The Besties - A Golden Age for Card Game Sickos

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

This week, The Besties shuffle the deck and deal a hand of fun new video games. First, they discuss two new card games that have little in common beyond the cards themselves: Monster Train 2 and StarVaders. Then, Frushtick tells us about the oddball new multiplayer game in the From Soft universe, Elden Ring: Nightreign. 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!

Damn it, guys. Damn it. Yeah. Shit. It happened again. I got the Switch 2 in my hot little hands. Oh, you got it. Yeah, delivered fresh and hot this morning from Kmart.

And I got out my katana and was unboxing it. Cut the damn thing in half. No. Yeah. Because they have that picture on the outside of the box that says no katanas. and was unboxing it, cut the damn thing in half. And yeah. And not like. Because they have that picture on the outside of the box that says no Katanas. Yeah, they, yeah.

So I actually had the box upside down because I was sort of beauty blogging it and I cut the whole thing. I cut it in half and Kmart won't take it back. And so I'm gonna have to give this one a zero out of 10 because it couldn't withstand a single strike from my blade. And this- I mean, this is why I get it.

I know that you love to sharpen your blade every night before you go to bed. It's important. In theory, it's important. But when you have a blade that is so sharp, that you merely drop the box on it and it slices directly through everything. Oh no, I used it in a distinct chopping motion.

Oh. And there was a certain amount of user error because I was trying to get it like the bamboo that I go after. It was a Fruit Ninja. It was a Fruit Ninja. Only a $550 game of Fruit Ninja. Damn, that's a shame. We should mention we were recording this early, so like, we don't have a fucking Switch, man. Yeah, I don't have a fucking Switch, man.

I don't have anything, dude. But it came out today, so if you're listening to this, guess what? There's a new Nintendo console, and we'll be talking about it next week, but we don't have anything right now. Do we, we never do what you're doing right now. Well, we don't acknowledge. It's using the cold open for promotional. This is supposed to be a safe place where we can just kind of goof off.

And you did business here and it Feels like reality here. It feels weird. What reality into the fun zone? Yeah, but not but you understand that we keep those two things pretty separate I do want to note that Griffin does not have a katana that could cut a man in half Thank you Chris. I just want to let everyone know. Is that what I sound like? Just now, yeah. ["Gryffindor Macro Theme Song"] My name is Griffin Macro, I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Fruschak, I know the best game of the week. Justin's in the toilet, he texted me, he says, peeing? It's a long pee. He said it won't stop coming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just keeps coming. So, it's just the three of us this week, and we're going to be talking about so many games. We're talking about hot, hot deck builders

like Monster Train 2 and Star Vaders. We're gonna be talking about Elden Ring Night Reign, the universally beloved, Russ just put his forehead into his palm. It was unrelated, sorry. That was not a... An unrelated grimace of pain from Russ Frushtick. We're gonna be talking about a lot of games, but first we're gonna take a quick break,

so stay with us. Let's start things off on a high note by talking about Monster Train 2. I hope that's not presumptive of me, that that's gonna be a high note. It actually might be, but we'll go, we'll see how it goes. Oh, is it really?

Okay, how familiar are you guys with the original? I played the original. Okay. I did probably like 10 runs of the original, so I know the basic structure of it. Yes, if you're not familiar, listeners, at how Monster Train is a deck builder, rogue-like, in the vein of a slay the spire.

You have cards that represent units and spells and equipment, and you play them to defend a four-tiered train from waves of oncoming enemies. Terrible way to design a train, by the way. Yeah, the train's usually not an up and down situation. Yeah. Typically we're talking about forward backwards and that's basically it.

Here you have a few levels to defend by placing down your units and casting spells and equipping those units with stuff. It should be an elevator, why is it not an elevator? Monster elevator doesn't, actually that is a kickass. You can shorten it, Monster Vader. Yeah, Monster Vader, you've lost it. And yeah, I mean it sort of iterates on that Slay the Spire format with this almost like,

uh, it's not, it's not quite tower defense, but you are building up, you know, multiple levels of defenses, uh, because after, uh, you finish all the waves of enemies, there's a boss, and that boss will just keep hitting, you know, whatever level it is on until it kills everything on it. And so you have to have built a strong enough defense before that happens. That's the basic premise. Add on, you know, you're going through different tracks

to choose, oh, I'm gonna pick up some weapon upgrades, or I'm going to go down this track that gives me spell upgrades, or heals my pyre, which is the thing you have at the top of your train that if enemies reach it, they'll deal damage. And then the time you die. The middle game of it feels much closer to, I think, most of the, like the Slay the Spirits of the world.

