The Besties - Pokopia Will Teach You to Love Pokémon Again

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Plenty of companies have torched their fortunes trying to smelt together a collection of hit games and genres, hoping to recreate others’ success. Understandably, many folks (ourselves included) approached Pokopia with a cold skepticism. A Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Viva Piñata combination? It sounded too good to be  true. Friends… they did it. Pokopia isn’t just a collection of great ideas; it’s also a wholly interesting and original thing. We can’t wait to tell you about this wonderful game. Plus, we look at Nintendo’s peculiar plan for the rest of 2026. 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!

Do you think Pikachu is a leader in the Mad Backs rebellion? Do you think he is ripping skulls out of necks? What is this Pikachu that we are now meeting? He has been thrown into a sphere that is used to power some of the bigger war machines. So he's basically just a big battery. Yeah. They fight for, you vie for, like, control of the Chew. Because whoever has the Chew has the power.

Yeah. The Chew is life. And how does Waw Bufit fit into it? I just want to invite all the listeners, and we are in a post-apocalyptic scenario. There was a big assumption from the top that Pikachu is in the post-apocalypse now. Yes. And so Waw-Buffet is chairman of the Federal Reserve. Oh, good for him.

Yeah. He's the chairperson of Berkshire Hathamway. And he's still out there doing his thing, wobbling around. Shaking it. Shaking it. Shaking it, shaking that dirty thing. It's weird. Editorializing with the dirtiness.

Yeah. And coughing is the head of the EPA. Coffing is head at EPA. And I've got salad for everybody. So it's like really on this kind of like sliding scale of apocalyps, I do think this one's not bad. It's kind of going okay, right? It's kind of going all right because you can get salad so fucking fast and easy. It's like not an issue.

Sounds not a problem. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy and Warren Buffett is still alive. He's 95 years old. I just have his shit pulled up here because I made a Bob Buffett joke earlier and it's just pulled up. This man's worth $147 billion. What are we fucking doing, man? Dude, are you just not finding out about this disparity?

It's been an issue. It's so crazy. Half of those are part. I'm really sorry. Chris. So sorry. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ralph Freshwick.

I know the best game of the week. This week we're talking about the first ever Pokemon game that doesn't have Pokemon in the title, Pocopia. Is that true? Is that true? Yeah. No, yeah. I think you're right. I can't think of another one.

Pocopia is a mashup of like Animal Crossing and Minecraft and. and all sorts of Dragon Quest Builders. We got it all here. And also, apparently it's common knowledge that this game is set in the post-apocalypse. Did everybody know this before playing this game? I think there were some indications from the community, but here we are.

Here we are. And we'll talk about that right after this. There are no gods anymore. Yeah. There are no trainers anymore. There is only Pokemon and man-shaped Pokemon. I thought that was a weird intro screen, but it did kind of set the moon. It's not far off.

I'm not even editorializing that much. You, you walk, you visit upon this nightmare man who's like, I thought everything was dead. You're the first living thing I've seen. And he's a horrifying, he's not a man. There's no man. There's only Pokemon. Yeah. He wouldn't know that on site, though.

That's true. He could be a man carrying a bunch of cables around his body. You play as Ditto in this game and you are sort of transformed into the shape of your missing trainer who you love and miss very much. And when other Pokemon's to you, they're always like, whoa, a person. But then they're immediately like, oh, that's Ditto. That's cool. They're not like, how dare you dress up in the guise of our subjugators. Can I take a swing explaining kind of what is going on in this game?

Because I think it's kind of a tough sell. Um, in this game you are playing as ditto. You are in an open sort of sandbox world. Uh, there's like a handful of areas in the kind of Dragon Quest Builders fashion that you are unlocking and jumping between. But they're all huge and open and full of resources for you to smash up and gather and craft into different things. Uh, and you think of them like Minecraft. If you haven't played builders, which I don't know that a lot of people have necessarily, but it's Minecraft. It's Minecraft. It's sort of. Yeah. Um, we'll get there. And so between, you know, crafting things and using these different Pokemon transform powers that you will unlock by meeting new Pokemon, you have to rebuild habitats for different Pokemon. In addition to a Pokedex, which exists in this game, there's also a habitat decks that will give you clues.

Sometimes you'll find little traces of Pokemon on the ground. It'll be like, hey, if you build, if you grow four flowers under a tree, maybe this type of Pokemon will show up and it'll show you a silhouette, but like, that's a Komi. Like, that's definitely a Vespicque queen in there. Like, I know my shapes. Thank you so much. And so you do that and you make friends with them.

