The Besties - Everything We Loved from Summer Game Fest

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

We watched all of the Summer Game Festival events and curated the upcoming releases that we think you’ll enjoy! Plus, Frushtick and Plante attended SGF Play Days in Los Angeles and went hands-on with tons of games, from the new Tomb Raider to Stranger Than Heaven. Was this episode recorded alongside Nintendo’s big announcement? Were we struggling to retain control of our brains? Yes and yes. 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!

This is a first, and it takes me back to my roots, gang. It takes you back to the joystick days where Nintendo doesn't tell anyone when they're going to announce all their shit. And so sometimes they do it right during the only scheduled recording time that we have for the besties. And so we're, I mean, the Nintendo Direct is happening right now as we're. Yeah, I told Griffin that I could not multitask and speak and also keep an eye on whether they're releasing, I don't know, banana guys. seven, so you're going to have to tell me, Griffin, if anything, noteworthy. No, I mean, I can do, like, Hello Kitty Party Land just announced October 29, 2026, like, be there.

I'm going to have it on in the background. So, like, if we're talking about other shit and you hear me get distracted, is because I'm watching an adult man do virtual thumb wrestling for 10 straight minutes in the newly announced Wii Sports Resort for Switch 2. But, like, yeah, I mean, live blogging guys, it's back in a big way and it's happening here at the besties. This is the way to do it too, you know? Like, you live stream by watching it, recording it, and then releasing it like three or four days later once everybody else's had a chance, you know?

Yeah. To get a bite of the pie. I am so... Do we know what Star Fox is coming out June 25th? I'll just keep this shit updated it in real time. This is going to be a fucking mess, guys. We're going to crush it. My name is Griffin McRoy.

I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. Nintendo just announced a new Murrow. Ramosa and I am levitating. My name is Ross Frasic. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the best news where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It is a game of the year club. And just by listening, you're a member this week. We've got news, news, news. It's freaking hard to follow all this stuff now that E3 has been gone for a decade. And so we're going to do sort of the hard work for you, the work that I wish we had someone to do for us,

which is we're going to be talking about the stuff that. that happen at Summer Game Fest, the stuff that happened at the Xbox event that probably has like a cool name that I don't know. We're going to be talking about the PC Gamer Showcase. We're going to be talking about this Nintendo Direct that is happening right now, right this second. And we're going to be wrapping up all that stuff. It's just a new Final Fantasy. And I can see Griffin's eyes just like, why am I here? I mean, it's Final Fantasy Resonance. It's, you know, it's a all Final Fantasy worlds combining. I think it's an iOS game that they're bringing to Switch to. I don't know.

It's going to be rough and ready this episode. But that's the only way we know how to do it. Russ and Chris were live at some of these events. I'm so fucking tired. I'm so jet-lagged. I can't wait. It's going to be a tired, shaggy episode of the besties as we catch you up on everything that's coming up for the rest of the year. So we'll be talking more about that right after this.

Where are we starting? Okay. I'm looking at this list. An I see Final Fantasy Revelation at the top. Somebody tell me how that happened. What's going on here? It's not chronological. I just thought that was the biggest announcement

that happened during SGF proper. I'm not saying chronological. I'm saying I thought y'all were down on the last Final Fantasy 7. Down like cool or down like... No, not like like, ooh. They could pull it back. They could pull it back.

You know. They could always... Yeah, sure. We had rebirth. We had remake, right? Shit, wait, what was the second one called? No, the second one was rebirth. The first one was remake.

Remake rebirth. And now Reveolation. Right, revalation. Following the pattern. Yeah, I mean, this is. In some ways, it's the biggest news, I would say, of Summer Game Fest. They announced the final part of the Final Fantasy 7 sort of remake trilogy.

Everybody knew it was coming, but we didn't know the name of it, and we didn't know when it was coming. Yeah. So it is called Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. The sort of trailer was very focused on what I would call the sort of disc two, three content of Final Fantasy 7, which is the great weapons.

The Ruby weapon, the Emerald weapon. And also a handsome vampire. A handsome vampire. Yes, by the way, name of Vincent Valentine. Yeah, I mean, it looks cool. I really was pretty turned off by the multiple timeline stuff that Final Fantasy 7 rebirth did. But I don't know. Okay.

But let me ask you this. I feel compelled to check it to give it another shot because I do. I mean, I love it. For argument's sake, if it wasn't for the multiple timeline stuff. Yeah. I mean, for me, what turned me off of Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy, the second one was just the like, I have to chase a fucking Mughal around a tree.

The open world nature of it, I feel like, was not great. But this one does have airships, and you can fucking jump off the airships and do like a Fortnite thing. Yeah, that's pretty same. Like, maybe they just kept going in that direction, and they're like, no, you will eventually.

We will get on the same page here. If we just go more and more and more open world. We will catch that Mughal eventually. Hey, what's not, I'm not opposed to it being open world, I'm opposed to the open world stuff being like, I don't know, the same four things over and over again and not, I don't know, not really. That stuff was not my favorite. It was the multiple timeline shit that really kind of, the way that they handled the big

thing that happens in Final Fantasy 7 at the end of disc one, I found to be kind of, I don't know, cowardly, I guess. But I will definitely be anticipating this one, because, you know, it's a It looks fun. It does look fun. It looks fun. Hey, they're remaking Resident Evil Code Veronica, which, as with so many of these things, we've known vaguely, they're going to do it. And the question was, how?

Because Resident Evil Code Veronica, the one that most people didn't play, because it was limited to the Sega Dreamcast at first, it is also someone with things that are not great in terms of how it represents its character. I don't actually know even what that is in reference to. I don't know anything about Code Veronica. I am not going to get into it here. Okay, cool. But what I will say about it is that it looks like they're using this almost like a chance to do an entirely new Resident Evil game. Okay. Which is in line with some of the things I have heard about this game.

The trailer that they showed looks closer to the kind of Resident Evil. seven, eight sort of stuff. There's like first person you're going through a like spooky apartment with an old woman. She seems so nice, which is exactly how you know that you can't trust her. She's French. So that's really the tip off right there. Yes. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I am very, very excited about this. They have all, you know, been picking at this idea of like how far can we take these remakes? I think Resident Evil Four has been like. like the furthest extension of that. And unlike 4 and 2 and to some degree 3, they really do have a lot of permission to go as far as they want with this one.

So I am very excited. Yeah, it is the team that worked on Resident Evil 2 remake and Resident Evil 4 remake. So arguably those are the best ones. Yes, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. We're kind of hopping around here between sort of stuff announced at the Summer Game Fest. The Resident Evil or the Final Fantasy thing was the Summer Game Fest. For my money, I thought the Xbox showcase was pretty shit hot. Griffin loves his green consoles that you can see. I don't even know where my green console is right now. So that is

definitely not it. I do love that like the big thing that Xbox kind of started out with was like, guess what, guys, exclusives are back. And it, to me, I felt like, oh, that's bad. I don't give a shit about like we're gonna make you pay nearly a thousand dollars for our video game console do you want to play gears of war e day well then find your xbox oh it is on pc too so sure yeah i guess that is that is the one benefit that you do get with the uh with with the xbox side of things but uh spiro is also coming back with a new adventure spyro around beyond uh which i don't i didn't anticipate i guess i didn't know that xbox would be the the stewards of spiret of spiret of moving forwards.

Yeah, I don't know. Is Spiro fully exclusive? It's owned by Activision. That's why it's confusing. It was a PlayStation game. And Toys for Bob. Toys for Bob. Let's thank you so much.

Put some respect on Toys for Bob's name. No, I mean, it looks fun. It looks, it's weird to see Spiro moving around that fast with that many, you know, pixels and polygons happening for him. Very excited for Spyro. Apparently the remakes that they released, they had like a trilogy of the remakes. and those did very well, and that was justification for why he was going to get his full-on moment in the sun. Yeah, excited for that.

How did you feel about the persona kind of double announcements? Yeah, so, I mean, the persona thing, we got a double-headed during the Xbox thing. The big one was, for me, persona 4 revival. They showed off a lot, a lot, a lot of gameplay footage of that, which is great because they needed to, because the way they revealed that game was like a total nothing burger. Now we get footage of, you know, running around Inaba. We get footage of the battles, which look extremely persona fivey. Yeah.

Yeah, what do you see as though, like as someone who's coming at it didn't play very much before, apart from the visuals, what do you see as the biggest differentiator here? There's a ton. I mean, there's a lot of I adore persona four golden, but five and five royal interests. so many like incredible quality of life. Yeah. Things that make that game a little bit difficult to go back to, right? You have things like the baton pass system, which opens up a lot of doors for how, you know,

persona does it's like one more turn, hit the weak point combat. They've added a lot of stuff to that. Delta Room Chapter 5 dropping June 24th. Thank you, Griffin. To the Nintendo Switch press conference. Oh, and fucking, oh, metaphor refund on too. Griffin is plugged into the matrix. we're recording this.

Guys, I'm fucking like, I've got, I'm like the alien secretary in men in black, just like, brittip, but, but, yeah. Anyway, it looks incredible. It looks so good. Persona Four Revival does. The, like, stylish, like, all-out combat scenes.

Like, I'm so stoked. This is exactly what I want. And we got a release date, which is February, February 18th, 2027. And it's coming to, you know, PC and Xbox. and PlayStation 5.

So I cannot wait for that. February's going to be a fucking... Yeah. Just a... Q1 in general, because... Changer than Heaven is a January release and then February has a bunch of shit.

Yeah, it's good. I think all these games are like, oh, no, GTA. Let's get the fuck out of it. That is exactly what happened is all these games are getting out of the way at GTA 6. But then during just the Xbox press conference,

like there were a ton of huge ass game, Fable, drops in February. Like, there were a ton of games that are dropping within about two to three weeks of each other. I think it's like Sega Capcom must be pissed, right? Because Sega, they've been released in Yakuza like a Dragon Games in January, February for a while now.

Capcom, they've, you know, they claimed the quarter one release. Now everybody else is like, looks pretty nice. I see that you actually sell your video games. What's that like? I feel like July, we need a little more July action right now. A little July action would go down so smooth right about now. Yeah, it's funny because they're all getting out of the way GT6, but like what's the value in that if everyone releases all the other days.

They all should have talked. Arguably, I think that is probably a much larger problem. But before we move on, I wanted to make sure that we note that Persona 4 Revival is a number that we've seen before, whereas Persona 6 is a number we haven't seen before. I mean, not entirely true. Like, Persona 6 has been like in the, in the war. I know, but have we seen that number in a trailer? Have we seen the number of six in a trailer? I guess maybe not we haven't seen that number.

That's what I'm saying. Big deal. We get about one minute of not gameplay footage, not really much of anything, just sort of slow scrolling through a graveyard, some like quick cuts through like, I don't know, almost ransom note style, like creepy faces and then just P6 appears on screen. That's it. That's all you get. That's all you get for it. It's nothing. I need more than that for persona 6 to get like stoked about that.

Do these games ever have like crossover with the other games apart from like the weird wizard in the door? Does this sound a little bit? The weird wizard in the door. Spoken like a real persona head. Yeah, I mean, in persona four, there's like a sequence where you go back to the place from Prona three. It's usually quite sparing if there is anything. Yeah, I think in Persona 5, like in the subway, you can see references to other characters.

Like, yeah, how life has gone on for them. The thing in Persona 4 is like the biggest one I can really think of. But yeah, persona 4 revival, can't wait. This is what I wanted. This is my favorite game ever. and have been fairly disappointed by what they've shown off so far, and this was like shit hot, persona six, whatever. I, yeah, it takes so much more for me now, guys,

than just a name to show up on a screen. I think that's gross, quite honestly, Griffin. Honestly, everyone should be that way. If fucking, if, if Todd Howard gets on stage and it's like, guess what, guys, Elder Scrolls six, and then they show a forest, and then it says, Elder Scrolls six on it. We need, demand more than that. Oh, and ironically, that happened eight years ago.

Crazy. That's what I'm fucking saying, man. Like, okay, persona six, great. Literally how they announced the game. Get back to me when you can show me a guy. Show me one guy. Like, show me a person. A human being, a person.

Well, Todd Howard is a person. Okay, fine. We actually have at least two more games that started as the, this thing exists, and now we actually know what they look like. Virtual Fighter Crossroads, made by, in some part, at least, the Ryu Gagodakou team, or AK- the Like a Dragon Yakuza team. And it is a fighting game, but it is also a single player story.

And the last time we got a big single player story that kind of was birthed from the neck of Virtual Fighter. It was called Shenmu, my friends. Wait, Shendu came from Virtual Fighter? Yeah. I mean, the same sort of a lot of the same devs and like the combat was very, very Virtua Fighter sort of. Yeah. I would also add the street fight, the latest Street Fighter game, I think it was Street Fighter 6, had like an, open world city that you run around do missions in while also street fighting yeah that's a good

point Russ this this looks more like oh we actually want this to look like a AAA big budget story game which I'm not entirely sure what that is going to be like but I forklifts baby yeah for so many coming coming at you fast so many races um I uh I 1666 Amsterdam 1666 Amsterdam 1666 I'm going to need someone to fucking remind me what that was. Okay, Griffin, I'm sorry. Oh, man. Oh, man. Bring us up to speed on 1666 Amsterdam because this is very interesting.

So a long line time ago, I think it was after Assassin's Creed 2, Patrice Dezle, who is the creator, one of the original creators of Assassin's Creed left Ubisoft and was like, I'm going to make my own big vision of what we could do in an Assassin's Creed type of game. And that game was called 1666 Amsterdam. damn. And now, I don't know, like 13, 14 years later, we might actually, well, we actually can play the game right now because a demo is available on Steam. This game has been tortured. It has been ups and downs. I think it's been canceled-ish multiple times. And yet, here it is. It appears to be real. But I think is going to launch an early access when it does launch. I am, I mean, this is, this goes a step further, Griffin, and like, even the demo is not enough to convince me. Like, I need to, I need to see the final credits of this game to know that it is real.

Sort of how I feel about Beyond Gerniva, which still isn't canceled. Crazy, man. That would be the biggest news story for me, the most sort of cathartic bit of news is that they're saying, I'm sorry, guys. Sorry to all of our space, space monkey supporters, backers. It's just, we couldn't, we didn't. A quick pause here, Griffin, do you want to tell people what's happening in the Nintendo Direct right now?

Yeah, I mean, they just announced fucking Kingdom Hearts 4. It seems like a big deal. It looks pretty sick. I mean, yeah, talk about games that I am surprised to feel fucking stoked for, it's Kingdom Arch 4. Hold on, they're doing their big, like, and one last thing. Is it Mickey? For the Nintendo Direct.

Again, I told you we were going to be jumping around. This looks like Zelda. Yeah, this is going to be that Ocarina of Time. remake, I think. Gotta be. Okay, the Ocreen of Time remake coming 2026 this year. That's a surprise. Holy moly.

Switch to, I guess, exclusive? Yeah. Got to be. They want you to buy that expensive hardware. Right? I'm going to turn this back down before. I have to watch this Man Thumb wrestle again. Yeah, okay, so we're doing things quite out of order, but they showed off the

Ocreen of Time remake at the end of the Nintendo Direct Press conference with basically kind of a new version of the first, like, minute of that game where you see Lane Quake up in Kokiri Forest. Very cool. Okay. So, back to it. We got a new Stuntman game cup. Stump Man Hollywood.

Did we not talk about this last week? Was this not State of Play? No. Was it in the state of play? I don't think so. I feel like, I don't know. I feel like I've talked about Stuntman on this show. I think we did because I think we were like, oh, we kind of wishcasted it into existence.

Yeah, because it's going to have a fucking, uh, uh, too fast, too furious. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. film franchises. It looks so cool. I'm very excited. Yeah. Also, apparently Jurassic Park is going to be in it, but they were not allowed to talk about Jurassic Park because Jurassic Park was on a mysterious media blackout for like eight months. Yeah. Or nobody could talk about Jurassic Park. Yeah. Very weird. But it's got like, what is it? Back to the Future or another franchise. Yeah. If it's got a car in it. I'm going to turn this Nintendo direct off because I do think they're moving into Treehouse mode, which I appreciate, but I can't. I'm so distracted. I wanted to shout out a couple other things that you all didn't write down here during, I think during the Xbox event. They announced Guild Wars 3, which like I think Guild Wars is a very cool game franchise that I've played a little bit. It's a, if you've not played sort of an action MMO.

Guild Wars 2 got released a long time ago, and they released a thousand expansions for it and was very novel in how they handled like exploration and all kinds of stuff. Guild Wars 3 is going to be on, I think, Xbox, PS5 and PC. And it looks very cool. I'm very curious to see what they are still planning to do with that franchise. Also, I can't believe you guys didn't put this on here, Fable. They showed off a lot of, including a new sort of more, I would say, dramatic arc than the Richard Iowade trailers that they've had so far with Haley-App. Well, is that her name? playing a character.

I don't know. They showed off a lot of gameplay footage, a lot of how the, like, you know, hero reputation mechanics are going to work. Yeah,

I'm very excited about Fable. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm a little bit bummed that they're doing the thing where it's like you're talking to someone and then you say something rude and there's like a speech bubble

that says, they think you're rude. Which I think we could probably into it. I don't know, man. That's, it's so what that game is about. I guess so. Like, managing your heroic

reputation is like the core I guess that's their solution because you don't I think the idea is you're not like growing horns and shit if you're evil yeah so it's all just like actual like how you are in the world and so the only way to I guess visually represent that is like speech bubbles that say you're rude but it was a little on the nose but as a game I'm I'm very excited and curious to see if that studio which is previously really just done racing games can do a not racing game would be very interesting and and two two other things about fable it's cross-platform it's gonna be on PlayStation 5 and PC as well as Xbox I don't know was there

another exclusive thing was the Halo campaign evolved which was another thing announced during the Xbox press conference a sort of remaster of the original Halo campaign with some like additional missions the tone of that trailer was bizarre to me it was very um I don't know silly I guess is the is the word I would use campy almost campy it felt a little out of step with what I've come to expect from the from the Halo franchise I wonder if that's because they've seen some struggles doing the like ultra serious sci-fi hard sci-fi thing and I think when people think back to the original Halo campaign like they just remember like having fun in co-op maybe right so yeah it's kind of a rock between a rock and a hard place whatever

there because like if you go the camp here out you kind end up going into the MCU like I'm yeah disgusted and embarrassed with myself which is Yeah. Not sure I want to go quite that far. Other Xbox things, if I can just run down, I have the list here of other announcements because it was quite dense. We had a state of decay three. Okay, curious about that. We got a lot of Castlevania Belmont's curse, which I can't believe didn't end up on this list, gang.

Yeah, I was mostly focusing on stuff that, like, mostly hadn't been announced yet. Yeah, no, I guess that is fair, but... Don't judge me, Griffin. It's okay. There was a lot of good... I'm just surprised at you, Russ, because that's... like your shit. I'm extremely excited for that game. Yeah, me too. The creators of dead cells are making

a new full-blown Castlevania game. Side-scrolling, 2D Castlevania. Fuck yeah. So good, so good. Viverium, I thought looked really neat. Animated like a, like a, I don't know. Like a 70s anime? Yeah, 70s anime, like early Ghibli, like

Castle of Caliostro sort of that far back, but very chill kind of life semi-type game looks very lovely. Um, we had, uh, Clockwork Revolution. Clockwork Revolution look kind of neat. Look like Bioshot. That seems like it's the other big console exclusive.

This is the new game from In Exile. Yeah. And I think they're probably first major games since being acquired by Xbox. Yeah. We got, uh, Modern Warfare 4. All right. Uh, Minecraft Dungeons 2. They showed off a lot of gameplay footage of, which I'm, Henry and I played the shit

out of the first Minecraft Dungeons. It was a really interesting. interesting Diablo like. And we really sunk our teeth. Yeah, I'm extremely excited for that one. And then, of course, there's Crazy Taxi World Tour. They're making a new crazy taxi game with the offspring and all of it. They did.

We should note on the Crazy Taxi front, they did kind of step in it from a just overall standpoint because they did, I think, have to announce that they used the generative AI to some extent in the creation of that game. I didn't see. Why do you need generative AI to make a new goddamn crazy taxi? Let me be clear. Bad. So, so dumb.

I think that we're going to see studios just like not say that they're doing it. Because these genera, the companies like Steam and Xbox that request that you say what AI you use, they need to be much clear about what they're actually asking for. Because I think that there's like studios who are using Gen AI in code and not mentioning it. And then there's like studios like Sega where they're like, yeah, we're kind of using it for. like referenced and then we have like this whole press thing that we're still in where people are like what do you mean by that yeah do you mean that it's like concept art do you mean that's all the VO generative like that's these are yeah like what what are these things that you're doing and

they need to be specific not that that's like going to convince people to get the games but like that this vagueness is so stupid yeah just so yeah it's kind of the worst possible it's the worst imaginable version of it because I'm just going to assume the worst I think if you don't if you're not But to answer the question, they are using it for the cars and that's, I mean, sometimes they have five wheels, sometimes they have three, but it's fine. Let me be clear, this is not actually happening. Don't Suisseca. Yeah. The PC Gamer Showcase, did you guys watch that or attend that? Didn't physically attend it. Um, uh, no. You want to bring us up to speed? It was, it was, I would say pound for pound, it had the most games in it. Uh, And there's, I mean, I would encourage you to go back and watch some of the trailers, because it's a ton of games that I had never really heard of before or did not know sort of existed.

They're making a new cassette beast, which is a very cool Pokemon-like, but this one's going to be sort of 3D. It's called Cassette Beast 2002. And then there's just like a ton of games that look very cool, like Slash Zero and Virtuantusledgehammer is the next game from the, oh no, what was the Carcass There's a new game from the mouthwashing team. Oh. That looked very cool. Yeah, Carcass Cloud is a tank sim from the mouthwashing devs. All right.

It looks cool as shit. I don't know that there's a ton of big sort of newspegs that came out of it. Just a ton of like neat looking games. Yeah. Into the wind, which is a, looks very shit. Chris, what's the airplane Miyazaki movie that you have a tattoo inspired by? The wind rises? But yeah, it looks very much wind rises.

S. As sad. Oh, there's, I think, two new Dave the Diver games. There's a spinoff, Dave the Diver game. Dave the Dye, and then there's In the Jungle D.L.C. Looks very cool. Yeah, not a ton of, they're making a game called Pipes.E., which is a horror survival game based on the Pipe's screen saver from Windows.

Also, there was a hack 95, a game called Hack 95. That also is very, I don't know, nostalgic old Windows. type thing, but it looks like a card battler hacking game. It looks cool. Not a ton of, like I said, you're not getting, there's a new Ocarina of Time remake, but the, you know, the stuff that they did have to show off. There was a lot of stuff I was interested in. Control resonant for folks who are, you know, stoked for that.

I'm very sure that. Do you want to tell people about the stuff that we saw on the floor now or you want to take a break and do that? Let's take a break and we'll jump into some of the stuff we saw on the floor. and then I think there was some of the... Yeah, we can cover some of the Nintendo stuff that happened. All right, take a quick break,

and then we're going to do some hands-on preschies. When you say the floor, like, what is the floor? It's not like the L.A. Convention Center, right? It's not. The floor, SGF has their press conferences, of course, and that's pretty typical. And then there's Play Days, which is a press and industry-only event

that happens in downtown L.A., And it's basically an alley? It's a very cool venue. It's a nice alley. Yeah. It's an alley that goes into the back rooms of multiple venues. And then all of the buildings in the alley are actually part of the same space. It's very strange.

Is that where they used to do EA play? Did they do EA play there once? Yes. I think they may have done that there. Yes. They had done Activision events there in the past. But it's a good way for like all the different places for like Sega to have like a building that you can go into. And for Square Enamex and for Beninamco.

I don't know what Square Aemix actually had one. We saw so many big budget games. But first let's talk about a game that looks like it was made in MS Paint and it was the most fun that I had. This was the game that I recommended to literally everyone that asked. And it's a cool one because it also has a demo right now on Steam. Do you want to do the pitch? Yeah. The game is called Blood Dungeon.

It is made by the team that made Did Hog and most recently Wheel World. Yes. I didn't know that that was the same team. Yeah, same team. Okay. Cool. And the Blood Dungeon is, buckle up, vampire survivors meets Spalunky. It is a sidescrolling platforming game wherein it's also an auto shooter and you're trying

to level up and earn perks and run perks. rewards and it uses a very similar, crunchy look that Nidhog had for the graphics. And it's very weird and bizarre and my extremely my, it feels like a very besties, besty kind of game. Yeah, it looks sick. So I'm very excited for that. And honestly, yeah, go, go play it. Blood Dungeon is available on Steam as a demo right now.

I think it's planned for the summer release, which is very exciting for me. It's jumped up. list. We saw three big budget games that I would say are all, we will see how they go. And we also saw one big budget game that is, I think, going to be great. That is the Star Wars racing game. Not worried about it. Looks like it's a rogue like. Don't need to tell you much more than that, other than we will definitely be covering it on the show. That's galactic race. The bigger question marks around Tomb Raider, Stranger Than Heaven, and Clutch. Three games that could go any which direction. Do you want to start with Tomb Raider Fresh?

Sure. It is a remake of the original Tomb Raider game. And by that, I mean the one that came out in like the mid-90s. It's called Legacy of Atlantis. And it is... Okay, so I went in expecting like, they're going to you know, up-res it and add fancy lighting and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they're going to make it really pretty.

And what they actually did was make a fully fucking floor-to-ceiling new game using the frame. using the framework of like, hey, Laura is in her element. She's a practiced adventurer, notably not an archaeologist because she does not give a fuck about smashing pots and dropping giant gears into the water. But she does tomb raid, and she does it quite well in this game, and I was really, really impressed with what they have going on. Cool puzzles, lots of physics-based stuff.

The combat feels really good. The movement feels amazing. it really feels like they've full on made a new Tomb Raider game, which is weird because they actually have a sequel coming out that's like supposed to be the true reboot of the game. I am stunned. So what's the what is the hesitance of? Yeah, this is my hesitance.

I thought this was one of the worst stimulus I've ever played in one of these events. Really? It was, I would say, disastrous. And I kind of can't believe that they showed it. But it sounds like maybe it's very, very hit or miss. This was one of the bugiest, completely unfinished. They have delayed this game. I think

that they should consider delaying it significantly longer. When I was playing it, my character would jump and just float. When we would do looking for puzzles, I would try to finish out puzzle sequences, and I would do the jump that it wanted me to,

and it would not connect multiple times. So then I would wander, thinking there was a different answer for the puzzle. The people who were giving the demo had to instruct people how to get through the levels. Basically, they were running from one person to the next, trying to help them know that puzzle actually can be finished that way. You should try it again and again. There were paths that they clearly had cut this out from an more open world demo. I mean, it was top to bottom. I could not believe that they were showing it at this early of a stage. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I literally did not have...

I mean, here's what I'll say. First of all, I'm really good at games. So there's that. Keep in mind. I'm really good at games. But yeah, no, I didn't experience bugs. I found the just visuals really impressive, and I thought the puzzles were interesting.

So, yeah, I'm surprised, but, you know, to each his own, I guess. I just Googled Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis bugs, and the Google AI result said that maybe it's because you're playing older existing titles in the franchise such as the Tomb Raider 1 to 3. Because they had bugs in them, like actual bugs. Do you think that's possible? The actual bugs. I think that's probably what they're thinking.

Also, a result from this search is that it has AI generated tools were used during the development to support some early exploration, temporary development content. Any AI assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team. So maybe you're getting some of that. Yeah. LL like, you know. cyber dream

I am I'm glad to hear that that you had a good experience of it because what's tricky when you get a messy demo like this is like you kind of can't tell what is going to get fixed and like what is just bad design like am I not able to go in this direction because

it's not working and am I not able to go in this direction because they're invisible walls that are going to frustrate me with the real game so I am I am glad to hear that I will say the thing where I was more positive is Stranger Than Heaven, which is the new game from the Like a Dragon team. I think it is set in the Like a Dragon Yakuza universe. It is set across five different periods. I think like 30 years, 40 years, something like that. Yeah.

Starting in like the 1910s, like it's distant past. Yes. Yeah. Because every video game over a certain. budget needs to make at least one decision where you're like, well, that makes me queasy. This game stars Tupac, um, uh, which is, you know, strange because he's dead and also because I don't think the people who run his estate are necessarily seen as a great stewards of his vision.

Um, but that's up to everybody else. What I do know is the fighting in this game is fascinating. Yeah. Very interesting. not like most of the like a dragon games. The way it works is you have your right bumper and trigger assigned to your right arm and your left bumper and trigger assigned to your left arm. And leg.

Left arm and leg. Yes. And it's not fully like gang beast, but it's not not that in some way. And you are like really like somebody like will grab one arm and then you're like punching somebody else with your right arm. That shit, I have never seen anything like that where you'll kick and someone will grab your leg and you're on one foot and you're punching away other guys with your other hand and foot and falling to the ground and it is it is an amazing feat that they pulled that off. Yeah, this looks fucking sick guys. Is Snoop dogs in this game?

He is also in it. Yeah. What's going on? It also has like, I'm not trying to do the everything's dark souls, but it requires you to use your health items in a way that requires. of way more strategy than these games have in the past, where you are backing away from a character, taking a moment to recover, taking a moment to apply a buff or something.

And I found that super interesting because if it is trying to do just great action movies and specifically great Japanese action movies, that, okay, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to plan, I'm going to see what you are planning to attack me with, and then we're going to get back into it. I don't know, it just felt very cinematic. in a way I dug.

There's a guy that you fight in the middle of it. Well, you fight a number of like a wide range of enemies, but one of them is like legitimately 10 feet tall and looks like he weighs 500 pounds. He's just enormous and muscular and huge. And then you fight the hardest guy in the demo is a guy that looks about 110 pounds and has no shirt and comes at you with,

what is it, a sword or something? Oh, yeah. And it basically turns into like a 1V1 intense samurai combat battle. where you're just trying to like stay alive and this guy's a fucking beast. So it does seem very from soft in that way in ways that like I don't particularly love the combat and the real time yakuza games and this made me more interested in it. What is clutch? What is clutch?

Clutch is a game that was made that is made by the some of the former members of playground games. most notably the folks that made Forza Horizon, and they spun off into an independent studio, and they are making a narrative racing game set in the south of France slash in Monaco with like full on, like actual story compared to the story that's in Horizon games. We're just like, we're having a party and come out

and race your cars and wherever. This is like an actual narrative, a story of like a brother and sister as they like make, make their way through the racing world. We were trying to figure out how the money works and getting this game made, because this game looks like, it doesn't just look like an EA game. It looks like EA's biggest game of the year.

And to be clear, it is not published by EA. It is currently an independent, technically independent game, although obviously they have a shitload of money. We know it had, like, self-funded at first and then some other funding. We know at some point Amazon was funding it, but then Amazon changed directions. Whatever the case, it looks gorgeous. And when Fras talks about this story, like real actors giving good performances.

And like me actually caring about the scenes, which is just very bizarre for a racing game. Like I'm so used to not caring. And they did, yeah, just a tremendous job. I'm very curious to see how this comes together. They are currently still without a publisher. And I don't even know if they're ever going to have a publisher. They might just release it themselves at this point. there was some weirdness where they had money from a ton of money from Amazon for a time and then they didn't.

So right now, I'm very interested. Yeah. Very interested. Let's run down the Nintendo Direct stuff. There were a ton of announcements of games that have been out for a while. And one of them, I don't know if this was announced already, but Chris Point, did you see the Dragons Dogma News that was in this trailer? Of course I did. They truly have something forever.

Everybody. They said, yeah, plant, you got your Dragon's Dogma 2, and now you can play it portable. You also got a new Muramasa, which, you know, you see things that you just assumed they would never make. Why would they make another Muramasa? It does not seem to be Vanillaware. It is marvelous. But I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am excited about it. But then they have plenty of stuff for both the YouTube nerds. Yes. Sure. They have orbitals, which is a game that was previously announced, but they did give it a release. of September 3rd. Orbitals is a, I heard this, I don't remember who I can give credit to for this, but it's a haze light, hazelike,

I should say, because Hayeslight Studios, most notably made, it takes two and getting, whatever the other ones were that we half hated. And this game follows that same rule of like, it has to be played in co-op,

but it uses like 70s anime aesthetic and just really, cool puzzle solving and visuals, and I'm very, very excited for this one. This is going to be a really good one, I think. Yeah. So yeah, a bunch of port announcements, Stellar Blade, Double Me Cry 5. We got, oh, the new Rayman Legends retold game was announced for Switch 2.

Yeah. The other notable thing is they announced the release date for Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave. Yeah, September 17th. They showed off a ton of gameplay footage. It looks really, I mean, it looks great. Based on what they showed, it really continues to look more and more in line with three houses, which I think is probably the pinnacle of the franchise versus the previous one. I think Fire Emblem engaged, which felt more like an off entry for them. And this feels like a bit of a return to form. There's four like main characters.

And you pick one of them. So presumably they all have their own like story arcs and people they meet and all sorts of stuff like that. looks really fucking good. I'm very excited for Fortune's Week. I happen with just one more Muramasa update because I know people are just, you know, aching for it. It is being made by Vanilla Ware. Oh, thank God.

And Marvelous will be publishing, and it will be on Steam, which I think is the first Vanilla Ware game on Steam. Wow. Big day. Love it. Pocopia DLC coming in August. It's underwater.

So they're adding like a whole new underwater biome and a bunch of new Pokemon that you can encounter down there, which is great. I love that. It's weird to see Magic Cart, like, just fucking flopping around on land. You feel bad for them. You see that. Zeno Blade Chronicles, all the Xenoblate Chronicles games are getting Switch to Upgrades with, like, new features and mechanics and stuff.

They also revealed Zeno Blade Genesis, which is the next Xenobled title coming out next year. I'm not like the world's biggest Xenoblade guy, but I thought it looked really cool. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Oh yeah With 12 games including thumb wrestling Which they showcased the most But you also have like you know ping pong and twin prop plane flying and a bunch of stuff It looks it looks like a great sort of carrying the torch of Nintendo Sports Resort

It did a little make me want there to be another Pilot Wings game Yeah Which I think is actually set in the same island if I recall So maybe some days But at least we have a plane, so that's something. Final Fantasy resonance, according to this thing I'm reading, is a sort of reimagining of Final Fantasy Brave Xuvius, which was the live service mobile game,

but they are sort of doing it in the HD2D sort of engine. It's coming to Switch on October 22nd. I never really gave a shit about Brave Xuvius, but that's cool, I guess. Dusk Bloods showed off a little bit of it. Let's remind the people what Dusk was this. Dustbloods is the new from soft game that is going to be a switch to exclusive, I believe. Very, very brief sort of feature here in the Nintendo Direct,

but they did reveal that there's going to be a closed network test sometime. How do I get in that? Get me in there. They didn't really show off any more than that. Dragon Quest Monsters, the Withered World, new Dragon Quest Monsters game. It looks great. It looks adorable. I've never really gotten too deep into a Dragon Quest Monsters game,

It looks great. It's coming December 3rd. Like I said, Delta Rune Chapter 5 coming later this month. They showed, gosh, a bunch of, like, third-party games. The one that stuck out the most to me was Final Fantasy 14, the online Final Fantasy game coming to Switch 2 August 2026. That I will be very curious to see how that goes.

Kingdom Hearts, they're releasing every Kingdom Hearts game on Switch 2. So you're not going to have to do the weird cloud version. from the original switch. You can't transfer your saves over if you do have those cloud versions of the switch versions. Are they removing cloud from the game, though? Cloud is going to be in the game.

Okay, cool. That whole collection is coming October 8th and then they showed off Kingdom Arts 4. With like a lot of gameplay and stuff. Genuinely, it looks very cool. It was the same thing of, you know, Sora kicking the ass of big heartless guys in the middle of a modern city.

It looks, way less sort of cartoony than Kingdom Arts has much more sort of realistic That's what I was looking for from Kingdom Hearts is an ultra realistic, gritty, retelling. And then, yeah,

new Ocreen of Time remake coming this year apparently. Okay, so on the remake, real quick, I don't know how I feel about this, mostly because I think Aquarine of Time, for me, and I realize everyone loves it,

but for me is not one of my favorite Zelda games. It's actually pretty low on my list. mostly because I find it kind of rigid compared to a lot of the later games like Majora's Mask and things like that. So I am curious to see if in addition to like revamping the graphics

they take steps to maybe modernize some of the experience in that way. That's the appeal of all these like potential Nintendo 64 remakes, right? Is that the games, it is the generation that aged the worst. Yes, that is true. And I think that there is potential there

for them to do something with it. We saw Nintendo due to a, very good job remaking Metroid 2, which they turned into Metroid Samus Returns on 3DS. So I would love to see that approach, which is to say, hit the beats, that's fine. Mumu lamp, whatever the fuck the place is. Mumu land. Yeah, Mumu land. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got to get Moomu land in there. Kakoriku, you've got the windmill, the music. Jesus Christ, man. All that stuff. Fine, hit the beats. But I want to see like the equivalent of what Capcom's doing with the remakes. That's what I want to see. Mumoo Land 2

Mumu Land 2, why not? Lon Lawn Ranch. Lawn Ranch? Are you trying to get to Lawn Lawn Ranch? Yeah, they sell Moomu Milk at Lon Lawn Ranch. It's confusing. And I think that's more or less brings us off to speed. Yeah, man, truly I would pretty big year.

I feel like these summer game fest weeks are so weird because you don't have the kind of corraling that happened during E3 where everyone kind of had to work around each other. and so sometimes it's a light time a light year sometimes it's quite heavy and I mean shit man we just talked for like 45 minutes about all the new stuff I think it's incredibly busy it was one of the busier like series in the last few years I think because these are now all the games that like kicked off during COVID are like actually coming out so it's very crazy I can't believe they didn't include this in the Nintendo direct in America but Nintendo Japan direct they've just confirmed that Earth Defense Force 5 and 6. Okay. Oh, thank God. I can't imagine why they didn't...

That game has a ton of bugs in it. Yeah. Too many bugs. Real quick, should we do some honorable mentions before we wrap? I would love to do that, yes. Okay. I know planets watching it, but Griffin, are you on the Widows Bay train? Dude, I don't...

I want to watch Widows Bay, but my only TV time is at night from the hours of 8.30 to 10 p.m. And convincing my wife... to watch a very, a show that looks pretty spooky in that window is a, it is a tough. I did notably watch it while traveling for work. So, yeah, that was probably the only way I was able to pull it off. But man, that show is fucking great. And I'm so, so happy it exists. It's really very special. I really want to watch it very badly. I will at some point, probably by myself while traveling or something. But yeah, it looks great. I've been playing No Man Sky a bit. I kind of.

of wrapped up my time with Diablo 4, I feel like, for this season. Really, really enjoyed it. I went back and played the last DLC, mostly because I was annoyed that I had played the first chunk of Diablo 4 and the third chunk of Diablo 4 and had not finished the, and it really can confirm my sort of feelings that it was not great. Do the new features, like, get introduced to the old DLC? Not really, no.

Not in any. I mean, the seasonal features are all there, right? But, like, I don't know, the war plan thing doesn't really unlock until you finish the whole kitten caboodle. Yeah. But I got through it very, very, very quickly. And now, I don't know, the new season launches, I think next month. And I might dip back in just to be like there when the whole thing starts.

Yeah. But very cool. But I've been playing No Man Sky because they have added one, a new expedition, which are like their time sensitive kind of community events. This one introduces the swarm, which is like a new type of enemy. and it like segments the player base into three teams and you're all kind of competing in this like galactic war against this new threat,

the swarm. It's very cool, but the thing that is most cool is that they have added turn-based battles for the creatures that you collect as your pets. Yeah, and it's like full Pokemon. Like every creature that you find has an elemental type based on like the type of planet

that you found them on. There's like, it's pretty meaty, man. There's a lot of ways. to kind of like upgrade and customize your individual, you know, procedurally generated creatures. It's that that game is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. It's also cool because all this stuff presumably is going to be introduced or at least some of it's being made in the new game, which is Light No Fire. And then bringing back into No Man Sky.

So they are in a way beta testing Light No Fire in No Man Sky. Yeah, very, very excited for that to, you know, to materialize a little bit more. The last thing, haven't finished it. Rachel and I watched most of it last night. There's a new documentary about the band, Earth, Wind and Fire, directed by Quest Love. I thought that came out in September. I don't know. No, man, I watched it last night. Let's keep it going. That's great. It is, this is a band that I love, right? Like, my mom and dad were both really into Earth, Wind and Fire. Listen to a lot of it growing up, and, like, you know, everyone loves the classics of Earthwind and Fire. But I didn't know any of, about them, nor did I ever kind of like put in the effort to learn more about them. And it is a, I mean, it's a pretty wild story, mostly about Maurice White, who was the, the leader of the band and his kind of constant struggle between making like the fucking funkiest music ever and also seeking an extra planer level of spiritual enlightenment.

Like the name of the band, Earth, Wind and Fire, I did not realize, was based on like his his zodiac chart and the raw elements of the universe. And like, I don't know, man, there's so many stories about like they go out on stage for a concert and then they just sit in lotus position for eight minutes and make the audience watch them meditate. And then they stand up and just fucking tear the house down. It's really, it's really great. Haven't finished it yet, but really came out of nowhere and has really ignited in me more, more appreciating. appreciation for this band.

Cool. Plant. Ba, bra, you got yourself a Thor. He's got an Thor, baby. I put in an order months ago, and I knew it would take forever to get here, so I used that time to sell all of my old emulator handhelds.

Good for you. And reduce my life to one. And, hey, you know what's pretty cool that I think, fresh you, maybe both of you were telling me about game native. Oh yeah. Holy moly. That is why I got this thing because I wanted to have something where I could play Steam games on the go that I didn't have to worry too much about.

I could throw it in my backpack. And this thing plays, it's vonkers. And to be clear, does it reload up? Can you just download Steam games right natively? Like, or do you have to? Right there. I literally downloaded game. There's a compatibility.

This is the one thing about it that does annoy me is that there is a compatibility layer that needs to run sort of online in order for the games to run on the Thor. And I have had a lot of issues with like playing a game on it, like Mugenics, and then putting the thing into sleep mode. And then when I turn it back on, the compatibility layer has crashed and it does not, you know, it struggles to like guarantee a cloud save in that incident. I've lost a lot of progress in times like that. So I have, it's incredible how well it works. It is just like there is this one limitation, which is that, you know, traveling with it,

not having internet access, putting it in sleep mode, like that stuff can kind of fuck it up. It is not quite a Steam OS native shit. I will report back on my journey this week as I'm flying around and seeing how that goes. I also know that there is the arm version of Steam that runs that's going to run on this. Yeah, it hasn't come out yet, as my understanding. It's not out. That'll be it. That'll be the fucking, that'll be the game.

I finally got in my Retroid Pocket 6 that I ordered three or four months ago, four or five months ago. It was a long time ago. And it is, it's going to run that stuff really, really well when I can guarantee that, like, I'm not going to lose a bunch of progress all the time. That's it. Big week. We're going to be, we got a Patreon.

If you've never checked it out, Patreon.com slash the besties. you can go there and support us and the show directly. And when you do that, you also get access to our monthly bonus episodes or bracket battle episodes. You also get access to episodes of the Resties where Chris and Russ talk about other games that we don't cover here on the core show. And yeah, do you want to thank some backers, Russ? I do. We have Olafer. Sorry if I pronounce that wrong.

Michelle, Buddy, and Jack Scher. If that's how I'm going to pronounce it, I will. Thank you for being backers. And thank you to everyone else to really make the show possible, genuinely. And we greatly appreciate you. If you can't get enough besties, go to patreon.com slash the besties

because there's a lot more there waiting for you. Next week, we are going to probably be doing a grab bag and also talking a bit about Adventures of Elliot the Millennium Tale, the new sort of mana-inspired, 2D, HD, 3D, whatever the acronym is, game from Square. So we're going to be talking about that and probably a bunch of other games too

next week. So please join us for that and join us here every week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!