The Besties - The (Other) Best Games of the Last 10 Years

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

As we build towards our 10 year anniversary in February, we decided to look back at some of the winners of The Besties Game of the Year throughout the decade. Were we right? Were we wrong? Let's find out! Each year we'll take a look at the original winner and decide what we'd put up as an alternate to go against it. You won't believe what we have for 2017! Or maybe you will. Yeah, you probably will. 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!

When was the last time you fell out of bed? I need a human-sized cushion with which to wrap my arms and legs around. And I feel like that that provides me sort of a doorstop, like a sort of ballast that keeps me from toppling. This cushion, does it usually have like an anime face on it? Sometimes. Why are you asking? Because I fell out of bed and i want

to know what to get him for christmas oh wait no i mean i need to know why russ fell out of bed oh chris also you'd be hard-pressed to find an anime pillowcase that i don't already have also supply chain issues forget about yeah but you you could get him doubles so he could keep the ones he has in plastic he likes likes to keep them organized in hard shells. I fell out of bed like a week ago. And it was really bad. It was a bad situation. What happened?

Okay, so I woke up at 4.30 because my child was screaming. So I went to comfort the child. And the child was pretty inconsolable. So Alex had to go and settle him. And then I went back to bed. What did you say? Did you loudly announce like, I quit? No, she came in because I was failing for about 10 minutes of flailing.

And it just wasn't. Imagine you needed comfort and this human praying mantis walks into the room. All spindles and talons. So I go back to bed and I'm a little bit groggy, but the baby monitor is still on and she's in there, you know, like doing stuff, singing to him, trying to like soothe him. That's not going to help me sleep. So I kind of on my stomach reach

across the bed to turn the baby monitor volume down and then when i go to roll back to my side of the bed i overdo it and literally hurl my entire body off the bed and i land on my back, crashing into a bedside table that I have. Everything on the bedside table goes flying. My back is on the metal floor of the bedside table, and I'm convinced that I'm never going to walk again. It was a really bad, bad situation. I'm high. I'm getting high. Also, I do not worry about you at all.

I worry about your wife right now, who now has two babies who have made oopsies that she needs to take care of. Both inconsolable. But I did that thing where, like, I fell, and I, like, vocalized, like, I'm okay trying to, like, calm her because she's in the other room. Uh-huh.

And I don't- I'm sure she was really painful. I don't hear anything and then so i like it takes me like five minutes to like get up off the floor because i'm like convinced i really hurt myself and i walk in the room and i'm like yeah i'm okay and she's like what i what and i was like i fell out of bed and like, I had no idea. So then I had to humbly walk back to bed like an idiot. And I just don't know how to sort of live with myself anymore. Also, I'm afraid of the bed.

Did you explain to her that you fell out of bed because you couldn't stand the beautiful singing voice of your own wife? Doesn't put me to bed. Doesn't help me sleep. Oh, my gosh. That was the funniest thing I've ever heard. There's a funny beyond laughing. And I found it. And I can't laugh.

It's the funniest thing I've ever heard. It's a sort of transcendent. It's transcendent. It's the TM of laughter. Yeah. I'm one with comedy now. I've joined with comedy now. I've joined with comedy. Theorizing that one can travel within their own lifetime,

Justin, Griffin, Russ, and Chris stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanished. They awoke to find themselves trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not their own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. Their only guide in this journey is Al, an observer from their own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only the besties can see and hear. And so, the besties find themselves leaping from game to game, striving to put right what

once went wrong, and hoping each time their next leap will be the leap home. Welcome, everyone, to Besties, Old Wounds. Is that what we've decided to call it? I think it is the only appropriate title. And since I get to do the intro, that's me, Justin McElroy. Welcome to Besties, Old Wounds. I'm joined, as always, by my friends, Chris, Russ, and Griffin. We've been doing the besties for nearly a decade now, maybe over a decade, no one knows for sure. And today, in a show that is defined by change,

defined by taking chances for good and for ill, going to do perhaps the most ill-advised episode in our decade-long history, where we will go back in time to re-litigate which is everyone's favorite part of the besties i think we can all agree to re-litigate a decade of video game history and try to do it better i think it's gonna be great i think it's gonna be great i think it's gonna be beyond great and i can't wait to get into it right after this uh brief uh commercial uh announcement

what if they reboot quantum leap i mean they are doing they've ordered a pilot which i think we thought they were gonna quibby it wasn't it gonna be a quibby? Well, the idea has outlasted quibby, but what if it's dark and gritty, and then at the end of each episode, after Sam leaps, he's like, fuck. Oh, shit. Instead of saying just like, oh, boy,

because it's 2022, and everything needs to be just a little bit harsher. What about like, I just got yeeted? Oh, that's good. He just looks up, and, like, he's John F. Kennedy, and he's like, yeet. Quantum yeet. Quantum yeet is something good.

Thank you, Chris. We can work with that. Yeah. I'm stalling because I'm scared about this. Can I talk about this really quick? Yeah, set it up, Chris Plant. Okay, so this is my bad idea, so blame me. Here's what it is.

For our 10th anniversary, we're going to do a very special thing where we choose the best bestie of our first 10 years. For this bracket, we have 10 games already because we've been here for 10 years. But I want to have 10 alternate games in a new conference that are like, you know, the stuff we missed. So today we are going to go year from year and we're going to say, hey, we'll start with 2012. Dishonored won that year. What is the other game that we missed that year that deserves to be in the conversation

when we do the best bestie of the last 10 years and i think this is going to go smooth yeah let me just clarify something when you say missed i mean we it's not like we didn't play these games or even like right i'll bet a lot of these showed up in the discussion yeah yes but like high insights 2020 like do i really think dishonored should be our guide for 2012? No, absolutely not. I think there is some games that I think are better, and I want to make sure that they get a shot when we have this final thing. Are there going to be years where Breath of the Wild wins?

