The Besties - Is Outer Worlds 2 the Second Coming of Fallout New Vegas?

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The studio that created Fallout: New Vegas has had a busy year, delivering Avowed, the early access of Grounded 2, and now Outer Worlds 2. This latest release comes the closest to the team’s legacy in the Fallout universe. But can it achieve those high highs without the beloved trappings of post-apocalyptic America? And would you believe it has strong feelings about capitalism?  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!

Here's what I'm saying. This is my problem with all games like this. Okay. The moment I get a spaceship. Yeah. I'm not going to do anything. Anybody wants me to. Ever again.

Forever. Right. The moment I get a spaceship, why am I concerning myself with these petty terrestrial concerns? Yeah. There's a little thing called gas money. Yeah. Okay.

How are you going to fucking power? are your spaceship. Are you, did you find a secret fucking... Only fans, only fans. Oh, did you find a secret menu option in the game that makes you put gas

in the hub ship of... I'm playing on realism. Realism mode? You gotta harvest anodyne tablets from the ground and the process of the... I get so tired when I walk around the planets. I get so tired.

Yeah. I just need a fucking nap. I'm just saying if I get a spaceship and somebody's like, we need it. We heard there's a border dispute out and go fuck yourself. No way.

Like, are you kidding me? I'm on Mars. I don't even remember you. Like, I've gone. I'm in space. I'm Captain Harlock. You know what I mean? I'm gone.

Starfield was a bad game by traditional standards, but it did kind of nail that one part of space exploration, which is you get your ship, and then you just kind of fuck around. And honestly better. What happened to Justin? I haven't seen him a while. I was like, actually, he got a spaceship, and he started going to these crazy planets so far out.

There's nothing on them except power-ups. And he would, like, fly to these. planets and I think he prayed or something and then when he came back he could float dude that's what I'm doing with the spaceship I'm gonna find those planets maybe we were too hard on starfield yeah when you say it in that specific and it only takes 20 seconds to say it's pretty good yeah now we weren't no that didn't fucking sucks My name is Justin McRae. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Frusick. Ah, I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. Where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. This week, we are talking about Outer Worlds 2. Normally, this is when Chris Plant would describe the game. He's not here, so Rush Fresh Dick, it falls to you. What is Outer Worlds 2?

I don't know what Outer Worlds 2 is, but I know what The Outer Worlds 2 is. It's the sequel to The Outer Worlds. Are you for serious? I'll be right back with The Pain in the Ass, Rush Frustick, and the one I'm still talking to, Griffin, right after this. Outer Worlds, to me, has always been really interesting because I feel like it's one that I really liked and I think a lot of people really liked, but it didn't, for whatever reason,

at least for me, seemed to have as much of the staying power. I know the music kicked around for quite some time, but I felt like the foothold, the song, there's a couple of songs from it that became very, like, big on YouTube and TikTok and stuff. But, like, I don't know, it seemed like just sort of an obsessive fandom or something.

If I'm remembering the timeline kind of correctly, didn't Outer Worlds come out sort of shortly after Fallout 76 was either out or announced? And I remember a lot of the response to that game was in conversation with like the stuff that, you know, Bethes is not really doing so much these days. And so there was a, I don't know, it became a point of comparison, like an inflection point about that, and it does feel like Outer Worlds 2 is free from a lot of that baggage and benefits from it a bit. I think there was also an element of, there was an expectation, and this is on them, because

it was marketed this way, of this being, like, New Vegas 2, effectively. Right. Like, the first game was New Vegas 2. And given the fact that they were building this new game in a genre that they hadn't really fully explored in quite a while, it. kind of felt like that promise wasn't totally met, even though there were elements of that in the first game, it felt a little more narrow than something you would see in Outer Worlds in Vegas. Can I try and set up what Outer Worlds is? Because I think that there's probably

folks who either don't know or do get it confused with Outer Wilds, which is a different game. But Outer Worlds is from Obsidian, the creators of Fallout New Vegas, and it is a, it is a first-person sort of action RPG exploration game in the vein of a fallout. You have a character with a set of skills that you invest points in every time you level up, giving you access to perks that change like your character. There's a bunch of different weapons, a bunch of different factions for you to work with, a bunch of stuff to explore. That's the basic setup of the game.