You help them build their house or, you know, little habitat, how they want it, and they get happier. And the environment of the area changes and improves and you unlock new recipes and items and new skills. And you just keep on going, building new habitats and improving their homes and looking around. You're kind of building, like, where a lot of games are more like, poeastern. are pets and you're traveling city to city and finding them in the wilderness. This is more like you're building a Pokemon reserve. And you're building it hand in hand with the Pokemon, right? It's kind of like you're building the Animal Kingdom Park where you're like creating all

these habitats for Pokemon to run free and you like attract new Pokemon. But you are building basically a big natural world for the Pokemon to come kick it with you. Yeah. You are building them. However, in these different, I don't know how many areas there are. are in the game. I've gotten to three. And then there's also like a sort of can empty canvas world called Palette Town, which is very cute. But the other areas are, I believe, based on areas from other Pokemon games. So like you'll go into like the ruins of Puder City, which is covered in

volcanic ash, or you'll go into, I think Vermilion City is one of them. But again, no people, no science of life. Nobody knows what's going on. And like there is a bit of a narrative, the game is you like find these old mainstay Pokemon that have been there for a long time and trying to figure out using their information like what happened here because obviously no one's around you also read notes about like from humans that will be scattered around the world and the humans will be like in letters saying man things are getting really bad uh all we have no power and yeah we need to get out of here as fast as like shit went down something bad happened and it makes sense because in every Pokemon game uh the

Pokemon that is in control of time and space or gravity or whatever almost destroys the world. So my theory, I haven't gotten very like to this point where I find out what happened to the world, but I bet it was one of those fucking guys. Okay, but you don't think it's like more about maybe humans weren't respecting nature? I would love it if that was the case, but no, I bet they're going to be like Gyratina came down and just like squeezed everything. So they very much have it both ways. It is unquestionably a game about climate collapse.

Like there are literally dev, like logs that you're. find from characters who are like the climate is going south we can't stop it we need to care about nature there's like things about like hurricanes hitting but then there's also something where it's like i've joined team rocket and i know the trick to weather yeah yeah sure the weather has happening because climate sore has come and he's legendary and it's all his fault um it is really i i referenced vivap pinata earlier i did not know that that was sort of of what this game was going for, and I think it's really, really spectacular, kind of how they have captured that formula.

Viva Penaata was a rare title on Xbox 360, where you had a garden, and you had to attract different sort of pignatas to your garden by building different habitats for them, or like including things that they might like. What that game did that this doesn't is like sometimes what the pignatas wanted was other pinaillas they could definitely eat. That does, the Pokemon live in relative harmony here. But I guess that's only true

if you do a good job of making sure they're living in nice houses. If you build a, you know, a situation where they're living in squalor, maybe Hitman Shane will start, you know,

taking swings at Heracross or something. I actually found it surprisingly more satisfying to like tend to this world because it didn't have the compulsion of like being a, like a more of a cityscape where you're trying to organize a town

and figure out the layout for, you know, this building should be over here and this thing should be over here. I found that like once I was just sort of making environments throughout, there was not a compulsion to like organize or min-max or perfect things that you would in a lot of more like life-simi things. It felt a little bit more like in an environment that I was just sort of like, I mean, literally organically and figuratively organically sort of growing. So in the second area, at least the second area that I went to is like a straight up like seaside town, like a city. and there are plots and I think a lot of this is more tutorial and I think this game does it

in a really smart way. There are plots where theoretically you could put buildings there. You can put buildings fucking anywhere. There's nothing saying it needs to go here. They're just sort of suggesting it and saying like you could and that's what I love about this game

is that there's so much freedom. You compare it to an experience like Animal Crossing and I think anyone watching this trailer would be oh it's Animal Crossing meets Pokemon. Straightforward. Animal Crossing intentionally put so many barriers in your way in terms of what you can do, where you can do it, how you can place things, so on and so forth. And this game totally takes the governor off.

You really have so much freedom in terms of what you're building. And yeah, I'm pretty over the mood about it. At the same time, it borrows really well from those games. It borrows what really does work. Like in Animal Crossing, there are times where it says, hey, come back tomorrow. That's just not ready today. And a great thing about having some of that in a game is it avoids burnout because the addictive nature of this game is real. Like you could just keep playing forever, just cleaning and building and hitting all of the little activities that it has from you.

You know, build another house, collect more of this, water a hundred more plants. And you will burn out on that. But the way it stops out is saying, hey, if you're building something really big and important, it's not going to be ready for. a few hours or it's not even going to be ready until tomorrow and that encouragement to put the game down weirdly makes me want to play it longer like over the long term i also think there's more shit to do like there is this game's fucking huge guys i did not expect sort of uh when you move on from the first area and you see the second area it really kind of like shows you like oh man like i have really just kind of scratched the surface of this thing there there's a lot of tech in the game

that is very cool, and a lot of that is, like, really adapted from Dragon Quest Builders 2. Omega Force is the studio that developed that game, and they co-developed this game. And so there's stuff where, like, any place where you build, you know, a wall at least two blocks high and you throw a door on it becomes a house. And now you can ask Pokemon to live in that house and you can customize it for them. There's also prefabs where, like, you can set down this prefab, and it'll show up like in Animal Crossing where there's a little gyroid wiggling around and it'll be like drop some resources in,

stick some Pokemon here, they will build it in either in a couple hours or it'll be ready tomorrow. Or you can just like leave them to live in these more sort of natural habitats that you're like decorating or putting. It's really up to you. There's so many ways to kind of like

increase the environment level which is sort of the end goal, I guess, of all of the different areas. But just the ways that they allow you to do that in the ways that they can kind of recognize like what you are building what you are trying to do and facilitate that is really uh i don't know like really technically impressive also yeah jason i'm curious for you as someone who obviously isn't like a huge Pokemon stan can you just appreciate like do you like just cut out the Pokemon parts of this and just appreciate it as like an open world building game or is it right like and it's not about cutting out the the parts of this like Pokemon are cool i like Pokemon i think Pokemon games and just appreciate it's like a games are boring. Yeah. And I think that this is a lot more fun than a typical Pokemon game for a lot of reasons.

