The Besties - Silent Hill and the Heir to Castle Crashers' Crown

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

What if you combined the structure of Hades with the minute-to-minute gameplay of Castle Crashers? Absolum! The new game from the creators of Streets of Rage 4 is one of the best surprises in a year full of them. Plus, The Besties take a trip to 1960s Japan with Silent Hill f. It might not look like other entries in the series, but we explain why this is definitely a Silent Hill game. 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 would consider myself an egg expert. We've gone over this quite a number of times, and I've spent so much fucking time on one specific topic, and I don't have the answer for it. Okay. I have compared extra large eggs to large eggs in the supermarket repeatedly, and they look the fucking same to me. Okay.

Okay. If I'm a mistake. If I, you're mistaken the cover of the book for what's inside. Exactly. On those extra large eggs, the yolk is like three times as big fat yoke. It's like almost all yolk. And it's like a thick, hard gig. And it's dimpled in that way that you love.

And if you get the extra extra large, they kind of like quack at you. They're fuck what. Well, no, that's fucked up. If you're going to a grocery store that is selling you that, Chris, you need to report them to the food. I don't go to a grocery store to buy eggs. I go to the egg man. There's no. It's why.

Well, no, because now, hold on, there's like three layers to this thing now, because first I want to hear about who the egg man is, other than Dr. Robotnik, that you're going to and getting you special. Okay, okay. Can I just take it at fit? Can we maybe just not talk about a bunch of stupid shit? Take the question. Please, please. I want to get, go, no, you go ahead. Can we just talk about the question at face value?

Because Russ is right. Yeah. Like, there's two reasons you buy eggs. Okay. Recipe. Yeah. Breakfast. That's it, right?

You either get it for a recipe, you get it for a breakfast. Principal Prank. Principal Halloween prank. Okay. I'll grate you prank. Prank. Third reason to buy egg. Prank.

Yeah. In none of those scenarios, even in baking and cooking, it doesn't very, very rarely will say, don't get large eggs. Right. Get extra large eggs. If you ask someone, if they want eggs for breakfast, you would not say, would you like a large egg or an extra large egg? It's insane, right? So, like, why do you even need to make the distinction when you're shopping between the two? Yeah.

Well, we're talking about... It's like a declaration of power, right? You know, yeah. Oh, I'm the sort of person who can get extra large eggs. When you're, you know... I just want to milk you for a few more cents. I think that's right. That's why they do extra large milk, too.

More like a few more dollars in this economy. With eggs? Yeah. Especially? Yeah. Topic. So... So...

No one has any answer to my question. It's fucking horseship. It's a weight thing. They are... Oh, it's weight? It's by weight. By weight. It's by weight in a dozen.

So a denser egg will be an extra large egg? Yeah. They should go by density, not size. How thick is the chicken inside it? That dumb shit we said about yolks may have been right. It's not a volume thing. It's a density thing.

Yeah. The albumin can be more tightly sort of packed. Less porous. Yeah. Fuck. My world has changed. Yeah, man. You're about to go on a whole new layer

of your egg sandwich every single morning. still can't believe that's good for you journey and now you'll be able to tell the difference by eating them can i launch a new tier of the patreon just so i can have ostrich eggs every morning tier of the patreon because if so no no i think yes just so i can have ostrich eggs every morning that is my number one goal because i've seen them and man that is an ambition i want to crush oh dude climb that's the last mountain for you the last tower oh sorry step is dropping off my breakfast God, you've got to stop going to that guy, Chris. It's not good for your soul.

My name is Justin McRoy and out of the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy and I'm the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plant and Justin's going to act like I'm not going to ask what the glowing ass controller light is. I got it out of the... This is part of my decor. It's my... Part of my decor. Whoa.

I can see it. I found it at the Peddler's Mall for five bucks, dude. Fuck yeah, dude. Sick, right? Right? This is how... I'm... Hey, Russ, no, you wait one second. Yeah, go ahead.

I've been trying to get it to... I guess if I placed it right here, I could get it to read on camera, but I just don't want the glare. Okay, well, now you need to take another photo and put in the newslet. I'm sorry, who are you? You haven't said your name is Ross Fraswick. I know the best game of the week.

And anything visual we need to put in the newsletter, that's the rule. We had so many fucking comments about the bug last week. We'll get to them in the reader mail section. But anything visual needs to go in the newsletter, so you need to take a photo of your... Can I show you the other sign that I got then? Yeah, show me. Can I get the other sign? Just go ahead and do some talk about...

So, Justin... Okay, so this week, we know we said we were going to talk about Silent Hill. We are going to talk about Silent Hill F. We are going to talk about Silent Hill. In the B segment of this show, because another game scuddle along, out of nowhere that we are able to talk about this week that...

Like a house centerpiece. More energetic... Or like a house city... Or like a character in Silent Hill. Yes, exactly. We were a little bit more energized by it.

And that game is Absalom. A very, very cool roguelike beat-em-up RPG from the creators of Streets of Rage 4. And so we're going to talk about... Okay, so show us the other sign juice. We've vamped as hard as we could. This is the first one

that found at the Pedlar's Mall. This is a history of place it's a history of PlayStation it's every PlayStation short from PS1 to PS5 that's really cool man it's that cool that's cool right that's not the best and where does that real that is a visual version of we used to have jobs cash that was yeah for sure for sure where does that go Justin in your house where does that go I mean the arcade of his shot I hope oh yeah and lastly I have a dream that one day my parents understand that online games cannot be paused.

That's awesome, dude. It's a sign that says that. That's spectacular. You got to hang that sign up that says that and then start Airbnb in your place because I need someone to find that kind of while poking their head around in the house they're going to be sleeping in that night and understand what it means for that. We'll get it going to. Yeah, this goes in the art.

I'm going to, I need to get rid of this dumb sound baffling. I'm kidding myself. This doesn't do it anything. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then talk about Absalom. Absolutely. Had you all heard of this game before we got code for it? I've gotten emails about it, but I got to admit, just the title alone made me seemingly not really super care. And then at one point I read in one of the emails that said, hey, this is by the team that made Team NT Shredder's Revenge and a bunch of other incredible beat-em-ups.

But it's their original IP. I was like, oh, okay, I'm interested now. Yes. So it is made by Guard Crush, who worked on Streets Rage for Dot Emu, who, or Emu. I guess it's supposed to be like emu later. Yeah, I don't think it's like an emu like the bird. Maybe. And Super Monks and who want, do you all want me to set up what the game is?

I can do it. Okay, go for it, Russ. The structurally the game, I'm sure there's a narrative, but we're not going to focus on that right now. structurally the game is picture a Hades like, but instead of it being a top-down isometric like action kind of game, it's a beat-em-up in the style of X-Men arcade or Simpsons Arcade or T-MNT Shredder's Revenge, it's that. So you go out into the world, you do runs, you'll find currencies, you'll unlock new abilities, you're picking perks as you go through the runs,

and just progress in this world. Yeah, there's a lot of really good sort of of micro and macro progression hooks, like certain things are per run, like the rituals you find that give you special sort of abilities bound to your character's move set. Those are like per run. So you're trying to put together a synergistic sort of thing. Like, oh, this build, when I use my heavy attack, it puts the enemies in a bubble. And then when that bubble pops, because of this thing, it shoots out a wave and it increases how much water knocks people. You're trying to like put together a general strategy by enhancing yourself. But then there's, you go back to base and you can spend your currencies to, like, permanently add health to your pool or unlock new moves for

the characters. Yeah, I don't know. My short version is Hades plus Castle Crashers. That's a really fucking, pretty good, succinct version of it. Yeah. It seems very clear that Hades was a big inspiration specifically because not only the upgrade systems and all that stuff, but the idea that, like, you're building up this hub world that slowly gets filled with MPCs and the MPCs obviously have different, you know, reasons

to talk to them, upgrade reasons to talk to them, but also they're also delivering narrative and the story progresses as you go through it. So people who love these sorts of games, you just take a break. People who do not like these games come a little closer because you're probably thinking, hey, I can skip to the Silent Hill part of this episode. Usually what people don't like about these games is they're just super repetitive, right? Like you're just doing the same thing over and over and over a game. And this game has one of the most brilliant fixes for a major problem for a genre that I've ever seen. which is while you are going through these runs, not only are you incentivized to go through them over and over and again to learn story beats like you would in Hades. But then also your point A to point B branch, a variety of number ways, kind of FTL like, so you'll be seeing different spots.

And when you go to those spots, new events will happen that you don't expect. You'll discover new enemies. Maybe a new branch will appear. maybe a different character will materialize maybe an entire boss fight will happen so you are going through you're going from point A to point B over and over and over again but it feels different every time to the point that you were incentivized to do it and by a certain point you actually have quest where it's like hey on the next run I really want to make sure I stop by the waterfall before I get to the end because I want to accomplish something there it makes it feel like a game game and not an arcade game, which is, again, the forever problem. That is a huge distinction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? Juce, you and I had a chance to play it a bit yesterday co-op, which it does have two-player online

and local. Yeah. Online is pretty clever if we could talk about that in a bit. Yeah. You should probably describe, like, set it up. We played through a level of it. I guess we're pretty different level-wise, but it still felt pretty, you had a lot more health than me and you were able to stay alive a lot longer, but it still felt like we were both doing stuff. Yeah, it synchronizes, it doesn't synchronize your thing. It basically takes the world of the lower level player. And so the higher level player, like, they're not really completing quests or doing things along those lines, but like the currencies that you find and the things that you discover and unlock, those are progressive. So it's like you can play with another

player and not have one of you just not be progressing in some way, which is, I think, think kind of how these things usually go in online, you know, multiplayer beatem ups especially. It's just a very, very clever fix, I think. I will say, I'm sure that there gets to be more layers, but as you go on, but with the direct comparison to Hades, I do still feel like the one vestige of beat them ups that this has really like figured out a way to rethink is for me, just the moment to moment playing of it doesn't feel quite dynamic enough. You do have like a regular attack and kind of a special attack kind of thing and then like

a magic that you can build up. And there are as you like unlock abilities and stuff, there's like lots of ways that those can layer on top of each other in interesting ways. But a lot of the ways they layer on top of each other are interesting in sort of a meta way, but not necessarily like I just felt like the moment to moment playing of it. without the layering those things on top of it. Still a lot of time felt like I was just kind of pounding on the attack button and trying to hit as many people as possible,

which I understand is every video game ever made. But I got a little. Well, but not, right? The Hades comparison here is app because Hades doesn't really do that to you. Hades, when you start playing, you know, you're finding all the different, you know, divinities, like upgrades that you get. Like, there's a huge amount there for you. In this game, you start with virtually nothing.

And by going through the different routes, you are like unlocking new types of rituals and new, types of things because it does add those things but you do got to get there and considering it's a beat-em-up game that you want to be pretty fun right away yeah it's yeah it has also wants you to do stuff like dodge and and and incorporates more elements like that and where this is early on especially like there is a dodge but it's not something you necessarily are one you don't need to do that it's a beat-em-up like you don't need to do that a lot early on the progression group is very dead cells and for some people that is something they love and that is for me I think I have not liked in the past

I'm going to get to why I like it here but basically you have to unlock the fun of the game as you go along so hoops is right at the very beginning it's pretty straightforward as you unlock all these things you're getting all sorts of new abilities that make it uh I would say much more elaborate in terms of how your combat works but you have to get there I think it was a pure luck situation with my interest in this game that I got an incredible build within 15 minutes and you don't always get

an incredible build but the very first time through I had this build where my character was like Sison and Dicing and every move I did would throw a character into a bubble that would make them float across the screen and then they would splash against a wall

and burst onto somebody and then once they popped out of the bubble they caught on fire and when I ran around fire trailed me It was all of this great, like, incredible stuff. And I spoke with Fraschenized Buddy Gio at Polygon. And he playing this game, too, and was like, yeah, I played like five rounds before I got a single interesting skill.

Yeah. And it's like, it felt to me what, like, my first run that I did was with Griffin, pretty much, in online. And because he was more powerful, we were able to get a lot further into the run. I also just got a quick for that, just to, for that run, I got in a fucking insane build where I was spawning like infinite throwable daggers and then when Justin and I played yesterday, I got some real garbage in like all of my draws. And it was, we got significantly less far. Yeah. So I think turbo charging those early runs do really make a big difference because you get a lot more tools at your disposal much quicker than you would if you, yeah, kind of fumbled around for the first. I also wish they would funnel those a little bit more early on. like you would it would sort of like default to some sort of interesting build and then you would cut it because I didn't even really

understand I feel like a lot with the success of Hades specifically and I think this is a problem for a lot of video games but this model more than others I feel like so many devs are bringing so much of that game

into their games that they don't feel the need to explain it very much and that's tough because their Hades, you know, their power curves and their structures and their currencies and everything is, it's all just a little different. Right. And I feel like the first time I'm playing, I was still trying to understand the game and you're like, you're, the gust power of this clash is double this.

And it's like, I don't know, like, you're throwing so much at me. I'm not going to have any hope of building something else. And they try to accommodate for that. There's characters that you can meet in the hub world that will explain things if you go through the menus, but even still, like, there was a currency that I texted Frush after probably two hours of playing. I was like, I straight up do not know what this currency does. It's a huge upgrade mechanic that really opens the game up and you do not get access to it until you beat like the first huge wall of a boss who is a real piece of shit. But it's just sitting there

the whole time. I know. I do agree that the pacing stuff is bad. I think that the moment to moment gameplay is tight as fuck and i think it is like the most fun feeling beat him up that i can maybe ever remember playing when russ and i had our run where like my build really came together just juggling dudes in the air for like a 200 hit combo and going absolutely ham like it feels it feels fucking great and you are getting new stuff every run you are uh you know putting together a different build that, you know, if you get far enough, like, really feels kind of unique by the end of the run. Like, I really- It looks outrageous, too. It looks so good. It looks so fucking good. The best, like, generous is

the word that kept coming to mind when I was, like, looking at the animation. It's like, so many, like, really lavishly animated frames that are, like, everyone looks like a little painting. It's gorgeous. The first time you punch a guy. It's amazing. The first time you punch a guy and see his, like, hit animation, it's like, oh, damn, this is going to be. this is going to be a good one. It's kind of wild because Dot Emu in particular, they've made such a name out of these like IP-centric titles, Humante being probably the biggest one.

And this feels like just another level of quality layered on top of what they're already known for, which is kind of wild because they're known for some incredibly high-quality shit. And I was wondering, like, a lot of that is just like, hey, we don't have to adhere to the limitations that an IP might have. we don't have to give them a chunk of our end revenue like this is all on us and the other teams that are working on this and it just feels like they just took the governor off and went kind of wild with it the aesthetic is uh let me know if i'm wrong here but he man meets the adventure zone was what i kept thinking like i thought of y'all's there is a character that hugely resembles taco from the from the graphic novel the graphic novel i will say maybe carrie peaches design i will say maybe carrie peaches his work on the adventure zone i i don't know maybe it is somewhat uh i think i think it looks really terrific and the world is like really strange and kind of rich like the respawn loop happens because you guys are your characters are loops not that that would be no that would be too uh your characters

are like uh worshipers of this pregnant goddess who like grants you the gift of rebirth every time you die it's like it's wild and there's like a lot of story apparently they have already uh like licensed out doing an animated series based on it oh wow which i think could be i still don't understand sometimes some people start attacking you why but like there's humans sometimes who are like hey fuck these guys and then there's humans who are like hey come on into our tavern we're gonna it's always a craft shoes like look at this guy what his story is let's find out oh okay cool you're gonna sell me a potion i do love that using the 2D plane of like, oh, you are going always left to right.

It's a classic arcade game of the first world you're in is a feud between the humans and goblins, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And you will have these situations where you are literally just in the middle at the wrong time. You are moving to left to right. You're trying to get past a castle. The goblins come in from behind you.

And suddenly you're caught in the middle of a battle and you just have to take everyone out. and that feeling of it's just like the lightest bit of story but it's very cool but you're right there's a lot of times where you find a camp and it's like why are you giving me free beer i don't know what it is here i think it's important though that it is a light bit of story but you get it every run and it will things will happen where it's like if you go down the route that takes you to fight the goblin boss a bunch of times then the humans will be able to sort of regroup and build a bridge that you can then go on the next time you run but if you build that bridge now they're going to start kicking the goblin's asses

and like you're going to keep getting updates every time you go through the run like when you hit these certain hub spots like hey you fucked us over big time because now the C tribe is coming to beat the shit out of us it's it is not like rich sort of lengthy exposition and stuff like that but I think given the short run nature

of the of the game that kind of like peppered on storytelling I think goes a long way I just have one quick like small game design thing because I can't tell if I'm like in my own head on this, if this is even happening. There's something about the juggling that I love in this game and I don't know how they pull it off. So if you knock characters against a wall in this game, like you'll knock them, they'll hit the wall, they'll take some damage, they'll fly up into the air. The invisible wall feels like it is inconsistent in a really good way.

Like if you just hit the character- You want them to hit the wall. Yes, you want them to hit the wall. And it's like as long as you knock them a certain distance away from the character, an invisible wall will basically appear to, like, deal them damage. Bounce them out. And I don't know exactly how it's working, but it is so intuitive. Like, I very quickly realized, oh, this is how far I need to hit people to kind of smash them up into the air and do all this extra damage. The boss fights are also really great, which is not something I could say about a lot of beat-em-ups,

like a lot of beat-em-ups. You're just doing the same thing you're doing to, like, the standard grunts that come your way, but they have a million times where health. one, almost all the bosses have some sort of shield that you need to break with like enough pressure. And once you have done that, they will become like pretty comboable for a short amount of time. So like there's a rhythm to it of getting in there, dodging a few attacks, deflecting a few attacks, punishing a few attacks. There's like three different ways to like counter shit in this game. It's absurdly complex once you like start reading the tooltips of like

the different damage types that you can deal to enemies and how they like combo into your build. pressure versus launch versus break versus whatever and so yeah if you want to get crazy with it I would also add like I've been pretty intimidated by some of their games in the past like they I thought Streets of Rage

4 was that the one for yeah streets of rage 4 definitely got very difficult but what's cool about all of these games is that they have accessibility features in them so if you feel like you're struggling or whatever you can dial down like the amount of damage you take

amount of damage you're giving out just to like see more of the story and that could actually probably smooth over some of the rough edges you might have on the early runs. It also rewards you for being creative and how you handle things and well it's not cheating because it's what the game can do but this final boss of the first stage

is not easy and it wants you to learn how to do the dodge to do all these different things or you can do what I did which is you collected 16 axes over the course of your run, went into the boss, very pissed off at it, and just spammed it,

knocked him down. Just one shot. He didn't even have a chance. You can break it. It is hard, but it gets easier once you unlock more of those different types of rituals, but you can really break this thing right open.

You can really, really fuck it up in some pretty major ways. I'm crazy about it. I can't stop playing it. I'm excited for it to come out on Switch, so Henry and I can play it. He loves beat-em-ups, and this is a really fucking good one.

that is not, like, super gory or mature in a way that I think would be too much for him. Justin, did you run into any, like, lag issues or anything like that when you played? No, that's pretty smooth, wouldn't it, yeah, I could not. I don't have any problems. I mean, I'm farther away from Griffin, and I couldn't notice a thing. Like, it was like, it was also very streamlined, like, just like getting in. I didn't even, like, like, I just started the game and we were together playing in a lot of it. Like, it was no preamble or anything.

Yeah, yeah, having to, like, use the invite system or whatever it is. It reminded me more, you know, it felt like Castle Crashers in that sense. Like, it reminded me that XBLLA since, like, jump in, jump out. It was very streamlined in that sense. Yeah, yeah. Agreed. This is a, this is a top fiver for me, I think, of the year. You've been throwing those out a lot lately, Griff.

I feel like, you've been really cabalera. I've been pretty, I've been pretty good about it lately, actually. They've really thrown back the tapes. Those plot it's out a lot. Been a real plant over here. It's been a real fucking. bonkers year. It's been some good stuff.

Hey, who's ready for some Silent Hill? Me! Does F stand for 5? F stands for fun. Silent Hill Fun is the new Twisted... Silent Hill Fear.

Oh, I like fear. That's cool. But it's a lowercase fear. It's like a chill fear. Yeah. No, it's Silent Hill fuck. Silent Hill fuck. I asked Google, and Google, said it was forte like the like the musical like loud it's not even i think a loud of the silent hill games i think it is among the quieter well but compared to fortissimo or fortisissimo

that's true that's a fair point um who wants to set it up i mean plant this is your dream game here we have a what is it mid-60s japan game it's set in japan in a small village featuring classic horror tropes a silent hole game. Like this seems like right up Chris Plans Alley. Sure. Is it right up your alley, Chris? No, I mean, yes and no.

Sure. So yes, it doesn't look like your average Silent Hill game, but let me tell you it is because there is fog and there is a story about how terrible men are and how hard it is to be a woman

in modern society, which is a theme of Silent Hill games. You're a high schooler in this one. Am I even like just a kind of a full re-intro of what this game is? What do you want? Yeah, I think that would be good. I think it would be help. Yeah, so you are a high school student in 1960s, Japan, and as a young woman in this culture, in this small town, life is pretty hard.

Your dad is a tremendous asshole. It seems like a lot of things are going bad, but then they get worse when the fog comes and practically everybody in town disappears, except for your friends. But you know what is still around? Like flowers, like evil flowers, red, evil flowers. And monster mannequins that bend in all sorts of uncomfortable waves and often have knives. And it is your job to figure out what happened? Where did all the adults go? How do you protect your friends?

Spoilers. You don't because a lot of people die in this game. And it happens pretty early. And then you solve a lot of puzzles. So, yes, in theory, I should be really into this because I do like horror. I do love Japanese horror. Where I bounce off a little bit is it's kind of a puzzle game, my friends. And I always forget about that with this series until I start playing it.

And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this game's a puzzle game series. When you start the game, you pick your difficulty for combat and puzzles separately. The difficulties are story hard and then lost in the fog, I think, which is like super duper hard. It's like that tells you it's wrong even if you get it right. Right. It's really twisted. It's really fucked up. So it is structurally like Silent Hill where you are, usually you'll have some area-wide puzzle.

Like you're looking for the password for this door and you will find it in these different locations across this map and you will have to find them while you are pursued. by fog monsters timeless classic can't be that yeah i think this is the first one and uh simon hill fans can correct me if this is incorrect but i think this is the first one that only has melee combat yeah uh i don't know i think the first one maybe did this was definitely a talking point about this game is like we're going back to this kind of like feeling of powerlessness in tight quarters that is sort of a staple of older games you is hilarious because there is one thing this game is not about, and that is being powerless.

You are a cold-blooded killer. This is the single most powerful teenager to have ever walked the earth. She shadow dances between realms killing whatever gets in her way. Your dodge in this game is crazy. The Dodge is crazy. The Dodge was the most

confusing thing about the entire dance me literally. Like, I don't know why she's like, she's got several classes. P.E., she's got geometry and bayonetta. And those are the three classes she has. She has to, like, at school,

she studied bayonetta moves. You don't have to get hit if you don't want to, I guess. I mean, I don't know. What difficulty did you guys play at? I played on story combat hard puzzles. Oh, I did story, story just to see as much as I could.

I will say this is the entire reputation that this game. People are drawing fan fiction of this main character. as a, like, pure muscle beast, it is... Yeah, I'll tell you, here, to you give an example, it's the kind of thing where you can hold in left trigger to go into, like, a slow time focus mode,

and there's a frame signal that you see where you can combo this attack. If you hit the dodge, if you hit the counter at the right time, they try to do something interesting with it, which is that you have your health meter, which you know what that does, but then you also have a sanity meter, which I'm always excited to see one of those in a horror game because I think we're in for, you know, some, what was it? Sanities Requiem, Eternal Darkness shit. This doesn't really get into that quite as much, but you can use this focus power, which will slow down time just a little bit and let you spot those frames where you can counter a little bit easier. But if you get hit while you're doing that, then your max sanity will decrease. So it's like looping in that element into it as well. But it's just kind of weird because sometimes they'll

do an attack that's counterable and sometimes they'll do an attack that's not and you don't really realize that until yeah it doesn't feel good ever like there's i i have not had a fight that felt great in the game yet i am not excusing the combat i'm more saying this to put it on the side the combat is by far the least interesting part of the game it i don't know why it's there every time i was doing it i wanted to be doing something else it feels to me like Like the whole hook of this game is the story, the visuals of it, and in the puzzles. So just very quickly on the story and the visuals of it, not only is this game influenced by, you know, Japanese cinema and Japanese horror. The way it is like quite literally shot is stunning.

And there's a thing that happens in a lot of video games where it's like at most they figure out their camera. position and that's it. There are choices with where they place the camera here that are so interesting. There are entire sequences where you will only see a character's legs as if everything above that is missing, which one is kind of unsettling and horrific, but two is... It's muppet babies. I get it. It also gets the kind of... It's a nanny treatment. The leering nature of the game, it also gets, it's like you are kind of being infantalized. It's, it is, doing so much with its visual storytelling that the script isn't even there for. So I really appreciate it for that.

I am curious what people thought of the puzzles, because I'm just not a puzzle person. I've never really enjoyed the puzzles in any Silent Hill games, and this was sort of the, like, I don't get satisfaction out of it. It's just like, oh, I figured out the trick to flipping the things around or whatever it is. Yeah. And that's just par for the course for me. Not only Simon Hill, like Resident Evil, whenever they. did puzzles. It was like, oh, okay, I got to get through this before I can get to the name. We use

that term pretty liberally, because that term is sometimes used to describe, like, you have to go find the token for the machine at the hotel. And that's not really a puzzle so much. Maybe you have to decide, like, you have to read a poem and interpret it. It's really uneven. I think some of the puzzles in this game are pretty bad and are just designed to make you run around a scary area and get jumped by monsters a dozen times. And sometimes they're really fucking cool. Like, I really liked the scarecrow puzzle in this game that you hit sort of towards the end of

I don't know act three or something like that yeah it's like a long time that's a long time to get there absolutely it was really hard for me to shake the feeling why I'm playing this like last last week we talked about uh ghostyote and

ghostyote one of the things that as I've continued to play it is really cool is the way it is that used mechanics to like get across a story and they used game mechanics to like make you feel stuff narratively and I'm I'm always knocked out when that happens this feels to me like someone who is deeply inspired by the aesthetics of Japanese horror cinema but didn't necessarily have a lot of interesting ideas about how to make that a gameplay experience instead try to capture like the aesthetics of it to give you to

like the idea that the mom the the thing that is scary in this game or the elements that I have to overcome are just like the same mob type that is introduced early on is such a retrograde sort of way of approaching. It's a very like PS1 era idea of horror where like there is this type of bad guy and they're free roaming around this area and you go and attack them with your pipe. It's like you, I don't feel like a lot of thought has been given to the way you make the game feel interesting or like the sort of Japanese

horror cinema that you're trying to capture and instead it's just kind of like the aesthetics are doing a lot of the work and it's kind of laid over a formula that are like I mean feels very late 90s if anything it feels like it would have been supported more by like

way fewer but more deadly enemies in the way that like retro silent hill relied on like the pyramid head man or whatever and that was like a really scary moment but here you're constantly facing people and yeah you have like a lot of combat maneuvers but your weapons are all

they break after a certain amount of time you can dodge out of the way but you're not getting anything from killing anyone so there's really no reason to actually fight a lot of these people unless you're forced in like a boss fight or like a there's like you know blood gating stuff later on but the it just yeah

that's when it hit a point for me where I think that's about where I stopped where I was like, okay, I actually can't play more of the game until you force me to fight like two to three guys at once. It just feels like two different faces of like, I don't understand how these two merged because they feel like so dichotomous to one another. Did I make that word up?

I don't think so. I want to diametrically opposed. Yeah. I agree with what Chris said. Like there is so much this game is doing that I am fully fucking viking with. I was really excited when I started playing it because I think it starts really strong.

And the way that it kind of like introduces the creepy supernatural element into the world like it fucking hits and I was like hell yeah man this is going to be this is going to be a really scary game uh and I do think that they as much as they nail the fear with the aesthetics and the cinematography and the storytelling and the writing uh and the sound design Jesus Christ the sound of the monsters as they get close to you is of course good because that's what like Silent Hill sort of has to nail it is betrayed I think pretty completely by the actual playing of it. Because I

do think it makes the game less scary when combat isn't threatening so much as it is sort of tedious, which is not a good kind of fear, I don't think. I wasn't, yeah, and to be clear, like, I had it set on story difficulty

for the combat, and like, I was not dislike it. I mean, it was like, it felt kind of weird to be walking around with like 11, or, you know, 11 red pills and three bandages. is to heal myself with like I'm fully ready for whatever's happening I don't feel really under threat like it wasn't I wasn't hating it I just didn't like feel a lot in between those areas where I wasn't doing some sort of like puzzle thing yeah I think it will be a great game to

watch I am looking forward to watching the rest of the game I bet there's going to be a cut scene a two hour long cut scene super cut you'll be able to watch that'll be fucking really really I will say I skipped ahead and watched like some later game moments and there is one of the grisliest moments I've ever seen in a video game in this game. So if you're squeamish, maybe no. What it does with little worms that can come out of your skin is it'll stay in no more. Talk less, chef. Yeah. That's good.

We have some reader mail if we want to jump into that. We'd love to. First one comes from Kel. Justin's bug is a house centipede. I think we expected that. but I'm glad it was confirmed by many of our readers. I know they look scary, but they're actually nice friends to have around the house.

They are completely harmless to humans and eat bugs you don't want like roaches and even wasps. They use their long legs to capture prey in a technique called lassoing so that you can think of them as little cowboys. Does that help? I really do. Sure, I feel a lot better.

I saw one in my lobby a day later, so they might be invading. They're everywhere. But they're little cowboys now in my mind. Yeah, no, I like them. I like them. We got another letter. This one comes from Chris.

Thanks for the heads-up on Q-Up. That was the game, the coin-flipping game that Chris Plant mentioned. Hell yeah. There is another recent indie release that's all about coin-flipping, and I recommend it as a very simple clicker game. It's called Unfair Flips. The goal is to flip heads ten times in a row, if that's compelling to you.

I've actually seen some streamers playing that one, and I've put it on the list. And then this last letter comes from Sean. You all might be surprised to learn that not only is a frog fractions three, there is a frog fractions four. You're just saying it. There's also a frog factions five. Is there? And a frog fraction six.

You can just say whatever. You can just say whatever shit you want. You can just say anything. Do we know if she's true? I would know if Twain Beard had relates to frog factions four. I would know. Wow. Personally, yeah.

Bragg. Do we have any honorable mentions here? at the end of our program because I've been playing one that has really got stuck in my hit us. It was suggested to us last week in an email and I'd seen some

streamers playing it. Clover Pit. Clover Pit, the slot machine roguelike. And it is I mean it's got all this stuff. I feel like it is lazy perhaps to say like it does a lot of the roguelike stuff

that you would see in a a slay the spire or a luck be a landlord or a what's the one that came out that inscription merge maestro inscription absolutely it is set in a single room with a slot machine and an ATM in it and a little shop and you go and you play slots and then between rounds you go to the shop and you will purchase little upgrades and those upgrades will be things like now cherries when they spawn they'll be 20% likely to have a buff on them that permanently increases how much you get for cherries or a special ability that's whenever you press this button, it increases the odds that cherries are going to spawn in and you get both

those at the same time, and now you're building, you know, synergies and stuff like that. So as you're playing through these runs, you are getting ways to affect the rate at which the different symbols appear, how much money they give you, how much money you get from the different patterns you could get on the slot machine, trying to reach these deadlines in a certain number of spins and if you don't you die that's clover pit um and it's really very very good i got through it maybe not like the true true ending but i got through a couple of endings on it and have beaten uh quite a few runs i think i probably only played like eight or nine hours or so so i'm not sure how much staying power it's going to have but like i can't get enough of these

types of games and this one does some it's got a really good It really, at first, it feels like Cheetos. Like, it feels like, oh, this is just, this is dumb. I'm going to burn, like, I'm addicted, but it's going to last 30 minutes. Yeah. And what you really do is, like, it is actually a lot more nuanced and dynamic than it seems. Like, you really do have to have, like, it rewards a pretty active strategy for, like, how you, how you approach each run. And it's really dynamic.

Like, you'll end up with really interesting choices that make it a lot of fun. it's also got that like dopamine hit um yeah it feels really really good when the stars align and you get a run where you start getting that balatro like the machine is just making the same noise a hundred million times as your points reach into like exponential scientific notation like yeah it does that and it's it feels quite good to pull that off um yeah i wanted to clarify something i went to the hit polygon story about this question apparently Jim Crawford would

the creator frog fractions would classify frog fractions one as frog fractions frog fractions two as the search for frog fractions two glitter bit and grove

as frog fractions three and the the DLC for frog fractions hops iconic hat as frog fractions four so everyone's man okay if you want to listen if the creator of the game

says that wild stuff, then that's his... Okay, he's the boss. That's the truth. Hey, good, Jim. I love it. You're in charge. I have the entry point for our friend Russ Frustick into the world of mystery dungeon games. I think I found it.

That seems really unlikely. I'm excited to hear this too. I like a mystery dungeon game. It's called House of Necrosis, and it is Resident Evil One, the mystery dungeon game. To the point that I'm a little. worried about a lawsuit. Oh my God. Yeah, dudes.

Yeah, man. Yeah. But if you have ever been curious about the mystery dungeon genre, which is one of the earliest forms of kind of like a rogue game, this is it. This is, uh, it's something. If you also just like Resident Evil One and you miss that aesthetic, hop into this. And then don't even ask yourself, what is mystery dungeon? Just let yourself sink into it.

because it is both one of the most challenging genres and also one of the most rewarding if you are able to get past that barrier. It's got a demo on Steam. Yeah, that's got big demo energy. Is there more too, like the core gameplay of Mystery Dungeon has never appealed to me because it is that like turn-based rogue style gameplay?

It just hasn't clicked for me. Is there anything this game is doing apart from the art style to make it more approachable? It's doing that really well. The reason that I think you will eventually change your mind on all of this is because you love rogue designs other than

the moment to moment and these games do that top level oh I am great at this I am learning to get better yeah player empowerment me knowing this world yeah it does that very very well but I mean then again so does sheer in the wanderer the only

problem is you have to play like a hundred hours of those games before you understand how to play them yeah yeah interesting this looks cool it does look Cool. Justin, you got anything? I got in my RG 476H this week. Let's see if I can figure it out.

Okay, it's an Amber... Go for it. Let's do your best. Let's see what you got. RG is an Ambernik device. No, what does RG mean? I don't remember. Retro game.

It always means retro. But it usually means it's made by Ambernik, correct? It means retro game. But it also means that Amber Nick made it, yes. Correct. Okay. And then what are the other? numbers. 4-76H. Okay, so the 4-7 is the size of the screen, 4.7 inches. That's my man.

And the H is a horizontal form factor. Yeah, so that the six. And what? What's the six? Oh, there was a six. Sixth. Oh, uh, six model. Yes, it's of the sixth generation. Exactly right, man. You know what? It's all very logical once you take LST. This is just like, this is, this is very similar to something they released. Uh, a while back. the 477 but that is a same form factor but it has do you guys have a preference on stacked shoulder buttons or inline shoulder buttons I like stacked I like stack too stacked is like when you're holding like a PlayStation controller that where the control where the triggers are like behind one another so on a really thin device they have to be in line yeah right right so that's

that's the that's the trade off you're making right if you want the stacked then you you're going to have something that's a little less pocketable this is stacked compared to the 477 which is in line so I like that a little better it is a less powerful processor it's it's uh but it is capable of playing pretty much up through like PS2 at like regular emulation speed and it can play stuff uh all the older stuff with like shaders or what have you i think it's a great uh the screen is uh uh the great a great form factor for like playing older stuff. Is it like a budget?