Yes. And I would say that tonally, and I don't know, this is maybe a bit more controversial, but you guys tell me, I've always felt like when Bethesda took over Fallout it lost a lot of the humor and the cheek that was part of that series to begin with and it's still in the DNA but it's not as like I think when you're

making a game as big as fallout I don't think they also wanted to make it as sort of like satirical yeah I mean Fallout 2 got fucking downright wacky at times yeah so for me I have felt like outer worlds is like in some ways a more fitting sequel

to Fallout because it's got a perspective and it is about consumerism in a way that fallout games used to be but now it's just sort of like i don't know it's laughing at its own jokes a lot i feel like outer worlds is like there is a perspective it is like a relentless capitalist satire that is very focused on this one specific this one specific thing yeah i think even uh outer worlds two does it better than outer worlds one i found the tone of outer worlds one a little bit grading because it was such a cartoonish like corporate hellscape

and that is definitely still the case here but the way that they have kind of consolidated some of the factions right in the first game there were a bunch

of different corporations vying for control of this one you know multi-planetary system and in this game the game starts off with a bang

and then there's like 10 years that you sleep through essentially and when you come back aunties what is it Ante's choice Anti's choice, which is made up of a corporate merger of Spacer's choice and anti-something.

Now, like, rules the galaxy. It is, like, making an incursion into this authoritarian of factions, like, the solar system that you are now in the middle of their great war. And also, there's this, like, religion based on math that's, like, kicking around in there, too. it's like everyone is everyone's sort of intention is extremely clearly laid out right from the jump but it's not only played for laughs like it's not only uh okay silly yeah what did you guys think of this game the outer worlds too uh sounds like you're setting us up i am because i feel like a lot of this is shoe leather to establish it's kind of like fallout so yeah that's yeah that's totally Thank you.

I liked it. I'm, I like it. I'm still playing it. I like it more than I liked Outer Worlds One. Outer Worlds One was a fine game that I feel like constantly pigeonholed me and my character into certain choices or locked me out of certain things because of how I was or was not built, leading to an ending that is like pretty widely panned, I feel like, for that game. where it's like so clear like you do the talking the bad guy out of it ending or you do the shoot the bad guy ending here it's like I don't know it feels like they have done a much better job of making the world so much more interactive regardless of which way you've decided to build

your character it feels like there's a million ways to go about stuff and that singular improvement has made the game like a lot more enjoyable for me yeah that's where the richest differences lie for me between this game and like recent Bethesda Game Studios Open World RPGs is because Bethesda's games have gotten so huge I think from a scale standpoint they feel like they can't offer those

six solutions to a given side quest. Right. And here, because, you know, the areas aren't, it's not one giant open streaming map. Right. They can do much more focused stories, and with more focused stories, they're able to have a lot more variance in the

solutions for a given thing. I also think the writing is just a lot stronger. So that helps a lot. I'm really, I think to me, the thing that stands out the most while I'm playing this, and it is the thing that I am, I like, I really appreciate, but I'm probably struggling with it more than I should, is that it feels less directed than a lot of games like this would be. And I mean that in the sense of like, I'll give an example, there is a, I'm not going to use any specifics here, but there is a calamitous event where a ship that you're on is about to be brought down on a populated area. And the person that you're with says, you've got to do something. And you're like, yes, absolutely, I'll do something.

And then the only thing that's indicated on your HUD is an escape, right? There is a computer in the room that you can use. But the only thing that's on the HUD is one place. And I just kind of assumed, like, well, I guess I figure it out outside. side of here but whatever and then I got out the door and she was like you just let it crash I was like yeah I guess there was you did say I should do something on there now that I think about it so I reloaded my save I looked around and yeah I'll be damn there's a computer there you can use to fix it but but the game wasn't like flashing it it wasn't like hey this is pretty early on so it's not a knock

on the game I hadn't sort of realized this was the level of like of load of I wasn't playing the blanks basically right yeah but that's cool I do like that it does that I do I actually really like that moment a lot because it does establish this feeling of like there's you could be doing something there is some if you run into a building and there's a big armored dude in there and he's like you wandered into the wrong building no i'm gonna fuck you up that's usually an indicator that like you could have found like a vent that you snuck in or you could have better at hiding that though it's better at a lot of these like dayus x where it can be like there's a great on the left hand side that you can pull off with your strength and then on the back there's a computer that you can

hacked over the door and on the left there's a window you can sneak into you know it's not like it masks it better than that yeah it feels more organic in the level design i i agree there's a lot of uh situations where it'll be like a theoretically an enemy base and obviously you can present like a fake id to get in but within that enemy base there's just so much other side content that you can find if you just take the time to do it that's that they also make skills so important in conversation and not just skills like your talking skill, but like how aware you are of, I mean, almost every skill seems to play into dialogue a lot of the time. So it made me want to increase my skills just so I would know what I was talking about in conversations, which is not something

I'd usually think. And there's also attached to every skill, some sort of mechanical benefit. So like your speech skill doesn't just unlock certain conversation options. It like increases the damage you deal to human beings. So like that's, I, I think the RPG systems in this game are second to none. I think that I have problems with this game. This is not one of them. This is a huge fucking issue for RPGs, especially this style of RPG.

