The Besties - Assassin's Creed vs. a Train That Does Backflips

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

This week’s games represent two ends of the video game spectrum. On one side, we have Denshattack, an indie game about a train that performs skateboard-style tricks in a fantastical version of Japan. On the other end, we have Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a decadent remake of a beloved but dusty Ubisoft open-world game. Guest Jeff Grubb from Giant Bomb helps us chat about these two very different delights! 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!

Okay, guys, have you ever created strife within a public park? Sorry, what? Accidental strife among volunteers in a public park. Gotta say I haven't. Sounds like a crime. I created some strife, but it is going to require some setup, some history, if you will, and I hope you'll stick with me through it. You have a history with the park?

All right. No, no, no. I mean actual history. Okay. Okay. There's an island in upstate. New York called Bannerman Island and it was owned by a guy

named like John Bannerman or something whatever it is. Anyway, he built this castle there. It was only like 1900. It was not that old but he loved castle as he's from Scotland. So he built this castle there and while he was building it he wanted to save on materials. So instead of using like rebar to like

structure up the walls and things like that, he stuck whatever he could find. So bed frames, bayonets, any piece of metal he could find. He stuck it up there. Upcycling. Yeah. Yeah, upcycling.

Some years later, there was a giant explosion and also weather, and the castle collapsed. Okay. Okay. I get this information because my wife and I were visiting the island, Bannerman Island, and the volunteer who was giving us the tour explained all this to us. So now I'm a Bannerman Island expert, even though I don't remember the guy's first name. Van. I get that information, and then I'm talking to another guy separately who seems like the head of the organization.

This is the Bannerman Island guy. This is the guy that raises all the money. And I'm saying casually to him, like, man, it must be really hard to raise money for this island when they have such a, I didn't say shitty, but such a shitty castle that you're trying to restore. They spent no effort. And the guy was like, what? What did you say? I said, you know, because there was like bayonets and bed frames. And he didn't like build it great.

And the guy's like, actually, I think they might have overbuilt it, if anything. and then he asks, who told you that? Oh, no. Who asked, who told you that the castle was poorly built? And I was like, uh, Mark? You threw Mark under the castle? And then I went back to Mark. And I'm like, Mark, by the way, I was talking to this guy up there.

And he kind of took offense to me. What is wrong with you? I'm just interested. Why are you a human Seinfeld episode? Yeah. Okay, so I talked to Mark. And I'm like, this guy up there, I told him like, hey, it's a shitty castle. And he got kind of offended. And Mark was like, was that the guy in the gray shirt?

And I was like, yeah. And then Mark went up to go talk to gray shirt guy. And that's when my ferry was leaving Bannerman Island. So all we could see was Mark going up the steps to have like a fucking confrontation. Was his fist like curled and like kind of like, yeah, yeah. He looked pissed. Hell, yeah. Because who's going to undercut your tour that you just did in 90 degree weather?

Like... So did they use bed frames or not, Russ? They did. They did. But I think the question is, is using bed frames, does that count as shitty building? I think it does. I mean, I think the more concerning shit is the bayonet. No.

Yeah. Half of the castle is gone. It did, however, worth noting, it did explode because they did store a gunpowder there and mass and kind of left it over the winter and didn't really maintain it. And it did kind of half explode. So that is part of it. That seems important for us. I'm going to be honest. It was part of it.

It was part of it. But also they said the bed frame. It was poorly built. Take that Bannerman Island. Go to hell. It was beautiful otherwise. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Fursick.

I know the best game of the week. My name is Jeff Grubb and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. It's a video game club that goes all year round and just by listening, you are a member. Griffin is not here this week. He is dealing with some personal stuff. You can't be on the same podcast together. It's a whole thing.

I know. That is part of the rule. He did request that he should have nothing to do with Jeff Grub. But we are very pleased to have a very special guest in Jeff Grub, I suppose. Welcome. Not your first time being here, but we do appreciate you coming back and filling in for our boy, Big Gee. Yeah, absolutely. Glad to be here.

Where can people learn more about the Jeff Grub experience? I know the answer to this, but tell us. Yeah, just go to Giant Bomb. We're doing a lot of fun stuff over there. It's, you know, actually, here, I'll give you a very specific thing. I am, like, the second, we got a hard out today because I have to go immediately into my first episode of a new season of Blight Club, which is our series where we play bad games, and we don't just play them.

We have to complete them. We play them to credits. The horror. Yes. So, Dan Riker just beat Space Ace for the Super Nintendo, which I know maybe doesn't sound as bad. It's awful. It was true.

Can you play it with like cheats and safe states and stuff? No, no, no, we have to play it on the base difficulty and we have to actually like play it for real for shoot as we say. Mike before that did Virtuoso, which is a weird 3-D-O game where you play as a rock star who like the way he gets away from his rock star lifestyle as he goes into a virtual reality where he has to shoot snowmen and clowns and stuff. And that one might not sound bad either. It was terrible. So they're mad that they both had really bad games. Yeah. were also very difficult.

So now they want to punish me for sitting back and laughing at them for the last year. So it's going to be, I really don't know what to expect. I won't know what my game is. Oh, you don't know what the game is? I don't know.

Right behind me is a box with the, we also wear costumes. So behind me there's a box of the costume. I haven't seen it. My wife has, when she saw it, she looked upset. She looked worried for me. Oh, no.

So. Well, I'm going to have to tune into that. That sounds fantastic. Not for you, but for everyone else. Yeah, apparently. I do hope that it's just like a painting. target and a jockstrap and you're going to be playing jackass the video game. Exactly.

That would be really nice. The slinkini that Borat wears, yeah. Yes. Chris Point, you want to tell the people what we're talking about today? So this week we are talking about two. I'm going to say great video games. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say how I feel up top.

We've got Denshot Attack and we've got Assassin's Creed Black Flag re-syned. People are probably familiar with the Assassin's Creed. This is a remaster remake. Some might even argue sequel. We'll get into that to Assassin's Creed Black Flag. And Dencha attack, lesser known, picture Sonic the Hedgehog 3D era but good slash a skateboarding game where the skateboard is a subway. And you're basically there. Or a train, I guess.

It's a train. It's a train. It's Japanese for train, right? Yeah. Oh, shit. Jeff Grub just pulled some Japanese. Don't get your hopes up for any more than that. Take that plant.

I love it. It's good stuff. That all sounds very exciting. All that and more after this break. Okay, before we're going to start with Dencha attack. Before we dive into it, I do want to call out. We mentioned it last week, but I will reiterate it. And you'll probably hear it a little bit in the coming months.

The live show is on. It's happening. You can buy tickets right now for the besties live show. It's October 9th at the town hall in New York City. There will be a link. on besties.fan. If you go over there, there will be a pinned post

that will have the link make it very easy for you. Tickets are already selling and great seats are going fast. So please get your tickets now. And maybe in the chat of besties.com, people can throw in

like travel tips or hotels they've stayed at before, things like that. That would make the trip better for y' y'all. I'm going to stay at Jeff Backelars' house and not tell them. That's fantastic.

Very close. Really not far from where we're doing it. I love that. Okay. Docs. Jeff Bath. You know, it's about like five blocks east and about 10 blocks south.

You see a wing stop, hang your left. Okay. Let's dive into Densha Attack. I played a bunch of this. Chris Plant, you specifically seem pretty hyper-targeted for this game. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I am. This should be like my game of the year.

And it might grow on me. even more. Right now I'm enjoying it, but I'm not in a place. Well, let's talk about what the game is. I don't want to get to chew down the weeds of it. Can you give like the basic pitch? Yeah, sure. So there is, this is like an imaginary version of Japan where various people within Japan, it's really hard to like summarize this. But basically there's a train culture where people drive trains to make deliveries and like become celebrities for, driving trains. And so you are going through these, I guess, missions where you're trying to accomplish different feats while driving a train.

But the act of driving the train feels closer to like a Tony Hawk or a Sonic the Hedgehog than it would be like a train simulator. Yes. It's also a game about layering on your skills piece by piece. So at first, it's just ride the track and learn how to jump over obstacles. and then it's learn how to kind of grind into a curve, and then it's switched between tracks, and then it's add tricks to it.

Each time you play, it's getting more and more elaborate so that by the time you get deep into this game, you're entering that kind of hallucinatory flow state of how is it possible that I am reading all of these cues back to back to back to back, which, again, is what Sonic at its best, aspires to be. Yeah, from the beginning.

I don't even know that Sonic ever throws you as many prompts and inputs as this game. Not consistently the way this game does, no. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff, how did it, how did this game hit you? Yeah. So the way you were describing it where it's like, I'm enjoying this, I should love it. And I think I'm on that trajectory.

So I'm not too far into it. I think I'm near the end of like the way the stages work. It's like 1-4-2. I'm nearing the end of, I think, of World 1, the first number there. So they're still layering stuff on top. And I'm, this is laser targeted at someone like me. It's,

it's about score attack and I just, I like a video game ass video game. And I, I have, I'm very Tony Hawk coded. And I think some of that has maybe worked against this game in the early hour of it, the early hours,

where, where I am trying to do things the way I play the game where, like this is very specific, but when I'm in the air in any game sort of like this, where it's like an extreme sports game, which I think this kind of is at the end of the day. I'm like, all right, I'm going to prime my next jump when I'm in the air. This game doesn't do that.

