The Besties - The Most Anticipated Games Of 2026

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

2026 may be the year of Grand Theft Auto 6, but we’re partial to the nearly 20 other games on our most anticipated list. You like RPGs? Prefer point-and-click adventures? Crave some tactics, life simulators, or deckbuilders? Whatever your interests, we have you covered! 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!

So I asked some of our patron members for their most anticipated games of 2025. Yeah. That was a mistake. Uh-oh. That was the first time I did that because it's not 2025 anymore. They're not. Oh, my gosh. And I'm so fucking embarrassed.

Did you get your ass fucking handed to you? We had like 30 or 40 people just unsubscribe right then. And it didn't say from Russ, did it? It just comes from the besties. It's just from the besties. So you're hung by my. error and I don't know what to do. I'm sorry.

Were there people saying shit like... Were they trying to be fucking funny, dude? Were they like Death Stranding too? And like saying games that came out last year to try to hurt your fucking feelings? They were. And I feel bad about it. That sucks, dude.

Hey, listen, if you're one of those people, turn this off. Yeah. Turn this off and go away. Don't be mean. If you're going to be mean to us, go away. Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry.

Go away. You said you did this on the Patreon? Yeah, I edited it. No, no, no, I'm going to say, hey, if you're one of those people, thanks for supporting the show. If you're a patron, you can razz, rust his ass, and tell the cows. By the way, no one was mean. Everyone was like, hey, by the way.

Okay, don't go. Don't go away. It's like our audience. I love that. Yeah. My name is Justin McElroy, and I, through the powers of psychic ability, you know, the greatest games of 2026. My name is Griffin McRoy, and if I'm being 100% honest,

my track record for knowing with the best games of the, the upcoming year I always absolutely fucking dog water, but I'm going to try again anyway. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I'm here to tell you about the best things that are going to happen this year. My name is Ross Froscika. I know the best game of the week. Chris, I'm glad you can escape from your terminal case of seasonal affector disorder to join us here on the besties. I hope the games of 2026 are able to pick your spirits up. Is the crop of games really as dire as you make it sound?

Dude, I've been awake since 4 a.m. this morning. My kid woke me up and was like, hey, you want to read a book? At 4 a.m. Who wants to read books at 4 a.m.? I want to play video games. Here, I'm back. I've had a joint. I've been touched by the gods. Welcome.

That's the kind of energy you could expect right after this. Before we dive into the list, I thought it would be fun. I have the rundown from last year's motels of a bit. I'm looking at that too, man. Oh, yeah. We got some choices. So let's direct ourselves to Justin for a second. Justin didn't do great.

You did successfully predict one game that came out, which was Outer Worlds 2. Congratulations. Was this predict or most anticipated? I guess you were anticipating Outer Worlds 2 coming out and then a bunch of games. So I'm danged for being a dreamer that anticipates games that didn't quite cross the finish line? Here's some other... Because I dream too big. Some other bad boys that didn't quite make it.

We have Fable. We have Slate Aspire 2. We have Judas. Marvel 1943. Judas is huge. Oh, Fable's funny. Is Fable on one from the year before? Probably.

There's a sneak peak of 2027, Fable. Yeah. No, it's on there this year. Let's see. Plant did pretty good. All these games I think came out and he liked them for the most part. Despolite, Descenting 2, promise mascot agency, and Adam Fall. I don't think we played a lot of.

Adam fall, but the other ones for sure. Yeah. How did I do? You had unannounced 3D Mario game. I fucked that up. That didn't happen. That's pretty bad. You also had Eldon Ring Night Ring.

Wait, let's take a second. In a million years, would you guess the fucking team that worked on Mario Odyssey was in fact just working on a Donkey Kong game where he eats a bunch of bananas instead? Like, never would have occurred to anyone. Was that not announced yet? No. I guess that? I guess not.

Yeah, yeah. No one no. Um, Metro Prime 4. Dada Duda, Doom, and Eldon Ring. Sorry, Metro Prime 4, you think you're going to skate by on that being one of your most anticipated Johns of 2025? It was. It wasn't. It didn't end up being. It can be anticipated and then...

Yeah, but I'd rather anticipate something that doesn't come out than anticipate something that ends up being dirty ditch water. That's fair. Fair call. And then I did it. I liked MGS 3 Delta, which I had on my list. Night Rain scared me too much. I didn't play a lot of that. And then GTA-6 didn't come out.

So, whoops. Mine's not in the rundown for some reason. Yeah, Griffin didn't write his down. So there's really no way for history to know. You will never find it out. I'm excited about this year. I'm looking at our list, and I feel confident that most of the stuff that we talk about today will come out in 2026. Yes.

Yeah. I think that's fair. I'm not as confident, but I appreciate that you guys are. Should we do a round Robin? Yeah. Yeah. A round Robin. How about you kick it off, Mr.

Robin? with a deep cut of Resident Evil 9 Requiem. It comes out February 27th. It will come out this year. Feel good about that one. What a fucking like staple. It's crazy to me how Resident Evil has become almost like the same way that I used to look forward to like, oh, the new Assassin's Creed. This year's Assassin's Creed game's coming out and it's going to be a quality AAA title.

For me, like, I don't know. I feel like that is what Resident Evil has become, which is really bonkers. What's really wild with Resident Evil is in addition to being like kind of a regular beat of either a year or two, every year or two, there's either a remake or a new one, they are very inventive. Like, they do really take curveballs with these games, which Assassin's Creed, I think, got to a point where they're... No, obviously, that's not the case for that anymore. But just every Resident Evil game that has come out, I feel like since Seven has just been kind of a club banger. Yeah. I also like the fact that you can play this one in third person and first person, because I think...

think the first person ones are too scary for me. Oh, see, I like that. I get too scared. I think the trick is the, the cadence, right? Because it feels like you're getting these all the time, and it's overwhelming you like that Ubisoft Activision style. The last Resident Evil mainline came out in 2021. So they, they left these things cook.