And the number of times, trying to find that balance between like, you're giving people enough stuff that they're doing that it feels like their own unique adventure while also not locking them out of stuff. Like every time I see a computer that's like hack it, I'm like, I have zero hack points. It's simply not the way I've gone.

that doesn't bother me though because there's also like two or three other things in this room that I can like fuck with and and feel like I've interacted with that stuff is like so on point in this game I think I think you're talking about like a peerless RBG system I think the biggest differentiator and we've talked about this a lot in other games is do like when you level up does that feel like an exciting moment yeah do the perks that you're spending or the points that you're spending whatever it is feel like things that would be immediately used to you useful to your gameplay. And in this case, there are like, I didn't count, I want to say 75 perks in this game that you can see the full list right at the start of the game and work your way up to earning those perks by spending skill points and variety of different. Which is a cool way of doing it, by the way, where the perks are an offshoot of the way you spent your points. So you're not like, it reduces the chance that you're going to like spec in a weird way.

Right. It's a building off of something that New Vegas did where once you hit like, level 10 in exploration, it unlocked a bunch of perks that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to get if you didn't have level 10. But here it's revealing all that stuff to you. So you know, oh, this is something I want to work on.

All that stuff I think is done, again, fantastically well in ways that I think this should be held up as a representation of like how to make perks feel desirable. Another cool thing that they did that I feel like a lot of games these days don't have the guts to that are in this genre is make ammo matter, where, like, I was pretty frequently, like, running out of bullets in a way that, like, grounded me to the, it kept me in the scenario, it kept me talking to my compatriots. It kept me, like, really looking at gear because every gear that you get can be turned into scrap metal, which you can turn into bullets. And a lot of times, like, I needed bullets because my thing was, like, a pistol. So I'm shooting out, like, every battle is, like, 50 bullets. So I'm, like, turning through a lot of ammo. But that keeps you, like, locked into the system.

it keeps you like in the in the world it keeps you balancing these things i don't think it does as good a job with like itemization and i know we're getting like into the nitty gritty but this is like a huge open world RPG so it is kind of important like there are sort of bog standard versions of different guns and some of those guns are like better than others right like a heavy revolver is just going to do more damage than a light revolver and they have mod slots that you can equip the guns with that you can either find in the world or craft there's like a a whole crafting build you can kind of go down in the game. But it's not like a ton of options.

And then you're also finding sort of unique pieces of gear of like armor and helmets and weapons that have a mod that's like you can't get otherwise that's slotted into them. So I felt like, well, I should really only be using those because they have like the coolest shit. And then you go a long time without getting stuff. I put a bunch of points in guns and sneak attack. And so like I saw my numbers go through the roof, but it wasn't because of the weapons I was using. like when I would find a new weapon, it was a little bit less exciting than like, oh, I just got this perk that does like doubles my sneak attack damage if they're looking at a corpse of someone that I killed already.

I will say I spent too much time. I think you spend way too much time in this game, like trying to get your cursor on an item that is like a very small object, but like kind of slowly looking around a room and slowly picking up the items that are lying around. I think that it is not fun to try to get your cursor on the exact little model that you want to pick up and then pick it up. up and then look and see if you want to drink it or break it down like it's a little fiddly it is funny though because everything that you can pick up has utility it's not like starfield we're like you can pick up this microscope if you want to sure go for it let me this is the way that they handle food in the game right think about bioshock where it's like you have your healing syringes but like you find a bag of potato chips you eat that right away and it heals you or whatever in this game when you pick up food it goes into your food inventory and then under your health bar you'll see a little knife and fork you have a healing inhaler that you use is like your only method of healing and you can customize

the inhaler. There's like a medicine skill associated with it. But if you have food in your inventory, it shows you that symbol of the knife and fork. And then when you press the inhaler button, if you're not in combat, you automatically will eat the food you have in your inventory to heal you to full before you go for any of your meds. And they use that one button. There's one button for that. Like that shit's real smart and real, real streamlined and real, real good. so it's a bit of a mixed bag Did you all listen to the I wanted to hear if you guys listen to the radio much Did you listen to the radio much?

