The Besties - What's Coming in 2024?

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

We're back after a brief holiday hiatus to discuss the biggest, Bestiest video game releases of the coming year. Spoiler alert: It gets real JRPG-heavy, real quick. Games discussed: Dragon's Dogma 2, Unicorn Overlord, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Baby Steps, Animal Well, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Alone in the Dark, Persona 3 Reload, Light No Fire, Hades 2, Prince of Persia, Brothers, Paper Mario: The 1000 Year Door, Skin Deep, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Visions of Mana, Death Must Die, Halls of Torment, Godzilla Minus One, Lair of the White Worm, Undertale, The Gnorp Apologue, Binding of Isaac 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!

Griff, that lag between you and me, baby. That's the power of fiber. Oh, I can feel it. Instant. I can feel it. It's like you're in the room with me. I can smell you through the internet. Griffin, count back and forth just with me, okay?

Okay, ready. Check this out. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Holy fucking shit, man. I was worried it wouldn't be appreciable, but it's like I'm in the room with my brother, baby. It's quantum, baby. It's like I'm in the room with my brother, baby. It's Quantum, baby. It's like I'm in the room with my own brother. Quantum of Solace? More like Quantum of Friendship. Quantum of Fraternity. Quantum of Fraternity.

Yeah, man. That would be a better name for this show. Russ and Chris, you guys got to get this fucking fiber, man. You guys got to get into fiber! I have fiber. It only took me four months and eight technician visits and me drilling through my own goddamn walls

to get this beautiful connection. But guess what? That hole juice, that's where the light shines in. And the light is me. I'm in the room with you. Thank you, fiber. Beaming directly in.

Do you want to say the name of your internet service provider just to give them some free help? No, no free pub. I can't even hear you, Russ. It's like I'm listening to an old-timey phonograph. You don't have a name for one string

that's connecting two soup canes. There's more standing. It's just a really long string. You guys understand this? It's string theory. What? my name is justin mccroy and i know the best game of the week my name is griffin mccroy the best games of 2024 my name is christopher thomas plant and i'm gonna take a real good guess at it my name is ross froschek now the best games of the week welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment it is a video game club in 2024 it will be stronger than ever okay it's a new

announcement i meant to tell you guys this is our year for the besties. Why am I so sure? Because this year is just absolutely chock-a-block with great stuff. Like what, Chris? Give me one fucking example. What if I told you that Yakuza game is coming back, but they're not calling it Yakuza this time, and it's got Animal Crossing in it? I mean, I'm hooked, and i think you will be too listener uh right after this brief commercial message i have to before we start i love this episode this is always a very fun episode for me i have to i think it would be worth going through our what are we looking for in 2023 list because

there's some stuff on there. I'm just going to go through it. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry. Before we even do that, we have some housekeeping. Uh-oh. That relates to 2023.

Okay. And it's a very important thing that needs to be addressed. Okay. Did you finish Baldur's Gate 3? I finished Baldur's Gate 3. And for people, I'm sure everyone has listened, but in case you haven't, there was some discussion about the ending of Baldur's Gate 3. I finished Baldur's Gate 3 and for people, I'm sure everyone has listened but in case you haven't, there was some discussion about the ending of Baldur's Gate 3

maybe falling short and essentially letting Zelda edge it out and have, because of the fact that Griffin was the only one that had played the ending of Baldur's Gate 3 at the time The only real gamer in the four the quartet here.

Just to further the table setting, I myself also went back into Baldur's Gate in an attempt to finish it. I, unlike Russ, had Christmas to contend with, so I did not have as much free time. I had eight days to contend with. He had eight days of busy. That's, I, okay, Adam said it was eight crazy nights,

so I'm assuming you had the days to yourself that is what my my assumption would be but uh i did play another um eight hours or so um got through the if you guys know the iron throne yeah did that uh and i am i did not finish the game so take this for what it's worth i'm more convinced than ever that it is our best game of the year some of the best stuff in this game happens like late no i'm not i'm just saying we're to lock it in amber i i think but it wasn't you i was gonna make a rush to play it and i was enjoying playing it so much when i got back into it that i was like i'm not gonna rush it for the for for okay i just but Russ did, and I'm curious to hear from the only other true gamer of the quartet, like how it hit you.

Right, Justin's opinion is worthless. Yes. Clearly, it's just Griffin and I, and let me just say, Baldur's Gate 3 is our game of the year 2020. Okay, fine. All right. All right. The ending rules, the epilogue is great it's exactly what

you would want from an epilogue and i was able to complete all the like tasks for my various people i know griffin here's the problem griffin was too much of a gamer and played the game when it was still a little bit broken yeah and now it's while it's slightly broken, 99% not broken. I will also say, for whatever it's worth, folks at home, if you're struggling, I lowered down that difficulty in the interest of just seeing as much stuff as I could. It's still pretty hard. Things can still go really bad, but I've really been enjoying that. Okay. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Great. Starfield. Final Fantasy XVI. go really bad but uh i've really been enjoying that okay zelda tears of the kingdom great uh

starfield final fantasy 16 that one we didn't even discuss i liked it in the goatee discussions oh not in the goatee no no there was a lot of heat behind it which one was that i'm so sorry final fantasy 16 that one with all the cut scenes oh right right right okay that was a cool game yeah that was a cool final fantasy I didn't think it was cool. Diablo 4. Star Wars Jedi Survivor. Hollow Knight Silksong. Beautiful.