RE4 was the remake. I feel like they're just bouncing between those two. But having a variety of things to release and then them all being nice, it is a different vibe than, hey, here's Call of Duty, and it's a version of the same thing, but by different people every year. So many companies, so many companies could take a hint from, from what Capcom has been doing with a lot of their franchise,

and just in terms of, like, managing it. And, like, it's wild that there hasn't been a mainline once in 2020. I feel like that franchise is like every year, there's something really cool happening with it. And, like, yeah, man, think about how many franchises really been kind of dug into the dirt recently. It's really nice to have something that's a little more dependable. Yeah. Also, can I say for this game, I'm hopes up that they will figure out the internal pacing of the game so you don't have to have the, it starts out as a horror game, it ends as an action game, which don't get me wrong. I like it. But I think that they want to fix this by having the two main protagonists so that you can bounce like and forth. I think they played a little bit of Allen Wake 2. And they said, ooh, that's the sweet sauce right there. Let's let you mix. This is a predictions episode in some ways. You are going to be wrong.

Because I guarantee the final act of that game will be fucking rocket launchers out of the ass. Shooting a rocket launcher. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. Did you say fucking rocket launchers out the ass? Because, yeah, dude. Yeah.

That would be something. Now, that's innovation. Yeah. Uh, hoops, you want to go? Yeah, man. Fabo is going to come. My prediction is that Fable will be capital C canceled this year. That's what I think.

No way. Wow. Yeah, 100%. I think Fable will be canceled this year. You're kidding. What makes you think that? What is Fable? Oh, you asked.

I thought this was a hypothetical. No, I'm saying like, Fable is this brand name that doesn't mean anything to anybody that buys games right now. It did mean something, but as a brand, it doesn't mean anything, right?

Yeah. I feel like everything we've seen of that game has been concept, has been like early thoughts. Like, the fact that you have to have... It's hard to tell. Right. Yeah, I just got...

I mean, I can't... I can't prove that they're going to cancel it. It just feels like... I'm saying that like... I feel it in the air. I don't know that... Man, I just don't know that that's going to come out. I mean, if they were going to cancel it,

it seems like they would have done it when they canceled all the other games last year with the perfect dark and things like that. That's the only reason I can take it. You know what they also didn't do, Russ? They didn't say that Fable will be out at this time. Yeah. Which if I was canceled a bunch of games and I wanted to be like,

don't worry about Fable, I would have at least given a quarter You know what I mean? I just think they're going to cancel. So this is you anticipating the cancelation fable. Yeah, this is on your list. I've anticipated the cancellation fable. That's my bonus.

Right. And instead I'm going to pick the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time, which looks wild. It's already kind of like, if there's a subgenre for like meta-narrative within a game, like I'm already a huge sucker for that in games.

This is, I mean, this is one of those where, like, my description is not going to do it justice because there is, the full nature of it is obviously being hidden by the trailers or whatever. It is ostensibly the remake of the last hour of a classic video game, but it includes, like, judging from the trailer, like fragments of the manual director's commentary. And then, like, throughout the trailer, then you see, like, video. of like the guys actually like making the game and there's some sort of like meta story that's bleeding into it it kind of reminds you what's the uh there is no game i think was kind of like

kind of reminded me of that kind of vibe or like things like that where there is a meta layer outside of the game or the magic circle was that the magic circle i was trained so hard to remember the name of that game good pull every every media needs its version of the greatest song in the world this is just a tribute yes sir You know? Like, I'm, yeah, I'm very excited for this one. It was, it looks really cool. It looks like Q1 this year.

So hopefully that'll be soon because it was originally supposed to be November. So, hey, if you enjoy one hour of JRP gaming, may I interest you in 140 hours of JRP gaming? Because, uh, they are doing another remake of Dragon Quest 7. Quick history lesson, Dragon Quest 7 came to the States Dragon Warrior 7. Uh, and it is the franchises, uh, and perhaps genres long. longest entry. It is sort of a time hopping, sort of JRP romp, and it takes so fucking long to beat this game. There is so much content and so much story. They are apparently streamlining

quite a bit of it and turning a lot of the mainline stuff into side quest stuff to make it maybe a little bit more accessible. But I don't know, it has more of a Dragon Quest, what was it, 11 aesthetic now. But, I mean, that game I played through and finished for the first time on like a PS1 emulator running at like 10 times speed. Because that was sort of the only way to cruise through it. But it is extremely charming.

And I think it would be a great, great, great game if, again, if they streamline. of that stuff. It's extremely charming. If you grind it down into little granules and open up your nose. Mush it into paste and then slurp, slime it down. No,

it has a lot going for it. It is just like so daunting. It is a daunting-ass game. Even in the like Dragon Quest canon, it is like a lot to take on. But there's a lot of cool stuff there. So I don't know. I think it will be,

they have such a, I think at this point, pretty solid track record with these Dragon Quest remakes. And I'm sort of, interested to see like... When is fucking rocket slime coming back? That's all I want to know. Dude, don't tell me about it.

Yeah, I would love a new rocket slime. They've really figured out how to create that feeling of nostalgia, the rose color glasses thing. First with that 2.5D pixel stuff. But this, it's like, what if the strategy guides, that look was how the game itself looked? It looks so warm. I want to live inside this video game.

It looks amazing. Yeah. You will be. You will, yes. Sorry, son. Daddy has to go to the war. That's out February 5th, so that's out pretty soon. I should actually probably start reaching out to Square Yenix to find out what the plan is for code for that because...

Don't worry, my bud. I'm already... Oh, thanks to how I can all account on you, Chris Plaint. I know it's a priority. Chris, what are you looking forward to? I am looking forward to a game that I've already finished. I'm looking forward to perfect tide station to station. It comes out January 27.

second. This game is absolutely incredible, and I cannot wait for all of you to play it. Perfect Tides was the one that came before this. That is an adventure game, a point and click adventure, kind of in the style of the Monkey Island, but you play as an emo teenager living in a very small town during the emo boom of like 2001. This game is that same person, is now, going to be a freshman in college in New York in the year 2003 and live in the Greenwich Village, which is basically exactly what my life was moving from a small town and doing that in 2004. So it is, for me, pure nostalgia bait. But on top of that, it's just some of the best writing I've seen in a video game, some of the

best memoir writing I've enjoyed in years, games or not games. the author Meredith Gran. Before this did a web comic called Octopus Pie. I don't know if any of you read that, but also just wonderful memoir writing. This is one of those games that you just sink into because it feels so lived in and so human. I have had three, four conversations with my wife

about kind of reflecting on our life together in our time in New York that we've just never have had before because this game was making me think about things that I had kind of forgotten about being in my 20s. And for a game to like give you that is not a thing that you get very often. So I am really excited for everyone to play this. No, that does sound nice, but is Pikachu building you a house?

That's a huge question for me. Ooh, I'm trying to remember if that probably is going to be in the DLC. DLC, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, understood. Well, right at the jump, March 5th, Pokemon Pocopia, Pikachu's building a motherfucking house for you. To code. You don't have to worry about it. It's got plumbing and everything.

The code. He's very concerned about that. He's very diligent. You wouldn't think. Pocopia is, unironically, might be my most anticipated game of the entire year. It's going to blow this house the fuck up. It's going to absolutely take over. Now, I think we can all acknowledge that Pokemon Legend Zia

is not a great. game. It has unfortunately been the game that I've played most, probably the last month, because my son is incredibly pilled on it. Thankfully, I do have more optimism for this game because it is developed by the team that did

Dragon Quest Builders, 1 and 2, which were both games that I really, really enjoyed. It also looks like Dragon Quest Builders, which is a huge, huge check in the plus column. Yeah, so assuming that they don't muck it up in some way, I'm very optimistic, and it looks fucking

great. There's a new version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about. You play as a ditto masquerading as a human being and that asks a lot of sort of existential questions that I'm ready to really dive into. The PQHU also looks dead and I don't know what the story is there but I'm very invested. Sorry, there's a new version of Snorlax I'm pretty excited about is one of the best sentences I've ever heard. It's huge. You can put that on my tombstone. Find joy, you know? Yeah. I mean, not since his Gigantamax form in Pokemon, um, in Pokemon Sword and Shield

where he had the big tree on his belly. That was really cool. Yeah, now he's covered in moss. Yeah, God, it's so cool. God, I love Snorlax. You know what else I love? Little Gators. Yeah.

I'm psyched about this one as well, yeah. Yeah, for the same reason over here. Yeah, a little Gator game in the dark. It takes the little Gator, the beloved little Gator from the first Little Gator game, which if you haven't played it what do you hate charm why do you hate charms

you know you should play it now because this is DLC so you're gonna want to play LLC so you got time Little Gator game The Ridge was about it was a basically a big fantasy game that you set up for your

sister to play and then to prove how fun it is you had to play the game that you created for her and it is a beautiful little story about growing up and but it's also a really fun open world sort of thing with a great aesthetic where everything's sort of DIY and in the dark takes that same idea of it like into the caves below a new adventure below the surface as it's advertised it looks really cute and fun and I can guarantee you it will be a joy I just this is a

sure bet there's new characters to meet there's a alligator it's going to be great it does seem like you would I can't even fathom how they would screwed up because all you need to do is like add new fun tools and continue the like high tradition of the writing and yeah mission accomplished and as long as like that it's like no one are like maga maga dude let's go that'd be bad it's the worst pacman noise ever oh we we hate that guy everyone hates this one pac man to just walk around um i'm looking forward to a game that i've just just realized after loading up its information page, it is coming to the Nintendo Switch 1 and is backwards compatible with the Switch 2 in the second half of 2026. So we're, that's pretty wild.

It is Tomodachi Life living the dream. Just based on what we've seen from it, maybe it doesn't need all the incredible raw processing power of the Switch 2 because it does look like a 3DS game, specifically the 3DS game Tomodachi Life. But I love Tomodachi. life. It is a really very, I would say, light on mechanics, social sim sort of thing that leans way more on absurdity and kind of like setting up these comic situations. In the original, you could have your me's that you had made, like live on this island together, go on dates, which was weird if you base them on your real friends. And you could have them sing songs that like you wrote the words too, but it would match it to music that was already in the game. And there's so many

fucking hysterical, like, things that came out of that. And I think Tomidashi Life Living the dream, despite the fact that it is on a nine-year-old video game console sort of natively, I think is in this streaming era going to absolutely take the fuck over all your feeds and stuff. It also is going to have more Meemaker sort of. options to put on your characters, including ears. For the first time ever, we're giving these guys some ears. So, yeah, it's such a silly game, but I really think it's a game that we are all going to be seeing a lot of when it comes out. Actually, quarter two, 2026.

Yeah, I never played the original. It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around it, but. It's bonkers. It's not like, so Meotopia was the other kind of similar one that came out. That was very much a Dragon Quest style. That was like the RPG one. RPG where you could customize every single character or download me's like from online. That is like more of a game than Tomodachi Life was.

Tomodachi Life was, there was very little in the way of progress or, you know, many mechanics to really get your hands on. Kind of tangential here, but how are you feeling about that Animal Crossing update? Yeah, no, I mean, I'm excited. That's out January 15th. I have been on and again off again with that game. Henry picked it up last year, and so we both got pretty, pretty into it for,

I don't know, like three or so months. And honestly, if I'm being completely honest, my feelings being complicated about it are that I want to play it on Switch 2, but I can't do that without destroying my son's island. So like my only option to do that

would be to buy another Switch 2. Why can't you just, Why? Because you can only have one island per switch, despite the fact that I own the game on both cartridge and digital so we can play it together. He owns it on. He's playing it on Switch 2. He is playing it on Switch 2 on my account. But we only have one Switch 2 and you can only have one island per Switch 2.

It's this insane trichonian. So just share the island, Griffin, with your son. He would be so pissed off if I did. Are you kidding? If I touched anything. Guys, he's pretty specific. Well, I would also... It's a island and he does not want Griffin to screw it up.