Yeah A little bit Yeah It's really I found it to be really interesting Because they have a bunch of these like It's super in world All of it is like

You know it's ads for Ante's choice It's like you meet a sort of like faction That's obsessed with numbers And they have a radio station And all their songs are about math. Yeah. I wish it is that

I'm right on the line with it because I love this sort of shit, right? I love it. I love in-world radio stations like I loved like when Laslo had a station on GTA, whatever. There's just, it's like you have to have it on and it's not background really. It's like you're

listening to these songs and there's not a ton of them. There's like a good amount but like you're playing this game for many, many hours. Like there's not enough radio that it's not like looping. and it starts to get a little bit like, okay, guys, I need something that I can tune out that isn't this. You don't have to have it on. No, yeah. I mean, I definitely used it on the first planet. And then when I got off the first planet, I was like, I kind of give it. And they'll

like, oh, you got a new signal if there's like a quest attached to it or something. Yes, this is what I'm said. I wanted to, I wanted to say, like, I eventually did turn it off, but like when you're listening to it initially, it's like, it's really great. I, it's a fantastic thing. I have to say the thing that is, oh, we should mention before I get into sort of like my main gripe, I think the gunplay feels fucking good. And that is not something that this genre is known for. I felt differently when I started because you start out with like weak, shitty weapons.

But as I have like found different weapons with like different unique perks and gone down a certain build and focus points into guns and unlock some gun perks, like, It feels pretty good to get in a gunfight. It is not like a fallout where once you are spotted and you lose your sneak attack bonus, it's like, oh, fuck. Like, now I have to shoot these, like, clumsy guns. Like, I think they've actually done a pretty good job with the combat side of things.

Yeah, they also, I think, in this game, added, like, slide, like, combat slides and things like that. So, like, the mobility stuff, you have a double jump at one point. So, like, the mobility stuff. You have like a slow motion gadget. It looks like you disagree. A bit juice.

Hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought it was, I thought they did a really, really good job. They do a good job. The guns feel powerful. It also feels like your companions are helpful. They have like special abilities that you can fire off that are nice.

There's not a ton of, like, they seem to stick to themselves pretty much. Like there's not a ton of like, other than like firing off that ability. Like you're not telling them where to go. Changing their gear up as much. So you do like some basic leveling of them, but you're not like giving them all their equipment. Which as far as I'm concerned is a boon. Yeah, I do not want to have to deal with that. Um, what was your great?

My, my issue is, uh, this is something that they have not fixed from this genre of games. And I think that there is just a sort of like, there are just some structural issues under the hood with quests and how, how all of that is handled. It is so rad that you are in this world, this like set of planets where you can do whatever and you feel like there is a custom path that you are kind of blazing through. but a lot of times I have been in a region where I am talking to people and they are talking to me as if I am like in the middle of a quest that they're supposed to be on that I did not start like I missed the first kind of part of and now like I'm kind of jumping into the middle there's a bit where one of the characters the main like a buddy of yours when you start the game I think got hung up on a quest or something and he always had a little speech bubble over

his head like he had something to say to me and yet he I have that with uh he didn't and another companion where she always and that stuff is uh that stuff is so soul crushing I feel like when you are investing as much time into this game as it asks for to feel like um I've put maybe 25 hours into I've played quite a bit at this point and I feel like for the last few hours I have been like on a planet where I'm just sort of running around and every quest is like out of order and I'm pretty this is a hundred percent my experience I'm really glad you're saying this griving because I thought it was in my head but I'm the fact that you're equating it's not constant it's just like there are parts of the game and the part that I am in now just feels like fucking spaghetti like it feels like nothing it is

and I've had parts of the game that are cogent where you show up and they say here's the situation on this planet go out here maybe you can find some help here maybe you can find some help there and it's like okay cool those are quest lines that i get on and then i've had entire hours long sections of the game where it just feels like jazz until eventually my main quest updates and it's like oh okay so now i guess i go there's there's also the the quests because it is a bit more open-ended there are quests that are sort of mutually exclusive that you don't necessarily it doesn't make sure that are that like if you do them you're going to rule out a whole other and maybe if you're like, you know, if you're thinking about it and like trying to logic it out, you know,

maybe you're thinking like, well, if I do this, then that might roll out this other quest. But like, when you're just playing a fucking video game, you're not like, you know, you're just doing the mission. That happened a few. Like, there'll be a lot of times where it's, it wouldn't be clear what to do if my, like, me knowing what I wanted to do narratively, it wasn't clear mechanically how I should be advancing that goal because everything sort of like contract. That would happen a few times in like Fallout where you, like,

