The Besties - 2026's Best Games (and What's Still to Come)

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Midway through the year, The Besties share their top contenders. However, don’t  make any bets on these being our final picks for our GOTY list, because the back half of 2026 is unprecedentedly dense with new releases. To set the stage, we curate our most anticipated games. Also, The Grinch 2. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I'm so excited to dive into the remaining big games to come out in the year 2026. We got a big fat list here. I'm so excited to unpack all this stuff with you guys. I can't help but notice a particular entry that I don't know who chopped this list together. I assume plan. That would be Christopher Thomas Plant. Okay. So maybe Chris, I guess this is for you, Chris.

I already know exactly where you're going because you think I don't know games. Yeah, well, it's just, you know, September's a big month. There's a lot of stuff to look forward to then. But beware near the aides of September. September 18th, we do have the Grinch 2 saving Christmas. Right. Has made the list. And I'm not sure.

It's sandwiched between the new Fire Emblem and the new control game. I'm just curious why the Grinch 2 saving Christmas. I'm also surprised that it was not dealt with in the first game. You think that would have been the primary focus of the first game was saving Christmas? I don't think Dr. Dr. Theodore Gaisal left a lot of. meat on the bone when uh on that roast beast um so what what is it about the grinch two saving christmas that's got you all fired up let's get some facts straight here okay okay one grinch two

saving christmas i don't think it's the sequel to the quote first game as uh rush rushick said here i think it is a sequel to the book okay but in the book he also saves christmas yeah okay okay after nearly after nearly dooming it yes his heart I go to recess. Heart goes to exercise. Second question. Are you telling me that you aren't curious? Is that what you're telling me?

Yes. Somebody comes to you and they say, I've got the Grinch, too. Yeah. And you're like, no, I don't need to know anything else more than that. I'm good. Yeah, no, I mean, that's not an intellectual property that I think has been, I shepherded particularly with a steady hand. It is not a seal of quality in my mind.

Let me mention this just as an important factoid. It is described as an RTS Moba. Does that make you more or less interested? Yeah, so I mean max, I main max, I jungle Max, mid-max, in the jungle, carry. I carry a little Louie. Cindy Lou Who. Cindy Lou Who. And that's all the Grinch and Moba terminology that I can remember right now.

I am not trying to make you all look like fools here. But there is a long history of Grinch sequels. We have Halloween is Grinch Night, the Wobulus World of Dr. Seuss. Are these games or books? The Grinch and the Cat and the Hat. These aren't games. These are the real official. The Wobulus world of Dr. Seuss was an interactive theater experience.

And I said that as a joke, but that actually sounds pretty lit now that I think about. I would fly to London for the punch-drunk version of the Wobulus Grinch. It's featuring Ben A Cumberbatch as Grinch reprising the role. Damn, I was wrong. What an asshole am I. I'm so fired up about this green burglar. I wanted to get your heart to grow three sizes too big. And I feel like that's what we did here today.

Now, I will say that I, because of my son, I got about two and a half. hours of sleep last night and I am feeling extremely just pressurable. So you can get me fired up about just about anything on this list. So I can't wait for the hard sell on Ace Combat 8. Wings of Thames. I'm much looking forward to that. Grinch to the holiday of Thav. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the year so far.

My name is Krista Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the year. Ma. He took a huge bond. You guys can't see the video, but Plant took a huge fucking bomb grip. That's a big binger right there from Chris Plant. My name is Ross Frusick. I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to The Besties where we talk with the latest and greatest in home, interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club just by listening. My friend, you have become a member. Maybe you already were a member. Maybe you've been listening for a while. Maybe you're a member of our Patreon. We only ever plug that at the top.

But maybe people turn off this podcast before that they get there. Patreon.com slash the besties. There's so much good stuff waiting for you there. This week, we are not going to be talking about one new game in particular. We're going to be talking about the best games of 2026 so far in the first half and then the second half. What we know is still to come, what we are looking forward to. It's going to be action-packed. I mean, there's so many games to discuss so much to get into, not just The Grinch, too, but like other stuff too.

So stay tuned because we're going to get into it right after this short break. So it's important to remember as we talk about the best games of the year so far that these are indeed our best games of the year so far. This is not the Metacritic list. This is not your daddy's best games of the year. These are the weird besties best games of the year, which honestly might have some dovetailing with some of the Metacritic scores. Some of it, but true to form, there's also some shit that I feel like is not on any of our list that is like pretty hugely like a, like your crimson deserts and what have you. There's definitely some games out there

that a lot of people liked a whole lot more than we did. Yeah. Can we start? There is one game. There's a single game looking at all three of our lists that is on all three of our lists. I believe it's just one game.

And that game is Pocopia. Mm-hmm. This is actually the only game that Plant and I share, which is very exciting. And I, man, that game has aged so well. Well, in my memory, I am so excited for DLC and to dive back into that one. I just, I'm still just absolutely wild about it. I don't play it anymore, but I would like to.

How far did you get into that game? I finished the, like, campaign or whatever. Yeah, I also finished the campaign. I thought it continues to be dynamite. I think my wife has played it more than I have. She continues to play it. They're currently having a Jarachi event right now. Oh, great.

Yeah, the event thing was it, I forget, what the first event was for Skiploom Jumploff, etc. Chirachi, they're bringing out the heavy hitters now but I am also excited they have DLC plan where you go under the water and stuff like that but man

fucking crush that game continues to be the best non-mainline Pokemon game that's ever been made in my opinion I would agree with that wholeheartedly it is also I think a point in its column is that it is probably I think it's the only switch two game that I've played that made me consider getting a second switch to so that

me and Henry could play together. You still haven't done that, right? Didn't bite the bullet on that, no. And probably won't now that they're more expensive, right? I think they might have gone up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, so, but yeah, man, damn, what a good one. What a good, what a great game.

Okay. There's some more overlap for you, Griffin, and Frush. We do have a lot of similarities. We are sympathetic. And I like a lot. These are edge cases for me. So I want to hear some of these. I mean, a big one is

Meena the Hollower. That one is, that one's gonna, I feel like that one's gonna stick with me for a while. Just really fucking exceptional. Torth through it and 100% of it and then wanted more, like wanted more from it,

which is always a great sign. I think if you take nostalgia out of it, it might be better than any 2Ds out the game. I'm not 100% sure of that. Oh, sure. I mean, with Zelda in particular, you kind of can't do that because it's like you're... And it's forged the genre, so you really need to give it flowers for that. I do acknowledge, but it is really fucking good. Jesus.

Yeah. Just an absolute joy to discover and, I don't know, all of its systems are so clever and looks and sounds so amazing. Love me some mean of the hollower. Do we want to put a mixtape on here for both of you? Yeah. How is it stuck with you, you know, with some distance? Is it growing in your heart? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I love a game that I, you know, does not overstay it's welcome, and it doesn't. In fact, no part of the game I think overstays it's welcome. I think it's like, I try not to get too annoyed about the kind of like knee-jerk, like, uh, it's woke bullshit, like that sort of reaction to it. Because, like, I don't know, any criticism that you leverage against it about, like, you know, oh, it's not a real game and, oh, our characters are so annoyed. Like, all of that stuff is so, uh, it seems like only being espoused by people who clearly didn't play the fucking thing, because no part of this game lasts for longer than, like,

two and a half minutes tops. Uh, how, how, like, precious is your attention span that you can't hang for two and a half minutes of, you know, flying around through a forest to a, you know, beautiful song. I don't know. I think it's amazing. It's great. It's great. It does.

And in the best way. Like, it is. Fucking rules. Yeah. And an emotional impact, like, characters I deeply cared about, which is such a rarity. And usually when there are characters that people deeply care about in video games, you had to have played 40 hours of the game before they, like, really started clicking with you.

Yeah. And here, they're getting to that place in 30. minutes. Like, they're getting there so quickly. Just a pitch perfect, like, rendition of this, like, last day of summer, this, you know, right before the end of high school, everyone's about to move. Like, that whole genre is, I don't know, it's, it's incredibly rich. And there's so many different movies that have done this so exceptionally well. And I can't think of a game that has even come close to doing it as well as this.

I think the cynic take for that game was like the, oh, it's Garden State the video game, which honestly couldn't be further from the truth. Yeah. Where I've kind of landed with it is it reminds me of like later years Richard Linklater stuff of the like school of rock variety where it's like it's not quite as subtle as dazed and confused and how it's using music and like talking about teenage life. But it's still great. Like it's it is like almost like a blockbuster teen movie that we just have not.

got had in forever. It gave it, the more I sort of sit with it, it reminds me of like if Michel Gondry had done high fidelity. Like that's great. I like that a lot. That's such a good description. There's just some, it executes what it does so fucking well. And I do, like, I think that on paper it sounds, I don't know.

It sounds like a game that would be annoying. I talked about this when we talked about the game. Like I was not looking forward to this one because I thought like, I don't know, man, that sounds pretty cloying, but I think it just, I think it fucking nailed it. Mix tape would be on my list, but I felt weird having two of kind of in the same zone, even though going about it very different ways games. I have perfect tied station to station, which I know I have sang the praises on the show

a trillion times over, but for real, if you aren't playing this game, please give it a try. This is a game about a young woman who goes to college in Manhattan in the very early 2000s and pursues the life of a writer and all the messy ways that you can do that in college. It's a lot of her working through some truly, well, I would say atrocious boyfriends, but sometimes she's the not very great one. It involves that feeling of reading a book on anarchy or political freedom and philosophy in college and thinking that you have somehow been the person to discover it and not realizing that it's come years, many years before you and many other people have discovered these feelings. It's going to see one of your first big shows and wondering if you are or aren't with the person who you are there with. Are you dating? Are you not?

It's all of these different feelings, and it's also a bit autobiographical in terms of what its creator, Meredith Grand, brought to the piece. I think people can be put off by it in the same way as mixtape by the, oh, wow, this is very sincere and about a point in our lives that we often find uncomfortable and cringe-inducing. I think it can also put off people because it looks like a point-and-click adventure. Do not let those things scare you away. It is a moba. It's actually a moba. It's a hardcore. Pay to win.

Free to play. And it has great costumes. So with that in mind, I think you're going to love the new partnership with the Grinch 2, saving Christmas. Yeah, sure. I need to check this one out. I have not given it. It's due diligence. This is one that I've definitely going to put on the hit list before we get into the real deal deliberations.

It plays well. on your Mac laptop, and that is like a great place to play it. Or it's on Switch 2 now, too, or Switch, I think. Oh, great. Normal. So, you know, I want to hear more about Romeo as a Dead Man, because I think I missed whatever episode. We did arrest these on it. That's where that comes from.

Everything I've seen from this game looks so bat shit. It is definitely the weirdest game I've played this year. Romeo is a Dead Man fucking rocks. Romeo is a Dead Man is the new game from Suda 501. Is that Grasshopper? Yes, Grasshopper. They made games like No More Heroes before this.

They made a lot of like 7 out of 10s. Games where you like the ideas, but maybe the gameplay is too basic or busted or games with really interesting visuals, but then it has like this kind of weird. Oftentimes,

I don't think they set out to be misogynistic, but they accomplished that unintended goal. Romeo was a dead man is a massive course correction. It is about a man who gets his head bitten off by an I believe intergalactic monster. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

That sounds right in my memory. Who then gets his great grandfather who has traveled back in time and is also killed, stitched onto the back of his cool jacket, where he then proceeds to give his grandson advice as they travel through time and dimensions, fighting versions of his girlfriend who may may not be an intergalactic monster. It's fantastic. And I'll just give one scene, just one scene that I cannot get past. You have an entire level where you go to a mall in the 1980s,

and you're just fighting these like random ghouls, collecting various shit, very video-gamy, and there's a boss fight, and it looks like this giant monster. It takes place in the mall atrium. You slaughter it, and then it reduces itself to a man. And what you realize is it is a man who fought, I believe on the Confederate side in the Civil War, horrible racist man who is skipped through time from the Civil War to the 1980s Reagan America to bring all of his ideas there. And you finally get him in your hand. You're holding him above the ground, pawing his face like a basketball, and he's giving his evil speech.

And you can listen to his evil speech about all of his horrible. ideas. Or you can just press A and pop his head like a grape. And that choice to just not even hear the speech that's there. It is available. It is one of the coolest moments I have felt in the video game in a very long time. It is full of stuff like this. It is every second surprising you. And it is a game that just grows on me more and more and more. I think it is one of the most. interesting games of the year. I also think it is one of the most acquired taste possible. It is like just drinking vinegar one moment and cherry soda the next moment. It is, it's something

else. Can I would like, I want to catching up on things that I didn't have a ton of time for. I want to hear about Pragmatta because I think I missed that episode. Oh boy, Griffin. I genuinely think you would really, really enjoy Pragmatum. It feels a lot like a 3D Mega Man. You are a kind of like a dead space looking, kind of like Isaac from Dead Space, but you've got like a little AI, a small girl that rides around on your back,

and she has the ability to hack the various enemies that you're fighting in third person, normal typical combat. I have, I actually haven't beaten this game, but it's a sort of game that I go back to, and I play for like 30 or 40 minutes and have a really fucking good time in that span. cool traversal, cool exploration,

a very satisfying upgrade tree and just like overall structure I thought was really smart and just a really strong art design. You're exploring this spaceship but very much in contrast to like the dead space. And moon. And moon.

Moon colony. Yeah. Yeah, but very much in contrast to the dead space like the griminess of dead space. This is like largely bright and almost welcoming even though obviously there's evil lurking beneath. It's humanist dead space. Because even the Dead Space comparison, the way that the shooting in the game works is you aim at the enemy and then you have to solve this little line puzzle, kind of like snake.

It looks like a slide puzzle. It is not. That's why I approach it. It's very easy. It's very easy. But in the same way that Dead Space makes you slow down and choose the limbs, the whole point is having to balance, oh, I need to slow down to accomplish a supplemental thing or I can rush the shots, which when I'm. am I going to do. Yeah.

No, it's, I think they did. I mean, it looks sick. It's great. I do want to check it out. Does it run a, Capcom has a pretty mixed lineage

when it comes to games running okay on a steam deck or a rock ally X. That's probably the mega- The ally X will definitely run it 100% plan. Did you play on Steam deck? I believe I played on Steam deck. I remember it running well. Yeah. I think those,

both with Resident Evil and that, I think, because they're all under the same engine, it's pretty scalable. I don't know what it is about Monster Hunter that they can't fucking. I mean, much more. ambitious because Mazurr, especially the newest one, was all streamed in, like, crazy open world shit.

So I'm not surprised, but, yeah. I'm torn with Pragata and Resident Evil 9. I have these, like, kind of competing, joccing. Yeah, like, you're the only one to put RE9 on the list. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it. They both have the same problem, and they get to it in different ways. Pragato, much more ambitious, big swing, probably the beginning of a new franchise, and then it falls apart in the end. uh,

Resident Evil 9, uh, you just really play in the hits. This is the greatest hits album. You're getting all of the things that you've loved about Resident Evil and from the eight previous games. And then it falls apart at the end. And I don't know if this is just the forever AAA problem at this point that you run out of budget. I don't know if it is that they know using analytics that most people don't make it past a certain point in the game.

so you should put your weakest stuff there. I can't figure it out. But there is this symptom in these games where the best you can hope for, it feels like what the AAA game is for it to make it 80% of the way. That is a miracle. But asking a game to be 100% or to be edited down just feels impossible. And for that reason, like neither one quite edges the other one out. Yeah. Yeah.

Resident Evil 9 is one that has soured more and more in my mind. The further off I get, the angry, the further I get from it, the angrier I get about sort of that game's shortcomings. Mostly because the gulf, in my opinion, between the beginning or the first half and toward and as it ends. I've had to fully cut the final third of that game from my brain. Yeah. It is how I have come to peace with it because I did love those first two-thirds so much. I have a few on my list that I don't think is going to like hang in the Goody discussion. I mostly just went through my Steam play history for the year

and looked at what I spent the most time with. One of those is Barry, Barry, Barry. Love it. That was an incremental berry farming game. I fucking loved the, you know, few hours that I spent kind of being obsessed with that game. There is another, I don't, I think it's called Project Pit or something like that. That is another incremental pit game.

Pit-based game. All right, sure. So it's a trend. I got to say the Spire 2 on here just because the early access stuff that's out there is so incredible and so good. and I really had to peel myself away from it to stop playing it so that I wouldn't, you know, fully spoil the thing before it was fully out. I would say probably not eligible, in my opinion.

No, it's not, I don't think it's going to be eligible. And I don't think I would place my experience playing this, you know, early access game up there with the best of the best for the year. But, um, God damn. Yeah. Really, really solid. And then the other one, I know you did play, uh, Russ was Mio. Yeah.

Which was a really cool Metroidvania, uh, set on this like very lonely, desolate space station where you're this little kind of AI rabbit type critter who's like trying to figure out what went wrong and there's a bunch of sad robots all around and a bit of a slow burn like a very slow opening which worked for me but I think I'm a weirdo on that side like I like that like you are totally weak and have nothing

and then you slowly get powered up but once it really gets going cool momentum stuff exploration really cool art design through the roof great I went back and finished that as well and I really, really enjoyed my time with it. So definitely worth checking out. I agree that it probably won't make the top goadie list, but definitely worth checking out.

What does have a chance, I think, I mean, it'll definitely be in my top five and where it places. I don't know, we'll see where the cards fall, but Mugenics. Muginx is still one that I like, I'll never uninstall that from my, you know, my, my Rogg.

And it always should, what I'm like on a plane or something and I don't have anything like really pressing to play. It is always the one I'm like, I could get back into Mugenics. But I feel the same way about it that I felt about Isaac, which is like, if I get back into Muginics, I can't dip a toe into those. It's a month. It's going to take me a while to remember what my, you know, my fucking breeding pipeline was looking like and like what objectives I was like shooting for.

There is a free update that is coming and I'm going to be careful. about what I say because I'm not sure how much I can actually say that I think will alleviate the onboarding issues that people might have in terms of jumping back into the game. Okay. So, Well, that is, that is glad. That is what I'm waiting for. I finished it.

I like got the quote true ending. And then I haven't touched it since. I think I, it was like 175 hours. I played so much for me of that game. It was crazy. And I stopped. And then I'm waiting for this update to come out that'll, I think, provide, yeah, even more.

But I think design wise, unquestionably, I've not played... The sandbox is fucking crazy. I don't, like, I've not played a more ambitious design game in that. It's been so long. So rewarding to play a game like this with like a sandbox, this robust where you can tell, oh, this is, this is why it took so long to make this. Like, you can feel the, you can feel the hours that went into the thing and like, wow, I bet that was really hard to solve for.

I could not at a million, billion years like come up with anything, you remotely this like interesting it's it's really uh just an artistic achievement uh well it's a creative achievement artistically it still does very little for me but i could play this game for fucking hours the music is spectacular the cats could just look like little squares like little different colored squares uh for for all i care um i got one more on my list uh and this one was a huge surprise for me which was uh the the the final dc for diablo four lord of hatred uh which i which i I got back into... Wait, did you say final?

I'm pretty sure it's the final. Have they said that? I don't know, man. When you look at the list, when you're like choosing where to hop into the story, it just shows you the three kind of like story arcs. It feels very fine. Sure, okay.

I will say it really... And it's the thing that I like to... You finally fuck Diablo. That's what you win. You fuck Diablo and you have a half-deman baby, and his name is Alukar. So handsome. Oh, he's so cool.

No, his name would be Oliab. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, it's really striking because I got back into it and I loved sort of all the changes that they've made to kind of the core game, even like not counting the DLC, just like the game itself is a lot more rewarding and fun and dynamic to play. But then I loved the story of this DLC and it made me go back and play the second DLC, the vessel of hatred, which I didn't like. And then I played it and I still don't like it. I think it was pretty bad. From like a story perspective, it was like kind of.

a huge nothing burger where not a lot of interesting stuff happen and this one takes huge fucking swings from minute one and like does not let up um and it is like i don't know it's the most invested i've gotten into diablo uh i don't know as a as a story thing definitely ever um but i've also just really enjoyed kind of dipping into it it is the perfect exercise bike game for me now where i do you play with controller or mouse and keyboard i play a controller it's great on controller Yeah, it's fantastic. There's a new season starting, I think, here in a few days.

I kind of fell off after finishing the going back and doing the second DLC, but I got a couple of buddies who play, and I'm looking forward to hopping back in. It's like, it's nice to have a social game now that, you know, Destiny 2 is not going to, you know, being alive for much. It's hard to say. It's hard to address. Good segue. To Chris Plant's one of Chris Flats' pick. Oh, yeah. You're going to do it, right?

Yeah, everybody's going to hop on that marathon train now. I mean, I played it. I know that you, and it's probably been growing in your heart. You've been thinking. I did the duo lingo where I learned the language that is marathon. So I've been there. I've been through it. Yeah, I took two years of marathon in high school, but I am not at all fluent.

That's fair. You know, I've really dedicated myself to it. Marathon absolutely rocks. I mean, I can say all the same things I've said before. single-player, a roguelike shooter that happens to be in multiplayer, a game that encourages you to be... That's an insane

sentence. That is a crazy sense. It is structured. That is how it is structured. You can play it like a shooter roguelike that just happens to have a whole bunch of absolutely merciless assholes running around. I think it has really struck a chord with people

who don't normally play these games because it is so transparent. about the morality of the world that you are in. When you expect everyone to be predator and you to be prey, it just is, it's honest in a way. And that sounds almost cynical, but I find it like a very zen-like game to play,

which is weird considering how hardcore it can be at the same time. I love this game, and I don't know how I or Bungy, that's not my problem, we'll convince more and more people to play it because I think it is kind of like you either want to play these sorts of games or you don't. And I think the challenge that they're running into now is how do we adapt this to bring in a larger audience? And how do we do that on a set amount of time? I don't want to get sucked in. We could talk about that for the whole episode. And I want to make sure we leave time for the rest of the year stuff. But can you guys give me the sell on titanium. Oh, Griffin. I got this bad boy installed, and I, I turned it on

once, and then I was like, this seems like it's going to be a lot. Griffin, you would love titanium court. Specifically, the writing of titanium court is, I think, very much in line with your tone. The aesthetic is fucking stellar. I'm really, really, really deeply into that. But I, I don't know, I played it for like 15 minutes, which was obviously not a fair shake. You will not know what the fuck is going on for probably 30-ish, maybe 45 minutes. But that's okay, because you're just enjoying like the narrative and the art and just vibe with it and then it will start clicking and I think you would absolutely love it. The thing, just as a reminder for people that aren't aware, Titanium Court is a match three

tower defense game with a graphic novel storyline where you've been transported into like a realm of fairies that hate one another and you're fighting with other fairies and I don't know, man, it's really hard to pitch this game. but it's incredibly funny and well done and I am personally to spend more time with it I am personally hoping and waiting it comes to a mobile device because I think it's another thing

yeah but I would not I think you can wait just a little while longer Griffin I have a feeling that you will be able to play it on mobile quite if I could put this on my iPad yeah I would get fucking totally done I feel like you know something and you're not telling us I don't remember I know actually that's why I'm being cautious I did a meow in Mugenics, so now I did the skip directly about the upcoming updates.

Let's take a quick break and a good, good for weird list. Like looking at these games, this is fucking crazy actually. I'm looking at this list and it's a really wild collection of games. I don't think I would have spotted a lot of these as being like contenders for me. But it's been a cool year and there's a lot of great stuff to come. So let's take a break and then we'll dive into that. Should we just kind of go month by? month and sort of shout out what's what's moving us because there's like 40 games here and I don't

know if we are going to be able to do. Yeah, there's a ton of games and I do think we can be pretty light on each of them. One thing I would ask is how likely is it that some of these games are going to make our final list? And we could be dead wrong. That's fair. Yeah, that's a good question. But it'd be interesting to explore that as we go because yeah, it's a lot of games. I don't know if it'll make the list. I am so excited for Spletoon Raiders. This is an extremely, timely one for me. Henry has been reading nonstop Nintendo manga and got into Splatoon

through that. We played Splatoon 3 afterwards and got into the side order roguelike DLC, which is really fucking fun. This might be one that makes me get another switch too if we get a super dug into it because this is like a rogue like progressive sort of

multiplayer based thing, not competitive, but like cooperative, sort of like the salmon run mode, which I really enjoyed from past Spatoon games. Yeah, I watched some gameplay of it and it looks very, very different from normal Spatoon, which is encouraging to me because I've never really gotten into it. I am curious. It's what I really liked about side order is like the gameplay of Spiltoon is so fun, but like the hooks were never quite there for me. I didn't give a shit about buying new clothes

and stuff, but having, you know, you're getting all these different upgrades that are sort of like permanently unlocking more options and stuff for you to take into matches. I don't know. It just, it looks, it looks rad. It looks really good. 100%. Um, the game that's jumping out to me and in terms of this list. Well, again, there are some strong candidates. I don't know that they're like goatee candidates, but like... That's July 23, by the way.

We should shout those out where we can. We have two weeks in a row of Nintendo games coming out, which is kind of crazy, exclusive Nintendo games. Star Fox comes out basically when this episode drops. We haven't played it yet, but I'm incredibly excited about Star Fox. I love Star Fox 64. And so seeing like an updated version of that, very exciting. And that's followed up immediately thereafter by Rhythm Heaven Groove.

I don't know how long it's been since a Rhythm Having game, but I fucking love those games. Oh my God. That's crazy. 11 years. I love those games. So I'm very, very excited for... Yeah, Rhythm Having Groove.

I loved what they showed in the last direct, like all the different kind of like multiplayer kind of like mini game style modes. It looks like a hoot. I have a week of chaos. At the beginning of August, we have Fields of Mysterias full release. That's the 1.0 release, crazy. Can't fucking wait. I think the only game that I've ever.

played that was like this might be better than Starry Valley. Yeah, dude. Yeah. It looks fantastic. I don't know about all that. That's crazy. It's getting there. It's getting there.

That's August 3rd. August 4th, Beast of Reincarnation. I don't know what that's the. That's the game freak. Yep. Game Freaks huge swing AAA action RPG video game. Princess Monanoque ass. What?

Yep. Yeah. It looks wild. Watch it. Watch a trailer for it. I almost wish we hadn't told you who made it. Because if you watch a trailer for it, you're like, oh, well, this looks like crazy. It looks like a Sony Santa Monica game.

It looks like Blackmunth Woo Kong. It looks like any kind of like character action game. Is this Game Freak? Highly polished type shit. But Game Freak making it. Oh, my God. So weird. The same day, Big Walk comes out.

Oh, I'm very excited for Big Walk. Big Walk is so, so interesting to me. That's like the multiplayer sort of hiking game. Yes. It's made by House House, the people who made Untitled Goose game. An Untitled Goose game, a huge hit in 2019. benefits, well, I don't want to say benefits. It finds success during the pandemic.

Let's put it that way. As more people are playing video games, the weird thing about Big Walk is they announced this in December 2020, 3. People are like, wow, what is this game? There's not really clear purpose and you're just like four friends, kind of solving puzzles, wandering around, chatting. And then over the following years, friend slop becomes an entire subgenre. So the thing this thing.

For the same. For people that aren't aware that aren't plugged in are repose. Multiplayer, goofy multiplayer games that people play on streams and things like that. Yes. So this studio that was kind of like the upstart now has become the, oh, we were making a really polished game and a whole bunch of people made, not ripping it off at all, but made versions of this thing before our thing actually came out. And I think what will be interesting about this game is how do people feel about really polished

friend slop. And I say that as a term that I like friend slop. I think it's a great term. I think it's a kindness. I also haven't seen this. Parentheses, complimentary.

Yes. I also haven't seen this kind of friend swap where the idea, it's not like climb a mountain necessarily. It's like,

it's a weird, like exploration, like treasure map kind of game. Yeah. Is my read of it. I was seen a clip where somebody fell in a pit and they had to then

acquire a bullhorn to be able to let people know that they had fallen in the pit. That's so fucking cool, which is great. Yeah, the means of like communicating via sima four like at a distance. It looks great. Yeah. Um, and then the last thing for that week I'll just add really quickly is Marvel Tocone fighting souls. It would not be a summer in video games if at least one fighting game didn't come out that made me think this is going to be the one that gets me into fighting games. Yeah. Sure. I'll buy a fight stick. That's when it gets you really good. When Marvel versus Capcom 3 came out, I was like, this is it. I'm getting a

fucking one of those, what are they called, hoary fighting sticks, and then I played it for like an hour and got my ass destroyed. It was like, oh, that's right. I still suck shit at these. I'm going to talk about EverQuest legends

during the honorable mentions this week to be of time for that. But that's out on July 28. I just saw on the list. I wanted to shout it out. I would say the next one on here that I am very much looking forward to skipping forward just a little bit

as the new fire emblem. Yeah, man. Fortune's weave. I was looking forward to it before this last Nintendo direct and after this Nintendo Direct, I don't know, man, it looks so much like three houses. Have they confirmed time babies?

What's that? Are there time babies in this one? I don't know if there's time babies in this one. But Three Houses is, I think, my favorite of this entire franchise. And it looks like this shares a lot of its sort of DNA. And I don't know. I think it literally shares the world. I think it's set in the same world as Three Houses, actually.

Oh, I didn't clock that. Maybe not the same time period, but. Stop highlighting the grandkids. Grinch Two saving Christmas. What? Stop it. Whoever's in the Google Doc highlighting the Grinch Two

saving Christmas. So next up, I actually wanted to pick this game. The Grinch Two Saving Christmas. What by from is the coming out of? Jump through snowy 3D worlds collecting ornaments to make your tree smirkle brighter with every step.

Yeah. If you make me late for my son's orthodontist appointment because you took too much time talking about the Grinch two saving Christmas, I'll never forget you. Is anyone, is anyone looking forward to Marvel's Wolverine? I am.

I think I'm going to have a very, very, very good time playing that game. That's a very talented studio making that game. Yes. And I want to see what that studio, which has basically been making open world games for a very long time, can do with like a very linear action heavy uncharted kind of vibe. So I'm very curious. It is not... Everything I've seen from it does absolutely nothing for it. Like I am, it's astonishing to me how much it is this like, well, this is going to be the big, like first party sort of Sony jam of the year. And it's like this, this is, not that it looks bad. It's just, I don't know, it does not seem like it fits that particular bill.

I just want to see how it curveballs. Like, I need more of a curveball than just, oh, you're fighting melee, but you've got knife hands. Like, I need more than that. And I need more than, hey, it looks amazing, which I'm sure it does. So I would set expectations to what you saw in the trailer. Okay, great. Yeah. I think that's probably a reasonable place to set it.

You can keep that. What are you basing that on? I'm basing that on everything. that has been talked about this game. It is an action game that is aspiring to be a go from stage to stage cutting things up.

Yeah. And I love that, but I don't know. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I'm not going to die on this hill. I just, I don't know, has done nothing for me.

I will tell you the game that I will drop everything to start playing, and that is Control Resident. Okay. I fucking love remedy stuff. It's so weird.

And I adored the first control game, although I had critiques, specifically in the upgrade system and all, meta stuff. But in terms of art design, universe, just overall vibe, I was so fucking in, and I loved Alan Wake 2, and the studio keeps throwing curveballs. I don't know for sure that there won't be a moment

in this third-person action game, where it doesn't just jump into being like a fucking, I don't know, team-based mobo or whatever. Like, you just don't know what they're going to throw at you because that studio is so weird. So I'm incredibly excited. It looks super fun. that's September of 24th.

Do you think they're the same character? Do you think they're actually not your brother and sister that they're actually just one person? Whoa, heavy. It could be. You never know. Hey, I'm also really looking forward to Minecraft Dungeons too. Oh, yeah.

Wildly out of left field, but Henry and I loved Minecraft Dungeons. We played that one a lot. It is an extremely clever kind of, you know, take on the ARPG Diablo style format. There are a lot of things that Minecraft Dungeons one does, in my opinion, quite a bit better than Diablo for it. And I think that it is easy to conflate this with the like Dave and Buster's arcade game of Minecraft. I didn't know that existed. There is.

And it's called the same thing. And it's like it does a whole thing with like you can print out cards when you like buy credits in the game. And then you can scan those cards in to like get past that the actual one is play the actual one. I'm sure it's pretty cheap. The actual one is just a Diablo one. But like had really clever stuff where you're finding gear and there's like three different like. gear slots that basically choose your abilities for you. And it's all like, you know, Minecraft coded, but just like really, really, really great progression and customization.

And fun physics where like shit just like flies all over the place and that. And also like accessible so that a nine year old can play it. But also like crunchy enough that a 39 year old could like get get pretty invested in it. So yeah, if this one lives up to it, I'm looking forward to it. Y'all, everything we've discussed so far plus Silent Hill, Townfall and Oni Musha is the back half of September. Then there is the October gauntlet, which we're going to get into. I was of the belief that people were not in their right mind avoiding Grand Theft Auto entirely, which is going to drop in November. And now I think I can't.

The number of games that are like, let me just get it here. There are not many. Let me just get in here real quick. We're recording this the same day that the first like big batch of, oh, the price of Grand Theft Auto was announced, along with a ton of screenshots. and the degree to which that consumed everything on my social media feed. And people being like, you know what, actually, I think I do like Grand Theft Auto. You know what? I think I'm going to go back and play Grand Theft Auto 5.

Yeah. Has me thinking it really is going to be all consuming in that way. I have no doubt. And that it is wise to dodge it. But with all that said, October. What is the price? $80 for a download key. All right.

I mean, and they're going to sell it. Or $100 with bonus. Oh, the second I saw it, I saw those new costumes and I was like, yeah, I'll drop $100. That looks pretty sick. What are you going to make time for in October because there's a million games coming out? October, easy pick in October, and I'm sure Griffin is with me on this. Castlevania Belmont's curse. This is the game coming from the Dead Cells team, but it is a full-on 2D, Castlevania, Metroidvania,

a search action game looks fucking stellar. Looks so sick. I am so in for it. I have such high hopes for it. So I think that one's going to rock. Rayman Legends, retold. Adore Rayman Legends. One of my favorite kind of platformers of the,

I think I played it on Wii U with my wife and had a great time with it. Just a really, really solid kind of physically multiplayer-based platformer with lots of stuff to find and lots of really cool kind of specialty levels where, you know, you're running to the beat of a song now, or you're like, you know, it just throws a lot of stuff at you and it's just so competent and so fun. So I'm looking forward to diving into that one. Before Chris Plan talks about Ace Combat 8 Wings of Thave, I just want to call out Star Wars Galactic Racer, which I saw at SGF, and is probably the closest I've seen to a burnout game, maybe since burnout. It looked, I saw a video for this today, this morning of a pod race,

and it looks so good. It looks so fun and good. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to that one. It also resembles Motorstorm and Onrush, too. It's kind of like a dream combo of those games. Also, apparently, it has an entire story about Subalba. So, you know, that alone. Speaking of great story is Ace Combat, Wings of a Thev, thank you for setting me up, Frush. The beginning of the game, as far as I can tell, is you are co-piloting with just Tom Cruise in Top Gun, who then

proceeds to kick the bucket. And then I think is somehow spiritually trapped inside of your head and is now your co-pilot. Video games rock. And this series is finally going to have its moment. And I am so excited. The only thing I think as a way to wrap this up, the only thing that is not on this list, but it is notable to call out because it does not have a date yet is the Okrena of Time remake. Because they have said it is coming out in 2020. but they have not given a date.

So we would imagine it's going to come out sometime in this obviously fall period, but something to keep in mind. Yeah. I mean, I'll also call out Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Hell yeah. I really, really like the Wii Sports Resort, and the vibe of that game was really rock solid, and it seems like they're going to recapture that quite nicely here.

I don't like swinging around the JoyCon 2s as much as I enjoyed swinging around a Wii mode. Sure. But, you know, I bet it's going to be fun. Should we do some reader? Obviously, we didn't cover everything. This does not comprehend. These are just some of stuff that jumped out at us. It's a good list.

It's going to be a good year. I'm very excited. We do have some reader mail. We can go through it pretty quickly. I did last week ask for recommendations for action RPGs that I might get into, given the fact that I liked kind of what Adventures of Elliot was doing, but needed a little bit more. Brian wrote in to recommend Alabaster Dawn.

It is a pinnacle top-down RPG, and pretty much all he was thinking while he was playing Elliot was that he'd rather be playing Alabaster Dawn, which is an early access still, but it is half the price of Elliot, so that's a good sign. So I'm going to check that out. I haven't played it yet. Yeah, it just came out in May. Yeah, I might check this out too. It looks fun. Another one, Smales, wrote in to recommend Sea of Stars, which I have indeed played C of Stars. I liked it, but I was not immediately grabbed by it.

I think if I played more, it probably would have grabbed me, but I didn't necessarily have the attention span beyond, like, the first six or seven hours. But I liked what he was doing. I thought it was good. And then the last one comes from Spencer. You all need to play Tombwater. It's a great little indie darling. Eldritch Horror meets Zelda with great exploration and power curve.

It comes in with bolt-in accessibility features that meet you where you want to play, which is great. Love that. That sounds cool. Oh, God. Sorry, Steam just auto played a trailer for it, and it's scary. It scared me. The sounds were scary. But yeah, this looks cool.

Should we jump into honorable mentions? Hell yeah, dude. Okay, EverQuest Legends. Let me just talk about it. Let me just get this off my chest. Our whole family played EverQuest growing up back in like the dial-up era. Pretty early adopters. My brother, Justin, played it.

You may know him from the besties. Played with like his college buddies. And so it was like on our computer. and I got sort of hopelessly into it, even though it was way too hard for me to like understand. I just loved kind of poking around in that world and not really playing it in the correct manner, despite the fact that I didn't know what I was doing. I still got really, really deeply sunk into it. EverQuest Legends is a sort of re, a new take on EverQuest.

It looks and feels very much like that classic EverQuest thing. It is not sort of like a spit shine EverQuest two style type thing. Like it looks and feels a lot like the original EverQuest. I mean, are they basically doing what they did with Wow Classic, but for EverQuest? No. So Wow Classic is basically like, okay, we're going to make it feel like you are playing World of Warcraft back when it launched, right? And there's some, like, quality of life stuff that they adopted. But for the most part, like it's a pretty traditional, pretty faithful thing.

EverQuest Legends is what if they made EverQuest for dads? It is EverQuest for dads. It's EverQuest for dads who are in their 40s and don't have time to, you know, you know, fucking sink eight hours, uh, farming lower guck to try and like get drops for it. So it, there,

it does a few things to make it a little bit more accessible. They've tuned up like the, um, uh, you know, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, stuff to make that go a little bit faster. The big thing that it does that I think is so fucking cool. EverQuest was a game that basically,

it was hard and it necessitated groups. It was almost impossible to play this thing solo. There were maybe a couple classes where you could squeak by, but it was really designed to be played in groups. groups. And just by virtue of that, there was a sort of habit that formed around the hardcore players of it called multi-boxing, where you would either have three different accounts all running at the same time on your computer or three different computers playing three different characters that you could party up together that could play together, right? Insane, right? But it was a way

that people found of playing the game and having it sort of be on their turn. What EverQuest Legends does is when you make your character, you pick like your race and your primary class, but then you also pick a secondary class and you get access to like everything that it does and then once you reach level 10 you get to add a third class into the mix so the character that you have like the power fantasy is uh is really really insane because you can make a character who you know can have the the heels from the cleric class and the like charms of uh like the enchanter class uh but then can also like tank stuff as a warrior as a paladin like and and there's 16 different classes i think in the game at launch and the amount of kind of like theory crafting going on around like,

wow, okay, so if you can make a party in one character, like what kind of crazy combos can you come up with? That is already like a really, really rich vein to kind of dive into that makes the game a lot more accessible to play solo. There's other stuff too, like there's difficulty levels. So you can just change the difficulty level that you're playing out and it puts you in like a different server. You can have private instanced versions of every zone in the area if you don't want to, like, fight for, you know, mobs against other, other players. There's just, like, a million little things that it does that are so clever and are all truly designed to make it be an experience that feels very much like EverQuest, but is just a lot more approachable

from someone who does not have as much time on their hands, who, you know, maybe wants to play it solo sometimes, but can play it with friends too, and wants to have, like, a power fantasy of like a character who can kind of like do it all. It also does the Final Fantasy 14 thing where you can like switch those classes at will whenever you want to and just have like one character that you're like unlocking all this different stuff and like leveling up all these different classes. But yeah, I've been playing the closed beta. The open beta for pre-orders starts July 1st and then the game launches July 28th.

And I just, I can't wait, man. It's been really fun to come back to that world as an adult and have it be so tailored for kind of where I am at in my life. That's a good pitch. I went in expecting to just not care at all, but that is a very good pitch. I don't know how much it's going to land if you didn't play. Yeah, sure. Right.

Like, it is hard for me not to be the most nostalgic about this thing that I adored when I was too young to really understand it. Now that I can understand it, it's, like, cool to circle back to it and have this, like, really approachable version of it. It's interesting just to hear about a version that's approachable and seems to respect your time to some degree, considering the legacy of EverQuest. at that time was this will devour every part of your life. I think you can still definitely play it that way if you want to. I have spent a lot of time watching EverQuest YouTubers, like, about their builds and, like, the different stuff they figured out how to do with the hybrid class system. And, like, these are channels with, like, you know, these videos have, like, 400 views on it.

Like, this is not, like, a, I don't know, a community that has stayed huge and robust through the years as other MMOs. like, wow, specifically, I've come around and eaten its fucking lunch completely. So, like, the people kind of coming back to it are very much, I don't know, I feel a kinship with them. We're like, I have kids now. I can't fuck around with this thing like I used to. What should I do? And I don't know, it feels like this has revitalized this ancient sort of civilization in a way that I, I don't know, I think is sort of, you know, sociologically interesting at the very least. But I've also, I've really been having fun with it. Cool.

I will give a blueprints update. We are in this point where the game is narrowing, which is to say we are running out of some threads to pull, which is making runs a little more challenging. That being said, just last night, we opened the safe in the office, and it was the greatest moment of my fucking life. Good, good stuff.

Love that stuff. Just having that moment, because we've tried 1,000 different codes in that fucking office safe, and just having that moment of finally being like, what if, oh! And trying it and having it open was like just like utmost fantastic celebration. So still hanging in. We've still got a few more threads,

a few more candles to light, if you will. But we are, it's getting to be a harder game than it was, I think, several days ago. Have you done, I promised not to spoil anything, because it's pretty pretty, pretty, I don't know, not hidden stuff, but like, have you done the chess kind of puzzly stuff, like the chest pieces? Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah.

That is relatively recently, just out of, but yes, we have done that with the chess pieces. The stuff you can crack into with that, I don't know. That is what they really. Yeah, it did seem to open a lot of possibilities as well, those things that you unlock. So that is very exciting. It's great. It's great. Yeah.

Plan it? I am still playing Persona 3. load and I am now fully obsessed with this game. I am, I guess, two bosses in. I have done midterms or whatever. I am in the game. What I am so impressed about this entry, more so than even Persona 4 and certainly of Persona 5, is it gets you into the game loop so fast compared to those games.

You are going out adventure. choosing what fun stuff to do, fusing personas all within the first five or so hours, maybe even faster, which I understand five hours is not, it's not fast, but compared to persona five, it just feels so much more open-ended. It feels like every day you have at least two or maybe even three moments of choosing what to do with your time. And yeah, it is, it is something else. I've heard that it has a long and protracted end game. So I'm a little worried about that in terms of me committing to it. But having it on that Thor and being able to just snap the screen shut and throw it in my bag and pick at it in between errands is a game changer.

And also it just feels comfortable to play in bed because it doesn't weigh a lot. You have enticed me. I didn't play a ton of Persona 3 reload. and you have made me want to circle back to it, but I'm also now, like, running the math on, like, okay, persona four revival comes out in, like, eight months. Is that going to, am I going to be able to finish this thing fast enough where I'm not going to be so burn out on persona by the time that comes out?

Because I don't want to split. I'm probably too scared to spoil that. Yeah. I am curious. The other thing that's just so great about it is having finished metaphorie Fantasio and now fully finished one of these games. It is like a Souls game or a Monster Hunter. Once you have seen the end of one,

you are so much better at playing and enjoying the games. And it feels like the secret language has been unlocked. I can't fucking wait for revival to come. I can't wait for people to play that game with like, so good. Actually fun, like RPG systems that they've figured out how to do in the last, you know, 15 years or however long ago that one came out. Okay.

I think we did it. Wow, that was a lot to cover. We have a new episode of the Resties that it's up. We dove into a bunch of other Steam Next Fest demos. So you can check that out on the Patreon. If you're a subscriber, it's patreon.com slash the besties. We have some new subscribers that I want to call out. We have Meg and G.

We have Eric R. We have Matthew D. And Doug H. Thank you for being subscribers. And thank you to everyone else for being subscribers. Chris Plant, do you want to recap everything we've talked about? Absolutely not. go read about that on besties dot fan but i will say the honorable mention i mean of the hollow

mugenics mixtape diablo four uh fucking pragmata titanium court perfect tides romeoes a dead man uh uh uh a rhythm heaven groove star fox platoon raiders fields of mystery a beast of reincarnation big walk marvel tocon fighting souls marvel's wolverine fire and love fortunes weave the grinch two saving christmas control resident minecraft dungeons two rayman legends retold ace combat eight wings of VEV. Star Wars Galactic Racer, Castlevania Belmont's curse, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, Ocarative Time Remake, Granthrift 06, EverQuest Legends, Pursona 3 Relo, Blueprints. Holy fuck. Well done.

Coward. Anyway, you can go read about all those on besties. Fan. It's a free newsletter available to you right now. It's Star Fox is next week. We're going to meet back up with Slippy and Peppy and Falco in the game. We're going to get nasty on the area. That's so good. Please join us.

Please join us again. mount up in our wing force and we'll do the damn thing next time on the besties so join us for that won't you because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games besties besties