The Besties - The Card-ians of the Galaxy

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

In our worst-titled episode to date, we're doing double duty! Join us for a discussion of the extra-creepy deckbuilder Inscryption and the surprisingly charming Guardians of the Galaxy. Other media discussed: Hearthstone, Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy, Death's Gambit Afterlife, lots of Godzilla films, Doom Patrol, Nightmare Alley 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!

It would be a chill start. I know we spent the last five minutes talking about my deceased grandmother-in-law's favorite recipes for frozen salad. And I feel like that would be a cool energy to start besties with for now. Just talking about some recipes. Recipes. Recipes. Cool. Now, here's a recites.

Next week, I'll be talking about chest bars. That's fun. But we do need one for this week. Okay, so I've got a breakfast recipe. And I can confirm this is actually... Now, would this be a recipe? Would this be a recipe? This would be a recipe.

Oh, my God. Now this segment is good and real. Hit me with your recipe. So first you take the eggs. Every breakfast starts with eggs, as we all know. And then you add, not with the eggs, but on the side, a little bit of apple cider in a glass. And then you add an apple cider donut alongside the apple cider.

I call it apple-apple egg. Listen, Russ, I love the recipe for apple-apple egg you i think it's a i think it's a lot of fun but it does sound like three different already made foods that don't really interact with each other as is normally the case in a recipe so is that what sets a recipe apart is that it's food that already exists that you eat at the same time. Yeah, you just mix, I mean, you mix flour and water and stuff to make cake. So, like, how is this any different? Mixing egg, donut, and apple cider, but in your mouth, not in a pot. And my stomach as well.

In your mouth and tummy. Right, yeah, that's awesome, dude. It's so much easier. It doesn't sound like a recipe, though, or a recipe. It just sounds like you rustled something up. Yeah, that's good, too. Maybe that's all it is. Yeah.

Listen, Russ is leading us all into a new era of food. End of sentence. And I think if you're not ready to take that ride, you can get left behind with the rest of the people out there eating ceviche or whatever, and not egg, apple, apple. Or sorry, was it apple, apple, egg? Sorry, I apologize. Yeah, it's not about like cosmopolitan meals.

It's more rustic. Oh, man. Come on. You're just full of them today, Chris. I've missed you, man. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just here talking. Yeah, that's all many of us are ever doing.

My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy. I do know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I do know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I'm sticking with the plural here. I know many good games this week. My name is Russ Frusche, and I know the best games of the week. I'm a sleeping baby over there in Restland. Sleeping baby. It sounds like welcome to the besties.

We're profiling the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a video game club, my friend. Just by listening, you are a member. We got a double header for you this week. Games are, as we tend to announce in this show, when you least expect it, back. Games are back, everybody. And these particular entries today, they have come a long way since Pac-Man. They are, I would say, wholly unrelated to Pac-Man in any degree.

Wait, wait, wait, no know one of them has pac-man in it well shit you're right actually one of them has pac-man in it so they just hang on my face uh we're gonna be talking about inscription and guardians of the galaxy guardians of the galaxy we'll save for the second segment um so glad to see telltale uh back no kidding dog the uh but first up we're going to be talking about inscription chris plant what's inscription inscription starts out as a spoopy uh card deck based game but it's not i you can correct me if i'm wrong here i would say not as much a card game as it is like a tabletop dnd style game with cards with a meta game layered on top where you're straight up trying to escape the room.

It's one of the wildest games I've played this year. We're going to be talking a lot more about it right after this quick break. I will say just as a table setter, Inscription is my current, maybe unseated, but I don't know about it, is my favorite game of 2021. Wow. Yes. I absolutely adore Inscription. And I am simultaneously desperate to talk about every facet of Inscription and also not wanting to spoil Inscription. wanting to spoil inscription because like,

unlike a lot of these, uh, deck based card battling games, it can absolutely be, be spoiled for you in a lot of, uh, unpleasant ways. So I want to try to keep it relatively vague, especially because I have a caveman brain and I haven't gotten past what is

apparently the first act of inscription. Uh, despite the fact that I do enjoy the game quite a bit yeah i i think we'll stick to the first hour or so and not get into any of the the biggie stuff but uh justin i we had a lot of people saying that you needed to play this game do you think that is because it is a mix of card games which you are obsessed with, Sleep No More, Mask, Meta Theater, which you're obsessed with, and Escape Rooms? It's everything I love in one game.

It seems like absolutely engineered. And without spoiling anything, I think I said this in the last week episode, Russ is like, Justin, this is your game. Like, it's got all these elements you love. The only thing it's missing is FMV. And then later I was like, Russ,

buddy. This hits all the notes for me. It is that rare game that it trusts you to meet it halfway, but makes itself like pleasant and engaging and like really brings you in from the, from the very first beat. It looks like nothing else. It's like dark and scary in a way that like works like in a way that you're

playing a card game against someone you can barely see. And he's constantly hidden in shadow. It kind of looks like a PS one game is what the like aesthetic reminds me of like a PS1 horror game. I love this aesthetic. It's a, they're trying to do like, it's like a retro, you know, it kind of reminds me of, it doesn't look anything like this, but conceptually like Obra Dinn. Yeah. Where it's like.

