The Besties - Can Zelda: Skyward Sword be Saved?

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

This week on The Besties, we're jumping into the HD remake of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Yes, it's a game that didn't make it very far in our Best Zelda bracket, but maybe some upgrades (and no mandatory motion controls) will pull it up by its own boostraps? There's also the Switch Pr- errr Steam Deck to discuss!Games discussed on this episode: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Clap Hanz Golf, Beat Saber Custom, Township Tale, Progress to 100, and the films of Brian de Palma, specifically Blow Out and Body Double.Next week: Death's Door 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!

I gotta know, it's been so long, I gotta know, like, the most Russ things that I missed so far. Like, I feel like I'm, like, several episodes behind on the Russ and the Restless. Did you, like, try to, did you accidentally choke to death on, like, an egg sandwich? Or, like, give us some of the classics. Did you buy too much shredded wheat? Um, so, a few- Did you get a big four-scoop ice cream and lick it and it all fill in? A few weeks ago I did as I was like setting the table.

A dinner fork fell off the plate and like landed tines down on my foot. Oh, shoot. Is it your horrid foot that you've been sending me pictures of against my will? Yeah, same foot. Wow, that's a... Foot's really been through it. I'm not getting any Russ foot pics. Russ sent me...

This is a brutal one. Russ, this is like a few days after his son... A couple weeks after his son was born, Russ told me like um oh man he's growing up so big i can't believe i can't believe how much he's changed just in a few weeks and i was like i'll send me a pic and fucking send me a pic of his toe and how it has evolved and gotten worse in the weeks since the last time he sent me a picture of his toe which i did walk right into it yeah right in sure lovely um i do want to mention though i am a little bit um i wouldn't say disappointed but i do want to say like this is my first time getting a um baby at

launch and i mean the first impression for me has been like very good and i've enjoyed it but it is kind of shocking that like i think in this day and age to have a baby that's like at launch doesn't have like crawling for example seems yeah it's bs like i mean no solid foods at launch like how do you consider yourself competitive in the marketplace at this point baby and they and a lot of the challenges of those first three months of the baby are attributed to they're not done yet and that's why they call it the fourth baby are attributed to they're not done yet. And that's why they call it the fourth trimester because their stomach's not done being built up. And it's like, well, then keep them in there.

Yeah, the fourth trimester is a layperson term. It's actually called the Bethesda trimester. Right. Yeah. And the problem is one of the big ones is the exploits that you can do with kids this age. I heard that if you whisper the right words into Russ's son's ear, you see Keanu Reeves naked. And it's like, could we not?

I do want to mention, though, the one upside is he is free to play, which has been great. There really is no upfront cost at all. And I'm sure that'll just be consistent throughout. It's a pretty low lift in terms of expenses also people think it's controversial not to include you know the name and the credits with um your children but i do actually support russ tattooing his name onto the forehead of his child yeah yeah um yeah i mean how is how is Justin Jr. doing, by the way? We went with ES, actually. Sorry, what?

ES. Yes. Egg sandwich! My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best motion control Zelda game from 2011. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know a Zelda game that is on the Nintendo Switch. My name is Russ Rushing, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome back. Is the baby sleeping?

Is the baby asleep right now, Russ? Is that why we got a reduced volume? He is pretty milked up at the moment, so he's not doing all right, all right, all right. Oh, boy. It's a new era, isn't it? The era of four dads. Four dad era.

So this is the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home, interactive, inter-game. Oh, yeah, folks. We still have time to game don't get it twisted these dads still love to game and uh this week we were talking about this is a it's a book club by the way it goes uh it's a video game we by the way you were going we went back to it's a book club for video games of video game club is that it's a book club yeah that's right Video Game Club. It's a book club for video games, colon, a video game club? Yeah, that's right. That's right.

That's right. This is a video game club. And just personally listening, you are a member. We're going to talk about this is a show that is not just about video games, though. It's about fashion. It's about interactive design, engineering, right? Genetics, bioluminescence. But today we're going to be zooming in on video games, folks.

They have come a long way since Pac-Man. Have you seen these things? I love them. I was playing one of these the other day, and the characters were moving around all weird. And it turned out that they were actual other people, that I guess I had downloaded them from a website or something. But they shot me to death. Oh, no. Have you guys seen this Y-Tennis?

My nephew came to me and said, Y-Tennis? And handed me this thing. I said, I don't know Y-Tennis because it's great for you and a lot of fun. But we played this thing and the rackets are invisible on this one. And you're just swinging around the Y and knocking it back and forth.

