The Besties - Doom: The Dark Ages is a (Shotgun) Blast

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Doom: The Dark Ages is a surprisingly bold departure from the formula of its predecessors. It’s also quite fun — if you can vibe with its slightly slower, parry-heavy gunplay. In the back half, the boys pick some letters off the top of the mailbag.Plus, Plante launched his Patreon for Post Games, and subscribers can listen to new episodes right now! 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 he's not the Doom guy. He's the Doom Slayer or the Slayer? Yes. Okay. But he's not ever Dr. Doom. That's true. Speak on that. I just feel like if you can earn a doctorate for kicking ass, then he should be at this point, Dr. Doom. Oh, so you think he's studied Doom so extensively that people would come to him.

It's an honorary, whatever he's doing. Yeah. I think he probably has it. He just doesn't wanna be like a jerk about it. He doesn't wanna be like honorary, like after every, like, honorary, sorry, honorary doctor, sorry. Yeah, like it's like, you know, you have a doctorate

in world history, but if you say that you're doctor world history, it seems a little weird. Yeah, this is a good point, is you don't, typically when you become a doctor, and you should know this, because you're married to one, you don't, you typically just append doctor to the beginning of your name, and I don't think his name is Doom.

As cool as that would be, if it would be like, what is his name? Dr. Slayer? No, I think it's Greg, wasn't it? Wasn't in one of the, I don't normally read them, but I think I read one that said Greg. Dr. Greg Doom and Schmertz. Can you become a doctor of stuff you kill?

Yes. If you kill enough stuff. He's not a doctor in that. What do you think, I mean? He's a doctor in the killing of them. You understand? Yeah. Have you not seen?

A fisherman, a doctor fisherman, a doctor of fishing, can't get in there and like dissect a fish and bring it back to life, you know what I mean? He's just an expert in hunting the fish. Like, you know in the Marvel movies, there's Dr. America who kills everyone who's not like an American. You seen these movies?

Yeah, yeah, I've seen them. Yeah. He's a problematic fave, Dr. America. He would have to kill everyone in America for it to be Dr. America under that premise, because Doomguy is killing everyone in Doom. Oh wait, they're just demons. They're not really Doom.

It's not called Doom. What do you mean? Is this a planet Doom? Maybe. No, not maybe, it's like, it's Mars. It's definitively not planet Doom, yeah. Maybe that's the cold, that's like how they, after the credits they reveal it.

Yeah. There's a sign, it pulls back. I'll tell you what it is, it pulls back and it says, you've been killing dudes on Doom, and then the Doom, and then the Dr. Doom winks. Yep. Yeah, cool.

What a cool game in a cool world. Thanks for letting us live in it and play around in it, dude. Oh shit, I just looked at the Wikipedia and he's a lawyer. God damn it. Dr. Doom, attorney at law. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plann and I know the best rock song about a Doomlord game.

What? Alright. About a Doomlord game. My name is Ross Frusik. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, and just by listening,

you have become a member. This week, we're gonna be talking about Doom, the Middle Ages. Chris Plant, what is that? Oh! Or Doom, the Middle Age? Doom, the Dark Age. Doom, the Dark Ages. The Middle Ages is coming next. We have a new Dark the Doom, the Middle Age? Doom, the Dark Age, Doom, the Dark Ages.

The Middle Ages is coming next. We have the Middle Ages. You just broke a huge NDA. Yeah. That's okay. Dark Ages, yes. What is this? The Dark Ages.

Yeah. Doom is back, the new Doom. The Doom 2016 is back for a second sequel to Doom 2016. This isn't a sequel to Doom, it's a sequel to the sequel to Doom 2016. And this time, you are standing and fighting. The last time, you were running and sprinting, and now you're standing and guarding.

You know, when you said New Doom, I kinda wanna play that game. Nude Doom? Yeah, Nude Doom. Computer, can you generate a Nude Doom? We'll talk about that in so much more right after this. Y'all, can I just tell you right up front two things. Love This Game was really prepared to hate this game.

Yeah. The previous two, I love the Modern Doom series, and it was on the trajectory that was so my speed It was let's do doom as fast as possible Where you were sprinting across the room like Tony Hawk with a shotgun and a chainsaw and you're just killing everything You're getting in there and then they're like, hey, you know what we're gonna do for the next one big open spaces in there, and then they're like, hey, you know what we're gonna do for the next one? Big open spaces, and you're gonna parry a lot. And I was like, that seems like a terrible idea,

and then it turns out it was a brilliant idea. Is 2025 the year of the parry? I think they probably need a new Sekiro if that was going to be the case. July 11th, Parry White, gonna work at the Daily Planet. I mean. I've just spent a lot of this year parrying so far. And this game, I wasn't expecting it from you.

What other parry games have we done? Fucking Expedition 33 is the parryingest game I've ever played. Is there another parry game? I think it needs to be a three for it to be a three. Yeah, we'll get Sekiro 2 in here. Okay. It'll happen.

You know what I like about the parry in this game though? What's that? How insanely forgiving it is. It's basically just hitting the shield button. Yeah. Within a good like second and a half long window of a green projectile getting even remotely close. It is shocking how forgiving it is.

It's not shocking. If you think about it, in a sword game or another melee focused game where parrying would be an ever present thought, it's one of three or four tools in your toolbox, right? And there are so many different ways you could approach any given situation. I think that you need more time to flash through.

You're like, okay, there's something coming at me. There's one of eight different ways I could deal with this situation. And like, you gotta pull up parrying, right? Like it takes a little while. I guess that's true. I think it's also a consideration. I'm not like a huge doom guy.

Well, definitely not. I'm looking at you. All right, man, Jesus. I'm not like a huge doom player, but I was not ready for like the number of huge kind of enemy filled arenas I would be fighting in as opposed to, you know, you walk into a room and kind of have an idea of where the demons are.

