The Besties - Nathan Drake and Kratos, best friends forever

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

In their on-going mini-series on the greatest games of 2007, The Besties this week discuss Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and God of War II. Together they comment on the trappings of Nathan Drake’s prob...lem solving, why Kratos has no chill and explore fringe Playstation exclusives including the “When I'm Cleaning Windows” song from window washing mini-game Wishi Washi on the EyeToy: Play collection. Plus, answer fan mail for entry level gamers! 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!

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, I wanted to say that I'm sorry that I was late for the recording. I was running a few minutes late. I had to take a bunch of laxatives. All right. Because I was getting ready to take a big shit on these games. Fucking X-Bot Justin. We haven't seen you around these parts in a decade. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Yeah, I'm back. I'm back. I've got my Kinect. I have four Kinects streaming straight to me. I see you've got a cardboard standee of Blinks the Time Sweeper behind you. Yes, that's true. Me and the brute force are back to take Earth back from the Sony cronies.
Starting point is 00:00:58 Wait a minute. Is that Peter Molyneux's weird virtual boy child behind you? Interesting. Milo. Where'd you dig Milo up? It's Milo. He's back.
Starting point is 00:01:09 Actually, I am actually an android. Inside me is a tiny Kudo Sanada who is powering my body. You can see the bottom of his shoe. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Justin just scanned a skateboard into his Kinect and he skated away.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Whoa. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of 2007. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know two games of 2007. My name is Chris Plant, and I am the god of Drake. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the PS3. What were those words? I got there. I got there. Welcome to the besties, where we explore the latest and greatest in home computer entertainment.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Usually we're talking about the new games the hot stuff uh but today we are uh dipping into 2007 to continue our ongoing uh uh series about the the best of of that year we've already talked about portal it's not just that year justin it is the best video game year of all time according to our listeners so i don't want to diminish it this this week may not be the best sort of cross-section for that to stand true that we play some good ass games we do and i think i think this episode we're gonna have to be careful because like more than any episode so far like this is the one where i had to remind myself like we loved this shit like this shit was so important when it came out and we were fucking hog wild for it because i was not maybe as hot now justin you've been doing a fun little
Starting point is 00:03:18 visual gag series throughout this uh little little run we've been doing do you want to talk about it or no you don't want to talk about the gentleman who's in the background of your skype window right now my friend kratos does have a sort of makeshift kratos uh i've been finding like the diy cosplay and playing that during our our different recording sessions but i feel like i've taken us off the rails with this one um usually it's a pre-show kind of delight so we're gonna go right to just a regular thanks and there was like a visible visible nipple like right at the bottom of your screen it was rough okay so we got we don't have time to fuck around we have two games to talk about today we're gonna be talking about uncharted
Starting point is 00:03:59 drake's fortune and god of war 2 the logo for god of war 2 in the playstation now store looks a lot like the logo for god of war 3 and i did enjoy the first hour of god of war 3 before i got stuck had to go find a walkthrough and then i'm like i don't recognize any of this i'm googling god of war 2 like i don't recognize any of this like okay this is the triple i've been playing uh i'm let me hop back so i have a lot more context than you yeah i'm surprised that you can fuse them because they're so different uh i so i played both of these on playstation now uh i hardwired real quick on playstation now because i hadn't actually gotten deep into that really good like really especially hardwired really good experience pc a little bit
Starting point is 00:04:47 annoying because i uh had to like do log in and the captcha like every time i booted it up weirdly like it didn't save any of those credentials um also a little bit stressful because it has a feature where if you are just sort of sitting on the server for too long without playing it kicks you off yeah and in and in playstation 2 slash 3 era when like if you didn't save you're just boned i lost some progress a couple of times having to like take care of my kids or or right or answer a call or something like that but overall just quick plug in playstation now really good especially on on the the console like no detectable lag for me on like uh uh ethernet yeah um we should we should frame this because
Starting point is 00:05:37 it's weird that we are doing two games this episode but i think that it is an interesting sort of uh conversation launch pad because these two games i think represent the bookends of their respective consoles uh the god of war 2 is one of the last sort of great triple a playstation 2 games and uncharted came in a year after the playstation 3's launch but the playstation 3 had a famously very sort of rocky uh launch uh partially due to the asking price which was what six hundred dollars for the larger uh memory capacity version and five hundred dollars for the uh for the the smaller memory capacity version uh but also the launch titles for the playstation 1 were uh there weren't a lot of them after the the launch
Starting point is 00:06:26 window we had what resistance fall of man and fucking uh motor storm i think was in there it was also backwards compatible so you could play god of war you could play god of war i guess that's another important but uh uncharted came in late 2007 which was like that post E3 2007 groundswell for the PS3 was like real good for it. I looked at E3 2007. That's where they showed off Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, Little Big Planet for the first time, Gran Turismo 5, GTA 4, you know, Final Fantasy 13. Like all of those started to sort of rear their head around there so this is when like i think uncharted uncharted was i think for me like the first kind of killer app for ps3 yeah where it was like oh this is what this can do and yeah there had been exclusive before but this to me feels like the rise or the uh evolution of like the strategy of like we're gonna sell
Starting point is 00:07:22 consoles because of these exclusives whereas previously they were like kind of fringe benefits um and i think we're still living in that age now where like obviously uncharted last of us you know games like ghost of shusiman stuff like that like they these consoles differentiate themselves or at least sony specifically differentiates itself a lot by its exclusives where i think xbox hasn't as much um so it feels like that was this was the beginning of this like era of priority yeah i i think the other thing to give a little more context to this is this is at least for me when sony really leans into video games as cinematic art um and sony as a company has always had a history of this. I mean, they've always been about hi-fi.
Starting point is 00:08:09 They sell a version of the Walkman now that costs like hundreds and hundreds of dollars so that you can have lossless audio, right? Their film program with the original Spider-Man trilogy was around-ish this time. I believe that the Spider-Man trilogy and the PlayStation 3 had the same font. But there was this kind of merging of all of Sony Hi-Fi branding
Starting point is 00:08:29 into this ultra sleek, expensive, cinematic experience that you couldn't get anywhere else. And I think we see that both with God of War 2. I don't know if y'all, it sounds like people did not enjoy revisiting it. Talk about a game that is like pushing at the edges of what the hell playstation 2 could do yeah it's like it's incredible what it's accomplishing on a purely technical level and same with uncharted 3 which y'all like i get it the other uncharted look way
Starting point is 00:08:57 better but this is like um when you go back and watch toy story 1 when you're like oh no andy what is wrong with your face you You got left in the microwave. But at the same time, you think about, oh, they just didn't make anything like this before? It's not bad for a first try. Not bad. I thought visually, actually, Uncharted still looked pretty decent.
Starting point is 00:09:18 It did not bother me. We talked about Halo 3, what was it, last week or the week before? And if you went back and looked at the graphics in Halo 3, specifically the faces in Halo 3, like what Johnson looked like as a human being in Halo 3, he was like a Minecraft character, effectively. It was gold-ish.
Starting point is 00:09:39 It was pretty bad. So if you compare that to the faces in Uncharted, it is like, like whoa crazy impressive that they were able to pull this off my hang-up my hang-up with both these games has nothing to do with the visuals i think i agree god of war 2 looked miraculous my enjoyment of god of war 2 spiked every time i remembered it was on the same console that had uh you know fucking final fantasy 10 or whatever on it like it looks spectacular and i think uncharted looks great well you also have to remember is in 2007 every single game was gray and brown and tan and that's it and this takes place in these beautiful lush
Starting point is 00:10:15 environments with all these details like i think i think it looks spectacular the face the faces look you know good the animations are fantastic and uh i don't know i think both these games have a a a core question that like i couldn't answer playing it which is like these games represent a time where we thought a very certain thing was fun to do in video games that you don't really see in video games anymore what's that well i mean it's a few things one is both these games have a type of platforming that was so like it burned so bright and fast like a dying star of just like here's a wall with some ledges on it and then there's some sections of the wall that are a little bit rougher and those are the ones that you can just climb up and then there's some vines you can jump and swing to. That's not like, I didn't realize how bored with that I was.
Starting point is 00:11:08 And Uncharted at least mixes it up a little bit. God of War, like every time I saw a platforming section coming up, I was just like, oh God. And it just felt like this unnecessary kind of third heat where they're like, look, it's more than an action game. It's more than a third person shooter. It's got jumps too.
Starting point is 00:11:22 And just after the first couple sections of that like i dreaded every other sort of thing that happened and that's a lot of uncharted and a lot of god of war 2 so that's like off the bat like oh no the platforming in these games is like and and and it was so common back then to just find this sort of filler platforming junk in uh in games like this there's a weird tics that both of these games have that you don't realize are of a time until you see them one is like balance beams yeah uh which are terrible and have never been fun in any video game ever but people just like did it another thing that you see in both these games is like weird pathfinding with
Starting point is 00:12:02 like just not knowing where the next thing is and both of them have like some real kludgy ways of addressing that problem in uh god of war after you do something the camera's like over here come with me i'm going to show you a net wall do you see that net wall okay do whatever you want now uncharted has a button where it's like you're lost aren't you fuck okay just wait hold on press this hint button and by hint we mean we didn't design the level to show you where to go next or like elena will like shout at you and be like yo dog it's this way i think the core um like loop of each game is also just fine something like portal right like you don't
Starting point is 00:12:46 even need to dress it up just like creating portals and bouncing around is super fun and everything on top of that is gravy and i think about games like uncharted where that series has to look beautiful and has to have all these cinematic sequences because y'all the running around even an uncharted 4 and shooting is just not fun it is okay at when you're when you're lucky and it is like incredibly dull at its worst and and to some degree i think that's true of god of war also it you know it's somewhere between a high-end action game like devil may cry and just a general beat them up so what makes it exciting is when it like has scale like that was what was fresh about that game was yeah you could see you know the end of the stage and this giant statue would come to life but then the stuff that you know filled the
Starting point is 00:13:36 time between that was like largely filler and i mean the greatest thing that god of war did and i'm sure like hardcore old time fans will hate this but was get away from that like changing the most recent god of war to be something where that moment to moment action feels good um makes it so much more compelling i will say this i still like the combat in god of war 2 i still think it's fun i agree with you that like everything else the running around most of the puzzles are not uh haven't aged or i don't even know if i like love them do game with but i think the combat is still enjoyable it doesn't solve the like now obvious tone issues uh with god of war which are numerous but uh yeah i don't know i think the combat's okay uh let's talk about tone issues real quick um ludonarrative dissonance is something
Starting point is 00:14:24 that we have talked about. It became a thing right now. I just want to, I know it has been talked about ad nauseum, but I want to talk about the first beat of Uncharted. Yes. The first beat of Uncharted is this. Nathan Drake,
Starting point is 00:14:40 lovable scamp, and Elena, his friend and reporter who he is working with, find a, they're doing like a deep sea dive. They found this coffin. It's empty. There's treasure inside of it. There's no treasure map. And then all of a sudden they hear noise.
Starting point is 00:14:57 And Nathan Drake's like, oh no. Them's pirates. And Elena's like, that sucks. And Nathan Drake, that irascible rogue and he's like don't worry i have an old trick in my deck i have a little life hack hello this is an old rogues trick for scamps and uh bad boys it's called Mass Murder. I wish they had had, I would respect it so much more. This would actually be my favorite game series.
Starting point is 00:15:31 If you could like turn to her and be like, I got a thing for it. I'm going to kill 30 people right in front of your fucking eyes. The craziest thing about that opening sequence is I think in later games, they're a little bit smarter. They'll have the enemies like shoot at Nathan and it'll like hide behind a rock and be like oh the only way i can get out
Starting point is 00:15:48 of this is to shoot back in this situation all he sees are just motorboats driving to him like that's it and it's like here's a gun like sorry neighbor you stranded seems to be having some boat trip you'll never take my map what map he hands elena the gun and he says you know how to use this she says yeah it's just like your camera right you point and shoot and i wanted him to be like no like a camera films people with this tool you're going to end this was a that guy over there that you're about to shoot and kill used to be a baby and i want you to think about that elena it's important i think about that every time elena every time i shoot a pirate and kill him i think about the fact that he was born a baby and grew up and i'm gonna terminate that like every time 20 minutes later he says to elena do you have a gun and she's like yeah of course and he was like
Starting point is 00:16:46 wow lana you live for this now great so you get it right you get my thing for murder you see why i love it so much and now you love to do it too here's here's to to just sort of focus this on uncharted for a second uh i didn't i did not like love uncharted one when it first came out uh and then obviously uncharted 2 comes out and is fucking incredible uh uncharted 3 gets a little too big for its britches and it's kind of uh it falls off a little bit more and then uncharted 4 i think they find kind of the right balance that even that even uncharted are where it's at uh but like i don't think ultimately like the platforming and the gunplay doesn't actually change all that much so i think
Starting point is 00:17:30 it's a question of pacing right like how much you mix in these big set pieces and these big sort of uh interpersonal moments in with this stuff and uncharted one like does not have that consideration at all i do not know how long is an appropriate amount of time to go in a video game before you get an achievement telling you that you've killed 100 people but it's not like 45 minutes in that's like a lot of people that's more than two people a minute like it's it's it's it's insane uh and they go these segments go on for so long like very very first level after the plane crash you're in the jungle and you come across this like pretty big little playground with stone archways to climb up on and lots of boxes to take cover on and there's like five guys and then you're like oh five guys i can do that pop pop pop pop pop pop
Starting point is 00:18:20 and then five more guys come in i don't know if you guys remember the exact segment i'm talking about it goes on for forever like maybe maybe 40 guys just right there and it's after that it's just like i am fucking done guys i do not want to do this anymore it's it's one way that's interestingly despite it's like very like not cool tonal issues god of war is actually more consistent i think in that in that sense like you definitely get the sense that like this is kratos he's got a one-track mind he's coming for this guy and i feel like even the everything about the even down to animations right like if if you see kratos is like this thing of vengeance and that's all he cares about even the animations
Starting point is 00:19:02 where he's like jamming his swords into like a roof while he's like climbing on it feel like this like absolute madman with like a one track like collision course with whoever he wants to uh to destroy yeah i think it only feels weird in the context of the new god of war like having played that you like realize because i remember when i was playing god of war 2 it all as you said it felt consistent with this like dumb guy that all he wanted to do was punch the hell out of everyone for revenge right and now sirens suck oh no i mean totally it's i mean there's parts yeah i know that you were just saying how you loved all of it but I do want to raise a flag with one part that I played where you
Starting point is 00:19:48 beat these naked women with your huge swords and then they're topless it's not like everybody's running around topless so far it's just these and you beat them with your swords and then you grab them and break their backs to make them scream
Starting point is 00:20:04 to help basically open a door there, basically turn them into keys. Not good. There's worse in God of War 3, honestly. Way worse in God of War 3. Way worse. Like, using chunks of women to, like, keep doors open and shit like that.
Starting point is 00:20:18 It's miserable. And getting a fucking trophy for it. No, I tried to listen to a story recap, and I don't know if you know the story of the god of war series but goes a little something like this kratos tricked by the gods kills his own wife and his child so then he's like oh i gotta forget this so then he forgets it but then the people who are helping him forget it he kills them so then he wakes up and he's like oh no i killed my wife and child so then he's really sad about
Starting point is 00:20:45 that all over again but then the gods are like you know what we'll bring your daughter back you can have your daughter back he's like cool thank you and they're like but it's gonna be the end of the world and he's like sorry daughter time to go you you're done because now i gotta save the world again it is literally him just living the same kill your wife and child over and over and over agony like four or five times. Yeah, he's not a happy guy. What is so frustrating about it is that like God of War, the new God of War, actually is – and I don't think video games have ever done this, actually recontextualizes all the stuff in these games to where going back to them is actually weirdly more palatable.
Starting point is 00:21:30 Not the obviously like violence against women stuff, but like the, what an absolute doofus this guy is. Like knowing that he has to reckon with this later is actually like weird. It's a very weird thing to go back to. The new one is written and directed by Corey Barlog, who was the co-writer and director
Starting point is 00:21:49 on literally this game, on God of War 2. Yeah, took over from David Jaffe. He became creative director on this one. Yeah, I think we won't go into credits, but I will say like- Let's go into it, man. Let's do a whole fucking Jaffe series, baby. Let's get into that Jaffe. Yeah, I'm downloading
Starting point is 00:22:07 Drawn to Life right now. Oh, no. My PS4 says it's not allowing me. I've turned on nanny protections. I just want to snap into a big bite of that Jaffe taffy. Let's just have some fun with it. We got a question, and I know we'll get to mail back later, but I think this one's relevant, from
Starting point is 00:22:23 our boy McGlam, who said, I started playing the uncharted remasters and ps plus put them up for free and while i know most are supposed to be great i'm honestly curious how one got a sequel at all because wolf um i think that is kind of relevant here of the first sorry what the first uncharted The first Uncharted game? Uncharted, yeah. Oh, it's... Okay, one thing we did... What you don't... What you lack the context of, I think, if you didn't grow up in this time period, is that the tone with which they were treating...
Starting point is 00:22:57 And this is why the dissonance, right? I don't think, at least in 2007, you saw action games attempt this amount of personality in your lead character like a a sort of like real i mean it's not that big of an idea right it's basically let's do an indiana jones right and it's like let's make a guy who's a little bit more relatable of an action hero which is why these things tend to stick out but with a guy well too i would argue laura croft is not like accessible in the way that they were trying to make nathan drake tomb raider was very like this is not a slamman's tomb raider obviously
Starting point is 00:23:35 it's also a foundational like incredible series but like even the first uncharted game does introduce a level of like he gets shot at and it's like oh shit oh shit crap crap crap crap well it's also the the relationships too it treats conversations at it like they're important yeah which most action games did not do at this time period which then felt very sort of like uh wow you can do this also cinematic in a way that games weren't uh as much yeah in this time period also just pulling back the curtain on the games industry, making AAA games in general, you can assume that they're going to make more of it.
Starting point is 00:24:10 When you're making something this big and expensive and it's at the beginning of a console cycle, the plan was always to make more. You make the first game to get the tools ready, to get an idea of what the game even looks like. There is as much proof of concepts as you can have. And then with number two, that's when the really big ideas come in. I mean, look at other games that came out this year.
Starting point is 00:24:31 We're not talking about them on their own episodes, but Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed. It was the same thing. EA and Ubisoft put gobs and gobs and gobs of money into these ideas. And then the second ones were they actually had time to make the game they wanted to make because they weren't worrying about tool design yeah also they were so they were so desperate for a not a mascot necessarily but like a master chief for playstation 3 like a mascot spot on i guess mascot is a fair yeah yeah anybody to pat up the roster of PlayStation All-Stars battles in a real game. Can we talk about QuickTime events?
Starting point is 00:25:09 Yeah, sure. One of the best moments in, okay, not best moments, but there's this cool moment in God of War 2 when you have to unhook these giant horses. And you're like going to steer them. And it's like, whoa, this is awesome. The scale in this game is phenomenal especially with like a playstation game but you unhook these giant like mechanical horses pretty much and you're like whipping them to take them to where you need to go uh as you pursue the fates um and there is a mini game where you have to move your thumb stick in like
Starting point is 00:25:46 making like little hadoukens like making a bunch of little hadouken punches that's how you do it with the stick that's how you control horses justin and it was miss it took me i mean literally like 15 tries to get these dumb thumb stick motions right um and both of these games will just kick a quick time event out to you when you think you're watching a cinematic they'll just like kick one out to you like oh yeah um press circle or you'll get crushed by a crane i'm glad you're enjoying the cinematic but uh we are going to need you to press circle real quick oh okay we'll watch it again um uh but yeah quick time events was a big conversation
Starting point is 00:26:25 point at this point in game development yeah and they obviously went away as more of the criticisms uh increased they'd still appear every once in a while but these days you don't really see them at all the biggest one that i despise that has thankfully gone away is the man this door is heavy the only way you can open this door is slam circle 50 times that drove me oh yeah insane that is not a fun gameplay mechanic and it was in every fucking game for like four years i think that's the stuff i was trying to get at way earlier in this episode is just there was a there's a lot of filler doesn't even seem like the right word because it is the game like it's not like the thing that is padding out the thing that you really want to get to except maybe in both these
Starting point is 00:27:08 games that that is the more sort of cinematic stuff like there's some really great scenes in here or some really huge action set pieces before then you're gonna have to open up very heavy doors by tapping circle a whole bunch and it feels like uh certainly uncharted you know by the time uncharted 4 had come out they they'd moved away from that. And God of War for PS4 is essentially, you know, a harsh critique of all of the God of War games that preceded it. It's just interesting to me. I had forgotten how pervasive those sort of filler elements were in games. And it's interesting that you don't even, we haven't necessarily seen them a lot in the other games that we've played although up to this point i guess we've only played sort of first
Starting point is 00:27:48 person shooters puzzlers whatever yeah yeah i think this also shows how hard it is to make a you know quote timeless game and why we associate that with like valve and nintendo we're going to talk about super mario galaxy 2 next week and y, and it holds up just fine. Two or one? Sorry, one. Thank you. But I think for these other developers, they're really just taking the biggest possible swing, and they don't even know where they're trying to land. It's like they went out to make Indiana Jones the video game.
Starting point is 00:28:21 They knew that they wanted it to be more personal. They knew that they wanted it to be talky, but they also didn't know how to make a video game like this without you shooting a ton of people because that's what you do in video games right like in same with god of war it was like we will we want to make something cinematic well how do we make it playable i mean i guess we could do a cut scene but now we can just add button prompts and like yeah man like that that's fresh that is brand new and exciting um and it's just it's hard it's like it is hard to create the new thing and when you go back and visit the original versions they just
Starting point is 00:28:52 they're they have tons of rough edges and you know how it could be done better because you played better games for the last 13 years i didn't realize that obviously at the time because hindsight and all but um after revisiting these games it's i would posit that like we were really at an interesting inflection point in 2007 where our vocabulary for first-person shooters had been developed so much that we were able to have bioshocks and portals and these games are sort this assassin's creed um i feel like are sort of a moment in god of war are our third our moments in third person games where we're like trying to establish that vocabulary a little bit more so you can get to a point where the mechanics are so
Starting point is 00:29:41 seamless that you can get to a point where you're doing a Bioshock or a Portal without level of like story or innovation and I feel like you what for me what really jumped out was like wow the first person shooter games that we've played so far feel so much better than these third person games and there's like so much more progress I think made um in third person in the next like 10 years oh yeah I think that's so astute because that's when we start getting dark souls. We start getting, I mean the modern Assassin's Creed games, we start getting open world exploration.
Starting point is 00:30:13 Like, yeah. Yeah. I would argue Assassin's Creed does, does like is, is that like Assassin's Creed is the, is the, is evolutionary in a way maybe that,
Starting point is 00:30:24 that God of War and Uncharted maybe are not. Not to say that they did not evolve from that point, but everybody yoinked everything from Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed introduced a ton of shit into the lexicon. Y'all, should we go to the next segment? Yes, let's do it. Come on, we can do this together. Hop on my back.
Starting point is 00:30:42 I'm Pegasus. come on, we can do this together. Hop on my back. I'm Pegasus. We talked about two sort of hallmarks of the PlayStation franchise, the PlayStation family today. And Russ, you had a fantastic idea. Can you pitch us on it?
Starting point is 00:30:56 Yeah, absolutely. PlayStation, you know, I think everyone thinks about Nintendo exclusives with their wide variety of the cast of characters that we all know and love. PlayStation obviously has had a number of exclusives over the years. Not all of them have been the most memorable, but they've all been interesting. And I wanted to sort of talk through some of those very bizarre PlayStation exclusives that have sold Sony consoles throughout the years.
Starting point is 00:31:24 Two questions. Are we talking about first party PlayStation exclusives that have sold Sony consoles throughout the years. Two questions. Are we talking about first party PlayStation exclusives or are we talking about- No, just games that only came out on the PlayStation. Okay, so I could talk about Stuart Little 2. Absolutely. Which came out just, okay. Yeah, second question. What if it eventually came out somewhere else?
Starting point is 00:31:43 So this game, Nier Automata, was playstation exclusive for like a year or two is there a way i can like audibly leave the leave the podcast is that a possibility i mean you want to know the best like our favorites well here's what i'm gonna i'll throw mine throw mine out. I'll start. Okay. When the PlayStation 2 launched, obviously we all have that moment. Is this a console that I need to buy? I'm standing in Nobody Beats the Wiz. I'm looking at the full selection of PlayStation 2 games. And one in particular jumped out at me
Starting point is 00:32:18 and it remains an exclusive as far as I'm aware. It hasn't come out on any other console. And it's Fantavision. Now, I don't know how you feel about fireworks but a game about fireworks sounds pretty fucking dope if you ask me was this a launch game this was a launch exclusive for the playstation 2 it was originally a tech demo and then they were like yeah fireworks they look pretty cool it's a game i don't know how much they charge 50 bucks sell it oh my god i remember this a hundred percent i that we've seen the box art
Starting point is 00:32:52 now i fully fully recall this bizarre thing now it got a 6.5 from ign but game spot gave it a 6.6 so uh they're they like the fireworks a little more i think was the difference wait wait wait wait wait wait sorry the beginning of this is from the game spot review phantom vision neither revolutionizes nor damages the genre what genre what fireworks genre doing um i mean i would be remiss i didn't know we opened this up to playstation 2 as soon as you said that i was about to talk about wild arms or some pain bullshit but no i think i'm gonna talk about itoy play instead fuck your connect fuck fruit ninja connect fuck all that i only want to talk about itoy play the camera game that you could play and it had 12 games on
Starting point is 00:33:41 it and one of them was like a dancing game so like you don't need just dance anymore uh one of them was a kung fu game where you had to like swat away things before it touched your shadow that's like way ahead of the connect game literally i'm pretty sure functionally speaking about the same level of sophistication but the best one was of course the cleaning windows game where you're a window cleaner and you had to scrub all the suds off the window using your hands that the camera would pick up and it had this dope ass song in the background that was like oh and i'm cleaning windows and it had like about a 10 second loop that it would go on and at one round you would hear it a hundred times do we need to pay for the when i'm cleaning windows song now justin if you could find the i toy play when i'm cleaning windows uh song okay
Starting point is 00:34:26 it's so fucking fresh uh i need that i need that remix waiting on it let me see if this is hip now i go cleaning windows to earn an honest bob for For a nosy parker, it's an interesting job. Now it's a job that just suits me. A window cleaner you would be if you can see what I can see. When I'm cleaning windows, honeymoon in... That's it. That's spectacular. That's the bop right there.
Starting point is 00:35:01 I feel like we need to editorialize how we feel specifically about the window cleaning song to make sure we don't have to pay for it. It's a good song. I agree. A very good song. Let me do mine real quick. And mine is also musical. So please, if you just bear with me, I need silence or else it gets picked up in my track so everybody just has to be completely quiet while the song is playing okay so if you think
Starting point is 00:35:30 you're about to if you feel like you're about to say like you can stop playing it now or that's enough of the song or anything like that just please don't do it because you'll mess up the recording okay visuals are fine if you want to cue me when there's been too much um that's fine but all the people everywhere everybody wants to hear my playboy philosophy Cause I look like stars When I'm smoking my cigar They wanna be just like me I know in their hearts They wish and dream That they could be like me
Starting point is 00:36:20 But if they want to know the truth Turn it up. It's true I'm the natural playboy of town And I am blowing everybody Okay, what was that, Justin? Fucking Busta Groove? Fucking Busta Groove.
Starting point is 00:36:41 989 Studios presents Busta Groove, a dance game with some of the freshest tracks on planet earth like Parappa but good very hard to play not unplayable but a wonderful exclusive and I want to congratulate our second and third place winners Blasto
Starting point is 00:37:01 featuring Phil Hartman is like one of my go-to when i'm talking about playstation exclusives uh fan a not good game but very funny that it exists and uh my probably number one in terms of like fun and and playability and like my heart colony wars colony wars uh i i know the mantle has been picked up by other games but none of them have ever like felt the way that colony wars uh made me feel which was like this like tiny ship against a giant fleet and uh i i love those i love those games What was with this mini bubbling genre of late PS1, early PS2 of dance rhythm games that were in the Busted Groove style?
Starting point is 00:37:53 I just remembered Unison, Rebels of Rhythm and Dance for PlayStation 2. It's all like the same, almost an indiscernible... Space Channel 5? Space Channel 5 was Dreamcast, wasn't it oh sure uh but yeah i mean yeah that that genre is not i don't know around so much anymore i feel justin i want to ask you specifically about the playboy song what about it spoke to you oh because we're editorializing
Starting point is 00:38:18 about it yeah i mean yeah it's true it's a bop it makes me feel like a cool dude about cigars and stuff. Also, the video that is with it has less than nothing to do with the song itself, which I very much appreciate. And graphically, this thing is really atrocious. The song is just really... I mean, you guys heard it. Griffin lit up the moment it started. It's a great track. It's really good. Y'all, I mean, you guys heard it. Griffin lit up the moment it started. It's a great track. It's really good.
Starting point is 00:38:46 Y'all, I have one. The director of the original Silent Hill, create Silent Hill, right? And then he's like, I'm going to do it again. And then make Siren, another like beloved horror series, right? And he's like, okay, now something has changed me. I have watched the film hancock and i need to dedicate my life to capturing the beauty of hancock um how can i do that with the power of
Starting point is 00:39:16 video games and he has an idea well he doesn't really have an idea he plays crackdown and he says okay how can i get hancock and crackdown but but more me and he's like i'm still not sure so then he watches bionic woman and he's like okay now it's all coming together rapidly and with those three things he creates a game called gravity rush the greatest greatest Sony exclusive to ever exist. Wow. So good that despite nobody in America seemingly playing it, they still made a second one.
Starting point is 00:39:53 And they spent a lot of money on it. Which is when you know a game is great. In Gravity Rush, think of an open world game, right? Where normal open world games, you walk around and then you go in like, I don't know, shoot stuff or drive cars. No, no, no, no, no.
Starting point is 00:40:08 In Gravity Rush, you fall in any direction you like. You aim up, you don't jump, you don't fly. You just throw your body, you change the direction of gravity and then you fall into enemies, into stairways, into fruit stands. And it is so very, very, very very very very good the story is like some real good anime shit the music is unforgettable i'm not a big video game music person but i listen to it
Starting point is 00:40:35 uh all the time on my youtube um and on my youtube i stream myself listening to it um and and honestly like gravity rush 2 i know a lot of people are not going to check out gravity rush 1 off this but i i if if you uh tried ps now to play uncharted and god of war 2 before your seven week trial expires i strongly encourage you to give gravity rush 1 into a try let's let's do some reader mail i know we already did one uh quick one and we'll uh i got one for you i we've gotten this question uh a version of it quite a bit so i wanted to hit it this is from juliana how would you recommend a non-gamer casual gamer get more into gaming a good first console or a game that you would suggest i feel like we have quite a few listeners
Starting point is 00:41:22 now who actually don't play games that often but they enjoy listening to the show so i think this one's pretty important yeah i think the nintendo switch is the best new gamer console that maybe has ever existed yeah uh specific i i yeah switch light 200 bucks get in like there's infinite games on it i think there's like a few animal crossing honestly uh my wife rachel has played that game every day since it came out and she is not like a heavy uh gamer uh the same is true for our uh stepmom carol who uh our dad got her a switch light and now she has started playing animal crossing and as far as i know is the first video game she's ever played and she's put like 100 hours into it.
Starting point is 00:42:06 So like, I think Animal Crossing and the Switch Lite is kind of like leading the charge on this in a big way. The one other option that I would say, especially if you enjoy listening to this show, is getting a used Xbox One and getting Game Pass. Like, get a cheap console, get Game Pass.
Starting point is 00:42:24 And a lot of the games that we discuss you will be able to check out uh just by virtue of having that and then there's a ton of other stuff there that you can try and try a whole bunch of stuff for a relatively low entry price also wonder swan get a wonder swan it's very important. Don't Google Wonderswan. Uncle Stadia harnesses the power of the cloud. Oh my gosh. Okay, this one's from Cookie Cleric, Crafty Domain. What has been your favorite
Starting point is 00:42:54 surprise in a game that totally flipped how you felt about it, for better or for worse? Also, thank you for this pod. I am not a voracious video game player, see? But I enjoy learning about games. It makes the times I spend playing richer. So, the best surprise that flipped flipped it that we've played so far for this series or just like any video game ever that's a tough question yeah um can i stump you i mean i still really appreciate i know we've talked about it in this series but i still really appreciate, I know we've talked about it in this series, but I still really appreciate the twist in Bioshock.
Starting point is 00:43:26 I still think it's really interesting. I know we talked at length about it, so I won't go on much longer, but I think it stands out as one of the most interesting twists in video games still. Not going to talk about Nier's ending. I'm tempted, but I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm not talking about it.
Starting point is 00:43:43 But I will talk about Spelunky, figuring out the hell levels that I'm tempted, but I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm not talking about it, but I will talk about Spelunky. Figuring out the hell levels, or just all the additional stages and secret endings and the eggplant run. I know that's not a traditional story twist, but that
Starting point is 00:43:58 made me adore a game. Spelunky is probably my favorite video game because of all of that hidden stuff and and the surprise of finding out about those things as the years went on with that game i should mention if you are not a gamer and you are encouraged by chris plant's glowing spunky review which i agree with do not get spunky it is not a beginner's game you will get very sad very friendly but it's great uh yeah true gamers only need apply uh okay uh one last question from oliver how do you think kratos would fit into
Starting point is 00:44:32 an office workplace environment what changes to company culture would be required to accommodate the big angry man himself that feels like a fucking at ad from 2000, doesn't it? Or a SportsCenter commercial. Yeah, right? Which Kratos are we talking about? Are we talking about old man, quiet Kratos? I think modern Kratos is probably the right choice. I feel like you couldn't accommodate God of War 2 Kratos.
Starting point is 00:45:01 There's no God. His appetite is insatiable. He would just destroy everything. No, but I could see new Kratos having his, a very popular podcast where he advertises like brain enhancing pills and gets the big thinkers of the day to come on and like, so Elon Musk. Yeah. Explain to me why the coronavirus is a myth
Starting point is 00:45:25 um do we have time to talk about other games because there are a couple of them i want to talk about one real quick and i know plant and fresh you dip in uh man eater is a uh open world action game where you are a shark the best thing i've seen it called is like crackdown but you're a shark uh you're going around and like eating people and other fish that are progressively bigger to increase your power and you get weird shark superpowers like electric jaws and bone armor and uh basically like cause a bunch of havoc. It's very, it's interesting. It's fun in basic ideas. There's some like good locomotion that feels good.
Starting point is 00:46:10 Like swimming around feels good. But all the combat feels really rough. And I think that it just is too repetitive to really stick with. I did a couple hours in it and I was like, I kind of got the loop. But I wasn't really um that into it i will say cool stuff there's a framing device where it's kind of like a discovery channel show man eater in the context of this is one of those like you know uh deadliest catch or whatever type shows where they're following a shark hunter not you a shark hunter that is trying
Starting point is 00:46:40 to to eat you uh and there's a narrator for the show, voiced by Chris Parnell, who has a lot of... Some lines are pretty funny, and some are just rather dry, dryly observed. And some are just educational, which is great if you want to learn about shows. But it's interesting.
Starting point is 00:47:00 It's not really something I am going to return to. I enjoyed it a bit more until I got towards nearly the end of the game, and then the repetition gets worse and worse um but the uh story that justin's talking about about the reality tv show surprisingly deep um it it goes some interesting places that you that does not gel necessarily with the game's sense of humor um it gets pretty serious and dark, which is, so far it's been well-written. The only question is, I don't know if I'll see the end of it because that would involve eating 5,000 more people
Starting point is 00:47:34 to complete 10 missions that are kind of a drag. I have been playing a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, which is, I think, a pretty niche title, but I know that switch rpg fans are looking forward to it comes out today i think actually when uh we're recording this a bit in advance but uh and it is a glowed up version of xenoblade chronicles which uh is a sort of cult classic came out on the wii and then most people sort of discover it when it's on the 3DS. And this is the sort of, you know, graphically, you know, retouched, redone version of it.
Starting point is 00:48:09 The soundtrack has been re-recorded. There's a new like post-game, like story chunk, a pretty actually huge one that you can, I think skip to maybe if you've already played it. I don't actually remember. And they've done a lot of sort of like streamlining stuff to the interface to make it sort of more approachable, which has always been a huge problem for this game.
Starting point is 00:48:32 There's a bit of hubbub about the resolution being subpar, which, I mean, it does not look Breath of the Wild quality, but if you compare it to the sort of muddy textures and and virtually everything about the 3ds version i think it's inarguably like a much better looking game um and yeah i've been enjoying it it's still hard to sort of break into i think have any of you ever tried to play i tried to play the second one and was like very not into it yeah it's it it is it is either your thing or it is like not your thing. And I think I'm on the side of it not being my thing.
Starting point is 00:49:09 I've hit the point that I hit every time that I try to play it. It is a huge game. It is a massive, massive, massive game. And it being on Switch, I think there's something there to, you know, if you need a big ass game to play right now in the middle of quarantine on your handheld,
Starting point is 00:49:22 like you could do much, much worse. But there is something about the bigness of it that still feels kind of empty to me like there is a lot of running around these huge like you know neat looking environments uh doing a bunch of different side quests and stuff like that but uh that's just that's not my sort of jam anymore but if if you've enjoyed xenoblade in the past or have been looking for like a version of it that actually you know looks up to par um then i think this is gonna this is gonna do it for you oh i have one very quick uh shout out super mega baseball three uh it's by metalhead software and it is y'all if if if you maybe casually like sports games back in the 16-bit or even 32-bit era, and you're looking for something to play that isn't hardcore simulation, this is it.
Starting point is 00:50:12 It's not NFL Blitz style, but it's incredibly welcoming, incredibly fun, very charming. It's like an RBI baseball. Yeah, ish. And it's available on practically everything i i've been playing it on switch and being able to just pop in for a couple innings now and then um is a real pleasure and as somebody who really misses baseball and sports right now um it's scratching the itch more than i thought it would um so i i strongly recommend it okay I'm gonna do one more super quick one Dark Nights with Poe and Monroe is an FMV game
Starting point is 00:50:47 sorry say it again the title Dark Nights with Poe and Monroe is an FMV game by I'm not gonna pronounce this correctly but Davecki it's D apostrophe A V E K K I they did the infectious madness of Dr.
Starting point is 00:51:03 Decker and, um, uh, a few, uh, the shape-shifting detective, a few other FMV games. And this is sort of like in that same universe.
Starting point is 00:51:13 Uh, but it is an episodic, uh, mystery game following to, um, uh, local radio hosts as they, uh,
Starting point is 00:51:23 examine, uh, supernatural occurrences. I am actually in the first episode. I'm the titular character in the first episode of it, which is a shameless plug. But I think if you like FMV games, then I think it is well worth checking out. You can get it for $12.99 on Steam.
Starting point is 00:51:44 So that's my big plug. Cool. Acting. Genius. What are we, so what are we talking about next week? Super Mario Sunshine? Galaxy.
Starting point is 00:51:59 No. Galaxy. You fool. How do you play it? It's available on Wii. it's available on we it's available on we you um and in theory someday maybe this year it will come out on switch there are probably other ways of playing it that are less than legal um and we do not encourage people to do that. Yes. But I have a feeling they may or may not exist. Statistically speaking, you have a Wii.
Starting point is 00:52:29 Yeah, it's probably a copy of this. Yeah. I'm very excited. It's a spectacular game and I think it'll be a lot of fun. And it's also the end of the 2007 series. It's the last episode. Yeah, y'all did it.
Starting point is 00:52:41 Then back to games. What a road. Sorry, Mass Effect. Hey, at the beginning of this, I said that games weren't as good as they used to be. Now it's pretty much an even split. At this point, I'm feeling a little bit more reserved in my praise. Thank you so much for listening.
Starting point is 00:53:03 Remember, you can follow and listen for free on Spotify. Please share the show with folks. Besties.fan is the web address you can share. That's also if you want to reach out to us. Mail at besties.fan. That's where you can get at us. You can also follow us on Twitter at
Starting point is 00:53:20 thebestiespod and if you want to follow our newsletter, it is the pinned tweet at the top of our Twitter page. And my child is screaming with excitement in the background about that. That is our cue. Thank you so much for listening. That is going to do it for this week.
Starting point is 00:53:36 Be sure to join us again next week for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Fox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter and produced by Ben Hosley. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!

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