The Besties - The Pokémon Studio Tries Something New

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Beast of Reincarnation is the new game from Game Freak, the studio that creates every mainline Pokémon game. But friends, this is nothing like Pokémon. The action-RPG calls to mind series like Dark Souls and Onimusha. Is it… good? Guest Ron Funches joins to help us find out. 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!

Do you think that Pokemon's a very dark storyline? Because I know on the surface, it seems pretty light and airy. Yeah. But it basically is a Black Mirror episode, specifically the idea that Pokemon are trapped in this nether realm that we never see. Interesting. Expand on that. What the fuck is going on inside the Pocopals? Yeah.

This is weird. This is weird that you've decided. Is this because it's game freak? You know they do it. This is what drives me. me crazy, man. No, let him cook. I'm about to fucking pop, dude.

Because everyone's like, why's the Pokemon company doing a game? Why are they doing a real game? And it's like, I'm sorry, first of all, if I see another fucking professional game journalist or critic say that the Pokemon company makes the Pokemon games, I'm going to lose my

fucking mind. I'm going to flip my gourd. That's a completely separate corporate entity. But the other thing is, they also made pocket card jockey. They also made come on hold on I can do this you can do it I can shit out the name of the rhythm game that they made that one time that wasn't very good hold on let me see if I can do it

nope it's not it's it's lodged in there yes it's fair that they don't make other games but the majority of their games I think we can all agree are Pokemon games yeah and I don't like we've never seen inside the polka ball yes we have no we I don't think we have that's it's insane how authoritatively you know what it looks like inside of Pokemon do you have any idea I have no idea what it looks like inside a Pokemon at all. It feels like once you are into it, you are transported

to another realm. But I think that you are just scratching the surface. We got to talk about the fact that the Pokemon are just, who were we to make them fight and work for us? Okay, that's fair. That's fair. That's, it's a dark, that aspect is incredibly dark as well.

I was hoping for like a slimer Ghostbusters Nether Realm situation inside the Pokemon, but the better option would just be like a luxury hotel. But we don't know. We do know. You're driving me crazy, man. It's like you're just saying stuff and you're like, this is true about the Pokemon world. You have not put in the hours. I've put in the fucking hours. I've not read them. I thought I was right. And I am. The Game Freak did make one other game that I think is incredible. Drilldozer. Drilldozer, dude. Yes, absolutely.

What if instead of Pokemon, we had like those little Hellraiser pain cubes? And that's where they come from. That's where they live. I mean, that explains a lot because they tend to be pretty pissed when they come out of the ball. Sure. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ron Funches. I also am familiar with the best game of the week. My name is Ross Furchick. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the best. He's where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club just by listening. You have become a member. We are delighted and honored once again to be joined by Ron Funches, honor very bestie. Thank you, Ron, for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and discuss

Beast of Reincarnation. Like, I don't ask you guys. We can still be honored and delighted for you to join us for this discussion. I mean, Chris isn't here. I can take a swing out. Oh, please do, because God. Okay, Beast and Reincarnation is a new game from Game Freak. Yes, the studio largely known for Pokemon, but all. Also pocket card jockey, which slaps ass and drill dozer apparently, and I think a rhythm game that I can't remember the name of.

But this time they've made a AAA action RPG blockbuster in the vein of a near or a Sekiro or a stellar blade or any number of, you know, extremely sort of fast-paced action RPG, maybe lightly soul-sey sort of inspired things. and they have done so in a way I I have never seen such critical consensus of mediocrity maybe in my entire career covering video games

not to put a finger on the scale before we really get into the discussion We are going to talk about other games as well so yes don't worry it's not just going to be a dump fest we know y'all don't like that so let's take a quick break and then we're going to do the dirty work

Ron if you wouldn't mind starting this segment by just summarizing the story I love that. Okay. Yeah, this is one things I've been doing on my YouTube on my What You Playing series where I summarize games to people who don't understand them are for me who only has paid attention while I play them. So what I have gathered as a father in a man who works and plays this game and the text is too small. Wait, these, holy shit, so small. It's so small. So I would say, do you like games like near automobiles? are Stellar Blade or Soulslike, but do you think those games are too hard, are too stylish, or have too much soul and individuality?

Do you want to play a game like Stellar Blade? But you're like, those are too sexy, and I have a wife or a significant other that will be mad if they see boobs bouncing around. And instead, when you go in to take a shower, you go in fully closed with your wolf dog. This is the game for you. If you want to play a game that you go,

I actually have better versions of this sitting on my computer right now. Maybe I could be, I kind of want to play Liza P again now because it is. This is a game for that. It's basically action, souls like where you have control of your wolf dog. You are someone that everybody is mad at, no matter who you talk to. They don't seem to like you and call you cursed and stained. But it is your job to what I gather kill these blood. These people who have spread in the blight.

And by people, I mean gigantic deer and monsters and robots who also seem like they are good robots who got tainted by the blight. Because some of the robots you just talk to and they're kind, but then the other ones you have to murder. And then you have some mostly standard action moves, the shoulder action buttons, which I've come to accept even though I'm a face button action person at heart. I'm a devil may cry action person. And then you also have control of your wolf. who you can build up and get new attacks as well. It brings a little more of like, I would say, like an action turn-based mechanic to it.

And you guys learn aboard. Also your wolf talks to you and you learn about each other. And sometimes it brings you back to life. And then you kill one deer. And then they tell you got to go kill a bunch of other Nishki, which are the demons. And then I decided to stop playing after that. Yeah. That's about the arc that I followed with the game as well.

