The Besties - Split Fiction is everything fans want (and more of what critics fear)

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

This week, the Besties play Split Fiction, the latest game from the creators of It Takes Two. It tells the story of an evil corporation that uses AI to steal creative ideas and create generic sci-fi and fantasy drivel. It's published by EA. Video games! 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 I'm worried because we were talking about like honorable mentions. I'm worried that What I'm doing at this point the way I'm filling my free time I am worried that I will have lost the besties audience with it's too much Do you think it's too smart? Do you think you're too smart now? It's not it's too it's too Niche it's too small. It's too annoying It's because pointless because your brain is too big now for everyone else is that it's not a brain It's too big. It's that the brain has winnowed It's itself down to just where it only can find so yours

Okay So basically what you're saying is the equivalent would be if you really got into whittling but only whittling small piccolos Yes, yes, exactly. Yes, and they. And they didn't make noise. So they were like decorative artisanal piccolas, right? Like just because learning how to SSH into your Raspberry Pi so you can make a time lapse camera for your wife's plants. Just because that is- That sounds dope though. Just because it has computer stuff in it

doesn't mean that it is like cool to people who like video games. And that is a tough distinction. I saw the comments on the newsletter for last week, and I have never seen more people engage with your fucking piccolos than they were with all the Linux. I think what we've discovered is,

maybe kind of subconsciously, there's a rhythm in your voice that has been training our audience over the past decade to care deeply about your bullshit. I think it's just, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep that audience, but I'm gonna, it'll be like a baiting kind of thing, where like I'll throw, every couple episodes, I'll just kind of like casually I'll throw them, every couple episodes I'll just casually throw out, like put a new Destro on the rig, they took out Ubuntu, put on Kubuntu,

messed around with Linux Mint a little bit, but some of the packages just weren't there, it kinda had that Spotify Snap installation. The listeners are sweating with joy right now, they are just drenched. Do you have to wedgie yourself or is that something Sydney does? I have a professional.

My wife is a very busy woman. She doesn't have time to come give me nuclear turbo wedgies every hour on the hour. I have to wake up. I pay a guy to wake me up at four in the morning because I can't get him in, in my waking hours. I have to have a man come by and wedgie me at night. He scares my children. I beg him not a man come by and wedging me at night. He scares my children

I beg him not to but then he wedges me harder He's a bully The fact that people talk about fedoras so much you guys have got to work on that though I listen a lot of it's good, but you guys have got to work on the fedora stuff. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas-Blanz and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frusik and I know the best game of the week. Oh, there's only three of us. Yeah, welcome to the Besties.

It's a video game club where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. And you remember because you started listening and that's kind of a trap we lay for you every week. This week we're gonna be talking about Split Fiction. Sort of, kind of like the fourth, I think of it as like the third or fourth

in like a sort of pseudo series that has come from this studio. This is the new one. What is this one, Plant? What's the, setting this one apart? Split Fiction is a co-op focused game that has a follow-up to It Takes Two, which might be the most slow, rapid,

growing mega hit of all time. I don't even know how to describe its trajectory. This time, you and a friend or family member are going to play as one character who loves fantasy and another character who loves sci-fi as they get trapped in the worlds of their own imagination and fend off evil AI. Wait, do we know that AI really? I thought it was corporations. It's probably AI.

It's all AI. Oh, what do you think corporations are at this point? Huh? Oh, gotcha! So Split Fiction is, I mentioned it as like a sort of pseudo, pseudo series, I think is, I don't know if you would count Brothers, although Brothers is definitely like exploring

some of these co-op ideas, you know, even though it's a single player game. Yeah, they're all from the same develop, you said four games from the same developer that all are either strictly exclusively co-op, but you can't play with just yourself, or they, in the case of Brothers, could play, you could play as a single player,

it was a single player game, but it had you controlling two characters at once. Yeah, so that single, it was was brothers and then a way out, which is like a prison break kind of thing. It Takes Two was the most recent and that was a game that like, I thought It Takes Two was really interesting because I feel like-

That was the divorce puppet that you turned into like little people. Yeah, and it really, I feel like the, it is one of those rare examples, maybe not rare, but like, where I feel like a lot of the press and the critics kind of saw, like, the parts that weren't functioning. And then it seemed like there was this audience that found the game of people playing together. And like, there not being a lot of games that, like, the people that I've encountered, they're really enjoyed, it takes two,

have been couples that have like played it together and like had a really good experience with it as a result of that. So this is another co-op game. I played a split screen. I don't know what you guys did, but I thought we could compare. We played online.

Okay, cool. But when you play online, it's also a split screen. You can also see the other person's screen, which is helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Well, they probably would have to balance it twice for different experiences if you didn't have that

because you already have the information. And it's genuinely like, Plant was making the point, even though we're online, like he could, if I was looking at like something cool or whatever, he could see that because I was looking at it. Yeah, I think that's smart.

And you can give each other advice on like, oh, you should hit that object. You're also, some of the experiences that you're having, I think are asynchronous enough that it's kind of neat to like see what the other person's doing. It like helps build some tension in some of the scenes. And maybe some jealousy when one person has the boring job and the other person has the cool job.

Yeah, no comment. So what should we talk about first? The gameplay or the story? No, no, no, I wanna start with the narrative first. Okay, no comment. So, what should we talk about first? The gameplay or the story? I wanna, no, no, no. I wanna start with the narrative first. Okay, go ahead. The narrative is like pretty fucking funny, just as a baseline premise. So you have these two characters, there's Mio and,

sorry, I'm blanking the other person's name. Zoe? Zoe, and they are both aspiring writers, but Mio seemingly doesn't give a fuck about writing and just wants to get a paycheck, and Zoe really, really cares deeply about her fantasy stories, and they go into this high-tech, I guess, corporation

that is like, we want your stories. That's also literally called Raider. Yeah, the company's called Raider, wink, wink. And he says, I am Raider. Like, he doesn't say, hi, my name's JD Raider week. Yeah, and he says I am Raider like he doesn't say hi My name is JD Raider. He says hi. I'm Raider, and it's J period D. No period Steal a period from where the author is why you're at it JD So they go in there they want to paycheck for their great stories

And it turns out what they're going to be doing is putting on VR suits and getting shoved into balls of light Wherein they kind of go into a Tron situation where they are experiencing their stories In a virtual environment and they have to like survive them as an animus from Assassin's Creed I would say is like rather than re-experiencing history. You're experiencing your stories. I think they're being extracted When you're experiencing history, you're experiencing your stories. So they're being extracted. Now, in a really baffling twist, they've told, not twist, set up,

they've told these authors that they're bringing them there to publish them. And then they put them into white super suits. And it's like, none of the authors save one, is like, this doesn't normally happen in publishing. And they're like, no, it's part of the publishing, get in the bubbles. And it's like, just tell them you're gonna let them

walk around their worlds. Like just say it's a VR thing where you can walk around your book worlds and the authors will go and do it. You don't need all of this nonsense. It makes the people look so stupid from the jump of the story. Also the fact that they're trying to make money in publishing is also pretty funny. Our master plan. Hopefully that they're trying to make money in publishing is also pretty funny.

Our master plan. Hopefully their master plan is not make money in publishing. They have to steal. Okay, so that's the setup. And very quickly, you, I guess Mio gets shoved into Zoe's bubble and now they're together experiencing one another's stories and kind of bouncing between the two. So you've got some levels in fantasy,

you've got some levels in sci-fi, and then you've got some, quote, side quests that take place in some, like, for lack of a better term, just like direct references to other video games. So if we were talking about the narrative first, I think there's a lot of really cool stuff happening gameplay-wise, but I did want to say just from a narrative perspective.

I think this game is so poorly written, none of the dialogue feels like anything human beings say. And you shouldn't say that your main characters are authors who are filled with such creative ideas that people need to steal from them and then make them two of the most generic human beings I've ever seen in a video game. These people are not authors. They don't care about their stories. They don't care about their worlds.

They don't, I don't know what they, like even their stories are the most, is that studio 60 problem of like, if you're gonna do a show about funny people, it's gotta be funny. So if you're gonna do a show about authors who are so inspiring that people are gonna steal their ideas, they gotta be better than like cyber ninjas.

And I am sorry to be like coming out on a hard note, but it is so frustrating to see the arrogance on display here that the studio thinks that they are able to write like dialogue that works and none of it, I mean, none of it works. It is built entirely of cliches and it feels like people who don't have a great grasp of the English language writing dialogue primarily in English

and having to overly rely on cliches because it is uniformly terrible. The analog that I would say is, if you've played like Quantic Dream stuff, Yeah. That it's a very similar issue. There is no- I think it's people that like, I don't doubt that Joseph Harris is very confident

in his writing style, because obviously he makes games that are very narrative forward. But I think this is true of a lot of his stuff. And arguably for me, I didn't play it a way out, but I loved Brothers and it's kind of telling that that is a game without any dialogue whatsoever. I mean, yes, yes.

The thing that's happening on a moment to moment level that makes it just difficult to latch on to the story is there is no real antagonist once you are in the game for the first few hours. So you arrive at Raider. Raider is purportedly the antagonist, right? This corporate publishing overlord who's going to steal all of your ideas. And then you hop into the bubbles of sci-fi or fantasy. And suddenly, the antagonist would be the villain of that story. So, you know, like the sci-fi overlord or the fantasy evil queen or whatever, but they don't really have any connection to the overarching story.

So they don't really have anything to do. They're not real. There's no stakes. If you die in this world, nothing happens. If you stop or don't stop this world, nothing happens. The wants and needs of the villains in these worlds are irrelevant to the overall story for the first few hours. And that is a really tough way story-wise to pull you through the game when you're like, wait, why am I here? Who is this villain? What do they want? What will even happen to me if they don't get it?

There's no villain, no motives. And it's also, I think kind of the worst thing is it's like dull for such a sweaty premise that seems set up to like, it feels like Rifts Apart kind of where they're setting up like this world could go anywhere. What is Rifts Apart? I don't know what that is. Sorry, Ratchet and Clank where they're jumping between like different realities, right? Or like, it seems like they're setting up a big like,

why make the levels ideas and then have like a straight down the middle sci-fi game for three hours? It's like, that really feels like such a huge missed opportunity that they're not bringing in, like when they're taught, they show you other authors and this may be happening later in the game, they show you other authors and they're like talking about their worlds and like, I kind of expected it would be

like you're going into their stories to do something to warn them about something. Yeah, you maybe do. I don't know. Maybe you do at some point, but there's no other, the worlds that I have seen have been like, there are a couple side things that are kind of really cool and creative,

but then there are some that are just like, straight down the middle rips of game worlds that you've played before. Well, intentionally to the point of like, like there's a- They quote that. There's a line. They quote the games.

Yeah, well there's a line that's like, we have to take a leap of faith and then you do the leap of faith from Assassin's Creed. That's how direct it is. And it's not a game about video games. It's a game about books. It's frustrating because I like so much of the stuff that is happening in this game

and it feels like an arrogance of, well the story is done and we don't have to like achieve something there that is new or unique or original. The machine that the bad guys use in this game is called the machine. Like, just... Well I mean last game it was the book of love. Yeah, I mean it's like, I think an AI machine already stole all your good ideas, guys. And you're just like using nouns and adjectives. Okay, so why do these games work so well? And why do I think this game is going to make a gajillion dollars and people are going to love it?

Is the other half of it. And I do wonder how much people, you know, these games have a great reputation for the writing. Is that people really loving the writing, which it might be, or is it people associating the good vibes that they have spending time with their people they love, maybe even goofing about the writing, telling their own story that seems more like it? And yeah, I think that's what's happening. I think people are talking about the writing, telling their own story, that seems more like it. And I- Yeah, I think that's what's happening.

I think people were talking over the writing. Certainly Plant and I, to some extent, were doing that, even though I had the subtitles on to make sure I didn't miss anything. But like there is a back and forth that brings life to the co-op gameplay, which I did enjoy, that kind of trumps the very kind of vanilla flat nature of the actual-

It's kind of like you get a bonus point because playing a video game with your friends is fun. Like it was fun to do that with my friend Slice on the couch playing together. Like I think you're bringing some of that positivity. Yes, and if you break like writing down into like three parts, right? There's the structure of the whole story,

there is the dialogue. I don't really enjoy either of those. But if you think of the scenarios that they're actually creating, what are you doing? What is the gameplay? That stuff's clever as hell. The amount of raw ideas,

nothing in this game is 10 out of 10 the most exciting new video game idea you've ever seen. But as somebody who's been playing games their entire life, it's basically a tour, a breakneck tour of video game mechanics. There is something about, and I don't exactly know, it's a very unique feeling that is specific to this kind of game, but there is something about there being a fun gameplay thing that you are not doing or any gameplay thing that you are not doing

that like lends to the verisimilitude of the world in the moment to me. Like it feels like more believable because the fact that there's other fun stuff happening, it makes what I'm doing feel more real because it feels less like a video game and more like that's happening over there and this is happening here

and holding both of those things in your mind is really not something that video games do very often. Yeah, the closest you can get, like you're playing an online game and oh, like someone's giving you comms that like, oh, there's a guy around this corner that you don't actually see. But here you'll see not only someone might be doing

a call out, your buddy next to you or online, but you also see their screen so you can see what they're doing and sometimes I'll see like plant in the distance like trying to hit a switch or missing a jump or something like that. And so you're seeing it from like three different angles in a way and that is pretty cool. And it does yeah

Lend more light to these environments. They really enjoy I Really enjoyed being able to see you screw up a lot fresh sure because it was great to know that you are not the perfect Gamer you're infinitely better than me. Let's get it. It might just be that I'm more persistent Let's talk about my favorite moment of this video. So fresh night get in. There's all these rapid fire. You're learning everything. You're learning how to jump. You're learning how to walk on walls. So pace of the first two hours of this game is fucking buck. It's like an uncharted like cut scene, but like for two hours. There's no stopping in that two hours. And then, Frush and I, we're hopping from like giant space semi truck to giant space car. We're flying through city's fifth element style.

And I hop from one truck onto another and I'm climbing through the future world. And I turn to Frush and I say, okay, lift that ladder. And he says, it that ladder and he says you did not say that you said what do you do now? And I'm like, well Get the ladder and he said it can't go any further down and we Bash our heads against this thing. We're like the game broken We try everything we try to break the geometry, we reset the checkpoint, we come back. And then what was what was the fix?

I just had to raise the ladder and still lowering it to turn the handle the wrong. Do you know that part, Justin? Do you know which part I'm talking about? I know exactly. Did you get stuck on that part? No, no, no. I had slice and I like it's like when you're really good friends, it's like you can't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I get talking. It is, those sequences are, again, it is that asynchronous, like one person trying to platform

while the other person is driving a truck. It's really fun. And it only works because they are like, it's weird because it only works because they're depriving you of something, right? It only works because they're kind of depriving you of half of the experience, but that's like a reductive way of looking at it because you are like sharing it with somebody else,

but it is neat like because you do actually feel like you're working together because you're doing different things. Like when both of you have swords, then one of you could just be a better sword guy. It's neat that you have to have different skill sets. Yeah, there's a reliance on the other player that I think makes this all work. I also think having some tension, healthy tension, in a co-op game is good.

It's fun and funny when one person has the really cool feature, and the other person is a pig that shits rainbows, and is not having as much fun, me. But it's like, I don't know. hits rainbows and is not having as much fun, me, but is like, I don't know, there's like some bonding that happens when one person is getting to have more fun and then it switches 30 minutes later

and suddenly you're the one getting to do all the cool stuff. They also do a good job, I think, of making areas where if you are having fun with the other person and you're approaching it in a good spirit, there were several areas that Slice and I ran into where we would just play around. Like it was just fun to, they have props in the environment

that are like interactive. And that's a fun- It's like a basketball hoop at one point. Yeah, there's like a, we were like, there was a water slide and we were like trying to go down the water slide and land in the rings. And you could like sit in a ring and just float around and like, there's a water slide and we were like trying to go down the water slide and land in the rings and you could like sit in a ring and just float around and like, there's no reason to do it.

But it is like, if you're like having sort of a hang with someone else, it's nice to have those moments where you don't feel like, there's zero stakes for screwing up. It's so low pressure. If you die, you're instantly back. I mean, it's like not a big deal most of the time when you're like not in an active combat situation. It's like you make a misstep, you're right back into it most of the time.

Did you find this game more challenging than It Takes Two or any of the other games they've made? You know, I didn't play It Takes Two. I didn't find this particular particularly challenging. I would say it was pretty, I don't think we fully wiped at any point where both of us were down. Generally, it was like one of us would die. But it never was something where I felt like

we were having to adjust our approach to get past something. It was never like that, like, okay, we died, let's try this again a different way. It was usually like adapt on the fly. This feels very much designed for one person is like pretty capable of video games and the other person is like tangentially familiar

with video games, but doesn't play them very often. Yes. And that's great. Honestly, like that makes for a really tough design challenge because obviously you can't make sequences super hard because it's just gonna get frustrating. They wisely have it so that if one person dies they can be revived by themselves very very quickly. They do a little like you can hammer the button to go faster with adds just like a little bit of skill and

interest to like the reviving. It looks a little more challenging than it takes to on the surface for people who played it. The game just moves faster, for us you made the uncharted comparison, but it does so much to make sure that you don't screw up. So there is, you know, intricate jumping sequences, but the reality is you can pretty much smash the jump button and it's gonna magnetize you to the poles that you need to go

Toward like a big-time magnet. Yeah, so I think it it wants to look like a hard game There's some cool perspective stuff too that look like yeah Where one of you is playing a top-down game and the other one's playing a side scroller and that's that's pretty neat Yeah, they also have sequences that The height of the absolute peak of what we played, which was the first, I would say, like three-ish, three and a half hours, there's a moment where Mio is driving a motorcycle and Zoe has to activate a self-destruct thing on the motorcycle. And Mio is not just driving a space motorcycle.

Mio is going through a Jerry Bruckheimer film. It is the most exposure- Exactly. It's fifth element, it's great, yeah. But while that's happening, Zoe has to activate an app on her phone that can activate this self-destruct mechanism, and the app in the middle of this intense race.

Wait, can I, I feel like this is a little bit, like this is, for me, I thought the phone thing was like one of the best things that we did. I feel like it's a little bit, that's fairly, it's a the phone thing was like one of the best things that we did. I feel like it's a little bit, that's fairly, it's a few hours in. I feel like some spoiler. I would say if you're gonna play it,

that moment and you'll notice it when it happens is really like a spectacular highlight for me from a gameplay standpoint and from just like a storytelling standpoint, I wish that there were more moments like that. What's difficult for me to kind of wrap my head around is if you've got two people that play games a lot, obviously plant and I play a lot, Justin plays a lot of games. I can't speak for slice whether they exist or not, but it does feel like

you take, obviously if you take the multiplayer out of it and you were just doing the things in this game, it would be like maybe the most dull, flat, like third person. To a comical degree. Where it feels like the video game that's in a CSI episode. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Yeah, but that feels to me like being like,

well, you know, if you don't fry the potatoes, tastes like just bland potatoes. To Russ's point though, I think for me at least, I had a pleasant time while playing it with Slice. I do not feel a compulsion to make that happen again. I feel zero compulsion, like see what happens with the rest of the story, or like see what else happens mechanically.

Where if I was... It was fun to do together, but I'm not anxious to return to it and playing... I mean, I can't play by myself, but it has not even occurred to me to like, I want to see what happens next. It feels more like matter of fact, like, oh, this is really fun to play together, but I don't feel like slice. Come on, we got to see what happens with the this incredibly innate story. And I just like a little bit of that would have gone so far towards making this something it's easier to recommend. Do you think it's even for us in that way? I picture the type of person who's going to really enjoy this game is the person who plays maybe two or three games a year, or maybe hasn't even played a game in five years. And it's the family member that you bring into the game, right?

And do you know like hotel TV, that idea where it's like, you haven't watched TV in like years cable, and then you go like a hotel and you turn it on and you're like, oh shit, hotel TV. I'm like locked in. Yeah. I feel like that's, this is like hotel TV. I'm like locked in. Yeah. I feel like that's this is like hotel TV of games. If you haven't played games in a few years, you pop this on and suddenly you just surf and throw this shit and you're just so overwhelmed cognitively. It must feel amazing for that

sort of person. And then feel like a greatest hits almost of like where video games are at. Yeah. And again, if you aren't if your brain is not used to playing games very often, it is already so, I don't know, it's revving up your brain and all sorts of fun, good ways. And then I think for the person who does like video games, being able to spend time with somebody who normally doesn't have interest in your hobby, and suddenly they're like really jazzed and wrapped up about it, that's going gonna release all sorts of good chemicals in your body. So I get how these games have such a huge audience, because I think if you have that perfect pair,

if you have your Mio and your Zoe, this becomes something really, really special. I just think it really relies on the audience, basically. Is it, though, like, are we making a... Is there a point at which, like, are we making a... Is there a point at which, like, if the narrative is too good, or the story is too well written, or like, where it would make me happy,

but it would be an experience where we're like sitting in silence and kind of... Like sometimes my wife and I like to watch Love is Blind, but it's not because we think it's better written than Severance. It's just like, you know, like that's about what I'm up to right now. I think I'm putting too much pressure on it

because I think what they're doing with the mechanics is so interesting that I wish they were trying to be just a little bit more inventive on any other aspect of it. I wish it was just like a little bit more fulfilling in on any other aspect of it. I wish it was just like a little bit more fulfilling in any way other than this one specific thing they're doing. And there was an element in It Takes Two where even though I didn't think the writing was very good, I did, I was desperate to figure out like-

If they were gonna do the ending, would they? Yeah, how are they gonna do the ending? Cause it's like these two should get a divorce. They are not in a good relationship, they clearly don't like each other, and there's really no coming back from this one. And just that was kind of pulling us along, apart from the fact that like, Plant and I both had to review it for Polygon. And I just don't have that like, pull that's pulling me forward.

I think that's the pickle. The story doesn't have to be great. You're spot on hoops. But the inner conflict of we're making a game about AI or publishing companies and how they steal ideas and we're going to have the main characters be people who really only have ideas from other stuff. They themselves. 100%, you're right.

100%. They invite the dialogue of like ideas and AI and like what makes an original thought. It feels, when people ask me about writing video games, writing reviews of video games back in the day, the thing I would always tell people is like, please read things that aren't video game reviews and read things other than video games back in the day. The thing I would always tell people is like, please read things that aren't video game reviews and read things other than video games.

And this feels like a game made like just in a world where only video games exist, which is like, if you're gonna do that, that's cool. Astrobots that kinda, but like, don't it make it about literature? Don't we? Why is it about literature? Why is it about authors? Why is it about authors?

Have the company just be a game company? Yeah! Here's why, Plant. Because then they're 100% ripping off Assassin's Creed. This way they can kind of pretend that they're not ripping off Assassin's Creed. I would say it's because then EA is their parent company and it's a little too obvious when... I don't know if EA owns them for what it's worth.

And I don't know man. It just I know that I'm probably asking too much and maybe that's unfair and I know that people are gonna like it because they like that last one and go and I'm glad go with God. I just wish I feel like if you're gonna make a whole game, why not make all parts of the game good? You know, I just think they need feel like if you're gonna make a whole game, why not make all parts of the game good, you know? I, that's me though. I just think they need to acknowledge

that they have a weak writing situation, and I don't know how to get that in their heads because their games continue to sell millions and millions and millions of copies. So I think we just have to live in the world where they continue to put out fun co-op games that are written pretty badly. Well, I mean, maybe we could send Quantic Dream over and just be like,

I know right now it seems like this will never end. Take it from me, David Cage. Eventually the money, she stops. We will make a great office environment for you. It is very healthy and fun. We should go to the B segment. For the power of generative. Did you just become Dracula? David Cage became Dracula. Oh, I knew it.

Okay, we've done it. That was Split Fiction. Given the fact that it's a co-op game, I feel like there are a lot of games that are single-player games technically, but actually work great in co-op. And I just experienced one recently with my child, which was What the Golf. My child has played like three games in total and played, uh, asterisk next to it. Um, what the golf has been the hugest fucking hit props to Chris plant for the recommendation. He, he suggested it and the way we play what the golf is. He has control over the a button, which if you remember that game really just

controls the power of the swing. Um, and I have control over the left analog stick stick, which controls the direction of the swing and I have control over the left analog stick which controls the direction of the aiming. And between the two of us, we can actually finish levels, which is kind of shocking. I think we beat the whole main game just playing like that. And that's really exciting playing with a kid that's, you know, three and generally not able to do much else in terms of video games. But that was a really fun experience with him. It's the best. It's also like Buckwild.

That game is totally in him. In a tour of video game history, more ambitious, I would say, than the one that we just talked about. Yeah. I have really gotten into with Cooper games that are a little bit more sandboxy. One that things that she has really been drawn to lately is stuff like Untitled Goose Game, or she really likes,

she's just gotten into Goat Simulator a lot on the iPad she loves. And the other one, what was the British one? Thank goodness you're here. Which is like, that's something where we can play together and I can kind of put it in her hands. And she likes to like, she doesn't have that frustration of, we don't have that push and pull of like losing and winning.

It's more like playing together. And that's like a co-op experience that's fun to share. Cause I can kind of nudge her, but control-wise, it's very accessible. We actually have, we're going to dig into reader mail, and I might as well just start, because my single-player co-op game is tied to it. Harrison asked us,

what's the best single-player game to play with someone? Example, my wife and I played through The Witness together, and it was a perfect couch co-op experience. You can both try and crack each puzzle section and it actually helps keeping from getting frustrated because you have someone to keep it from getting dry and in theory succeed more with two people putting their heads together. Looking for more games that we can enjoy together even if it's just one person behind the controller. Love you guys."

So for me, this is the narrative games come in big time here in the deduction games. We've talked about Curse of the Golden Idol, especially if you are able to get a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I think that's great. I think games like Kentucky Road Zero are good for this, where you're picking dialogue, but it doesn't really matter what dialogue you pick. It's more of a feel. I think that is excellent for this sort of situation.

Do y'all have any other narrative typey games? Witnesses is funny because I tried to play that one with Sid because she's into puzzles and what we learned, and we probably knew it from long ago, but first person things where I'm controlling it and she's not are instantly nauseating. I mean, looking for 10 seconds and she is done. Yeah, I think that game in particular, I remember feeling motion sick

because of the lack of a reticle or something. So yeah, that makes sense. Any first person thing though, where she is not in control and she's watching me play, it is tough. So the more static things, Christical model, Return of the Obra D den is really great for that

I was gonna shout out the walking dead the first telltale walking dead game. I played in Co-op with my wife. We switched off. We did that too. It was extremely old though, aren't they? Those they're very old games, but Extremely old games. They still work. I still have a memory of, there's a sequence where you realize that what you're eating is human meat. It's like just a scene. And you fed it to a child?

And my wife was playing at the time and she was like just too late to stop Clementine from eating the human meat. And I've literally never let her forget it. That's right. Good times. I also just tossed 1000 Exorcist on the pile, because why not? If I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna shout it out.

I think it's a good idea. It is? I would say- Just to mention it as a game that people can purchase and play, right? I'm mentioning it as a game that you can play with somebody else, because- I think it's, hey, hey man man You can't even get me to play it It's pretty fucking overzealous to think you're gonna get me and somebody else to play it you're getting greedy plant I'm telling you I'm gonna wake up. Oh people haven't told everyone that I am the wedgie man

So next morning, I'm gonna wake up at 4 a.m. I'm gonna put you up on a little Clothes hanger by the back of your briefs I'm gonna put you up on a little clothes hanger by the back of your briefs, and I'm gonna say, baby, it's time to play through this game. A lot of people wouldn't fly cross-country to give their friend a wedgie every day. You know what I mean? A lot of people don't have the guts. I'm cool like that. I have, speaking of 1000X Resist,

I have played a bunch of the Phoenix Wright games with my wife, and it's actually, it's good, but for, for, what are they called? A graphic novel, what are they called? A graphic novel, what is it? Visual novel games. It can generate some like minor tension when there's like a reading pace difference. And I think that can throw things off.

Did your connection to 1000 X Resist be the X in Phoenix, right? How did you? No, it's a visual novel. Did you just wanna brag to me and Plant about how much faster you read than your wife? Yeah. Why do you think I was the one that was a faster reader? You wouldn't have brought it up otherwise, uh listen you didn't even need a guy to learn how to read Okay, let's

Russ Russ is Going guide free on learning how to read. He has not mastered Q or X, but he is going to nail it. They're coming, they're coming. He said he's never gonna quit until he masters those two letters. People keep saying that this is a one, but it looks like an L to me, and there's no convincing me otherwise.

Hey, let's dig into some more mailbag really quick. Please. The big question from Nick. I am so shocked to hear Justin install Linux for personal use. As a server engineer, I applaud their excitement for wading into waters even I haven't bothered to yet, hoping for SteamOS on desktop soon. Here are some recommendations for some quick helpers. If anyone wishes to dive deeper into some of the basics, I highly recommend Wizard Zines by Julia Evans. They cover topics that are tough to even

begin to quote know what you don't know and help you get a handle on the OS and what to look up next. I also recommend Explainshell.com for whenever you need a quick explainer on a command that you found online. Easy way to learn what a command will do. It mimics the quote, man, the manual pages found within the terminal, but in a more comfortable interface. I see you hoops writing these down as I named them. I love that we're turning everyone into Linux people. It's great.

Do you know how long it would take me to realize that man is short for manual? Thank God for Nick actually writing that in parenthesis because I definitely would not have done it. And you can do the man page on man. So you can man man. You find out all the stuff about manual. Yeah, that's a great resource. I'm excited about, I heard about an OS this week

called Bazite. Oh yeah, I know that. It is a Linux distribution that can run on a mini PC. So I've been thinking about, I've got a Batacera mini PC that is running like all my emulation stuff and I was thinking about setting up a Bazite like mini PC, like a Bazite PC basically to like turn it into like a gaming. Yeah. Like just use my gaming PC as like a living room type gaming setup and, you know, use

something else for like my day-to-day stuff. It's just really, there's a, it's a confluence because I started messing around with like the Raspberry Pi stuff and then that sort of like opened the door to Linux because Raspberry Pi computers are running a version of Linux. But those, they all work together. And I was just finding it very satisfying

to figure out how those pieces interlock. I love it. I feel like, I didn't mention this last week when we were talking about Linux, but the thing that has been appealing to me is, I've always been someone who like surface level knows how to kind of do stuff with computers, but mainly because I know how to like Google it

and figure it out. And I feel like what's cool about with the Raspberry Pi stuff and Linux because it's similar setups, because you are doing it all yourself, you really understand, I think I'm a lot less afraid to mess around with things because I know that I could just put the USB stick back on the thing and start fresh.

And since I put most of the things on there and I decided what they all do and I can interact with them, it's much more simple than a normal computer, but I feel like I'm understanding these concepts in a way. It feels like you're building an engine from scratch almost. Yeah, and I'm understanding what's going on.

Like yesterday, I used my Windows computer through the terminal, connect to the camera that's doing the time lapse of Sid's plans upstairs. And I did that and I had no idea that the computers, even if they were running like different operating systems, all that crap, you go to the terminal, they don't care. They get out and talk to each other. It's great. It's also just wild to learn something almost entirely new once you're in your like late 30s or early 40s. Because by that point in life, every day what you learn is the equivalent of, like, if you're redecorating the house,

you're like, I don't know, changing a pillowcase. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a new thought. But this is how I feel with learning Japanese is, each day is like, oh, I'm just gonna have to put a whole new expansion here, because I just straight up didn't know any of this when I woke up this morning. And I think it's really intimidating at first because you're bad at stuff in a way that you just have not been bad at stuff in a long time, like since you were like a baby, but once you get past that, if you accept, if you give yourself the

permission to just be bad at it, the goal is not to be the best at the thing. You're, yeah, my, uh, my, my learning advice, and I've been, I did this with like the Python coding that I've been doing, like the Linux stuff and, and I did it with Japanese and too, but I think it's a really helpful thing is I tried to start learning in a few different ways rather than agonize about the best way to start learning something. I'll start in like three different ways usually. And because the base entry level thing is always the most rewarding to me, right? And as it gets more advanced

and it gets a little harder, then I start to get a little bored and it gets a little frustrating, maybe I go away. But if I start back again with a different learning type and then do that introductory stuff again, I'm reinforcing those concepts. And then maybe I do it a third time and see how different learning platforms

teach these concepts in different ways. And if you can understand them in two different ways, there have been three different ways, then as you progress through, your understanding is a lot more complete. Like it's a holistic understanding. And for me, that goes a lot quicker, even though I'm like kind of doubling the amount of work.

The second time I'm going through this stuff, I'm like, okay, I know this, I know this, I know this, I know this, but it's reinforcing it in a different way. And I think it's a really fun way to learn stuff, but anyway. Justin, have you considered like Tony Robbins style presentations? Cause I think you've got it.

I think you've got. Yeah, I mean, who wouldn't want to live more like me? I mean, who wouldn't want to spend more time staring at a terminal? You know what I mean? Who doesn't want to be reading time staring at a terminal, you know what I mean? Who doesn't wanna be reading more man pages? Man, man. Man, man, that's who.

Hi, I'm man, man, no need for the man, just ask man. Do you know that you can type in, there's a lot of commands that you can type in that start with sudo, S-U-D-O, and you know what sudo means? It means run this like I'm the boss for the whole thing, no matter what. You just type in sudo, it's like fuck It means run this like I'm the boss of the whole thing no matter what. You just type in pseudo, it's like fuck it.

Run this like I'm the boss no matter what. And you can type in things in that computer where the computer's like, all right, bye. You're like, okay, I'm dead, I'll forget everything I know. Goodbye. And it's like, oh man, I shouldn't have told you to do that. But you can. So much of what I do when I'm setting up

a gaming handheld or something like that is typing in these phrases. One of them is suit, I remember doing that. And then being like, okay, it's gonna say, you're about to fucking delete everything. Just hit okay, it'll be cool. I don't know what I'm doing. It's so rewarding to be in,

now at a point where I feel more comfortable in the terminal, I just wanna get in there and do the stuff that I need to do and not fool around with like the gooey stuff. And that's like, that's very, that feels very good. I feel like I understand the crap that you're talking about on like a much deeper level without actually knowing anything.

And you don't feel like you're gonna like, you're working without a net, like you're gonna type. Yeah, you do. I do feel like that. Yeah, so that's not scary to you. It is, but this computer costs $200. This is what I'm saying. I bought the cheapest laptop they have.

And I just kept putting new operating systems on it. You know what I mean? That's smart. Yeah, and I'm coming, hold on, wait. Justin ran away. He ran so fast his chair spun like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. I'm covering my Linux desktop with all the most kick-ass hacker stickers I can find. You've got a Raspberry Pi sticker.

Got a picture of a pirate. Here's a picture of a pirate. Look at this! It's just freaking lasers! My other computer cost $35. Unbelievable. Oh, bless you. Unbelievable. Are the stickers more expensive than the laptop at this point? No, they came with the some of the many, many, many, many different components, $5 components

I've gotten from China. Oh, man. Y'all, while we're sharing just nice things that we've learned, can I tell you the euphemism I picked up in Japanese a couple weeks ago? Oh, sure. When you want to say that somebody's fly is down, it's shakai no mado. I believe that's right. Yeah, shakai no mado.

And it means your window to society. That's great. That's great. God, Japanese men, they're so poetic. Figured it out. We can jump into honorable mentions, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I've been watching a new show, and I'm pretty excited to talk about it.

Here's the premise. There's a guy who is having kind of a tough time in life and decides that he wants to kind of unplug for like eight hours a day and not even worry about it. So he joins a job where he like has no memory of that while he's at the job and then he leaves the job and then he can like live the rest of his life without knowing like what he was doing at the job. And the show is called The Big Brain Theory

and it's on Apple. Big Brain. Big Brain Theory. Okay, so I don't think, so you're talking about The Big Brain Theory hosted by CalPen in 2013. Yes. Yeah.

So where's this bit going? I'm interested. Where's this bit going? Yeah, I'm interested. Where's this bit going? Yeah. Where are we going with it? Cause it's different. It doesn't actually have anything to do. Where are we going, Russ? I started watching Severance.

Oh, okay, good, okay. And it took me three years. I also, for what it's worth, spent the last week watching the first season of The White Lotus. So I am on the fucking pulse of culture right now. There's a lot of great TV that you are in store. I've been rearing a small child, and it left me in a bit of a black hole.

Sounds tough. Doesn't that sound hard? Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh! It left me in a culture black hole Doesn't that sound hard? Oh yeah. Oh. It left me in a culture black hole because we also have the homework of playing the games on this and I have that movie. That sounds hard, doesn't it, Plant? Oh, imagine, man, having to have a family and play games.

I'm just saying it's hard to keep up with the culture. Sure, yeah, it sounds tough. But Severance is a good show, people should watch it. I highly recommend it. I hope it finds an audience because it's kind of weird, but it's got some good actors in it, and yeah, I think it's gonna do well. Big frame. I feel like there was so much talk

when the second season started, but I feel like algorithms have made that so hard to tell what's actually buzzy and what's like. The good news is I'm- That's always been the problem, though, right? Remember when Girls came out, and the whole internet was talking about Girls and then I think like 30,000 people watched Girls when it came out? That's because yeah, that's a New York media focusing on this show that only New York media

is watching. I do think Severance is a bigger deal. I think it like has actually driven subscriptions to that thing something that I really like about severance that I Wanted to mention is it's not afraid to be a genre show And I feel like a lot of shows that have a high concept like this or a sci-fi concept would want Like would immediately want to dismiss that and talk about the heady concepts, right? It's more about humanity Like they're like no, there's concrete mythology. It's not abstract, it's not Lynchian.

These things are happening and here is our reality and here's what it means. It doesn't get lost in the metaphor either. I had kind of avoided it because I was like, okay, I get it. You have a personality at work and you have a personality at home and now we're going to do the thing that all the horror movies have been doing recently where they bash you over the head with the like very obvious metaphor. In this, it's that it's interested in that sort of but it's much more interested in the world that it's creating as if it were a real thing.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think it's a credit to your audience to Yeah, yeah, balances the humor really well. It's also the fact that I've been able to get as far as I have without it like being quote spoiled It's kind of I mean I do intentionally avoid stuff that is involved involved with the show but Like it's been four years and yeah, you know That's kind of exciting and cool that I can experience and it is I think it's a it's a different way of like, um

doing And it is, I think it's a different way of like doing this sort of television where it kind of puts the twist at the beginning, if that makes sense. Like the big idea, like the big, like what does it all mean is in the first episode. Like you know what it all means. That's what I was saying to Alex. Like after watching the first episode, I was like, oh, that would be the last episode of the first season of a normal show right

Instead the first the last how far you made it. I'm like halfway through season one The last episode the first season it I did not breathe. Yeah amazing I can't wait to hear what you think about the rest of it. What about you plant you've been doing anything interesting Uh, oh, yeah, I'm always up to like cool stuff, you know, like raising a kid, playing games. It's really hard. I don't have time to watch things like Severance. Actually, I watched Severance Season 1. I have not started Season 2.

I want to recommend a movie called Bad Genius. It is a 2017 Thai heist thriller about smart high school kids. And this is a movie I saw a long time ago. I had not really thought about it recently, but now I'm starting to see it pop up on Netflix and Canopy and lots of different places. And I don't know if it's finally having its moment. I understand a years old Thai high school thriller.

Is this for everybody? Yeah, it really is. If you like stuff like Ocean's Eleven, or you just like high school centered stuff like Gossip Girl, here is your mix of those two things. It is so compelling and so exciting. And yeah, you do have to read subtitles. But if you can get past that hurdle, you're in for a real, real treat. And I do believe it is on Canopy. So you don't even have to pay for a streaming service. So long as you have a library card, though, I think it might be on Netflix too, which most people have. So with the school year now kind of approaching that big test-taking time,

I think this is a movie that, especially younger folks, would really enjoy. Cool. I just wanted to real quickly recommend The Substance, even though it's an older film. I was trying to catch up on... Wait, this is an older one that came out last year, right. Man, I tell you, I know how this sounds. Wait, this is older, it came out in the last year, right?

Yeah, I mean, but it's like, I was trying to catch up on some of the Oscar stuff, and man, I know this sounds, how this makes me sound, but this year, more than so many, I just could not get it together enough to watch some of these things, man. They look so boring and sad, like, I just couldn't do it. Brutalist. What?

The Brutalist. It's called The Brutalist. What? The brutalist. It's called the brutalist. Like, ugh. I don't like those buildings. There are these. Substance was very cool, and I liken it to, it reminded me of Night Bitch. And I feel like, this feels kind of embarrassing and vulnerable to say, but I hope that it hits

the way it's meant to. There have been things that I have sort of understood about being a woman and being a woman, like in America specifically, that I've only sort of understood through my wife and like talking to her and intellectually understanding it. And I think that it's really cool to see movies. Like Ebert said that movies are like engines for empathy. And I feel like both of these movies have really helped me to understand in a better

way and like an emotional way what it is like to be a woman. And in this case, the substance like a woman who is older than many of her peers that is trying to like still make it and and still like What society expects of her the plot is similar to? Severance it kind of lays it out the ideas pretty early on it is about a substance where this fitness Influencer who is played by Demi Moore It basically creates a second her. It's a second body that she can utilize

as long as she switches back and forth between the two once a week. So she can have this career where she is this young, vital superstar and she goes back to herself, but she has to switch every week or a movie happens. So yeah, but it's great. It's very, it's weird. It is unsettling to watch.

It is a good example of a movie that was written by someone who English is not their first language, but they have made that a strength. By not trying to make the dialogue literal, it feels a little disorienting, it adds a heightened reality to the whole thing. And it is not trying to feel like literal dialogue. Not going for naturalism.

Yeah, and I think that really, that helps a lot. And I think that it's very, very cool. There's also a lookbook for this movie that now is online that people can check out that is extremely cool to look through. I don't know if you had a chance to see this yet but I'll send it to you. I think you'll really dig it. Cool. I think we did it. Griffin will be back next week. I wanted to thank the following people for being patrons of the besties. We have some new members. We have

Jiora, sorry if I'm gonna screw up the pronunciations. I'll do my best. Jiora, Jared, Kale or Chell, I'm not sure which one, but I did research the pronunciation of your name and Alistair, which is an awesome name, and I didn't think anyone had that name since Alistair Cook, so I'm glad that they're keeping it around Welcome. We appreciate you and we appreciate everyone else at the patreon We have a new bracket episode which is about the best Easter eggs in video games. That is live right now Here's a clip from it The thing that they've connected is that the year the X-Files is,

the year the X-Files started, you punch that in and you get abducted by aliens. That's such a strange one. This is, I gotta say, man, this is primo. This is primo Easter egg, because it has a quality that I think we have been dancing around this whole time but I think this one really highlights it a

great Easter egg makes you kind of Want to give the creator a wedgie? Yeah, sure it this makes it's like oh you dorks God, you guys are such nerds clearly bully you guys have made it you're making your murder game But really you're just watching x-files and be a big dorks I think that that that is primo right that they're sneaking that kind of junk in there. Yes, please That is the power of a snort too, right? I mean, that's really we can that is why it's a minute this all the time because when you store it that that's kind of a Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's how a person who is congestedort, that's kind of a... Yeah. Like it's a little, yeah.

It's how a person who is congested laughs. And that's inherently pretty dorky. That is a snort. That's a pretty dorky. Awesome. Good times. Cool, that was good. That was fun.

What are we doing next week, Justin? Next week, we're going to take a break from all this work and all this gaming all this action we're gonna take a little break with Wonderstop and we're gonna continue to do what we have to do we will still be working because we have to talk about a video game but the video game is kind of about like not not doing that but it's ironic but we're not taking a break like we never do no we never stop be sure to join joins again for the besties!