And like we all go, yeah, of course it should win, but let's pick another game to throw in the bracket. Yeah, that'll happen too, but you know. I just feel like looking at our list of goatee winners, we poke fun at ourselves sometimes. But I think we've crushed it, I would say, maybe half the years. Yeah. Like going through this. I would say half the years are good.

Let's just get started. 2012 was the first year of the besties. This was one of the years where, if I remember correctly, tell me, I feel like a little bit of history could be fun. This was the year that we filmed, videoed the finale in Barcade, correct? Yeah, I think that's right. Was it in Barcade? I think we did that two years in a row. Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah, so this, I don't know if this video is still kicking around somewhere. I probably look great. I probably look fantastic. So young, so joyful. Let's just toss our little guys up there. I'll kick it off because Frush literally changed his answer because he's copying my homework. Frush was going to bring Journey. I'm getting that on the record.

Journey would be my number two. Yeah, his favorite game of all time came out this year. And maybe he should bring that, which is Spelunky HD came out in 2012, and we, the besties, did not give it the bestie. That is, I mean, we're getting it out of the way right up top. Of all of the misses for me, this to me is, I kind of can't believe it in retrospect and i and i remember thinking back and i'll bet there's video footage of it part of this is really just like justin's bad at games well and also wasn't there an argument that like the game had been out and playable for a while but not in like it's finished you know uh was this when it came out on xbox live arcade yeah

yeah that was that was the first edition of it right but it had been playable for a bit like on pc right no no like there was a like a spelunky it looked and felt very different i mean it was checked it was like a rough draft okay um yeah that's a good that's a good choice so wait what did you go with russ if not this Um, yeah, that's a good, that's a good choice. So wait, what did you go with Russ? If not this? Um, I wrote Journey, but I forgot that Spunky HD came out in 2012.

So that is my actual pick. Um, interesting. See, I went with, uh, there were a lot of good games in 2012. I thought about Walking Dead just because that first season was so good. And I would say transformative for, well, I was going to say the industry, but really it was just telltale. And just for a couple of years, and then they stopped existing. Well, for maybe like six years or so, but that was a good time.

The change that never came. I picked Hotline Miami. Of all the games that came out that year, I have replayed Hotline Miami 1 and 2 on PS Vita maybe a dozen times uh i think hotline miami just completely beats ass and i would like be down to play at any time the soundtrack was good the the action was good it's is a good game great soundtrack man um justin this is a good game that you're going to talk about speaking of uh great soundtracks, I'm just going to...

Let me just give you guys like 20 seconds. Tell me, tell me. So few soundtracks have whipped more ass than this. It's very frustrating. Oh, yeah, baby. Oh, just let it bring it in. I only needed a second i mean

fuck super hazy gone like i fired it up last night when i was making this list right 10 years old this game is and i was like i played it and i was like, I played it, and I was like, let me remind myself. First off, the soundtrack hits really hard. And then I'm like, wait a minute, I think I can do a little better than I just did. And then I was like, oh, no. I know. I'm in again on Super Hexagon. This is unfathomable.

For people that didn't play it, maybe a quick refresher. Oh, man. Whoa. It's like yeah it's very basic but basically you're in a you're a tiny triangle in a concentric hexagons that are thank you yeah yes that are closing and opening and leaving very small gaps for you to rotate to so you're basically like rotating yourself back and forth to try to find the gaps but it's very much about like finding the the all the visualization is is tied perfectly to the music

um and it's very much one that was like get in the zone type games it's really really really it looks like if they were it was an 80s movie but it was set in the future and they showed a video game in that that's what the video game would look like. Or if Trance was a video game instead of a music genre, it would be this. But that's Fez, like, not Fez. Although Fez did come out in 2012 and had maybe my favorite video game soundtrack of all time. Rez. Rez is what

I was thinking of. Okay. Do we have to pick a winner? Well, I think we already did. Spelunky HD wins. It has two votes. Welcome to the suck. We might have to do it that fast. I came up with this

and I came up with the rules and you weren't ready for it. Wait, does Dishonored get kicked out there? No, baby. Dishonored still exists. Okay, got it. All right.

You know what? Two votes. That works. Let's go. I appreciate it. One other thing i want to mention from this year gravity rush came this year i knew it wasn't gonna win but i wanted to just let people know you should go download gravity rush that game rules okay agreed good game i haven't actually

heard you i haven't actually heard you talk about it before chris that's weird yeah that's very why do i feel like i'm being picked on uh 2013 our winner was the legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds which one is that what's that that's the fucking super good 3DS one amazing 3DS one probably my second favorite Zelda game of all time absolutely amazing game

I'm gonna change mine again oh my god so we've got Griffin get us started yeah I put in Papers, Please. This game's great. It's a wild fucking game. It is a sick game.

Yeah, it's cool. You know, we got more Lucas Pope representation here with Return of the Obra Dinn, but Papers, Please was one of my favorite kind of games, which is one where I'm like, oh, people are talking about this. I should check it out. And then I turn it on and I play all of it like in the span of an afternoon uh and i i thought it was a

just just like over din is like in its own sort of genre like is there another game like papers please that is all about like navigating bureaucracy yeah there have been some like kind of games inspired by it but none that rose to the occasion also i want to apologize i was not laughing at griffin's choice griffin's choice is fantastic i was laughing at fresh dick once again going to the google doc and changing his answer yeah uh yeah the i wanted to nominate the uh the stanley parable if you have never played it it is one of my favorite like gaming that really, weirdly, kind of like Papers, Please, takes the mechanics of video games and some of the tropes of video games and uses them to say something really impactful. It's an extremely, maybe the first extremely meta game right like i if there's others before it that have done this sort of vibe it doesn't necessarily uh occur to me not not remotely as well as not remotely as

well yeah yeah it's by davy reardon he re-released i think a new expanded ultra deluxe version so that's coming out this year and a theory that i've seen which i think is more one of those things i want to be true than is likely to be true is that it's actually a sequel yeah yeah that's fun which makes sense that would be on brand very weird for it not to be a sequel it's a great if you've never played it it's honestly like it's fantastic and it's probably super it's also uh the one of the best steam awards i think is in that one where if you don't play the game for five years you get a steam achievement i think that's right i would also say uh as we're talking through these

we probably would spend like two or three hours doing this episode if we had to sort of like get a summary of what each of these games are. So just trust that they're very good and if they're interesting or sounding to you, you should Google them. I only slowed down a little bit for these that people may not. Yeah, sure. It's a little more later.