He's even got one with this little, it's a sword. And this young lady runs around in her green hood and boots, and she runs around. Her name is Zelda. I haven't seen, well, she's in it apparently at some point uh i did not see this this is just this little this little green clad figure but you're you will you when you wiggle around it's a sword sword goes like the tennis racket does yeah yeah yeah for sure what are we talking about this week we're talking about skyward sword and really just trying to not talk about it, aren't we?

Let us... Can I do the explainer? Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I love that. The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword was a 2011 Wii motion-controlled entry in the Zelda franchise. It utilized the Wii Motion Plus peripheral, which was a box that you plugged into the bottom

of the Wii Remote to make it perform better. Eventually- I actually like the Wii Remote Plus, by the way. I think it made it a more attractive form factor. Yes. And more pleasant to hold. I like the Wii Motion Plus. Eventually they would incorporate that technology

into the core Wii Remote so that you wouldn't need this, like what was essentially a counterweight for your hilt of your master sword, essentially. But the entire game was designed around motion controls. The sword, you swung the Wii remote and your sword would swing either horizontally, vertically, diagonally. You could stab, you could aim your bow and arrow

or your slingshot with the Wii Motion Plus. Virtually all of the game's sort of special tools and mechanics were built around these motion controls to varying degrees of success. That facet of it is sort of the make or break, whether or not you're going to enjoy it. I really liked it. I did not think the motion controls were as bad as a lot of other people made them out to be. Particularly things like aiming the bow and arrow

and firing off an arrow. Like that felt really, really good for, you know, the time, 2011. Like that was sort of new and exciting. In Skyward Sword HD, if you want to, you can pop off those joy-cons and play it with a fairly accurate recreation of those motion controls. Weirdly, I think not as good. Or you can play now with a controller. And when you play with a controller, most of those motion controls are aped by the

movement of the right stick so if you're playing without motion controls you swing the right stick uh you flick the right stick right to swing your sword to the right uh and and vice versa and you can probably fill out the rest from there um but it is important if you've never played this game to understand virtually every fight that you get into, you have to use the Master Sword in the correct way. Like, they will block, every enemy has, like, a block they will do to a certain direction, and you have to swing against that direction to break their guard and do damage to them. Griffo, let me stop you there. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll come right back to talk more about Skyward Sword HD.

Griffin, you were discussing the combat. Would you say that the one-to-one swordplay not only works, it turns every fight into a dynamic puzzle requiring pattern recognition and swift, decisive movement? Would you say that fights against fellow swordsmen feel like proper duels, more so than any motion-based game ever has before? Oh, my gosh. Would you say that fights against fellow swordsmen feel like proper duels more so than any motion-based game ever has before. Oh, my gosh.

Would you say that? Are you reading my joystick review? Your 2011 joystick review of Skyward Sword? Yes. Am I holding you accountable for everything you say here to make sure it jives? Yes, I am. Every word. So far, you're doing good.

Thank you. Yeah. you're doing good thank you yeah um the the i would say the combat is it is okay it's undeniably pretty neat to battle in this way every other zelda game even uh breath of the wild there is not a whole lot of strategy to it aside from you know you press the button that does the sword attack and sometimes you do a jumping sword attack and you can block and whatever. In Skyward Sword, you have, I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do while you're fighting.

There's a really great like shield bash counter maneuver that in some of the like tougher fights, you have to execute. I would say that the combat is like where this game really, really shines. But it is, to like summarize my thoughts on it it is a a bending of the zelda like formula to the point where it kind of breaks and therefore like sort of skyward sword hd walks and trips down a flight of stairs so that breath of the wild could run

is how i feel about it because there's so many mechanics there's so much stuff here that was new and fresh and like had never been in a zelda game before and i don't know 10 years later i am not i am not sure it is as successful as uh i first thought yeah okay so here's here's the deal we we talked about scarboard sword somewhat recently when we were ranking all the zelda games and if people will recall i shat on it pretty intensely um yeah it i really didn't love it when it came out the things that i mentioned were like the beginning is super slow that's still true um and i didn't like the motion controls i know griffin felt strongly he liked them but they never did it for me they always felt kind of clumsy

and uh annoying and um so in addition to the fact that you can use button controls for this for swinging and stuff like that the other major feature and this seems ridiculous is you can now skip through dialogue and skip every cut scene and you know what it kind of changed the entire game for me because i was able to sprint through that really obnoxious long-winded you're in skyloft talking to everyone and everyone's talking slowly and fee shows up and talks to you slowly and all that stuff can be kind of breezed through because spoiler alert the story in zelda games is usually kind of not great for the most part um and you're able to get to the stuff that i think really really works in this which is i think the dungeon designs are fantastic i think the um the tools you're given are like really unique for a Zelda game. You know, the remote control beetle, the you get this like bellowing wind, this thing that shoots wind out.