I would also add you have the ability now there's like a free mode where you can like fuck around with islands without like impacting the main island. Cool, cool. That doesn't address the issue at hand, which is that I would have to buy a second switch two in order. But like all the content is coming to the switch one version aside from like, you know, the weird webcam stuff. And I think you can only do 12 player multiplayer on the switch two version. But all the stuff that they're adding about, you know, the mode Russ mentioned and the like hotel where you decorate rooms for people. people bringing in more of that like happy home designer sort of vibe. I don't know.

I think it looks cool. I think time will tell whether or not it sucks us back in or not. But I think it would be. Yeah. I think it's pretty likely it probably will. Plant, you want to do one more and then we'll take a break? Yeah, yeah, I'll do one more. I can't wait to play Pragmata.

I mean, Resident Evil 9, don't joke. It's probably my top of the Capcom game. But Pragmata is more of a Chris Plant style video. game. What if I told you there was a third person shooter, but whenever you wanted to shoot the robots, you had to also do a hacking mini game at the exact same time with the other side of the controller? Why, yes, that game does exist and it's called Pragmata. And it also just looks beautiful. So you're doing this hacking game, you're trying to avoid the robots that are coming at you. And once you nail that perfect hack, the robot flays open like a robo fish and you see it

glowing blue internal organs and you blow them up and there's goo everywhere and then you have a little girl

who just hangs out with you who has the power to hack not just hang out it looks like Isaac Clark from Dead Space

has like a little girl on his back like a backpack with like noot from like aliens yes yeah cool sort of a

Donkey Kong bonanza situation it is I mean basically the same yeah this is the first bonanza like

Let's take a quick break. We have some more coming at you after. Okay. There's one that I'm incredibly worried about, but I hope I end up liking it. Okay. It is the Dusk Bloods. Yeah.

For sure, you. I don't know how I feel about this game. Because Dust Bloods, for those that don't know, is the Switch 2 exclusive game from From Software, makers of Eldon Ring, and all those other games that we all love. But, and it like looks... It's not Night Rain.

What? I get it confused with Night Rain. That's a different game. Night Rain. It's Night Rain. It's just the two-syllable kind of dark words. Dustblads is the one that kind of looks like blood, like when the trailer showed at the Nintendo event, it kind of was like, oh, my God, is there a new Bloodborn happening?

Because aesthetically, it does have some of those notes to it. But it also, they've said it's like multiplayer-centric or PVPVE. And that's the stuff that like... characters. Love that. Called the Bloodsworn. Love that. Cool. Cool. Very cool. I just don't know.

Yo, it's got a dedicated hub. It's kind of wild that there's not a lot of, I don't know, to announce a switch exclusive from Soft game that looks extremely blood-borne coded, it seems weird how little kind of stuff there is out there about the game. Yeah. I don't know. I also get worried that, like, is this them? I know they've made statements about this, but are they continuing to push into more multiplayer-centric stuff, which quite frankly, doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as it does their, like, mostly single-player stuff. So I am cautiously optimistic about this one and definitely very curious.

I'm looking forward to Witchbrook, which I'm almost certain I brought last year as well. However, it was delayed from being a winter 2025 release to a 2026 release. And that like span makes me feel like it's fairly likely it's going to come out at some point this year. It is a social sort of sim, life sim game from chucklefish who I always get the relationship. Well, why should I be familiar? Well, they publish a lot of stuff. Initially, I think they published Starry Valley. Yes.

They also, I mean, gosh, Risk of Rain, they published, Time Spinner, Eastward. There's like a lot of, like, honestly, pretty great indie games. They also developed Starbound and Wargrove. Yeah. So Witchbrook is like their next thing. And it is sort of a, you know, magic-looking, isometric,

Stardy Valley-like, it looks like, where you live in a town called Mossport, where there's a witch college, a wizard college, and you just do all the different life sim stuff and build relationships and all that. The game just looks like... It looks phenomenal. The is asymmetric pixel art is...

It's so detailed and... God, I don't even know how to sort of describe the look that it has going on, But it, yeah, seeing it in motion, I think it was featured in a Nintendo direct, like, towards the end of last year. Like, it looks crazy how, how. There is something about the isometric view that I think really supports, like, makes it feel more real in some ways than like a Stardu, which is obviously flat. I mean, great art and Stardu, but like this is, feels like the S&ES approach versus Stardu is closer to, like, GBA. I just think Chucklefish has a great pedigree, and this is like a genre I like, and it looks spectacular.

So I'm really hoping this is the year where it finally comes out. On the Stardew Valley note, I was curious when that haunted chocolatier game is coming out from Concerned Ape. Googled it. This is the headline that I saw, the first one that I saw. Fresh, can you read that out loud? Sure. Concerned Ape hopes to release. least haunted chocolatier.

No, dot, dot, dot, dot. What do you think comes right after that? Well, I would say you don't need anything, right? Yeah. At all. Because he does hope to do that. Yeah, I think Concord Dap is pretty much hoping for that. Within the next five years is how that ends.

Within the next five years, that could be never. Next five years? Good for them making a probably accurate assessment. Yeah, I want to play it now, though. No, I'm good There's so many games Yeah, you're right I have like such a Zen approach

To all this stuff at this point Maybe because we just have to play So many games for Besties That like fucking delay it forever If Silk Song never came out I would have been fine Well, no, because it's good That one is good

It is good Well I mean, I'll build off this And then I'll throw back to Hugh Hoops I have Fields of Mysteria Which is technically An Early Access right now And if you are looking for a

Stardue Valley like with more emphasis on romance and kind of an anime aesthetic and jump back dragon you can date. It is a delight. It launched in early access with so many quality of life features that I had wanted in Stardue Valley. And I enjoy probably the 15 or 20 hours that I put into it and then have not gone back to it until it gets out of early access. It's been there for a while. So I'm very excited to go back to this one. Really good dog.

Juice. Russ, why don't you do one? You got two left, Russ. You got two left. Let me do mine real quick thing, because I got two left too. Because my next one is Fable. Now hear me out, guys. Interesting.

I want to try to cover my bases. So let me say that I'm also very much anticipating the video game Fable. Okay. I'm a big fan of the entire franchise. I really like Richard Iawaday. I like everything they've shown so far. I think it's a kind of first person adventure thing that could have a huge impact.

Wait, it's a first person game? As long as I've spent on it, I think it's gonna be really good. Did you say it's a first person game? No, I don't know. No. You said that. Check the tape.

Check the tape. In the trailer. You know, there was first person. I think it's a first person video game. No fucking way. Dude, they just uncansel. It could be anything. So that's mine.

Fable. Russ, what's your next one? Oh, before we go any further, are we, because we always forget that we're not a video show. Justin is wearing the official Besties, Fable. I never doubted it would come out T-shirt. Are we planning on selling those? No.

We made one only because Justin was the one who demanded it. And it's only in how. I have owned it for four. years. I just keep his moth it is moth eaten at this point.

It is problematic somehow. There's like problematic designs. That's how long I've had it. It's like there's things that the popular

culture has soured on. Yeah, baby. Yeah. I've got two more. I'll do a quickie and then I'll do a slightly longer one. So one of them is

Mina the Hollower. This was a game that was supposed to come out in October of last year. This is from the Yacht Club games folks who made shovel night. And it's

basically inspired by one of my favorite games of all time, Link's Awakening. I don't fucking think I need to say anymore, so I'm not going on. No, it looks so fucking good. I'm hanging a lot of hopes on this one, I think, being a contender, because, man, it looks so good.

The other game that's coming out this year is Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, which is a new mainline Firemum game. The last one that came out was Fire Emong, Engage, which was a game that had pretty good gameplay, but story-wise and character-wise, awful, in my opinion. But before that was three houses,

which I think a lot of us enjoyed and was kind of a high watermark. My understanding is Fortune's Weave is either a far sequel or far prequel. It's related somehow. It's connected. There's some like crossover. Certain characters appear again,

whether they're dragon people or not. Who knows? But my hope is that the high watermark of storytelling quality and like overall feature quality that was introduced in three houses will continue here and if it does I will be over the moon thrilled

because that is one of my favorite franchises and I would love to see another like really great installment for that franchise. I've got to, I'll do a small one real quick Delta Rune chapter 5. I'm so fucking in and on board.

How many total chapters are there supposed to be? I think that might be up in the air. I think seven was the original sort of intention. But they are coming out at a pretty good, a decent clip at this point. But I played through the four available chapters for the first time last year because three and four came out sort of together.

And it's so good. It's so fucking good. And has me truly like waiting for like excited to see like what happens next. Henry is also like hugely, hugely into it. And so that is very exciting too. It's going to be weird when I go back and play all these like for the first time at once. I think I think there's a ton of people who are going to do just that. And I think it'll be totally digestible.

Is it going to be weird because there's like Vuvuzello references in chapter one? Yeah, there's, yeah, no, I don't know that there's a lot of timely references being made. apparently chapter six and seven are going to be like the joke like the six seven joke that's like one big one that they've already kind of that's good and that's going to still be around so that's great yeah for sure um my other one is uh and this was featured last year in our most anticipated games list which is professor latent in the new world of steam which was supposed to come out last september uh and then in september during the Tokyo game show they showed off a bunch of new footage of it some gameplay footage uh and then delayed it

until 2026. And it looks incredible. Gosh, I love Professor Layton games. They are sort of go-to games for me when I got my hands on the Thor and started goofing around with like 3DS simulation stuff. Just because like there's really nothing else like it, a puzzle sort of fiction game that gives you a bunch of brain teasers that I just love to kind of chew over. The aesthetics are out of sight. it is more kind of like animated and feels much more alive and the like I don't know 15 minutes or so of gameplay footage they released last year just it looks delightful and I can't wait to get my hands on. Dude I'm going insane about vampire crawlers. I don't know what this is.

Are you kidding me, dude? I don't know. Hey, hey, brace your frigging ass, man. Hold on a second. I'm going to send a link. You ready? Okay. Just let me send you a link.

Don't get weird about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. I don't know how to feel like from Steam. Gamer alert. I mean, I can look it up. If you go to Steam and you look up vampire crawlers and it says vampire crawlers,

the turbo wild card from vampire survivors. Yeah. Listen to this. It's going to sound like you're dreaming, dude. But listen, from the somehow triple Bafta winning creators of vampire survivors, Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wild card from vampire survivors, turns the snowballing thrill of vampire survivors into a turbo turn-based car. card-driven blobber.

That's in all caps. I don't know what that means. Build busted decks, explore familiar dungeons with a new perspective, and unleash world-ending combos. Take your time to be tactical or play turns as fast as you humanly can. The outcome is always accurate. Are you kidding me? Vampire Survivors X.

Bilatro, basically. Seems like it. That sounds fucking incredible. I mean, unreal. I'm losing it over here. That's great. I'm losing it. That's the goatee.

I got two to wrap. It's a boady. It's probably the boadie. Might be the boady. The boadie. Two to wrap up on my end. One that I think probably actually won't come out and one that hasn't even announced yet. Control Resonant. Very excited for this.

Very excited to go back to a remedy game that is action-based. I have finally started replaying Allen Wake 2, a game I bounced off of despite thinking it would be extremely my thing. And I am enjoying it more, but it's still just slow. Control, that game, is fast. You get all that good, weird energy, and you also get good fast action. This one looks kind of like previous control meets like a devil may cry style game. There's melee. Very, more melee-centric.

Into it. Very, very curious about it. That said, don't think it's going to come out this year. I just don't believe that. I don't fight it. Yes, that energy, yes, I feel that plant. I absolutely, there's just something about it, huh? There's just, you can feel it.

You know? You can feel it. You can feel the delay coming. Meanwhile. I think it's going to come out. AP Thompson, co-creator of last year's Consume Me, has a new game coming out. And all I'm going to say about this game, because it's not announced yet, is you can go follow AP on Blue Sky, I guess, right now and hear more about this game. Ads coming out.

