The Besties - Open the Besties Treasure Trove

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Due to technical issues, our Doom conversation has been delayed until next week. The good news? We finally had time to dig into our backlogs! The boys brought a bag of beautiful bits and bobs. A boomer shooter! An actually good IP game! And THE Planet Crafter. 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!

Hey guys, you wanna see something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're not gonna talk about what we're seeing, we're just gonna bask in it. Yeah. What the hell? Holy shit, guys, Justin's got a gun, Jesus Christ. Look at this, this is the Retro Shooter Reaper.

Look at this, it's got a button here, got here, it's got two buttons here, it's got a trigger here, and it's got this here. And Griffin, I just wanna say, I haven't shown it to Travis yet. So if you wanted to call dibs on it, this could be like the one you use whenever you come over. I'm not like a big gun guy.

And I'm like excited for you. Like I know that you're really into it. Wait, hold on. Look how tough I looked up. Whoa, that was crazy. No, for sure. Whoa! And I'm like stoked you're so into the 3D printing scene,

but I do need to tell you. This is not 3D printed. No, no, no. Are you kidding me? I wish. That's a ghost gun, Justin. I read about that in Reader's Digest, and they're super illegal.

If you don't wanna call dibs, just don't call dibs. It's fine. I mean. I'll let Travis use this one, and you'll have one of the crappy ones. I mean, I don't want a crappy one though. I'm not a big gun guy. So do you wanna call dibs on that one?

If I was a gun guy, I'd want a good one. It does have a few things, and you have to look pretty closely. It does have a few things about it that tell you it's not a real gun. Yeah. Like one, there are buttons all along the side. Buttons all over it, yeah.

RoboCop's gun had guns. Cords. Guns I don't think have, do guns have cords? Usually, do you have to? RoboCop's guns do have cords, but RoboCop ain't real. Now guns have cords usually do you have to Robo cups guns do have cords but Robo cup be real Now so Griff did you call dibs? Just got it what is that an MP5? Quite the collection there Justin, I don't know what you're going to whip out next. My name is Justin McCrudden. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McCarran. I know the best game of like February.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of somewhere between 2020 and 2025. My name is Ross Froschek. I know the best game of the week. Hello. Welcome to the Besties, where we examine the latest and greatest in the home interactive entertainment field.

Today, rather than talk about a new game, we're gonna talk about old games. We will explain why. We were gonna talk about a new game. We were gonna talk about a new game. An old, new, an old timey, new, old game. New, old game. Said in the past. Said in the old, this is an old timey, new, old game.

Set in the old, this is what I'm saying, it's an old timey, new, old game. Yeah, but as it turns out, the Doom Slayer slays more than demons and evil robots and stuff. Sometimes it'll slay your actual real life shit, which I think is a bold innovation in gaming. We were playing some pre-release code, and let's just say this game came in hot. So hot that I'm not sure what it did to my computer, but I'm not blaming it.

It made it hot. It maybe made it too hot. I am legally not blaming this pre-release code. Bethesda blacklisted me for years when I talked about getting stuck in an elevator in a Fallout game. I don't need any of that shit right now. I'm sure the game runs perfectly fine. We're just going to talk about it next week. Okay?

Yes, I agree. We should talk about it next week, but that's okay. We've figured out a good backup plan. As always. And we're going to call it... What are we calling it Justin? We're gonna call it the Treasure Trove. It's the Treasure Trove.

It's much like a backlog, but it sounds more like something you would want to listen to. Backlog sounds, yeah, very negative unless, no, entirely negative, there's really no way to, but effectively it is a backlog, which is a term that people understand, but it's a good backlog. In fact, it's a great backlog because it's all some somewhat slightly older games that are great and in some ways glitter like treasure

I like Wow nice like beautiful beautiful much better than dookie box which we were thinking about yes Outcast title The love below early push for do hey hoops What do you what do you what do you been playing this week? What did we take a commercial break? I don't feel like no no we didn't should we? We are now Justin so yeah as the Originator of the treasure trove labeling I feel like the pressure is on for you to bring some true

fucking fire to the mix. Yeah. Yes. My little brother Travis has been playing this game called Planet Crafter. And he has been highly recommending that if you need something like kind of pleasant, relaxing to check out, it is a great one to explore.

Seems like a lot of work just to build a planet from scratch. Right, probably planet Cajoler might be more, planet Shaper. Okay, so the planet's already there, but it could be better. The planet is there, the crafting here is really more terraforming.

So when you crash land on this barren planet, it is basically utterly uninhabitable think like The Martian you know, I mean that kind of idea where you've you're stranded on this uninhabitable planet the ship that you came in that had a lot of your equipment is destroyed on entry and spread out over the surface of the planet and you basically are tasked with making this planet livable with,

with improving the environment in such a way that, uh, it becomes habitable by living beings. Um, so when you start out, it's very, you have a little like, uh, you know, all purpose mine and build and laser. And you use that on the, uh, small bits of detritus lying around on the planet surface that lets you get like base minerals, things like silicon and iron and cobalt, things like that. And then you use those base minerals to make basic tools, you know, a habitat, things like that. But then you start making the overarching goal is to make things that will make,

uh, the planet's atmosphere improve for, you know, for living beings. So you are crafting heaters to try to expand, you know, increase the heat. You're making drills that create by drilling into the planet's surface are creating pressure, like more of a pressurized atmosphere. You know what I mean? Creating more atmosphere. Feels like this is planet colonizer and they just didn't wanna call it that. Well, that's an extremely loaded term to level

against a planet that does have no discernible culture. I don't know why we would wanna, you know. That's pretty judgmental of the planet. Yeah, it's very judgmental of all of you, correct. I think that the, so that's the basic idea is you are finding tools that will improve the planet's atmosphere. As you are improving the atmosphere,

you gain access to more powerful tools that let you drill faster or grow plants. You're finding seeds out the planet surface that you can put in habitats. And those habitats will create oxygen. So that's how you're creating oxygen. You're creating heat. You're creating, trying to create an atmosphere and you're doing it with all the basic like survival mechanics.

I think Subnautica is a pretty good like comparison here with it's, but it's more, I would say more guided than Subnautica Subnautica is very you never lose that sort of like Exploration edge I felt like I you always felt a little bit more in peril. This is a bit more chill As you you know, it's not too hard to find Oxygen and waterline around how would you describe these visuals because I'm getting kind of like oxygen and water line around. How would you describe these visuals? Because I'm getting kind of like 1990s PC gaming magazine vibes when I look at this.

Yeah, it's funny. You know what it kind of reminds me of? It kind of looks like Half-Life 2 to me. It kind of looks, it has that sort of look. It is pretty barren. I think the worlds are pretty barren, but that allows them to do a lot of look, it is pretty barren. I think the worlds are pretty barren, but that allows them to do a lot of planet, it's not super detailed,

but the scope is always really impressive, right? So if you see, there are occasionally meteor showers on the face of the planet, and when you look outside, it looks like there's a meteor shower outside. It sucks and it's scary. But they're probably sacrificing some detail for scope, I think. Yeah, it has that weird 1990s pre-rendered thing It sucks that it's scary. But they're probably sacrificing some detail for scope, I think.

Yeah. It has that weird 1990s pre-rendered thing where people are like, yeah, we can render an entire environment. We don't know how to add textures yet. But we can make it look pretty big and beautiful. I like that, though. Oh, I say that as a compliment. It looks fun and beautiful.

There are also big differences in in, like really unbelievable differences, I will say, in like the biomes. So you'll like take a step and all of a sudden you'll be in like a neon green, crazy spider columns emerging everywhere. And then over here, it's like a bunch of lava stuff. There's a, it's cool to explore like the crashed parts of your ship.

You have to really like ready a little expedition with like your oxygen and your water and make sure you're like set to go explore and pillage it. Oh, so it's like Dragon's Dogma. It is, well, I mean, it's just like any other survival. The reason I was interested because what you're describing on paper sounds a lot like the game we played last week, which is Revenge of the Savage Planet.

Because you land on a planet, you don't have anything, you gotta like kind of build up from scratch. But obviously the core structure of like, building out your base and all that's, I mean. That's really interesting Russ, like, they are so different that it did not, the comparison didn't even occur to me. Because like, where that game had very little

in the way of meaningful mechanics that kind of kept you engaged and was really kind of relying on your innate curiosity and whatever narrative it has. Like you really do get a sense of like your, it's a virtuous cycle of you making the planet more livable makes exploration easier. So in this case, like what is pressurizing the atmosphere do

from like a playability standpoint for you? So it is as you're improving the overall pressure of the planet, you are primarily with pressure, you're, it's contributing to an overall habitability score. Okay. So there's like oxygen and pressure and those feed into and heat and those three factors feed into that and as as

you're that is improving your granted access by your employers to like better equipment better you know and also drains as the environment improves you like for example your oxygen stat will drain slower figured because that makes better it's better. Is this like a persistent server multiplayer sort of experience by design do you think? It could be, yeah, I'm pretty sure it could be. It's not how I played it, but I think there's some multiplayer.

It looks like it supports up to 10 players. Wow, cool. Be neat. It was really, I really, it clicked for me in a big way. It felt, it's really fun. It's the, stuff like the base minerals all look very distinct. So like ice looks like a big chunk of ice, like a big white blob. And you see like, it's very easy to parse the environment and see like,

Oh, there's something way out there that I'm gonna try to get to. Um, and it is really intense when you're like halfway back with all your new crap and you are almost out of oxygen and you can like build lakes and shit in this game. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of like the options get really, if you compare a starting planet with someone who's been playing for like a hundred days in world or whatever, it's a huge difference. I mean, the planet itself is really,

which is, you know, we talk about a mechanical improvement and I think that like, it is more about like the aesthetic sort of like bonsai gardening effect of just feeling like you're contributing overall and that being the pleasure of that and seeing how you're improving the environment. That's always really nice. I love it. It's called Planet Crafter.

It's good, the Planet Crafter, right? The Planet Crafter, yeah. It's a remake. It's going to go back to the gritty origins of Planet Crafter. No, okay, Travis said the Planet Crafter. If I looked at Steam, the logo looks like Planet Crafter. The title of the game is the Planet Crafter. They might have Facebooked it. The Planet Crafter, if I looked at Steam, the logo looks like Planet Crafter. The title of the game is The Planet Crafter.

They might have Facebooked it. The Planet Crafter. Oh yeah. It's the the. It might have what? They Facebooked it. Pick out the the. It's a billion dollar idea.

Did you never watch Justin Timberlake? Did you ever watch the movie Justin Timberlake? I didn't have to watch it, man. I lived it. The logo, which I will say, for me, a logo should be the final straw. The logo says Planet Crafter. There's no the.

But everything about the game says the. So I don't know. I don't know, man. Noticing a problem. So Justin has been pretending to be Robocop this week. I have been Robocop this week in RoboCop Rogue City. Heck yeah man that game rules. We like briefly touched on this game a few times. You've definitely brought it as like a you've also been playing it right?

I don't know if I mentioned it before but it's fun. It's super fun. It is a RoboCop, honestly the closest we've gotten fun. It is a Robo cop Honestly, the closest we've gotten I think to a good Robo cop sequel is this video game it gets the assignment It gets the energy it gets the tone it gets the pacing you are yes doing a first-person shooter is Robo cop But there's a good deal of story in this game RoboCop, but there's a good deal of story in this game that doesn't suck. If it is well written, it's clever. RoboCop is going through kind of a, um, psychological episode, uh, and trying to figure out like what the hell he or it is. Um, and meanwhile, the city of Detroit is struggling, would you believe it

in this alternate future? The cool thing about the game is it doesn't just play like a traditional first person shooter and like in a lot of ways. One, the actual going around and shooting is much closer to like a mech game or a tank almost. You really can't die. Like it's pretty damn hard for you to get knocked down.

So you move around very slowly. You can actually hear the thud of each step that you take. And then you go into this analyze mode that you could use for detective stuff, but you can also use to find people's heads and then you pop them like a. What is there a dick setting though, in true Robocop fashion? You can also use to find people's heads. Sure. And then you pop them like water balloons. Is there a dick setting though, in true Robocop fashion? Of course there is an achievement for blasting off dicks. That's, I mean they know exactly what they're doing.

I can't tell if you're joking, but I hope that's true. No, there is. No, there is. They know. The impact that just your pistol hits with, the pistol sounds like almost rocket launch. It sounds louder than all the other guns. And you like breach into a room

and you'll shoot someone's head clean off. You'll shoot someone's arm clean off. And then you'll miss and hit somebody in the leg. But it hits with such impact that they flip like three times in the air and then like fall off a building. It is so completely over the top. It kicks ass.

It also looks great, like visually. It's doing the thing. It's funny that you were holding up the light gun hoops because even though you're walking around, it reminds me so much of like Virtual Cop or those light gun games of that era. Because again, you're walking around, it reminds me so much of like Virtual Cop or those light gun games of that era. Because again, you're not hiding, you're kind of just going from scene to scene and then

just shooting at whatever you see. And like games like Virtual Cop and Medal of Honor or Soldier of Fortune, yeah, Soldier of Fortune of that era, it knows that like the pleasure is in the actual feel of destroying the environment. So you'll the opening level is in a TV station. And there's just so much shit that can be destroyed. There's the glass walls, there's the papers in the air, there are computers which you can shoot and blow up, or you can just pick one up and throw it like 100 feet and just nail somebody in the face with it.

Is it the most complicated game ever? No. Can I, as Robocop, issue a parking ticket in the middle of me slaughtering all of these people? Yes, I can. And I can go back to the office where everybody's like kind of uncomfortable that I'm there and I can like help them solve really tiny personal problems. And they go, oh, Robocop, you fixed the vending machine.

You're not so bad. You seem like a pretty OK guy. And I go, thank you. And then he starts hitting on the vending machine. He just loves to help out. Wow. That's how you get health in the game. You walk up to a vending machine,

you push a few of its buttons, and the sign says, go for it, then you smooch it, and you get smooched health back from smooching it. That sounds great. This seems like a very fun game. It did remind me, brief segue, I have a little anecdote from when I interned at the ESRB

when I was in high school. Did you guys know that I did this? I did, but I forgot about it. I interned at the ESRB, I was in high school. Uh, did you guys know that I did this? I did, but I forgot about it. I interned at the ESRB. And when I was there, soldier of fortune, the PC game made by Raven, I believe made it, um, came out and the way they, they basically evaluated the violence

is they were sent VHS tapes of like the worst parts of the game. And soldier of fortune was noteworthy because it allowed you to like. Fully dismember people with bullets and the games used to be so cool, man. Fuck. Yeah, man. The key, uh, determinant determining factor of the rating was how long would

the like leg pieces stay on the ground before fading away and man, they really pushed the needle on that one. It was like a full minute of leg pieces you could just stare at. And that was enough to guarantee. Were you sitting there and then stop watching? But I think if it was two minutes, you gotta go adults only.

I think that was the line. Because of how long the leg meat stayed? Yes, that was one of the variables that they had to factor in. Is the idea that if you look at leg meat for too long, it'll make you violent? Maybe. And make you sick? It might, I've never tested it.

I looked away when they were showing the VHS tape. Yeah. Good idea. It's the only safe thing to do. Fresh, do you know the name of the engine that powered the leg meat? Oh, God. GOOL. Oh, yeah, it was the GOOL engine.

The GOOL engine. Right, right, right. They knew what they were doing. They did. Uh, should we take a quick break? Yes. Let's do that. What about the rest of you?

You playing video games or what? Yeah, man. I've got a couple Ws for you. And by that I mean W titled video games. We'll start with, I forget if I brought this, but if not, I think it's worth re-highlighting. The game is called Willmont Works It Out. Have we talked about this?

I've never heard of this. We talked about Willmont's warehouse. Yeah, okay, so it's the same developer as Willmont's warehouse. This one's Willmont Works It Out, and it is a puzzle game, and I mean that in the most literal sense, you are putting puzzle pieces together. You're a little man in your house,

and someone keeps delivering pieces of puzzles to you, and you just have to like rotate them and snap them together until they make pretty, pretty pictures. And some of the puzzle pieces come in, and they apply to like puzzles you'll only get in like three packages from now. So you kind of have to like separate those out and arrange them in this open space. There's no time limits, there's no like stress about it. And when you're done building the puzzle, you get to place it on your wall

wherever you'd like to place it. So there's a very meditative experience to it. I feel like- How are you moving stuff around? Is it just like click and drag situation? I think you, I played it on the Steam Deck, so it works with controller. There's like a hold down to drag kind of thing, and you can like rotate things with the bumpers,

things like that. Okay. But I'd imagine on PC, it probably is just click and drag stuff. The- But it's not like one of those like, I think Sokoban not like one of those, I think Sokoban is the name of it,

where you're actually pushing shit around. It does, to some extent, feel like a Sokoban game, but it's not like, oh, you can only move this box two squares. It's more just like an organizing the area kind of game, if that makes any sense. I love that this is a genre. I love the a little to the left sort of just like tidy sort of game.

This kind of seems like that. Yeah, like I think Wilma's Warehouse was like much more of a traditional puzzle game and it was just like very interested in patterns and blocks and puzzles. And this is this is like a jigsaw game effectively. And I've turned to it a number of times just because like I want something chill for 10 minutes and it saved your progress wherever you are so you don't have to like finish the puzzle to save your progress and it's just been like a very nice vibey kind of game so

if you're looking for something very chill definitely recommend Wilmot works it out because he does he does work it out Total opposite of the spectrum another W game is called Wiz or dumb shit Okay, I mean I'm excited about this one and had wanted to play it. Yeah, it is neat. It is a I Still don't like the term boomer shooter, but I guess that's what it is It's it's inspired by like early doom or Wolfenstein 3D, like that style of gameplay, but you are a wizard. Well, you can be a number of classes.

You can be like a cleric, you can be like a sorcerer, but effectively like the levels play out very similarly to those like retro first person shooter games. You know, you're going through, you're finding ammo, you're finding health, you're pressing against ChexQuest. Hexen, yeah, Hexen, ChexQuest, like it. Yeah, but it's worth noting, so this is not, I think Hexen was 3D, like with actual polygons,

whereas this is the like parallax, like flat character look that like Wolfenstein 3D had. Yes. Even it looks kick ass. Yeah, it's really fun. I've enjoyed it and they layered in some more modern mechanics. So they have, you know, you're collecting gold throughout the levels and in past games, like

gold didn't mean fucking anything. You just got points. And here, when you get to the end of the level, you can get upgrades and things like that to improve your future runs. So there is that element and they've and they've added a few more things where it helps you find all the secrets in a level, for example, so you're not driving yourself nuts

pressing every fucking wall in the level, just to get 100%. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. It seems pretty full feature. Are those upgrades? I was curious about this one, because I saw it on TikTok a bunch, and it was like, this is kick ass, so I downloaded the demo.

And I had a really good time with it. Do you feel like those, are those progression hooks, like, do they carry over run to run? Or is it just like? They carry over level to level. I don't know that, I think it's run to run probably not. But there's like a full slate, like there are campaigns basically.

So you play through a campaign, and again, this is just like in Wolfenstein. So you'll, you know, over- Oh, so it's not like a rogue-like sort of format. Correct, as far as I'm aware, all the levels are like designed. I don't think they are randomly generated in that way. Cool, it feels so good, like it feels amazing.

One of the first weapons you get is like this ice, rapid fire ice spell that you can use to freeze enemies and then with the alternate fire you snap and they all shatter into pieces. There's a lot of really rad stuff like that. Yeah, they did a really good job. It has a great score. I found the score very good and like,

kind of World of Warcraft-y. And it's so bright and colorful, which is a nice change of pace from like most of those games, which tend to be very grim and dark. Uh, so I've, yeah, I've enjoyed it. That one's wizard dumb, W I Z O R D U M, which is not how I would guess the game would be called. I thought it would have wizard. It's a word.

Um, I have been playing rift of the Necrodancer, a rhythm game from Brace Yourself Games, the successor to Crypt of the Necrodancer and Cadence of Hyrule, only where those games were sort of like dungeon crawlers with rhythm game elements sort of like superimposed on top of them, where you had to move your character to the beat and attack to the beat and all that stuff.

This is a straight up, straightforward rhythm game. It is notes coming down three tracks towards you that you have to hit in time, a la your guitar heroes, if you will. So there is no exploration mechanic. It is pretty unfamiliar to the two games that I mentioned before. Where it stands apart from a guitar hero

is that instead of just like little nodes or little beats that come down that you have to hit in time, there are monsters that come down that you have to hit in time. There are monsters that come down the track that symbolize the nodes. And the monsters do different shit. So it's not like you just stay there and you kind of just like wait and you're like,

oh, here comes a red one, boop. So there are enemies like bats where there are gold bats who will jump between the three tracks as you hit them three times. And then there's blue slimes you have to hit twice on the beat. And then there's dragons that are long and you have to hold down the note for them.

And then there's zombies that jump around before they land in the right space. So you have to kind of anticipate where they're gonna land when you hit the note on it. And then there's harpies that will skip spaces on the track and jump forward two at a time, so you gotta keep track of those to make sure that they don't come at you

when you're not ready for them. And then there's red zombies, they can jump, warp from one track to the far side of the track. There's so much, there's so much. There's three tutorial stages to the game. You're not attacking them. You attack them by hitting the buttons in time.

Left, right, or down, up. Even when you're like, whatever, hitting the buttons, it's still in time with the music. Yeah, yeah. Left, up, and right are the only ones. And then you can hit down to activate all three at the same time. I thoroughly recommend playing it on mouse and keyboard.

You can play it on controller, but I have an easier time with a rhythm game like this. All of that stuff that I just laid out, it's so complicated. And that's, I've mentioned maybe half the mechanics. Sometimes shit will appear on the tracks, like a patch of fire will appear, and when an enemy moves through fire, it moves double time. Or a little arrow will appear on the tracks like a patch of fire will appear and when an enemy moves through fire, it moves double time.

Or a little arrow will appear on the field and whenever an enemy lands on it, they'll move over to the track that the arrow is pointing to. There's all this shit. And so you are not just having to hit buttons in time with a rhythm, you are also constantly frantically looking at the field and looking at the field

and looking at what's coming to you and trying to piece together like, okay, when I hit that blue bat the first time, it's gonna scoot to the side and then I'm gonna have to hit both those nodes at the same time, but I got a red harpy coming and he's gonna get here before the other guy gets here. And it's really, it is at first overwhelming and then as you jump up the difficulty settings,

it gets really fuckin' overwhelming. I'm pretty good at rhythm games. I cannot rock, I've not reached the level where I can routinely complete one of these on like hard setting, because the stuff that they throw at you is so crazy. Where this game really, really succeeds is one, the soundtrack fucking bangs.

If there is a better video game soundtrack that comes out this year, I will eat my hat. It's Danny Baranowski, like the other Necrodancer games with a lot of different guest tracks, runs the game out of a bunch of different genres, but they're all fantastic. And where it really takes off is, you know that moment that you have some time

when you're playing like Guitar Hero or rock band where you're trying to keep up with the notes and feeling overwhelmed, but then you kind of like tell yourself like, if I just kind of listen to the music and try and play along with the music instead of focusing so much on the visuals of like the notes coming at me,

I can, I will manage to hit them more, you know. You gotta cut out the pathway that is recognizing the notes and just kind of like directly connect. Correct, connect it to the beats of the music, right? Like you have to do that at a certain point with this game, right? So you'll see sometimes enemies will come at you and they'll have a little diamond outline.

That means that they come at you off beat. They come at you like on half beats. Sometimes they'll have a little star under them. That means they're coming at you in triplets. So like once those show up, it's like, fuck man. Like how am I supposed to possibly like keep up with this? But if you listen to the lead, like guitar in the song, it's like, you're just playing it along with that.

And once you do that, you start doing better than you could do just looking at the field of the monsters and it creates this like left brain, right brain, like it creates a center lobe of your brain that is so, you get into the groove so fucking deep. It is really, really hypnotic and it really entices you to keep plugging away at a song, right? Because you'll hit a really hard section and boom,

you'll fail, you have like 10 hit points and once those are gone, you have to restart the song. But you'll be like, but I got that riff now. Now I know what to look out for, I know that riff, I can totally fucking take this on next time. In terms of the inputs, there's no randomness, really. Right, no, it's the same, it's tracked. It is like tracked, like a Guitar Hero song is tracked,

or like a rock band song is tracked. It's just that the notes move around because they're monsters and sometimes you have to hit them on triplet beats and sometimes you have to hit them three times in a row. And I don't know, it's really pretty, the monster shit is crazy, right? But like, other than that,

it is a straightforward rhythm game. There is a story mode that is fine. It throws in these like rhythm heaven style mini games into the mix, but not like a ton of them. They're kind of a sideshow for the main game. But I really, really, it's been a while since I've played a rhythm game but I really, really, it's been a while since I've played a rhythm game that I've gotten really into,

and stuff like Cadence of Hyrule is neat, but it's still more of a dungeon crawler adventure game than it is a rhythm game, and this is just a rhythm game. It is just you trying to vibe with the music to keep track of all these different rules that the monsters kind of represent. And once you make that connection, man, it feels really, really, really, really good. I guess they've done a bunch of collabs because they have like Pizza Tower and Celeste.

That's pretty cool. There's some Super Meat Boy tracks in there as well. Some of it is DLC. It's a huge soundtrack though, even without that stuff. I have not finished playing all the songs. I've played maybe two thirds of them. But really, just really, really, really, really good stuff. And the kind of game I think I'll keep around for a while. I don't know if I will ever be good enough

to move up to the next difficulty setting. There's an expert level above hard that I don't know what else they could possibly throw at you there. But I've seen some videos of people trying expert mode and it seems really, really wild. But yeah, I feel like rhythm games, it's been a while since I have played one like this.

And it's been honestly kind of nostalgic to like, I don't know, get into a game in this genre again. I have my own reader mail question. Did you write it? Well, no, I didn't write it down. I'm not asking you now. I'm just off the dome. Yeah, it's a voicemail.

It's talking. Okay. It's called a voicemail. Oh, wow. A voicemail. Blueprints. Yeah. It's called a voicemail. Oh wow, a voicemail. Blueprints. Yeah. What happened with it?

Did people beat it? Did anybody here fully beat it? I still haven't played it. Where are we at on it? Russ hasn't played it. As far as I'm aware, it still does not have colorblind settings. Oh wow, that sucks.

Yeah. Okay. I did everything in that game you can do. As far as the community knows, I have done everything in that game that you can do. So I guess you're using a lot of cheats, Griffin. I'm using a lot of cheats. You're relying on the community.

No, this was like the- You're just using guides. This was like the pre-release reviewers discord. I don't know, I have not kept up with the game. Maybe the community has found more shit, but I feel pretty confident that I exhausted, I exhausted what that game had to offer. Cool.

Yeah, we'll come back to it. Yeah, I guess once Prosh has had a chance to play it, but I was curious kind of where the story went on that one. I beat it. Do we have other stuff? We have more reader mail, actual written letters from people. Yep.

This one comes from Dustin. Dustin wrote, I don't really worry about the backlog anymore. UFO 50 kind of did the magic trick to my brain where it really made me have fun playing games again in a way that I hadn't really in a long time. So I still pick at games, but I'm not worried about checking any of them off

like a list. I let myself get sucked into a game like Blueprints, but I'll dip out and play some indie Metroidvania that's been in my library from Humble Bundle, and that I probably bought years ago. And if I want to make sure that I'm up to date on the latest and greatest interactive entertainment, I pay someone else to do that for me. So thanks for that. And thank you, Dustin.

Hey, you're welcome. It's a living. That's a good mentality to be in. I think we all have quite a bit of like steam sale backlog things that just live in there and never leave. I bought Black Mesa for $2 this week, which is the fan made remake of Half-Life 1 that I don't know I'm gonna play but it was two

dollars and I remember playing it years ago for Resty's and really enjoying it so I'm sure I will go back and play. It's also a good good this question asked kind of touches on it but it's good to remember like the way that we consume and think about games should not be the way that a person thinks or Hell no. Things are consumed about this video game. So few, maybe four games, I would ever play. I mean, maybe four, you know what I mean? It's like, I think we talk about, when we talk about things we've missed or piles of shame or whatever,

I think that should be taken into the context of there is an onus on us to be somewhat knowledgeable about as much of it as we can. So I do feel that pressure in that sense, but like, yeah, don't try. I mean, my brain's so fucked up at this point, it's not fixable, because I saw this email and I was like, oh, UFO 50, damn, I got like 33 of the cherries in that game, I really got,

I see that one pop up in like my queue sometimes and it's like, I fucking, if I do this, I'm gonna have to get really good at like turnip delivery. Like I fucking can't, man. I can't do this again with you UFO 50. I hated turnip delivery. I have like hydras in my queue, in my backlog, where it's like, once I take this on,

it's gonna be a whole thing. Yeah. We have one more letter. This one comes from Joe. I finally finished Death Stranding, so I can jump right into Death Stranding 2 and know what's going on. Jump right in. Spoiler, I will still have no idea

what's going on with Death Stranding 2, but Griffin is wrong. Death Stranding is an amazing game, which I agree it is. I'm so glad you found something in that game that resonated with you. There's so much, Griffin. I didn't, personally.

That's okay. But I didn't play the director's cut, which maybe, no, if I got to. I've heard the director's cut is a lot smoother. That's the word on the street. I've heard it's much better. Griffin, I think I know you as a person, broadly speaking. Yeah.

I think if you skipped every fucking cut scene in this game, you would love it. I will say this. As someone who played some of Death Stranding and then played a lot of other games, is in concert with what we were just saying, I think better equipped to make a decision on whether or not Death Stranding is a good game.

Because Griffin played Death Stranding and 20 other games and he said Death Stranding is not good game. Because Griffin played Death Stranding and 20 other games and he said Death Stranding is not good. You played all of Death Stranding and it was like, I'm full, yeah, you're full. But at what terrible, but I know this is also, like Justin said, related to the last question. Like my gaming time is virtually non-existent. It is like what I can sneak into my day

when like the kids are eating dinner while I have my rock ally like charged. And at the ready, I've been playing Expedition 33 like seven minutes at a time. Like that is what I have. And so I simply cannot justify playing a game I don't like. You gotta protect it. You gotta protect that time.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I feel you. That it. You gotta protect that time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I feel you. That's why I played Robocop. Yeah. Can I, are we, is it time for honorable mentions? Can I talk a little bit about Expedition 33? It is time.

I've spent a lot. I'm afraid to tell you guys, I think you're gonna need to play this one for go-to considerations. I, here's what I'll say. After the pitch of last week, cause initially, was it last week I don't even remember initially we were like Justin and Ross you can skip out. It's fine

But when you guys were talking about it, I was like genuinely intrigued I haven't tried it yet, but it didn't make me more interesting. So it's fucking great I'm curious to hear your thoughts choose. I don't know if you picked it up. No, I really liked what I played of it. Here is what I had no concept of playing it and usually I can get a better sense of it. But like, if it is, I just didn't know how long, if I got invested in it and wanted to see it through to the end, I didn't know how long

I was setting myself up for. Because there's some games that I will not, I can't, won't, shant, and there are too many games where I've sunk 60 hours in and then been staring at another 60 and bailed midway that I feel really crappy about that I just didn't know with this one. So what I've heard is like 25 to 30 hours,

not like persona length. I'm back, baby. Yeah, it's, and I guess it depends on like what difficulty you played on and how much of the like exploration and shit that you do. I don't, I don't know, I would say it is not the most imposing. Clar obscure, according to howlongtobeat.com,

which is a pretty reliable source, it says main story 26 hours, main plus sides is like 39 hours, and then if you wanna do a completionist, it's like 60, but you know, who's going to do it? I will just say that is not, that is not a concept on, I mean, there's not a comment on anything other than if a game takes 80 to a hundred hours, I think it is offering a certain amount of like stimulation

for that, like return on that investment. You know what I mean? And like, if it's gonna be constantly engaging, 30 hours is a game that's gonna be constantly sort of like, keeping you involved. No, I mean, it's a currency at time, right? Like, I think people always think about like, well, what I wanna spend $200 on a game,

but less so on what I wanna spend 200 hours on a game. And it's weird because it inverts. When you're young, you want to burn that currency and then you get older and it's like, dear Godts when you're young, you want to burn that currency and then you get older and it's like, dear God, I wanna be precious with it. The one thing I would say about the flow of the game that I found unusual, I started the game immediately in, great intro, great grabby story, killer music.

And then there's a dip when you have to learn how the mechanics work that I did not vibe with. And only after a couple weeks did I go back to it and really grind that out. And then it gets, it's just all up from there. But it's a weird high, low, high that I don't think I have experienced in a lot of RPGs. The writing is tremendous.

The acting is fantastic. It continues to deliver moments that are like set your controller down like, fuck man. Really, really good from the narrative side of things. But I will be honest, the thing that has really hooked me is the mechanic side of things. I have not played an RPG like this in ages that allows you to just fucking break

the whole thing wide open, to just like come up with these builds and these strategies that lets you just absolutely just let Hulkamania fucking run wild, not since like setting up, you know, eight times Knights of the Round Table summons in Final Fantasy VII, like that level of shit of like, okay, hold on, if I use this character to put burn on, it'll up the critical chance so that I can get these stains

and then execute this with a mark on the net. Like, you get so fucking into it, and it's just, I cannot stop playing it. I cannot put it down. And that's really where my interest peaks is when I feel like I have direct control over the events of combat. Like that, which I think like a lot of RPGs tend to just be like, well, is weak to water

or whatever. So use a water spell. And like, that's the extent of the knowledge. It's strategy versus play. Do you know what I mean by that? Like with, with what you're talking about, the Pokemon thing is like strategy. It's, oh, well, these things have these weaknesses and I need to remember all that and I need to create a strategy that's going to respond to this scenario that the game has given me. And I think what this game does well

is it lets you actually play within that. It sounds more like an immersive sim in that way. No, not really. I think I know what you mean of like, you can go about it in different directions. And like, the way that I played the game and the way that Griffin is playing the game are probably looking quite different

in terms of like our builds is what I mean. Yeah, yeah. So like, there's just more space. Yeah. Yeah, I'm having an amazing time with it and it is definitely going to be in my top list for sure. Okay, no more JRPGs though. No more loud. Well, it's an FRPG, but thank you.

Oh, sorry. We should probably also play, all of us should play Kingdom Come Deliverance too, because I've kept picking at that game, and that game is really good. I know, Justin, I'm sorry, but like, it's like, I think you all might like it quite a bit. You know what, I didn't do that game justice because I tried to play it on the Steam Deck, and I should have started on a PC to get the hang of it. That might be a good late summer game for us to come back to, assuming we ever get time in the schedule.

I do wanna shout out a different game, Rift Riff. Have you all heard about this? No, sounds like Rift of the Necro Dancer. I know. Uh, fresh, you're going to be excited about this. Adrian De Jong has a new game out and we are huge fans of Adrian De Jong in this house. Oh, Adrian made hidden folks.

Yeah, I love hidden folks. Oh yeah. Also made secret shuffle, uh, made a game that allows you to play multiplayer ballet using your iPhone. Adrian is, that game's called Boundin' by the way, is one of my favorite creative developers just working and had not really released a lot recently. Um, I think because he's been going through all sorts of different things in his life, but this game is kind of a traditional, but very beautiful and

very cleanly designed tower defense game. Um, it's tower defense that looks a bit like, um, what was that game that we played? Chance of Senar. Yeah. Yeah. It kinda has like a Chance of Senar type of aesthetic. But it's just a delight and it is, I think, six bucks. You know, it's just, if you want,

if you've been craving good tower defense and you wanna chill out game, I really couldn't recommend this more. Cool. Sick. Justin, do you have anything? Yeah, I could tell you guys about the retro shooter guns that I have here.

Who wants to talk about the state of guns? Tell me about how these work. So yeah, so there's a few different options if you're wanting to play light gun games at your house. One of them is, and probably the most common, I think is Sendon, which Sendon guns have an IR sensor in the gun and then they create a border, like a white border around the edge of your screen.

So if you're playing a game with a send-in gun, you can activate a white border and it uses that as like a frame of reference. That's what it's doing math off of to figure out where it's positioned, right? So that's a send-in gun. That's probably the most common. There are also gun for IR and these

that are from a company called Retro Shooter. These are the Retro Shooter Reapers. They do a smaller gun and they do the, this, that, this big guy. Oh, that's a, you're full swat. Yeah, but I don't know enough about guns to say what it looks like, but it looks like a bigger gun. It's like an SMG. If you're looks like, but it looks like a bigger gun. If you're in- It's like a SMG.

Kind of like that. Sure, yeah. And then what these do is they have four IR sensors that connect, that attach to like the top and bottom corners of the television. And that, all those are wired together to one USB cable. And then the guns themselves have two cables coming off of them. One is a USB and one is a power for recoil.

Oh yeah. And all the guns plug into, like, so they have these two cords. And then all the guns plug into a single hub that Retro Shooter also says. And then if you want, if they come in the kit, if you want to do it this way, there's also little clicky pedals. You can do stuff like time crisis and stuff like that. I used to use those for transcription.

Oh, cool. Can you just get it to do a five a second backwards? It was so nice. Yeah, there's not a lot of light gun games made these days. I always kind of got a kick out of them. And when I started making like my own little home arcade cabinets, it was definitely something that I wanted to look into and I've, I the Sinden guns are okay.

I definitely think the tracking with these IR guns that have the built-in sensors is better. It's a definitely a special specialty kind of thing, but they have a lot of different options. I will just say of the guns that I've tried, the Sendon guns feel kind of cheap comparatively. Sendon has a model with and without recoil. The ones with recoil are a lot more expensive. The Retro Shooter, so far, these are the best feeling ones that I have tried.

They feel really good. They got a lot of different buttons on them that is nice for like menu navigation. This one even has a, it's got a thumb stick built in so you can do a lot of stuff. It looks like a Dreamcast PS2 era device. Yes, that is about the vibe. It's pretty similar to the GunCon controller this mold is, but yeah, they're really impressive. They feel really good And if you are look probably the best thing to play Gallagher's gallery with if you have not played Gallagher's gallery the light gun game where you

fight Gallagher And what is Gallagher using from out like a combat standpoint does he have any oh good you asked a question about Gallagher using from a combat standpoint? Does he have an E? Oh good, you asked a question about Gallagher's gallery. I get to talk about it more. So here's the deal with Gallagher's gallery. It was an American laser game arcade cabinet where there are four different games. One was food based,

so you shoot food that Gallagher doesn't like. What kind of food does Gallagher not like? A spinach and he likes cherry pie. So if you see cans of spinach, you shoot those, but you don't just be lacking one aspect of food that seems like he has a strong. Oh, you're thinking about the melons. So that's when you beat all four levels. You get to go to the. Here's a true story about Gallagher's gallery.

Last week, I was trying to get some of these different guns and emulation things set up and I was in a chat room where I was saying, Hey, does these different guns and emulation things set up, and I was in a chat room where I was saying, hey, does anybody know why Phillips CDI digital video conversion has never been emulated? And someone in the chat room is like, I don't know, maybe you should offer a cash prize or an Olive Garden prize to see if you can get someone going.

I'm like, ah, damn, I've been clocked. So this person that I started talking to is the person that created the laser disk library of this particular emulator. So they have worked in this field a lot. And as I'm going through the list, I'm like, you know, I noticed Gallagher's gallery is missing. And the person who does this as a hobby said, what's that?

I'm like, ah, God, I've gone too deep. I've gone so deep that the people who do this for a hobby say, hey, I've gone too deep. I've gone so deep that the people who do this for a living or for a hobby say, hey, you've gone too deep, pal. But then I explained Gallagher's Gallery, I'd always wanted to see, and I found videos of it. And I made a post about the crappy, low quality videos of Gallagher's Gallery that I found.

And then I wrote a post about it for my own personal video game blog, and I sent it to Chris Grant at Joystick. And I said, hey, you guys should post about this on Joystick. It's really fascinating. And then he said, oh, you know what? I remember you sent me a job application a few months ago. Do you wanna come work here?

So if it weren't for Gallagher's Gal, Wow, incredible. I would not have a job. Sliding doors. This podcast might not exist. Sliding doors. doors podcast might not like doors this podcast might not exist We're not for the hilarious Talented and utterly unimpeachable Gallagher unproblematic fave

Never told a joke that I would not personally 100% endorse Take it from me Justin McElroy. I fully support Gallagher and everything you stand for Take it from me, Justin McElroy. I fully support Gallagher and everything he stands for. So I have a couple honorable mentions just to wrap things up. Oh, wait. Just I don't like Gallagher. You don't like Gallagher?

Gallagher was extremely problematic. Gallagher was problematic two point work. Well you say that was, like he's okay now though, right? Gallagher is dead, but he did walk out. Before he died, he walked out of an episode of WTM with Mark Maron, which ends with Mark Maron in a hotel room by himself saying, "'Oh, come on, Gallagher!" It's really something else.

It's not mouse, man. Two more cool- But the melon stuff. Yeah, primo. Primo. Slash sound. Two more quick honorable mentions for you. I'm still playing Tactical Breach Wizards.

I continue picking at it. It remains one of the best narrative games of the last 10 years for me. Are you able to do that to return to games that are narrative focused like that and like be able to- I'm gonna tell you how it- I can't remember anything. This is a great question.

I'm gonna tell you how I'm able to do it with- Cause I would like to return to that one, but I just like- I'm gonna tell you how I'm able to do it with. Cause I would like to return to that one, but I just like. I'm gonna tell you how I do it with this game. This game has the chart that after a few, after like you beat a few levels, you have to like pin things to the chart to like remember what is going on narratively. And that alone has been so massively helpful

to just like re-jog my memory of like where all the characters stand. So I would, I would agree with you. Most games I'd have a really tough time, but this game in particular, it's been totally fine. Talk about a pile of shame. That is one that like that and wander stop. I know if I went back and finished, I would really enjoy.

Yeah. I just, uh, it's been great. Uh, it also got updated with like better control or support tactical breach rosards, so props to that the other game I want to call out is a game called Animal Crossing New Horizons which came out a few years ago kind of a deep cut but I've been looking for things to play with my son who is three and he's into like watching me play Mario and things like that. But then it occurred to me that I had a fucking mega island of everything going on

and Animal Crossing New Horizons. I booted that up and he is fucking riveted. He wants to walk through the museum. He wants to check the mail. He wants to swim in the ocean and look for sea animals. I don't know how interested he would be in like a bare bones starting from scratch island, but us walking around the fucking baller island

that I built five years ago and hadn't touched in that long has been pretty great. So- Henry is obsessed with this game and has- This is back when daddy had free time. Yeah, no kidding. This is back when daddy had time to do this. Definitely before Child. There is a little bit of, oh, I was pretty down when this was free time. Yeah, no kidding. This is back when daddy had time to do this. No kidding, definitely before child.

It did, there is a little bit of, oh, I was pretty down when this was going on. Oh dude, yeah, I would love to do like a video series on like revisiting people's COVID islands. Just like, oh, fuck man, wow. Built an army of gnomes, yikes. You've named everyone after your extended family. That's weird.

Yeah, it's, I think even for kids that are like, it's too young for them to play, just like visually speaking, kids love going to like museums and aquariums and shit. And it's basically that. You know, a great game model that we don't get enough of, kids that age really like is Peggle. I showed like when my kids are both that age, they both got really into like Pegglin. And then I dug out Peggle, because it's a great like they can point one time,

they click the button and then they just watch for a little bit. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, right, they love it. There's been a few recent- We haven't had a Peggle. What happened to Peggle? What happened to PopCap?

We got Balillionaire, what's the- Ballillionaire. Ballillionaire. Yeah, there's been a few indie spin-offs after Peglin had come out. There are two, there's one in the middle, B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B- Okay, I think I thought your kids like that'll be some refractory. Can we do it? We did it some some Patrons that I want to thank we can thank Eric Noah Rachel and Greg Thank you for being patrons of the besties and thank you to everyone else who is super de duper Great at being patrons. We have a new episode of the rest ease up talked about two very cool very very different games one of which you have to arrest Satan and

cool very very different games one of which you have to arrest Satan and you can go over to patreon.com slash the besties if you want to learn more about that and we've got bonus episodes we do a bracket every month with the whole gang and we love all y'all that are making this all possible genuinely super awesome thank you okay next, for real this time, I think we're gonna do Doom the Dark Ages. For real, real. For real. Assuming none of our computers break in the process.

But I think it's gonna happen. I've also heard that you can run the game on low, low, low settings on Steam Deck, which I wouldn't recommend because obviously it's a visual spunder. I'm not planning on doing that. But if anyone is at home and only has a Steam Deck, maybe worth looking into.

That's incredible. I thought, how is that even possible? Well, low settings and FSR to max. Cool. All right, that's going to do it for us this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!