The Besties

Mixtape arrived alongside a flood of euphoric reviews and a variety of discourses across various social media platforms and gaming groups. With a tiny bit of distance, we talk through what does and doesn’t work about this riff on the modern musical with the help of Friends Per Second co-host Lucy James!

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!

Saros is the continuation of decades of bullet-dodging action games from Housemarque. But it has most in common with the team’s previous game, Returnal. Is this game welcoming enough to bring newcomers into the pseudo-series? We find out! Plus, a humongous collection of other stuff we’re playing and watching, including a Korean reality TV series that pits different types of spirit mediums against one another! Look, we’re just as surprised, confused, and delighted as you are.

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!

This is a big week of change at The Besties. But before we get to the news, we all want to chat about one of the strangest spinoffs in indie games. Vampire Crawlers adapts the iconic Vampire Survivors into a dungeon crawling, roguelike deckbuilder. And... it mostly works? Stick around until the end of the show, when we chat about a big change for the future of The Besties.

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!

This week we're diving into Nintendo's bizarre life sim, Tomodatchi Life: Living the Dream, which allows a bunch of Miis to eat cigarettes for breakfast. Griffin also regales us on his experience visiting Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, and we explore the total nonsense going on with handhelds these days.

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!

Announced in 2020, Pragamata has finally arrived. Capcom’s new third-person shooter puts you in the boots of a space marine-type who must overcome evil robots on a moon covered in 3D-printed skyscrapers. Which comically sounds like a pretty standard video game premise. But this isn’t your standard shooter. You must solve puzzles in the middle of combat, team up with an adorable robo-kid, and navigate some classic 3D platforming in low-gravity. Kinda Funny’s Andy Cortez joins us to discuss this odd delight!

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!

How do you talk about a film as strange as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? You call in backup. Get Played’s Matt Apodaca joins us to talk about the blockbuster sequel. Does a film need a story? What’s the worst sin in adapting a video game? And which voice actor stole the show? Plus, Raccoin! 

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!

This week, the Besties chat about two relatively low-priced games that have won over huge audiences: Creature Kitchen and Scritchy Scratchy. In the back half, we talk through the recent PlayStation price hikes and consider what alternatives gamers have as the hobby gets more and more expensive.

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!

Frushtick and Griffin were Destiny dudes, and yet it's Plante who has fallen in love with Bungie's new extraction shooter. What's so appealing about Marathon? Is the extraction genre's difficulty a dealbreaker? Who is this game even for?

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!

Welcome to The Besties March grab bag. There are simply too many new games, so to cover as much as possible, we split up the workload. Griffin talks about the surprisingly complete Early Access release of Slay the Spire 2. Plante, of all people, explains how to get into Marathon. And Frushtick . . . well, he found a big hole.

To avoid Resident Evil 9 spoilers, skip to ~20 minutes after the return from ad break.

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!

Plenty of companies have torched their fortunes trying to smelt together a collection of hit games and genres, hoping to recreate others’ success. Understandably, many folks (ourselves included) approached Pokopia with a cold skepticism. A Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Viva Piñata combination? It sounded too good to be  true.

Friends… they did it. Pokopia isn’t just a collection of great ideas; it’s also a wholly interesting and original thing. We can’t wait to tell you about this wonderful game. Plus, we look at Nintendo’s peculiar plan for the rest of 2026.

Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!