And you will be like, wow, I was there at the beginning. I was the person who went to the show. at the tiny little punk rock club when it was just five people drinking out of solo cups and then when it is at the biggest stage you will have that moment for you this is I'm giving you this gift

so you will want to follow what is coming from AP Thompson this year Is it going to be a sequel to Tony Hawks Prodator? Will it be Tony Hawk's Prodator too? Griffin I thought you like had signed the embargo Oh damn Damn it! It's going to be awesome

There's so many good games We didn't even talk about like, we have another, a list here that has another, I don't know, probably like 20, 30 games. I can't believe none of us said Grandfdiff dot 06. It felt a little obvious, I think. Yeah. For all of us, like, you guys know that one's coming out November 19th. You don't need us to talk more about that. I don't know it's coming out November 19th, honestly. I don't know. Yeah.

I'm surprised you didn't bring up. Yeah. I can't believe that nobody's suggestion. I was counting on you to be the suit of 51. I like Suda in theory a lot more than I like Suda in practice. I get to like knowing chuckle with him before I'm like, yeah, I really want to play a lot. I like Suda as a person. Yeah, I'm an energy.

He's a good hang actually. I mean, the galaxy needs racing, and I will continue to say that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Griffin, I noticed you snuck in maybe for the historical record, Half-Wife 3. I didn't put that in. Sorry, I just thought maybe if we can't, if nobody noticed, then maybe we would come back next year and you'd like, no, you know that I didn't put that. I would have included the hyphen.

I would have capitalized life. I was in a hurry. Oh, God. Did you not say meugenics, Russ, because the name of it makes you. You didn't want to say it out loud? No, no, no. It is coming out. It's coming out like a month.

We have a bunch of reader, we have a bunch of reader mail picks. And that is one of them. So I was going to read them through really quick. Oh, okay, okay. Let's do it. Was there any other fun, joky picks that anyone wanted to make? No. I'm fucking psyched about the...

Hey, do you think there'll be a Half-Life 3, though? Jesus Christ. Come on, dude. I kind of do. I do think they will. The fact that there's not makes me think that there will be. Put it on my list. You know what I mean?

The fact that there is it, I think Half-Life 3 will launch alongside the GameCube. The Steam Machine. That's the thing, is that they always, whenever they, launch new hardware, they always launch with software. It tends not to be a whole fucking sequel to a game. That's why they can't say it because it's going to be the biggest thing in the world. Yeah. So huge.

It's going to be so massive when it drops. Could be interesting. Okay, some reader mail picks that people wrote in for. Just like somebody try to get Jeff Keely on the phone. And if he's like, I can't! I can't right now! Wink! Yeah, and you hear Gabe sharpening knives in the background?

Yeah, that's... Exactly. That's very true. Remember your mail picks. We have Evan G. Wrote in Rhythm Heaven sequel. Yes. I forgot what's happening.

That's pretty exciting. Goositris wrote Sulfur 1.0 release. I really like sulfur. I don't know if you guys have played it. First person, Rogue Light on Steam. Cool, kind of adventure timey art style to it. Very into it. That looks cool.

Elise mentioned Tomajachi Life, which we already talked about. Nikki mentioned Assassin's Creed Hex and the AC Black Flag. remake. Black flag was probably the last Assassin's Creek game I actually enjoyed playing, so that's pretty good. Hex is interesting because I would be down to have actual magic in one of these games. That seems like a cool introduction, but again, I'm cautious about anything like that. Man, a Black Flag remake getting me back into Assassin's Creed would be a huge twist for the year 2026. Yeah.

Shumahiel wrote The Incident at Gallery. House, which apparently is like an Oberdeen style mystery game. Yeah, I think it's Galley House. Oh, sorry, Galley House. You're right. Mark S. Ace Combat 8. That seems like some Chris Plant and maybe

Justin's shit. Justin, do you like Ace Combat games? You know what? I do. I haven't played one in a while, but there is something about that. It made me kind of want to go back and play an Ace Combat game. I like it. I like Ace Combat. There was one we got into, I remember.

I think it was like five or six. It was back when we were playing more like colony wars and stuff like that. I don't know. I have to go back and that's a franchise I like in theory. Olivia G. mentioned Fields a mystery release, or full release, which we talked about. Colin R. Mugenics.

I am very excited about Mugenics. I hope you guys get into it. I haven't really, I played like an hour in a preview build ages ago and I really liked it. But that is the new Edmund McMillan game. Yeah, the new from the creator of Binding Isaac and Super Meat Boy.

It is an isometric tactical strategy game with cats. Okay. It would be the best way I could shortly describe it. And they also breed and have like aspects to them.

And then Thunder Ruth mentioned Dench attack, I guess is probably the best way to pronounce that word. Oh, yeah. I don't know what I'm looking at.

It's a subway fighting aim. Dinsha means like the train. Okay. Yeah. So you're a train and you're riding on a ferris wheel as it's going through the ocean. Yeah. Looks great. Can't argue with that.

Flip trick and grind your train in a fast-paced off-the-rails ride through colorful Japanese dystopia. That does sound like fun. Sounds great. Yeah, it looks like, um, Jack Arnd Radio, kind of. We want to do some honorable Munchies? Yes.

It's been quite the long break since we've done. Yes. Yeah, man. It had to be choosy. There's a lot of things I want to talk about. I got really pulled into satisfactory. Mostly at the behest of our brother Travis, who I believe has logged 300 hours on the game at this point,

which just makes a lot of sense. I can see how it is... Saddest factory, more like. Satest fact. Oh, really? There is a genre I've never really dipped into this factory game genre. But satisfactory... I mean, you kind of have, because it's a little bit Star Doe Valley, right?

Not even a little bit at all. So what sets it apart from, like, Star Doe Valley or any of the other kind of like open world survival craft games that I do really, really enjoy from like your Minecrafts or enshrouded or the runescape, Dragon Wise. that came out last year. It has the look of stuff like that. You land on an alien planet. You have like one or two tools and you have to go around and like find iron and collect wood and then you use that to make a thing and then you use that to make a thing. Where satisfactory kind of like sets itself apart is that it becomes about sort of setting up automation, literally building factories and it gets so detailed in how you are able to do that. And I'm talking about like running conveyor belts and building power grid. and creating sort of like supply chains because you'll get a recipe that's like, here's iron plates. If you combine that with screws, now it makes advanced iron plates.