I think one of the reasons why the pairing is so forgiving is that you're going to be getting shot in a full 360 degree radius at all times. And so maybe they need it to be a little bit easier for you to block shots you see coming in. I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves. Okay. Because we're talking about a very specific aspect

to a game that has many specific aspects, and I think that we should take a step back. Okay. And reframe exactly where the first two games landed and how we think this one differs. So the first game was like, we're gonna bring Doom back, you're gonna sprint through these hallways, you're gonna kill guys using mostly traditional Doom mechanics, but you're also gonna rip their heads off.

Yes. And it's gonna feel really, really good. Second game. Melee feeds into you getting the ammo and the health that you need. So you have to go in. It's not a fallback, it's part of the loop. It's like a combat flow thing.

Yes. Second game had a lot of that stuff, most of it, but it also added traversal stuff. So air dash, double jump, swinging from rafters, doing fucking crazy grapple swing, shit like that. So that I think mostly typifies the second game. Also you're fighting angels. Yes, it's much more skate park platformy stuff. This game adds, we've sort of talked about it a little bit,

it adds a shield, it adds, it feels like a number of like, new, almost exotic mechanics to those previous two games. Because I think- How do you mean by exotic? Like vastly different from anything else. new, almost exotic mechanics to those previous two games. Cause I think- How do you mean by exotic? Like vastly different from anything that we experienced in the previous two games. Giant mech robots, the dragon that we've talked

a little bit about. Tentacles that are like the size of skyscrapers. Yeah, this feels, it feels like it has the spirit of Doom, but it doesn't feel like a almost half-step sequel that I think Doom Eternal did. Yeah, it's so funny because I feel like those last two Doom games were so, were championed and were promoted as being fast fucking Doom, like fast nasty Doom.

And this game is still definitely very nasty, but it feels like Doomguy is, I mean, it's a prequel, so maybe he just hasn't, you know, hit the cross. He is fairly fast, but there's such a heft to it. One of the first mechanics that the game doesn't even really tell you about it tutorializes all this stuff, right? Like you have a melee attack and you have this shield

and you can do a shield dash with the shield and then you can throw the shield and like all that stuff, right? Like you have a melee attack and you have this shield and you can do a shield dash with the shield and then you can throw the shield and like all that stuff is cool. It doesn't tell you that you're such a big fucking beefy boy that if you jump and land from a high enough height, you will obliterate everything around you when you land. And that's cool and great that he does that. But I was just surprised,

because do you not feel like the game feels a bit slower than especially Eternal? I don't feel like it, I mean, obviously it's slower, but I think that the pace is like, I think it's less mobile. But I think that the thing, you are probably being asked to think a bit more quickly, I think because there are so many different ways

to approach like the dash attack and the throwing of the shield. And it's weird how I really would oftentimes like kind of forget about the gun. Like I would forget that I had a gun to shoot people with, which isn't bad to make like a gun part of the like overall tool set that the E.V.S. has. And I think that's the thing about the E.V.S. is that it's not like, it's not like it's like a tool set that you can use I would forget that I had a gun to shoot people with, which isn't bad to make a gun part of the overall toolset

that you're using, but it did feel, I was a little less focused on the overall loop, I think, because I was, the different tactics that you had other than using your gun were so varied. Yeah, so you've got the gun, you've got the shield, as we mentioned, and you can do a shield dash with that, where you've got the gun, you've got the shield as we mentioned, and you can do a shield dash with that

where you like lock onto a guy and just like fly straight at him. Which you can do from about a million billion miles away. Yeah, the range is insane. You've also got the ability to throw your shield like Captain America, and you can like stick it in guys, and while it's like grinding up inside of them,

they're having a good time, but they're also taking damage. That sentence was the most erotically charged sentence you've ever said out loud on this show, right? You've also got guns, which obviously you have guns, but that is the thing. It's like, if you got this melee, you've got this shield,

you can do all these sorts of things, and you're basically switching between like, let's say two guns at any given time. Like there are so many variables that I kind of found myself leaning on the consistencies of, oh, I've got this melee combo attack. I'm gonna upgrade that. Or, oh, I've got this shield and I always have the shield,

so I'm gonna keep upgrading that. Where I felt like, yeah, the guns did feel a little de-emphasized in that way. I think it's a game about the mid-range, right? So like, if the first one is about getting in and back out over and over again, so much of this game is about projectiles, like towards you and away from you. So you mentioned the shield, but that dash move works best again, like out of mid-range. The throw move, when you throw the shield, it will stick into characters,

basically like freezing them. So if there's one character that you're like, I just can't worry about this one right now, you can throw it at them and they'll stay there for a good long while unless you recall the shield. But then on the opposite end, yeah, there are like the parries of it's kind of a weird system because you do have characters who do melee attacks, but a lot of what is coming at you is these green projectiles. And in that case- Which I couldn't see by the way, just a heads up.

Could not. Is it not a colorblind mode? There is one, I did find it in the settings, but by default I had no fucking clue which things were parryable. That stinks. And unfortunately it does put like a full on filter over all of the

graphics, not just like the one thing you can parry. They just picked very bad colors to delineate. Anyway, there is a colorblind mode, so that helped. But when these are coming at you, it's closer to, I think Ikaruga is the one that does it, of the shmups, where it's about like changing the color that you were in so you're matching a Color yeah, so if you think about it less like Perry and more like oh when I see a green one I actually want to run at those projectiles and and then shield into them It's like a resource almost like it's like half damage half like pick up kind of like yeah Yeah, yeah, the boss fights revolve entirely around that.