I really, I found the subversion of one, the shower mechanic to be a true delight. It's one of my favorite things about the game is that you roll up into you have this walk or this giant robot mech thing that's sort of your home base. Because it's set in the future. It's set in the future. It's not like a fantasy world. It's like apocalypse. When I saw there was a shower, I thought in the grand tradition of like, I'm about to see,

this is going to be like a nude Norman Redis death stranding situation. but instead it's more like you're at a pet smart and you go in fully clothed and you wash off all the blood off of your dog, which I appreciate. I feel like the game is doing some cool stuff. I was kind of interested in it at face value because the world, the post-apocalypse that they're kind of depicting, I thought was pretty interesting in a sort of annihilation-esque way where like plants have taken over the world and are mutating, you know, everything. You'll be running around and just treat. will shrink into the ground and shoot out in other places and say, oh, that's interesting. And there's people who have, like, plant hybrid kind of curses, and you are one of those people, which lets you sort of shoot your vine hair out into, like, a whip that you can then traverse across,

and you can sort of grappling hook with it, and you can do, like, a cool jump up into the air and then just kind of rise up from the ground on your, like all that. Yeah, you basically have poison ivy powers, which is actually pretty cool. Yeah, they're fun. But it's like, okay, so that's, is that the thing that's going on? Because when the game starts, the game starts with this, like, opening monologue that's like, humans have divested themselves of emotion. And it's like, okay, so wait, hold on. Are we doing, like, is it like an annihilation thing or is it a, what's that Christian Bale movie where no one's allowed to have emotions with like all the gun cata shit? Like, is, are we doing that? And now everyone's robots and the robots are getting cursed. It's, it got, it was like, be like two or three, too many kind of like big ideas. just in the story, which I think is maybe representative of kind of the whole game because it's doing a ton of shit and it's doing it all okay. Yeah, Ron sort of alluded to it, but it feels like they played a lot of games that are in

this genre, or at least look like this kind of game, and just like took a little bit from this and this and this and jam them all in there because you need leveling up at a fire shrine. Yeah. need picking up items that you don't necessarily know what the fuck they do, but you're just going to keep picking them up because that's what you do. And some of them you feed to your dog, and some of them you eat yourself, and some of them upgrade your sword. And you've also got the giant monsters that you have to parry as Sekaro style and...

You're building up like break. You're building up like break meters to like do instant executions, also various... There's even like fucking Batman Arkham Asylum shit in this game where you'll like be in an area and it's like, sneakily take out these six enemies to unlock the next area. But they don't respond. Really bizarre. I don't know if there's a better version of this game

that does half as much stuff. I suspect it is. I suspect so. I think if you maybe made the game move twice as fast, it would be a better game. Because my main issue with it, I think the combat's pretty fun. I think the parry feels great.

And there's like a lot of cool ways that you can customize your character so that like when they parry, you know, they're not only avoiding damage and building up their like energy meter that they're going to spend on these almost FF7 remake style like quick turn-based like attacks that you're making coup, your dog do. But you can also customize like, okay, so when I parry, it activates this special ability or it does this. There's a Dodge 2, which doesn't feel very good and also doesn't give you all these incredible other benefits. So you almost never use that.

The dodge, I don't think you're supposed to use. The combat on the Dodge is terrible. It just gets a small little sign. It doesn't. Like, you know, Bayanetta, I think is the queen of the Dodge mechanic because you felt it right every time. Well, and it activates that dope which time. Like it feels good to do that.

It just feels bad to dodge. And sometimes you have to, especially when you're doing like the big boss fights against the big deer monsters. The issue is like all this stuff, the like customization, the upgrading, you're unlocking new skills. you're unlocking I felt like I didn't need any of that shit

because the Perry windows are like really forgiving there's not a ton of enemies in the game and the enemies that are in the game really only have a handful of attacks and you learn them pretty quick I did not struggle really

with the combat side of things so much at all. Yeah I like the fact that it wasn't so hard. Sure, yeah. I kind of like that. It was a nice change of pace to be able to

learn the three moves that the first boss had and like really be able to parry them to the point where I was able to beat it I think on the first try. So like that was not a nice change of pace from all these like wo long fallin dynasty, all of these games where you fucking kill yourself on that first boss. Right. To like learn all the mechanics. I don't like that.

Like I like being eased into it. So I thought that was a good decision. But I guess so it just kind of undermines the RPG side of things, I feel like. Like in a, in a, uh, uh, I think it's unfair. First of all, I don't think this game is especially soulsy outside of the fact that there's like campfires that you stop at. Like you're not losing your, you're not losing anything when you die.

Like there's not really, it's not penalizing you for, for anything. But at the same time, like the reason that those games work, the reason that the difficulty of FromSoft games like work is because they make every little incremental upgrade, every little, you know, item that you find, everything that you can potentially do to like increase your build. so necessary because it's so hard, it's so hard and it's so punishing and I understand not, not liking that stuff. I would definitely not want this game to be that level of difficulty, because I don't think it's good enough. Like, I wouldn't, I simply would not hang with it.

But it really makes it so that like when I find some item laying on the ground or I upgrade my weapon and now its attack is like 5% stronger or whatever, it's like, who gives a shit? Like, I don't need, I don't really need that. I didn't really use any of the new abilities I unlock because the ones that you start out with are pretty good. I just, it's, it's just kind of a... I mean, you just said it real quick, but I think that is one of the things that is very disappointing early in the game is when you go to upgrade, like, you go to upgrade your bow or your crossbow thing, and then you see the only change. There's not even like a real, like, a lot of times people add a, like, a fancy animation, something to make you feel like you accomplish

something, and it literally just goes from like 200 to 204. Yeah. That doesn't even feel good. There are these stones that you can find that are kind of like accessories that will like benefit you in some way. But again, like the upgrades are like you have a 4% faster Dodge animation. Like they're so, so, so small and not very meaningful. But I think again, if the game was just more combat focused and they maybe added a little bit more variety in the enemies, I think that would be interesting. the biggest thing that this game fails at is just the pacing is really astonishingly bad.

