The Besties - Metal Gear Solid Delta is Peak Remake

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

With practically every “important” PlayStation 2 game being remastered, remade, and reimagined, it wasn’t a surprise when Konami announced Metal Gear Solid Delta. The question wasn’t “would it exist?”, but “should it exist?” This week, The Besties discuss why Metal Gear Solid 3 benefits from a high-definition, low-tweak update. And they debate just how loyal a remake should be to its source material. 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!

Justin's point. He's pulling out his acoustic guitar now. I wrote the cold open for you guys. We never put this stuff in the show. Yeah. So this is just like you guys. But we usually don't want the other. Normally I don't include my songs.

Okay. Yeah. Express yourself. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. I will. Thank you. Okay.

Thanks. So I will send a better version to Rachel, too. So in case she wants it for her own files, you know? Sure. So if you're like, the sound quality is not great. It's more about the sentiment that I really need you guys to hear, okay? Yeah. Because emotions, sometimes you've got to communicate them with music

because words just don't do it, you know what I mean? You want to pull the guitar up to the mic a little bit more? Well, I don't want to blow it out. Okay. How's that? That's better? That's beautiful. Okay, good.

It gives you a nice Bob Bill and hunch, too, which nice. Remember when we first gave it a try O5, pretty soon I knew I'd had enough Cause like, this cutscene has been going for a month And I'd really like to play Please, then you come around again and say Justin, they fixed it and it's really fun to play Trust me, they trimmed that miffon cutscene to a day

I say I'll try it, I'll load it, it could be a goatee Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, you made me play again this week But this time, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we are never, ever, ever playing more snake eater. We are never, ever, ever playing more snake eater. You crawl through the grass look like an assall play some we, but we are never, ever, playing more snake eater. It's beautiful and also not true. They're definitely going to crank out another one of these on PS6, baby. And we're going to be back.

My name is Justin Macra. the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Frustick. I know the best game of the week. Hey, folks, this is the monster hunter that is really

going to turn you up. I swear, this is the, no, sorry, I'm just ready. This is the iteration of Metal Gear Solid 3 that you're really going to get it this time. Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater. Chris, what is that? I feel like I've kind of summed it up, but what is that? Konami is back. They said, we can't wait for Kajima to come back. We've got to do this on our own this time. And by do it on their own, they mean just kind of remake it exactly how it was before. And some of us maybe not into that. And some of us very into that. And maybe we'll do a performance of the snake eater theme before the end of the show. For lucky, right after this break.

I thought for sure that's the way that was going. I did too. oh boy this is going to be interesting this is going to be real interesting so I'm going to start it off because I take a slight issue with Chris Plan's introduction of the game there because it is not an exact recreation I would put the recreation quotient

for medically solid delta at 85% 85% of the game is the same game they've changed two significant areas that are immediately obvious Area 1, the graphics look better. It's like Unreal Engine, it's lighting, it looks pretty. Area 2, the controls are not total fucking bad shit,

which the original controls, even in subsistence, pretty fucking bad shit. Now the controls, if you played Metal Gear Solid 5, the controls are basically comparable to that. You can do third person aiming. You can crouch walk, remarkably, that was never in the original game. You can do all the things you would expect. you could it do in a modern-ish stealth game from a control standpoint. Some smart streamlining, I think, of some of the systems for, like, making those accessible

on the fly rather than having to, like, dig through menus quite as much. Correct. Yes, just being able to hold the up button and change your camouflage and it show you, like, hey, this is the highest percentage camouflage you have, it really, really, really, really helps make that system that I found so annoying. It actually made it kind of fun. So in defense of Chris Plant earlier, this is the same game in that the same cutscenes, the same level designs, the same... Well, they redid the cutscenes, but the actual cinematography, yes.

You could follow a GameFax walkthrough from 2007 or whatever, and you will get through it just fine. Yes, yes, which is a little unusual compared to what we have started to see from other studios like Capcom with the rest of the year. I thought about that a bit where I was like, you know, certainly when it was first teased, like we first saw that trailer, I'm like, oh, so they're doing a Resident Evil 2 style total remake of this game, and that's pretty exciting. But the amount of, I can't even imagine the amount of total reframing that this game would require from tip to tail for it to make sense. for it to, like, still, like, track as a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, because it is so fucking weird and its own thing. And it, I don't know. It just, I'm not saying they shouldn't have done that.

I'm just saying, this is a quibble that's actually separate from the product itself, but does bother me. I feel like if you're going to, especially if you're going to hue this closely to the source material, and I know I get the gimmick with Delta and 3 or whatever, you shouldn't change the name, especially when Kajima is not there, right? Like, this is, this is a work. This has a name. This is middle year solid three.

You know, like I, to me, I feel like it's an unmooring from history that makes these things easier to, like, recycle and regurgitate. So if they don't have numbers, you can just put them back out whenever. But I really, I feel like it's important to, if you're going to do an update like this, that like, it should be called what it is. Yeah. And that's a quibble, but like, I think it's kind of weird. Sorry, it's a quibble, but it's also, it is.