Even the bombs. This if I recall, this was really the first game where the bombs had like actual physics to them where you can like. Yeah, you can kind of bowl them or toss them, but they roll. You can kind of bowl them or toss them, but they roll. And there's a lot of like, throw this bomb onto this ramp in a specific way where it will roll down and blow up the crowd. Yeah, it's got good bombs, this one. Yeah, and that's all Breath of the Wild stuff is like creative use of the environment using physics is like very new for a Zelda game. Whereas previous Zelda games, all the physics was like canned physics. a zelda game whereas previous zelda games all the physics was like canned physics so i really do think look it's not my favorite zelda game ever but i do think the changes they've made here have

made it a zelda game that i'm actually eager to go and play whereas before i was just like nah i'm literally never gonna play this game again and that's a pretty remarkable turnaround i can't think of another game that's ever done that. Yeah. Get in there, Juice. Go for it, Juice. I know you feel strongly. Dowsing sucks. I'll give you that.

Dowsing really sucks. The whole thing, it's okay. This is such a weird thing. It's just the whole thing is weird because what you've done is you've taken out the absolute center of what this thing is. And you do miss it because it's what the entire thing was designed around, was this motion control. I mean, and there are like weird kludgy solutions for everything, right? But none of it feels right because it wasn't... The fun of this thing was designed around

what if we could make sword fighting in a Zelda game fun with these Wii motion controls. That was the core of the thing. And so it doesn't feel good. All of it feels weird and bad. And there's weird stuff like to free look, you hold in the left shoulder button, which is just the default for every game so i've got

like my fucking arthritis is flaring up because i'm like just want to be able to free look like i can in every modern video game on the planet it is worth noting like free look constantly it is important to note the original scarlet sword had literally no free look it wasn't even an option in the game so you had to constantly drop into first person to like look around these rooms. So even though it is annoying to hold down a button, I kind of get it because you have to use that right stick

for the sword controls. I'd much rather it be in there than not. And it actually does make exploring these environments much more pleasurable to actually be able to look around. But there's no reason that it couldn't, because what they've done is, right, so the right stick that you would use to look around

is now mapped to the sword, right? So you can't do that. But then at that point, I would be the person standing up in the meeting like, then we shouldn't make this. We shouldn't do it. Let's port Mother three into english let's do anything else we shouldn't do this because it's it feels bad like and uh what else feels like oh it's so boring uh walking through the forest is so stupid

and boring it's like a maze for no reason and it's not a magical maze it's just a forest that has like lots of different levels and stuff to like get lost on and get hung up on they're like really if you do a real okay here here okay okay okay oh my there are so many segments in this game where you do like you climb a thing and you swing on a vine and then you jump over another thing and then you climb across some vines and when you get to the top there's a big log right and the the you push the log down and then it's like you could for now on you can just jump up on the log just and then that is the that is the and i know that that is not a completely unheard of video game mechanic,

right? But it is this tacit admission in this game specifically of like, well, we know how not enjoyable that was. And you for sure never going to want to do it again as long as you live. So here's a long that you can jump on for now. Cause that's, can I ask you an honest question?

How, how, how much, how far did you get in playing this? Cause I got, yeah, go ahead yeah i got in that first dungeon you know what i mean the what's the boring one oh uh i don't know

it's really boring and you're just running around doing nothing oh there's so many crystals you have to shoot with a slingshot uh thank you for bringing me into your fantasy world by the way thanks for all the great fantasy gear what's this a slingshot oh man that's so fun except even that is robbed of the joy that it had when you played on the wii because then you could like you know you're pretending to point a slingshot like that makes sense right i mean there's a first thing you would get that doesn't have no no but i'm saying in this one it would be fun you know if i had like a motion controller and i was like doing the thing that you do with the wii mo like

it's built to be fun doing it well playing it that way i would counter that okay so one of the first items you get is and i mentioned this earlier the remote control beetle and i remember playing this game on wii and even though i liked the idea of the beetle the idea that every time I shot the beetle I had to like motion control my way through its flight path fucking sucked I always hated it and the fact that I have it now and I just use a analog stick to control it it feels great to me I'd rather those um smoother control processes than having to like constantly like oh i'm in i'm doing a first person like um uh with the slingshot as well like i it just it's like cute for one one time and then gets old to me so i'd rather just play it like a straight zelda game which