Frosh, do you want to tell people what you changed it to so it doesn't sound like you've got it? My original pick on this year was and is Tower of Fall. Uh-huh. I changed it. I don't actually even remember. Oh, yeah, I changed it from GTA 5, which I stand by.

It's a very good game. But Tower of Fall. You know, I considered that, too, but mostly as, like, a technical. Like, I felt like some deference was owed to Grand Theft Auto V just because of how, like, I mean, not just technically I mean it is probably the most convincing open world environment I've ever played like that level of like fidelity in an entire

city and country or you know whatever countryside is very fucking wild so I give that game a lot of credit obviously it has the Ouya came out, and it was ready to kick some ass. Yeah, this Towerfall has got to be one of the top 100 Ouya games.

Easy. Easy. Towerfall, I feel like it's a smaller game, so I'm going to just briefly mention. Imagine like a Smash Brothers, but using more 8-bit SNES or SNES-level graphics, a bunch of little wizard people with bows and arrows and everyone's a one-shot kill

and it just turns into this totally amazing multiplayer game. We've talked about Towerfall a ton on the besties in many, many years past, but I feel like it's been a while since we have. Fucking sick. One of my favorite multiplayer games ever, ever made. It's great on Switch. It almost ruined our careers, I think, fresh.

You and I specifically, the amount of time that we played this in the New York office when we should have been working. Yeah. Is... I mean, you know, it's working. It's research, Chris Plant. Yeah, Vox Media almost invested in esports because we were we were ready to go pro that that is honestly the last time and it makes me sad to think about this it's the last time that

i like consistently played any one game locally with other people yeah for like any extended period of time like we played starting to sorry this is starting to feel like between spelunky winning the last year and then towerfall winning this year just like the Chris and Russ No, it'll change. Well, let's see what happens in 2014. Let's wait until 2014 because the tide's about to turn. It's not going to get his way.

I guess I changed my option to Towerfall because Fresh was so inspired and I feel so moved by it. Why is it? So Towerfall, I guess? Yeah. 2014 was dark souls 2 a wonderful video and we might want to give some backstory as to why it was dark souls 2 yeah i'm sure people are on the edge of their seats well the people that maintain the wiki

for the besties have stated that the only reason dark souls 2 won is because new york giraffe showed up and voted as a tiebreaker vote because we were stuck on between dark souls 2 and hearthstone if i remember i was definitely in the pro hearthstone camp i think griffin was dark i don't know what yeah but looking back like that's by far probably my least favorite from soft game so i don't know why i was maybe you know i was a man in the desert looking for a from soft oasis i think that's right no no you know what i i love dark souls 2 i like i genuinely love this game and i am very glad that we gave it to to this game because i know that there's a lot of people who hate this game and they're wrong dark souls dark souls 2 rules and it's the bet it's the bet like it's i never finished dark souls 1 because

it sucks and it's mean and dark souls 2 is is uh really hard easy game for babies okay oh sorry well whatever so let's talk about our alternates um okay i have a question here yeah you're all you're all gonna push destiny forward and i respect that destiny was not a good game okay and that that's why i wrote down in the notes i wrote destiny eventually because you're right i think the dialogue when we did it was like you know it'll probably get there eventually yeah but like it's not there now but we're it's now it got now and we know it's now it got i will also say when destiny launched it had problems with like uh progression the story was uh doo-doo garbage it was a bad game when it launched but no but it was like fucking fun like the core gameplay feel of the shooting the using the

abilities like all that stuff was great and they've iterated on it a bunch, obviously, in the last eight years, but it still has that same core of like, oh, this is when Halo felt really good. It has that vibe to it. Now, Justin, you wrote Destiny in all caps. Yeah, because I was very excited to see this, because this was an easy one for me.

It's Destiny. Okay. Destiny. Counterpoint, Mario Kart 8 excited to see this because this was an easy one for me it's destiny okay that's counterpoint mario kart 8 is the best mario kart game of all time what like how is this a mario kart 8 i don't really mario i yeah i don't really like mario kart games to be honest yeah they're not they're kind of i kind of like forza i thought mario kart 8 was a switch game oh my gosh it was the deluxe they just re-released it as a deluxe game so that was originally on the wii u release it's kind of a cat it feels like kind of a cash in okay destiny

yeah destiny is a pure game for the players okay right it doesn't care about money it just cares about fun yeah not like mario kart, which is a cynical cash grab. That blue shell, there's no skill involved. It's such a, like, you just shoot it and you win. Yeah. Yes. Why is a solid snake in it? And I think we can all agree that Chocobo Racing is a way better car racer.

Yeah, give me VW Bug Racing Adventure. 2015 is a tricky year because according to our wiki. How did we do this? No, no, no. I have a solution for this. According to our wiki, we said it was a tie between Bloodborne, Rocket League, and Undertale, which makes no sense because there are four of us. Right, yeah.

I don't want to go back and listen to it. It'll make me confused and probably angry. Yeah. I don't want to go back and listen to it. It'll make me confused and probably angry. I think if we can all agree right now, we give it to Bloodborne because I think all of us really love this game. I understand there are going to be people

who love Rocket League in our mentions. Maybe we'll talk about it in the reader mail segment. And then we can debate Rocket League Undertale and a few other big games. I think we should talk about what people picked, though, because it is kind of interesting. Because I'm the only one here that picked Bloodborne as the... Well, I didn't pick it because I assumed we would just give it the win. I don't understand how this happened because I don't like Rocket League or Undertale, and I love Bloodborne.