That's the only way to sum it up. It's wild how much a good offense is a strong defense in this game and that it's still fun. Like I don't associate defense with being fun and in this game they make it very, very active to do these defensive maneuvers. Yeah, I think of any franchise, there aren't too many that make like gunplay, and this has been true since

the reboot, feel as fucking good. Like, it's like Destiny and Doom are kind of the leading the charge. Like every gun. Some of the guns are not as purposeful. They don't have as many use cases, I don't think. You get the auto-fire machine gun of machine gun, gun, like second or something like that, and it just doesn't, when you have a gun, a shotgun that can hit from,

you know, 60 yards away and absolutely obliterates, like it doesn't feel like you need to use the other one. But it still feels. Yeah, some of that is like, they get more utility as they get upgraded, but you're right, like from the jump, I'm focusing on this. Anything that is high damage, single shot, seems way more fitting for this game.

I was curious, because you all have played more of this game than I have. I've only had time to play a few hours. But how do the core combat mechanics improve as you start getting the upgrades? Because I was not particularly wowed by the melee combat in the game. It's based on charges and you can use all your charges

to do a combo, but one, it's kind of slow and it makes you stop for a while and then you have to keep track of how many charges you have before you try to go in for one of these combos. It's also by default map pressing R3, which feels kind of weird to do melee combos by pressing the thumb stick repeatedly. E on mouse and keyboard,

which is also kind of a strange button for melee. But R3, clicking in the mouse, it's not the default, like that's how you do melee in most games. So right, but like, okay. If you're doing it three times, you're doing it three times is what I'm saying. Like a three hit combo feels bad.

And you'll do it even more later in the game. Okay, yeah. But like, does stuff like that kind of, a lot of the stuff works for me, the shield I think rules and the guns feel great, but like then there's like one or two parts of this loop that they have designed that don't really do it for me

that I tried more or less to just sort of avoid wherever I could, which wasn't especially fruitful because it really feels like they want you to use this like melee combo stuff. So I'll hold back just a little bit, but I'll get to answer that, which is comparing this with like Doom Eternal, which Doom Eternal was use all,

we're gonna give you a ton of weapons and a ton of different enemies, and we want you to use all of these weapons and you are like, cycling through all the weapons to make sure you're using every bit of ammo to go through everything. And I think that's where people who didn't like the game really bounced off of it, because you could actually spend quite a bit of time in the radial menu, just zipping through right in this game there it's more like there are problems to be solved when you face the enemies so there are these enemies that

carry shields and if you pump enough ammo into them the shield starts to heat up and once the shield is heat and it's glowing orange you throw your shield at it and it makes it all explode and it will blow up a ton of stuff around it. There are ones who have plasma shields and there's a weapon for that. So it's all about kind of matching a weapon to the scenario. But and this gets to your question about the melee Griffin. As you upgrade other the various weapons and stuff, they start to solve different problems for you.

So for me, I have the shield I throw now is so powerful that I can just take out any plasma characters without even using a plasma weapon. And it bounces and hits like 20 enemies. Or when I see a character go into that destabilized stance, that kind of like pseudo unconscious stance, I don't even have to go in with R3 anymore. I just do that shield charge and zip to them

and take them out. That's not a defense of like, you're right, depressing R3 four times in a row does not feel good, but there are like more options for how you go about solving things that I- It becomes more possible to avoid using this one element of the game that I don't really like. And same thing with the radial menu.

If you really want to use every weapon to solve every different scenario, you can do that. But for me, I was like, I'm pretty cool having three weapons that I really like and then just using the shield to solve everything else. Yeah. That is available. To what extent do you have enough ability to upgrade where, like, does that feel like a build that you are working towards or is that like an

Overall power arc that like anybody would was sort of that was a build I very intentionally worked towards because I didn't like using the plasma weapons I didn't that felt like I was like having to really pull out of the type of game I was playing I mostly use the like there's a super shotgun that feels so meaty. We didn't even mention that, like, you blow pieces of muscle off of the enemies. It's cool, man. And the super shotgun- You don't think you're a gross kid anymore until you take a shot with a shotgun,

it blows a demon ass off, and you're like, ah, cool, I love that. It's so good. I mean, and it kind of has almost match type of clay-ness to the way things just glob off. Yeah, I, like. My build is very, get in there, really, really strong heavy stuff and then everything at range I do with my shield. And that felt like a really conscious decision. And when I look at like the other ways that you could go about it, there are charge builds where you're using the like rapid fire weapons, but it gets like higher and higher

power as you charge things up. It feels like there are quite a few different builds that you could approach the game with. I think the flip side of that and complaints that I've seen about the game is it is a lot easier than Doom Eternal, which I don't think is bad at all. But if you are the sort of person who is playing these games because you liked the difficulty, it feels to me like they switched the difficulty for the creativity, which is cool. What does that mean though in a game that has a bajillion different difficulty settings? If you're playing on the highest difficulty, they're saying it's still too easy?

The complaints that I do not spend a lot of time in these YouTube circles, but the complaints that I've seen is that the game is just much, much easier, but the complaints with eternal is that it was too difficult. So I think that's more just, yeah, you can't win. I play, I don't play every game on easy, but every doom game I play on easy. Cause, uh, it's super fucking fun to play it with that way. I don't like dying. It's so insulting.

How can you do that? They're so mean about it. They, when you pick the easy setting, the easy setting is like, I'm a fucking little piss baby. And they make you say it out loud. They fucking called me. That's it. I feel like there's a,

I'm not a difficulty person who cares what you played at. I do think with a game like this, I worry sometimes if I set the difficulty too low, then there will be meaningful systems that are enjoyable that I just wouldn't engage with. I feel like I'm still engaging with systems and still taking damage and like, it doesn't feel like it's just like a walk in the park.

It's definitely easy, but it's such a power fantasy thing and I wanna make sure that I can like beat a level in the 20 minutes that I have. Be honest guys, because there's, again, no judgment. This aesthetic, does this still work for, this is like getting kind of heavy metal, literally, like not heavy metal, the heavy metal with a capital H,

capital M, like the music magazine. I wanted more, and maybe this happens later in the game, plant, you can maybe speak to this, more traditional, very grounded, dark ages environments, versus like fucking dragons and shit. It felt so spacey so quick. And it didn't- There's something so interesting about the contrast of like, you have a very normal

environment and fucking doom guys, they're like ripping demon heads off. Like that, like I wanna see him doing it in a fucking office building. Like that's interesting to me, more so than just like, yeah, it's like a fucking yes album cover basically. I get that they maybe there's flashbacks and shit later in the game I should state again that I didn't play play it through but it feels like they missed a trick making a Doom prequel and

not having a little bit more at the beginning about like who the fuck this dude like what this dude's origin look like. It's like there's these Maker alien guys and they're sort of on your side and the humans are being attacked by hell. Go Doom Slayer, go get him. And it's like... There is, I don't know if you've gone down the rabbit hole

of like the Doom lore thing. The last game in particular like went incredibly far to the point where when this game started and quite honestly still still the plot of this game makes no fucking sense to me. I don't know who the organizations are that are working or working against or for the doom guy. I know there's hell and they seem bad. And then there's this other organization that's like a sciencey alien hell. They also seem bad because they've got the doom sire trapped up in his electric thing. Yeah, I was never sure of the cinematic who, who I worked for. they also seem bad because they've got the Doom Slayer trapped up in his electric thing.

Yeah, I was never sure of the cinematic who I worked for. Because everybody seemed pretty down on the Doom Slayer, honestly. Yeah. I didn't need it, quite honestly. If you think about when Doom, the reboot's peak happened, was you break out of your fucking coffin in level one, you hear a voice message, just like fucking rip and tear.

And that like carries you almost the entire game. Give me, but I would prefer, I prefer that to kind of what Dark Age offers, which is, which is you are a creation of the great maker. Yes. But you're on loan today for these dudes and there's hell demons and we're telling you to get an org structure. There's like no story in the gameplay either.

So you really can't skip it. At least in what I've played so far. The thing that you will see in the game, I guess narrative wise is that there are people you can't shoot and they seem to like you. And that's maybe the entire narrative in the gameplay. They're like night, night friends. Those are all your brothers.

Yeah. Well, the best is like, I love, there'll be these scenes where there's big hallways where they're all prepared to like go fight, which they know that they're not going to do. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll definitely go, uh, right. Once you're done, we'll, we'll go clean up. You get them first, loosen them up. And then they're like in a cathedral, they're all gathered, and then you run into the room from one corner, jump over them,

and then just zip out the door, and they're like, oh man, that was good. Right. Thank Christ, it was getting real close. It is tough to slot this game into my life with it not working on any of the portable gaming computers that are in my possession, which I know is not the fairest criticism to leverage anything,

but this one especially feels like... I think we just need that Steam Deck 2. I'm putting this more on Valve at this point. We need that Steam Deck 2. It's their fault. I mean, I guess so. It might, I might be able to get it going on the Rock Allie X. I was just nervous to do so because of how hard it was

to get it to work on my computer. And that's the way I was. Absolutely anecdotal evidence. I downloaded it on my Rogue Allia X on the Bazite side, the Linux side. And I got a pretty, it crashed consistently like as it booted pretty much, and I got like a weird bug report error type thing.

They went all in on the ray tracing for the lighting of this game, which is always a silly thing to say, but I think that's why it's just not gonna work on anything. I don't think so, because I'm running it on my gaming PC, which is mid-range to say at best. That was just what the Digital Foundry video said. I'm just going off of them.

It runs really fucking, it's really well optimized. I've played a lot of modern new PC games on that computer that have really struggled. And for whatever reason, I think this game in particular, I mean, I'm running it on much lower settings than I think was intended, but it looks great. It's a steady 60 FPS, which is more than I can say. It does work.

It works for me now. I think I'm conflating it with like our pre-launch issues where like I couldn't get this fucking thing to work at all until Nvidia released like one driver, like a day before the game was supposed to come out. I did make it functional. I did try it on Steam Deck, because I heard in like a random forum somewhere,

you can actually run it on low at 30 FPS, just without all the settings low. And I tried it and it was one of the levels where, spoiler alert, you control a giant 50 foot Doom guy mech. And there were just, the level launched, and I guess I cut scene played, but there were no graphics.

So I could hear and and like little artifacts of like something in the distance and they're like dodge through the shields and I was like I don't see shields so yeah unfortunately I don't think that's gonna cut it maybe maybe updates will happen but again given the fact that it runs as well as it does on my kind of shitty gaming PC I kind of of have hopes it's going to run on... Before we wrap up, I want to talk about just where this game goes in its midsection, because the first few levels do feel a bit like the previous Doom. Outside of yes, you can get in a giant mech.

They're kind of these closed off corridor mazes. You use a map to go find items. There comes a point where you write a dragon, and it turns in very briefly into a on real Xbox 360 game and you think like, yeah, I'm gonna ride a dragon, I know what this is. And then from there, it opens up into a humongous open world city in which you fly around as a dragon and then destroy massive battleships, and then land inside of battleships and have entire like level expirations in these standalone worlds, which then gives

way to very, very, very large open worlds. All of which is to say, the game might feel like the original first two Dooms at first, it is increasingly a different thing as you get deeper and deeper into it. Are you gonna stick with it, Chris? Do you think it is worth sticking with? I am really in love with this game. I think it is something special. I also get why some people have not clicked with it,

but I don't know. This is what I, I really hope that this is what more franchises can do, make a game every four years or whatever, and have them be pretty different. Doom Eternal, these are very different games compared to what so many franchises do. The Assassin's Creed are route where it's like maybe every 15 years you get a relatively

significant change in gameplay. And I like that they like take the risks and that there's creativity in what they're trying to do. That each one sets out to feel different. I think that's good. Fuck, I want like an 80s neon infused dude. Yeah, I mean, going further with the aesthetic would be nice. Even with this, I feel like it didn't,

hoops to your point, it doesn't really go all yes album either. Like it's not realistic, it's not full heavy metal album. It's somewhere in between and I wish it went the other one. It feels like somebody had a vision at some point that maybe got a little bit. Pulled back. Yeah, pulled back are sort of like, what's the word? We got a bunch of people putting in their feedback.

Jiminy Cooks. Test, product tester. No, like testing, the product tested, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like maybe they had people like, I don't get all the dragons and stuff, like okay, we'll cut down, make it a little more bland. I don't know, this is a guess, I don't know. the dragons and stuff. Okay, we'll cut down, make it a little more bland. I don't know. This is a guess. I don't know.

Can't all be brutal legend. But why not is what I say. Every game should be brutal legend. Still waiting for Toodle. Let's take a break. Yes. Let's do that. Okay, we're back.

We have a number of emails. A lot of these are in relation to the Backlog episode, sorry, Treasure Trove episode that we did last week about things that people are still playing. The first one comes from James. I cleared out room 46 in blueprints, but it still feels like there's so much to do. I only just figured out how the pump room works.

And I also need to find huge sums of money somehow. Claire Obscura is next on my list, probably. Well, the good news is I could read that and not feel like it's a spoiler, because I did see that there was a pump room, and I assumed that there was a room 46, but I will play this game eventually. Do we have anything on the latest about

when Russ Frushtrick is gonna get let off the leash? Let's see if there's any news. I can try to speak to this while you are, in a general way that might be helpful for people. And then Griffin, cause Griffin has gone much farther than me. I'm kind of a middle ground here. And I think that after you finish it,

I think you play one more day. See how you feel. Yeah. See what you feel like doing. Cause I think you play one more day. See how you feel. Yeah. See what you feel like doing. Because I think you play one more day, and if you feel like you've had your fill, That's fine. Keep on going there, friend. I had my fill after about 40 hours altogether.

Saw a lot of really interesting stuff. Had a great time. Got my fill of it. Moved on down the road. But you can get, you can be a nasty hog, like I was, which is eat up all the stuff that this game has on offer, but I'll warn you, you will reach a point where you're gonna keep hogging around

looking for more clues, but you'll have found all the clues. I'm just saying everyone I know has had a tremendously satisfying experience, no matter how much of it. Where they tapped out. Except for me. Except for Russ.

I'm so sorry, Russ. I think it's really good to keep mentioning it, because I mean, no, I'm so sorry Russ, I think it's really good to keep mentioning it because I'm serious, because there's a lot of people, as scary as it is, Russ represents a lot of people who can connect with him in this and I think we should keep mentioning it because everybody should be able to play this. The developer I think knows and is aware, and honestly I'm not a game designer.

I don't know how hard it would be to implement some sort of color accuracy thing. And I think Doom is a good example of this huge studio with this huge backing, and the best they can come up with was a filter that changed some of the colors in the game, but that wouldn't work in for Blueprints. Sometimes I try to think about how Blueprints would do it, and I get a little, it gets a little palpitation.

Here's the only thing that I can think of, because I personally have an app on my phone that's called like Color Picker or whatever the fuck it is, and it has an AR mode, so I can point my camera at things, so when I'm shopping in the store, I know what color the shirt is that I'm buying. Okay. So theoretically, that would be the only implementation

I can think of is you would have a pixel reader built into the game and it would tell you what you're playing. Yeah, that's cool. That's a cool idea. Can we do this next one? Austin emailed and said, if Griffin loves Rift of the Necro Dancer,

he should really try the demo for Unbeatable on Steam right now, it's a rhythm based RPG about a punk band in a world where music is banned and I'm in love with it. It has a wholly original soundtrack and every track is incredible. I wanted to read this because somebody messaged me about this game and I watched the trailer and it does look fucking rad.

I don't think it's out yet though. Yeah, it looks like it's just a demo. They do have the demo out. So I may wait for it to come out, but the trailer is pretty badass. It does look like exactly my shit. So I'll hold it. Yeah, it kinda looks like FLCL.

It's like my media side. Yeah, that's a really good comparison. I never, do you guys use like wishlist stuff? Like do you actually, is that a feature you imp? I'm really bad about actually doing that. And I think it's partially because I took for granted the fact that when I was more actively working in the games industry, I just kind of knew when shit was coming out.

Well, there's also just way more games now. So it's so hard to remember, oh, this game came out. Yeah. I think my Instagram ads are largely worthless because everything on there is overpriced and ridiculous, but it has actually helped me from a game discovery standpoint, uh, just cause you'll see gameplay and I'll just

like click right through and wish list the game. And then I remember when it actually comes out. So look at that. Saving the world Instagram for the first time. Uh, we have another letter. This comes from Basstode. Basstode. Justin, are you still woodworking?

I'm getting my workshop set up and I picked up an old craftsman wood lathe for around $150. Woodworking is kinda like gaming if you think about it. Hmm, yeah, sure, I guess. I mean, anything is metaphorically, I guess. I have a lathe and it scared me too much to use it. And I don't know anybody around here that knows how to use a lathe, except for that guy down at heritage farm who just sits down there and uses the lathe all day,

because that's how they did it in pioneer times. And I don't want to go talk to that guy because I don't have a good exfiltration strategy because it's a big open farm. What am I going to do? Act like I got a business meeting. I don't, it's a farm. So lathe's are scary. I still would. because it's a big open farm. What am I gonna do? Act like I got a business meeting? I don't, it's a farm.

So lathe's are scary. I still would- So you bought a lathe with that, like, and you're just sitting there? Huh? Like, what was your end game when you bought the lathe? It was a cheap, it was a very cheap lathe that I hoped to learn on.

Oh, sure. And then when I started watching videos about it, it was like, and I would try to use it, it's just kind of daunting. It's kind of a scary tool. It spins wood really fast. And you don't wanna mess it up. I still would work pretty frequently. It is more of a, I would say like component of stuff

that I do. I got to a point where, I don't know, kind of leveled out with the stuff I wanted to learn. I use it a lot during the summer for like set construction. So I've got a big build coming up for the shows we're doing this summer. But that's, I don't know, yeah, I guess. It wasn't the question,

it's just like a personal question about my life. Yeah, I guess about you. Yeah. I think probably a weird inclusion. It's a weird inclusion, but okay, sure, yeah. You're a lot of people's idle juice. Oh, cool. And you need to be like, you know, aware of that,

grateful. Yeah, you're a woodfluencer. Yeah, I'm learning about, I got a multimeter, a couple multimeters, I'm trying to learn how to use those and do some electronics work and solder and learn some of that kind of stuff. So that's where I've been focusing lately. This next question really dovetails,

this is our last email, it really dovetails into my honorable mention. Kate says, have y'all talked about the fact there's a new season of The Devil's Plan? It's called The Devil's Plan Death Room and it iterates on the first season in some of the best ways. I'm obsessed, I'm 99% sure someone on this show

turned me on to the first season, so I really hope you all are checking out the new one. Let's talk about The Devil's Plan Death Room. Did you guys watch Devil's Plan? Cause I'm almost certain I talked about it on this show. Yeah, I watched it the first few episodes. I couldn't quite. Can you give watch Devil's Plan? Cause I'm almost certain I talked about it on this show. Yeah, I think you did. I think you did. The first few episodes, I couldn't quite.

Can you give us the elevator pitch just as a reminder? Okay, it is something like 14 or 16 competitors, usually just really smart people. People who are like, this season there's like a gaming YouTuber, like a board game player YouTuber. There's a, like an international go champion, like people whose livelihoods are usually related to games or intellectual pursuits or whatever.

Live in a house together and they play a series of games. Some of the games add money to a big prize pot that you get to take home if you win. Some of the games are more designed to eliminate players. Everything kind of is built around this currency that you have as the players called pieces, which are these little golden fancy tokens. And as you play the games, there will be opportunities for you to get more pieces or lose pieces. They are ways of bribing fellow players to help you out in a game, but if you run out of pieces,

you're eliminated immediately. That's the basic setup, and it's not like the most out there bold innovative thing. The thing that makes this show is the nature of the games that they play throughout it. Each one is different, and they are so insanely complex that it is a game about these games and it is about watching people figure out strategies

for these games that probably didn't exist before they started playing them. So you're watching games, people learning about games and on the fly trying to figure out how to playing them. So you're watching games, people learning about games and on the fly trying to figure out how to survive them. And it's very, very, very, very cool to watch. It is also a, you know, it is a South Korean reality competition show. I am not super familiar with that language.

And so it is an extremely demanding television show for you to watch, because the rules explanations for some of the games will go on for 20 minutes. And you've gotta be pretty dialed in. The first game this season, the second season, The Death Room, is a hidden role type game. It is also like, what's that game where there's like a spy and a spy catcher and you're moving around the map

and the spy catcher can't see the spy, so it's like moving around spaces trying to see if they've been there or not. It's based on that sort of- Getaway, hideaway. Something like that. And so there's that element, but the police officers are split into three teams.

Manhunt? There's secret, manhunt sounds right. There's secret corrupt police officers on the officer's team who are feeding their teams like false information. And like, there's so many different elements. And each game starts with a 20 minute long explanation of like, here's how it's gonna run, here's how it's gonna work. It's hard to follow, but once the games start,

you start to see people figure it out. And it's just, it's so, the games, while extremely complicated, lend themselves to these like, incredible tense moments of like, strategy and betrayal. And it really condenses down a lot of the shit that I like about these types of reality competition shows into their most distillate kind of nature.

Would it be helpful if, you know how when they're doing sign language and they have the ASL interpreter over in the corner, would it be helpful if they got Jeff Probst to do that and just explain stuff? I feel like this game is the kind of game that does have a subset of the audience that is like, if you talk about Survivor,

they're like, well, if you like Survivor, you've got to check out Devils. It's nothing at all. Nothing at all like Survivor. Nothing at all like Survivor. Here's what Devils plan is, okay? I mean, I watched it. Here's what it is.

If you've ever been at somebody's house and they've got a big, thick rule book for a board game they wanna play with you, and they've already got 15 pages in, and then they're like, you know what? We should start playing at this point, and we'll pick up the rest as we go. And then someone in the room is like, no, no, no, no, no.

I think there's gotta be more of those rules. Keep them coming, brother. And then that guy is the guy who would light Devil's plan. That's the guy, that's the audience. I think it is so statistically unlikely that two people who would enjoy the show would marry each other, that I think Rachel must be trying to assassinate Griffin.

That's where I'm at currently. Rachel's very, very deeply into this show. But she does this thing where like, she will start to try to follow the rules, and then at a certain point, just kind of let the explanation of the rules wash over her because once you start playing the game and the second you see someone have to make a decision

on like, wait, I think I might be able to get a leg up on this game. There's always like a period after they explain the rules for like a half hour, you can kind of like mingle and talk about what your game plan's gonna be and that's where you see the rubber hit the road of like, hey, actually, I think if we, maybe if we alternate rounds that we make these bids,

we can maximize our chance not to get in each other's way and not waste all of our current, you see people start to make, and as people work out how they can survive and how they can win, the rules crystallize pretty, they do crystallize fairly quickly. It's interesting because, speaking of Jeff Probst, I have been watching Survivor as like the only reality show

that I watched, so I'm like a total noob. But they've been doing ads for season 50, which is coming up, I don't think it's the next season, but in a couple seasons. They're in 47 right now. Right, so they've been doing ads for season 50 saying, hey, we want you to get involved, and you're gonna vote on like the rules,

like the way this all works. Sure. And one of the most recent ones, they were like, do you want immunity idols or not? Because some people apparently want a just relationships. No hidden immunity idols whatsoever? No mechanics, raw, just based survivor. And this seems like the total opposite of that. Of all the things to trim off of the survivor

at the end of the model. I know, it was surprising. People don't realize that those, it is the mechanics they're introducing are constantly, that is a back and forth with the audience, I think, and the players too, of like changing those expectations. And it keeps things interesting. Like you're not just rolling into the same scenarios.

Or it makes things like convoluted and stupid and those usually don't make it past another season, right? Because there was that money season where you're like, you have six Starbucks, whatever, survivor coins. And that was like, no. I like the smash the hourglass to reverse time. Your time reversal cubes. Now that means that you won the last challenge.

Congratulations. Remember? Remember actually that team lost. That sucks. I will add there is a whole other element to Devil's Plan that is there's secret shit hidden throughout the house that they all live, like there are little puzzles and opportunities for you to get these pieces

that are your lifeblood in the game. Oh, so it's blueprints, you're just playing, you're watching blueprints. Kind of, right? Like, you see someone walk into their room and then they're like unpacking and there's a part where somebody gets out their clock and they're like, oh, they already have clocks here.

And then he looks at the clock for a while and he's like, that clock's not moving. And then he goes over and investigates the clock and there's some shit, there's like some shit going on. Like that stuff is so, so full of human dookie. But inside it, there's a letter E, what could it be? If you are able to like dial into a game, it is a very rewarding experience watching this show.

The first season kicked ass, we're like three games into the second season and it's the whole death game mechanic this time is like, there's one round where it's like, one player gets eliminated for sure. And if you're in prison, you have to play in the death game. There's a prison too that you get sent to if you're not rich enough.

It's very much like life. Anyway, that's Devil's Plan, the death room. It fucking kicks ass, it's on Netflix. I've also been watching Andor Season Two, which I wanna talk about it. But I just take that for a long time. Yeah, we can't talk about it at all because I've only watched the first half

of the first episode of Andor Season Two and I'm incredibly into it, but I'm dying to watch more and I just don't want to know anything about it. Okay. The way you rule this show is actually it gets under the run a little bit. I'm sure there's people at home that agree with me. I get it. I get the Russ Frustick thing. There's not ways to talk about why it's good without getting into the... You can talk about the letters that are in the title.

Give me a list of things I'm allowed to say about Andor season two. Yeah, yeah, sure. So you could say how many letters are in the title, what the letters are. You're writing these down, by the way. Yeah. You could say, is it about space? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Is it about space?

And how much space is in it versus land stuff? Okay. That's it. I think that's fair, that's fair. It's so fuck, it's so good. Yeah. If you had the moments during season one of Andor where you're like, wow, I can't believe they made a thing this good in the Star Wars universe,

I promise you that it has escalated dramatically. It sucks because it is all over the fucking internet right now and like, I know that person, oh no. I got spoiled pretty bad by a TikTok. Yeah, I've been really, anytime I see any Andor anything, I'm like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, get the fuck out of there. And close it immediately, but.

You will absolutely. We'll see. It covers a lot of ground, a lot of territory, and it's just so good and so interesting and so nuanced. And I'm like an episode and a half away from finishing, and it's like all I can think about is getting off this fucking stupid podcast

and going to finish the episode of Angel that I was on. They should make a movie about what happens next. Yeah. Good idea, man. Thank you. You can watch this at home. Okay, I've been watching the rehearsal, season two still. Griffin, I'm glad you finally watched the episode that I was alluding to previously regarding Sully Sullenberger.

Fucking mind-blowingly fantastic episode. It's really, really, really good. I'm glad you finally watched the episode that I was alluding to previously regarding Sully Sullenberger. Fucking mind-blowingly fantastic episode. It's really, really, really good. Really fucking good. This season has been amazing. I think there were rightful concerns regarding the first season that the impression was such that there was like,

we're a little bit making fun of the subjects of the show. And I think over time, and this includes like late in the first season and then into this season, I think it's very clear that they are being, I think more mindful about not only the people that appear in the show, but also like what it means to even produce this show. And so it feels like it's very much like a looking inward,

Nathan Fielder thing, but it's very much like a looking inward Nathan Fielder thing but it's also unclear like I mean he knows a lot of this stuff but like he presents himself as it's just very layered and interesting and again there's really no analog for it on television right now so I've been really I'm behind a couple episodes so I actually need you to mention anything people or pilots or planes, whether or not there's jokes, any jokes. I can talk about whether it's in space or on land. I can do that.

Both. Oops, anything else you're enjoying right now? Let's see here. I watched the first two episodes of Murderbot on Apple TV last night with my wife. I had read the first couple of books, or at least the book that this season is based on, and she had not, so we both were coming out

as a different. Does the season just cover all systems read? Is that the first one? I feel like yes. If I had to guess, that's what it feels like, but I don't know, I I don't know all The episodes are now so I don't know. Yeah, sure, but um, that was kind of the vibe with them silo I think was doing did no no, no, they split the first but anyway, anyway

This this seems on pace to do that But it is an adaptation if you don't remember I talked about the book Series a few months back weirdly before I knew there's going to be a tv series so that worked out nicely but it is about a security robot that hacks his own programming and is basically working for himself but fears that if it is ever discovered that he has hacked his own programming and is working for himself that he'll be destroyed so he has to fake that he he is still under the thrall of whoever is renting him to provide security. It's about he gets hired by a crew of human beings.

We should point out you're saying he because it's played by Alexander Skarsgård, is that right? But I do believe that Murderbot the character is... It or they? What do they use in the- And the show everyone is, well, okay, see, it's tough because it is used, it is being used in a derogatory fashion amongst the crew. So it's kind of, anyway, this robot,

who is played by Alexander Skarsgard, the whole thing is kind of an extended metaphor for, I think for people on the autism spectrum, people who are, a lots of different neurodivergence, I suppose, and sort of the difficulties of relating to people who may be more typical or neurotypical. And it's using things like, he has a armor and a mask

that he very rarely removes, which is, I know, pretty on the nose in terms of that, but like, yeah, he has to take off the mask at one point to comfort a crew member, and once they realize that there is a face under the mask, they want Murderbot to keep showing its face constantly, which makes it more uncomfortable. And the more intimacy the people of the crew want, the less comfortable Murderbot is with it, with the whole situation.

So that's the dynamic is sort of Murderbot learning about the crew and the crew learning about it, and Murderbot fearing that the crew will discover that It's just kind of doing what it wants to do and not working for anybody It's really a fateful adaptation from what I could tell they get the tone really right. It's very fun and funny Alexander Skarsgard gives a really I think good nuanced funny performance It really he sells I think what they're doing really well.

And I really enjoyed it. I look forward to the rest. And Sid really liked it too. So that was... I was wondering if Rachel would enjoy it. She does not usually go for a lot of sci-fi. Like we watched all Battlestar together, which I guess is pretty firm sci-fi.

One hearty recommendation I can get, you know what? I would say it is sci-fi, but like only in the sense that like Hitchhiker's Guide is sci-fi. Like the first episode is 30, the episodes are 30 minutes long, so it's like, it's skewing more action comedy than it is like hard sci-fi. That's much more about the setting, but it is like the fundamental human connections

are really relatable and I think come across really well. There's an actor who was in Suicide Squad and I really enjoy that actor. David Dasmaltzian? Do you know this guy? I know who you're referring to in the cast, because I did not realize his name, but I've seen him in a couple things too, and yes.

Yeah, he was in Ant-Man and Late Night with the Devil. Late Night with the Devil, yeah, that's what I meant. He had a great face, just a killer face. Yeah, that guy's great. Yeah, really great, that guy. Any other faces of people you want to comment on Chris for being spiky? Both good and bad.

No, that was pretty much the only face. That was like the only face that I really had top of mind right now. I finally played some repo. I'm so glad one of us is talking about a video game. I was starting to feel a little self-conscious about that. I get it. I mean, I don't have anything to say

that we haven't said already, other than it's really nice to feel a little self-conscious about that. I get it. I mean, I don't have anything to say that we haven't said already other than it's really nice to play a social game. Oh, I can add this. We've been doing it. Our last time we streamed that game, we installed a bunch of mods suggested by McKay, our merch liaison, and mods really make that game fucking sing, man.

There's a lot about Repo I enjoy except for the playing of it, because of how fucking hard and punishing it is, and I feel like sometimes in a way that feels so hugely unfair that it's not, like, I don't know, enjoyable really anymore and with mods you can really tweak kind of what what the game throws at you and what you're able to kind of do in response and it's pretty easy to get those up and running so you can also if you want to preserve the original vision of the game you can just download aesthetic mods there's one called more head which lets you add you can dress up like Batman or Ash Ketchum or, you know, whatever, so. What are we playing next week?

We're playing Chua-T. Great. That is the new game from the creator of Katamari Damacy. A lot of people made that game, but the person known for that game, it looks great. I played a little bit of this at GDC and really, really, really enjoyed it.

I will also say, Griffin, if you need a game for the B segment, I know you only have so much time. Jesus. Do you know that there is a new fantasy life out? I'm so sorry. As soon as you started saying the name of whatever game you just said, I clicked open a trailer for the Tuatee page

and my ears were blasted at 100,000 decibels. You can't have the exact same thing just have, boop, boop, boop. Just like, there's this game you're gonna love. It's, ba-da-ba, skada-ba. So what the fuck did you say? Fantasy Life is back. Oh, is that new Fantasy Life out? It's out. You can play it right now on Steam.

Level 5 has a new game, and I am so hyped. You want a slow RPG? You want 14 different jobs? You wanna cook and fish? Maybe fight a dragon if you have to. I have that, I hold that 3DS game fantasy life so dear to my heart even though it is not very good, it is extremely, extremely shallow, but the ideas behind it were so like promising and neat, so I'm, is it good?

I have not started it yet, but it is almost overwhelmingly positive on Steam as 92%. This says it's out tomorrow. Don't get me all pumped up when it's not out for 20 more hours. How does it have all these reviews? Tell me May 23rd. Oh, oh I see. There was a pre-release version of it, and now. Guys, my Arby's is on the front porch. Oh, that's so, I'm so sorry.

Oh, you need can get that beef. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends eat the world's best beef? Well, hold on, because we do usually do some other stuff. I know you want your Arby's. Do you want, the Arby's are not, Griffin.

Do you want, do you care or not? Is it an act? Because you guys were like, yeah, you gotta get your Arby's. Patreon.com slash the besties. Thank you so much for being supporters of the besties. We really appreciate all of you that have been subscribers and supporters

and we have got new content coming at you, new resties coming at you on Tuesday. We got this month's bracket episode is live. We got another resties about Despalote and a number of other things. So thank you all. Real quick plug, I launched a new show, like right now. People can listen to it right now.

What? It's called Post Games. And you can listen to it at patreon.com forward slash post games, or you can wait till Monday and you can listen to the free version. But like, you don't want to do that. You want to go before that. Don't do that.

Listen to the nice version. Yeah, it's the nice version. I made it extra good. All right. Cool. All right. That's going to do it for us for this week on the besties Unless anyone else has any no go get your beef Be sure to join us again next time for the beast sure shouldn't the world's best friends with the world's best games Besties!