The Besties - Open the Summer Video Game Grab Bag!

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

We have talked about dozens of awesome games in 2024, yet we still missed several tasty delights. This week, the Besties take solo journeys across the world of gaming and return with some fascinating discoveries. Want a remake of a ‘90s classic? Or an FPS about sneakers? Have we got the games for you! 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 need you to make a promise to me right now. Are you talking about all of us or? All three of you. Okay. We will let you talk about whatever busted broken down joint you brought for at least three minutes, I promise. Without any goose or ragging. No, you can interrupt, you just can't shut it down.

That's all I'm asking. Okay. So my wife and kid are out of town for the first time in like, I don't know three years and you're just No, go ahead go ahead. Oh, yeah, what were you gonna say? What were you gonna say Russ? I'll shut it down. Just cranking it. You're not rust Russell. What did we say? What did we promise? I saw myself real you guys made me we did he's that's true. Go ahead play it. Sorry, man Okay, so I I decided hey, I'm gonna treat myself

What should a five and a half hour long? Japanese film called happy hour. Let me tell you wasn't happy was not just an hour And then I said, uh-oh I'm gonna smoke a little bit. I'm gonna I bit. I'm gonna have a little bit of that weed. Oh. And I did, and immediately it hit me like a pickup truck, just backed right up into my head. And I thought I had this amazing epiphany.

I thought, holy shit, I have the perfect intro. For the best... Holy shit, man. I have the best intro, and this is... Let me be clear, this is me waking up in the middle of the night, stoned. Um... Can I just ask real quick before we go any further, is this one of those where this is not the greatest intro in the world, this is just a tribute, couldn't remember the greatest intro in the world,

is that where we're heading with this? I just need to know it would be better probably if I never told you what it was Okay, I write like it is checkoffs intro, you know It would be bad not to pay it off So I this is the kind of stuff you guys should have on rest. He's like you start here and then it's like want to know What is three? You start here and it's like, want to know what his dream was about? That's good. You're gonna have to get behind the table.

When you woke up, did you write it down? I wrote it down at 2am, stoned. Great. And it reads, what if everything you ate came out the same when you took a two? So I did assume it would be two related. Okay. And I'm not just would be two related. Okay. And I'm not just, I'm-

Pretty too motivated. And then there is a question for you because I am anything. Yeah, that's good. Gotta be generous. Open it up to the audience. Would it change what you ate? Oh, fundamentally, yeah.

I know, okay, hold on. I think it's really, really important that we not address what Platt has said here because this intro was about how he came up with an idea for the intro. The next time we do an episode, then it should be that incredible intro that he came up with, because now if we segue into another conversation, it's like, why all the preamble? It's not going to have enough oxygen for this level of... We're going to have to remember that topic.

There's no way of knowing how it will hit. You know what I mean? Like you don't know if it's the perfect intro cause now we've built it up so much. You gotta take it just like clean. So let's do, actually let's just do a clean break. Okay. Let's do a clean break.

Let's take it in. Clean break. Take it in hot. I think at a basic level I would start with foods that were the diameter of my butt hole. And then move from there. Oh wait, when you said clean break, you meant like stop talking about this. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week and also 1998. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best feet of the week. My name is Ross Prusik, and I know the best games of the week. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game-ment. It is a video game club. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member.

This week, we have a melange, a grab bag for you of all of our finest offerings. We've traveled far and wide with 10 of our 4 fastest ships in 4 cardinal directions, and this is what they have come back with. The SS Justin, Russ, Chris, and Griffin. Chris Plant, what am I mean? Oh, video games. They've come a long way since Pac-Man. Great. We're going to discuss that and so much more right after this brief commercial message.

I'm excited, guys. This is a really good batch of games. I'm getting pretty excited. And it's good timing, because we just did the best games of the first half of the year, and it's very clear that obviously we missed some stuff because some of these games have been out for a Little bit and we fully missed them

So it's great to be able to loop back and make sure we were checking boxes and some of these are brand new So it's it's a nice mix Can I start because mine I think is the newest and simultaneously the oldest and the one that I think I will struggle to talk About a whole lot because it's riven, the sequel to Myst. Oh my God. Go for it. I have a lot of fondness for this game. I think a lot of people who grew up in the like,

you know, CD-ROM gaming era probably feel that. I don't know, actually, quick straw poll. Can I contextualize it real quick? Straw poll across the room. What is this? Can I contextualize this real quick? Yes, please. Okay, Myst is a first person adventure game. There are actually a lot of games like this right now. Can I contextualize it real quick? What is this? Can I contextualize this real quick? Yes, please. Okay.

Myst is a first-person adventure game. There are actually a lot of games like this right now. Like, if you think of games like, shit, I don't know, Talos Principle is an older one. Any of like the walking, people call it the Walking Simulators, The Witness. They're all in the same sort of mold. And this game came up sort of like at the same time as widespread CD-ROM adoption in computers. Basically everything before that had been floppies. So once this new format is there, Myst is there also, and it incorporates FMV and cutting

edge graphics, whatever, but it also gets quite a reputation from the PC hardcore at the time, who were playing stuff in three dimensions that is a lot more kinetic and game-like than MISS. So MISS gets kind of like one of the earliest versions, I'd say, of a game getting saddled with a casual... It was a huge mainstream hit. It was also a huge hit, right. Exactly, yes, yes, yes, for sure.

But you're right, not a hardcore game in that sense. Riven was... Really impossible, yeah. Riven was actually released in 97, not 98, I misspoke earlier, Miss was 93. And these games, like, you know, like Justin said, they were not, you weren't playing Unreal Tournament. We were moving, you know, through a point and click adventure through static images of what was at the time,

like top of the line CG environments. And they had fucking 240p full motion video of people talking in books. Which, yeah. Yeah, let's put it this way. I played this game on PlayStation 1 and it was five beautiful CD-ROMs long. It was insane. It was quite big.

Big game. Riven, I feel like people are probably more familiar with Myst than Riven, right? Because Myst was a big game. Riven, I feel like people are probably more familiar with Myst than Riven, right? Because Myst was a huge hit. It's been ported a billion times. There was Real Myst, which was like a, you know, attempt to turn this static image point and click game into like a fully explorable 3D environment

that you can walk in. There was Peter Gabriel's Myst Uru, like let's me forget. Yes, there was Myst 3, Exile. Riven is, I think, I'm not speaking out of turn here, like, the most widely beloved of the Myst games from people who have played these games. Oh, that's interesting.

I just know it is, like, the hardest. Like, I remember when I beat mist with my brother using like Meticulous notes yeah, I could not beat Riven. It was too fucking open That's interesting to me use any guides They didn't exist back then no one thought To do Russ you know what you have to do. Thank you. The the game is afoot I'm gonna take it off the pile of shame, baby. No guides. No guides.

It is, I think Riven occupies a really special place in the history of this genre that Justin kind of laid out where it's at now. I don't think it gets where it's at now. Without specifically Riven, because Riven takes everything that was really interesting and really beautiful about Myst and improved it dramatically.

Like it is huge, there's so much like environmental storytelling. It does a great job. Myst is like very, what's it, sterile for lack of a better word. Like these are, you go through these like ages and islands going through these books, but everything is just like, well,

there's a big fucking puzzle and there's no reason why this, here's an island that rotates and it goes to these different password like islands and you go there and you look at one little thing with a password on it and then you go back and you start rotating again, that's it. It's not like a world where people live.

Riven very much is that. And there is a like a logic to it and a history to it. Anyway, like all of that stuff was, I think, pretty ahead of its time. The game looked, even now, going back and looking at static images of this static image game of Riven, it is striking. The artistic design of this game is next level.

So they have- Really good sound design too. Incredible, weird alien sound design. It's so cool. Everything feels- The people who love this game sound design too. Incredible weird alien sound design. It's so cool, everything feels. It's a very, the people who love this game like fucking love this game. They also do, as an FMV person, if I can just say.

Yeah. They do a lot of really cool stuff with depth that a lot of FMV games don't do where people start in the background of environments and like crawl over real world environments. Sure. Where like it just wasn't a level of production a lot before. You'll also go hours without seeing a person

and then you'll turn a corner and just, you'll see someone standing on a bridge who sees you and gets scared and runs off and it scares the shit out of you every time. It is atmospheric in the best way. So. Did you get back to the work, Griffin? Did you see the work?

I haven't reached the work yet. The work is very, we can't, we can't, we can't. This remake basically does what RealMist did, right? It turns Riven into a fully explorable 3D world that you move around in, and there is a PC version that you play normally, like you would expect to play a 3D adventure game on. There is also a, not Oculus,

I'm never going to not call this thing the Oculus Quest 3, the MetaQuest 3 version of it. I think it's also a MetaQuest 2 that you play in VR. You can also play the PC version with like Steam VR. I say this because I think this is maybe the most important public service announcement I've ever done on the show. I bought the MetaQuest 3 version and played it on that.

And I cannot recommend enough that you don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've played it for, I don't know, I'm a few hours in and it's very very cool. It is cool to be able to like walk around these worlds and explore it. They have done a lot to like change stuff about the game because it is no longer a static

point and click thing, right? Like you have to be able to move around these worlds. So there's like, you know, you walk into one of those big gold domes that you see all over the map and you're like, oh, I remember this one. This is where this bridge connects to this and I find the book in here. But it's like, they have changed it.

They have changed that. There's also some really cool stuff. Like there's a lot of things where like, you see a little peephole and you know, in the original game you click it and you look in and you see like a constellation in the sky that like provides a clue for, in the original game you click it and you look in and you see like a constellation in the sky that like provides a clue for, in the VR version like all of that stuff is like in the world.

So you like literally get up on the peephole and put your eye up to it and like now you're playing you know, Silent Scope or whatever that arcade game was. That stuff is really, really cool. And all the atmospheric stuff like it really absorbs you, it really takes you in. The performance on the Quest version is bad. Yeah.

Bad, bad. There's a lot, there's a suite of like comfort and accessibility options, which I really appreciate. But there's like, my like patience for like technical issues in a VR environment are so low because like when you start seeing flickering shadows that are different in both eyes, it's like, the biggest issue is the load times are really bad. Like there's when you first turn on the game, there's like a good six minute,

like load of shaders, uh, that gets better every other time you play it. But then like every time you pause the game, there's like a few seconds there before the pause menu pops up. When you go between islands on those like cool tramways that like zoom through the ring, like that there's a load screen before and after that whole thing, it is really unpleasant.

And so I was like feeling pretty down on it until I watched, I think Digital Foundry did like a comparison and the PC version in like Unreal 5 looks fucking amazing. It looks so good. And you can play it with the Steam VR ship that I do not have and basically get the same experience, but it looks and performs a million billion times better.

And I feel so foolish, because I spent like 30 bucks or something like that on the VR version and I don't... I think you can use the Quest 3 with pass through to play the Steam VR too. But he's still already bought. I would have to buy it again on Steam, that's what I'm saying.

He bought the software. Yeah, that's a shame. I think it is, I don't know, it is hard for me to sort of separate my feelings about the game from the performance of the software. I don't know what I'm trying to say for. Yeah, that's a shame. I think it is, I don't know, it is hard for me to sort of separate my feelings about the game from the performance of the game on Rift, which I think is genuine, or Quest rather, which I think is genuinely, it just ruins the experience entirely.

It's hard to get sucked up in the atmospheric, you know, storytelling of this world when you are hampered with like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of downgrades. But it looks like on PC, it looks fucking gorgeous and does all the stuff that I think folks wanted from this game. And it is truly, I think, an important game in the genre.

And so, I don't know, maybe after some time, I'll buy it on Steam, maybe on a discount or something like that. Can you guys think of another franchise that was as big and well known and commercially successful as Myst that has not had an entry in 20 years? I'm just thinking about how it feels like one of those brands that would like keep on, you know, chugging along in Eastern Europe with a new one every few months alongside the Nancy Drew case chronicles or something like that. Didn't it kind of have an entrance, a new entry recently, but it wasn't officially missed, but Cyan Worlds did a like other game.

Oh my gosh. So missed. Abduction. Abduction. Abduction. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking of. Did that have people in books in it?

Because that's really the determining factor. I actually think it might have. It was very missed. That's an old man in a book talking to you that's pretty much missed. Yeah. I mean, I gotta give it up to Cyan. I'm in the manhole.

Do you remember the manhole? Oh, that game rules. Was that them? Was that them? That was Cyan Rolster. Cyan is one of the oldest indie developers that is still currently operational. They still live in their weird, not live, they work out of their weird,

I mean, mist-inspired fortress. And I think keep it very real. And I think that's very cool. And I don't know, I think if you like this genre and you never dipped into Riven, I think this is worth, I think this is worth picking up, I think it's worth playing, but just get it on PC and not on the Quest. In the newsletter, I'll include both

the Digital Foundry video, because holy moly. I don't know that I've ever seen a comparison video from them as like stark and wild as this. I've played some shit on the Quest 3. This is not a slam of the Quest 3. I've played the Quest 3. I've played shit on the Quest 3 that is mind bogglingly good and cool and beautiful.

And like, sure, they cut corners here and there to like make it work on the thing, but like not so much that it makes it unpleasant to experience, but this is not, this is one of those situations where. Yeah. They very clearly made the PC version and then just downgraded the fuck out of it

and it just didn't work. It just doesn't work so good. That's too bad. Yeah. I wanna hear about a game that was loved and also one that surprised me that, you loved it Justin, I wanna hear about Flint Hook. You do? Flint Lock. Flint Lock, wanna hear about Flint Hook. You do?

Flint Lock. Flint Lock, thank you. Flint Hook. It's not how it is in the rundown, and so you're gonna send Rust into a tizzy, because that's not how it is in the rundown. But I will do it if Rust promises not to yell at me. I won't yell at you, I might yell at Plant after.

That's because, I mean, I'm unsurprised that you're champion at the bit, Plant, because I've gotta tell you guys, interest in this thing over at Besties HQ has been off the charts. If I could just say, if I could read all the chat about it that we've had, can I just read all the chat log? Justin, 546, Sunday, July 14th.

Hey y'all, I'll just say Flintlock, it may be really good. I can't stop playing it. And then, let's see, Tuesday, there was no responses to that at all, nothing. Not so much as that. No real query in that statement. Yeah, but no follow, no request for follow. And then I-

Kind of just like a straightforward statement that you didn't need additional context. Yesterday at 9.50, I said, wow, tough question. I guess all of it is just surprisingly solid. So I was trying to get it going by pretending you guys had responded to me, and still nothing. But, Flitlock! Tell me more, because I have... you are the first person I have heard positive things from.

Well, other people don't have as good a taste as me. This is well established in my career. I... I often agree. Okay. Flitlock, uh, okay, story-wise, you are a soldier named Nohr. She's a slicer, and that means that she's like among the toughest soldiers in her army. But her army is absolutely demolished when, as near as I can put together from the story, gods have re-emerged from the earth,

and they are tormenting the living because they are no longer bound by the rules that they had to adhere to underground. The Lord of all the gods, the God of Death Enki, is reduced to just a wolf who finds you and says, hey, I need your help. You're the only person I can find around here. You and me, we're going to go fucking kill all these gods. What do you think?" And so you and this god Enki are going to go, like, basically, you're reassembling your army, which was scattered in the attacks. So you're going back and finding

people. That's sort of like the narrative thing is like you're finding other sappers that you lost track with, and they're coming back with your camp and each of your sappers can like improve different kinds of gear. So that's like the overall thing but moment to moment it is sort of like I feel like Jedi Survivor is like the kind of the closest because it's like very mobile it's very like you have a double and a triple jump. So it's like, there's a lot of that like mobility stuff. And it's a third person and you're fighting like groups of guys. Combat wise.

The big marketing push for them is they keep, they really are using the rogue light phrasing. Like they're one of the first games I've seen where like in the marketing, they're like, this is rogue, sorry, not roguelite. Soul's Light. Soul's Light. So they're actually doing it in a really arcadey kind of way, and I really love it. This is the best, I think, mechanically, it's probably the best part about the game. Okay, so there's an experience thing, right? You're getting souls.

Let's call them souls because everybody knows what souls are, right? So you get souls. Each enemy is worth a certain number of souls. And as you're attacking enemies, you're building up a multiplier depending on the number of different attacks you bring into it. So like your main attack is like a melee,

and then you have a really quick pistol attack that you can use for interrupts. And then there's a parry and anyway, the longer you combo together the combat, the higher that multiplier goes. And that multiplier will persist throughout combat encounters. It'll persist to you playing in the open world. It'll persist through everything. And you don't collect on everything you've gotten until you press the button to collect everything you've gotten. So if you get hit one time,

the multiplier you lose completely and you automatically claim the base amount of souls. So- Is the base amount of souls exactly what you dropped? What do you mean? Like if you dropped 100 souls- You don't drop. You lose your multiplier. You lose your multiplier.

You lose your combo if you get hit one time. So like. If you collected 100 souls, if I'm getting this right, say that you've been fighting a whole bunch of stuff and you collected 100 souls. Yes. But up until that point, you had built up a multiplier of like 5x. Yes. You could have gotten 500, but you're only going to get 100.

I understand. So this is not related to you dying beforehand. It's not related to you dying. If you die, you lose all of it, and you gotta go back and get it. But you are holding out on claiming the salt. It's like a bank system. Yes, right.

You're not banking it, and if you get hit once, you lose it. Do you yell bank when you do it? What? Do you yell bank when you do it? You don't have to, but you absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause it does have connect functionality. So it turns into this really,

every moment is more tense. Cause every moment you're like, man, I really, I just killed a boss for 2000. And I have a, you know, 10% multiplier. If I go fight a few guys, I bet I can build it up to like 100% and double what I just got. But if I get hit once, I lose it.

So it's like, I don't know, you gotta think about it every single time. Can you build up a multiplier on like puny babies? Or does the like bigger, angrier bosses count for more? So you can, you can build up the multiplier, but the multiplier rewards you for variability. So if you've already shot somebody with a pistol, you don't get a bigger multiplier

for shooting somebody else with a pistol. You can get somebody maybe for countering with a pistol or putting in a slide or doing a perfect headshot from long distance, because you can like snipe and whatever too. But like the conversations that you have with the sappers that you find are really good. Noor's a really good character.

She's tough and cool, and they don't waste a lot of time. It's very focused on, there's also this idea of you're reclaiming villages away from the gods and returning to people And then you get like rewards based on that you collect gear Gear has you know Synthesis like a lot of the other things that are part of this game that the other thing that is really really neat is the How you're getting around the world. There's not a Horse there's on a mount there there's not anything. There is

fast travel, but when you progress through a difficult sequence of jumps or a difficult area that's maybe hard to navigate, you will often find a skull on a purple pedestal and you put your hand on that and it'll open a warp gate that is above you or a series of warp gates. It's like they call them rifts. So you're rift jumping. If you look at it and press Y, you can jump straight to it. And you eventually are opening up these like channels through the world of rift gates.

That sounds cool. That you're just like ripping through to get between your different places. I thought I was just gonna dip in, but honestly like, I really can't stop playing. There's so much variability in the combat. And also Enki, the god, has attacks mapped to, they're basically like a magic attack or whatever, where you press a certain button to make him attack, independent of you completely. But you can time your attacks together to try to work with him. And then as you upgrade him, he will actually start doing shit without

you. So he'll find the toughest guy in the battlefield and start fighting him to keep him busy. And you can upgrade him with different gems, the poison people, whatever. You made that the Star Wars Souls game comparison. Does it have kind of the same pacing in terms of like exploring the worlds and stuff like that? Yes, the worlds are pretty condensed. It's not a lot of like, not a ton of like vast expanses. It's more like elevations, you know, big, big mountains and levels throughout that you kind of scale.

And once you've scaled it, you don't have to scale it again. Then you're kind of bouncing around. But like the it's very propulsive. You move from one thing to the next thing. And it's the kind of thing that I like where you pick up side quests at your camp from your other sappers. They like hear about stuff going on and then you can go run them down and then bring the rewards back.

You do them whenever you want to. And the fast travel and all that stuff is like super duper interesting. It runs on Steam Deck? It runs really well on Steam Deck. I turned it down to like medium, but it ran great. That's great. I'm playing it splitting between,

yeah, I wouldn't say it's like graphically a stunner. And I should also say, I believe it is labeled as being in early access, if I'm not mistaken, if somebody could check on that, because there are things that are still placeholder, some like cinematics and stuff like that. So there's a few things that are kind of a little bit hinky, but it's really cool.

It's really neat. I would say the Jedi survivor, the thing I would say to not expect is though that level of like Triple a yeah the production value is not necessarily. Yeah, you're not gonna see those like gigantic set pieces. Sure Etc, but um, it's it's really really neat. Um, you sold me I mean I should have known because it did hit the hoops talking to himself level of good. So I'm gonna give this a try. I will say also it is,

I don't normally talk about prices and stuff cause I don't know, but like it is 40 bucks. So you could just get it. It's coming out and it's already out. You can go get it. It's 40 bucks. You'll like it. It's fun. It's pretty, the only other thing I'll say to clarify the Souls thing, it's really forgiving

with stuff like counters and parries and stuff. There are a few bosses where that's kind of essential to the fight. It's not like as deep or hard as the Souls, but I really, I really enjoy that level. I also want to add it is on Game Pass. Oh. Oh. So you can check that out if you happen to subscribe to Game Pass, you can live that.

This is by Kepler is the name of the publisher and the developers A4. I don't see anything else, Cat Quest. Ashen is a game they made. Oh, that explains it because Ashen was kind of building towards some of these ideas right hmm I vaguely remember that one hey should we take a break and then we can come back and I can finally talk about feet I guess yeah

Yeah Chris plant, I guess you wanted to talk about feet Are you doing? I'm bringing a game called anger foot. Have you all heard about anger foot? I heard about it on This web platform called slack from a guy named Chris plant. Oh Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, that's my connection to this as well. Angerfoot, the elevator pitch I'd give you is what if you blended Hotline Miami with Bullet Storm? All right, pretty good, right?

And Hotline Miami already kind of has some of that stuff. Yeah, so it's 3D world, FPS, one to two minute levels, quick, you know, die, learn what you did wrong, retry sessions, a lot of creativity and kills. Did we just play a game that was like this, like a second ago, am I crazy? Yeah, in the same way that we play like a Metroidvania every week.

They're like pretty common. Yeah, Russ, you really can't leverage that argument. You have two core moves. One is you have an instant kill kick that turns enemies into projectiles. So if you kick, not only do you kill them, you send them flying across the room. And that's a Bullstorm thing, that was in Bullstorm.

Yes, you can also use it to just bash through anything. So doors, you don't open doors, you kick them and then you project them into people's bodies and obliterate them. The other is guns, which have limited ammo and they get dropped by enemies. So that's again, kind of more of like the hotline Miami thing. And you obviously get better and better guns as you go through the game. You know, you're going to come across cooler stuff, but guns isn't really the point.

The point is this kick, which can be changed as you unlock various shoes, because you see all of your sneakers have been stolen. The story of Angerfoot, you live in Shit City and Shit City has only one rule, and that's do crime. Everybody's a criminal, including you. But you've had your shoes stolen, so now you're turning on all those criminals, you're kicking everybody with your bare stinky feet until you get all those shoes,

because those shoes give you special powers. And some of those powers are like, oh, you get an extra life And some of those powers are like, oh, you get an extra life. Some of those powers are like, boring. And it's like, oh, congrats, you get like a little more ammo. Some of them are like super cool and silly. They give you like big head mode and that. You get straight up to that GoldenEye stuff going on.

That's also the problem. There are so many damn shoes in this game, and the whole thing is about these cool shoes, and it's like a distraction from what you wanna be doing, which is being inside of the Hotline Miami thing that I talked about at the very beginning of this. Yeah. It's a weird push and pull of a game.

So... Well, I don't understand why more shoes is bad, though. That, that, that, that, Yeah, more shoes should be good for you. That's a good question. Okay, so here's how, like, uh, kind of the progression works in the game, right? You have a minute to two minute long level, right? And each level has three stars that can be earned. The first one is like, yeah, like, finish the level.

But then the second one will be like finish it in 30 seconds and the third one will be like finish it and only use your bare feet. Don't use any shoes and don't use any guns and don't use anything else. The problem is the fun of this game is like getting into a flow state and experimenting with different like shoes and guns and just having fun, right? And immediately, oh, so those stars, you're gonna use those to buy shoe unlocks. Got it. Okay. So you are basically, if you wanna keep unlocking shoes,

you need to stop and slow down and get these stars. And play the game in a way. And it's sort of encouraging, it's limiting the way you wanna beat the level because you have to do it by their method. By their metrics and their metrics, especially early on, are not fun. They're anti-fun. They are like just chores and they're annoying chores

and they're chores where you are just slowing down and playing over and over again. And if your job is just to get from beginning to end and you get an unfair kill where something kills you, because again, you're very vulnerable just in games like Hotline Miami, who cares? But if you are doing a run where it's like oh my gosh I have to do this stupid just use my bare feet thing and then I got picked off at the last second and it didn't feel fair, that's maddening.

Worse, when you go to unlock these shoes, you don't get to buy the shoes that you want. So there's like- it looks like a mountain of different shoes that you could choose, and you are spending those stars and it's like, congratulations, you got the shoe that gives you a little bit more ammo. And it's like- Are you telling me after all this rigmarole I can't even pick the shoes? That's- I wanna be able to pick my shoes! Is it like a slot machine of shoes? I can't tell. It shoes. That's I want to be able to pick my shoes. Is it like a slot machine of shoes? I can't tell it has like a dice roll thing

But it kind of looks like you're just filling them out in order right very unclear which does not help So all of this sounds like mega bummer Two things that I think are a big fix though for it Two things that I think are a big fix though, for it. The game is still fun with or without like all these silly fancy shoes. Just going through levels and playing it as if it is Hotline Miami, where you have a super powerful kick and you can have guns and you want to go from point A to point B, turns out super fun. And you can kind of forget the rest of the game and just go from like literally

beginning to end of the game and have a pretty killer time. You just have to ignore the entire reward cycle that the game is built around. So I think for people who like these sorts of like time trial games, it's still actually weirdly I recommend it because the aesthetic is great. It's just like neon grime aesthetic. That is kind of a mix of like nineties skateboard art. Like, I don't know if people remember the girl brand of skateboards, but like a little bit like that mixed with like kind of like modern, like, um, final collectible, like culture.

Um, it looks great. It has a good sense of humor and level to level. It's fun. Like you, you start with just kind of generic enemies who are trying to like beat you at the club. Then you're against like enemies who have guns, which makes it really hard since you rely so much on melee. And then you have enemies that have giant bombs for heads and suddenly

you can like kick them and like destroy entire rooms. Um, so it, it's a shame that the core reward system is broken. My hope is if this is the sort of thing you're into you could start playing it now. You could enjoy all of that. If you don't want to deal with that, good golly do I really hope that they patch the shoe system. Because it doesn't feel like this game is forever busted. It feels like it is like two or three balance updates away from being like really something awesome. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's just not there yet.

A couple things. One, it does seem like there's a demo, at least on Steam. Yeah. It might be on other platforms so you can test it out there. Two, it does seem that Plant is maybe more down than a lot of people who have played it, which is, it's currently at 93% on Steam. Not taking anything away from Plant's assessment,

but maybe he's just wrong is the possibility. I think it's, as we always talk about, like, your ability to not fall victim to your own neuroses. Yes. I think a lot of people probably just like, I don't feel the need to grind every star and get every shoe. I can just have fun.

Or other people are just like very good at video games and don't really. I feel like progression mechanics in games are like the most subjective part of like what games are. No, Justin disagrees, okay. No, I just kinda, I know, just if everybody would just agree with me. It's like, it's me and wrong.

It's me and wrong. That makes sense, that does add up. Now Russ, this is a departure for you. In this game it looks like you're a cute little guy pie with swords and you have to run around a big world and collect different abilities. Speak of that. OK, so I'm going to talk about Nine Souls.

This is a metroidvania, side scrolling 2D metroidvania. This game came out a few weeks ago. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did we play this one last week or the week before? OK, we've had a lot of fun here, but Nine Souls actually does whip ass, so. OK, OK, OK, OK. This game came out right around the time that Animal Well came out, and after it came out, I was so, like, in Animal Well

that I just needed a break from the genre. But on paper, everything, in reading about it, everything sounded extremely tempting to me, because it is a Metroidvania, a search action game, sorry, with Sekiro mechanics. So every fight that you have, you basically can parry against the enemy and stagger them and succeed,

but it's also incredibly difficult in terms of boss fights and things like that. And has like a cute 2D art aesthetic where you play as a little fox person, sounded all fantastic to me. So I wanted to play it, but I didn't get around to playing it. And then we had some letters about people talking how great it was and I jumped into it. This game is fucking hard.

Made it the hardest Metroidvania I think I've ever played. I cannot think of a harder one. To the point- Even the ones that are about like that are trying to summon up the despair of a Souls game like you're what was the one like Salt and Sanctuary? Hollow Knight is another one that Hollow Knight is very grim. Grim and it's like so fucked up. No, not as bad as this.

Well, and and and let's just say for people that are expecting a family friendly experience, dog, no. It does not go in that direction. Very early on, there is extreme, intense, horrific violence happening. In the opening cut scene, someone falls off a cliff and you see their exposed brain as they crush the ground.

And really only gets grittier from there. But once the actual gameplay starts, it is pretty much a straightforward, like if you played SAKURO and you played a search action game, you kind of know what to expect. I will say- This is like the Yuusagi Yojimbo game

that we never got. Yeah, it really, really is. That was what I kept coming back to. I, surprisingly, because a lot of these things seem like would be my jam, I did not vibe with this game as much as I thought I was going to. Some of that is the difficulty.

The difficulty is incredibly punishing very early on and you face a lot of enemies that you're kind of better off just running away from, which if I'm playing a Metroidvania and I come across an enemy, usually that means that I'm like ready because I have the proper gear to face that enemy and I'm going to bash my head against it until I beat it. And in this case, you face some mini bosses that will just smoke you into the ground in two hits. That being said, this game has one of the best accessibility modes I've ever seen and more games need to implement this, including From Software.

I would be totally fine if From Software started doing this. So if you turn on, I forget what it's called in the game, but if you turn on accessibility mode, you basically, it makes the game dramatically easier. Like you take less damage and you deal more damage, but in the options, you can tweak that. So you can change, I think by default, you take like 25% of normal damage and deal 150% damage. But if you think that's like too generous, you can increase that to whatever percentage you want or decrease whatever percentage you want

until the game feels right. So I was able to find a place where the gameplay felt still challenging, but wasn't like I was spending six hours on the same boss and it felt really good. I still didn't necessarily jive with like a lot of the exploration stuff in the game. I like the art style and stuff like that. I think the narrative, the story set up, you can't really get into it. It's very chatty. It's kind of a early, it's very chatty, but I think it's really neat.

It's a lot less obvious than a lot of games like this. A lot of games like this will lay out everything that's happening. They're so desperate, they'll lay out everything that's happening in the world in the first 30 minutes, right? You're gonna, and there's a lot of exposition here, but there's also a lot of mystery as to what is actually going on. It reminds me a lot of, just narratively, of Iconoclasts.

I don't know if you guys played that one, but it's like, oh, there's a whole world here that's pretty fucked up, and there's a lot of huge fundamental secrets that are being kept from everyone who lives here, and uncovering those I found to be very, very cool. I think the combat rips ass in this game, I think it's great.

It's very, very, very, very parry focused. Like the first boss fight you get into, when I got into it I was like, oh, I've done something wrong, I've gone the wrong way, because there's no fucking way I'm supposed to be able to beat this guy. You missed a mechanic, right?

No, it's just that you gotta parry this dude's shit several dozen times in a row to get through it, which is satisfying. It took me 20 or 30 tries to get through it. It was very satisfying. For me, the issue has been there haven't been a lot of cool exploration upgrades. Maybe I haven't gotten to them yet,

but I'm a couple bosses in, and I don't know to them yet, but I'm like a couple bosses in, and I don't know, it's not like- It feels chunky for too long getting around the world. Yeah, it's not like Ori. Or maneuverability. In both Ori games, you're unlocking crazy, platforming shit all the time, and this one, I don't know.

Hedgepursha did a really good job with it. Yeah. But I think, I don't know, I've been having a lot of- Yeah, I don't dislike it,'ve been having a lot of... Yeah. I don't dislike it, it's just, I feel like I've played other ones in this genre this year that I liked more. Yeah. I will say, if you find that your taste

is too closer to mine, I really liked, like I liked every part of this game, and honestly, I even like the difficulty to not throw at me. There's a lot of games we play that are hard that I think are bullshit. This, the time before I beat that boss Griff is talking about, I said to myself like, I'm going to beat him this time. Like I, it, it just clicked. Like I know I'm going to, I, I found the rhythms, I found the patterns and I did the next time I had it. But it's like I had to, there was no cheesing it. There was no, it's just like Sekiro, right?

Yeah. There was no cheesing it. There was no, it's just like Sekiro, right? There was no fake yet. But I finished that and I was like, this is fun, this is cool. I am not gonna be able to invest this kind of time over and over and over again in these boss. Like it's just not gonna be rewarding enough. It takes more work than for me, then probably a lot of people are more comfortable in this. And the accessibility thing really makes me think

I might go back and mess with it. That's what I'm saying is like, I think a lot of people would feel the same way where they don't have the time to come into it. As we were recording. Yeah, right. I just turned it on. I have found that just reducing the amount of damage taken

has injured, I haven't really tweaked the like damage dealt stuff very much, but just like not dying in two hits has made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. It lets you learn phases, like you get to the second phase of a boss fight and you like can have a couple hits before you die and learn that phase a little bit better. I just turn the damage all the way up.

It's cool to pretend to be strong sometimes. That's right. I think that's fun to pretend to be strong. It's a good game, but yeah, I think Prince of Persia is probably, and Animal Well are probably my two search action games so far. Very different. I mean, Animal Well and this are like, share a perspective.

No, it's a reminder of how broad and far-reaching the genre can be. Yeah. And another game where I accepted my limitations and had to be satisfied with just beating it. I didn't. Couldn't push myself beyond. Wow, guys, a lot of great games. So encouraging. A lot of people say games are done for, but not me. Nope. You want to get in this email here, Russ?

Oh yeah, we got some reader mail. Yeah. This one comes from Remy. On a recent episode of your show, Justin mentioned that he has a 3D printer. That was news to me. I'm curious what kind of printer or printers he has. How long has he been in the hobby and what is his favorite thing that he's printed so far? Thanks.

Oh, man, I didn't think anybody would care about that. So, yeah, I met a cat at Jamien's Grove when we were there and he was was into like 3D printing, and we were just kind of chatting about it, this guy, Jacob, and he recommended a printer, and I wanted to kind of mess around with it, because I do wood and other crafting and stuff like that. And I got an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro,

because that's one he recommended, and also it was pretty cheap, I think it was, like, $250. I like that they have names like, uh, emulator handhelds. Dude, they're the wildest, the fakest-sounding bullshit. Very much. Very much, though. Um, and I don't know, I...

I mainly, the practical purpose was to be able to make props for the shows that we do at the Summer Theater. Like, we had some, like, Wonka stuff that I needed like, you know, I wanted to go to the Gobstopper. I need signs, I need doodads, I need doohickeys. So that's kind of cool, but I've been using it to, okay, the best thing I printed so far, and it is busted. It's not busted, it's very cool,

but it's like classic 3D printer, inventing a problem where none is, but there really is an issue. Sydney insists on these mammoth water bottles. I mean, absolutely unhinged. Very big one, the biggest hydro flask will do. Just the biggest one, and she carries with her. So I made a cup holder extension

that goes into my cup holder, and then has a basket basically that her fits in perfectly. Fuck yeah. So now she can put her drink in my car, and I made one for her car. And was that something that you found online? Did you design the CAD file yourself? No, so I haven't designed any CAD file.

There is a world of incredible like designs that people have already done. Most are what are called SDL files that need to be translated into G-code, which is a format your printer can understand. But they're all there and widely available. It's really fun to just to goof around with stuff. I also made Cooper a Gomchabar and a pain box

because she is really into that part of Dune. Sure. So she walks around with a pain box and tries to. She says she's trying to find the Quetzaltexodroc and. Yeah, I get it. Classic 3D printer. Have you tried making a 3D printer? I had a Creality Ender V3 a while ago which is like the $150 starter one.

Justin and I weirdly also invested in 3D printers at around the same time. I got the Bamboo Lab P1S, which is pretty expensive. But I have definitely, I have made that money back solely from realizing that you can print Brio train tracks on this fucking thing. You can print, sorry, what? Brio.

Oh, Brio train tracks, yeah. They're like kids train tracks on this fucking thing. You can train, sorry what? Brio. Oh, Brio, train tracks, yeah. They're like kids train tracks. Yeah. I've printed out like a dozen of these things. I actually finished one this morning. It's like a little bridge piece. Guys, those things are so fucking expensive and it's little pieces of wood with slots in them.

But you can 3D print that shit no problem. What, do you know, can you math out what the expense is for the 3D printer material to print out one piece? Six cents. No, I can't fucking and math that out. That's insane But that what a terrible way to spend people's time relevant if you're looking to save money on not buying Brio Be good to know if you're actually saving money. Okay exponentially infinitely cheaper I will say that, if Gus is three and a half

and he will want a certain type of piece, and then you can just go print that out and say, I'm gonna go buy an 80 piece set for like a hundred dollars. I feel you. They also make the, you can 3D print bendable brio tracks. They're like sort of, what's that word? Hasselbeck, potato style, kind of like split.

So you can bend them and turn them curved or straight. But they're not, it's not flexible material. It's just flexible in the design. Right, exactly. You can get flexible materials and print with those. If you are looking for something a little bit more on the medium end of things, the Bamboo Lab P1S has been fucking great

Yeah, I'm gonna need you to fall around with I really have enjoyed the the elegant. Can y'all send me after the show? Send me the names these now include them in the newsletter. Oh, what's wrong? You can't remember. It's the kamikaze Elegoo Neptune Pro for definitely can definitely can't. The other great thing about Griffin mentions making toys, and I will say also as a parent, it is really powerful if your kids fuck up bad enough to just take the toy away and snap it in half. Justin. Sorry.

Maybe if you're good, he'll come back. I don't think I could do that to him. I have become unto a god, man. Anything. These kids want or destroy. It's like, manna. I can create, but I will also just like, let me leave this out in the sun.

Oh no, it melted. It would have been better on math. I have seized the means of production from our corporate overlords. I am making a sword because the law says if you get a 3d printer you have to make a sword It's in the manual. We have another letter. This one comes from Devin I was waiting to hear further thoughts about silaco, but given the next week is the indie grab bag This was obviously earlier

Maybe you're waiting for that Also, Chris glad to hear you picked up fallen aces I love how it's an immersive sim where your build is what you're carrying around. Yeah. That's interesting. On the second point, can you elaborate what that means? Sulaco or fallen aces? No, about the fallen aces thing.

I mean, not any more than I did last week. That's a smarter thing than what I said last week is what I'd say. Like you can pick up and use whatever you find in the environment. So whether you're holding a person, or you're holding an ashtray, or you're holding whatever you could find. And that determines your equipment. It kind of determines what you're trying to go for. I tried to mess around with that a little bit.

It hates the Steam Deck. Really does not. It just constant crashes. I haven't been able to sit down in front of a computer. Pretty early access. Still so impressive. And Sulaco, I could have sworn we talked about it on Resties maybe? We did actually do it on Resties.

Not everyone listens to Resties as you recall. It is a Patreon only. What I'll say for everybody here is Sulaco is built on very loosely the skeleton of Doom, but like an ultra, ultra, ultra upgraded version of Doom, and plays somewhat similar to like Half-Life or System Shock. Or Fear. Fear, a lot like Fear.

Yes, just great combat, cool retro aesthetic, but just really looks beautiful running on a decent PC. Are we out of good video game names? So. It's not bad. It, yeah. It does bad.

I agree, it's not. Angerfoot's a good video game name. Yeah, it sure is. Yeah, but we're having, but it's a joke, isn't it? You know what I mean? Like, I think we're out of the really good ones. At this point. I think Flintlock was probably the last good one. Oh, I don't think Flintlock is good at all.

I keep forgetting the name of that game. Flinthook? That explains it. That explains the lack of response in Slack. I should have been more clear. Here's another one. It's weird with as much as you've looked into it, Russ. It's weird that you can't remember the title. Alex said, for the next half of the year,

you guys should consider trying Earth Defense Force VI. My friends and I fell in love with the madness that is Earth Defense Force V. Chris should not be allowed to pick the emails that we discuss on the show. Can I tell you guys, here's the thing, here's the thing with Earth Defense Force, okay? I've been doing this thing for a really long time.

Okay? And I'm gonna be a little cranky old man right now. I am tired of new generations discovering that the EDF games are pretty funny one time. Like, yeah, man. It's the same gag and every generation thinks they came up with it like, have you guys seen these Earth Defense Force? I played five and it was actually really fun. Talk to me after seven. Seriously, like come back, go back and play three and tell me you have a lifelong. No, it's just you had your time to realize that Earth Defense Force is funny and not as bad as you think it's going to be.

So what you're saying here is that I'm over here watching Police Academy five and I'm like, yep, funny as it's ever been. Still good. That guy's making sound effects. Only if the bit is that you've never watched a police academy movie and then you're like, there's a new police academy movie every year. Nah. And you dip back in there like, I kind of get this.

It's like, yeah, man. It's like, it's EDF, man. It's always, it's always unto itself. They need to just do a massively, Give me my massively multiplayer EDF change, and then I will come back to you. But if you make a whole planet where it's aliens versus bugs, then I'll come play. This one has giant ants in it, just to be clear.

Oh, good. That's good. That's good. I am, needless to say, very excited for this game, and I will talk about it. Two other very quick things. Caleb said, y'all should play Yellow Taxi Go Vroom. Nicholas suggested last week in your newsletter, I played the demo, it slaps. It's a 3D platformer inspired by the Nintendo 64

where you are wind up taxi. You have to manage both taking people to and from places and finding collectibles, incredible stuff. What was that title again? Yellow Taxi Go Vroom. That's a good title. No, that's a good one actually. That's a good one.

It's different. It's, yeah. We're back. It has to, it's intentionally bad though. This is what I'm saying. That's not intentionally bad. Yellow Taxi Go Vroom. They're intentionally clumsy

because we don't have any cool sounding names anymore. We used all the doom and quake. We need to start over. Here's what I'm saying clean slate Okay on the next episode of besties will start over right everybody gets to pick their names again So like if you're a new game coming out pick whatever you want. Yeah, this is Zelda. This is clean Zelda kept doing it. Okay, they get to keep it but it's a quick We're starting from scratch. Violet dinosaur. Missed, missed.

Any honorable mentions from people? Yes. I've been watching a reality show on Netflix. Oh. Chris knows what I'm gonna talk about. I messaged our group thread of dudes from Austin. It didn't make a huge splash there, so hopefully it'll have a bigger footprint here.

It's called The Boyfriend. This is a Japanese reality dating show that is basically explicitly Terrace House, boys in the house. It's right now there's- Boys in the house. They got, guys, they've crammed eight fucking boys in this house, and they are trying to find house. Guys, they've crammed eight fucking boys in this house

and they are trying to find love. Griffin, when I'm watching, it's only got seven boys. Uh oh, the secret eighth boy hadn't even showed up yet. I'm so glad. There's an eighth boy that's been living in the house the whole time, hiding in the shadow. There is a seventh boy who has what I think is probably the strongest character introduction

I've ever seen. It's the most powerful probably that I've ever seen in a reality TV show setting. We can't spoil it. But are they trying to date each other or? They are dating each other. What they do is they live in this house together and they also have to run a coffee truck.

They operate a coffee truck. They operate a coffee truck. And they have a set budget that they buy all their food and supplies with. And then they rely on the income they make from the coffee truck for the rest of the day. Do they all have to work in the coffee truck at the same time? No, that's too many boys.

Every episode, every day rather, several times an episode, one person gets chosen as the leader of the coffee truck. And they get to choose one person to go with them that day on the shift, which is like the equivalent of what the date is to get to know each other. Oh, that's nice. But I mean, guys, it's just Terrace House.

It's like they live in this house together with stationary cameras all over, and you get little slice of life stuff. They argue about one person needs to eat three smoothies made with chicken breast and water every day just to maintain his protein for his work. Yeah, they make you watch it. Also, there's gotta be other sources of protein, pal.

There's got to be, my man. I know they got powder these days. But he's spending too much of the house income on his chicken breast, and so it's a big thing that there are several scenes discussing the chicken income on his chicken breast. And so it's like a big thing that there are several scenes discussing the chicken breast fiasco about. There is a panel with five people on it, cutting up, making jokes.

One of the people on the panel is Tokui, the guy who had to leave Terrace House because of some fraud issues that he got into with his own sort of, I guess, production company or something, where he had to resign from Terrace House in disgrace. He's back, baby! Holding it down, it is fucking great.

It is real, real, real, real good. I've also never seen anything like it, like a gay dating show that is this, like, I don't know, earnest and sweet and kind and nuanced. It's really, it is really, really scratching the itch for me and I cannot recommend it highly enough. So go check, if you miss Terrace House, if you liked just that vibe, I guarantee you that The Boyfriend

is gonna hit for you too. I wanted to give a recommendation. This one is sight unseen, but I feel very confident. Because the funniest podcast I think I've ever listened to in my entire life, Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding, after several years, Dormit just got a second seat. Fuck yeah. They're eight episodes in.

It's called, well, it's the story of one of the hosts, Mother-in-Law's, who finds on her back porch one day a tiny suit, and then a year and a half later on the same porch in the same place finds a tiny suitcase. And that's the mystery. That's all you get the trailer. We're headed out on tour this week in Sid and I are driving so we're gonna listen to it on the road. But I can guarantee if you're a fan of that one, I mainly wanted to give you a heads up if you're not already a fan of who shotat on the Floor at My Wedding,

it's, again, the funniest podcast I've ever listened to. Wow. I really can't recommend it enough. I think it's still called Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding. If you search that, I'm sure I'll put that up. Yeah, I think the title is now Who Shat on My Floor at the Wedding and Other Crimes.

Okay, great. Oh. Ha ha ha ha. I've been playing in maybe the nerdiest thing I've ever done, a rom hack of Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, which addresses the fact that the luck stat didn't work in the original Dawn of Sorrow on the Kendo DMX. Fuck, yeah, Rush brushed it. Didn't we just talk about this?

So no, we did talk about us. Didn't we just do a game exactly like this, where a ROM hack of another game fixed the luck stat? It's called Dawn of Sorrow Definitive Edition. There's also Dawn of Sorrow Definitive Edition Plus, if you prefer other enhancement features. Does this also remove the touch screen like glyph drawing? It removes the touch screen stuff.

It also inputs the pixel art that was in Aria of Sorrow replacing the anime style portraits. Doug, where is it? How do I get my hands on this shit? What are you playing it on? I'm playing on RG 28XX. I do own Dawn of Sorrow for what it's worth if Nintendo or Konami wants to come after me, but it is perfectly legal to play Backups of games you have anyway. There's a fan made rom hack. I haven't done much rom hack

experimentation but there is such a huge community of people making these out there of like addressing quality of life issues and like old retro games and this might kind of crack the cork on me. Uh, yeah. I'm playing the biggest game of the year. I'm playing EA College Football. It's back baby! After over a decade away! I know you all missed it. I know that you all have been counting down the days for EA to return to college football. They finally put some names on the jersey. You can all take a big breath of relief. And let me tell you, does it live up to expectations?

Am I going to talk about it more? No, because you don't want to hear about it and you, listener, probably don't want to hear about it either because there are two types of people. There are the people who already bought it and are loving it and are right there with me and there are the people who are like, Chris, I need you to shut the fuck up. And to number two, which is a callback to when I talked about number twos at the beginning of the episode, I want you to do me a favor. I don't expect you to play this game.

I don't even expect you to read a review. But I want you to watch the trailer for this game. Because for all the power that we've talked about with these PlayStation 5s and these Xbox Series X, how often do you see a game that actually takes advantage of it? Not very often. And let me tell you, this game looks like a next-gen,

whatever game. It looks and feels fantastic. It looks so sick and the trailer is awesome, even if you don't like any of this stuff. What's it called? EA College Football. Great. But what year?

It's like this year, 25. No, but at the end of the title there's gotta be a number. 25. EA College Football 25. What does EA College Football 25 know that we don't know? About the future? Because it's obviously based on the future, so if it could perhaps like send some messages back to us. Yeah, on one hand it's like not that far, but like they know who won the election.

Far enough. Oh, I'm wanting it. It's like not that far, but like they know who won the election. Far enough. Oh, me too. Chill. Very chill. All right. Well, thanks so much. If you want to support our show, you could do that at patreon.com slash The Besties.

I really hope that you'll do that. I wanted to thank some patrons from the Festies before Justin realizes what we're doing next week on the Festies. We have F Crate, we have Wrath of Anima, we have Old Meme, and we have Fraz Ninja. Thank you so much patrons. We have a new episode of The Resties coming at you

on Tuesday with some more Grab Bag games that we both quite enjoyed. Stay tuned for that. But before that happens, Justin, why don't you tell us what we're doing next week? Oh, God, yes. Earth Defense 4-6 and Zenless Zone Zero. Okay, you only have to play one of them.

Okay! We're in a bit of a pickle, and this pickle is gonna alleviate in a week, but this is a weird time for game releases, and we're just kind of getting our way through it. And we've had some amazing episodes. We talked about the best games of the year. We talked about some grab bag episodes.

And now we're doing a twofer. And now we're doing a twofer. Yeah. And Chris Plants is gonna talk about how much he loves Zen Lizard and Zero, and I'm gonna play Earth Defense Force and like it this time, even though I haven't really liked any of the other ones,

and it's gonna work out great. It's gonna be so good. I forgot to tell you, I'm out of town next week, but I'm gonna bring my mic. I'm gonna bring my mic. I can't miss the episode that was made for me. That would be terrible. So I'm gonna bring my setup. I can't miss the episode that was made for me. That would be that would be terrible So I'm gonna bring I'll bring my setup. I'll record from the road

That's how much I love you all. Or Joel will just be like, ah Chris would have loved this I mean we could we could come up with something we all want to play instead, but it's really It's so we're either gonna play both those games or something completely different. Cool. Yeah, it sounds great. Something is going to happen something completely different. Cool. It sounds great. Something is going to happen. All right. That will be worth looking forward to, I'm sure.

Be sure to join us next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best thing? Besties!