complete a quest for a companion or whatever and then suddenly there'd be like 16 pop-ups of like you failed this quest you failed this quest right right this game this game also does a thing a lot which is I will talk to someone and they'll be like we need you to help with this uh we're trying to negotiate with this labor union uh can you can you go and and help us out and it's like sure but then it doesn't give you a question like sometimes you'll be asked to do something and you will not get a quest for it and it's like or it'll just be like something you heard and then you have to kind of like sleuth it out or sometimes it's nothing but sometimes it wasn't even that sometimes it wouldn't be that the doctor gave me

medicine for a guy and then didn't tell me the guys I had met the guy earlier that's the only reason I knew where the guy was but like there were also a couple of times we're like and maybe this is I don't know if this is like a positive or a negative I guess but um there was an area that there frequently be areas that look intimidating they look like video game levels and you're exploring and you're like okay I can get into here so I'm gonna go mess around and then you'll start finding mechanics of quests like a switch that flips a thing and you're like okay I guess I'm flipping switches

and then I'll go do this other thing and you'll go through a whole thing and you're like I'm fighting a guy who's this guy I don't know and then you go find someone who's like I've got a serious situation I need you to rectify oh the factory yeah man I fucking did all that dude is done

I went to this huge facility found who I think is probably the final NPC for like one of the quest lines in the game the whole time I'm going through the facility is like this will be great evidence for fucking what? I don't know because I just found this place and I was like this place looks cool

and I went inside and I didn't get a guy who showed up like not yet, not yet you're not I'm gonna have shit for you to do here later don't come in here it's not ready yet I guess the question I would have is how much of this stuff is fixable you guys are for I think I've played 10 hours so you guys are further along than I am

yeah how much of this is like you know with patches over the course of a month or two or whatever I found that I feel like it is a friction between the amount of freedom they want to give you and the amount of like direction that some players might want. Because there's a lot of the times if you think about it logically, you can usually come up with it.

But more often than not, it would like you'd get to, you know, you'd go for 20 minutes down a road and then you'd hit a skill check that you can't pass. And it's like, well, I guess I could fail this skill check and get a really shitty ending of this mission. But I've done all this shit. I'll just come back when I've improved my speech skill and I'll have a more satisfying ending in that mission.

I did that exact thing in that facility where my speech skill was one point too low to fulfill like a series of checks with like the final boss of the thing. And I was like, okay, so I left and I did other shit and then I come back and the result was like he was instead of starting a fight with me, he's like, okay, you can have the thing in my office. And it's like, dude, I stole that thing from your office three and a half hours ago. I did all of that for about me. It is, but that's the tradeoff, right?

That's the illusion you can't have the system that they have here without having that moment happen to you some of the time. That stuff doesn't bother me as much as like something's going to break. Like something's going to break. Am I, do I really want to keep playing this game and investing in this character who like maybe I'm not going to be able to do the rest of his shit? I have characters who I roll with who I have maxed out all of their stuff and like pretty much finish their quest lines and I'm not particularly like interested in them. And then I have my road dogs who like for whatever. reason, like, won't start a conversation with me. Like, hey, can you go here so I can meet my old buddy and I can get some new skills? That stuff seems fixable. It does seem fixable. It's just

like, in the state of the game, it's like that level of structural stuff in a game that you spend so much time playing is such a turnoff. And it's a bummer. If you're going to do this stuff about not using a firm hand to guide people, like to use the example I used earlier, right, if I don't know that that's not a bug if I don't know like if you're going to give me that level of freedom your shit has to work perfectly because if I hit a bug where I'm like

well that's not that was not me missing something that was you then I don't trust anymore like I don't have that trust anymore then I want you to put all the markers down because I don't have the faith that this is all working as intended I don't know if this is how it's I don't know if this is intentionally obfuscated

or if it is a bug and a lot of times in this game like I just fail safes even if they are immersion breaking of like you show up to a facility get like a fucking phone call or whatever from someone like hey good you found this facility can you look for this stuff for me instead of just like I went oh am I I don't think I'm supposed to be here yet uh oh that guy knows my name I don't know his fuck um I think I think this to me feels like a very strong foundation for something that could certainly be cleaned up over time I agree there's always going to be issues, especially with a game that's this open. Yeah.

