The Besties - Splatoon Raiders Might be the Most Fun Switch 2 Game Yet

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

The guys are back again to talk about the magic and wonder of Splatoon Raiders, a game that finally made us all agree that Splatoon is really kinda awesome. We've also got some reader mail to dive into and whether we can actually find someone who inverts their horizontal axis. 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 think I have a pretty good case against Christopher Nolan and his cronies. Oh, boy. No, okay. Oh, boy. I was really, I was really waiting for you to weigh in on this for us. I can't wait to hear your thoughts, man. Those crumbums over at Warner Brothers, whoever made that movie, did something that is unforgivable, in my opinion.

Wow. All right, dude, I'm on my butt hole is clitched so tight in absolute terror right. now, but what is it? Somehow, and I don't know how they did it, they seem to have fully body scanned my nude body and put it in their film as the body of the Cyclops in the Odyssey. Because that's my I've seen enough of my body to know that's my body. God's Christ, sadly me too. Yeah. Can I tell you a fun story? And this is like, I don't know if you know this about our relationship, Russ. But yesterday I was I was upstairs. in my house and my phone was downstairs. And so I got a notification on my phone.

You got a text message from Russ Frustig, and it includes a photo. And I couldn't see the photo on my watch because my phone was downstairs. And like, I was scared, man. I was scared because what if it's like a picture of like your huge nasty toes that like a bee stung? Or what if it's like a picture of like some sort of goiter

that you've got? or it could be a screenshot of blueprints, like where you're at in the game. That is what it was this time. But it does make me think that maybe all of those pictures that I've been sending really out of the kindness of my heart to both you have somehow, and we're going to have to look at the bank records, vanished and arrived at Chrissy Nolan's doorstep and proof,

there's my naked body in the Odyssey. And they can take, I mean, technology is as such. is just so powerful these days that they can take photos of your gnarled puppies. Yes. Of your disgusting feet. And then it can extrapolate from there what a nude cyclops version of yourself would look like. What I'm trying to figure out is like, have you had Christopher Nolan over for dinner or anything lately? Because now that you mention it, I can see how he would be inspired.

Having been to your house, you do tend to just be exclusively in the nude. Yeah. You grab onto random anime. animals bite their heads off and kind of, why, you know, asking for a god to kill you. Yeah, it did come up. But I do want to say when he was here, I did mention that I know the difference between hay and sheep hair. Like, I made clear that I was like, by the way. You said, don't fuck me. I know the difference between these two. Don't embarrass me in film. Yeah. I know the difference between these two things. And I'm so method that there would be no way to

fake it, really. Right. Even modern technology couldn't allow. for my performance to imply that I wouldn't know the difference. So they had to go with someone else, is what you're saying. But clearly they didn't. Clearly they went with someone's face. That wasn't my face. Oh, I see.

Kind of like a Mark Hamill's face put on a younger body sort of thing. Right. Makes you so exhausted whenever I have Chris Nolan staying with me as a house guest. And I'm like, all right, Chris, I'm going to go take a shower.

I'll be in the shower for like the next 10 minutes, Chris, just so you know exactly where I'm going to be. And he's like, okay, okay. And I'm like, don't walk, don't come into the bathroom. Chris, Chris, Chris, what is that noise? That sounds like an IMAX camera. I know they're very loud. It sounds like it. It sounds like an IMAX camera in my, in my, I'm going to go use the toilet. Chris, Chris, please, man. Oops. Oh, I didn't know you were, yeah, you did, Christopher. I told you I was in here.

Don't, don't fucking, don't green screen me, dude. Boom. My name is Griffin McRoy, and I, I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plan. I feel pretty confident that I know the best game of the week. My name is Bustrushk. I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to The Bessies where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. And just by listening, you have become a member of the club called the Besties. This week, we are talking about a Switch to exclusive first party title from the Nintendo Entertainment Company. And it is called Splatoon Raiders. Chris, what the hell is that?

Splatoon is back, but you are mostly familiar with those multiplayer games. This time, they're back with a looter shooter of sorts. Not quite borderlands, not open world, more of one quest after another. And it's pretty delightful. Can we call schluter? Can we say schluter? We can call it a schluter. Splatoon Schluter.

No one's here to tell us not to call it a schluter. You, the listener, might be yelling that at your radio, but we can't hear you. So, Locked in. Let's take a brief break. And then we'll talk about Splatoon Raiders

and what makes it just such a delight. I think I have always been like, man, I really want to get into Spatoon, but I have no interest in playing PVP paint shooting. Yeah, it's been an interesting franchise for me. We're like, the aesthetic of it is off the chase, dude. Crazy.

I'm crazy about this aesthetic. These little squid kids and they're running around and you can, they're all about, you know, dressing up in their gear and their fashions and they live in, you know, kind of a sort of fish, fish world Shibuya sort of analog. Like Neo-Tokio kind of vibe with fish. Love it. Love the vibe. And just the feel of the game is great. The weapons, when they shoot their little ink out, that's great stuff, man. That was a really good. That was a really, really good sound of paint cover. Yeah, it was good. I didn't know. I had that in me. That was really exciting. But yeah, I find the sort of turf war model of ink as much of the stage as possible. I don't know.

It's hard to feel like you know how good a job you are doing. It's just stressful to me. I feel like I'm playing an RTS, which is not my genre at all. Yeah, interesting. And I've tried to do, and you've talked about this before. They've done non-P modes, like they had the salmon run, things like that. They had salmon run, and I forget which one. there was Splatoon's side order.

And then there was all like the single player campaign style things that they've had in, I think all the games at this point, which received, you know, varying degrees of attention and work that went into them. This is, I would say, by far the most sort of fleshed out single player focused with, you can also do multiplayer in it, like cooperative multiplayer. There is no PVP side of Splatoon Raiders. It is just you versus the salmonids, and you're going into missions and you're blasting a bunch of guys and you're collecting loot and you're upgrading your stuff between missions. That's pretty much the whole sort of setup.

Yeah. The way that you do these missions, too, is really clever because it avoids the looters shooter problem that I have in a lot of open world games where you do spend a lot of time just wandering between things to do. And I say that as somebody who generally likes open world games. here these missions are anywhere between like two to maybe six or seven minutes the longer ones, the multi-layer ones. Yeah.

And what they're doing with the design is each stage has either a unique kind of geography or it has a unique way that it hammers you with the enemies. So you might have a stage that is kind of like a mini level like you would have in a Mario game.

where you're going from point A to point B over a long area and you're shooting different types of enemies and you're doing a bit of platforming. And then you might have a stage that is kind of like a horde mode where you are doing three layers and you are just in the middle of a field and enemies are coming at you from different spots. And then you might have a stage that looks like a bowling alley almost.

And there's just waves and waves of enemies coming up from one end toward you. And what's really smart about this is, one, each just feels different. There's like actual design happening. Two, it gets you to learn the different enemy types and like what they specialize in. If you have a hundred of a UFO enemy that you have to kind of hop on top of using this special jump maneuver. You're going to have a different experience.

And three, it gets you to actually use all those different weapons from the multiplayer game, which I was very curious how they would figure out because the weapons in multiplayer are meant for covering the arena in paint. Like there's a paint roller that is not a great offensive weapon at times, but is really good for covering tons of the ground with paint. Here, it turns out, it's also really good against large hordes of weak enemies, but is quite poor against one really big enemy. So they designed it in a way that really uses every part of the Splatoon formula in a single player experience. Yeah, I'm pretty impressed by the structure of it, mostly because I never thought of Splatoon. as like a build crafting game. Again, I haven't gotten so deep in the multiplayer that maybe that gets introduced at some

point. But this is fully like, you know, in the ballpark of destiny where you have three classes, one of them is like a strategic like dropping bots and things like that. One of them's more like a tanky class and one of them's like a ranged class. So you have three classes driven by your backpack and each of those has special abilities that you can equip. And those special abilities can be customized with mods that. like increase the damage or the range or recharge time, things like that.

And so all of these things are combining to the point where you are fully customizing your capabilities at any given moment. And oftentimes you do have to make a new build if you're up against guys that you have to attack from the back. Otherwise, they won't take any damage. Like, you're constantly reevaluating things in a really cool way. And also, it gets very interesting. You're like leveling these different kind of class backpacks up between like the speed. one and the melee sort of close range one and the strategic one. And after a certain point, you will level them up to a point where you can start hybridizing them. I don't know if you guys

have gotten to that point yet, but once you've leveled up a pack to a certain point, you can start equipping gear from the other classes and make more of a more of a hybrid one, which I don't know, man, it's really cool. It's really, really cool. And you will find yourself like the loot you're finding in the levels, right? You're finding resources that you were using back at home base to usually like craft new upgrades for your gadgets or otherwise like upgrading your weapons a certain amount, just sort of like numeric statistical upgrades or like expanding parts of your base. That part of the game isn't like super fleshed out. I was a little disappointed in that. You have this like floating base and they've talked a lot about how you'll be

kind of like upgrading it as you go. And that's like a big focus. of the gear, but really like, I don't know, it's like five or six different facilities. And it's like, now you've unlocked weapon upgrading. Now you've unlocked gadget upgrading. And then you don't ever, like there is very, very, very little to the game in that. I like that there's a hub area that you can go back to and kind of fuck around in. And you can test out weapons. There's like a training course so you could like try out weapons, things like that.

But yeah, the like actual customization of the area, you're not like deciding what furniture shows up. Right. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I don't know that that game necessarily needs that, but it is, I really love this game. I love it a lot. I'm almost finished with it. Like, I've really been burning through it. And from what I understand, there is, like, a postgame sort of, like, mode that I'm, like, really excited to dig into because I've become, like, pretty, pretty diesel.

Like, I've found a weapon that is really, really insane. They have, like, different rarities. And once you get up into the higher rarities, then they start to have, like, special properties. So the one I have now has like a freeze debuff. Oh, cool. That it procks sometimes. But it also has like a burning debuff that it can prok also. And it's also just like ungodly strong.

I'm like automatically dropping down turrets and like vacuum blades and these like orbiting satellite ink blasters. Yeah. Like it's just like absolute nonstop chaos. And I'm excited to like maybe get to a part of the game that can be a little bit challenging again. Yeah. because I've, I don't know, for the past, I don't know, one-third of my time with the game, it has been a real cake walk. Is that even with like going back? Because you can replay old missions with the higher.

Yeah. So, yeah, there's different difficulty. So there's three difficulty settings to the game, which I do appreciate because it has made it more accessible to my son, Henry, who loves Splatoon. But for the same reasons, we kind of have outlined, like, never really got into the competitive side of it. gets like very stressed out by the like super duper tough like side order levels and and stuff like that. Uh, being able to have like an easier mode that you can turn into is good. But then also once you beat a mission, you can go back and play a spicy version of it that

spawns in like way harder enemies and gives you like way more loot. Um, so there really is like, there really is a lot to the game. Um, I, I would say the multiplayer aspect of it is, It kind of follows, I think, Nintendo's track record of not being so, so great, so like, fleshed out, especially compared to really any of its peers in this space. You can play with friends online, easy. You can play with friends local sort of local co-op easy. I don't think there's split screen. Well, we should clarify.

So it does not have split screen, you're right. And if you're doing local co-op, it needs to be two Nintendo switches with two copies. of the game. It does not support game share, which is a heartbreaker. Yeah, really a bummer. I kind of, I kind of get it because it's like, there's a lot of stuff going on screen and they would have to render a lot, but it's also like, that's also true of Pocopia, which does game share to a switch one.

Yeah. This technology is so dope. Like, it's really, really great when it works. And I think it's a huge sort of selling point of the hardware. And it just seems like such a huge missed opportunity to not have it. to not have it here. Definitely a disappointment. Also, the online multiplayer is, it is weird how they handle that, right?

You can play with friends, no problem. If you have, like, a bunch of friends who have the game, you're going to have a great time. For matchmaking purposes, there is a call for help setting that you can do almost sort of like monster hunter style where, like, you can press a button and then it will call for help. And then if there's other players who are like volunteering their help in like a, you know, waiting room lobby, then they can hop in. and you guys can do a mission together. But you, as someone volunteering, you don't have any input on, like, what you're going to do, what you're going to do, what you're going to do.

You do get rewards, though, if you help someone out. You do get rewards for going in for helping. But like, if I wanted to do, I don't know, it's a weird limitation of matchmaking, I think. I've not done a ton of the multiplayer because it doesn't feel very, like you have a ton of control. My understanding is if you're doing the, I want to help other people,

it will only give you the missions that you've done previously. Right. So that's a way to, again, not have people, like, see content that they haven't seen before. Right. But I like the fact that it's there because I've definitely used it. Like, when I go up on a hard mission and I'm struggling, I can call for help and we, like, fucking smoke the mission. I think it's also on a timer because they don't... A lot of the missions are on.

No, no, I mean, not all the missions are in time. When you call for help, if you try to call for help, like, in subsequent missions, there's a cool down on it. You can't constantly do it. There's also a weird thing where if you go in to help someone and you don't succeed on the mission, you don't get any loot at all. Whereas if you're just playing single player

and you try a mission and you get some cool stuff to drop, but you fail the mission, you get to keep that stuff. It's just, I don't know, man, it just seems weird. It just seems like a weird. Just let me pick a level and just say play online. Like, why all the rigamarole? I don't understand it. I want to run back to the,

hub world stuff really quick, just because this is my one big bummer of the game. The appeal for people who were not into the multiplayer side of a multiplayer game in Splatoon 1, 2, and 3 was the hub worlds, was these Neo-Tokios, was the fact that there were other players walking around and we were sharing like little bits of art and there were just a bunch of characters and it was very beautiful. Yeah. And this ship, I think I know what they're going. for and that they want it to be a more solitary, if not like, lonely experience, that you

are the only person. I mean, narratively, you're in the middle of the ocean, basically. Yes. And, like, you have, like, two buds, and then you have your little manoray or whatever who's hanging out with you. He's also a bud. He's also a bud. His name is big man, and my son is obsessed.

Yeah, mine too. But it's definitely a smaller. It is all just the one ship. And even as it grows, it just doesn't. feel nearly as extravagant as that stuff had in the past. The game is so much about style and like the clothes that you wear. And you just kind of unlock clothes here. Yeah, this was my biggest failing was the closed customization.

The clothes customization is also, yeah, it is weird. Because you get things basically as achievements, right? So it's like upgrade a level plus five for the first time. You get this outfit. You know, max out your friendship level with big man and you get this outfit. it. But there's not, you know, the way that Splatoon handles that stuff is like all the clothes have, you know, different properties, different upgrades, different things that they do for your character.

And that is not that it's just purely aesthetic. Which I would have been fine if it was purely aesthetic. But it's a huge downgrade from Splatoon 3 where if you look at the, like I am deeply motivated by character customization that's just cosmetic. And in Splatoon 3, you could change the goggles, the hat, the shirt, the pants, the shoes, every aspect was kind of bespoke. And here, you're basically locked into very simple outfits that have pallet swaps, and you do unlock a little bit more.

They have pallet swaps, but they are all, they almost all, with very few exceptions, do look like an ensemble that perhaps like a fly girl dancer on a living color. Like, it's pretty much all, it's pretty much all Bear Middra. And like Verets. Which my son is very pro bear midriff. Huge baggy pants. No, it's a dope. Look, look, just give me some fucking options, dude.

And the really sad thing is there are three outfits that I'm dying to use, but they are all locked behind the fucking amoeboes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm about to bust out the old flippers here because I cannot find it. I want those amibos. I just can't find them anywhere, as is always the case with amoeboes. A word of warning for anybody who is watching footage or gameplay of this game, the game's feel is infinitely better than it's...

So good. This is one of those games. I mentioned that kind of bowling alley level. There is this level where you're just going down a path and enemies are coming up at you up this hill. And the first time I played it, I had the wrong weapon a click. I had just like a little splatter gun. Completely underwhelmed or overwhelmed by the enemies. Next round, I put on that big paint roller and I just zip through it. I am literally just laying the paint down over these enemies. Feels so good. You describe it. It is tedious. You watch it. It's even more like what is going. on here, but when you play it and you feel that, oh, I figured it out that aha moment, and then you just start hopping these, it feels like bubble wrap going through these bad guys. It's scratching the like vampire survivor's itch of like, oh, you get that combo. Yes. Yeah, I mean, especially once you get strong, especially once you get these gadgets that can really put the work in sort of for you, it really does become just like enemies

exploding constantly dropping their big beautiful power eggs. Yeah. It looks great. It sounds amazing. Like, Chris is right. We have, I feel like spent a lot of time kind of registering our qualms with the game. For me, they are completely overshadowed by the fact that it's just fucking fun to play. It is so much fun to play. And all of my hangups with the game involve like, I don't know, I wish it could be fun to play like at the same time as like, like playing it with my son but that's not really doable unless we buy another switch i wish i wish it was quicker to you know pick play play online i wish i had a little bit more control over who i play with online uh there've there've been uh i was looking to see like what if i was missing something

uh with the online multiplayer and i found that uh you can punch in like a code almost like a dodo code in animal crossing where like if someone has this code they can find you so there are like people are trying to popularize the the codes that a lot of online players are using. So it's like there's no matchmaking in the game, but if you use JP 513 or whatever, that's not actually the real one, then that's actually where all the real players are.

I actually, I just want to grab Nintendo and shake them and be like, do you see what they're fucking do? Do you see what they're doing? Just put it in the game. This is relevant because I have a reader mail. We'll jump ahead very briefly to reader mail from Sammy writes folks playing Splatoon Raiders

set that multiplayer keyword to Besties. And you would be matched as simple as that. I guess it's simple as that. And then you'll be matched with Besties people. I'm certainly going to do that. Maybe you'll stumble upon me and my pals in the paint world. Before we wrap this section, I've been cooking up a hot take for you.

Oh, I can't we take it? Yeah, please. Might not be the flashiest, might not be the even best designed, but this is the most fun switch to exclusive that I've played yet. Even more than Donkey Kong. Even more than Mario Kart.

This is the one that, like, has really got me in the gut. I might agree with that, man. It's definitely down to Donkey Kong and this. And I would agree. It is close. I think Donkey Kong is a more interesting game overall to me. Yes. But from a minute to minute standpoint, this game is so much fucking fun.

I want to return to this, maybe even just next episode, once I've gotten to sort of, like, the post-game stuff, right? because I think that this genre for me kind of lives and dies by the length of its tail. And if, you know, it doesn't have a lot going on. If I just kind of finish the campaign and then that's it, that's fine. But like, I think this game has promised to be something more than that. I don't think it's going to be destiny. I'd like to do that because I'd like to talk a little bit more about multiplayer and about like the boss fights.

The boss fights are great. So I think, yeah, having a little bit more time with it in the next, whether that's next week or coming up would be a good idea. It's also worth considering that, like, of all of Nintendo's properties, Splatoon might be the most well supported in terms of post-release content. Yeah, that is true. Absolutely. They go generally like a full year, if not more of like, forget that just like, which do you like pizza or salad battles. They also, like, do actual, like, content drops and new levels and new stuff like that. So I definitely plan on keeping this install for a very long time.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm super optimistic. And I've heard really good things about the end game sort of mode. And so I'm eager to check that out as well. Yeah. But yeah, man, Splatoon Raiders. It's a good, it's a good freaking time, man.

Nintendo's putting out some good stuff. Just keep doing it. Everybody else is just collapsing. And Nintendo's like, I don't know, you want another great game? It's really wild, man. But it's also like, I mean, this year has been kind of weird for Nintendo. Like the games have been good like Pocopia and this, but it's like. Rhythm heaven.

Rhythm having. Yeah, sure. But there's not like a, you know, a Zelda or like there will be. There will be. Yeah. I mean, I guess. It's a remake, but yeah. It's still weird to me that that's coming out this year.

Oh, and Fire Emblem is closing in. That is so excited about FireRubm, man. Yeah, me too. I just want to give a number on that really quick. though. The new Tomodachi life has sold over 3.8 million units. So the weird thing about

Nintendo right now is even when they put out the weird small game, they're like blowing past everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. It also helps. It's like I get it. Yeah, Mario card will sell like 59. Some astounding number, but yeah. Well, it also helps that

title was Tomodachi was cross-generation. So it also came on on Switch 1, which definitely helps. on sales. Let's take a brief break and then Russ, I believe you want to... Yeah, I have no way to set this up, so we'll talk about it when we come back. Kick ass. All right, we'll be right back. I do want to start by talking about

the way, some of the changes that, like, I think we make to controllers by default, depending on like the genres and things that we play. Okay, so while I was playing Splatoon Raiders, the very first thing that I did, and I'm curious if you guys did the same, was I turned. turned off motion aiming. I know a lot of people like it, but I really don't because it makes me feel

like I'm constantly having to hold my hands steady. Do you guys turn that off? I pretty much exclusively play switch games in handheld mode. And it is for that reason I don't love it. Because I don't want to be moving the screen I'm looking at. I think that's a pretty reasonable thing.

I don't want to be moving the screen I'm looking at around. And it's selectively like I do. like it in a in like the um ocarina time major's mask 3DS remakes like you know lining up bow shots with like that level of detail like that's great i never liked it in splatoon in a competitive environment i just like couldn't get the feel for it but it does give you a huge advantage if you're using that but i sure i mean yeah using it but yeah it does i mean i think that the common sort of agreement is that it is the the more effective way of aiming and and stuff in that game

I tried it for a little while in this one, but I, yeah, I just doing the aiming and shooting and platforming on the controller that is attached to the screen I'm looking at was just not my favorite. Five hours of this game on a plane, and it would be unacceptable to have left that on the plane. You know, I think people would get pretty annoyed with me. The reason I mention it is because there are a couple things that I do to my control settings that are like pretty uniform across certain. genres. And the biggest one that jumps to mind that I don't think I've heard anyone ever do, but I kind of love it. If you're playing a side-scrolling Metroidvania search action game, which I do very frequently,

I remap the right bumper to attack, to main attack. So Castlevania or anything like that. Started like Dark Souls. Dark Souls style. The reason is, because a lot of these games have like jump attacking being a crucial element of it. Yes. And for me, doing a jump attack where I'm hitting A.

and then maybe X or whatever's on that left side doesn't feel as satisfying. It doesn't feel great as much as it does jump with my thumb and then use my index for attacking. So that is like something that I do for every search action game now and it's been a huge help. I did it for Mio,

for Silk Song, every search action game I do that. And it is inspired by DarkSoults, really. It makes sense to me. I don't know that I do it necessarily for that genre, but any game where, you know, jumping is. a heavy concern and also you're going to be attacking a lot. I don't want to be using the same thumb to do that stuff. I think that makes sense. And ditto for like dodging. I almost always try to put

dodge on a trigger like in Hades or anything like that because I don't want to have to move my thumb from attacking to dodge and back again. Yeah, sure. So I think the craziest I ever got was when I was playing destiny. I definitely reached a kind of cap on what I was able to do on controller. Um, and I I have the, you know, the Xbox elite controller that has the back paddles on it. And I read a lot of people saying like, you know, bind jump to one of those. And then now all of a sudden you can move with the left stick, aim with the right stick, and be jumping at the same time as opposed to moving with the left stick and then moving your thumb between jumping and aim. Basically, bumper jumper, right?

Bumper jumper, right? Yeah, I mean, kind of. Bumper jumper. Technically, I think you're supposed to use the actual shoulder. Shoulder buttons is the historical usage of that phrase. They didn't have as many buttons back then, so they had to do. But I went Buck Wild, and I put, like, reload back there, and I put Switch weapon back there. And now all of a sudden, like, I don't have to hit the face buttons, really at all.

I bound all of them to the back paddles. And it made, it truly made a huge difference specifically for the PVP side of the game. We're, like, jumping and moving and aiming, you know, all at the same time is pretty imperative. And I think I did that for, I did that for a long, long time. I played that way for a long, long time until I realized, like, I should finally just bite the bullet and learn mouse and keyboard. So I did eventually switch over to doing mouse and keyboard for that. And I tend to do that now for shooters. Destiny was Destiny and Sea of Thieves.

I was playing Sea of Thieves with some people who gave me a hard time for being on controller. And I did find, yeah, actually being on mouse and keyboard does make an enormous difference for that game. I'll tell you another big one for me is any open world survival craft game like a you know like a rust or anything along those lines where Valheim or Enshrouted or Dragon Wilds or like any

of those power world anything where you're running around and picking up a bunch of shit off the ground I do not want to do that like with my thumb that I have to also aim with if I'm using a controller I will always put that on a shoulder button or a back paddle button because it's just a thing you're going to be doing a million billion times. And so I just, I don't know.

Assassin's Creed actually has a setting in accessibility where you can mass pick up every item in your area with one button press, which is like, fucking bring it. I object that in my veins. That was especially helpful during the Far Cry era where you would have to go through an individual animation for every pickup. And it was like, just let me have the things. I think Horizon introduced a skill unlock where it's like fast pickup and now you just don't have the animation.

It's like, go fuck yourself. Just give us the good stuff. Plan, I know you're an inverter, but beyond that, I don't know if they're- No, I'm not. Oh, you trained yourself out of it. I untrained myself after having my son. Yeah, I realized after handing him the controller and realizing I don't want to. You can't spread that trauma to another generation.

Yes, and it really is about a year of- being completely confused. And the most confounding thing now is when I will start a game like Ace Combat or something that has the natural inversion. So it's just there from the beginning and my brain's like, what's happened?

It kind of makes sense with planes. It's familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. With plane games, it kind of makes sense. Like it's supposed to be like a flight yoke. Yeah, but it's like I kind of can't even go back to that now because my brain it will disorient me for,

this sounds ridiculous, but for a half hour. Yeah. If I play it, because then my brain is trying to remember which version of the me I should do. I have done a lot more of what Griffin has said about the Xbox Elite controller,

but I use that for things like screen capture or video capture, being able to have those extra buttons that allow you to do those things that, again, previously you were limited to your keyboard, like hitting, I think it's F-12 or something for Steam, is great. I guess there was actually, like, a way to capture screenshots on some consoles,

but now it seems so much more difficult to do with, like, the Xbox controller and Xbox console specifically. No, you can still do it. There's a button dedicated for it, a share button. Is it? If you press it, you put the... You just press the button in it screenshots or you hold it down for a video.

It's easier just to just tap that little back. of the controller feel so good. I know. It does feel good. Yeah, I don't think I do any other weird shit other than that. I think that the rise of back paddles on controllers, the, like, I don't know, I feel like those have become so ubiquitous is really just such a, I mean, an accessibility victory and also like a customization sort of victory as well.

Griffin, there is one version of weird shit that you do, which is you do play one video game with three people spreading the controller out. Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, we do six thumbs, one heart. We're doing Dark Souls now, which has required us to play with mouse and keyboard, because there's not a great way of doing that with, like, you know, splitting up an actual physical controller

over three sort of different, different sort of users. And, man, playing Dark Souls on Mouse and Keyboard is a trip, y'all. I would not recommend it. It's crazy, dude. would not do not recommend did either of you ever do the thing of playing a game with the guitar hero controller or like the DDR controller

I would watch those videos it's very impressive but I you know I got time I got things to do right I do want to know if anyone has any listeners have like things that they do on the regular for certain games or genres or anything let us know I've definitely been making more like custom

steam controller profiles like I set something up for escape from Duckoff, which is a keyboard and mouse-only game, a parody of escape from Tarkov, that allows me to play on a controller. So, like, I use those Steam custom controller layouts all the time. They're great. I usually just grab them.

Also, there's anyone listening to the show who inverts horizontal? Please let us know. Oh, that's a great question. Tell us about that experience. Because it's always there. It's there. You always have the option for invert horizontal, and I've never met anyone that does that.

So please, yeah, show. Share the knowledge. I'm very curious. Yeah. We have some reader mail. We mentioned the one from Sammy regarding the besties keyword for Spletoon Raiders.

I haven't even messed with the keyword option, but that's cool that it's there. This next letter comes from Winky. What EQ server are folks on anyone down to spend three hours making their UI and key bindings functional tonight? Okay.

I'm on, I believe it's pronounced Quinos or Canos. Q, E, Y, and EOS. Which, from what I understand is the Pacific time sort of server, whereas Freeport is the Eastern Time. Despite that, like, I don't know, the people I know who play the game started on Canos, and I wanted to be.

Okay, so Griffin, the other day, I was like, Griffin seems really hot in this EverQuest Legends thing. Like, maybe it's something that I should check out. Ooh, I can't wait to hear the next sense. And I went to EverQuest Legends.com, and I was like, let me take a look at some of these screenshots here. just see if it's my kind of joke. And it looks fucking great.

You're right. Yeah, no, I agree. It looks amazing. I mean, I'm sure it's very, very faithful to the, but holy cow, is it faithful to the original? It is. I mean, if you can't rock with that, that's a, that's a you problem. That's a, that's a personal failing. I'm obsessed with the aesthetic of EverQuest.

It's very charming. The website itself also appears to a transcendent time and space. Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely, it's definitely a relic. Props to them. That dragon made of 16 polygons is just like multi-bene. So good. Oh, we have another letter.

This one comes from Matthew. It's worth noting that the devs of TR49 explicitly cited TypeHelp, an early version of Gallery House, as an inspiration. So it's funny to hear that Galley House was now being compared to TR49. So that's cool. All of these games are like doing like early releases on HIO, which is cool to see. It's like continues to be a really cool testing ground and eventually just just an alternative release platform than Steam on PC for making like cool ass shit.

Yeah. Last letter comes from Andrew. Sorry to be contrarian, if anything, I feel more vehemently anti-Microsoft right now than the show. But will this same sentiment regarding Microsoft apply to the pending Okorino remake that is basically Nintendo reheating the old hits of this? year with Star Fox and Okina of Time.

Is it just the layoffs that make this bad, or is it otherwise like a fine? I mean, I thought the game was fine, but I guess we're kind of exploring. I am happy to take this one. Yeah, go for it. I think it really depends on what the Ocarina remake looks like. We talked about this a little bit with the Halo remake remastery thing, but there is a huge gap between this Halo remake and what Capcom is doing with its rematch. makes.

Yeah. Right. Like, yeah. Those are very original experiences, very much inspired by the original

games, but going on and doing their own thing. And there's a difference in terms of quality. There's a difference in terms of ambition. And I,

we'll see with basically what Nintendo does. Are they getting to kind of the Star Fox thing, where it's really similar, but very beautiful and an emphasis

on the spectacle, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the game design a little bit here because the game design of Ocarina is fantastic, but very of its time. Yeah. There's a lot of opportunity there, and I think expectations are different for that sort of a game. So it's tough to say what it is, but I think the Halo thing was specifically tough. And I know that I saw some comments too where people wish we had talked even more about

the game, but there really isn't that much more to say about the game than what we said, which is, it's very, very similar to the original thing, except they have made some areas that were too dull and repetitive. They've simplified them, and they have given you more either weapons or, you know, kind of like buffs to make it easier to get through, and it looks pretty. But otherwise, it's the game.

Like, they remade the game. And I think that is where kind of our, again, like you said, Fresh, it's not a bad game. It's just, it's a fine game that also represents a kind of commitment to that, to kind of averagedness, to not, you know, offend anyone. It would be really hard for me to recommend that game to anyone that isn't just a hardcore. I remember playing the original Halo on Xbox, and I want to replay it again with my friends in the best possible graphics. Like anyone knew, I would never recommend that game. I'd recommend Halo Infinite, certainly, before I'd recommend that.

and we've seen a number of remakes recently, like the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake, that's a game that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of you, if you know anything about Assassin's Creed, because in addition to the remake being good, the game itself feels like a modern game. It's also a thing like, one,

remakes are not inherently, like, creatively bankrupt. Sure. It's a, there's so many different ways of doing it, so many different, like, it's such a sliding scale of how much has been fixed, how much new stuff has been added, how much has been preserved, right? I think Halo does an okay job with that.

But you also look at like the legacy of the of the franchise itself. And I think that they've, the Zelda games that have come out in the last decade have been fucking incredible. And so they want to return to Ocaryana of Time. Like, cool, that's one of my favorite games ever made. I, you know, I hope that they put a lot of care into it. I really liked the Grezo remakes of the N64 era games for, for the 3DX. but also like has Halo Has Microsoft been as good of a steward of Halo

in the last 10 years? I don't fucking think so I don't think it's even remotely comparable. Like it's, I think these are two like wildly different situations. And I think you also just need to look at the release cadence, the overall context of if you're comparing Microsoft and Nintendo, because Nintendo is still like we've talked about a bunch of them, putting out unique, interesting titles.

this year that are exclusive to the platform and we're just not seeing that. I know there are a number of titles in the works from Microsoft, but a number of those titles also got canceled or shifted out because those studios are now independent. So it's just, I think, in a very different place,

those two companies where Nintendo feels very confident and is willing to take risks outside of its remakes, whereas Microsoft feels like it is shifted into a very safe place. Yeah, and I just, we can't, I think it's unreasonable. to like think about these things in a vacuum. I truly because you know,

Nintendo is certainly not faultless as a as a company, but they they have not been acquiring talent, acquiring studios at breakneck pace and then fucking shuddering them or or failing them in a way that leads to their, their erasure from the timeline. And it's, it's tough. Like, not to look at Halo as a, this is what we're getting instead.

This is the, this is, this is, to see it as like a symptom of a much, much, much, much bigger thing. I, I don't know. It's, it's tough not to hold that against old Master Chief and his buddies. Also, the new stuff in the Halo remake stinks. It's very bad. So, like, it's, if, if Agregated Time comes out and they're like, yeah, we got a new, a whole bunch of new dungeons in it. And the dungeon is like, you know. Tingles

Tingles family reunion or some shit. I mean, that actually sounds incredible and I take back what I said. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a different thing.

Yeah, it's nuanced. Speaking of nuance, I've been playing a game called Blueprints, which is a game set in a house. You explore it.

Interesting. You sent me a screenshot of some shit last night that I did not know, that I did not see. What did I send you? You sent me a screenshot of like a letter you had gotten.

Oh. a fucked up thing you had done I broke the game I broke the game so much that I was like oh no did I literally break the game permanently

it involves summoning a room in a place where you probably shouldn't summon it and I asked around the number of people that know these things

and they were like I don't know what you do and then a couple days in the game actually knew that I had broken it and sent an in-universe letters being like you broke the house dog

you might need this item which is dynamite So cool and awesome. That game rules. I just got over another hump, and the game once again has sprawled out before me in a pretty fascinating way. So Christ, how does that game keep throwing haymakers and not ending is amazing. Anyone else? Honorable mentions?

I mean, EQ Legends launched yesterday. I'll probably talk more about it next week. I don't know that I've spent enough time with it to have any new thoughts. What class are you playing is? I have settled on a... So it's a triple class thing, right? You pick three classes and then you kind of have to figure out how they all kind of combine. I am playing a warrior monk shaman.

Warrior and monk both, you know, melee focused, have some cool A.O.E. melee attacks. And then shaman's just sort of about buffing and healing. So I can just run into a room and try and kill all the stuff in it. It's a very straightforward way of doing it. If you wanted to, you could be a enchanter magician bard and just be all about charming, you know, different MPCs and making them fight each other. Like there's, there's, there's a lot of different ways to go about it.

But that's, that's kind of how I'm starting. But what's cool is, like, they're doing the Final Fantasy 14 thing where if any time I want to switch, I can just switch and level up other classes alongside the ones that I've been doing. It's been tough to get in on launch day specifically. Oh, that's a throwback too. Slam jammed. Yeah, dude. It really took me back.

Being in a 35-minute long cue to get into play ever quest was a trip. But it seems like the game's doing very, very well. That's great. Y'all, it is summertime, which means I'm respecting a great in our tradition of watching The Mummy by director Stephen Summers. It is one of the great summertime movies ever made. That's the Tom Cruise one? Yeah, actually, no, it's the new, the new Mummy remake, because they just keep trying. It is just such a great movie, y'all.

everyone in it is impossibly beautiful. There is CG that is kind of tacky, but it's always paired with, like, actual effects or real places or real actors. And I yearn for those days. Same thing with Jurassic Park, right? Where the CG was, it was the spice that got sprinkled over the practical effects.

And there are just so many stunts in this movie that I forgot about. There is a stunt where they light an actual boat on fire and they are like fighting through the flames fire is rippling over the ceilings of the boat people are jumping off just incredible old school stuff that is a delight yeah is that the one with the sand mouth that you like see the mummy well actually it is like trying to swallow a real plane so good that is flying through the dunes it's it's great sequence so cool yeah i haven't really been playing too too much else um i i've been watching the new

season and Married at First Site, but I don't think anyone really wants to hear about that. I want to know about Married at First Site. It's on Peacock now. The thing about, okay, I watch a lot of reality television. And Married at First Site to this point has been on the Lifetime Network. And it's been really, it's not a watch that I enjoy a great deal, but I do enjoy the, I don't know, the kind of roughshod nature of it compared to a Netflix reality show that is like, one, like pretty cookie cutter at this point.

All of the love is blind, the two out to handle, the perfect match. Like all those shows look and feel and sound exactly the same. And now Marriott for sight feels like a Netflix show as well. It used to feel like a, just like a shit, like a shitty show. Like things would just be blurry. Like entire scenes would just be like out of focus. And it's like, whoa, holy shit.

You never really see that on television. The casting was like, I don't know, a lot of these folks are not really ready for prime time. And that's like, I kind of enjoy that. I do kind of enjoy a little bit of a little shaggy nature to my reality television shows. What is, I don't actually know. What is, like, what do they do before they meet? Nothing. They get married at first sight.

They show up at the altar and then they get married. So they don't know anything about the other person? No, man. They get married at first sight. This show doesn't fuck around like a little. love is blind where it's like, let's date over the pods, and we'll talk, we'll get to know each other, and then we'll see each other, and then we'll get engaged, and then we'll decide whether or not we want to get married, you know, six weeks down a lot. This one's like, you're fucking married now.

How do they match them up? Is it for... With a really, with an expert process. This season is like all new, like, matchmakers and shit, and like, I don't know, it's a colossal failure, I think, from a, from a actual romance point of view. But isn't that intentional? Aren't they, like, doing bad matches? I think so. Yeah, I mean, some of these fucking dudes, man. Some of these fucking dudes, man. There's a dude, guys, whose whole life. There's a dude whose whole life is jet skis.

Sure. His whole world is jet skis. And like, the couples, what are we talking about? I don't know, man. But the couples send each other little gifts before they, like, meet. Oh, so this is like a present. They knew, the woman knew that he was into, jet skis. Yeah, because the present he sent her was a like a, like a tether that you put your jet ski key on,

so it doesn't go flying off your wrist. What's it called a kill switch bracelet? Enjoy. She rolls up to his cabin like by the water where he keeps his jet skis and goes into his bedroom. He's like giving her the tour and he has two like climbing ice pick pick axes like stuck into the wood ceiling and she's like, that's fucking terrified, man. You got to get rid of that. He plays the people. He plays the people. piano at their wedding reception. They're like, play some music. And he's like, okay, I'll play some music at my own wedding reception. He sits at the piano.

Gang, he plays Fur Elise. He plays Fur Elise. And it's like, everyone, get ready for this one. Fur Elise, the first song that you learn to play whenever you learn to play piano? He spent a lot of time mastering it. And then he's like, you know, he plays all of Fur Elise. Then he's like, all right. and now I'm going to play just another one

and he plays like a Beethoven track or something and everyone's like huh oh my god one of the like the bride's like friends is just like head in her hands just like laughing while her other brides her other brides are like stop you have to stop laughing at the fact that the group is playing for release

it is it's just like it's not a it's still not a great show and it's still largely pretty gross and it's hugely uncomfortable television a lot of the time but still man you can't get moments like that really anywhere else. You really can't. You simply can't.

I watch a lot of good reality TV too, but this is still really a one-of-a-kind kind of experience. It's on Peacock. Now, I think there's probably a different company making it. And I think it has lost a lot of its charm in not being as just openly, visibly shitty all the time. Yeah. But, yeah, that's married at first sight.

I can't believe I talked about it on this program. Thank God. Thank God. did. Okay, Plant, you want to recap the games we talked about? Here is what we talked about today. We talked a lot about Splatoon Raiders. We also talked about more EverQuest, which is coming back with a vengeance and EverQuest Legends. We talked about the mummy, the 1990s version with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. We talked about Blueprints because it's an episode of the besties. And we talked about married at first sight because it's an episode. to the besties. I don't know that that's, I don't know that that, it's that needs to be a besties sort of

trademark. Yeah, probably not. We'll probably never talk about that program again. It's just the only other sort of thing I've been on. That and Friday Night Lights, if you guys want me to go deep on that. I love that show. I love Peter Berg. Hey, thank you so much for

listening and thanks also to our patrons. You can go to patreon.com slash the besties to get bonus bracket battle episodes every month and also weekly episodes of the Restes where Russ and Plant talk about the games that we don't go for here. Twice a week. Twice a month we do Restes and we do one a month for the bracket battles. And we have actually a new bracket battle coming up right soon with this very special guest. Yes. Can you thank maybe some of our patrons? I would love to thank some of our patrons.

We have VGR. We have Michael S. We have Dale. And we have Ryan H. Thank you for being patrons. I also want to say thank you to everyone else. Tickets are selling very well for our live show, which is happening in October of this year. If you're interested, it's happening in New York City. You go to besties.fan. We have a post pinned all up there, which has all the details on where and when to buy tickets.

So I would recommend doing that. If you're interested in coming, we'd love to have you. It's going to be very fun. You will not believe the stuff that we have planned for you. Initially, I did have a 15-minute break dance set. I was vetoed on that. But we do have other stuff that we think is going to be pretty great.

No, you know what? I changed my mind, Chris. I want to see that. 15 minutes enough is the real question. Yeah, that was my issue is I need at least 30 to finish. So that's it for this week, this episode of the Bessies.

Next week we're going to be talking about Beast of Reincarnation, Game Freaks' latest Pokemon title that I can't wait to discuss more at length. and so join us again next week for that discussion and join us every week here on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

Besties!