The Besties - Pragmata Is Like Dead Space with Optimism

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Announced in 2020, Pragamata has finally arrived. Capcom’s new third-person shooter puts you in the boots of a space marine-type who must overcome evil robots on a moon covered in 3D-printed skyscrapers. Which comically sounds like a pretty standard video game premise. But this isn’t your standard shooter. You must solve puzzles in the middle of combat, team up with an adorable robo-kid, and navigate some classic 3D platforming in low-gravity. Kinda Funny’s Andy Cortez joins us to discuss this odd delight! 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!

What are y'all doing with Easter? What do you mean what are we doing with Easter? Easter is done. Just a cold open man. This is a bonus episode. I can't believe. Yes, tell me everything. What are you doing?

If you will, Russ. Tell me all your thoughts on God. What are you? I am a middle-aged man. Uh-huh. And I had my very first. A middle-aged Jewish man. Middle-aged Jewish man.

Middle-aged Jewish man, it should be noted, sure. Okay, yeah. And I had my very, very first Easter egg hunting experience, and what the fuck are you guys doing to these children? Okay, well, let me stop you here. You said it's your first Easter egg hunting experience. Have you hunted eggs in like a completely agnostic context? No, that's a fair question. No, I haven't.

So I guess it is my first egg hunting. Before that, you said you are a 40-year. old middle-aged man and you participated in the Easter egg hunt presumably with children. Do you think maybe what was what was kind of weird about it?

I was physically there, Chris Plain. I wasn't actually stealing eggs from kids. Although there was a moment when it started where I was like, am I supposed to take the eggs? You are. Genuinely, I didn't know. I mean, all these people were running around. The wild thing about eggs is there is,

I mean, to your credit, Russ, absolutely zero consistency. Some of these bad boys you could peel and eat. Some are plastic with candy. Some are plastic and empty. Some are plastic with coupons for hugs. Some are chocolate, right?

They're just foil-wrapped big chunks of chocolate. Some are, and this is the wild ones, used to be real. Then are filled with confetti, and you're supposed to smash those on your head. I mean, there's just no rhyme or reason. Flower as well sometimes. Flower!

Yeah. Those are the prank ones. Prank ones. pregnant ones and and is there shouldn't you give the kids

like a quota like shouldn't the kids be like five is enough and then let the other kids have some because right now it seems like unfettered capitalism no no no

Andy I do want to hear here because we did bring you on for expertise as a fan of the cloth you know I'm not I'm not trying to you know push my beliefs on anybody guys

okay I can't recall the quote I'm looking for Andy's the rare guest that will push his religious beliefs on people before he's been introduced. There was a moment as we were waiting in the line. I was waiting in line and the line was long and we were nowhere near the front of it. And there was a couple of parents right behind me that whispered to themselves, if we miss this, they will never forgive us.

And then proceeded to find ways to cut the line. and that is not a very well-spirited event. That is a stressful nightmare of an event that you're teaching children from an early age. No defense. You all agree that this is a bad. I'll be honest, I didn't hear anything you just said because I was Googling Ecclesiastes' Easter egg quote

just to see if there was one. Is that how you pronounce the word? I think I said some different. Ecclesiastians I'm pretty sure you've been in eclosians It counts One of the Gnostic Gospels Yeah that was in the bad boys

Yeah that was in the book of Job Right after the book of Thomas When were the Jesus blinds dude Just because he can't The King James one He's going for another title this year guys Oh hell yeah And now we're back to games

You know My name is Justin McRoy And I know the best game of the week My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frustick. I know the best game of the week. Andy, get in there.

My name is Andy, and I know the best game of the week. Yeah. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and the greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you just become a member just like that. This week talking about pragmat, ta, ta, ta, what is that? Six years ago, Capcom announced that it's going to make another game, which means this game has been in development for several.

or eight years. Imagine dead space, but a little bit more humanist, a little more anti-AI, and a little more mega-man. What? Well, we'll hear about that. And so much more right after this. Before we start this segment, I want to introduce our very special guest who is joining us. It's Andy Cortez.

Thank you for joining us, Andy. Hi. Hello, everybody. I've been listening to the Bessie since 2012. I think I'm the oldest guest to have ever been on a show. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

For us, I guess. Yeah, huge for us. It's massive. You don't look 60. You look like a solid 28, 29. It was college time. It was college time 2012. Yeah.

It's good time. While we're holding it down, we appreciate it. People can experience Andy's Magic on Kind of Funny. You also have a very good Twitch channel. You want to direct people to the Twitch channel. Sure. Andy Cortez on. Twitch and then we do

kind of funny games every day. We talk about industry news. It's usually, unfortunately, layoff news for the past couple years, but there's always some good news sprinkled through out there. So kind of funny games daily for all of the gaming news

and gaming reviews. Well, thank you, Andy. We have a very special game that, as Planned alluded to, was long delayed and comes from the team over at Capcom. it is pragmatia. Andy, you want to take a stab at summarizing what the fuck this thing is?

Sure. Pragmata is a third-person action shooter game. You know, it's got similar story tropes to what, you know, it's the older father figure with the daughter who, you know, maybe he doesn't really care for her at the start, but then he warms up to her. And you're just sort of battling through a space station. that has been kind of in disarray,

and there's a lot of 3D printing all over the place. It is very pro and anti-3D printing at the same time. It's kind of impressive that they walk that line. I think it is most notable at a glance for being the game where as you're shooting 3D printed creatures, you're also doing like Pipe Dream style mini games. Yeah. Wow.

That is a poll that I think. no one but our oldest listener, Andy, would know the reference to? What a tragedy that he doesn't get to listen to this one episode. I'm unfortunate. He's going to be bummed out about it when I told him. When I saw that feature, I was like, oh, Justin,

this is not a game Justin's going to be able to play. Like, physically not. And I think that ended up being true, correct, Dustin? Can you describe the pipe dream a little bit more for people? Yeah. So imagine like a Gears of War over the shoulder, third person shooter. And then when you aim at something, a grid shows up.

A two-dimensional grid. Yeah, like an eight-by-eight grid. And in that grid, there are like nodes. And the idea is to hack the enemy, you have to push face buttons or whatever you're using. A, BXY. Yeah. To move through these nodes and eventually land on like an endpoint, which in turn hacks the

enemy, leaves them susceptible to damage, might stun them, might do a variety of other things to them. So it's not like a puzzle. I mean, it is in the lightest sense of the word. Like you can finish them in two seconds. But it is interesting to have to juggle that while you're in combat. It's closer to a maze than a puzzle. And that like you're navigating this 2D space getting from point A to point B.

But even on like a maze you can for the most part go wherever you want. It's like, do you want to build up the nodes on the way to the endpoint? So these nodes also have, especially. capabilities that could maybe slow down an enemy or hack multiple enemies at once or put little blue postules on them that make them take even more damage. I never want to hear you say the word pustral again. If you could just like that's that's in my like that's that's a word I'm constantly going to. Oh no.

Yeah. Kind of like damp towelette pustule. It's it's definitely like a vocal tick of mine. I'm always saying pustule man. You picked the wrong guest. So the comparison to like dead space that I made up top, I think holds true in two ways. One is the game, it's like the story. You are literally in space.

You are a big, bulky dude space marine type. And you need to find out what happened to this colony that is like now basically abandoned. So story wise, it's playing with a lot of the same ideas. You're picking up random, you know, audio diaries or written diaries. And even like, like, so many diaries. Like, Dead Space style, like those, like, projected diaries, which is used in Dead Space as well. The other comparison is this shooting itself builds off of something that I think kind of got abandoned post Dead Space. I wish more games do, which is we want you to think about shooting as strategy, not just like aim for the head.

In Dead Space, I think, conceals this pretty well, but if you go back and think about it, the goal is to de-lim the enemies, right? That you want to cut them off in certain ways, and there is a strategy on top of the usual shoot for the head. Here, and because of that, the enemies move slower. Here, a similar thing is happening. The enemies move slower, or you're incentivized to find ways to get them to move slower so that you can both shoot them and do a secondary thing. and I'm kind of surprised there just hasn't been more games like this I was trying to think

were there other games that kind of did this hey we want your brain to do two things at once shooters I can't I don't know man Andy Justin I mean aside from just the hacking mini games in your automata where you are actively I can just be hacking and slashing all these dudes or I could as the character go into your mainframe

and do the little, which is another arcadey thing, because the hacking here always, it reminds me a snake, and in your automata, you're just kind of playing asteroids or whatever. So I, but that's not a simultaneous thing.

So it's kind of a, I don't know, I don't really know of another comparison. I think a Bioshock 2 had like, when you're hacking, like, the turrets and things like that, it was like real time, like, timing minigames and things like that.

Or even like you look at Gears of War, though, like, active reload is somewhat of this, which is. Hell Divers has the little, Bebo, beep, boop things. Yeah, the air strikes. Yeah. That's true.

Yeah. No, it's interesting. I'm curious what y'all thought of the story, because the story is coherent. I will say that. It's also fast. When I started playing this, I was like, oh, boy, I'm in, this might be a situation where I have to play five hours before anything happens

or I get to control the game. It starts really quickly and, like, gives you the controls really quickly, which I did appreciate. Narratively, you mentioned Dead Space totally different from a tone standpoint than Dead Space. I think it's important to realize that this is a much brighter

and more optimistic tone. It doesn't have the gore elements of Dead Space in it. Thematically, obviously, has ties, but tonally, very, very different. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it rang as like a game about adoption, which is not what I expected. And, well, that's a surprise, and it's not.

So, like, you, yes, you are. It's just funny. I laugh only because the writing in this game is so ham-handed that, like, he multiple times is like, I was adopted. You know what that means? So I, I, I don't think it's ham-handed for that reason. I was so happy to have a game where it actually said what it wanted to be about, instead of just being the kind of metaphor that doesn't quite work.

I think there's a worst version of this game where they're like, it's about adoption because you get it, he's a space marine, and then he finds this little girl, and then he like takes her on the way. And we never pointed out, but like you kind of know what it is. But if you actually unpack the metaphor, it doesn't work at all. It's incomplete. And I admired that the writing had the gumption for him to be like, hey, I was an orphan, and I had a very similar experience to you.

And now we as characters are coming together, instead of this kind of usual like lone wolf and cub, stoic man, child relationship, it's like, hey, we actually have just a lot in common. And I'm learning from you, you're learning from me, which I think is just, it's a twist on this formula that is it just, it's that extra step that I didn't expect to get from it. I think they could have gone the super cliche route and made it the grisible. you know, angry dude who is pissed off about having to be in this experience because who wouldn't be? I think it is kind of nice that they didn't go that cliche route, but then parts of me kind of wishes they did just for better storytelling period because the whole, like, this Hugh guy, like, he, he really warms up to the fact that you, that you have now kind of pseudo-adopted this robot girl. He warms up to the idea.

of that in about 20 minutes. Yeah. And he's just like, he just, I keep on making the comment to my coworkers that like, Hugh feels like a 10-year-old in this game.

There's just so many moments where little Diana, who was a robot child, you'll experience an action sequence or just, I don't know, something will happen in the game and she'll go, wow, that was really fun.

And he will respond with something like, yeah, that was awesome, right? And he just doesn't, He just feels so tonally weird to me. You're right. Yeah, it's kind of like, I like ice cream too. Yeah, he's, he's seeing the world through a child's eyes as well sometimes. And it's like, you know, overall, it's really good for the positivity of the story because I feel like this is a very, a very, like, hopeful thing.

And you never really feel a whole lot of dread in this. This isn't like The Last of Us where you just always feel like garbage. But he just, I don't know, man. I wish I could just be in the room with them as they were doing writing passes on Hugh and just like, I don't know, let's switch this up. But then there are really endearing moments too. So it's kind of a mixed bag for me. It's mostly just the dialogue for me is just like incredibly wooden and not real. Like, I mean, I'm fine with them being like upbeat and fun, but like it's written like we're going to tell and not show every single story beat in this game.

that being said I did despite that wooden writing almost immediately like feel a lot of connection to Diana with a little AI girl and like she's very charming

they give you like collect fucking slides and crayons and various other things for her to like hang out in her in your secret basin and she's like playing on them and asking questions about them and like that stuff is very endearing I don't have a problem

the story, I just found it a little bit funny how how we get there. Yeah, it's just blunt. There is the other half of the story, which is that they're building New York on the moon. So we should probably talk about like the level design. Fresh, can you explain kind of like how the game works structurally?

You have a, it's like a hub and spoke. So you have a main base. It's called the shelter. And back in the shelter, you can do things you would expect. You can upgrade weapons. You can add new gear. All the like collectibles, you find live in the shelter, you eventually can unlock like training missions,

things like that. And then from the shelter, you go out to these different areas where you have objectives like, oh, rescue or some character or unlock these doors to activate a radio to the earth, whatever it is.

In each of those areas, the levels are like, it doesn't quite feel like dead space, which I think dead space feels like a very organic, almost grounded portrayal of what a space station would be this feels a little bit closer

like almost like portal in the way that it is very intentionally designed as like a puzzle environment but they do take big swings where like one of the environments is like they 3D printed New York City and it's like and parts of it are like sideways

like weird inception style or one of them is like a forest that they generated on this space station So there's that, but I think it feels more like color to the actual level design, which tends to be pretty boxy for the sake of like, again, solving puzzles and opening doors, things like that. Yeah, would you call the level design Metroidvania Light? Like, I don't know how to describe this. Like, it's like these mini worlds where you're going to be kind of, in some ways, looping back. You're going to be.

There are elements of that where you have to like unlock powers to access. I agree that one The siege Was that what it was called? There was a sequel to it The surge Yeah yeah yeah yeah Oh yeah wordhead

Similar idea where like Sort of like factory biomes That you would like unlock with different skill sets As you as you went on Yeah and there is an element also Where you'll like get the ability To like Decrease the amount of like moon filament

that's in the middle of a hallway, and that'll allow you in an earlier area, yeah, this is a video game. That'll allow you to access, like, a chess that you couldn't get before. It has, like, God of War 2018 kind of vibes in that as well. And there is backtracking. And super helpful to kind of show you the map

with your completion percentage and say, oh, I got a red key for that red dangerous zone that's kind of a challenge room. Let me go back and backtrack and see what the treasure there was. And I've been really enjoying a lot of the side stuff. To like weirdly, I wasn't expecting to want to sort of chase these training missions that are back in the hub in the hub world to then unlock cosmetics and things like that. I'm really enjoying that part of it.

Yeah, they make it very easy. The training missions are called training. And I guess they are teaching you how to be better at the game. But I think the closer comparison is the kind of VR missions in Metal Gear where it's like, yeah, we want a slow story to exist in this game. but we want a space where you can really video game-ass video game it. Like, Andy, what were some of the ones that stood out to you that got you to keep doing? Because there's like 20, 30 of them? I mean, there are all sort of a different varieties.

I think you start off super easy with just platforming ones, and you have your jump and your float and your air dashes, Hugh. You move so swiftly for a big guy. Like, you're just a big man. And you're moving through really quickly with, your kind of cool aerial boosters or whatever. And so some of them will just be a bunch of floating cubes and you jump over the gap. And then they kind of progressively get tougher where there might be another large block that is

kind of an obstacle, you know, moving in the way of yourself. And if you fall off, then that counts as a death. And maybe part of the challenge to three-star that mission is to not fall off or not to get damage. And so every one of these missions has, you could just do the mission. but there will also be the three sort of meta challenges within the challenge of, well, you also got to the goal and you also shot the six boxes and you also did it within 20 seconds or whatever. And all of that just kind of, you know, it just sort of, it looks at me and it challenged me from across the room. And it says, can you do this?

And the unlockables are fun and I want to get more cosmetics for the characters. So I've been kind of really incentivized to go back into it. Yeah, it's kind of like a Flores lava. game design, where it's like you could just walk around this room, but what if the floor was lava and you didn't want to touch it? You're like, oh, damn, you know I don't want to touch the floor even though I definitely can. It's in that area that I think plants earlier comparison to Mega Man is most obvious. Like it really feels like a 3D Mega Man X vibe, especially when you're mixing the air dashing with the floating, with the jumping, with the whatever. Obviously the combat itself is very different, but like the Capcom is bringing Mega Man back for a reason. And it's kind of interesting to see them also tackling this, like, 3D approach. Not saying it's an official Mega Man game or anything, but design-wise. Let's teach the controversy here.

You know, like, there was a lot of Hubbleu. Hullabaloo, is that the right phrase? Before this game came out of hubbub. There we go. Of is this game a Mega Man game? Because the little girl looks. Mega Man-esque. She's wearing a big, puffy blue coat that is, like, the Mega Man color.

She has a glowing arm that, like, has a magical technological power that looks... And her character's name is Megan Man. I didn't play very far. That was so weird. So that's a guess, but... I had no idea that was... By the way, P.S. just make this into a Megan game.

It's free You do this for free, right? Like, swap it, like, easy. It's so close. Her eyes do needs to be bigger, but probably they could figure that out. We'll get that in post. That's D.L.C.

When the game was being revealed and the man's name was revealed to be Hugh and all of us, kind of funny, are just trying to, like, force, to really force this into Omega. Something. Shrily.

Hugh Lights. Doctor of Lyme. Like, if we were just like, we were really going forward, man. Huge disappointment. I'm ultimately glad it's not. I'm glad that they've made their own thing. And it very much feels like this is the future of something.

The game, it's plenty enjoyable at the beginning, but it has a hell of a build. It feels like kind of a slow, use a pistol puzzle shooter for the first hour. It feels like that Metroidvania light. god of war contemporary comparison that Fresh mentioned after that and by the end the combat in the game is truly absurd

you have you know like seven or eight robots varying sizes some flying some tank like on the screen firing you know giant missile loads at you and you're hacking all of it all at once and it's absurd at one point the game becomes basically the movie tremors, but with robots.

It goes for it. And I'm happy to see just a new, a new AAA-style video game that's doing its own thing that doesn't have the number two or further beyond that coming after it. It feels like a minor miracle. I mean, Capcom as a company feels like a minor miracle, just the fact that they've been able to keep up the cadence that they have with like a large back, like, they've got Monster Hunter,

they've got Resident Evil, they've got this now, which we don't know if it's going to be a success from a monetary standpoint, but critically certainly a success. Fucking Ace Attorney, what else, you know, they're doing very well for a company that, for sure I thought was going to go the way of Konami

and like just sell Pichiko machines for 20 years, which is kind of crazy. Konami's back, maybe, you know? They are back. They are making actual games again. So good on Konami. They realize. there are limits to what those balls can do.

Before we wrap up the section, Andy, do you have any other final thoughts on the game? I mean, I still think that this game would be so much more easy to recommend. First of all, I think the game plays a lot of fun, and I do enjoy the action, and I like the way it's been evolving. I think that if I could look at anybody and say, like, yeah, but the writing and the story is, like, actually super awesome. I wish we were in that spot. I think that it really falls short in a lot of different.

different ways. Like, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a quote that I wrote down at a certain moment where you're dealing with a bad guy and Diana, the little girl, because again, her name is like, I'm model number, D-I-A, whatever the hell, you know, and so you'll call you. D-I-A-N-A. I'll call you Diana. I'll call you Diana, you know, and they deal with like a enemy that's doing lightning and electricity, and she says, hey, I had to write this down. She says, hey remember when you got hit by lightning Hugh? That was pretty shocking. And it's a, it's a cute pun, whatever.

She's playing with puns for the first time. She just gained sentience. And then Hugh, but here's the part where Hugh seems more like a non-human. And his reply was, well, you know what they say about lightning, right? Next time, it'll be the bots that get zapped. I was like, Hugh, no, what, nobody says that first off. Like, I don't know what... What do you mean by...

You know what they say. They don't say that. I think the implication is that you... Nothing gets hit by lightning the same time. Like, twice. So the implication is if he already got shocked, certainly... It's a lot of worse. It's a lot of work.

Look, I'm trying to be generous. A lot of inferring here for a little robot, Diana, meeting her first human. Oh, my. Justin, how do you feel just in hearing about it? Is this the sort of game that appeals to you, or is it? I have a long list of things that I will return to. I do like games like this, and I'm always a sucker for a compelling single-player experience.

The dialogue does not fill me with a lot of confidence, I will say. Turn on the Japanese and turn off subtitles on your set. Let me map my kids' faces onto the girl, and then I will be into it, because then the kids would love that. The kids would love that if they were sitting on the guy's shoulder blasting people. Let me do that for $10 as DLC. Andy, you have just before we wrap the segment pulled up a truly horrifying video of what looks like a mod maybe. No, what is this? This was Pragmatas, sorry.

This was their April Fool's post. Oh. And they said Pragmata is a Mega Man game, April Fool's, and it's Hugh, but he's in a very life-like proportion-sized. Mega Man suit instead of his big astronaut suit. And his mask is, you know, Mega Man's face. And then that kind of like goes up and reveals the real tiny face of Hugh in the helmet. I mean, that'll for sure get released as DLC or whatever. Absolutely.

You do not make a Mega Man costume and then refuse to sell it to us. That is some horse armor shit. They're going to be like, you want this for $20, you swine. And I'll be like, oink, oink, give it to me. Okay, let's take a break and talk about more games with Andy. Andy, I think you play more games than any of us, which doesn't seem possible because we feel like we play a lot of games. And yet, you do streaming, you do kind of funny. I think your cadence is more than ours.

And I'm sure there are games that you've played this year that we haven't. Is there anything recent that you've played that you would call out as a special release? For 2026 games, let me go through the old Steam library. Because I know you are currently going through your backlog to better inform yourself for the forthcoming kind of funny 100 best games of all time list. Was there anything recent before we get into that? As far as brand new games go, I did just beat Mouse P.I. for hire. That was the first person uses like old-timey. cartoon style, like cuphead style graphics, but Doom gameplay.

Yes, yes. That's a boomer shooter. It looks like a 1920s, 1930s Disney animation. Hopefully not exactly like one. Well, Steamboat Willie is fine. We can hit that area. And so that game I played recently. That's about a 19, 18, 18-hour-ish video game.

And I thought it was fine. I thought it was still lacking in a lot of different, other spots. And so that's one that I did recently. I think that is the difference between you and I is if you're, oh, I guess you were reviewing it. But if I'm playing something that's fine,

there is no fucking way I'm spending 20 hours on it. Yeah. And that's the thing is that you would be hit with really neat moments. And I would say, oh, cool. Okay, maybe we're, we're getting even better here, right? And honestly,

we're very similar at kind of funny. And that's one of the things that they would always bring up is, you know, back at IGN, you would have to play this. And now we have the freedom of saying, I am not digging this enough to continue on, which was kind of a lot of everybody's experiences with Crimson Desert, where they said, you have to play 10 hours for it to get good?

Sorry, man. Like maybe after a bunch of, you know, patches and things like that. But Crimson Desert's another one that I'm about, you know, 12 hours in, and I'm kind of momentarily going back to it just in hopes that there are more patches and in hopes that it feels better. and it's slowly getting there, but I'm still needing to, I still want to see the magic

that everybody on the internet is claiming, like, this is some truly like generational type shit. I just don't, I'm not seeing it quite yet. We had a question, a reader email question a few weeks ago, about whether the game Crimson Desert could be saved with patches in the way that cyberpunk was.

Do you think there's a shot of that level of, like, resurrection? I mean, if you ask, 80% of people, the game doesn't need saving. Like, to them, it's already an amazing video game. And a lot of that, I think, is just an amalgamation of just a buttload of mechanics and cool looking things with amazing visuals. But, you know, mission structure-wise, I think it's like one of the weakest things I've ever experienced. And that's because they made Black Desert Online and they're just like an MMO sort of studio. So there's not, you know, playing Crimson Desert after beating the Witcher 3 for the first time was a massive, like, shock to the system.

Not ideal timing. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, gameplay-wise, it's so deep. And there's just so many wild things that you could pull off. It really is like that Breath of the Wild Tears to the Kingdom. Check this shit out. Look what I just did here that I figured out. Or look at this cool discovery I made.

And I'm hoping to get there one day. But at the rate that they're putting out updates, I feel like it will inevitably get to a point that everybody says, all right, now's the time to hop in because movement is better and because now I can button remap and they've, you know, made a decision to not have. Sorry, there's something very funny of now I can button remap in the movement. And it works. And the thing is, you know, it's not only just button remapping.

It's the fact that the controls are so obtuse. Yeah. And there's no button remaping. mapping. Like, the things that they have you doing in this game are just really odd. And it's one of those where you go, all right, I applaud you for doing something different, but was it the right choice, you know? But PC mods have been helping out a lot with, for me.

Like, I immediately installed the unlimited stamina outside of battle, which is like, I feel like every game should have that. Yeah, no kidding. And so I installed that mod. I installed a couple of different mods that help out with the kids. camera angle. But, I mean, they're putting out, they've put out like four updates or three updates since it launched, and they are, they know that this game could be a better experience.

And it's pretty obvious by what they're fixing. So button remapping is already in the works, and that should be here probably within the next couple weeks or so. Do you think that they've considered making it a Mega Man game instead? They would have been better off, honestly. Just a bold idea. I mean, especially not owning the property, would have been very bold. I mean, well, the game is just, you know, why not throw another IP in there?

Because the game has so many other influences that, like, yeah, sure, throw in a Mega Man in there as well. Got to take big swings, you know? That's right. What is the best thing that you've played this year so far? Oh, it's, so because of the backlog and me finally looking at all these blind spots and empty spots in my gaming history, and knowing that I want to do them justice because we have a big top 100 thing coming up this year where all of us are going to submit our top 100 games and then we're going to add them all up, add up all the points and then do our own kind of big event that we've always wanted to do.

And finally, you're like, all right, let's freaking do it this year. And so this year has been just me looking at my backlog and saying, well, I beat the first play-through of near Automata when the game came out. and then I put it down like many people and everybody said, you got to go back. I'm like, no, no, no.

So this year I finally did all of the main endings and that and the Witcher 3 are probably my two favorite games that I've played this year. I think they, like I was just so, even mechanically for anybody

who is worried about combat and the way that the Witcher 3 might feel, I think that's one of the biggest things that everybody, while I would let them know I'm playing the Witcher 3, they go, oh, how does the combat?

because I'm such a I'm such a Soulslike action RPG type dude and I think it's like totally fine it's not it was kind of a non-issue for me of course I would love it to feel like Liza P does or like any of the Souls games do

but it's totally serviceable enough when the story and the writing and the branching paths are hitting as hard as they do I was just so blown away by the widget three yeah it's pretty staggering that I mean, that and then eventually, like,

cyberpunk, in my opinion, got pretty damn close to that level as well. Like, that game is fantastic. So, you know, I think that studio has a future. Yeah, they're doing, they're doing all right. But yeah, near automata was definitely one that blew me away as well. I was just so, I was just so overtaken by the whole experience.

And it's just so my shit. And the fact that I waited that long, I felt kind of embarrassed. But, like, I'm so glad that I got back to it because I just really enjoyed the story in where it goes. the things that I would call the Kojimaisms that Yokotaro does with all of the

breaking of the fourth wall and all of those little things that I just like, oh, I love this shit, man. This is like, this is why I could have watched the movie, but I'd prefer to do this because this is so like inter-this, this is a video game, you know? Like, I love that shit. Well, the good thing is now you have to watch the movie and the animated series, eight of the plays. You have to find the story that is locked in the gotcha games.

and Justin has good tips on the fishing in the first game. Oh, yeah, if you ever want to walk through on that? Okay, yeah, I'll have to hit you up for that. But I definitely will be going to the orchestra that's coming back on tour. I'm pumped for that. Because that was one where I'm like, as soon as I'd be, I was like, I have to go watch this, like, symphony thing, which I only ever really do for games. Like, I never really, like, seek out concerts, but I love for the big gaming experiences.

Like the Final Fantasy 7 rebirth was super sick And then everybody's like, dude, you just missed it on tour, man It just kind of like ended But it's coming back in a couple months And I'm pretty pumped for that This isn't actually a problem for NIR Because I'm me and I'm on this show But it always so frustrating when you find a game like that

And it's all you want to talk about And everybody talked about it two years ago It's like, hold on wait, no, no, no, listen See there's different ending You're like, it's like you do them all It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second one, you think it's going to be Lion King 1.5, where you're playing as Timone and Pumba during the Lion King one. But it's so much different, man.

And honestly, the reason I quit back in the day was, you know, I was like, all right, that's neat. But I don't want to play as the dude for another 20 hours like I just did. And then another gameplay would be another 20 hours, right? And everybody's like, no, just do it, just do it. And luckily, it's not that. So for anybody who's been ever discouraged of saying, well, one play-through is about, about 20-ish hours times five, that's a hundred-hour game. It's not that.

Every next like play-through, quote-unquote is much shorter and they do different things with it to keep it fresh. I do want you to let me play as Timonin Pumba in near Automa. That'd be fun. Once you put that in my head, you can't just take it away from me. What are they doing in those moments? It's so true. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Fresh, you want to dig into the mailbag? we have a bunch of reader mail. This one's for Justin from John. Season four of From is almost here. My girlfriend and I are re-watching this crazy show for that good, good Harold Parenthood face. You know what I'm talking about. How do you feel about From, Justin? It's so good, man.

I actually just, we stopped watching from midway through season three. And the only reason, the only reason is that it was a bad show and not worth watching. but it got it did that thing where it started popping back up in the and the algorithm and you start thinking uh-oh is there something in the air we're going to get another season of from and then you know there's nothing that makes a show more appealing to me than knowing there's more of it so it's like you know what we got it back in see what all the it is an absolute if you ever watched from or if you ever didn't watch from here's 30 seconds it's a town a village somewhere in a nowhere place where when you're driving through the woods, you accidentally teleport there and

you can't get out and everyone is stuck in the little village. And no one knows why they're there or how they got there. There's time travel. The wires are hooked up to appliances, but the other end doesn't go anywhere. They just like go into the walls. There's a woman that digs a hole so deep in her house that her house collapsed. It's nonsense. The biggest star on the show is Harold Perronaut from Lost. Do you think is it better experienced as a YouTube, like, best moments of From? Or do you actually have to watch it?

No, no, no, because it's like you have to get into the internal logic of it. Because if you take something out of context, you will watch and think, well, I'm sure that makes more sense in context. You need to earn, having watched all of from, you need to earn the right to with your chest, 10 toes, and say, this does not make any goddamn sense. And let me say,

into season three, it really picks up to what Andy's hair. Crimson Desert. Yeah, 100 hours in, both from and Crimson Desert, really pick up. No, the third season, if you ever watch from,

finish the third season, or it clarifies what is happening in From, the central mystery of From is revealed. It is unbelievably stupid, but it is there, and there's a whole other season that I have to reckon with it. It's a really wild show. Truly, the fact that this has gone on, it's one of those shows that I feel like I forgot to cancel. You know, like, I should have canceled it. Someone should have, but it's still going. I love it. I do appreciate you looking at and discovering more episodes and saying they didn't give up on it. Why should I?

Andy, there's not even a joke in what you're saying. It's a 100% like, hey, listen, if they're going to meet me halfway, I'll keep watching their stupid ass show. I'm pretty drunk anyway at that point. It's common courtesy. Yeah, it's like the dignity, they got me through a lot of nights with season one and season two. I owe them, you know what I mean? Sure, I've already paid my $7.99 for fucking MGM Plus. I swear to God.

That's not real. That's the only show on it, I think. Incredible. I'm so happy from Exist. Maybe I'll watch it. I literally took a year-long gap. Came back. Took a gap year from from.

Came back. I saw the world. You know, live some life. This next letter comes. from Bing, Bong, Bing, Bong, Eggsteam, and it is calling out the Baby Steps Developers React 7-minute Speed Run video, which is on IGN's YouTube page.

I don't even want to necessarily tell you what happens in this video, apart from saying Gabe Cazillo and Bennett Fadi, the two creators of Baby Steps, also the voice actors that appear throughout Baby Steps, do a seven-minute speed run, like, rewatch, like Dev's React rewatch video. and if you liked the tone and weirdness of Baby Steps as a project,

highly recommend you watching this Baby Steps Debs React because it is one of the best things I've seen in recent memory. It is so funny. It's so funny and so it's smart in the way that you, every 15 seconds you're like, is this smart or is this dumb? What high wire act are these brilliant people doing? It was great. What a masterpiece.

Highly recommend it. We'll drop it in the newsletter if you want to watch it. This next letter comes from Jack. I appreciate your commentary on Raccoin, a game I've been curious about for a while. I highly recommend you check out omelet you cook. It's the best thing I've seen come out in response to Blotro. It's incredibly silly, but serves a big challenge. You can make the most unappetizing omelet and get a ton of points for it. Plus, there's a real-time option for your turns, which I've never seen a rogue-like deck builder before,

and I really enjoyed it. And I appreciate that as option. So that's a good, I haven't heard of that game. That sounds like a video game. Yeah. Omlet you cook? Omelet you cook. How is it?

That sounds good. And no commas in there. So. Even better. Yeah. Sounds like a Justin game. Do we have any honorable mentions that people want to call out? Anything you've seen, anything you've watched.

Let me tell you what I've been doing lately. Listen, Windows, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 10 with security updates. I don't know if you knew this. But Windows 10, no longer getting security updates. There's a lot of hardware that will not run Windows 11 that will no longer get security updates. And I want to encourage you, my friend, if I could, to put Linux on it.

Oh, there we go. Say the word. Here's what I wanted to say. Say the word. Say the word. If you had a Kalshi bet. Listen, if you had a Kalshi bet about, first of all, I'm rich because I always bet on me bringing up Linux.

I'm just saying, if you, it doesn't have to be for, dorks. Like, I'm the only cool person over here in, like, the Linux world, and I really need more cool people to think about it. If you go, here's what I want you to do. Get a USB drive. Search for Linux Mint. Go there. Follow the instructions. Put Linux

on the thumb drive. Put that thumb drive into some old hardware. Load the BIOS. Load from that thumb drive. Install Linux. You got a whole new operating system. You don't like Linux Mint? Fuck you. Fine. Put a different Linux on top of it. Who cares? Put a bunch – you know what I did? I did one on

a really old laptop my kids had. And there's a distribution called Endless OS. It's a Linux distribution that is designed to impart work offline. So there's like 23 gigs of encyclopedias and information and coding tools and programming for kids and kids like games, stuff like that, which would be an amazing resource. And it runs great, even on old hardware that has been, you know, as part of planned obsolescence, It's sort of like made useless. A lot of these distributions,

the lightweight ones still run really easily on it. So experiment today. Go get Linux Mint. Put it on a thumb drive. Put that on some old hardware. Have fun. Do you remember when I was talking about how excited I was about Linux and you asked me what distribution I was on and I said Bazite and you made fun of me for 20 minutes?

Right. Yes. That's true. We're past that. Yeah. 20 minutes? Maybe not 20. Oh, to be a young man again.

I no longer have the Vim and Vigur. I have a couple that I wanted to call out. The first one is, and let me be very clear, this is not the new Mario movie, which I still haven't seen. I know you guys talked about it last week. I'm talking about the original Super Mario Brothers movie, but I have a caveat for you.

Watch that movie on mute. No audio. You can watch the subtitles if you want. I wouldn't recommend it. Watch it on mute. I think that movie as a just a visual storytelling medium when you're not listening to the pretty weak-ass script works way better just as like a experience the visuals of it than it does when you're listening to the actual narrative script. You got to find there's got to be an album. There's got to be an album or a podcast or something that would sink, sink up perfectly.

That is the dream. The reason I've discovered this is because my son was watching. on the airplane when we were on vacation and we didn't have headphones that would plug into the screen and he was like fine with it so you watch the whole thing on mute and I was just watching over your shoulder and he had a fucking blast and he's never seen the movie

I read some sort of like medical study about how you are more likely to emotionally connect with movies on airplanes because you're in this like very vulnerable place and that's why people cry at movies on airplanes or you can like find yourself watching over some screens

that was it that's probably why you like it so much. Oh, yeah, he was pretty wasted. Yeah, that's true. I mean, yeah, visually the movie, it looks so much like the running man and other 80s sci-fi movies. So, like, when we all watched it for work, it was like, man, if you just made the characters not named Mario and Luigi, like, this would just be an 80s action sci-fi movie.

And if you just remove the IP from it all, the set design is. crazy in that movie. Yeah. And the storytelling, like, you know what's going on in every single scene of the movie without knowing the actual words that are being said. You know what's going on? You just don't care what the next thing that happens is. It's just not good, yeah.

Just irrelevant to you in your life. The other thing I wanted to call out is a game called Shattered Pixel Dungeon on iOS. This game has been out for, like, several years, but I spent a lot of time playing slice and dice on my phone and fell kind of totally in love with it. great RPG with dice in it. And I was looking for games that were similar. And Shattered Pixel Dungeon is basically in the style of rogue or games of that spirit. But in my opinion, it has been, is much more welcoming to learning the mechanics.

I've never gotten into one of those games where you move and they move at the same time, whatever that, I guess it's the rogue genre. And this is the first time that I've had one kind of click for me a little bit. It's great on iOS. if you're playing on like steam, you would definitely need a mouse because it doesn't work great with a controller.

But on mobile devices with touch, it's perfect. And the sort of game, you look at the reviews, people have like thousands of hours logged in this game. It kind of scratches that finding of Isaac itch to some extent,

but again, it's turn-based, so it makes it really good to pick up and put down. So Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a title that I keep forgetting, but that is indeed the title of the game. Nice. Um, mine is exit eight the movie.

Are you all familiar with this? No. Yeah. I had a feeling you were Andy. I assume you played the game. I just know that it's like very backrooms adjacent. Yes, yes. So the way Exit the game works, which came out in 2023,

is you are in a Japanese subway station and you are hoping to get out. But you were caught in a lot. loop that is basically one big hallway. It's kind of like a Z shape, if you think about it. Like you turn left, you go down a hallway, you turn left again, and then suddenly you're looping. I was about to reference PT, but it's a game that literally no one can play right now and has been out for 10 years. So I don't know that I can reference Pt T.

It would be the more recognizable game at this point. Yes. So the way that you get out is as you go down this hallway, you look for anomalies. And if you see an anomaly, then that means that you should turn back. And if you go backwards, you basically reset the hallway, but you upgrade your number. So it's like, oh, you've gotten through this. Can you get through this eight times? Either recognizing anomalies or seeing that there are no anomalies, in which case, go forward and then go through the loop again.

The game is like four bucks. And it's a solid entry point into the whole backroom's phenomenon of these. like what if the very mundane parts of our world became horror in their mundanity? The movie is really interesting. I will not say it's great. It is, in fact, not great. It is good. But it is one of the most loyal adaptations of the experience of playing a video game.

Of like literally the source material to the point that it almost feels like somewhere between a movie and a let's play. of this game. It is not animated. It's shot in real life. But you are hopping basically into the shoes. The first five, ten minutes is first person of this character of why are they in this world? So like what are they going through emotionally where they need to process getting out of this spot? Yes.

It is like they are, I mean, this is not a spoiler. It is the very first thing you hear in the movie. their ex-girlfriend is pregnant and at the hospital. And it's like, is this guy ready to be a father, basically? Or is he going to be a kid forever? And over the course of his journey through the platform, he's going to learn about himself. What it does that's very clever is at a certain point,

you see that there are other perspectives to being in this hallway, much like there are different people playing the game, which I think is a reflection of if you watch this game on streams, you can watch people stream these sorts of games and there are people who are like, this is the scariest thing, I'm taking it very seriously, there are people who are playing it and laughing,

there are people who are playing it and not talking at all. It is weird how much the movie is a version of the game, and I've never seen anything quite like it. It's in theaters right now. I don't think like it's a must for the theater experience, but it's certainly not bad, and with a good crowd, I think you definitely would enjoy it.

Andy, you got anything? I've just been setting up the old A-Y-N-Thore, set that up over the weekend, downloaded some themes and some icons, and then I was like, I don't like this. So then I just started photoshopping a bunch of icons for myself. And, yeah, really digging it so far. I think I've played through the intro of Link to the Pass about 1,200 times. So I'm further than that again because I haven't beat the game since I was like a kid or whatever. So I'm through like the second dungeon on that.

That's a pretty cool video game, Link to the Past. Yeah, they figured that one out for you. I've been, oh gosh, in the off time, a lot of like marathon has been awesome. I've been one that I will always sing the praises of that I recommend is a super fun roguelight called The King is Watching. And it kind of like just came out of nowhere last year for me and I fell absolutely in love with it. And they've had like three major releases since then.

Oh yeah, I remember. I think we talked a little bit about this. This was the one where you have to like, the mouse cursor is determining, what's being productive at any given time. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. You essentially have like a five by five grid that is your kingdom that you're kind of putting up different things to produce, I don't know, logs or water or stone or whatever to make your castle stronger and defense better. And the king's gaze is like just a whatever you're focused on are the things that are working on the grid.

and you just kind of had to strategically click around there. And that's a game that has kind of been one that I revisit all of the time. It's not the best on Steam deck because it's definitely more of a mouse game, but I got it work into where the buttons, you know, I use my finger to just kind of like be the mouse cursor. What was that called again? The King is watching. Sounds cool.

It's really, really damn good. And it's one that I'm just like, I want this game to just keep on having updates because everyone they put out, they find a new way to kind of reinvent the loop and the gameplay of it while still being the king is watching. And it is just so much fun. I really, really dig it. Yeah. Cool.

Good lineup. I wanted to shout out the Patreon over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have two bonus episodes up for the month of April. I did want to call out the bracket episode that I don't think that we did last week and drop in a clip. It was one of our more fun. We've done a lot of fun ones, but this one was particularly fun. This was, if I recall, about

space jamming a franchise, which was quite enjoyable. Here is a clip from that episode. In addition to defense, and we're talking right now about basically any ghost Pokemon, but I'm going to go with Haunter, because he doesn't have feet, so there's really nothing to worry about

tripping on. Yeah. Pasimian is... He's a point of it. Guard. Passimian? Which, I mean, which Pokemon does the most pass? Or which basketball player does the most passing? I don't know much about

the different basketball positions, but it seems like Pasimian is, I mean. Chris Mullen. Who? The Chris Mullen of the team. Maybe if you guys could throw out famous players that have played these positions, then maybe that would help, because I don't know.

Who's like the best center ever? Best center, Dekhe Mottombo, is a big center? DeKame Mutumbo is, Awesome, man. I loved his video game. The old Spice one, do you guys play that? Yeah.

That's a good game. It's good. And if we're going to look at the tallest Pokemon, that would be Eternitus. He is 66 feet tall. Now, is that Eternomack, Eternitus? Everybody get up. It's time to slam now. No, that's standard.

Okay. And, yeah, we also have a new Resties. In addition, that's up, we talked about a very strange game called Robatu. What was it called? plant. Rubato. Rubato. Thank you.

About a frog. It is. Not about a frog. It is. Yeah, it is a platform that is not a platformer about halfway through. I don't know. It's a very different game than whatever you think it is.

Yes. Thank you to everyone who's been backing the Patreon. Thank you to new members. We greatly appreciate it. Here's some members that are currently joined. We have Kevin L. We have Eric A. We have Ben R.

And Moss L. Thank you for being members. We greatly appreciate you. We also greatly appreciate Mr. Andy Cortez for joining us and spending time with us. Of course. It's an honor. I've been fans for such a long time, and it's really cool to be on the show for the first time and experience it in its grandeur. Well, I sincerely hope it won't be the last.

But you know what it is. I'm telling you right now, it's the last. That's fair. Sorry, but. I veto it, you're back, baby Was it the Bible references? It was the Bible. The Bible did it for me.

Yeah, ecclesiastions. That's going to do it for us for this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time on the Besties because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!