Atomic Heart. Are you sure? Judas. Really, guys? Judas. I don't know what that is. Suicide Squad. Are you sure?

It's Ken Levine's thing, right? No. Judas was the game that looked like it was Ken Levine's thing. No, Judas is Ken Levine's thing. Oh, it is? Judas is Ken Levine. thing oh it is judas is ken levine suicide squad well suicide squad final fantasy 7 rebirth nope pragmata don't know what that is stalker 2 did it fire emblem engage okay armor core 6 cool red fall are you sure guys alan wake 2 the wolf

among us 2 and play dead's new game. Wolf Among Us 2. Yeah. Did you guys know that in 2023, the year of our Lord, there was a new Telltale game, The Expanse? Did you guys know that came out last year? No. Did not. I know, right? Like, it's wild. Just want to say, take everything we're about to say with a grain of salt,

because sometimes the shit we say is bad, and sometimes it doesn't exist. Yeah. Agreed. Okay, so with that all, that was a lot of table setting but i think we're gonna start diving into what we are most excited for for the year and some of these games definitely will not come out this year and as griffin said some of them will be awful but we're gonna try any of us are bringing silk song which is a first for the last five years which is exciting i mean i'm bringing it next year so it'll be great for next year great chris do you want to start because chris has a pretty firm heart out on this episode yeah i have school this guy i have three games and

they are all number one with the bullet somehow that's possible but the one i want to start with is dragon's dogma 2. Yes, baby. Can't fucking wait. Justin, I should have listened to you so much. I really should have listened to you a long time ago. Because this is exactly your type of hurt little puppy game that I also love. I'm in the early stages of becoming a Dragon's Dogma 1 weirdo. And this game is nothing like people had described it to me.

That was the biggest surprise. It's wholly original. It is. People, when it came out, I think it got knocked because people were like, hey, this is like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. And it's very little like either of them. It is a big open world action RPG where you spend a whole lot of time spamming attacks with you have an whole lot of time spamming attacks.

You have an AI party of Dungeoneers. Pawns. Pawns is what they're called. Some of whom are made by other players, which is great. Yeah, so you make one of your own pawns, and then you can pick two pawns from this magical realm,

aka a video game server, that is made from these other- Wow, way to take the magic out of it, Plano. I mean, you know, I just like to know how it works. I like to crack it open. My pawn is basically Irish Andre the Giant, and they have a voice option in this game that is just Andre the Giant.

And let me tell you, going through a dungeon and having a pawn, Andre the Giant, give you advice feels really, really great. Sure. But yeah, it just, it's a really, really, really fun dungeon game. And it also does,

it also does a lot of stuff that is unique to itself and other people, but it makes sense contextually, contextually, but it doesn't make sense in the wider swath of the world of video games like the way the this game does teleports is absolutely wild you have to find these weird crystals and then like use them in a certain spot and you're

basically creating your own waypoints where you think they'd be the most useful it's wild like it's it's i don't think other games do it it's all make sense the first time you get one of those crystals you have to like walk down down down into a dungeon it takes a very long time you get the crystal it's like hey congratulations fast travel works unfortunately you do need to decide where you want to travel to so you're gonna have to climb all the way back up where you just came from um which sounds awful but it's actually quite funny the game has like a weird i guess maybe that's the dark souls of it all it does have kind of a weird um antagonistic sense of humor um but yeah the sequel looks almost like the same game

watching the trailer just with a few bigger bosses uh and obviously much better visuals so i'm curious how much of it a sequel it is versus kind of a like hey we're rebooting this series man i don't know the first dragon's dogma rules on so many levels and sucks also which is why i love it so much is that there's a lot of stuff that is not good it's good ideas done badly which makes me very excited for the potential of a sequel and ironing out some of those kinks. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I have not even hit the bad stuff yet.

I don't know if that's because I'm playing the updated version. I think it's kludgy a little bit. They did update it, but it is like, I know what you're saying. I don't think, I'm not in a hurry to rush back to DD1. Yes, it is messy. I will say

I tried it because it was on sale on a Steam sale over the break. I think it was like five bucks and everyone looks like mutants. The faces are just so horrifying. It was delicious Monster Factory fodder when it first came out.

You can become like a thin man. Like, what's the scary guy who lives in the trees? Slenderman? Thin man. Slenderman. Carl Slenderman. Thin tree man.

That'll be good. Frush, you have one you want to share? Yeah, sure. I'm not convinced this is going to happen this year because we haven't heard anything about it since that initial kind of announcement. But Elden Ring Shadow of the Erd Tree is the DLC to Elden Ring,

a game that I might have as my number one game of ever. And as we all know, FromSoftware does like amazing DLCs. And I think this one will be great whenever it actually drops. But yeah, they've been extremely quiet about it. I was expecting some sort of trailer or something during the Game Awards didn't happen. Elden Ring lore, like I have been watching all the YouTube insanity of people trying to track it, just the idea of knowing what Mikula has been up to, who's a character that hasn't been touched on really at all in the main game, only kind of subtextually, I'm very excited about it.

