The Besties - Silksong is an Exceptional Metroidvania (If You Endure its Challenges)

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

After years of anticipation, Hollow Knight: Silksong has arrived. And it’s difficult! The Besties talk about what makes the game so appealing, the early spike in difficulty, and the appeal of discovering small upgrades in an inhospitable (but beautiful) world.  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!

Justin, do you feel bad? Yes. Just in general. How did you know? It's a good guess, honestly. I'm going to talk a little bit about my Silk Song day, the day that Silk Song came out. Yeah. This is how the day went.

I woke up in the morning. I was like, I'm going to download Silk Song at 10 a.m. Eastern. Steam totally shit the bed and wouldn't let me buy it. And then I had to record with Chris Plant an episode of Resties. And then I got off of that and couldn't download it. and then my aftercare from my child fell through so I had to babysit my child it wasn't until hold on hey that's a tough that's we got to take a big stop right there my man because you actually can't babysit your child you can only parent them I think Russ was having

some Andrew Dice Clay style fun there guys I don't want to hang later on it too much okay he's the bad boy okay okay dice man keep going keep going keep going I just wanted to to make it explicitly clear for the listener that's on some introduce clay shit. It might help if and people don't get to hear it very often, but if you actually use your natural accent. Use a nasty voice.

If you're going to say nasty stuff, do a nasty voice. Hickory dickery doc. I had the babies at my child. Great. Now it makes sense. You know, in 2025, maybe that is edgy. You know, I don't know. We allowed to even say that anymore?

So we go through the whole process, and 8.30 rolls around and my child is sleeping in his bed. It's time. I've got, finally, I've been able to download Sok Song. Wow. It downloads to the Steam Deck. I'm ready to start playing.

I literally turn the lights off, put headphones on, and I'm going to, like, be in it. And I suddenly hear a click-a-click-click coming from my bathroom. And I go in there, and water is pouring out of my outlet. What? Which is not a good thing. That's crazy, because for me, for me, electricity comes out. Yeah.

This is literally, I'm not joking, 30 seconds into playing the game. I haven't even gotten to the intro cuts in it. Apparently, there was a pipe that broke several floors above me in my apartment building. Okay. And water was flowing down. Is it all the drilling? It's all the drilling that's been happening. Yes, part of the drilling.

We've heard the drilling before. Okay, so that happens. I call the downstairs, I call us talk to the super. We're figuring out what it is. You do let them know that it's Silk Song Day, right? I let them know. Yeah, okay.

I let them know. I mean, I sent them an email two weeks ago making sure they were aware and yet this still happened. It takes about an hour for things to calm down. Water is no longer pouring for my outlet. Hooray. And I'm able to play about

probably 30 minutes of that. Nice. I imagine him starting to play in like a rocking chair and he's like time to give. Well, actually, not what happened. His little sleeping cap falls over. So here's where I'm at. A little bubble comes out of his nose.

And then suddenly I get a notification on my phone. And someone has sent a Slack message to the besties. Now, I know if it's a Slack message, it must be important, work-related information. Oh, no. I just remembered. Okay. Now, as we all know, I'm not a big fan of spoilers. at 11.09 p.m. on that night, what is Justin's send?

Justin, you want to do it? I'd rather not. Okay, so Justin sent pro-tip. The yo-yo is O.P. once you get the chain. Listener, this is not a real... First of all, listener, you probably don't care about this as much as Russ Wood. That's so fucking fun. Now that you've told me contextualize it, that's actually one of the best jokes I ever did.

Oh, man. Russ, that story tells so much about you. I think the ending is the most demonstrative because it is so not a spoiler, and yet it is enough to really cap off your... I mean, it's literally not a spoiler because it was bullshit. Right.

But how would I know that? Right. So you were kind of like fading in and out of this gentle slumber. Yes. So I said a very snippy slack message to Justin's at 7 in the morning. Really good.

Well, not to Justin. I sent it broadly to the room. Yeah, sure, the group. Don't talk about silk song in here, and Justin admitted that he was baiting me. Yeah. So that was my Silk Song day. How was your guys day? Fun?

Yeah, pretty good, but we should probably talk about the game, too. Okay, fair enough. My name is Justin McRoy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McQuarray. I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best song of the week. My name is Russ Frustick. I know the best game of the week.

Hello and welcome to the Besties. A Besties episode long awaited, long anticipated. We are talking about Hollenite Silk Song. Chris Plant, I don't know if it even needs explanation. Are you fucking kidding? I'm not telling you jack shit. We've been talking about this game for years. It's a sequel to Hollow Night and it finally came out, but it's faster and harder.

Unless it's not harder and it's easier and it's better. Unless it's not better and the discourse is hot and fast. And we're going to get right to it after this. Wait, not after this break. Burr-Ber-Ber-Burt. Rust crush steak, please. Thank you. We have some news, actually.

before the, the ad rolls here, and this will be relevant because we are launching a new tier to our Patreon. What? Yeah. What's that even mean, Russ? I'm scared and pissed off.

But excited. We've been doing this Patreon for about a year and a half now. We love you guys. We really appreciate the support. It's awesome. At this point, there's probably... The vibes are great.

The vibes are so good. five-ish episodes. Way more than that. Way more than that. I think we're like, like, over like 60. Okay, maybe 60. Anyway, a shitload of bonus content that is only available to Patreon subscribers

is all there, so that's all great news. There's a bunch of the resties. There's our monthly besties bracket episodes. There's the resties. There's the Rusties, which is Russ's annual adult video award. He does. He does.

this quarterly, folks, you would think annual it would make sense, but he says there's just too much. This Rocky Sprocket needs some grease. No, we're trying to encourage people here, folks. We want people to do this thing. Ever since we launched, there's been a request and that request has been, can we get the main episodes, like the episode

you're listening to right now, add free, and now you can, because we are launching. We've launched, in theory, assuming everything goes well, we've launched a $10 tier that includes all of the bonus content you've currently been getting, as well, as all of the main feed episodes completely ad-free.

So that will be up now. Hopefully that is something you guys are interested in. I know a bunch of people have asked about it. It should be noted that we are once again just straight copying what Blank Check did on their Patreon because they seem to be good folks that know what they're doing. So that's what we've done here. And, yeah, so if that's of interest, I know for people that haven't subscribed yet or don't have an active subscription, there's a bit of a discount for.

signing up things like that so hop on over it's patreon.com slash the besties for all that cool stuff with the tier and that's it and we should make it clear if you don't want to do that you still can listen to the regular episodes with not going anywhere you'll still have the ad supported main feed episodes those are there or if you just want to stay at five dollars you'll just get the bonus content and the ad supported episodes of the main feed this is really just for people that either want to support us more or just want ad free main feed and they'll all be in you can actually choose they'll all be in one

giant feed with all the bonus in the regular episodes or you can separate them out if you want according to Patreon people that know more than me that's it let's take an ad break let's do it or not if you're a part of the new tier wow hey welcome

you're a chance to try it out so hollow night silk song is here the way is O'Ker. And it's, what do you guys think? How has it living up to your expectations?

How do we even tackle this? It's such a heavy thing. Yeah, it's tough. We should lay this out first. We are only talking up to a certain point in the game. Obviously, with Russ on the line, we're extremely cognizant about spoilers. And so we are not going to go too far past an area that's maybe like halfway through

act one, I think we can give town names. I don't think a town name is a... Well, I don't know, man. With you, it's always a moving target, dude. It would be a spoiler for me, but I think for most normal people, it wouldn't. Yeah, you set the boundaries fresh. Sure.

So there's a town called Bellhart, which is like a critical path town. It takes, I mean, depending on skill, probably seven or eight hours to reach. If you played a ton since launch, you've probably reached it already. So we were thinking everything before that we'll cover here. We won't be touching any late game stuff in this conversation, but obviously, anything before reaching Bella Hart is a fair game. So if you want to wait to listen to this until you've gotten to that point, feel free.

If you don't care, like most people, I'm sure, rock and roll. Can I kick things off with this? And it's the thing that I keep kind of coming back to, as I've played, I think I've put about 20 hours into the Silk Song at this point, is I had forgotten the thing that made Hollow Night so, special and so memorable which is this this sense of place and atmosphere and vibe that team cherry was able to sort of accomplish of being a little bug in a big sprawling bigger bug now was yeah bigger bug slightly bigger bug now uh in a threatening sprawling world that constantly scares and surprises

and overwhelms you. That vibe, like, the fact that they have been able to do that again, and I think much more even effectively than in Holo Night, is really above everything else. There's a lot about this game that is working for me so well. I have not felt so sort of like transported by a game in a very, very, very long time, if ever. Difficulty is like the big conversation about this game,

and it's always one that is so fraught and turns people into, I don't know, but holes sort of on either side of the conversation. But the way that this game makes you pay attention to everything and care about every hit you take and every jump you make because of that kind of like atmosphere that it surrounds you with is a feat, it is an accomplishment that I think cannot be, overstated.

The way it looks, especially now that you mentioned the bigger bug and like the animation, I kept trying to think of like, what is the vibe that is I'm connecting with here? It reminds me of like a lot of

the non-Disney animation of the 80s. Like Don Bluth stuff? Don Bluth, exactly. Like that, that, it's a very generous, like, lush kind of animation.

