The Besties - Forza Horizon 6 Wants You to Love It

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Forza Horizon 6 wants you to be happy forever. It features a colossal open world that reimagines Japan, stuffed with more free cars than you’ll ever have time to drive – let alone upgrade. You can win races or lose them; either way, you’ll get rewards. Even its trees will gladly explode into tinder on contact with your vehicle, because the game would hate for a pesky forest to get in the way of chaotic car fun. All of this makes for a fun game. So why are we craving friction? The Besties try to find an answer. 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!

Guys, you will not believe my luck. Yeah? I was on a nice walk through my neighborhood yesterday. And I took a little shortcut down an alley. And I found parked in that alley a 2014 Hyundai Allentra. And was it in a barn? No, just sitting on the street. Just sitting in an alley.

And it was close to some trash cans sitting on the street. So I've got a new Hyundai Allantra that car. It's mine. It's my treasure. And I found it. And there was nobody in it. So now I've added that to my, what I call my collection. Sure. And if you look on the street where I live, it's like I've taken up every parking spot. There's that, there's 2014 High Enda Alontera. There's a 1970 GMC Jimmy that I've found just kind of like sitting in a Walmart parking lot and no one was in it. So that's my treasure. Traditionally, historically, I would say if a car you find in a barn is just in a barn. you're free to take it.

That's your. But you're saying in this... The rules have expanded. Oh, they've expanded. So if you find a car and it's a little bit dirty and it's not parked in a traditional parking spot and nobody's... This part's so important. If someone's in it, that's not treasured. Not okay.

That's someone's car. You can't get in there or else it's Grand Theft Auto and that's a different game. I'm... I'm... Did you break any glass to get in? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm really, I'm not trying to like, you know, spoil your fun. How did you start the car? Good question, good question. A lot of people won't tell you this, but you don't need a key to start a car. There's special wires that you can usually find underneath the steering wheel, and it's not hard to make the, like, engine wire touch the power wire, and then all of a sudden you have a new 2014 high-endale. Sure. And Griffin, just to clarify, how many seconds passed?

between you finding the car and you driving away. Or, like, specifically before you were gone. Yeah. Yeah, no. It was, it was, so I know you guys want me to say 60 seconds, but my friend rolled up with a bucket and helped me wash the car. And that's actually an important step when your friend shows up with the bucket and washes the high end a launtra with you.

It's your treasure. So it was more like six and a half minutes that it took. So the cops are outside of my house. Can you take their cars? Hold on. Yes, they just got out. I'll be right back. Oh, sweet, sweet.

My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Wells Frustick. I know the best game of the week. Welcome back to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest at home interactive entertainment. It is a game of the year club and just by listening, you've become a member of the game of the year club, the besties. This week, we are talking about Forza Horizon 6,

a game that I wasn't really, was not on my radar at all because I barely know how to drive in real life. But it has apparently been in the works for, what, five years, six years? It's been in demand for quite some time since Foresa 5, Horizon 5 came out. And now it's here. It's set in Japan.

You get about a thousand cars within the first hour playing the game, and boy howdy, you're going to drive them all over. Chris, anything. to add about the spirit of Forza Horizon. I think you pretty much nailed it on that one. And the pronunciation was spot on. Yeah, thank you.

Chow, Bella, Forza. Fiati. Talk coming up more about Forza Horizon 6 just after this short break. Griffin, did you play Forza Horizon 5? Barely, dude. Barely. I used to love racing games, but it was like a specific kind. My general kind of rule is if there is a turbo button, I'm used.

A boost, if you will. A boost of sorts. Yeah, I have dabbled with the, like, super creative aspects of, like, the older Forza games on 360 and stuff. And I appreciate, I've always appreciated what Forza Horizon does. The vibe of the games are, like, on point. But the more sort of semi-non-boostable aspect of the franchise has never really been my, never been my cup of tea.

Also, Forcer Horizon 5, I felt like the setting, which I believe was Mexico. was the playground sort of for that game? Was, I don't know, not so interesting. They did not do a particularly interesting job of adapting that sort of whole country into a big car playground. But I feel very differently about this one. Interesting.

Y'all mind if I lay the groundwork for what the game is? Please do, yeah. Yeah. So the idea of Fort's Horizon is it is not Forza Vanella, Forza Motorsport, which is, if you picture a Grand Tourismo, one of those like hardcore racing games where you're going to be sweating all over the controller going around trying to get little milliseconds off of each lap.

It's not that. This is big open world with gobs and gobs of flashy cars. And from entry to entry, it has become even more of a cruising USA, San Francisco Rush type of game where you are getting hundreds of feet in the air flying off of mountains whenever you would like. It also is built around this idea of like music festivals, but for cars. So the structure of the game is driving across countries to these, I would say like, Gastonbury style influenced or Coachella cultural events where you show up and somebody hops on the radio and is like, hey, cars are great.

And you're like, yeah, they're like, they're like music, baby. and you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then you go around and you do either like street races inside of a city or outside of a city. It's a really smart conceit because it's like when you play a call-a-duty game or something like that and like the map is so clearly, like London doesn't actually have this many chest high walls. Yeah. Like this is, they made this map for shooting and there's a bit of dissonance there. This is a way of getting around that by saying like, yes, everyone in the sort of,

in a 20 mile radius of Tokyo has lost their fucking minds and turned everything into cars and car tracks and car drivings and they put little stuff all over for you to smash your car into and it's the only thing anyone talks about. Because there's a festival happening called Horizon. What is unusual about Fort's Horizon 6 is it's the first one that takes cities seriously. Griffin, you mentioned Tokyo.

I think because of this festival vibe, you would do the UK, but you're mostly out in nature. UK was what? Forza, a four? For it's a four. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not about like being in the city here. They're moving up to this generation of console.

This is the first one that doesn't run on the previous generation of consoles, too. And we're going to put you into Tokyo. And it is one of the strangest decisions that the series has made. I have seen a lot of people Obviously you can't do the whole Tokyo's Fucking enormous right And so there's a certain amount of A certain amount of sort of simulation you can actually

And probably not super fun to drive through If I had to guess That's it I've seen so many critiques of people saying Like the Tokyo present in this game Feels so empty and hollow And it's like I'm sorry Do you want to be doing a street race Through Shibuya Scramble

You fucking madman? I mean absolutely I mean it is both are true Because as I described the plant, like when driving through this Tokyo, it basically feels like St. Louis. Like, it does not feel like a bustling metropolis. After a plague. I think what you just said is one of the more offensive things you've said. I'm sorry, St. Louis.

You're a nice city. You've got the cool city museum and other things going on. But I wouldn't say it's like a bustling down there. Great athletics. Yeah. No. Yeah, definitely not. I think it's just, but it's just more racetrack.

Isn't it? What I love about Forza Horizon 6 is the map, right? I love any opportunity to kind of do Japan tourism stuff just because that's something I like a whole lot. I'm so desperately want to go back to Japan. I have it in over a decade, and that's a huge bummer. And so like getting to like visit Japanese places, I love that in a game like a dragon and what have you. And this one gives you like every kind of conceivable. Japanese biome in a single kind of like interactive world.

Like there's, you're racing through the, through a cherry blossom sort of, uh, mountain and now you're racing through a bamboo forest. Now you're on the beach. Now you're in the snow-capped mountains. And now you're in the big city.

Like every five minutes of driving on the highway, you are in like a totally different kind of neck of the woods. And that's, it's really rad because it makes a lot of stuff about forza. It makes sense to me. Like there's so many different cars and they all, they're different car categories and they do feel so different. As silly and bombastic as like the jumping 200 feet off a mountain is, like, it's still a pretty chunky physics heavy kind of race simulator. And there's a huge difference between driving a big SUV, you know, on sand versus like racing down, you know, a tunnel or something.

That's the secret of the series. The way the ground feels real, which talking about what I like about this game, I feel like I am stoned out of my mind. But there is drifting in the game and a Honda Civic versus a shitty truck versus a ultra-powered super truck that has rocket boosters on it. Each feels so different when it is on the surface of pavement or if it is. on dirt or if it is on the beach or if it is raining and that sense of feeling the ground is why I come back to the series over and over again because I really don't know of another racing game that has quite the same feeling where I if I'm like if it's giving me the information this is so hard to describe if it like I am responding and in conversation with

the surfaces that the car is on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely. Once you switch to asphalt, like suddenly you're much snappier and then you're sliding around when you're on mud. I think that like snow runners, mud runners series spends a lot of time on surfaces. Where this one stands out to me is because they spend all the time also on the haptic. So if you have a newer controller, like an Xbox Series X controller or like I was using the steam controller and this has that,

any controller with HD rumble, you will feel every change in surface as you're driving over it. And it makes a huge difference in terms of immersion. They did a very, very good job on that stuff. It also gets around that feeling, kind of gets around my big issue that I've always had with Forza, which is with the sort of like progression of it, not feeling great.

And this game definitely, I think, still falls short in a few kind of important categories. Like I never, you can spend a bunch of your credits to tune up your car. You can actually, my favorite thing about the game is you can, and download someone else's tuning profile that they have for a specific car, right? So, like, I found this BMW M1 treasure car that's, like, a 1980, like, old fucking car

that was dog shit when I got it, but then I found this profile that someone had made where they had tuned it up and put these certain upgrades on it and gotten just so, like, just the right feel. And now that's, like, my favorite car to drive. I'll drive that more than the insane pre-order bonus thing that I apparently got with my copy of the game

of, like, a BMW M4 that's, like, super fat. Like, this one feels great to drive. And I don't necessarily need, you know, the feedback of like a need for speed underground or something like that. That's like, oh, the top MPH is like this much better. So I know it's better. I have no fucking idea. Those charts, those tuning charts where it's like lines going across lines, I have no idea. For total gearhead perverts.

And that is not fucking me. I'm not a car dude at all. But the opportunity to go and download a car perverts perfect sort of version of these like really sick looking and sounding cars is actually pretty appealing. Yeah. And that carries through to like the visual customization, the fact that you can download people's like creations, like liveries and things like that for the various cars, some of which are like a little edgy. If you buy any kind of four wheeler like Jeep style vehicle, the top like custom livery for. it made by like somebody online that you can download is the Jurassic Park like Jeep you can put the Jurassic Park you can make every car you owe look like it belongs on the set of Jurassic Park

which is but you can also do that there's a housing in the game for the first time which is like I think the last game had housing oh I thought that was a new feature for the customization you can customize your land yeah you can customize your house in your lane you can build a racetrack out behind your little custom you know mountainside house you can customize your garage which is only purely aesthetic. Like, it just shows up while you're, like, in there tuning shit up. But you can also download someone else's, like, layout of their garage. If you, like, that stuff is peak forza for me. And they've done, like, a lot of shit with it in this game that I love. I think the ability to download things gets at the biggest problem for the game, which is,

when you are in a menu in this game, things have gone wrong. For me, if I'm out driving and I'm flying through the air and my super truck, great. The second I'm in a menu, you, I am having to look at a map that's way too crowded. I'm having to look at tuning features that are not explained. I'm having to figure out progression that I don't know why I'm necessarily doing it. And I think the ability to like solve, instant solve a lot of those things by just hitting download. Give me the other thing is great. But the second I have to start spinning a wheel to find out if I'm getting bonus credits or a car that I'll never drive, things have gone awry. and then I'm back on the road and I'm happy again.

It is weird how different the experiences are. The progression is so weird because you, like ignoring whether you get the pre-order bonuses or not, things like wheel spins or even just like doing missions, you'll just be granted quests. You'll be granted cars at just random intervals. It's so weird because you would think if it's a traditional open world game that you'd start with a Hyundai Alontera and then work your way up and now I've. have a Subaru and now I have a Honda, whatever, and then eventually get a Lamborghini. But a lot of people are going to get Lamborghinis in like the first hour or two of the game.

And the game is balanced for that because a lot of the early challenges are like you can only use a B-ranked car. So you're only going to use this. But then you're in the open world. You can use whatever you want. So it does kind of invert, I think, what a lot of people expect from racing games like Grand Turismo, where you start with a shitty car and work your way up. that's still something I don't like. Like there's, for as much as this game has going on for it, the map is insane. Like there's so much shit to do.

It's so fun. It's so good to drive around and to like download other people's sort of like creativity and share your, like that stuff's all very cool. But like when I spend a bunch of credits, if I find a car and then I spend a bunch of credits, if I, God forbid, like spend a bunch of time tuning it myself. And then I picked that car to go into a race solo with and then it changes. all of the cars I'm racing against to be like competitive with that car's like stats completely. It's like, well, then why the fuck did I just, I had a race that was like, you have to do this race to qualify for the next wristband to do the next big event, which is the only sort of trick this kind of campaign structure has going for it. I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll use

this car that I have. Oh, wait, it's like rank C. It's got like stats around 500. That's not good, but all the other cars are around there. Maybe I'll juice it up. I'll go into the shop, juice it up and come back and I juiced it up came back and I was like now it's a fucking A rank speedster 750 stats this thing's gonna zoom and every other car had like been changed like it's scaled to match and I'm like well then why the fuck did I just do all of that stuff like it feels better to drive for me but if like what is the what is the competition yeah necessarily and competition related I actually I think the difficulty is in a really weird spot because I was finding myself at the average I'm not a great racing person. I'm okay at it. When I was doing average, the like default setting for difficulty,

I'd more or less like, it would be a tight race. Like if I did a good job and I'd clean, it'd be tight, but maybe I'd win. Maybe I'd lose. When I dialed it down to whatever's one below that, I was winning by like 150 miles, like it was not even close. And I would like to have it like a little competitive, but not feel like I'm slamming my head against the wall trying to like get through these races. So it does, on the difficulty setting side, I was a little bit like, eh, but I want to do, I do want to call out from an accessibility standpoint, I don't think I've ever played a game with a more robust accessibility set than I've ever seen in this game.

It is insane. You can change, I'll just speak for myself and what my needs are. When I started the game, there's like the GPS and it shows you where you're directed, whatever it is. I could not see the line going to the location. that I had picked because the color was contrasting with the map. You can change individual UI elements in the UI and only in the UI. It's not like a filter to select the colors that you can actually see.

You can change the in-game graphics like, oh, I want these flags red or, oh, I want these flags orange, and I want these, the roads should all be blue so I know exactly what type of road surface it is. Through the roof accessibility settings to the point where I'm really, I was really, pleased to see it. I'm sure others can speak to their own personal preferences, but like, great, great to see. Very good. Yeah. This is a really frustrating kind of game for me, where I like playing it a lot, but the hooks, the carrots aren't necessarily there. Like, it doesn't really matter if you win or lose a race. You get credit towards like your next big

flagship kind of event, which one of the ones I did was pretty nuts. Is it the robot? Yeah, and then the rest have just kind of been, you're racing, but now there's airplanes flying overhead or some shit. Like, I don't, the story is a huge, nothing. There's no story. Like a huge, huge, huge nothing. And they've made it so you can't skip any cutscenes,

which is fucking bonkers. I do not need to hear my friends say for the 15th time, like, that was a great race. See you guys the next starting line. Like, it's a total, there's no, everyone's super nice. in love with cars and that's great. The vibe is great, but like, you don't get that. There is no friction or competitive kind of spirit to speak of in the game of states.

I want one asshole. One guy. One asshole. Like, from your rival in Tony Hawk's Underground who's like, I'm going to be the champion of racing way before you, dips shit. Like, none of that. That's, you know, I guess you don't need that, but I need some reason to feel like if I win or lose a race, like it fucking matter. Like, it matters.

at all because it doesn't here. There is... Do you remember in Fort's Horizon 2, I think it was? No, I don't. Okay, so Fort's Horizon 2, I believe, is when it got really open world. Is when, like, the series expanded. And you could drive around, but there were train tracks.

And if you hit the train tracks, they were basically the invisible walls of the game. Sure. So you had an open world, but not entirely. And whenever you hit these, you really, really hit the walls. And I remember at the time, as a big fan of the beginning of the series, that I wanted a version of Fort's Horizon where I could go anywhere. And I remember interviewing them for Fort's Horizon 3. And they're like, we're doing that.

But like, there are problems with being able to literally go anywhere. Like, we want to give you a directed and a curated experience. We are now at Fort's of Horizon 6. And you can run through any tree in the video game. Smash right through. You get bonus points. Yes, I actually got a truck that I think was a pre-order bonus that I have dubbed the Global Warmer. It is the biggest fucking truck on Earth.

It has rockets on the back. And it has what can only be described as a snowplow on the front. And I can clear, entire forest. with the global warmer whenever I like. On one hand, it's great when the challenge is like, keep a score street going for as long as you can. Okay, point me to the nearest plants, and I'm going to absolutely... Is there a UNESCO heritage site nearby?

I went up a mountain, cleared out all the trees on the side of the mountain, and then jumped off the mountain with it. It was fantastic. At the same time, there is no challenge. Every minute with the global warmer is the same as the minute that came before it. And as a result, as much as I enjoy it while I'm doing it, I can put it down and never think about it again because it's the same experience over and over and over again. And that is kind of where I am at with the series right now, which is while I'm playing it,

great, having a really nice time. But you're right, the friction, whether that is the characters in the cutscenes, whether that is the, you get rewards, whether you win or lose, whether it is finding something to do, there is none. There is none. And I am now realizing I don't want the age of the train tracks again, but

as someone who genuinely loves this series, this was probably my favorite AAA series to a point, I really yearn for it to feel like a game in some ways versus just a toy box or a play

Yeah, a toy box is right. It feels like an activity that you do at the end. It's a long day of work, and I'm going to get a few races in. And that's like, and you're going to, these are commonly for people that buy like one game a year and this game could easily last you 200 hours because there are 200 hours worth of activities in this game. I don't know any one of them is going to necessarily stand out unless you're a huge car person in which case maybe.

But yeah, no, I mean, I like, plan is right. I like playing the game. I like while it's going on. There's not something that is like constantly dragging. me back to play more of it, but they made a really fucking fun racing game. So it does leave me in a weird place. I also have some issues with it

that could just be sort of personal tech problems, but the kind of like somewhat always online-y, it's not always online. You do have to bring the game online and link it to your Xbox Live account before you can play the game, which I discovered at an airport as I was like getting ready to board a flight

in which I planned on playing this game. But I managed to get that going. And then while I was traveling for a weekend, I played the game, like, offline for probably about five or six hours. And then when I got back home and booted the game up again, there was no save. Like, it had never saved my shit locally, I guess. I had a prompt at some point, like, saying, like, unable to sink to the cloud.

And I'm like, well, that should be okay. I'll do it when I get online. But I lost a lot of progress at a disturbance. whatever, which is huge bummer. Also, there is like a DRM layer that is kind of always operating in the background while you're playing the game. And I've been playing on the Rog Ally X. And if you put the thing in sleep mode, the DRM layer crashes. And then when you turn the game back on, it goes down. And you can't skip any of the opening fucking company. It takes forever to get back in the game again. And I just want to do a fucking race, man. I don't want to watch the speech.

I don't want to watch the Turn 10 Studios logo for the millionth fucking time. time. It's, it's, that, that stuff is like, maybe small quibbles, but hugely problematic. It's so good that you mentioned that because if Microsoft's whole thing for the future of Xbox is this project helix, we're going to be a PC thing. Yeah. They have to finally figure out how to make Xbox gaming on PC not total shit for the first time in 30 years. Put your shit on Steam or don't put your shit on Steam. The like making, we're going to run a secret application in the background the whole time just to make sure. sure you really, you really are playing Forza Horizon 6th.

That shit. But even if you were playing it just on Xbox, you'd be using all these same crappy headaches. Like, they have to create a better PC experience. If that is the horse that they're betting the future of Xbox on, yeah, figure it out, figure it out, figure it out. Yeah, just do what Sony does, which is to say, we're not doing that any. We're not putting any games only on PS5. That's going to work out for us. That's the way the whole industry is moving around us, like a brave rock in a river.

Fucking dipshits. So that's Forza Horizon 6. It's really fun. It's really fun. If there were like 10 pretty big structural changes that they had made to the game, it would be a fucking contender goatee for me all day, all day. One asshole. That's all we're asking for is one asshole. Just one asshole.

Or some other big changes that I would like to pitch. to playground games after we take a short break. I love it. Issues with Forsa Horizon 6 are as follows. One, you have too many fucking cars. In my second save, I've gotten, I'm up to, I got my green wristband this morning. And so I'm making my way back.

It's beautiful to look at. The cars, aw, they look amazing. You do have 50 of them so fast, and then it doesn't fucking matter what cars. Once you have 50 cars, you basically have infinity cars. and so it doesn't really get as exciting to find new cars or change the ones that you do already have.

Another issue, all the human beings look so fucking whack. When you start the game, you create your drivetar, and I have not found a way to get him to change out of the baggiest blue jeans I've ever seen. You can change them out of very baggy blue jeans. It's funny that he's going on his whole adventure without changing those clothes. I haven't found that in the extremely busy...

Yeah, you have to be at a house to change their clothes. out of house to change your clothes. Okay, shame on me. The humans look so wild and they speak in a way that human beings don't talk, IRL. And there's just, the cars have a lot of personality in terms of how they feel and they're kind of like lineage as these like sometimes just classic automobiles. But beyond that, it's hard to really get stuck in one and feel like a sense of real ownership of it. But the driving is great, and it looks great, and it's fun to explore a big open world in one of these cars. But what if, and this is where my pitch starts.

Sure. What if you weren't in the car? What if you were the car? What if playground games made the next cars? It could be an MMO racing game. It could just be the format. It literally just Foresa Horizon 6, but you're the cars. Uh-huh.

So there's just one. Okay, when you're saying you're the cars, do you mean the property car, the IP car? You're the cars from cars. Okay, got it. And you get to pick a cool name when you start, right? And you start out of some busted up jalopy, but you can still be called like smooth thunder or some like cool shit like that. Nutso. Yeah, I'm Natso, yeah.

Sure, yeah. The Mazda, CRX. And so you're the cars, right? There's just one. And now all of a sudden like tuning it up and changing it and upgrading. And I think in this one you'd be able to like change their consciousness. It's a ship of thesis question where you could sort of a Masta CRX could be come a high-end a lot of

Yeah, if they like Sure, sure, sure. It's around, right? Sorry, you said to meet up. You're getting to where I think you're going. Where they fuck? They fuck. They don't fuck.

How do you populate the world? Chris, this is a real pitch I'm doing to the company playground games. This is my chance to get off the sinking ship of games journalism. My chance to get off too. Yucco. The cars are you.

You are the cars. There are no humans, no human models at all. They can still be showing up for this fucking crazy race event. That's true. Huge music festival. All that stuff can stay. Everything else about the game can stay. What works about this idea is you would have to change so little.

You would have to remove a lot of stuff. You would have to remove 49 of your 50 cars and you just have the one car and you can shape shift kind of the crew style, I guess, into the cars that you've bought and upgraded. But all of a sudden, like, when you get a new fender, that's like part of you. I see. That's like part of your body. Yeah. So you're taking the like oblivion approach.

So like you're on your own adventure. You're on your own adventure and it's you trying to make your way in the cars world. And you know what you can have with this? Mean shithead cars out there that you want to beat in races so bad and all of a sudden those races really really mean something. You can also have for what it's worth you can have cars that you can have sex with. Right. Just saying. You guys, hey guys, how do you eat?

Will you continue this? Will you continue this part of the conversation during Resties when I'm not there? You can pick up this conversation. I want to talk about fixing playground games as flawed race and menstruation. You can't have it both ways. You cannot tell me you're a car now, Chris. Okay, I'm a car. How do I eat?

How do I take a two? Have you seen the cars films from Pixar, Chris? Yeah. Or cars planes fire and rescue? Yeah. Cars planes fire and rescue? Yeah. Do they get into these questions in there or do they just kind of go like it?

It's all in the manga. It's oil. Yeah, exactly. I guess we could fold some of that in here. Okay, good. You're a car. You're the car. You are, and you can keep all this sim shit.

It's just you change the headlights to eyeballs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Can I give you, I'm not trying to steal your thunder, which would be a name for your car. Don't steal my smooth thunder. I was thinking about taking the series in a different direction. Because you're right.

The problem is the cities that they're based on, It can never recreate Tokyo. You could never recreate Los Angeles if you want to move it there, right? Yeah. And also, too many cars. How do we solve for that? Forza Event Horizon. A Cthulian sci-fi adventure.

Space? Set in... We are mere meters from the surface of the sun where we are racing against Lovecraftian gods. Yeah. On what, though? Cars. Cars. No, no.

No, no. You're in the cars, but like, What are you racing on if you're in space? Have you ever seen Rainbow Road? Yeah, but there's no rainbows in space. That's just in Mario games. The tracks are short. The tracks are short.

The tracks are very short. It's like an interior kind of, you know, interior space mountain type of tracks. Have you been on Space Mountain? Yes. Imagine it covered in blood and Sam Neal is there. Oh, thank God. I was worried if Sam Neal is there.

Lawrence Fishburn is there. They both have hurt their own faces. They're there and they're cheering for you. Oh, they're friends now. They're friends now in space event, hurrah. Do you have your own version of the game? No, I'm worried specifically about Sam Neal because he's getting up there. Has anyone recorded him for AI purposes like they did with James Earl Jones?

No. Why would you let that happen? Probably a good idea to get ahead of that. Because if you're planning on making Sam Neal a big part of the show, like, I'm not worried about Larry Fishburn. He'll be fine. Samuel's getting up there. No, no, he's doing great. He's healthy.

he's he's he's I feel very good about this he's still hunting for the wilder people I'll be I'll see deep sea racing oh on on oil rigs it's forza deep water horizon is this anything oh I like that and then like the first half of the game is racing the second half of the game is legal battles this has felt like jokes to me when my car's idea was so the car's idea is really good the car's idea is pretty good don't act like your kids

wouldn't be all about that fucking life. Like, I would love racing around and being a car named Smooth Thunder. And so would my children. They would finally give a shit about car simulators. Get him turn it to real dudes. I'm prepared to green like this.

I just got one question, which is, how are you going to fit in DJ Atomica? Mm-hmm. He's been out of work since SSX folded, so he's really hurting for... And burn out here. Let's not forget. we can get him we can get yeah I guess he could be in there he'd have to be a fucking car man

he'd have to be a car he couldn't be like a dude you just said it a fucking car you've been describing these all along do we have any mail we do have some mail that was a great pitch Griffin well done thank you I was really excited about it uh this is I've never seen a cars movie still this is a Griffin centric letter this comes from Anthony um they have peaches without fuzz someone please give Griffin a nectarine I don't think necterines are the same as peaches. I think it's a totally different fruit. Just because it's a stone fruit.

I mean, so I think it is a peach. I think it is a genetically modified hairless peach. Yes, that's fine. But true peach heads know the difference of the mouth feel when you get in there. It's, it's, it's, incterines, the skin is actually waxy. I need something in between waxy and fuzzy. There's got to be, there has to be a middle. you allowing a little bit of fuzz, a little bit of peach fuzz, if you will?

The implications of the sentences that preceded this one. Okay, our next letter comes from Chris. Chris is talking about mixtape, which we talked about last week with the wonderful Lucy James. The genre siblings of mixtape are Florence and Edith Finch. So that's accurate to say that they're non-interactive than it is to say they have plenty of interacted to interactivity, but no gameplay

consequences. If I wanted to do this genre, a backbiting and sardonic name, I would call a walking simulator. It would actually

be an emotion simulator, which I think is a pretty good way to term it. The gameplay sequences get you participating in a story moment, so you might better feel what the characters are feeling.

And mixtape in my judgment succeeds at this at the majority of sequences and tells a well-crafted story with a recognizable cinematic pedigree as a la John Hughes. I think, most of the critiques come from critics expecting or wanting it to be something else.

I think that's probably fair. We didn't fall on that trip. No, no, no. This wasn't a criticism. I think it was more speaking to the broader commentary about the game itself and whether it's, quote, a game or not, which I don't think any of a... That's the, that's, miss me with that shit. That is such a nothing fucking burger dude.

I can't believe people are still having that. I've seen conversations about this game that I also saw about fucking gone home. Yeah. And it's like, guys, how the... How are you still, how is there still an audience for that conversation? It's deranged. Yeah. It's so fucking baby-shed.

I think it's all just coming from a very disingenuous place of people being fucking shitty about it. I know. I know. But I don't, I don't know, man. Just say it, it's not a game because there's no points or winning or losing. Like, yeah, that's fine. We can do that.

We still do those. Yeah. That's great, actually. This next letter comes from Madison. my husband and I play a lot of co-op games together and I feel like we are running out of options. I am now inspired to try playing blueprints together. Any other examples of games that aren't technically co-op

but are fun to play with a partner? I wish I did more of this. Rachel and I really don't play anything. We used to play the telltale games when they came out, if that lets you know how long it's actually been since we've dipped into a two-player thing. We mostly just have an hour to ourselves at night that we usually spend watching perfect match.

or hockey. Yeah, that was my, generally that was us too. But yeah, since Blueprints, it's really opened things up. And it does kind of make me think of like, I think deduction games are probably great for this. Games like Oprah Den and... Did you say Oprah Den? Oberiden. Oh, I thought you said Oprah.

I don't want to play that DLC. That'd be fucking awesome. That'd be fucking awesome. That's a cool deal of Oprah's family. It's just her during one of like the Oprah's favorite things episodes. And it's just like a gray scale one bit like her with her hands out. You have to identify the crowd. You have to go through the crowd and look for the people who are being like trampled as people race towards their oat bath.

We have one more letter. This one comes from Hugh. I was bummed to hear about that Justin is hanging up the sticks, but I wanted to reach out because I upgraded my hitbox controller a few years ago. And I still have my old one. If you're unfamiliar, a hitbox is a fight stick with no stick. It just has buttons for the cardinal directions. The pad I have has a Brooke fighting board in it. works with PS5, Xbox, and PC, plus nice arcade buttons.

They are designed to increase input accuracy in fighting games, but it's good for lots of other stuff, too. I use mine for 2D search action games and platformers. That's really cool. That is really cool. I've always admired these, man. I feel like I used to roll up to QuakeCon and people would bring their own, like, insane hitboxes.

What would they use it for Quiccon specifically? I mean, anything. Yeah, I guess so. That's cool. Yeah, I always, I always, like how would you play a 3D game, but you probably can't necessarily play a 3D game with them? No, I think there's ways

of like, you know, mapping different button inputs to different kind of like analog axes. I don't know. I can't pretend to understand how these things work. They look absolutely bonkers. I mean, it's just buttons. They don't look that crazy. I love... I love tech. I know you love tech. I love gadgets and shit and this is like the final

frontier of that it feels like. I know. I know. I like the final frontier is just buttons on the board. Yeah. Beautiful glowing buttons. Okay, that's it for our reader mail. Thank you for sending those in. Do we have honorable mentions to talk about? I got a couple.

There is a mobile game I've been playing called Dragon Quest Smash Grow. What? Dragon Quest Smash slash Grow. Okay, so you can choose. No, you're doing both simultaneously pretty much all the time. It is a vampire survivors by way. of Dragon Quest. So you play as like a Dragon Quest hero and you go through maps where you're smashing up, you know, Dragon Quest enemies and then you're leveling up and you're getting

you know, gotcha tickets to draw random loot. Oh, it's a free to play. And it's a free to play. It's one of those. Yeah, I've not spent any cash on it so far. But man, I really do like the sort of like Dragon Quest aesthetic. And it does some like, it is very progression-heavy. It is much more progression-heavy RPG sort of centric than you know vampire survivors or crawlers where you're getting some upgrades between things and this one like you get experience

points and level up and your stats go up and there's different classes and it like structurally kind of progression-wise it feels very kind of classical dragon quest but it just it feels great looks great and I don't think it's going to necessarily

grab me long term but it has been like a fun you know, when I've got one hand free while I'm watching TV or something like that. Like, it's, it's been a... I'm telling you, that vertical iPhone gaming is like so clutch, and it's surprisingly rare to find. Like, Nubby's number factory, my understanding is, correct me, if I'm wrong, only horizontal, right? Only horizontal, yeah. Seems like a vertical... Bit of a missed opportunity there.

Yeah. I played Nubby. I beat Nubby, actually, on iOS for the first time. I had my first, like, finished run, because I'm terrible at that game. And then I was like, I'm done, I think, because I don't want to keep trying my phone to the side. And that's, I'm just that lazy. I've also been playing with Henry. So Henry still, most nights will read one of the many Nintendo manga adaptations that are out there.

We did all the Zelda ones together. He read through all the Pokemon ones over the course of like a year or so. And there's so many of them. There's Animal Crossing and Kirby. But the only one he hadn't really read was Splatoon, a game. he doesn't have a ton of affinity for. And so you started reading that and wanted to play specifically the Splatoon 3 DLC side order.

Oh, yeah. Splatoon 3 side order, which I had never, I don't think I had even heard of. That's like a single player or like not. Yeah, so it is a single player roguelike. You play as Agent 8 and you go up a tower every time. And you get on an elevator and the elevator will show you one of three rooms you can pick. It'll show you like the reward and the rewards.

things like, you know, your range for your main weapon will go up or you'll get, you know, some new sub weapon or whatever. It's, you know, in that Splatoon kind of progression way. And then there's like different types of challenges. So you beat a room, you go on to the next, you do it again. There's a boss every 10 floors. There's like currency you're earning that you're spending on vending machines, like in the runs. And then it's converted to a different currency when you lose and you spend that on like

permanent upgrades. Like now you start with more lives. Now you start with more armor. or whatever. It's like doing a lot of pretty classic rogue-like stuff, but you're playing Splatoon kind of single player. Can you play and come up? Is that an option?

I don't know. We have not tried to do that yet. If it is an option. That seems like a good bonding opportunity with your son. Yeah. Well, honestly, it's been a great bonding opportunity of us just kind of passing it back and forth because it's not like a game where I'm going to beat some like important thing that now he doesn't get to do.

Like, I'm still kind of farming it out. Yeah. So we've been just kind of like pass and playing it. Like he'll do a floor, I'll do a floor. And it's been a ton of fun. I really, I really like Splatoon. I like the vibe of Splatoon a lot and the feel of Splatoon. And like it doesn't feel like any other kind of shooter out there.

Griffin. I just, the, the multiplayer of it really never grabbed me. But this has been a really fun. Griffin, do you, you know, I know you're kind of out of the vibe of video games these days. Do you know what the next Splatoon game is? I don't think so. The next spiltoon game is called Spiltoon Raiders. Oh, yeah.

And it is basically what you're talking about, uh, the game. It's like, it's like a single player-centric game where you land on an island. I don't know the actual structure of it, but it's like more like co-op single-player like character progression stuff than it is. It's not really multiplayer.

Up to four-player co-op. Yeah, this looks fucking tight, guys. I think you're going to really like it. All about it. Yeah. Yeah, this is the fun part of this being the only real foothold I have in the games industry is that I will miss this shit, or I will see it and immediately forget about it because I'm not writing 12 stories about it a month.

And that's exciting. That's great. This sounds really good. But yeah, that's the DLC to Splatoon 3, and it's been a ton of fun. I love that Nintendo has just kept updating that game, like, without fully becoming like a Call of Duty guitar hero, Tony Hawk. This is a year old, I think. This DLC came out of, I do believe it came out a while. It came out a while ago.

I don't think they're still doing updates. But it did have a long life and it also stays alive with like their nonsense. Like do you like cake or hot dogs? Yeah. They're staying alive. I mean just like they could have done the thing where they release Splatoon and they don't release another Splatoon for 15 years. They kind of Tomodachi life rhythm heaven thing.

And it's like no. They've kept updating it. They've been kind of figuring out what it is. It's actually the only, I mean, in terms of cadence, is there another Nintendo franchise that comes out more regularly than Spiltoon? It's pretty weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's their cod, I guess.

I think they'd like very much for it to be there. I think that's their dream. Plant, do you have any honorable mentions? I have one thing that I want to shout out, and it's going to be available between this episode and the next episode, and that is 868 back by Michael Bro. Michael Bro, I think, is one of the greatest living game designers. He is brilliant.

He made 868 hack a long time ago. He made games like Cript. Zardaz, I believe, was the name. Or Zargah 33. I always get the name wrong. These are... You name your game's actual shit, man. Maybe Chris will remember him.

Yeah. These are... They're incredible. incredibly designed games, almost entirely roguelikes or variations on classic roguelikes in the very old school sense. You're moving around grids when you move, the enemies move. And for him to get a big, big by his standards release is extremely exciting. When Bros. Games were kind of popping off in the early 2010s, they were on iOS. not a lot of people were playing them outside of like the very hardcore weirdo gamers.

And they also just, they have an aesthetic that is not necessarily inviting. And because of the rogue likes, they're difficult. I think this game is releasing into a very different world where, one, it's on Steam. Two, people are way more familiar with rogue games now than they were 13, 14 years ago. And three, I think his aesthetic is, without. sacrificing its corkiness, a little bit more appealing for a broader audience this time around. I mean, these days like Pizza Tower, like that look of it is, I mean, it kind of is in a little bit of a similar vein here.

The culture is caught up with him, I think. So yes, 868 back cannot recommend it enough. Yeah. I'm all about it. I played so much 868 hack and it is a game I have not thought about in years and just seeing these screenshots has sent me. I made the mistake of downloading Crypt and just that

becoming my entire life. And then Zaga 33 got the title right that time. Once you put them on your phone, everything else just disappears into the background. Speaking of other things that disappear in the background, I've been playing more vampire

survivors than I think I ever have on my phone specifically because I never really got into it on mobile. And the only reason I did is because I was stuck on the subway for an and a half with my son and I needed something to keep his attention. And so he glanced over to my phone while I was fighting hordes of zombies and milk monsters, what the fuck they were. And he's like incredibly invested now.

And specifically I want to call out in the main menu of the game, there's a grimoor that like has a little blurb about all 350 fucking monsters in this game. A lot of them, I don't know if all of them were, but definitely a lot of them were written by Stephanie Sterling, who is a longtime games journalist. And they're very funny. And just discovering that game, which is so fucking nested and crazy, and there's so much content in it. And it's free.

And what's interesting about that on iOS, even though it's free, and there are ads, all the ads are self-inflicted. Like you can watch an ad to get an extra revive or get more money, whatever it is.

But once you get deep into that game, you kind of don't need to ever watch an ad again. and so it's just like a lot of content they're kind of giving to you. It has cross-save now so if you have a lot of progress on Steam you can carry the progress over and back again.

All that stuff is, it works incredibly well. I've been just like blown away. They have a ton of DLC that's come out over the years. Castlevania DLC, Contra DLC, etc. So I don't sleep on some vampire survivors.

It's done a really good job. The DLC for that game is strange. I forget which one I try. I love that game so much. I've spent so long playing it, and I feel like whenever I try to play the DLC, it absolutely blows my ass right out the back of my shorts. Difficulty was?

Like, absolutely so fucking super duper, duper, duper, duper difficult. I don't know if maybe that's just, from going from being a, you know, overpowered demigod who can kill 100,000 zombies in 15 seconds. I have heard, for what it's worth, that Castlevania DLC is a very good entry point. I forget the price point. It's, like, very low.

Yeah. The only note I would say is if you're going to play, just keep in mind that the Apple arcade version does not support DLC and does not support cross-save. Yeah. So if you're going to play it, just play probably the free version. That would be my recommendation.

I have one other honorable mention, and it's a game called Blueprints. Oh! You get to that room 49 or whatever yet? No, I've not entered the room yet. I will again keep it, somewhat vague because I don't want to spoil things for people that haven't played yet, but I've used the basement key.

We used the basement key for the first time, and that was such an exciting moment. I was so pumped to see that. We generated a schoolhouse and made it through some classrooms and then got to a classroom that had like a giant, two fucking giant maps drenched in stuff to take notes on. So our notebook at this point, my wife and I, as we continue to play through it,

is just like drowning and stuff. but it's been it continues to be so great those rooms you find that's like oh well this is the answer to like 15 yes we need to do we you become like a i don't know a crime scene investigator all of a sudden where it's like we got to write down everything there have been a few times where it's like we get to a room that's like kind of hitting you in the face with the answer to the question and yeah but we might have already gotten that answer before so that can be a little deflating but you always get something if it's a new room you always get something new uh and at the very least you'll get lore about the world and the story and all that stuff. So I don't know, man. I have no idea

how long it's going to keep our attention, but it's been a nightly endeavor and it's been so delightful. Have you guys played some Notica 2 at all yet? It launched on Early Access last year. I have not played it yet. Okay. You haven't played it, right? No, no, not yet. This is the epitome of the game that I am dying, dying, dying to play in the way that Justin was psyched about Hades 2, that I will be good and use the willpower within me to not play until one point out. I think that's going to be it for me to. I played about 30 minutes of it and it, I did all that first 30 minutes of subnotica shit,

like swimming around and grabbing a fish to turn him out into, into flippers or whatever. And I was like, I will do this, but I don't want to do it right now. I don't want to do it right. I think I can wait on this one. I don't know why I couldn't wait on Slade Aspire 2,

but I think I have to wait on this one. It's, you just know that there's like an overarching story that, and like a power arc that you just won't. I don't want to interrupt. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I'm sort of in the same boat. It's done incredibly well. Look up the story of the like, the business shenanigans that went on with the release of this game.

A lot of stuff. It's incredibly interesting and shady in terms of the publisher, what the publisher is trying to pull off. But as a studio, they've done great, and I'm so happy to see it because it's a really great team. I also want to, this is less of an honorable mention and more of a, brag say I did finish the Legend of Zelda Matures mask in my trial by theory

YouTube series randomized one hit KOs turned on. It was a pain in the fucking ass. That's crazy. That's all on YouTube. You can watch that on the... Really, really hard one to do. But yeah, it's all on the Macroy family YouTube channel and yeah, I love that game even more now

I think. Wow. I think I appreciate its weirdness far far more now that I've had to really interface with it in such a perverse sort of manner. Is there an immediate Like, oh, I know what game I would do next option? No. No, I've done Ocarina.

I've done Like, I've done Like, there are ones for other games. But these are the three by far that I know kind of the best. Sort of tangential, but Griffin, are you going to play the Twilight Princess decop? Have you seen this? I have not. That's not one that I like have a lot of affection for, but I would also love to revisit it. Did they fix it? Is it a fun?

Super long time. I was mixed on Twilight Princess when it came out a long time ago, but the decompulation looks gorgeous and runs apparently very well on Steam Tech. For people who are not following this, decompolation is basically recreating the code of the original release so that it can run on your PC. I'm sorry if I got that technically wrong. It basically is like a native app for the device you're using it on

rather than it being run through an emulator. And who boy looks good. Yeah, it looks like they're just about done with it. I don't know. I'm terrible. I know there's so many different ways to play these games, right? Like there's the ship of Harkinian kind of stuff for O'Carena time. And I think Majors Mask and there's like insane multiplayer mods and shit like that.

I have not really dabbled in any of those dark arts. I think I did download a weird mod for the 3DS version of Majors Mask when I played it on the Odin, A-Y-N, Thor, whatever it's called, you know what I mean. I think that's it for this week.

Do we have any patrons that we'd like to shout out? As a matter of fact, I wanted to thank patrons over at patreon.com. slash the besties. We have John G. We have Deirdre C.

We have Jason B and we have John another John G. This one's a John with an HG. Okay. So we have both versions of Johns with G. Thank you for being supporters of the Patreon, really it means as much to you as it does to us greatly

appreciated. Wow, that was not the order I would have said that in. No, no, no. That's exactly what I meant to say. And literally, you guys allow this show to exist. So thank you so much for all that support. In addition to everyone else who shares the show and talks about the show, we greatly, greatly appreciate it.

Chris Plant, can you talk about what we talked about today? Oh, man, I'm still trying to think about those cars. have in love with each other. We talked about Forta Horizon. Again, that's a Rusty's talk. That is not for us.

It's not for me. Forza Horizon 6. What do you think they're doing with that Rusty's? What are they doing with that Rusties? What are they doing with that Rusties? Rusties. Never mind.

It's the spray they, it's a lubricant in the world of cars movies. I haven't even seen cars and I fucking know about that. So maybe this car is MMRPG. was a fucking bad idea if the retention rate is that back. You can run it on Kickstarter. They're allowing sex stuff now. Forza Horizon, I'm going to do this now.

Forza Horizon 6-868 back. Dragon Quest Smash Grow. Splatoon 3's Side Order D.L.C. Trial by Fieri on Macroy family YouTube. Vampire Survivors, Blueprints Update Day 20. That's all the stuff that's written down here in the documents that I'm reading. Thank you. Oh, in the film Event Horizon.

You should go watch that too. Direct by Paul W.S. Anderson. Next week, we're going to be talking about Mina the Hollower. So brace your ass for that conversation. Because I think I could talk about that game for a decade. So join us again for that discussion next week. And thank you so much for listening to the besties this week. Stick around, won't you?

Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!