I feel like this DLC is going to come with a demo disc for Hollow Knight Silksong. I feel like that is the extent to which... That is an epic crossover. I feel like this is not in the realm of the, this is not in the shadow realm that Silksong has been in. But it is surprising because like how many DLCs do you know of that like the game came out, what was it, two years ago now? And we still haven't seen a DLC for it? That's like crazy.

That's very weird. Wasn't that Resident Evil 7? Did its DLC take that long? I feel like there's... No one knows. You've seen that... Yeah, yeah. Who, who, who?

But I'm very, very excited about it. Yeah. I... Y'all, are you all as excited for Unicorn Overlord as I am? I don't know what that is. Yeah, it's a new one on me. Is it Jeff Minter?

Because it sounds like Jeff Minter. It's the new game from the developer of 13 Sentinels. Vanilla. Oh, okay. What a wild... Well, you see, they have to get the unicorn powers to become the overlord. It kind of makes sense when you say it out loud. They always do something very, very different.

This time they're doing hey fresh you're gonna actually want to play this a modern take on 90s tactics rpgs uh and you play as an exile yeah you play as an exiled prince and you are amassing a giant army across all these different kingdoms to go take on the bad dude who took your throne and and it looks like they're toning down the fan service this time and like putting all of that energy into like beautiful food anime food so i'm gonna i'm gonna get you all to try it um but i can't guarantee how it will go but i'm i personally am very excited for it i'll play it i do do have concerns. There was so much talky-talky between the gamey-gamey of 13 Sentinels that, you know, that was only...

It was a visual novel. Right, so I guess is this also a visual novel with some tactics elements to it? No. When they make games, they are truly whatever the thing they're making is. So, like, they've made, like, a hack-and-slash game that is a hack and slash game.

It'll have some dialogue, but they commit to the bit. And then last one I have for y'all before I head out. Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth. I set it up up top. Are we going to play this? Because I

think Freshick is on a firm no more. He feels like he's been tricked. This should be an episode we should have from time to time where we all pitch games to try to get the other ones to play. I mean, I've played three Yakuza games at this point. I've tried with these, and I like... Okay, Russ, tell me how close this is to your experience.

I like them, and I stop playing. I like them them pretty good and then I don't play it anymore yeah sure man that's how it goes with all games I would say every game yeah no no no but I the stop playing it is like before you're supposed to yeah yeah before you're before it says game over and flashing white pixelated letters when you're supposed to quit. Thank you for playing. Exactly. Insert more. Yeah. My experience is I like the combat sometimes, but they spend a lot of time on the narrative, and the narrative

is, in my opinion, I know a lot of people like it, I find it incredibly boring. This is, it should be noted, the sequel to the RPG, Yakuza Like a Dragon, which I played through all of last year and really, really loved. So, Chris, I'm with you. I did like the tone of that one.

Yes, it seems like this one's going to be pretty much the same tone based on all of the trailers that have come out for it. The wackier, the better. If it can be consistently wacky from beginning to end or at least 90 wacky i am totally for it the problem is so frequently i find myself in a cut scene talking about like yakuza politics about how this boss fucked over this boss and he's really upset about it and that goes on for like 40 minutes so if we can avoid that i'm all i think you'll be happy because i feel like the bit of the mainline yakuza games is the hero is kind of the straight man who is then surrounded by silliness in in the new like

a dragon games ichiban is like also goofy um yes and there's there's just more consistency in the goofiness a very quick selling point for people who might actually want to try this. Like Griffin said, it is a turn-based RPG now. The series has evolved. And you build up your own parties. Evolved back to the mid-'90s. Intentionally. I mean, it's a whole Dragon Warrior pastiche.

Yes. And this one is set in Hawaii. So it's like beautiful, colorful setting. And as I mentioned at the very top, it has as always lots of very varied deep mini games throughout. And one in this

is an Animal Crossing clone. Which looks absolutely delightful. I know that none of us will finish this game because it has been described you will it's been described as the longest yakuza game i believe by far i mean you must know me by now that's true that's true that's true you gotta know how it ends. But yeah, I'm honestly really looking forward to it. I am waiting for a view

code to appear in my inbox. Oh, January 26th on this one. This one's real soon. Oh, I didn't realize it was so soon. It's very soon. Gotta make time. Can't fucking wait. Soon for it. Alright, well, I think Chris needs to roll, but we do have a ton of additional games, so we're gonna send him off. Farewell, Chris. It's been fun. Bye. Bye, Christopher think Chris needs to roll, but we do have a ton of additional games. So we're going to send him off.

Farewell, Chris. It's been fun. Bye. Bye, Christopher. He'll be back soon. I'll see you later. Bye. Bye.

And I've got a game called Baby Steps that I'm very excited about. Do we know? I know that this is the new Bennett Foddy Jam, maker of QWOP and Getting Over It. Do we know anything else about the game? I mean, they've shown gameplay, and the gameplay is the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen.

Because it is a grown adult man in a onesie, I guess, or like a union suit, perhaps, walking across like a... It kind of looks like the death stranding like iceland landscape but using the animations of like a quop so like the awkward like walking animations of quop or um the awkward controls of uh getting up with what was that game called getting up getting up with mark echo mark echo's getting up. Wow, that's such a benefit. A Benifati's game.

No one's going to get it. I should mention there are a few other people working on the game. It's not just Bennett. Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Bach are also working on it. Shit, this does look funny. And this is going to be published by Devolver. It's supposed to be coming out this year. It looks dope.

It might be... I think at the very least it'll be very funny i don't know how much fun it will be but i think it'll be very funny to watch and probably every streaming moment yes every streamer in the world is going to stream this game so go ahead yeah used to seeing it uh seeing this this man's generous behind it is funny just because like the more realistic the graphics get the funnier it gets because you're contrasting that with the like insane physics of a benefit game yes so i think there's a lot of a lot of potential there are you watching videos

yeah it's really good so fucking funny i don't want to play it, but I want to watch somebody else play it. I can do one of mine. Yeah, do one of yours, please. It was on the list last year, baby, and we're going to bring it on back home. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This one I actually think is coming out this year. Yeah, this one's out pretty soon. It's February, right?

Yeah, I mean, I fucking love Final Fantasy VII. I thought Final Fantasy VII Remake, which came out now four years ago, just absolutely slapped ass. Wow. And yeah, 2020. How was that fucking four years ago? That's crazy. 2020 was four years ago. That's, yeah, it sucks.

Jesus. And I'm, it's gonna cover a lot of my favorite stuff from Final Fantasy VII. I was talking to friend of the show, Jason Schreier, about this. I have no recollection of anything that happens after they leave Midgar like none

that's wild that's so wild you don't remember I know there's grass and I know they meet there's Cosmo Canyon they go to Cosmo Canyon they meet the cat boy

I don't remember what happens to Cosmo Canyon that already happened in remake they called it Red 13 I believe is his name into remake oh the Yuffie DLC, which I didn't play? Nope, it was just in the core game. Then you got the Gold Saucer. Golden Saucer.

You got the Forgotten Capital, which I believe is where things get a little nasty. Where does Kate Sith join you? Gold Saucer. Okay, that I do remember. I remember Kate Sith. I like Kate Sith a lot. Yeah. I think it Gold Saucer. Okay. That I do remember. I remember Kate Sith. I like Kate Sith a lot. Yeah.

I think it's going to be good. What about that dog or cat? Yeah. So Red 13. We did mention him. That's a very easy name to miss. Yes. I am honestly a little bit worried that this thing's out,

I think in February, February 29th. I might need to play remake because this is, I mean, it used to just be the one game. Back in my day, Final Fantasy VII was one game. And a lot of stuff happens in the first part of it that it seems- It's gotta be a three hour long YouTube video. There's gotta be.

Gotta be. I'm excited excited i'm really excited for uh i mean i the the soundtrack for final fantasy 7 remake is incredible i'm like excited just to sort of have my hands on on that uh and uh the way that they sort of changed and upended some of the plot in in the first part of the game makes me wonder how wild they're gonna get with the you know the plot in the second part and yeah i'm just just really looking forward to it it's also just fun to play it's a fun game to play remake and i'm sure yeah it's it's funny because i knew so little about the original because it's been like 20 years since i played the original yeah so i spent most of that remake being like did this happen i have no no idea yeah so i think this will be more clear when they take diversions from the historical canon i know there's one event in particular that is

supposed to occur within the timeline of this second game yes that will be the big talking point that is sure to be spoiled in about 30 seconds yeah sure absolutely um 30 seconds on this podcast right in 30 seconds no we'll be no we'll be nice um the uh uh yeah i hope that you know what they should do with those since they're like playing around with uh history and and that this sort of timelines and whatever they should do they should like make it into a verse you know final fantasy just like just like uh make them all in the universe do the multiverse thing everybody's doing. I thought you meant like a wrap.

What? I thought you meant like they're gonna wrap it. No, no, no. Like they should put them all in one thing. Like there should be a dimension multiverse spanning event where they gotta go into all the different Final Fantasies. Have I got about 50 iOS games for you? Yeah.

No, I don't want to do that. I want it to be a real one, and there's only this one Final Fantasy series. Oh, what about Dissidia? That's going to blow your fucking gourd, baby. This will definitely help with the cogency of Final Fantasy by trying to bridge them all together. Absolutely, it will.

It's tying them all up. Should we go to a quick break? Yeah, let's take a break, and we have a bunch more games to talk about. I'm very excited. Can I talk about one? I haven't picked one yeah oh yeah please um dragons of dogma 2 was definitely on my list that's huge for me uh i want to talk about one that i'm really really hoping get my hands on this year hades 2 uh would love to see hades as easily my like time spent like the game i've spent the most time with it is the only game that i could think of i've played for over

100 hours maybe slay the spire is like up there because i've played a fucking lot of that but hades was like such a big time sink and the way it developed over time, it was so good from the launch and just kept getting like more and more reasons to go back and play through storylines and new dialogues and everything i just i just love hades so much i love the way it sounds i love the way it looks i love the characters i love it all so i'm really really excited for for this to to come hopefully in like a some sort of beta situation that i can yeah so i think this game will we will see this game come out this year in early access or whatever format it is. I guess the question I have for you is, would you see yourself spending a lot of time with the early access version of Hades 2? Or do you think you would prefer to wait until it's out?

I would, I think I'm just going to hop in the moment that someone lets me you know like the second that I have the ability to do so I think I will definitely do it it has been a freaking long time I mean like Hades launched early access December 2018 uh with the VGAs if you remember yeah and and what it was I think we voted at game of the year what was that 2020 i believe that's right yes it launched in 20 in fall of 2020 yeah um and then it came to consoles on uh like august of 2021 but it was on on windows fully out september 2020 so it's been like i mean three and a half years since the proper release five and a half years since it uh you know or five years since it like actually uh came out so i feel like it's you know it's a long time for a studio that size yeah you know it takes a while counting that

money yeah yeah man i i i find now that my gaming time is so much more restricted than it was even back in 2018. He says he considers playing Final Fantasy remake again. And beating Yakuza like a hero. Now that my gaming time is limited, I have to be very judicious. He has to spend time with Henry and oh, what's the other one? Dang it. he has to spend time with uh henry and oh what's the other one ah dang it i will say that i have space in my gaming diet for a game like this and you're gonna fight away i have not had one well i'm saying i like to have like a a sort of roguelike that doesn't require a lot of

uh reading and you know story memorization and shit uh because i do play games like yakuza infinite wealth or whatever the fuck uh i like to have one that i can just kind of vibe with uh isaac is this for me most of the time so i'm i'm looking forward to having a new one of those i was i was playing uh this will come up later in honorable mentions but i was playing uh what is this game called it It's called Death Must Die, which I know Justin had mentioned a while back. And it kind of made me wonder, is there like a sub mode of Hades 2

where they try to do the like vampire survivors thing? It would kind of be fucking sick. It would be pretty tight. I don't know if that is the direction they would. It is a very, I don't think it is necessarily, but I don't know. that is the direction they would it is a very i don't think it is necessarily but i don't know i there is an element to which because of hades being like very consistent runs where you know each run could take a good chunk of time 20 to 40 minutes long

there's something that kind of is like i wouldn't mind having like a shorter more bite-sized version of that while still maintaining the mechanics at work. But you know, what is it? What is death must die? I've never heard of that. Oh, well we can cover it in honorable mentions.

It's a game that's already out. So it already counts. Sounds good. I just, you said I recommended it. I've never, I thought you did, but maybe,

maybe I'm mistaken. Hey, also coming out very soon. Uh, man, I got to tell you the first two months of this year are very jrpg heavy for yours truly so that's gonna be that's gonna be tough uh persona 3 reload uh a a remake in the style of the more modern persona games uh of persona 3 which was sort of

the first of the persona games that really blew up i would say on was sort of the first of the Persona games that really blew up, I would say, on a sort of more mainstream level. It helped that they made a portable version, I believe, for the PSP. I believe this is before Vita. And I think it lacks some of the charm. Certainly, it lacks some of the charm of 4 and 5. But, you, but maybe they'll have a chance to kind of punch that up. But it's just like Persona 3, but with a lot of sort of gameplay contrivances and evolutions that 5 added, and I'm really, really looking forward to it

because it's been forever since I've played that game. And famously, this is the game where they shoot themselves in the head, correct? Yes, that is how they get the monsters to come out of their bodies okay so do you envision them changing that in any way no fucking way no way i mean it's it is it is about i mean it's the thing you knew about the game so that'd be wild for them to uh to change that now um yeah uh but yeah i i man i really am hankering for some persona uh especially after playing whatever it was persona just not strikers what was the strategy one that we just did oh persona tactica yeah clearly it didn't leave the sort of indelible

impression in my mind that i was uh that i crave from the Persona series, but I am optimistic that Persona 3 Reload will do that. I believe it's out like early February? February 2nd. Yeah, that's pretty soon. Yeah, so I'll have about a week to finish Infinite Wealth, and then about three weeks to finish Persona 3.

No problem. After Final Fantasy. No problem. He's a cake. No problem at all. Easy. I put one on here that's just for fun i don't even know about this game that's just for what alone in the dark i mean i know about the series but there's a new alone in the dark game coming okay buddy this one is like my called shot shot the dark because if it comes out and is good i'm gonna look like a freaking genius alone in the dark new survival horror you know they're rebooting it we got uh jody comare holy shit and david harbour as emily hartwood and uh edward carnby heading to the manor

to to investigate the disappearance of emily's uncle it's third person starring david harbour and jody come here i don't need anything else that is all i fucking need man maybe who knows the is uh you know the creator of the series frederick ranal according to uh wikipedia gave his blessing and said it did a great job of preserving the core feeling from the original game so who knows i don't know they made magica 2 and they started developing this five years ago they've made some titan quest dlc and magica 2 people like magica magica is cool and it came out uh in 2015 so it's been about nine years since these cats have shipped something. I mean, what's cool is, like, I have no baggage whatsoever.

Like, I know it's scary, but, like, that's it in terms of me knowing anything about the backstory of this franchise or anything. The last one was 2015, Alone in the Dark Illumination. And hated. Nobody liked it. I am actually looking at steam right now there is alone in the dark prologue which came out last may and i did not know about which is i guess like from the same developer yep uh pieces pieces interact pisces i think maybe pieces pisces pisces pretty sure it's pieces, but yeah.

Which to me, just going on the title, I think it's probably a prologue. Guys, is that the same word and we're just now discovering it? Is this like a big deal that we need to tell everybody about that these are the same word? No, Pisces is spelled completely differently.

Pisces has an S in it. I'm pretty sure it's Pisces. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's fucking pieces. No, that looks like pieces. It looks like pieces interactive. We can all agree that Pisces would be a better day, right? Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and do my last one here and pisces then this is my cold shot because i think it is pretty unlikely that this game is not coming out this year okay no way listen to russ

zero chance uh i'm talking about light no fire the new jam from hello games uh oh yeah yeah sure you don't think you don't think it's at all possible that this is i will say hello games Light No Fire, the new jam from Hello Games. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. You don't think it's at all possible? I will say, Hello Games themselves, who's the guy? Who's the Hello Games guy? You know, the guy from... Sean...

Sean Murray. Sean Murray. Said that they wanted to keep a tighter sort of marketing cycle. Hey, Griff. No kidding! Like, I would bet you probably don't want to burn your life to the fucking ground again, Sean.

Yeah, uh, I am... Sean, your whole studio fluid, and it was flooded, and it was the second worst thing that happened to you all that year. Like, you absolutely do not want to have the same marketing cycle. I think, I think we'll get this one in early access i think it's going to be a fun uh open world you know survival game like in in the style of uh no man's sky the trailer looks dope the idea of like a fantasy uh version of kind of no man's sky set on a fantasy earth uh sounds tight as hell and i

it's as big as earth as big as earth okay well maybe the marketing cycle has already begun on this one which is unfortunate but uh i i i really love this genre and it's been a while uh since i have gotten really into it i really enjoyed playing grounded with you guys was that last year or the year before i think it was the year before i love the sort of survival base building uh thing that v uh the vampire game where you built your own castle that was that was cool too and no man's sky which i think we all we all dipped into how ha Halo is also fun. Yeah, I am craving, actively craving, like right now, a game in that genre. And I think Light No Fire is going to come out

in the next two or three months. Scratch that itch for me, baby. It's going to be on the demo disc with Hollow Knight Silksong, and I can't wait. It's interesting that you think, I guess No Man's Sky has those survival mechanics, but I don't think of No man's sky as that anymore as much as a you have this enormous whatever randomly generated galaxy but more more interesting is that you have this big toolkit of options where you can base build or buy ships or trade or blah blah blah yeah and that I think is more of a draw for me because I've seen how No Man's Sky has evolved. Yes.

And specifically, like, the on-the-ground stuff has evolved in really cool ways that I think if they focused an entire game about the on-the-ground stuff and how you can, like, really build intricate stuff with multiplayer, like, kind of leading the charge, I think it has the potential to be one of the best games of the year it comes out.

The survival mechanics of No Man's Sky are not. I mean, I turn them off. Yeah, I turn them off too. So that's not my jam. But I like base building in basically any game that allows me to do it. And that's, I mean, I guess I just play most games in this genre as Animal Crossing in that regard.

So, but yeah, Light No Fire, I think it looks really great. And I love fantasy shit. Is it in the galaxy? Like, is it in the universe? Well, No Man's Sky incorporates the whole of existence. So, yeah. I mean, it's got it. Well, you know what I mean.

The branding. The icon is, like, similar, yeah? Yeah, the branding is similar. People have made speculations. If I had to guess based on the icon, it kind of looks like a prequel of No Man's Sky. If you could make any sense of the narrative of No Man's Sky, good luck. It's the easiest thing in the world to do to just be like,

yep, it's in space too. Like, yep, it's there in space. It's before they figured out spaceships. Technically, we're all in space all the time. What about this last one here that's on the list we haven't touched on yeah this game is called animal well um it's from a developer called shared memory uh billy basso is the kind of creative uh lead on it and the game is a 2d uh I think, I played an early version of it like a year or two ago. And it felt like a 2D take on like the Tunic idea of like, kind of Metroidvania-y, but it's filled and filled with puzzles. So there's like, you're constantly stumbling upon things that are like, very kind of opaque opaque tricky to figure out puzzles and all of this is presented

in like really really gorgeous pixel art great soundtrack and just like a very cool vibe to it this probably got the most attention because it's the first game that uh video game donkey will be publishing as part of his uh publishing arm that he launched. Big Mode. Big Mode, which is the name of the publisher. But what I played was really dope. I actually stopped playing intentionally just because I thought that I wanted to play the final

version of it. But I think if you're into those sorts of games that are very puzzle-centric 2D platformers, this should scratch that. I mean, it's got some metroidvania heat to it it looks like yeah it does you'll find like upgrades that'll allow you to explore more of the map and then you'll access more puzzles and stuff like that it's not a sakaban game like it's it is more of an adventure exploration game but yeah the It's fucking rad also. It's like CRT scanline neon.

Yeah, like neon kind of vibe to it. It looks really, really cool. Cool. Well, that's all the games. I think that's it. This list, we should say, I feel like feels super, even more so than past years, like super light. It feels to me like last year we got a glut of absolute heavy hitters i

mean we knew that tears of the kingdom was coming uh on on the list last time notably balder's gate three was not on any of our lists and there you go right i think that was because it was in early access so we like but you know you're right like we didn't really look to the final version as being this like like, ultimate moment, which it ended up being. I do think there's a significant thing that we're missing on this list, and that is, and I'm certainly not promising

that this is going to happen, but it's looking decently likely. Look, it's looking decently likely that if the Switch 2 launches, obviously there will be games that launch alongside the Switch 2, my guess being Metroid Prime 4 and the next follow-up to Super Mario Odyssey, which would be a fucking baller lineup for a launch of a console. And so if that happens, you know, yeah, we would add a few more. But I think right now there's just like a lot of opacity around release dates for the for

the coming year yeah a couple quick quick ones that i are not like huge on my list but i did want to like mention real quick um prince of persia oh yeah oh yeah that looks good i also wanted to mention because i didn't know it existed until yesterday looking at this list and february 28th they're doing a brothers remake uh brothers a Of Two Sons if you haven't played that game don't look into it don't read anything about it just on February 28th go play it

because it is a masterpiece and I have not liked that cat's other games after that one I did not like it's the same developer behind It Takes Two and what's the same developer behind um it takes two and oh what's that what's the name of it um where they escape out yeah they say no way out no it's called they escaped from

jail um sorry it's not no way out it's they escaped from jail uh but brothers brothers a tale of two sons the remake february 28th go play. You know what I think the key was for Brothers? Why it's so regarded? What? No talking. True. Yeah, I mean, I like that a lot. I'm also, I am looking forward to Paper Mario,

Thousand Year Door remake coming out. I never played that game. Do you all have a, like, called, like, long shot, like, that you don't think would be out this year, but you've been looking forward to

for a long time? Hollow Knight, Silk. Yeah, that's's an obvious one. Mine is perennially Skin Deep. I feel like Blendo Games will release another game at some point. It has been like six years since the last Blendo Games game, and it's been eight years since Quadrilateral Cowboy, which Skin Deep is sort of the follow-up to.

But I mean, I know that that's not a... I don't know. They've been really quiet. It probably seems like the size of developer where they probably have day jobs and stuff like that. But I would love a new Blendo games game. Cool. Oh, Visions of Mana also. There's a new

fucking Secret of Mana game that got announced at the Game Awards. Looking forward to that. I'm increasingly... Do you guys find this increasingly challenging, this process? I feel like it used to be a lot more concrete, I feel like, going into, not only when games would ship, but what games, I feel like I get surprised a lot more often. Which is great. For sure, I'm not complaining.

Things have certainly democratized, I would say, now that E3 is officially dead and gone. There used to be, I would say, four to five pretty big checkpoints throughout the year where just people would announce their shit. And E3 was the big one. Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, maybe PAX to a lesser extent. The Game Awards are certainly that now and you didn't really get a lot of big sort of

waves of announcements between those now that like a lot of those aren't the big deal anymore and publishers and developers are doing their own events like you just don't have the kind of docket at the beginning of the year that you used to yeah i also think people realize that like there's value and not necessarily talking about your game until like three months before it's out sure yeah cool well uh y'all been getting into anything else that's worth chatting about well i wanted to mention death must die which i

indicated earlier i played just a little bit of it. It's still in early access. It is a vampire survivors-like. The reason I mention it in the context of Hades 2 is that it has very Hades inspirations tied to it. As you're playing and you level up, instead of just getting, like, whatever, random sub-weapons like you do in Vampire Survivors, of just getting like whatever random sub weapons like you do in vampire survivors you're getting boons from gods and choosing between the boons and the gods are you know all sexy and they have like advice and thoughts about the other gods it's like very hades um but aesthetically it kind of pulls from the diablo look and feel and uh it's just really cool turns you on because you you

talked about sexy it was it's like it's kind of like turns you on because you you talked about sexy it was it's like it's kind of like an like an erotic kind of thing is it erotic for you is it an erotic kind of game you just you know a lot i find a lot of things erotic i find you guys erotic at times huh that's cool uh it's a cool game i it's just been cool to see how this genre has evolved in different ways uh from where it started and and how people are kind of making it better and better with each iteration um fucking let me just say halls of torment is on sale at least it was last i checked for like four dollars and i've spent i think it's the best one of those from last year fair i think it is too yeah i don't think there's another one that's

close like halls of torment's great and it keeps getting better. Yeah. I played through all of the Gnorp epilogue. Oh, man, that's what I was gonna talk about, too. Go ahead. Oh, okay. I mean, we can both talk about it. It's great. It is a great little game. I am surprised by...

I feel like I beat it real fast, and that is not usually... Maybe I'm so used to, like, iOS incremental games games which are designed to keep you playing forever and ever and ever the ignore apolog has a ending and it's uh not impossible to get to i think i got i think i completed my run in like seven hours which is which is i feel like for a game like this pretty pretty fast um but yeah that was a that was a great game did you play that on steam deck yeah yeah uh yeah it works really well on steam deck i was surprised uh because it is

you know very much cursor control but there's like shortcuts to hop between all of your different like upgradable buildings and stuff like that so it is it is very achievable on Steam Deck. I've also been playing Undertale with Henry. He really wanted a laptop for Christmas so he could be a sweaty Fortnite gamer in his own words. He does not play Fortnite, but he has certainly been starting to.

But he has gotten really into Undertale and the humor of that game really hits with him and the characters in that game he is like really very into sands and papyrus and you know the whole the whole crew there um and i also dipped into binding of isaac to i had like two characters left to unlock i've done that now i don't really know what to do next but that's it you got to get all the completion marks for all the characters no I won't be doing that but I do uh like I said like I I like just having a sort of idle not idle it's very you know you have to focus on it quite quite

intensely but uh you know a game that you can just pick up and play for 15 minutes which is like have you tried halls of torment griff uh, I did. I didn't really get super duper into it, but the way you all talk about it makes me feel like I should give it another swing. I've been asked by Plant to say this. I watched Lair of the White Worm, the Dracula adaptation that replaces

bats with snakes. Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi pair up to hunt a literal succubus. It's just as good as that sounds. Was that your Chris? It sounded like you half did a plant. It's very mild. I didn't want to get into parody,

but it was like a tasteful, you know, it was an homage. So that sounds good. I'll probably go watch that. That's an old movie, right? Like a super old movie? It's definitely a sad movie or like a bleak movie because Plant brought it, but I don't know how old it is. Yeah, it came out in 1988. No didn't are you kidding yeah it's an old movie god plant killing me man just

these old dusty old ratchet movies i can't even get it can't even watch it it's on vhs hey listen you grant and yeah they must have been so young back then. I want to see what young Peter Capaldi looks like. Probably, it's right. It sounds like a sexy movie, honestly. You got young Hugh and young Pete teaming up against Succubi. Heck yeah. I went and saw Godzilla Minus One in the theater,

which is a new movie-ish. Like, it was like going out of my theater, but maybe you got another shot or two this week to go see it. And it is, I've never watched like a Japanese Godzilla movie before. I have no connection to the source material. I watched the frigging – the two US ones that I thought were pretty good. Not the Matthew Prater one you're talking about.

No, no, no. That one was quite bad. The new ones. Godzilla Minus one kicks ass. If you guys haven't seen it, here's the pitch, okay? Godzilla's a real piece of shit. Like he's a real asshole. And he attacks all these people because he's a real dingus. And it's post-World War II Japan.

And Godzilla has made an attack on this small fishing village and he's going to do it again. And they say that the Japanese government is too afraid of inflaming tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. So they're not going to launch their military. So basically this village of people

has to kill Godzilla. They decide people has to like kill Godzilla. Okay. They decide they're going to kill Godzilla. So many questions. First of all, how do they know what Godzilla is going to do? Like how do they know he's going to do it again? Because he's a – first of all, he's got patterns. He's got –

Does he? They have a science answer in there. Do they have a shared Google calendar? No, but he has a pattern. He's Godzilla. And they draw him in. They draw him in with some fake Godzilla noises. So like a Jaws situation.

Yeah, you're making me give away all these great plot details. Anything else you want to challenge me on? How much it kicks ass to watch Godzilla. That, man, wow. It sounds great. I did want to see it. I know that this is a movie, right? And you know movies end a certain way, right?

Yeah. Like Godzilla's probably going to not movie, right? And you know movies in a certain way, right? Yeah. Like, Godzilla's probably gonna not win, right? Maybe. I was going into this movie thinking, how the fuck are these guys gonna kill Godzilla? And it is awesome. To say that, here's my review. At the end of the movie,

I stood up and turned to the people behind me and said, please don't tell anyone that I cried during Godzilla and walked out of the theater. Wow. That was how, that was, it was great.

Yeah, that sounds dope. Well. See you in a theater if you can. If you can. If you can. I think we did it. I wanted to thank the following people

for writing reviews for Besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Quotor. We have NotCoolBro. And we have CowgirlCaviar. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on our Apple podcast. Thank you to everyone who has shared the show or subscribed to the newsletter, which is still going strong and keeps growing week after week.

We're very, very proud of it. You can go to besties.fan to subscribe to that. We'll probably have some free game codes coming sometime this year uh and next week we have two games to talk about yeah we're gonna do avatar mists of pan frontiers of pandora not mists is it mists frontiers of pandora avatar frontiers of pandora and Lil Gator Game, the 2023 erstwhile game of the year. I think it came out in 2022. No kidding, really? Oh, it's worse.

December 2022. So it wasn't eligible that year. Yeah. But we probably should have voted it last year and just missed it. Sorry. So we're going to talk about two great games and it'll be a really fun discussion i'm looking forward to it please join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!