The Besties - The Big Switch 2 Episode – Plus the Best of SGF

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Nintendo’s new console is finally here. With Plante undergoing a colonoscopy (which was all okay!), the crew invited long-time friend of the show Chris Grant to discuss the Switch 2. In the back half, the group shares the most promising games from Summer Game Fest.Chris Grant: https://bsky.app/profile/charstring.com 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!

They used to come with games. They used to come with games. Do you know how many games they used to come with when it was an NES? How many? It came with so many games they had to shove two onto one cartridge. And it came with a robot. Both. And it came with a robot and Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.

They used to be begging for you to buy these things. Desperate for you to buy them. You're on your own, buddy. This is the new age. What do you mean I'm on my own in the podcast or on my own in the hellscape? It's just like Imagine Dragons. This is the new age. Do you like Imagine Dragons?

Fuck, I love Imagine Dragons. Imagine Dragon D's nuts on your face. Hey. I'm so excited for this new gaming console guys. Yo. My name is Justin Macari and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRae and I know the best game console of the week. My name is Ross Fruschka and I know the best game of the week.

My name is not Chris Plant. And that's it. Yeah, that's Chris Grant. He's just on the show as a guest. It's the closest we could get guys. The first name's the same, the last name rhymes. It's pretty close, don't you think, gang? Sonically, it's really actually very close.

Like the phonetics of the name are actually uncanny. I'm pretty proud of that. Body size wise, two completely different silhouettes these fellas carve. They're saying one's bigger than the other one. And I don't know why that is a shameful thing. It's beautiful. Both of you guys have beautiful bodies. I want't know why that is a shameful thing. It's beautiful.

Both of you guys have beautiful bodies. I want to say that a lot. Thank you. That's such an interesting thing for you to be talking about right now, Griffin. I think that's so fascinating. Chris, you didn't say thank you when I said that. No, I did.

I'm blushing. I noticed that too, Chris. You want to speak about that or? I have a lot of body shame, so I'm still coming to terms with what you just said. It's hard for me. No, you don't need it pal. Shed that, shed those layers.

Fill a rain on your skin. Good for you, Chris. What are we talking about this week? It's the Nintendo Switch 2. Russ, what's that? The Nintendo Switch 2 is the new console from Nintendo, the makers of cards and that weird grabbing toy you can get for $5 a target. They've made a new console.

It's very wide, it's very tall, it's very big, and it has cars on it. Not cards, cars. Thanks for clearing that up, man. I'm so glad to know it has cars on it. That's cool. And we'll be, and man, I've never missed Chris Plant more than right now. And we'll be back to talk about this console right after this. Chris Grant, you've been someone who's been watching

the video game space and hardware. You're very smart about hardware and video games and a great student of that industry. You've covered it for many, many, many years. How does the feel? I wanna talk about the vibe first. How's the vibe of this launch compared to other launches that you've been alive for?

I'm gonna say sleepy. That's sleepy. Sleepy. Okay, interesting. Yeah, nobody else thinks it's sleepy? Just from a, like, you're less, you're not as busy having to grind on the coverage. Well, that's true. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. I'm busy. It's gotta be nice, right? To just like fucking kick back, pop open a Cold One, and place a Switch 2 without having to worry about the content, except here you are. Gotcha.

Having to worry about the content. I'll be back in for one more job. One more heist. Right. No, I mean, I think just talking to people, there's a lot of sort of, is that out? Like a lot of this question of like, is, is that a real console? I think some of that is that it doesn't have a major hook on it. It's a bigger, quite literally bigger, faster switch to or switch. Yeah. And I think when you tell people what's unique about it, the answer is it's it's a good or switch. And that's it. And like, there's a lot more you can say about that. And so how do you get people hyped about a gooder Switch?

I think you have to have exclusive software that pulls them in. I don't think a gooder Mario Kart is that just yet. Will people play it and buy it? Yes, they will. But that's not gonna be the thing that gets people really amped about Switch 2, I think. So what we have now is like a relatively slow

and sleepy launch based on the pre-order chaos. Like, can we swear on this podcast? Is this a swear on the podcast? Let me see if that works. Oh yeah, we love. That's so great. Love this one. On the pre-order shit show, the idea.

Oh no, no, no, no, no. Whoa, you didn't say S bombs, dude? Yeah, just the heck and holy. Okay. And bastard, you can do two bastards, and then there they go. All right, I'll pay the fine. Based on that, it was surprising for me

to walk into a Best Buy on release day, two hours after the store opened, and just buy one with money. You are not the only person I have heard say that, and it's wild, because I was caught up in the pre-order show. It was up until like 1.30 in the morning, one morning, just refreshing furiously. Fortunately, Walmart did come through for me,

but then I heard like so many people like, yeah, I just went to fucking, I just went over to the Costco and they had a whole pyramid built out of them. Yeah, mine was in stock at the Best Buy when I went to go get a memory card of SD cards. Oh, those are fucking, I was not prepared for the rush on those.

Those aren't anywhere. You cannot find one of these special SD express cards. Yeah, it was a hot ticket, but they had them. You could just buy them. Crazy. Also based on like, not just the pre-orders, but people getting their pre-orders canceled? Like even like the day in a couple days before, hours before, it still seemed like it was gonna be

a scarcity, so I remain pretty surprised that you can just walk in and pick them up. Yeah, I had a pre-order and it came, I think a day or two post-release. So, not too bad, but yeah, like I could have just gone to the store and gotten one. Obviously, the anxiety of knowing whether you could get one on launch day was very present, and I think I regret nothing. What it did mean is I had to fly to California to go to Summer Game Fest without it, and I had to beg for scraps from Jason Schreier,

whose Switch I used a few times. So. Let me touch it, just let me touch it. They somehow side loaded blueprints on that shit. Man has a sickness. He's a wizard. Serious illness. What was y'all's first impressions?

It's not the most impressive launch lineup in the world, but I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of it, I think, one of the first- By what, in what sense? Well, sir, the first thing I booted up was Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 edition, which is a, I think a $10 upgrade, unless you are a Nintendo Switch Online member

and then it's free. And seeing that game run at, you know, I think 120 FPS, butter smooth with like real fast load times was fucking pretty great, pretty exciting. Not quite, you know, as juicy as my my rogue ally X probably, but I'm not gonna be able to play Zelda on that. So there you go. In addition to the games that they said

they were gonna patch, I have been very impressed by the games they didn't say they were gonna patch, but immediately got improvements regardless of patch. So like Animal Crossing, for example, Animal Crossing's load times dramatically shorter. I haven't done the math, but they're like absurdly shorter.

And if people will recall, I became a little bit scary with my island design to the point where the game would consistently run at around 15 FPS when I was running around the island. Oh shit, I didn't even think about that. No longer an issue. The game runs. I put too many waterfalls on my island

and that shit wouldn't even work no more. Fucking waterfall the ass out of it. You'll be fine. It's funny, I played with Henry, him on the Switch 2, me on my Switch Lite, and I flew to his island and on his screen it was just like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And on my screen I had to wait the whole time

while he just stared at a black screen for a while. I'll say this from the hardware side, they're doing all of this in software. This is not a hardware emulation layer, it's all software, which is pretty impressive. Especially when you look at some of Nintendo's more recent emulation foibles, the N64 back compat on the Switch being a bit of a mess. And so seeing them kind of nail this out of the gate with really high levels of compatibility on pre-existing games is really impressive.

And like even pre-patched, they'll start patching some of those gaps that individual players find on games. Juice, it seemed like you were surprised to hear me say that I found the performance of the thing impressive. Well, it's just, I didn't mean, I guess I was kind kinda like compared to what, I guess would be the question,

because it is like everything on it is bespoke for the thing. I mean, compared to the Switch one, like the games I played are the games that I play still a lot with Henry all the time. And so like, I don't know, most of the gaming I do is either at my PC or on my ROG LIX, like 95% of it.

And then like, if I'm playing games with Henry, it's, it's, it is on the switch. And so having a system that offers a markedly better like experience, uh, just from a load times performance, all that jazz perspective is, is, I don't know what I feel like I am getting out of it right now. Um, yeah, I think I have struggled because the whole thing just feels so iterative. I mean, I can't think of a time, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong,

but I can't think of a time where Nintendo in a generational switch has ever, pardon the term, has ever been this like conservative. I mean, this is, I mean, you have to go back to like the new Nintendo DS for, and if you even count that as a half step. Yeah, I probably wouldn't count that as a new console per se, but.

If you called that the Nintendo DS2, or the Nintendo 3DS2, I think the reason they didn't do that is because even hearing me say it out loud is very stupid to say the 3DS2. But I'm saying like, that is the, I don't think it is more of a leap forward than the new 3DS. I would say 3DS in general. I think like from a percentage standpoint, like the new 3DS from it, like, I'm not talking about flops, but in terms of what it could do versus what the previous version could do, the new 3DS from it, like, I'm not talking about flops, but in terms of what it could do versus what the previous version could do, the new 3DS could not do that much. It was like 20% more

and the actual exclusive. Well, I'm not talking about the sort of Murphy's law of the whole thing. I'm talking about the actual like console and like what you're gonna Chris, you were gonna say something. What were you? I would not look to new 3DS to 3DS. I look at 3DS to DS, right? Where the basic form factor software compatibility feature set is almost identical with the lone exception

that the 3DS had 3D support, which most of us just turned right off, or we got a 2DS that didn't even support it. But I think that is a better paradigm of like, what was it? And I think they had the gimmick, they had the 3D gimmick to try and get people excited. I think the Switch 2 is missing a gimmick.

It has a mouse. It does have a mouse. C button. I mean, I have a mouse at home. Kids, we got a mouse at home. Yeah, does it work on your fucking lap, Chris? It's not a mouse, man. You can use arrow keys to move a cursor around it

and make it a mouse. But now on my lap, Griffin, it's actually working. It's blur a mouse, man. You can use arrow keys to move a cursor around and then make it a mouse. I'm using this now on my lap, Griffin. It's actually working. It's blurring it out. Your camera is, for whatever reason, thinks what you're doing. Rubbing your mouse on your lap is a pornographic motion, and can I just say, good call, Net Nanny. I have struggled with the, okay,

when you're an early adopter of a console, there's very little reason to do that logically, right? You do it because you're a fan, you're an enthusiast, you're an early adopter of a console, there's very little reason to do that logically, right? You do it because you're a fan, you're an enthusiast, you're excited to play with it, but I think also you're excited to share it with people, right? You wanna say like, you wanna see this new thing, I have this new thing, do you wanna see it?

And since the Switch 2 arrived, I've really struggled to figure out what to put in people's hands to say, what do you think about this? The closest I've had to a novel experience, sincerely, is the feel of when it has a ball in the maracas. In Welcome Park. And you can roll, move it around,

you can feel the ball in there, that's really cool. That's pretty rough, guys, it's pretty rough. I'd be like, yeah, the new Nintendo Switch 2 is is amazing give me 10 minutes to get into this maraka simulator cause if i turn it to ball it's actually a very awesome. Because a bunch of people had them at summer game fest in like various hotel lobbies and things like that. And I'm not saying this is like a full unique feature, but it did kind of stand out to me in ways I wasn't expecting. Because of the increased size, specifically the screen size, the idea that you can play a multiplayer game on tabletop mode with other people and not have it be like a squinting mess is actually kind of a big deal. Like it actually kind of facilitates a use case that I know Nintendo was pitching for the first Switch, but wasn't the most feasible for most games. And now because of that screen size,

it is much more feasible. And adding on also that the Joy-Cons and the specifically the trigger buttons on the like Joy-Con side profile controls, actually you can actually use them. And so I was playing, I forget what game I was playing with Henry, but we were doing that. And I never, that shit never felt good on Switch One.

That was terrible. And here, it's still not as good as using a pro controller or whatever, but it's way, way, way more doable. And so I do think it kind of like, I don't know, fulfills the promise of some of that novelty from Switch 1. It seems unlikely that we will ever have any, like, holy shit new console moments in the foresee... Like, short of fucking holograms.

Yeah. Just because, hey, Russ, just because you can't dream. Well, apparently neither can any of the other console manufacturers because either the xbox or the ps5 were like basically the same problem right i think this question of diminishing returns has been one that's been plaguing video game hardware iteration for a really long time um how do you show off a console uh playstation 4 to, where like the games in a lot of cases look identical, run a little bit better, letting one spend $500 for that and when you tell them, Justin, that the ball demo, which is neat, can be theirs for the low low price of $500 US dollars, like, I have a tough sell and so I think that getting to a place where what they're offering you is more broad compatibility

with AAA games. So you can play cyberpunk on it, for example. Fortnite runs. Did anyone actually get that and check it out, the cyberpunk? I've heard good things. I just replayed it, I'll say probably would have. Because I had it on PC running at a million frames a second

a decade ago. Like it's like, it's late. And so I think that the sense of what are you buying here? You're buying portability. And that's really interesting. And you know, you can sort of offset some of that compute power to portable thresholds. And that's what they're really offering.

And they can increase the screen size. And that also comes at battery life. And that's what they're offering. But at some point, what you're looking at is diminishing returns where to your point, Griffin, you can play a lot of even PC games, like on a portable PC now and get a good enough experience. That's just what you do.

And the raw horsepower is not really necessary anymore. It feels like especially sort of boutique-y stuff, because it's like the real thing that you're buying here is like access to Nintendo's first party catalogs played on a system that doesn't feel like a 10-year-old Android phone. Like it is at least on par with what, you know, good graphical fidelity was, you know, a year or or two ago maybe but that still feels considerably better and i don't know that that is the best case to make for a you know a concert i think there's there's one more thing that i want to mention.

I don't think there's any other device that is more like group multiplayer friendly than the switch to like bring it to a house and have a multiplayer game. I can't think of anything that is like better than that. I bring my everywhere and we can show her that that was pretty good too. And I don't think that's like that is I think how they continue to differentiate differentiate themselves from the other consoles is you're not going to log a PS5 over you're not going to set up a screen you have an option to with two to four players or whatever have a good multiplayer experience on the go in addition to having access to like the first party stuff. I have a lot of fifth graders coming to my house on a pretty regular occasion and the amount of times where it's just bring your switch. You should specify you have kids by the way. I do, I have children specifically a fifth grader. Yeah they're not just strange fifth graders coming to your house. I mean some of them are strange, I'm not gonna say they're not strange but um. Come on down to

Grant's arcade, fish town. So we have a lot of kids here and they just bring their Switch everywhere. And it's really portable and it has some commonalities. They can play Minecraft together, they can play Fortnite, they can play Smash. They can trade cards or games. And I think that sends out... I'm excited about the GameShare feature. I think that's really cool. I think it's a really neat iteration of the Wii U technology. And how do you reach back into that grab bag of failed ideas and

repurpose it for something new. But to your point it is a portable system and it is a system that is often convened in the same space so gameshare starts to make a lot of sense if it is native and when you have that extra horsepower what do you use it for? The game I've been playing the most on Switch 2 isn't Mario Kart World, which is neat, and it's not, it's probably a little bit of Fortnite. I had my nephew over yesterday and we were playing Fortnite, and it runs fine as opposed to the Switch version,

which ran really poorly. Like shit. Yeah. Big old file Fortnite though, for the old Switch 2 internal memory capacity. Oh, she had like 40 gigabytes taken up my whole. So if you are unable to find a SD Express memory card, which you will not be able to do,

then you might wanna skip this one. I did go put Notify Me on all the local stores. I don't buy SD cards on Amazon anymore because they're always fake. So I put a big ol' Notify Me on Best Buy and Walmart and Target, so hopefully I'll get one in. But I think the game I'm playing the most, which is not really using that hardware,

but is one of the few Switch 2 native launch games is a Deltarune. Chapters three and four. And like, it's not using that hardware. It's just a system that is portable, that I'll play that my son will play and bring places. And I think the why are we playing it there instead of PC? Because he wants to bring it to his friend's houses and play with it there.

And so I do think the portability even more than the hardware still is unique. But, you know, I say this with a family with two other switches in the house. It is frustrating that the switch to doc doesn't work with the switch one console. Little frustrating. I kind of didn't, I don't know, I guess I missed that detail in all of the preview coverage, but that's really maddening to me, to need to set up two docks that dock the same way.

Why couldn't you have just made it compatible? I really don't understand. Yeah, I'm glad that a lot of the, I have so many fucking pro controllers, just from the fact that the Switch was my, if I'm going to a lake house thing with a lot of the, I have so many fucking pro controllers, just from like the fact that the Switch was my, if I'm going to a lake house thing with a bunch of friends, like I'll bring the Switch and all my pro controllers so we can play Tower Fall or whatever.

I am glad I do not have to, yeah, I'm glad I don't have, well, I don't live in Oss anymore, so I don't need all those pro controllers. I'm sort of a solo guy now. But all the Switch One controllers work with the Switch Two. Which I was glad because I did not fucking buy a Switch Two Pro Controller. I did.

I did foolishly only because I whiffed on all the Switch Two pre-orders and didn't get one and I was really feeling sorry for myself. And I did manage to land a Switch Two Pro Controller pre-order. So I put that in as a consolation prize. How is it? It's nice. It feels really good. It has this like soft texture, same as on the back.

Yeah, it's like a brushed plastic. Yeah, I worry about it because as somebody who's packing up a bunch of old controllers now, I don't know if you know anything about those plastics with that kind of treatment on them. But after 20 years, they get sticky and gum. Yeah. I guess think about the holder dealie. The grip? Yeah. I mean, it's not.

It's a bit of a different form factor. I don't love it so much. It's also the texture. Oh, like the grip that you slide the Joy-Cons onto. I think it feels a lot nicer than the Switch 1 grip, because the Switch 2 Joy-Cons just feel way nicer. I got, OK. I feel like I'm struggling because early adoption doesn't, like I've said earlier, early adoption doesn't really make sense.

And so you're talking a lot about intangibles. And I think that one thing that the switch is really up against, uh, for me personally, and maybe there's other people who are in this scenario, but not, I understand it's not the biggest segment, but like as the the sort of portable computing segment, you're like Steam Deck portable PC, you know, rogue, all those guys, as that segment gets better and better and more evolved and more interesting. I feel like it gets harder for the Switch 2 or the Switch period to feel like very impressive. And I think that it is a market that the Switch really like kind of carved out in a sense and it really like created a lot of. But I think at this point where we've had so many really solid handheld PCs with more on the way, we're seeing a lot. That's what I've been playing most of. Like that's the, the ROG Allie X is like the thing that I play most.

So when I picked up the Switch 2, it's kind of like, eh. I just kinda, I gotta play out though. And it'll end up being worth it when there's a lot of Nintendo games, which is the oldest story. Every time you guys say ROG Allie X, I do think you sound like total dweebs though. So.

Okay. Should you say Republic of Gamers? Yeah, if you said Republic of Gamers, Allie X, I think that would be cool. Republican Gamers. Right, that agree with you. There's not a, there still is not going to be a third party title that comes out that I'm going to opt to buy on Switch 2 over. Unless there was like a, I'll give you an example. Virtua Tennis, not announced, but like if you wanted to play multiplayer Virtua Tennis, wouldn't you buy it on Switch 2 and not on other platforms? Sure, yes.

You got me in a tech-wise position. I mean, I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game. I guess there was like a, I'll give you an example, Virtua Tennis, not announced, but like if you wanted to play multiplayer Virtua Tennis, wouldn't you buy it on Switch 2 and not on other programs? Sure, yes, you got me in a technicality there, Russ.

Bazinga, you burned my ass. It's like, it's hard to talk about because the truth is this, right? If you really like Mario Kart a lot, I think it's, you could, no, I don't think you could justify it yet. No, I wouldn't know. But when there's a few Nintendo games you like,

you can buy it. I mean, it's really, but there is very, very, very little reason to buy this thing right now. I wouldn't buy this thing right now. One of the ways I justify it to myself, I'm gonna take this on a trip with you guys and tell me if it smells okay. Nintendo doesn't lower the prices.

If you wait five years for there to be a whole bunch of first party Nintendo games, guess what? The Switch 2 is gonna cost the same dang price. It might even be more expensive with tariffs, et cetera. Yeah, I mean... They're not gonna lower the price. And there's a tariff question. Maybe it's more expensive in a few months.

So if you don't buy one right now, you're losing. That's right. You're a waste idiot. You're actually losing money. Yeah. Can we spend a little bit of time going through some of the games that we have been playing? I don't think we, I don't know if we're planning on doing like a whole Mario Kart World episode or what,

but I think that that's probably salient is what we've been playing on that. Yeah, for sure. I'll just speak for myself again. I was sort of playing when I could, uh, over summer game fast. Uh, I landed last night. So it's, it's, uh, just trying to fit it in.

And I played Mario Kart, as you mentioned. Uh, I really enjoyed it. I think the knockout mode in particular, I was really enjoying. It's the highlights. I think it really stands out. I was a little disappointed by the open world stuff. I was expecting more and I kind of hope that like maybe

over time, over the year, they'll like update it with like more challenges and more online, whatever it is. But right now it feels really barren. To find, I didn't, I couldn't find it. How do you even get it? So on the title screen, on the title screen. I thought the open world was the fact that you could drive between the different little towns.

I figured that's our open world. So on the title screen, if you go into single player or whatever, it's not one of the options there. But on the title screen in the bottom corner, it says press plus for free play, for free room. All right, well you guys keep talking. Let me go grab my screen.

Yeah, sure. can at least look. It is, it's weirdly hidden. For a game where world is in the title and they kind of marketed it this way, I was very surprised that I had to hunt for it. But like Forza Horizon it is not, and I think that the interconnected levels is very novel, and it benefits a mode like knockout which is like a stay above this

this place in you know the in the race every time you reach a lap we're going to knock out you know places 20 through 24 so you got to stay ahead of it and then those laps are just like one on a course and then you seamlessly drive to the next course, so you go through like five and cross the whole country. It's very, very cool. But like, I don't know, without a more, without much more to do in the open world stuff, it feels like a weird thing to kind of anchor the game around that they did not sort of put a lot,

there are P-switch challenges that you can do to earn stickers, you can stick on your car, and that is just about the only thing that I've found to do in Free Roam. I have only played a handful of races and all of the extra costumes I got in Free Roam. Are those available if you play just Grand Prix, if you get food, or is that only in Free Roam? I don't know. I got a biker Waluigi costume from playing a Grand Prix.

And then I was like, I'm good, I don't need any. I got a crab that I didn't recognize the crab previously, but it was a crab. Yeah, you can be a crab fully in this one. The online works great. I was surprised when you play, that is the benefit I think of the free roam mode is that when you play online,

it drops you in a lobby with 23 other people. For me, like every time I've tried like fairly quickly, and then you get to just kind of cruise around the open world while you wait for them to finish whatever race they're on. And then everyone votes on what they want the next race to be. So you can kind of see like where people are at

and cruise around and it's like, it is a fun little thing to do to spend time while you wait. It's like the Namco playing like Galaga in the load screen. Yeah, exactly. But it works, I mean, I think the online is commendable how much it, how well it works, and I think the tracks are neat,

but it's hard, I think, to follow Mario Kart 8, which was in many ways like the, like the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate of Mario Kart, where it's like, it has fucking everything. It has a hundred tracks and everything you could ever want. Following up on that, I see why I had to do something different. But really great looking menus. Love the menus.

That's something that matters to me. It matters to me a lot. Really, they look great. My sexual appointed out when they had on the TV and he said it looks really like, I forget the word he used, but he basically said it looks crisp. I was like, you're right.

Like he was just trying to play out how it looked different. Yeah. It was, you were running it at 720 P before and now it's not 720 P. Yeah. Um, I really like welcome park. I think it's still wild. You have to pay $10 for it. But, but like, I think you want to talk about the thing that makes you feel like,

uh, that was $500 well spent is a $10 little game that's like, check out every little fucking thing that this little guy can do. Check it all out. Can we talk about that $10? It seems quite literally unimaginable to me that they're charging $10 for what is effectively a- Please don't buy Welcome Park.

It's a commercial. Whatever we say here, don't get Welcome Park. Don't a commercial. Whatever we say here, don't get Welcome Park. Don't buy that. I welcome Welcome Park. Griffin just recommended Welcome Park. He said it's the only reason to spend $500. I like tech. I'm not saying, it is insane that it costs $10.

It is insane that it is not a free thing, which is the literal norm that has been established by every modern game company on Earth. As a person who likes the moment where you get a new technology, a game where you get to turn into a little guy and climb inside the controller and it's like, yeah, this is what the fucking microchips look like on the inside of it.

I think that's very neat. I think that that is a very neat experience that is somewhat fulfilling as a, I don't know, person who is enthusiastic. It is exclusive. Like I think the positivity would be through the ceiling about Welcome Park. If there wasn't a price tag on it. And I know there's like a reputation within Nintendo of like,

Reggie claims this is sort of up in the air in terms of accuracy, but in Reggie's book, he claims that Miyamoto said we do not give games away for free. And Reggie convinced him to give Wii sports away for free. And that's why it blew up in the States. And obviously Reggie died, sorry, Reggie. So we're here having to charge for- Reggie did not die.

I do want to say here right now that Reggie- He died in Nintendo. He was- Okay. In the Nintendo fiction. Also, I think it's just- So now we have to pay $10. Crazy to have a game that is a tech demo with a cute little guy who's inside the hardware bouncing around

for a $500 console and historians of ye olden times in gaming might recall the PlayStation 5 had a little free pack-in called Astra's playroom which was a had a little free pack-in called Astra's Playroom, which was a cute little guy who bounced around inside the hardware and told you about the cool new features.

And the big difference there is I think that was a much better game with higher production value than Welcome Park. And it was the blueprint for the game that won Game of the Year and swept every single publication last year and then Sony gave that away for free. Well, you wait for Welcome Park 2 next year, baby. It's gonna blow your fucking mind. Oh my god, that little guy that runs around,

he's gonna be fucking awesome. I think that the money question is, lingers over, casts a pretty long shadow over the Switch 2. And like, I know that that is not a conversation that we want to get especially mired in, but I will just say that I think Mario Kart World is pretty fun.

I do not think as a first shot across the bow of, can $80 be the standard price of our first party games? I don't think that it is the strongest fucking argument for that case because it's not, you don't feel that $20 difference in the, when you equip the cow skin and switch it to HDR. Especially a product that is like better the more people that play.

Yeah, sure. Right, like the more friends that you have playing Mario Kart, the more valuable Mario Kart is. Yeah. Did anyone else play anything else that like stood out in terms of, those were the two games that I played for Wordsworth. I mean, I've been playing Tiers. Mario Kart is. Yeah. Did anyone else play anything else that stood out? Those were the two games that I played for Wordsworth. I mean, I've been playing Tiers.

Oh yeah, you mentioned, yeah. I mean, it's been just long enough to have forgotten all the puzzles and shit. Have you been doing Zelda notes? Yes, it's very cool. It truly is. You can connect to your, I don't know how it connects, but whenever you are playing the game

and connected to the internet, and you have the Nintendo app on your phone, it will do like a live GPS, show you exactly where you are, and you can see whatever on the map, and it will do like voice navigation for you that updates in real time, which is very neat. Would it let me find all the Koroks? It would let you find all the Koroks,

it would let you find all the cave entrances if you wanted to get really- I did that already. Fancy about it. Yeah, that's true. I forgot what the nasty boy was doing. No God's baby. Griffin, how old was your,

how old was your tier save? I started a new one. Oh, so- I mean, I played at launch. Yeah, 2023, so. I had not gone back in. This was kind of surprising to me since August 23. So firing it back up, I kinda,

I don't know, I felt like it was more recent than that. But- It feels fucking great, right? Like I was- Yeah, no, it feels great. It runs so, so, so, so well, and it's like the best game ever. So-

I think the smoothness is a huge W, but the load times, like the load times in that game were painful. And being able to fire it up and immediately have the game pop up quickly or die and have it pop up quickly, that was really nice. The Zelda Notes thing is really cool. I worry that it's a great proof of concept for the kinds of things they can do with the Nintendo Switch app. I don't know if we're going to see a lot of that kind of integration.

Probably not. This felt like it was like, not for free at least. We don't want to redesign the core internals of the game. So we're gonna kind of halfway it with an app. I think that second screen thing is really clever. I mean, they launched a whole console with that in mind. And I think adding it is smart. I just, I don't know if they have enough ideas

to extend it and if any other third parties are gonna do it. But yeah, I was really impressed with that. And Breath of the Wild, I did some of the GameCube. I fired up some. Oh yeah, how's that? Fired up some Wind Waker. I have not, I'd managed to finally order

a GameCube controller, but I didn't get it yet. I wasn't exhausted, but the emulation seems really good. It doesn't seem really compromised. It's fun to get GameCube games on there, and I'm excited for them to add more. I would love Luigi's Mansion to get GameCube games on there, and I'm excited for them to add more. I would love Luigi's Mansion to be available for spooky season. I'll see what I can do.

You should check out the rogue LAX. I mean, I have a GameCube right here. It's just, when it's on the Switch, it's really... You wanna play with widescreen? Upres, widescreen? Come on over. Justin's got some really, really sick shit, man. Justin, is that?

No, it's just like, there's no, I mean, the truth of the matter is, if Nintendo didn't have a first-party stable to like fall back on, this is an unimaginable flop. I mean, it is twice as much as like competitive devices that can play a lot more stuff and have a lot more flexibility. Hardware standpoint.

There's literally no reason to get, they are holding it hostage. They're holding Mario and Link hostage in their expensive box. Like, and this, and if you think that I'm like being hyper, like, like, like facetious here or overstating it, they are charging you $10 for the tutorial. They will do anything to get as much money out of you

as humanly possible. And I'm saying that like, there's no, this device, you cannot justify it. I'll say this, compared to the PC gaming portable segment, that's your ROG allies and your Steam decks and everything else, the Switch One outsold the entire category by a bajillion to one.

The forecast on the Switch two are that they're going to continue to outsell the entire portable PC gaming category by many orders of magnitude. So in some cases, this is a popularization of the concept. The super dweebs in the house like you and I, I'm a Steam deck user still, I'm not fully rogue ally-pilled,

but we'll play that because we have games Steam, and I still would rather spend time and money on Steam library than Nintendo library, even though I will give Nintendo a lot of credit. I went back before the Switch 2 launched and pulled up my op-ed just before the Wii U launched, and then I wrote another one just before the Switch launched about how bad Nintendo's online capabilities are and how much it gave me pause with regards to their ability to kind of compete in a modern environment, but also. That used to be the Charlie Brown football with us,

I feel like, even as far back as Joy's dick of like, man, did you hear about this fucking Street Pass stuff at 3DS, Nintendo's finally figured it out. And then that and Monster Hunter, this is the Monster Hunter that everybody's going to get into. Even the Switch, like you lost your DS, we lost your 3DS. If you left your portable console at school or on the bus or wherever, all the games you bought on it were gone.

That's insane. That's like a truly insane prospect. And so the Switch changed all that and the Switch 2 changed all that. I think the idea that your library has some, and the fact that your Switch 1 games work through a software layer on Switch 2, and they work better, gives me some confidence that this is a place you can actually put

your digital purchases safely, and not feel like they're gonna disappear in one generation, in the way that, I think that's part of why a lot of people stick with Steam, because those games you bought in 2007 on Steam are still there. The stuff all does kind of the same thing, but I do think that they're clearly still too,

I mean, there's more than two, but the ROG AliEx Steam Deck ecosystem is different from the Nintendo Switch ecosystem in so far as you can go to Target and buy the Switch and then you turn it on and Mario's like, here's how to put $80 in to get me to take my clothes off. And the Steam Deck, if you are not familiar with that world and you are not familiar with that ecosystem

and you are not as savvy about that stuff, you know, it can be a bit imposing, I imagine. And the ROG even more so. Yes, fuck yeah, man. The stuff you have to do to get it to work. It's just, you know, with the Nintendo console, you're not paying for horsepower, you're not paying for, like,

you're paying for the library and the joy, the pleasure, the whimsy. I actually think that this is the first time that you can make a case that Nintendo is really hardware forward. They're bragging about the specs of this thing. Their entire pre-release cycle is about a spec sheet in a way that it normally is not. In the early readout from your dorks at Digital Foundry, you know, once the smart nerds

get a hold of it, is that from a hardware standpoint this thing is more powerful than a rogue ally. And it is more powerful than a Steam Deck. It won't always be that market will iterate more often than the Switch 2, but for right now this thing is kind of a beefcake compared to the Switch 1 at its launch and certainly compared to some of the other current PC gaming counterparts. What they do with that horsepower. It's just so hard to just, unless you're dying to get back into those old Nintendo, the Switch 1 games though, it's just so hard to justify it. Like there's so little, it feels so cynical

that it's really hard, I think, to get excited about the launch. Cause it feels cynical. It's not my cynicism, it's like it feels cynical to me. Even at the Switch One launch, we were like, you should wait, like you had fucking Breath of the Wild and people were still saying, you could, you find waiting, like wait a year.

The library will be more filled out, it'll be have more robots. You're always fine, wait, I mean like that is a, you know, I wanna try to separate like the, my anti-consumer's impulses here from like, I'm not trying to rain on the parade. Like it's always, you could always wait and the prices are always gonna get better,

but as they say at the RV store in my town, the price is gonna go up and the kids are gonna grow up. Eventually you just gotta pull the trigger and get it. This one, I just don't know how, I wish I could justify it. I'd love to get excited about it. There's just nothing there. Well, it's a good thing you have a podcast

about video games, so there's your justification. Yeah, dude, it's fully justified for you. Do not sweat it, man. You're good personally. You don't have to worry about that. I wish I could justify endorsing it. Well, as soon as Super Mario Odyssey 2 comes out later this year, I heard that from my uncle

who does definitely work at Nintendo. Yeah, I heard at the end of Bonanza, Donkey Kong gets killed by Mario Odyssey. With a hammer. Mario from Mario Odyssey. And then he's like, November 15th, 2025. He announces the release. Yeah, that's it.

So fucking cool. That's the good stuff. Yeah, it's so cool. We should take a break. Yeah, let's take a break. Because we have been going for a while and we have Summer Game Fest to talk about. So let's do that.

So as I mentioned earlier, I was in California this past weekend for Jeff Keeley and the other gang Summer Game Fest 2025. Yes, a lot. God, the announcements. There's a lot of games. A lot of games. Sure. I didn't play a ton of games, but I did watch a lot of trailers. I don't know, did you guys follow any of the news, anything that jumped out to you in particular?

Well they're remaking my favorite video game of all time in Persona 4 Revival, which they announced with a trailer that was the equivalent of Atlas saying like, yeah, we're doing it, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. It'll be done when it's done. Persona 6 is coming in 2081. Fuck up, it'll be done when it's done. Persona 6 is coming in 2081, fuck you, it'll be out when it's out. It was 15 seconds of the protagonist

running through the fancy updated streets of Inaba while one of the songs from Persona played. And for us, for us weirdos, that's all you need. Do you wanna guess when the actual next sequel will happen? Oh, I mean, I don't know when Persona 6 will come out. Well, because they do say in addition to the trailer, in the letter that they released. They put out a statement,

because I think they knew that this trailer, this thing was so thoroughly pre-revealed via the rumor mill that I think people's expectations were a little bit high, and the trailer really was, I think it's 40 seconds long, and it is very, very, very very very little footage to go off of. And so they did put out a statement that was like hey it's good we're working on it really excited we know people like this one a lot and we're still working on the next one too. I think probably it's

not going to be until like 2027 that we see Persona 6 at the earliest. And I think it would be a shock if revival shows up this year. As excited as that would make me. But yeah, I'm glad that that one paid off. Also, Grounded 2. Yep. Grounded 2 would be the best.

Yeah. The games that jumped out to me when we were watching trailers were ill. Did you see that trailer for ill? It looks sick. Looks very cool. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, It's a scary first person shooter.

It looked kind of like a Resident Evil. I'm surprised I spoke to you, Ross, cause you're usually such a scared cat. Yeah, I'm not gonna play it. I'll be too scared to play it. Yeah, but you like the idea. But I like the idea. I thought the visuals were very impressive

and it just jumped out at me as like, cause they do like weird crowds of zombie babies that it was just working for me. New Resident Evil, what's it, Requiem? What is that the name of it? I mean it's nine. I should go with Resident Evil 9, which I think is a good shorthand.

I got a real thing for Resident Evil games, just in general, like historically, but ever since 7 and then remake 2, 3 and then 8, they're all so good. They've all been really good. They're all so good. I go back and I like go, I get weird about like completely finding everything, doing all the stuff.

So they showed no gameplay, new characters. Is this a continuation story? I don't know. I have no idea. I think, is this a continuation of the story? I don't know, I have no idea. I think it is. Yeah, I guess. I will say they showed gameplay at Summer Game Fest in a back theater that was under embargo. So, and they were aspects of that that I can't share,

but I am aware of. Can you tell us this? So you're just bragging right now. Well, I didn't see it, I just heard it. So there's- Can you tell us this? So you're just bragging right now. Well, I didn't see it. I just heard it through my sources. Does it have graphics in it? So there are graphics and characters and- Can you shoot guys?

Can't say that. Come on, Russ. No, that's too much. You weren't even there. You didn't sign the embargo. That's true. I am optimistic of that one because basically every Resident Evil game released recently has been pretty, at least good, if not great.

If not excellent. Some of them have been excellent. So I think they're really being very smart with that franchise in ways that for many years they weren't. Very excited to see Mena the Hollow. Oh, hell yeah. The next Yacht Club games, the creators of Shovel Knight. It looks a lot like Shovel Knight, but their take on a sort of more top-down, what would you say, like almost Zelda-like? Yeah, it looks like Link's Awakening. I think it's probably the closest analog.

You're like a little mouse named Mina, I assume. And there's like a whole open world of dungeons and puzzles and upgrades that you can find for your character. man I loved shovel night so much so I kind of have a lot of faith in this developer. To make dope ass shit I think there's actually a demo a playable demo on steam right now I don't want to play it because demos for games that I really really want to play. See my spoilers to me and you know how I feel about spoilers so. But it was really cool how How about Scott Pilgrim? I like everything Tribute Games does. That's my intro there. I know it's not a game that didn't light the world on fire. It was just it was missing for a while and they just

did the re-release last year but two years ago. But that scratches it for me. I'll say this, I don't know if my kids have any affection for beat-em-ups and like, I don't think it does much for them and I'm always like, let's play Street Rage 4 and they're like, no, that's stupid. But it does it for me. So, yeah. And this is a new, a fully new game.

It feels like it's borrowing more from River City Ransom. It's got like these RPG elements. Yeah, which is cool. I'm into that as well. I wanna talk about Deadpool. Okay. He's the bad boy of Marvel. So Deadpool is the bad boy of Marvel.

And he is back with a new twisted adventure in virtual reality If thing gets developed by twisted pixel pretty sure I'm accurate in that so I feel right I don't know actually who do they going concerned still I think I'm right Twisted pixel yeah Okay, what what other games for to remind the people what twisted pixels worked on so twisted pixel did Wavy Tube man Chronicles and Wilson's heart and lococycle and explosion man and

They I'm looking at their website now And they've done some other games that I was not aware of like path of the warrior defector and B team huh, and then this now we got Deadpool VR and of like Path of the Warrior, Defector, and B-Team. And then now we got Deadpool VR. And it's a new Wade for a new day. Neil Patrick Harris is taking over as Wade Wilson. And I just wanna know how everybody feels about this. Do we feel betrayed or I wanna talk to my biggest

Deadpool guys and just see where we're at. I'm just glad that Mint Mobile's doing okay. And clearly it's doing okay to the point where he can just set it aside and be like, yeah, you can get the scraps, Neil, you're good. Ryan's going through a lot right now. And so sometimes when that happens, you need a friend to step in and pick up some of the slack.

Usually though, being Deadpool is his outlet. You know what I mean? That's where he gets his works through all that stuff. Now do you think, do you think in classic Deadpool fashion, Neil Patrick Harris will allude to the fact that he is not what people think of when? I bet we'll get there. There is, hey dude, there's no way,

there's no way that he is gonna refer to the fact that there's usually a different guy doing the Deadpool voice. No way, I will bust up so fucking hard. He for sure will say that and you're gonna be busting. Just prepare yourself. Brian Reynolds already made like a joke video about the whole thing.

I imagine this is just gonna be a running gag for a while. You're gonna have a good time, Justin. It's good news. That's good. Worry not. That's good. I played a game. Yeah.

Did you have anything more to say about the work with the math? No, no, no thank you. I played a game called Art is Rifle. This was at the, it's called the mix or the indie mix, I guess it's like a collection of indie developers showing their stuff. And I have no fucking idea how this game is played.

I tried playing it and enjoyed shooting paint around. Yeah, it looks like if Antichamber was like a fun... Game. Game. Sorry, Antichamber. I love Antichamber, but this looks like if Antichamber was also traps. Yeah, it looks fucking sick.

Yeah, it's all these hard lines and weird, yeah, Antichamber is a good analogy. It's on Steam, you can look it up, the screenshots of it. I have no, again, no idea how it's played. I was stuck in an area, I assume there are puzzles, and color probably plays a big part, which might preclude me from enjoying myself,

but what I did play was encouraging. I'm excited about the idea of Killer Inn, which is a social deduction game. It looks like there has been a murder, and you're trying to figure out with a bunch of other people. It looks like vibes-wise, not vibes-wise, but it seems a little bit like after the shooting has happened,

like after the action has happened, you're trying to put the pieces together. It's not super specific, but it looks like a really neat idea from the trailer, so I'd like to check more of that out. I'm excited to play the Liza P. some more. I never finished it, but now there's DLC, and it's out now.

Apparently the DLC is too hard for even Liza P. Sickos. They've been complaining. That sucks, because I am not one of those. So they are patching it to make it easier. So maybe it's a good thing that we haven't played it yet. But I am excited about that as well. What was this LEGO game? I didn't actually watch the trailer for LEGO Voyagers. Hey watch it while we're just sitting here

It looks really interesting. It's like you're it's sort of following a piece like a Lego piece No, we're literally actually you're confusing that with the other Lego game There were two Lego get sorry to interrupt, but there were two Lego games announced How did you psychically know because one Griffin is? Because we're looking at the rundown. Okay, got it. Good question though. Talk about your- Oh no, yeah, no, I was talking about Lego Voyagers.

Oh, so I was wrong. Oh, so one of us is a clown who knows my brother better than the other one, and it turns out it's me? Wow, I know Griffin better, weird. There is a game called Lego Party, and I didn't even know that that was a thing. What is that, Russ? Yeah, you seem like such a big fan of it, Russ.

I am, it was on the rundown I was such a big fan. Lego Party is Mario Party, but with Lego, and a little less bullshit. But if you like Mario Party, and less bullshit in Mario Party, I really found that quite enjoyable. Play WarioWare. This does, this Voyager's game looks cute though.

You are like a little piece, and you're just going around and you're building stuff and you're solving puzzles with a friend. It's like, it's like Deadpool VR, but with like a piece. Yeah. I mean, I get excited about games where I'm like, yeah, that's, Henry will definitely want to play that.

And this seems like one of those for sure. And Deadpool VR. You know what other game Henry might be into? I was thinking. What's that? There's a new Wu-Tang game coming out. And... Yes.

That was cool as hell. Yeah, Henry's really excited for that. At some point, you have to introduce him to Wu-Tang. And I'm not sure. Different parents, different styles. I'm not going to tell you when. But, you know, it's good to know it'll be there when he's ready. We do a sort of like, when Rachel was still pregnant,

we would put Wu-Tang up to the belly. And so there would be like, that way when they were ready for it, they would have some, the lattice work would be there. Some of the support systems. The scaffolding is there for them to clip right in to the 36 chambers. That's good.

It does look fun though. Also Le Chiffre from Casino Royale has come to Hitman, which is very confusing. I don't know why they did that. It's very confusing. Wait, what? Le Chiffre. The mads-mickleson bad guy from Casino Royale who cries blood.

He's going to be a high value target in Hitman. God bless you, Hitman. Keep doing your thing, man. I want to. Okay, Hitman, if we're doing it, let's fucking do it, dude. Let me hunt Freddy Krueger. Give me the tools to hunt Frederick Krueger.

I thought it was gonna be fully like, let's do a James Bond Hitman game. I thought that's what we're doing. They are already mixing the media. Let's get Sub-Zero in there. No, I like Freddy Krueger. Let me hunt Sub-Zero. I like Freddy Krueger

because all the Hitman missions happen with people just going about their day to day. So just checking him out and trying to take him out while he's like at the library checking out books would be fucking awesome. I got a better one. Let's do Freddy Fazbear. And we could just mix, get the kids, get the, you know,

get the gens, the zoomers, the alpha gen kids on Hitman. At some point you got a bridge. Yeah. Let's do Hitman versus It Follows. Yes. And it's like, you don't know who the target is until you see someone walking all weird and then you shoot them.

Social deduction game, I like this. But it might be- Social deduction game, like Spy Party 2. But that might be Hitman disguised as It Follows. Yeah, sure. It's a, this thing's got legs and layers. You know what you call it? You call it Hit Follows.

Cause it's like Hitman. Yeah, you would call it that Chris Grant. Fuck yeah, man. I want to talk about the game that wasn't at Summer Games and it's driving me crazy because I feel like they're, torture is a strong word, I don't want to use it lightly, but I feel like there is an abuse going on with a certain games community from a certain developer and that is Hollow Knight, specifically Silksong.

And these poor people. It actually was a game fest, by the way. It was to a certain extent. It was showed on a screen at the Xbox event. That's what they keep doing. This is the torture. And once it's coming out, it's coming out later. Check this out.

They said this year. Yeah, sure. They did, they said this year. That's sure. They did, they said this year. Good day, Russ. That's adorable. And it's confirmed. So wild. I made a joke in the Slack chat when it showed up on a screen and was like,

what if this was the only Hollow Knight silk song that we got during this thing? Or ever, for that matter. Or ever, yeah, what if this is the last time we got to see it? Yeah, no, it's wild that that's not more of a known quantity at this point. Even Deadpool made fun of Hollow Knight.

Yeah. It's nothing sacred to that guy. Was that in the Deadpool VR trailer or basically? I think it might've been in Jeff Keighley's promo for it. Real quick, Griffin, I'm surprised you mentioned Stranger Than Heaven, which is the Yakuza in like 19 various decades In Japan. Oh, was that at the they showed a new trailer for it. I don't remember what I didn't catch

I didn't catch all of those. Yeah, it looks very cool. It was originally called project century and ah I think it was I've heard of that. The idea is that you're gonna see Yakuza through different time periods. Oh, fuck yeah, this looks rad. It's fucking sick. This looks really cool. Great jazz in it. Hey man, thanks.

You're a good games journalist, cause I didn't know that and now I do. I try. A couple more to wrap it up. Mixtape looks very cool. That's from the Artful Escape developer. I don't know if you guys played that game, but that game is super cool.

Oh God, I love our full. It's fantastic. See Moonlighter two, which is obviously the sequel to Moonlighter. I think that also has a demo on steam. That looks fucking sick. Luminous rise is so you're kidding. Can I miss his back baby?

Whoa. It's got chameleons in it. It looks fucking sick. It's obviously made by the developers of Tetris Effect. And then the last game, which I wasn't expecting, especially because it's named so forgettably, is called Crimson Desert. Crimson Desert is basically looks like a medieval game, but with the gameplay of Breath of the Wild, and you are a single knight, I guess, but there's a war going on, but you are not part of the war.

The war is like between two factions, and you are like an outside element to that war. And so you have all like Breath of the Wild tools, and grappling hooks, and such, so on and so forth, and you're going through pretty gorgeous like medieval environments, as they're fucking like duking it out. And I guess trying to like complete missions and stuff.

But I thought it looked really neat. This looks sick, yeah. Yeah, this looks really cool. I thought it was a massively multiplayer online game, just because the name of it sounds like that. Yeah, I think it is developed by a team that traditionally makes MMOs, but this is not MMO. Oh, okay. Well, it's from black, it that traditionally makes MMOs, but this is not MMO.

Oh, okay. Well, it's from Black... It's from the Black Desert people, right? So I'm assuming it's a... Is it from the... It is, you're right. Okay. So I'm assuming it's part of the Desertverse.

That's great. I love that there's a Desertverse. I invented that just now. It may not be a Desertverse. I mean, now there's two games in the Desertverse. They're making it happen. Two games with Desert, and now I have a desert verse. Okay, I think that's basically it.

We covered a lot of ground. Grant, anything you want to mention in Honorable Mentions before we close it out? It could be a game, could be a book, could be a piece of machinery that you're using. TV, movie, whatever. Two fun games I've been playing that we didn't get to. One, it's this J get to one. It's this

JRPG influence, it's not Japanese though Game and it has like this really cool innovative parry system that everyone's been talking about Is it called clear obscure? No, that's not it. It's um Sea of stars Great game. Okay. I thought this was setting up a bit. And it, what? Sea of Stars, just got a new DLC that came out. It's like eight to 10 hours. I'm not that far into it yet, but that's what they say.

And it's excellent. And since I played it last, it has now three player couch co-op. So you can just hop into it with your buds, your fam. Oh shit, that's great. Right from the couch. The base game was excellent. So if you haven't played it,

but now there's a whole new expansion. The expansion also costs Nintendo zero dollars, which is nice. So do you need to, is it one of those things where it picks up at the end of like a finished save file or can you like start it from scratch and just, I think you need to save file?

I guess is it stand out? Yeah, there's a certain chunk of the game we have to get to. I had beat the game so I loaded up for my end game save and went that way. I forget which platform I beat it on. So I was struggling to remember. So there's that and I've also been playing Sulaco, which just had a big patch come out. And if you were playing Doom and just want to scratch more Doom-ish, it has a decidedly old school look,

but it plays like a really honor game. They've been in a long early access period and they've been changing it a lot and there's more stuff to come, but I've found it. Is it an Aliens game? No, it's just an indie kind of old school boomer shooter FPS. But they do a really good-

I thought that was the name of the ship from- I think it might be. Yeah, I think it is a nod to that. They don't have the rights or anything. But yeah, great game, a lot of fun, and it scratches that itch. And I've been going in just kind of getting all the secrets and min-maxing my runs through the levels and good stuff. Yeah.

I like video games. Chris Grant, you would like a game that we played like six months ago with the hook shots and grappling and sliding on a hoverboard whose name I don't remember. Does anyone here remember that name? Cool. No, I don't.

I simply don't. I'll go back and listen to every besties episode. That would be the best way to do it. Yeah, I don't think that's too much to ask. I finished Andor Season 2, I simply don't. I'll go back and listen to every Bessie's episode. That would be the best way to do it. Yeah, I don't think that's too much to ask. I finished Andor season two, which was very good. Don't spoil anything. Don't even say that it's good, Russ, because if you say that it's good,

I'm gonna know exactly what happens at the end of it. No, that's fair. I think that's a fair critique. I won't, I won't do it. It's fucking great though, right? Yes, it's very good. Oh man. It's very good.

I was very engaged with it. I also didn't realize that Dej Ramiro, who's one of the stars of the show, is also the voice of Yennefer from Witcher 3. Yeah. She's making it happen. Good for Dej Ramiro. That's not her real name, that's the character's name.

No, that's the name of the character. Anyone else have anything, Justin? You know what, I set up the GeForce NVIDIA streaming, which I messed around with a couple years ago and didn't do much with, but I set it back up now, the GeForce now, set it up, and I set it up on the Steam Deck, just as a, I don't have anything like installed on it now,

so I wanted to set it up for streaming. And it works really, really well. It has evolved to a point where it works really great. And it's also the front end will let you tie in your like game subscriptions. So your Steam, your whatever other games you have like cloud access to, Epic Game Store, whatever. And then you can play them from that main hub.

So it kind of like turns all of your library into a streaming setup and it works really well. The lag is almost unnoticeable and you can play a ton of stuff just like, right on the Steam Deck. So that's very convenient, and it works super duper well. It was great. What is that called again?

Very, G-Force Now? We finished, doubles play in season two, fucking rules. We also finished rehearsal season two, and I do wanna just second Russ's full-throated endorsement of that. It's a rough ride at times, but it is also the most ambitious comedy thing I think I've ever seen.

And it's also thought-provoking in a very genuine way that has really left it stuck in my craw for, I don't know, like five days after we finished it. And yeah, I've been playing something else that is not, we can't talk about yet, but, and then a bunch of Switch 2 shit. Clubhouse games. Clubhouse games on the Switch, played that on the Switch 2 a little bit.

Mostly because I watched Devil's Planet and they played some Monkala on there and I was like, oh yeah, hell man, I'd love to tear up some Monkala. I have ways of doing that now. You can just find some stones, set up some cups. I guess I can make my own mancala board, sure, I guess. Okay, I think we did it.

I wanted to thank Chris Grant for joining us. It was a pleasure to be here. It just took us not working together anymore to get an invite, no big deal. I wasn't counting the days or anything. It's fine, it's not a big deal. It's horror. You were working in my heart.

No big deal. I'm so happy that you're here, Chris. To podcast with you is a real gift, so thank you. We left it all out on the court today, man, and we did it for you. Because we did it because we wanted to do a good job for you, boss. So.

You know what? Let's just keep this one for me, personal, private, private stash and we'll do a whole other episode for the your own vintage. Yeah. I also want to thank our Patreon over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have some new members that have recently joined us. We have Lindsay, we have Duncan, we have on Drina. I hope I pronounced that right, and Jamison, thank you for being members over at the Besties. You can go over to, did I say it already? Patreon.com slash the Besties? I've heard, I'm sure you can't say it too many times. Yeah, actually three is too many.

So I hope I didn't hit three. Okay, next week we are gonna keep it vague for y'all because we're still kind of figuring out the whole plan, but at the very least I guarantee at least one game will be discussed. Is that fair to say? Wow. Guaranteed. Yeah, man, I think we can pretty much offer that

for all of our episodes. I do think we've at least hit on one game at some point in the runtime. I also know that I'm gonna be playing a Switch that isn't owned by Jason Schreier. So that is something that I'm really looking forward to because he got his meaty grips all over that guy. Yeah, wet. I mean it wasn't wet, they were they were meaty. It was a meaty switch. It was wet when I did it. Oh. Please take us out of the show Justin. Thank you, that's

going to do it for us this week. Be sure to join us next week for the besties because shouldn't the The world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!