trek episode. A one man John Nancy show just as Q letting you like play out different possibilities within the Borg world. There's the goose bumps FMV game is in here. Never hoods in here. A logical journey of the zoom pennies. Yes. Bill my science guys stop the rock. There are a few of these games. Cosmotology of Kyoto is in here. There are a few of these games you can get onto gogg.com and buy. And if you can, I think you should. And there are some of these games that you can get on steam. They're not a ton of them. But in terms of a preservation project, it is astounding. It knocks me out. The fact that there are so many games on here that I don't that would be so hard to play otherwise. And it is an incredible piece of history. An incredible effort in preservation. It's really astounding. And what's amazing is all these exo projects nest within each other. So you could have like, I mean, I have what I have done is have one hard drive that's like a thumb drive an SSD that I have all these on one thing. So I can plug it into a computer and I have like the entirety of this project. It's amazing. It's really fantastic. Yeah, dude, there's so many on here. And what's cool is they are not all installed. So like you find the game you want to play and it installs it on like that expands it. That's the size should be a lot bigger than it is because there's a lot of like as you get into this era, you have less and less copy protection because it was assumed that the games being on CD would be copy. Right. But there's like, they're getting they get big. And yeah, it's a fascinating thing. Yeah. Seek it out. Okay. I think we did. Okay. Thanks for listening to our podcast next. Patreon.com slash the besties. We have to call out some friends. Yeah. Do it then coward. We have Matt H. We have Jesse H. We have J F. And we have Claire. Thank you for being patron. Thank you to everyone else for being patrons. We have a new bracket episode apart from the bracket episode that went on up on the main feed. There is a patrons only new brand new bracket bracket episode that went up. And there's a new one coming obviously in the future. We also have resties coming out. It's all happening. So thank you for being patrons. Patreon.com slash the besties. Thank you all. What are we doing next week? Thanks. Next week, we're going to be talking about an entirely different video game. Terminator 2D no fake. So it joins for that. And so much work next week on the besties. Be sure to join us again for that on the besties because in the world's best friend, the big world best games. Besties!