The Besties - Half-Life 2's Patch Adds an Incredible Commentary

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

The 20th-anniversary update to Half-Life 2 turns the game into a masterclass in game design. The Besties talk about the in-game commentary along with the new feature-length documentary. No surprise: Valve nailed it again. Plus, Griffin and Frush opine on Pokémon TCG Pocket! 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!

What do I do with the pickle shapes? Hmm. I don't even know. I could try and sit here and try and decipher what garbage you're talking about, what you just said. But I don't know. I'm a fan of pickles. Right.

And I like to put them in sandwiches. I'll eat them straight up, you name it. But when all the pickles are gone from the jar and there's just the juice, at the bottom, there's all sorts of shapes. And what am I doing with those shapes? Am I just drawing them? When you say shapes, what does that mean to you?

There's balls, there's rectangles, there's- A pickle? No, no, no, no. It's like other stuff. What? What's going on in your pickle jars that there's just shape? No, no, no, no. It's like other stuff. What? What's going on in your pickle jars that there's just shape?

A shape describes the form of a thing. It doesn't describe the substance of it. So I guess I'm asking what the substance of the shape is. Unless you are living in an episode of Sesame Street. Are you in a Sesame Street episode? I don't think so. I might be. I do a lot of counting.

There's certainly locals. What are, yeah are the sh, There's like balls, but they're hard. And there's like, Of what, balls of what? I don't know, I've never eaten them. I don't know. Like onions?

Like little onions. Maybe. Like little pearl onions maybe? I don't know what color they are. You could tell me that there could be ball bearings, Brown? And like shark's teeth in your, No, it's not made of metal.

It looks like a kind of food, but not really a food that is meant to be eaten by me, maybe by birds. Okay. It could be just like a little pearl onion though, and that is I think okay to eat. Yeah. It's very hard though, it's not soft.

It's like a spice. How do you know about the hardness of it? I've touched it with a fork. Okay, and the rectangles, let's go back to the rectangles, because that's not a naturally occurring shape in most situations. Well, they're like long rectangles. What?

Those might be onions. Talking about. A little pepper? Maybe a pepper. Long rectangles does not naturally just equate to onions. I feel like what we're discovering is you have been living in an alternate plane, near ours but not in ours for a long time that would answer so many of my questions We're finally hitting it. You're calling in from Earth 3. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like herbs and spices probably, right?

What is the brand of the pickle? Oh, it's from Trader Joe's That it's yeah. Okay. Yeah, they'll throw they'll put a bunch of crazy shit in there, it's from Trader Joe's. That, yeah, okay. Yeah, they'll throw, they'll put a bunch of crazy shit in there, man, including shapes. Trust Trader Joe's for nothing. They got sprinkles in the bottom there, floating. They got, it's brine. That's just brine friends. Okay, so what do I, okay, so to go back

to my original question, what do I do with the pickle shapes? Is the name of the product Trader Joe's Pickles and Shapes? No. Okay, well then don't eat the shapes. Okay the name of the product Trader Joe's Pickles and Shapes? No. Okay, well then don't eat the shapes. Okay, so I just dump them? Yes, you throw them away. Can they be composted? I can compost.

Compost the shapes. Okay. The juice, you could sell. You can resell the juice. Okay, that's good. There should be a local artisanal like mom and pop popsicle stand that you could sell the juice to for a dollar.

And they don't mind that my fingies have been in there. Are you putting your fingies in the, are you not fishing those out with a special tool? You're using fingies? I mean, they're stackers. Remind me to, yeah, snackers indeed. Not for me though, remind me. If I ever come visit your house, I need you to remind me and I need you to swear to God you're gonna remind me.

Don't eat those pickles. I touched them. I touched them all. It's just my family that's sharing the pickles. Can we talk about video games for all that's holy? Please let them talk about video games. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of 20 years ago and this week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game slash documentary of the week. My name is Ross Froschere and I know the best game of the week. Justin McElroy is, he got sucked up by a big tornado. He's gonna be fine, but he couldn't be here this week. It's one of the twisters, I'm not sure which one, but it's one of them.

It's one of the twisters from Twisters, which I didn't see, so I just assumed that they are not. It was one of the B-story twisters. Okay, that's fine then. Welcome to the besties, we're talking about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-gainment. It's a game of the year club, and by listening you're a member, and this time it's a special double header.

We got a game that came out 20 years ago, about, probably a little bit more than 20 years ago at this point, Half-Life 2, which has received an anniversary update and a full ass documentary about the anniversary of Half-Life 2. We're also gonna be talking about Pokemon TCG Pocket. You dear listener, guess which one I played more of? You'll never guess.

Chris, what is those games? I think you did a great job, but for anybody who's completely unfamiliar, Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter that changed the very idea of first-person shooters. Documentaries are a method of storytelling where we use facts instead of fiction, and Pokemon the Card Game Pocket

is a pocket version of Pokemon the Card Game. We will talk more about all of that and more right after the break. Okay, so huge thing. I did not remember about Half Life 2 going back to it to the point that I'm wondering if like, did they patch this in? But Hatsune Miku, has she always been your companion through the game? I thought it used to be Alex, but. So you, I, okay. Where did you download, where did you download your copy of Half-Life 2 Anniversary?

I downloaded it. Or the Geocities website. I downloaded it on Steam, but then Steam Workshop popped up. Was it spelled S-T-E-E-M? Steam Workshop popped up and there were all these green plus signs. And I was like, I love to click things. So I clicked them. And I started the game and then the first thing that I saw was Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Awesome. And his big face showed up and he said, welcome, Mr. Freeman.

And I was like, okay, something feels a little off. And yeah, and then I went the train and you know, you get off the train and you go into the station and all of the soda machines had these hilarious memes on them. Cool. Okay. I love it. I love memes.

And then Hatsune Miku showed up, and here's the part that surprised me. She had full original voiceover. This was not Alex. In fact, Hatsune Miku- They got Hatsune Miku? Hatsune Miku introduced herself as Hatsune Miku. I mean, they downloaded Hatsune Miku.

They didn't get anyone. I love, Chris, that we, in figuring out what this week's episode was going to be, we were like, let's talk about the 20th anniversary update of Half-Life 2, because there's a lot of cool new stuff in there. And you were like, yes, let's do that. And also, I'm going to chop and screw it myself, T-Pain style, to make it an unrecognizable mess when we talk about things that are not at all related

to the 20th anniversary update. It's actually fitting Chris Plant. Is it? Yes, it is, it actually is. Because as part of the 20th anniversary update of Half-Life 2, they added Steam Workshop support. So even a dummy, like Christopher Thomas Plant, is able to install his favorite Vocaloid into the game. Gary is holding his mod in his hands and crying

and saying, it's not good enough for you anymore. You need an easier option to put anime girls into my video game, me, Gary, who made it. I guess we should talk about the traditional game, but we will come back to Steam Workshop, because I feel like the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I have seen something beautiful. Oh, it's tremendous.

I was not really intending to dive too deep into the Half-Life 2 side of this episode, but can I talk about the game part of things? Because I tried to watch the documentary, and I got really bored really fast and didn't watch it. I liked it. I have not played Half-Life 2 in a long time. I cannot remember the last time I played Half-Life 2.

It's not one that I returned to for shits and giggles. So it's probably been honestly since like Orange Box. So a very, very long time. And with the 20th anniversary update, they've made a few little changes, if the introduction by Gabe Newell is to be believed, like patched a few little things and tweaked a few little things.

But the big update, as far as I can tell, is the addition of developers commentary all through the game, and it is, we've obviously seen this feature in lots of different games before. I cannot remember a developers commentary that is as exhaustive and as ambitious as this developers commentary is. And it was enough to get me really genuinely

very interested in replaying Half-Life 2. It's extremely detailed in a way really genuinely very interested in replaying Half-Life 2. It's extremely detailed in a way that I think even a person who doesn't care that much about Valve or Half-Life 2 will get interested in, because the cool thing they do from time to time is it's not just people talking about, well, the graphics card back in 2006 was blah, blah, blah, blah. They do do that for whatever reason. They do do that and it is nice that you can just like

turn on one of those little nodes and it'll be like, it'll tell you the subject of the thing. So it'll be like shader compilation and you can just turn it right off like, nope. But what it does do from time to time is it'll be like, this is the choreo system, which is how we set up the like basically in-game cutscenes where characters are talking when you show up

to Dr. Kleiner's lab and he's like, here's the ATV suit, here's, let's get on this teleporter, here's a Vortigaunt, and he's all crazy. They will show you behind the scenes, sort of, by which I mean the choreo is like a list of commands they give to different character models that are in the game to like, okay, now you look at Gordon, and then you look at Alex when you're talking to Alex,

and then you move to here. It shows you like a wireframe like box. Yeah, there's a visualization of how it works. A visualization of how they move, or they'll be like, this is like, this was when graphics cards, like, you know, individual graphics cards became like a thing that you could start to do a lot more.

So like, here's how we did bump map lighting, and then all of a sudden, all of the textures and everything just drop out, and it just shows you like the bump map of the world that you are like walking around. It's really genuinely very cool and insightful in a way that I was not anticipating, like getting interested in.

It actually makes me a little, actually very bummed at the idea of how much institutional knowledge is lost after a game gets developed, because it's, you know, all this sorts of documentations and anecdotes, whatever, are buried in documentation somewhere on a drive somewhere. Yeah. And so few companies would have the time or resources

to be like, we're going to bake this into this entire 25-hour long game and have hundreds of these anecdotes and give you kind of a history lesson of how this game was made. And it is massively fascinating. It is massively fascinating. I don't know how useful a lot of this institutional knowledge

is, because what was surprising for me is how many of these anecdotes demonstrated that this game was held together with twine and tape in certain cases where they were like, we actually had to use eight different renderers, all operating at the same time because this wouldn't do this but this could do this. And so because of the kind of like evolving hardware

of the time, like they were kind of figuring it out as they went, which like for a game as, I don't know, Totemic is Half-Life 2, you don't think of it being like this project where people had to like get it across the finish line through sheer force of will, but it really sounds like that's kind of what was required. Yeah, just to clarify, it's more talking from a historical standpoint, like how this stuff came about, not necessarily, oh, you could use this to make your own game today.

Yeah, sure, sure. It's like a document, basically. Yeah. The comparison that kept coming to my mind while playing it was, remember that show where they revealed the secrets of magic? No, sure. But it was always like magic that had been around for like 20 years, right?

Like it's like, we're not gonna ruin something that's like modern. And at this point, I love Half-Life 2. The kind of core magic of it is gone in some ways, while it's still very fun. And now is the time to reveal how it works. And that's what it felt like was being invited on stage and then literally the magician in

the stage checks and everybody being like, Hey, welcome. You're ready. You are now ready to see this and we're going to show it. There's a airboat very early in the game for people that have played the game. If you haven't played it, I'd highly recommend it. Maybe you were one of the few that got it for free during this three day period a week or two. It's 10 bucks. It's 10 bucks now.

I can't believe I didn't own it. I don't know how that's possible. Totally worth it. But there's a moment when you're in this airboat and throughout that whole sequence is a number of jumps. You're like jumping into the air. And one of the anecdotes that they share is that like, they wanted to make sure the jumps all felt good,

that you didn't get frustrated. So when you go off a jump, they jacked down the gravity of the game so that every jump is gonna feel good, even if you maybe weren't going necessarily as fast as you should have been going when you hit that jump. I thought you were going to talk about the bit where there's like a node while you're on the airboat

where it talks about motion sickness. Oh yeah. A lot of their early play testers got really motion sick in the airboat sequence, because it goes very fast. And what they figured out was they had to make it so that when your airboat kind of went up on one side or was sort of not super steady on the ground,

they had to keep your plane of vision, your field of vision flat, so that it wasn't also tilting and pivoting as the thing rocked, because that is what was making people very motion sick. And they had one person on the staff who suffered from terrible motion sickness that they made play test this over and over again

to like make sure that they could really whip it. It's, you are right, a lot of the magic of this game is I think lost just because it changed the game so much in a way that all future games were sort of informed by. And so what was- I mean, but how much of that is also you having played it? Oh, well, sure. Yeah, no, for sure.

But what I'm saying is what I think is incredible about the commentary is that it does kind of recapture that stuff because it does put, it hangs a lantern on all of it. And it's like, you know, there's one great bit where you come to this staircase and the game, the commentary like freezes and pivots up the staircase and then you get this like commentary that's like,

if you look up the staircase, there's an enemy up there. Behind them, you can see the Citadel Tower as it starts to sort of like wake up in response to Gordon Freeman's like running rampant through City 17. And it was talking about like, we had this cool idea where if an enemy died, they would also be subject to physics.

And so this staircase was an important moment where you shoot this enemy at the top of the stairs and they would ragdoll and fall down the stairs. And it's like, yeah, man, that's how all video, that's how all first person shooters work. But it points out like, this was not a thing. This was not a thing. This was the first time that we were like,

ooh, what if this enemy died and just kind of slurped down the stairs, which is a, I don't know, a historic enemy death in this genre. I learned how autosaves work. Yes, the autosave danger. So fascinating, yeah, danger autosave. I've always wondered this.

How does a game know while it's active when to place an autosave if there's, for example, like you're in the middle of a combat sequence that takes six minutes and halfway through, there's an autosave if there's for example like you're in the middle of a combat sequence that takes six minutes and Halfway through there's an autosave that loads you back How does it know that when it made that autosave you weren't gonna die a second later? And what they figured out was if they made like a temporary autosave and then the players survived for 30 seconds after that Then it would become a permanent autosave

Yeah, so that way they knew for sure, oh, the player's not going to die immediately when that save was placed. So many smart approaches to these ideas that are now so commonplace in the industry. And it was really, really cool. It's not a perfect analog, but Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Have either of you read this book?

Yeah, I've read it. Oh, Griffin, you're gonna love this. It is a graphic novel comic about how comics are made and also kind of how to read them. And I have craved a version of this for games forever. And this is not quite that, but it is the closest I've seen where the game is actually using the game to teach you how video games work.

And I would like to think that there are more of these. The reality is I would be shocked to see other studios do this with any regularity for two reasons. One, Valve has a lot of experience doing this. They've been doing this since, I think, Portal 1, including various versions of commentaries like this. And two, they have so much money that they can do something purely for. And, and I would say time.

Sure. Because they're not making stuff. They can just do this thing over and over again, because they don't, they're not making anything else. Deathlock. There's one thing about the game, because we've been talking around the game, but there's one thing in the game that I we've been talking around the game, but there's one thing in the game that I did want to talk about, which is the way it pulls you through

the world is unparalleled. And it's strange how little I see other games borrowing from the Half-Life 2 model. And specifically what I mean by that, because you'll see it right away in this game, is that when you see what should be your trajectory at any given time, that will not be your trajectory. So you have something that you are always walking toward, and then the game pivots you in a new direction. And the way that this works is like in the train station, you're in a train station which has very clear pathways. It's a train station. But as you move forward, you realize they've put up impromptu chainlink fence.

So suddenly you're gonna get kind of redirected in weird ways. When you're going down a big hallway in the train station, you see kind of two chainlink fences back to back. You go through one, the next one, they close the door on you. You turn around, they close the door on you you turn around because the door on you suddenly you realize there is a another door to a like security checkpoint yeah this constant turn of okay leave the security checkpoint to go to a back room back room to an alley way you going to a hallway but you don't just walk down a hallway hallway you go in and out of apartments. It is constantly. hallway, you go in and out of apartments. It is constantly making you think that you are not going in a straight line when in reality you're going in a straight line. And on top of that, making you think that there is a very lived in world

because every time you get to a dead end, it's not just a wall. It is something that's going on beyond that world. And it feels like you could have gone that direction. Maybe if you had hurried just a little bit faster. There are also no like collectibles or like reasons really to spend a ton of time in each section, and so you are just kind of blazing through. I actually have really been enjoying my playthrough of Half-Life 2 with the commentary on because when a commentary node is running you're invincible, and so you can kind of like see a commentary note,

start listening to it, and just blaze through the combat section in front of you and think like, as long as Gabe is talking, these man hacks won't chop me apart. And so yeah, that game has a really, really great momentum to it. I think it's just fantastic. It's not like, I don't know, it's not gonna hit my goatee list or anything like that,

but it's like, you don't get a lot of sort of playable history lessons like this. I do wanna say for people that have never played Half-Life 2 before, please play Half-Life 2 before you play it with the commentary on. 100%. It is like, you need to have the experience and then after the fact,

you'll have a really great reference point. But really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that you, I don't think there's many realities in which a person who has never played Half-Life 2 is like, okay, I'm curious about this. So I'm gonna go ahead and play the whole last game and then I'm gonna go ahead and play it right back again.

Well, I mean, play the whole last game and ask yourself at that point, is this something I wanna learn more about? I think it's fine to go ahead and ask yourself at that point, is this something I want to learn more about? I think it's fine to go ahead and play it the first time with the commentary on because it is still even if you don't have much attachment to the thing, there is a lot that that has to say about the era in which this game was made. And if you play PC games now and you play shooters now, I think that you still get a lot from like learning about that. Sure. Learning about that. Here's the real question. Should you play the game before watching the documentary?

I mean, I played the game a few times and tried to watch the documentary and it did not hook me. The documentary has a ton of spoilers in it, so I would not recommend doing the documentary first. I did find it personally very interesting. There's a lot in the documentary, obviously about did find, I found it personally very interesting. There's a lot in the documentary, obviously about the development of the game, but there's also a lot about like how fucking close Valve was as a company to not existing. They were in the midst of a very, very large lawsuit

with Vivendi, who had the publishing rights to Half-Life 1. And there's a moment which I think really shines a light on like who Gabe is as a person and why he's so successful. There's a moment where Vivendi sues Gabe and his wife at the time for basically all they have to the point where they are gonna have to put up their house. And Gabe was like, eh, okay, that's a bummer. But like, you know, it is what it is.

And that's how he handles everything. He mentions an anecdote where he was recently scuba diving with sharks and a shark approached him and everyone else in the group was freaking the fuck out. And Gabe was like, all right, well, I'll just like move away from the shark. Well, he wasn't scared because he had four to five knives on him at that point. They do mention his knife making. He made some knives for Counter-Strike 2's initial announcement, which was about 15 years before Counter-Strike 2 actually came out.

You know, I found it very interesting to, you know, they talk about the choreo system, they talk about the writing, they talk to a lot of the voice actors. I didn't realize Barney and the G-Man were the same person. I didn't realize the Overwatch voice that you hear throughout City 17. There's a person, Mr. Freeman is in this sector. The woman's voice is the same voice as Gladys from Portal. That's where they first worked with her.

They talked about how originally that was a Microsoft text-to-speech, like when they were developing it for a long time, but then they realized that they would have to pay to license that. And they were like, oh, shit. I think you need to be in a good mind. These sorts of docs and the Double Fine documentaries included in this is like, for me, the perfect, like, I've got 20 minutes during lunch,

I'm going to put it on YouTube and watch it. I wouldn't sit and watch it for two hours. I would put a pretty humongous gap between this and the Double Fine documentary. Yeah, they are very different. And that like, this is, and that's not to say that this is bad, it's not. It's just that this is, this is a documentary for the fans. Like, this is a gift, I feel like. So it's like, less a documentary with a story, then like like here's all the stuff that you were like maybe not sure about.

Did you know that there were gonna be five cities in the game? Did you know that we had to cut a plane sequence after 9-11? Did you know that all the faces are people from around the area that we paid like 600 bucks and now these iconic faces are just random people that wow Yeah, who knows where they are now the fucking skippity toilet face was just

True but like all I'm amazed they don't talk about skippity toilet at any point I know it's a big commentary track. Yeah, it's very interesting. But just yeah, definitely don't go in expecting Narrative. I think yeah,. Yeah, it doesn't come off as a humanist story, even though obviously a lot of humans sweat, blood and tears to make this game. It's more, yeah, a behind-the-scenes anecdote kind of thing. Yeah, 10 bucks for a genuinely unparalleled sort of like video game history lesson just for the game,

I think is like a pretty easy recommendation for anybody into video games enough to listen to a video game podcast. Yeah, and the documentary is free on YouTube. Yeah, we'll include an embed of it in the newsletter. Yeah, Valve needs our help to promote it. They desperately need our help, finally. Oh wait, I wanted to hear more about the mods. Oh, oh yeah, so all I'll say is,

I had not really used Steam Workshop on my Steam Deck. Yeah. And holy moly, it is unbelievable. I really did not appreciate that you go into what is effectively just a library, you can search for whatever you want, you click a button, and then you're just subscribed to the mod is just in your game and you don't have to worry about it at all.

It is so easy. As somebody who has not really been modding since, I don't know, probably 10 years ago, the, the changes, I really couldn't get over it specifically on the steam deck where I like just was fully prepared for it not to work. So I am- Well, yeah, you're not going to dig through Linux to find a folder to drop the files in. Yeah, sure.

And this takes all that out. I've used Steam Workshop probably most on Binding of Isaac, which has a shitload of amazing mods. And I really just wish more games would take advantage. I do wish that they made it a little more present. I feel like you have to kind of go looking for it. Yeah, that's true. But otherwise it's fantastic.

Okay, now can we take a break? Cause I wanna hear all about those Pokemons. You got it, let's take a break. We're gonna come back with Pokemon TCG Pocket right after this. I caught them all. Whoa! Yesterday, grabbed my last card of the genetic apex set,

which is a troubling name for the first expansion to genetic apex. Sounds, sounds, not great. Not great. Pokemon TCG Pocket. I think I talked, did I talk about it a little bit through the honorable mentions last week? You have talked a little bit about it, yes.

Okay. So like, y'all kinda know what it is. It is a, I would say, very, very beginner-friendly distillation of the Pokemon Trading Card game experience, both the collecting side of things and also the playing side of things. It has, I would say, been extremely successful so far, just based on the amount of coverage

I am seeing of this game. And right now, it's just like the first set of cards are out with some beginner quests and missions and stuff like that. The basic concept is every day, every 12 hours basically, you get to open a pack of five random Pokemon cards from this set. And there's like a few different versions

of these expansion packs. There's like a Charizard set and a Mewtwo set and a Pikachu set. And that's basically it. You collect cards by opening up these packs. It's very tactile. Every time you choose to open a pack, you can cycle through different,

like a wheel that you spin through, and you can pick the one. But there's a lot of weird, unknown sort of ritual around it. Like when you are spinning through and picking your pack, is it actually changing the cards inside or is that pretty much predetermined before you? And is there a way that if you tear the pack,

if you tear the top off the pack in a perfect line, does it increase? Like no, clearly not. But it is also like- Especially since there's a link to their legal documentation, which details the percentage rate. Yes, the probability, yeah sure.

But it is genuinely very pleasurable to open up a pack of cards, of any trading card game, right? That is a very, I don't know. You've played a few of these. Is there any, is there another card game that comes close to the satisfaction that you get? No, right? Like Hearthstone is also like five card packs,

but it's like you buy a pack and then you click it and it explodes and then cards come out and then there's a little guy who'll be like, it big! Which is like great. There is something different though about like picking your pack and then tearing it open and then watching the cards come out.

Sometimes if there's a rare card inside the pack, a little light shoots out of the top of it as you tear it open and you're like, oh fuck yeah, what's gonna be inside? You can also, before you open the pack, if little light shoots out of the top of it as you tear it open and you're like, oh, fuck yeah, what's gonna be inside? You can also, before you open the pack, if you flip it around, you'll only see the backs of the cards so you can have the moment of like, oh, I'm gonna tap it to flip it around and see what the.

It's up to you how much like, like pomp and circumstance you put into the opening of each pack, which I think is really cool. Great, they nailed it. Once you also have the cards, you can pick them up and move them around, see them in 3D. There are certain cards called immersive cards that are pretty rare.

There's only four of them in the game right now, where when you open them, it zooms into the card, and then all of a sudden you're in this scene. You're living with Mewtwo. Yeah, you're flying around the the lab where me too escaped and so like I don't know as a fan of trading card games, I think the way that it kind of like I don't know makes it into a Tangible experience is very very cool. I so I've I never played Pokemon the card game ever

Obviously, I've played basically every Pokemon game. And as a fan of Pokemon, the franchise, but not of the cards, I was really blown away by just like the artistry involved here. And the, you know, they're recreating the cards themselves. I assume these are all like existing cards that actually are in the world. I believe so.

I don't know if they like immersive cards are. But they, you know, there are a lot of them are like really funny and very creative approaches to like different characters. Like there's like a slow poke being like a total dumbass and like taking a nap and there's farfetched with like a bunch of leaks behind him. And so like that charm is doing it for me

in ways that I never got attached to the idea of, oh, I'm gonna spend five bucks and buy a pack of cards. Yeah, you're talking about, I believe, the Illustrated Rares, so outside of the base set, there's 226 cards in this first set, and then there's also these bonus Illustrated Rares, which take Pokemon from that set, but have the whole card is art.

And like the text is like sort of like not as featured. You can still play those in your sets if you want to, but those are just sort of like rare, pretty bonuses essentially. So there is a premium pass you can get. It's like 10 bucks a month and it gives you more daily missions and an extra pack that you get to open every day

Did you do that Griffin? I did do that Yeah, I I've spent so much fucking time with this game that I have not shied away from I did that and then there was one like like heavily discounted like gold Poke a gold pack that you could spend to like knock down the clock from time to time That I that I also spent money on I I will say as someone who has only done it as a free to play or have not spent money yet, it's pretty generous if you don't mainline it. Which is to say like, if you're just doing,

you're playing for like 20 minutes a day and you open your packs and you do your requests or whatever it is, I am drowning in resources. Yes. So I have not felt the urge, which is nice. I would imagine as with all free to play games, that tap eventually runs out, so you need to be mindful of that.

But the onboarding experience has been pretty good. In addition to the packs, they also have what are called wonder picks, which is you can go through, and it's very clever, you can look at a list of recently opened packs by other players, and then if you see a pack that has a card you really want in it, you can spend these things called golden hour glasses,

which is another resource that recovers over time to do a wonder pick, which is it takes the five cards that were in that pack, shuffles them up, and then you pick one, and you get to keep whatever card it is. So you can go through and be like, okay, I'm missing Charizard EX. It's in this pack, shuffles them up, and then you pick one, and you get to keep whatever card it is. So you can go through and be like, okay, I'm missing Charizard EX. It's in this pack, I'm gonna try and go for it.

And when that pays out, it's genuinely pretty fucking thrilling to get cards. And there's also a resource where you can just buy cards with these pack points that you get for opening packs. So it has ways of kind of guaranteeing, like you can get the card you want if you are patient enough. There is not trading in the game yet.

There's like a button for it, but it hasn't been implemented. Mostly because I think it will complicate the economy of the game in a way that- I'm just surprised there's a button. I thought for sure there wouldn't be trading at all. No, there will be trading. As far as I know, they're going to add it early next year,

I think is what I've read. So on top of that, there is also a playable version of the card game that is very streamlined. In a main Pokemon game, basically, you have this bench of five Pokemon and you have to knock out a certain number of the enemy's Pokemon and get points. And if you get a certain number of points

from knocking out enemy Pokemon, you win. This time it's been shortened, and there's only three spots on the bench. You only need to get three points to win, which in some cases, there's some Pokemon that are very strong that award two points if you knock them out. So some matches, I mean, I've had matches

that have lasted a couple of minutes. It is very, very fast. They've also gotten rid of energy cards, and now you just, every turn you get one energy that you can attach to your Pokemon. And so your decks are only 20 cards. So it's like a super, super tight, super streamlined version of the game.

A lot of the nuance of the trading card game is, I would say, lost here, which has led to certain decks becoming like extremely meta and extremely overplayed, which has, I would say, reduced a lot of interest in the PvP side of things. But it does still scratch the itch for me, and it does still like connect enough with the collecting side of things that when I get a card that I've been getting my ass kicked by it's like

Oh, thank Christ now finally I can start to wield this like completely busted set up that other players are doing Yeah in my experience. I love the collecting part I love the opening packs part even though like building a binder of your favorite cards. I was like enjoying Once I got to the combat part first of all all, learning the combat is like a 12 step, it doesn't take long, but it's long enough that I was like, this is gonna be like homework. It took me several days to work up the courage to actually even try it.

It's pretty slow in my experience. Like comparing it to things like Hearthstone or what was the Marvel Snap? Marvel Snap? It feels like every step along the way of the numbers popping up on the screen and the card going down and the energy... Like, everything feels about twice as long as it should

to the point where because the combat is so simplistic, no battle should last more than three minutes. And I've been in battles that last like 10 minutes. Like, they really drag on. Yeah, I will say at the higher end of things, like the PvP where players have collected a shit ton of cards, battles do not last that long because all the cards are extremely strong.

And that's just because like you lucked out on the type matchup or? No, usually, honestly, the type matchup doesn't matter a lot, right? There is type strengths and weaknesses, but it basically means if you are attacking a Pokemon weak to your type, you just do 20 extra damage with your attack, which when you're dealing with Pokemon

that have 180 HP, it's not a huge, huge game changer. Yeah, I think the PvP side of things needs to be balanced. There is a solo mode where you play against the computer, which does introduce some interesting stuff later on where where it's like there are challenges of, you need to build a deck that only has cards of like the base rarity, or you have to build a deck that is only comprised of Pokemon weak to the type you're fighting.

So like it introduces some deck building challenges that I found very interesting and very compelling. I'm really, really, really into it. I finished collecting the full set. When you'm really, really, really into it. I finished collecting the full set. When you do that, you get like a super rare Mew card, which is not obtainable any other way, which I'm a sucker for that stuff.

And with the promise of more expansion packs coming and more sets to collect and more different ways to build out decks and the meta shifting. I am really, really enjoying it. That's great. It is free to play. So I don't know, if the Pokemon Card Game is something you ever had any affinity for, I genuinely

think it is very, very smart the way that they have built this one and slimmed it down so that it fits wherever you want to sort of pop it into your day. Yeah, just be mindful of the, you know, if you have free to play tendencies of like being and lacking some level of restraint. Yeah, it'll get you. Probably not a good idea. But if you know, I think if you are relatively patient don't super care about getting everything real quick

You can do it for free and be fine. Like I've I've had a good time playing it Should we go to We've been gone. Yeah, we got a mailbox. We got some mail questions read your mail We've got one question for both me and Griffin This comes from Andrew. Request, I'm looking for a handheld gaming device to turn into a dedicated UFO 50 slash Pico 8 machine,

maybe some GBA. Russ has awakened the idea when he mentioned that UFO 50 is on Port Master. Yes. This is such a rad idea. I am at a point where I could not possibly start over with UFO 50. The idea is unthinkable. There might be a way to carry your save over or something.

Probably not from Steam Cloud to not Steam. I don't know how that would possibly work. So I've set this up. I installed UFO 50 on an Anbernic device, which is a Linux based handheld. It's called the RG35XXH. I think I've mentioned it before. It has kind of a similar form factor to like a GBA, the original GBA, that like horizontal form factor. And you can play UFO 50 on it.

And I have played UFO 50 on it. I was sort of in the ballpark of Griffin, which is to say like I've played a bunch on my Steam Deck and I didn't necessarily want to start from scratch, but I also like like playing those games. So the fact that like I didn't have my cherries completed didn't necessarily bother me a ton, but it is a very small screen. So if you're worried about like vision and screen size, you might want to look there's a larger version called the 40XXH, which I've heard good things about. But just keep in mind that Portmaster as a thing, I'm pretty sure only supports Linux devices.

I don't think it is on Android. So just make sure whatever you're getting is a relatively recent Linux devices. I don't think it is on Android. So just make sure whatever you're getting is a relatively recent Linux device. We'll drop a link to a video explaining how Portmaster works and the sorts of devices that support it in the newsletter. So keep an eye out for that. But if you're looking for a quick and dirty answer,

the RG35XXH is like $50 and is very, very good. Just keep in mind, you do need to own UFO 50. And you basically would drag and drop the files from Steam onto your device to get it to work with Portmaster. I feel like I have been a little bit out of the retro handheld scene. Yeah. It moves so fucking quickly.

Yeah, I just loaded up Retro Game Core, which is like my go-to source on YouTube for this stuff. It's just, it's all just fucking unrecognizable to me. And Brnic, the company that made the device I just recommended, has released, I think, 11 handhelds this year, something fucking crazy. It's nonstop. It moves.

I'm looking at this RG406H, and it looks fucking good. That's an Android-based device that... And the Odin 2 portal. My Odin is one of my favorite handheld things that I have. I did not know that they were making a new thing that could play fucking everything on it. Now, the best way to experience

the handheld gaming emulation world is to buy nothing and just drool over whatever the latest release is, because there's going to be another release in about two weeks. Yeah. But eventually I'll cave in and get something new. Just don't drive yourself nuts. I think the mentality to be in is here's where your head should be at. What consoles do I want to play? Do I want to play PS2 games? That's going to put you in a certain price bracket. For PS2, you're looking at at least like 150 bucks to get a device that does that.

If you don't worry about PS2 and you want to play like PSP and... You can find a $30 thing for sure. Yeah, $50, whatever, something like that. So just go into it with that sort of mindset and start cheap and see if it's something you'll actually use or if it's just gonna rot in a closet somewhere. Don't get an expensive device off the bat. I still like my MiU Mini Plus the best. It's great.

I still think that's my, I have not played one that has a better form factor. It feels excellent. That is one of my favorites as well. Another question? We've got another question from Matthew. I recently discovered Red Dead Redemption 2 which is slowly becoming one of my favorites as well. Another question? We've got another question from Matthew. I recently discovered Red Dead Redemption 2, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite games.

When it came out, I tried to work my way quickly through the story, but fell off halfway through the game. Recently on a whim, I decided to take another crack at it. However, this time I played slowly, taking the environment, talking to strangers on the street, playing poker at the saloon all night. It has since morphed into a tabletop-esque role-playing experience, where I have an investment in playing the role of Arthur Morgan.

At the time of its release, I remember many complaints about the pacing of the game, and this time I'm not fighting against the intentionally deliberate pacing on the flip side. I have also started to enjoy Diablo 4 for the opposite reason. Instead of scrutinizing abilities, upgrades, synergizing myself, I'm just following a build guide. The increased pace at which I'm leveling and moving through dungeons has really enhanced my enjoyment of the game. I'm curious if you all have some more experiences

where an intentional change in the pace of playing a game has fundamentally changed your feelings about the game. I selfishly ask this question to maybe uncover some more brilliant games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that I think I was simply playing wrong. I mean, I got a pretty good answer for this. I tried to play Yakuza Like a Dragon when it first came out and I didn't get it. I didn't understand how to play the game

and get sort of the most out of it. And I was trying to play it like a lot of other games where I was just going from waypoint to waypoint and trying to progress through. And when you do it that way, it is suboptimal because you are just sort of like now sitting through a ton of cutscenes. Like not actually doing a lot of stuff

that is fun and enjoyable. And then I took a break from it and came back and started over and this time was like, I'm gonna like just pop around, you know, Tokyo and check shit out. And then it became one of my favorite RPGs ever made. So this is very much in that same. I also don't play Diablo games without using a build guide

because it is the fatal flaw of those types of games where there is a best way to play it. And I don't have the type of gamer brain where I can shut off that, where it's like, I'll just goof around and play a build that is not very effective and waste my time. It doesn't have, it's different from Elden Ring or Dark Souls, whatever, where there's enough other stuff

in the game, the exploration, whatever, that you can feel kind of ownership over what you're finding and unlocking. Yeah. This is just like, you level up and you get more power. Like, you're not really doing a lot, so you better kind of do it the optimal way. Yeah.

My one note on that is just RPGs in general. And I feel like that's been my journey over the past few years. But like, I feel like there are, you know what I'd say, it's not that I returned to one game, like the example here with Red Dead, but that I can return to a series and gradually come to appreciate it. And I feel like that is how my journey with Dark Souls was. I feel like that's how my journey was with the Persona games, then going into metaphor. But like, sometimes it takes a while of learning how a game works and what it expects of you before you can kind of appreciate what its pace is and meet it on its page rather than whatever you thought it would be. Yep. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention, because Red Dead was the example here.

I've been playing. I've mentioned it before. I've been playing through the GTA trilogy, the remakes, because they recently got patched, and they're quite good now. And one pacing aspect that these remakes changed is that you get an autosave whenever you start a mission. And that change alone makes the pacing of those games

so much more enjoyable, because you no longer have to stress about after every single mission you do, having to drive back to the safe house, do a hard save, and then drive to the next story mission. So you can kind of blaze through it in a pace that actually I think really helps these games maintain your interest rather than having a lot of busy work. That's cool.

Anybody been playing anything else here for the honorable mentions segment of our show? I finished Agatha all along, which is on Disney+, and I quite enjoyed it. I hadn't really been keeping up with much Marvel stuff over the last several years. Definitely not the TV stuff and really not the movie stuff either. And I know it's kind of the general opinion has fallen off a bit, but, um, I was, uh, really impressed. It's like a very different approach to the Marvel format with some, like pretty amazing actors in it.

Uh, Patti LuPone in particular is like someone I never really expected would be in a Marvel anything. She does an amazing job, Aubrey Plaza, amazing job. It's really quite cool and interesting and definitely the most queer friendly Marvel story I've watched in quite a while. So if you feel like that's something that they've like kind of not given a lot of attention to,

I think they do a really good job here. I am still kind of picking away at Dragon Quest III, HD 2D remake. I mean, quick cherry update on UFO 50. I'm at about 24, I think. I'm almost halfway through. Jesus. Got that cherry. What was the most recent?

Most recent one I finished, I believe, is Block Koala, which is the Sokoban sort of puzzle game, which took a while. I very much enjoyed that though. Have there been any of the ones you've charried that is like, ugh, ugh, I gotta do this, but this is not working for me? I mean, yeah, there have been a couple

that are not like my favorite genre of game plan. It's Zoldath is one of those. That was not my favorite. I did also just cherry mortal, which is- Oh, I love mortal. I fucking love that. Love it, yeah. I put that one off for a while and I spent so much time.

The way that they handle how you accumulate lives in Mortal is so brilliant and I think reflects a lot of the great game design that goes into so many of the games in UFO 50. Mortal is a game where you have, it's like a platformer, action platformer, and you have these little guys that are trying to get to the end of a level,

but you have to use these different rituals to get through it. So there's one that turns your character into stone so it can make like a little block you can stand on, or there's one that shoots you forward like an arrow so you can stick into the wall and make like a little platform that way, or you can just explode to kill things.

And every time you do that, you lose a life, but you can find more lives as you explore each level. What is very, very smart is like, you get to the end of the level, end of level one, and it's like, you made it here with 19 lives. And then you carry those into the next level, right? And you beat level two and it's like, all right, you have 30 lives. That's great.

You in that level, you take 30 lives to the next level. But at any point you can go back to level one, right? And you can say, well, if I do it this way, I can actually in the level with more lives. So now I in level one with 25 lives. I'm actually in the level with more lives. So now I'm in level one with 25 lives. It automatically adds what you sort of like added to your top score to every subsequent level. So that it's like imagining like,

okay, so this is what it would be like if you had had five extra lives the whole time. Instead of making you go through and replay the whole fucking game again. It's so, so, so smart. And like, I feel like every fucking game has something like that. I also be cherry Valbrace, which I really liked a lot. That was the dungeon crawler punch out style.

Really hard, but yeah, I liked that one a lot. Yeah, it was genuinely pretty tough, but the maps don't change, so you could sort of trial and error figure out. Have you done Porgy yet? I did Porgy, yep. Porgy was my first cherry, I really liked that one. I liked Porgy a whole lot.

I did have to look at some maps online of Porgy because it gets pretty crazy. It does. But yeah, I've put off a lot of the very tough Twitchy games. I have not dipped into. NINPEC. What's that? NINPEC.

I've tried NINPEC. NINPEC might be the one that makes me stop trying. No, I'm talking about like Star Wars Spear, and what is the Caramel Caramel. A lot of the like shooters seem just really fucking hard. But like, Golfaria and the both golf games I've charried at this point, which I fucking really, really.

This is incredible because I am getting a sense of what it feels like for a normal person to listen to our show, where you can't tell what's real or what's fake. This is all real, there's 50 good games and shit. I've played some of this. I really wanna go back to it this holiday. It'd be a good time for it.

Two quick things, very, very, very near the end of metaphor refuntasio. Finally, Griff and I are going to find some way to talk about some spoilers about that. Just to have made it worth it. Just to have made- Just to commercialize the time we spent with the game. But the other thing that I want to talk about is the most obscure Chris Plante thing imaginable. It is a 4K release of the Blair Witch Project, which you might be thinking, why would I care about that?

It was shot on really crappy digital cameras. Why would you need a 4K release of this? Which is exactly what I thought. And then what I learned was when they made the Blair Witch project to go into theaters, it was still film in theaters. We were not in the digital age that we're in right now, right? But it was shot on digital. So it was shot on digital. And then they took a film print. Like they, like they set up,

imagine like setting up like a TV or a screen in a controlled environment, filming that with a 35 millimeter camera and then sending that back to digital to make all the DVDs that everybody has in their homes. So this is, they went back and they actually got the masters for the original tapes and it is like what it actually looks like in its original digital form. So it looks like you're watching a true original digital file. But it wasn't 4k originally. The 4k is beside the point. You could watch this on it could be a DVD. What you're getting is like the original digital file. Okay. So it is extremely dorky. It can only play, I think, on Region 2 or Region B or whatever.

Blu-ray players, there's no reason to talk about it other than I am endlessly tickled by its existence. And that's it. It's a scary movie. Great. Hey, let's wrap up. Let's do it. Do's a scary movie great Hey, let's wrap up. Let's do it Do we want to thank any patrons? Yes, we want to thank the patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties Just a heads up while I collect those names

I want to shout out because it is holiday season if you feel like giving a gift to a Besties lover in your life. We have a gift link gift to a besties lover in your life, we have a gift link. You can give them a subscription to our Patreon, which has all our bonus episodes, at patreon.com slash the besties slash gift. Slash gift. Thank you. I want to thank, we've got Evan, we've got Rebecca. Thank you. We've got Ash with two exclamation points. And we've got Demi. Thank you for being patrons of the best you. We've got ash with two exclamation points and we've got Demi. Thank you for being Patrons of the besties. We really appreciate your support I also appreciate that no one made the name super long this week because that was a real pain in the butt But and I almost forgot Chris what games did we and other shit did we talk about this week? Oh this week

We talked about so much cool stuff. We talked about half-life to the Oh this week we talked about so much cool stuff. We talked about Half-Life 2, the Anniversary Patch, we talked about Pokemon the Card Game Pocket, UFO 50, Dragon Quest 3, 2DHD Remake, Metaphor Re-Fantasia, we also talked about Agatha All Along, Second Science UK, Blair Witch 4K Restoration, and Half-Life 20th Anniversary Documentary. And lastly, but not leastly, we talked about the RG35XSH and Port Master, which we will include a guide to on the newsletter. You can find that at besties.fan. Gotta get that. Next week, we're going to be giving our Game Awards predictions, which is going to go great, I think. Oh, it's so much fun.

This might be my favorite episode of the year. These are, to be clear, this is not our Game of the Year. No. These are our predictions for what will win the Game Awards. Game Awards, Game of the Year, which I believe will happen the night of the episode going up of the besties. I love it.

That's the dream. Fantastic. You can watch and listen at the same time. I think we'll also have some predictions there for what will be announced at the besties. I love it. That's the dream. Fantastic. You can watch and listen at the same time. I think we'll also have some predictions there for what will be announced at the Game Awards too. Oh yeah. Oh good, good, good. That sounds like fun. Yes, that makes more sense.

We are killing time until we do our goatee shit. But it's good. Hey, if you do want to hear more of us though, again, patreon.com slash the besties. We got some fun bracket battle episodes. We just recorded one yesterday that is a silly topic, but ended up being some of our most thorough work as game journalists today.

Yes, I'm very proud of us. So join us again next week as we talk about the Game Awards and be sure to join us every week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!