But I'm trying to be real because this is my shit and I'm going to keep playing it. I love this kind of shit. But it is also the kind of shit that I am most permissive of flaws because it is, I don't know. This is the most I have enjoyed one of these games since, probably, since Fallout 4, probably. It really does say something. Yeah, I think they've nailed it. I think that there is an experienced hand who have made some like really, really clever choices to like sidestep a lot of the issues that this genre has faced in the past and they've done it in a package that looks good

sounds good feels really good to play feels like the things you're doing are meaningful um and yeah you're probably right like they probably will patch it out or release you know their spacers choice uh premium edition or whatever at some point i mean it's worth knowing also like when this episode this besties episode comes out the game still won't be out for another like four day five days yeah so that's not an excuse like the obviously but i also know that couch it a little bit because our experience may be different. It is not mostly buggy, though. In my experience, I will say it was not buggy. It was a, it seemed like a deliberate amount of freedom. Yeah. It, it, it, you know what I'm I just, I watched a, the, the Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs movie, the Aaron Sorkenrode on the plane home, because I was looking to like check. And they have this argument that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have this discussion between number of ports in the system where Steve Jobs wants two because he wants a closed system that they completely control Wozniak wants eight. Because he wants the users to be completely in control, and it's the, how those two, like, that, it reminded me of this game where it's that thing of, like, wanting to have a completely polished, smooth, like, an uncharted versus. Yeah, of course.

Right. Versus, like, what's the other end? It's, like, stalker, right? Like, or Daisy or something like that, where it's like that. Yes, exactly, right? So it's always that balance. It just feels a little bit on the edge of, like, it feels like that it was more about. it's impressive that you can keep the immersion and get to the end of it and it still like holds together and it seems like that was more important to them than having something that's consistently sort of like pleasant to engage with i would i'll probably stick with it yeah i'm i'm genuinely like pretty pretty sucked in the writing's great to do i don't know if we talked about that but like the interactions between people and the the the moments and like even data pads and stuff like yeah

are all pretty I would also add that like this is the third game they've released this year that has been pretty fucking good they put out a vowed they put out grounded two and this that's wild no one uh no one is doing that play these days yeah um yeah my cause don't let obsidian don't let Microsoft know how well you're doing whatever whatever locks you change just leave them change uh should we take a break yeah Justin, you have a new device. Thank you for not saying toy like my wife. You have a new doodad that you like and enjoy.

Oh, gosh. I think that's the color I got too. That shit looks so good, dude. Yeah, it's the rainbow one. So I'm watching, as you can see here, I'm watching a video down on this screen of the AYN Thor. And up here, I'm playing the latest retro art video games. Can you set up for the folks not seeing?

Yeah, so this is a device made by a company called AYN. They made, most notably, the Odin 2 and the Odin 2 portal and the Odin 2 mini, but those are their last few devices. They're very well regarded. This is the Thor, which is a dual screen console. And there have been other like dual screen PCs, but this is the first dual screen Android console. It's like a DS form factor, basically. So, yeah, a clamshell form factor. you've got a wide screen at the top

right and then at the bottom you've got close to like a four by three kind of square guy here so you have two different form factors when you load a the two screens are independent so you can get a game going on the top screen or an app or whatever it's whichever is

focused is what the controls will do so if you tap on the bottom screen and then use the controls you're controlling this if you tap on this screen use the controls and I'm assuming there's emulators like Melend DS and drastic and like the major sort of DS 3DS simulators are able to like use both simultaneously yes you can set it to use both simultaneously you can also choose for certain apps that they'll always launch in the top or

in the bottom or whatever and there's also they've another kind of clever solution that they've done here is there's this button here at the bottom of the screens and this brings up sort of a a home it is just for this specific dual screen setup so there is a button where you can switch from dual screen bottom screen top screen there's also an audio slider where you can choose which screen is doing

how much volume right so if you have like a game on this level and a video on this one you can like choose and then you can also do the brightness independently on the screens so it's all pretty well like I mean all pretty well optimized for that it feels pretty good to play

the buttons the only thing that I will say I don't know if you guys can see this very well but look at these shoulders ground it out just a bit so this is like we've got big chunky triggers

on the twos and then we've got some these guys on the ones and they're kind of like behind this that's not super comfortable when the screen is like this it's not super comfortable

hit these and I will also say that if you're someone that wants to play a lot of D-pad stuff this is not the most comfortable Yeah it's in the bottom left so you've got to like curve

the pad's on the bottom left it's kind of a reach down here of it's not super they have traded I think it's always a question of like ergonomics versus pocket I think that's that's what you're up against and this they've made a little bit of a concession here right you got some guns for the ergonomics here rounded in the back a little bit but like it's surprisingly like pretty chunky I saw it's about the size of a 2DS xL if you remember that here I have a DS let me grab one I have one of these bad boys ordered and because it is coming

from Mainland, China, it does take a minute to get your hands on one of these. There's some fraught relationships, so maybe that's part of it. I've heard a little bit about that, yeah. Yeah, speak on that. No. Let's see what I have handy here. This is a 3DS, so to compare this for you guys, I would say, I mean. Oh, that's an original 3DS.

So it's original 3DS. Yeah, so probably about 10% bigger than it. about xl size if i remember the 3ds or the 2ds so this is a 2d s well yeah that's the crazy uh yeah single panel i i think here's here's where i'm like this exactly here's where i'm at with these things is i definitely know it's about it's also about the same size as this guy the the our the we were talking about the 477 m the new ambernate guy it's about it's about it's it's impressive they've gotten all this and yeah it's it's a here's what i'm going to say i at this point, I don't know how to

fit this much tinkering in my life. And when you're talking about two screens in particular, I'd imagine, and tell me if this is incorrect, even more tinkering required to really get things working nicely. Now, it is, I will say this. It is a no, broadly speaking, no. Like if you load up a DS ROM in whatever, an emulator for DS games,

it works like it recognizes the second screen and just works no because you the part of it is like figuring out how you want to do it right some some games work better with like certain screens oriented different ways like you have to fiddle with it um and it is not there is like more there is more tinkering you're a hundred percent right and and i honestly this is probably the most damning thing but russ good rus said it and i think i agree with it it it still doesn't replace it through yes like it's it's it's not It's not a replacement for the 3DS. It's a very cool way of experiencing those things.

And I will say it's a pretty good use case to have like a walkthrough or something on one screen and like a game on the other. Or like something like if you have music or something you're zoning out to, all that stuff works really well. It feels good. The trigger, the thumbsticks are really deep in set. I don't know if you can tell, but like to avoid the clamshell design, they're sunk pretty deep in there. which is not my favorite. But you kind of have to if you're going to do the clamshow.

They kind of have to, right? But like, I think they executed on this really, really well. I think that there's different form factor. I hate getting into, like, the pricing. And I'll be for, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the base of this is, like, 250. And that's for, like, the base model with eight gigabytes of memory,

and then 16. uh is with a terabyte of storage for 429 so there's definitely a range there's a range yeah i'm i'm still in this mode of just like i kind of like i have my uh what is it flip to and i it works well and i set it up and i took like whatever a few hours to set that up and it works and so i'm in this like dormant period where i just kind of just want things to work and i don't want to take a lot of time but again like it'll happen like a year or two from now where i'll be like okay i'm ready and i'm going to commit a bunch of time to it but for right now i think i'm i think there's a lot of people probably

doing that and i think that makes sense um i think that this is a really it's a really good one of those and i think the dual screen thing is i will say it's like so i agree with you russ in the sense that like it doesn't open up a whole lot of like new doors but i think that for me i'm always thinking from like a preservation standpoint too and like there's a lot of experiences especially in like the Wii U and the 3DS that are kind of like locked to those consoles. Yeah. So there is a respect at which you're right,

but there's this other regard in which there's a lot of libraries that are kind of like that are not as easy to explore. And like these devices are kind of moving forward trying to help keep that preserved. Like so that part to me is like if you're someone who just wants to play old games and like just wants it to work,

I think that you can usually like lag behind about a year. and it's crazy how well these things will work. I mean, people will do it all for you. It'll be so easy. But if somebody likes to screw around new things, it's an exciting, it's an exciting area of screwing around that catalog is so strong. D.S and 3DS games are so, there's so fucking many good ones,

and there hasn't been a great way to really do that yet. But, like, it's not coincidence that I have my 3DS, like, in reach. Like, this way, I have my Vita within reach. Like, they're still, like, I have my Wii U. I don't have my Wii U. just kidding. Why would I have it with you? We have some reader mail. Oh, yeah. Okay, we have a letter

from Andrew. In talking about Steam Neck Fest, I have only been able to play one game despite downloading close to 14. It's called Desktop Defender. It's basically like a little window. This is me talking. It's basically like a little window that just shows up in the corner of your desktop. And it is like part vampire survivors, part progression game,

idle game. But because it's so minimal, it kind of just sits in the corner of your screen and you like do some doodle things on the corner and then you just go back to working whatever you were doing. You get a gun to shoot in coming things. You get more XP, you get more upgrades, et cetera. We're all familiar with the format.

I think the interesting thing here is specifically that it is just this like such a minimal like side game, almost like clipy showing up and you can have like a little moment and then you just go back to whatever you were doing. Which seems kind of cool. It's called Desktop Defender.