Very, very much so. Insofar as there's a little thing at the top of the screen that shows you all your artifacts that you have. And those are like permanent kind of modifiers that go over everything. There are, I believe, 10 different factions. And when you start playing, you choose two, and you can choose a special unit that's free to play,

that becomes kind of a cornerstone of whatever your build ends up being. And that hero unit will get stronger and stronger too. There are different ways you can upgrade your pyre permanently to like weird little modifiers on it. There's so much shit to experiment with. It's unbelievable, because I feel like a Sleigh of the Spire run, you start pretty small

and then it kind of grows and this, within two waves of enemies, you're like balancing a lot. Yes, it is definitely more mechanically dense than Sleigh the Spire and there's probably a lot of people listening to that who played Sleigh the Spire and are thinking like, well fuck, that's, Sleigh the Spire is already pretty mechanically intense. That's my question. I didn't play the original game. I found this game extremely overwhelming. Sure. The metaphor that kept coming to my head was

3d chess Chess however, you know, it's like what's like I'm playing multiple games at once and it felt like I was Especially in learning the game having to learn how to play like a lot of systems all at the exact same time. It does kind of ask that of you. I will say that it is, there are some strategies that are pretty universally good, right? Like you have three floors basically to work with that you are customizing by putting units on them

and then like, you know, modifying those units with your spells and equipment and everything. And strategies basically kind of boil down to like, okay, I'll use that first floor to weaken the enemy or buff my other units, and then the second floor, I'll be able to sweep all the little guys out, and then my third floor, that's where my fucking juggernauts are, that's where no one's gonna get past that line,

and by the time they reach there, they're weakened. So there's strategies that are pretty universal and make a lot of sense. One thing we get- You kind of feel like your tower defense strategies. Yeah, sort of, right? It is kind of fulfilling that role a little bit. What the game does that I really appreciate,

and I think makes all of these 100 systems pretty easily parsable, is before you end your turn, you can see a preview of exactly how the next round is going to shake out, which is important because on a boss round, you're gonna exchange 40 attacks back and forth. It doesn't get into the nitty gritty of that. It will just show you an X on the boss, which means you will kill the boss

if you just hit end turn and go about it as you are now. And that is so good and so important and necessary kill the boss if you just hit in turn and go about it as you are now. And that is so good and so important and necessary because otherwise the game would be just fucking impossible. Yeah, as someone that played the original, it does feel like the sequel is in a lot of ways like designed for people that played the ever-loving fuck out of the original. Sure. And it does, I did some reading through the forums

and things like that. It seems like people are excited about the fact that the original had tried and true tested strategies of always put your strongest guys on the third tier, right, et cetera, et cetera. And it sounds like this game forces you to like mix things up a little bit more. Yeah, you will hit bosses that if you do have that strategy

of, okay, I'm just gonna wait and have my heaviest hitters on the final tier, the game eventually will start to throw stuff at you that will directly counter that. Yeah. And that's, it does shake things up a bit. I, it is not an easy game. Uh, I've, I have done like close to a dozen runs or so and the runs last a long fucking time. Uh, and have only cleared it once. Uh,

and the rest of the time I just have been getting my ass absolutely kicked. But that said, I've really been enjoying it. Because there's so much. Yeah, what do you see as the big improvements that justify the sequel? Okay, so the game that I have the most experience in this genre is Slay the Spire. So if it's okay, I'll use that as kind of like a baseline.

Slay the Spire, there's obviously like four or five different characters, and there's different ways you can kind of build them depending on like how your early cards and relics play out, right? But then you start to get into this place where it's like, damn, I was going for this, you know, poison exponential multiplication strategy

and the cards just ain't hitting, it ain't there and it's taken too long to get my engines up and running. I feel like Monster Train 2 throws so much shit at you all the time that you really have no excuse for having something not come together. Your strategy may not be what was correct to get you through, it may not be the most optimal strategy, but you are constantly making choices, you are constantly, every road that you choose to go down

will have a shop on it, and those shops allow you to add up to two modifiers to your units or your spells, and they completely crack the game wide open. You can take any unit in the game, and if you put the right modifiers on it, all of a sudden it is a beast, right? So with that much flexibility and that much customization, like it, and opportunity to seize those things, like it is kind of balls in your court.

And I love that feeling of like, of, of control and that every choice that I'm making has, has some sort of impact. And, you know, learning new things about what strategies work best with which factions based on sort of the mechanics that they focus on. I am also pretty overwhelmed by it. I definitely don't feel like I understand it 100% of the time, but I also feel like

it is doing a good enough job, kind of like leading me by the nose and showing me like what the results of things are going to be before I do them. That I don't know, I just feel like I am constantly learning and getting better and just having a really, really, really good time. What do you think of the look and like the vibe

of the whole thing? Eh, yeah. Eh, yeah. It's fine. That's fine. It's a lot of demons, angels, and they're yeah. Eh, it's fine. That's fine. It's a lot of demons, angels, and they're on a train and it's pretty basic, I don't know. It feels a little flashy, right?

Like a flash game-ish? A little bit. It's interesting, I mean, it looks like Monster Train 1 and to that extent, they have, as far as I can tell, included all the stuff from, it's sort of like an Evil Dead 2 situation where pretty much most of Monster Train 1 is in Monster Train 2.

So yeah, I don't know, that shit's not really that important to me for a game like this. Maybe it should be, but I don't know. I played a million hours of Slay the Spire and that was a lightly animated experience. There is a whale though. There is a big whale and the whale kicks ass. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's great and I'm, I have other stuff going on right now that I can't surrender myself to the grind of Monster Train 2. So I'm having to forcibly kind of like put it to the grind of Monster Train 2. So I'm having to forcibly kind of like put it to the side now that I've played it enough to talk about it here because once I get back into that game, I'm worried it's gonna get me for a while.

