The Besties - Can Any of Us Beat Up an Avenger?

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

This week the boys offer an in-depth review of the new Marvel's Avengers! They examine the original storyline with Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel at the center of the story. Discuss the similarities of the multiplayer gameplay with the Destiny series. And breakdown the upcoming releases of the Xbox Series X and the recently announced Xbox Series S. 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!

So, we've talked about this before, where I bought too much cereal in the past. I remember it well. I can't believe we're going back to this fucking well. Have we run out of things to talk about? I don't make a lot of trips to the supermarket, but sometimes, you know, when you have to go, you're running out of food, whatever. Sometimes I don't always thoroughly look at what my stores are like like what i have back at home yeah so i go and i'm like yeah i'll figure it out when i get there bad idea right yesterday i went and they had a sale for four boxes of family-sized

uh frosted mini wheats my absolute favorite cereal, not sponsored by the show, but four boxes of them for $10. And I was like, gotta have it. And I got back to my house, and I had three more boxes waiting for me at home, and now I don't know what to do. So just to run the

quick, let me punch this into the Calcutex, which is my giant math computer that I keep at my house. You have seven family-sized boxes of shredded mini-wheats at your house. Not only that, only I eat them. My wife does not eat them. So it's just me on this board. It's time for her to learn.

You know, you always see the Green Goblin throwing pumpkin bombs and Spider-Man misses them. And then they careen down to the street, New York City streets below. Just once, I'd love to see you get blown up by one while you're holding four boxes of shredded mini-wheats. Like, I want one cutaway of the next Spider-Man where Russ is like, whoa, whoa. And then he looks up like, what the hell is that? Kaboom! Shredded mini-wheats everywhere. Spider-Man's like, no, not Russ. And then Russ is like, don't worry.

I have three more boxes at home. Don't worry, Spider-Man. I bought these as a pumpkin bomb-proof shield. Shield. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best heroes of the week. My name is Ross Frasher, and I know the best game of the week. And I'm worried that Justin might be thinking we're doing two games when in fact we're doing just one.

Just the one game. I've just been playing a lot of other games. I've been playing lots of games. I'm in love with games right now. games. I'm in love with games right now. I'm in love with games. After a long drought, I feel like I'm in love with games. And I should mention, by the way, this is the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game-ment.

These titles are coming fast and furious now. We're in the fall, and it's just a torrent of great video game releases. This one was supposed to be bad, but turns out it's good. Weird. They did a switcheroo on us. It's called Marvel's Avengers.

What the fuck is Marvel's Avengers? If people want to know what it is, it is kind of two games in one. The first game is a single player uh superhero campaign where you get to play as uh kamala khan and who is miss marvel and then the second game is like a destiny meets uh marvel ultimate alliance but 3d and pretty loot collector game does that sound fair did i get it they did game. Does that sound fair? Did I get it?

They did a Destiny. Right. That's fair. We're going to get into exactly what all that means after this quick commercial break. Okay. Maybe the worst marketing campaign or effort. Marketing, it's not even like they had bad commercials

for this game, but every single thing I saw for this game before it came out hit my alert sensor my bad game alert sensors just your don't give a fuck my don't fuck sensors i didn't yes it didn't seem as soon as they announced we're making an avengers game oh okay well making superhero games is tricky because how do you make the superheroes feel good and feel like superheroes but still vulnerable enough to like fit into a game but also you're doing like six of them that seems ambitious oh and by the way it's also going to be a destiny well destinies are pretty hard to make as anthem proves so i don't know guys uh and yet this game

is really fucking fun and cool uh and enjoyable yeah it's it is literally feels like two games in one and both games are pretty damn fun. I guess we should start by talking about the first game, which is probably the more traditional version of, like, I don't know, a movie game, I guess you could describe it, but good. I don't want to diminish it. It could have been just it. I feel like if the single-player component of this had come out

and said it's the Avengers, I think it would have done fine. It wouldn't have had the hooks of like service that is going to make this profitable. But I think that it would have been like very well regarded. So, so I think, and we've talked about a little bit in, in the intro. I think the big interesting thing is, is, you know, just the star of this game, which was not readily apparent in any part in the lead up to this game, like to the point where they kind of felt like they were hiding it, whether for good or ill. But Kamala Khan is the star

of Marvel's Avengers. We learn about her origin story. I am not a comic book reader. I did not know very much at all. I've seen her, like, you know, covers from comic books and stuff like that. But she is Miss Marvel. She's a Pakistani-American. And she's awesome. She's, like, the exact sort of, like, human superhero that I think in the early days of

Spider-Man, like that really like kind of captured that vibe of like, this is a relatable person that is thrown into this outrageous world of like gods with hammers and lightning powers. Like that's, it really does nail it. And she's great and actually has a Disney plus TV show coming. So I'm really excited about that.

Plot wise. here's the summary. There's a big event celebrating the Avengers that a young Kamala Khan happens to be at. Some calamity ensues. A big bomb goes off, kills a bunch of people, including Captain America. The Avengers are disgraced because they didn't stop it. And some people blame them for it and they disband um and basically a few years later through her you know absolute 100 rock solid faith in superheroes and her fandom of superheroes uh and her disbelief that the avengers were to blame for

this bomb she comes into evidence that uh the avengers are innocent and she and and the aim the scientific group that has sort of taken over the planet and run out run out shield and run out the avengers uh is an evil organization that maybe had caused this calamity so kamala khan takes it upon herself basically with the help of a sort of underground resistance to reassemble the avengers um and and the pace at which she does that is really shocking you i mean i was two hours in and i had just unlocked kamala and the hulk and that's it and one of the things going into this where i was like thinking about superhero fatigue how am i going to be excited about these heroes that have been plastered all over movie

screens for a decade and the way this game does it is through kamala khan you are excited about these heroes you're in all these heroes and also it takes so long for them to come into the action that when they do arrive i found myself thrilled like fuck yes it's thor can you believe it thor like a little kid and it's like and it's just because they were smart about how they reintroduce these characters at a very gradual pace that gives them all room to breathe um the the other i think sort of cornerstone of this is that kamala and bruce's relationship bruce uh banner by way, is being performed by Troy Baker, who is putting on an absolute masterclass. Always great, but in this one is really bringing something very cool to Bruce Banner.