Is this? It's not desktop Tower Defense. No. It's called desktop defense. It's on Steam. I have not thought about desktop tired of events in so long.

I'm freaking out. You're playing it. You're already playing it. Desktop Tower Defense. God, I haven't thought about that game in a hundred years. March 2007. This other recommendation

comes from Caleb. Regarding Steam Next Fest, I got the recommendation in the post games Patreon for Tears of Metal. Having played it, it's a blast. I'm not usually one

for hack and slash Dynasty Warrior stuff. But this one is a greatly simplified version that feels good. combined with Slay the Spire type rogue-like path options. I had a blast and thought it could be a good diamond in the rough. This does look cool. Kyle has a quick shout out to me. I took Russ's recent advice.

Just read your own goddamn emails for us. Fuck. Why don't we have to hear it? I took Russ's advice and downloaded Luigi's Mansion to play with my four-year-old and went great. She's never really gotten to a game before because she's never clicked with using a control order to navigate a 3D space, but this game seems perfect for the level of a

approach ability so she's finally get it getting it if you guys have any other pre-K friendly game wrecks they're always welcome Luigi's Mansion just hit the or it is hitting the Nintendo Switch Online like GameCube

classics yeah this was I think in context of Luigi's Mansion 3 which has co-op oh right yeah right Cooper got really into to a T she really liked that one a lot yeah it's a pretty good one for young youngsters I think they'd have a lot of that yeah I mean, Donkey Kong Bonanza,

but we've talked quite a bit about that. Solar Smash is an iPad game where you blow up planets with different things. Kids love that shit. Kids love blowing up whole planets. It's a big one. We have one more letter.

Schmorgle sent a bunch of recommendations from Steam Next Fest, but I want to call out one of them. Seance of Blake Manor is a first-person puzzle game, sort of like blueprints and return to Oberdin. You're gathering clues, finding evidence, reviewing people all the good stuff. Time passes when you look at objects, so there is a real

sense of tension in your moment-to-moment decisions. Yeah, I think Plant dropped the trailer for this in the Besties channel a bit ago, and it does look real good. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it just seems like it has like blueprints, but even spookier. Spooky blueprints. Whoa. Check please. Someday I'll play blueprints. It still has not been updated for colorblind month. That's bonkers, man. Anything else you want to talk about

for honorable mentions? I'm still playing a... Do we talk about Clover Pit? We did. We haven't talked about Clover Pit, yes. And I'm still playing Clover Pit. Merge Meas Show. Nothing. I wanted to call out a show called Extraordinary, which is on Hulu.

British people. It's got British people in it. uh tonally i think it's probably pretty close to something like what we do in shadows it's not like a mockumentary format but otherwise what we do in the shadows that's good that's good dude razzed his ass the premise stinker the premise of the show is basically uh it's like our world but every single person on the planet has a power of some sort and some of those are weird like you can this person can rewind time 12 seconds and this person can fly and this person can go blah blah blah but the main protagonist of the show is 25 and has not received her power yet. So she's like in this state of rest of development. But it's very funny and really well written. And there's two seasons of that. And so if you're looking for something in the tone of what we do in the shadows, there you go.

I want to call out the Undertale 10th anniversary album of remixes that came. out i think last week of the week before that toby fox got a bunch of different people together and did remixes songs from undertale to celebrate the 10th anniversary and some of them are such fucking club bangers there's a version of death by glamour on there that absolutely fucking treads um so we've been listening to quite a bit of that is it stuff that toby remixed or is it like fans uh i don't know i don't know his name i ask mostly because like where's toby finding the fucking time to do all this stuff yeah i don't know man I don't know.

But yeah, I've pretty much only been playing Outer Worlds, too. It kind of demands a lot of your time. All right. Well, next week, what are we going to be doing next week? Next week, we are going to be playing Keeper. I think Justin's going to be diving into Keeper, which is the new double-fine game. And Griffin and I will be playing Pokemon Legends, Z-A,

which is the new Pokemon game. Yeah. I might dip a little toe into Keeper, too, because I do like their games. Keep her, too. You got it? Shit, dude. Damn!

But before we wrap up the show, I do want to thank the members over at the Patreon. That's patreon.com slash the besties. We want to thank new members, John, Ben, Brennan, B, and Curtis G. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. We have Resties coming up on Tuesday. We have a new Bracket Battles episode coming up real soon. For members of the Patreon, you can actually vote on which.

bracket battle we're going to do next. So keep an eye out for that for subscribed members. And we love you a lot. Yep. Beautiful. All right. Thanks, y'all. Appreciate you.

Be sure to join us again for the best. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties.