The Besties - The Highs and Lows of Borderlands 4

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Borderlands 4 reimagines the series with more weapons and less snark. Will that be enough to appease longtime fans and attract skeptical newcomers? The Besties chat about the many positive tweaks and the one structural decision that impacts the entire experience. Plus, Justin talks about mobile Destiny, and Plante shares his opinions on a new co-op indie game. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I feel like copies of Borderlands 4 represent to me the, it's such an autumnal game, isn't it? It's an extraordinarily autot. When I play it, the game should come with a slice of banana bread and a pot of chili and just a whole pumpkin. It should come served in a whole pumpkin, cornucopia style. So spirited has it gotten me for the autumn season. Why are you fucking laughing at me, Chris? Don't act like you don't agree with this association. that borderlands playing borderlands

it should come with a Madden Demo disc because it's fall now baby what about is supporting you guys are leaving me out to absolutely dry no no no I'm trying to figure is it because it's association with magic like what is what about it

color palette the color palette of borderlands is extraordinarily fall like the foliage in this game is crisp and gorgeous uh okay I'm starting to I think I'm starting to see the problem here what's that so when when you play the game does it open with the words costume quest yes got it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so you're you probably have caught on too that you that Griffin just I will say that in I feel like in the borderlands for discussion today

I'm going to be carrying the bulk of that if Griffin has been playing the 2013 release costume quest thinking that was the writing was funny and so like I I assumed it was borderlands. And it kept being like, cheese, bacon. And you were like bacon cheese, yeah. And that shit absolutely tears me up. Sorry, okay, Chris, you are thinking now of Death Spank by Ronnie Gilbert. Oh, sorry, that's what I played this week.

Wait, what did you play, Juse? What? I played costume because he played Death Spank. What did you play this week? Go. I learned the art of Go. I thought you were starting the podcast in the weirdest, weirdest way possible. In a way, I was.

Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think we do need fresh. I think we actually do need his museum of horrors that he brings. Please hope he doesn't listen. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin Macquarie. I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the week. I miss him so much. I know I miss him a lot too. He's gone but not forgotten because he's not gone. He'll be back next week. I'm sure he had a press. dressing business to attend to, but you got the three of us, and we're going to tell you about some of the latest and greatest in video gaming. It's a grab bag. Chris Plant, why have we done

this? There's just too many games. There's too many games for us to talk about, and we're about to get too many more games, so we need to clear out the backlog. We need to grab the bag. Grab the bag. even when Frush isn't here he put the rundown of what we should do and look behind us see where there was one pair of footprints that's where Russ was carrying us

even when he wasn't here A lot of people think Russ couldn't pick up all three of us boys and carry us at the same time but he's actually pretty ripped up it's kind of like an ant you know the legs look spindly but they actually very very powerful yeah oh you know what

now that I'm looking at at this, Russ did want us to briefly mention that there is a new $10 Patreon tier. If you are signed up for our Patreon and you'd like to get an ad-free experience, well, we are going to be offering that to you

on our Patreon. So if that's something that you have wanted, you could head on over to patreon.com slash the besties. And Russ left us one other housekeeping note, which is he was so excited to talk about abiotic factor. But he's not here. So we're going to talk about that on Resties.

next Tuesday. But we have so many other games to talk about. How is it? Should I check it out? Yeah. Griffin, it is intense. It seems like my shit.

It seems like it's going to absolutely devour my time. And I don't have any of that right now. What if you had a game that felt pretty much exactly like Half Life, Half Life 2, and then also had all the addictive hooks of every survival game? Absolutely brutal. Please don't do this. Please let me go. We have to have a commercial break, guys.

I'm freaking out. Please, we have to have a place for a break. Go. So I thought, listen, I have my whole presentation about the current state of Android handheld gaming ready that I called nibs on for the B segment this week. So I'm going to move Mr. Hathead up back in the A segment. Thank you. That's perfect. And we'll do all that. Halfhead, but sure.

Whatever. Hey, what was that? Okay. When I first read Henry Halfhead, it triggered a. memory of a game that is not, it has like hat in the title like that, but it's like one of those like 2D mystery

like very whimsical. Do you know what I'm saying? Is it black and white? You're not thinking of a hat and time. Hat and time maybe? Hat and time is like a 3D platform. Or like the guy put on a lot of these time jumping hat game. Something something hatbox.

Mr. Hat box, something hat box. Some hot box. Mr. Sun's hatbox. Mr. Sun's hat box. Thank you. Okay, okay, good. I'm glad that we did that.

That can't have been in the show. God, that is exactly what I was thinking of. God, that's, oh, okay, great. That games fun. Hey, hoops. You have been playing some Borderlands 4 and some Destiny. And now I'll be honest. I'm curious about one of these, but I'm not going to tell you which.

Ooh, interesting. I have also been playing Borderlands 4. That is the game that I am. Let's start with that one. I think that's a good media. Yeah, start with Borerlands 4. How is Borderlands for? Hey, listen, okay, I want to tell you, I'm going to, here's what I'll say.

I texted Griffin last night, and I think it was like 10.30, and I was sitting on the, on my chaise. Sitting on my chaise with my laptop in front of me, and I texted Griffin, I said, I don't know, man, I think this is kind of fun. That sounds good. Like, we were both playing Borderlands, and I texted it was like, I don't know, man, I think. I think Burlington's four is kind of fun. You got to the heart of the matter so quickly, and that is something that only decades in this industry can't provide. It's kind of fun. It's kind of fun.

You're doing the same. If I have this right, I'm checking my notes here. You go around various spaces, shooting and looting, collecting what could be countless guns, billions. Yeah. And then people say kind of like naughty, funny things. Is that still basically thing? So no, they don't do as much naughty, irreverent South Park style humor, and I fucking appreciate that. Yeah, that's the good part.

That is the thing that's the headline for me is like the writing doesn't make me want to die. It doesn't always hit because like obviously a game has about a hundred times more jokes than any other media could ever need to have. Right. And they need to land at weird time. Comedy and games is really, really hard. So it doesn't always hit. But I will say it is not trying so hard to a point where you want to call your own eyes out. The writing and story are super duper inoffensive.

And usually that's like a strictly a negative commentary on a thing. But it's way better than it like just constantly joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, right? Like open up the fire hose and never ever shut it off and feeling so exhausting. this game doesn't really do that it doesn't do much in the writing department but it does not make me want to it doesn't it's not cringe worthy it's more kind of like silly like it's kind of silly and just sort of like my i'll give me let me give an example there is one and i'm going to be very general about this because like who cares but there there is one mission that terminates with you finding a experiment gone awry and it is basically an experiment where they have rigged the heads of one of the large beast's that are roaming the area, rigged it into machines and given it the ability to speak. So the end of this quest is you finding this sentient, like, speaking animal.

And you are immediately, like, disgusted by it. And the creature's like, ah, I can see my appearance has distressed you. This is understandable. And the gag is like, he is like an extremely wise, gross animal head hooked into a machine. But it's like, it's silly and it's fun.

And it's like, it's a one-off goof. and you move on. And it doesn't feel like it needs to, like, rub it in your face, and it doesn't need to, like, walk you to a big gag or something. And, crucially, it's not just a reference to an internet meme that was cool two years ago. Yes. So our buddy Tom Francis, who made Gunpoint and Tactical Preach Wizards game we love, a person who writes really funny games.

A point that he's made about writing funny games is if you can make it also just serve as even the smallest amount of like either plot or character development and you can make it where you're just kind of acknowledging what is happening in the world because games are deeply silly worst case scenario people don't laugh still serve to purpose and you move on and it sounds like the thing that you just described sounds so in that zone this makes me curious i want to i want to be careful because i don't think the writing is that good like there's a lot of and i think that it's some of it stems from the issue of like there's four playable characters and they each have their own you know who did you choose out of curiosity i i bounced through a few i ended up on vex

vex was the sort of i knew it we always do that i like the summoner sort of like type stuff uh when there's four possible responses to most of the stuff that like NPCs say like is going to be hard to make all of that hit and make sense with the like canned sometimes you get like custom responses based on what characters you're playing. But, like, it feels like you're storming through the same dialogue with four different voices, four different, like, lines of dialogue in it. I don't know. I think it's hard to make that feel, like, really, really, really, really strong.

It's not really, it's a solid double, though, and it is not going to, like, it's not going to get in the way of you enjoying it. No, yeah, for sure. It's the headline for me. To talk about mechanics a little bit. Yeah. The four, like, vault hunters obviously are different, like, like, every time. I will talk about Vex because she was the only one I played

but her sort of main ability I guess you could say is summoning a duplicate of herself what's cool is after you choose the summoning you can decide on the fly if it's going to be a melee focused clone of you which is more mobile or a gun focused clone of you which is more stationary so it's basically like you're choosing a turret you or like

a tank, combat tanky you, that you are on the fly, and you can summon like a few of them into the fight at once. So you are kind of like,

and their damage type will mirror whatever damage type you have equipped. It's really, really, that's the only build I have used. Each character, like in past games, has like three different abilities

that you can equip, and that is the one of vexes that I have really, really enjoyed. But I also tried, uh, Rafa, who is like the speedy mech type guy.

He can pop up these auto turrets on his back. which is not really the type of archetype I usually go for and Harlow who throws these big like gravity bombs who actually really liked I just I found the game to be a lot more I had trouble with multiplayer and so I was mostly playing it single player and I like like a pet pet class for that yeah I mean that's did either you get to play any co-op together or is the multi-pare

not together yeah yeah I mean it feels like that is the great equalizer for this game where like The writing doesn't need to be totally perfect because the dream scenario is that you're just playing with other people and just grinding and getting more guns, right? Yeah. I think, well, I mean, that's not how I would typically play one of the, I mean, like, what are you saying? The dream scenario, I think, is always that, right? Like, for any co-op game, it's like that, that would be the ideal. I think that it's pretty chatty.

I mean, like, if it doesn't, if it doesn't intend for you to listen, that there is a lot of, like, in-your-ear dialogue and that kind of thing. Like, it's still a lot of writing in that regard. I was just going to ask, like, I've played so much Destiny and Destiny 2, and, like, Borderlands is never something that I've really particularly stuck with. But it's never really hooked for me

because I find the process of, like, building the character to be a little bit more, a little simplified, I guess. Like, you're only picking the one ability, and then you're kind of going down those trees. This was the first game where I kind of appreciated that because it felt like as you chose your skills or whatever, they were usually a little bit, you know, build, more build defining, like stuff like if you kill an enemy, if you pick this tree, it'll make your skill, you know, recharge that much faster or make your fire rate that much better. But it's like substantial enough upgrades that it feels like pretty, pretty good. It is also, interestingly, what I, Doug, is that, at least with the system that we were using, like, it was working in concert with the gunplay rather than, like, in opposition to it or is an alternative to it.

Yeah, it was more supportive rather than, like, I'm chucking lightning bolts. Because that, to me, if I know that I can shoot lightning bolts. Constantly, the guns don't matter. Constantly, then, like, then I don't care about guns anymore, right? Like, these are, like, a little bit more supportive. That's my question is. I always assumed, and again, I got into these with Borderlands 1 and 2, not really three much at all, the guns are the build. Like, there's so many guns that you want to be focusing on, like, what you're using and your weapons at any time.

Do the gun, like, do they feel different? What is special about them? I would not say the guns are the bill, like, at least for me, I felt like I was going through them so fast that it was not really, like, building around them. I think end game that becomes more of a thing, like you find a legendary. that will like keep you for a while as opposed to like oh I'm level 14 now I gotta get rid of my level 13 gun because it's not doing as much

interesting it is really fun or at least I thought it was a lot of fun to just kind of cycling through guns to me I thought it was kind of a joy like when you see a gun you see every

all the information about it you could need including like in world you see how it is better or worse than your car currently equipped item, and you can, with a different button press on the fly, equip it directly to yourself, store it, or send it directly to junk. So, like, looking at it in the world, you can see, oh, this is better than want to have, like, instantly put it on. Yeah. And cycling

through that, and then, to me, I didn't know what was going to happen when I pulled the trigger half the time, and that's really fun. Like, I would pull it, I would start pulling the trigger and just start shooting tiny bombs. It's like, whoa, what is this? Yeah. And I would do that until I kind of got bored of it and then I'd switch of something else and it would be a gun where like when you reload you throw it and it becomes a grenade so every time you reload you're throwing

a grenade and you can shoot it mid-air shoot the gun that you just reloaded and that'll explode bigger for more damage like all the guns are like not every gun has that level of silliness but it is like I was not planning on what I was going to do I would just start firing you you get to learn

like what the different brands of gun like feel like and what they're kind of like properties are what type of like architect like there's one where they're all like charging you can charge them up and fire multiple bolts like at the same time so when you see one of those you kind of start to say like oh okay so this is the one that's kind of more like the you know halo energy pistol or whatever I think the gunplay is genuinely very very fun I am having a better time with this game than I thought I would there is a lot of structural problems like not even talking about performance which has been pretty bad for me.

What have you mostly been playing it on, Juice? So I did not use the, I used my laptop. This is the only thing I played it on. I installed it. Well, no, no, sorry. I used it on my desktop BC2, which are both pretty beefy, you know, in terms of, like, gaming. I didn't, I didn't, my setup was pretty good, like, three or four years ago.

so I guess maybe this is the sign of the times but it does not run very well and I can get it to go at 30 on the Rog ally with like everything turned off every single setting turned off and with frame gen having to be on which is not not ideal it is I do feel like games

these days are good they really in an era where it feels like they should be getting better at that kind of low end optimization I doom the Dark Ages was a really good example of this too where like rather than it get or they're actually getting worse. Way, way, considerably worse.

Well, we've seen issues with this new Unreal Engine that, like, games can be really stuttering and that they're having tough launches. Also, Borderlands has a history with tough launches. Like, I'm curious what this game looks like in a month once it's been cleaned up a bit. Can you talk about the structural? Like, what?

Okay, I think you're probably a little bit further than me. This is my big sort of complaint is the, it is a more open world structure. it is less like going off into a narrative table setting you basically clap trap there's a there's a really bad guy called the timekeeper timekeeper yeah time super and uh timekeeper and he uh there's a resistance against him that's led by clap trap and clap trap basically bales in the resistance as soon as he recruits you into it and now you are the one who is leading this like resistance against the bad guy and so like so go around and gather gather a coalition right your coalition building and and at certain

sort of junctions you have like a choice of where you want to go in the world and like which of these you know three big bosses you want to try and take down first um i like the setup by the way structurally that is a setup for me that works for a big open world thing yes i enjoy that as a narrative structure but yeah i i i i i truly truly do not like the open world of this game i really really uh it is not like a you know hub system there's fast travel The unlocking fast travel points is kind of annoying because you'll come to a base and it'll be like, you've got to get to the computer at this base and you'll unlock it as a fast travel point. But sometimes the thing you need, like the computer terminal's not there yet because you haven't gotten far enough in the story. Like that happened to me a couple different times.

The like nav, like auto nav beacon thing that you can activate. Like we'll show you the path you can go on, but it didn't always, it worked like half the time for some reason. And there's also like you have a grappling hook, you have a double jump with like a glide boost and like it feels pretty good to move around the world except like you will reach a point where it wants you to wind up this mountain path to get to the next thing when it's like

you've given me a hover bike and a grappling hook and a booster jet and it's like, oh, this wall is just a little too high to mantle over. That's, yeah, man, it's like, it feels pretty good. So the glide jump is like super early on And the way that they handle that is like, if you're elevated at all, you can do a pretty good speedy jump forward, right? So it's kind of like a hover, float forward. I'm assuming that you get better distance and speed on that as you go in the game.

But like they don't get, so that like lateral movement in that sense feels good. They don't have good tools, at least I have not found any to the point I am where like upward movement feels good. You know what I mean? So you'll often see like crossing 100 yards is not a big deal. but if you see something that's like 10 yards high it feels like like oh fuck I gotta go all the way over there to go up this one ramp in a way that really it's insane it feels like the movement it really breaks the like the flow because you're like well I need to go find a high point to get to to get around I was going through a base I was going through this base like trying to find

these supplies that have been stolen by the order and I missed one at some point and the this situation is such a pain in the ass to like find the little mission objective things you have to pick up while you're in a big area because it just kind of sucks at telegraphing that stuff like and that's not complaining because I can't figure something out it's complaining that like this little PDA that you had sitting on this one terminal on the fourth floor of this thing and so you end up on the ground floor because you pass the thing and it's like if I want to go back up there and get that I'm going to run all the way through this wonderful maze that they've created instead of using my actual grappling hook that they give me the first two minutes of the game to go wherever I want with it. It's just such a chore, and it really makes me miss the more siloed off, like, just let me play this level. Let me go after this one boss and this self-contained thing. I feel like that stuff has gone to the game's great detriment. Griff, I think that you, I'm thinking about something now,

and I feel like where they kind of stumbled is the times where they've tried to incorporate the more open world into the mission design. I'll give you another example And this is very early on too I had a mission to go find an egg Like an exquisite egg That's what it was And it was like a good three minute walk

From my home base The Quest Giver And I do the I go like a three minute walk out And I find the egg And that pops up in my hood And I kill the guys around it And I have to grapple the egg

To pick it up And then I'm like holding it And it's giving me the option to like throw it. I'm like, it's a held object, right? And then the quest does not at that point tell me where I need to go next. It doesn't like update my map, but I do know I need to take this back to the quest giver, right? So I fast travel back and then I, I'm no longer holding this egg. And like, no one, there was no mention of this. There was no like, carry that back to me and don't, like, nothing like that. It's just like, oh, you wanted me to, you really just wanted me to

walk with this egg. You know who would have never let that happen? Hideo Kajima. He would have said, we will have four good cutscenes that talk about why you cannot carry the egg. I remember when I tried to fast travel

with the egg. Thank you, living dead man. So much of it is just so, so poorly executed and it sucks because there's so much about borderlands that I don't know, that I think characterizes the franchise in a good way that is here.

And I have had a lot of fun in the moments where it's gotten out of its way and just let me like run around a battlefield, dropping little ghosts all around and blasting people with fun guns. But then as soon as it's like, all right, make your way back to this guy. But the fast travel's broken. So you're going to have to ride your bike through nothing for five minutes. It's like, man, I don't know. Again, that's where the co-op for me comes in of like a little easier to stomach

when you're just hanging out and talking with friends. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying, like, I feel like that is how it has gotten by. It frustrates me because I've never really, one of these games has never gotten its hooks in me. And I feel like there's always, like, something really, really fun and great and pure and good at the heart of the thing that it is kind of tarnished a bit by the stuff surrounding it. So it's frustrating.

I am very curious to play this. I'm going to download this, not while we're recording, but afterwards for my internet speed. I also want to, I usually don't do this, but I should. issue a correction on something Justin said. He said that it was living dead man who does the fast travel, and we actually know that it is egg travel man who is responsible for that. So I just want to make sure that we got it right. Do you all want to do? I saw the corrections department hand you the letter. I thought that was so smooth and seamless. People think that that's a waste of money, the five people that I have full time living in my house. Yeah, because people say you

guys are never ever wrong about anything fucking ever and it's like yeah guys thank you that's why that's why um you y'all want to do just a kind of a short catch map on what's going on with destiny and then i'll tell you about henry half head how about we take a quick break and then we can talk about that okay when you say we're going to talk about the state of destiny we should make it clear that you're not saying destiny too because i have despite the fact that i still have so many people in that community You're like, this is the patch. This is the patch, baby. We're ready.

No, Chris Plant, we're talking about Destiny Rising, a discreet video game. Destiny Rising, and I'm definitely not Googling it right now. Don't do it, don't do it. Why would you Google it? I'm right here, I'm going to tell you about it. It's the whole conceded of the show. Destiny Rising is the first mobile destiny game. It's on Android.

Okay. play it. You're fucking crushing so far, dude. It is just like destiny. You get guns, you shoot bad guys who are the flood, you know. Okay. Basically. You know, basically the flood. You are having a destiny experience that looks like

destiny. It looks great, actually. I played it on a tablet with a... Well, hold on one second. because it will color this a little bit. While Hoops is doing that, Griffin, honest question, is it fucking insane that I have not heard about this? Is that weird?

I don't think it's that weird, no. I mean, if you're not, I certainly haven't seen it plastered all over the community as much as like a Diablo when that first launched. Okay, okay. I have only heard about it when I like see, when I check in on Destiny 2 with some of my content creators who I followed

when I was playing the game and who will be like, here's what's new in this update. I've only sort of seen them talk about it specifically in terms of like, hey, player base that this game is to some extent migrating over to Destiny Rising and they do not have a great solution for that. Interesting. Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, that is the, I mean, that is the amount of, the extent to which they have captured the feel of Destiny is like, it feels like playing Destiny. I mean, like, I don't know. I was playing on a tablet with the Game Sur G8 Plus, one of their, like, retractable doodad kind of guys. You know what I mean? So it's like a full-size controller on a 9-inch tablet.

There's your, like, your login bonuses. But once you're in and you're playing, it feels like destiny. It feels like a destiny game. Like it looks indistinguishable. There's a hot world. It was not made by. No, it was made by net ease. Okay.

And that's kind of, that's kind of the second half of the story. There's a little, a little gotcha, a little gotcha elements. If you boot it up and you play it, you are going to say, this feels a lot like Destiny. And then you're going to notice that your character has a name. And then you will start to, you realize that like not all the weapons are accessible to all the characters. And then you encounter like other characters and then they let you play as those characters. And you're like, well, this is kind of cool. is a whole different character.

And it's, rather than you building a, like, your guardian that is your character, you are finding guardians that have a discrete ability set and a weapon set that is specific to them. That's interesting. Okay. Okay. So the first one is wolf, and that's kind of the character you, like, create. And then you meet other characters, and there are some missions that you have to do as wolf, narratively. And then there are other missions that you don't have to play as wolf.

you can play as these other characters. Is it like an Iron Wolves sort of situation? Or unrelated wolf? Okay, never mind. I don't know. That one guy, there's people that a cora ray is in it. But she's younger. I think it's like earlier in Destiny Rising.

It's like earlier in the timeline. She's one of the collectible characters. Like you can get her basically. Okay. Collect her. When you say collector, is it through a, is it through a gotcha sort of draw machine this is where

this is where for me it's all starting to come in a wall yeah so when you start playing destiny rising it will it very much is like it feels like a destiny game

on a on a portable setup um and that's very cool the big challenge with that is and this is kind of immutable but the the destiny

experience if I don't feel like it's necessarily maps great to like the impulse gaming of like I have two minutes and I'm just going to game right because I you know there first of all yeah I got to have online access second of all like you get there's a login procedure and then like what what mission was I doing so like you know whether or not that you have like a setup where you know you're going to be in front of an Android the idea of sitting for five hours on a Saturday night with a group of like five Welsh strangers who've been best friends their whole life and like cranking through Last Wish is it seems tough to imagine in that format. So that is kind of immutable.

The other thing is the thing with the characters and stuff, that is going to be, I mean, for me, the thing that bumped with Destiny and the reason that I lost track of Destiny, really is anytime I try to go back I would be so stuck trying to remember all the different currency and the systems of value and like what is this worth what is that worth

what quest was not whatever and I feel like to me when I got hit with those first few walls of like gotcha garbage I mean to me that's what it feels like if you're into gotcha games it is probably a lot more parsible to you but I sent a screenshot to, like I showed Griffin a screenshot and both him and Travis were like, whoa, like, it stings the eyes, the amount of like, so now we've gone from a system where like they are kind of like intentionally maybe obfuscating those value systems because they don't want you to know or be thinking about how much things are costing.

So it's like, to me, more of the stuff that alienated about death. Sure. There's like more stuff to keep track of like that. more timers, more, everything's glowing, everything's glittering, you know, it's that casino aesthetic that so many gotcha games have of like push this, they want you hit this. It's not impassable really like what you can and can't have access to right then, right? Because they want the distinction between doing it for free and doing it for money to be so faint, you know, that you don't notice that you're doing it.

And this is becoming more and more the norm in free to play games. I feel like every time I hop into one of these, it's great for me as somebody who's very fine playing a game for 10 or 20 hours and feeling like I got my money's worth because increasingly they will let you have that window entirely and get you hooked in and then be like oh now now here's the real the real but it's that seems so weird to me because everything in that market has it feels like funneled into the same exact business model for all of these like free to play games regardless of like scale or genre or whatever and once one of those once you see the shape of one of those because it got you

fucking good, I feel like it really stops you from as soon as you see it, you know to recognize it and be like, okay. Mine was, so like, Zenless Zone Zero was my big awakening for that, where I was like holy shit, this game's incredible. How did they make this a free game?

And then after I think it was like the 15th hour, I was like, oh, that's how. Because once you are fully committed, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to keep playing? I can't It's just those systems to me are not

To me It's about like what is a fixed resource for you And like I don't have the time to learn those systems Like I just would rather play I don't really have the time to engage with that level of like I already feel like RNG was kind of the most frustrating aspect of destiny In a lot of ways for me at least I like the parts that were.

methodical. I like the parts that were challenging, but I never really liked the parts that were random, and this feels like a lot more of that, and a lot more demanding of your time to keep up with all the different, you know. It feels like, I don't know, I feel like I went through the arc

with this game that I went through with Marble Snap, but Marvel Snap took me several months, and this took a few hours. You know, where it was like, oh, God, this is too much. I can't keep track of this anymore. Like, it's too much for me, and this got there, like, so quick. I got some great news for you. Which is if you were just craven another net ease game,

they publish a lot of games like this. But every once in all, they publish a game that you can just buy and play. And earlier this year, they released a game called Rusty Rabbit. And I would like to read the synopsis to you from Wikipedia. Please. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have long abandoned Earth, leaving it to rabbits who have developed a civilization

where the books of Peter Rabbit are seen as holy. And you play as a rabbit who is a bad, ass and wears a sick jacket and basically is Mr. Triller. Yeah, all right. Heck yeah. Yeah, sounds good, man. Video games are back.

In a big way. Griffin, you have any other thoughts on Destiny before I tell you about Henry Halfhead? I mean, I didn't play Destiny Rising. I watched Justin play it. I would also say that I think the fact that this is only on Android right now is probably limiting the conversation.

Yeah. I will say, though, if you have, if you're someone who has gotten one of those Android you know gaming handhelds this is a great app there you know there's not a ton of stuff on Android this is a great application of that sure that that overabundance of hardware that you have uh I want to hear about Henry Halfhead please cool Henry Halfhead is uh also a co-op video game that I played solo but unlike Borderlands and Destiny it is a novella of a video game it is two hours like tops uh and knows exactly what it wants to be down to the title you are

Henry, and you are half of a head, specifically the top half of it. From the tippy top down to the nose, and then it just ends. That's all of the head. And the game is basically... It's all you really need, man. I've always said the rest of head is just sort of superfluous. I think that's true if, like, the entire bottom of head below nose could be also mouth. Because I would hate to lose.

Yeah, sure. Mouth does, yeah. You know, we can just kind of lay on top of things and just suck them up, like a little vacuum. Just kissing the ground all the time? That's gross, man. It's gross. Along with being a top of the head, Henry also has basically the Mario Odyssey power to zip into every object. Effectively every object in the world.

So it could be like, you want to hop into a chair? Sure, you can go for it. You want to zip into a color pencil that's laying around? Do that. You can even doodle on the ground. You can hop on a match. And then you can light a candle that you could also hop into or they're like puzzle pieces maybe lying around. You could hop into them and put them together.

There is no like point. system, though you unlock like hats because you're, you know, that's about as much as you want to wear. And then the motivation is the story, which is I feel bad saying this because the person is either British or Australian, but has kind of that like beginner's guide sort of thing where it's like, we're going to narrate a story while you kind of like screw around in this space. And the story is just the story of an entire life. So you start as a baby and you are in, it's kind of to really sound like an asshole, it's like a Brechtian set. There's no actual world that you're in.

It's just kind of like a big white space. And then you know what rooms you're in by the props and furniture that are in it. So you are awake in a cradle and there are like baby toys on the ground. and you solve these kind of like very, very, very simple physics puzzles in that space, like connect the puzzle pieces, right, climb to the top of a clothes drawer. And then once you do that, poof, a door appears in the middle of this empty space. And beyond that door is also new furniture that conveys a new room. So maybe it's a kitchen or maybe it is your parents' bedroom.

And each time you go into these new spaces, you solve a few more physics-based puzzles. You get a little bit more narration about Henry, and your character also gets older each time. So you are going from like basically cradle to older, older, without getting into too much spoiling. It is unbelievably simple to the point that at first I was like, oh, this is a game for babies. Not like as a pejorative, like quite literally, this is a game where you, I could play it with a very young child and we could learn about objects basically like oh this is a candle when we get to play and here's what it's like to draw around the room and here are these little safe spaces where you can learn about all these different very simple objects and play with them

but that's not the case i mean you can and definitely should play it with a little kid i think but where the story goes ends up being much more adult and the idea is it an adult is an adult where like, okay, so... Yeah, what's Henry doing? Thank goodness you're here. Thank goodness you're here looks like a game for babies, and then they throw a secret peen in there

when you are in no way ready for it. There's full pain in that game and it is not for babies. So is there full peat and Henry... No, it's not like... Is he the game Henry Half Head Foldong? No, no, no, no, no, no. There's not...

I didn't unlock a secret foldong. But that could, you know, that could come at any point. they're just peeing and I'm just saying in my dinner here they just have a penis in there I get it's not adult in that way it's more adult like at first the narration is like Henry got out of his bed and he played with his toys and then later it's like Henry is at work

and it's extremely boring and he has no sense of self-worth and you're like oh Jesus okay now I see now I'm adult themes adult themed yes um it is a game i wish i had played co-op for that reason because again it is so simple that i think the pleasure is discovering what all the little objects do and if you can do that with a friend it's like whoa i can take control of this look at what the hell i'm doing yeah what's what's it look like co-op being the exact same there are now two henry half heads and you're playing the exact same game. The narration is still playing over it. It's just two people solving the little physics puzzles at the same time. But again, because the game is almost entirely about discovery

of what happens when you control these different objects, I think that's more pleasurable if you have someone to share it. So at one point, you can, you find a cake relatively early on. And it's like, oh, I can embody the cake. Cool. Oh, when I hop the cake off of the platter and throw it on the floor, it creates a chocolate stain anywhere it goes. Oh, that's a cool, nice surprise. Oh, if I embody the kitchen knife and I swing at the cake, I can chop it into individual pieces. Oh, now I can embody those pieces and I can eat the pieces. Okay.

Is any of that actually doing anything towards a greater goal? Absolutely not. is it like fun little surprises all the way down for sure which again I think is just more fun with another person yeah for sure alone I was like oh that's cute I kept I kind of kept you know that the knowing laugh like uh huh huh huh I was like that the whole way through um I like that cute laugh Chris

thank you thank you um it's good I I like it I think it I think there's a sort of how do I say that I truly do not mean this in as negative a way as it will sound there's a person who likes those co-op games that we don't like where they have stories that are like

you have like some mild existential awareness by the end where it's like hey you learned some human drama while playing a video game and that really resonates for them to have that experience to do something is like tack time and play and then also like teaches them what you know like a pretty like standard short story would teach them if you are that sort of person you will love this game the

story is solid and you will come away from it with that little like glean of oh my time on earth is precious yeah so i think you should like chase that if you're looking for a two-hour version of that sort of game to play with a friend this is a hundred percent it is this also a forewarning that if you're the type of player who just wants to play a silly game where you make a man's head jump around and turn into cake that it's going to get, it

will have existential messages. I think what I would do is I would just turn the volume off if you want that. You can still have a great time. You can still be doing all sorts of silly things about a little half head. Love it. You know who I don't want to turn the volume off on our beloved listeners?

You know? I like to hear from them. Like, give me an example. This is from Connor Connor says Usually I scoff when Russ is like Don't tell me anything Because I'm the opposite I love to get on the hype train

But still discover stuff Like in Breath of the Wild And tears the kingdom Went into Silk Song and I'm floundering And haven't made progress in days But I've also found so much stuff That I've been absolutely shook by I rescinded my scoff

This shit is fire And you shouldn't look up guides If you can't help it Wow Connor Took us on a whole journey there Connor But now people know this is how Russ gets his hooks in you. This is how

this is how Russ corrupts your now I feel I feel the same way I've tried to stay fairly guide free on Silk Song except for a couple of bosses who were real pieces of shit I've tried to but I'm also I'm so scared with this game

that I'm going to pass a point of no return where I will lose access to the stuff that came before it and I don't know that that's an entirely justify fear. I think it's just a scary game that's got my, got my, uh, paranoia going overdrive. Uh, this one is from forest. Dude, I just wanted to thank Griffin for sharing Koso. I'm an aging skater who's always looking for fun skate media to consume when my bones and muscles tell me to stay on the couch and away from the park. I was really into Vices King of the Road series, but they

canceled a while ago. Koso has the same kind of skate contest meets game show vibe that is just a blast to watch. So thanks, Griffin. Keep it gnarly and keep hitting those bennie bongas and casparanas and don't go mongo. Yes, those are real skate terms. Yeah, I know. Yeah, clearly I know those are real skate terms. Why would you think I would need you to clarify that those are skate terms? Because I know them. Clearly. I just pulled off a Christa air. That's now you're showing your hand too much. No, Casa rules. I love any show where people execute their remarkable talents

in the company of other people who have also invested their entire lives into developing those specific talents. That shit's good, especially when it's silly, like a, you know, grind this rail that does a loop-de-loop. Like, sure, man, fuck yeah, all day.

I love it. I love it. Hey, should we dig into some honorable mentions? Yeah. What else have you guys made time for this week? I've been playing a lot more silk song. I don't know how much we want to, sort of expound about it, nor do I know how much...

How is your experience evolved? Yeah, pretty fucking good, man. I've got about 32 hours in the game, I want to say. And I am in sort of the last leg of it, it seems like, where it's like now you can go around and have pretty open access to whatever, and now it's just go find the stuff, and it provides some ways to help you do that

if you are a completionist. some of these last few bosses and sort of gauntlets have gotten so hard that I feel like my progress of the game has slowed pretty dramatically and it requires a level of investment of time investment to like get in that flow state to like learn all of the bosses different attacks so you know how to like respond to it and that is kind of tough to promise it or any game all the time for me these days um but it's still just like god it's going places that are so remarkable uh the writing is really really really strong like really extremely strong there's been like exchanges between hornet who they develop as a character like so well and other

people that i i've been i don't know really uh i have really really admired um and i think it is a a very special game, just like Hollow Night before it, and I'm definitely going to keep pounding away. Did you have any issues? I wish in the text that it was a little bit easy. I agree with you about the writing. I wish it was easier to immediately tell who was speaking. There's little glyphs on top, and Hornets will have the two ears coming up. It is hard to. I do wish that they surface that maybe a little bit better, but that is the kind of thing. or something would be appreciated. Yeah, no, I think it rules. I still don't know if I want 100% it. Like, I feel like I'm going to be playing

for quite a bit longer if I do that. I've been doing a ton of shit and I've found a bunch of stuff, but if I really wanted to clean up the map, it, you know, I don't know if that's something I can give the game right now. But I think I'm getting close to seeing it through. And I think it's really fantastic.

I love it. Hoops, what do you've been up to? Um, gosh, what an I... You play a lot of games. You know what's good? It's Alien Earth. Oh, yeah. Alien Earth is really good.

I started watching it because I feel like Russ and I, and I don't know, I don't remember if you go in this camp, but like, Russ and I tend to lock ourselves in these, like, Noah Holly TV show prisons where, like, no one else is watching, but we have to be the ones who are carrying the torch, like, we are watching these things where it doesn't. feel like there's a huge conversation about it. I think that I just am not exposed. I have realized that I am not in any way exposed to the conversation about TV. I don't know what people are talking about.

I have no clue. But I picked up Alien Earth because I like Noah Hawley shows. Yeah. I loved Noah Holiday shows until there was a very final turn in a season of Fargo that was so preposterous. I was like, I can't do it. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep falling in love. But I did check in on Alien Earth because I was like.

Like, I got to know what, what's a twist? What is, I know how these show is always about something. It's not just going to be about aliens. And boy, howdy, was I excited to see that this is a show about how very young social media CEOs prey on even younger populations to basically make their riches and ruin the world. And I don't know if it keeps going that direction, but that is where it is. head and fast in the first episode or two. And I am very curious about it.

Yeah, the premise I think is so cool and gripping. And like, what is the premise? I love Alien and I want to watch this show. I just haven't. It's wild. Okay. So here's the setup. You know that there are corporations that are vying for.

Waylon, Utoni, et cetera, yeah, and all those. So there's a new one called Prodigy. And what Prodigy is, their big focus for the past 10 years has been, the research focus, secret, super secret, has been, they are, rather than synths, which are asteroids or cyborgs, which are fusion, they want to transfer human consciousness into synthetic bodies to make hybrids, right? And these hybrids would be super strong, super fast, almost vulnerable, but they would have the mind of a human. What they discover is that adult minds reject it and that only children's minds will make the process work. So they

find kids who are terminally ill and offer their parents a chance to be transferred into these synthetic bodies in a secret program where like no family has any idea what has happened to them, etc. So the first girl that this happens to, she begins going by the name Wendy and there is an overarching Neverland theme that is like being projected onto the kids and the whole this whole story really um but basically this first girl has a brother uh who she loves very much and she continues to monitor with her like you know abilities uh and there is a crash a a crash of a spaceship on the planet that she lives on which is the planet that the store that's the earth from the title uh and there's a crash there and she realizes that her brother who is

a medic for the prodigy corporation is being sent to help at the crash site. So the girl goes to the person who runs it and says, send us, send me and the rest of the lost boys, we're ready, we want to go help at this crash. CEO thinks that, since the, realizes that since the ship is Wayland Utani and it is loaded with a trillion dollars worth of like research, he's going to send in the lost boys. to get it. Okay, cool. And that's his reasoning.

And she's going in to save her brother. And you'll never guess what is on the ship Griffin. It better not be Zemo Norphs or I'm gonna lose my...

Dude, it's fucking Zemo Norphs. It is Chocca Block with Zemo Nors. I am so sick of these guys and they're weird tongues. It's the worst possible thing because they're not in space. In space no one can give a shit because it's on Earth now, man.

I don't want... I live here. Yeah, no way, dude. Yeah. Yeah. You know morphs? Maybe in Mars? Yeah, sure.

Maybe? Even that's all too close for comfort. But not on Earth. Yeah, it sucks. So the CEO is greedy, and he wants, basically, he wants to take the Xenonorphs for himself and doesn't want, and it is corporate warfare to try to control the, so this is why it is a story and not an isolated, like, scary ship experience. Yeah.

Ship experience, the ship comes to Earth, quite literally. Like, it's pretty indirect. Here is how it intersects. I don't, I'm pulling a fresh here. I don't want a reaction. I'm just going to say the thing out loud. But what really got me here. I, by the way, that was a lot of story.

It was made the first half of the first episode. Yes. It is, that is. They chuck through it. I am skeptical of brand mashups, especially after all the Marvel stuff. If Predator does not show up. at the end of this show, I will be crushed. I'm just putting that out there because there are all sorts of aliens on this ship.

And then there's that new Predator movie coming out where it is about the Predator just hanging out with a synth that is Whalen Utani, which like they are building towards that, like, what if we made a high-end Alien versus Predator that I need in my life? I am not ashamed to be that comic. What about Alien and Predator now getting along? That's nice. It's a sequel series to Bob loves Ashiola. It's alien loves predator. It's great. It's great.

I really, it is very, okay, Noah Hawley shows, I'm still using that as a subgenre, but I feel like you know, so like, that's like Fargo and Legion and, you know, it's a very thinky kind of TV, right? And I don't mean that in a complimentary way or a pejorative way. way it just is. It's the style. It's the style. And I feel like this is again, I hate terms like this, but it is the most effective way of stating it. There is less pretension here and more entertainment and storytelling. And it doesn't ask you to marinate in themes so much as it does touch on the themes and then moves on to more action. We're like, great. Some of the shows

got very experiential, got very sort of like, especially Legion, got very abstract. in a way that's very bracing and cool to see, but, like, not always the most engaging to watch. This is not that. This is highly entertaining, super engaging. Really cool uses, I will say, by the way, I know, like, mega corporation mergers are an absolute nightmare and are ruining the world. There is a cool, it is a, there are a couple instances where they have folded in intellectual property that is owned by the Disney Corporation. in a way that makes the story feel actually a little bit more approachable and real rather than just using

ancient references. There's like Ice Age is a recurring like tableau that is almost in contrast to the Neverland theme, right? Like Ice Age is like a more modern take that the sister and the brother watched obsessively. So it's almost like a little sub-language

they share. And they actually show the original Peter Pan, the Disney Peter Pan, which is wild to see. Yeah, but it's like yeah, but it's like that really grounds it in a way that makes it feel really relatable and real, but it is, I think it's great. I say it's 20th century and not Disney. And I want to make that explicitly clear. And which is owned by Disney.

Well, okay. No, I know what you mean. You're talking about the old world when, you know, there were, there were many warring factions. We live in the newer one. I'm just saying, referring to Ice Age as a Disney classic, sent an actual chill of my spine. This is the world we live in now. This is the world we find ourselves in. I know it's a 20th century Fox project, but whatever.

Growing up, I just, there were types of... Did I bury the lead? I did bury the lead. Who leads to the Lost Boys? It's the only adult, uh, synth played by Timothy Oliphant with bleach blonde hair. Oh, baby. Uh, thank you. Yeah, I will.

Fucking, don't mind if I do. Oh, wait, he knows all the world's, he's learned all the world's philosophy. Uh, yeah, thanks. I'll take it. Thanks. Thank you. How many you got? You got anything, Creus?

Yeah, I got a thing real quick. The other night, I went and saw the Invincible Zars perform a live backing to the Phantom of the Opera, the original silent film, the Phantom of the Opera. And if you are looking for a very kick-ass thing to do during Halloween season, I strongly recommend going and checking this out at your local theater. The, like, music is much more modern. You're a tour? Kind of Synthi. It's a tour. The Invincible Zars are a band from Austin, and they started doing this at the Alamo Village

a long, long time ago, and now, of course. I mean this in the nicest way possible. They very much look like a band from Austin. Yeah, 100%. Extraordinary. Extremely. And, yeah, they go around, and they're doing this and Nospiratu, the original Nospiratu. Oh, that's sick.

And just a heads up, like, they're very early in the tour. So if you live in like Arizona, Arizona, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ontario, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, or of course, Texas, they're going to all those different places. So I'll include a link in the thing. Also, there is a online version of it. Like you can just watch, pay like six bucks and watch it. But I really recommend going and seeing this in person. It is so transcendent. Honestly, it really is amazing to go watch a live band perform a score for a silent movie because it makes silent movies work.

You get how people would go and see these things and be like, just totally entertained because it's so loud and thrilling. And the score that they have is absolutely killer. So it is a great way to spend a night. This seems so cool. I want to do this. You should do it. Movies. They're back.

Okay, I'm going to wrap up really quick on the stuff that we have talked about. We talked about. Borderlands 4, Destiny Rising, Henry Halfhead, Silk Song, of course, Alien Earth, and the Invincible Tsar's performance of Phantom of the Opera. Anything I missed in there? Nope. Cool. Hoops, you want to take us out? Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast that we do here.

We hope you enjoyed it and we'll come back. What we do next week? Oh, next week, we have like two options. I think what we're probably going to do, I think, don't hold us to this just yet. I think we're going to do baby steps next week. And then we're going to do the new Fottie Jam. The new Fottie game, the new, from the creator of quop. And then we're going to do Ghost of Yote after that.

I think that's something that's the week after that. Okay. Yeah. Great. Wow. There's a lot of great games, man, crazy. Hey, we got a Patreon. Patreon.com slash the besties. If you go there and become a supporter of our shows, you get access to all the episodes of the Resties and our monthly bracket battle episodes.

And plus we have this new $10 a month tier where you can get episodes from the main feed without advertisements if that is something that you want. That is over at patreon.com slash The Besties, you can join the ranks of great folks like your good buddy Brandon. I think I've reached a threshold where I need to permanently zoom in the text on screens. Welcome. Stuvius Tyler, Ultimate Danny 5,000, and get Stiggy with it.

Thank you all so much, patreon.com slash the besties. Perfect. Thank you all so much for listening. Be sure to join us again next week for The Besties, because shouldn't the World best friends pick the world's best games. Besties