But their relationship is sort of at the center of the game. genuine moments of like just letting the moments sit and have actual like character growth and discussions and an actual uh story which makes everything else land all the harder yeah i i think this troy baker performance is his best i know he's done a lot of dramatic roles but i think doing comedy in video games especially this type of what marvel cinematic universe style gentle comedy is tough um yeah And he nails it. Their relationship right away is so good. The other thing that I love about Kamala that you mentioned, the beginning's slow.

And that's not a bad thing. You don't do a lot of combat for a long time. The game does something that I don't see a lot in much superhero fiction, which is explain how these superheroes both exist in this world as crime fighters and world savers and as like comic book characters and how those can like coexist. And it does that really two ways that I loved.

The first is you start by being inside of Kamala's shoes with her father, and you are visiting the San Francisco Bay Area for this big event. You know, all the Avengers are going to be there, and she has written a piece of fan fiction that might give her something, some sort of reward. I don't know. She's getting praised for it. But you get to walk around and see like, oh, here's the Shwarma food hut. That's a fun thing that in-game seems to be a wink at the Avengers' own love for Shwarma. There's little arcades filled with superhero games.

There are comic books that you collect. And it's just full of the iconography of these characters inside of its own world. And you see the characters walking through it and kind of uninterested in it, the superheroes. That rules. Then after that, you actually get to see the inside of her room and her, I guess, kind of like training area, which is full of her kind of like personalized version of all of this stuff. So before you even really get into the shoes of

the Hulk or any of the traditional Avengers, you've learned so much about how the world perceives them. A bad version of this game would start with something has gone wrong, and now the Avengers are on the run, and now here's a whole bunch of dark corridors where we see statues of the Avengers half torn down. Eventually you get to that but before all that you really get an idea of why these uh superheroes matter in this world yeah and i think that it didn't really occur to me until i was playing this it's so rare that you see superheroes in in video games in normal environments, normal, familiar situations that makes them look abnormal or so incredible. So the typical superhero level is scientific base, and you're walking through his store, and there's just metal on the walls and computers or whatever.

Right. and computers or whatever. To see Thor walk into a gift shop and then have like an exchange with a fan really helps exaggerate and accentuate his like otherworldliness in ways that I've literally never seen in a video game because you have that contrast. So it was just super smart.

The story is amazing. They took some huge swings that is like admirable. I always love like whenever a project that is sort of ancillary like this game is uh like goes hard on such an established important canon like the avengers like i think that's rad but also on top of that this game is essentially a 3d beat-em-up and i i would, I think, probably say it's in the... Well, it's tough to say, right? Because there's six characters at launch

that are going to add more with DLC, and they each sort of feel a bit different. But I would sort of liken it to the Arkham Asylum Rocksteady Batman game style of beat-em-up, where there's lots of enemies coming at you. You have to juggle combos and also be very very uh skillful with your evasions and parries of incoming attacks i think it's i think it's a lot

of fun like i am it's it is not my genre of choice by any stretch of the imagination but i find myself like um i play a lot as black widow who is like very focused on combos and avoiding damage and like just being really really quick with your inputs. And I'm finding myself getting into it fighting game style where I'm like, oh, okay. So if I layer these two combos together, it is surprisingly deep, the beat-em-up combat. I think a bit different between the two characters is kind of underselling it. I mean, I feel like, you know, you discussed Black Widow. She's got a grappling hook

that lets you kind of zip between enemies. She's kind of zipping all over the battlefield. Captain America just feels like a battering ram. Like if he starts punching, he's not going to stop punching and there's really nothing you can do about it. Like he's going to continue punching you. The Hulk feels like the Hulk.

Like there's a really pronounced power difference when you're taking over these characters where every time I started playing one I kind of felt like I was cheating like the Hulk punches somebody and half their life bar is gone because it's the Hulk and he just punched you like I felt the same way about Thor Thor feels like powerful but also the way you use these characters has to be different. Like the fact that Thor and Iron Man can fly like actual 3D fly around is such a big difference. Like they have like aerial combat basically that they can do. And what is really, really, really smart is you have their basic – because they're superheroes, right? You have their basic powers from the beginning, pretty much. I mean, once you get the character and unlock them, you have their powers, right?

There's usually a support power, an attack power, and an ultimate that all feel very cool. Iron Man, for example, gets the Hulkbuster armor, right? But the way that you level up is you're basically adding like, in addition to numbers wise, like I had a healing buff to Thor's Bifrost, whatever. You're also adding like flourishes that make it cooler to be them. I'll give you an example. Thor can throw his hammer Mjolnir from the beginning and retrieve it into his hand. That's cool. Then I got a power that let me throw Mjolnir, and while I didn't have it in my hand, I could

headbutt somebody for a lot of damage. That's cool. Then I got an ability that let me throw the hammer, and then it would pin an enemy to the wall while I battle this other enemy. Then, building on top of that, I got an ability that let me throw the hammer would pin an enemy to the wall while I battle this other enemy. Then, building on top of that, I got an ability that let me throw the hammer, pin the enemy to the wall, and then shoot electricity through the hammer

to shock them. And they're layering that on. You have the basic abilities, but you're getting real pronounced cool stuff you can do in battle. Not a smart idea compared to the things that you said, but you really get to break stuff in this game. Did you notice that? do in battle. Not a smart idea compared to the things that you said, but you really get to break stuff in this game.

Did you notice that? You just break lots of stuff. I mean, I was playing, I don't know how the console version is. I hope that they have this, especially in the next generation versions. But on PC, they have a little dongle, and it says, do you want it to break more stuff? I'm like,

yes. It might break your computer. And i'm like yes it's like this might might break your computer and i'm like no problem let's go for it let's go and then i play the hulk and you already know i like breaking stuff so fine break my computer i i liked it it felt like at least with the hulk that they watched the avengers and they're like what's the hype like the hulk's iconic scene and like you know that two seconds where he just runs through glass towards the camera? Like, uh-huh. And they're like, it should just feel like that every second you're the Hulk. And it's like, okay, cool. The amount of time

the Hulk is breaking, I mean, the entire room is just covered in rubble, motherboards, GPUs, power supply units, CPUs, RAM. RAM everywhere you know, he's just breaking it all up

and it feels so meaty and good just the feel of the game feels great. The Hulk feels really he has like he can grab enemies and use them as weapons basically and then you can add on a second enemy that he has in the other hand and then he's doing like different combos with two enemies and then you get an ability a second enemy that he has in the other hand, and then he's doing different combos with two enemies,

and then you get an ability where you smash these two guys together as hard as you possibly can, so hard that it creates a shockwave that knocks down other enemies, which has got to feel bad, I would think, for the people directly involved. I don't want to rain on the parade.

Here we go. The single-player campaign is amazing. The narrative is surprisingly great. It has great moments. involved um i do i don't want to rain on the parade here we go the single player campaign is amazing the narrative is like surprisingly great it has great moments the combat the action all feels great the characters feel great and they are well acted and everything i do i don't love tony stark i super quick before we move on with that oh interesting writing a funny character like that with quippy one-liners is tough yeah It's tough, yeah. And it's, oh boy, there's some where I'm like, skin-crawlingly rough. Jarvis at one point says,

Master Tony taught me the phrase, awesome sauce. I believe that applies here. And I'm like, I bet he did. Nasty boy. Nasty, nasty bad joke boy. This is also a Games of Service game. In the Destiny milieu. I feel like games of service doesn't isn't an accurate sort of like catch-all descriptor for games because like a destiny and a fortnight are two completely different things uh fortnight is games of

service that you like play over and over again because it is inherently competitive battle royale and like that's the hook meanwhile a destiny is loot based and progression based and it is all about like how do you keep the play games of service is could be more accurately described as like answering a single question which is how do we get people to play this video game forever if you want to extrapolate like out what that means and like that is an impossible question to answer i literally like i don't think it's obviously impossible to get somebody to play a video game uh for forever and more accurately pay to play this video game forever sure i mean you could play this game

without it but like there are also the ways that they solve for that are twofold. They are the, the, the first fold is money. Uh, there is a challenge card for each character that you go through by like earning experience and completing objectives and stuff like that. And going through that, you unlock different like currencies that you use to upgrade or you unlock new, uh,

cosmetic costumes of which there are a ton and they are super, super cool, but you got gotta unlock them. Or nameplates that look like panels from old comics or whatever. And there's also a battle pass style thing for each character, which feels a bit much. For me, the bigger thing that I am not even remotely sold on yet is the other fold, which is the destiny style like loot thing the loot

progression you have a character level that you earn experience and you level up which you use to unlock new abilities but then there's a gear score which you get through like doing different challenge doing different missions doing harder missions finding rare drops getting exotic drops building a build out of like now you you have 5% stronger ultimate ability. Like all of that stuff, I don't know that I give a shit about. And you can play the main campaign without having to worry about that.

So the good news is that like, I don't think that the games of service stuff gets in the way of what is like really, truly very good about this game that I would recommend to pretty much anyone. But I genuinely do mean it. I think that the Destiny, I think Destiny is a hard fucking game to make

as proven by the fact that like, it has taken them a long, long, long, long, long time to get it to where it is. And everybody who's tried to step to that throne has like pretty much catastrophically failed. And I think that this game does some smart stuff. It also lifts a lot of stuff directly from the Destiny playbook but like

as i don't feel that sales pitch of hey griffin you really like this game you think it feels good and you want to unlock new costumes here's how we're gonna let you do it i see that stuff and i'm like i don't know that yeah i said i think i think what is limiting it is the the it's two things one is the gear is not cosmetic which is a big problem. Except for the cosmetic gear. Well the costume gear. The gear that you unlock

you don't see on the character. And I think that is and not only do you not see it it doesn't feel special. Like it doesn't feel, I mean like for instance the Hulk's upgrades are like his nanites and his fucking rib cage, right? And his badge shorts, I don't know. But, like, the gear does not, it does not feel cool to get it.

It's good to see the numbers go up, but it doesn't feel like an event when you get a big new thing. But I, just to address that specifically. big new thing. But just to address that specifically, so that is something that I think has sort of torn the living games community asunder, because some people want hey, I want this item and it's going to show up on my character, it's going to look really cool.

Other people want hey, I want a pure look for my character that does not make Hulk wearing a top hat make him 10% more strong. So that is sort of the argument that's going on here. I completely can get on board with that. I understand dealing with licensees, you have certain things you have to do.

