The Besties Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 2

I've got, now I have two cushions, one for my hemorrhoids, and one for my lumbar. So what I've done is basically there is the hemorrhoid cushion, and then the lumbar cushion sits on top of the hemorrhoid cushion. And basically, guys, what I've done is make another smaller chair. Do you understand? I'm not sitting on the chair's back. I'm not sitting on the chair's bottom. It's another tiny chair. What kind of orthopedics are we talking about for the wrists, because I know that that's what, walk me through your cockpit, I guess, is what I'm wanting to know about. I mean, the wrist support is bad, and I don't feel like, you know, I've started exploring surgical options. It doesn't seem the time to mediate my behavior. You see what I mean? I might as well just let the wrist go. The wrists are sharp. The wrists are cooked. Okay, I'm going to have to get the sardine. But the butt. The butt is still spotting. We can salvage the ass. Science can't get in there with them and give me a robot, but they'll fix my wrist. I'm good. Sorry. You said the hemorrhoid thing is beneath the other thing. Yeah. It's like the hammer would be in the back, right? The lombar is behind me. The hammer cushion is just like this. And the lombar cushion sitting on top of the, I'm not going to do it in the visual. It's literally a chair. It's literally have created the child's booster chair. Yes, it's a booster for a body. A juicer chair. Yeah. Special butt. Quiet. Sell it. This is going to be the biggest thing since you dried the juicer chair. Come into the merch store for $150. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. My name is just Mac Roy and I'm in the best game of the year. My name is Griffin Mac Roy. I don't know the best game of the year, but we're going to fucking find out. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the year. My name is Russell Shaka. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. This started as a game of the year show that went all year long. If you remember that. And then it turned into a game of the year show that only happened every month and then it turned into one that only happened at the end of the year. And it can't be stopped and it won't be stopped. And we do pick the best game every year. And there is a wiki page that lists all the games we've picked, except for the one year that we led a robot version of our boss pick. And that year's kind of inconsequential. And the wiki seems pretty frustrated about that. But other than that, I think one year also the giraffe picked. One year the giraffe might have fished. Was there a tie one? Man, we got to take this. Don't get it. Don't get it. This is the point though. Chris Plant, what are we doing today though? Like in terms of game, what is happening today? Maybe today we're picking the game of the year of 2026. The besties? Besties. What did you do today? 2025. Baby. It's a simple one. No, no, no, that's for a year. I have four. A year before is 2026. You heard it here first. You know how people get the date wrong after the year? Plants getting a jump on it. Yeah. His checks are going to be way off. I'm going to go sit in the corner of my juicer chair. Okay. Chris Plant, do you want to go through the, just as a reminder for people from last week, what we narrowed down to the final eight? Yes. The final eight are Clairib Skier Expedition 33, Blippo Plus, Silt Song, Absalom, Descending Two, Indiana Jones, Baby Steps, and Sictory. And Indiana Jones for what it's worth was a fan pick. True. Oh, yes. Correct. Thank you for the trouble. We're going to listen. We do. Yeah. We do. Which happens? This happened last year too. We had a few fan picks, I think, make it last year. So we're going to be, oh yeah. I think this batch probably would have made it much further if it had not been up against Expedition 33 up in the top. I'm glad that one made the cut too. Usually how we do this is we'll get down to a top four after these and then pull one up from the past contests in order to make a clean top five. I don't know if that's how we intend to do it this year. I think that's a good idea. Okay, cool. That sort of helps narrow down the, maybe a bad matchup. Yeah. All right. Let's get into it. Okay, so first up, we have Clairib Skier Expedition 33. It's not so tired of these two being head and shit. I know. Jeff on stage at the TG at the, at the Viggies. The way you've been waiting for me a lot of it. Sorry, play and go ahead. That's a very, very good question. I don't need to say it out loud. Everybody knows this is the showdown everybody's been talking about. You know, how does the French take on Japanese role playing games compared to the P.V. Hormann S. Klaus Nomey 1980's TV show that may or may not be a video game. Classic conversation. Only one of these, only one of these has the quizred in it. I'm a big expo 33 thing. You know this, but only one of these does have the quizred. What was everyone's favorite blip-o-pip show? How many people listening to the show who have not played Expedition 33? We're like, oh, it must be Expedition 33 that's got the quizred. That's not what the pictures are always hanging out. No, the quizred was my favorite program on blip-o-pip plus. And it was a quiz show where people sort of also role played D&D characters who they were very, very, very particular about making sure you got their names and attributes and everything, right? I like how they're pretty. It just happened for me, man. Every time Jess Abbins on, we at my house, we got to watch the whole thing. Yeah. I was fond of it. There was like a McGuachan group style talk show, whose name I don't recall, but I particularly like that one. That was one of my favorite. I mostly just watched the zest channel. I kept waiting. I was sure that I was going to get something. Something's going to come through that static fuzz. How the fuck do we do this? I mean, that would be three years of video game. And blip-o-pulse is not a video game. It makes comparing the two beyond this normal exercise, which is always pretty crazy. I mean, this starts to strain, strain, and gradually. Yeah, for Jess, then I have a serious question for you. Go ahead. What is a video game? Okay. Are you saying my definition? Yeah, I'm curious. Okay. I think for something, for me, I guess the difference that I'm using here is that there is no way to, as far as I understand it, one does not progress. Blip-o is the same thing when it begins, when it ends. And it might change or evolve, but you are not progressing it. It is. So by you are interacting with it, and it is interactive media, but I think a game, for it to be a game, there has to be a bit more in terms of back and forth between the player and the game. Beyond just changing channels. Beyond just changing channels, right? Like that's a passive way that we can interact with TV, but that's not a meaningful distinction that would make it a video game versus. I really, this is a, this is not, it is a, and I'm not in any way limiting it. I'm just saying it is hard to compare because it's such a different animal. It's not like anything else on this. Blip-o succeeds so completely at being blip-o-plus. Yeah, sure. Yes. I think it's tough to say what is or isn't a video game, but Blip-o is so unusual in that even the video RLC game. It's the same hard one. I did such a good job. Like you know, I'm going to do it. I made it look easy. Well, because it does progress. Like that is why it's tricky. Like there's a story that progresses, you unlock different chunks, you know, the 10 pieces. But I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to end up agreeing with you. It's just that like even a art game that doesn't have a goal, you still are interacting in a virtual space. Sure. And it's quite literally, you're just flipping channels. It is, it is a, it is a entirely different medium that we are already familiar with. It is why the people who made Blip-o have said that like, this isn't really a game, they're not really game makers. It is like its own thing. They made it because like that's how you could make it right now. Right. With a game publisher. I mean, so we're recording this the day after you recorded part one. So it feels like I've been defending Expedition 33 for a long time. I think Expedition 33 is a towering achievement in terms of storytelling and like the kind, the ability of video games to, I don't think there's a good comparison tonally for a game that is made by Western developers that has the sense of scale and scope and like emotional weight that Expedition 33 is communicating a lot of the time. It is so, it's not just tasteful. It is using game mechanics and the idea of game exploration as a way of like communicating something. Like you are feeling things because of how this game is set up. Like you feel things because of the mechanics of exploring this world. And like it's difficult because it's communicating that like narratively. Can you get an example of like how it's communicating it? It's the sure like when you are in the exploring through this environment. For example, you'll come across like a totem or like some sort of artifact that was put there to like honor the gods that were, that have been attacking you before, right? That have been making life so difficult for you. And the scale of that in the world that you are in and how small and torn down that is. And the scale of just like the level in the world that you're exploring. And the way that the game is about like grief and exploring the like trying to find your way out of it basically and how you navigate it. The thing that clicked for me the most about Expedition 33 and it's kind of a bummer that like, not kind of a bummer, but it didn't occur to me organically. I had to read it, but it made so much for sense. The critical path is marked in Expedition 33 by light. It's marked by lamps. I didn't do that. Yeah. If you see a lit lamp that is marking the way forward. It's light is different sources, but like that is what is lighting the critical path. And there are like if it's an unlit area like it's not like those lanterns then that is like a more of an exploration opportunity. I want to get back into the main. I know, right? But like it would have been nice. It still means like that is like yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, but right? It is like we also push against like instruction manuals and handholdings. I'm not asking for like a pop up that says go to the light to get complete the quest. I think there is a smoother way to convey that information than just like. I love this game. I also agree with Russ's point that like no, I listen to this for us. I think that there is like stuff that is essential to it. And stuff that is not essential to it that like I do think that they could. And I don't want to fall in that dark souls trap where it's like you're defending every single choice. It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, you just don't get it. Well, what's tough about Expedition 33 is like the it's hard to talk about what works with the story without spoiling a big, big portion of the game. And I realized that that's a sort of like not particularly helpful kind of discussion for our game of the year kind of deliberations. There are moments in this game that I think are going to stick around in the kind of consciousness of the gaming community if such a thing could be like one big block. It can hang with the big moments of gaming history. Like would you rather from Bioshock or Arith getting killed? There's we can't possibly. It's more of that. It does huge, huge, huge shit with the story that would be ruining the game to talk about in this. Yeah, I was kind of in and then once I'm now like definitely going to finish it. Like that definitely after spending just like a couple more hours. But Griffin said like push a little bit past where you're at. And I'm yeah, I think Expedition 33 should go through. In the sense that we talked about this last year. This is our group list, right? Right. And a bloop of plus I love that game or whatever. And I should go back and caveat. Like I'm sure there are people who worked on it who feel it's more a game than just the writers. But Expedition 33, I really adored it when it started. And the reasons that I personally ultimately don't really love this game is is the would you kindly is the twist? Right. Is the narrative not working for me? But that is a personal tasting and I can recognize how the quality of the achievement this game is. I also don't know for sure. If because the gameplay wasn't totally I was liking the gameplay and then it started getting a little bit tough to get through as you just mentioned. If I stuck with it and if I had gone through I feel it's possible and I don't know this for sure. But it's possible that the story which I now know because I looked it up because I knew I wasn't going to play through the entire game. Yeah. When I looked it up I was like this is not necessarily landing with me. But I'm sure if I was actually playing through it. Oh, sure. It would have had a much more of an impact. I mean that's the RPG specifically the JRPG kind of formula. Is you are investing your time into these characters. You're being rewarded with experience and leveling and like all of those gameplay mechanics form a feedback loop with your emotional investment when the game works when the game does a good job of it and this game does a fucking fantastic job. Now to be fair I actually only read the ending of Xenoghears and I think it has a lot to say about. Yeah that's my white whale. I put Xenoghears on every Android emulation device I own and I have some day. I've never cracked that in the net. Yeah and there is an endless and I think the mechanics are cool and funky. There's also certain characters that I just like refuse to engage with because like I don't get it. I'm not smart enough to do it so I just don't use them. Like that's but I still with all that being said like I just I think blipoplus is so freaking cool. Yeah I just feel like there's there's so much that I would like to celebrate about Expedition 33. Cool. Okay so Expedition 33 congratulations. You're moving to the final five. Next up we have Hollow Knight Silk Song versus Absalom. Russ why don't you do a Hollow Knight Silk Song setup since we've really rushed past it. We really did. Hollow Knight Silk Song is the sequel to Hollow Knight, long awaited, long rumored game that was in development for about seven years. The core gameplay it's a search action game you play as Hornet who was a side character in the original Hollow Knight and here Hornet has been displaced into another realm that is facing some sort of catastrophe and pending catastrophe and there are religious forces and economic forces that are pressing down on this world and you have to sort of conquer this environment and overcome a number of like incredibly hard boss fights and challenges that I think even though it's 2D if you've played a Dark Souls game if you played Elden Ring like I think there's a lot of analogies there. The things that really stand out for me, visual storytelling, actual literal narrative storytelling because Hornet actually speaks in this so there's a lot more dialogue and back and forth. Sound design through the fucking roof, maybe my favorite sound design game of the year. I was really bummed to see that it didn't get a nod at the the Viggy's because it certainly earned that and yeah I mean it's just shocking to me that a game that was as beloved as Hornet could somehow get a sequel that really felt like a reimagining of the original formula in a really ambitious way. The things that I was like nagging Hades 2 about a little bit in part one I think Hornet takes a lot more swings with the formula in a way that it feels like a truce. I don't have as much of an understanding. I finished the first one but when you say like evens the formula help me. Sure a lot of that comes in game in the form of gameplay there's something called crests which kind of feel like a class based system when you're equipping them it changes the way your primary attack works and secondary attack and downstab whatever you can equip tools that act as like secondary materials. It felt like an evolution from like early Castlevania games this simply the night where you're suddenly like making much more choices about how you build your character beyond like equipping some crests which is what the first game was. The world is also I think the world of Hollow Knight was great. The fact that far loom has a has multiple kind of like structures and systems that are decrepit now right because of the pseudo apocalypse that has befallen it. But like you are you are exploring the history of this place and seeing how it is connected up here they gather the silk that they use to like extend their lifespan and gain power and it falls down into this of the city of Greymore. Will people gather it up and spin it onto spools to send back up and you find those spools you can collect it but then the really poor bugs get sent down here down to the very bottom and then when they die they get thrown over this bridge and you start down there in the bone pile and you are working your way up through the kind of like cast system of of this world and I think they do a pretty good job of kind of making you understand that and feel that as you are as you're going through it. I would also say one other nuance to the difference between the original Hollow Knight and this game is when I finished the original Hollow Knight a game that I absolutely fucking adored I had no idea what the story was about not even an Iota of an idea and this game I think writes that ship pretty dramatically. I mean there is a great story in Hollow Knight but I had to watch an hour and a half long YouTube video to understand it. This game when I finished it I felt like and was correct I knew about 80% of the story and then obviously there's edges that I didn't fully grok that are more hidden but realistically like you come away really understanding this world how it works what the motivations are for all the characters and it makes kind of the conquering of the challenge that much more impactful. I want to ask you Russ because I feel like you're the biggest sort of proponent of this game. Now that we're a few months out from it and the conversation has kind of settled a bit and the game itself has received a couple of updates sort of addressing the difficulty stuff. How do you feel about the difficulty of the game in general and sort of like the curve that it puts before players now that we're like this far removed from it. I feel unequipped to talk about it because when I finished it it was before the balance patches happened or at least pretty close to that. I have heard that the game is more approachable which I think is 100% the right move and it bums me out that like I know Justin you had struggles with it especially really on. Yeah it's tough like it I really I just felt like it is it drilled down on the audience. It seemed designed for like a smaller subset of the audience to love it even more. You know which is like that's cool I just was on the outside of that kind of because it was like the things that I like about the game like the exploration and that kind of stuff. I got lost in the how frustrated I was and like how how difficult I was finding it to like make progress and stuff. So like that it just didn't which is like it just didn't click for me and I know that I wasn't the only one but I also don't I don't know it's not the game. You know like I want to like you know well but I would but I would add I don't not only you're you're not the only one I think the developers even acknowledge that you weren't the only one to the point where they actually made the game easy right like boss fights early on and like punishments for death early on and unlocking benches early on dramatically cheaper to unlock you know you get more tools more whatever so I don't think I mean it's difficult obviously because I know the experience that you had was like right at launch and that was the experience. It's tough but that's like yes it's not there here or there. I mean it's I'm really trying not to be I you know no no I my feelings about the game have changed a bit since since finishing it mostly because I think the difficulty is like it works against the game and I understand that it's a hard game and it's like part of the the challenge and the triumph like that's all that's all part and parcel of the like experience of conquering this hostile world and that's very very cool but the when I think back about the amount of time I spent farming rosary beads and the number of you know runs through the fucking hollow muck or whatever the fuck that awful swampy it was like that stuff was so I don't know it seemed pointless it seemed like a waste of time and not not enjoyable and there was a lot I think there was a lot of it especially once you get to the once you get to the third act and now the world is actually much more difficult to to to explore much more punishing there's so many moments in that game that are exhilarating and so many like the progression of it is obviously great because you need every little aspect that you can get every little inch of advantage that you can get over the world but I don't know there's there's some parts that just kind of seem clunky in terms of how the difficulty was was managed and that's a shame because I think it is on on the whole of a pretty masterful kind of game and definitely my favorite like search action game that that that came out this year with a bullet yeah certainly up there for maybe all time for me at Absalom I don't know can really hang here for the reasons I kind of I mean I love this game but I also do still kind of feel like it is the the we are going to think back on it when Absalom 2 comes out and be like okay so this this was the proof of concept this was the and it's a good-ass proof of concept and I think folks who are really into beaten beat them ups are definitely eaten good this year but I don't know that it is on the same kind of level as a as a Hollow Knight song song I just want to say three nice things about Hollow Knight so song one I think it looks really pretty too I like that it wrestled with Catholic faith and we did not expect holy shit yeah remember three that song that that one character sings that I love it love that was actually true good you hear Kirk Hamilton's instrumentalized version of it that he did I can't remember if it's triple clicker strong songs but that one got stuck in my head it's a real earworm that's a good stuff I I am not a select song person I agree with what Griffin said yesterday you look at the list of things here Absalom feels the most like we're gonna see Absalom 2 that is the full version of what that thing aspires to be and it's gonna be absolutely incredible absolutely incredible I don't know I do think it's like singing this forward here I do want to say one last thing on Absalom before that happens I don't like taking the like nostalgia bait of most of these beat them ups out of the equation I don't know that there's a beat him up I want to play more than Absalom from like a minute to minute oh dude for sure it's it's I mean it is going to stay uh alongside sectory as an infinitely installed game on my raw gala accident I come back to um I I finished it with Henry I actually played through most of it myself on my computer and then I was like hey Henry would love this put it on the switch and we played through all of it again and and beat the game and then it kind of like I don't know fell off a little bit after that it's it's tough because the thing I have to compare it to is Castle Crashers which we've been playing a shit ton of because of the the Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out and that one like every time you finish the game it's like holy shit here's a new guy you just unlock the whole new guy and also you can go on steam workshop and make that guy look like John Wick if you want to get crazy with it um so it's just like I don't know a content question the gameplay the core gameplay of Absalom is you know yeah but I think Hollow Knight is is so fucking big man it's so big and getting bigger they announced DLC yes okay so that means Hollow Knight silk song you move forward to the final five up next we have Death Stranding to this one's for the dads Indiana Jones dad's only that's only who wants to take Indy yeah man I'll take him in this fight um the Indiana Jones and the Gray Circle best circle if you want if you like I don't know the name Indiana Jones the great circle yeah great circle yeah that sounds really good um rather than try to adapt the character Indiana Jones into a video game it adapts Indiana Jones movies into a video game oh do you know what I'm saying I like that for sure it's like a meaningful distinction where if you yeah because if you if you take Indiana Jones the character and make a video game about him that's been done a lot right because as Nathan Drake and and all those and like they have the feeling of an Indiana Jones movie but you are still playing as a kind basically a pitfall you know to mean it's basically scary you're running around you're jumping you're climbing you're shooting dudes this takes the character Indiana Jones and it centers in but also it the experience of watching the Indiana Jones movie with the walking around a beautiful historic environment and the sense of scale that conveys and the the sometimes like quiet introspection of like solving a puzzle and knowing that it could break bad at any second and the the music cues and like the visuals and stuff and all that that things that feel aesthetically like Indiana Jones are are brought into a video game so like it is not a shoot him up it is not a like run around and mow down as many guys as you can it it seeks to be true to the experience of like being that character in a movie and I think not to mention the fact that the game the fact that the game opens up it's such a fucking bold swing the game opens up with you playing the most famous Indiana Jones scene in history which is the opening of the purpose right it is so impressive it this works like that's them proving this will work yeah which it can't be overstated how tough this is because some of the greatest video game developers of all time have tried to do this and failed uncharted and tomb raider no secret wanted to be Indiana Jones games and they end up having you kill hundreds of people across it and whenever people would ask about this they'd be like well ultimately it's a video game you have to have it be a game where you shoot people and you do all that you have to have the action and then like and that's the only way to make a game that feels like this in the reality is it never quite felt like Indiana Jones what's so impressive about this is that it it actually feels like being the person Indiana Jones and even the way that they've written a story the way they pasted is that you don't have to mainline it you don't have to get to the end of each quest you are often in the beginning going around the Vatican discovering these additional mysteries and it feels more like a tv show where it's like well yes I can get around I can solve all of this I don't have to rush to the very end where I think a lot of the untrusted tomb raider because the stakes are so high because you're killing people it is a full sprint from point A to point B which just again doesn't feel like how an archaeologist turned a mystery solver would go about their life I mean also a Troy Baker like it's easy to say like he he does a very good very convincing indie impression I think I think he goes beyond pretty well beyond that and that is like not doing a lot more than Indiana Jones I mean it's so much more probably more Indiana Jones talking than Harrison Ford has ever done in his entire life almost yeah right exponentially yeah and it's like incredible I don't know that I've ever seen that before where an actor or a voice actor has like taken on arguably one of the most famous character roles in like movie history certainly and truly made it like his made it his own thing really stepped into it while while being obviously sounding a fucking lot like Harrison Ford absolutely yeah I think it's I think it is one of the greatest voice acting performances certainly on the level of like the Joker hat Mark Hamilton's the Joker Joker yes absolutely like pretty pretty iconic stuff yeah on that level if if Mark Hamill had already done it and then someone was like you got to do it again just like that do it like that so people think it's Mark Hamill do it the Joker like it's wild it's a it's a really wild performance good good on it's a credit to the writers because that works if you have a ton of dialogue that actually sounds like what Indiana Jones is supposed to sound like and it gets the humor which is a very slight humor it nails it I feel like for me if I got a ding Indy for something and I've I've spent a lot of time with Indiana Jones but has been split up into a lot of segments I feel like where Indiana Jones messes up is it still has too many compromises towards being a video game and when that starts to bump they will go they will lean towards the Indiana Jones side of the needle before they'll lean towards the video game side of the needle so like things like there's 15 bottles around this world scattered around this world you need to collect them like that does not feel very much like Indiana Jones but it's still in the game and you still have the stuff of like well I've got to change my outfit because this isn't what I'm supposed to be wearing and the longer you're in those environments doing that sort of like middling shit it starts to feel like Disney with the lights off or you're like okay I get it it's like this guy's doing this and he does this turn a little bit it's just like it skews a little it's just like a little bit too much like still feeling like they need to do that kind of video game stuff like you want an excuse to to hang out in those worlds and things like that it just the ideas that they have come up with for how you spend time in that world aren't especially like fun and every time that I have played this game I will spend like two or three hours and it I think I said somewhere that's like hanging out with you watching sports with your dad yeah that was that on recording yeah I think you said that a couple episodes of yeah so that's that's I like it it's just it's it almost feels more like it's very impressive that they achieved all of it and it is pleasant but it doesn't quite get past that to where it's like you really want to find it very compulsively playable and will somewhat contradict myself in that if you are just about to play this for the first time even though you don't have to have that propulsion in the story works without going from point eight to point B I do think the game works better if you actually do hit the point eight to point B and then go back and do everything after that especially because the disguises are so central to pretty much everything and you get them by going through the main the main line um I know that's very just a macquarie kind of thing but I've been stuck at the beginning of the Himalayas area because you have to trestle snow and it's so fucking boring that I make it like five minutes before I'm like fuck I can't I can't I can't do it and then when I close it that reopened it it's like I fucking back in the beginning of it God is so boring I can't do anything in the show I'm sorry I think I know where it's fun to try to snow is it does training to yeah I haven't hit any snow in desk training to is there still it's I would say like 60% of the way through the game there's a fuck load of snow yeah we we talked a lot about desk training to in part one of this um and uh my feelings haven't changed when I first played the game it was scratching every fucking itch of inch of my brain uh in ways that they wanted to like this was all this is not like a whoopsie accident Hideo Kajima did like a wacky thing and that worked out to be like a fun game point mechanic like they just have dialed this game into uh just in incredible levels of precision I think it's his best I think it's his best game yes I genuinely I genuinely do and I I've been kind of slow to come to that but like it does so much stuff that succeeds as a game this idea of being a long haul kind of delivery man who is putting the world back together and building connections with people and like leveling up all these different areas like all mechanically it's so fun and so compelling and also you have a little doll who is inhabited by a man and he is animated at a different frame rate than everything else in the game like there's still so much really genuinely super weird shit going and it doesn't it doesn't lose that while kind of like you know heavily featuring good gameplay mechanics as well it's also cogent which is more than I can say about every fucking Kajima game ever including the first one that you can understand on your first playthrough yes everything tracks and a lot of that is editing like a lot of it is if you want to obsess about this stuff you can dive into the in-game Wikipedia about what the fuck chiral crystals are but if you're just worried about the key beats of the story and the people that you're meeting the game will convey that stuff very clearly and ways that like are very affable there's a character named Rainey who is just like this delightful ray of sunshine ironically and you build this community of people that are like living on your core ship and you want to go back there because you want to see scenes with them yeah it's I just try to jump by the way sorry but no this is a little bit of a later thing you can build a ramp in this game this ramps in a lot of different games that's fine you can build a ramp in this and I was like yeah I'm not gonna why do I need a ramp I'll build ladders and roads whatever the fuck but someone else that I was connected to built a ramp in a spot that was near me and I was just running around so I was like what happens if I just run off of this ramp and I sprinted directly at the ramp and Norman Reedus flies into the air about 600 feet and starts doing fucking back flips and on the screen it says extreme double extreme triple extreme every time you're doing a back flip and suddenly I'm on the other side of this river that I was trying to get across how does he survive the descent you land safely the chiral crystals and the air bring you peacefully to I love it doesn't we can say this game is cogent until the fucking cows come home it is still gonna be like how does that work chiral chiral chiral chiral chiral chiral crystals I'm gonna I'm gonna say a thing that's a spoiler for an item but not for the story so if you don't want to hear it just skip ahead like 15 seconds you can do the exact same thing that fresh is talking about but instead of running and jumping off of it you can ride a giant coffin as a surfboard through the entire game a floating chiral crystals fortunately help it float coffin awesome the game rocks you can meet a guy who makes pizza and he will teach you how to use a pizza dough training up like plastic little flap wobbly plastic to beat the shit out of bad guys if you want to find it it's a valid part there's a griffin yeah there is a Pokemon aspect of this game Jesus just waiting to be discovered now I'm starting to think this is a frog fraction situation where this shit's not actually in the game but you know I'm probably not going to plan yet get to that point and if you were to jump right in and start playing it I think it would carry you through for that was the thing I was gonna say I when I got back into it for you know being a little bit more informed for this game of the year discussion the that in-game Wikipedia the story so far thing that it offers is truly truly helpful really really great at like telling you exactly what was going on in the story when you stop playing it I think it probably looks at you like ps5 activity log and it's like god damn man it's been two months okay so um chirol christmas he when you booted back up yeah you haven't played for a little bit it pops up text and it's like yeah what was happening that's great man it's so helpful about that genius man I'm gonna go back and play it today guys I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm reading the winds here it seems like nori this is funky yes it's about to slide right up past Indiana Jones yeah that's how I feel that's what I'm starting to feel in the air guys I think you're right uh and welcome to the uh the the pain the pain is here we have baby steps versus sectory two games I think there's a lot of love for it might be a perfect split down the middle of which one could go through so uh hey who wants to pitch sectory first shit man sectory is uh okay I don't want to oversell it sectories uh if you liked score chase games dual stick score chase games not unlike and in fact quite similar to john shrew wars uh then you will love sectory which has uh is a dual stick shooter just like those uh accept that the it has several different modes that you can uh that that feel very very different to play um that are each using like slightly different mechanics but I think what sets sectory apart is that there is a lot of technique and there's a lot of ways in which you can um there's a lot of strategy in how you play moment to moment for example you're collecting these things called selectors and they are basically like um raising you up a letter a ladder of power ups where the as it gets more expensive the power up is better but you got to cash it in at a certain point so you are basically saving up for a better power up or you know using it earlier um and and the uh pace at which you use those the ones that you decide to get the times at which it is the best time to collect those and it is like one small facet of how you can improve your odds of like survivability or or collecting points and stuff and that is uh there are so many mechanics like that in sectory where it is not clearly laid out it is not explained to you but as you play more you can start to intuitively and like uncover some of these techniques in a way that reminds me more of like a bilottro or it is not this level of like discoverability there's a lot more skill involved but there is a uh a way in which it reminds me of bilottro when you uh realize that certain possibilities are possible it really can blow the game wide open in a way where you don't know how you were struggling by before um and there's also the upgrade the upgrade cards you're like building a deck by choosing oh yeah yeah yeah that's pretty good uh types of upgrades that you will get like a handful of as you go through the campaign mode and those really spice spice things up quite a bit there's just like a lot of player agency which I don't think you see in these sorts of games these arcade games tend to be you know the fucking pack me into the world like I'm sure there's nuance to it for extremely hardcore people but realistically everyone else is just running from the ghosts and here it's like oh I'm gonna decide missiles actually I need an extra shield here I'm gonna spend it on that or oh I'm gonna pick these cards because I think they're gonna synergize well together there's just like a lot of ways you can kind of evolve your playstyle to fit what you're good at there is also a this is not necessarily the kind of achievement that we typically recognize here on besties but there is a stunning amount of information being conveyed to you in this game visually with like in an incredibly complex battlefield there is so much information and it's like possible like you can parse so much in a way that feels overwhelming but also like really can help to lock you in you can get a sense of everything that is going on just from like the way the different shapes are drawn and move and color and stuff it still has that simplistic sort of geometry wars line based style but it it expands it in a way that feels like frankly kind of like overwhelming sometimes from sensory perspective in a good way it's hard to talk about it because it is subconscious right like you are playing this game it's not like you are thinking strategy you are feeling whatever the flow is that you get into and you are evading things but I will go back and watch video of when I play to watch other people play and it doesn't make sense there is so much on the screen that how you could possibly know to dodge all these different things manage all these different enemies all the projectiles and still accomplish your goals and get to wherever the powerups are or not use the powerups or do any of these things it's like you said who it's a tremendous amount of information that the brain and theory shouldn't be able to make you feel like a genius like it makes you feel because you are able to parse that like there's some I would say at least two or three times on playing this game I each run I have a moment where I'm about to fly between two guys and I think I'm good yeah this is over I sometimes I'll close my eyes the ads it I'm done oh my god oh my god I pulled it out that's through I mean that's every run has something like that it feel it is that like thrilling every single time right away like you very very early on in playing this game you feel that you're not training up to do that you will feel it within the first half hour of playing the game it feels like sitting down with the symphony and you've never played by a land and they're like you know just keep up and you're like oh I'm actually doing pretty okay yeah and you get all the modes kind of build on each other too like they're different ones my favorite is still gates where you're flying you don't you can't shoot and the only way you have of killing enemies is by picking up powerups or flying through these gates that spawn in so it's all about like not killing stuff as long as you can and then doing a huge fucking burst and and clearing out the whole screen and like that teaches you how to avoid enemies and every mode is just constantly building so you are you your skills are improving until you reach that sort of super human ESP level like intuition it's it's it's really really really excellent I am shocked this is not a much bigger game and maybe it's just because it came out of when it came out which was like I think it's timing and it's also this is a game that doesn't necessarily stream great it's really hard to parse if you're just watching someone play yeah maybe that's it wouldn't necessarily be the most watchable game I think it's just and it's just like a marketing challenge like this is also depressing hard to market a game based on like it's really fucking fun it's like just really like it's so fun yeah the good news is the developer thought that he was gonna make zero dollars off this was expecting it to totally bomb and that you'd have to go back to maybe working in a studio and it has surpassed those expectations so great good I hope we can do our part we'll see baby steps is sort of the opposite game it's actually can I make an argument for why it's not I want it so bad give me this argument okay so Justin was just talking about insectory you're making these like minute to minute choices and you kind of look at it at the field of enemies that are before you and you're like there is no fucking way I'm making through this but I'm just gonna give it a shot because why the fuck not and that is the feeling that I feel frequently when playing baby steps because you'll come upon a fucking sideways house surrounded by goo that makes you slip and slide and you are like there's no fucking way that's gonna work out and for me at least I was like that was fun to like try to like hammer went my way through it now obviously very different games but I do think that the player agency vibes and the feeling of player control that you have in baby steps is similar I also think you make really funny choices in baby steps we mentioned a few of them earlier and I I mentioned I think when we first reviewed this I mentioned this moment but I'll just call it attention to it again pretty late in the game you get to a cliff side like a cliff face and you're on top of it and on the side of the cliff face is a plank the plank is probably about eight feet long and at the end of the plank is a hat and as you're playing throughout the game there are many hats that you can collect and if you bring the hats to like these say points campfires you get like bonus scenes and I was like I'll fucking go for it I'll go for the hat whatever I've walked along a number of planks I realize how dangerous it is if I fall but I'm not gonna fall because I'm good at this and I make it to the end of the plank and I hit the button to like reach down for the hat and I like just the center of gravity tips in such a way that I fall ass over t-cattle down 200 feet down to the bottom and the fact that my immediate reaction wasn't fuck this game I'm never playing it again but instead this is hilarious and oh now that I've fallen I found this new area that I've never explored before and I didn't even know was here and I'm gonna have a new experience that I didn't have before that is the like shit that gets me going because I feel like I'm in total control of the experience. This is really this is maybe the hardest one yet I feel like I yeah I adore baby steps it might be my personal game of the year I don't know it's kind of tied I think it is a hard one to sell to people it's so dumb to say like it's an acquired taste but like more than I think any game that is at this point on the list it is either it resonates with you or it deeply doesn't because it does ask so much of you and I think it does have this kind of masochistic streak or at least it feels like a masochistic streak if you're not on its wavelength for me I don't think it is at all because I think it is constantly telling you if you don't like it quit that's the whole point but that's a hard sell because then if you quit the game you're not gonna laugh at the end of your your in the year list I also wouldn't even necessarily call it masochistic it's actually pretty at least in comparison to like games that Bennett has made previously but also in comparison to games like spulunky for example more often than not if you fall in baby steps I would say 90% of the time if you fall in baby steps you will fall one inch to the to the floor you will you know there are moments and these moments will be very clear to you because you're crossing over a river or going across a chasm whatever it is where you know that the stakes are much much higher but those moments are rare and I think this is the one area that I think this game does better than other previous benefit of games is you have the pacing of moments of tension short moments of tension followed by long moments of like exploration fuck around yeah yeah the most difficult part of baby steps for me was not the like falling and losing progress as much as it was like three or four times so far while I've been playing the game I feel like I have had no fucking idea where to where to go and that like I will walk along a big long ridge looking for any kind of ingress and find absolutely find nothing and not realize like oh actually over here there's like three boulders that you can that you can get up that stuff is is infrequent I think but to me that is like the main difficulty that's the thing that makes me bounce off is just walking around and feeling like okay well I don't I don't know how to progress when I fall and lose progress it's like okay I know what to do I know what I should have done differently there sucks when I lose a hat doing that and floats away down a river but that's yeah I'll say one more thing because I I have a feeling I'm kind of playing for the five spot really for for baby steps I think about this game constantly just like the little things the way that the game builds to this idea of why can you not accept help and when will you accept help and when will you take the easy route and again you can think about that at the very end where there is and I'm almost impossible path up the side of a mountain or literal stairs you can take one or the other which one you're gonna take and there is an instinct in video games to say I'm gonna take the hard thing because that's the challenge right like that's the that's the whole point I shouldn't I shouldn't take the easy thing and yet at the very beginning of the game when you are walking up a muddy path you on a on a micro level are going to think what is the easiest way for me to get up this you're not going to think how could I make sure that I choose the hardest version you're not gonna think well I want to climb up the wall now you're going to think why I want to get to the next point of the game and it is it's weird thing where the micro and the macro in this game are constantly in conversation with each other in a way that I don't feel very often in video games it's so holistic this video game yeah something special I took the stairs by the way yeah I tried the hard path once I gave it a good go and I was like yeah whatever I fell and I took the stairs it does make fun of you either way too there's cats in the triggers either way to let you know like what are you doing um I I think sectorie goes through I think it is I can vote I don't think we need to we can or Justin actually Justin hasn't waited on baby steps if there's anything I yeah I I've said my piece about baby steps I mean I'm I've been pretty clear about it I had I thought I maybe says it's cool as hell it's not sectorie it's cool though but sectorie actually it's not sectorie is a pike bus bear here you know okay so can we bring it to a vote to an official legal vote yes okay sectorie uh um sectorie I'll take I'll have sectorie please it would be baby steps for me it would be baby steps for me now we're right Frankie now we got it now we're how we made it this far without a deadlock that's crazy baby steps yeah we got I would recommend sectorie to almost anybody pretty much and I think that baby steps there's a lot of people that maybe don't need that in their life and maybe don't shouldn't shouldn't get into baby steps and I think that it's so cool what it's doing and I think that I think it's really cool what uh blipo plus did in in a similar vein I think that's very cool but in terms of like what I want to award um this is like the the the the the attention to design and like the the work that went into that like I this is the kind of thing that I want to award the fact that it kind of spread through the four of us like like uh uh wildfire then other get other people hooked on it uh and I just really I think sectorie that's the kind of thing that I would would feel okay so we need to be careful here because I think everyone here loves both games so be mindful that this doesn't turn into a that's why I make the joke about Russia please your paternalism is going down a lot smoother can I say can I say this let's push them both through I think I think this could be a fourth and fifth situation or or I do think that it's worth trying to choose between these two in case there's a different game that we want to pull up mm-hmm I think that may personally it may be baby steps it may be sectorie I don't know but I think in the spirit of the we don't want to let ourselves off the hook too much the conversation has been so focused on which one reaches out to a broader audience I don't know if that's the thing that we want to it may be the only kind of unifying things since these are two pretty dramatically different games I am more interested in like our take on them rather than like how well they can attract other other audiences other folks I yeah I really like both of these games a whole lot um and would be fine with either of them taking you know that that fourth position yeah I would I would also say that I don't you know I I alluded to this earlier but I don't think there that even though it's on its surface I don't think they're that far apart um in so far as I think they are both before anything game design games like I don't think they're even though baby steps has has a lot of narrative beats to it I don't think it's primarily a narrative game I think it's primarily a gameplay game yeah and both of these are both player player expression games in terms of how you take a challenge and conquer it obviously in the case of sectory you're doing that over the span of three seconds every loop but baby steps is much more of a slow paced methodical thing but I do think there is a connection there when I look at what we've already picked we have x-finition 33 we have Hollow Knight silk song we have Death Stranding 2 sectory does fill a spot that we don't have filled on that list if if what we're trying to do is kind of like round out the different types of games I don't think we are the fun the fun the fun one the fun one one I yeah guys here's what here's what stuck in my head I plant I I think you're right I also think though that that is the thing that we thought we should talk about where we're at a five position right it's like it making a list that feels whole I can't get past this you know this has been about it bouncing my head it's like I love sectory for me sectory might be some most fun I've had this year I don't know if it's my game it was like some of the most fun I've had this year I can't shake the feeling to which it is a better mouse trap and and I do think that if you don't have the familiarity going in it may not hook in the same it may not fire off those same neurons you know what I mean and I think that maybe that is part of the story we're seeing play out with like it not making a huge a more huge splash but like it does seem like if you don't have the affinity and I swear to God some weird geometry words like neurons must be kicking back that like kicking around still which is kind of weird but like I don't uh I don't know that it's it's not taking the level of swing that baby steps is taking and succeeding in a in a lot of different ways in a way that's like they made something that was fun to watch streaming which is kind of the only way to get something in front of an audience these days in a in a sense but also like is a meaningful experience to have on your own I think that's pretty cool I mean I don't know I think that's pretty neat I'm I'm all in I think I would change my my vote to baby to break the log jam change my vote to to baby steps oh good sectory rules baby steps sucks but I'm out unfortunately that's the way it goes sometimes okay so there's a there's four games that are definitely in the top five mm-hmm those four games are expedition 33 holonite silk song that's stranding to baby steps and let me just say that is a rust-fresh list right there as way more the last year yeah man yeah I got shit fucking yeah this is your come-upence dude it's a funky year dude I wish Liza P2 came out this year man can you imagine Liza too Liza P the sequel came out Liza P the squeakle this time to pet us back like something be the funniest year ever um I think we need to take a break before we start narrowing down what our final five is sounds good 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 eight dollars 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 one eight dollars 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 drag net and make sure that you're not spending money uh that you don't even know about rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions monitors you're spending and helps lower your bill so you can grow your savings obviously the the subscription catching thing is uh enormously useful for someone like myself but if you need help sort of uh 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 uh rocket money can do that too and set budgets for things and automatically categorize your transactions you can see where your your money is going there's a lot of stuff that rocket money does uh to to help you with your money and uh 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 rocket money dot com slash besties that's rocket money dot com slash besties one last time rocket money dot com slash besties there's four games that are definitely in our top five as we say yes those games are okay they are uh expedition 33 Claire obscure ex-sertion 33 Hollow Knight silk song destiny to baby steps um those are the four they're definitely in it there's a fifth slot that is in competition with our other nominees I think we can pull up anything right if we all can sort of be on it anything they got knocked out in an earlier round or this round for them just looking at the list I think first of all sectory just because we were so so torn on it obviously I think it stands a pretty good shot uh dispatch dispatches maybe the front runner for me for the for that number for the fifth for the fifth spot um I really really uh it not only is like my favorite story I think in a game this year maybe just my favorite sort of writing and and acting in a game this year I it's been forever since I have played a game like this and part of that is just feeling burnt out with the genre I think this does so much cool stuff and uh it's just so yeah I don't even think the genre existed no I don't think so right I don't think it's a telltale game in that way yeah like it feels like something else um I yeah I think dispatch is definitely in the running um I think root trees is definitely in the running the ways for me I'll speak for myself uh Hades two not for me but I know other uh Justin maybe for you you might yeah but if I was if I was one of one versus three there I'm not sure it makes the most sense no I love Hades two I played a shit time I hate yeah I love Hades two two um I mean I would you love it more than sectory yeah more than this bad man no well I think let's get this down to a top let's get this down to three let's get this down to three runners runners up in this elimination match that we can sort of pick from I'm sorry okay yeah Hades I think sectory dispatch dispatch dispatch yeah yeah I love root trees I don't I don't like it as much as I'm fine with three games okay my argument for Hades two is that if Hades two had come out in a different way in a different way of being released in a different like it would be it it's simple like it just would have dominated the narrative this year in a way that these meaning if it just came out like if it just came out like with a nor release and it didn't have this long tail we are bound sort of like the way we cover games the way we like interact with games like we have to handle it in a way that like other people don't are editor Rachel held off on Hades two stuff the entire time and it seemed insane to me and then she had like a fantastic experience and I feel like yeah the only reason that Hades two is not higher on this list or already in this top four is because of the way in which it was sort of drip fed out and and evolved over time like it's simply six seeds as a as a thing it's a dispatch fails several times dispatch exceeds wildly when it hits there's a lot of ways in which dispatch fails especially in this how much of it feels random in a way that's really unsatisfying whether or not you your missions succeed is often just up to chance and that yeah some of it is is like thumb on the scale like they want a narrative beat to happen so they make yeah some of that happens behind some of that happens behind the scenes yeah some of it is like you lose when you shouldn't have in the odds were really against achievement there's an achievement for that if you lose a mission with like 75% chance success but for me the the thing that drives me crazy about the sort of interactive part of dispatch I actually kind of liked it like I ended up having a team that I felt very invested in and the game asks you to make some pretty huge choices like you your roster is going to look different from my roster based on the decisions that you make throughout the episodes and I found myself like really getting invested in the team for that reason but it is I mean it sucks to lose those like challenges and the game doesn't really do an awesome job of kind of telling you like oh that's okay it doesn't actually matter that you blew that it doesn't matter that that challenge didn't go your way because it's not going to impact the story at all and the story is really what this thing is doing well also one I mean not for nothing but if we're trying to pick like the best games of the year the fact that there is just a button for like turn off a lot of this because it's just annoying like that that's not that's not the game the game of the year does not have a turn off interactivity because it's just getting in my nerves like that's not the game of the year right that's a fair point it's a fair point man I'm just I struggle with it because I do I think just it's it's right it's great it's so good it's so good alien earth game what alien earth he's he's saying a TV show is I'm just saying like like there is there are incredible stories you know what I mean like being communicated I I like dispatch a lot I 100% really like dispatch but I love it because I love this story and a lot of the other stuff I'm conatolerating the interactivity I think that for me at least elevates it a little bit not a lot yeah I think the story the cutscenes or what elevate the entire project which again doesn't feel as I am I am I am convinced I I would agree with that it is a game that I love despite its despite its flaws so that brings us to Justin with a pistol in his hand deciding but doing two of his best favorite children don't use three Justin can I make a case I don't care I like them both you three juice when when we make a list I love when I can look back five years from now and be like yeah that feels right and five years from now I will have a sectory on my steam deck and I will still be playing it whenever I have a flight and I forget to download something new and I can't say that with any confidence about almost anything else on the list and I think that is very telling there are very few games that live in my conscious and on my steam deck and as my habit like that that they are spillunky I think fresh for you that's like a binding of Isaac yep and I think the games that come to mind whenever I say something like that are games I would definitely want on my game of the year list but Hades 2 has everyone so hot everyone in a Hades to have and if taking back this stuff and it's like wow I will also say I don't have to be theoretical with what you're saying about Hades 2 plant because I have had Hades 2 installed on my devices permanently like yeah 100% straight up played it yesterday still kicks ass I like them both I just feel like I feel like we did Hades 2 a little dirty it's so fun it's fun every time and I think that I would rather it's fun in a lot of really cool ways too it's like it really does embrace a lot of different play styles in a way that it must be really hard to balance I mean must be like impossible to balance but I would be really happy either way genuinely I think they're both great I really like them too I think in my brain I probably enjoyed sectarian more but I also only played sectarian for eight hours that's what I'm struggling with is like the security the purity of sectarian and the kind of like I don't know and the nuance of sectory whereas Hades 2 again is is building off of but I've spent more time playing Hades 2 than maybe any other yeah not okay so not to put my thumb on the scale too much here because I am trying to let you know I'm going to figure this out but I do think that with sectory once I had sort of like risen to the top of our personal leaderboards my desire to kind of play it diminish pretty quickly like when there were no more worlds to conquer in a sense like there wasn't it doesn't do a great job of like incentivizing you with its own mechanics it kind of like the score chase thing is definitely a huge part of it but like once I'd sort of figured that stuff out I didn't feel a big desire to like get back in there and tear it up because it was so demanding to set some of those high scores and like I legitimately don't know if I can top it it's funny because like that was very much the geometry worse like geometry worse 2 on xbla I played constantly because I wanted the top score of like you know all the old joystick crew that we that we used to play with but that was back when they only made like 20 video games a year and now they make a choice and I have two kids and so like the idea of fucking clonkin down and doing 100 runs of gates mode is not not really in the realm of possibility for me I would also say that when I beat the campaign of sectory I had the same vibe that hoops did about his arcade score chase which was I beat the campaign and my desire to keep pushing for other things kind of diminished pretty quickly and happy looking at my scores it's like what's the point you know to me like you had to be like how am I going to get up there in Olympus speak you go I think Hades 2 it's funny because it I I still feel like I liked absolute better for that sort of comprehensive standpoint but I also I think that the argument is sound for Hades 2 to to join the top yeah I think yeah I hate it yeah man we have to have one of those every year we're like someone leapfrogs around a matchup that it lost the first go around okay so do we feel good about that as a top five I think so okay okay so that is expedition 33 silk song Descending to baby steps Hades 2 oh baby steps the only original well yeah you're right yeah wait expedition there's been 32 of those motherfuckers maybe kidding me I'm gonna just call they finally got it right they finally got it right I didn't even notice the other ones man they've been churned these things out there's a lot of Eastern European stuff I can't keep that song I know I guess they just been them in frog warriors would just be cranking these things out um so I know I know what the game of the year is going to be and I think I do too I do it it's fucking crazy that that's going to be the game of the year should we do that should we and this is unusual should we start at the top and work our way all at the same time yeah I'm gonna count to I'm gonna count to four and then if we could all say the get the number one game of the year according to the besties because I think we're gonna get it in one guy we say it after four you say it after one two I'm gonna say no not after four that's crazy I said that because there's four of us so one two three and then just say the name okay okay okay okay okay one two three that's crazy fucking yeah it's so crazy but the best game of the year is death stranding two it's and you know what's you know it's really crazy go back and listen to the original death stranding two episode when I fucking called it did you did you read yeah I said well at least for me I said this is my favorite game of the year when it came out now listen when I went back and played it I gotta say you guys I said in the chat maybe death strand two is the best video game yeah it's not my I have a weird thing where it's not my personal game of the year but it feels right to be the to be the best game it's so good yeah so good and you know what it is it doesn't mean it it you know what it is it's not just good I've been playing this man's games for so long and the fact I mean this genuinely I don't know why it happened maybe he offloaded more to design I don't know why but this really does feel like one of our like last a tours in game but only the only a tours in games actually kind of evolving like actually changing and like wanting to not just like wanting to stay like relevant and wanting to like engage with the audience in a way that he like I think it's kind of kept people at a distance and I feel like this is a game that's really like really a lot more about connection you know then the first one was thematically this one feels very open-hearted to me the first true strand type game I would say Griffin it's maybe the second true story yes so yeah it also is kind of the answer to the little tiny questions we have about the other games it is a sequel that is doing a lot more than the original game it is dramatically improving the original game it is a game that is taking the challenge of the original game and making it more conceptually interesting it as a story that is coherent from beginning to end and I find very fulfilling and it is even saying many of the same things that baby steps is saying about working with other people and taking support and being open to what is given to you it's a very it's a game about community which I it's a good vibe of it is really good and it's you know what it is it's also like it engages with the fact that it is online in a way that doesn't detract from but rather builds up the single player experience and I feel like so few games I figured out how to do that in a smart way like you got some soul stuff that does it but like it's it's rare and this one really well soul stuff also has like the trolley shit like oh here's a note that doesn't mean anything but here everything that you find in the world that is placed by another player is in some way useful yeah and also like it feels I love that shit where you know why someone put that thing there I'm on a run and I'm on this route that I designed and right when my tricruiser runs out of batteries someone has built a battery tower here because they did the same thing that's cool it's cool did any of you play when the servers went offline between the review period and release yes I mean that's the bulk of when I played it and why I didn't have a great time with it the first time I was it was such a wild experience because if you played a lot before the servers went offline you got a real taste of how much the thing was helping you yeah but kind of assumed it wasn't kind of assumed that was just the game kind of assumed it was all your work and then it gets taken away and you're like oh I have done nothing yeah I've created four small roads and I realized so much on the help of others I am helpless it actually winks me worried because someday I just hope they have a plan for the day then the servers get turned off I think they I mean it's still fun I played when the service offline and it was like a fucking grueling experience it was not the broad appealing experience that I think most people have but I loved yeah like I'm gonna fucking ship these metal peat anyway this game fucking rules it rules that's training too if it makes one person play that's training too then that's not enough and that's not a good reason to do this podcast but it makes 100 people maybe maybe I see someone who's put Hades 2 at 5 I didn't put it there I put it there just because it'll get shifted around but it was it was our fifth one and usually we put it there but I'm fine with it moving wherever I can go wherever I would be fine with it feels like to me that an expedition 33 are probably gonna be four and five I'm not sure where you all want to do that but to me it as much as you all I think expedition 33 did really well to get here but there's a lot of ways in which I think expedition 32 this can be the best expedition ever I like Hades 2 more than expedition 33 that's kind of where I would that feels right to me I mean I don't I would not agree with that and I can make a pitch for it but again like it's such a it's such a like personal thing this is more than any other game this year the like it's gotta be your preference I think applies to expedition 33 and like I don't know man this is maybe my favorite genre of games is is is JRPGs there's like a reason I go back and replay all those old final fantasy games and dragon quest games and and it is it's truly uh unthinkable that this studio came out of nowhere to deliver such a such a kick ass version of that thing Griffin at the holidays will you explain the grandpa Dan why a game is a French Japanese RPG because this is a French Japanese RPG but I do want to have that conversation with Dan like you don't understand no yeah it's not an F RPG that's nothing it's a FJ maybe it will be something maybe it will be something but it's gonna have to be doing this because this is a French Japanese role playing yeah the things that you guys bounced off of about expedition 33 I simply don't because of my the fact that I like this genre so much like that's the stuff I like and to me I think that's the only game on this list where that is true uh like dispatch the things that don't well no I'm saying like the things you just liked about expedition 33 were things that I liked about expedition 33 the stuff that didn't work in dispatch we all kind of agree like oh well that didn't that that didn't work so much I think it's a boulder and way more innovative and more exciting game than Hades 2 I would agree with that I think I think Hades 2 is a fucking kickass game and it does such a good job of building on Hades 1 but doesn't necessarily I don't know doesn't do it in a way where I'm going to be thinking about it for a while and yeah that I'm going to be thinking about expedition 33 for for really really long time I beat it eight months ago and I'm still thinking about that game so so I I would put it higher than 5 but um not a 5. I personally would also but that's just because yeah let's do that Hades you're just didn't really stick with me so I feel like I'm both I feel weird leaving it out because I I just could not get myself to lock into that it's Hades 2 I feel I don't have a good vocabulary for how I feel about Hades 2 honestly because it's so singular I spent 150 hours the first Hades that's too much time to play a video game that's not the fault of Hades 2 you know what I mean like it's not yeah I mean it's just fault the Hades 1 was so cool it's not that that I've had a belly full of it not just like I don't want I feel like for my life maybe I'm full on Hades you know what I mean like unless you want to bring some other people in there unless to like a co-op thing I maybe just like I think they're done dude if it was co-op that would have been enough I feel like to break the mold a little bit I think this would be a kickass co-op game I think that is a fair way to describe it is it does feel I think it does extend beyond the mold of the first game but not to the point of it being a full sequel at least for me okay I was I think Hades 2 at 5 expedition 33 at I mean I like the expedition 33 better than baby steps and yeah I make some but I don't think it's gonna get up higher expedition 33 at 3 I like all those 3s you know expedition 3 3 3 3 3 3 I love what's in the 4 what's in the 4 spot and 4 you get baby steps and until you get silk song say this again yeah why are we doing it in that weird order yes stranding number one number two silk song number three expedition 33 number four baby steps baby steps number five Hades 2 baby steps expedition 33 silk song that's training to I mean I'm good with that list if you guys are I think I think that sounds like our list like as a group yeah in terms of like where kind of yeah average it all out that does seem like a good averaging of our yeah that's how I yes that is yes and we did somehow find one game that we all fucking loved so mission accomplished on that front thank you yeah kind of incredible yeah yeah yeah okay someone write it then I guess yeah okay Chris so Chris plant do it okay go down from the mountain tops with the tablet and tell them what they say thank you so much for joining us here today to celebrate the top five besties games the besties besties of 2025 not 2026 those games are at number five Hades 2 at number four baby steps at number three Claire obscure expedition 33 at number two Hollow Knight silk song and at number one with a bullet dilate stranding to to wait no wait on the beach on the beach we're gonna read all these other stupid ass subtitles everybody because of a normal name no we just have a normal name you gotta have a colon how you can have a colon your first game Claire was here come on come on better than that yeah that feels good man hey that went a bit smoother than I thought it was gonna go thank you why don't you it's good thank you who would have thought I can consider the the small town governor from Ohio just enough people gonna agree on it's really our system at work isn't it that's straight into just just funky enough that all of us could be like I guess yeah man for sure for sure I wrote a big moderately it ruled I think we did it did it okay any honorable mention the normal mentions for every game no okay we're good let's go do it I wanted to thank some folks over at the patreon who've been lovely this year in supporting us just these are just a couple but there's been tons L.H.G David R Oli H. Killer and Dreas are just some relatively recent or existing subscribers thank you very much speaking of subscribers next week we are taking a short break but the subscribers have chosen to elevate a bracket episode we do monthly bracket episodes over at the patreon and they've picked one from this year that will be delivered a beneficially to all members of the besties community so that will be hitting your feed this coming Friday so get pumped for that and then we'll be back the week after that for most anticipated games of 20 26 all right that's gonna do it for this year on the besties be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games so besties