So, like, I don't understand how this happened. Yeah, this should have been a Bloodborne win if Justin and Russ were... were let's just say it's a bloodborne well yeah for the main one year understand yeah let's not let's not think about it if you look directly into the sun and large your eyes but it is interesting also that the witcher 3 wild hunt came out that year um mostly because like i definitely didn't play it because like i had like things to do but since then i have become quite a fan of that game uh but bloodborne's a better game and maybe yeah i'm gonna go ahead and say it's the best fun from software game they've made so i'm real with you witcher 3 wild hunt the whole reason i didn't play it is there was a guy in vox media's uh

product and it department who we were in dc for something with polygon getting sub sandwiches and the line was 20 minutes long and he spent the entire time talking about different grenade types in it and i was like i am never gonna play this game just because of this bad subway experience and then it turned out it was really good okay you were in a 20 minute line at it wasn't subway it was actually it was like a pretty nice sub restaurant and you see that probably is not in existence anymore um okay so i think we just give that to bloodborne okay as the win yeah that's the win and then griff what do you want yeah i mean i picked undertale i i love this game up and down and uh i i know that it is there are people who super don't like it um but i i think the

the story that the whole conceit of not murdering everyone soundtrack, like there's a reason that it is, it remains a sort of a cultural staple for, I would say, young, younger, youngish gamers. So yeah, Undertale's one of my favorite games ever. It's gotta be that. Her story by Sam Barlow is resuscitated and I would say validated the FMV genre.

Maybe this is why, maybe I abstained in 2015 because her story is so obviously the winner. It is a really interesting story told in a fascinating way and it uses video better than any game before it

in history and probably every game since. It is the high watermark of an entire genre, and congratulations to Herstory. It's actually pronounced Herstory. Thank you. The Witcher 3, The Wild Hunt, or however you say it, they had this wild idea, which was, what if the thing you spend the most of your time doing in a video game, the side quest, was actually fun? And then they went and made it.

And very few people have been able to do exactly that ever since, including the people who made it. Yeah, that's fair. Sad. Someone changed mine, which I originally wrote Bloodborne, and someone wrote, nope, no, you don't. Because you erased it. I erased it.

And then I was, I thought, oh, plan erased it. Okay, I thought it was frustrating to bring up something different. No, no. Watch out for him. All right, so you picked Bloodborne. Which is the winner of the year. Right. Do we need another game from me?

No, we don't need another game from you. We just need to call it for her story and move on. Call it for her story and move on. I would not do that. Okay, so we're saying the original winner should have been Bloodborne, so we're calling the original winner Bloodborne. So, Fresh, I would say your job is to pick between the three games. Yeah, it's The Witcher.

I'm sorry, other two, but it's definitely The Witcher. Yes! This is my episode well except for mario kart 8 pu i actually really like the witcher so no no worries there never finished it but i mean who did um hey i did both you guys finish it um yes i did it was spectacular wow i need to go back and finish it's one of those where like i got so deep in before i fell off that like i don't feel like i could it did it towards the end it does feel like okay i just want to be done with the story because it is a little long but finishing it made me feel really good and it see i have this theory that the game doesn't have an ending and the people who say that it does are just like trying to save face everyone just gets yeah eventually just get to a black screen with white text.

It's like, okay, this is how we made up. So please just tell people you finished. It's been like half a map and no one actually knows. It's been 800 hours. You fucking weirdo. Go do something else.

If you turn back on your switch, he's still falling through the jump. Y'all, did you, did you hear about the ending of Fight Club in China? No. Did you not hear about this? So they finally released a cut of Fight Club in China? No. Did you not hear about this? So they finally released a cut of Fight Club in China,

and it ends with them looking out the windows, but instead of the city exploding, it just immediately cuts to black, and it says the police were notified and responded immediately. Cool. 2016, Stardew valley one duh stardew valley the best that was my i think this is our best best choice because like breath of the wild i mean that was obvious i think everybody in the world picked that but stardew valley looking back we we nailed this one yeah uh i picked

dark souls 3 as my runner-up i would say a much better title than dark souls 2 probably my third favorite from software game uh which is still saying something uh i i i don't think i finished it the first time i i went at it because there was a lot of competition in 2016 but uh i have since gone back and it's it's just it's just really really good it's very good i i do wish my one thing on dark souls 3 is that i do wish they weren't so i guess reverential to the first dark souls because it's all like a lot of references and like throwback stuff to that game there is yeah but the core elements of it are very very good the the diversity of like what kind of builds you can go for i think is is like the best uh that from soft

has made in dark souls 3 like there's so many different ways to play through that game they added all like the special weapon techs and all that jazz uh it's, it's just a fantastic game. Yeah. Juice. Oh buddy, it's Titanfall 2. Not only is it like a thrilling, really, really, really fun multiplayer experience. The campaign is so much better than it has any right to be.

And it really, not only does it have like a lot of really cool creative levels, but like has a genuinely good emotional relationship between a robot and his pilot. BT has a lot of great moments in Titanfall 2. It's very exciting. Remember when you get the pistol? Remember the part with the pistol and the thing?

It's in the pistol. Okay. Titanfall 2 is my choice. Yeah, I agree. Titanfall 2 is my choice. Yeah, I agree. Titanfall 2 is it. And Fresh is going to bring a game that has one of the, I would say, top 20 best levels of all time. Unfortunately, Titanfall 2 has two of those levels in one game.

What a good year for levels in 2016. Yeah. A lot of good levels. A lot of good levels. I would counter that by saying I believe the game that I'm bringing is Dishonored 2

and I believe Dishonored 2 also has two extremely fucking good levels in it. The Clockwork Mansion. Clockwork Mansion and that time travel level in Dishonored 2 which is also super fucking sick.

Where you're using the clock. There's a time travel level in Titanfall 2. Yeah, they both had that but dishonored 2 had two of them is what fresh is saying yeah but but i'm saying timefall 2 had that they had the time travel level right it also had the level where the entire um uh fabricated homes are built around you while you're playing the level yeah so you're so you're really balancing because there's or both games have a time travel level and both games have another level so you're really balancing because both games have a time travel level

and both games have another level. So you're balancing whether the Clockwork Mansion is better than the home fabrication level. Oh yeah, but what's interesting about this is your game has one vote and my game has two. Now wait just a minute, wait just a minute. Because Dark Souls 3 had Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. It had the Catacombs of Karstus.

Right? Do you know that you're actually erasing times that you've had sex in your life? The Church of Yorshka? There goes another one. That was a good one, too. Okay, but- You're erasing them from the time stream. Stop.

Wait, wait, wait, though. Not joking, okay? The profaned capital really left a different impression on me. Griffin, your back hair hair It's out of control It's absorbing everything in the room Alright so Titanfall 2 then by law of By law of votes This is a cold clinical

Exercise and we are going to take A quick break from it Congratulations Titanfall 2 Quick break and we'll be right back after this 2017's fun because it's like we gave it to legend of zelda breath of the wild which is i think a lot of people could make the argument the best game ever made and so everything else we pick after that is like like i picked destiny 2 which seems like just some game jam project compared to Breath of the Wild.

I don't know if it's okay to pick Destiny and Destiny 2 on the same episode, though. I think you can do whatever you want. I'm gonna pick Destiny 2. It's like the first one, but fucking better. Plant has been, I think, Plant is having a little fun. Yeah. Because on our

sheet here, on our notes, he has made a habit of picking several games and then just going whichever way the tide flows. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can go back and look at it. The first game is the game that I always pick. The other things are things I wish I could mention because I want to make sure people play good games.

Like, for 2016, we didn't talk about Pokemon Go, and that's kind of a crime right like pokemon go is a very important game it just didn't talk at length during that bestie i remember that recording that besties and and the world changing nature that was pokemon go for a couple years yeah and like i put gravity rush 2 for 2017 not because i'm going to actually pick it but because again i am here advocating on behalf of a great series that, like, 12 people played, and maybe if I can get that number

to 13 or 14, I'll have done my job. Yeah. Let's just keep that explanation in mind when we get to the next round where Chris has picked eight fucking games. I'm going to change it. No, no, no. Don't change it. Don't change it after I said that. No, no, no. You've got to leave it as is. I clarified it. I'm going to make sure that- No, no, no. Don't change it. Don't change it after I said that. No, no, no, no. Yeah, you got to leave it as is.

I clarified it. I clarified it. Yes. Okay. Okay. What is your game for this year? It's near automata. I mean, is there even a question?

I mean, not for you. I think everyone knew it was going to be near automata for you. Clearly, there was a question for the rest of us because it didn't win. Well, that's true. But, Justin, I believe you later backpedaled on this and said, because you didn't play Nier when we talked about this. I'm not here to talk about Nier Automata. I'm here to talk about number one victory.

Yeah, Fortnite, we're about to get down. There's no way Fortnite is not the best game of 2017 fortnight rules just discovered it i don't know if you guys ever heard about it i just discovered it a couple weeks ago but it's like fun and you get this got boba fett playing hacky sack in it it's got john wick doing gong style in it it's got everything in it spiderman in it it's great fortnight congratulations i put fortnight i'm just gonna spoil it i put it in 2020 because that's when the game actually came out what yeah what do you fortnight early access in 2020 no and that is also when it transcended from oh i, I get it, PUBG knockoff, to like, at this point, it's like, oh, it is a cultural metaverse.

No, no, no, no. That's ridiculous. It came out in 2017. Bye-bye, Half-Life, Alex's hopes. Person who didn't play Fortnite until two weeks ago, Chris Plant, the game did not substantively change in 2020. They can call it whatever they want, but it came out in 2017. I was playing Fortnite in 2017 before all of y'all. Before all of y'all.

Let's check the stats. No one victory. Because Chris Grant yelled at me because nobody else was playing it. So I played it. This is, I mean, you can just see the passion that the best game of 2017 is able to engender in people. Fresh, did you have sort of a sacrificial lamb

you wanted to offer up at Fortnite's feet? Yeah, I picked a small, little-known title called Mario Odyssey. I actually never heard of Mario Odyssey. I'm changing my answer to Mario Odyssey. Wow. Congratulations. Oh, no.

Justin just changed his to Nier Automata. A counterattack from Justin. I changed my Nier Automata. A counterattack from Justin. I changed my Nier Automata. That game fucking rules, and it's still in my heart long after I played it. I can't shake it. It is... I love Mario Odyssey. Okay.

Now, someone on our sheet, someone named Craig, has chosen Mario Odyssey. okay now someone on our sheet someone named craig has uh chosen mario would you say craig chose mario odyssey or mario odyssey because that might give us a hint as to who craig might actually be i'm just saying crappy throw crappy at the dinosaur become a dinosaur 10 out of 10 though guys it's sweeping it's it's incredible it's emotional it's haunting it there's a lot of downtime in that game a lot of downtime i played it i mean here's my case for near mario odyssey a fantastic game near is core to the besties experience for you to not get a chance to knock it out during our 10 year anniversary special would be an act of cruelty to all of you um okay that's true counter just

another counter uh platinum games who made this yes uh-huh has made so many better like fighting systems i never enjoyed the fighting in your automata i enjoyed everything else about it but like i would much rather play a bayonetta i would much rather play a transformer's devastation not to mention that also that no no no that's like being like uh you know what cormac mccarthy's books aren't good because the sentences are too simple there are other books no that's not what i'm saying at all. I am saying that the combat in Nier Automata kind of sucks.

No. Since Platinum Games is a developer. Yeah, this is just showing that you're a bad gamer, but that's okay. We like bad gamers. And it takes like 10 hours

to get to something that is more interesting, and even that did not super click for me as something that was the most interesting. Dope-ass music in N in near really good art design there's a lot of cruft in that game a lot and if it was a three-hour game it would probably be my game of the year but it's a 40-hour game and it isn't well it's a 40-hour game if you want to get ending alpha 1-13 I wanted to see the true ending and I did and it wasn't worth it.

It's great. It's so worth it. You're so... It was good. I want to move on because I'm getting angry. Mario Odyssey, fine. But I'm going to write Fortnite back. I can't believe that Nier Automata is not going to be in our final conversation. Well, you've gotten nine of your fucking games to win.

Yeah, but it's the only one I care about. Well, that's got a sting um 2018 return of the overdone crushed it nobody's made a better game than that yet it's been what three three years and change it is a sick i don't think there's been a better like right now if you're like justin i'll give you a sequel to any game ever made it would be over yeah it would be another or something you know whatever Lucas wants to my man Lucas wants to make next Lucas Georgie Luke hope hope George Lucas I think Monster Hunter world does such a good game that was such a good game guys such a good game, guys. Such a good game. It's wild that Return of the Overdead won this year

because God of War came out this year, Spider-Man, Monster Hunter World, Smash Bros. Ultimate, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It was just... And the winner from this year also. What? What?

Dead Cells. Oh, right. Dead Cells is awesome. Hold on, you didn't let Plant finish his non-committal answer? No, he has a committal answer. I do.

My winner is Celeste. And I'll just go back in time and it also said dot, dot, dot or Prey Moon Crash. So it's like your explanation of I just want to expose

the world to these great indie games like Smash Ultimate and Red Dead Redemption 2 no no my oh my gosh reading literacy what I was doing was it's called setting up an idea that these

are not the winners and then I was going to say so that's the real winner and then Pray Moon Crash is like hey by the way whisper to like the people in the know you should go play this game because it's better than Arkane's most recent game he's doing some cormac mccarthy stuff in there yeah it's just like mccarthy it's just like saying cormac mccarthy's books aren't as good as arcane games no country for gamer men celeste is a sick very very very good game god of war however is probably the best third person action game i've ever played

i will change my answer to god of war oh i was about to change mine to celeste okay whatever really i was about to change mine to dead cells yeah i thought it's the last bts the celeste is a really good game the old i don't Celeste. So I'll do God of War before we can unearth this. Okay, fine. I don't want to get bogged down. Yeah, we have Towerfall going forward, right? Okay. I love God of War.

I really, I was shocked by, I love how in conversation God of War is with its history in a way that like, don't i don't think most like films that are remakes um have been able to achieve where it's like god of war is in dialogue with itself like it's in in dialogue with its own like weird history and its own weird past and that's really did you see that new matrix very uh yes i did and that's really Did you see that new Matrix? Yes I did. And it's Do you guys want to just do an episode?

Yeah. That would be cool. It really really rules. And just to confirm we're talking about the Dave Jaffe got ore right? Yes. Okay cool. And I didn't know you were so casual so well acquainted with David Jaffe that you're calling me Dave now.

Me and Dave. This is my cool brother who buys me beer. David Jaffe that you're calling me Dave now. This is my cool brother who buys me beer. Dave Jaffe. Look, he's so angry. He hates his dad. He gets me beer and I get him tips on how to get past the

first room in Betrayal Games. Okay. 2019, we chose Wait, what was the winner of the last one 2018 god of war yeah yeah god of war we chose sekiro shadows die twice fuck yeah yes that game is good i don't know how that happened um that game beats that i think it's because when you beat the final boss and get like the final ending conquering that boss is one of the most exhilarating singular video game experiences ever and it you were on a cocaine high when you voted

for this basically is what you're saying also fresh you had not played outer wilds that's why that was that is the real reason why sacro one is because i couldn't physically play outer wilds and now that i have i definitely know that it would have won that year yeah i'd probably that's weird because here on the sheet you've written outer wilds or control yeah that's oh it seems there's a lot of you don't definitely know but i never wrote it like that to be clear or or is a powerful word and i would never have been like hey i can do either or. I wrote Outer Wilds first, though.

My pick is Outer Wilds. You did. Knowing what I know now, I would probably change my vote to Outer Wilds. I think that game is a very special game. Justin, do you want to give a little blessing to Control before we move on? Yeah, Control's a great, like, not only is it like a really atmospheric cool third-person shooter with really interesting combat um and uh it's also like kind of a great comeback story for remedy uh remedy because it they had such a rough patch and released like what i think is it actually a bad game like i don't say that like it's truly

a bad game break quantum break break quantum break is truly bad um in ways that may or may not be their fault no it's unclear um yes it was a little bit their fault well yeah but there's some other stuff anyway uh, Control was great. I actually originally on here before it was so clear I was going to die on the cross, I had Disco Elysium, which if you did not play Disco Elysium and you like sort of an isometric RPG and a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and a lot of feeling and a lot of growing Disco Elysium is very very good takes a little while to get going but it's excellent so people should go play it but don't play the DLC

whatever you do don't play the DLC I agree that DLC is bad as a fan of Alan Wake it made me sad so don't play it it's also just like made me like I actually know I love that game but like having that be the final thing from it was not, did not leave me in a good place with it. 2020.

I actually struggled with because it's so clearly like, this is, I think this was maybe the easiest vote we ever had. Yeah. Yeah. It's Hades. Hades. Hades was the winner.

And I, I said it, then i stand by it that game is fun no matter what's going on in your life how far you are in the game what time of day it is your general emotional state yeah not just fun but like emotionally moving amazing art it was fucking great i mean we don't horny as horny as horny as all hell game on this entire list i think yeah maybe um i'll go first my alternate pick is a pick that i know other people won't necessarily pick but it is half-life alex um which is a little bit surprising because i did play like 500 hours of animal crossing but when i think back to both of those games the game that sticks with me as like sticks to my ribs like i just had a really good meal is half-life alex

incredibly memorable uh there's like i mean part of it is because it's vr so it's like literally immersive like i'm in it uh but man so much dope shit in that game definitely the best like vr experience i've ever had and um for the people who kind of bounced off of it specifically justin griffin please go back and play it because holy shit it's amazing um quest i mean native yet no i don't know that it'll ever be quest native but you can yeah play it wired on quest or you could set it up wire i know a few people that have played it wirelessly using quest cloud wherever that tech is um that also works really well i was just anytime i throw on my headset i just end up tumbling into the metaverse yeah it happens some time we'll spend some time with my friends your good friend rick and morty

rick and morty and I get turned into a pickle man and I show everyone my NFTs. Awesome. I picked Animal Crossing. It was 2020. It was a fucking bad, it was a shitty

fucking year and Animal Crossing let me, you know, have, have birthday parties with my friends from afar,

you know? It was a good ass, it was a good ass game. It's still good. I's a good ass game it's still good i didn't end up playing it for 15 years straight which i may be expected but it dulled the pain of 2020 you know what i picked miles morales which i don't have any illusions about winning or not winning um or winning this but i did want to just give credit to uh i love the scale of that where it's not necessarily DLC and it's not a

standalone, but as a way to like keep a franchise in people's minds. Um, it was a wonderful, just like, here's more of this and it's not drastically different, but it's different enough. Um,

the character of, of miles as he's realized in the game is really good. And it also like was the first game that i played on the playstation 5 or any next gen console uh where it felt like oh i get it because there's like so much happening on screen at once and it all looks great um i really really really liked amen more 15 hour games please more exactly right like just that that scale i think it was like 40 bucks at launch something like that like great great excellent now chris plan is oh i was gonna say oh chris

plan created some uh tension because he he drew a bunch of ellipses on the document and has now replaced it with 13 sentinels baby he just rim you actually extended the b so it's b a so it's bad that's actually a reference to death stranding uh bb um 13 sentinels you just rim absolutely rules uh it is a i don't know, visual novel-like adventure game where you do time loops with a bunch of kids in Japan. And it effectively collides every single science fiction trope ever into one story. But it also doesn't get good for 20 hours.

No, it gets good immediately. It rules. It is gorgeous. It's coming out on switch next year i know for a fact this is the last time that we're going to talk about it until it is on switch you're gonna have a whole episode about it baby that's gonna be great um uh yeah this is the first time that we've picked different games yeah i i think i think animal crossing wins here i mean i would actually be swayed to that too that was a really i think i said at the time is like the most maybe the most important game ever released like in terms of like

we really need this right now i will also say uh the like additions to that game have maybe been slow to roll out but they have released like two major patches that have like added a ridiculous amount of shit to the game um so i i would say that they have been fairly good stewards of of keeping that good vibe going yes i agree and then the one we did fucking four weeks ago let's let's get back into that chris plant jesus plant do yours first because it didn't even come up in the game of the year discussions and now you're adding it as a if i mean miss it was resident evil 8 that we picked last last four weeks ago yes village yeah yeah also i i want to say i can't believe that um

that like kentucky route zero isn't anywhere on our final bracket because that feels like one of the most besties games ever. I feel like it deserves an honorary spot on this bracket. We can talk about that off the thing, but it's weird that it's not there, considering it almost won many years.

I think the general consensus, if I recall, was that it didn't quite stick the landing in terms of the ending, and that's why people like... I thought the fifth chapter was great. Yeah, that's... But anyway, we can't... Yeah, let's not.

Yeah, we'll talk about that later. The winner for 2021 that isn't Resident Evil 8, we all agree, is Death Stranding Director's Cut. I like that you didn't include Death Stranding in the year that it actually came out, but rather the Director's Cut. Yeah, because I want people to have the best experience. Okay. Why is the director's cut so much better than the normal version?

Because you can get put. Just tell me it's longer and slower, please. Yeah, it is longer, and there's more talking. But you can also hurl yourself across the map with like a catapult. You could do that before, couldn't you? No. Come on. That's funny actually because the first time I played Death Stranding,

it made me want to hurl myself across a ravine on a catapult, but definitely not make it. Then rather than play another fucking second. What you just described sounds fun and if i worry if i had fun while playing death stranding i might assume i'd been hacked and have to delete it from my i actually genuinely loved death stranding when it first came out i did not play the director's cut so i can't speak to that but um it is a good game but i would also say i've criticized a lot of games today 13 Sentinels and

Automata for being very slow to start and Death Stranding is slow to start and slow to middle and slow to end I actually like for what it's worth I like Death Stranding too I couldn't finish it it is funny to make fun of though

it's a good it's like weirdly so Straying 2. I couldn't finish it. It is funny to make fun of, though. I got too bogged. It's like, weirdly, the actual experience of playing it is so in tune with the mechanics of what the main character is doing. I feel that. When I set my weight down for a week or so and didn't play it, I couldn't pick the weight back

up. It was just too much. I had to leave it where I found it. I picked Monster Hunter Rise on the Switch. One one i do think that's a really great game and there's dlc coming out very soon that i'm excited to uh dip back in on but for me this is a very personal pick because this game came out in march uh which is when my son gus was born and i think that the switch is a gift to new parents when you have like time to just like chill in a dark room and you know kill kill kill a few big dragons or whatever and take their that's so funny griffin because i had the exact same experience with world it came out uh right when cooper was born so i had like a ton of like 3 a.m just like zoning

out what trying to get her back to sleep and it honestly monster hunter is perfect for that like let me ask you if the birth was happening at like at the waning ends of a hunt realistically speaking i probably set the game down, you fucking dummy. Yeah, but what? I probably set the game down to be the present for the birth of my child, you fucking dummy. What are you talking? I don't know, man. I gotta get those Rathas scales so I can make my new boots. Oh, what's that?

My son was born? Shoot. Can he wait? I wanted to say, this is a quick mea culpa, and I alluded to this on Twitter, but I did want to, I love that we are returning this just so I can say this here. I finished the Halo Infinite campaign. I'm really excited for this. And y'all, it's so, credit to the people who made it. I think you maybe got in over your heads a little bit and you just had to finish a game because you couldn't delay it anymore and you're trying to do a lot and I completely

get that and respect it for sure. The last few hours of that game are so incredibly insultingly dull. The campaign you're talking about. The campaign, yes. I still think the multiplayer is fantastic but like the last few hours of that campaign when I decided like

okay, I'm going to finish this. I've done all the like side stuff that i feel like doing i'm gonna finish this game it is just this maddening pointless like slog through very similar corridors shooting which i understand is like that's a lot of games but halo makes no effort to like try to guss it up to make you feel like you're doing other stuff you literally like walk to the next pylon it's missing a battery you go find the battery you put it in you keep trudging uh it is meaningless it's soul-sucking like made me so bummed out and i want to say that like had i finished that campaign there's no way i would push for it in any way shape or form yeah and if you scrub back uh if you shrug back to that

discussion this is what was at the very top of my mind when i was fighting to not include it was this specific thing is everything else you know if it had stuck the landing on the campaign i think there's a definitely very good chance it would have won Game of the Year, and it super, super didn't. It's weird. Like, it feels like – I talk a lot when I think about video games. I talk about, like, feeling like the hand of the creator there. Like, whatever you're doing is something they anticipated. No, the game creator.

Whatever you're doing is something they anticipated, and, like, they knew that you were going to try to do that and they had sculpted this experience for you to enjoy right it's one of the things that makes stanley parable so powerful is whatever you do in that game you can feel the authorship there like you know like this is an experience you're intended to have halo feels like you've been abandoned like you're in it it's like you didn't did anybody play this to see if it was fun or not because it's so clearly not enjoyable like it's mad to me anyway what was your actual i picked inscription inscription obviously it's better than all the other games from last year um mine is metroid dread and i feel very strongly about this you know this was my number two during our game of the year discussions.

We've talked a little bit. Some of the people on this show have talked a little bit about the fact that inscription has, even though is great, especially for the first act has down moments that aren't as great. And I do not think Metro dread has that. And I think it's fucking sick as hell. And I love it. I'll change my vote to metroid dread the things that justin talked about with uh an ending ruining a game for you with halo is how i feel about inscription i i do genuinely like inscription i think the

ending of that game it makes me so upset it makes me it just i i kind of like it but i i feel you oh my gosh one day one day can we do a spoiler cast on maybe yeah sure inscription because it really does some shit all right so we're done then right yeah i think we're done congratulations to all our new winners um just some very quick uh favorite games from our listeners from Lex What Remains of Edith Finch was absolutely robbed by the year 2017 and I feel like it was barely discussed in the Gotti episode the fish scene touched me more than maybe

any other moment in a game ever beautiful game I'd agree with that really great game robbed is a wild thing to say in 2017 which is maybe the best game did we name it the best year in gaming I can't remember what we picked. I don't either. I think maybe it was 2007. I don't think Edith Finch would have won,

but I also think that game is... Would have got more airtime. Yes. Pretty incredible. I just played it on an iPad last year, so that's why I'm late to the conversation. This one from Cash4OneNess. I really thought Death Stranding would come back for Gotti. It feels like the only episode it was talked about and everyone had just uh scratched the surface of it at that point

which i think we kind of got to hear of hey we actually all like this game quite a bit it just there's a lot of games sorry oh no no no no oh all of that game that game that game sucks the mood out of this guy that game is not a good game. But everybody has the opinion. This one's from AnalogousPants5. Half-Life Alyx, on a purely design basis, it's in the top 10 games of all time. It simultaneously is the primary justification for its medium, VR, while also being held back by the current limitations of its medium.

So it always makes for interesting discussion. I'm sure Frush agrees with that. Yeah, don't know about like top 10 games of all time for design on a design basis necessarily but it is i think the epitome of them making smart choices even though i know griffin disagrees making smart choices to make a game both accessible and pushing a format which is vr so i think that game did a lot of very, very cool informative VR shit that is going to inform the genre moving forward. You can shake jugs around.

Yeah, I just didn't think it was very fun. The last one from Dad. Rocket League never got its fair shake in the once-a-year days. It has perfected the mass multiplayer pairing system while continuing to cater to both its esports and casual audience it kind of won but it was a three-way tie broken by new york draft not in its favor so i wouldn't say that counts and justin recently said he didn't believe it should have won i this is the trouble with games being everything is that rocket league

is a great sport i just it's not the type of game that we often talk about on this in the same way that we often don't have. I don't think we have any fighting games on these lists. How is it a three-way tie broken by New York Giraffe? We don't. We've made so many mistakes. I just don't even know the math of that. I don't get it.

We don't have time for honorable mentions, except for Hard Boiled, which is on YouTube. You pretty much can't watch it anywhere else. So you should go watch Hard Boiled. John Woo rules. That's it. Cool. That's it. I've finished Nobody Saves the World. It's great. What have we talked about? Do we even need to do

a game? No, we can't do this. Very quick. Here are the winners. Oh, no. I just looked at next week. I'm going to say the winners. Let me just say the winners real quick. Here are the winners. Okay. The winners are Spunky HD for 2012, Towerfall for 2013, 2014 was Destiny, 2015 was The Witcher Wild Hunt, 2016 was Titanfall, 2017 was Mario Odyssey, 2018 was God of War, 2019 was Outer

Wilds, 2020 was Animal Crossing Crossing and Metroid Dread was 2021 perfect next week Justin's favorite game next week Pokemon Legends Arceus comes out it does say here that Justin has a scheduled diarrhea and cannot attend so I don't know how one

schedules a diarrhea it's out of my hands I mean that's probably for the best. Yeah, I guess. It's out of my hands. I mean, I hope. I do notice on our work calendar Tuesday at midnight

you have scheduled eat a bunch of Kadova. So, I guess you will miss the record time. That's going to do it for us on The Besties. Thanks for hanging in there with us. And be sure to join us again next week for

the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!