The Besties - The Best Mobile Games Out Right Now (Oh, and Zelda)

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out today, which probably means you're playing it right now and not necessarily in a podcast listening mood. Hey, we get it. We're in the same boat, probably, since we didn't get early access. We chat a bit about Zelda in this one, but mostly, we're focused on the glut of great mobile games that have dropped over the past few months! Also discussed: TMNT: Splintered Fate, What the Car, 10 Dates, Zen Pinball: Garfield Table, Honkai Star Rail, Grand Mountain Adventure, Resident Evil 4, Rusted Moss, ROG Ally, Jury Duty, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Bull, 3000 Years of Longing 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!

Guys, I know we've been talking about mobile games. We're going to talk about our past with them, but I got good news for you all. Yeah, sure. And this is kind of going to be good for the whole show and all the shows, I think, is that I found one of my very first apps I ever downloaded back in 2008, and Pocket Guitar still kicks ass. Okay. Turn that shit up.

Let me crank it. Hold on. Crank it. Oh. Oh my god, he's shredding. Somebody whips this out at a party in 2008. It's time to rock. It's go time, baby. That 15-year-old guitar rap sounds crisp go time, baby. That 15-year-old guitar app sounds crisp as hell, baby. Let me add

some distortion on it. Hold on. Yeah. No, I had to. Okay, that's too much distortion. I took the distortion off. A little bit less reverb in my monitors. There's too much wah. Oh, it's turned up to 11, guys. Funny. Okay, now watch this.

I'm going to drink a beer. This is hilarious. See, the beer disappeared. That's funny. Oh my God, you got everything. For 99 cents, you make it look like chocolate milk. Yeah, but can you make your room that was previously very dark, light with the flashlight app?

Mm-hmm. Can you do what this app does? Oh, nasty. Okay, I'm getting wind noise on that track which makes me think it's not coming from your phone plant I feel like the call is coming from inside the plant I mean there would be wind if we're technical

gross bye start the show My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games on the phone My name is Christopher Thomas, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games on the phone. My name is Christopher Thomas Plan, and I know the beep boops. My name is Ross Rorschach, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club, buddies. Just by listening, you have become a member. Welcome to our illustriousous illustrious number um soon and for a while we'll be talking about legend of zelda it's the big green elephant in the room the big green legend of zelda and let's all say the subtitle together tears of the tears of the yeahars of the Kingdom. We all remembered that, but this week we're going to talk about

mobile games. Chris Plant, what's a mobile game? Well, one day somebody decided to put a video game on a mobile thing and we've been rocking and rolling ever since. We didn't get Zelda or we didn't get it early. Just say we didn't get it early we didn't get it early

so yeah this this episode comes out the day zelda comes out but none of us have played it but we will have a little bit of zelda segment in the second half and there are going to be plenty of people who listen to this show who do not have a nintendo switch who do not have a zelda but do you know what all of them have a mobile fucking phone not necessarily we don't want to judge and i do just want to say that i have played breath of the wild and banjo kazooie nuts and bolts so i've basically played tears of the kingdom just jam them together just squish them just squish them together. We're going to talk about all that, and we're going to do it right after this. Hey, y'all. Has anybody been playing anything good on their phone lately?

Jesus Christ, I hope so. Wow, I hope so. What a twist that would be, huh? I would say this episode, though it may seem like it's coming out of nowhere, on Zelda Day, Zelda Day, episode though it may seem like it's coming out of nowhere on zelda day zelda uh there was just a an influx of apple arcade titles that we have of a scale that i do not know we have seen uh since maybe the platform first launched uh and it is i have been playing games on my phone more in the last two weeks than I have in the last year. So it is a fun time for games on the phone right now.

Which game is the star of your house? Oh boy, of my house. I mean, I don't. Can we take a moment? Because it's so rare to find an original sentence in the English language. And I don't think anybody's ever said, what game is the star of your house? What? What do you mean?

Like, there's a game. What game is the star of your house? Yeah, like, everybody in the house is like, can't get enough of that game. And it's the star. Star. I mean, go on. Star of the house. Stretch the bit uh the current game that is being played a lot in

our house is pokemon violet henry has finally gotten into it but that's not a phone it's not phone game um my phone time is for me um it's a personal journey that i like to go on sometimes when i am playing gus will climb up in my lap and seize the phone from me. And then all of a sudden, you know, Donatello has died because a baby is controlling him. And I guess that's our first game to talk about.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splintered Fate, I think is what it's called. Hades Edition. Hades Edition. Yeah, I a a this is apple arcade title it is free if you have apple arcade um which is maybe a loaded statement uh but it is a sort of isometric brawler uh in the vein of uh in the vein of a hades where you control the the titles uh through a series of battle arenas,

and you get level ups every time you finish a little arena, and you create builds based around those, and it's got four-player multiplayer, and it's pretty fucking fun. Has anybody else played this one? Yes, I actually played it as well, and it is pretty fun. I like the combat feels good.

You know, you got the four turtles there. Raphael's quick, and Donatello's got a big stick. Oh, there's probably more to it than that. But yeah, in terms of like a jump in, jump out. And it's a rogue light, I guess, because you have some progression, but it's, you know, you're starting from scratch when you die kind of thing. Yeah, it's satisfying. It's like welcoming. Yeah, it's pretty challenging, I would say, though.

Once you beat the first level, the first level I feel like is super easy, and then the second level will kick your ass, but that's okay because you, you know, take your dragon coins back to the base and you get permanent upgrades for your turtles. Yeah, I think it maybe leans a little too much in the progression update you know upgrade so you have a shot at surviving but the actual combat is pretty fun and satisfying and i like the graphics and they like fully voiced a lot of it and that's pretty cool i do it is uh i don't know that it works so great with touch controls like it is totally serviceable but especially once you get into

more challenging like encounters it does the um it does the thing that a lot of games do which is like enemies telegraph their attacks right so you see like oh this guy's about to launch this big poison bomb and it's gonna land here and i have like a second and a half to get out of the way it's easy enough to like deal with one of those but when you have like six telegraphed attacks to try to like weave around while taking out enemies at the same time uh i i found myself wishing that i had buttons which i don't know it might use backbone i have not used my backbone in a long time yeah they i think most of the newly released uh appleade games all support controller things. The other one that I played,

I don't know if you have more to say about Team NT. No, not really. I played What the Car, which I know other people on the thing played as well. Hell yeah. That game, it's the star of my house. It's the star of my house. This game is the star of my house.

We finally found out the star of Plant's house. If you're not familiar, What the Car is made by the same people who made What the Golf and What the Bat. And it is a- Wait, I haven't heard of that one. Oh, you haven't heard of What the Bat? They made a baseball one? They made a VR baseball one where your arms are bats. Yes.

It's pretty fun. It's not as good as What the the golf but it's still pretty fun um but the idea is it's like comedy mini games where you in what the car you start out with like a simple car that you're driving down a track and then suddenly what if the car had legs and what if the car had a jet pack? And it's a variety of very silly, over-the-top, I guess, kind of platforming challenges in a 3D space. And it's super fucking funny. It's so rare that there are games that make me laugh out loud, but this game genuinely was like,

what if it had too many legs? And then suddenly you have six legs on the car. It does the two things you have to do to be a funny video game, guaranteed. The two things. What's that? Are you ready? Yeah. Be so easy that you don't have to repeat the bit.

Hmm. And be so short that the bit doesn't wear out its welcome. Two things that comedy games fail to do most of the time. I mean, this game is not easy, is what I would question. Well, if you go for you know there's like collectible trading cards on each course that require you to like take pretty circuitous routes that are much more difficult it dares you i at a certain point i stopped going after those because i did i was repeating levels and it was not funny or fun anymore.

Yeah. Your mileage may vary. Every level starts with your car is in a cannon and you have to press the honk button to launch the cannon. And then it zooms up close on the car and voices sing like car with too many legs. And it's different every time and it's like a fun comedy jump scare every every every single time that it happens and it is a it is a delightful a delightful experience yeah i really liked it they also have a um level creator built into the game with like pretty intuitive tools and they even they do something very smart

where they feed in uh user-created levels into the main like there's like a world map like uh super mario world style like you're moving around selecting levels and in that you'll see user created levels as well that's sort of where i was alluding to with the difficulty is some of those levels are like people made insanely difficult levels which so maybe caveat emptor but the for the most part it's uh very approachable and fun if you don't go crazy i would say though it's totally playable on touch it is like excellent on a controller like the controls are so good and like the cars feel great and the responsiveness is like really good that if you have the ability wheel i i don't think you can play with a wheel maybe you can but you can definitely

play with like an xbox i don't be able to play it with a wheel that'd be so fun yeah so like the controls on the screen is a like a little wheel that you steer left right and then there's like a stick shift slash horn button yeah um this game rules we have a lot of people like the recurring question uh we get on any time people ask us questions is either i don't play a lot of video games what should i play to start or how do i you know start my kid on video games this is the perfect game for that because it does so many different styles of play that you know it's it's referential to so many different types of video games that it's kind of just a good primer on i don't know like the history of play and then when you go from here and go try

other things you'll be in a good spot i let my kid try it she She's eight, Charlie. And she really dug it. She said, this is very fun to play, and the concept is very stupid. Good. Oh, yeah. That's pretty much the whole bit. She has a future in games journalism, unfortunately. It is enjoyably dumb. But I got a kick out of it. I think it's very funny.

But I got a kick out of it. I think it's very funny. I think it is under, like, it's easy to underwrite how impressively dumb and also fun it is. Like, it's extremely difficult to make what they made, which is, like, a really approachable. Yeah, get that eight-year-old fresh. Get her. Yeah, take that.

She undersold it. She doesn't appreciate the nuance of a man's game. No, I'm just really impressed by their, all of their games really are like it's it's really hard to make these sorts of games approachable and fun and silly and funny um and i'm always like thrilled to see anything that they're putting out because it's such a rarity i'd like to mention a game that i have been enjoying uh that i've been playing a little bit and this is like not for everybody but

it is the kind of thing where if you like this sort of thing I think you'll really get a kick out of it it's called 10 Dates and it is the sequel to a game called 5 Dates and it is from Wales Interactive

which does a lot of these like first purse like fmv type thing they actually just released one called mia and the dragon princess they did who pressed mute on uncle marcus which i've talked about here before um so that has been uh their milieu i guess and uh this game 10 dates like i said the sequel said, the sequel to 5 Dates, is on mobile. You can play it on Steam. You can play it on mobile. It is – so the last one, 5 Dates, was about like – it was very much a quarantine-era product. It was about dating online during a pandemic.

dating online during a pandemic. Uh, and you would be set up on dates and you are playing a, you know, fully voiced acted character. You're not like playing yourself or whatever you're in control of your main character. And you would go on sort of like zoom dates with people. And it's pretty binary. It's just like, uh, you know, yes or no questions. You decide like, if you want to keep delving into something or if you want to like ignore it and move on to something else. But you're really like navigating a conversation with somebody and like the ebb and flow of it. And there's not really a win state. It's much more about just like the pleasure of watching a conversation like this play out. about just like the pleasure of watching a conversation like this play out um 10 dates the sequel is in like starts the first sort of round of it is in like a speed dating setting so people are back in person uh and you're sitting across the table from or your character is sitting

across the table you can choose a man or a woman uh and you go on a variety of these like little speed dates and you're choosing the basically the conversational topics, how you're reacting to stuff. And because there's not really a, you know, a win or lose per se, you're not getting points based on, you know, winning people over. It's not like that super seducer that that nightmare is going to say. Yeah, it's not like that. It's not points to like do well. It's very much like who you sort of like click with. And it's interesting. It's mainly like the pleasure of it is mainly just like watching.

The acting is really good. And the writing is like really good. And it does kind of feel like just watching two people kind of connect for the first time. Or watching them sort of not connect for the first time and bump off each other. But it is kind of like that romantic comedy energy, but it's distilled down to its purest, just like a boiled down meat. Cutes pipe them right in direct to the vein,

cute and light and very different from from other other games i mean game is probably not even they call it an interactive rom-com which i think is uh maybe overstating it a bit but uh i i got a really big kick out of it if you if you want something different it's phone ipad steam you know whatever but it's called 10 dates and you there's no connection the last one that i can discern. But it's neat. Speaking of different, I just dropped in a screenshot of the thing that's basically sucking up my entire life. No questions about it or anything. I thought there'd be a discussion.

Well, Justin, look at the image. More like, let me shuffle out this FMV degenerate and let him do his legally mandated spiel, and then we'll put him back in the eaves above the home where we store him no chris and russ and i have done our community service if you'll look at the image that russ has just posted in here i do think you'll feel embarrassed for your thoughts and actions um i guarantee we'll talk more about this than mine yeah for sure so it seems that zen pinball has uh licensed probably the most in demand pinball franchise the world has ever seen and that would be garfield yeah and man there's

so much to take in with this game before sorry before you get into that i think you're assuming people know what zen pinball is or what garfield yeah i was gonna i thought maybe oh sorry first of all garfield he's a cat hates mondays loves lasagna kind of grumpy has like a love-hate relationship with odie who's the dog that lives in his house there's normal who's very cute john drinks coffee a whole lot and has like a on again off again thing with this woman um staunch christ Christian overtones. Meow. Yeah. So that's Garfield.

Zen Pinball is a long-running pinball franchise. It's the best pinball franchise. I thought this was going to be like a junky iPhone game. I did not realize that the people who actually know how to make pinball tables were like, you know, we're going to take a break. We're going to really go for it.'re gonna go garfield yeah and so they've gone and made a bunch of franchise uh pinball tables and garfield i don't know how long garfield's been up there but as i was surfing for other mobile games to check out garfield pinball just jumped out at me and man everything's here you got od you got garfield you You got John's chair, which has just a really central place on this pinball table.

I'm zooming in here. Odie's treats. Feast frenzy. TV time. There's a scale to weigh how Garfield weighs. I can't tell if you are describing the table or reading the garfield wiki it it's really no no this is literally stuff that's on the there's a fridge someone right now is listening to this and looking at their nintendo switch across the room it has just made the

noise that has let them know that zelda downloading. And they probably find themselves confused at how much they don't want to play Zelda right now and just want to listen to Russ sort of recap the characters and concepts of Garfield, the mythos of Garfield. Can I suggest something? So Zelda, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom both have sort of ambient piano music

playing in the background. But what if, instead of that that while you're playing zelda you could just hear the like idle chatter of the garfield pinball game sure yeah no i mean those two things are definitely equivalent i do remember when the video game award for best video game music in 2017 went to lorenzo music uh the voice of garfield uh which was uh and then the audience just started booing like really really really really loud jeff keely was run out of town in shame he was never allowed to and he was like we should have been more specific when we said best music that we meant like songs and not like a guy's last name. Yeah. Even though it is Garfield, so put some respect on it. Can I share a game?

Please. Okay. So did any of you play Grand Mountain Adventure Plus? I really liked that. Yeah. That was a chill thing, man. Talk about a game where, well, you're going to talk about it. No, you go ahead.

You go ahead. I'm excited that you're excited. Well, no, I're going to talk about it. No, you go ahead. You go ahead. I'm excited that you're excited. No, I just want to say my little thing is like, and it kind of connects to what we were talking about. Early days of mobile, there was a lot of work put into how do you find experiences that just like feel good with this input? And that was common back in the day where you'd find one. It's just like, oh, this feels great. This is exactly what everybody should be doing. Those are less common because people have gotten smarter about it. But this is a skiing game where it just feels like so perfect for mobile.

It is just a joy to play. Well, going off what you just said, a lot of those early mobile games, the trick was what's familiar to everyone. Like, let's bring solitaire over free cell right or minesweeper let's bring over games that people know how to play already and then you know at least that part's taken care of and then they can learn the touch controls and this is like ski free through and through for i don't know the people listening remember ski free it came out like 1991 but it's just a little top down or i guess isometric uh skiing game where you go down a hill that the whole point is like basically chill

zone out go down a hill it feels good to move downwards in a video game and this game is top down slash isometric chill zone out go down a giant semi open world. It's like these like large, entire mountains, there are a few mountains in the game. And you can kind of go wherever you want. And as you progress, you'll like come across little goals like oh, you know, race through this area or get to the bottom at this speed or do a couple tricks and then you'll earn little passes that give you uh the ability to go up ski lifts and then you get higher and higher in the mountain and then you switch between the mountains it's a really really great um just kind of i don't know progress path the only bummer i'll say this is as i got into the uh just, did you get to any of the hard levels?

No. So I got to the, like, they're like hard paths, and they felt wildly difficult, like just did not gel with what I had assumed the game to be. So I looked up the game because I wasn't sure what its full title was because I had seen a few different ones and it's also on steam and switch and now i'm kind of wondering like oh as great as this feels on you know like phone was it made for those things right and then this is kind of a port because for me if i were designing this just for mobile i would have really stuck basically exclusively with the chill-out vibes and not tried to go too hard into, like, this being a game game. That said, it's Apple Arcade.

So it costs nothing if you already have Apple Arcade. And I think it's, like, a great couple hours until you get to the hard stuff. And then there's plenty of other stuff to do. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Hey, has anybody else played Honkai Star Rail? Oh, man. No, I want to hear all about it. I'm not sure I do.

You got to get up on it. Justin, you are excused. Thank you. From the next five minutes. Hey, listen, my to-do list just got a little bit shorter. Thank you. From the next five minutes. Hey, listen, my to-do list just got a little bit shorter. Hawkeye Star Rail is the new title from MiHoYo,

or Hoyoverse is like their, what they call their slate of games. They made Genshin Impact. And so this is the next in their series. I can actually hear Justin going. That's incredible. That wasn't me, actually. Unbelievably. No, I'm still here. I guess it's incredible. That wasn't me, actually. Unbelievably.

No, I'm still here. I guess it's Russ who's just excused himself for the conversation. He didn't count on what a loud door he had. Russ is on the bubble. I don't think Russ would like this game either. I know Justin wouldn't.

I'm still here. Don't worry. It is... It is Genshin Impact by way of more traditional JRPG instead of being a more action RPG, action adventure, you know, Breath of the Wild like. It is, man, they know how to make a very polished game. And it is free to play. So, you know, it costs nothing to download it and check

it out uh which if you are a jrpg fan uh you i definitely think you should do just because it is pretty impeccably presented it does a lot to streamline the turn-based battles that make up you know the majority of the games like gameplay uh where every character that you can unlock through the you know gacha system that uh returns from genshin impact has like different elemental affinities that you can use to target weaknesses and enemies to sort of get a persona like uh like like break their defenses and slow them down and delay their turn and make them extra vulnerable to follow-up attacks. Every character also has like a specialty.

So there are like single target, you know, damage characters. And then there's healing characters or debuff characters. And you have to put together a team of four using those two sort of considerations. But fights move very, very fast. You don't have some huge list of commands. You basically have a basic attack, a special attack that uses like a point system that you accrue as you, you know, do regular attacks in battle. And then every character has an ultimate that you can deploy at any time.

attacks in battle and then every character has an ultimate that you can deploy at any time and it basically boils down to you know deciding when to use your ultimates and when to use your special attacks to break an enemy that has an upcoming turn so they can't do a thing to you and you know maybe i need to save my energy so that i can uh put a shield up on this character that's being targeted um it's it's very smart in how it doesn't overwhelm you with options for things that you can do for any characters like given turn but uh trying to figure out the best way to deploy those like limited options is has been pretty rewarding um i've i've only played it for a few hours and it seems very big um so i i can't speak to it a whole lot the story is incomprehensible and so if that's a thing that you are looking for then i this may not be for you uh it has big

fantasy star online vibes which is really scratching the itch for me um but i just i really like the gameplay the writing is at times like kind of cute and funny and charming um and you know the character designs are amazing as uh genshin impacts were um i haven't spent i i dropped a few bucks to uh do like a special draw from the gacha machine but uh they also do the thing that these games do which is like overwhelm you up front with free passes for you know pulling characters and so i think i've pulled like 80 characters and if not or 80 80 draws and have not you know spent that much money on the game um so i i am going to spend more time with it because i am uh very very much enjoying it i

never really got into genshin impact too deep um just because i didn't really enjoy the combat in the game and the way that it handled sort of elemental weaknesses and stuff um but if you are a jrpg fan i i definitely think that this one is worth checking out because it's um it's just very very very well made um yeah that's the hunk i started well i'm just gonna say before we go to breath the wild if we wanted to share the earliest games we ever downloaded on our iphone god i'm not kidding this could i could go for a half hour on my ancient history of my purchase. You showed us how to do this. Friend, if you want to do this, this is a value add, right, for our show.

Yeah. Go to the App Store, click on your little icon of yourself in the upper right-hand corner, then click Purchased, My Purchases, and then scroll all the way to the back. You probably should go to Not on this iPhone, because I'm hoping if you've been using iPhones for 15 years, you don't still fucking have, you know. The first game I ever downloaded on my phone was in 2008, and it was Super Monkey Ball.

Fuck yeah. That's a good one, right? That's a good one. My first one is a game just called Balls. Guys, it's my top, my first, I'm not kidding, maybe 30 apps on here are straight up Garbo. Hit me with some of them. I feel like I have some good ones on my first few apps.

What do you got? Well, my first few, I got Rolando. Remember that entire Njimoko era of games? Oh, yeah, Rolando. Remember that entire NG MoCo era of games? Oh, yeah. Rolando's good. Rolando, Sway, Zenbound, the game where you did rope bondage with wooden trinkets. Oh, yeah. That was a great game.

Light Bike Online, the Tron ripoff, light biking. Textropolis. Yeah, I got that Super super monkey ball light of course was i gonna pay for it of course not do you have switchblade free self-defense i'm pretty sure that was an app that it had a little switchblade on the screen and when you tapped it it came out some of these aren't even like you can't even get them anymore most of these are you can't get them anymore you can't even download anymore you know the one that i have completely forgotten about this is in um

god constitution for iphone god justin why but why oh here's a rimshot app that's great um it's an interesting one called soul trapper that was an uh audio-only video game where you would use gestures to control a story that was just being told to you through your headphones. That was really cool. Hey, what about Fart Piano? Make Everyone Laugh. That's from... I downloaded that one on May 18th, 2009.

Oh, I just found... I just found Light Bike Online and Zenbound. They're good. Absolutely. They're good. How big of a bummer is it game preservation wise? Some really big games straight up you can't download now. It's like Let's Golf, Peggle,

Flight Control. I'm sure there must be a new version of Flight Control somewhere. Zenonia? Land of the Lost Crystal Adventure starring Will Ferrell. Heartbreaking. I am T-Pain 2.0 is no longer available, but man alive did I use that app a whole lot.

That was an app, if you didn't play with phones in 2009, that let you auto-tune your voice. It was quite a thing for a little bit. Literally anything you could sing into it, it would auto-tune it, and it would sound so shitty and bad. Y''all how big of a bummer is this do you remember that game ellis with the little circles and you would like push down the circles it was just like it's kind of like the first artsy indie game on on mobile and it's you can't download it anymore but then i know that they did a a re-release of it and it looks like you can't download that either man you can't download it anymore but then i know that they did a a re-release of it and it looks

like you can't download that either man you can't even download Cylon detector how the heck am i supposed to detect Cylons they look just like us Mafia Wars guys yeah Mafia Wars 2009 can't play that anymore there is a real rest we were just talking about how how there is such a loss of game history like you talk about where like game preservation is rough man a lot of these are just gone yeah a lot of you just can't can't do it oh man oh guys okay i just found the first game that i was like really obsessed with and uh this was in 2010 early 2010 um and this would have been like the first game where I was working at joystick um and we would you know get all fixated on the same mobile game and and start like comparing scores in the tilt to live yes oh yeah

talk about games that just like felt that was a you know what it's sort of like geometry wars except the the only like input was tilting the phone um and they would put out like mines and stuff like that god that was a really really good game that was a i i really miss being really fixated on like score hunts against other people. Yeah, I think Cube Runner was my first standout, obsessed with this game. This was a 2018 release. I don't know if it runs. I'm looking at the screenshots and it's, Jesus Christ, it's

so rough. Some of these you can still, I had back-to-back downloaded Battleheart and Tiny Wings. Both fucking absolute jammers. Yeah, Battleheart is great too. It's so wild to look at this shit.

First of all, that this was, I mean, I downloaded Tiny Wings March 16, 2011. That was 12 years ago. It is such a wildly different landscape that, you know, when these games were coming out we were downloading them there wasn't a ton of competition for phone space or time uh and so when tiny wings came out everybody at joystick downloaded it because it was like it's the same reason that we have popular podcasts yes that's fair we started back then you had to you had to do it early when you weren't competing with anybody it's just i'm looking at the list of shit from back then and these games have a big footprint in my mind and that absolutely would not be true i mean even like okay uh i mentioned honkai star rail i don't know if i'm still to be like if 12 years from now I'm going to have the kind of memories from that game that I have about you know uh Tiny Wings or Super Brothers

Sword and Sorcery uh because those were like the only ones those were the only games uh that were out on phone that people were talking about I made a I made a uh like when I when I got back into Tiny Wings you can still find it on my youtube channel from like a dozen years ago when i got back into playing tiny wings competitively after saying that i was done with it i made like an intro video like a video about myself playing tiny wings again as the million point man and i like was bragging about how the million point man was back on the on the charts in tiny wings because it was such a big deal like what like tiny wing scores back then

did you find it no i just found out my balls uh that was sure uh download that one in 2012 um uh okay well anyway that's our i don't know if there was a point that is fun to do the like nostalgia trip. It's weird to think about mobile gaming having that level of nostalgia, but, like, we're there. It's been at least 14 years. I mean, there's a lot of these that you can't play. I tell you, that preservation thing does bother me, though. Yeah.

I mean, it's a problem everywhere, unfortunately. But, yeah. It feels like these could slip through the cracks a lot easier than games that are released in retail with physical forms you know sure yeah i know what you're saying uh let's take a break and we'll come back we'll talk about uh the incredible princess and her hero link okay so zelda as people probably know came out today the day this episode is now live. And I wanted to ask y'all, like none of us have played it at this point as we are recording, what is your intention? How will you be playing it when it comes out? So I guess like number one, is this a game where you'll use like walkthroughs and like read a guide on like where the best places to go are first

or are you just going to go completely blind? It's hard to say. When I played Breath of the Wild, I basically did it two times in a row where my first playthrough, I just kind of like I beat all the dungeons and then I beat the boss and I did some of the shrines enough to like get strong yeah and then I played it in master mode and tried to

aside from the Korok seeds like a hundred percent it um which I would love to do this time around I don't know if Tears of the Kingdom has a master mode yeah I don't know which would be honestly a pretty big bummer if it doesn't just because i really really really enjoyed playing the game in a like very intense difficult way um but it's hard to say with this game when you go at life right right exactly it's hard to say with this game though because it seems like the systems are so much more open-ended that it's like less about well where do i go to get the master sword and how do i get it as fast as i can so i can get a weapon that doesn't you know i don't

have to worry about weapon degradations but when in this game it's like oh i found a big spiky ball and i put it on a stick and now i kill everything uh if it feels like i don't know it feels like you rob yourself of some of the joy of that if you go in with a more walkthrough-focused mindset. On that same level, I don't know how much you guys played Breath of the Wild with Pro mode on, which was a HUD setting, but it was one of the best decisions I ever made in playing Breath of the Wild with Pro mode on,

and I was curious if anyone else wants to. Can you explain what what that sure so pro mode is like the most minimal hud you could possibly have i'm pretty sure the only thing that you see is um your health like when you're walking around you can see your hearts at the top left and you can see your stamina as it's like being used but otherwise there's nothing else on the screen normally the like default hud is surprisingly cluttered and busy and i don't particularly like it because there's like so much there but because the game is so well designed so much of the stuff that is in the hud is already portrayed in the game so for example if it's cold there is a

a thermometer on the hud normally but you can see Link like shivering and like rubbing his arms for warmth. So there are ways to like intuit a lot of that stuff. The only thing that's like big that you're missing is like a radar, like a map. But again, like there, you know, I'm fine checking the map it was just a really great way to feel way more absorbed in that world way more like invested where i actually had to like look at the environment and think about where i was going next rather than just like following icons around so i will give it a shot it seems like not having the radar on the screen it's awesome i gotta say play it play it for like an hour and see how you feel but i i thought it was just incredible to play like that feels like a good way to play the first hour because i asked have

no expectations you know i mean i'm just gonna want to wander around anyway yeah um the other thing i was wondering for for y'all that aren't going to look things up are you going to keep a notebook this is killing me i can't talk about any of this yeah no plant plant is not allowed to plant has been i know everything that happens in this game yeah hey you know what i can say this is gonna be fucking awesome plant has been very hands-on he's not literally he has not literally played it but he has been very hands-on with the production of all the content that polygon is working on regarding the launch of breath of sorry just say he's a nerd i mean well he knows he knows every it's gonna be so good it's gonna be so good he knows everything about this game

and i don't know how he's gonna be involved in the further discussions of this game because it will drive me nuts no i, I'll be good. You need to be really good, like the best plant you've ever been. I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. You love the spoilies. I'm not saying anything right now. I don't. That's old me.

New me? I would never do that to my friends. Why are you confusing the old him and the new him? Big mistake. I'm not even available to download on the iOS App Store anymore. New me? I'm right there top

of the list right there i mean can we at least talk about the gif you posted to me and oh that was and justin oh i didn't know i literally didn't watch it i know he was like do you want to see this i was like i don't want to see that shit now you can see it you can see this i don't want to look at i'm not going to look at it. I'm going to describe it. Ugh. Environment. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. How about actually, Frush, this is good. This is good content. Can you do me a favor? Can you pull up that link and then can you just tell me

what you're seeing? Sure. Just pull up the link and tell me what you're seeing. He says it's good content. I mean, do you want me to read what you wrote? Okay, I'm going to say this is a link to reddit a weapon to surpass metal gear not really spoilers but it's from the leak i don't know that i want to look at just oh my god fine fine fine it's a giant penis there we go no oh sorry it's a man who appears to be shooting fire. I'm sorry. It's a construction. It's like a robot that someone made within this game. And the robot has a big penis that is shooting fire. Thank you.

And then Link is like, right there. He's right there. He's looking at it. He actually lights the penis on fire. And the robot has a head with a face on it that's like looking left and right, but it looks like Box Boy. And the penis goes up and down as it shoots fire out of it. This is going to be a fucking good game. This is what E.J. Onuma envisioned

for the future of this franchise, honestly. So we just have to live in it. Okay. Well, all right, fellas. That's going to be fun. Do we have any other games that we wanted to mention for honorable mentions? I wanted to say I finished my S Plus professional Resident Evil 4 run just under five hours. You got those cat ears?

Got those cat ears. Got that infinite ammo. What a fucking game i it has reminded me i've never engaged with a resident evil game like this before where i wanted to play it in the hardest way possible um i usually just play through on normal so i don't have to stress so much about the different systems in the game, but I, I, I enjoyed this one so much.

And my familiarity with Resident Evil four was at a point where it felt, uh, it felt very doable and it was super duper hard. There are some of these like combat encounters that I, I'm going to have dreams about just because I had to slam my head against them so many times. The big thing for, um,

getting S plus on professional, which is the hardest difficulty setting is that you can only save 15 times. Uh, and there's 16 chapters in the game. So that meant that I would have to, there were, there were a few times where I was playing through like two, two and a half,

three chapters without saving. Wow. And if you die, it's all gone. I think I should finish this game. It seems like you guys like it. The game rules. I mean, it's pretty stellar. It's pretty great.

Definitely a top 10 for me. Unquestionably top 10. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to unsee in my mind. It's, yeah, man, it's one of those games I feel like uh i've not felt this way about a game since sekiro where i enjoy the experience of just playing the game so much even though it is not traditionally the type of game that i would pick up and replay immediately after finishing it uh it's just so so pleasant to like play this game and

goof around with it that i i'm i'm just absolutely in love with it um so that has been my big my big jam um i've been playing a little bit not a ton but a little bit of breath of the wild because i've just been dying and it's just killing me waiting for Tears of the Kingdom to come out. And I booted it up and was reminded of how fucking amazing it is that they added the Hero's Path mode in that game, which, as a reminder,

you can turn on Hero's Path if you're looking at the main map and it'll show you a line of where you've walked for your entire adventure from start to finish it was tracking it the whole time even when the game launched it didn't have hero's path it was still tracking where you were going to the point where you know exactly like places of the map that you haven't been yet and in doing that uh i've like stumbled upon areas that i've never been to

uh side quest like i found a side quest that I had never touched before, just like big chunks of the game that I just didn't interact with previously. And it's a shame that I won't have enough time to experience them because Tears of the Kingdom is going to be out and I'm just going to play that. But it's,

that game fucking rules. I hope Hero's Path is in cheers of the kingdom fingers crossed don't tell me but i don't want to know yeah i'm not saying anything i've been playing something else yeah but he is internally i can hear his little brain work no i'm not i'm looking forward to telling you about my stuff oh what do you got i've been playing a game that you wanted me to play and here you are cutting me off at the knees sorry and i was so excited to tell people about this always just when it comes to zelda really i'm not doing anything i want to talk about rusted moss a game that also i believe i recommend oh yeah you fresh and i don't

think that's true i think that's true i think that's true. We'll check the logs. And it is a rogue. Not rogue. Like, what am I saying? It's a Metroidvania where you are a young human or fairy woman. I'm having trouble with the story. Whatever the case, you have a giant ass gun. You're a changeling. Changeling.

Thank you. And a grappling hook. And the grappling hook has really goofy fun physics and you go around and you you shoot robots it's cool as hell um we'll be talking about it more in rusties and griffin it sounds like you've been playing it so i want to hear your thoughts and then the the other thing is i've been playing it on an asus rog ally which is the steam deck competitor in griffin how is it i knew i oh you are um it's gonna be hard for you to resist it i think i didn't know it was out it is not but oh here we go here we go baby you didn't think i was gonna let that inside stuff slide no um you can order it

now it's very promising we'll talk way way way way more about it later um griffin i think you should you if you have the means you should get one because the big difference is it's just way easier to tinker with um like i mean mean, Steam Deck has like a huge community. So people have been building lots of interesting things for it, especially around emulation. But at the end of the day, having Windows on handheld and all of the stuff that already exists for Windows is like a pretty, pretty, pretty big deal. And to be clear, I don't know if I said that up top. Yeah, basically picture a Steam Deck with Windows on it instead of steam os and linux which you could technically install windows on a

steam deck for what it's worth yes there you go there you go but it's it but it is my understanding it's more powerful a higher resolution screen a little bit bigger a little bit small a thinner it feels somewhere between like a switch and a Steam Deck is what I would describe the feel, the hand feel as. Anyway, anything else? Justin, I need to hear your reaction to Jedi Survivor. Oh, okay. It's a weird one, right? Because I kept playing it because Fresh said that there is some, like, pretty kick-ass stuff later.

And he was right. There is a, not just one sequence. There are a few sequences that are, like, really, really, really good. And it is, and also, like, the mobility evolves as you're going through the game in a pretty major way. And it is weird to me still, I think how long it takes to get to that point. Like I'm not saying with like a clear conscious, like I could, I could say like, oh yeah, it's definitely worth, you know, sticking with it if you're not absolutely loving it. But I will say like, I have softened on it more the longer that I've been with it. You do have a lot more flexibility with the movement and like, it's a lot more challenging. There's a lot of stuff, like there's

one part where you are like doing a wall run on a platform that is moving, but you are staying on the platform because when you jump off the platform itself moves forward and you can rejoin it so you're sort of like consistently wall running on the side of a tram as it goes to this factory there's a lot of cool stuff like that and there's actually some like pretty good jokes some pretty good jokes in there love that turgle we love turgle we stand turgle we stand turgle i still think there's too much cruft uh to and it obscures some of this cool stuff but uh i do have to say it's it's it's it's uh a pretty and the sequence that uh fresh was sort of hinting us towards is astounding i mean

it is it's all time it's definitely like you know respawn is i think kind of known for like a few like incredible sequences um and it definitely stands toe-to-toe with you know the best moments of titanfall 2 and you know the early call of duty games like the jedha sequence that you're referencing this is the jedha sequence sequence okay yeah one of them it's after the wind stuff how's that there's like a wind dungeon and it's towards the end of that yeah it's great and you'll know because it's yeah you'll know cool not something you can miss that game is great my my general attitude of it is like that game would be easily like top five like scratches a ton of itches for me if it ran better it's still not i'm playing on ps5 and i have to run on

resolution mode because the second i switch to performance mode it like is like at a 45 50 frames skippy screen tearing mess if the game was like consistent and smooth in the way that like you know i'd say like god of war ragnarok was this game would be like stratospherically higher for me but i think the core of it and i think over time they will address the performance issues but the core of it is like so incredibly strong that I hope more people play it. I wanted to mention movies real quick. I just watched a couple and I wanted to briefly plug Bull. If you want like a pretty nasty British crime thriller kind of thing, if you like revenge movies or like,

especially that kind of low key, but pretty violent British crime thriller kind of thing. If you like revenge movies or like, especially that kind of low key, but pretty violent British crime thing. Uh, it's really intense and fun, but dark. It's called bull. Bull. B-U-L-L.

Yeah. About a guy who's basically appears out of nowhere and should not be alive and has come to find his, his son. Um, it's very, it's, it's great. You are leaving out like the most important part. and should not be alive and has come to find his son. It's great. You are leaving out the most important part. Which is?

That when it's a full moon, he turns into a bull. That's true. Yeah, he is half man, half bull, all party. The other, I also watched 3,000 Years of Longing, the George Miller movie. Do you guys know that one? It's so nice. It's so nice. It's really nice. It's just a nice watch.

It made me feel good. It's like, basically, frigging Tilda Swinton is a narrativologist, studies stories, finds a lamp with a genie in it played by Idris Elba.

He's like, let me hit you with those wishes. And she's like, nah, it never goes good. And then she, he like tells her stories from his life about like this incredible life he has lived and the people he's helped. And so it cuts between the two of them talking about the nature of wishes, the nature of stories, the nature of relationships, all that stuff.

And him telling these fantastic sort of fables from his life. It's beautiful to look at. It's very, very different from George miller's last movie which was uh mad max fury road but is similarly has its heart in uh the right place and is and the dude has range he did babe pig babe two pig in the city i mean come on mega hit and then it's like what if i make the weirdest thing possible it's also kind of like a beautiful story about how like it becomes harder and harder to like believe in fantastical things. I want to plug a TV show

called Jury Duty. Hey! This is a good one folks. If you haven't seen any of the like trailers or anything for it it is a show about a fictionalized court case and the jury that is uh convening over it uh and everyone in it is an actor except one guy named ronald

who doesn't know who thinks he's just on a documentary about being on jury duty. And the big sort of gag is that James Marsden plays himself, and he is also on the jury. And it is so... It could have gone in a very mean-spirited, pranky direction. Instead, it is one of the more wholesome uh shows i have watched in recent memory where everything is just kind of about building this dude up and giving him essentially hero moments i don't think it would work if the guy himself wasn't like pretty great he's like the best sport on the planet and like un unflappable but like okay just to give you an example of the kind of guy this guy is he

shows up james mars is there he doesn't really recognize him and he admits that to him and then james mars is like yeah i was in like son of the hedgehog recently and this guy's like i heard that wasn't i heard that wasn't very good and then he comes the next day he's like hey i gotta apologize i watched sonic the hedgehog last night and kicked ass it's so good you're right it's great at one point he brings in his dvd of of sex drive to have james mars inside that's hilarious everybody else in the room is like what is sex drive and he like recounts the plot of sex drive and they're like why you could not make that movie again these days uh it's it it it they keep finding it treads the line of like outrageous like there is no way this dude would not clock that this is a a like a a reality tv premise at one point like it gets so bonkers that he's like i feel like i'm on a reality

tv show and just kind of like a hush falls over the crowd to that note james marston did an interview that sydney was telling me about where he was talking about that they would often have to make deposits into the reality bank is how he phrased it. And basically like have days of shooting. That was boring. That were just boring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like nothing happened, right? So funny.

It's so wild. It is such an impeccably produced tightrope act. Is there a way to watch it? Because it's on Freebie, right? It's on Freebie. It's on Amazon. If you watch it on Amazon video, you can watch it because it's on freebie right it's on freebie it's on Amazon if you watch it on Amazon video it's you can watch it with ads

yeah you watch all of it with ads and you should it's hysterical it is it's a very kind there are moments of genuine human kindness that are a beautiful beacon in the darkness

it's sort of like the positive version of John Quinones is what that are a beautiful beacon in the darkness. It's sort of like the positive version of John Quinones' What Would You Do? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, if the wildest possible thing happened, what would you do? And this guy just makes, like, kind choice after kind choice.

It's really lovely. I really only know the Mark Summers' What Would You Do? So I can't really pick up on that reference. I got you. I understand. Also, James Marsden, national treasure and finally getting appreciated for that. Performance in this is so fucking wild. Dude's doing like three

levels where he is pretending to be James Marsden, but like a stylized like... There's a whole subplot where he is in... He's like reading a script that he got through the rail and he audibly goes ha he's like oh sorry it's a jump scare the gag is that it's a script for an upcoming basically quentin tarantino movie but he won't

say who it is but he's like i can't say who it is but imagine he's like, I can't say who it is, but imagine a director that like, stuff has not come out about yet, but when it does, you wouldn't be too, I can't say, it's called Lone Pine, and the script sequences that he reads from it

are so shitty, and so bad, and everybody just kind of like, rolls with it. It's, man. God, it's funny.

It's really funny. It's so, so, so good. I'm recommending it to anybody who watches television. There it is. It's, man. God, it's funny. It's really funny. It's so, so, so good. I'm recommending it to anybody who watches television. There it is. It's fantastic. Thank you so much for listening to our program.

We really hope that you've enjoyed yourself. We hope you're enjoying Zelda if you partake, if you're one of those sorts of people. And next week, I think we should make at least a passing mention of Zelda and let's say it together. Zelda. Breath of the Wild 2.

Tears of the Kingdom. Yes. Yes. I'm excited for it. I just can't remember things anymore. Sorry, one more thing. Oh. He's back. He's back.

He's back. I just worried that if I didn't do it one more time, there was going to be somebody who was going to send a nasty email. There was an app. I have more than one fart piano app in my history, and none of them are available to download anymore. And that's good. Thank you so much.

We appreciate you. for oh oh games that we talked about this week oh sorry i'm gonna that's probably the thing i should have done um this week what did we talk about well great question we talked about a ton of mobile games we talked about teenage mutant ninja turtle splintered fate what the car 10 dates zen pinball specifically the garfield table grand mountain Mountain Adventure Plus, Honkai Star Rail. We also talked a little bit about Tears of the Kingdom, the new Zelda game, Jedi Survivor, Bull, 3000 Years of Longing, Rusted Moss, the Asus Rog Ally, both of which we'll talk about on Rusties next week, the wild resident evil 4 and

jury duty a show that you should watch if you like watching shows i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts we have lizzie mcguire 123 the southwest man smusher and sketchy breakfast mm-hmm love them thank you for writing reviews for the besties and thank you to everyone else who has shared the show and talked about it we are coming to a very big episode so now is the time if you want to get your family and friends

on the besties train no better time than breath of the fucking tears of the kingdom can't believe you did that it's hard to remember, guys. Listen, we can all admit it. That's going to do it for us this week. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!