I mean, it'll come out on mobile eventually, theoretically, right? Jesus, and that I don't think would work. There's too much shit, man. I played the first one on mobile and it was playable. Okay, it There's too much shit, man. I played the first one on mobile, and it was playable. Okay. It's just so much shit, man. I have been playing it on, for what it's worth,

ROG, my ROG ally. The controller controls are great and very intuitive, so you don't have to mouse and keyboard it. But yeah, if you played Monster Train 1, Monster Train 2 is like 10 times more sort of dense, and if you played Monster Train 1, Monster Train 2 is like 10 times more sort of dense. And if you liked Monster Train 1, that probably sounds good to you. So this is actually a good comparison

to another game that we were talking about today that is also a card-based game called Starvaders. Hell yeah. Do you wanna lead the charge on this one, Chris? Or did you play it too, Russ? I played it as well. Oh, okay, cool. Why don't you give the rundown?

Yeah, I'll take a stab at it. So Starvaders is another card game. In theory, it's weird to call any of these things card games because they've gotten so far away from cards as anything other than the attacks or moves that you're playing. But there is a five by nine grid. and the look and the feel of the game is imagine space invaders but instead of you firing up manually you're using cards to move around the

playfield and to like fire bombs or actions and you take turns dealing out all of your damage and then the enemy getting its turn where it cascades down that 5 by 9 field, right? So that's the basics. It starts to get more complicated by how you use those cards. So you have a thing called Heat and each card costs a certain amount of Heat. So say you want to move, that'll cost you a piece of Heat and you'll use the card also. You want to fire a special move, that'll cost you a piece of heat and you'll use the card also you want to fire a Special move that'll cost you to heat and some leave maxed out your heat gauge and then you have an option

to still spend one more thing and go overheating and this comes with a risk reward where if you overheat a card You can use it But the turn immediately ends after that and then it goes into the deck and it's now burnt. So if it ever gets shuffled back in suddenly you have this card that's effectively worthless. Yeah. Making you have fewer cards the more times that you spend this. But as with all of these games what makes the game really special is how it complicates that with rules that change over the course of like a really

long rogue like style run. Yeah, you could have a thing where, oh, yeah, you're burning a ton of cards, you in theory don't have anything. But then you get two abilities, you get an ability that allows you to reshuffle your deck back in, which in theory would be bad, right? Like you don't want those burn cards, but you also get the ability that like ultra powers the attacks you do have by however many burned cards you're carrying. Yeah.

So it's- I have not gotten that tactic to work out for me quite yet as sick as it seems. So like that was, that was one that I think our friends into the Aether had had. The ones that I had that was just absolutely killer was I got moves where I could fire bombs on the field, right? And then I would get a random aerial volley of three bombs and I had a multiplier that whenever I used bombs while I was in the safe space, it would repeat that move.

And then I had a double repeat on it, and then I had a thing that only made it so I got one hit for like anything. So basically each move, I was just fire bombing the entire map and ended up beating the game, which doesn't mean much. It is a game that's meant to be beat many, many times. Yes. On my very first run. It, uh, that was the difference between this and Monster Train is Monster Train. I was wildly overwhelmed, but I have a feeling it's maybe a deeper game.

In this, I was, I finished my first run, beating it by the skin of my teeth and felt amazing and immediately hopped right back in. There's not like insane damage numbers you're tracking. Right, it's like two. Most of the time if you shoot an unarmored enemy, they explode and that is it. So it's very tactile and very easy to tell like what is going to happen when you use this gun card.

Yeah, into the breach I think is a good analogy for that what is going to happen when you use this gun card? Rarely are you surprised. Into the Breach, I think, is a good analogy for that because you have these very low health enemies and you know what the next turn is gonna result in and can you maneuver with your cards and your heat and use all those resources to get out of it by doing some damage but also avoiding damage yourself. Yes, it is also like into the breach in that

if the enemies reach the bottom three rows of the field, you accrue doom and once you have five doom across your whole campaign, it's game over instantly. Yeah, doom is bad. I found this to be like way more tactile than Monster Train, like way more I know the impacts that I'm making don't feel as like weirdly ephemeral as they do in a game, even like Slay the Spire.

Like it just feels like to some extent numbers going up and here I'm like, oh, I'm moving my ship out of the range of this explosion to go over here. And it just felt like I was way more in control of the situation, even though again, like you're obviously making all the decisions in monster terrain. It's just like a different style. Totally. Yeah. This is where the card misnomer thing comes into play. I mean, by all intents, you could frame this as a action,

a tactical action game. Yeah. We're not literally dishing out cards because you, like you said, you see the enemy's attack coming at you. You literally move around the battlefield and you dish out different attacks. You just happen to do all that with cards that you were randomly assigned. Um, yeah, I found it extremely compelling. Um, it has a very cutesy, um, kind of retro art style. It reminded me of, this is kind of a deep cut, there was a PSP remake of the original Mega Man called Mega Man Powered Up,

which had like chibi Mega Man running around. See, I thought more Advance Wars, but that might just be the group-based shit. That's true. Yeah, it's fun to do both of these games because they're both amazing deck-building, roguelike games that could not be more different from each other Yeah, whereas like this one also has like synergies that in strategies that when they come together really great

I had one using the bomber character where I had a card that would shoot a bullet straight up from any bomb I had on the field and then I had one that turned me into a bomb So that anytime I took damage I would explode, but I would also, when I shot this shot, I would shoot two bullets up because now I'm also technically a bomb. Like that stuff is very, very satisfying. It is not as, you don't feel like you're breaking

the shit wide open as much as like in Monster Train you get some synergy where you're buffing up your hero character permanently every game. But again, that's a totally different thing, right? That is a totally different genre, basically. Yeah, and I'm curious as you play this more and more if that changes, because it is a rogue light, or whatever we want to call that genre.

Yeah. No, rogue light. You're unlocking shit. Oh, sure. You're unlocking stuff, yeah. And there's a lot of different difficulty settings, different character types, different cards that you're acquiring, and the game is evolving,

and I wonder just how powerful you can become by the end of it. One question I have for you, Griffin, because I believe you're a Mega Man Battle Network person. Oh gosh, I've played a couple of them a long time ago. Is this much like it? I've seen that mentioned a lot with this game. Yes, now that you say that, I do believe so.

You had, that was like a horizontal grid, and you would have enemies on one side and Mega Man on the other, and then I think you had randomly selected moves that you... God, I don't know, man. That sounds right, but it has been forever since I played one of those games. Yeah, it made me want to actually go back and play those games, because I've had them

on my list forever and was so charmed by this. But again, with this one, really, for anybody interested in playing it, play through it once it's a long session. It does have the ability to save in the middle of it, which is important because a run for me was like 45 minutes to an hour, uh, beginning to end. But also really allow yourself to have fun with it. Like I was kind of almost stressing out the first run. It was great, really exciting,

but I was weary of playing it again just because it felt like it was asking a lot of me. And then the second run I was like, well I don't care this time, I just want to see what absolute bonkers shit I can pull off. Yeah, and it does reward that. Yeah, yeah, it wants you to be trying to find silly ways to break it.

Card Freak's eating good this week. Should we take a quick break and then talk about Elden Ring Night Rain? Let's do it. I mean, Russ is the only one of us. I've been on tour and we did not get an early- You could have been a local area networking some Night Rain over there.

I guess I could have been having my own personal hotel-based land party. Elden Ring Night Rain land party. I will be honest, when I got home yesterday afternoon, I did not race to my computer to download Elden Ring Night Rain. Can you lead the charge on this, Russ? Sure, happy to.

Elden Ring, Night Reign is a co-op centric game set in the Elden Ring universe, whose closest analog is probably Fortnite because you basically fly in with a team of two other people, it's max of three players, and there's a big ring that closes in on a giant Elden Ring-y map. The Elden Ring. Oh, is it?

I don't think it is. That's what it is. Finally we know. It's the Fortnite Death Storm. Now we know. So you land on this map and you very quickly try to level up and get better gear in the end of,

as the circle closes it closer and closer in, eventually once the circle is very tiny, you do a boss fight and then the cycle repeats itself assuming you actually survive that boss fight and you do that two more times and that's like a full run. And what you get out of runs is like you get some cosmetic upgrade things, you get some permanent like buffable upgrade things, and then you do multiple runs cause the there's different bosses and different map layouts and things like that.

Um, the big difference that there's so many fucking differences from the original Elden Ring. Elden Ring is I think to all of us, very fond. I probably like it maybe more than everyone here. I don't know. It's close. Griffin. I fucking adore Elden Ring.

Um, uh, this is so just from an experience standpoint, It's close, Griffin. I fucking adore Elden Ring. Okay. This is so, just from an experience standpoint, vastly different, which is weird because artistically, like the graphics are identical. You're fighting almost all familiar bosses and enemies, although occasionally they'll throw in like a fun Dark Souls cameo, which is cute. And it seems like the character classes themselves have some fun mechanics to them.

I would say like outside of the ring aspect, the like actual gameplay loop, the character classes themselves are the most different part of this. So, uh, instead of generating your own character and starting from scratch, you are picking identities. There's like a bird guy and there's like a samurai person and whatever. There's like a bunch of them and each of those identities have very, very unique abilities that they can use in the world.

So for example, the like, what I feel like is kind of the default all rounder kind of guy has a grappling hook that you can use to like latch on to enemies and pull them towards you or for bigger enemies you'll like zip towards them. That's like the most basic some of them are much more involved so you'll have one of the characters like uses like secaro parrying for all of your like special attacks you have to like utilize that sort of timing I played as the bird guy a bunch of times I don't remember what the bird guy is called, but the bird guy has the ability you can't dodge as the bird guy I guess birds can't dodge you can fly fittingly

And the bird guy can do these like giant like dive bomb attacks You can also revive people as the bird guy much faster than other people. So each of the classes really does have specific utilities. Some of them are gonna be much more focused on range attacks. Some are way more tanky. So you really do need to have a team comp that's gonna be able to cover a lot of bases in that. So all that stuff is cool.

I like the idea of it. Here's the issue. Everything that I love about Elden Ring is not this. I love slowly creeping my ass through a cave and oh no, a giant boulder shows up and can I dodge the boulder? And oh, behind the boulder was a chest. And oh, I'm like looking at all my inventory to see if this sword that I just picked out of this chest

is better than the sword that I had. And I'm gonna upgrade this sword and feel really proud of this sword that I just picked out of this chest is better than the sword that I had, and I'm gonna upgrade this sword and feel really proud of this sword. No, this is a complete reversion of that, just like a total, I wouldn't even say reversion, it's just like a different direction entirely, because you have to move so fucking quickly to succeed in this game.

Every single second you are in the world should be spent either leveling up or finding better gear or upgrading your flasks or fighting like field bosses that give you a bunch of experience and drops. It's just like a fucking, like someone was like, Elden Ring, but let's take meth first and see what happens. That's where we're at. I really like how in every gameplay video

or people streaming it that I see, inevitably whenever a character stops at the, not bonfire, whatever they're called, bonfire substitute, the menuing happens like, brrrrp! Then they are immediately running away. Every single time, I've never seen a streamer spend more than like a quarter second, like, okay, level up, level up, level up, level up,

and I'm gone. It's great. Well, right, because you're not even picking stats. It's just like, you're just leveling up the number to get more powerful. People are like realizing like, oh, you don't even need to stop sprinting. As you like sprint past one of the bonfires,

you can level up in that process. So it is incredibly that, and it makes sense because it's like you are trying to maximize the power that you will eventually have to use to beat the final boss, which can be really fucking hard. Right. I think my immediate question when I first heard about this game was,

can I have a good time playing as a solo player? Certainly not at launch. I tried playing it at launch. It was basically impossible as a solo player. They have... Just for balancing reasons or...? Yeah. So they may... They did offer some balancing changes, specifically you were a little more powerful,

you got more runes. Since then, because I think the blowback was pretty immediate, they've given you other things, like for example, if you're a solo player, you get a revive once a day. It'll just like auto revive you. If you die previously, you only have one life and you are fucked.

That's crazy. That's crazy that they can launch a balance change that quickly and have it not be something that was flagged for them ahead of time. Well, they already had items in the game that could do that. So presumably it's just like almost like just grant everyone. I'm not complaining. It's great that they listened to the feedback and changed it.

But if the feedback is it's so impossibly hard to play this solo that they added this free instant revive to to that experience, that just seems like the kind of thing that would have been caught with enough sort of like trying it out. I mean, they play tested it. I wonder if you have post-launch plans for a game like this. Like if the feedback is the game is too difficult in this mode, here is a series of things that we will change to adjust for player feedback or if it truly

is like they're winging it under normal circumstances I would agree with you but they had a pub effectively a public beta where I'm sure that feedback was heard yeah yeah it's an interesting the people who played the beta were like really good yeah that that could have been um I it's interesting because it's just like, yeah, as you said, how quickly that change came about. But even with that change, like, I've played it since, it's definitely a little easier. It's still fucking hard as shit

and doesn't feel designed to be played with one player. There's a lot of boss fights in the game that just like, you know, you have to get around shields and there's like two bosses you're fighting at once and it's just like not. Do you get spirit summons or anything like that if you play it? There are like items you can get that'll like allow you

to do similar sort of things, but they're random drops. It's not like a guaranteed thing. And some of the characters do have something similar as well. But again, none of that is like the intention. It's very clear that the intention is a three player Elden Ring experience. It's not even two players. You actually can't play as two players. If you queue as two players, it'll drop a random in with you, which is weird.

They say they're working on it. All that is to say, like, as a person that adores Elden Ring and basically everything that FromSoft has made, it's really fucking hard for me to get into this. In the same way that, like, I didn't do a ton of PvP or multiplayer stuff when I play through any of their games. Um, I do it occasionally if I need help, but otherwise, no. And I like taking my time and I like going slowly. And- and I'm taking my time and I like going slowly. The idea of playing a FromSoft game without that constant progression hook is so unappealing to me that it makes me kind of

reevaluate my relationship with FromSoftware games where if you take away the fact that I'm leveling up a guy and finding all this stuff through exploration and customizing them and having that be something that I do over the run of a 100 hour long campaign. If you strip that away, it seems so bad, like, oh man, it's not fun. I'm only doing it to get stuff and buff.

Not to be an armchair developer, but I'm gonna do it anyway, just for shits and giggles. If this game allowed me to play solo and didn't have the like intense time limit aspects and was just like kind of a randomly generated Elden Ring game, I'd be fucking in. Like that sounds fucking fun. I'm not saying it's balanced for that, it obviously isn't, and I'm not saying it's easy to do something like that, it's a very big pivot. I mean, but you're describing Elden Ring kind of.

But like a little bit faster. You're right. You're right. Oh, um, well, just speaking of the length, uh, another issue specifically for me is if you do a full run, it's about 45 minutes. And it's as with all Elden Ring, whatever, all that stuff, like you can't pause. And in this case, if you want to finish your run with two other people, you better be there for 45 minutes and it's a commitment. That's like a big fucking commitment. It's longer than a Fortnite match,

and even Fortnite matches are kind of a commitment. So that's, and like not to mention, like there's no in-game voice chat, you have to use like Discord. There's very minimal, like directions that you can give, like there's no really, there's very minimal directions that you can give. There's no really, there's a pinging system, but the pinging system isn't great. It just feels like someone had a wacky hair. How could we get an Elden Ring game out in shorter amount of time than it would take a full sequel?

And they had a wacky idea for it, and it is very ambitious from a design standpoint, super ambitious. It's just not necessarily a game i really want to play as a fan of elven ring which is a total fucking drag and it gives me real worries about the dusk bloods which is also multiplayer centric we don't know what structure it is it doesn't appear to have a ring or whatever the fuck um but you you know, when you hear like multiplayer centric, that tells me that single player is not the priority and you won't have that experience that you know from the start. I mean, can you imagine though that all of the stuff

that you're talking about and it is on Nintendo's online functionality? Well, we don't know. I mean, you have to play it on the Switch. No, I know, but we don't know what the Switch 2's online functionality. Well, we don't know. Best of both worlds. I mean, you have to play it on the Switch. No, I know, but we don't know what the Switch 2's online functionality is. Yeah, you're right. It's probably gonna be great. It's probably gonna be really, really good. You can look at people's faces while they die.

It's out right now, and we're fucking grooving on that C button. It works so well. I'm playing Dustbloods right now. I'm playing Dustbloods also. We got super duper duper early games. Oh shit, the katana's back! Oh shit. I'm a weird doctor and he's got one of those bird masks on.

It's fucking sick. Love it. Bloodborne guys in there, even though they won't say that. Yeah, it's dudborn. So. Did you say dugborn? I said dudborn. Anyway.

I like dugborn. I'm dugborn. This is my cane blade. Do we have mail bag or do we wanna go to honorable mentions? Well, there was one game you wanted to talk about, one more game. We've had so many games and forgot. Yeah, oh, I guess I was thinking I would save it

for honorable mentions, but I can do it now. Originally, I was going to put it in here because Justin recommended it to me while we were on the road and it hooked me real hard. Obviously, Juice is not here right now so I'll carry I'll carry the weight. I've been playing a game called Cauldron and I've been playing it a lot and it's a real problem. It is a new idle incremental game only it's also a lot of other things too. The game starts out you're this little witch in a clearing surrounded by a shadow and if you run up to one of those shadows Also a lot of other things too. The game starts out, you're this little witch

in a clearing surrounded by a shadow, and if you run up to one of those shadows, you can interact with it, and you'll do a little turn-based battle. Do a little turn-based battle against the enemy. And the further you get from your little home base, the harder the fights get. If you wanna get stronger,

you have to put ingredients into a cauldron. How do you get those ingredients? By playing a little idle game. And it's not just one idle game, there's five. There's five different idle games. And so you'll go and you'll collect some apples in this idle game, and then you start generating apples for free based on the average of your five highest runs

on the apple game. And then you unlock some specific talents for the apple game that make it better at collecting apples. But then you say, I'm gonna take a break from that. I'm gonna go play the fishing game for a bit. And then you go over and you play the fishing game, you get five good scores, start generating some free fish, you go back to the apple game, you've got so many apples

you got from the idle process, you dip into that. You come back, the fish has been racking up, you get some free fish upgrades, you go down, you check out the mine cart game. It's insidious. I am what, I just had the trailer on. It's diabolical. It's... it's insidious. I am what? I just had the trailer on. It's diabolical. It's disgusting. The chemicals that were oozing out of my brain as...

It'll fuck you up, fam. It's just numbers. They're just numbers and flashing things. So many nodes. And it looks so cute. It's very cute. And then, you know, you go around, you basically play these five different idle games to make it so that you're earning idle currencies of these five different types,

and then you feed those in your cauldron, you do that, it makes all your characters stronger for the turn-based battle component. You're going out in the world, you're expanding what you can explore, unlocking new characters, and finding new mini games. The worst part, the games, looking at this, you know when you're flipping through TikTok and you see a commercial for some iOS game and the whole design of it is like,

I don't know how to solve this puzzle. And you're like, I do, let me solve it. Yeah. Like looking at these little games, I'm like, I know how to collect all those apples The five games are totally the five games are totally different. There's like a sort of space invader style Shooter there is there's a full ass vampire survivors in here, and it's really good and I've gotten very very deeply into that one There's like a ridiculous fishing style game.

Like, the five games are really great. And you can seriously just spend a lot of time like doing five good runs to bump up your average so that the amount you earn incrementally goes up and you know, unlock some new talents and you hit these break points where now all of a sudden you're going twice as far in that game than you did before. And oh shit, I haven't gone and played

the Vampire Survivors game in a bit. I'll go down and check that out. Whoa, I have so much currency saved up. I can unlock all these upgrades. Like, it's just, it is like Hellraiser in how many hooks it will embed within you. And just keep you. Does the idle part work when the game is off?

I don't, no. I haven't turned the game off. Okay. I've been sort of scared to. I got it just kind of open here. Yeah. Ready for me to, and boys, I'm looking at some of the numbers I racked up.

As soon as I get off this call, I'm about to blow my shit Apple the fuck out of this game. sky high. I, the Steam reviews, incredible experience from start to finish. Oh cool, this person finished it. What does that look like? 104 hours. Oh my god. Yeah, but then when you finish it you unlock new upgrades for all the different idle games Oh, can you play a different mode guys? It's called cauldron. How did you know that? Huh? Have you finished it?

I'm getting close. Oh my god close. I keep like slacking on the turn-based, I'll be straight, I don't enjoy the turn-based combat side of things that much because the battles will become like eight on 24 and it's just so, but you can automate that side of things. You can automate, you know, the upgrade selections if you don't want to feel like fucking with that.

It lets you pick the stuff that you are into and I'm into these five different idle games. And then I'll go and I'll cash all this shit in the culture and I'll go around to all these fights that I was having trouble with earlier and the auto computer will just smash through it and it's so satisfying. It's great guys, it's very, very, very good.

I'm not joking, it's treat it like a venomous asp because it is a deeply, deeply compelling experience that is genuinely tough to put down. Fucking yikes. Yeah. It's not a good time for a game like that. It's a bad time for a game like this. It's a bad time.

There's a new console coming out, we've got a lot going on. I tell myself like, you know what? I'll just let it idle, but they'll start letting an idol I'll be like damn I got a lot of apples if I could probably afford that one upgrade that increases my Apple damage It needs an Apple watch app Yes, right needs a it needs a Cage that will only unlock every six hours you can dip in to see how things are going

I think I'm good at that. I have a lot of willpower Can't download this this would ruin me right now. What else are we talking about today? You got any honorable mentions, Brush? I watched Murderbot, which I know we've been talking about, but I started watching it and it's a lovely show. They did a great job on this show. I don't think the season has ended. I'm caught up with all the episodes.

job on this show. I don't think the season has ended. I'm caught up with all the episodes. And it's just, I never watched, I never read the original source material, but I imagine it is pretty consistent with what that was. And I find it very funny and interesting and really well produced. And the acting is dynamite. And if you're looking,, yeah again, it's like a light 25 minute show which I am like really hungering for these days. So it's been really nice. I still really wanna check that out. I have, sometimes I have like shows that I feel like, oh, I bet I could get Rachel into that.

And then I'll like hold off on watching it until this beautiful imaginary day comes where we actually watch that instead of one of the four shows that we watch every night. It hasn't happened yet. I might just have to break and watch all of it. Have you watched Andor yet? You weirdo.

I know, I'm planning, okay, I'm planning on watching it like, that's like a flight and like spare time during SGF because it's not a show that my wife is gonna watch, speaking of shows, so I've been saving it for that trip. So that is my intention and I will make probably a lot of progress. I'm very excited. I watched this full season of John Mulaney's Everybody's Live. That is very interesting because you don't watch TV regularly like early with any sort of consistency no I don't and I'm not really sure I think I know how we saw

him do like a prep set for this in LA I don't know a couple months ago and then we ended up watching the show but what a really cool and interesting show yeah because it is a late night talk show in the very literal sense, but without any of the obligations that make late night talk shows suck. Yeah. By that I mean, late night talk show has to go forever. It has to air every night in the week. And it largely has to act as a money making device for network TV. Yeah. So that means it has to be cheap to make. It has to promote a whole bunch-making device for network TV. So that means it has to be cheap to make, it has to promote a whole bunch of random shit,

and then hopefully draw in ads from all the stuff it's promoting. And this show runs for, I don't know, eight or 10 weeks, and once a week, and they never even mention any of the stuff that people are promoting when they are there for it. And every skit is just, I think the show is very, very, very funny.

It is a show that is comfortable knowing that like, I don't know, maybe a third of it stuff can totally bomb. Yeah. They were taking a lot of swings. Yes. It would rather take the shot then bomb. And that all builds up to a finale in which

John Mulaney fights three teenage boys. Yeah. And the whole season, he keeps saying this and he seems pretty okay with it. And there's a moment, maybe five minutes before it happens, where you can for the first time really see the fear in his face of, have I really put myself in the dumbest,

crappiest corner ever. Is this gonna- Because you could get really hurt. Well not just get hurt, but like is this just stupid? Like is this not gonna be funny? Right. And it is really cool to watch somebody who is at a point in their kind of life and career

where like this is clearly what the juice is for him as an artist. It is aspirational comedy in the truest sense of like, fuck man, that's somebody just doing it, doing whatever tickles their fancy, and they have outrageous support to do so. That's great. Yeah.

Good for him. No idea how Netflix decides to fund it, or if he will keep doing it, but I really hope they do. Yeah, I think that's the larger question. It's like, I'm sure a lot of the motivator was like, they wanna maintain their relationship with John Mulaney, who obviously brings in, for his standup specials, quite a lot of attention.

I know Netflix is fending off Hulu, which has been like hosting a lot of like major comedy specials lately. So this feels like, you know, Richard Kind's probably not asking for too much. This feels like a relatively cheap way to maintain a relationship with relatively little amounts of harm. And if he does some fun stuff, I mean, I watched the clips on YouTube, some of the clips on YouTube, it's some of his stuff is very, very funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can tell that the writer's room

literally will design a sketch only to make the person who happens to be on the show that week laugh. So Pete Davidson is on at one point and they do an entire sketch about like one of the like, I think its name is Butterball from Hellraiser series, being his like pizza delivery man and no one in the audience is laughing at all, but Pete Davidson is literally hyperventilating. And it's that shit. I just, I live for it. I really do.

It feels like the sort of show that's gonna get canceled after one season, and for 10 years hence, video essays on YouTube will just be obsessed with it. That may be the best way to consume it, all things considered. I'm still watching Devil's Plan season two, which I still thoroughly recommend to everyone.

I'm not gonna give the hard sell on the whole show, but they did play a game that I wanted to talk about, because it's such a good game that I feel like I would just watch a show just about this one game. It was one of the like death match rounds where one player gets eliminated no matter what at the end of it. And it was called Sniper Hold'em.

And it was just Texas Hold'em, like the poker game, you know, you have two cards face down. Don't describe how Texas Hold'em works. I'm not gonna describe how Texas Hold'em works, but most folks know. What is different is there's no face cards. Okay. And there's only four community cards instead of five

But otherwise it's the same thing right you're trying to put together a hand using your two face down cards in the four community cards The only did and the whole time you're like placing bets like in Texas hold them And there were only a certain amount of chips to go around once you hit 75 chips You're free from the game. It's a leave and you're safe, right? Yeah, that was the whole thing of the game What the big twist is is and what makes it sniper hold them is after you get 75 chips, you're free from the game. You get to leave and you're safe, right? That was the whole thing of the game. What the big twist is, and what makes it sniper hold'em, is after you get your face down cards, community cards, there's a round of betting, two more community cards,

and then after all the betting is concluded, at the point of the game where usually, in traditional poker, you would then reveal to see who has what, every player who is still in gets to take a shot. And you call a specific type of hand and that type of hand is neutralized and if someone else has that hand, they are out. So if there's shit on the table and you're like,

I bet you somebody has a full house of aces, like they have three, or not aces because there aren't face cards, but like a full house of eights, right? If three, or not aces because there aren't face cards, but like a full house of eights, right? If three eights and a pair of something else and you say, I call full house of eights. And if you get it right, they're out. They can't win the hand. So it is a way of playing poker where if you are actually doing the math and can predict

what the other player has, you can win with like a shitty high card. As long as your hand doesn't also get sniped. And it is, gang, the most exciting poker video I have ever watched in my entire life. There are huge swings back and forth, huge like miracle shots, like that reverse fortunes on these enormous pots. It fucking rules and it like adds this element

of excitement to poker. A game that is a billion, billion years old that has been played a billion times and like it exists in the middle of this as one challenge in this Korean reality competition show. So if, just for argument's sake, if there's four spades in the community thing, and someone There's no colors or suits. It's just numbers, one through ten. And so when you call something

out you are just calling like, you know, straight to the eight. Got it. Or three of a kind nines. You have to be very specific about the hand that you call. You can't just say flush. That makes sense. three of a kind nines. You have to be very specific about the hand that you call. You can't just say flush, right? There's no flush. You have to specify the hand and the number associated with that hand. That's crazy.

And so you'll have like pocket pairs, right? Like I'll have pocket nines, and then no one's gonna call that. No one has any way of knowing that you have these pocket nines. So, you know, maybe your two pair will win out because people don't know that you have this secret shit in reserve.

It's really, really, really, really good stuff. All the games this season have been rad. I'm watching, the challenge we're watching right now is a variation of Mungkala, where you're earning three distinct pools of points. It's the Monster Train 2 of Korean reality competition shows. That's on Netflix or where is that? It's on Netflix, yep.

Both seasons, absolutely kick ass. Um, so, yeah. Cool. It's been off of a thought with minecaller, but Gryphon, did you see the New York Times officially endorsed Kube this week? No! Yes! To what extent can the network in New York Times...

The wire cutter did a... The game that you should be playing this summer is Kube, and they are bright. I love Kube. I don't know if we've talked about Kube on this show. I think I did a whole wonderful segment about it though. How do you spell Kube, just for the people that are curious? K-U-U-B. I mean, do we have time?

Do you want to give a brief Kube rundown? Yeah, I mean, do we have time? Do you want to give a brief Kube rundown? Yeah, I mean sure. Kube, I don't know, it's from Norway or somewhere like that. Vikings played it. You throw sticks at other sticks and there's a big pylon in the middle and I guess the like lore is that they used to be bones and skulls. Yeah, it is fantastic. Explaining the rules is not fun. We're actually just watching someone play it once and then playing it is a blast. It is a game, it is that perfect type of game

that can last five minutes or five hours, depending on if you get into the thick of it. It's a momentum game where you are constantly like, yeah. And it is also a one-handed game so you can play it while having a beverage. It is also a, um, there's this king piece that has to be the last thing you knock over so it has that eight ball roll where someone can also end the game drunkenly at any time with a single wayward toss. Tensions. I like that. It's my favorite yard game by a country mile. It fucking rules. Alright that's it. That was so much stuff. You guys really got your money's worth. Busy today. If you thought this week was busy, next

week's gonna be even wilder because the Nintendo Switch 2 is out the day that you're listening to this probably and hopefully all of our different retail partners will come through for us. TBD. And we will all have Switch 2s. I've actually, so, in theory, I may be getting a Switch 2 on launch day, but I'm gonna also be flying to Summer Game Fest

that very same day, and I'm terrified to move my pre-order to another address. So probably all of the impressions that I provide about Switch 2 next week will be on Jason Schreier's Switch 2. Aw, man. So, here's hoping. You know he's gonna have overclocked it.

Yes. And modded it and tweaked it. He's gonna be fucking King Boo and all over that game. Also, I'm just gonna let people know up front, I won't be here next week. It's because he doesn't like Nintendo. I know we'd like to have all four of us. It is because I'm getting a colonoscopy, and if you're over the age of 50, which I'm not, do take care of yourself.

That's what I'm gonna say. Keep your head on a swivel. We will have a different Chris with us though. Oh yeah, that's true. Chris for Chris swap out with Chris Grant. Very excited for that. So yes, a lot to do next week. Please, if you enjoy our show,

consider joining our Patreon at patreon.com slash the besties Russ you're gonna read off some some friends who have been supporting us some recent members of the patreon Thank you again for everyone's support, but here's some recent ones. We have defiant. We have Stefan or Stefan Daniel and Gabby. Thank you all we really appreciate you. It's a huge fucking help, a huge help. Next week, Switch 2 and Summer Game Fest, are they gonna announce that Persona 4 remake that has my TikTok algorithm ablaze, ablaze with rumor mongering?

Christ, I hope so. You'll find out before us, and then we'll talk about it next Friday on the Besties. So join us then, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!