But getting individual pieces of gear also doesn't feel different. If I got an exotic weapon in Destiny, I'm going to fire it, and it's going to look cool and do cool stuff. And there are some that are kind of neat. Like, I'll add a, you know, it'll hit the enemy enough times with your combos, and it'll shrink them or stuff like that. That's a very rare, you know, stuff. Or shock or cryo or whatever.

But, like, it doesn't feel that. Transformative. Yeah, exactly. I want to reframe the games-as-a of service part, though, because I think we might be coming at it a little too harshly. None of these games of service games launch well.

No, no. Or even as close to as well as this. I think if you frame it as like, how does this compare to Anthem? Pretty damn good. Beats the shit out of it. Or even Destiny, honestly. Destiny was a fucking mess when it launched. How does this compare to Anthem? Pretty damn good. Beats the shit out of me. Beats the shit out of me. Or even Destiny, honestly.

Like, Destiny was a fucking mess when it launched. And what I dig about it is it honestly reminds me of kind of the Call of Duty model of, hey, it's going to take us a while to get, like, the online stuff exactly into that sweet spot. So here's a campaign that you can enjoy day one. It's going to be a real pleasure. And then come back in a couple months, and we'll have some of these problems worked out, including the technical problems, of which there were many at launch.

Holy shit. I jumped into one mission, and I was playing single player. And I had three Kamala Khans and three Hulks in with me which like as a bug is like this is a pretty wild bug guys but as a video gaming experience rolling with three ms marvels and three hulks and it was a fucking fiasco i finished that mission like 45 seconds i had a much more banal one of those where i was i was supposed to be black widow uh but for some reason i was kamala khan and i was talking as black widow but i looked like kamala khan and i was i was supposed to be black widow uh but for some reason i was kamala khan and i was talking as black widow but i look like kamala khan and i was walking around the ship i just ran into

kamala khan and she was there too it was very surreal like uh hi hello i'm gonna go this is probably a singularity i'm risking here um i will say that like what they have done with what is out here, Chris is right. I am being too harsh on the games of service stuff, but like what they have accomplished is sort of beyond the scope of games of service where I think this game is genuinely very fun to play. And I've only played the multiplayer like a little bit. Justin and I like ran a couple missions and it was super fun. It is a fun game that feels good to play and I'm still bouncing around the different characters trying to figure out who my main is. And if they keep this updated as sort of aggressively

as they have talked about, like Hawkeye and Kate Bishop are coming out in a future DLC, as soon as that drops, I'm going to hop right in because I want to know what those characters feel like. The campaign is such a strong sales pitch for what the whole thing is capable of doing, which is interesting because that is the opposite

of what Destiny 1 did, where the campaign was a joke, but the multiplayer stuff was actually like super, super fun. Yeah, I am excited by what this game could become. It's interesting. I finished the campaign and I unlocked each character has an iconic mission chain, which is pretty much just like two or three missions that they have to take the lead in. And when you finish it, you get an iconic costume for that character. And I finished all those.

I finished the campaign, obviously. I finished all those. And I was left kind of feeling like i think i'm good like i think i'm i don't necessarily want to like grind it out to get new stuff for these characters because i don't like i've got all their powers i've seen all the powers i've played them all a lot like i think i get it i will definitely be back when there's other characters to play um but like i wouldn't think of it and also on the multiplayer front, like Griffin said, I've played, except for

two missions that I backtracked with with Griffin, I've played the entire thing by myself. This is not something where you need to play multiplayer. It would be easier. There's a couple of times, I should mention this because it's weird. There are some doors that only certain characters can unlock, right?

So there's like computers that only iron man and black widow can hack there's these big uh broken doors that only hulk and thor and tony stark in his hulk buster costume can can break down and there's treasure behind them and there's a lot of times they're like i would be in a mission and be captain america and see one of these doors. And there is no, and it's designed so like everybody in the multiplayer experience can like do their part. But for me, I'm like, hey, Hulk, please, Hulk,

come break this door. Please come back, Hulk. Please, you see the door, just break it. Please, I can't do it on my own. He loves smashing. That's what he does. The treasure's getting away break it, please. I can't do it on my own. He loves smashing. That's what he does. The treasure's getting away from me, please. So that is weird where it's like, okay, do you not want me to?

And there's certain objectives where it's like, someone stand over here and hold this thing open while everybody else attack it. The computer will, if you're playing with other people, you'll pull out a transformer or whatever, and everybody will attack it as it's going while one person is holding it when you're playing with uh ai component the things the transformer just stays out because they know the computer is not going to realize there's a mission objective here that they need to help out with but it's fine it's a good game i i like. I feel like I gave the same sort of apology for Destiny back when it launched.

It was like, I have had a lot of fun with this game. Even if I don't play it forever, I feel like I've gotten a lot out of the experience. So I would not let the somewhat weak games-to-service hooks scare you away from the game. I think for what you pay for the price of admission, you get a pretty stellar superhero campaign, a really fun multiplayer beat-em-up. And even if you don't play it forever, you don't play any other video game forever. So why is that a deal breaker here? And again, maybe one of the most surprisingly great games that I've ever played because I feel like I judged it completely wrong. And apparently the beta was, I didn't play the beta, but I saw

a lot of negative buzz coming off the beta because I guess they didn't give a great representative slice because I think a lot of those opinions are being reversed right now. Well, the people at Polygon.com knew it was good off the beta. I don't want to brag, but maybe

it's a pretty good website. Anyway, we're wrapping up. Justin, you want to talk about what we're going to get after the break? Oh, there's a small Xbox in my pocket. I got it for $300. Next, we're going to hear about

the Xbox and the other one that's Deluxe. Oh, that's good. That's good. Okay, so one of the Xboxes is $300. Is that right? Yeah.