this feels except for the sword fighting feels like a straight zelda game to me i that i'll give you a good this is is, I'm going to let it go, because I'm sure, obviously, just looking at the reviews, a lot of people enjoy this more than I did. They're these skulltulas, right? They're like giant skull spiders that hang down from the ceiling, and what you do is, if you attack them from the front, it doesn't hurt them, but they got this big glowy gem

on their back or whatever, and their tummy, and if you hit them there the front, it doesn't hurt them, but they got this big glowy gem on their back or whatever, and their tummy. And if you hit them there, then they die. And you don't really, when you come across one, it's kind of like, if you hit it, it swings away and then swings back into you and hurts you. What you can eventually figure out is if you hit it with like a sideways slash, you can start it spinning, right? And then eventually the gem ends up in front of you,

like facing you, the tummy gym. And I struggled with this over and over and over again because it's like I would swing again. Once the tummy gym was facing me, I would swing and it would just start swinging the skulltula around again because I wasn't hitting the tummy. And what I finally like literally, and I'm sure it told me this one time in one of the dialogue things I skipped. But if you press the right thumb stick in, it will stab. Like. What? If I had had a motion controller five minutes ago, I would have just tried to stab it.

Right? Because it would be intuitive and fun the way it was designed to be. This just feels like such a retro fit. It seems to me like you should have just played it with motion controls, to be honest. Wait, what do you mean? In what sense? You can play this with motion controls as well.

With the Joy-Con. I have a Switch Lite. I actually can't do that. Okay, fair. Take that, smart aleck. Chris, what are your thoughts? I have no major thoughts. I played a little bit of this this and it kind of depressed me

and i i didn't want to just dunk on a zola game that i know a lot of people love and i knew that justin was going to bring some heat and i knew that fresh was going to bring some love i'll i'll say um about the motion controls is that motion control did you have fun like can i just ask just hot take like i don't know how much of you played. I don't really care, but like, was it fun? No, but I didn't like it on Switch at all. So like, it just isn't for me. On Wii, yeah, Russ, a lot of it, actually, it seems like right now.

Yeah. Anyway, all I wanted to say was the motion controls on Switch are, they're a mystery to me and a bummer because they don't have the precision of like playing on the Wii. Understandably, they don't have the same setup. So it, motion controls work and they worked for the Wii when they work like a hundred percent of the time. They didn't work on Kinect because they didn't work like, I don't know. 60% of the time. No, no, no, no.

Like being like super serious i i really think they like even if they didn't work one percent of the time that means one out of a hundred times you try to use a button it doesn't work and if you think about how often you're tapping buttons that's a lot like that's a whole lot so i i think that that is the issue that i've had with motion controls on switch in general is, honestly, the fail rate is quite small. But when you're doing so many repetitive motions, you're going to hit that fail number time after time after time. And it's just, yeah, it just doesn't work as well as I'd hope. But that said, like I said, I'm glad that this game has a version that people can actually enjoy like that seems pretty great and it's been cool seeing uh a lot of people kind of give it a second shot like this

does feel like a game worthy of a second shot unlike say that the choo-choo train zelda game um you know like i think it's called zelda's magic choo-choo yeah it was the name yeah yeah yeah it's it's weird having a zelda game that i remember not a stitch of like i don't remember anything about this game which is wild because i did review it 10 years ago uh it's for me i i we've only been talking about the controls uh which is doing the game something of a disservice there is there are some great parts of this game there are some genuinely redeeming parts of this game for me the issue is not the controls because i've i've been playing it i just cleared the third temple or so like i feel pretty accustomed to them uh it is the amount of filler that is

present in the game and justin touched on some of this because you you hit it instantly as soon as you get to that the the setup for the first temple like you have to douse where you switch into first person mode and you aim your sword around and uh look for i think three koroks that are hiding all around the this this forest and you do that and it's like well that wasn't exactly fun but um now i'm ready to go into this temple okay and then you get to the second area and it's like okay now you need to find five pieces of the key by dousing yeah and then you can go in the temple it's like okay this isn't fun but the i am excited to get to that next temple and then you get to the third area and it's like okay now you need to douse to find these three generator and it's like holy shit like i i and i if memory serves it doesn't get much better like you go back to the

same four areas to and and things change in those areas because of like world events and new tools that you get um but the the i don't know the stuff between the temples has been a real drag. And I hit a wall where I just kind of put the game down for a couple of days before the third temple because I was just so tired of dousing for shit. And to me, that is the issue is that it is, I don't know, there's so much filler and it genuinely doesn't need it because this game's huge. It's like a 50 hour long Zelda game, which is too long for a Zelda game that isn't Breath of the Wild.

There's also, can I say also, you fly a bird in this and it sucks so bad. Like flying the bird. It's very slow. It's so slow. It doesn't. It's so slow and rotten. And if you go up, if you want to go,

there's things above you sometimes. If you want to go up to them, you can't go up to them too fast or you'll just stop because bird air flight physics, you know how when you're riding a giant bird in real life, when you're flying up too fast and having too much fun,

it stops completely. That's definitely represented here um the only good thing about it is that you can jump off the uh you to ride your bird you jump off your floating home and that's kind of fun uh when you are flying through the air and you you call for your bird uh and you can uh to you jump onto the back of your bird. That's kind of, I would say that's kind of fun. I'm going to put a pin in this by saying it's important that people remember, even though I actually think this game, and you guys haven't really gotten there, but this game has some of the better dungeons that Zelda has ever done.

Dungeon 3, for example, is like this very cool time warping, like jumps in the future, jumps in the past stuff. This is also the one with a pirate ship dungeon that, if memory serves, that beats ass. Yeah, the dungeons, I think, are actually exceptionally good for a Zelda game, but that said... Not the best boss fights. Some shitty boss fights here and there.

That said... The boss fight's the third dungeon is not it is still the third best zelda uh game on switch so you've got obviously breath of the wild you've got the remake of uh link's awakening which is also really good and then you've got this so the fact of the matter is if you're not you can play link to the past on snes yeah you can play link so fine for the fourth fourth best and then the original zel You can play Link to the Lost So fine, fourth. The fourth. Fourth best. And then the original Zelda if you want to include that. So fifth.

Fifth best. This is better than the original Zelda. Probably, yeah. So, but, so, look,

it is not by any means my favorite Zelda game, but I do think even though I completely agree it has a slow start and some filler in it,

the parts that are good are very good and worth experiencing if you are a Zelda fan. And this is coming from someone who genuinely hated playing the first one. So really keep that in mind that it is quite a turnaround. So I don't know. Consider it. I think you could say that as the flagship component of Zelda franchise's 25th anniversary,

you couldn't ask for a better identikit of the series. As it moves through the all too familiar cycle of temples, tools, and time travel. Justin, could you say that somewhere within Skyward Sword slumbers the best Zelda game of all time? It is choked by a dozen hours of Needless Croft, but

it's there. It's right! I'm fucking right! I was right then, and I'm right now! Griffin, a question for you. Which band did you reference with your deck on this review? Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, my God.

It's 2011. Where is a young Griffin's mind 10 years ago? Think of it. Put yourself in 2011. You're reviewing Skyward Sword. What is your deck? You might be listening to a certain soundtrack. It's three words.

Oh, God. A certain soundtrack? Let me just say this song is going to change your life. Oh, no. Was it fucking Such Great Heights? Indeed. Indeed it was. Indeed it was.

Oh, man. Fuck, that's good. All right. Hey, we're going to take another break and be right back to talk about the Steam Deck and how it will change the entire planet. But first, commercialism. Well, this was a surprise, huh? This one kind of came out of it it both it both came out of nowhere but then also sort of like i feel like vibes of this thing have been sort of like bouncing around what are you talking about the steam the steam new incredible private computer

that you carry around in your pocket if you have JNCOs. It's Gabe's private computer. We know the problem with computers is sometimes the screen's too big and if you're looking at yucky stuff on there, people see it. So we've made the Steam Deck, a private computer that fits in your hand. Yeah, this one,

you can leave your passwords right in it because it is a private computer. This isn't like your library computer, folks. This is the one you can leave your passwords right in it because it is a private computer. This isn't like your library computer, folks. This is the one you can put your passwords right into. Russ, set this up. Okay, so this has been rumored for a while. I remember there was a Gabe gave a speech where he's talking about like how they wanted to produce

a handheld gaming PC effectively. And, you know, knowing Valve, he says a lot of things. So there's really no telling what they're going to actually do versus not but they actually went ahead and did this um it is a as people mentioned a handheld gaming pc uh fully integrated with steam so the idea is that you can run any games that you already own on steam on this handheld gaming pc assuming that they're not extremely, extremely 3D-intensive, amazing games. Because hardware-wise, it's not like having a 380 graphics card in there.

Just a caveat, it is running Linux. Right, I was going to say that. It's sort of standard. So there's some games that have been confirmed that they have. To add to the a caveat it's running a version of linux that apparently will translate windows some of them yeah is what they're talking about which i mean i yeah i've talked to some people some developers about like how feasible that is and it sounds like it is doable but i don't i wouldn't expect like newer PC games to really be able to come out on Steam Deck as

well because you know it's not a perfect translation of getting Linux games to work on whatever but I would say um where it's really cool is for at least for me well I where I look at it as like a really cool device is just as an indie platform i mean you know this whole these last three four years that the switch has been around whenever there's an opportunity to get a game on an indie game and it's multi-platform i usually opt for switch just because the portability of it right this might change that um decision for me because i'll have you know a higher end device a switch pro if you will that will handle all that stuff while also having like all my library of games this thing can also be like booted up with any os you want because there's an sd card you could just flash an sd card with any os

and so that'll open up the gates for stuff like emulators stuff like you'll be able to do remote play from PS5 and whatever. So it kind of becomes an all-in-one. Obviously, the only thing you'd be missing then is the first-party Nintendo games that you get on a Switch. But other than that, I think it really is a very interesting product for people that play predominantly handheld,

which I certainly do. Great price point, too, for what it is. Yeah, remind people that, what handheld which i certainly do great price point too for what for what it is yeah remind people that what is it 400 so they came out with three tiers the lowest tier has 64 gigs of internal emmc internal storage uh and that's 400 bucks uh but then the next two versions have the nvme ssds which are a lot faster so if loading times are like a thing for you uh one is 256 gigs that's 529 bucks and then one is 512 gigs which is 649 bucks um which like you know that's that's pricey when compared to a switch yeah but when compared to a a gaming pc like these are these are quite affordable and specs wise like

these are about on par with with like xbox one like yeah that's a they're about good way to think of it the interesting thing is that there have been handheld gaming pcs before like there are a number of them you can find on amazon by a number of different makers but they're all like very scattered and kind of you know they've all got giant keyboards on them and there's not really been a unifying device that will like be like oh this is the go-to handheld pc and i do think assuming they can manufacture enough of these this has the potential to be that like this is becomes like the standard for handheld gaming pcs and uh i i think that'll be really uh the one thing that that kind of surprised like that that jumped out at me a little bit is uh this thing's fucking heavy yeah it's real to a point

where it's going to be like i don't know about like long-term portable game mix. How heavy is it? Oh, it's a pound and a half. For comparison, I saw a video that compared it to like a little heavier than a Nintendo Switch with a PSP taped onto it. Yeah, it's heavier. It is one and a half Wii U's. Like remember the Wii U game pad with the screen in it. If you want the, it's like 50% heavier than that. It's a pound and a half.

Like it is. I'm diesel though. Like I'm ripped. No, I know you're ripped, but I feel like some, some, this is just like begging and this is my age coming through,

but like it begging for a carpool tunnel. It is 50% heavier than the heaviest portable ever made. Like nothing else ever made even comes like, can guys think of any and i can like i don't have like a list of all the weights i just looked at everything in like the the nintendo uh family can you think of like any portable that might gear with all its batteries probably pretty damn heavy yeah there's some heavy ass batteries virtual boy the way i played it um okay shout out russ shout out game gear with all its batteries two pounds yeah buddy wow you are right about that i just that hit console that everybody loved and bought the game gear now plug a tv tuner into that i was eight years old when i

played that game i played echo on that thing i if on my eight-year-old little bird arms could handle it i'm sure i could handle this this there's also going to be like a dock that comes with it that you can run into a tv like it's it is it is so funny to me that this really did come out around the same time that the switch pro was not announced uh this is what they were thinking yeah it really is it is also the fact that the steam deck was announced on the same day that elgato announced their stream deck is proof of a benevolent god that loves us all and wants us all to be so happy uh that he just gives us little treasures like that what do you think that was like at elgato where they when they were like yeah shit what did they do they announced our stream deck no it's a different thing um the the thing that i i am very excited

about this piece of hardware i i i think that it is uh i i think it's extremely cool my concern with it is i i worry that this and i i mean this is not enough to keep me from pre-ordering one. I did pre-order one, but in terms of like long-term viability, I worry about this walking the line between like being a PC and all the like flexibility that that offers, but also being a console and the sort of like promise of stability and reliability that that entails. I worry that they hove too far because I don't want to have to be fooling with a lot of the junk that you don't have to mess with on a typical console in terms of like, you know, updates and patching and the ability to like, know different mods and stuff like that like i i want it to be fairly um you know uh i don't want to you know a closed garden but i want it closed enough where i don't have yeah i get that i i think my for people that are looking for that

like kind of quote safe garden i think people will just use the steam functionality anything on steam more or less is going to work fine and you'll know uh certainly because the hardware is standardized there will be reviews that be like oh this runs really great on a steam deck for example for people that want something more uh versatile you have that option to like go online and find a like weird uh os that you can flash onto the device to turn it into whatever the hell you want and that's that weird os windows i mean yeah i mean i guess you could throw windows on it sure yeah i mean i i what i'm excited about is the competition right like i don't even know if they expect this to be a thing that lasts for the next five to ten years that they're just in the hardware

business i think for them they just want more people making portable video game machines like this that allows you to access the Steam store, right? Yeah, that's their big investment. So I have to imagine that we'll see companies like Razer getting into this market that have a lot more experience

making this sort of hardware. I think, I hope, that this finally forces the hand getting into this market that have a lot more experience making this sort of hardware um i think like i hope that this finally forces the hand on uh microsoft to like think about what does a portable gaming focused you know handheld look like you know they they want game pass to be anywhere and everywhere but like that doesn't that doesn't work super well when the best ways to play games portably are Switch and the Steam Deck and neither allow you to access Game Pass. I would really like to see a version of this, and I don't know if we'll ever get it, but a version of this that is built specifically with uh playstation remote play in mind i mean there there's like solutions for that but nothing that feels like a hundred percent like even the um using the backbone right is is a nice solution but i have to take my case off

yeah to use the backbone and you know it's still my phone so i have to do i can't do like phone shit with it while i've got these the controller i would be very i would be very surprised if sony does not support this very close to launch consider that sony supports ios uh remote play windows remote play mac remote like every platform is effectively supported there's no downside for them to support it on this and i know valve would be eager for it so yeah they're not trying to push vita sales right it's also worth noting we didn't talk about this the steam deck incorporates some of that steam link controller shit where they can simulate a mouse with two uh two individual trackpads and mouse buttons on the back or like a

programmable buttons on the back of the thing which if you ever use steam yeah it worked really well actually for steam link so like even games that aren't controller based you'll still be able to maybe be able to play i don't know i i'm stoked i think it's gonna be awesome pre-ordering it was a fucking nightmare but oh god uh in a very predictable way you know what i mean like i even think i tricked myself right before like this is valve man maybe they've got it all figured out here and instantly instantly the whole thing is is crapping the bed i was i had a genuine like bottom pit of my stomach fear for almost the entire day that what if i had bought 10 of these like i clicked and i clicked enough things that valve think, could legally send me 10 and be like, well, I don't know, stupid.

It's your fault now. That'll be $6,000, please. Hey, we got any questions from the audience? Yeah, I'll toss to them. The first one is a little long and the rest are shorter. This one's from TheSmallestPossibleE. Nintendo has a frustrating track record of not including accessibility options in their games. Nintendo has a frustrating track record of not including accessibility options in their games.

Remaking a motion control game led to some awkward results, like holding L for camera, and didn't leave them room to provide control remapping, even if they had tried. With intentional accessibility design in AAA games becoming more common, do you think we will see control remapping or any access options in Breath of the Wild 2? Or will Nintendo games stay at you get what you get with little to no customization yeah that's interesting i never thought about that but it is true that like i really can't think of any nintendo games that allow control remapping um some i feel like there might have been a metroid maybe but generally speaking yeah they don't jump and run in uh breath the wild one but not in the way that you would want to oh right very limiting very limiting yeah i would love to but but uh the point

is well taken that they they have always been really reticent to do that and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me i know they feel like they're crafting the perfect version but obviously not everyone plays the same way so i would love to see it i wouldn't hold out too much yeah probably not it's nintendo if you want things from them they won't give them to you let's let's remember nintendo we won't give you what you want but you want what we give you and just to add a codicil in this case but you may not be able to play it because we did not think about you i I'm sorry. The next question is from Noah. Who's your favorite

character in the franchise and why is it Groose? No. No. It ain't Groose. It's the guy who runs the cannonball minigame in Wind Waker. The one who you play Battleship. Y'all know who I'm talking about he's the one

who like runs the video game in that first town you get to and tries to simulate the sounds of ocean combat with his mouth and so he does a lot of uh that dude's the fucking best yeah i know i said story uh can tends to be pretty weak in z Zelda, but Wind Waker's story and writing is really exemplary. Yeah. Guys, it's 100% David Jr. Obviously David Jr. Because his name's David Jr. Who?

Who is David? Well, David Jr. is at the top of Tingle Tower. And he's one of the Tingle siblings. Oh, sure. And his name's David Jr. You guys don't fuck with david jr he's in wind waker and four swords adventures and the minish cap i just looked up his his zelda wiki page his name is david jr i don't even know if there's a david senior that might be fresh what else have you been playing this week uh clap hand okay it goes without saying that playing games baby don't

always mix but i think clap hands golf i i listened to your your episode of mario golf and i've listened to that episode where you guys were talking about the best games the first half of the year seriously clap hands golf is really spectacular and I continue to play it on iPhone. And I started playing with the Backbone, which I initially didn't love, but it totally clicked for me. That game fucking rocks, and it's great to be able to just do a hole or two

and stop and have it save your progress, and it's terrific. Did you say you play it with Backbone? I started playing it with the Backbone, yes. How does the swinging work? It's with the right analog stick. It's kind of like how those tiger woods games used to work where you was hold back and then push it forward yeah it works great love it um justin i sent you a link to the canon game from wind waker can you play a little bit of that for everybody everybody. Splish.

Splish. Splish. You get it. Great. Love it. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. Very good.

I need to put that sound on a button, actually, now that I'm thinking about it. I need to have it on my soundboard. When you hit something, when you hit something, he goes, kaboom.

It's fantastic. Okay, so, have I been playing anything you guys what else you guys beat saber custom griffin what's that oh that's beat say yeah there's you can uh i was getting into beat saber but i didn't really like any of the songs that were in it so i just uh got on uh side quest which is a platform you can use to sideload content onto your quest and through a very convoluted workaround you can download your own songs into into the game and so I've been doing that and it's dope there's a lot of songs from my jam now is the Celeste soundtrack is on there almost in its entirety and the the

finale of that soundtrack reach for the, is like 11 minutes long. And boy, howdy, that is a gauntlet. But it is exhilarating to get through that. Confronting Myself, too, the one that, that song that plays when you're sort of having the climactic battle at the end of Celeste is on there, too. It's, yeah, it's fantastic. There's also, I've been playing a little bit of Township Tale,

which I mentioned earlier. It's like a, I don't don't know pseudo life sim game for vr that i was pretty pumped about like you have to use an axe to cut down trees and then uh put that in a woodworking shop to chisel out a handle and then collect ore that you have to smelt down into a sword. It's like very, you know, trying to be accurate crafting game basically. But it's, I don't think it's quite ready for prime time yet. So I don't want to go too deep in it. I was, I have not been playing a lot other than this game because I am just like wild about it.

The one thing that I did, and it is called Progress to 100. This is like such an old game, like it's an extremely old game. You've talked about it on this show before, I feel like. I mean, that's possible, because it came out in 2015. But like my daughter was wanting to play these like,

there's all these like bad lateral thinking puzzle games on iOS that people like stream a lot on youtube whatever you know it's like make a path for the guy to do the thing um so progress to 100 is a game where there are like 100 individual stages that each one tasks you with like doing a different really interesting thing with the iphone um and. And it's from this phase of iPhone development where like people were seeming to like really come up with unique things to do with it rather than just treating like a small bad computer

that didn't have a mouse or a keyboard or a game controller. You know what I mean? Like they were really leaning into it. Like you, I think of like this, like the Samogo games, you know along the same lines but like just to give you an example of this one um there's one where it's like the screen just says like quiet down or something and you you hear the sounds of a movie and your phone ringing and someone shushing you and it's like um okay what do you want me to do here and it turns out

what you need to do is like lower the volume on your phone like physically like lower the volume and that's how you pass the stage and there's like yeah there's like a lot of there's a hundred different ones like that and uh it's very it's good for a kid like you can um you know it's very simple for them to sort of figure it out but i've been having fun with that uh and last up uh i've been playing some clap hands golf and i've also been watching the films of brian dema, despite someone crossing it out on our list of things to talk about. Who would do that? I'm guessing Russ Frushtick. Who would do that?

I'm guessing Russ Frushtick. But y'all, if you like trashy video games, see, there's a connection. You should check out the films of Brian De Palma streaming on Criterion Channel, specifically Blowout and Body Double. I think you're going to really enjoy them. Anyway, here's the things that we talked about this week because this is a new thing that we do that people seem to like.

We talked about The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, a divisive Zelda game now available on your Nintendo Switch. We talked about Clap Hands Golf. More. It's a golf game. You can play it on iOS. Great. We talked about Beat Saber Custom, which, you know, go exercise in VR. We also talked about Taunt Chiptail, a life simulation

that is not ready for primetime. We talked about Progress to 100 for umpteenth time. And we talked about Body Double, which is a great film by Brian De Palma. Next week, we're going to talk about Death's Door, which is kind of like Zelda meets, I don't know, Dark Souls meets The Crow. Not the movie, an actual crow. And that's it. Have you ever read The Devil's Candy?

It's a book about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities. No, I've been listening to some. You would love it. I feel like I'm in fucking school right now. That's how bored I am. The problem is the anti-school. Next week we're going to talk about Death's

Door. So Death's Door is what we're going to be talking about. And that's going to do it for this week on The Besties. So be sure to join us again next time for The Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends be like the world's best games? Besties!