So you need a line in your factory making screws and a line making those plates and that runs up to the next thing, which runs up to the next thing, all trying to build a space elevator that you are sending parts up for a project to save humanity. It's really, I'll tell you what it is,

kind of hitting for me is that idle game kind of it. Yeah, it does seem like that, yeah. Because you are, you are unlocking things to make getting the thing faster, unlocking things to make sort of processing, you know, larger and larger and larger quantities of the thing that you were like really struggling for an hour ago. And I don't know, it's really, genuinely, it's right there in the name, is very satisfying to like put together like a nice, a nice little, a nice little thing for yourself. So I've, I've been very hooked on that. I've reached a point in the game where to move forward,

I would have to do so much kind of refactoring of this factory that I have built over the course of, you know, 20, 25, 30 hours, which I know is a drop in the bucket for like the sickos who are super into this game. And I don't know that I have that in me, but I don't know. It's been really, really sucking me in satisfactory. Yeah, I've considered it over the years, but I also deeply am worried of the time it would take from my life. That's the other thing is like, I don't know,

we're in sort of a slow period right now. Yeah. So, like, my time can be spent on a satisfactory. There were definitely, there will come a point where there's simply is not space for it. Yeah. I took the break between a game of the year and now. and played through Dark Souls 1 and got all the achievements for some fucking reason. I thought.

How do you, where did you find yourself? Where was your headspace? Well, I were like, I got it. It's Dark Souls 1. Well, it's because I had previously done this for Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 at various times over the last several years. And I was like, I feel like I need to do one. And I'd never gotten all the achievements in one before.

So I went through and I did it. And it was a delight. That game is great. It's so much fun. And what's cool about it when you're doing all the achievements is when you do new game plus and then a second new game plus, each time that you run through the game, you do it at like 10x speed because you don't have to level. You don't have to, you know where all the paths are. I'm running through Sends Fortress without like attacking anyone. Shit like that.

Dark Souls 1 can fuck off. I will not go back. I've played all the other Souls games. I'm not going to go back to Dark Souls 1. the curse mechanic, if nothing else. Well, they did nerf the curse mechanic for what it's worth. They did nerf. In what?

In like... Yeah, so initially, when the game came out, the frogs would show up and you'd get cursed. And you'd have to go get the redstone for the little bird. It would have your health. And then if you got cursed again, it would have your health again, et cetera. Now you can only get cursed once. So you're only at half health once. Realistically, I think Dark Souls won more than...

any of the other games needs to be played with a guide. I think two and three, to some extent, you could get through without... There's so much weird shit where it's like, how do you get to the Ashy Lake? Well, you gotta go in that tree. What the fuck are you talking about?

And the tree doesn't have a visible door. Oh, and guess what? Tree doesn't have a visible door. You actually need to roll through two invisible doors to get through the tree. Diabolical. I know exactly how far I've ever made it in that game. It's to...

The Ornstein and Ornstein and Smiles. I've never, that's as far as I made it. I did the whole thing where you, remember that stupid thing where you shoot the dragon's tail a hundred times? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I love that shit.

Man, I'll, should I go back and play Darmstadt. Yeah, you should. Maybe I should be go back and play Darsol. It's really good. I don't know. I really don't want to get good at, I want to see it in Smog. It's really not worth it.

You don't even need, that's the thing is like, so much of these games is like, if you, especially if you're using a guide, the games get pretty fucking. Because you just summon. Like, I summon fucking Solair and he helped me with Ornstein and Smog and it was easy.

Yeah. So I think the first time I was playing through it it was like early in the and I don't know that I never I don't think I was like letting myself do that kind of thing more. I think I would do that today.

Oh yeah, I take every fucking advantage the game throws me and it's way more fun. The other thing I would say is just fucking, yeah, roll with it. Don't worry about like

the pride of it because the game will fuck you either way and you'll end up having a really delightful time. Great characterization. A lot of the quests you can't do without a guide, like impossible to figure out where Solair's going to be next

and how he's not going to die at the end of this fucking quest. So I had a lot of fun. The other thing I wanted to mention is Pikmin 4, which is a game that I played probably 10 hours of before we, when we did our episode, and then put it aside. But I really enjoyed it. We didn't have time to play much more.

Did you finish it? I have not finished it yet, but I've been playing it with my son, who mostly watches, but it does have a very good co-exam. where he can like throw locks at shit. And it's great, like, really enjoying it. And there's an easy mode where it like takes a lot of the stress of like

Pikman dying out of the equation for the most part. And Ochi's very cute. And he has space sickness, which is a problem. And so I'm closing in on the ending, but it's been really, really delightful. And I'm dying to see either some DLC or just like a switch two update. Because right now it's running at 30 FPS, which is a drag. But otherwise, it's great and looks beautiful, and they did a great job in that game. Y'all, I only played games that brought me intense joy.

Went back and played some Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. Ichibon is in there. Joker from Persona is in there. SpongeBob is in there. They've just been playing everybody in that game. Cream the cat is definitely in there, buddy. You can't reference a joke that we did in our recent bracket episode for patrons only here for the main, here for the normie. won't be live for three weeks.

It won't actually air for another two weeks. Also, Dragon's Dogma 2 went back and played some of that. Still just an absolute stunner of a game. Destraining 2. I did this thing where I didn't fully finish it back at the end of the last summer, got into the mountains and said, you know what, I'm going to come back. I want to be able to enjoy this.

I've been putting so much time into building all this stuff. I want to come back and I'm going to finish just the story when I'm ready for it. Go back into it. You know what I've done? Put like another 10 hours just building random roads in. Who knows when I'm going to finish, finish this game.

But right now with the season, being able to just go around in the snow, feels good. Giving me a taste of winter that I'm not getting in California. So nice. And yeah, and now in week two, as I mentioned,

which I'm trying to give that a fair shake ahead of control. Juice? Yeah, I'm going to say two things. The first is Hundreds of Beavers is a movie I watched on a whim And it may be one of the best movies I've ever seen my entire life Wow

You guys ever seen hundreds of beavers? No I'm so I'm hugely aware of it and have not Not made time for it What about you, plan? I showed one of the first ever screenings of it And I also brought him back out the director And he dressed up as a beaver

And then dressed up one of our interns at the theater as a beaver And then tackled the intern And for a moment I saw the, our theater's legal status in jeopardy, but unfortunately everybody was okay. It's the best. It's an incredible silent film about a black and white, about a fur trader who, well, he is an apple jack salesman who accidentally burns down the factory and finds himself in a sort of, the movie is a parody of the revenant. It is about this guy trying to survive in the wilderness while he is trying to eat food to stay alive and then win the heart of a woman, uh, he meets by impressing her father by bringing him, quote,

hundreds of beavers. So it is a slapstick comedy about him trying to kill hundreds of beavers and stay alive. And the gags in this movie, I mean, if you like things like Buster Keaton and, you know, Three Stooges and that kind of like broad, it's slapstick comedy, like you're already going to like this. But it's also like the, the guys who created the, the, the, the, the, the guys who created the film were inspired in part by let's plays. So his structure when he is in the wilderness is very much like watching a let's play, right? He starts off with nothing and then manages to get enough for like a couple beaver pelts and he buys the smallest knife. And then he uses that tiny knife to get enough beavers to buy the next thing from this like fur trappers. Yeah. Yeah,

it's yeah exactly. And it's like that is the movie is structure like that. But it is like, They filmed it for 150 grand in the wilderness, and then it made, you know, like, I don't know, $2 million in the box office or whatever, but it is, you can see it on Amazon Prime is where I watched it for free, but it is incredible. And it looks better than so many movies that cost a fortune. It looks fantastic. It's one of those things where, like, you watch the first couple minutes, and you're like, there's no way it's going to be a whole movie like this. Like, no one could do a whole movie like this. And then it is an entire movie like that. It's a joy to watch.

And really fun to watch with kids, too. Like, my kids were entranced by it. They laughed the whole way. It's also on Canopy, the library streaming service. So if you... Oh, cool. If you're not paying for any of the streaming services, you can grab it there.

The other thing I wanted to mention is Exo Win 9X. And I know. Okay, I know how that sounds. That sounds like some nerd-ass shit is what that sounds like. Yeah, I know it sounds like some nerd-ass shit. If you don't know about the Ex-O project, it started with Exodus. Get it. And here's the deal.

If you want to... If you want to play old console games, that's really easy because the old consoles are easy to emulate. You have an engine that you can write and it runs on a computer and then you put the ROMs in the thing and it runs. But old PC games throughout the DOS, Windows 3.1 Windows 95 era, it's a lot harder because you have infinite combinations of hardware. These things could run on, different permutations of software, operating system, whatever. So with the XA DOS, the first edition of this, took a lot. of DOS games and then made them playable through one unified front end that is powered by Launchbox

and they're and they're sortable by topic and they all work they all run Windows then there was at Exo 3.1 that is an expansion to that that folds into it and now they have really which is a bunch of Windows 3.1 games and now they have released Windows uh is ExoWIN uh is ExoWIN uh 9x, which is the Windows 95 and 98 version of

this same idea. So when you download this, there's a Torrent file, and the Torrent is 262 gigabyte. Holy shit. Yeah, man. What's in there? Every game. But it's

so many Windows 95 and 90X games. I'm sending you guys the... Oh, it's... Okay. There's a full list there. Yeah. There are...

They have favored, like, highlighted a lot of, like, the weird things that, like, there's games on here I've never heard of, games that I never played. I played a game called Nine, the Last Resort, that is narrated by William S. Burroughs and starring Jim Belushi. Whoa. There's versions of Miss on there. There's two Star Trek FMV games that I've been trying to play. for literally 15 years.

I've been trying to play these games, and they just work. Fucking math munchers deluxe. Dude, Star Trek Borg is on here, which if you don't know Star Trek Borg, it is basically like an interactive Star Trek episode, a one-man John Delancey show, just as Q, letting you, like, play out different possibilities

within the Borg world. There's the Goosebump's FMV game, is in here, Neverhoods in here. Logical Journey of the Zoom. Beanie's. Yes. Bill and I science guys, stop the rock.

There are a few of these games. Oh, cosmetology of Kyoto's in here. There are a few of these games that you can get onto Gog.com and buy, and if you can, I think you should. And there are some of these games

that you could get on Steam. They're not a ton of them. But in terms of a preservation project, it is astounding. It knocks me out. The fact that there are so many games on here that I don't,

that would be so hard play otherwise and it is an incredible piece of history an incredible effort in preservation. It's really astounding. And what's amazing is all these exo projects nest within each other. So you could have like, I mean, what I have done is have one hard drive that's like a thumb drive, an SSD, that I have all of these on one thing. So I can plug it into a computer and I have like the entirety of this project. It's amazing.

It's really fantastic. Yeah, dude, there's so many on here. And what's cool is they are not all installed. So, like, you find the game you want to play, and it installs it. Like, that expands it. That's, the size should be a lot bigger than it is because there's a lot of, like, as you get into this era, you have less and less copy protection because it was assumed that the game's being on CD would be copy of production enough. Right?

But there's like, they're getting, they get big. And, yeah, it's a fascinating thing. Yeah. Seek it out. Take it home, juice. I think we did. Okay. Thanks for listening to our podcast next week.

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Thank you for being patrons. Thank you to everyone else for being patrons. We have a new bracket episode apart from the bracket episode that went up on the main feed. There is a patrons only new brand new bracket episode that went up. And there's a new one coming obviously in the future. We also have Resties coming out. It's all happening. So thank you for.

for being patrons, patreon.com slash the besties. Thank you, y'all. What are we doing next week? Thanks. Next week, we're going to be talking about an entirely different video game. Terminator 2D, no fate. So join us for that. And so much more next week on the besties.

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