Can that be right? Plant, fill me in. That's right. So there are two Xboxes coming out on November 10th, okay? The Xbox Series X, and that's the one that we already knew about, right? And that's the big expensive one. The Xbox One X? And that's going to cost $499.

It's not the Xbox One X. They changed the word in the middle. So instead of one, it's serious now. So why serious? It makes me so mad. I know. I know. These naming conventions call it Xbox Two.

I'm not in charge of it. Xbox Two X. That's awesome. Sounds like a fighter plane. It's twice as big. So Xbox Series X, $499. It's also like huge. Like it looks like a little PC gaming tower.

And you're going to be able to play games in 4K, high refresh frame rates, et cetera, et cetera. And then the thing that I'm more excited about is the Xbox Series S s doesn't help that s and x sound very close there's so many weird choices it's also it's such a mess uh and it costs 2.99 which is basically the price of an xbox one right now which is wild that's um but they haven't they haven't announced what the sort of spec offset is for that, right? Like what the different...

So you can play games in 1440p resolution, and it says up to 120 frames per second. But let's focus on the 1440p. So 1440p is like splitting the difference between your 1080 TV and your 4K maybe computer monitor, right? 1440 honestly is like what I have kept my computer monitors at forever because I really struggle to see the difference between 1440 and 4K. That's just me.

And that means that I can redirect a lot of the power in my games towards all the other things instead of just resolution and just wasting it on high res. Which is to say, I think this is a great deal for pretty much most people. We'll see how much it impacts other parts of the games, but if the games are similar in quality minus resolution, this is kind of an astounding deal.

So there's some bips and bobs of clips of showing games running on the Xbox Series S. And one of the examples they gave was Outer Worlds. Outer Worlds on the Xbox One, the old Xbox, the load time was like 48 seconds. And on the Xbox One S, the load time is 12 seconds. The Xbox Series S. Serious shit. I The Xbox Series S. Serious shit. Series S. Yeah, it's wild. And I mean, there's all these other features that they've been showing off, like being able to pause and resume games, which is a thing that I think they wanted

to do with the current Xbox, and now they're going to finally achieve with the next one, where you can be playing Skate and then immediately load into Forza, and then immediately load into Forza and then immediately load into Halo without drop-off times. There's a whole range of games that have not come out this year that you'll be able to instantly load into with your Xbox. None like now games, but like, boy howdy,

you can jump from 2019 to 2017. You'll be all, rip-roaring good times. You don't expect any new ones. Here's the good thing about it. It plays Game Pass. Like, that's what you need to know. It plays Game Pass. It'll play all the big third-party games,

like whatever the future Call of Duty and Madden Assassin's Creed games are. And it's $2.99. And there's no disk drive, right? There's no disk drive. It's a games are. And it's $299. And there's no disk drive, right? There's no disk drive. It's a weird thing. I know that there's going to be a big push because Sony has big exclusives like Spider-Man

and the Demon's Souls remake, which is great. But being able to buy a next-generation console at launch for $300 and to be able to play some version of the visual quality of the new Call of Duty and all the other games that most people play. And to be able to have that subscription service, I just, I think it's like such a ridiculously smart and good deal. good deal okay so with that and i agree with what you've said but it's important that people remember that if you are expecting this to be a console that you buy for 300 hours and for it to last you three to four years it maybe might not so if you, for example, if you try to run a recent Call of Duty game on the launch Xbox One,

it's bad. It's not a good experience. This is not going to be a future-proof box given that the specs of the S are lower. I think for people that are interested in playing games that are already out but making them run a lot better, totally great. I think for the next year, I think you'll'll be fine all the games are going to run great i think for three years that we're talking about this generation we're talking about seven

years yeah but even then you have to consider that like effectively the xbox series s is slightly more powerful than the x of last generation right like not dramatically slightly more powerful than the X of last generation, right? Like, not dramatically, slightly more powerful. I do not think, I think you're going to run into this wall within, you know, maybe it's two or three. I don't think it'll be longer than that, where games are just going to start kind of chugging. On the Series S. On Series S.

Or Xbox is going to design games to be super, super scalable, which is fine, but it also means that there are limitations in terms of how good a game can look, like a Halo, for example. The fact that Halo Infinite needs to run it on Xbox One and Xbox Series S and X, all of them, kind of diminishes somewhat the top end of what this game is capable of looking like versus something that is purely exclusive.

I am curious if they believe that streaming is the future anyway. That's possible. In terms of this, by the time that becomes an issue, they assume that everybody will have an Xbox Game Pass subscription via xCloud. I'm guessing that's the ticket there. Yeah, that would make sense. So this Series S just becomes a streaming box for new games and a direct install box for older games

that can still run pretty well, basically. If it was me, I'll probably, I don't know if I'll take this advice because I'm a maniac, but if it was me, I'd probably not buy either one because they are going, and I would wait for them to make it make sense to buy one. Because at this point, I don't feel like that argument has been made, and I feel like in 2021, they're going to have to start making that argument in some compelling ways that are trying to move some of these boxes because I think they are about to be absolutely demolished this holiday season. And I think they're going to be scrambling to make up ground in 2021. Counterpoint, a lot of people didn't buy Xboxes. If you didn't buy an Xbox this entire generation, I would buy one of, I would probably buy the Series S now. Yeah, the X doesn't make sense, I feel like, at all in any way, shape, or form this year.

Like, if you're desperate, like, go for Series S. And like I said, you'd probably be fine for two or three years. Like, I don't think it'll be an issue. But, like, I don't feel like they've made a compelling case for the Series X for anybody at this point. Like, right now, like, I don't. And they will have to next year. I feel like be at the, be that price cuts or pack ends or whatever.