But I think the main thing that for me was like it was clicking is I think you can joke a lot about Pokemon, but the whole thing about eating them and the there are they pets? But the general arc of Pokemon is kind of like it's been the same sort of loop for a very long time. There's a lot of like things that are built in there. And it is the base... You mean like a gameplay loop? And the base metaphor is you're finding these Pokemon and capturing them. Oh, sure.

You know what I mean? There is something in the base of this game where like when you're trying to build a project, sometimes you need Pokemon for it, but they're just like any Pokemon and you just like need them to come and help. And it's not a currency, right? They're not, it's not like a, you know, you got to get this many points. It's like you're building houses for them and they're like helping you to build them. to build other things. There is a spirit that I think is at a base level of this game

that feels more about like cooperation and like a socialist paradise in the way that like Pokemon never really feels. And I think that's cool. And I also think the way that they give you the abilities and have that evolve gameplay, like you get the jump, you get the water spray, you get to do it,

is so much more fun than, you know, find some Scraty-Row little chihuahua that can shoot lightning out of its dick, you know? Yeah, Justin, I think your point here about like stewardship is is like pretty radical in terms of these games because I think so many, the vast majority of open world games are about bending that world to your will. And usually that is you like remove the fog of war. And then that means you have an area where you can kill more things or you can force people to sell you things. Or in the case of even Animal Crossing, it's you're getting tons and tons of stuff to buy and then like just.

cover the environment in. Here, you can buy stuff, but what you quickly discover is even the stuff you're buying is towards the goal of building these habitats. Yeah. Environment and decoration, you can do it, but it's not the point. Even when you are manipulating the land, you are very often doing it to either get resources to help other characters or to like literally terraform the world to be a more hospitable environment.

Yeah. And that, I just, I'm like actually struggled to think of big games that have that approach to open world design. And I think, I think it's really something special. As sort of like cool and unique and virtuous as like the game sort of ethos is, it does also have its cake and eat it too. Henry was, Henry's a huge Pokemon fan. We spent, oh, God, countless hours playing Scarlet and Violet to. together. He got really into Z-A. And he was not sold on this game. He didn't necessarily think it was going to sort of be for him. And then we played it and we played around in Palat Town.

He just like took my switch and started goofing around in there. And then he found Sysor. And he was like, oh yeah. Like immediately just like finding Sysor was enough to get him stoked without having to imprison Sizer inside of his battle sphere and make him come out whatever he wants. And immediately he was like, all right, let's see what this dude needs. His big thing is we went to, there are these things called Dream Islands, which you can go to. Those you can fuck up. Yeah.

Those you can tear down to the studs because I guess they're not real, maybe. Maybe they're not real. We found a church on one of them. I mean, a ghost takes you there. A ghost takes you there. Maybe it's, and so we found a church, and he was like, take every block from that church. and so we destroyed this church, which he thought was really funny.

And then he wanted to recreate the church on Palatown for Sysor to live in. And he was like, that's all he wanted to do for like two whole days was just build this. How's the church for Sysor coming along? I don't know. That element of collecting Pokemon is still there, right? Like you're still filling out your Pocodex. But like, I don't know. Everything that happens after that point is completely different from a Pokemon game.

Griffin, you were talking about Palat Town. Did you try using game share there? I did not try. So, yeah, the game has multiplayer. It's Switch 2 exclusive. You can game share, I guess, from Switch 2 to Switch 1. You tried it, Russ, right? You told me it was kind of restricted.

So I, when I told you that, I still believe it is a little bit restrictive. It's definitely not the full game. You are restricted to Palet Town and building there. And the person joining you, you really have to give them blocks and inventory items. They have all the powers that you have currently. But they don't necessarily have like full, full capabilities. That being said, if you're just looking to, like, build habitats or build houses or discover Pokemon, that's all stuff that they can do.

So, yeah, I don't know that we made it clear. You can game share to Switch 1. Yeah. So if you have a Switch 2 and a Switch 1 lying around, you can GameShare from the Switch 2 to the Switch 1 and then have this sort of limit. Honestly, I... To be clear, you don't need a copy, obviously. There's no...

It's only on Switch 2. It's a Switch 2 exclusive. Yeah. So if you have... That is a good option. I may end up doing that after all because the other option is buying a second Switch 2 because he's like all about this game now. Yeah.

And I don't know. I can't. It is it is the first time. It's the first Switch 2 game that I have felt that compulsion of like Henry and I play a lot of games together. There's the first one where it's like, shit, man. This one might be so fun to play together. We might get so into this that, you know, it might be, it might be the time.

I'm definitely going to have to do it before the fucking wins and waves comes out. So eventually I'm going to have to put that bullet. I know. I'm realizing hearing y'all that I think we've mentioned this a million times on the show of like, when are we going to actually get the Pokemon game that is just in a world where you get a walk around and hang out with Pokemon? And this is that game. They actually finally made the game that we've been wanting forever.

I also, I want to run a little fan theory past y'all here, though. I think the text of this game is about. people like us. Specifically me and probably Justin, which is, in this game's world, all humans have disappeared because we are all adults and we've played the same damn Pokemon game a trillion times and we've stepped away from it. And now we are literally returning to Pokemon world and having to rebuild it from the ground up. We're having to relearn the old text. We're having to meet all the Pokemon and learn all their details, we're getting caught up with like mentions of all the characters from our era.

Like one of the first things that you find is a message about Jim Leader Spotlight Misty, right? Yeah. It is a welcoming back into the world of Pokemon from the, from literally the ground up. And I think I am very curious to see what this does to the fandom and how this strikes people who have been away from it for a few years. because as somebody who desperately loves Pokemon as idea, but has really struggled to get back into the main games,

I felt like this is almost embarrassing to say. I like genuinely felt emotional playing this game. Like I felt whatever the thing is that people, I guess is nostalgia that I very rarely feel and allow myself to feel here where I was like, oh my God, I am back. I am like something that has not been awakened as awakened. And that is, it's a really incredible thing. I mean, I just, I love this game.

I think the reason I was a bit hesitant about this game, like the lineage of like the developers and the sort of comparisons to Dragon Quest Builders too, which I adore that game, I was like, I knew it was going to be pretty good. I did not expect it to be, like, as cool as all the stuff we've talked about here is, it is also pretty crunchy, like mechanically too. Like if you want to sink your teeth into that stuff, there is like a, system that you can use or not use like most other things in the game where like you can build a power grid or you can there's like a cooking kind of element that you can get to later like there's a

you can run water through towns and then the water the ground around the water gets hydrated then you can play stuff in the like all that stuff is encompassed yeah so like if that is stuff that appeals to you also it it's here man um i i am i love this game man i think this is the best Pokemon spin-off game I've I've ever played. And I'm someone who still like plays the games. I'm someone who still enjoys the franchise quite a bit. And this one is, just has really blown me away.

Outside of Griffin, did anyone else's children play this game? My son watched and was absolutely smitten with it. Yeah. Just the very idea. Again, you're walking around. You're just surrounded by Pokemon who want to talk to you and give you gifts. Like, what more could you want?

Yeah, I would also say the other thing when we think about Builders, for those that did play that game, Builders, even though it does allow you to have a fair amount of freedom, is also incredibly linear in terms of quest progression and what you're doing and you have to go to this place to unlock this thing and so and so forth. And this is just so wide open and like, you could spend 30 hours on the starting island and nothing is preventing you from doing that because they just will constantly give you stuff. I will say my only gripe with the game. Truly, my only gripe with the game so far is that inventory management is kind of a bear. There isn't, and this is something that is like... It's better than Animal Crossing. It's better than Animal Crossing for sure.

Like, just the sheer size of your inventory dwarfs that of Animal Crossing. And so, like, it's not a thing where your pockets are constantly filling up. It is a thing of, like, there's so many different items and pieces of furniture and materials and blocks and all kinds of different stuff. and the game is missing like a quick sort stacks from your inventory to chest or like drop in a nearby chest. It does let you attach chest to like crafting benches

and then pull materials from there. Like it does some of that stuff, but just a button where after I get back from a dream island, I don't have to like remember like, oh, where do I put? Where have I been putting my roadblocks? Like anything to make that process smoother

would really, I think, buff out any of the rough edges on this thing. We've covered a lot of stuff about this game, but before we move on, I think we've finally danced around enough that I would like to talk about the big problem, and that is the lead character of this game is horrible. It's a nightmare.

It's a ditto pretending to be a human, and it is ghoulish. I mean... Not just any human. Not just any human. A human it cares for. Guys, it walks around. There are several times I checked this.

You could look around and not see anybody. and still wear your skin suit. You don't let it drop. You know what I mean? It's for you. It's perverse, right? It's disgusting. It does disappear.

This is the worst jump scare. Jump scare at 2026. If you go towards a gap that's too low for you to stand in you'll fucking turn back into a dido and go underneath it. Fuck you. Are you serious?

Or if you drop. If you drop, yeah, you turn into goo for like a second. Four hours I'm playing as a man. And then I'm just like confronted with the diddo-ness of my nature in like a full screen like if because it flips the perspective too

and I'm sitting through the ditto's eyes terrifying. This thing's horrible. That's what it thinks we are. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. There's a surprising amount of humor that works for me in this game too.

Like when you learn these transformation moves you will usually learn them from the Pokemon who like, you know, who taught them. And when you transform into them, sometimes you'll like turn into a lapris so you can learn how to swim. But the laparice still has that fucking

completely 180 degree flat mouth like just blank dead-eyed stare and laparous will be like hey great job you really oh fuck oh yeah I mean yeah most of it looks really great the faces um oh wow yeah terrifying also because you look like a human the rest of the world thinks you are like human and you act kind of like a human you are the only one who carries around a smartphone and everybody else is living like finally I'm free of the 5G yeah yeah and you're over here every time if somebody talks to you, you're pulling out your phone, taking a picture of them, checking notifications. But you like, don't know what to do with it because you've only seen humans have it, so you're like smushing it on your face and licking it. Like, oh, I like, human.

Like, fucking professor tangroath, I think, is going to come out of this as the star, as the MVP, like, breakout star of the game. He is the professor of this game. And he had, he, he's just a big tentally, tintically dude. And what is did he kind of dangles? Yeah, Tangreth is a Pokemon. It's an evolution of tanga. Uh, it like, dangles over. his head and he has a CD tap like wrapped around it so it looks like a it looks like a doctor's like flashlight yeah he's he's he's he's a real unc he's great also magic carp says yo and sup dude a lot of Pokemon say yo and sub dude yeah they just have a chill vibe about them which i wasn't necessarily expecting but then i was thinking about it in the show whenever Pokemon hang out on their own and it's subtitled which does happen occasionally it's it's basically that same tone it's like what's going on.

Yo, man. Hey, got any catch up? Yeah. It's a lot of fun. It's really fun. It's really fucking good. I'm going to be playing this game for a very long time. I think the fans are going to hate it.

It's going to be a cast. I do not think, though, man. I think people are absolutely buck wild. No, no, no. Let me go ahead and plant this flag. They are going to hate it. They're going to walk away from this thing so fast. It's going to make your head spin.

It's going to be ponopia. Out. Should we take a break and talk about more Nintendo what's coming down the Nintendo pipe? You bet. It's called the Nintendo hole. We'll check it it right down in it. The Nintendo pipe goes in the Nintendo hole. The Nintendo.

Right. So, Nintendo's release dates are I would say generally hidden. For example, we don't know what like Q3 and Q4 really have in store for us. Yeah. There's really only three major

first party releases that have been revealed for this year. wait is it four does fire emblem have a release date yet uh no so they're really yeah i'm looking at it now tamadachi life rhythm heaven yoshi in the mysterious book and fire umbum whatever the fuck it's called i think are the four big ones that have been announced this year um of those i know griffin you're in particular a pretty psyched about tamadachi life i feel like i will not be able to play another one of these after playing pokopoeia for quite some time oh i mean I mean, that's a totally different thing, dude.

Is it? You're gonna be so happy. So Tomodachi Life. Soap opera simulator. Basically, I watched a bit of the direct about it. What is the subtitle? Tomodachi Life Island. I forget the, I forget the,

you're all the same. Every subtitle of this game. It is called Living the Dream. Living the Dream. Tomadachi Life is. April 16th is coming out. Was a 3DS game originally where you took Me's that either you had created or like found in street pass or whatever and you live on an island with them but like there is no mechanic like the mechanics are the red bear you are not collecting resources and crafting shit and doing all that jazz you are mostly like dropping down this uh you know this this this this weird sort of huge headed caricature of uh you know whoopey goldberg uh next to one of anderson

Cooper and then like they start talking and go to the beach and then they go and they sing a song together that you customize all the lyrics. It's just like it's going to be the only thing you see I think on TikTok for a while just because the the potential there is for just like really out of pocket funny shit is through the roof and I'm sure that it will be. It's arriving at the perfect time with these microdramas blowing up because like yes on the Whoopi Goldberg Like Anderson Cooper example, they will then go take a ride on a carousel and propose, but then they'll be interrupted by Kyla Wren because Kylo Rinn is also in love. But so is Peter Griffin. Okay, but I guess like what are you, what is your input to that? You pick the guys that live there and you can sort of like drop them near each other. And I don't know. I've not watched enough footage of this new game to know exactly what the- But it's got to be basically the same as the previous one, right? I assume so I don't know

But yeah That one will be That one will be fun And then there's a rhythm Heaven game that's coming out I don't know when the last Rhythm Heaven game came out Do we have the release date for the new rhythm?

No it's still 2026 It's called Rhythm Heaven Groove And Yes this Yoshi date I think was Just announced a couple of hours ago For Mario As the voice of Yoshi Yes that's

That's true For the movie Not probably in the game though I don't think No But you are gonna get Luis Guzman As Wart So yeah I think I'll take it

Thank you Yeah dude I think so I mean I don't know There's a lot of You know what I'm actually Kind of excited about Is Indiana Jones

is coming to Switch 2 On in May 12th Which I would love to play that game In a mobile How? Like how will that run?

Badly. I mean, Resident Evil Requiem runs great. I mean, guys, this thing is pretty fucking deep. We're far enough into the lifespan of this thing that like I, I, I, uh, it's pretty diesel, man. Well, and it's also because of, what is it, DLSS or whatever technology. Oh, sure.

Like the, I think Requiem runs at 360P. But it just they, they, because they upscale it. It looks good. Like, it looks really good. Yeah. So, uh, I think they're at. this point where they've dialed in the upscaling tech

so it really does open a lot of possibilities for what can run versus not I mean who knows it might launch and run like dog shit and we also got the adventures of Elliot the Millennium Tales which is genuinely pretty psyched about that game yeah it looks cool it's from the octopath traveler bravely default

team looks great I love all those HD 2D games Griffin are you excited about Tokyo Zandadu are you for that whole PSP or PSVita era RPG stuff coming? I believe it's Kyoto Xanadu. Oh, sorry, I think Tokyo Zanadu is maybe getting a re-release and then Kyoto's...

No, it's just Canada. No, no, to answer your question, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I had to Google it. Okay, okay. So, what is it? It's a sequel to a PlayStation Vita game, which was Tokyo Zanadu, and it's like basically like kind of a mishmatch of ease trail and persona.

Seems interesting. I mean, yeah, okay. That all sounds cool. I don't know much about it. Guys, I want to direct. Doesn't it feel like it's been a minute since the last direct? Well, they just did one for the movie.

Yeah. So that doesn't, yeah, so I don't give a shit about that. I don't give a shit about that. Sure, yeah. Have we talked about the new Pokemon games? I think we did, actually, last week. Yeah, we did. The first segment on it, dude, are you kidding me?

It's called Pokedica. Yeah. I mean, there's stuff that is, there's stuff on the docket that I am, that I am really looking forward to, but it does feel, I don't know, it feels a bit, it still feels a bit, anemic. I do think, I mean, right now we're really looking, I think, basically through probably July of this year. I think we have a pretty good sense. These games will probably come out before July if I had to guess. Maybe Fire Emblem goes to fall. I think, well, I do have a prediction that says the new Zelda game is going to get announced this year.

I don't think it's going to release this year. That's your prediction? Yeah. Okay. According, well, my prediction to plant, we have an annual predictions thing. Oh. I think it's going to get announced this year. Yeah, the big question is like what the big Q4 releases, because right now we have no

fucking idea. They, for all we know, could shadow drop it in the way, practically, in the way that they did Donkey Kong? Like, here's a game you didn't even know we were fucking working on and it's coming out in like two months. So it'll be interesting. Yeah. Do we think that the new Splatoon

spin-off game comes out this year? Oh, God, I forgot about that. Yeah. Maybe Splatoon Raiders, is that it? Yeah, it looks more like kind of like an open world maybe cleaning game. I can't really tell what it is. That would be ironic.

Yeah, I don't think we know a ton about it. I would like that. I love that, Splatoon stuff. I'm just not good in the multiplayer. Yeah, I'm terrible. Well, and that's most of the game. games. So yeah, it'd be nice to... I always really like the stories in in the the story mode in those games. Yeah, but I never really get too particularly absorbed by the... Yeah, I miss... We're so far away from the world that we kind of like... I

I shouldn't speak for all of us because you guys got an earlier start in the industry than I did, but like there is no rhythm, I feel like to this stuff anymore. There is no like, well, okay, well, in the early months of the year you won't know a ton and then you'll get like a little bit of stuff around GDC and then come E3 baby that's where you find out what the years got coming for you and it it just simply doesn't work like that any anymore yeah and so it doesn't it's weird to not know kind of when we could expect another round of big you know here's the new zelda here's the new I would also add even though you said earlier that this is an anemic list which I sort of agree with it feels a little light but then you look at

Like, what is the PS5 exclusive list? Oh, dude, don't get me wrong. I'm not, I'm not. To compare these, I think, yeah, I think they would probably come out. Or Xbox for that. Probably the same. It still kind of feels like we are in that weird, like, we are maybe around the time that games that would have been developed during COVID, like, shut down, sweeping the,

the world would be coming out of it. Like, it does feel like we are in a bit of an abnormal lull, but like, I mean, there's still some fucking jams on me. I also, man, this is not, maybe the most charitable take, but like, if I'm Sony, I'm probably kind of slow playing on the strategic front a little bit just to see what is happening at Microsoft, right? Like, I kind of feel like, if I'm Sony right now, I'm like this, right? Like, I'm not doing anything, man.

Yeah, I'm not releasing shit. I'm not doing shit. You guys just do, like, spin out over there and see where it lands. goes and then we will build a strategy to respond to that because right now if I'm Sony, I don't know. How do you respond to that? Wait, wait, grab fucking blinks the time sweeper

at a fire sale. This is what we're waiting on. There are reports saying that Sony will be moving away from bringing its single player games to PC which would be very sad. That sucks, man, because I'm real excited for Destra Annie too. Well, that one is coming.

This is more for moving forward. You wouldn't necessarily see. I think there is concern both on the Xbox side and on the PS5 side, that this move away from exclusives, as much as we all love it as consumers, is not helping the big studios, and they're going to start rolling back a lot of those decisions. Well, yeah, I mean, there's no reason why they started releasing their games for broader markets in the first place. So, you know, I totally fine to just like...

I mean, there was a reason. The reason was... No, I know, dude. I was being about as facetious as I could be... without actually eating shit. My camera is off. Yeah. Hey, hey, y'all.

You forgot your sarcasm. I didn't put my sark mark on there. That's true. One more Nintendo thing. In two weeks, we're going to get more Super Mario Brothers wonder. Well, yes. Yeah.

That's true. That's good news. I'm sort of excited. It is very multiplayer-focused is the only hesitance that I have. It's like a multiplayer. You love playing these games as a multiplayer because then you can get to boss me around.

Yeah, it's like competitive modes. It's just not necessarily what I'm playing Mario Wonder for. I'm like playing it for new levels in campaign and things like that. That's fair. So I'm a little bit not over the moon about it. I could be wrong. They do add, I think, a new character or two. I think you play as a star.

I enjoyed that game. I don't know that I enjoyed it so much that I want to play it again already. I don't know. It didn't leave me with that. that particular hunger. Yeah, my fucking kid. I can't get enough. We have some reader mail.

First one from Thrillho. I would love to hear about Griffin's Choose Your Own Adventure book, which we mentioned before, but let's hear more about it. What was your process for writing it? How did you determine how many choices to have? How did your experience as a DM impact

how you approached the project? Yes, thank you. I have a new book out. I have a new book out. I was a Choose Your Own Adventure book called The Still Away. And it is out today on Mario Day. and it was a lot of fun to write. It was pretty challenging, I guess.

I haven't written like a ton of prose books. I do mostly picture book stuff. And writing a book and second person was kind of a trip. But a lot of those things were like guidelines that the Choose Co, the company that does Choose Your Adventure books kind of like provided. Like, hey, you know, you want to be shooting for around this much, around this many endings. I think the book has 27, 28 endings, somewhere around there.

And, you know, there are some suggestions of, like, you know, make sure you include some, you know, you got to get, like, a quick failure one in there. You got to get, like, some silly ones in there. Do you write from, like, the beginning to the end of one line? No. So what I did is, like, I had ideas for, like, it's set on a spaceship and you're a kid who has stowed away on that spaceship and you wake up and all the humans are gone and all of the, like automated security of the ship have kind of gone rogue and you have to kind of figure out

why. And so like knowing that that was the setting and everything, I just kind of thought about like what would be cool scenes. And then basically what I did was I had all this stuff written down in note cards and I basically made a whatever, a mind web on the floor of my office with like, you know, something like 70 note cards or something like that of, you know, here are the endings that I wanted to get to and here's how they can organize. And, you know, it's sort of, organically arranges itself into, you know, four or five sort of main story paths that all branch out and go in sort of like different directions. But yeah, it was really genuinely super duper satisfying to like get all of that organized and figured out. And there's a part of my

brain that really likes, you know, organizing a flow chart. And I do think that, you know, having experienced DMing as much as I have sort of helped that out. But yeah, it, it was. It was truly a cool project, and I'm really proud of it, and I hope people like it. It's $10.10. 10 bucks. I mean, what do you want? What a steal? Is that bit that I know why Ford slash Griffin's Stowe?

Yes. But at this one, you can also just go into a store. And it'll probably be there. We have one more letter. This one comes from Dean. Question for the mailbag. Is esoteric ebb on anyone's radar? Yes.

It's a disco-elisium-like wrapped in a classic D&D package. We've played it and talked about it on. Restes, as a matter of fact. Has anyone else talked about it or played it here? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I want to play it. Really good. Dude, Griffin. I know, I'm, I know it's going to slap ass.

I am right now, like, being pulled between Mugenics, Pocopia, and Slay the Spire 2 just came. Like, yeah. It's crazy how much these, these hungry little monsters are like scrambling. from like hey you know you haven't tried this new class it's spire yet like oh but you got to keep you got to finish that run you almost made it to the throbbing domain like it's it's it's like oscar the grouch and hank hill are both already into the game so yeah but they're they're in there uh i just and i'm michael kane and i love the game too it's tough to pick up a new

one when you have all these these boys that you know you're going to have a great time i would also say esoteric ab is a sort of game you want to play uh mostly focused on just esoteric ebb because you do need to keep a lot of stuff in your head. Yeah. So, but strongly recommend it for people that like disco elysium definitely, but also just like general D&D. It's incredibly well written. Offers a lot of freedom. It doesn't feel like Baldur's Gate.

It feels like its own thing. It's also not as heavy as disco alexium. I know disco leasing is funny, but like this was a more inviting world to live in. So if that is putting you off, I would definitely check it out. It's not going to credit. Yeah, it's excellent. I think it'll has a chance of coming back for a game of the year to talk.

So definitely for checking out. Any honorable mentions? I'm watching season 50 of Survivor. Oh, yeah. It's really good. It's really good. It's probably going to be an all-timer, y'all. You've got to get in now.

If you've never watched Survivor before, weird, it's probably not the time to start. It's a good time to start. It's not a good time to start. I would not a good time to start. I would not watch this. one that is sort of based on how much we all

remember these guys. It's Mimidus 90s kids this season. This is the end game for Survivor. It's a very much, not the end game, but this is the Avengers end game of Survivor. Like everybody you love is back. I think this season will have to end with all of the continuity being destroyed.

Yeah, probably. I would not be surprised. Fing sinks into the ocean. Griff, I want to hear from you. Is Jeff done retire after this one? What do you think? Jeff done? No.

No. No, never. No, what is he doing? He's not doing rock and roll jeopardy. He's got nothing else going. Yeah, he would call it rock and roll jeopardy. They should have switched the whole show to Jeffordy when they had the whole hosting crisis. They blew it, yeah.

It's great. It's really super compelling, and I'm enjoying it. And it might end up getting me into traders because I am now aware that a number of survivor people, in addition to a friend of the show Ron Funches, a number of survivor people also do traders. So Rachel and I started watching Traders Australia season one. We basically were like, hey, we are between things to watch right now. Do we want to check this out? Because a lot of people have said, like, this is a different form of the game.

And because they do not cast inherently celebrities from the jump. Yeah, that is more enticing to me. They are making a U.S. version of that sort of like non-celebrity traders also. But it is also like Alan Cummings not in it. It's set in like a- Is it Paul Hogan? It is not Paul Hogan. I can't remember the host name.

We've only watched one episode of it, so maybe I should. It's, it is like satisfying in the way of like, it is cool to watch people play this game for whom it feels like there are greater stakes because the money is, I would say, more significant. And you don't get that kind of baked in like, well, all these people are going to be friends because they were all on below deck together, or these people will be friends because they are gold medal award-winning

Olympian figure skater and commentators. Like, it is sort of just a clean slate, and that feels a bit more, I don't know, it feels more exciting. More fair, certainly. Certainly more fair, yeah. But this is the season that people usually say, like, outside of the,

this is like the best season of traders that is out there. This, and I think UK season two is the other one that people recommend. Where does one? Traders Australia season one. Same place you watch Traders. I think it's on,

I think it's just on the Peacock app. Oh, nice. Yeah, Peacock has a lot of international versions of their shows, which is cool. Yeah. I've also been playing Slade the Spire too, but like, but genuinely, genuine fear.

Genuine fear of like what that game's gonna. Yeah, when you start playing, Iron Cloud is the only class unlocked, which is smart, and you go through a run and it like, you see kind of how things are different and what is very much the same and you fucking beat ass

because it's the ironclad, and you know the iron cloud, like the back of your hand. And that is the run I am currently like wrapping up right now. And it, it is a perfect way of making you remember like the old ways. I thought about holding off, right? Because I didn't want to happen what happened to Hades 2, where I played early access a lot. And then when the full game came out, like it was like pulling teeth to get back into it. But I'm glad that I eventually did. But I don't know, man, it's Slade the Spire. And I'm going to play that a million times anyway, so it felt like a better idea to do the early access stuff here. That's how I'm

at least, you know, getting by without feeling too guilty about it. But yeah, we will talk more about it next week for sure. Yeah. Justin Implant? Well, the Survivor thing is what I've been, I've been mainly. Yeah, yeah. It's super good. Mine is just a reminder that Death Stranding 2 on the beach is coming out on PC in like a week, less than week, probably when you hear this. And it was our big game last year. And now it's going to be even, well, not even better. It'll run well and have all the bonus PC features. I don't know if it's going to run on Steam Deck.

That is the real X factor. Yeah. And for a lot of people, a determining factor of whether it's worthwhile or not. but yeah this might be the last Sony first person single player game that they do on there I'm curious how that deal works because well I'm getting way in the weeds but like it's co-published by Kojima and they had done

publishing with 505 before and that's why it was on PC before all the Sony stuff last time so maybe we would see Destranding or like Kajima stuff on PC in the future but maybe I don't know I think I think we've done it. Yeah, what's next up? Well, we're going to do a grab bag next week.

We're also going to do that long-promised Resident Evil Requiem Spoilers episode. So Chris Plant has a little homework. He needs to finish it up. He's very, very close. Last I heard. Yes. But it'll be great. And then I wanted to thank the members over at the Patreon.

That would be patreon.com slash the besties. I'm sorry. We have Aspen Shield. We have Trent C. We have Jamie R. and we have Charanamo Sharanamo No, it's probably someone

named Sharon Very funny, I like that Thank you for being patrons over at the Besties Thank you to everyone else For supporting us We have a new episode of Resties We've talked about it already

Which was the Esoteric Eb episode That is up and live And we have new bracket battles every month And all sorts of fun stuff So please go over there and support us If you haven't yet, we love you We love all of you You make the show possible

Do you think that maybe it says Sharon is Emo? No. Because it's IMO. It's not EMO. Oh, Sharon in my opinion. Thank you so much for the besties. Join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

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