From a like, there are nested flashbacks. Like the game starts you off sort of in media res and then it goes back in time a little bit. And then it continues to go a little bit more back in time, like a couple layers, like inception style to a point where it's like, God damn, I've been doing this flashback for a while, haven't I? And there is a, what would you? you guys say is the duration of pause between every line of dialogue. Oh yeah. Because I think it's definitely more than two seconds. It is pregnant. Every single time. And it is really insufferable. It's really, really, really insufferable. Yeah, I take this game does, one of the worst things it does is that it does not start well. It like, it starts slow. It starts super easy in a way that

makes you feel, and then not in a way where you feel like a lot of Metroid games are like that where you start off with feeling more powerful than the enemies and you get your powerscript away. Right. Whereas this, though, I never felt like a badass. I just felt that the enemies were too easy. I immediately upped it to hard and was just trying to see if that did anything. And all of that did was just up the damage that I received any time I did take a hit. It didn't, where I was looking for more like increased attacks, more attack animations, more varied attacks.

It didn't do any of that. But I will say one thing that I think this company is good at is building a world. That world is beautiful and fun to be in. And I think this game I would just say is a good first try. And if this was a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, I'd be like, oh, this is great. There's not that many, like, from soft type of games on the Switch 2. Like, this would be something that they can claim as their own. But the fact that this is a multi-platform game that when there's so many,

many games where you can get a you know you can get Liza P for like $20 you can get near three you know there's so many things that you can get that do this better yeah is so fucking good every time you're right when I was playing this I was like oh my god Liza P was so fucking good every aspect of it that game rules I also found myself wanting to be playing other better better games pretty much the whole time I was in I was with Beast of Reincarnation I do want to I guess end this segment because it's probably the last time we'll ever think or talk about this game by exploring the idea that Ron, you got to experience something that we, Griffin and I, have had to do for many years just as a career. And that is play a game that you

weren't really like it. Play a deep seven. Yeah. Play a deep seven. Yeah, no, this is the first because I get excited to come here. But every time that we've talked about games here, it's always been a game I've already been playing or a game that I was heavily interested and then just reach out to see if you guys can give me a coat. But this was the first time where it was like, oh, I hadn't even heard of this game until you asked about it. And it was very interesting. Maybe because in my youth, there was a time where I was like, oh, that's all I wanted to do is be like a games journalist, wanted to be sushi X and come up with the rumors. Yeah.

And you just, you just aged all of us. Oh, we're old as hell. I've been noticing that. Oh, come to my shows. They're all getting old. to play a game and immediately be like, oh, if I didn't, if I wasn't coming here, I wouldn't play this was an interesting experience. And it made me feel like, it made me think a lot more about game reviews in general and how, like, how hard, how hard it must be for a game. A game must have to be really good if you don't, if you're not immediately interested for it to, like, win you over.

and to bring you into a new space. And I think I just like the way that you guys do it more than like the general like score and what you're doing. Because I'm like, oh, like I would be like, oh, you made me play this. I want to get this game of five. But it's not. It's like there's good parts to it and there's bad parts to it. I think there are people who will play this game and really like the aesthetics of it and like the art style of it and maybe like the relationship with Koo. And it will be a game for them.

There are people who this game would be for. But to have to play something and just not hit it off, I was just like, oh, this is, I'm glad I don't have to do this for it. Honestly, there's no comparable in criticism, because if you're watching a movie that sucks, you're watching it and then it's over in two hours. And you can, like, roll your eyes at it or even like an album. I guess if you're reading a book that's really bad, that might be brutal. But like, man, having to play a 30-hour game, man, like, yeah. Having to play a game, I mean, we did not play that much, but having to play a game that you really don't like because you, have to.

Woof. Yeah. It's pretty bad. I want to say, I want to be clear. This is far from the worst game that I've played. Like, even this year, it's far from the world. Like, it's fine. There are times that I really, I did enjoy, like, the combat, the exploration, like, feels good.

It's just like, I don't know. You can say, like, oh, it's a great first effort from Game Freak, but Game Freak has also developed. And, you know, there's probably multiple studios. I don't know if the infrastructure of Game Freak as a studio is like particularly public knowledge or not. But like there's some stuff like there's, I have heard maybe three songs in my entire, like there's looking around song, there's fighting song. There's like cutscenes. Like there's weird little stuff that's like, okay, that's crazy. Like that seems like something you should know better than at this point than to just have a few, a handful of songs in the game that you're spending this much time in.

And there's just some stuff that just seems kind of, I don't know, a weird miss from a company that has been around as long as Game Freak has been around. I think we've made the point. I think we've made the case. And people can kind of decide based on that. Griffin, I know that you played something else that I actually hadn't heard of, and I guess it's been in early access for quite a while. Yeah. But sounded pretty great. Yeah.

I don't know if we want, do we want to do that here? Or we want to take a quick break and come back? I don't know if we had a business and a B-blower. Yeah, yeah, we can take a quick break. Why don't we do that? Yeah, let's do it. The game I've been playing is EverQuest Legend. No, I'm just kidding. I'll do, I will be talking about in the honorable mentions. Don't worry about that. I've been playing a game called Sifuria, which does sound like a fragrance brand. I was going to say shampoo, but yeah. It is not. I was going to say a new version of syphilis. It is not a new version of syphilis. It is much more,

much more enjoyable than that. It is a top-down action. sort of RPG roguelike from the studio that made Dunggreed, Dunge greed, like dungeon greed, I don't know. It was sort of an indie game that came out on Steam and was quite successful. And this one is, it's really, really good. Imagine a game that kind of has the sort of pace and, I don't know, mechanics of like a hyper, hyper light drifter almost,

or a, uh, into the gungent. A lot of, like nuclear throne at a glance. Yeah, sort of a lot of dashing around and, uh, you know,

doing these melee combos and, uh, there's different weapons that you're using throughout the game and each of them has like an interesting sort of peri mechanic, uh, sort of associated with it. Uh, you're going down into this dungeon that is more or less the same every time.

Like the rooms are, are different and the path that you're following sort of, of Slay the Spire, sort of like choosing like, oh, I want to go this way so I can, you know, try and get this anvil that's going to upgrade my weapon or whatever. And every time when you level up, you're like drafting different like relics that you can synergize into like different builds. Everything is sort of, everyone is woodland animals. You're like a bunny and you're in like a bunny village. But also you are the sort of servant of this like, Kabbalah sort of Jewish mysticism tree god.

So there's some like interesting sort of tonal stuff going on there. Wait, wait. Is it explicitly a Kabbalah Jewish mysticism tree? I mean, it's called Sephiroth, not the Final Fantasy villain, but the like, the, the, the aspect of Kabbalah. I was not familiar that there was an aspect of Kabbalah that it was called Sephora. Yeah. And it's like the good one, but then there's like, Keithoth. I don't know.

know much about Kabbalah. I'm discovering while playing this game. But then you're also like, you know, there's skill tree and there's lots of stuff that you're upgrading. It's interesting now that I'm saying all of this stuff, like, it's obviously a way different game in terms of genre and look, but like a lot of that stuff is also true of beast of reincarnation. It's just that this game really has a scale and a pace that I have really been enjoying. I've not gotten this deep into a rogue like like this sense like Heroes of Hammer Watch 2, which funny enough, just got DLC, just got an update that has added some new stuff. I tried to get back into it and really just kind of struggled to because I spent enough time with it when I first

started playing the game. This has just been really fast-paced and really slick. All the weapons feel really great. And it's in 1.0 now. That's what happened is I think July 30th, it came out, 1.0, but it's been around for a while. But yeah, it's called Seferia, sort of spelled like Sephiroth, but with an Ea at the end of it. It's been a really good time. Yeah. While you're talking about it, it reminded me of Spirit's Abyss, which I played a few weeks ago and recommended that basically no one seemingly has heard of because it had like

You guys always bringing up games that I'm like, I don't know, I think they just make up names. Ron, do you, I actually don't know. Do you fuck with Splunky at all? Yeah. Okay. If you like Spelunky, but you get a little bit frustrated, but the fact that Spalunky kind of bends you over a little bit, man,

Spirit's Abyss is really, really great. Is that the one from the Nidhog? The Nidhog developer? That game is not out yet. That's Blood Dungeons. Spirit's Biss is basically a mash of Spalunky and Binding of Isaac, but like I was just doing a run before we recorded where I had like 50 health and 40 bombs

and all these like comboing passive abilities and things like that. I think the big difference here is you pick individual classes, and those classes have unique attacks and upgrades, so I could do a mage with like a long-range shotgun attack or like a samurai type of class with like short range but high damage. So it really makes runs feel very different. But mostly you can just like see a lot more without having to know every aspect of the game. I like the art style.

And yeah, the art style is really cool and it's like eight bucks. And I feel like it just never had too much shine on it for whatever reason. but I've been really, really impressed with it. I'm like six or seven hours into it. Sick. Do we have, you mentioned we had some reader mail. Well, I want to see. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ron, is there anything else that you've been playing? Yeah, I play games. I play games, Griffin. I know, I know. I've been playing the Avatar Legends, the fighting game. I've been really into that as a fan of the Avatar of the Last Airbender series. I actually didn't know that there was a fighting game.

Yeah, no. Nice. I brought news to you. Nice. And I love Avatar. You love Avatar? I do. Me too. And now, and do you like the fighting in it? Hell yeah. All the bending, sure. You like the hand-drawn art style? Yeah, you bet. Well, then I got a game for you. It's called Avatar Legends. And it's the best Avatar video game that they've ever made because most of them have been terrible. Not a great legacy there, yeah. This one is a snappy fighting game that has its own unique. I think every good fighting game builds off of one mechanic and then they do it well. And this one for that is called the flow state where every character has a dedicated flow button. They all can be used to dodge attacks and special attacks. But each character has a unique way that they use their flow.

There's characters that can use it to basically double jump. There's character Ozzy who can kind of like, he can eight directional jump. So he can basically fly across the whole map. And then every character plays how they looked and seen in the show. Toff is strong and has these rock attacks and can use a pillar to lift herself up above the playing field and throw rocks down at your opponent below. Kiyoshi is like 12 feet tall. It's just a great game and they're going to keep adding characters. Iro's coming in, which is who I'm looking out for.

I need my uncle in there. And as a big fan of the show, and to watch not only every game suck, but also seemingly every non-animated project, just be terrible. It's nice to have something with the game or with the franchise that seems to do the series justice. So I've been really enjoying it. So it basically pulls from each like Cora and the original and they're mostly young or do they do like the older characters too? No, everybody's at their normal age or isn't like an older on or Ang.

That's the joke that they did that made me laugh so much. They have a joke based off of the M. Night Shyamalan movie where the characters keep calling him on and he gets mad. That was the first time I experienced Avatar was in a screening of that. movie. Oh, that's a freaking shame, dude. That's, oh my God, what a bad way. And it was like, 15 years later, someone was like, no, seriously, wipe that from your memory and just start with the anime. And man, it fucking rolled. How like my nine-year-old Henry is like really into Avatar right now. And it's a pretty new thing that mostly came from like, I don't know, he started watching YouTube shorts of people talking about Avatar and was like, hey, this seems cool.

he's also gotten super into animaniacs through the same vector and that's been fucking rad for me. I've been enjoying that a lot. But he doesn't play a ton of fighting games. He loves Smash. But I was showing him in this game because we're about to go on this road trip and I wanted him to have something to play. And he was sort of nervous about, you know, playing a fighting game, which is not sort of a genre he is particularly familiar with or adept at. Would you say it's like somewhat accessible to like folks like that or does it feel more kind of like hardcore for folks who are. like already, you know, fighting, fighting game pros.

I mean, the online for sure is. Well, yeah, sure. You don't probably want him going in there. And the, but I'd say the story, Mo, I would say that you probably want to sit down together as father and son and, like, just walk through with them together, play a couple of rounds because there are a lot of mechanics to learn as far as dealing with the flow state. And the one thing I would say is a detriment, and they probably, I imagine, will adjust this soon is that there's no difficulty

like settings at all. For the arcade or whatever. Yeah. So you go in there and I would say my first couple of rounds in arcade I was getting my ass handed to me because I just didn't know any of the mechanics. So I had to go in to do the tutorial for sure. Yeah,

that's interesting. Yeah, I'm trying to remember with the first like, I guess I mostly just Street Fighter 2 and then some moral combat was like early on but I never I barely knew the moves. I knew like maybe the scorpion throw and that was it. So I'm sure it's gotten much more complicated, especially for kids getting into it.

But it is fun. I love when your kids find out stuff that you didn't know. My son's been doing this. My son now is deeply into Pokemon. I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Go. His whole room now is Pokemon base. And that just came in suddenly out of the blue because someone handed him Pokemon cards

when he walked by a video game store. And so I appreciate them very much. That sounds seedy. you put that like I know hey they hooked them yeah first packs free little plastic baggy yeah but he also's been watching 10 fish reviews because dude yeah 10 fish reviews I love those guys I don't know what that is four years old he's like put on the video that goes 10 squid in a pan in a can from Japan I was like oh I know oh mine is there's two dudes that just sit and have like almost a romantic candlelit dinner and they provide in-depth reviews of different brands of premium-tinned fish.

Oh. I can't remember the name of the channel. There's one guy who wears a fazz, and he has a dog, and a dog also wears a fazz. Oh, that's good. I don't like that a lot. Well, that's lovely. Thank you, Ron, for bringing that game that I had no idea existed. I'm happy to help.

It seems like my jam. Okay, so Ron, earlier on, you were talking about face buttons versus trigger buttons for attacking, because you're right. trigger buttons are becoming the norm. And it actually came up last week. I was mentioning that whenever I play a Metroidvania or search action game, I use right bumper for attack because it makes

doing jump attacks much easier for me. And I was asking, we were asking specifically if anyone out there inverts their x-axis, because we know a lot of people that invert their y-axis. Do you have a preference? Do you just keep it normal?

I keep it normal. I keep it normal. I don't mess with it. I just let it go and let, I mean, I do, I'm a big fan and having customizable button options. I love it if they let you switch from face to shoulders or let you do what you want. I just don't like it sometimes when they just immediately push you to the shoulder buttons when it feels to me like more of a face button game. But I get used to it. Like Crimson Desert does it well, where you do a mix of both where you use the shoulders for your weapons and then you use the. face buttons for your fist and I like that a lot. I love the action in Crimson Desert. I don't know

if you guys stuck with that at all or even played it. I played a bit of it. I did bounce off of it. Yeah. It just, I don't know. I wasn't ready for it. I feel like everyone I had talked to about the game was like, yeah, man, you got to you got to you got to put in the 60, 70 hours to I don't know. It's it. It's, it's it's it's a very competitive time for for gaming time in my life. I will say that the new stranger that, The new, what is it? Yakuza, whatever, what's it called? The new Frangers in Heaven. Yeah, the new Stranger Than Heaven, which I played at SGF,

had the most bizarre control scheme where, like, every button was like a hand or your head or your feet. So you're, like, fighting off one guy and then kicking with your left foot and the other guy. And it was, like, they're doing some fucking wild shit with controls in that game. It's interesting to see them take risks, but, man, I'm curious how people get into it. we do about this topic in particular we do have some reader mail because we asked for people to write in to see if there was any x inverter people uh glass funyon writes in to say i am a mythical y and x inverted player uh i think it started with spiro on ps one which has flight levels uh as i never played a flight sim it also makes more sense to me if you imagine the joystick attached to the back of the player's head inverted correlates to how their head would move if you you push the stick. Sure.

I understand that. I think that this is a, this has to only just be a situation of like, if you play a game long enough to like get this ingrained in your, in your brain, then it's going to get stuck there. And then all of a sudden you need every other game to kind of go the same way. I just think that it's rare that,

that that happens. But, you know, I think the PS1 era, especially like the early 3D platformer era, I think we, there was no consensus on which way the camera should move when you move a stick in a certain direction. Oh, I love the beginning of all those games.

Are they just like, hey, look over here. Okay, we got it. We got which way to do. Yeah, I think Halo was the first time I saw that. That was like very smart. Good solution. Actually, related to this, pretty interesting. This one comes from Aaron.

In regards to inverted controls, I learned something recently I thought you might find interesting. My nine-year-old son just started playing first-person games. Growing up, I learned to play 3D games first on my dad's PC with games like Fight Simulator and Ty Fighter and then Mario 64. All these games used inverted y-axis, and I used that inversion ever since. Knowing that most current games default to non-inverted controls,

I, like Chris, Plant, didn't want to subject my son to the same issues I have when getting into a new game. So when he wanted to play Indiana Jones on Switch, I left the settings as is. To my great surprise, he played a bit before switching the controls back to inverted. Actually, apparently there is a scientific study regarding this

that details why people do this and which are more advantageous for people. They concluded that standard controls allowed for higher speed while inverted controls resulted in higher accuracy. The basic gist of the study was that your brain has to translate the unnatural inversion, slowing you down and forcing you to be more careful and precise, whereas standard controls skip that step in your brain, speeding up your play,

but at the same time creating more movement errors and requiring you to consciously slow down for precision. That's great. Whoa. You have a, now, but you have an excuse if you're like a total fucking scrub at a game. You can be like, ah, it's because it's not inverted. My brain's not moving slow enough. If anything, if anything, my brain's too lightning fast at 4-9.

I got too much conversion going on. There's way too much conversion happening on the ground. If anything is interesting for you guys, we'll actually drop the link to the study, which appears to be an NIH study that was done relatively recently, so you can take a look at that. Cool. If I know your fan base, They interested. Right up there, Allie.

Okay, a question actually for both of you. This comes from Christina. Hey, besties. I've recently found myself back in the trap of mobile games that aren't very fun and barred me with fake ads for even worse mobile games. I've been listening to the backlog and good quality mobile games don't come off as often as they used to. Do you have any recommendations for good mobile games nowadays that will scratch the itch of something to play between meetings, things like that.

All right. I mean, do you, if I've been playing this game, idle obelisk minor for months now. It's, it is an idle game. It's an incremental game. And it's, it's pretty much the best one I've played. Sorry, I notice here, you've just typed into the document, IDOL obelisk minor. It is not, you're not collecting, you're not drilling into Hatsuneiomikus to like, drain them of their of their blue essence.

Wait, hold on, we got a game here. Yeah, there it is. It's on paper. I don't think it sounds like it does really anything that novel. It is a game about sort of like mining into these different ore deposits, and then you use the stuff to upgrade your digging abilities. You unlock drones so that can sort of begin to, you know, handle that stuff for you. What is so incredible about the game is that it begins to layer on like 16 different

different kind of gameplay elements that all sort of interconnect. So, like, you will unlock, like, pets that then will help you out with different benefits. You will start spawning in stars that appear sometimes whenever you mine through a thing. And then the benefits you get from the stars also benefit all the other things. There's, like, a fishing thing. There's, like, an archaeology sort of, like, digging thing. There's so many different layers. And it is so just the math of the game.

Just the math behind this game is so detailed and so, like, rewarding and satisfying. It has been my go-to, like, pick it up when I get a notification that, like, my, you know, offline benefits have stacked up to a certain point and cash those in, get some stuff, and dip out, like, two or three minutes. It's a great tourlet game when you're sitting down on the turlet. You can just knock out a little bit of time on it. And you can turn off ads. I haven't seen a single ad.

I don't think. Like the way that it monetizes, it is a premium game. There are like, you know, there's like a founders pack that you can buy that I eventually did because frankly, the amount of time I was spent playing this game is outrageous. Yeah. Because it does sort of add up over time. And I don't mind, you know, supporting a studio that has really enriched my days as much as this game has. It's got like a pretty hardcore community out there, like pretty helpful because it is a bit

complex the way that like all of these different systems sort of interlock. But that has been my go-to sort of like recent jam. That's pretty cool. Ron, is there anything you play on mobile? I know you travel a bunch. I don't play any phone games besides, I mean, even though I travel almost every weekend of the year, I don't play any mobile games. I think the last mobile game that I put really any time to was like Fallout Shelter. Yeah. I tend to either travel. with my Steam deck or if I'm not carrying a bigger bag, I'll have my A-Y and Thor on me. And I'm just a big, I think my favorite,

I'm not a good person for this question because all my favorite mobile games where it'll be just like ports like Belorough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would say as an alternate thing, maybe come on over to the emulation side, just grab you a $50-60 Amber Nick, throw it in your bag, throwing your purse,

throw it in whatever you got. And you can just throw a bunch of GBA games on there, whatever has you. It's one of the things my girlfriend I did for her. And she says one of the best gifts I ever gave her. I just had an old Ambernik sitting into my closet. So she had a long flight. She had like a 12-hour flight. So I just kept asking her what her favorite PlayStation 1 games were when she was a kid.

And then I went and downloaded them and put them on the Ambernik for her and had them on there for her flight. And she loved it. That's very thoughtful. Yeah, I would say there's two things working against the mobile game space. One is that it's never been easier to play actual real games, sort of in a portable fashion. I do like everything on the Rog Ally X that I have because it runs basically. I play Beast of Reincarnation on that mostly. And that game is a bit demanding.

Yeah, it runs it on my Steam Day. Yeah, it runs like pretty well. But the other reason is I just think that market has really kind of crashed a bit. maybe not crash, maybe that's not a fair thing to say, because there are games coming out that I'm still sort of interested in in iOS, but it's never been harder to find out about those games. Largely because a lot of the, you know, gaming verticals that focused on that industry are not around anymore. And also just kind of like the way that it has been inundated with either slop or extremely predatory, you know, in-app purchases or, you know, whatever. anti-consumer. It's hugely, hugely anti-consumer.

So, yeah, they are few and far between these days, I'll say. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's it for the reader mail. We have our dedicated honorable mention section. I want to talk. Can I ask a question? Oh, yeah.

We love to. Because I'd like to talk about it in front of people who may have thoughts about it. Sure. We don't have to go far on this. But I just was sitting and thinking about the game industry where we are right now. We've talked about it with the mobile space, anti-consumerism, which I think has bled over into the console and PC world as well. And then we're dealing with the prices of RAM and talking about the PS6 being over a grand,

being the new systems and nobody even buying Xboxes. What if we just stopped making hardware? Okay. And we just kept making games. You'll find no argument, I think, from any of us here. And honestly, probably not much argument from a lot of people, like, covering the industry. It just feels so antiquated. And even, I think game publishers think that.

Because I think game publishers would rather develop games for hardware that people bought five or ten years ago than develop for the new brand spank and whatever that only like 3% of people actually have. So I think it's a good thing to keep looking back and making games scalable. Yeah, we've talked a little bit about it, but I'm all for it. Like, forget about the new fucking console. I don't care. There's examples

that buck this sort of trend, right? Like, and I don't know that people necessarily love the like kind of walled garden ecosystem that like Nintendo has, right? Where Nintendo, I think bucks the trend that

has like completely swept the rest of the industry where they are making their own hardware and they do have like a huge focus on first party games and they're putting a lot of money into like R&D and have had somewhat mixed success but like I don't think anyone could argue that I think they're doing the best of this idea of like having a platform and making the games for it and really focusing on that and not kind of like proliferating all of their software onto any device that you want to play it on, right? And I think, I don't know why they are. I mean, there's a ton of reasons why they are.

Like, they just have the kind of legacy of it. And I think that they have a focus that benefits them. And they have done a decent job of like not going all in on a bunch of shit that has failed. Like, you know, connect or like, you know, having a, having an always online connected platform that you have like all that stuff that people, you know, soundly kind of. turned away and said, hey, no thank you. Sorry, your whole gaming console is based around that. We don't like it. I would also say that

their games, largely, not every game, but most of them, much, much cheaper to make than a naughty dog, high, like every room is precisely crafted, even though you're going to see it for six seconds. It's going to be the best

fucking room you've ever seen. If you walk into a room of Tears of the Kingdom and it's got one picture frame on the wall, you don't care. It's fine. Yeah. And all that stuff makes the games. It's not entirely altruistic, though, right? Because they are still charging like 80 bucks for the new Mario Kart game and they have to increase the price of the switch too. I'm not saying it's altruistic. I'm saying from a business standpoint, why they're able to keep things exclusive to the platform and not consider multi-platform is because they don't necessarily need that added revenue because they are not

spending as much on the actual development. The thing I'm looking forward to most in the entire industry is not a game. It is not some big update from hardware from like Nintendo or whoever it is the release of Steam OS onto any Linux or Android device that I want it on Ron are you aware of this? I heard of this, yes, yes. It's like there are hacks,

there's like game native and there's like ways of doing this that, do you fuck with that on your Thor, Ron? The game native and all that like streaming Steam platform stuff? I've done a bit of it not a game native there Game Hub Light I think I've used for it to with varying degrees of success

but sometimes I like I almost like being limited in my choices so to me when I bought my Thor I was like oh this is for DS games this is for Game Boy Advance games this is for older games games where I can use the dual screen

functionality I wasn't necessarily looking to play piece of game but then I was like I do want to play Bellatro So, yeah, I did add it on there, yeah. But the idea that you're like this process whenever you get a new handheld of like, I'm going to spend a half a day setting it up and installing that Android setting, blah, blah, blah, blah. The idea that that would essentially go away and you would just install SteamOS and log in and poof,

there's all your Steam games. I love that. I agree. Like, I'm fucking psyched for it. Well, I was just having the option of like playing the game I bought on whatever the fuck I want to play it. Like, this Seferia game is dope. I don't need this to play. Like, I don't need this 15-pound hammer of a game console.

Like, let me throw it on one of my five-ounce sort of little Android devices. And I don't know, when that option is available. So that's like the ultimate kind of like democratization of play your games wherever you want to. You're still going to run into stuff. Like, Steam is still going to be a pretty monopolized platform in that regard, not that they've been like the worst stewards of that. But yeah, man, like, I don't play my PlayStation 5. I don't play my Xbox.

I play the Switch because, like, there's still games coming out on the... I picked up Pocopia because that DLC just dropped. I've been playing that. Henry plays it. It's easy to play, like, local multiplayer stuff on because of the way the controller snap, but, like, all of that stuff. But that's, like, it. That's the only one, everything else I am doing on PC and on Bazite, the, like, Linux

hack of Steam OS and Rog. ally X. It's like you're jumping through so many hoops to do a thing and I think that's just kind of what people want now. Yeah. I think we've talked about a lot of stuff that we are all excited for apart from the games we discussed but I did want to ask Ron any

honorable mentions of other things you wanted to shout out specifically like movies you've seen TV show book, whatever. I don't watch anything. I don't do anything. I work a lot. I'm always just either work in her game and I would say I'm excited.

to watch a movie called The Furious. I bought it. I can't wait to see it. It's supposed to be a great action film. And then I'm excited to watch the new season of King of the Hill in X-Men 97. And then I just had a thought that made me happy, which was that I think if you were new to this country, you never been to America before,

or you're just you don't live in America and you want to learn about America. I would say, watch full series of King of the Hill and then the full series of the boondocks back to back. And you got pretty much... It's everything you need, yeah. That's everything you know.

It's a real sort of cultural education of everything that America has to offer you. Welcome to our wonderful country. You've picked a great time. Yeah, I had someone, I did a cameo for someone who just became a citizen, and I was like, all right. You're sure. Good luck with that. Cool. I've been doing a bunch more EverQuest Legends.

I'm not going to actually continue to talk about it. I don't think like on the show, but it's been out for a week and it's been fucking great. I've really, really, really, really liked getting back into that game. They've done so many smart things and have made it so almost arcady in how much the progression has become like faster and more enjoyable and really focused on not wasting the time of dads like me, which I appreciate.

I've also been playing a game called A.K. Hesolodal, like Axe-Soloddle with Henry, that is another kind of rogue-like sort of into the gungeon style action game on the Switch 2. That has been pretty fun. It's an old game. I think it came out in like 2023, but it's cute. You're like going around and you're doing all the usual sort of rogue-like shooter stuff, but also you're finding like eggs that you're nurturing into other, usually reptilian or amphibious

sort of creatures that then become sort of playable characters with new sort of abilities. And it's been fun. It hasn't been too difficult. There's a difficulty setting that you can choose, which I appreciate. Into the Gungeon was too difficult for him. But we've been playing this one together. It's been great. Real quick, I'm still playing a game called Blueprints, set in a house.

You walk around the two rooms. Keys, this is like round 97 of this game. This game is fucking life-changing. Ron, did you get into Blueprints at all? I did. I enjoyed it very much. I never finished it, never got even into the last room, which I know is not the end of the game. But I think it's a great puzzle game, a great couple game to just hang out in one.

Yeah, that's how I'm playing it. Yeah, I really, yeah, enjoyed blueprints quite a way. We're at day 102. Wow, man. I'm so proud of you. Yeah. Been living in it months now. Did you, I see you wrote Retroid Pocket Nova.

Did you get yours? Yeah. So I wanted to just mention it because I've only, only only just started messing with it. So there's not a lot to say. This morning I am very, very excited. But I will say just in the hand feels fantastic. My understanding is it is basically designed

if you want to play anything like PS2 and earlier. So GameCube. 4x3, anything in that. 4x3 predominantly. You could probably get away with 16 by 9, but it's going to be a little small. But predominantly is designed for 4x3 gaming. And just out of the box,

it's been pretty delightful to hold. So I'm very encouraged to try it. What colors you go with? The 16-bit, the S-N-E-S. style, which I am quite fond of it. I got that transparent, clear. Looking forward to it. Cool. All right. Let's wrap up. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to all of our patrons. You can go over to patreon.com slash the Besties. If you are not already a member, you can get access to the biweekly Resties episodes where Russ and Chris talk about the games that we do not cover here on the besties. We also do monthly bracket battle episodes. And there is a new one, I think. Yeah. Featuring Jacob Geller. It was a best. best rivals in games and we'll drop a clip in right here. That's not even what I'm saying.

I was saying I didn't want to sit near kids for the annoyance factors. Oh, okay. In this case, Fox and Falco are going to be annoying as shit. They're going to be dicks, dude. Is this as fast as this thing goes? See, that sounds great. They're going to be talking about the plane. The hell they could fly it better.

That sounds awesome. Do we want a factor in me that you don't want them both jockeying to take over the front of the plane. And this sort of just be like, sir, and I'll tell you why. Sir, you are legally need to sit down. So you are legally a bird. You cannot fly. And they're like, we're going to do a barrel.

I think there's a good chance that any flight Fox and Falco are on is going to get grounded before it reaches its destination. 100%. And I cannot be bothered with that. I simply need my flight to land in the place where it's supposed to go. I can't have it be redirected to Las Vegas because of an on-flight emergency of two bipedal animals shouting about how they're going to fly the plane and they're going to blast all the other planes out of the sky.

Like, I can't have that getting in my way. And Ron joined us. If you're a little bit late for the bracket battles from a few months ago, Ron joined us for one of these bracket battles, and that was so much fun as well, and we appreciate you joining in. I forget the topic that you came on for. I have to forget it, too, but it was fun. We've done a bunch of them.

I think it's about who you would want to be friends with. And then... Oh, yeah. Best roommates. Roommates. Yeah, that was it. That was a great one. Yeah.

Yeah, that was fun. I want to thank just a couple backers. Uh, these are some new backers at Patreon.com slash the besties. Kristen S. Lucy C. Hebes, I want to say is how that's pronounced. And Selenbys, thank you for being, uh, backers of the besties. I also want to thank a man named Ron Funcchis, who is lovely and currently on tour.

And you can see Ron in a show that I can. personally vouched for because I just saw him a couple weeks ago in New York City. It was fucking awesome. You can go to Ron Funches.com. It's got the tour dates and everything. You're going to London. Is that right? I'm going to go to the UK.

Let me know this real quick. Yeah, do it. Before I go to UK, I'm going to be in Milwaukee. If you live near there, come on by. I'll also be in Appleton, Wisconsin. Again, Ronpunches.com. But I'm really going on a UK tour. I never go there that often.

So if you come support me, I would truly. love it. I will be in Dublin, Ireland. I broke that. Me knew this right. Yes. Dublin Ireland, August 26. I will be in London, August 29th. I will be in Cardiff on the September 1st and then Manchester as well. And then I'll be going to Istanbul to go get my second hair transplant done. So if you want to come watch that as well, you're welcome to come and hang out. Live stream it. Yeah. Ronfunchy.com. Can you get tickets to your hair transplant? Probably they'll let you end. Hell yeah.

Awesome. Oh, hey, wait, we're going to be doing a live show also. Do we want to talk about that? Bit.L.Y slash Bessie's on Broadway on October 8th. We're going to be at the town hall in New York City. Yep. Doing our first and maybe last ever Bestie's live show. We've never done one before, and it's going to be a blast.

It's going to be really fun. Executive producer Justin McRoy is going to return to the stage with us, and we're going to do, we got a bunch of fun stuff plans. So come see us, Bit. bit. L.Y slash besties on Broadway. Next week, big walk. The new sort of, I don't even know if Frenslop is it accurate. It's not Frenslop.

It is a co-op game, and it looks like Frenslop at a glance, but it is actually like a much headier version of that genre. Amazing. I'm excited to talk about it and play it, and I'm excited for everyone listening right now to come on back next week and every week here on the Bessies because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? No. Whoa.

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