Here's the compelling case for the series X. This is the, the use case. You have a laptop, maybe it's for work. Maybe it's a Mac book air or like a, whatever IBM think pad, whatever the fuck,

not a gaming PC for those. Can it be a Lenovo Idea 5? Love it. Okay. For those people, being able to basically pull the trigger on something that is $500, in the case of the Series X, and have something that will be able to play a lot of games for the next, let's say, five years, six years,

is a very easy solution, especially when you look at those NVIDIA cards that just got announced, and to buy a top-end gaming PC, you're looking at three grand. Why didn't I buy it? Okay, but why didn't I buy the PlayStation 5? Yeah, that's a pretty significant moving of the goalposts

from every other console generation before this. Like, when the PS4 was coming out, you could not make the argument of like, yeah, you should buy the PS4, so that eventually, when the cool games come out for the PS4, you can play them. Like the launch of a console is like such a huge, huge fucking deal.

I don't want to poo-poo all of this, but I didn't really, I guess, have we mentioned that they just announced the release date? Like an hour ago? Well, yesterday they announced the S. Yeah. And then the X was announced today, but they're both the same day. It's November 10th.

Oh, they're both dropping on the 10th? Yeah. So every new Xbox game, every new EA game, plus tons and tons of other games that you're getting for a very low comparable rate. What does that mean on the one? What is the one Xbox One X? Can it play Game Pass games? Every Xbox can play Game Pass games. Justin's saying, why bother buying the new one

if you could just use the existing one? I know. I mean, that's the same thing. Like, why buy a new graphics card? I mean, my five-year-old graphics card also works. Justin, what type of graphics card do you have? You're talking about streaming, though, right? Justin, what graphics card do you have on your computer?

Here they go, Russ. Russ, let's... What graphics card do you have on your computer? Here they go, two gamers fighting. Sorry, what? What graphics card do you have here they go russ russ let's see let's see here they go two gamers fighting sorry what what graphics card do you have in your computer what what's one of the good ones wow you don't even know the name of the geforce 960 buddy no it's a it's a uh 2080 ti okay so why would you buy an xbox series? I can't imagine the reason. Probably because you like pretty things,

and if you're going to play these games, you want them to look real pretty. But you can play them on this computer. I'm not saying this is a bad... I'm saying that this is like... I'm saying it's going to get fucking bent over by the PlayStation 5 this year. They're not giving anybody any reasons

to buy this thing today. I'm not saying that I'll never own an Xbox. I'll probably buy one of those vlogs. I'm an idiot but i'm saying like i don't feel like they're making a compelling and that's you know for whatever reason we've we've covered this with like the games kind of falling through but like i just don't see i hear you path forward i'm just saying i think you're putting too much weight on a couple of exclusives for playstation versus where i would put my weight on which is like a subscription service that lets you play hundreds of games for a few bucks on a couple of exclusives for PlayStation versus where I would put my weight on, which is like a subscription service

that lets you play hundreds of games for a few bucks and they all look pretty. But aren't they streaming? I just, that just seems, for me, better. It's not streaming, you download it. No, yeah, you download them. You download the games. So, but they look better on the new boxes.

Correct. But they look better-er on the Series X, right? Yeah. Significantly, yeah. That's the assumption. I would just wait then. I get it. You really want to play Ratchet and Clank.

Well, but to Justin's point, he has a very... When you're talking about a couple of exclusives, that number does become significantly important when the counter example is zero like yes ratchet and clank spiderman are two thousand percent better than n a like not applicable you know you know the way i i'm thinking of myself as a kid and if i only have like 15 bucks a budget for games each month i want the one that gets me more games and they're pretty versus, okay, I can have this and I get to play Ratchet and Clank.

And that's a great, but I can't play. I don't have that other option. I feel like y'all need to keep, you need to keep Ratchet and Clank's name out your mouth if you're going to be so, if you're going to, I feel like there's a lot of Ratchet and Clank hatred, a lot of persecution of Ratchet and Clank right now. The game looks great.

I can't wait to teleport to new worlds. I'm just saying. Maybe there's one where there's Xbox games out and you can like bring them back as like a goodwill gesture. You know what I mean? Hey, I found Halo. It's in a different dimension.

I'm bringing it back for you. Here's the reality. Both of these are going to be very good. Neither of them are going to be perfect this year. And if you have a good gaming PC like Justin McElroy has, do not buy

any of these consoles because you can already play all these fucking games on your existing gaming PC. Well, no, no, no. Not Ratchet and Clank and Spider-Man. Ratchet and Clank.

Okay, now I see. Now you've opened my... The scales have fallen from my eyes. Not incorrect. Got great points all around. I mean, Ratchet and Clank is basically two games.

There's Ratchet and there's Clank. And Clank. You get both. That's true. No, actually, Ratchet is in a single-player campaign. The Clank parts are a games-as-service

multiplayer loop base. It's called the Clank Initiative. And it's... We didn't really acknowledge this, but wild that this is a $300 new console. That is also actually very cool. I'm down on the Xbox brand as a whole. I love that there's going to be a $300 version of these.

I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah. Can I just say one more thing just to close this out? What the hell do we say when a game is coming out on the xbox series x s the x the xbox one like what do we call a game that supports all those platforms an xbox game yeah that's what microsoft wants us to call it but the fact of the matter is there's going to come a time when games will not run on the xbox here's a question for you what do you call a game on your iPhone? Yeah. Casual.

You just put him in the fucking potty, Chris. Damn. Oh, man. I am just feeling it, y'all. I have some questions from the mailbag. Can I open it up? Because I'm worried if I keep talking, I'm just going to get pretty mean. Don't come at me, by the way, when I talk about buying one of these boxes this fall.

I don't want to hear it. I've said it three times. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Buying one of these boxes this fall, I don't want to hear it. I've said it three times. Wait, wait, wait. Buying one of these boxes. As if you're not going to buy four. You're going to get both versions of that Sony. You're going to get both versions of that Xbox. You're going to line them all up and you're going to cuddle them.

You know what? To be honest, I don't think I will get an Xbox this year. I really don't. I just don't see the point. What would I do with it? I'm 39 years old and I learned a long ago that I can't fill the point. I cannot wait. What would I do with it? I've learned a lot. I'm 39 years old. I learned a long ago that I can't fill the hole in my heart with electronics. I need to fill the hole in my heart with like interacting with other people and being in public spaces. And I can't do that.

There's just a bottomless gap down there that the Xbox is not going to fill. Spider-Man, an exclusive to PlayStation 5, might. I don't know. It's a possibility. It will fill the gap in my life created by the quarantine and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This question is from Thurs on Twitter.

Which Avengers video game power would you most tolerate being forced to use in your daily life? The only answer to this is Kamala Khan because everybody else is just like, nobody wants Hulks. Black Widow and Tony don't really have powers. Thor's would be okay, but there's so much baggage that goes alongside that.

Yeah, you have God duties. Yeah, but being able to do a stretchy with my hands? Hello? And not just stretchy, but big hand or big foot. Big hand. One of the few sour notes the story hits is when Kamala's like, they're talking about a cure. Do you think there's a way I can be cured and be normal?

Fuck off. You don't want to be normal? Look how big your hand is. You can do anything. You don't want to be cured. Stop it. I agree. Next question.

From Katie. Besties, I must know, which Avenger is most likely to be a gamer? I mean, Kamala is definitely a gamer. I was going to say Kamala. We all had three different answers because I was thinking Iron Man. Well, I mean, Thor, you'd see it in the Avengers movie. That is true.

But only because he's very depressed. And he thought it was called Thor-knight. We all are. That's true. That's why we play video games, guys. This is from Stella. Which Avenger do you think each of you would be most likely to beat in an IRL fight? Immediately.

If I could sneak up on Bruce, I could get it. If I snuck up on him and really bonked him fucking hard and knocked him out, and they don't talk about that in the Hulk movies. Like, we gotta kill the Hulk. We gotta stop the Hulk. All you gotta do is wait for Bruce to be asleep, and then you just, donk, right over the head with a bowling pin or something.

That's it. I think I could seduce Tony Stark into a vulnerable position. Just, like, act dazzled by his brilliance, put on something tight. Like, I think I could do that. Talk about his father, make him feel bad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would go after two-gun kid with three guns. It's just the law

of numbers. You know, two-gun kid. He's a kid with two guns. And I figure me being a grown-up with three guns just seems kind of obvious. Bring three guns to a two-gun fight. Yeah, that's what they say. Do you have one fresh? No.

Okay. That's accurate, actually. That shows a real maturity on your part. For us, you don't think you could beat any Avenger in a fight, even in a hypothetical situation. You could smash a computer that had Jarvis in it to the ground. Oh. Is Jarvis a hero?

Of course Jarvis is a hero. He becomes Vision. Okay, that's different. Final question from Max. Please go around the Hornet and discuss which Avenger you each are. Probably Two-Gun Kid, right? Yeah, I mean, Chris has big Two-Gun Kid energy.

If I'm being honest, I feel like Hawkeye, where it's like, but I think that that's my own sort of self inadequacies. Are you saying that because Two-Gun Kid and Hawkeye are best friends and they go on time traveling adventures together? Okay, so I guess I didn't know that Two-Gun Kid was a real person. Me neither. He keeps referencing it. He's very proud, you know.

Yeah, he's really proud of this 1948 Marvel Comics character that he actually two versions of Two-Gun Kid. The one that was friends with Hawkeye is the second version. Clay Harder is the original Two-Gun Kid. I think I'd probably paste Pop Pete. Who is that?

He's actually a villain. He's got a gun that shoots glue. Sometimes he calls himself the Trapster. That's cool. It is cool. I think Fresh would be Ghost Rider. What?

Yeah. Some serious... Like Nick Cage, when it's just Nick Cage wearing the makeup, not CG'd. That is your energy., when it's just Nick Cage wearing the makeup, not CG'd, that is your energy. Yeah, it's funny. I was going to say, and I know this is not Marvel, but Mr. Mixleplex, I think,

is probably the closest that I could get. You mean Mr. Mixapitlick? Yeah, that one. Mr. Mixapitlick. There we go. I can't say my name, because if I say it, I revert to the negative zone. Now, if he was trying to trick three white guys into saying his name,

saying it incorrectly would actually be the 100% right way to go. Excuse me, I believe. Were you trying to say mixture Spitalik? I believe it's pronounced Beetlejuice, actually. Yes, I said Beetlejuice. Yes, Beetlejuice. Done. Dead. Everybody's Beetlejuice. Yes, Beetlejuice. Done. Dead.

Everybody's dead. What else are we all playing this week? I played the Control Alan Wake DLC. It's called AWE. I adore Alan Wake. As a franchise, it has been dormant for, I don't know, a decade or something. And I really, really like Remedy games, but this was not a... It didn't make me happy, to be perfectly honest. It just treated...

You just described the worst possible Venn diagram for that not to make you happy. Yeah, it was bad. It's bad. I mean, it just doesn't... Although it presents itself as, like, Alan Wake-centric, there's, I would say, very little there. The only like glimmer of hope was that it ends with like some sort of quasi tease that they might be making a new Alan Wake game, which they might not be.

They might just be fucking with us. To be fair, the first Alan Wake game ended with like, Alan Wake games do tend to end with a tease that they'll make more Alan Wake. Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I think in both cases of the controlled DLC, neither of them lived up to the really, really goodness of the actual game, which is a drag, but that's okay. I've played through and finished Divinity Original Sin 2 on the Switch, which is a game I've tried to pick up a lot,

but usually peter out just around finishing the first act or so, which is about a quarter of the game. And I'm glad I did because that game really unfolds into something pretty spectacular. I had a CRPG hankering after last week talking about Wasteland. And I don't know, as a longtime player of RPGs who loves that idea of here is a problem and there's a billion different ways to solve it.

Are you going to sneak in? Are billion different ways to solve it are you going to sneak in are you going to use charisma are you going to etc etc divinity original sin 2 adds some options that uh i've never seen in any other kind of game before like there are now you have the ability to see ghosts everywhere and you can talk to ghosts to find out the password to the thing and then you can eat that ghost to get their powers and then like whoa it's like it is absolutely wild what that game lets you do it also has a tone unlike anything i've then like, it's like, it is absolutely wild what that game lets you do. It also has a tone unlike anything I've ever seen

where it's like, this is a world where you can actually become God and everyone wants to do it. And that is like the defining characteristic of every single character you meet in the game.

So it's a game about like, ambition. And it's fantastic. It is probably the best CRPG I've ever played and I'm glad I powered through it. And they were making Baldur's Gate 3, which comes out in like this month, actually,

the early access version. So very exciting. I played some Krumitz Tale, K-R-U-M-I-T-S Tale, Meteorfall. If you play the other Meteorfall game, this is the second one of those. It is on iOS, though it is also on Steam if you want to do that. But it's very good for iOS.

It is a card-based dungeon crawler. Wait, hold the phone, Justin. Shut up. I don't want to hear it. Wait, you're saying, what is this game that you enjoy? Is it a card-based dungeon? It's different. It's neat, though, because they deal the cards out in a 9x9 grid,

and some of the cards are enemies and some of the cards are items that you pick up. And you kind of have to be selective about the order in which you get items, and so there's a little bit of a puzzle element, too. The art style is very, very cool. It looks kind of, I don't know, a little bit a kind of a little bit adventure time a little bit gothic more gothic than that um but it's it's very neat uh it looks cool indie developers out there if you are able to make a card-based dungeon crawler that also has fmv justin is that justin's way game of the year in for it uh i'm playing a game that i want y'all to play, Crusader Kings 3. Oh, yeah.

It rules. And I'm embarrassed that it took me this long to finally get into this series. I understand why I waited, because holy moly, just the tutorial is quite intimidating. But it is... Good sales pitch so far. I don't even know how to describe what the game is.

I would say it's a cross between like Civ meets Reigns. I think that's what you said, Freshick, right? Yeah. It's taking the idea of a civilization game and adding in just gobs and gobs of narrative choices. And it's much more about the alliances that you make, the marriages that you arrange, the way that you make, the marriages that you arrange, the way that you manipulate people

with power, then it is just like raw might of taking over lands. And it just leads to some of the most bizarre things that spread across thousands of years. So you have storylines about your children turning on you or your kingdom being effectively like devastated except for like a six-year-old who is left in power. It's so goofy and so well-written. It has a really good sense of humor. So yeah, I don't want to talk too much about it because I do want y'all to play it. I know it will be a huge piece of our end of year conversation. want y'all to play it i know it will be a huge piece of our end of year conversation i'm sure it will um the uh i did want to say quickly uh i downloaded uh kingdoms of amalur uh reckoning remaster which is called kingdoms of amalur re-reckoning and it looks really bad i can't

believe how bad it looks it's not a remaster it looks terrible i i played it for 30 seconds and i wanted to barf. I'll try to probably try to play more so I can give it a fair shake, but holy crap, it is not a remaster. Do not expect something that looks modern. Y'all, next week we're talking about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1

plus 2. And it... We should split it up over two weeks, right? If we're gonna... It's two weeks right if we're gonna stupid games and I like this game a lot I'm excited to talk about it you guys might want to talk about the Mario stuff that's coming out next week

too a little bit is that next week I think it's in two weeks okay two weeks video games there's so many video games y'all so exciting and then we capture that and we can say it now we'll be talking to Spelunky 2 so put it in your Okay, two weeks. Video games. There's a lot. There's so many video games, y'all. So exciting. And the week after that, and we can say it now, we'll be talking Spelunky 2. So put it in your calendars.

No joke, I have spent 55 hours playing Spelunky 2. No, you haven't. So stoked. Because nobody's spent any time playing Spelunky 2. No, no, no. It's under embargo. I can't talk about whether it's good or not, but I've played a lot.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. It should under embargo. I can't talk about whether it's good or not, but I've played a lot. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. It should be fun. And be sure to listen to our show and follow and listen for free on Spotify. Please tell some people about the show this week. If you can, you can point them to besties.fan. Let them know that, yes, it is a Spotify exclusive, but you don't have to have Spotify Premium

to listen to the show. You just go on through and you listen to it and you enjoy it. We really would appreciate that. We're at The Besties Pod on Twitter. You can also find a link there to our mailing list so you can hear from us on a regular basis about Video James. And

I think that's it, right? That's going to do it for us. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening and be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Fox Media.

The show is edited by Jelani Carter and produced by Ben Hosley. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!