I don't understand what you're taking issue with. The fact. that it has Delta in the name? Well, it doesn't have three. It's not called Middle Gear Solid 3. It should be called Metal Gear Solid 3. It's like that is what this game is. And I feel like it is,

the fact that they took the liberty to change the three to something else to like update that. That's fair. That is shitty and market, like it's bad for a historical preservation sense too. You know what I mean? Like you're changing the name of something

that you didn't, like you didn't redo the work. You just rebranded it to make it sound cooler or something. I don't know. I don't know. It's an especially acute problem for this game, which has been remade for a few different platforms, a few different sort of generations. And I'm of two minds about it because while I agree with you and this was not something I expected, this was the first version that actually worked for me. This was the first version of this game that I was. able to pound through past, you know, the first couple hours and really finally feel like

I get it. And I get why people hold this game in the esteem that they do. And I think part of it is that they did shave off a lot of the rough edges from a control standpoint. Like just being able to play it and not constantly be like, oh, fuck, wait, which one is the CQC button and which one's just like the quick melee attack button and why are those two different buttons and like all of that shit has been really really filed down and and now it feels very not completely filed down but it does feel more organic and sort of uh i don't know easy to to remember than it has in past iteration before we go too much further it is better to it is easier to remember than metal gear solid three beloved o four debacle i i know that we have talked about this game

a couple times on the show, but I'm sure there are some people who just literally do not know what Metal Gear Solid 3 is. Does somebody want to give the X-L-I? May I? I feel like I could do it fast. Do it nice. I will. I will.

There's, in this sequence of Metal Gear Solid that we think of the canonical Metal Gear Solid game, there's Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation, and then you got Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2. And then this was the third Metal Gear Solid game, but chronologically, it's the first.

And it takes place in the 60s and has more of a, I would say, like, spy, cold war that is a huge influence on this. And it really feels like more of a, uh, Kojima wanting to do more of like a period piece, but it's still, it is, it is a prequel, but still very much like the themes and the storylines and everything you're learning are, uh, in conversation with the, the, what has happened in, you know, in the future games. Yeah. You're learning backstory that you didn't have before.

It's not just like all prequel-y. I don't know. And it's worth considering. Like, you're playing as who is effectively the main, if you will, kind of antagonist of the rest of the series. So you're learning about his origins and like why he became who he became. What I find just narrative. There's also the last thing I'll just say mechanically is that there's a big emphasis on collecting your resources from the environment and scrabbling together things like your own camouflage. flies, your disguises, harvesting food from, like, the livestock and not livestock, but like

the creature, the wildlife, maybe will. So that's, that's kind of like thematically one of the big differences. Yeah, I do want to say, narratively speaking, I think this game is maybe, no, I'm going to go out and say definitely the most cogent Metal Gear Solid game by like a good mile. Because there's like 5% magic in this, but most of it is just like, in, you know, Cold War spy shit, that doesn't rely on the fact that you know that this person is possessed by the ghost of this person who is a clone of this person who needed to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because this takes place before all of that, there are references to other characters and even like parentage of other characters, but you don't necessarily need to know them to understand what is going on, which is really a pretty straightforward super weapon Cold War story. It's really, I was surprised because I had never really played in, you know, past, you know, the beginning of the second act of the game or whatever. I was surprised at how much the story kind of trucks along.

And I think that I'm in the right context to sort of process that, having played Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 sort of earlier this year. And didn't we go back and revisit Metal Gear? We did. I feel like we did go back. Yeah, for sure. And there's, like, the cutscenes are still definitely pretty long sometimes, but there's less bloviating about, like, just someone talking about their philosophy about, like, gene sequencing for fucking 20. What if you want to save your game, though? Well, if you do want to save your game, you do need to hear a quick IMDB recap of a classic B movie of the era.

It's like in video games. Yeah, yeah. Sure. All games. Good games, all games. You need that letter. review. I get it. I think having played this and beaten it

probably four times, this was my fourth time, and I did actually beat it. So much of that stuff gets alleviated by the fact that I'm not fucking listen about fucking attack of the 50 foot woman. I'm good. And you can just skip all that stuff. Just quick round the horn what was our sort of skip rate on

that old dialogue? Because we've all seen that a lot. I bet a lot of us started to get a little pretty gisty with it, huh? Get kind of gisty our fifth time through, right? I bet It does go pretty smooth when you're just fucking parody the turbo on that circle button, brother. You can skip the second time they explain things. So, for example, the first hour of this game, I really actually love this remake despite maybe my tone. The first hour of this game is a series of awesome, just fucking awesome computer animated action sequences.

Like, finally, a Metal Gear movie. And then it's like, okay, I'm glad that we gave you the entire story. Now we're going to show you a motion comic of two world leaders repeating everything that you just saw for another 15 minutes. And knowing that you can just skip that and be like, I remember this, I remember this old trick, no need for me to watch it. That is a huge relief. I think two things about brevity here. One, I do think it is briefer than other Metal Gear games. Ironically, briefer than Metal Gear Solid 4, which will come out right after this, which is,

to me, the worst offender. It finds its pace as it goes along. But to contradict that, I have a theory about why Kojima games have gotten more and more bearable in terms of story, which is, Kajima was a natural-born tweeter. Even before Twitter existed, he needed to tweet more than any person has ever needed to tweet in their life. and he would just tweet directly into the game. It just, you want to know why a character is named West or whatever. It's because of this movie that I liked, just tweets and tweets and tweets. And now, if you actually follow Qajima on Twitter or Instagram, my dude has the outlet.

And boy, does he take great use of it, like just hundreds of stuff all the time. And there's something cool about that where, yes, you get a random thing about the Great Escape, but it is it can wear out it's welcome sometimes so you think just because he has a steam vent to let him get out these like nonsense ideas

he doesn't put them in the game I think he still put some in the game but he doesn't put every single one of them it it weeds out the boring thoughts yeah and leaves the Kevin Smith sorry go ahead

sorry Gervin go ahead it weeds out the thoughts that would be boring to see in a video game and leaves in the rad thoughts like what if all the enemies had superpowers and when you defeated them they shouted their own name like Pokemon while exploding while exploding it's fucking great like it really really really is i feel like it was the shit i enjoyed about death stranding too when it got like super duper weird and this game i don't know it the ratio of boring exposition to like wild and silly shit happening is, I don't know, a lot better than I remember it being. And I think that's only because, like, I was able to engage with the game more because I found it so, so much more enjoyable to play because of some of the, some of the mechanical change. It's still not like my favorite game ever, but this genuinely, I'm really glad for this remake because I know so many people who hold this game in such high regard. and I've always been bored to death by it.

And I feel like after there is a certain amount of pushing through, you do have to do. And it is easier to push through in this version of it and get to the stuff that makes you see like, okay, I get why this was a classic of the PS2 era and is still loved by so many people today. I have one other theory about that, about why maybe this game benefits from a revisit, not just because of the remake, which is the game has a lot. of mechanical doodads you can do some really silly-ass stuff like throw sleeping snakes over at enemies or porno mags to distract them it does not take a lot of time to explain any of the things you can do with its systems it barely even explains some of its core systems you know what's crazy though is that it does have a tips system that when you start playing you like tell it like here's how much m gs i played here's my favorite one you can choose like how often you want tips to appear

And if you, like, die in a boss fight, when you start it again, the tip will appear like, hey, press start and you can see a tip about this fight. And I would, like, not look at those. And then I would check my tip screen later. And it would have, like, here's five pages on things you can do to beat the fear. I was having the same problem as you, Griffin, except I would press R1 to look at, it kept saying, like, press R1 to look at the tips. And I didn't want to press R1 because I'm 44.

my wife could walk in at any moment. No, I'm sorry, Jess. So I didn't want to press the R1. You're confused. That's the, R1 is the horny button. You can press during cutscenes sometimes. Did you say tips? To look at Bates.

With a P? With a Pee. I'm talking about very game-play guides. Okay. And instructions. Griffin, I'm so sorry. I misheard you. I was trying to go with it.

But yeah, I did think that was weird that that was still in there. How you could press. But sometimes, sometimes when you... Seems like if you could get in there and change around all the polygons, you could probably take out the one press R1. I know you had to

remaster the image of the press R1 to look at this person's boobs button. It's adorable. I know you had to make a new R1. Yeah. Yeah. But sometimes when you press R1, sometimes when you press R1 in a cutscene and it does make you check out a babe. Sometimes when you press it, it gives you the password to escape the prison that you need later.

So it's like, you never know which one's going to be. I've been so good. I've been so good. Other than the song at the beginning that did say, a bit of a tone. I've been so good. One last thing. Just one last mild correction

to sing. Yes, you can press one. There is the horny button. There is two styles to the game, legacy style that's really true to the original. New style, which makes some changes, including all of the like horny bikini babe posters that

were in the game. When you switch to new style are pictures from that same woman's family in the real world. From, like, now. So it's, like, her with her, like, kid wearing a cute little bunny outfit, uh, just like a high school reunion. Yep. Of the person that was in the bikini picture initially?

Yes. So now it's like a faster 21 years and it's them with their family. So there's a, there's like a serial killer button you can activate like a detective issue? That's not better. No. That's course. That's clearly so much worse. Wait, wait, wait.

Look at, here's, here's a photo. from it. I just dropped it in our slack. I guess that's not too bad. That's the lady with a baby. We're in a bunny family. It's a freaking cute. Yeah, that's really cute. It's cute. Okay. Okay. Now, hoops, please. Go ahead. So, right. So, like, I actually don't have that big problem with this thing because I think the, from a

preservation standpoint, I think it's great. Because I think that this is really, really what you want in a sense. Because it is like, we've we've taken off a little bit of the rough edges but like everything else that made this video game this video game uh it it's here like you could get the experience and i think personally that's really cool i think that from a preservation standpoint making it so that people can have these experiences and like make them easier for people to have more accessible but like you still get as close to the initial that's great charging $70 for that is not preservation because you've made such a huge wall to accessing that, right? You are praying on people to get more cash out of them, like, because you know you can and it's been enough years. But like, you're not, this is not preserving this work. It's a Pichinko company, my dude. This is what they've been doing for 30 years. No, you're right. I'm agreeing with you. They're right. It's just funny because it's Konami and they make their money off Pachinko. If you're going to

preserve it and say, this is released as is, then freaking do that and charge a fair amount for that. But you didn't make a new video game. You didn't even get new voice actors, man. You're just profiting off the same work of the same people. You know what I mean? It's like, you didn't

make a new thing, and you're charging people for a new thing. I think that sucks. I would also be fine with, if they wanted to make a game where it was like a real overhaul and it, you know, it wanted to re-envision this thing. I don't think that would be good probably it seems like it be really really weird it's just for me it is a compliment in a sense

that i still am bouncing off of this thing because the stuff that is in there is very representative of this initial experience when it came out like it does not do enough for me to make it like oh i'm having fun now but like i'm glad it exists i just wish it was like they made it fair to i feel like kanami it's they're one of of the worst offenders because they are profiting off of just withholding access to this stuff. And I think that that sucks. I think what is tricky about this game in any video games now that they cost so much money to make is they have to be so many things at once. And that's like, yeah, I agree.

Like part of this is like acting like it's preservation, which I imagine for them was very low, very, very low on the to-do list. I think a huge part of it for them was we want to ramp up Metal Gear games again and we eventually want to make our new ones and we want to do like what 3-4-3 did with Halo which is we train ourselves by remaking the originals. I think why it's called Metal Gear Solid Delta back to your original point hoops is because they're going to release these in a different order, they don't want to do 3-1-2 or whatever they're going to do. They want to change the name.

then they also want it to be a thing that makes them a lot of money. So then it's being released as if it's a quadruplea game or whatever they want to do. It's just when games become this expensive, the messiness of what the thing is is so tough. And that makes it hard for us because, oops, I think what you're getting at here, and I think what you get at every episode very well is like our job is to review a thing for whatever it intended to be. and it's hard when a thing intends to be everything you know it intends to be so many different things many of which are inherently conflicting

I mean I don't this to me feels like a pretty focused project like it does not feel like this got scope creeped to the point where there's that much more in this yeah I don't mean what I say it means to be everything I don't mean scope creep I mean like existentially what were you trying to do with the game are you trying to ramp get a team trained What a product, like from a product perspective.

Are you trying to preserve it? Are you trying to, you know, reintroduce a lot of previous, like old players to the game? Are you trying to introduce a bunch of new players to it? Like what, it's, it's having to do a lot of different things all at the same time. There. There is, it is, you know, I think it's part of what soured me on this. I know that this is not like, this would not be everyone's experience, obviously. But I was looking into like PS2 emulation this week.

And looking at how there are people in communities that will, like, work on, they've basically worked on HD texture packs that for specific games, the big ones, because this is a real labor of love. They will go in and, like, remake textures, like, remake all the textures in the game, and you download the pack, and then you're playing this game with, like, newly handcrafted textures that fans have, like, gone and, like, recreated, right? and that is work that people are like doing because they love the games and they are like they want to preserve them and they want to update the experiences and they want to like they're doing it for all these great reasons and like this kind of work the things that they have like added to this game or whatever like there are people that care about this stuff that are doing it for free because they love it and and those people are the ones that are getting prosecuted by companies like Konami because they want to be able to keep profiting off of it. the work somebody did 20 years ago

rather than and gatekeeping this product that they own rather than you know actually preserving these works and I think that like to not call it what it is is not really fair play because they are asking

$70 for something that is a new coat of paint pretty much I think that's a little bit dismissive because I do agree that you know it is not the boldest dream master, but I do think that a considerable amount of work goes into, you know, changing the complete perspective through which all of the gameplay kind of takes place, right? It is not a, just saying it is a visual overhaul is not, is also not accurate.

Griffin, given the fact that this is the first time that you've sort of latched on to this, what was the turning point for you? Was it literally like the first two minutes and you're like, oh, I can actually walk around and see what I'm doing? or was it more gradual than that? You know, I think it was getting to the second Revolver Ocelot boss fight, the duel on either sides of the canyon. And seeing this man who is just the biggest dork ever

summon his troops to his side by putting his paws up next to his face and going, it like really clicked in my head of like oh this is like a stupid like this is a stupid thing that I think I was trying to take this game really seriously every time that I've played it in the past and because of that I don't know my my perspective was like well if I'm supposed to be taking this pretty seriously that I'm actually pretty bored I'm just bored it is slow and a lot of these systems while they were innovative at the time aren't that exciting now now. But then when you start to treat it as, like, Hideo Gajima's magical mystery tour of, like, silly bullshit, which is very much how I engaged with Death Stranding, too, and I enjoyed it that way as well. Like, I don't know. I feel like trying to, I, treating it that way, uh, kind of made me more curious to see what was going to happen next, rather than sort of, uh, dreading the next, like, extended gameplay sequence where I was just going to be slowly crawling on my gut from point A to point B and hoping nobody, like, turned a corner.

Yeah, this was, I think, the first time where, like, humor was injected into the whole thing. Like, previously it was like, oh, that guy's pissing. Why don't you, like, punch him in the back of the head? Like, that was the extent of the humor. And here, it really feels, and this, I think this is the beginning of Kajima having a lot of fun with later games you'd see, like, oh, I'm going to use a Fulton balloon to, like, launch a sheep into the air or even Death Stranding 1 and 2

have like a ton of these like I'm not taking this seriously and it makes the whole thing more tolerable I even think the humor in this because the systems are pretty flexible there's humor in just the gameplay of it like I was doing a non-lethal run and I tranquilized a spider

and picked it up and threw it at a guard yeah full Kevin McAllister bullshit it's yeah it's it's it's the guard died, the guard light got poisoned and fell off a cliff but I still didn't get... That doesn't count as a human kill. I do appreciate

what this game calls human kills or not because that is important to the plot of the game later. I've tranquilized a couple dudes just standing on bridges and watch them fall either to their death by crushing or drowning but then I check the stats screen and it's like, don't worry, dude, you're cool.

Yeah, I wonder how much of the humor in these games, because I want to go back and play more Metal Gear 1 and 2. If it's there and I just wasn't ready for it, these games were released in such a weird time in the early 2000s. I, like, peak our video games art, you know, for 2004, whenever this came out, 2003. And I think that there was a desire to see games as serious.

And the things that people focused on about this game were the serious bits, was the ending, you know. it was not as much here as somebody who can spin their revolvers so fast that they can fend off thousands of hornets by actually fighting a hornet's nest like that shit I think is silly and also just looks badass and fun

in ultra ultra high definition I think there's a lot of humor in this game that like works for me and I think it makes it more towerable that it's overly serious and the contrast with the goofy bullshit makes it work because if you if the whole thing is like

90% serious and then occasionally there's something wacky this feels closer to almost 50-50 of like wacky shit versus not even just eating random shit off the floor is funny like that's a you know the fact that he's like the high definition models of him picking up a snake

and just take it or a big fucking arijuana fish just eating it like fucking Fred Flintstone style. Y'all, we have talked a lot about Metal Gear and maybe we'll talk about it more another time, but because that's kind of

what we do on this show. Other stuff I want to make sure we have time for. I want to hear more about this sweet, sweet new Kirby D.L.C. from Fresh. We got a bunch of stuff in the mailbag. Cool if we take a break. Please. Let's do it. Okay, so Kirby and the

Forgotten World? What was the original? Kirby and the Forgotten Land Star-Crossed World. I don't see what so hard about it is. can we do it again? We were professionals. I kind of... That's the first thing you said.

I'm not going to do it again. I think I need to be honest. Basically nailed it. Pretty close. So that game came out a few years ago. It was fucking great. We all loved it. It's an amazing co-op game.

It's amazing core game. I had a blast fucking playing it. There was a problem, though. It was running on the original switch, and the best it could do was 30 frames a second. And that could be better. So Nintendo has gone ahead and released an upgrade pack. for the Switch 2 that allows you to play the original game in 60 FPS.

It also adds a new chapter, if you will, expansion pack, if you will, a little side story. It's called the new, Nick Kirby's new nightmare. It's a new twisted spin. And so that is in the game as well. I played a couple hours of this, the first few levels. And it's a delight. first of all my son has been obsessed with playing this game

but having to play it at 30 fps knowing that a 60 fps update was coming has been true torture so i can finally actually experience it as it was meant and it's glorious it's very looks great feels great it's a big improvement um the actual like level content uh are kind of like remixed levels that were in the original game areas that were in the original game, but they've added, like, new paths through them because you're using these, like, bicycle meteors, whatever the fuck. I don't think it's a life-changing update, but if you love the original Kirby and you want, it's like five-ish hours to play through the campaign, probably seven if you're

collecting everything, it's certainly a nice improvement. For me, the, like, huge draw was the just playing it at 60 FPS is like a really nice upgrade. But honestly, like, I've been, I think their level design chops are like through the roof great and they continue to be really great. They do a great job hiding secrets in the world in like a really neat way. They edit a few Kirby new transformation so you can like be a new mouthful. Mouthfuls.

Your like spring at one point. You're a cog at one point. And all that stuff is like just transforming the way you interact with the world in fun, interesting ways in the same way that like Astrobot. had very similar approach to, like, different power-ups or upgrades. Man, you think Kirby's a cog these days? I'm telling you. Part of the machine.

I, uh, we, I've been a bit underwhelmed by, by this DLC. I do think it looks great and it plays great, but we, Henry and I, like, 100% had this thing, like, have played the ever-living shit out of it. And it adds, like, a dozen levels that are sort of remit. mixes of some of the original levels. But there's not a lot of carrots to pursue as far as I am concerned. Like there's no new, you know, copy abilities or anything like that to find in the original you were finding like blueprints and you could do these extra challenges to upgrade them.

And I think that that stuff made the campaign like really propulsive and really exciting to go through and while the levels are the new levels are great and they're fun to to play through like it has not gotten its hooks in us in you know nearly the way that I was sort of expected. It does seem like they're relying on the gosh upon like collection token capsule toys as like the way to pull you through. That doesn't do anything for me. My son for whatever reason fucking loves it and that's like the driving factor. That's all it matters right. But I do agree. It needed a little bit more of a meta component to make it a little more compelling. But I think just as a game, it's still fucking got it.

Like, I think there's elements in here that feel really, really good. I just wanted to clarify from it because this is an upgrade. You buy it as like an add-on or you buy it. You're buying it. So it's a $20 upgrade if you own the Switch one version to get the Switch 2 version and the Star-crossed World DLC stuff. Yeah. you guys feel about this like this is the sec i i have not done any of the like upgrade things

the the nintendo is done i didn't check out the zelda thing yeah either well the zelda thing was if memory serves if you had a nintendo switch online membership it was gratis and i don't think that that is true for for this one for whatever reason um i think if this had been available day one of the switch two launch and it maybe it would be sort of a different story this is truly a for me a mismatch of expectation versus what what we got and this has been like the the killer app like big thing that we have been really excited for in this household and it's it's just it hasn't been uh it has not set set this house on fire in the way that the original kirby and the forgotten land did um and that's that's genuinely like pretty uh pretty disappointing i worry that nintendo is going to go to if nintendo goes too hard on these like sort of like semi remakes between their like platform generations they're already pretty iterative I worry that their release schedule is going to get even more predictable like each generation not only will have its Kirby game but it's going to have its like remake of the last generations you know everything

from the last generation getting an update because I feel like Nintendo's big struggle is always to fill out their release calendar in a way that feels compelling and I will be interested to see if they start padding with a lot of these sorts of like half half measure releases. I think this is a reflection of the challenge every developer's going to face. Now that you can carry your games over between generation and between hardware, where in the past it was, you know, we'll just resell you Super Mario Brothers too every new time that you get a piece of an upgrade and you'll buy it because you love that game. I mean, Final Fantasy was, you know, the definition of this strategy. And now that they know, hey, you already have it. It's going to follow you over. What we're

going to do is we're going to just create a little bit of incentive to get you to pay that 20 bucks extra. So we're not just reselling you Final Fantasy 7 or Super Mario Brothers 2. We're also selling you these blank extra levels plus the hardware upgrade that maybe you should expect just to happen and maybe you shouldn't. I think that is kind of a weird thing. It does happen in certain titles. I think it's really the inconsistency that's confusing here because like yeah, what is it? The Link's Awakening remake now runs great

on Switch 2 and that was a free update to support the... Yeah, Pokemon, the last Pokemon games they run much better. Animal Crossing as well runs much better, faster load time. So yeah, they're trying to make this delineation of like, I'm also going to give you this content

and that's the stuff we're going to charge for. But again, there's that weird middle ground with Zelda where it was like, well, mostly just an FPS increase but there was also that weird app integration nonsense so I agree it's messy it's like a messy situation right now and I also agree at

you know that's I wish it was more substantive at you know what they're charging for this expansion pack I thought it was fun but not I agree it didn't fully transform the experience of playing Kirby as much as just like I just liked playing it at 60

FPS most just give me something to chase it's also an issue with like we played the shit out of it already. I think if Henry and I had not gone as hard, because it's one of his favorite games ever, if we had not gone as hard really playing it as much as we had, then, you know, the lack of incentive kind of like baked into

the content itself wouldn't be as big of an issue, but... Some of it is just, you also have all the upgrades, so you're just like a fucking God King walking with a giant fucking sword just demolishing everything. And I kind of wish that they like, you know, just like start a

you from scratch when you were in this area or something just to like give you a little bit more of a power curve experience yeah uh we got any mail we do uh point you want to read some mail yes i would love to uh this one is from whizzle i want to take this opportunity to shout

out stray children it's a spiritual successor to moon developed by onion games that came out that was a game sheesh man i'm so glad that was a game holler stray children kids out there Shout out to kids, like the Baker Street are regulars, like the Lost Boys, the box car children. Kids from newsies, just like any stray kids, Fagan's kids, like all straight kids. Shout out, man.

Thank you for keeping the street. Like, keep of the streets. Moon developed by games came out for the Switch in Japan last December. They've announced that it's coming out in English later this year, along with the steam release. I just can't wait. Oh, and Moon is also available on modern platforms. for anyone interested. And here's some mechanics

with Chibi Rovo and is very similar in tone. P.S. The subtitle for Okairi Chibi Rovo means Happy Rich Osogi. Osogi is basically the Japanese equivalent

to spring cleaning. A common custom at the end of the year. Think big cleaning project. Perfect for Chibi Robo. Love it. Thank you for the clarification. This one is for Justin

from Frank. Justin, as a bike pervert. I would love nothing more than here about your journey getting into biking. Yeah, so I don't know, I live on a hill

and I miss riding a bike, but realistically, if I rode a bike down my hill, I would have to get a new house. Yeah. Yeah, or yeah, I'd have to get a new place to live because I wouldn't have a car to get back up the hill. So I would have to move every time.

So I found the sort of like the lowest barrier e-bike that I could so I could like write it like normal but then when it came time to come back up the hill that I could have a little extra juice in the tank and so that's what I did did you find the process of

picking your e-bike challenging at all yes I regretted the one I got as soon as I got it I went with like a mountain bike type deal which I don't know why I definitely was not going to do I was definitely not going to leap

from 20 years no biking to shredding the trails behind the Huntington Museum of Art. I don't know why I thought that was necessary because it's quite heavy to. The other thing I will say is that I cannot lift my bike by myself very well. Oh, for sure. I have to get a little bit of help on that.

Can you lift it off the ground? Like if it was on its side? I can lift off the ground. I can't lift it into my car. Sure. That is an issue. So yeah. So yeah, I don't know. It's been nice to have an excuse to get out and ride around simple joys what have you do they explode

mine hasn't I hear they explode no makes me anything can explode I mean I sometimes it goes so fast that it leaves like fire behind it like in back to the future because I'm going so hard

I'm riding so hard yeah when I bought my e-bike I did it from a shop around the corner from me and they were really cool they were really chill and they helped me pick out a good one I got the turn HSD beautiful beautiful like love, you know, trucking around with my kids, taking them to school, doing errands, all that.

And I bought it. I was like, yeah, this will be great because this place is right around the corner from my house. If I need any upkeep or help or anything, they'll be right there. And then they shut down two and a half weeks later. And now... Was it like one of those monkey paw stands where they saw you something and then you went back and it was just like...

Yeah, it was a load-bearing e-bike. It was a load-bearing commuter vehicle. We have one more letter. comes from definitely Shrek. It's awesome to hear Juice talk about 3D printing. I've been working in the industry for a number of years. Customer care and helping others make things is a hallmark of the industry. There's a lot of crossover between gaming and 3D printing.

In fact, y'all taught me about anti-aliasing before the industry did. It didn't occur to me. When Shrek wrote this, it didn't occur to me that anti-aliasing was obviously an issue in 3D printing, but it's just like a resolution thing effectively. It's just a physical object, right? It's a really interesting. thing. It's funny because I was talking about like overlap, right? This is something that

just finished. It's a, you guys obviously can see it, but it's a 3D print handle for this Amernick 35XX+, but you can see the lines of filament and that's a really interesting way of like understanding resolution too because I could print this finer

and it would take longer and it would look smoother but it would be at a cost of like more filament and it would slow the whole process down which is like a pretty good analogy I would think for like computer graphics. as I understand, my limited understanding. Yeah, higher resolution. It causes more performance chug and things like that.

No, that's super interesting. Any of them to play in any other video games? I went ahead and finished Hollow Night. That's crazy. Wow. Can I say I had the temptation to do that? And then I had a voice in my head that said, that's crazy. Don't burn yourself out right before Silk Song comes out.

What do you mean by finish? I didn't do 100%. I just wanted to get to an ending. So I think it ended up being like 80. You've finished it before. You've played it before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went ham.

When it first came out on Switch, I went totally nuts ham. This was more of a like, I want to remember the characters and the narrative and the whatever, just so I'm not coming into Silk Song Fresh. The crazy thing about Holland Night is it fucking still slaps in comparisons to the competition in ways that just blow me away. It's just like there's been a ton of indie metrovenas that come out since Hollow Night, and there's been some really great ones like Blasphemous 2 and Andrew Magnolia, fantastic ones. Nothing comes close to holding a candle to what Hollandite did just from an art and gameplay and overall package standpoint. It's really an astonishing thing, and I've remained incredibly dark on what is going on with Silk Song, which comes out this week.

obviously we are recording before it's actually out. So I just wanted to, yeah, I wanted to jump in with a little bit of background and better understand our gal Hornet. Yeah, I'm real fucking excited. And it's one that I've been scared. I'm going to somehow ruin for myself. Yeah. Here's the trick.

It's really easy to not ruin it for yourself. Don't watch any trailers. At the second you see anything about Salk Song, turn away. I've been doing it. it for many, many years. And fight the urge. There's going to be a moment

when you're playing through Silk Song where it's like, I'm stuck, I don't know where to go. Fight the urge. Just wander around. Have a good time with the world. Or, if I may, fucking look it up.

Or don't, or don't. But that's how. Nasty, be a nasty dog. Yeah. One got one go round. Don't take time management tips from us, guys. That is true.

It was a delight. I used guides a little bit for this run of Halloween just because I wanted to get it done before Silksong came out. But I had already beaten it. So it's fine. It was mostly just me fighting my memory.

Great game. No, that is very rewarding. You know, it's always hard. I feel like if a game is really well constructed, I usually agree with you, Russ. And I think Holonite is that. I really do. Like, I would think that for, like, animal well

because the understanding that you are building, you really are cheating yourself. And I would say that about Silksong, too. Just kind of teasing. Yeah, agree. I wanted to tell you guys about something that I thought was kind of neat called Kazeta. Have you guys heard of

Kazeta? No. No. That is a check word for, I'm going to send you a link here in the BustyChimp. It's a check word for cartridge. And it is a new Linux space operating system that came out this week. A new operating system, if you can imagine. And with these, like little indie operating

systems, this person made one called chimera OS. It's very popular. With these indie operating systems, they, you know, you can flash them to a mini-PC, but what a lot of people do is they will put whole thing on like a USB drive so you can like run it off a thumb drive and you can pop it into whatever and whatever you plug it into it'll work but Kazeta is a really cool one that just came out recently and the whole gimmick with it is that you store you you you you it plays

DRM free games that you store each game individually on an SD card and you can make your own little label for it but it's one SD card per game and when you put the SD card in the game starts That's fucking insane. That's crazy. So the idea is that people will make their own cartridges because you can make your own cartridges and you could like distribute these, collect and share with people.

You could release in this format if you wanted to physically release this way. You can also use USB drives, but the metaphor is a little bit different. But it probably means cassette if I had to guess. Is that what that word means? It does. It's a check word for cassette,

which you can have as much fun I know, for example, that there are, as I have tried to get my kids into games, it is sometimes easier for me to show them a cartridge, like, on the DS or the 3DS, and say, this is this game, put it in, and you play it, versus handing them, you know, a 10,000 old games that they can, like, scroll through endlessly and get lost. So from, like, a collection standpoint and, like, just a fun, Like, the fun of doing it, it, it, I think it's a, it's a really fun, fun little thing. Easy to set up, pretty slick.

It's, it's got some rough edges. It's just getting started, but that's kind of the fun with these, like, open source things, is that they continue to, like, grow and get better and, I don't know. I finished playing Final Fantasy 5 advance on the INAO pocket ace, which I had never finished before. It's a weird installment in the series. It has probably the best fleshed out job system of it. any of the Final Fantasy games, like you can make any of the characters be any jobs,

or you can mix and match the different abilities, which is, like, mechanically very fun. Is this a translation? Is this a sequel to the original Final Fantasy Tactics? Final Fantasy Five Advantage, sorry. Yeah, yeah, no. There was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and then A2 for the DS, which is also pretty great. Five Advance is weird from a narrative standpoint, especially in this translation. This translation is apparently famous for being, like, really fucking,

weird and full of weird pop culture references that were definitely not in the original script of the game to Mighty Morphan Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles and like they gave one of the characters like an insane old prospector accent for no reason like there's a character who just says things like what in Tarnation like I mean at the drop someone's got to say that no they really don't and it's weird and out of step with the rest of the game so But I don't know. It was like one of the only Final Fantasy games I had not finished. So I had a good time with it.

I also went to a movie theater and I saw weapons. That shit slaps. It's really, really good. I won't say a ton of it. Yeah, no, I've been told to not have it discussed in front of me. But I hear it's very good. Sorry, I forgot to mention. I've been playing when we were doing signings last week and during the lulls,

the very infrequent lulls. Yeah, well, I played a lot of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire third edition on the PlayStation. It is a really good. Who wants to be a millionaire. It's really, really good. The load times are atrocious, and you barely see any Regis Philbin, and the questions are outdated. Did you play with the texture pack or no? Did you download the Regis Filden texture pack, or what was the deal there?

I can tell the day you're going to die. It sucks. He's so HD. that it's like, that one is the H-D-A-I pack for Regis, where he's like, he's alive. And he's like, I'm trapped in here. What am I? Don't turn it off, Justin.

But weapons is really great. I won't talk about it because I know what I'm sensitive about that stuff. I want to watch it. My wife won't watch it. So I'm waiting for it to go on streaming and then I'll watch it. It's very exciting to see, to see Zach Greger sort of like do this thing a second time. He's cracking it up. With the second sort of like fucking slam dunk hit in this really, really weird fashion, it really, it's, it, it establishes him in a way that is, uh, I don't know, I'm not like a movie buff or anything like that. But even, even for me, like, it is excited.

Would you recommend I watch one first, one of them first? No, I don't think so. I, I think they work well in concert with each other, but it's, it's, it is not a, I don't think that necessarily one builds on, on the other. I think weapons sort of does the thing. Barbarian does a little bit more experimentally, but it, I don't think there's like, this is Pete Anderson going from Boogie Nights to Vagnolia is what my dude's doing here. Also, I would recommend you watch some white as kids you know before

you see this movie. I'm not even joking. I guess if you want to complete the whole. I actually think it sets the vibe. I think it is a good thing to watch. Very quickly for me, demon school. We were going to talk about that recently, but we can't talk about it. It was delayed, right?

It was delayed, right? It was delayed because of it got so I just want to shout it out I can't give a review but what I can say is it's coming out on November 19th I am digging into it and you don't want to

lose track of this game I think a lot of people who like our show who also like persona and tactics games I think they want to keep an eye on this so I know that we will be talking about it more when it does come out but yeah I'm bummed to

got delayed, and I am excited to talk about it more when we have that opportunity. Thanks, Team Cherry. Yeah. I mean, we don't really need to talk about what we're doing next week, right? Well, we do for people, but it will be Silk Song. That's right. We are doing Hall Night Silk Song, a video game, which is actually coming out. We're not going to give it to you creeps early.

We're not getting it early. It would be tomorrow. We're not getting any code. they're doing a everyone's equal in team cherry's eyes so uh that's beautiful team we're gonna be playing it alongside y'all and i'm very excited about that so stay tuned also if you are a patreon subscriber you have so much good stuff right now you have our besties battle bracket which we just did which was awesome and it's about the best games to play on the toilet in the bathroom and we also have an episode coming up on Shinobi

the Art of Vengeance which just ridiculous how many good ninja video games there are in the world right now. Yes. I also wanted to thank some people that are patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have Sorin. We have Alex. We have Danielle and we have discount

Dracula. Thank you for being patrons. Of the besties you mean a lot to us. We have a big announcement happening next week. I'm not going to talk about it right now, but it's exciting and so stay tuned in addition to the silk song we're going to toss in some big news on the patreon front so stay stay tuned for that you can have the show now just

no it just sounds what is it i'm like looking forward to it you should be excited are you playing who wants to be a millionaire right now is regis with you is regis in the room right now is regis with us that is going to do it for us this week on the besties be sure to us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friend and pick the world's best games. Please.