Like, you have to wait until the train gets back on the track, then you can prime the next jump. So I'm like, okay, a little thing that I'm so used to doing from years of Tony Hawk or 1080 or whatever, I need to retrain that. So I'm in the process of doing that. And as I'm doing, I'm like, okay, more and more is beginning to win me over. And the way I really like to play a game like this is I will get obsessed with one stage and try to perfect a run and see if I can't put up a really high score. And I'm like, realizing, like, oh, I just looked at my customized train page and it shows the train I have,

doesn't have any extra abilities. Like, oh, I'm not using the real train I'm going to be using later on in this game to really be doing the high scores. So I might be wasting my time a little bit. I should probably progress through the story and unlock more stuff and then come back to these level. So I've kind of just had that realization. And that's got me back on the flow of going from level to level, which is, it's very fun to get through a level. I just, I will have more fun when I do that perfect run on a stage and I'm competing for scores with my friends. I think maybe where it started clicking for me more is less when I was looking at it like a score attack game and more as a platformer. Yeah. And like surviving the platforming challenges that it put in front of me. Because

I was fucking up a lot. Like crashing, like slamming to the ground when there was no track, things like that. And the game is very generous in terms of checkpoints. Like it doesn't start you from the beginning. You will start pretty close to where you fell. And just getting through a stage, as you said, was fun. But also I was messing up a lot. And I was kind of okay with that because it was like throwing me a lot of new things and modes and things like that.

But I think it helped when I stopped looking at the score because in very very, I would beat a stage and it would be like one star or whatever, less than that maybe. And I had to sort of like know what's power through and keep going. And that, I agree with you. I think that's a good strategy helped because you do get more stuff as you, as you progress. That'll help you score better things. I do think learning the stages and kind of beginning to read stuff early on is the more important part. And it is just fun to do the little challenges that they do put in front of you.

like that gives you a list of stuff. It kind of, again, kind of similar to a Tony Hawk game. But in Tony Hawk, like, you know, one plus two or three plus four now, the games that most people would be familiar with, it's like, go do a kickflip over a certain thing in the stage. You're on tracks. So then there's a couple of variances throughout each level of like maybe some areas you can go left or right. And there will be different challenges hidden on each side of those tracks.

But it has stuff like, okay, you're going through a building and it's an office building and you have a horn. So once you go through the building, hit the horn. the papers off the thing. It's more like fun little gimmicks to keep you engaged in exploring the levels while you're learning them. And I think the idea is, okay, now you do that on the first play through. And then when you do come back later to do the score attack, you can ignore that stuff. And so it's again, like, I'm shifting my focus in that direction. And I find trying to find all of those to be pretty entertaining so far. Tony Hawkwise, what it actually has more in

common with is Tony Hawk's downhill jam. Do y'all play those? This was a Wii and a Nintendo DS exclusive where you didn't have the open tracks or courses or parks that you had in the main game. It was simply these like go bomb a run straight downhill, try to get that perfect run. But it's going to be more or less the same each time. How you modify it is up to you. And I think that's where I struggle with it.

not because it's not great or even exceptional. It's those aren't my favorite types of games. That's not, I am the opposite of U-Grab where like, I don't like score attack. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again. I don't like the sense. It's not I don't like. I just have trouble making my brain turn off to allow me to give the time to that. Right.

And doing something like this or another game I admire a lot, but struggle with is like thumper. or a guitar hero, which is another, like you're moving down the lane, I just can't get myself to chill out and let myself really get good at something. That sounds great. It's just not where my brain is always at. And that's where I think the Sonic comparison kind of collapses is this is part of a Sonic game, but it's not the entirety of a Sonic game. And what Sonic does well, at least for me, is it breaks these things up. Sometimes you're doing this. Sometimes you're slowing her down and you're walking around and exploring. There is a bit of variety, which is not what this game is interested in. There is a game very similar to this that I also enjoyed, which is Action Hank.

Do you remember this game? I do. Yes. It was a really interesting game by Rage Squid, released in 2015. where you are this kind of grotesque, I would say, like European-style cartoon, kind of Asterisks and Obeliques, running through little toy sets like old hot wheels, you know, slides and loop-to-loops. But I'm realizing that there is kind of a whole genre of this that I have always, I always like it. and I can never quite, you know, allow myself to fully dive in. It reminds me of, like, going back to game, like, to two, like,

un-racers for Super Nintendo. Like, it's got some un-racers in there for sure. I think that the one thing that stands out to me is presentationally, it might be one of the best indie games I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, I mean, we, we've, like, moved on from, like, everything's, like, you know, I don't, I'm not complaining, but everything being a PSX-inspired game to, oh, yeah, remember Dreamcast is still very cool. Yeah, it is.

I mean, forget. Like this, I think, takes the Dreamcast aesthetic, which it certainly does. It looks like a jet grind radio. But, like, modernizes it in a way that the game is running at 60 FPS. And you can see all the way into the distance. And everything's flying at you at, like, lightning speed, but it's still, like, comprehensible. And, man, the fact that they pulled this off with, like, a very small team over, I think the development was, like, two to three years, something like that, is unbelievable. There are moments in this, there are, there are like splashy moments where you like jump the train on a ferris wheel or you're controlling like a boat in the middle of a race, things like that.

And those moments, and I feel a little bit bad saying this, but those moments scratch the same itch of when I'm playing through an uncharted four level where they spent six years on this one 30 second chunk. and the same brain itch is happening by a team of whatever, 10 people, 5, I don't know how many people, but small, happening on that because of the art design, because of the way it's all presented. Like, I'm still getting that same charge. And it's a reminder that that splashy thing can be done with much smaller teams if you have a really, really strong art design.

Yeah. What they get about the whole Dreamcast aesthetic, and is separate from the PS1 thing is, Sega knew that the menus mattered, that the stuff between the action has to be as cool. The style is substance, right? Austin Walker has to say that. Like, style is substance, and that's what this is, yeah.

In carrying you from one action setpiece to the next, maintains that cool factor. The game that I most compare this to is neon white, another game that got that if you want to have these really cool speed runs, then you need to go into these really energetic user interface. You need to have the music that is carrying you from moment to moment. You need to have these really beautifully animated sequences. Otherwise, the train stops.

And the whole point is that the train needs to keep moving. Yeah, I'm pretty blown away by it. And I think there is a person out there who is probably about 10 years or maybe 20 years younger than me that would instantly pick this up and be able to like do all the prompts pretty quickly. Yeah. because it did make me feel very old. But even though I'm fucking up, like I'm still really enjoying myself mostly because the presentation is so fucking

through the roof, gorgeous. It does feel like that's what they focused on here. It was like they had a game that was going to be my I'm someone who played a like one level of neon white for like 20 hours at least. I'm probably undercutting, like the amount of time I actually spent on a singular level in a game like that.

And I bet they had that nailed down very early. And I bet that was the part where it's like, that's the easy part. Making this game appealing to anyone sort of picking it up and giving them something to do and giving them something to feel like they are moving forward and accomplishing something, that does require the synthesis of all the audio and the visual and the gameplay and the physics all working together. And they really got that right as well. And you can see that. Like the reviews have been very positive. People seem to be kind of getting this across the board. Yeah. Yeah. I do think, I do miss the like the freedom that you have in.

games like Sonic, as you mentioned, plant and neon white, where you literally can move in any direction you want. There's obviously an ideal location you should be moving in. And I think that's part of the challenge of like, I need to remember, like, there's a more or less a path, like there are branching paths, things like that, but you are locked to attract for reasonable reasons. So that was, I think, something that I was having a challenge of like wrapping my head around. But again, once it started clicking for me, I was really interesting.

It helped that I just played sin and punishment for the N64, which is in the Unreal's sort of treasure shooter. And I always was like, if I'm going to play a shooter, I want to be able to control my character. And it's like, no, there's so much cool stuff they can do here if they have control of the camera. And that is definitely what they are doing here. Now I feel like a hypocrite. That's one of my favorite games a while time. I'm going to dig more into this game and keep it going. I want to carry this to the next section.

But there's one last thing I want to say about this game, which is good on the creator. for having a really wacky, memeable internet-friendly idea, and then delivering on it. Yeah. Right? This is not squirrel with a gun, and sorry to call it, like, one specific game, but that one was particularly frustrating. But there are so many times that a thing trends

because it's quirky and cute, and it's called Densha attack, and it's about a train. Well, and also, like, in a 10-second clip, looks like the most fun game you've ever seen. Right. You turn this into a gift. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And the amount of effort in polish that went into this, because that is the other piece of it, it is polished like a dreamcast game. It feels like it could have been released on a Sega console 20 years ago. It's really interesting. That said, I do want to talk about the game that was what I needed while I was sick and was the Just Wander Around game of the year. How about we take a quick break? And then we will come back and talk about Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Resynced. No colon's involved.

Okay. Ooh, boy. I'll try to set this up. Assassin's Creed Black Flag came out like over a decade ago. 2013. I remember it being like an Xbox one game that. It was 360. But I remember playing on Xbox one because it's like it's coming out alongside the new consoles.

And there was a version of that ready to go. Yes, one of the earliest games I remember doing previews for at Polygon. A real, oh, I'm getting old when I am playing the remasters of games I remembered covering midway through my career. And the appeal of Assassin's Creed Black Flag, both versions, was we're going to take the climbing of Assassin's Creed and we're going to put it in what seems at first like the last place you would want to see it. and the open water is where there are no buildings to climb on. But quickly you realize, know what is special about this games is twofold. One, ships, these big, beautiful old ships are fantastic for that feeling of climbing an adventure. And two, by moving it to an island setting, rather than have to design these open worlds that have to illogically all connect,

you can create really intentional spaces for you to explore. And it was revelatory, I think, for the series. And it was revelatory in a weird way that they didn't quite learn from it until much later on. I don't think we really see what they were going for until the modern series set in Egypt and ancient Greece. So that's the basic premise. Can one of you explain why this remake exists and why now? money is a good reason. I'd be able to sell the game again for $60

and get $2 million copies sold in like a day. That's good. Yeah. I guess to Ubisoft's credit, like they have done quite a bit of work to modernize this game, both visually and in terms of the controls, to make it feel like it is not just an HD remaster,

which they've done of this game previously. They basically ported over most of the controls that you saw in Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is the newest release that came before. this, the visuals instantly look like a modern game. I think... It looks stunning. Yeah, it's a very beautiful game.

And the original, I think, looks stunning. But obviously, if you play it now, it's very easy to see, like, oh, there's barely any lighting going on. The textures are pretty flat. The, like, random towns that you're in are, like, pretty basic comparatively to a modern Assassin's Creek game. The character models look like a wax museum gone wrong. Yeah.

all that stuff was modernized. But they also took the time to modernize a lot of the missions that were incredibly shitty from the first game. A few things they did. They took out the first person Abstergo nonsense.

That was in the first game. If you don't remember, you played as a fucking hacker in Abstergo. It was awful. And, like, read the things that were clearly pleased from the games developers

talking about Ubisoft. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it was funny from a meta standpoint, but from like, oh, I'm loving, building my pirate army. And then suddenly I'm a,

fucking office drone, not a great transition. So they took that stuff out. They also adjusted the many, like, hide in plain sight, trail these people missions that the original game had, such that originally you'd had to hide while you were trailing to like over here what people were saying. And if you got spotted, boom, mission over, you restarted the mission, huge pain in the ass. Now those missions play out. They start the same way.

You're hiding in plain sight, whatever. But if you get spotted, you'll get some. clue to be like, oh, I heard that the warden actually has a key. We can go to him. And you just murder everybody. And there's also like a dedicated crouch button. So like stealth makes more sense now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're not as relying on like hiding among a crowd of random people standing there. So all that stuff makes the game feel. Combat's also just better. Like it's just better. Yeah. Like they have parries and stuff. Perfect parries. And that stuff's kind of expected this point. So it's like almost like they didn't always have that. And that's like, no, it didn't. That is much improved. something the plant mentioned when he started playing it and was like telling me I should really dip in was how much faster the whole thing feels and it feels incredibly fast. Not only just the gameplay, which it does, just the pacing of it. Yeah, you're into it real quick.

You're into, you're, you're, you're, you have a ship in the first hour and a half and you're like basically let loose on the open ocean, essentially, which, which is a big contrast to like a lot of the last three games, which, like, throat clear for about five hours. which was nice. Plant, I know you are, you've been waiting with bated breath to talk about how impassioned you are over this release. Well, yes, I do want to talk about these things that are changes

though, because that is where I see the biggest gap in opinion. And that is, there are people who are now going back and playing the original one and preferring it. There are a number of pieces. I'll make sure that you link them in our show notes that have pointed

out these changes do remove some friction that added a lot of character to the game. For example, you climb so fast in this game. You can scale a tower in seconds. And that is great as a gameplay

experience. It is less great as an immersion experience. I'm curious, Jeff, for you, like, where did you land on these changes? Because I personally found that I didn't mind. I'm also as I said earlier, very conscious of my time and a game respecting it and letting me enjoy what I

I enjoy most about these games, which is like just being in a beautiful tropical setting for, you know, 30 hours. Yeah, I think I might be with you on this one where it's, I played the original game when it came out and really enjoyed it and have fun memories of it. You know, it's maybe my second favorite Assassin's Creed. I was always a brotherhood guy. that was my favorite. But this one was like,

yeah, this was right up there with that. And it was like, oh, yeah, I'll go back to that someday. I really like that game. And then this gets announced it.

And it is kind of the version of the game that I want as someone who played that game within the last 15 years. It's the processed version where it's like I'm going to be able to digest this very easily. They are removing the points of friction that maybe did give the original character. But I experienced that already. I kind of want to just hit the high notes. So having my ship in the first hour and a half, yeah, thumbs up, being able to climb to the top of that thing in three seconds.

Yeah, I was trying to get up there and I got other stuff going on in my life. Yeah, the processed food version of this game is kind of what I needed here because does that make it feel like something that we're going to still be talking about a year from now? Probably not, but in the moment of playing it, it does go down very easy. That's what I wanted from it. I mean, easier than I would say even Assassin's Creed Shadows, which I think is the like the thing to remember. remember is why this game works for me is because the minute to minute works really well. There's like a somewhat engaging narrative, sort of. But the big part and why I think you like Brotherhood as well is there's a meta that is

super engaging where you're building up the ship and building up your team of guys. And that feels like there's no downtime where you're going from gameplay into shipplay into gameplay and the chip play, and you're constantly like feeling that power curve, but also just enjoying the sights and sounds that you're experiencing. And there just aren't that many. So it's very easy for me to play it on my time. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge thing as well.

Like they built it in us with a scalable engine. And I think we're going to see more and more of this. We've talked about, we talked about a bit when talking about the steam machine where, granted, it's not the highest of high-end computers, but I think more and more studios are going to make games that allow them to run on not the highest Nvidia card imaginable. It'd be silly to do that at this point. Yes, incredibly silly to do that. And I think those days of like cry tech fucking bragging about you have to spend $3,000

on a computer to run our game are long gun. That's just a computer now. Yeah, that's just the regular computer. Okay, I'll now do my why the game is brilliant shiel, which is because this game was made a long time ago, in video game. you know, time. Weirdly, they are more comfortable editing it and the way that I feel like we're always begging these publishers to edit their games, to make choices that simplify them in ways

that are helpful and beneficial to the story, to make them move at a reasonable pace, but also to remove just filler. And they've been toying with this idea of a kind of like immersion mode in Assassin's Creed games. Assassin's Creed Shadows had this where it's like, hey, you can basically turn off the UI or you'll go into like a castle and maybe you'll find a character and then you'll get a clue and that'll kind of give you a little dot on the map of where to go, which is really neat. But the games themselves are so big and so dense that actually getting those things to trigger can be a pain. where in this game, where you will start, and I believe the mini map is off by default, you kind of are playing a version of this immersion mode, but because the game is very small compared to these modern games,

because each setting is kind of its own standalone experience, you really do feel dropped in. So I do think this game is absolutely stunning to look at. I think it's incredible. They've said that because each setting is, is its own unique place. They are allowed to just cram in so much more detail, even than they did with shadows. But also, I think the fact that it feels designed to put you in the space and to make you feel

like you are actually visiting rather than just checking off boxes on your to-do list, that feels so refreshing. And again, part of that is trimming things down. Part of it is this is before the glut just got so, so, so, so out of control. And it's strange to go and play a game like this one that, to me, feels more modern than modern video games. And that's weird. Like that is, it shows just how much money and effort is being wasted on these games on stuff that is making them demonstrably worse. worse.

It's a bummer, and it feels like a lesson that's being learned too late. Yeah, I think the, if you're playing this with like a modern eye, you could point out, like, oh, from a design standpoint, this room should have more fucking pots in it or whatever. Like, not every room has that level of attention you would necessarily see in a modern game, but we don't care. And it goes back to my point about that impact. Like, you're still capturing that spirit of a very, very expensive game in a game. that came out 15 years ago because it has that art design, because it has that overall flow and theming that supports it even though it doesn't have the ultra-high fidelity that you would get from a naughty dog experience. And that's okay. That's fine. And I do think like when

games get made today, they are being made with this idea in mind. And I think like Starfield was the one that like suffered from this the most of we are making the forever game. We're making the game that's going to last 10 years. And I think every Assassin's Creed game after a certain point was trying to do that, despite the fact that they knew another Assassin's Creed game was coming out in the next year and a half. This one was still made in that time, but it's like there's going to be another Assassin's Creed next year. So we can kind of really just focus on what we're doing here. And then we did get to like 2014, 2015, 2016, where games did start to come out at a point where it's like, witcher's here and Witcher 3 is just going to keep selling forever. And we're not just going to, like,

make new Witcher games, which we'll eventually do. Ten years later, we're going to make a new expansion for The Witcher 3. And it's like things shifted really quickly around this time. It's like we reached a sort of, there was the end of the ramp for graphical progression. Like the RX480 came out in 2016. And that like did 1080, 60 in just about every game and still kind of does. And it's like, okay, so what are we going to do to make these games stand out? And everyone had the same thing in mind bigger.

bigger, more, just filled with more stuff. We got to spend, you know, countless person hours, making as much content for these games as possible. And now we've reached the logical conclusion of that, which was unsustainability as everyone was shouting back then. And now here we are. And it's like, everyone's kind of like stepping back going like, what were games like just before this?

And it was this sort of end of that ramp of they learned so much about making video games in a really sleek way, while still getting bigger and bigger. but they reached this nice balance point. And I do think Assassin's Creed Black Flag was like a game that represented that in a really strong way. And so kind of bypassing that and just attaching on the modern elements that make games smoother to play today while keeping the skeleton really does show the strengths of what we were doing then and kind of the weaknesses of the way games have been made in the last 10 years. Yeah, I completely agree. I don't want everything to be sequels, but also I know what Ubisoft is. Like, I know that we're getting sequels or remakes in some form anyway.

Yeah. If they're going to do that, I would love for them to do the DLC for this Freedom Cry. Yeah. Also, rogue, the sequel to this, which is, I think, Stephen Dittillo's favorite Assassin's Creed game, a previous guest to the show. There are games that people just didn't play in this universe, or at least the large, audiences did not play and the opportunity to bring those back. What was Roves like release thing? It was the Xbox 360 and PS3 only at the time game while there was another newer

Assassin's Creed for the next gen consoles. Is that how it was? Yes. I believe it was that. It was like if you want to go play Assassin's Creed on the previous hardware. Right. We have a game for you. And it's like, and it's a sequel to Black Flag.

Like you will love it. And I think it was maybe higher praised at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really interesting for where Ubisoft is. It does feel, I fear, a bit too little too late. I don't know, like, this is the sort of thing that's going to pull them out of their rut. I mean, they don't think it is. I mean, they immediately start laying people off, right?

They didn't take this team or one of the teams that's sort of. supported this and like, all right, get to work remaking five other these, just like Capcom has done to great success. It's like, we made some money with this game. This feels like CPR right now. Yeah. It's very good CPR. Yeah.

But yeah, I do worry certainly about the future of this company. And any AAA company for that matter. Definitely. Okay. Cool. We do have some reader mail. I want to dive into that real quick. This first letter comes from Clayton.

We were talking about Delta Rune chapter 5, I want to say they're at chapter 5 now. Plant and I still haven't really started it any of the chapters. So there was some debate about like whether how we would do that. Clayton writes, A note for anyone debating if they want to wait for all the Delta Rune to come out before starting, the difficulty really starts to ramp up with each chapter. And when you're rusty, it can be very frustrating. If you're like me and this bullet hell skill does not come to you naturally,

you might want to wait because I had to resort to watching the end on YouTube. Wow. I didn't realize that. That's interesting. We have another letter. This one comes from Chris F about Rhythm Heaven. Did you play Rhythm Heaven, Jeff? I did.

I loved it. I reviewed it, yes. Yeah, I thought it was really good. It seems to me what's special about Rhythm Heaven is that it's not a game primarily about responding to prompts on the screen. There are no button icons or string of jewels that make elite beat agents or rock band mostly a test of hand-eye coordination. Rhythm Heaven is about learning the sound prompts that tell you when to respond.

It's about hand-eer coordination. Whoa. Then that necessitates a unique, unique features in the series, the in-depth tutorials. You need to hear the sound prompts multiple times to get them in your head, the relative simplicity of the songs and the simplicity of input. Long story short, I'd argue rhythm heaven is probably the most musical of the rhythm franchises. That's a good argument. Yeah, it's like, it's very, it actually is very deep, despite not appearing so. And it, like, it kind of gets to what, it does what it's trying to do very well, which is just,

just give you an experience of what it's like to get in rhythm with a band. And the game is the band. And you get to play your part. And your part is actually the key part. And it's crucial. And they give you a bunch of on-screen, fun stuff happening. But you can play the game with your eyes closed because you're just listening for that music. And that's kind of giving a bunch of different expressions of that idea throughout the course of playing that game.

It's really well done. Yeah. I got one more question here that I want to make sure we show, which is from Alex. Hey guys, popping in with a question, what's a game that will help me get better at gaming? My brothers live across the country and we often play together as a way to still hang out. But I feel bad that we either have to always resort to friend slop type games because of my skill level. Or I'm the weakest link on the ship while we sail the high seas and sea of thieves. We still have a blast, but I'd really love to be able to feel like I'm contributing when we play.

Love the show. There's like two things here, right? Like what are you bad about when it comes to games? because there is the clicking on heads and shooting them, and then there is the understanding what the game is trying to communicate. There are two very different things. If you're lacking in skill of like on the controller

being able to make the character jump when you need to, I mean, just playing more of the game you're trying to get good at probably just is the answer. There are like aim like test games that you can get on Steam if that's what's happening. But if it's about like understanding the world, like spending like a month in an MMO will put you in so many different kinds of quest that you will eventually just understand the language of how

video games are made by the end of that, almost certainly. So, yeah, those would be my recommendations. It's a little bit difficult, though. I would even say, like, Assassin's Creed Rethinked that we just played is, like, a pretty good example of that, because it really throws you so many different curveballs of gameplay and things like that. But mostly, like, I would say if you're getting very stressed out, because you feel like you're not doing a good job.

Just understand that most people play video games with their friends because it's fun to spend time with your friends. Yeah. And the video games are the secondary thing. Yeah. The fact that you say that you are like having a nice time sounds great. And maybe the pressure that you are feeling nobody else is even thinking about. Yeah.