Sure. Classic elements that are being engineered and retooled in like a very modern seeming way. But like the guy that you're playing against who's hidden in shadow is putting on different masks to play different roles. He's a real thing. Yeah. He's a real, he's a real,

uh, fun, fun character. Is he more of a Joker or a Riddler? He's more a Joker and a toker and a midnight smoker. I would say this guy, uh, who I know his name,

but I don't want to spoil his name. I, tall it's todd it's todd this game it's um what works about this game that that you guys can talk about without getting into the stuff that is sort of yeah i i think for me you know i really liked hearthstone when it came out and i got into it and then i fell off when it just became like too much there was too much to keep track of and classes and all sorts of stuff like that that was my expansion pack two probably for hearthstone it's when it jumped the shark yeah and i think for this obviously it's it's a totally different experience and so far as this is not designed as like a living game that's going to survive forever but it does do something that i always really liked about hearthstone which is introducing narrative into the card game mechanics when they would do those

like single player expansions and kind of throw you for a loop with these like crazy rules in the middle of you know while you were playing um you'd be uh following like a certain set of rules and then the the your enemy the host in this case would be like ah but what if i did this and like totally changed the game entirely and that i feel like i'm like fighting against the tide a little bit and makes me feel like really super invested in the events that are going on in the game they also like like some of your cards talk to you which is very funny and cool yeah uh and and there's like characterizations in the cards themselves yeah i my bummer with like

most card games i don't like reading rules i don't mind rules in video games i like spelunky but i don't like having to like read rules over and over and every new card i just i just find it very exhausting this game and i know that puts me on the minority don't worry i know this game is so good about how it fits its rules into its story so you mentioned the cards talking to you it's menacing um they're like truly terrified of whatever place they are in um and they either are explaining it as a way to counter this uh ghoulish uh fellow that you're playing against or he is outright saying the rules but they it comes across as menacing because, like you said, he just keeps changing them. So while it's giving me the same thing a lot of card games have given me in the past, I don't know.

Maybe it's like a spoonful of sugar sort of thing, but it goes down much easier. It is also smart in the way that – so the sort of core mechanic for the section that we're discussing is one of sacrifice. So you play an animal. The sort of base unit is a squirrel that doesn't attack or – it doesn't attack. It's just sort of like there to be sacrificed. And you can use your turn to draw a squirrel and play the squirrel, and then it's out there on the board. And you can use your turn to draw a squirrel and play the squirrel, and then it's out there on the board. And then when you get an animal or creature that does do damage, you sacrifice the squirrel to play that card.

And each card has a different sacrifice cost. It's the same way you would say is like a really solid deck and it works synergistically and it feels like kind of very strong and undefeatable and in a way that you can slowly sort of build your deck and then you can slowly sort of lay out your strategy and it's consistent, whatever. Inscription, because you're constantly sacrificing to play your next card, it feels very much like swinging from vine to vine. Like, I really hope this next thing works because I don't like I'm going to have to kill the thing that is working pretty good for me to play the next card it doesn't feel like good and powerful it feels like scary each time you play because it could fall apart really really quickly and that's on I I my only qualms with the game are is is related to how how that works because i have had runs that i have had like incredible success

with you can at the end of each of your runs uh you get to make something called a death card and with that you pull the stats from different cards in your hand right like the cost comes from one card if you're lucky you can get a zero cost card uh and then you can get like the health and damage numbers of a different card and then you can get the sigil which is like the um you know modifier think like in hearthstone you have the oh god the taunting one and i forget all the different sort of things but there's a ton of them in this game and it creates like a unique card i had one run where i had like this beastly deck with this god card in it that was just like able to you know if i get it in the first draw i can defeat the opponent in a single round i was crushing it and then literally one bad turn on a

boss fight and i was dead the next round okay but this is this is the secret genius thing about it those death cards are actually how you are like how this is a rogue light and how you are advancing because those death car a lot of games like this will give you like some sort of currency that you'll use to upgrade or you'll unlock new cards that will get added to your deck because you've gotten to a certain level the The death cards are reseeded between matches. The more you play, the more death cards you will encounter.

These cards are very powerful. You play it enough times, eventually you're running into two or three of these extremely powerful cards that you can build a deck around. That is the way that you're like sort of advancing as you play.

It's not just starting you from scratch. On that front, Juice, I had a quick question. As someone who's played probably more than anyone else here, as you, like, is this... I finished it, to be clear. And you finished it, okay.

So is this a, more or less a linear card game or does it at some point hit the point that a game like slay the spire does where it's encouraging you to like do basically infinite runs have you finished the first act i think so there's no way to confirm that how do i know i mean i i have you beaten the yeah the boss you beaten the boss? You beat the boss. And you've done the next. Maybe I didn't do the next thing.

I think I might've stopped at the boss. Christ. Sorry. No, it's not your fault. It's all experiences are valid. You, it. Okay. I'll tell you this.

It completely throws out all the mechanics and starts again okay how's that cool how's that without oh oh oh and all the aesthetics wow okay okay cool the the entirety of the game changes wow there are still cards okay cool i'm glad here i love that honestly makes me even more pumped because i'm you won't know until you guys play a little bit farther you will not know why people are very excited about i mean i'm already excited like i think they nail even that part is great right that's what's so cool it's like it's not like not to dump on it but like there have been games like near where you got to get through some pretty stuff to get to the fun stuff right and? And this is like... You've activated

Chris Plant. No, I think it's very fair. This game wouldn't have existed without Nier. I think that's a perfectly fair and nice thing to say. Sure. There is... It is like you don't even... It is also layering on some like... It's like

four layers of meta. On top of the card game, there's also like, we touched on the escape thing, but just like highlight that real quick. You're in a room that is full of other puzzles that are being hinted at by your cards who also want you to escape.

And so you're like, cards are nudging you towards not just strategies in the game, but like things you should check out in the room like you stand up and physically walk around the room yeah to be clear one example and i was curious about this as well so like one of my cards gave me a clue this is like the first clue so i don't necessarily think this is a spoiler one of the cards is like hey you should you should read the instruction book that's in the room and in the instruction book is a clue for something else that is in

the room is like if i just missed that prompt do you think i would ever find that thing or there are other ways that i would maybe you would have definitely found it there are only so many things to click in that room like you would definitely have found it but also there is a that is the progression really so like they would have kept prodding you. Oh, I see. Yeah. Until you found the thing. With very little exception.

Yeah. Big thanks, by the way, to Steven Spahn for actually, I think, referencing this game and recommending it during that episode. What a good rec. So, so excellent do you think that there's do you think that there is stuff in this game for people who are not uh you know attuned to the hearthstone slay the spire that's me train like that's you okay yeah like i i do not get into that stuff in this game rules i actually don't like hearthstone very much i think it's too many too many mechanics for me to at this point yes absolutely yeah um i i think it's just very

forgiving i i think because it is a bit more chaos i i found that like i i don't know maybe maybe i just have a real smart brain and i would be great at hearthstone if i gave more time to it you know that's probably it um but no i i felt like it was like a game that invited me in um and that's just something i don't feel with most card games i also want to say like it's very weird i mean we have two games this week two games that none of i mean inscription i hadn't heard of until steve mentioned it so that's one and then guardians of the galaxy which none of us even were watching out for and ended up being i think we'll talk about it quite good and that's kind of very rare i mean the indie

game coming out of nowhere happens more frequently but the triple a game coming out of nowhere is very rare so this is this is a pretty rarefied episode it's less exciting though when it came out of nowhere because you expected it would be complete dog that's true and it episode it's less exciting though when it came out of nowhere because you expected it would be complete dog that's true and it is it it's actually more exciting for me that way it thought that happened almost never you know what that feels like a good segue i actually don't want to talk about an inscription too much i am hopeful that we will return to it later yeah in the in the years and you guys promise me you'll play more before them because you're not going to have valid opinions. Except for all experiences and opinions.

Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to talk about the Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, Chris, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there already a Guardians of the Galaxy game? Oh, there was. Well, I didn't play that. When I mentioned Telltale, that was not a joke. That was legit. Absolutely a Tellt Well, I didn't play that. When I mentioned Telltale, that was not a joke. No, that was legit.

Absolutely. A Telltale experience. Did you play that? Did anybody? I don't know. I mean, I feel like that is one of the first Telltale ones where it was kind of like, we get it, you're doing a license. Yeah.

Of everything. That was close to the end of Telltale. That was what, 2017? When did Telltale kind of stopped around anyway let's not dwell on the past it's different from that let's live for the present but not that different kind of yeah so hey everybody guardians the galaxy is a new video game that is actually good uh earlier we just said uh hey we didn't keep an eye on this. Oh, we did keep an eye on it. The marketing for this game was dreadful, and they really managed to show the worst bits of it.

I also wonder if they had a bit of a cyberpunk problem here where they didn't want to show what this looks like on a console that actually runs well, so they showed really ugly versions of the gameplay. I don't know what the deal is, but the long story short, you can play Guardians of the Galaxy now,'t i don't know what the deal is but the long story short you can play guardians of the galaxy now and it is quite good it blends together kind of the action of rpgs like tales of a rise and final fantasy 7 remake it does it does i hear you scoffing it's true it does um it has some of that storytelling vibe from telltale characters they just talk through the

entire game they don't stop talking and what else would you say a little bit uncharted a little a little uncharted here and there yeah a little bit of uncharted a little bit of um there's like some like tomb raidery side questing slightly um i think the big thing that just shocked me immediately was how instantly invested i was you know i like the guardians movies they're pretty good i'm not like a huge diehard fan but the writing in this game is like pretty spectacular um and i was immediately like like when i play this game the parts that i get excited for are not the action parts and that's very rare for me I usually like get down on the like quote unquote gameplay

parts it's more just like me walking around the ship hearing like the fellow shipmates saying fun shit like it is so well written yeah it is also I think worth noting that like if you have not watched the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or played the much beloved Telltale series.

And well remembered. It's wild how little, by which I mean no, like, exposition about, like, their origins. Like, this game assumes, like, you know who the fuck these guys are. Like, they have done all that. They have done all that found family stuff. And, assumes like you know who the fuck these guys are like they have done all that they have done all that found family stuff and like you know it yeah but i think you're playing this game odds are you know i think they do a very subtle and good job of making it clear in the first level who the bait the like basics of each of these characters that you would need to know if you didn't know anything they but they don't get bogged down in exposition.

I think that's great. I think it is a great thing because it changes the stakes a bit from, oh no, are these ragtag oddballs going to find a way to work together? They already did that to probably save the galaxy a couple times. And this time it's like, they have

differences still that they have not necessarily ironed out. Let me correct one quick thing. So this game, I'm pretty sure, takes place more or less six months into the forming of them. So it's actually, I think, a prequel to the events of the movies, whether they're in the MCU or not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not in the MCU for sure. Totally, totally separate. And there are a number of things that very, very much separate this from the movies, especially how Thanos fits into this story.

Yeah, and his mom. But they do make a point of saying that both Drax and Gamora had just recently joined. Yes, it is set early in their relationship, but I think you don't need to know anything about the movies here because it's a very different Guardians of the Galaxy story than where the movies take it, minus the fact that they both love classic rock. I feel like it's...

I'm trying to put my finger on what is working about this game for me because it is really divisive in a way that most games aren't anymore. Most people seem to reach a general consensus, and this is not one of those. I've heard some people really, really not vibing with it and some people really enjoying it. I really think that they do. The writing is really at the center of this, and they really genuinely do a good job of, you know, a lot of times when you have antiheroes like the Guardians of the Galaxy, there's this underlying like marshmallow to them where it's like, yeah, they have a tough exterior. But, you know, deep down, they really love each other. Right. they really love each other, right? And I feel like this game really plays with that in a way that's

like genuine and fun and really does make you feel like it's five people who are out for themselves but do look out for each other at times where you don't expect. It makes it hit harder. There's a moment where they're in a tight

spot and Rocket Raccoon who is a raccoon with guns and who does engineering stuff, suggests to Star-Lord, who's Peter Quill, who's kind of the leader of the group, that a good way for them to get out of the situation they're in is for him to drop on the ground and act like he has passed out and is having some sort of episode. And then they would all leave during the distraction. And Peter Quill says, what about me? And Rocket says, well, you just kind of take one for the team. You would just be kind of taking one for the team. And it's like, there's a lot of that underneath it where it's like, wow, these people actually, there is actually like, and it makes the conversations actually have

attention to them so because like i had some choices that i made and then people like left the group for a little right yeah i have no idea like if that's you know predetermined or whatever but it felt completely plausible and it makes it punishing on a mechanical level too because in combat when you don't have every member of the guard against together, it gets a little bit harder to get things done. I can talk to the divisiveness, because this game surprised me that it is better than I expected it to be, but I do not love it. And that is because of the combat in the game, which is, you know, the other half of the game. There is a fun mechanic in combat where you can huddle, and Peter Quill kind of calls everybody together, and it starts playing, you know, a classic rock song. And some of them are real bangers, and that's fun.

But that's, like, the only enjoyable thing about the combat to me. It is, within the first hour i feel like you like get it and then it will throw very sort of you know actiony game like this stuff actually like this one's got a shield now what are you gonna do it's like well just get around him we'll just get around him and shoot him and stuff like there's other abilities that the other guardians can unlock you don't control them you only control star lord um and so you kind of command them to do what they are gonna do with the intent that like each enemy type has different sort of complications that you have to overcome with the different abilities of the people on your team but i did not find that

necessary at all like i i found like the first ability that I had to be more than sufficient. I don't know how far you got, but you definitely will need to use a lot of those different abilities to win fights as the game progresses. Especially as Peter unlocks different elemental abilities for his weapons

and those work in concert with different things that the Guardians have. And you really have to kind of work it together. But even that- Because more necessary. Even that isn't exactly novel. I don't know. I just felt like it was-

I'm not saying that it's- I'm not trying to act like it's revolutionary. It does feel weirdly secondary to the narrative in a way that like most action games, it's always the action first. Like think of a COD game or whatever. Action first, always, always, always. and then the narrative is like window dressing and here it is flipped um and it's i don't find it i don't find the combat bad it definitely feels like filler to me it's just uninspiring like it's just it's it's you've seen you've seen this combat a lot and then

you have to do it a lot, and then as enemies get stronger, it doesn't necessarily get harder. It's just, well, okay, well, this fight's going to take a long time. Shit. My counterpoint to all this, I do agree that the combat is secondary, just because, clearly, I mean,

the amount of cutscenes in this game, I think that's probably another part of the divisiveness. If you decide early on that you're going to play it like other games and skip, try to skip the cut scenes, you're not going to have a good time. Yeah. But the combat,

I am glad that I was playing tales of rise before this, as silly as that sounds in that final fantasy seven remake. And a few other games have kind of like, I don't know, opened my eyes to to this style of i i found it very creative like i find that you're right you you can just win this just by spamming the same attack but i enjoy thinking of ways to like effectively combo my my abilities together in the same way that you can like spam your way

through Devil May Cry. But it's more pleasurable if you're like stringing together combos, right? Yeah, I don't know how much of my, the impact was in like, oh, I'm picking Gamora's special attack at the exact right time, whether that won the fight for me or not.

It does feel and look really, really cool when it lands so yeah yeah i also really dig the uh the the the licensed music drops it's like it really makes you wish that more games would employ licensed music as silly as that sounds like when they have these i mean and they're 80 sounds you've heard million times, but they're still better than the like 95% of video game fight music or whatever. Like I really, really thought that helped the, like we were talking about the rallies and stuff like that land. I also like how the narrative stuff is even brought into, there's some like very light puzzle solving you need to do as you go through the world. But like to give you an example of how the narrative overlaps, there's like tunnels that only rocket can fit into.

And when you see one of those, it's like pretty much a grand slam. You got to just tell him to go get in the tunnel. But there was once or twice where, when I would push the button, Peter wouldn't would ask in like a rude way and Rocket would refuse. And then you can like ask other, you can ask other people to like, can you get in there? And they would say like, you should probably try asking Rocket like a nicer way because I'm not

doing it. And then you have to ask him again. So like by asking him again, I mean, you're like, you have to actually do the button prompt again to like get him to do it so you ask in a nicer way but it's like they're letting the narrative overstep mechanics in a way that most video games don't do like it that's what really is fascinating to me about this i don't think it works in a lot of regards but there is this like undeniable thing that they're doing where it's like really trying to make a hybrid of action and narrative that i think is really ambitious i also think that thing that you're talking about with rocket is because of decisions that you made already in the game um we haven't talked about

this a lot but the decisions you make do have relatively important impacts on who is with your party at certain times or how people react to you obviously this is not like the game doesn't end in a totally different way um but you could have entire missions that go dramatically dramatically different ways at times um depending on say who you decide to try to sell as a monster to uh a woman who keeps yeah effectively a monster zoo that's early in the game yeah it's important to know the team behind this game is the deus ex team uh who did human revolution um that team more or less jumped right into this and you can see a lot of the impact both in like deus ex obviously a series that is like very known for choices that really do impact the gameplay in the story dramatically so you see it there but i think just overall i think the writing has always been strong in deus ex series and here it's that

paired with uh more of a sense of humor which deus ex traditionally not a very funny series um yeah can i just yeah i think that the deus ex game maybe was well written but not relatable or human at all shit when one of the games called like beyond human or something oh no what am i thinking of detroit anyway uh become human and despite the game that this game is that guardians is primarily aliens yeah like it is so much more related like the things that they talk about and and um the way that they either make beef worse between each other or try to squash it uh specifically for me between drax and gamora like that hit so much harder than anything that ever happened in deus ex yeah like this game got this game is funny but it also has emotional moments and deus ex while i do like that

series has neither uh so yeah there are not many triple a studios out there that are doing narrative as good as this um so i definitely think it's worth really taking notice and uh i hope i see more from this team i don't know how the game is going to do sales wise based on like i think they fucked up the marketing pretty bad um but i hope that this doesn't discourage people from getting this team out there because i you because it lives and dies based on how strong that writing and the narrative is. Yeah. I'll say just for people who are worried

that they may not be into the game because of the somewhat stale combat, this game has a lot of accessibility options and you can sort of create your own custom difficulty setting by changing like very specific parameters about the combat uh and maybe think about doing that i don't know if you can change them mid-game you get uh yeah you can change them at any time and you can turn off stuff like uh qtes if you don't want to like mess with qtes at all yeah you just turn them off and it'll

just like play out the scene um there's a there's a way to tailor the game for yourself is what i'm trying to say we're like if the combat is not fun for you you can make it pretty like quick to get through the combat and get back to the story stuff yeah no i i think it's great i think i'm hopeful that more people get to play it because i know it's a very crowded season but yeah i'm like really struggling just strictly on the narrative side i'm really struggling to think of a stronger marvel effort than this yeah i think it is probably the best narrative marvel game i don't know about gameplay overall but certainly narrative yeah i kind of liked avengers the story like single player stuff in avengers i think a little bit better but that might just be because I like the combat

a whole lot better in that game Controversial take Up next, we're gonna be answering your questions Whoa, I think you just did a segue with a voice, which seems a little out of line, but I'm all willing to let it stand. Give me those

questions It's gotta be more like that, a little more sand give me those questions it's got to be more like that a little more basic give me them questions here we are we're back with a question from betty boo um hey everybody this is a question from betty boo uh inscription is the first ever deck building game that i actually like also the first game i actually bought so that i could follow along before you guys discuss it oh Oh, thank you. I'm glad that it was a good one. What strategies do y'all suggest for each loop?

Like, which encounters to choose, cards, etc.? Justin, I'm going to let you answer this one. Yeah. I'm trying to think back to that. Justin is in the MMO phase of inscription now. Yeah, right. Yeah. um it's been justin is in the mmo phase of inscription now so yeah right yeah it's actually become like a uh it's an arg where i have to my kids have been reading um i would say that if you find yourself not moving at a steady pace to try like working on some of the puzzles around the room, because a lot of them will lead you to really powerful cards that are good and helpful to your deck building efforts.

The other thing I would say is don't be afraid to sacrifice a card that seems like you need it if it will let you play something more powerful because you will end up uh you can end up with this game in a bad loop of like playing a squirrel with the intent of using it for the next time and then you know it getting killed by before you can even sort of like tap it or harvest it however you want to say it so um you know don't be afraid to to take chances because that will often uh lead you to success i would say um in the in the runs i've gotten furthest in i always take the routes that give me the most opportunities to get rid of cards like once i have uh a strategy with my deck that involves pulling certain cards um like those very strong death cards i then want to be able to get my hands on those in my hand as quick as possible so like also anytime that you

get rid of a card using things like there's a there's an altar that you can just pull one of your cards in and it kills it uh it will give you a token that will basically give you free currency at the start of every fight like there's always good stuff that comes out of that same with um the mushroom there's like a mushroom person who if you have two of the same two of the same types of cards it'll smash them together which essentially gets rid of one card that you may not want in your deck it's also really good to uh try to upgrade the cards whenever you can there's these fires where it's so cool we basically like you find a fire that you can warm one of your animals by and that like lets them upgrade and you can actually do it multiple times but if you do it too long eventually the people around the fire will get hungry and eat

your animal yes so it's like really you're weighing against that when you're playing. Just one more real quick question, and this one's from me, so I'm going to take this. This one's from Chief Godzilla Officer. Wednesday, November 3rd is Godzilla Day. What are your favorite Godzilla flicks? Already. What?

Already. I can't believe it's Godzilla Day. I know. It's here. I haven't done any of my shopping well any of you have a favorite godzilla uh film before i before i give my answer here i mean for me it's godzilla versus kong which came out this year yeah yeah but with the most i'm kind of with yeah yeah i've always been more of a kong fan but i think the matchup between the two was, was spot on for me. I haven't watched the like classic, uh,

Japanese original movies, but my pick would probably be the soundtrack to Godzilla with Matthew. That actually is a good soundtrack. Um, it's a fucking great sound. This is our second podcast episode in a month where we've talked about how great the, the,

the soundtrack for Matthew Broderick's Godzilla, which is a great Jamiroquai music video for that soundtrack that's very hard to see in a good quality but let me tell you it's it's good are we talking about the score is it like goo goo dolls no it's you're not that far off but it's like the got it's um it's got that cashmere sample Puff Daddy. Come with me. It's got Air by Ben Folds 5. It's got that cover of Heroes by the Wallflowers.

By the music video, are you talking about the Puff Daddy music video, Chris? No, I'm talking about the Jamiroquai music video where they're in a movie theater, but then it gets attacked. Like, floods and it's attacked by Godzilla. Jamiroquai, of course. The Puff Daddy music video is great because it's just him

standing in front of a fan with a big white shirt on. That's more or less the movie. And just saying come with me. The best Godzilla movie is just very quickly, the best monster is Godzilla vs. Hedorah. It's a pollution monster. it's really the best godzilla movies just very quickly the best monster is godzilla versus hedora it's a pollution monster uh best problematic camping movie king kong versus godzilla not to be

compared to the the new one that's the original are these your answers chris yeah these are my answers but they're also they're also true uh the best not so problematic camping movie destroy all monsters which is just a gem and best overall isn't that a game mothra versus yeah it is a game destroy all monsters is the one where like all where they're like you know what it seems like we've made all of the monsters there's no monsters left to make what if we bring them back what if we bring all of them back for one show and we fight kind of like alien space people. It's good. Y'all remember War of the Monsters?

Back on PS2? It was like a monster fighting game. That was good as hell. We need more kaiju content. We do. Yeah, that was a good game. Can we talk about what else? Deeper Underground by Jamiroquai.

Yeah, baby. I'm going. Fucking Brain Stew is on that album. Yes. It whips ass. Can we talk about what else we've been playing this week? No Shelter. Yeah.

Rage Against the Machine. Come on, this album. Yeah. I'm going to buy this CD. I got to get this on vinyl for my kids. Props to Broderick. Kids. Broderick did it again.

He's sort of like, Broderick was sort of the DJ Khaled before, you know, DJ Khaled. He would like get all the bangers

on one track. Can we talk about honorable mentions? Because I think Russ's is the same as mine. It is. Okay. It's,

why don't you introduce it? It should be noted I actually did very briefly talk about it during resties but we can get a little more in depth here uh i think it kicks a lot of ass it's called death's gambit afterlife uh which is apparently the expanded version of death's gambit which came out like three years ago yeah 2018 it came out on switch with this afterlife expansion uh it is a souls like um in the vein i don't know if you all ever played salt and sanctuary um yeah it is it is similar to that in the in the sort of way that it it uh appropriates those like souls dark souls mechanics

of like going around and collecting stuff and um you and trying hard not to die on these big boss fights or else you'll lose some stuff. But I would say this is a much more mechanically refined game on a bit more smaller scale than Salt and Sanctuary. It has big

dead cells energy. Not necessarily in the mechanics of it, but in how it feels like how the combat and the aesthetic to some extent and the aesthetic absolutely um i mean the aesthetic you could probably guess right it takes place in this ruined kingdom where there's lots of undead monsters and uh you have to go fight a bunch of boss fights as you you know make your way through this this environment um it has a little bit more metroidvania stuff in it like you get for defeating certain boss fights like the air dash and the double jump

and all that and what's really interesting is that was not in the original release that was added for afterlife so they reworked the entire map to like integrate that stuff into it which is bizarre to me i didn't know that yeah um it's it's great like there's lots of um there's like seven different classes that you can choose from and then customize how you want and get subclasses later on in the game and it just feels really good yeah it feels very very very good um it's a little bit limited in uh like there's different weapon types that each, you know, character can sort of specialize in, like long swords or daggers or magic tomes or whatever. And then there's like special skills for each one of those. But there's only like four different weapons in each of those categories and like only a handful of skills for each of those.

Like it's a much more smaller thing than compared to like Salt and Sanctuary where you are, you know, there's dozens and dozens of weapons to find and you know all these different ways to customize your characters but to the game's credit like because it has narrowed the options down a little bit like it all feels it all feels really great yeah there's a whole talent system for that like kind of blends into itself you know salt and sanctuary had like you could spend 300 talent points across this giant web of things and here every single talent you pick is making like a pretty big impact on your character rather than just like two percent more damage on blah um which i think is a really smart design decision i i've i'm totally smitten by it um and it just again kind of came out of nowhere for me i know it

actually came out a month or two ago, so it's a little bit old, but if you dig on, I mean, there's been so many great Metroidvanias this year, but here is another one. Yeah, I can't recommend it enough. It is shockingly, I think, in the top five of the year for me, just because I-

You played on Switch? Yeah, I played on Switch at 60 frames. It's like fucking great. It runs really, really well. I can't, yeah. If you like these types of games, you are going to very much enjoy Death's Gambit. Perfect. Sounds great. I want to plug

a TV show that I've been watching a little bit of that Travis got me onto. My brother Travis. And it kind of made me, our Guardians discussion kind of made me think of it, is Doom Patrol on HBO Max, which is not one that I had ever watched before. And I just

kind of ducked in to see how things were going over there. And it's really fun, and it's enjoyable right from the beginning. And you talk about a superhero, and I'm just a few episodes in still, so I don't know how this all unfolds. But talk about a superhero, and I'm just a few episodes in still, so I don't know how this all unfolds, but talk about a superhero

show where people really actively work to not be superheroes a lot is this show. It is very much about the interpersonal relationships between the characters and them sort of like gradually easing into accepting just sort of who they are. The Doom Patrol, if you don't know,

is sort of defined by the fact that these people are outsiders without traditional like superpowers in the way that that we would think with a lot of heroes um brandon frazier is in it he's great timothy dalton's great tudyk my man alan tudyk always always a slam dunk it's really fun and it's you know if you got hbo max you can like watch it I love the show I haven't started season 3 yet but I've watched the first two seasons and it's spectacular it's just like very super creative and

constantly like introducing things that I like go and like dive into wikis about and I'm like they really made a comic about this because it's totally buggered but it's great I really like that show the fact that three episodes in they introduce animal vegetable mineral yeah it's like

whoa what are we doing it goes wilder from there yeah you're you're in for a treat Frush do you have anything else that you want to share or just no DeskGam that's mostly been taking up my free time so yeah have you finished it yet no no i'm okay yeah you you're

probably a little bit ahead of me i i just uh yeah close but not quite uh i want to share uh nightmare alley the 1947 version not the new guillermo del toro movie which is coming out in december but i'm sharing this because you should watch the original film now. It's on Criterion Channel. 1947 sounds like a really old movie. I assure you, if you can watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie, you can watch this and really enjoy it. It is grim. about a uh i don't know kind of a confidence artist uh who uses fraud to to make a lot of money in uh the backstage acts of carnivals um and what happens to him when he his ambitions get

away from him uh it is great it's really cool to see a movie that is kind of weird and macabre as this, that also had like a really big budget. And it has me really excited for the new movie that is coming out with Bradley Cooper in it, and a whole bunch of other folks. Of note, the new movie is based off of the book, which came out like a year before this movie, and apparently is even darker, which would explain why Guillermo del Toro said it's going to be like a hard R. But yeah, it's good stuff. It is very different than the type of stuff he makes normally. Or can you watch it?

You can stream it on Criterion Channel right now. And the Criterion Channel has it as the like, where it's like they port all of the special features. So you can watch like the documentaries about it and interviews about it and all that stuff. Are we chomping pop culture happy hours flavor with the honorable mention

segment as it stands now? I don't think so because we select good stuff. Oh. Oh, that's right. They have selected our show before. Like not this show. I'm just kidding.

One of the ones I work on. You know, Linda Holmes is great. I still think about the review that she did of Scott Pilgrim a long time ago. It's a great piece. Witcher's headed back. Oh my, dude, get there. I do want to thank some folks who have written reviews for the besties, specifically Prisma Bunny, Jeff Williams, Your Man in Motion,

Mushroom Boy 1022, and Chris Plant's son. Thank you, Chris Plant's son. Thank you to everyone else who has written reviews. We really appreciate it. I don't want to tell you your business, Chris, but you should wait a little bit longer to introduce your child to the the internet i don't want to tell you how to do your your stuff but that's a irresponsible age i'm never letting my child anywhere near the internet or people knowing about my child um here's what people can know about the games that we talked about this

week we talked about inscription which is the like moody meta card game thing of a jig we talked about this week. We talked about Inscription, which is the moody meta card game thing of a jig. We talked about Guardians of the Galaxy, the not-connected-to-the-MCU storytelling action RPG-ish thing. We also talked about Death's Gambit Afterlife. You know, it's one of those games that Fresh Chicken Griffin liked, and I should actually probably play um justin talked about doom patrol which is now streaming on hbo max

i talked about nightmare alley the original from 1947 which is on criterion channel and we also talked about pop culture happy hour a show that i actually like and i feel bad for dunking yeah you should oh hey quick bonus as long as we're doing it Secession's the best show on TV in the third season. Yeah, I didn't want to mention it because it seems basic to mention how good that show is, but it's really good. It's so good. I can't take the risk that not everybody's watching it.

Just get there. Next week, we are talking about the game that I have been most excited to talk about this year. Forza Horizon 5. The latest entry in the best open world franchise that is an active uh development these days can we pull the room and get an understanding of who else is excited to talk about forza horizon 5 wait are we actually is it is it too late to stop this no no are you kidding i'm not fucking playing Forza Horizon 5, not in any reality when I'm playing that game. Well, what about COD?

COD comes out on Friday. I got diarrhea next Wednesday. You are a fucker. I put it on the counter. I got diarrhea next Wednesday. I'm not playing a racing game. Just play this game. Fucking no. Play it like it's an open world game. They're making the next Fable. Do you want a taste of that new Fable flavor? Yeah, when that one's out, I'll play that.

Okay? Assuming it doesn't have cars in it. I'm not playing this fucking racing game. Should we also talk about the new cod game then we absolutely should yeah yeah i'll be your man oh my gosh okay next week's gonna be a fun one this is how i'm gonna drink i'm gonna to avoid forza riser 5 i'll pound a bunch of fucking g fuel and play and play cod with my gunners on cool yeah i'll play both because i'm a real gamer although i don't have an xbox series x which seems like something i should recognize it's probably on pc too right plan it's on pc a real game we would know that justin can you take us yeah gladly uh except it does take me one step closer to listen to people talk about forza horizon 5 hey thanks so much

for listening to our show go Go play Inscription, no matter who you are, and play Guardians of the Galaxy if you think you would like it. Thanks to everybody who's been supporting us for all this time. We appreciate it. Thanks for being so cool. This is the only show that I know of, or have ever heard of, where when it

started running ads, people were celebrating it. The show might continue in a more consistent form. So if you want to visit some of our sponsor links, you should go ahead and do that. They actually pay attention to that shit. Yeah, that would definitely help. Yeah, that would really help.

So thank you. Thank you for that. And that is going to do it for us. So until next week, my name is Justin McElroy. Be sure to join us again next week for The Besties, because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!