The Besties - The Besties Podcast XV

Episode Date: June 15, 2012

The Besties are back from their E3 sojourn and they've been playing all the latest games so they can talk about them, for that is the social contract you and they have entered into. Also, Russ Frushtick shares the sad, sad story of attempting to do a pull-up. 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!

did everyone else get their bodies just riddled with contagion no i was i was totally fine you know what it is i think it's my um consistent alcohol it's all no no no it was the fiber oh no that's not what it was you were you were a vessel for alcohol you were you were sterilized who took vitamins every day i took vitamins thanks to justin he went which went out and bought them was the metamucil the vitamins no the vitamins were the vitamins um but metamucil has vitamins in it right no it has poop vitamins that's just that sweet sweet fibra let me just say i think the the key to staying healthy during conferences is twofold ready one hearty salads eat a lot of hearty salads number two consistent bowel movements if you

get those two going you are basically superman one sort of leads into the other doesn't it i think they're very much tied into one another yes how were your bowel movements during e3 they were the pits and there you go that's what you were keeping all those toxins inside yeah we should have done a team colonic i think wow that's that's awful everything you said is awful i mean like it's like human centipede but like yeah is that that's that's what i'm picturing it's like you want to that would go through all of us no no it involves a hookah like apparatus like a water a water bottle like a central watering unit uh with with 12 to 15 hoses dibs on the head dibs on the head oh i'm first yeah no no no it has multiple hoses it has multiple hoses so that we can share in the experience it's called plural

irrigation it's called octopusing because it's what it looks like. All right. Let's start the show. There it is. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. Hey, I'm Griffin McElroy, and I'm a lunger, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop playing video games. Hey, I'm Christopher Plant, and I am the winner winner chicken dinner.

My name is Russ Frustik, and I know the best game of the week. Russ Frustick goes super saiyan every time we start this show. He receives the quickening, and then he's ready to roll. This is, of course, the besties, where the four of us, us best friends, meet up weekly to discuss the week's new releases. And maybe one's just a little bit older than that. Pit them against each other in Mortal Kombat to find out which new game reigns supreme. That game is then pitted against our current reigning champion, which is...

That's fresh stick. What is our current reigning champion? I honestly do not remember cool cool meaningful anyone i don't remember i do we don't have a current one right didn't it's max pain three technically yeah okay well look we had our special video episode last week which i hope everyone watched and enjoyed it's where we decided that um the best of us was that our was that the best game of e3 no last of us did not win the land of us are you sure it wasn't the best of us it might have been the best of us um so so yeah we're a little foggy project p100

i think it's the fest of us oh you're right it was oh the Oh, the Festivus. It was Project P100. Good. I'm going to be our commissioner this week, if that's okay with you guys. But that's only because the three games I've been playing this week are Persona 3 Portable, Skyrim, and Puzzle Quest 2. So... Really on the pulse. Can't really talk about any of those.

So I'm going gonna lead today's discussion and um to pick who goes first why don't we vote on who goes first this week survivor style okay justin okay i vote for me okay i vote for justin okay so that's three votes for justin so justin gets to go and then oh no I thought we were kicking him off the island. No, I wanted to, I was voting for the other thing. Plant, how old are you? Uh, you know, like 26. Frustic?

Ageless. Okay, so we're gonna go Frustic last, because he's awful. Justin, what you been playing? Yo, yo, yo, so so check this out I've been playing lollipop chainsaw that's a game from Suda 51 and James Gunn helped write it did you just have to google the number that came after Suda no uh no so that's the game I've been playing. It's about a cheerleader. It's about a cheerleader who

has a chainsaw and she eats lollipops and she there's zombies coming from another dimension to sweep across the earth and they're turning her classmates into zombies. So she, her boyfriend gets bit by a zombie and she chops his head off and attaches it to her belt, and they go off and fight the zombie menace. There's action because you have to use your chainsaw and zombies to kill them, and there's also dodge. Oh, they've mastered the dodge mechanic. It's dodging? Now, Justin, what can you— You're hitting guys with pom-poms? Oh, they've mastered the dodge mechanic. It's dodging?

Now, Justin, what can you... You're hitting guys with pom-poms? Sorry, Justin. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but is there jump? No. No, no jump. If you dodge near a Zombo, you'll jump over them leapfrog style. That's the closest it gets. Oh, I see.

jump over them leapfrog style. Oh, I see. What feels kind of like clunky combat at first, it does have a certain fluidity to it when you start chaining together the dodges and the chainsaws. But I think probably the most notable, I mean, it's a pretty standard character action game. I think the only thing that's notable about it is the tone, which is alternately pretty grossly sexist but simultaneously being kind of campy about it and helping to

excuse some of that i guess maybe depending on your tolerance um i mean some of it is i guess funny ish um but a lot of it is just pretty crude i mean and i know that makes me sound like an old man but when you save a teenage boy he says i'm gonna masturbate to you tonight it's like well is that a direct quote that is a direct quote i think it might be i'm so gonna masturbate to you tonight now can i can i interject here and just say there's a there's a beautiful yeah of course no um there's been a lot of talk about the you know exploitative sexuality of the game is it possible that maybe he's just going to masturbate to you tonight because he's so like grateful for for your help for your heroism uh maybe but then you get an achievement for looking up her skirt so i

it's hard to say is there connect support um no but there is a like it says it says the thing like don't look up her skirt and so i'm just playing normally and all of a sudden i get an achievement okay achievement that says this part of the show is for justin's wife yeah it was a total accident i jumped the name of the achievement is actually it was an accident i swear which i mean it was um because like i don't know i'm 31 you know and if i need to see that i i know where to find it and it's certainly not in a pseudo 51 game like i i it's very bizarre but hey at least i have that achievement now forever wait what is the achievement's name i think it's called like it's it's either i think it's like it was an accident i swear or this man is a pervert

this man is marked as a pervert it's uh also or it could just be like oh you like that teen stuff huh and like all caps bold i got a link for you that's dreadful justin let me ask you something nummy nummy oh god daddy like justin let me ask you so there was a panties ahoy oh my god this is gonna give me nightmares pampies a boy um why did you become java i it's called i swear i did it by mistake and it will actually give you 10 points which is pretty good i mean it's probably worth it um it is the uh shockingly it is the, shockingly, it is the, like, seventh, I don't know, it's in, like, tenth place in the achievements in Giant Bomb's rankings. So, I don't know. Most commonly unlocked, you mean? Yeah, right.

I'm so bored with your game. You know what set me off with... It's a very boring game. It's a boring game, and you did the helpless puppy thing, where you're like, it starts off, and it's not fun at all, but you kind of get into the rhythm of it. No, no, no, no. The combat itself becomes more fluid

as you sort of unlock new moves to use. It just, I don't know, it's like, it's very sort of, it feels like one of those things where once you've seen, played through, just in terms of mechanics, right? It feels like once you've played through the first stage, you kind of mechanically understand most things that are going on it it has like um similar to what was that ninja game that from software ninja ninja ninja similar to ninja ninja um it has sort of outlandish minigame type quick time events in there where you know you'll be you know

jumping across a bunch of zombie heads and you'll um and you'll have to hit a button sequence to to keep it going or uh sometimes you put your boyfriend's head onto a zombie's body and you have to do a little minigame to make him complete some sort of objective. But it's all so stilted. I mean, you... It's... What's the word? It doesn't smoothly transition from the action into these little sequences. There's always a little text pop-up or something that says,

like, hey, this is how you do this minigame. When they press the buttons that pop up on the thing isn't the most obvious thing you could possibly do um so i i don't know it it seems it's all very standard it doesn't have any of the sort of mechanical creativity of even like a shadowadows of the Damned. Well, that's what I want to ask you because tonally it sounds, obviously it's the same people. Didn't James Gunn also write Shadows of the Damned? No, I don't think he was involved with Tate.

But obviously Suda51 worked on it. And tonally it sounds very similar, but I found Shadows of the Damned's sense of humor really funny and engaging and clever. Even though it was really crude. Yeah, for the most part. Obviously some it was like really crude yeah for the most part obviously some of it wasn't but for the most part i thought it was like very much aware of how ridiculous it was being and sort of embraced it and it sounds like this game doesn't really do it quite as effectively yeah it doesn't really get there I mean, it just is, it makes you, I don't know,

it just kind of made me feel a little dirty. I can't imagine why, with its pervert achievements. Yeah, right. It doesn't feel like, oh, we're all having a laugh together. It feels like a, I don't know. I just can't get excited about the game because James Gunn couldn't get excited about the game. I remember an interview I did with him at GDC, and i was like you know are you kind of you know thinking of

bringing more talent to you know the the game writing ghetto you know you're you're a relatively successful film writer and now you're writing here and he was like yeah i mean it's cool i mean if it fails i can just go back to doing what i do and it was like oh okay and then he like went and sat with his pretty model girlfriend i just i just think not jenna from the office he should stick with designing um dresses and and that kind of like yeah i mean he only has like that's really no no that's a different gun. That's where his strength is. Griffin, that's the other gun. That's not him.

Yeah, you're making a mistake. You're confusing two different people, Griffin. But... James Gunn, Jimmy... James Gunn, James Jim Gunn. Jim Gunn. Jim is also an alternative for tim is this not ladies and gentlemen rush fresh dick comedy poison it's more like i just like yeah like demolishing horrible idea yeah it's pretty bad so let's let's

talk about somebody else's game hey excuse me are you the commissioner sorry i'll i'll decide when it's time to move on maybe i want to hear more about this game oh i i wait wait before we move on i do have a serious question for justin justin so you're you're fighting zombies in this game but the zombies are from another dimension which uh no the you said that virus that converted them into zombies is from another dimension. Oh. They converted your classmates into zombies. So it was a virus. They didn't start out as zombies from another dimension.

Yeah. Okay. So you're killing your friends. Well, but they're zombies. It's fine. No further questions. Okay. Okay. I saw a trailer and the lollipops look like chupa chips.

Can you confirm or deny? They look exactly like chupa chips. Why do you pronounce it like that? Chupa chips? It's just chupa chups. Chupa chupas. No, no, no. It's chupa chips.

You're talking about the ice cream flavored lollipops? They don't have to be ice cream flavored. There's all kinds of... Churp churps, I think is what it is. No, it's chirp chirps. Churp chirps chirps hey chris plant tell me about your game uh my game is gravity rush for the playstation vita thank god i know right the vita we we mentioned how great it is and you know it is great when you

have a good game on it uh and i guess i should explain how Gravity Rush works for people who haven't seen it it is a game in which you play as a young woman named Cat who is named after a cat that she wakes up near and she has amnesia because it's a Japanese game we had a debate with Justin apparently didn't know that people in Japanese games Have amnesia This was very new to him Which makes me think Justin has never played a Japanese game

Maybe I just forgot So you gain the power to fall Any direction you would like You basically have control of gravity Within about a five foot bubble around you so if you want to fall upwards you can do that or you can fall sideways or any which way downwards what about downwards you can fall downwards because the game takes place in a sky city uh like in star wars but it looks more like a japanese kind of anime. So it's Star Wars by way of Japanese anime. And you are fighting

these like squiddy ink-covered monsters. And that's kind of like the not so hot part of the game. The power to fly or fall or whatever is great, but kind of matching that up with these kick attacks that you usually miss, especially later in the game, is pretty irritating. But the story is very cute. There's some really dark stuff in there about whether reality is real or not. It gets very depressing. Lots of dead children. Is it?

Yeah, it gets dark. No, is reality real? No. In the end, you find out that reality is a lie. Wait, is that true? Yeah. why would you spoil it like that did your parents not tell you life spoiler i thought that was right after santa no i'm sorry i saw the matrix with my daddy and afterwards he was like yep that's pretty much it nailed it got it and then he jumped then he jumped 30 feet into the air and disappeared he turned into bits in front of me i said dad no and that's how my dad died

by turning into bits you turn into bits and sprites and thank god you have ssx i know call back um thank you Thank you for putting a lantern on it the size of a porch in the Statue of Liberty. Your ass. Yeah, that's it. Do you have any questions about it? I do. I have a question.

It's up on our site. Go ahead. Is it a problem that because there are so many Vita games coming out in the next six months, should people really invest? It will get lost at the top of the now available for download section. There's literally one. You know what?

This game might win the Vita Best of the Year collection because, honestly, there's one Vita game coming out in the next six months. So it has that going for it. In the next six months, it has Little going for it in the next six months it has it has uh little big planet vita as little bit it has assassin's creed and it has call of duty and probably madden but call of duty might not even come out we haven't even seen call of duty ps all-stars battle royale it's coming out ps yeah yeah yeah persona 4 the golden i'm excited about that yeah all right They're good games.

Seriously, though, I was watching someone playing Gravity Rush. Hell yeah. And they were making a bedroom in a sewer. Oh, my gosh, yes. Please explain. You do that. Here is what I've realized about female protagonists in games and why there should be a lot more of them.

I don't think it's out of good intentions, but female protagonists in Japanese games get to do a bit more housemaking than male protagonists, where you just immediately start shooting things. So at the beginning of this game, you don't really have a house yet, so you use your gravity powers to go and steal furniture, I guess borrow uh abandoned furniture

off the street and you build a house in the sewer uh and it's very cute you can go there and you can change your outfits i want more of that in my video games i would like more stuff away from uh the constant killing things to actually get to know my person. And also build a cute little house. But it doesn't have to be a female character to do that. No, not at all. But since that seems to be the only type of character that gets to do this, I'm appreciative of it when it shows up. What about Animal Crossing?

It would be great to see a man doing it. There is no more Animal Crossing. Yeah, did you not hear? No. Nintendo shot the franchise into the sun. No. Yeah, they said, what are all these hashtags? Too many hashtags.

It sets off our computer-controlled sun device and fires the franchise into the sun. It's actually the fans' fault. I have another question about Gravity Rush. Go on. Oh, good. Is there a lot of motion controls? No.

So you can't, like, use... There is a cool move that you can do. I mean, sometimes it can be annoying when there's a smooth surface and you want to walk on it, but your gravity is, you know, constantly aiming in one direction. So you just want to kind of go on its side, and that'll sling you off the edge because you're facing i can't say south you're facing some direction it throws you off so you can stick to a

surface and do like a kind of a slide move that uh kind of like you know in the sonic games and you can slide on rails you can do something kind of like that and that requires motion control where you're steering the character left and right and it is not super responsive oh it's a cool move but it's not it's not my favorite thing to do because motion controls kind of suck were you at all a lot of people were pinning their hopes on this being like the vita's like first real killer app game and like the vita had a good launch lineup but i don't think it has that one game on it yet that people have to own a vita for and and reading your review like it you sounded like a little bit disappointed like all the flying and falling stuff sounded as cool as

we were all hoping it was going to be but um a lot of the games sounded kind of disappointing no i i i i compared it to i was talking to arthur our reviews editor about this that it's like a crackdown or earth defense force or even just cause two in some ways where the game is by no means perfect it's definitely repetitive but like it just does that one mechanic so well and it's so fun and the game itself is just so joyful despite being very dark and grim uh that it's like that that makes up for all the faults so i i think it is definitely if you're really into games and if you're like on the fence about evita i think it's worth it i think it's crazy to i'm surprised people ever thought this would be, like, a console pusher, you know?

Like, it's not mainstream like a Madden or a Call of Duty or even Uncharted. Like, it's a weird game, and we always knew that. But I think if you're into weird games, yeah, I don't know why you would want to skip this outside of the Vita being expensive. The only reason people thought this as a console pusher is just because there was literally nothing else coming out for the next many months so it was like a unique first it's first party right sony put this out um yes it is yeah a unique first party game

on the platform and people are just like desperate for anything so and it's not really like anything you can play anywhere else i mean maybe maybe it works on a big screen but i kind of actually think it would make me nauseous playing it on a screen much bigger than a portable really yeah i do i was trying to figure out why it didn't come out on anything else and you know you need the traditional controls like it wouldn't work with a touch screen uh but at the same time i mean you are whipping around in every which way especially when the combat gets going and i i think i would just puke if i was playing it on a large uh television sounds lovely yeah

yeah it sounds great that's why it's good on the vita that's why that's why it's there so so far we have two games that will make you puke if you play them. For different reasons, except for mine is good. And mine treats women like human beings, though it does emphasize that they love to make their house nice. And they have some skimpy, skimpy costumes, from what I've seen. They're skimpy, but they're not, like, revealed. It's more like, oh, my gosh, I almost said like little girl dance clothes.

Oh my God. Oh my God. What is that show? No, it's like not sexy. It's not like revealing. What's that creepy show on A&E with the mothers and they make the kids dress up and do dances? No, it's not like that. It's like gymnastic outfits.

Yeah. Creepy. dress up and do dances no it's not like that it's like gymnastic outfits yeah creepy it's not i just got so eked out you just compared little girls gymnastic outfits to lollipop chainsaw i need to go take a salt bath i was about to say which is worse so god let's get let's get chris playing out of this grave that he's digging for himself Salt bath. I was about to say, which is worse, nipple. So, God. Let's get Chris Blaine out of this grave that he's digging for himself. I hate this. Let's talk about anything else. Okay. So, I wanted to discuss something.

Okay. Okay. I don't know if you guys know, but I'm kind of scrawny. Right. I'm not exactly a large man. I'm a little slight. You are beautiful, though. I know I'm beautiful. I'm not exactly a large man. I'm a little slight. You are beautiful, though. I know I'm beautiful.

I know that doesn't spite me. You have a beautiful body. I'm slightly elfin, I would say, like Legolas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're beautiful like Legolas is beautiful. Right. Let me tell you something. I wouldn't change a thing.

Well, here's the thing. Recently, I've been thinking, you know maybe i could um be a little more strong in reality and not just in video games okay so i went out and i purchased a chin-up bar that i installed in my house and three days ago i tried to do chin-ups uh i've literally not tried to do a chin-up since i was about nine years old in gym class when i could do less than half of one um and has anyone on this call ever done a one ever done one chin-up no lies yes yes i had to horse horse shit justin back no it was back during the president's fitness yeah that's that's exactly right well you don't have to during the it's not like they shoot you if you can't do a chin-up.

No, no, no. Yeah, but you don't get the President's Award. I got one for hanging onto the bar for 10 seconds. Wow. Yeah, they were giving that shit away. Yeah. Well, I did one pull-up then, and that was the last. And I said, I'm never doing that again.

I hated that. Yeah, it's not too much fun. But I installed one. And I was actually surprised. I think it might have to do with my svelte body. I was actually able to do about two. And then I did this thing called negatives where you hang down. You try to lower yourself down really slowly.

I did a bunch of those. So this was three days ago um my entire body three days on feels like basically every movement feels like i'm in acid yeah uh well you are an acid you're in uric acid yeah i'm living in uric acid i'm surrounded by it and it leads me to believe that i might be in the worst shape of anyone on the planet um I honestly think that anyone I could lift like I have difficulty lifting uh stationary right now I uh started using a uh doing a few times a week for the past month or so doing a a body weight routine that that uh i found a nerd fitness why why would you want to have the fitness of a nerd though i don't it's more about i mean there's lots of pictures of swords that kind of thing i you would think you would want like a good bodied individual to be showing to like be lighting your path. Like a John Travolta.

John Travolta fitness. John Travolta is not in great shape. But this is a routine you can do, like... Take it back! In your own home! With no additional equipment. So that's been pretty good. And I like it a lot.

It's a lot more interesting than riding a bike. Because that gets pretty boring. I used to ride a stationary bike. It's a lot more interesting than riding a bike because that gets pretty boring. I used to ride a stationary bike. That's what I do. Yeah, it's boring. You don't really ride a stationary bike, do you? Riding implies movement. Operate, then?

You sit astride and you pump a bike. I've sat astride things and people have called it riding. I'm not riding this office chair right now. Although I could technically if I... Do you ride a car? No, you drive a car. That's in motion though. What about during intimate encounters?

Oh, God. I'm just saying that is called riding at times. Ride is the wrong word too because it implies that you're not the one in control. The rider is usually the passenger. Sure. That's a real problem for these bikes. What? No, no one says you're driving a bike. Yeah, but why do they say ride?

Because that's not the right word. You ride a roller coaster. You don't drive it. You ride a bike. No,'s not the right word. You ride a roller coaster. You don't drive it. You ride a bike. No, you shouldn't, though. You should drive a bike. Well, I'll go back to 1910 and make sure everyone changes that for you. Thank you.

So how are your guns doing today? Oh, my God. It's a nightmare. I literally cannot stretch my arms out all the way. It's horrible. You're not supposed to overexert yourself. I know, but it was the first time i was doing it and i went on youtube and there was a really muscly guy and he told me to

go nuts and i went nuts big mistake when does nuts mean for you uh three i mean no do you want me to like give you my full regimen that seems a little dull i don't but i did like basically pull up for like it was a good half hour of like pull up extra at like exercises um how's your what's your way intake like what do you my like eating way like porridge in a way yeah curds in way like are you taking a lot of raw protein powder yeah that's the secret you know is you know, is you got to cram your pro and you got to slam your way. And then you can chug all the lifts that you want to do. Apparently, there's a fitness term called greasing the groove or something. Yeah, greasing your groove.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the body V. You got to wet up those muscles. You got to get your muscles super wet before you try to do these things. It's spelled W-H-E-T, right? You got to wet your muscles so that they're like really lubed up so that when they rub up against each other, there's not as much friction. It displaces the uric acid, which becomes sweat, and then it turns into full muscle energy.

I'm good at gleaming the cube cube but i'm not really good at grinding the that's real day proto fitness now tell me that you're getting out there real quick are you uh are you romancing the stone i'm doing some of that now have you burned on a wire uh yeah tell me real quick uh uh cat on a hot tin roof are you doing that yakuza serious 1980s romantic comedy i actually i've been thinking about you know the way exercise works and have you ever made whipped cream before like homemade whipped cream sure yeah all the time so what you do is you take like you know fat and then you agitate it and it becomes whipped cream so you're saying i'm saying like why when you exercise serious question why when you exercise do you not like excrete whipped

cream yeah sure it makes sense so is that like like those belts in the 1950s that they put on people and they'd shake and then they turn i wonder if that's what happened i wonder if that's why you don't see it anymore that's where where the blob came from? Yeah, it made Jim's too delicious. See, that's the problem with... That's the issue with John Travolta is that he's not doughy. It's just that he got super beefed out for Battlefield Earth.

But then all of his fat that he worked out of his body just turned into cream. So he's just a cream-filled man. What about Broken Arrow? Speaking of cream-filled men yeah russ tell me about your game uh i did want to tell you about my game but i wanted to tell you uh one quick thing first um no i've already decided i don't like your game what no no i did i want to before we move from the halftime i want to talk about uh heading back from E3. So I was in the airport waiting for my flight to take off,

and a bunch of other people were, like, waiting in line, waiting for their flights to take off. And I realized that I thought, you know, I could probably do this a lot better. And if only there was a game that could allow me to control uh an airline and organize it how i wish you know what's great about you you don't need binoculars you can see a mile away it just it's just common you can only see it if you know what game i'm bringing which you guys did but no one else did you want to tell our friends what it is yeah i'm bringing a little game called pocket

planes uh pocket planes is developed by nimble bit it's a a small developer you might know their work from a little game called tiny tower and also pocket frogs but tiny towers seem to be their big hit um and pocket planes is similar to tiny tower in a few ways one it's free and two it sort of revolves around time management in the sense that like you know things take like five minutes and you put your phone down or whatever and then you come back and you like earn coins you should put really big uh finger air quotes around free when you talk it totally is for no no stop because i put in a good i'm not proud of the amount of time i spent playing tiny tower and i did not spend a dollar until i felt

guilty that i'd spent so much time with the game that i just bought a dollar just to give them a dollar i've i've actually been playing pocket pocket planes all day get planes and i haven't spent i haven't yeah you but this is one day that's how their games work. You play it for an obscene amount of time for three days, and then you slowly start spending money. That's not entirely true. It's entirely false because I spent 100 hours playing Tiny Tower and spent a dollar. That's gross.

There's no game. I've bought games for $60 that I spent a few hours on. I don't mind spending a dollar. I think my time is worth much, much more than that. Right. There are a few cool things. The reason I like this better than Tiny Tower. Tiny Tower had a lot of random monotony to it where you had to control an elevator.

And you wouldn't know what type of store you what type of store you were building and it was just a lot of randomness uh this in this you it feels like you have a lot more control over how you expand your airline you can pick from cities all over the world justin you started playing right yeah and and didn't you build uh in europe somewhere if i recall yeah i started in munich in munich trying to trying to learn some of the geography over there. Yeah, trying to figure out what are they doing over there. What are they doing? Because I don't know.

No, seriously, what are they doing? Do you know now? I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm trying to. I've maybe put an hour into it or so. So far, I think it's a lot more it seems a lot more it seems a lot the dense more dense yeah it's an actual game because it doesn't no no no it is not that's what i want to sure app

you know that's what i want to get to um first off is not the tutorial does not do a very good job of sort of explaining what's going on in the game um it feels like there should be a slow ramp up but more importantly like it's not a game i mean it's a toy that you can play with but it's not um it's not a game it's not we music though like we don't want to sell it too short but is it work i mean like i said the problem with tiny tower is it's chores you you check in and you do your chores and then that's that's with points yeah but you could argue that's extremely skyrim is you could say that about any simulation game really and that's what that's what not right no because no because simulation games

have a fail and have a fail state yeah they have a fail state that's a racing simulation is nothing like tiny tiny tower is not sim tower it is come and do your chores and get your points and check in at a right time so you can upgrade as much as possible in one day i think there's strategy to it in the way that there's strategy to playing sim tower sim city but there's no strategy in the sense that your your victory as it were is is assured like you can't you don't it doesn't require any strategy it's right it's it's a question of how long it takes you similarity to compare a sim tower to tiny tower there's no comparison whatsoever you can't i think it's closer to um i think in this case

because you have a lot more control of how you expand uh let me tell the people because the people might not have played this game. So you basically build airports around the country, around the globe, and then you are buying planes. And as you progress through the game, you unlock more planes and more planes have more seating for people

or they carry more cargo. And so you're constantly upgrading your airline with better planes and better planes can go farther and carry more stuff and so you're constantly upgrading your airline with better planes and better planes can go farther and carry more stuff and that earns you more money so on and so forth you can also find plane parts which you can use to build your own planes yeah um what i really think is cool is the collaborative part of it can you talk a bit about that absolutely griffin did you join our oh i joined oh you joined okay so there's this thing called what are they called flight crews something like that uh in the

menus there's an option called flight crew and you go in there and it basically says like you know what's the name of your flight crew and if you type in one that already exists for example you should join the polygon flight crew um that already exists. You can basically have anyone that types in that same flight crew is working collaboratively to participate in these events that go on around the globe. So, for example, right now there's like a chemical spill in Calgary, Canada, and we're trying to like get medicine to Calgary. So anyone in the Polygon flight crew that goes to Calgary

and brings medicine or doctors or whatever works together. And the idea is to hire you up on the leaderboard of flight crews. When the event ends, those people are then rewarded with, like, a huge amount of in-game money. So it's pretty cool. it's a you know very lo-fi it's not like constantly bugging people uh like a farmville would uh to join i like it i like it because i don't i don't know if this is what happens on iphone i'm playing on on ipad is just a friendly ding whenever my plane lands. Like a seatbelt sign ding.

Yeah. You can do that. When you're away from the game, yeah. I turn off all the notifications. You can turn it off, but it's just a friendly ding. You know? It's comforting almost. I think that the way the collaboration works is indicative of the problem with this sort of thing

well the fact that there's nothing you can do to um hurt like there's no reason you wouldn't want somebody helping you like that to me says oh it's like um it's like it's basically like we're raking leaves come on over any leaves you can rake would be appreciated yeah there's nobody you're not going to put on your team well but uh would you rather rake leaves alone or with help it's no but it's it's in there so more people will use the game and hopefully buy content it's not in there to challenge you or to be I know it's not a challenge it's just all right i just like i think it's possible to build an engine an electronic engine that preys on uh you know sort of the human need to feel satisfaction and you know those dopamine triggers that that games

like farmville and what have you prey off of. Like, I don't think that there's a big challenge to that. Everything past that is just marketing. Like, I just don't, I would like to see a well-designed game rather than what is tantamount to a time sink with no real game to it. So I think I understand what you're saying. You basically want something skill-based. Is that right? It's not skill.

I mean, it's not even like, yeah, like skill-based is one of the defining tenets of any game. Like it can't be a game otherwise. That doesn't necessarily mean twitchiness. It just means any sort of... You can succeed where other people fail, and there's no failure to be found in pocket planes i think yeah well i could build a lego machine that could play this game as well as i could like it's not a game it's just a it's a i don't know i i think i get get the same

satisfaction out of this that i get out of playing diablo i mean you could argue that you know you can't quote unquote fail in diablo because you just keep restarting well except i mean you could argue that you know you can't quote unquote fail in diablo because you just keep restarting well except i mean this is one of the problems that we brought up with diablo no i and i appreciate that it's a shallow i appreciate absolutely it's a relatively shallow gameplay experience but when it comes to i have a minute on a subway platform and i want to do something there aren't too many options on mobile phones that'll give me like some sort of feeling I have a minute on a subway platform and I want to do something, there aren't too many options on mobile phones that'll give me some sort of feeling of rewardedness. Even if it's phony,

there just aren't that many options. It's a different kind of... It's not an experiential reward where it's like, I did this, so I can feel proud. It's a very cumulative... I already feel a great sense of ownership for my airline.

Like I worked up right i like the planes i like the cities i'm expanding to i really want tim daly and crystal bernard to get together like i feel i feel a real ownership i i'm with i'm with just on this boat i whenever i mean game dev story is a game i thought i loved but whenever i finish these things i just feel like empty like oh my gosh i devoted so much time and the same thing would have happened no matter what and that sounds like a personal problem yeah i mean maybe maybe it is i like i like to get something out of a game that where i feel like i actually accomplished anything and what i realized with those games i was playing

these like totally totally brain dead games on on iOS on all my commutes. And at a certain point, it was like, what am I doing with this? And I don't know. At this point, I use, like, Instapaper on the subway. It's like, I'll read. When I want to play a game, I'll play a game. Look at me. I can read.

You know what I mean? It's like I don't have to be playing a game 100% of my life. I get it. But I think the good thing about this is, like, let's say you've got, whatever, a bunch of planes and you want to send them across the country. That literally takes 15 seconds to set up, and then you're not playing it anymore. Yeah, and then it reminds you five minutes later that you should be in on it. No, no, because it takes six hours to get across the country.

So it's up to you how, like like long you want the trip to be yeah i i guess i just like yeah i'm i part of the problem is that because i don't find the mechanic like i think the mechanics of this are a little inscrutable it doesn't do a good job of explaining it i never had that moment where i bought into the fiction of what this was like i've only seen it as ones and zeros it's sort of like when you um if you play a lot of mmos that time it takes you from like i'm in a fantasy world to i need to get plus one for my fire protection gear because it's a math problem like that time between those two realizations is gets shorter and shorter the more you play because you you see the mechanics emerge even before you

can get into the world and like that's the problem i had with this is like since i don't understand a lot of have a fundamental understanding the mechanics what it really feels like is just tapping things to get gold coins if you're really curious about the mechanics all you need to do is turn on uh tnn at 1 p.m every weekday you know spend a little time with the nantucket folks they know what they're talking about oh god it's a callback sounds good uh so plant what are you thinking what am i thinking i think i brought the best game of the week okay uh you're not the commissioner i got so what griffin what are you thinking um i don't i don't know justin you didn't sound too into your own game, so I think that we can safely go ahead and get rid of that.

Oh, no, don't. Okay. See, I don't know. I'm enjoying Pocket Planes. If I didn't have that personal connection, I would say Gravity Rush all the way. Griffin, I just want to remind you what you tell me every week what's that plan you better not bring some shitty ios game this isn't a shitty ios game

every ios game i bring a shit and they're much better than pocket yeah but here's what you're not thinking about i just bought an ipad i just bought an ipad two days ago and i want things yeah and i want things to now now want things to play on it. Well, how about I recommend some good iOS games that aren't just reward mechanisms? Hey, here's a question. Out of our two games, mine and Plant's games, if you recall, one of them was enthusiastically pitched.

Enthusiastically? Is that a word? And the other one was sort of like, no, I really like this thing, Enthusiastically pitched? Enthusiastically? Is that a word? Mm-hmm. And the other one was sort of like, no, I really like this thing, but the rest of the game is sort of meh. Yeah. That's because I'm just an honest critic. Sure, okay. I'm not afraid to show the flaws of something because I love it.

While you have a stinker on your hand. Chris Plant, tell me in which ways your game would be a good Wings simulator. Wings simulator? Like the band or the TV show? Of course the TV show. Obviously the TV show. First off, you make your house. It's kind of like the locker room where they all hang out.

Okay. You actually get friends who come and live there with you. another another lady comes and lives there with you a man who has the power to open up his jacket and reveal the universe to you oh tony shalhoub tony shalhoub exactly yeah monk uh i i think i mean what could be more wings than that you you fly oh i forgot to mention you can grab other people and make them fly with you oh that's just you can just like steven weber does when he gets them in their plane tell me something uh is the main character voiced by amy yazbek yes i have the wings wiki page open right now how is sarah forks performances and rebecca shull uh you know the former great

the second uh lacking don't lie to me um how much does your game cost forty dollars oh my gosh you're not going to that yeah but you could ask me the same question hundred dollars you could spend easily two hundred dollars on yeah on pocket planes um i pocket planes I gotta give it to Gravity Rush what? thank you for being sane that's insane he didn't even like his game he was like

it's pretty good I really like the Gravity stuff but the rest of it's crap whereas 100% I loved it and not only that you loved it Griffin I call foul commissioner you guys are about to be surprised appeal because i think gravity rush is better uh for our our current bestie than max pain three oh you're pitch me on that okay so one max pain you play perfect wing simulator on uh on xbox 360 playstation 3 there are plenty other games you

play yeah you got a vita where are you gonna play okay i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and overrule this point you can't just say the scarcity of releases on the platforms okay there aren't any new if somebody released a new virtual boy game i wouldn't be like oh man ain't that many of those out okay okay second point second point the whole game has a pretty traditional uh like fantasy sci-fi story except there is a little girl you meet in the game who arbitrarily it seems will behave like a little girl uh half the time and the other half will look at you dead-eyed and ask you uh if you are part of a dream and that by playing the game you are disrupting a bigger dream and that if you keep playing you may force the like internal being to wake up and that you will cease to exist that

sounds a lot like uh lynx awakening yeah So what I'm saying is maybe this, that we have actually been given a message from our super being. A space whale. Our super unconscious space whale whose dream we all live in. This is maybe the second message that he has ever sent. And the first one was Link's Awakening, which is great.

I mean, good company. And this is his second, maybe most important call to us to awake him and cease our existence. Kind of a universal seppuku. Well, I don't want to do that is the problem. But we don't know what's past that, you know? But we don't know what's past that, you know? You're saying that we could reach another plane of existence by playing Gravity Rush and receiving the secret sleeping space wells message. Yeah, and waking up a space well.

Okay. I'm saying that's a real possibility. Is it a real possibility? Listen to the words you're saying as you're saying them. Wait a second. Say it out loud for me by playing gravity rush we could awaken a space whale who is okay there's a red flag there's your first red flag right there okay read it back to me space whale no one remembers by playing pocket planes

oh my god you can fly shut up you can fly. Shut up. You can fly to Saskatoon. What? How do I buy new planes? Okay, I think. Now this is a section of the show I just came up with called Pro Tips. Russ, how do I buy new planes? I sent you a part. Did you get it?

I got one shitty part of a plane. It's an engine if i threw it off a building it would just fall on the ground it has neither lift nor drag please please tell me how to buy a plane you uh spend your space bucks guys are you trying to tell me that we're not going to uh promote uh gravity rush past max? No. Gravity Rush is not being Max Payne. Although I do think Max Payne 3 is reaching its freshness limit, where it moves into

that. And by the way, people who are listening, feel free to harass the rest of the Besties members on Twitter for holding back a great game from being the best game. Oh my god. Okay. Go ahead. I'm just putting that out there uh people that are listening say the word saskatoon it's really really fun um it's not

it's it's really your own fault because you came to us with some space whale nonsense let's let's end the show okay i'm so over it the whole thing how do i buy new ones how do i check my parts that i have i accidentally bought eight hot air balloons how am i doing there are actually hot air balloons i know i bought them all thought it'd be fun they go another plane so thanks for listening to our show the besties make sure you keep up with our writing, theverge.com forward slash gaming. We'll have our own website soon. It's called polygon.com. It'll be great.

I promise. You can follow us on Twitter at Polygon, Facebook slash Polygon, YouTube slash Polygon, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And make sure you join us again next week. Besties. Shouldn't the world's best friends be the world's next game Besties!