Like a budget price? It's 150. So that's the thing, right? For 150 bucks, if you don't want to do a bunch of stuff beyond PlayStation, if you want to just do like PlayStation before, I would say this is a great place to start. This may be the new, like, best place to start. It's 150. It feels great.

It looks great. It's got this glass front. I think it's really slick. All the controls feel good. It feels a lot pricier than it is. I think it's a great place. If you just want something to play a bunch of older games on,

this is a great device. But you would say it's okay for PlayStation 2. You could, okay, so this is like hit or miss. For me personally, yeah.

I don't like to play stuff that is, I want to play stuff in the best form factor for it. Sure. And so I wouldn't play PS2 or PSP or Vita stuff on a four by three

or one by one device. Right. I only play it on like a widescreen. I guess what I would say is like there are are like cheaper device, like the brick and things like that that can handle PS1 and before pretty

handily, right? If you want, I mean, you're always talking about the metaphor here, right? So like with a brick, you don't have the thumbsticks. Oh, sure. So like, so for me, that limits the library a lot. And the screen's not as good. Like, 4.7 inch 4x3 screen is going to make,

like, your Game Boy, GBA, GBC, like, all those games are going to look amazing, like, better than you've ever seen them. Um, and I just think it's a really great stage for everything before that. Once you're into stuff where like, even PS2 games that weren't innately widescreen, a lot of them have widescreen hacks that have been developed by the community that are a lot of fun to play with if you're already going to have the juice to do it, right? Right. So for me, I, I would stick to widescreen devices if I'm going to be doing anything after, uh, uh, PlayStation.

That makes sense. Yeah. I think it's cool. It's a really cool. And for 150 bucks, I think it's a, and if that's where you're, interests are at I think it's a great like great advice midline yeah Russ did you go I didn't go I played a little bit of um super Mario yeah super Mario Galaxy 2 uh which we're going to talk more extensively on resties about uh but there is for the first time in like 15 years an official

playable version of Super Mario Galaxy 2 uh it just just starting that up and reminding myself like oh fuck this was like where they really took the limits off of their game design stuff that they introduced in the original Mario Galaxy which I think kind of takes some time get going

whereas this is like bam you're like fucking in it minute one so if you're looking for a fucking great 3D Mario game and you haven't played

Galaxy 2 because it kind of came at the end of the Wees life cycle yeah it's a good taking the

the limits off you'll also want to listen to that episode of Rasties because we're talking about Sonic Racing Cross Worlds let me tell these people took

the limits off. They did. Minecraft Steve is there. I mean, they're doing Hatsune Miku. They do whatever they want over at Sega, and I love it. I think we did it. I want to thank some members. Actually, before I think the members, even though I love them very much, I wanted to throw out we have a new episode of the

Bracket Battles series that we do. This one was most practical car in video games, not counting racing games. So there's not a lot of Honda Civics and things like that. but we had a lot of fun with this one. I will ask our great editor, Rachel, to drop a clip in here. We have the tram from Half-Life versus the Battlebust from Fortnite.

This is too funny not to record. Guys, I got to record this conversation. Okay, now I'm recording. Started. Let's go. Wait, really? Yeah, Griff, really. Let's go on.

Okay, so these are just, you know, we don't get to drive these in either the games. The beginning of each game is the tram and Half-Life and the Battlebus of Fortnite. Both games begin with both vehicles. But again, it's not about the games.

So what was I thinking? That's true. It's about what they would do for me in real life. A tram would do jack shit. Because I don't... And we're not doing the airboat from Half-Life. Because we're doing the tram.

Yeah. Okay. FF2 has a fucking kick-ass vehicle in it And we're picking the one that you start the game in It exists at the airport That you can ride at the ATL airport Here at the Kelly Blue Book We're excited to announce

2025's vehicle of the year is The Tomorrowland People mover A ride that can't even jet up 20 minutes away for. You could move the tram such that it would solve child transport issues for one location. Sure. Yeah, no. I get, yeah, that's cool. That's great. My kids are going to go to several schools, so like that's going to, I will age out of that at some point. We had a lot of fun. I think it's a great episode. I think it's some of our most, like, deranged logic. Just like really, really, really bad faith. We had a good time.

But really fun stuff. We have some members to thank as well over at the Patreon. We have Graham S. We have Brandon B. We have Joshua S. And we have the dankest mic. Thank you for being members of the besties Patreon. Thank you to everyone else who supported us.

We really appreciate it. And I think we can recap what games we talked about. We talked about Silent Hill F, Absalom, Clover Pit, queue up, unfair flips, house of necrosis, and Super Mario Gals. Galaxy 2, along with the Anbernik R.G. 476H. You can get links to all of those things and so much more. And photos of stuff that Hoops showed at one point in this show at the newsletter that is at besties.

What are we doing next week, guys? Next week we're playing ball pit, which has an X in there. There's an X in there. It seems wild to not include it. You know, but yeah, I think you pronounce it ball pit. And so that's happening next week. Might be some other stuff, but I think that's going to be the key focus there. All right.

Well, I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to spending that time with you, our beloved listeners. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!