It's probably the truth. The other thing that you can do, but I would still emphasize exactly that fresh said of like feel good and also just sort of just be in the game. watching a video that's like 15 things I wish I knew before I played blank is good because games are not always great at communicating just the basics of what they want you to accomplish it's very weird we'll spend you know 15 minutes teaching you how to crouch and jump which you've already probably not to do but we won't tell you how like the systems work how to unsheed a sword like they'll forget some like very important or if they do it like with like one

like one style of communicating that and it's I definitely need it like on screen written out say it show it to me give me a chance to play around with it I need multiple modes there to get across those ideas and games don't usually do that. Yeah. Yeah. Good letter. That's very interesting.

Good letters overall. Thank you everyone for submitting that. You can, if you ever want to write us notes, you can drop them into the newsletter at besties.fan. If you're a member of the Patreon, you could send us DMs if you have any questions there. But Yeah, those are the two best places to reach us for reader mail. Any honorable mentions, Jeff, this can be a movie.

It could be a book. It could be a board game. It could be a great toenail cutter that you've been using. I don't know. I will go with another video game right now just because it is the first thing that came to mind when you said that. Heave-ho 2 is coming out. Have you guys seen Heave-Ho? You played Heave-ho before?

I have not played it. I am aware that Heath Ho, too, is about to launch. Yes, this is a cooperative or competitive multiplayer. He's kind of like a, definitely friend slop adjacent, where you are just a little guy with arms

and you have to sort of like work with your friends to swing across gaps and create little bridges. And there's a fart button and you can charge the farce. So it's like, you could be working together. Your Malino is smiling somewhere. Right. And then the little demon inside of you could take over and be like, but what if I just let off a really big fart

and blew us all apart and caused us to fail? And that's fun too. They got some nice competitive modes. It's almost like there's some races. There's some weird physics versions of Towerfall. And they just really kind of know what they're doing. And it was immediately fun when I played it with the guys over at Giant Bomb. That's awesome.

Check that out. That rocks. Yep. I've got one. Y'all remember battle chess? Yeah. Battle chess was chess, but what if we? animated it and you can see

the pieces really like kick each other's ass back in the early 90s. This is a DOS game. Well, in a way, battle chess is back. Except for now it is cat chess. Where you can play chess with beautifully

CGI style animated cats. And that is it. As far as I can tell, nothing more, nothing less. It costs seven bucks. And it is just a very adorable sassy cat version of chess

that is now on Steam. The animation is DreamWorks chic, illumination chic, I would say. And it is a delight. Cool. Last update for me is Blueprints. It's a

first person exploration house game. I'm on day. Jeff, I don't know if you're aware, but the color This forced me to wait a year before playing this game. She were just talking about this and I'm like, why did he wait? And then you mentioned that, yes, of course. Yeah. So I waited a year and I've been playing through with my wife on day like 71.

Momentous day and I'm sorry that Griffin wasn't able to make it today because this is the day where I tell you that I did ask for help after 71 days. Wow. The help that I asked for, and again, I'll keep this relatively spoiler light, was specific. regarding the notes that you find once you unlock blue tents, which for people that have played blueprints, we'll know what the fuck that means. For people that haven't, I mean, even people that haven't gone to the end game might not know. But I'm not going to tell you what that is, but there are like 60 to them, and only four of them are helpful for the purposes of like progressing what you're trying to progress. And I did multiple runs where we were just

focused on blue tense notes and not getting anything. And eventually I broke. and I asked a friend of the show, Jason Schreier, which rooms I should be chasing for the Blue Tense notes. And so that was the help that I got. Wasn't a lot, but it was enough that, like, I didn't have to do 12 runs of just grinding those fucking notes to find something useful. So I wanted to be honest on the show.

It's a show about honesty. But that's where I'm at. And now I'm on the hunt for the next step. I know more or less what I think I should be doing. so we're going to see how that plays out. Man, what a game. What a game. Okay, I think that did it.

Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. I know people can find you over a giant bomb. Yeah, if you're in Portland, I'm going to be at Mysterium, which is a MIST convention next weekend. Not that, so the week. Good segue from Blueprints. Yeah, exactly. That's what reminded me.

It's the weekend of the 24th. We have a panhole on the 25th, the Mistubusters, which is the crew of guys that were playing missed on Giant Bomb recently. And so, yeah, go to that. I think there's tickets still available. Small little convention out in Portland. It's a lot of fun.

That's fucking awesome. Yeah, we're very excited about it. I wanted to thank the folks over at patreon.com slash the besties. Some recent backers include Justin G. Bill with several L's, Corey S, and Nimbus. Thank you for being backers and thank you to everyone else for being backers. Over at patreon.com slash the besties. Next week, I'm going to say TBD.

There's a couple games that I think we're going to check out, but with Griffin being out today, I didn't want to finalize it. So TBD, there will be things. Griffin should be back next week and we'll enjoy those games together. But for now, I want to thank you all for being with us on the besties. Because shouldn't the best friends play the world's best games? He kind of got it. Yeah. Besties.

Besties. Stees