The Besties - Nintendo Is Playing the B-Sides

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Rhythm Heaven returns after an eleven-year hiatus with Rhythm Heaven Groove. It’s a fun game, but something’s changed. The series? The boys? Nintendo? We find the answer. Plus, Frushtick talks about life with the Steam Machine. It’s neat! It’s expensive! And it’s a reflection of the moment! 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! 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!

I have a case of Bigfoot, and I don't know what to do about it. Yeah, man, I knew this was going to be, I knew this was going to be the introduction. I knew this, for the moment I received the JPEG on my phone, which I won't get into details, but came at hysterically an opportune time. I knew that we were going to be spending a little bit of our time with it here on the best. I don't want to be pedantic here, and I should, you know, choose my words, why. because I only have so many of them. Are you big foot or are you big toe?

Oh, it's big foot. It started as big foot. It started as big toe and now it's big foot. Yeah. I want to be, I do want to be podantic and hear about your foot. Okay. I love that. Here's what happened.

A bee stung me on my toe, my middle toe. You try to steal his honey? You're trying to get up in the hive and get a little bit of a snack roll? I was putting those little footsies in the hive, see what I could grab out with them. Why did you use your footsies to get the sticky, sticky goo out of the high? I thought they wouldn't expect it. My thinking was they always see hands. They know what hands look like. They don't know if feet look like they're always in shoes. Yeah. And here we are. Now, what if some of the bees really liked it. What if that was actually what the B movie was about was Jerry Seinfeld like, listen, guys, you're not going to believe this.

It's not far off. We're going to get rich selling pictures of these things. Yeah. It's not far off. I'm hobing. bubbling around on a giant foot, it seems to maybe be getting better, but it's still pretty big. It's definitely much bigger than the other foot. Ross, this is your rookie of the year moment. Have you tried kicking a football? Oh. You could be the new NFL All-Star kicker punter Russ Fresh did. And for a very limited time, the Super, the World Cup is happening right now.

I know it's going to go away eventually, but now is the time. Watch out, Paley. So I was doing a sort of football Norte-Americano thing. But yeah, for sure you could, yeah, for sure you could do that. I mean, they're in Norte Amaricano. That's true. That's true. And they're ba-a-bop-ba-ba-ba-bawing it.

And who can blame them? I'll be fine. Did you at one point think about maybe seeing if you could get those bees to sting your other foot and just make this the new you? Chris Plant, you sound like shit. Sounds so bad, dude. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant.

Oh, my God. game of the week. Okay. My name is Ross Freshick. I know the best game of the week. Chris Plant literally has laryngitis. He says he feels better, but we all know that he doesn't sound better. Yeah.

I've literally never heard him sound worse. Welcome to the besties. I've heard him sound worse. Welcome to the besties, though, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. I'm still like learning the ropes of doing the intro guys. You're doing great. You can't throw all this.

You can't throw bits. You're doing it. You're doing it. Because it messes my timing off and I'm all about that rhythm. I know. Because of the game we've been. playing this week, which is rhythm heaven groove. Maybe, Chris, you could, instead of having to use your words to describe the game.

Do you have flags? We could do semaphore. Stomp and claps. How about this? To rhythm. B, butt, b, bap, b, b, b. You're still using your voice. It's just you have so many ways of making music with your body.

Okay, he's snapping now. Dude, can I say, that's good shit. That was good shit. People know what Rhythm Heaven groove is now. You put all four of those on the floor. It's a switch game, and Switch 2. and it's rhythm heaven and they've got a bunch of new modes and stuff, but for the most part, it's rhythm heaven.

So we're going to talk a lot about what that means and a whole bunch more right after this short break. Before we jump into it, we talked about it last week, but I do want to re-highlight the fact that we, and by we, I mean Griffin McElroy, Christopher Thomas Plant, Russ Frashtick, and none other than our executive producer, Justin McElroy, are doing a live show in... Hell, yes.

It's happening in New York City. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to get in there my enthusiasm for this project. It's been a long time coming, baby. It has. It has. It's going to be October 9th. That's a Friday.

It's the town hall, which is a venue in New York City. It's the same weekend as New York Comic Con. Tickets are available now. Please make sure you don't go to a ticket reseller. They suck. Just go to, like, the venue website. Or, as a matter of fact, I'm sure Plant will drop in the legit link in our newsletter as well. Oh, you got to be on the newslet.

You got to be on that newslet. You got to get on the newsletter. Besties. Fann for that newsletter. It's going to be a lot of fun. We don't know what it's going to be yet. We got some big ideas. Here's what I will promise you, special guests.

Okay. Wow. We haven't really even talked about that. But I guess we're promising. I guess we are making promises. Everyone gets a car. Since we're on Broadway, like maybe I should bring out

some of those high school theater audition monologues. I think that's a good idea, man. Yeah, I got Richard the third just cooking. Yeah, man. And do it. You should record those next. Now. Yeah.

You should do a, you should record some sides. Discontent. Yeah, baby. He'll probably be better by then. Yeah. Rhythm Heaven groove. Okay. Are we ready?

Yes. How much rhythm heaven had you guys played? I remember playing it on, I guess, D.S. Yes. And having a really good time. I actually think I, the copy that I got for D.S, I went to GDC one year. And I think Shigarimamoto gave a speech at GDC. And they just gave everyone in the audience.

copies of Rhythm Heaven and I was like, what the fuck is this? And it ended up being a fucking blast and I love it. It's great. It's great. Yeah, there was the original Rhythm Heaven, which I think was only released in Japan at first before it came to, I think it came over here as Rhythm Heaven. It was Rhythm Tengoku before. And then it came to the DS in 2008.

There was Rhythm Heaven Fever on the Wii in 2011. There was Rhythm Heaven Mega Mix on the 3DS, which was sort of a combo. platter, if you will, and then this is the first one in 11 years. The first rhythm having game in 11 years. Incredible, wow. Yeah. If you've not played a rhythm heaven game, I think it's actually pretty easy to explain what it is, which is a very short form, very straightforward, for the most part, rhythm-based

mini games, usually using only one or two buttons, and most of the time you're to the beat of a song, you're popping bubbles with your fingers, or you're popping frogs up off lily pads, or you're bouncing fruit off your big oily biceps. And you are doing so to a rhythm that is sort of defined in a brief intro package for each of the little mini-games. Yeah, there's a little tutorial for it so you can get the timing down. A little isn't the word I would use. I would say my biggest issue with this game is the tutorialization for just how much

they make sure you know what you're doing before they'll let you get in there and make a big mess out of things. I feel like there's maybe a little bit of time padding happening in the, in the tutorial section. You can thankfully skip them once you get it down. You can skip them once you can even watch a video of them doing it properly. That's probably a faster way to do it. But once you do get it down, yeah, as you said, the games are very simple.

Like, this is not Guitar Hero. It is literally one or two buttons for basically every game. Yes. Which I actually think is to a benefit. Like, I think the simplicity of it works for this game in a lot of ways. It is what the franchise is like, it is the defining feature, I think, of Rhythm Evan. Yeah. is the relative simplicity of the of the mini games.

In the same way that like Warrior Wear. In the same way as Warrior Ware, right. My favorite part of this game and all of the rhythm-haven games is it separates these songs, these, you know, mini-game levels out into sets of four, I believe. In this game, it's sets of four with a remix that you then get to do that then combines the sort of, you know, the animations and the different kind of rhythms of the four preceding songs into. one kind of mix and it jumps between them all sort of in a random sequence. Well, not random. I guess it's predefined based on whatever the song is. It turns it into like a music video featuring all

of the mini games you just played. Yeah. And that's, to me, that is like, I really, I really do enjoy rhythm heaven. I enjoy the vibe and the aesthetic of it is like really, really charming and bizarre. There's a lot about kind of the art style that reminds me of like the soft sort of painterly style of the like Catamari Domesi sort of world. Or even like Flash game era. Like there's not that crudeness to it, but the it's it's I guess very welcoming. There's a surrealism to it. Yeah. And the music is the music is for the most part like I think really great. They do license a few like songs in this one that are. a real highlight. Some of the levels, music doesn't, is not something that I would ever want to go back and listen to again, let alone go back and play again. But I would say on the whole, like the music and the way that it kind of asks you to interact with it is, is still as fun now as it was, you know, back in, oh God, whenever the 2008, when the first rhythm of heaven first came to the state.

Is there a scenario in particular that jumped out to you, Griffin, that you liked? I really like stop and go. and stop. Yeah. And that one, you're driving a car for a commercial shoot. And to the beat of music, you have to stop your car and start your car. Just a great, great track, great music on that one. Just felt really good. I liked the vegetable chopping one when it would throw those triplets at you, those paradiddles. I did appreciate those. I really like any of the ones that involve like holding in the bubble popping one coming down the conveyor belt. I like, I like a lot of those. Did you do the sneezing moon one? A sneezing moon one is a bit scary. Okay, so the sneezing, I just need to set up the sneezing moon.

So the premise of the sneezing moon is that you're controlling, I guess they're like cult members, like little people dressed up to prey to this sneezing moon. And you need to watch the sneezing moon's like cadence of sneeze. Of his, huh, huh, yeah. And then you dash in front of it, like. On the chew. And if you miss, you get struck by lightning. and everyone's sad. That's the like weird fucking tone

of this entire game, some weirder than others, but like it goes for it. But to really, I think, dial down on like the mechanics of it, that level in particular will also throw at you like half measure sort of sequences where instead of doing like three wind up like,

oh, oh, oh, true, he only does one. Yeah. So you have to be like really paying attention to it. And then also he will throw like an offbeat sort of set. of, you know, sneezes at you that you have to also be kind of ready for. So it's, it does involve, you do have to be paying very, very close attention. Well, they'll even, like, remove elements. So they'll, like, there's one that's set on a beach with crabs.

And at one point in the front of frame, someone, like, puts a Coke can down in front of your character. Someone just sets a soda down right there, yeah. And you just can't see. So you have to, like, still use the beat, obviously. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's a very smart way to sort of evolve the challenge as it goes. That's the core

Like rhythm Rhythm Heaven Sort of stuff going on here I think there's eight sets of Of the four levels And a remix for each one of the sets It's a lot It's more than my understanding

Is it's more than have been In any Rhythm Heaven game previously Yeah I really do enjoy it Especially the remixes I really Those are Those are genuinely thrilling

Because you're having to go In a split second Like oh fuck Like What do I do When the vegetable chopping lady It's a yellow bell pepper. Oh, that's right.

Like, you do have to be constantly bouncing between stuff. And it is fun and really exciting when you're able to kind of string stuff together. It is also really demanding of accuracy. Yeah. It is tighter than, you know, you may be used to from like a guitar hero or something like that. There's not a lot of rhythm games here to compare it to. I got to offer a small critique. Small critique.

I think this is a trend across a lot of what Nintendo's been doing over the last five years, but it's cool they're making the weird game. It's cool we're getting a rhythm heaven for the first time in 11 years. The kind of stuff around the game is so streamlined and not weird anymore. Like the actual menus, the being in the game is like oddly sterile. The main menu is the weirdest. The main menu seems weirdly unfinished where you're like selecting like a bunch of options on a plain white screen. I don't even think there's any music. It looks like when I would test,

when I would test like early indie games, like that's what it looks like. Yeah, we're like, I just think about this in relation to like the we versus being on the switch to like main UI, right? Yeah. Like you used to get into like a Nintendo UI and it was like, wow, this is so weird.

There's cool music and there's like bips and bops. and there are these little distractions. I think about the Game Boy Camera's UI, which was like, kind of looked like a role-playing game weirdly. Yeah. And just like that, the experimentation that you would associate with these games top to bottom seems to have been kind of condensed into these little,

like, safe packets. Yeah. And it's not the worst thing in the world, but it is certainly a strange change. It's, it is the beginning, it is like part of a bigger critique of like, it really feels like as cool as this is. And I do enjoy just kind of plugging into rhythm heaven and going with it and just like playing it for an hour and going through like a dozen levels or so.

And, you know, trying to get the medals on the amazing ranks, like trying to get perfect scores on all this stuff. Like, I really do enjoy that. But it really does feel like they could do more. Like there could be something more. And there is other stuff in here, right? Let's touch on that role. Yeah. Because there's a multiplayer mode that I will be, Frank, I did not play at all because I tried to get My kids, my youngest, my five-year-old Gus loves music. He has a drum set. His rhythm is actually really good, but he could not keep up with the very first minigame. It's hard.

For some reason, throws you like a five count instead of a four-four sort of traditional thing. It's kind of weird, a weird one to start with. And my other son doesn't, didn't like it very much at all. So I didn't play much of the multiplayer. I played a lot of the multiplayer with my wife while my son watched. Okay. And I will say this. Unabashedly, it's one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had on the Switch 2.

And the Switch, quite frankly, unquestionably. Like, super, super fun immediately. Very little preamble. It looks great. Very easy to get into. They tutorial-wise, but you can skip all the tutorials. They do, like, when it's different people's turns, they'll do the, like, voiceover of that person's, like, character. And they use the, like, Tomidachi style, like,

a text into voice thing. So there's just like that silliness to it, but obviously you have the layer of both cooperative and competitive. And I do want to call out about half of the levels that are in multiplayer are cooperative and half of them are competitive.

And so having those options is actually really great because you can remove the like, oh, you suck and really have like an actual competition to it. I like that. Are you spending the medals that you earn to like unlock stuff

in the multiplayer? Oh yeah. So that, So in the multiplayer, you're earning another currency, which is rings. Okay. And the rings unlock, like, other mini games in multiplayer, but it feels pretty optional. Okay. And nothing, like, worth writing home about.

I think it's more just about, like, this is a very good party game. I would say better part of game than, like, Mario Kart in a lot of ways, because it doesn't have that, like, intensive setup phase. Yeah. And it was, like, really fun. We were, like, played it for, like, two hours. It was like really, I thought they did a really, really good job. I did a great, we did a great one where it's cake, and you're supposed to pick up the cake at a specific time.

Right. And it like starts the timer at 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. And then suddenly, like, the voice fades out and you just have to, like, try to sense when 10 is. And so, like, that was hilarious every time. And we'd, like, get it perfectly or be, like, a tiny, tiny bit off. And that was, like, really fun. This, like, a lot of multiplayer stuff. that I think, for me, that's more of the draw.

I like the single player. I had fun with the single player, but I wouldn't necessarily have this stick-to-itiveness to perfect it. The multiplayer is like, this is one of at the top of my list of games I would trot out if I was having a multiplayer night. Maybe I'll give it a shot with Rachel. I'm curious how this plays with younger Nintendo fans

because I do think it is at odds with modern Nintendo and their design focus, which is, I think, about expression and freedom. It is about you can go anywhere. You can create lots of things. There are not wrong answers in a thing like Bananza or Zelda, right? And this is about, like, rhythm heaven is about precision.

It is about competition. There is a right way to do it. And I was trying to think of, like, what is a rhythm game look like that would fit modern Nintendo? And actually, what came to mind is elite beat agents. Oh, interesting. That's interesting. I thought you were going to say we music. No, no.

I mean, yes. Get out of here, Robbie drums. I think elite beat agents has a little bit more flow. There's a little more room for some physical expression while you are still meeting the rhythm. It is not as hardcore. I don't know if that will ever come back because I don't know how the rights worked with that game. But yeah, I am not surprised to hear, Griffin, that your kids were bounced off because I just don't think there are a lot of games that ask this level of precision of their players, like, pretty much exclusively.

Like, that's what the game is. Yeah. There is another, so there's some other single player kind of bonus stuff on the fringes. Like, there's like a little silly kind of sequencer thing. And you can spend some medals to unlock more of those, like, little mini games, none of which really I found particularly compelling. The thing about the game that I found most disappointing that I was, like, kind of looking for, like, kind of interested in, based on what I heard, was beat spell, which is a game mode that unlocks very early, and it purports to be sort of an RPG where you play this young wizard, and you can cast spells, sequences of spells by pressing buttons as, you know, to a 4-4 beat. You know, there's like a fire spell, the damage enemies, and a healing spell. And every time you, you know, defeat an enemy and you level up, you can upgrade one of your spells. And you're kind of, you know, seeing how far.

you can get into a run. And then there's things like you get critical hits if you hit it right on the beat, which is really fucking hard to do. And I thought that sounded neat. I thought that sounded really cool. It sounded to me like I thought it was going to be like the Meetopia stuff. Sure, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That is sort of the bar that I was expecting was the Meotopia, you know, whether it was the simpler street pass version of Meotopia or like the full blown, find me, I guess it was called or Meotopia. And it really isn't. It is barely there. It is not very fleshed out at all. It is just another, it is just another rhythm minigame, basically, with sort of RPG trappings, but it is not, it is not rich or honestly, it's very tedious because the fights can go on for a while.

And, yeah, I really, really found that mode to be kind of a bummer. I do find it interesting, though, because Nintendo continues to experiment with, the price of their games. Sure. And so, so we just did Star Fox last week. Star Fox is a $50 digital game. This game is $40 digital.

Sure. And then obviously they have like the bigger releases at $70 or even $80. How do you guys feel about like this? I kind of like, I like the fact that there's that flexibility. I think at $40 this is a good deal personally, but I'm curious what you guys think. I don't know.

I'm not going to get into the like how much. money is it worth. I will say that like I pretty recently played through all of Rhythm Doctor, which is a rhythm heaven-inspired indie game that's on Steam and it's on sale for 1599 right now and it fucking rules. I loved every second of my time with that game and has like a kick-ass story and the music is like amazing. Like it did, I think it eats this. It's not entirely the exact same thing, but it is so inspired by it. It is going to stick around in my memory a lot longer than Rhythm Heaven Groove is. Because ultimately, like, I've enjoyed the time I've spent playing through the levels

of Rhythm Heaven Groove. Maybe I'll dip back in for the multiplayer stuff, but it is not something I'm going to stick with. Yeah. For the broader conversation of the money, I think Nintendo realizes if they're not going to do sales very often, and they're doing more than they used to, but they still don't do them a lot, and they certainly don't do steep discount. Yeah, the most is like 20% off.

Yeah, the prices have to be very distinguished because they can't have a scenario where like, well, rhythm having goes on sale for half off. Yeah, yeah. But Mario Kart never does. So I think this is them trying to find that balance of how do we create some clarification of value if we want to keep these prizes more or less locked in. For sure. Understand that for sure. But if you're competing with, if you're competing with other, you know, folks in the hardware space, like, okay, that's fine. PlayStation 5 games are pretty expensive too.

Like, I get it. But if you're competing with all the, I don't know, man, all the necro dancer games on Steam and all the other kind of like really fucking rad. Eventually, like rhythm dance or rhythm doctor will come to switch, I imagine. Right. I think the harsh reality is that most of the people who hear of rhythm heaven have not. probably will not hear of those games. I don't know. There's some fucking freaks out there.

Look at Griffin. There's a freaky franchise. There's a huge audience. I'm just saying Nintendo automatically, fair or not, has the benefit of you open the e-shop and you're our friends who never look into video games and you see a new Nintendo game came out. Yeah, for sure. I mean, $40 is a lot of money. Yeah.

I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't feel necessarily like I have gotten a ton of time out of this, out of this game where we'll continue to put much time into it. So, like, I am not saying. And like you said, Griffin, there are like many other rhythm games on Steam. There are, like, there are a variety. Yeah. I am not saying it is necessary worth it. I would recommend, though, Griffin, if you get the chance to try to do some multiplayer, I do think it helps to elevate. I'm not saying it reaches the $40 or whatever,

but it does elevate the product. I got to try. Unbeatable. Unbeatable is another one that came out. I think actually. Oh, yeah. Late last year at the beginning of this one, I never,

it was on my wish list. It was like one of the first games I ever wish list. I never, I've not dipped into that one. Yeah, there's so many, there's just so many games doing this stuff and the indie sort of like ecosystem,

financially speaking, is like completely on a whole other level than a $50. I wasn't here for the Star Fox episode, but $50 for the Star Fox remake also feels a bit out of pocket to me. But let's not, I guess, relitigate that. Let's take maybe a brief break and then we can come back and talk about things that you can feel great spending an exorbitant amount of money on. Maybe. I want to hear about the steam machine, which Russ has been spending some time with. But first, let's take this quick break.

Okay. So I'm about a week or so, maybe 10 days. into using the steam machine, which is Valve's TV side computer. I don't know that I need to. Do I need to describe it for the people? I mean, maybe, dude. They announced it a long time ago

and then did not say anything about it for a long time. That's true. And Steam machine used to mean something different, so hardcore listeners. Yeah. Okay, so the Steam machine that Valve just released is a computer that runs Linux. It runs Steam OS,

which we should be familiar with through. That's what's running on a Steam deck. But this one is designed specifically, to plug into a TV. So the idea would be you would have a steam machine in your living room and you plug it into the TV. And suddenly you have all of the things that were in your Steam library accessible on this box. Obviously, there are many other ways to have a computer gaming experience in your living room. You can plug a laptop in.

You can plug a desktop computer in. There are a number of different ways. But I think Steam's goal was Valve's goal was to make this as easy as possible for people to have this experience that aren't interested in like juggling a lot of setup or wires or whatever. Right. You plug it in and it works. And I will say from my experience, they did achieve that goal. It is incredibly easy.

I was playing No Man Sky in like seven minutes after unboxing this thing. You may have not played No Man Sky recently enough to have a feeling about this. But isn't the like latest like five updates they've done on that game just fucking crazy? Oh yeah. I don't think I've talked about it on this show. Maybe I did. A little bit you mentioned it. The fact that you can jump out of a spaceship from orbit and build your own Corvette,

jump out into space and just free float around while catching space Pikachu's. It's fucking crazy that game. But, yes, I was able to start playing that game immediately, and I have just gobs of games, just covering games for as long as we have, just untold numbers of games that are on my Steam library that I was able to boot up. And mostly the way I've been using it is not for me necessarily. It's more for, there's a ton of games that I know my son would enjoy, but for whatever reason, it was a pain in the ass to set it up on the TV. And now I can put, we were just playing unpacking the other day, which is a really fun puzzle game where you basically empty boxes in a room and, like, put clothing and toys and things away in your house.

Very simple game. Really loved it when I played it on Steam, however long ago that was. And then promptly forgot about it and it disappeared into my giant library of games. And now I can go and scroll through my library, and he can see all the thumbnails and be like, oh, let's play that. And when he wants to play Death Stranding, I say, oh, maybe not. And then I picked something else.

Right. And so he picked unpacking. And we also played Earthion. Do you remember that game Earthion? Plant, you might remember that game. Earthion is a schmup that actually runs on native Genesis hardware. If you were to like get the ROM, it actually runs. But it is made, obviously, with very modern design.

tenants and he's fucking awesome. I'm not really a schmup guy, but apparently my son is now a schmup guy because he fucking loved it. And we played that. Can I tell you that just real quick, the game that you should play? I don't want to say with your son. Drainus. Do you remember Drainus? No.

This sounds made up. Drainus. Drainus is one of the best schmups of the last decade. It's called Drainus? Drainus. Like anus, but with a drain? Okay. I know you may not like us talking about your voice a whole lot, Chris, but when you get happy, when you get happy with this voice, your voice compresses into something so small and adorable, I just want to put like a little tiny cup over it and carry it outside. Now here is the deal. I do think he would probably love Dranus.

Now that I'm looking at it right now. Who doesn't love Dranus? It looks pretty good. Okay, so that's the like top line understanding of what the steam machine is. I think most people will probably have that user. experience. We will get to the price. Don't worry. It's a million. It's a million. It's a million.

trillion fucking dollars. The other aspect that I want to mention before we get to the price is if you're willing to start tinkering, I think the steam machine gets increasingly even more valuable because you can turn into an enormously capable emulation machine, ROM playing machine, whatever, or turn it into a media set top box where you're not even using like an Apple TV anymore. You're just using that to like launch Netflix and whatever else. So there are, I think a lot of, there's a lot of utility so long as you're willing to like go a little bit deeper.

But even if you aren't, hey, poof, you have a pretty damn good steam playing thing. So long as you are not necessarily interested in pushing the hardware, because if you try to play games like 007 First Light or even Descentraining 2, it can run. It's not going to be pretty. you're talking about like low settings, maybe 1080P to get a clean 60 FPS on like a modern 3D big game like that. Okay. So that's the consideration you're doing. You can, you know, again, play these like 2D games or even a lot of 3D games that came out like two or three years ago. But if you're trying to play modern games, you are going to take a hit.

I would say you can certainly run a lot more than you can on a Steam deck, but that's not saying a whole lot these days. Right. That's that part of it. And then there's the price part of it, which is 100% valid. The price starts at $1,050. Yeah. Which is high. People have done, I have not done this myself, but people have done a ton of like,

side-by-slide comparisons of what's more powerful as PS5 or a steam machine. Obviously, the PS5, maybe not obviously. The PS5 is noticeably more powerful than a steam machine is. They've also done the thing where they're like, we're going to build our own steam machine using parts off the shelf. and they end up building a much more powerful device for the same amount of money. Valve doesn't seem to have a problem with that.

In fact, Valve released SteamOS to fully support any computer with an AMD chip in it. So if you want to build an AMD computer as a Steam deck that is arguably more powerful, you can do that. And in fact, Valve is like, that's part of the reason Valve isn't taking that 30% into consideration when they're like pricing this thing.

they didn't lower the price because they didn't know necessarily what people were going to do with it. I mean, who's it for? I think if you've listened to all of this, you probably know. Are you the sort of person that likes the convenience of playing older Steam games in an easy way and could maybe like drop a bunch of emulators on this thing? It's very convenient. Are you going to be more careful with how you spend your money and you want to like get the most bang for your buck? 100% you will be able to find something better elsewhere.

And even as the years go by, even six months from now, I'm willing to bet that there will be like off-the-shelf steam machine competitors that will do pretty well. So those are really the considerations. I don't know. Do you guys have questions? Are you using the new steam controller? I'm using the steam controller.

We've talked about the steam controller in the past. It is fully compatible with the steam machine, as you'd imagine. I fucking love this controller. I've used it basically nonstop since it, first came out a few months ago, one of my favorite controller's ever made, unquestionably. It's very ugly.

If you, yeah, sure. Very ugly, but I love holding it. I love the buttons. It feels great. Very flexible with the track pads if you want to use those.

I do kind of want one of those. It's pretty great. I do kind of want one of those because it looks cool. I give a glowing recommendation for the controller, unquestionably. And a, I would say, hesitant recommendation for the steam machine,

only if that's what you're looking to accomplish. I just, my beef is, is not with the Steam machine. Okay. I want one. I mean, it looks great.

Yeah. I truly do it. And I think it fills a need that, that I, you know, have in my kind of, like, gaming space. I guess I could dock my Rog ally X to the,

to like my living room TV if I wanted to, like, play PC games. I mean, I've had that use case. And in my experience, I just don't end up doing that because it's too many steps. Because it's, yeah,

and it can be a pain in the yes to set up. And then also the, I don't know if this is, is true, but using Bazzyte on the RoggalliX sometimes after docking it, and then undocking it, it has trouble getting back into

kind of undocked, like, using the onboard controller and aspect ratio. The OS does fully support the Rog AlliX now, by the way, just letting you know. If you want to leave Bazite behind, it does fully support. Bazat's been pretty good to me. My, my, my, my,

my, my, my, my, my, my, is not with steam machine or valve or this price point. Like, I think it, or with Gabe. Like, it's a lot of money, but, and when you compare it to like the Rog Ally X, or I don't know how much the new Xbox Rog Ally is, or the, you know, the PS5, you know, whatever. It's, it's a lot of money, but everything costs a lot of money now that has RAM in it. It just feels, I don't know when I'm going to feel like great about dropping a bunch of money on a thing that has obviously had its price jacked into the,

fucking stratosphere by a global economic sort of crisis is maybe a strong word. And I know that it is the kind of nature of this thing that you don't really know. No one really knows when the RAM shortage will begin to sort of resolve. But I don't know. It feels bad to think about buying a new PC or buying a, you know, buying even that Switch 2 right now to the increase the price. It's something that has never really happened in my lifetime before where a game console gets more expensive after they release it. And it just feels so bad to imagine spending money on that when ostensibly you could wait. Well, I'm going to make it worse for everyone, which is you might not be able to wait because Lenovo has said that they don't expect prices to ever to come down. And NOVA is incentivized to say that for reasons, but that is also how inflation works.

When prices go up, rarely, if ever, does the market want to bring them back down? They're not incentivized too. They would much sooner keep the profits than they would bring the prices back down. The other thing that I think we have to be aware of for like who this is for, the bummer here is this is for people who want to get into PCs. which should be a growing audience. And the steam machine itself was never going to replace the Xbox or the PlayStation. But the idea of Steam OS and moving to PC has been gradually doing that. And as consoles themselves become $1,000, and as consoles get worse and worse,

and like, let's be clear, they've gotten much worse this year, they're going to get significantly worse over the limitations over the next three years. moving to PC. By the worst, you mean price, worse. Not just price. They will have less features than they've ever had. You won't be able to play retail discs in your products. Sure.

You have even less clarity on how your digital rights work, right? These are not great times for a console owner. We're not talking about Nintendo. That's a whole different thing. And for that reason, like, it would be a great time to jump into a relatively easy, more welcoming PC experience like Steam, so you can benefit from the sales. It is digital sales, but they have a much longer history of digital rights, maintenance for you, right? There's a lot of reasons for you to do it.

Which are still pretty draconian, but at least they're all in one place. And they're consistent. Yeah, yeah, sure. I would also add that you don't have to pay a subscription fee to play online games, which is another way you can save some of that money. I think that there is value in this. The other thing to keep in mind is because of the prices being so extreme, I think you will see way fewer developers, apart from like the rock stars of the world,

pushing hardware in extreme ways. I think you're going to see people design games, continue design games to be very scalable, such that hardware from a few years ago, which Steam Machine arguably is, because it's not top of the shelf stuff right now, can still run those games. So I think you will get more life out of this

and you think, but yeah, again, you are still, you won't be just playing, it's a new computer, but you won't be playing games with all settings max by any means. This is my theory, and I'm going to sound like a bonkers person,

but I think over the next year or two, we're going to see more things pop up that we've seen in other countries where people are better about repurposing the hardware they already have. And I won't be surprised if those computer shops that you see or repair shops that you see in your neighborhood or in your city, if they start saying, hey, you can come in and we'll wipe your old laptop or your old PC and we will convert it into a steam machine or something like this

for you. Because the process isn't so easy that the average person is going to do it. but if that becomes something that your local vendor can do on your behalf, that's a great option. Like a lot of people have old hardware in their home that is not being used to the best of its capability. And that would run a lot of older stuff and accomplish a lot of these things. Yeah, man, shit's really rough. It's rough. Sort of industry-wide.

Like, it is sort of a bummer thing to... prophesized about what the future holds. I do want one of the... I think I like the form factor of it, and I think it looks rad and everything, but I don't know that the need for it justifies the price for me, personally speaking. I think a lot of people are going to make that decision,

and I think that's right. Like, if I was buying an easy PC for a friend that doesn't know anything about PCs, yeah, the steam machine makes total sense. Yeah. But I'm mindful that, like, there's a lot of people that could do a little bit of heavy lifting and get a more powerful machine out of it.

But it's, I think it's great that this is here, and I think it sets a standard for the industry, for the PC gaming industry, and like Microsoft and whoever else sets a standard to be like, hey, dummies, we can make this incredibly easy for people. You don't need to overcomplicate it by making them install fucking stock widgets every time they launch their computer. Let's just like give them the games they paid for. So I do appreciate Valve on that front of designing a system that is like as smooth as it could possibly be. I also like, if I'm going to spend an outrageous amount of money on a on a steam thing, I'm probably going to wait for that VR headset.

Yeah. Because that thing looks, that thing does look pretty tight. I don't have a need for that either. That would justify whatever the price of that will almost certainly be quite large as well. But I don't know. That stuff gets me real excited. We have a little bit of reader mail. Paul wrote in to say,

you mentioned liking puzzle games this week, and I know you guys have tried TR49 Enchanted Sonar in the past. My friend turned me onto a recently released game, The Message from Deep Space, which is on Steam. It's a puzzle game where you are decoding messages being sent from a meteor. You will know in the first 15 minutes if it's a game for you, but if it is, it's great. Otherwise, bail, and you can see what you got.

There's a demo. Yeah. I just looked it up. It looked very cool. definitely worth checking out. This does look cool. Yeah, this looks neat. There's a few of these, I feel like, language-based, translation-based games that have dropped over the last year.

I think Chances Sinar really, I don't know, set the genre ablaze. One more reader mail email. This one comes from Bass Toad, Bass Toad, maybe. Has anyone in the besties played Mecca Chameleon, the biggest indie hit of the year? It has 15 million sales worldwide. in a single month. I have not played it yet, but I have seen it many times. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've seen, my kids watch videos of Mecha Chameleon. A lot. Yeah, it rocks. We should play it together in the coming week. Sometime before the end of the summer, we'll play it.

Yeah. For those that don't know, it's a hide-and-seek game where when you go to hide, you can basically, like, draw on yourself and design your own camouflage such that you fit in with the scene. so you could like draw half a hydrant and like kind of blend in with the scene better, and then the other person tries to find you. It's very clever. Yeah, some people are really good at it. I've also seen some people have developed a hack technology that will like screen print exactly what you're standing in front of in like a weird kind of line by line dot matrix style. That's so funny.

Which I'm sure is frustrating for the hardcore mecha chameleon community. Yeah, sure. But I enjoy the ingenuity of it. I mean, we talk about price stuff. and like capabilities of computers these days. Like this is what we're going to see more of, is weird-ass experimental things that do not require you to have a modern PC.

Yeah. And that's good, keeping in mind like the odds of another indie game having this level of success fucking very, very low, if not zero. So just keep that in mind. I mean, there's always one every year, at least. There's always at least one every year.

Not to this level. 15 million sales is fucking crazy. This is the video game's equivalent. of, well, actually, I guess the video game's equivalent of backrooms is backrooms, but in terms of what that has done to the film industry, that and, oh shit, well, it's the one with the wish willow, they snap it, obsession. Yeah. Where it's like, we need indie horror stuff. I don't know. I feel like that also does happen every year where then the big players in the space are like, shit, guys, we got it making among us. And we got a month and a half to do it. Also, just a little thing with Metcha chameleon, a little Japanese here. It's pronounced Metcha. and that means like, oh, very chameleon. It's totally a mess of a chameleon. That's fun.

I had no idea. That explains the extra C, I guess. I'm glad you told me that before I said the name of the game, like in public or something, like picking my kids up from school. It would have been really humiliating for me. Is this your version of saying karate correctly? No, this is my version of saying near automata. Oh, boy.

Honorable. We got any honorable mentions? mentions. I've been playing a game called it's called Blueprints. It's a first person puzzle game where you explore apps. Yeah, man. Where are we at? I have all the sigils done. The sigil doors are done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm currently saving money for a blue skin

of my tents. Oh, that's such a good one. That's a real good one to have, man. Can I tell you, the blue tints really open the game up for you. Everything before that is basically the two-toy. Oh, yeah. It's filler, basically, yeah. I do actually really like, I mean, I won't tell you what happens when you get those, but it's, it's, it is truly pretty transformative for like what the game has to offer. Yeah, I'm pretty excited. We're a day like 60 something. And obviously, look, it couldn't last forever. As of right now, we are currently like kind of up again. I'm sure there's

stuff we've missed, but like, every, I would say 90% of the threads we have pulled and seen. what the end of the thread is. So I am waiting for that chew to drop a little bit, but we'll see. If you ever want Tinder sort of... I don't. No, no, no, I'm not hints, but just like... Nudges. I don't want those nudge.

Not nudge is just confirmation of whether or not you're done, done. Yeah. I know, I know, because you guys were struggling because you beat the game and had no idea that you beat it. So we will get to that point. Before I quit, I will ask someone whether we are at that point. I, this is a little tease for Restes, which I hopefully will have my voice back for by the time we record that. But I have been playing Ace Combat 7 again.

And I am going to teach Russ Frustick, the history of the Ace Combat series on the upcoming Restes to prepare everyone. Because I understand that you might think, how will I be ready for Thav if I haven't played Ace Combat series? It's one through seven. And you, for, I mean, for a mere $5, can listen to the resties and you will find out, you know what, game fucking rocks Ace Combat 7. That game rocks so unbelievably hard. I really had forgotten just how much I enjoyed it.

And being sick sucks. But being sick and getting to play is Combat 7 again has been a total joy. I don't think I spent a ton of time with Ace Combat 7 But Yeah You have good taste in games Chris

Sometimes I mean you can just wait for Well actually you don't need to wait for eight You could oh Griffin Are you ready for this Ace Combat 7 runs on the Ein Thor Oh shit I don't know how But magic dreams are possible

If I'm in a cockpit dude I do want it to surround me I don't want to hold a tiny little nintoshet Tindo DS in my hands. Will you hold it like two inches from your face and you go, is that the secret? I mean, that game is seven years old. Of course it runs on the handheld from.

It's old. It looks really. Why you got to move in my magic? I'm just saying. Griffin, anything you want to show up? Yeah, I got a few. They just opened up the open beta for EverQuest Legends, the kind of like EQ for dads for people who pre-order the game.

And I spent some more time with it, but they're going to wipe all the progress from the beta on the 21st, I think, before the game goes live on the 28th, for real. So I think I've kind of stopped because I don't want to, I played quite a bit of the closed beta and I don't want to burn myself out, but really, really, really, really fun, really enjoying that game a lot and seeing the community kind of come to life. There's always been like hardcore EQ players, but it's been fairly insular. Now I feel like they've broken containment in a way and it's, I don't know. It's, it is really enjoyable and it's cool how many kind of quality of

life things they've done. Diablo 4 has a new season that I've spent a couple hours playing and I don't like it. So I'm going to stop. And there's been quite a bit of, I would say, pushback against this. They did some weird stuff like changing how like the unique items that drop work and now mythic items drop differently and they're not dropping for a lot of people at all and the seasonal activity is not very fun and it's just kind of a weak one. What I did play, and finish that I really enjoyed was Delta Rune, the new chapter, chapter five of Delta Rune, which, I don't know, man, how do you talk about the fifth chapter of a game that no one else on your podcast has played? Do so sort of quickly and respectfully.

No, it's great. I would say more than any other chapter, it is the one that kind of like deals with undertale stuff more. Like, that's always been a kind of somewhat weird thing about this game that is an anagram of undertale, is Delta Room? I did forget that. It's like, oh, it takes place in a different world, but a lot of the characters are the same, and there's references like nonstop. So what is going on? This is one that does that. I'm not going to talk really anything about the main hook of this one chapter and kind of the characters that come in and are featured. I really enjoyed it. The writing continues to be hysterically funny and really warm-hearted and just kind of nice.

This chapter does some really fun mechanical things. Jump ahead if you don't want to be spoiled on it, if you think you'll play it. But part way through the chapter, you unlock an item that allows you to switch perspective from the kind of top-down, you know, RPG style that Undertale and Delta Run to this point I've had. And then it goes into a side-scrolling platform.

And it shifts it sort of like in real time, sort of Fez style. And then you have to like, you know, do a platforming segment. There's like boss fights that you do in platforming mode. it's very mechanically sort of ambitious. It is, it doesn't do a lot to kind of move the overarching plot forward. This is a game that is like full of mysteries that people are kind of trying to unpack and figure out. And I don't know that it gives folks a ton to chew on.

Not as much as four, which I, I really, really liked. But man, I just, I just think it's, I just think it's exceptional. The music is so good. And this, this game, as weird as it's sort of release strategy is, like, it's so polished and so unlike anything else that anyone else is making. And I don't know when it will be finished. They've said it's six chapters. Is that right? I thought it was seven.

Oh, okay. I'm pretty sure it's seven. I don't think it makes sense to hold off on it just because it took me like a few hours to get through this chapter. Maybe four or five or so. It's big. It's like the length of undertale. And so like I don't, I feel like almost. waiting until it's all out and trying to play through all of it would actually be kind of rough because

now it's shaping up to be i mean i can look at my steam play time for delta rune so far but you know five chapters in and uh i'm actually curious to see what that what that figure is yeah 24.9 hours yeah five for five chapters so like what seven are all here that's like i don't know a pretty big time commitment yeah i liked it a lot i think it's fucking great and if you've played delteroon and finished chapter four, got a new one for you. It's great. Maybe during Christmas break.

That seems like a good time to maybe try to catch up. Look, are you talking like me, acting like you're going to play that game. I mean, I do feel like, to Griffin's point, like I do feel some obligation, especially if it eventually ends

to like experience this thing that specifically Griffin has been in love with the reason. Oh, you'll definitely experience it when it ends, but you're not going to. You're not going to start it until it ends. But I know if I, Griffin's right. I know if I wait until the end, it's going to come out.

And I'll be like, oh, fuck, I got to play chapter one first. And then I'm going to have 30 hours. A lot of, a lot of Delta Room. Yeah, that's a lot before I get to the new stuff. I am very hesitant about things like early access, right? Like, I'm not going to touch fields and mystery again until it's out 1.0. I'm not going to touch and shroud it again until it's out 1.0. I have games that I'm like waiting on baited, waiting on baited breath to

be finished before I like really put my time into playing it. The episodes are so are so um self-contains not the exact right word, but they're done. Complete packages. They feel like full games. Like I spent a long time with this latest chapter and now I am like really excited and really looking forward to the next one. And to me that is a different sort of pattern because that stuff is not going to change, right? They're not going to do much to adjust. I imagine the first five chapters at the game. It's just, you know, there's more stuff coming. Cool. Hey, thank you so much for listening to our show, which is called The Besties.

We sure do appreciate you. Chris, do you want me to go through and talk about all the games we did this year? Actually, before we do that, I do want to throw to the fact that we have a brand new bracket battles episode, which is live currently. We have a very special guest, Mary Kish, from the Fire Escape podcast, joined us. It's excellent, and we have a clip here for it. It's impossible to put yourself in the shoes of a person. in 1985 playing this game and beating four levels

and thinking I've been it. You do it all the time. Pretend that you are a child playing the game. Well, okay, that is fair. That's fair. That was before I was alive. So that's like a huge,

a huge leap backwards. Very fun. Super fun. Go to Patreon.com slash the besties if you haven't already. That's where you can get access to those bracket episodes as well as episodes of the Resties

that Chris and Russ do. Talking about games that we don't cover here on the besties. This week on the Bessies, we talked about Rhythm Heaven groove. Touched a little bit on Rhythm Doctor and Unbeatable. Russ detailed his time with the steam machine. Talked about the message from deep space.

Talked about Metscha chameleon, which is pronounced Metscha chameleon, I think. We talked about Ace Combat 7. We talked about EverQuest Legends. Talked about Delta Rune Chapter 5. Talked about Blueprints, once again. And we'll continue to until Russ has slain that dragon. Russ and Alex, I do want to give, I'm sure that she is. Yeah, she is the bulk of the driving force, the brain, the real brain power of your duo.

She is. She's crushing it. And now, Frush, where can people see pictures of your foot? That could be traveling touring? I think we need another Patreon just for my foot. Okay, sounds good. Honestly, I think that makes sense. Yeah.

Lonely fans? Is that anything? There's got to be something there. Speaking of people paying money. I want to thank some backers that have recently supported us. We have Adam N. We have Stephen T. We have Source 4 Mini.

And we have Kieran. Thank you for being backers at the Patreon at patreon.com slash the besties. And thank you to everyone else who has supported our show. Please remember to check the newsletter about the live show tickets, which are going fast. You want to make sure you get a good seat. Now is the time to do so. And yeah, next week we are going to be doing two games. we're going to be talking about the

Assassin's Creed 4 remake, which I believe is called Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. And we're also talking about Dench attack where are you... Just the Judy Dench simulator.

And she's pissed off with a thirst for blood and vengeance. And I think you are... She's also a train that grinds rails. Yeah, she is a train that grinds rails.

So yeah, join us again next week for the besties for that and more because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!