You know what I mean? Like, there's almost more frames than you need to like really bring across like the fluidity of it. Like, you feel that like sort of an almost sort of like painterly aspect to it like as you're as you're going through and so crazy varied too like beyond the point we're going to talk about today like

you will reach areas that don't look anything like places you have been before and all of a sudden it's like oh fuck like the rules are different here uh thing this is a this is I need to be on my fucking toes and that sense of like constant alertness that the game requires it it tales it feeds back into just the appreciation for the for the vibe and the environment. I mentioned earlier when I was playing I plugged in headphones. Did anyone else try

playing with headphones? No, I don't think so. I don't think I've ever played a game with better audio design than this fucking game. The audio design in this game is fucking through the roof insane. There's a moment very, very early on when you

are going through a cavern or whatever and you hear in the distance somehow it's a 2d fucking game and yet you hear it in the distance just the echoing of a song from someone that is singing beautiful chris and your footsteps are echoing on like the cave floor and you can hear just like the whispers of air sneaking through the cave and you get closer and closer this singing voice and you meet the person who turns out to be like your main map fender effectively. And that vibe is just like so precision tune in ways that I really can't think of a single like oral experience that I've ever had that is better than this game.

And it's holistic. Yes, it's incredible how well they do that. And they do that in a lot of other ways. There are lots of subtle audio cues. And then there are subtle visual cues. So, like, when you're meeting this character chakra, there are little items that serve no real purpose other than to cue you in to you are getting closer and closer to this person.

There are large objects in the environment that also cue you in that you are getting closer and closer to this person. It's so incredibly clever. I'm curious, point as someone who we've talked a lot about the fact that this genre does not click with you. Yeah. how you found this one in particular because in my experience in playing it

it does feel more directed although not extremely directed at all but more directed than Hollow Night was yes I'm so glad you asked because I bounced off Hollow Night and there are a few things that have changed one didn't just have a kid

let me tell you bad time to play a game where you need to remember an entire giant world is when you don't remember anything including your own name So that was a huge game changer. You write more directed from the drop. This game does a pretty clear job of confining you just enough that you feel like you know what you're doing before you get lost in its world. And most importantly, with that confinement, I feel like you have the opportunity to get the core parts of the mapping system.

Yeah. Before you get thrown out into the murkiness, which I did not feel. personally with with um hollow night maybe that is maybe i'm wrong i don't know you this game gives you the mapping stuff earlier way yeah way yes i also just found the combat very quickly to be much more exciting um and i again i don't remember much of hollow night or why i bounced off i remember being a little bit slower or um not muddier because it's not bad in that way but this reminds me of something closer to a platinum game honestly it feels like pretty intense action combat the amount of aerial work that I'm doing when I'm playing the game feels like the sort of thing I like doing in

action games and what's really really blown me away about this game as somebody who is less interested in the Metroidvania stuff is your move set is so small but it wants you to use every piece of it so like I pictured this game as oh I'm I'm going to do the normal, like, poke, poke, dodge. Like, that's the system here. That is not how the combat works. Like, it is, at least for me, I have been zipping through it and have maybe had to, like, retry a boss once or twice as long as I continue to play really aggressive.

And I'm, like, jumping, and I'm doing the dive poke, and I'm doing stab, stab, and then diving downward, actually, once you get the dash. Like, it's wild how much you benefit from just. using every little thing that it gives you it does so well at catering to different play styles and i think there's a lot to talk about there but i am curious to hear juice's thoughts about it because i don't know were you a big hollow night uh yeah i finished it i played all of it uh how is silk song treating you um yeah i don't know i i don't think i'm going to be able to to to hang with this one uh i really the um the i just found it pretty

frustrating. The boss, whatever, that I ran into, were, like, difficult, but, like, once you learn the patterns, you, like, it was a little bit more manageable. But I would, like, I just kept getting kids. I would need to pace myself a little bit too

much. There was, like, too much distance between the safe point and the boss that I was fighting. And I would, like, takes a little bit too long to get back to the guy. And I would, like, die and get hurt on the way back to him and just found it frustrating. It felt I think that it feels more, like, dark souls or like that level of like find the perfect route master the perfect way through

and like there's things like the uh the the little platforms that you have to jump at diagonally to like bounce to move off of yeah yeah so just that it just for just the question yes this you're right this is before the cutoff so is the is the thing that like destroyed you a little bit mentally was this chapel of the beast fight? I don't know if no. Is a big bug in a cave?

No, I beat him. A big bug in a cave? Big bug in a cave? Oh, a big bug in a cave? Hold on. You described them all. It wasn't even like, I mean the first

boss fight that I did, the Bell Beast was the first one that I like. And the Bell Beast is like, once you learn it, it feels a little slow but once you learn it, it's not that hard. Like you, once you learn

there's a pattern and once you get the pattern and once you realize like, oh, this is much more, this is really the kind of experience where, you know, if you look at other Metroidvania's or search action, thank you.

Those battles, the big fights in there are a lot more about like utilizing tools. A lot of times in there are about like pattern memorization. And there are some that are like on the harder end like Prince of Persia was a little bit. Not to this level.

I don't think at all. But for me, I kind of wanted to do more of the exploration, and I felt like so sort of hampered by how careful I had to be all the time that it made it, that sucks some of the fun out. Yeah, for what it's worth, I found the, it's, it's by no means an easy game. It is a hard game. I did find the early parts of the game to be some of the hardest. The hardest. Because you really don't have much of a kit at all. And that's just hardest, but like most unpleasant, like not most, least enjoyable, because before, you will, you can reach a point where it's like, okay, I've got some traversal upgrades, I know I can go back and maybe find this mask shard. And if I go into that fight and I have an extra mask, that's going to help me do that a lot.

But when you start the game, you don't. You only have this one, this one move set. It's basically Sekaro at the beginning of the game where you're like locked into a play style. I also have like 400 of the, I don't know. chits bucks rosary beads no no rosary

shards shards I got 400 shards I can't get any more of those there's a limit I can't get more I haven't got any

place to use them but there is a limit and then the rosary beads you lose those if you die you know and you don't get back to your

your thing but I was confused about that because it seems like there's a finite number of them right yeah so my

my interpretation Justin is you might feel like you're being more critical path than you actually are because really at this point where you're at there is a ton specifically involving like your a ton of aspects involving your actual like kit that you haven't found yet that you might think you have to take on these boss fights with what you have but yeah i don't know why i would get that impression it's probably from the

getting to them there's there's a uh item that you get that completely changes how your jump dive That makes it usable. And, like, those are the things that I think. Or, like, you don't have any tools. And we haven't actually talked about tools, but it's a big, like, mechanic. Let's come back to that. I do want to hear Griffin fresh. Like, you two are the ones who have been waiting a long time.

Where are you at on it? I'm through the roof in love with it. I've played about as much as Griffin has. and the things that I love about Metroidvania's search action games, sorry, are all here. It's just done at such a high level of quality and just variety. I'll talk about a couple of things that really stand out to me. I had just played Holo Night. I mentioned it on the episode last week.

I had just played through Hollow Night before this, and I was a little bit worried that I might be burnt out or something like that. but this game actually takes a lot of turns that Hollow Night never even approaches, one of which is, and we'll talk about it because it's before that cut off, there's something called crests. So crests are basically subclasses or even classes that you can find in the world. They're items that allow you to change your primary attack, the gear that you have equipped, how you interact with the world, what your downstab is like,

all sorts of aspects of the, like, way you actually fight, that felt like a total, like, shift from how they were approaching Holo Night, where Holo Night's combat point you kind of mentioned it was attack, attack, dash, or sometimes cast a spell. Like, that was really, there wasn't a lot to it.

Right. And here, you are given so many tools at your disposal to really transform the way you interact with this game that I was not expecting at all. in addition to all the other stuff that I love about Hollow Night, which is exploration and world design and audio design, et cetera. Yeah, it really didn't click for me until I found one of those because I fucking hated the diagonal down dash.

Like that Pogo mechanic is so integral to Holo Night and this game. And I was like, well, I've done it a million times and it still doesn't feel good. But finding one of those crest completely changes your move set. And also they are built for different play styles, which I think is the most brilliant thing. I found a few at this point, and the one that I keep coming back to is the crest of the Reaper. And what that does is after you heal, which you use some of your silk to heal, it puts you in this state where if you can hit enemies without getting hit, it will spawn extra little silk orbs in the environment. So it creates this play style where it's like, I'm going to heal, I'm going to use my moves.

As long as I don't get hit and I keep hitting the enemy, I can just keep this chain going of healing and powers and all this stuff. There's one where after you heal, it puts you into this rage state where you deal extra damage. But the move set is like really weird because your attacks are like really, really small. Also, there's like different tools that are kind of like the, what were they called in Hala Night? Not badges, but something like that. Oh, yeah, the perks basically. Yeah, where like there's different slots, different types of perks and each crest can equip a certain amount of those. And so like, I don't know, looking at other people.

talking about the game, it's interesting to see, like, how people are gravitating towards different play styles. As you find more move and abilities, specifically, the dash, like, that is where the game really took off for me. But I really did not have a good time with this game until I found that stuff. And I think that that is an evidence of, like, seven years of overtuning, perhaps, the game as evidenced by the fact that they are patching it to give you more rosaries and reduce the cost of unlocking checkpoints and making a few of their early game bosses a little bit easier because I that stuff is just that stuff is a pretty pretty solid wall I am I am well past that stuff now and I am really really really liking the game a lot I do think that there are a

couple elements still though that are just like too punishing not not hard like there's boss I have yet to face a boss that, you know, I felt like I can't beat this. But I have faced a boss where I'm like, this is a five minute fucking run back to this. There's a five minute run back to this boss and then I have to fight five waves of enemies and then I get a chance of the boss. Like, that sucks, man. Like, that's not, I'll just, I will leave and maybe I'll come back and do that later. But it really sucks to like put a bunch of work into clearing out an area, hit this point and then feel like, well, okay, this is not, this is a little bit too much for me. I have that for what it's worth and again having played hollow night just recently it actually helped

this i think i have a good sense now of like what a normal fight or a normal quote runback should be for them based on their design language and oftentimes if i feel like a fight is going on so long even though i know the pattern or whatever it is it usually means like it tells me at least i don't have the right kit for this i should just come back later when i have morkey or a damage increase or whatever it is. And that has actually helped me rather than like throwing myself again and again and again at a thing. I get that.

I get that. I, and I, I should be clear, like, I like hard games. I like that this game is, yeah, I like that this game is really challenging. There's an area, uh, pretty well past the point that we're supposed to talk about that. So I won't get too deep into it. But it's like, it's just a really, really, really, really hard challenge that you get a cool thing if you can do it. And I banged my head against it for two hours and I did it and it was fucking great. That's cool. What's not cool is like I have to, all of this work I have to do to go

through this area and then hit this boss and get my ass kicked. And then like instead of getting another shot at it, uh, I have to do a lot of busy work to, to get there. It doesn't feel, it feels like, uh, punishing in, in a bad way. And there's not a lot of that in the game, but I have hit a couple points of it. And it really. it is a pretty big kind of like, I don't know, momentum killer. Threading together what you and Frusher saying, for me, what I don't like about Metroidvania's in general, and especially bad ones, which I don't think this is, is I don't like the feeling of wasting my time. I don't like when a game feels like it's larger because it is having me backtrack. And it's the thing I don't like about some Souls games, too, for a different reason is the wasting my time of having to replay and regrind to make up for the time that I'm.

lost. And I think what you are talking about feels like a bit of both those things. That said, because I am so skeptical of the genre, I've had almost an identical experience to you, despite not knowing the language of this game, which is the second I go somewhere and I'm like, right away, I'm like, well, this is harder. This is more challenging than it was before. I turn around and I go a different direction because I'm like, I just, you know, want to fucking deal with it right now. And what is cool about the game is there are a lot of different directions to go. So, weirdly my...

Did you guys end up in Hunter's March? Did you guys make it to that old spot? It sounded like Justin did if he's bouncing off those... Did you hit Hunter's March juice? Yeah, yeah. Hunter's March is an area that you, no one has any right to go to early in the game, but you can get there pretty easily.

Yeah. And it is a point where it's so fucking brutal. It's so hard. The enemies are... I think that's where I am. probably, I guess. I don't know. It is an area that you can get to fairly early in the game where it just, the difficulty spike is insane. And there's not really a lot of signpost saying like, turn back, man,

like you're, you ain't ready for this shit, uh, where it's an area that is just nasty, full of traps and, and crazy fights. Uh, and I don't know, I, I, I, I am of two minds about it because it was so annoying, but I felt like, well, this is the way I'm supposed to go because it's a straight shot from the last boss that I fought. Uh, and I did end up sort of like making it pretty far into it before I realized like wait a second there's a lot of like platforming shit here that I'm not able to do so maybe I should turn back almost always there's it's so rare that maybe at the very very beginning of the game but otherwise it's so rare that there is just one path you have to go to yeah you don't have anything else to explore when I hit that

I hit that cap I was going to address what you mentioned earlier Justin I hit that cap that resource cap of the shards, whatever they're called, and I'm like, I'm fighting a boss, but I'm at this cap. This is weird to me. There's no reason I'd be running around with this much currency that I've been collecting and nowhere to use it. Right. So instead of fighting that boss, I was like, I'm just going to walk around and look in rooms and see what's there until I found a way to actually spend that stuff, which in turn gave me tools that made me more effective in combat, that made me better at exploring and that's kind of I mean I don't know it's a design language that it oftentimes is a little opaque you really have to be into this kind of game and you kind of have to meet it

its own kind of level and if it's not clicking for you I probably won't for me this I've talked for a long while about like what kind of games I'm into and what like checks my boxes from a game I this is this is doing it all for me like it's I think it's better than hollow night hollow night was easily one of my top five games of all time and I think it does everything in here apart from which I agree the intro is a little bit punishing yeah I want to I want to put a bone up because I know that we will probably be talking about it more at the end of the year and I also honestly just want to play more of it I am surprised how much I've enjoyed it, despite it not being the game that was at the top of my

two-wait list. I'm still waiting for Mother 3. It's got to come out. I've been talking with my buddy, Doug Bowser and Shigeru Miamoto, with our usual weekend lunches, and they keep saying, Chris, you just keep waiting, but I guess that this will hold me over for now. Do you want to talk about, speaking of, some other games that I will never play, and by that I mean Silk Song 3?

I would love to, after a quick break or not, depending again on the new tier thing. We are back and with Silk Song now available, now taken off of our fantasy dreams of the future. We have to move our hearts to something new, something fresh. So I thought we could talk about the games that we're really excited about coming out between now and the end of the year. And you might be thinking, Chris, this. seems like just an excuse for you to talk about Sonic Racing Crossworlds, to which I want to say, yes, it is. You don't need an excuse to talk about 30 minutes you need to talk about it. We don't have to

give you an excuse to talk about Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. So you're saying like 30 minutes is maybe too much. If you want to take 30 minutes to talk about Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, that's actually great. It's a crossword game, right? What if I told you, Sonic Racing is back? And you might be a little worried because it's not being made by Sumo Digital, the team that made the really good ones. But, you know who is making it? Team fucking Sonic. Sonic team is making the racing game now.

And you're thinking, yeah, but just more Sonic, don't worry. What if I told these SpongeBob was there? What if I told you Avatar and the Ninja Turtles are going to pop up in an absolute lot? Which avatar? They're doing Nickelodeon in with the Sonic? Of course they got Nickelodeon in it. Who else would you put in these games? Did you say multi-curses?

but if you want to talk about some if you want to talk about some other games I want to make sure that I give you all time to talk about those two but we can come back the outer worlds two is the true star field I'm going to say it because outer worlds two the benefits are one

no one is going to be confused and think you're talking about outer wilds that's because there's no outer wilds too very powerful second I feel like outer worlds one was so close so close to really great like the wheels fell off like for me halfway through it was halfway to being like truly great and I feel like obsidian is on a really solid run where they're figuring out ways to iterate things that Bethesda is still struggling to sort of figure out how to do with any sort of like soul or character and I feel like outer worlds too is going to be very good. That's where I'm at. It's crazy that they're releasing two large action RPGs in the same fucking year.

And they released that Honey Eye Shrek the kids. Oh yeah, and fucking grounded is really wild. What's the other, sorry, what's the, my brain is it? What's the other biggest obsidian? And Shrap and Slate? Avout. A fashion. Ash and that man, man, man, that was a real spate of those A-games all at once.

that didn't come out. I am nervously excited. I am tentatively excited for Pokemon Legends, Z to A. Mostly because Henry and I still play Scarlet and Violet. And so just the idea that I'll be able to play a different Pokemon game is an exciting notion to me. I can only square off against him in six-on-six battles with the same fucking team

and pretend like it is a thrilling melee so many times. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. I'm looking forward to see what they do on new hardware sort of natively because the last Pokemon game really was pushing at the seams of what the Switch could kind of do

and suffered dramatic. Is it native? I think it's on both. It is on both, yeah, I guess. But it's going to roll like dogs. Legends also felt like closer to what I want from a modern Pokemon game. When we played that last one,

that was the first time I felt like in a long time, oh, I'm... Yeah, it was cool. This feels made for me. It was cool. It's also returning to like my favorite generation

of Pokemon games that Pokemon X and Y, you know, early Nintendo 3DS era I thought was really, really good. So that's... I want to call out

Mina the Hollower, which is the Yacht Club game makers of Shovel Night. I just a few weeks ago finished Pipestrello and the cursed yo-yo which like awakened something in me for this era of game

and I just kind of want more of it and that game was so fucking good Did that keep evolving that Pipestrello? I liked it all right at the beginning but I don't know where it was going. Yeah I mean they kept adding like new movement and puzzle mechanics that like kept it very interesting throughout I think it was tenish hours.

I've been miserable this year. I feel like worse than any other year at finishing stuff. I feel like my ability to, like, actually see things through has been so bad this year. I feel like I keep jumping from thing to thing. Maybe that's a testament to the speed of releases. I don't feel like there have been a lot of dry spells, but... Yeah, they really haven't.

Even, you know, I think our driest spell has been this, you know, past month or so before, you know, before Silk Song. And even then, it was like, there's still stuff to play. The backlog for this year for me too is really quite brutal. It's been a really strong year. It's going to get even stronger when Kirby Airwriters comes out because that shit looks good as hell.

It doesn't have SpongeBob in it, unfortunately. We should also mention there's going to be a Nintendo Direct happening when this episode goes live. Obviously, we won't have seen it. So who fucking knows what's going to be in there? It does feel like they're missing. I mean, I guess Metroid theoretically is coming out this year.

It does feel like they're missing another holiday title at the moment. Yeah. So you might see something. Have you all heard about C-A-I-R-N? Yeah, so it's a mountain climbing game. And look, I just dropped two images in the besties slack. And I feel like these images are designed to get the juices tingling and a certain type of brain. I see a lot of TikToks about Cairns.

Oh, that's a different. Sorry, that's a different thing. My kids are always talking about Cairns. yeah yeah there's a haircut this screenshot the screenshot you sent me it's insane it's a backpack full of of pasta noodles it's yeah it's kind of like a resident evil style inventory thing but it looks like it's like physics space where you're kind of just making space for all of your items and then it is it's a climbing game it's all about just climbing mountainsides but taking try and try again to like find your path. It looks

to me like a return of the Strand game. And if we could get two Strand games in the same year, I'm just saying that's big. That's big news for the Strand genre. That is sharp. That is a hundred percent increase in strand games. Yeah. Who put

Ball X Pit on here? I put it on there. I think it's pronounced ball pit in the way that anime often adds like an X for no reason, like Spy Family. But it's just a breakout rogue-like Yeah, I've seen

some streamers playing it and it looks really I guess the demo is out and it looks really, really good. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that one. What, any other last ones? I mean, yeah, Prime 4

assuming it comes out this year. Did they say officially that it is coming out and they just haven't given a release date? I don't remember hearing a release date, but I'm also pretty dog shit at keeping track of that stuff. I think it might come. We might hear the release date on this new Nintendo director.

That seems right. Yeah, that is a cursory Google search does suggest that that is the, that is what's going to happen. The point. I'm also very excited about baby steps, which got delayed because they wanted to get out of the way of Soxong, but that comes out end of September. Did you see our friend Gio took a nice long walk with her friend Simone for that name?

No, I didn't see it. It's very charming. Yeah, Gio and Simone at Polygon went on a long walk with Bennett Fottie, the co-creator of this game, and it's just a great conversation about game design and walking that I really recommend. Lots of good stuff. Lots of good stuff. Do we have any questions from the mailbag? I think we do.

Let me pull us up really quick. This one is from Thrill Ho. Hey, besties. this question is partially inspired by Chris's excellent interview with the creative multi-hyphenate Claire Evans on post games but I think this is a better place to ask Any place to get a promo? I like mini-gamers

Anything to get a promo. Hey, hey I just, it was the first question I saw. I remember I was enjoying a Lipton iced tea on my Casper mattress and the question continues for a mere $5 a month you can subscribe to

Patreon, that's wild I can subscribe to save the Whistler? What? I, like many gamers, harbored dreams of making a video game despite knowing nothing about programming or what game development actually entails. It would be an utterly boneheaded thing for me to attempt, both because of my lack of knowledge and how very rare it is for a game to pay off. At the same time, I somehow managed to be a mildly successful writer, another career where the odds of success are dismal at best. It got me wondering, which is the more quixotic pursuit,

making a financially sexually successful video game I would say just sort of like with the recent spade of censorship on Steam making a sexful game is not going to be financially the most sort of sound decision making a financially successful video game

or writing a financially successful book they seem comparable but I would say I think writing the book is easier. Yeah, I've written books. It's hard. It takes a while, but, like, you don't,

like, you don't, I don't need any technical. It's just one person, generally. Yeah, you can just be the one person, you just write a whole dang book. And that's, that's cool,

but you have, there's so many other things you have to do to make a, to make a game. I don't know how to make a financially successful either one of them. I don't think,

yeah. But, I mean, the game does seem harder in general than the book so yeah i i i will say the books make money but then does anything make money is the big question so i you know what i would i'm going to flip this question and say uh make things uh because it's a great art and uh if you can't not worry about the money if you're doing it as a hobby part of it

i would just say make things if it brings joy to your life oh there you go that's good you want to put it into the world doesn't need to be art do what you feel That's a great point. Hey, I want to get into honorable mentions, and there's a request we've had from a listener about AR glasses and what we think of them. In hoops, I know that you've actually tried these things, so I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about it.

Yeah, I use a pair of X-Real. I've got to make sure I'm saying the right things because there's a lot of X-real glasses, the X-real ones. I believe that I don't know if I have this model I'm looking at here but they're by Xreal there's several different kinds these have there's the Xero 1 pros are the new the new latest and greatest I think those are 650

and I don't know what you're getting that's different with this let me tell you what these do all right let's tell what these and you will know if this use case will work for you or not but you got a pair of sunglasses that look like big thick black sunglasses they look they don't look like normal sunglasses but they don't look like a visor they look like there's a depth there's a depth to these glasses and they look kind of like stupid they look kind of stupid but not stupid in the way that like a visor would they look like stupid sunglasses and they connect via a USBC to whatever anything with a USBC outlet or a USBC video out

I guess I should say and they will play the video signal from that device and the sound from that device through like bone conduction speakers in this part right in the in the the ear part and then the

the glasses will project a large image in front of you that's tandem out to like a seven foot tall screen you can adjust the size in terms of inches you can make it big enough that you have to like look around to see all of it

you can also do if you're watching something it's in side-by-side 3D you can activate that as a mode if you like but mainly the use case is like if you are here's why I have found

them to be useful for me and why I end up using them a lot because if you travel a lot and you don't want like if you're trying to like watch something on a flight or you want to do something like that it is like just a fantastic experience

I mean you plug it in and you can do it with a steam deck you plug it into a steam deck and you're playing the latest and greatest video games on a gigantic screen is it two screens one for each eye what do you mean

like what are you seeing when you're looking at a you're looking at a stereoscopic you're looking at a 2D image is what you're looking at it is two dependent independent things, but you're like looking at a regular, it looks like you're looking at a big

floating TV screen in front of you. And if you move your head... But if you were to pull your, pull the glasses away from your face, you would see two screens on the inside? Yeah, sort of like how an Oculus, you know, Quest does it, I imagine. Okay. Yeah, got it. Same concept. It's boiled down to the very

smallest. You can push a button and, like, it'll turn into like pretty dark sunglasses so you can see in front of you, but they're pretty good at shutting the light out uh you know you don't have to use them in like a super dark environment um but like for you know if you end up watching a lot of like tv movies video games and like hotel rooms or or planes or taxis or whatever like we do uh they're it's pretty cool i don't know if you would

want to necessarily use them in a place where people you know might see you but like you know when you're on a plane or whatever you don't give a crap uh that's pretty pretty cool for that and gaming is a lot of fun I will say it feels like you are not you know there's that old David Lynch video where he talks about like if you watch a move on your phone you'll think you'll have seen the film but you won't have actually seen the film this does feel like in this one specific case when I plug these glasses in I do feel like I can watch a capital F film and also cheaper than the Applevision pro right like I mean yeah but like you are it is a

such a more, I mean, I will say this, that's probably what I would use the Applevision pro the most for anyway. I mean, if my history with VR is any example, I have, I'll say this to this. I have used these more than I have ever used any, like, cumulative hours spent. I have used these more than I've

ever used any VR helmet I've ever owned. So that, I mean, this is, this is the way this needs to go, right? This is much closer to the way things need to be, but yeah, they're cool. I have not tried the, like, best of the best higher-end ones, but the ones, I mean, the X-Real ones I used are good.

I enjoy them. I've been watching CASO, K-A-S-S-O. You all heard about this shit? It's a Japanese competition show. It's on YouTube. It's where I've been watching it. And it's basically skateboarding Ninja Warrior. It's long skateboard obstacle courses that,

incredibly talented skateboarders go through like one is just a crazy long winding rail that goes around and around and people take runs at it just to see how far they can go before they fall off and it beats ass because it's a lot of like really really really good skateboarders like busting up as people try to do these like ridiculous uh challenges it's it's taken way less seriously than a you know a saske or ninja warrior or or whatever it's just like Like, skaters cutting up and doing crazy stunts, and it is a good-ass time. It's K-A-S-S-O on YouTube. I love that.

I want to call out a video, speaking of YouTube, done by our friends over at Secret Base. It is about scurigami. Oh, yeah. If you're not familiar with scurigami, it is a concept that John Boyce invented. It's basically the idea that in football, when there's a score that has never happened, before in the history of the NFL, that's a scoreagami. So if no one's ever scored 21 to six, I'm sure that's happened a lot for argument's sake, that counts as a scoreagami. And so they're doing a video series about the concept of scoreagami, the history of it, why people

are so into it, the weird, esoteric moments throughout history, you don't need to care about football. God bless John Boy's for making me give a shit about sports that I otherwise would not give a shit about by focusing only on the weird, weird erata that I'm into. That whole channel has dynamite stuff in here that will really draw you into the weird esoteric sports stories

and this video just went up so it's definitely worth a watch. It's great. There's so much good stuff. What games do we talk about this week, Chris? Do you have anything before we? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's basically Halloween season

so all those throw out like a random recommendation. I think that everybody should watch Halloween 3 Season of the Witch. Heck yeah, man. It's basically Halloween 2 because Halloween 2 is a direct sequel to Halloween 1 and Halloween 3 is basically the exact opposite. They said, you know what, Halloween? It's just going to be this random series where we tell different stories and not all of them are about Michael Myers. And after this one, people got so mad that they didn't do it again, which is a shame because this movie is

a blast, and it is a great way to both start or stop your Halloween season, and you should check it out. It's also a great way to stop the Halloween franchise for four decades. Yes, that's true. Maybe you should release another one of those then. That might be a good

idea. Okay, what do we talk about this week? We talked about so much stuff. We talked about Hollow Night Silk Song. We talked about Metroid Prime 4 Baby Steps, Pokemon Legends, Z through A, Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, Ball, Pit, or X-Pitt, Karen, Mina the Hollow, were Kirby Airwriters, the Outer Worlds 2,

plus we talked about the X-Real 1 AR glasses, Koso, the YouTube TV show about skateboarding challenges, Halloween 3, Season of the Witch, and the Scorogami video, which will be linked, along with everything else, at best use.fan, a newsletter that you can subscribe to for free. There's also the Patreon over at Patreon.com slash the besties. I wanted to thank a few members. We have Alden. We have Tanner. We have Sarah.

And we have Triosaurus. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. Once again, we have that new tier. If you're interested in getting the main episodes, add free in addition to all the bonus episodes, the new tier is up. But if you want to just stay at $5, that's also fine. But you do you. Whatever is going to float your boat. we've got a new bracket episode up about

bathroom games if that's enticing to you we've also got a new besties episode up where we played some fun stuff and yeah what are we doing next week oh we're doing a grab bag next week we're doing so much stuff we're going to be getting back to some things that people have been asking us to check out like abiotic factor

and a bunch of other games that we talked about the new hot shots that new hot shots we talked a little bit about it on resties Have you played it yet, Griffin? Yeah, hell yeah. Okay, okay. Let's talk more about it.

It sounds like you had a more successful technical experience than some of that. Yeah, I want to talk about Lone Shark. I need to give that a try. There's so much stuff, so many games. That is going to do it for us for this week's episode of The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties.