The Besties - The Besties Best Game Bracket: 2025 Edition, Part 2

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

The continued discussion, the grand finale. The Besties crown the GOTY of 2025! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I've got, now I have two cushions, one for my hemorrhoids and one for my lumbar. So what I've done is basically there is the hemorrhoid cushion and then the lumbar cushion sits on top of the hemorrhoid cushion. And basically, guys, what I've done is make another smaller chair. Do you understand? I'm not sitting on the chair's back. I'm not sitting on the chair's bottom. It's another tiny chair. Do you know what I mean?

What kind of orthopedics are we talking about for the wrist juice? because I know that that's what... Walk me through your cockpit, I guess, is what I'm wanting to know about. I mean, I... The wrist support is bad, and I don't feel like, you know, I've started exploring surgical options,

so it doesn't seem the time to mediate my behaviors, you know what I mean? I might as well just let the wrist go. The wrists are cooked. Okay, I'm gonna have to get the sour... But the butt is still... We can salvage the ass. Science.

can't get in there with with them and give me a robot but they'll fix my wrists i'm going sorry you said the the the hemorrhoid thing it's beneath the other thing yeah it's like the lumber would be in the back right the lombar is behind my cushion is just like this oh i see it's sitting on top of the i'm not going to do it literally a chair it's literally have created the child's a booster chair yes it's a booster chair a juster chair a juster chair A juster chair. Yeah. A special button.

Quiet, sell it. This is going to be the biggest thing since you dried. The juster chair. Come to the merch store for $150. Whoa. Whoa. My name is Justin McRoy, and I know the best game of the year. My name is Griffin McRoy.

I don't know the best game of the year, but we're going to fucking find out. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the year. My name is Ross Falsick. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. This started as a game of the year show that went all year long, if you remember that. And then it turned into a game of the year show that only happened every month, and then it turned into one that only happened at the end of the year.

And it can't be stopped, and it won't be stopped. We do pick the best game every year. And there is a wiki page that lists all the games we've picked, except for the one year that we let a robot version of our boss pick. And that year's kind of inconsequential, and the wiki seems pretty frustrated about that. But other than that... I think one year, also, the giraffe picked. One year the giraffe might have picked...

Was there a tie one year? Man, we got to take this seriously. Don't get it. Don't get into it. This is the point, though. Chris Plant, what are we doing today, though? Like, in terms of game, what is happening today? Baby, today we're picking the game of the year of 2026.

The besties, bestie. Wait, what did you just say? Of 2025, baby, it's so simple. No, no, no, no, that's Fable 4. Fable 4 is 2026's day of the year. You know how people get the date wrong after the year? Plant's getting a jump on it. His checks are going to be way off.

I'm going to go sit in the corner of my juister chair. Okay. Chris Plant, do you want to go through the, um, just as a reminder, for people from last week what we narrowed down to the final eight? Yes, the final eight are Clare Obscura Expedition 33, Blippo Plus, Silk Song, Absalom, Death Stranding 2, Indiana Jones, Baby Steps, and Siktori. And Indiana Jones, for what it's worth, was a fan pick. True.

So thank you for contributing. We don't listen. We do. We do. Which happens, this happened last year, too. We had a few fan picks, I think, make it last year. Oh, yeah. I think Dispatch probably would have made it much further if it had not been up against Expedition 33 up in the top.

I'm glad that one made the cut, too. Usually how we do this is we'll get down to a top four after these and then pull one up from the past contest in order to make a clean top five. I don't know if that's how we intend to do it this year. I think that's a good idea. Okay, cool. It sort of helps narrow down maybe a bad matchup. Yeah, sure. All right.

Let's get into it. Okay. So first up, we have clear, obscure Expedition 33. God, I'm so tired of these two being, being head-to-head and shit. I know. Jeff, Jeff on stage at the TG at the, at the Viggies. The war you've been waiting for. Making a meal out of it.

Sorry, Plin, go ahead. I don't need to say it out loud. Everybody knows this is the showdown everybody's been talking about. You know, how does the French take on Japanese role-playing games compared to, did the Pee-Herman-esque Klaus Nomi-1980s TV show that may or may not be a video game. Classic conversation. Only one of these has the Quizard in it.

I'm a big Expo 33 fan. You know this. But only one of these does have the quiz. What was everyone's favorite Blippo? How many people listening to the show who have not played Expedition 33 were like, oh, it must be Expedition 33 that's got the Quizard.

The Wizards and patrons are always hanging out. No, the Quizard was my favorite program on blip-O-plus, and it was a quiz show where people sort of also role-played D&D characters who they were very, very, very particular about making sure you got their names and attributes and everything right. It's a highlight for me, man. Every time just Zabin's on, at my house, we got to watch the whole thing. Yeah.

I was fond. There was like a Maguacan group style talk show whose name I don't recall, but I particularly I really like that one. I mostly just watched the Zest channel. I kept waiting. I was sure that I was going to get something.

Something's going to come through that static fuzz. I, um, how the fuck do we do this? I mean, 33 is a video game and Blipo Plus is not a video game. It makes comparing the two

beyond this normal exercise, which is always pretty crazy. I mean, this starts to strain, strain credulity. Yeah, for sure. Hey, Justin, I have a serious question for you.

Go ahead. What is a video? game. Okay. Are you saying by my definition? Yeah, I'm curious. Okay. Hmm.

I think for something, for me, I guess the difference that I am using here is that there is no way to, as far as I understand it, one does not progress. Blippo is the same thing when it begins as when it ends, right? and it might like change or evolve but you are not progressing it right it is so like by by you are interacting with it and it is interactive media but I think a game for it to be like a game there has to be a bit more in terms of like back and forth between the player and the game beyond just changing channels beyond just changing channels right like that's a passive like way that we can interact with TV but that's not a meaningful distinction that would make it a video game versus like I really this is a this is not it is a and I'm not in any way limiting it I'm just saying like it it is hard to compare because it's such a different animal like it's not like anything else on this blipo succeeds so completely at being blipo plus yeah sure yes I think it's tough to say what is or is it in a video game, but blipo is so unusual

in that even really artsy games. It didn't seem hard when I did it. I did such a good job. I didn't seem hard. I made it look easy. Well, because it does progress. Like, that is why it's tricky. Like, there's a story that progresses.

You unlock different chunks, you know, the 10 pieces. But I'm going to end up agreeing with you. It's just that, like, even an art game that doesn't have a goal, you still are interacting in a virtual space and this is quite literally you're just flipping channels it is it is a

it is an entirely different medium that we are already familiar with it is why the people who made Blippo have said that like this isn't really a game they're not really game makers it is like its own thing they made it because like

that's how you could make it right now with a game publisher I mean, so we're recording this the day after we recorded part one. So it feels like I've been defending Expedition 33 for a long time in a row here. I think Expedition 33 is a towering achievement in terms of storytelling and like the kind of the ability of video games to, I don't think there's a good comparison tonally for a game that is. made by Western developers that has the sense of scale and scope and like

emotional weight that Expedition 33 is communicating a lot of the time. It is so it's not just tasteful it is using game mechanics and the idea of game exploration as a way of like communicating something like you are feeling things because of how this game is set up

like you feel things because of the mechanics of exploring this world and like it's difficult because it's communicating that like narratively and I can you an example of like how it's communicating it sure like when you are in the exploring through this environment for example you'll come across like a totem or like some sort of artifact that was put there to like honor the gods that were that have been attacking you before, right? That have been making life so difficult for you.

And the scale of that in the world that you are in and how small and torn down that is and the scale of just like the level in the world that you're exploring and the way that the game is about like grief and exploring the like trying to find your way out of it basically and how you navigate it. The thing that clicked for me the most about Expedition 33

and it's kind of a bummer that like not kind of a bummer but it didn't occur to me organically I had to read it but it made so much more sense the critical path is marked in Expedition 33 by light it's marked by lamps

I didn't know that yeah if you see a lit lamp that is marking the way forward light is different sources but like that is what is lighting the critical path and they're like if it's an lit area like it's not lit by those lanterns then that is like a more of an exploration opportunity but if you want to get back into the main I know right but like would have been nice it still needs me like that is like yeah it yeah I mean yes but right it is like we we also

push against like instruction manuals and handholding tutorials I'm not asking for like a pop up that says go to the light to get complete the quest I think there is a smoother way to convey that information than just like I love this game. I also agree with Russ's point that like, getting lost in a big twisting space. I don't, I don't, I think that there is like stuff that is essential to it and stuff that is not essential to it that like I do think that they could.

And I don't want to fall in that Dark Souls trap where it's like you're defending every single choice. It's like, no, no, no, dude. No, you just don't get it, man. What's tough about Expedition 33 is like the, it's hard to talk about what works with the story without spoiling a big, big portion of the game. And I realize that that's a sort of like not particularly helpful kind of discussion

for our Game of the Year kind of deliberations. But there are moments in this game that I think are going to stick around in the kind of consciousness of the gaming community, if such a thing could be like one big block. in like it can hang with the big moments of gaming history like would you rather

from Bioshock or Aerith getting killed like there's there's we can't possibly spoil that it does huge huge huge shit with the story that would be ruining the game to talk about in this particular video and then once I'm now like definitely going to finish it

like that definitely after after spending just like a couple more hours but griffin said like push a little bit past where you're at and i'm yeah yeah i i i think expedition 33 should go through in the sense that we talked about this last year this is our group list right right and a bloop plus i love that game or whatever and i should go back in caveat like i'm sure there are people who worked on it who feel it's more a game than just the writers but expedition 33 I really adored it when it started. And the reasons that I personally ultimately don't really love this game is the, would you kindly, is the twist. Right.

Is the narrative not working for me. But that is a personal taste thing. And I can recognize how the quality of the achievement this game is. I also don't know for sure if because the gameplay wasn't totally, I was liking the game. play, and then it started getting a little bit tough to get through, as you just mentioned. If I had stuck with it, and if I had gone through, I feel it's possible, and I don't know for sure, but it's possible that the story, which I now know, because I looked it up, because I knew I wasn't going to play through the entire game, when I looked it up, I was like, this is not

necessarily landing with me, but I'm sure if I was actually playing through it, it would have had a much more of an impact. I mean, that's the RPG, specifically the JRP kind of formula. is you are investing your time into these characters. You're being rewarded with experience and leveling and all of those gameplay mechanics form of feedback loop with your emotional investment. When the game works, when the game does a good job of it

and this game does a fucking fantastic job of it. To be fair, I actually only read the ending of Xenogers and I think it has a lot to say about that. Man, that's my white whale. I put Zeno gears on every Android emulation device I own and I've never cracked that nut. Yeah, there are. And listen, I think the mechanics are cool and funky.

There's also certain characters that I just, like, refuse to engage with because, like, I don't get it. I'm not smart enough to do it. So I just don't use them. Like, that's... But I still, with all that being said, like, I just... I think Blipo Plus is so freaking cool. Yeah. I just feel like there's so much that I would like to celebrate about Expedition 33.

Cool. Cool. Okay. So Exposition 33, congratulations. You're moving to the final five. next up we have Hollow Night Silk Song versus Absolume Russ, why don't you do a Hollow Night Silk Song set up

since we really rushed past it We really did Hollow Night Silk Song is the sequel to Hollow Night a long-awaited, long-rumored game that was in development for about seven years. The core gameplay,

it's a search action game you play as Hornet who was a side character in the original Hollow Night and here Hornet has been displaced into another realm that is facing some sort of catastrophe, impending catastrophe, and there are religious forces and economic forces that are pressing down on this world, and you have to

sort of conquer this environment and overcome a number of, like, incredibly hard boss fights and challenges that I think, even though it's 2D, if you've played a Dark Souls game, if you played Eldon Ring. Like, I think there's a lot of analogies there. The things that really stand out for me, visual storytelling, actual literal, like narrative storytelling, because Hornet actually speaks in this,

so there's a lot more dialogue and back and forth. Sound design through the fucking roof, maybe my favorite sound design game of the year. I was really bummed to see that it didn't get a nod at the Viggies because it certainly earned that. And yeah, I mean, it's just shocking to me that a game that was as beloved as Hollow Night could somehow get a sequel that really felt like a reimagining of the original formula in a really ambitious way. The things that I was like nagging Hades 2 about a little bit in part one, I think Hollow Night takes a lot more swings with the formula in a way that... Help me understand, because I don't have the nuanced.

I don't have as much of an understanding. I finished the first one, but when you say like it's the formula, help me. Sure. A lot of that comes in the form of gameplay. There's something called crests, which kind of feel like a class-based system. When you're equipping them, it changes the way your primary attack works and secondary attack and downstab, whatever. You can equip tools that act as like secondary materials.

It felt like an evolution from like early Castlevania games to simply the night, where you're suddenly like making more. much more choices about how you build your character beyond, like, equipping some crests, which is what the first game was. The world is also, I think, uh, I think the world of Hollow Night was great. The fact that Farloom has a, has multiple kind of like structures and systems that are decrepit now, right? Because of, uh, the pseudo apocalypse that has befallen it. But like you are, you are exploring the history.

of this place and seeing how it is connected. Up here they gather the silk that they use to extend their lifespan and gain power and it falls down into the city of graymore where people gather it up and spin it onto spools to send back up and you find those spools you can collect it but then the really poor bugs get sent down here down to the very bottom and then when they die they get thrown over this bridge and you start down there in the bone pile and you are working your way up through the kind of like cast system of of this world. And I think they do a pretty good job of kind of making you understand that and feel that as you are as you're going through it. I would also say one other nuance to the difference between the original Hollow Night and

this game is when I finish the original Hollow Night, a game that I absolutely fucking adored, I had no idea what the story was about, not even an iota of an idea. And this game, I think, writes that ship pretty dramatically. I mean, there is a great story in Hollenite, but I had to watch an hour and a half long YouTube video to understand it. This game, when I finished it, I felt like, and was correct, I knew about 80% of the story.

And then obviously there's edges that I didn't fully grok that are more hidden, but realistically, like, you come away really understanding this world, how it works, what the motivations are for all the characters, and it makes kind of the conquering of the challenge that much more impactful. I want to ask you, Russ, because I feel like you are the biggest sort of proponent of this game.

Now that we're a few months out from it and the conversation has kind of settled a bit. And the game itself has received a couple of updates sort of addressing the difficulty stuff. How do you feel about the difficulty of the game in general and sort of like the curve that it puts before players now that we're like this far removed from it? I feel unequipped to talk about it because when I finished it it was before the balance patches happened or at least pretty close to that

I have heard that the game is more approachable which I think is 100% the right move and it bums me out that like I know Justin you had struggles with it especially early on it's yeah it's tough like it

I really I just felt like it is it drilled down on the audience it seemed designed for like a smaller subset of the audience to love it even more

you know what I'm which is like that's cool I just was on the outside of that kind of because it was like the things that I like about the game

like the exploration and that kind of stuff I got lost in the how frustrated I was and like how difficult I was finding it to like make progress

and stuff. So like that it just didn't, which is like, it just didn't click for me. And I know that I wasn't the only one, but I also don't, I don't know. It's just not the game. You know, like I don't know. I don't want to like, you know. Well, but I would, but I would add, I don't, not only you're not the only one. I think the developers even acknowledge that you weren't the only one to the point where they actually made the game easy. Right. Like boss fights early on and like punishments for death early on and unlocking benches early on. dramatically cheaper to unlock you know you get more tools more whatever so I don't think I mean it's difficult obviously because I know the experience that you had was like right at launch and that was the experience that's tough man but that's like yes it's it's neither here or there I mean it is I'm I'm really trying not to be I you know no no my my feelings about the game have changed a bit since since finishing it uh mostly because I I think the difficulty is like it works against the game and I understand that it's a hard game and it's like part of the challenge and the triumph like that's all that's all part and parcel of the

like experience of conquering this hostile world and that's very very cool but the when I think back about the amount of time I spent farming rosary beads and uh the number of you know runs through the fucking hollow muck or whatever the fuck that awful swampy zone was like that stuff was so uh i don't know it seemed pointless it seemed like a waste of time and not not enjoyable and there was a lot i think there was a lot of it especially once you get to the once you get to the third act and now the world is actually much more difficult to uh to explore much more punishing there's so many moments in that game that are exhilarating and so many like the progression of it is obviously great because you

need every little aspect that you can get, every little inch of advantage that you can get over the world. But I don't know, there's some parts that just kind of seemed clunky in terms of how the difficulty was managed. And that's a shame because I think it is on the whole a pretty masterful kind of game. And definitely my favorite, like, search action game that came out this year with a bullet. yeah it's certainly up there for maybe all time for me absalom i don't know can really hang here for the reasons i kind of i mean i love this game but i also do still kind of feel like it is

the the we are going to think back on it when absalom two comes out and be like okay so this this was the proof of concept this was the and it's a good-ass proof of concept and i think folks who are really into beat-em-ups are definitely eaten good this year, but I don't know that it is on the same kind of level as a, as a Hollow Night Silk song. I just want to say three nice things about Hollow Night Silt Song. One, I think it looks really pretty. Two, I like that it wrestled with Catholic faith in a way I did not expect. And number three, that song that that one character sings,

I love it. Love it. Did you hear Kirk Hamilton's instrumentalized version of it that he did? I can't remember his triple click or his strong songs. But that one got stuck in my head. It's a real earworm. That's the good stuff. I am not a silk song person.

I agree with what Griffin said yesterday. You look at the list of things here. Absalom feels the most. like we're going to see Absalom 2 that is the full version of what that thing aspires to be and it's going to be absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible.

I don't know. But I do think it sucks on going to move forward here. I do want to say one last thing on Absalom before that happens. I don't like taking the like nostalgia bait of most of these beatem ups out of the equation, I don't know that there's a beatem up. I want to play more than Absalom

from like a minute. It's a minute. Oh, dude, for sure. It's, I mean, it is going to stay alongside Sectory as an infinitely installed game on my, on my Rog AlliX. I'm going to come back to, I, I finished it with Henry. I actually played through most of it myself on my computer. And then I was like, hey, Henry would love this.

Put it on the switch. And we played through all of it again and beat the game. And then it kind of like, I don't know, fell off a little bit after that. It's, it's tough because the thing I have to compare it to is Castle Crashers, which we've been playing a shit ton of because of the Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out. And that one, like, every time you finish the game, it's like, holy shit,

here's a new guy. You just unlocked a whole new guy. And also, you can go on Steam Workshop and make that guy look like John Wick, if you want to. Get crazy with it. So it's just like, I don't know, a content question. The gameplay, the core gameplay of Absalom is, you know, rules. Yeah. But I think

Holo Night is so fucking big, man. It's so big. And getting bigger, they announced DLC. Yes. Okay. So that means Hello Night Silk Song You move forward

To the final five up next. We have Death Stranding 2. This one's for the dads. Indiana Jones. Dads only. Dad's only. Who wants to take Indy? Yeah, man, I'll take him in a fist fight.

The Indiana Jones and the gray circle best circle, if you want if you like I don't remember the name Indiana Jones is the great circle you guys like that great circle yeah that sounds really good um rather than try to adapt

the character Indiana Jones into a video game it adapts Indiana Jones movies into a video game oh do you know what I'm saying? I like that for sure it's like a meaningful distinction where if you because if you if you take Indiana Jones the character

and make a video game about him that's been done a lot right because as Nathan Drake and all those and like they have the feeling of an Indiana Jones movie but you are still playing as a basically a pitfall you know what I mean it's basically yeah scary you're running around you're jumping you're climbing your shooting dudes this takes the character Indiana Jones and it centers in but also it the experience of watching an Indiana Jones movie with the walking around a beautiful historic environment and the sense of scale that that conveys and the the sometimes like quiet introspection of like solving a puzzle and knowing that it could break bad at any second and the the music cues and like the visuals and stuff and all that that things that feel aesthetically like idiot jones are are brought into a video game so it is not a shoot-em-up it is not a like run around and mow down as many guys as you can it it seeks to be true to the experience of like being that character in a movie

Not to mention the fact that the game The fact that the game opens up It's such a fucking bold swing The game opens up with you Playing the most famous Indiana Jones scene in history Which is the opening of purpose right It is so impressive

This works Like that's them proving this will work Yeah Which it can't be overstated How tough this is Because some of the greatest video game developers Of all time have tried to do this And failed

Uncharted in Tomb Raider no secret, wanted to be Indiana Jones games, and they end up having you kill hundreds of people across it. And whenever people would ask about this, it would be like, well, ultimately, it's a video game. You have to have it be a game where you shoot people, and you do all that, and you have to have the action. And then, like, and that's the only way to make a game that feels like this. And the reality is it never quite felt like Indiana Jones. What's so impressive about this is that it actually feels like being the person in Indiana, and even the way that they've written a story, the way they've pasted it is that you don't

have to mainline it. You don't have to get to the end of each quest. You are often, in the beginning, going around the Vatican, discovering these additional mysteries. And it feels more like a TV show where it's like, well, yes, I can get around. I can solve all of this. I don't have to rush to the very end where I think a lot of the uncharted Tomb Raider, because the stakes are so high because you're killing people. It is a full sprint from point A to point B, which just, again, doesn't feel like how an archaeologist turned a mystery solver would go about their life. I mean, also, Troy Baker, like, it's easy to say, like, he does a very good, very convincing indie impression. I think he goes beyond pretty well beyond that. And that is like,

It's like doing a lot more than Indiana Jones. I mean, it's so much more, probably more Indiana Jones talking than Harrison Ford has ever done in his entire life. Almost certainly, right? Exponentially. And it's like incredible. I don't know that I've ever seen that before

where an actor or a voice actor has like taken on, arguably one of the most famous character roles in like movie history, certainly. And truly made it like his, made it his own thing, really stepped into it. while being obviously sounding a fucking lot

like Harrison Ford, absolutely. I think it's, I think it is one of the greatest voice acting performances. Certainly on the level of like the Joker, Mark Hamill's the Joker performance. Yes, absolutely, like pretty iconic stuff. Yeah, on that level,

if Mark Hamill had already done it and then someone was like, you got to do it again, just like that, do it like that. So people think it's Mark Hamill doing the Joker. Like, it's wild. It's a really wild performance.

Good on it. it to the writers because that only works if you have a ton of dialogue that actually sounds like what Indiana Jones is supposed to sound like and it gets the humor which is a very slight humor it nails it I feel like for me if I got a dang indie for something and I've I've spent a lot of time with Indiana Jones but has been split up into a lot of segments I feel like where Indiana Jones messes up is it still has too many compromises towards being a video game and when that starts to bump they will go they will lean towards the Indiana Jones side of the needle before they'll lean towards the video game side of the needle so like things like there's 15 bottles around this world

scattered around this world you need to collect them like that does not feel very much like Indiana Jones but it's still in the game and you still have the stuff of like well I've got to change my outfit because this isn't what I'm supposed to be wearing and the longer you're in those environments doing that sort of like middling shit it starts to feel like Disney with the lights off or you're like okay I get it it's like this guy's doing this and he does this turn a little bit it's just like it skews a little it is just like a little bit too much like still feeling like they need to do that kind of video game stuff like you want an excuse to hang out in those worlds and things like that it just the ideas that they have come up with for how you spend time

in that world aren't especially like fun and every time that I have played this game I will spend like two or three hours and it I think I said somewhere that's like in you know watching sports with your dad yeah that was that on recording yeah I think you said that a couple episodes saved yeah so that's that's I like it it's just it's it's it almost feels more like it's very impressive that they achieved all of it and it is pleasant but it doesn't quite get past that to where it's like you really want to i found it very compulsively playable i will somewhat contradict myself and that if you are just about to play this for the first time even though you don't have to have that propulsion and the story works without going from point a

to point b i do think the game works better if you actually do hit the point A to point B, and then go back and do everything after that, especially because the disguises are so central to pretty much everything, and you get them by going through the main line. I know there's a very Justin McRoy kind of thing, but I've been stuck at the beginning of the Himalayas area because you have to trench through snow, and it's so fucking boring that I make it like five minutes before I'm like,

fuck, I can't, I can't do it. And then when I close it and I reopened it, it's like, oh, fuck, I'm back of the beach. beginning of it. God, it's so boring. I can't do anything. I'm sorry. You know where it's fun to charge through snow? Is it? Destranging, too. I haven't hit any snow in Death Stranding, too. Is there snow? It's, I would say, like, 60% of the way through the game, there's a fuck load of snow. A lot of snow. Love to hear that. Yeah, we talked a lot about Death Stranding 2 in part one of this,

and my feelings haven't changed. When I first played the game, it was scratching every fucking inch of my brain in ways that they wanted to. This is all, this is not like a whoopsie accident. Hideo Kajima did like a wacky thing and that worked out

to be like a fun game play mechanic. Like, they just have dialed this game into just in incredible levels of precision. I think it's his best. I think it's his best game. Yes. I genuinely do.

And I've been kind of slow to come to that. But like, it does so much stuff that succeeds as a game, this idea of being a long-haul kind of delivery man who is putting the world back together and building connections with people and like leveling up all these different areas. Like all mechanically, it's so fun and so compelling. And also, you have a little doll who is inhabited by a man and he is animated at a different frame rate than everything else in the game like there's still so much really genuinely super weird shit going on and it doesn't it doesn't lose that while kind of like you know heavily featuring good gameplay mechanics as well

it's also cogent which is more than i can say about every fucking kajima game ever including it might be the first one that you can understand on your first playthrough yes yeah everything tracks um and a lot of that is editing like a lot of it is if you want to obsess about this stuff you can dive into the in-game Wikipedia about what the fuck chiral crystals are but if you're just worried about the key beats of the story and the people that you're meeting the game will convey that stuff very clearly in ways that like are very affable there's a character named Rainey uh who is just like this delightful ray of sunshine ironically uh and you build this uh community of people that are like living on your

core ship, and you want to go back there because you want to see scenes with them. It's... Have you guys tried to jump, by the way? Sorry, but this is a little bit of a later thing. You can build a ramp in this game. This ramps in a lot of different games. That's fine.

You can build a ramp in this. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to... Why do I need a ramp? I'll build ladders and roads or whatever the fuck. But someone else that I was connected to built a ramp in a spot that was near me. And I was just running around. So I was like, what happens if I just

run off at this ramp and I sprinted directly at the ramp and Norman Redis flies into the air about 600 feet and starts doing fucking backflips and on the screen it says extreme, double extreme triple extreme every time you're

doing a backflip and suddenly I'm on the other side of this river that I was trying to get across. How does he survive the descent? You land safely. The chiral crystals and the air bring you peacefully to Earth. I love it. We can say this game is cogent until the fucking cows come home,

it is still going to be like, how does that work? Cairole... Yeah, Cairo Christmas. I'm going to say a thing that's a spoiler for an item, but not for the story. So if you don't want to hear it,

just skip ahead like 15 seconds. You can do the exact same thing that Fresh is talking about, but instead of running and jumping off of it, you can ride a giant coffin as a surfboard through the entire game. A floating chiral crystals, fortunately, help it float, coffin.

Awesome. The game rocks. You can meet a guy who makes pizza and he will teach you how to use a pizza dough training up like plastic, a little flat, wobbly plastic, to beat the shit out of bad guys. And it's just there. If you want to find it, it's a valid part. There's Griffin. Yeah. There is a Pokemon aspect of this game.

Jesus Christ. Just waiting to be discovered. Now I'm starting to think this is a frog fraction situation where this shit's not actually in the game, but you know I'm probably not going to get to that point. I'd say, if you were to jump right in and start playing it in, I think it would carry you through for quite a while. That was the thing I was going to say. When I got back into it for, you know, being a little bit more informed for this game of the year discussion,

that in-game Wikipedia, the story so far thing that it offers is truly, truly helpful. really, really great at, like, telling you exactly what was going on in the story when you stopped playing it. I think it probably looks at your, like, PS5 activity log, and it's like, God damn, man, it's been two months. Okay, so, um, Cairo. It does. When you boot it back up after you haven't played for a little bit, it pops up text, and it's like, here's what was happening. That's great, man. I forgot about that.

That's genius. Man, I'm going to go back and play it today. Guys, I'm going to, I'm reading the winds here. It seems like Norma to read this his funky ass is about to slide right up past Indiana Jones. Yeah. That's how I'm feeling. That's what I'm starting to feel in the air, guys. I think you're right.

And welcome to the pain. The pain is here. We have Baby Steps versus Sectori. Two games I think there's a lot of love for it. It might be a perfect split down the middle of which one could go through. So, hey, who wants to pitch Sectori first? shit man sectory is

uh okay i don't want to oversell it sectory is uh if you liked score chase games dual stick score chase games not unlike and in fact quite similar to

geometry wars uh then you will love sectori which has uh is a dual stick shooter just like those uh except that the it has several different modes

that you can that feel very, very different to play, that are each using slightly different mechanics. But I think what sets sectory apart is that there is a lot of technique and there's a lot of ways in which you can, there's a lot of strategy in how you play moment to moment. For example, you're collecting these things called selectors

and they are basically like raising you up a ladder of power-ups where as it gets more expensive the power-up is better but you got to cash it in at a certain point so you are basically saving up for a better power-up or you know using it earlier and

the pace at which you use those the ones that you decide to get the times at which it is the best time to collect those and is like one small facet of how you can improve your odds of like survivability or collecting points and stuff

And that is, there are so many mechanics like that in Sectori where it is not clearly laid out, it is not explained to you, but as you play more, you can start to intuitively and like uncover some of these techniques in a way that reminds me more of like a Bellotro or it is not this level of like discoverability. There's a lot more skill involved. But there is a way in which it reminds me of Bellotro when you realize, that certain possibilities are possible, it really can blow the game wide open in a way where you don't know how you were struggling by before. There's also the upgrade, the upgrade cards. You're like building a deck by choosing different types of upgrades that you will get like a handful of as you go through the campaign mode.

And those really spice, spice things up quite a bit. There's just like a lot of player agency, which I don't think you see in these sorts of games. these arcade games tend to be, you know, the fucking Pac-Mans of the world. Like, I'm sure there's nuance to it for extremely hardcore people, but realistically, everyone else is just running from the ghosts. And here it's like, oh, I'm going to decide missiles. Actually, I need an extra shield here. I'm going to spend it on that.

Or, oh, I'm going to pick these cards because I think they're going to synergize well together. There's just, like, a lot of ways you can kind of evolve your play style to fit what you're good at. There is also a, this is not necessarily the kind of achieves. that we typically recognize here on Besties, but there is a stunning amount of information being conveyed to you in this game visually with like, in an incredibly complex battlefield, there is so much information and is like parsable.

Like you can parse so much in a way that feels overwhelming, but also like really can help to lock you in. You can get a sense of everything that is going on just from like the way the different shapes are drawn and move and colored and stuff. It still has that simplistic sort of geometry wars line-based style, but it expands it in a way that feels like, frankly, kind of like overwhelming sometimes from sensory perspective in a good way. It's hard to talk about it because it is subconscious, right? Like when you are playing this game, it's not like you are thinking strategy. You are feeling whatever the flow is that you get into and you are evading things.

But I will go back and watch video of when I played or watch other people play. And it doesn't make sense. There is so much on the screen that how you could possibly know to dodge all these different things, manage all these different enemies, all the projectiles, and still accomplish your goals and get to whatever the power-ups are or not use the power-ups or do any of these things. It's like you said, it's a tremendous amount of information that the brain in theory shouldn't be able to. And it makes you feel like a genius. Like it makes you feel because you are able to parse that, like there's so. I would say at least two or three times when I'm playing this game, each run

I have a moment where I'm about to fly between two guys, and I think, I'm dead. I'm cooked, this is over. Sometimes I'll close my eyes. That's it. I'm done. Oh my God. Oh, my God. I pulled it out. That's every run has something like that. It is that, like, thrilling every single time.

Right away, like you very, very early on in playing this game, you feel that. You're not training up to do that. feel it within the first half hour of playing the game. It feels like sitting down with a symphony and you've never played violin and they're like, you know, just keep up. And you're like, oh, I'm actually doing pretty okay. I'm right here with you. And you get all the modes kind of build on each other too. Like they're different ones. My favorite is still gates where you're flying, you don't, you can't shoot. And the only way you have of killing enemies is by picking up power

ups or flying through these gates that spawn in. So it's all about like not killing stuff as long as you can and then doing a huge fucking burst and clearing out the whole screen and like that teaches you how to avoid enemies and every mode is just constantly building so you are your skills are improving until you reach that sort of superhuman ESP level like intuition

it's it's it's really really really excellent I am shocked this is not a much bigger game maybe it's just because it came out of when it came out which was like I think it's timing And it's also, this is a game that doesn't necessarily stream great. It's really hard to parse if you're just watching someone play. Yeah, maybe that's it. It wouldn't necessarily be the most watchable game.

I think it's just, and it's just like a marketing challenge. Like, this is. It's also depressing hard to market a game based on like, it's really fucking fun. It's like just really fun to plot. Like, it's so fun. Yeah. The good news is the developer thought that he was going to make $0 off this, was expecting it to totally bomb and that he would have to go back.

to maybe working in a studio, and it has surpassed those expectations. So... Great, cool. I hope we can do our part. We'll see. Baby Steps is sort of the opposite game. It's actually...

Can I make an argument for why it's not? I want it so bad. Give me this argument, Russ. Okay, so Justin was just talking about Insectory, you're making these, like, minute-to-minute choices, and you kind of look at the field of enemies that are before you, and you're like, there is no fucking way I'm making through this, but I'm just going to give it a shot because why the fuck not?

And that is the feeling that I feel frequently when playing baby steps because you'll come upon a fucking sideways house surrounded by goo that makes you slip and slide and you are like, there's no fucking way that's going to work out. And for me at least, I was like, that was fun to like try to like hammer my way through it. Now, obviously very different games. But I do think that the player agency vibes and the feel. feeling of player control that you have in Baby Steps is similar. I also think you make really funny choices in Baby Steps. We mentioned a few of them earlier. And I mentioned, I think when we first reviewed this, I mentioned this moment, but I'll just call attention to it again. Pretty late in the game, you get to a cliff side, like a cliff face, and you're on top of it.

And on the side of the cliff face is a plank. The plank is probably about eight feet long. And at the end of the plank is a hat. And as you're on the side of the cliff face, and as you're you're playing throughout the game, there are many hats that you can collect, and if you bring the hats to like these save points, campfires, you get like bonus scenes. And I was like, I'll fucking go for it.

I'll go for the hat, whatever. I've walked along a number of planks. I realize how dangerous it is if I fall, but I'm not going to fall because I'm good at this. And I make it to the end of the plank, and I hit the button to like reach down for the hat. And I, like, just the center of gravity tips in such a way that I fall ass over tea kettle.

down 200 feet down to the bottom. And the fact that my immediate reaction wasn't, fuck this game, I'm never playing it again. But instead, this is hilarious. And oh, now that I've fallen, I've found this new area that I've never explored before and I didn't even know it was here. And I'm going to have a new experience

that I didn't have before. That is the like shit that gets me going because I feel like I'm in total control of the experience. Man, this is really, this is maybe the hardest one yet, I feel like. I, yeah, I adore me with stuff. It might be my personal game in the year. I don't know.

It's kind of tied. I think it is a hard one to sell to people. It's so dumb to say like it's an acquired taste, but like more than I think any game that is at this point on the list, it is either it resonates with you

or it deeply doesn't because it does ask so much of you and I think it does have this kind of masochistic streak, or at least it feels like a masochistic streak if you're not on its wavelength. For me, I don't think it is at all because I think it is constantly telling you, if you don't like it, quit. That's the whole point.

But that's a hard sell because then if you quit the game, you're not going to want to put it at the end of your end of your end of year list. I also wouldn't even necessarily call it masochistic. It's actually pretty, at least in comparisons to like games that Bennett has made previously, but also in comparison to games like Spalunky, for example. More often than not, if you fall in baby steps, I would say 90% of the time, if you fall on baby steps, you will fall one inch to the floor.

You will, you know, there are moments, and these moments will be very clear to you because you're crossing over a river or going across a chasm, whatever it is, where you know that the stakes are much, much higher, but those moments are rare. And I think this is the one area that I think this game does better

than other previous Benet Fadi games, is you have the pacing of moments of tension, short moments of tension, followed by long moments of like exploration to fuck around. Yeah. The most difficult part of baby steps for me was not the like falling and losing progress as much as it was like three or four times

so far while I've been playing the game. I feel like I have had no fucking idea where to where to go. And that like I will walk along a big long ridge looking for any kind of ingress and find absolutely find nothing and not realize like, oh, actually over here, there's like three boulders that you can get up. That stuff is infrequent, I think. But to me, that is like the main difficulty. That's the thing that makes me bounce off. It's just walking around and feeling like, okay, well, I don't know how to progress. When I fall and lose progress, it's like, okay, I know what to do. I know what I should have done differently there.

It sucks when I lose a hat doing that and it floats away down a river, but that's neither here nor there. I'll say one more thing because I have a feeling I'm kind of playing for the five spot, really, for baby steps. I think about this game constantly, just like the little things. The way that the game builds to this idea of why can you not accept help and when will you accept help and when will you take the easy route? And again, you can think about that at the very end where there is an almost impossible path up the side of a mountain or literal stairs. You can take one or the other, which one are you going to take? And there is an instinct in video games to say, I'm going to take the hard thing, because that's the challenge, right? Like, that's the whole point.

I shouldn't take the easy thing. And yet, at the very beginning of the game, when you are walking up a muddy path, you, on a, a, a micro level are going to think, what is the easiest way for me to get up this? You're not going to think, how could I make sure that I choose the hardest version? You're not going to think, well, I want to climb up the wall now. You're going to think, I want to get to the next point of the game. And it is this weird thing where the micro and the macro in this game are constantly in conversation with each other in a way that I don't feel very often in video games. It's so holistic this video game.

Yeah, something special. I took the stairs by the way I tried the hard path once I gave it a good go and I was like whatever I fell and I took the stairs It does make fun of you either way too There is a cutscene that triggers either way To let you know like what are you doing

I I think Sectori goes through I think it is a game bit I don't think we need to we can or Justin Actually Justin hasn't weighed in on baby steps If there's anything I've said baby steps by baby steps. I mean, I'm, I've been pretty clear

about it. I think, I think baby steps is cool as hell. It's not sectori. It's, it's cool, though. But sectori,

actually, it's not sex. Sectori is, like, the best video game in a year. I was like, you know what I mean? Okay, so can we bring it to a vote to an official legal vote? Yes.

Okay. Sectory. Uh, um, sectory, I'll tell, I'll have sectory, please it would be baby steps for me it would be baby steps for me now we're

cooking frankie now we got it now we're how we made it this far without a deadlock that's crazy baby steps sucks there we go um i would recommend sectory to almost anybody pretty much and i think that baby steps there's a lot of people that maybe don't need that in their life maybe don't shouldn't shouldn't get into baby steps and I think that it's so cool what it's doing and I think that

I think it's really cool what blipo plus did in a similar vein I think that's very cool but in terms of like what I want to award this is like the the attention to design and like the work that went into that like

this is the kind of thing that I want to award the fact that it kind of spread through the four of us like a wildfire than get other people hooked on it and I just really I think Sictory that's the kind of thing that I would feel

Okay so we need to be careful here because I think everyone here loves both games so we need to be mindful that this doesn't turn into a That's why I made the joke about it Russ But please your paternalism is going down a lot smoother Can I say this

Let's push them both through I think this could be a fourth and fifth a situation or or i do think that it's worth trying to choose between these two in case there's a different game that we want to pull up i think that may personally it may be baby steps it may be sectory i don't know but i think in the spirit of the we don't want to let ourselves off the hook too much the conversation has been so focused on which one reaches out to a broader audience i don't know if that's the thing that we want to it may be the only kind of unifying things, since these are two pretty dramatically different games, I am more interested in, like,

our take on them rather than, like, how well they can attract other audiences, other folks. Yeah. I really like both of these games a whole lot and would be fine with either of them taking, you know, that fourth position. Yeah, I would also say that I don't, you know, I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think they're that, even though it's on its surface, I don't think they're that far apart. insofar as I think they are both

before anything game design games like I don't think they're even though Baby Steps has a lot of narrative beats to it I don't think it's primarily a narrative game I think it's primarily a gameplay game

yeah and both of these are both player expression player expression games in terms of how you take a challenge and conquer it obviously in the case of sector you're doing that over the span of three seconds every loop

but Baby Steps is much more of a slow-paced methodical thing, but I do think there is a connection there. When I look at what we've already picked, we have Expedition 33, we have Hollow Night Silk Song, we have Descranning 2, sectuary does

fill a spot that we don't have filled on that list. If what we're trying to do is kind of like round out the different types of games. I don't think we are. We've never done. The fun one. One fun one. Guys, here's

what I here's what stuck in my head. I think you're right. I also think though that that is the thing that we should talk about when we're at a five position right. It's like it making a list that feels whole. I can't get past this. This is what's been bouncing in my head is like I love sectory. For me, sectory might be some of the most fun I've had this year. I don't know if it's my game here. It's like some of the most fun I've had this year. I can't shake the feeling to which it is a better mouse trap. And and I do think that if you don't have the familiarity going in, it may not hook in the same, it may not fire off those same neurons, you know what I mean? And I think that maybe that is part of the

story we're seeing play out with like it not making a huge, a more huge splash, but like it does seem like if you don't have the affinity, and I swear to God, some weird geometry wars like neurons must be kicking back there, like kicking around still, which is kind of weird. But like, I don't know that it's not taking the level of swing that baby steps is taking and succeeding in a lot of different ways in a way that's like they made something that was fun to watch streaming which is kind of the only way to get something in front of an audience these days in a sense but also like is a meaningful experience to have on your own I think that's pretty cool I mean I don't know I think that's pretty neat I'm willing to I think I would change my vote to break the log jam

change my vote to to baby steps oh good sectory rules baby steps sucks but I'm out vote

unfortunately that's the way it goes sometimes okay so there's a there's four games

that are definitely in the top five those four games are Expedition 33 Hollow Night Silk Song Death Stranding

two Baby Steps and let me just say say, that is a rust-fruscious list right there. Way more than last year. Yeah, man. I got fucking knocked out last year.

Dude, it's a funky year, dude. I wish Liza P2 came out this year, man. Can you imagine? Liza 2. Liza P. the sequel came out. Liza P. the squeakle. This time Jepetto's back. Like something, be the fungiest year ever.

I think we need to take a break before we start narrowing down what our final five is. Sounds good. there's four games that are definitely in our top five as we say yes those games are okay they are uh expedition 33 claire obscure expedition 33 hollow night silk song death stranding two baby steps um those are the four that are definitely in it there's a fifth slot that is in competition with our other nominees i think we can pull up anything right if we all can sort of agree on it

up anything that got knocked out in an earlier round or this round for that matter just looking at the list i think first of all sectory just because we were so so torn on it obviously i think it stands a pretty good shot uh dispatch dispatch dispatch is maybe the front runner for me for the for the fifth for the fifth spot um i really really uh it it not only is like my favorite story i think in a game this year, maybe just my favorite sort of writing and acting in a game this year. It's been forever since I have played a game like this. And part of that is just feeling burnt out with the genre. I think this does so much cool stuff and is just so. I don't even think the genre existed. No, I don't think so, right? I don't think it's a telltale game in that way.

Yeah. Like, it feels like something else. I, yeah, I think dispatch is definitely in the run. I think root trees is definitely in the running ways for me I'll speak of myself Hades 2 Not for me But I know

Justin maybe for you You might Yeah but if I was If I was one of One versus 3 there I'm not sure it makes the most No I love 80s 2 I played a shit time of Hades 2

Yeah I love Hades 2 Um I would you love it more than sectori Yeah I mean yeah man No Well I think let's get this down to a top three. Let's get this down to three runners up in this

elimination match that we can sort of pick from. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. Hades 2. I think sectory. Dispatch. Dispatch. Dispatch. Yeah. Yeah. I love root trees. I don't I don't like it as much as those three games. Okay. My argument for Hades 2 is that if Hades 2 had come out in a different way in a different way of being released in a different like it would be it simple like it just would have

dominated a narrative this year in a way that these are meaning if it just came out like if it just came out like with a normal release and it didn't have this long tail we are bound sort of like the way we cover games and the way we like interact with games like we have to handle it in a way that like other people don't our editor Rachel held off on Hades 2 stuff

the entire time and it seemed insane to me and then she had like a fantastic experience. And I feel like the only reason that Hades 2 is not higher on this list or already in this top 4 is because of the way in which it was sort of drip fed out and evolved over time. Like it simply succeeds as a thing. Dispatch fails several times. Dispatch succeeds wildly when it hits. there's a lot of ways in which dispatch fails, especially in how

much of it feels random in a way that's really unsatisfying. Whether or not your missions succeed is often just up to chance. Some of it is like thumb on the scale. Like they want a narrative beat to happen so they make you lose. Some of that happens behind the scenes.

Yeah, but some of it is like you lose when you shouldn't have and the odds were really against it. There's an achievement. There's an achievement for that if you lose a mission with like 75% chance of success. But for me, the thing that drives me crazy about the sort of interactive part of dispatch, I actually kind of liked it. Like, I ended up having a team that I felt very invested in. And the game asked you to make some pretty huge choices. Like, you, your roster is going to look different from my roster based on the decisions that you make throughout the episodes. And I found

myself, like, really getting invested in the team for that reason. But it is, I mean, it sucks to lose those like challenges and the game doesn't really do an awesome job of kind of telling you like oh that's okay it doesn't actually matter that you blew that it doesn't matter that challenge didn't go your way because it's not going to impact the story at all and the story is really what this thing is doing wow also one i mean not for nothing but if we're trying to pick like the best games of the year the fact that there is just a button for like turn off a lot of this because it's just annoying Like that's not the game of the year does not have a turnoff interactivity because it's just getting in my nerves like that's not the game of the year, right? That's a fair point. It's a fair point, man. I'm just, I struggle with it because I do, I think just it's, it's great. It's so fucking good. Alien Earth too, man.

What? Alien Earth's, he's saying a TV show is also compelling to watch. Like, there is, there are incredible stories, you know what I mean, like being communicated. I, I, I like dispatch a lot. I 100% really like dispatch. But I love it because I love this story and a lot of the other stuff I'm kind of tolerating. The interactivity, I think, for me, at least, elevates it a little bit, not a lot. Yeah.

I think the story, the cutscenes are what elevate the entire project, which, again, doesn't feel as. I am, I am convinced. I would agree with that. game that I love despite its flaws. So that brings us to Justin with a pistol in his hand deciding between

two of his best favorite children. I shouldn't have to. Why don't you three? Justin, can I make a case? I don't care. I like them both. You three choose. When we make a list, I love when I can look back five years from now and be like, yeah, that feels right. And five years from now

I will have a sectori on my steam deck and I will still be playing it whenever I have a flight and I forget to download something new. And I can't say that with any confidence about almost anything else on the list. And I think that is very telling. There are very few games that live in my conscience and on my Steam deck and it's my habit like that. They are Spalunky. I think fresh for you, that's like a binding of Isaac. And I think the games that come to mind whenever I say something like that are games that I would definitely want on my game of the year list.

But Hades 2 has Everyone's so hot. Everyone in Hades 2 is so hot. And they're taking baths and stuff and it's like, Wowza. I will also say, I don't have to be theoretical with what you're saying about Hades 2 plant because I have had Hades 2 installed on my devices permanently.

Yeah, 100% straight up, played it yesterday, still kicks ass. I like them both. feel like I feel like we did Hades 2 a little dirty it's so fun it's fun every time and I think that I would rather

it's fun in a lot of really cool ways to it's like it really does embrace you know a lot of different play styles in a way that it must be really hard to balance I mean it must be like impossible to balance but I'll be really happy

either way. Genuine I think they're both great. I really like them too. I think in my brain, I probably enjoyed Sectory more, but I also only played Sectory for eight hours. That's what I'm struggling with is like the purity, the purity of sectory and the kind of like, I don't know.

Well, and the nuance of sectory, whereas Hades 2, again, is building off of the foundation. But I've spent more time playing Hades 2 than maybe any other video. Not, okay. Not to put my thumb on the scale too much here, because I am trying to let you gentlemen figure this out. But I do think that with Sectory, once I had sort of like risen to the top of our personal leaderboards, my desire to kind of play it diminished pretty quickly. Like when there were no more worlds to conquer in a sense, like there wasn't, it doesn't do a great job of like incentivizing you with its own mechanics.

It kind of like the score chase thing is definitely a huge part of it. But once I'd sort of figured that stuff out, I didn't feel a big desire to, like, get back in there and tear it up because it was so demanding to set some of those high scores. And, like, I legitimately don't know if I can top it. It's funny because, like, that was very much the Geometry Wars. Like, Geometry Wars 2 on XBLA, I played constantly because I wanted the top score of, like, you know, all the old joystick crew that we used to play with. But that was back when they only made, like, 20 video games a year. And now they make a trillion. It was illegal to be more than 20.

And I have two kids. And so like the idea of fucking clonking down and doing a hundred runs of Gates mode is not really in the realm of possibility for me. I would also say that when I beat the campaign of Sectory, I had the same vibe that Hoops did about his arcade score chase, which was I beat the campaign. And my desire to keep pushing for other things kind of diminished pretty quickly. It had to be hard to looking at my scores. It's like, what's the point? You know what I mean? Like you had to be like, how am I going to get up there in Olympus?

Speaking of. I think Hades 2. It's funny because I still feel like I liked Absalom better for a sort of comprehensive standpoint. But I also think that the argument is sound for Hades 2 to join the topic. Yeah, I think. Oh, yeah. Haiti, yeah, man. We have to have one of those every year where like someone leapfrogs.

around a matchup that it lost the first go-round? Congratulations. Okay. So do we feel good about that as a top five? I think so.

Okay. Okay. So that is Expedition 33, Silk Song, Death Stranding 2, Baby Steps, Hades 2. God. Oh, fuck. Baby Steps, the only original.

Wow, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Wait, Expedition. There's been 32 of those motherfuckers. Are you kidding me? I'm just God they finally got it right They finally got it right I didn't even notice the other ones man

They've been churned these things out There's a lot of Eastern European stuff I can't keep dads on I guess they just been Them and Frog warriors They've just been cranked these things out Fuck so I know what the game of the year is going to be

And I think it's fucking crazy I do too I do guys It's fucking crazy That that's going to be the game of the year Should we do that? This is unusual Should we start at the top?

And they'll work our way back. All at the same time? I'm going to count to four. And then if we could all say the number one game of the year according to the besties. Because I think we're going to get it in one, guys. We say it after four. You say it after four.

I'm going to say, no, not after four. That's crazy. I said that because there's four of us. So one, two, three, and then just say the name. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay. One, two, three.

Death Stranding two. Crazy. It's fucking crazy, guys. It's so crazy that the best game of the year is Death Stranding 2. It's classic. You know what's really crazy? Go back and listen to the original Death Stranding 2 episode when I fucking called it. Did you?

Did you? Yeah. Well, at least for me, I said this is my favorite game of the year when it came out. Now, listen, when I went back and played it, I got to say, guys, I said in the chat, maybe Death Stranding 2 is the best video game for 2025. It's not my, I have a weird thing where it's. It's not my personal game of the year, but it feels right to be the best to be the best.

It's so good. Yeah, so good. And you know what? It's redemption. Like, it doesn't need it. You know what it is? It's not just good. I've been playing this man's games for so long.

And the fact, I mean this genuinely, I don't know why it happened. Maybe he offloaded more to design. I don't know why. But this really does feel like one of, of our, like, last autores in games, one of the only autores in games, actually kind of evolving, like, actually changing

and, like, wanting to, not just, like, wanting to stay, like, relevant and wanting to, like, engage with the audience in a way that he, like, I think it's kind of kept people at a distance, and I feel like this is a game that's really, like, really a lot more about connection, you know, than the first one was thematically. This one feels very open,

hearted to me. The first true strand type game, I would say, for that. Griffin, it's maybe the second true string. Yes. So, yeah. It also is kind of the answer to the little tiny questions we have about the other games. It is a sequel that is doing a lot more than the original game. It is dramatically improving the original game.

It is a game that is taking the challenge of the original game and making it more conceptually interesting. It has a story that is coherent from beginning to end, and I find very fulfilling. And it is even saying many of the same things that Baby Steps is saying about working with other people and taking support and being open to what is given to you. It's a very, it's a game about community, which it's a good vibe of it. It's not really, it is. It is, it's good. And it's, you know what it is? It's also like, it engages with the fact that it is online.

in a way that doesn't detract from but rather builds up the single player experience and I feel like so few games I figured out how to do that in a smart way like you got some soul stuff that does it but like it's rare and this one really does well it's old stuff also has like the trolley shit like oh here's a note that doesn't mean anything

but here everything that you find in the world that is placed by another player is in some way useful yeah and also like it feels I love that shit where you know why someone put that thing there I'm on a run and I'm on this route that I designed and right when my tri-cruiser runs out of battery, someone has built a battery tower here because they did the same thing.

That's cool. It's cool. Did any of you play when the servers went offline between the review period and release? Yes, I mean, that's the bulk of when I played it and why I didn't have a great time with it the first time I played it. It was such a wild experience

because if you played a lot before the servers went offline, you got a real taste of how much the thing was helping you. Yeah. But kind of assumed it wasn't, kind of assumed that was just the game, kind of assumed it was all your work. And then it gets taken away and you're like, oh, I have done nothing. Yeah, I've been saying. I have created four small roads and I rely so much on the help of others. I am helpless.

It actually makes me worried because someday, I just hope they have a plan for the day then the servers get turned off. I think that they... I mean, it's still fun. I played when the server's rough line and it was like a fucking grueling. experience. It was not the broad appealing experience that I think most people have, but I loved the like, I'm going to fucking ship these metal pieces. Anyway,

this game fucking rules. It rules. Death training two. If it makes one person play Death Training 2, then that's not enough. And that's not a good reason to do this podcast. But it makes a hundred people. Maybe. Maybe. I see someone has put Hades 2 at 5. I didn't put it there.

I put it there just because it'll get shifted around. But it was, it was our fifth one. And usually we put it there but I'm fine with it moving wherever it can go wherever I would be fine with it feels like to me that an expedition 33 are probably going to be four and five I'm not sure where you all want to do that but I to me as much as you all I think expedition 33 did really well to get here but there's a lot of ways in which I think expedition 32 is going to be the best Expedition ever.

I like Hades 2 more than Expedition 33 for what it's worth. That's kind of where I would, that feels right to me. I mean, I don't, I would not agree with that. And I can make a pitch for it. But again, like, it's such a, it's such a, like, personal thing. This is more than any other game this year, the, like, it's got to be your preference. I think applies to Expedition 33. and like, I don't know, man, this is maybe my favorite genre of games is JRPGs.

There's like a reason I go back and replay all those old Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games. And it's truly unthinkable that this studio came out of nowhere to deliver such a kick-ass version of that thing. Griffin, at the holidays, will you explain to Grandpa Dan why a game is a French Japanese RPG? Because this is a French Japanese RPG, but I do want to have that conversation with Dan. Like, you don't understand. No. Yeah. It's not an F-R-PG.

That's nothing. It's an F-JRP. Maybe it will be something. Maybe it will be something, but it's going to have to be different than this, because this is a French-Japanese role-playing game. The things that you guys bounced off of about Expedition 33, I see. simply don't because of my the fact that I like this genre so much like that's the stuff I like and to me I think that's the only game on this list where that is true uh like dispatch the only game you like that don't well no I'm saying like the things you just liked about expedition 33 were

things that I liked about expedition 33 the stuff that didn't work in dispatch we all kind of agree like oh well that didn't that that didn't work so much I think it's a bolder and way more innovative and more exciting game than Hades 2. I would agree with that. I think Hades 2 is a fucking kick-ass game, and it does such a good job of building on Hades 1, but doesn't necessarily, I don't know, doesn't do it in a way where I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. And I'm going to be thinking about Expedition 33 for a really, really long time.

I beat it eight months ago, and I'm still thinking about that game. Um, so, so I, I, I would put it higher than five, but, um, not a, I personally would also, but that's just because, yeah, well, let's do that. Haiti, Hades two just didn't really stick with me. So it feels, I like them both, man. I feel weird leaving it out because I, I just could not get myself to lock into that, that. It's a Hades too. I, I feel, I don't have a good vocabulary for how I feel about Hades two. Honestly, because it's so singular. I spent 150 hours with the first Hades. That's too much time to play a video game. That's not the fault of Hades 2.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's not Hades 2's fault. The Hades 1 was so cool. That's not that I've had a belly full of it. Not just like, I don't want to, I feel like for my life maybe, I'm full on Hades. You know what I mean? Like, unless you want to bring some other people in there,

unless do like a co-op thing, I may be just like, good. I think they're done. Dude, if it was co-op, that would have been enough, I feel like to break the mold a little bit. I think this would be a kick-ass co-op game. I think that is a fair way to describe it,

is it does feel, I think it does extend beyond the mold of the first game, but not to the point of it being a full sequel, at least for me. Okay. I think Hades 2 at 5, Expedition 33. I mean, I like the Expedition 33 better than baby steps.

Yeah, that makes sense. But I don't think it's going to get up higher than there. Expedition 33 of 3. I like all those threes. You know? Expedition 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. I love it. Then what's in the 4 spot?

And 4, you get baby steps, and in 2, you get Silk Song. Say this again? Yeah, why are we doing it in that weird order? Death stranding, number 1. Number 2, Silk Song. Number 3, Expedition 33. Number 4. Baby steps.

Baby steps, number 5. Hades 2 Baby Steps Expedition 33 Silk Song Death Stranding 2 I mean I'm good with that list

If you guys are I think that sounds like Our list Like as a group Yeah In terms of like where It kind of Yeah

Averaged it all out That does seem like a good Averaging of our Yeah That's kind of how I Yes That is yes And we did somehow

Find one game That we all fucking loved So Mission accomplished on that front. Thank you. Yeah. Kind of incredible. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Someone write it then, I guess. Yeah. Okay. So, Chris Plant, do it. Okay. Go down from the mountaintops with the tablet and tell them what they say.

Thank you so much for joining us here today to celebrate the top five besties games, the besties besties of 2025, not 2026. Those games are at number five, Hades 2. At number four, Baby Steps, at number three, Claire Obscure Expedition 33, at number two, hollow night, silk song, and at number one, with a bullet, death, stranding two. Two, wait, wait. On the beach. On the beach, Death Stranding Two, on the beach. We're going to read all these other stupid-ass subtitles. Nobody just have a normal name.

Nobody just have a normal name. You've got to have a colon. How are you going to have a colon on your first game, Claremps here? Come on, come on. Better than that. That feels good, man. Hey, that went a bit smoother than I thought it was going to go. It went okay.

It's good. Thank you. Who would have thought? I can consensus builder, the small town governor from Ohio, just enough people can agree on. It's really our system at work, isn't it? That's straighting too. Just funky enough that all of us could be like, I guess.

Yeah, man, for sure. For sure. I wrote a big monorail. It ruled. I think we did it. Did it? Okay. Wow.

Any honorable mentions? No. Top of every game. No, okay. We're good. That's going to do it. I wanted to thank some folks over at the Patreon who've been lovely this year in supporting us. There's just a couple, but there's been tons.

L8G, David R. Ali H. Killer Andreas are just some relatively recent. or existing subscribers. Thank you very much. Speaking of subscribers, next week, we are taking a short break,

but the subscribers have chosen to elevate a bracket episode. We do monthly bracket episodes over at the Patreon, and they've picked one from this year that will be delivered beneficially to all members of the besties community. So that will be hitting your feed this coming Friday. So get pumped for that. and then we'll be back the week after that

for most anticipated games of 20, 26. All right, that's going to do it for this year on the besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!