The Besties - The Star Wars Game Renaissance Is Here!

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Sure, we expected Star Wars: Galactic Racer to be good off the pitch alone. A new studio, featuring members of the Burnout team, is creating a spiritual sequel to the Nintendo 64 podracing game? Yes, please! We didn’t, however, predict the game’s creator would splice a clever story and an inspired roguelike structure into the racing genre. Our GOTY conversation just got a bit more complicated. Plus, we discuss how Galactic Racer is one part of a larger trend of delightful Star Wars games that have a fresh vision for the franchise. 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 think it's baloney. I think it's outer space baloney that they don't let you name your guy in this one. Your guy in this one's got to be called Shade, which is top 10 most boring Star Wars names. They had an opportunity to let me carve my legend throughout the, throughout the galaxy as Jiz Bumpstow or Snizz Blasto.

His last name, they don't really cover it, but his last name is Shade Bazaarks. Yeah, they only say, it was. There's a single line where Sibaba's like, um, bazzoos, blo, blah, blah. And he says like alien shit. Yeah. Still a missed opportunity, I think.

I think they're really proud of the characters that they got in here, and they want some contrast. You know, like, they don't want you worrying about shade when you can be thinking about Biddy Blass. I love my big Biddy Blass. We're all Biddy Blass fans around here. It's just, I want to be right there next to him.

As Scump Drusgo. Something fun like that. A little Trans-Ocean little scoundrel. Oh, I'll whip my hair tails of people. Yeah, man. I mean, that's Twylex, but sure. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Planton. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Frosha. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Bessies, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club

just by listening. You've become a member. This week's for the nerds. Because we're talking about Star Wars Galactic Racer. It's a Star Wars video game, and it doesn't get much nerder than that. Let me put in my pocket protector as I ask my friend Bruce Flint to turn on his lightsaber and tell me all about this new one from George Lucas's mind's eye. Zlinks, this is kind of a spiritual sequel to both the burnout games and the pod racing game from the Nintendo 64.

It is made by a new studio called Fuse, who has, some members from Criterion, the people who were working on, everything from burnout to the late great need for speed games. Here's what you need to know those, Star Wars fans. This one takes place, I believe, between episode six and

seven. So this is the future of pod racing. What does that mean? It means that pod racing takes place in episode one. This one takes place between Return of the Jedi and... Palpatine, this is before Palpatine came back, but

But after he died. He got smoked. And Sebulba's still here. Before he was in Fortnite. But after he died the first time. Subbo must be so old. Subbo must be 500 fucking years old. We'll talk about that.

He is actually still a baby in Subalba. That's how they age. In subalban years? Yeah, they age 10,000 years. I can't wait to talk about. These movies take place over like 60 years. So he's a baby. Whatever.

That's what I'm saying. He's a baby. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. You realize that these movies actually. I fucking warned you guys. I warned you.

So dust off your calculators and we'll be right back. Wow. I cannot believe this game exists. I'm genuinely surprised that this game exists. I'm pleasantly surprised because I really did enjoy it. But the idea that there is a Star Wars game in modern day whose premise is, wait for it, don't hold your breath because I'm going to give you the entire premise in one go. The Empire is Fallen.

The world needs racing. That's it. I feel like Star Wars has pulled this trick a few times where it's like we killed Darth Vader. We took down the bad guys. And now the galaxy can't get enough of blank. This time it's racing. In the past it has been. Sabok.

Subok. It could be whatever. I tell you, gang, I didn't really learn a lot about this one until we played it. And I played it for about 35 seconds. And I was like, this has got Criterion stink all over it. God damn, this feels like a really good, you know, need for speed or burnout title. And sure enough, you got some Criterion folks in this new studio of Fuse Games. You just, they're like cockroaches.

You can't kill Criterion. You can't stop the signal. They're going to find a way to keep making tight-ass racing games. Unless he used a black gun, in which case you can. In which case, I guess that it is possible. Yeah. But here's the rub, y'all. it's even better than a Criterion game because this is kind of a motorstorm game, disguised as a criterion.

It's a little bit of a motorstorm game. Because here's how it works. You have different environments that have all sorts of impacts on your vehicle. So you have like really muddy tracks or like ice or lava or maybe you have tracks where you're going to be up in the air a lot. And then you have three different types of racers. You have kind of like a land speeder, basically a car. It's a really good car. You have the bike, which is very delicate, but can zip around corners.

It's a bike. It's a bike. And then you have the skim racer, I think so what's called? Skim racer, which I only played when absolutely forced to, didn't understand how to use it whatsoever. I think you're supposed to get these really wide, followed by sharp angles with it and create kind of a flow without getting stuck on your side. there's also it would be insane to pretend it's a secret

that there is pod racing in the game also and it's not immediate sort of it's not as available as the other stuff but like it's there

do some pod race it's crazy to think that there's not pod racing in it and they tease it out like uh oh here comes subalba and you're like

yeah no I know you guys are going to put fucking you guys of course you're going to put the premier kind of racing franchise of Star Wars in the Star Wars racing game.

The splash of lore that you got to know is like pod racing happened what 60 years ago or whatever and it was wildly dangerous as we saw it in that film. It was super fast. It was all gas, no brakes. And basically everybody but Subalba died doing it. And then he made it. Eventually he did succumb, but that wasn't related to the podcasting. That was not because of pod racing.

Well, he retired early. You know, he got out of the game while the game was good. And that what we are seeing now is something more formal. There's like a league, the Galactic League, that is making a lot of money that has these giant, giant venues full of gajillions and gajillions of people. And then the story is about basically the infighting of that league. It would be like if Tom Brady right on the cusp of retirement was like, you can't make me retire, I'm going to own the NFL, the story. And there's still, there is still time for that.

Yeah, you play as Shade, who is an amateur racer who hails from a planet where he was disenfranchised and treated like shit by the family of another racer. Kestar Boole, I want to say, is his name? It's very important. I can't believe I remember that. Who is a real dick, just a real dickhead throughout the whole story. So there's like, yeah, there is a. an element of, you know, underdog fight happening here.

Let's talk about the actual mechanics of the racing, because there are different vehicle types, but ultimately they're kind of different flavors of, you know, you're racing, you have an afterburn kind of boost meter that is constantly sort of recharging, and then you have a turbo boost called the Ramjet that you can activate when it's charged up, but if it goes for too long, then you explode.

Yeah. So there is still that danger, which... There is that dangerous. The ramjet, even more complicated and also brilliant, which is if you let go of the ramjet, if you let go of boosting on it, it fully empties and you have to wait to recharge it again. But if you hold down on it all the way up until it's just about to explode, you can ramjet for a long time. By the end, I was ramjetting entire lapse of the course. But it is living dangerous.

That's the core sort of thing. the different vehicles have different flavors of that, right? So the land speeder is pretty good at drifting. The bike, what it can do is when it drifts, it decelerates. But as soon as you finish the like break of the brake slide, then it re-accelerates to where you were before. So that to me feels a lot like Blue Sparks, like Mario Car, kind of like drift dashing. Once I felt that, I was like, okay, I don't need anything else. I didn't even fuck with the third type of car.

I tried that and it felt so good. I was like, okay, that's super sick. On top of all that, the game has a rogue-like structure. Yeah. When you enter into a season, when you enter into a league, you have one token that if you explode too many times on a race or you fail a challenge, you lose that token and you might lose the whole run if it was the only token that you had. Yeah. By default settings, if you crash three times in a race, you lose your token, you're out. And you're moving through this like Slay the Spire-esque chart of events.

And some of them are. Like branching and where you have options and you can pick between different races. I'll do this branch and then later I can decide if I want to do this like special event where I might run into a character who gives me a deal on some parts or it'll be an elimination event where you have to avoid being in last place or else you get bumped off. or it could be a time trial with a type of vehicle that you haven't used before. And you're moving between those, and if you're successful, you get upgrade points for, like, your vehicle stats.

You also get parts that can do special stuff, like increase the amount of time you spend in Ramjet or make it so that when you're redlining the Ramjet, it goes like way faster, so it gives you more incentive to push it. You're also getting abilities, which are similar to, like, you know, Mario Kart power-ups,

which are things that you can, activate at will, which will be things like a pulse that you can emit to like knock out other racers who are nearby or the overtake boost, which is a boost that is like pretty good. But if you overtake someone while it's active, it resets so you can like use that to chain your way through. So like all of that stuff is coming together so that if you do make it all the way through a season, your vehicle is going to have all these parts, all these abilities, all these upgrades. That may not be like anything that you have like gotten before while moving through these events. So when I saw this, all I could think was like, has anyone done a racing game with this structure?

Because it's fucking genius. Yeah, it took me some getting used to because there are permanent things you're getting. After you finish an event, you get permanent points that you can spend to permanently upgrade the stats of vehicles or unlock new models and new shapes. Yeah, that's all stuff that like at the end of a run. But even in mid run, the idea that you're building a build for your car where the same way as Slay the Spire. where the perks will layer into one another where like every time you drift you get more ramjet and every time you ramjet,

you get a faster boost when you're redlining and all of these like kind of loop back on themselves makes for part of the reason I don't generally like racing games is because I don't feel a lot of ownership of what's going on. I either get first place or I don't, but the decisions I made previously don't necessarily impact that as just how good did I do in that race. And here, everything kind of ladders up.

Right. Your successes in previous runs beyond just having, oh, I have 17 tournament points, whatever fuck that is. Here, it's like, no, because I succeeded earlier, I got more money. I was able to buy these two perks instead of just one perk, and they in turn pushed me to be better in future runs. Very cool. I'm going to lay out the problems that this creates just to show how they, I think, address them and largely resolve them. But by doing this, the inherent problem is one, ultra high risk. because you can make it really, really far.

You can put it an hour and a half in and then lose on a race because every race matters and you are out and you are starting over. And the other thing is you could win, like actually get through an entire tournament and then you start from scratch. And that racer that you really liked,

that model that you thought was like your number one, it is gone. And Griffin and Fresh both mentioned that you can get some permanent stuff, but not really. You have 15 upgrade points that you can peek out on on a vehicle, which basically means you can invest in two things pretty well,

and then you're capped. And then you have these cards that you can buy, but they're a bit random at the beginning of a match. So you are starting fresh each time. There's also the thing with any roguike, which is you're just playing the same things over and over and over again. All of that said, I think it largely is chill, because that variety

that Griffin was talking about is bonkers. When I made the Motorstorm comparison of oh, you can play as three different types of vehicles that was really clever at the time. Here, it feels like

you were playing entirely different racing games on top of each other. You can have somebody who is playing Mario Kart against somebody who is playing burnout against somebody

who is playing Grand Turismo and it balances. That's like the part that breaks my brain. The build that I ended up going very, very far with was effectively purely a ramjet build. It was all about boosting, living directly on the edge all the time. I had no abilities until like the final round. I was zero Mario Kart. It and it was unbelievable. I truly felt like I was living on the edge every race. It's so good. The roguelike structure is a really clever way

to make it so it doesn't feel like you're just racing over and over and over again. Because I worried, like, after my first, you know, failed season, which will happen a lot because it's fucking hard not to crash in this game. And we can talk more about that because I think that that mechanic is kind of bonkers. I was worried like, man, this is so punishing. I don't know if I'm going to be able to stick with this. The permanent unlock things are great. But also, the story continues on. So like you show up to the next season. They're like, man, you fucked up so bad.

But maybe you'll get to meet one of the other racers and learn a little bit about them. Maybe you'll form a rivalry with them. And then throughout the season, you'll have special events against them where you do one-on-one races and you learn about their backstory. And then you unlock special boons associated with that character that is also now part of your customizable loadout that you can now choose next time you start over a run. There are sponsors that you'll eventually unlock. They'll give you special missions. So now it's not just like win the race. One of the special side objectives might be like, spend this much time in

last place. Now all of a sudden you're thinking like, how can I spend enough time in last place to satisfy fucking Java's ass? But then also come back to win the race. You do that. You unlock a permanent specialization that also becomes something you can choose the next time you start over. There's styles of racing that you can also choose like 30 of them, that you are, upgrading because it'll be like in this in this style you start the race with this ability unlocked and if you do this for four planets then it will upgrade to the next level and you'll have this upgrade with it alongside so like there's like a dozen different kind of factors that you are some of which you're choosing before you start some of which you're upgrading with this currency

that is like permanent upgrades but most of which you are just kind of getting as you as you go and as you dynamically sort of form rivalries with racers, you may or may not crash into on the first planet of races. It's really, it's very, very, very dynamic. And I think does such a great job of making the game not just feel boring, not feel like you're doing the same shit over and over again. A thing I wish I had known before I started is these series basically that you compete in, there are multiple of them. And each of them feels like it could be the entire game, at least narratively. They're framing it as like, this is the most important thing on earth. And not only is like it a unique story once you get into a new series chunk, the game expands quite a bit

with each series. So the first one, it really is just teaching you how to race, like how to use the afterburner, how to use the ramjet, how to get from point A to point B, how to knock people out. When you finally do get past that first boss, basically, that's a ton of stuff unlock. So that's when you are hanging out with Subolba. That's when there is pod racing becomes part of the game. That is when these, you know, taking on special goals for clients, all of these different layers on how you can modify your vehicle. And that's that chunk. And then after that, and I don't go a whole lot further, that's when you get into, oh, what happens when you have three or four or five different types of racing happen all at once.

What happens when you start putting massive traps on the tracks? What happens when the game just complicates itself when you're actually in the middle of the race? And that layer of learn the basics, learn the meta, then have these really, really intense races is it's a great progression. But you should know it's coming because I think at times I was like, wow, is this really all the game is? and then the second I got past another level, it expanded even more than I thought it could. The story also expands as you go from season to season. And it does a really great job of that.

I won't like get into spoilers or anything, but like I finished a season that I thought was the end of the game. I was like, oh, so like the whole game is just trying to survive a whole season? That makes sense. It's fucking hard. But I managed to do it. But then it's like actually welcome to act three of the game. In this one, Kestar Bulls, a real piece of shit.

And you have to like, you're really fucking going for him. Like a lot about the league has changed since the last season. In addition to these like gameplay mechanics that are that are unlocking, I actually started to give a shit about like the characters and stuff, which. Who's the name of that robot guy, that sweet little robot guy who keeps showing up? Nollie, I want to say. Yeah, I love him. I see their names while going 700 miles an hour and sometimes it's very difficult to parse.

The, the crashing out. mechanic is... Did you guys adjust the difficulty settings? I eventually did because I wanted to see more of the games. So, yes.

For me, I was not having a... I was... Okay. First plan is very good. I didn't have a problem with the... I thought the AI was actually really balanced and like it... I mean, for me,

they definitely do rubber banding for sure. They do, but I don't know. It didn't run a foul of me as much as I've seen in other racing games. Like sometimes someone would slingshot by me, but like it was pretty

rare. I didn't feel, but, but you only get three crashes in the normal difficulty setting, and then you lose the whole season, basically. And you have to start all the way over. And some of the maps, specifically, Jaku, which is the first planet you race on, I had such a goddamn difficult time telling, like, is that a turn up there? I've got about a quarter of a second to decide if that's a left turn or a right turn. There's little lights that like flash and sequence on the, you know what that tells you, Griffin, you are not poor sensitive. I guess maybe I don't have the, force in me. But I had to drop it back to an easier difficulty setting, which gives you five crashes, which I found to be a lot more reasonable. But now I found it a lot easier to completely

smoke the competition. It wasn't a lock, but, you know, they would still pass my ass if I crashed, which I was doing somewhat frequently. And there are still challenge, like those eliminator challenges are also like one shot. Like, if you get eliminated, you're done. Yeah. So like, yeah, that is like, I earned that. If I came in last place, fine. That's fine. But like, if I could, couldn't tell because it's very bright on this fucking desert planet, whether that was a left or right turret ahead and I exploded and had to start all the way over. Like for me, that was, that was a little too punishing. Yes. I agree in just a little tweak, which is you very quickly get optional bonuses or like things that you can equip that give you the opportunity to crash

considerably more times. You also get more tokens so that if you do lose out in one of those survivor matches, you aren't totally knocked out. That said, it is seemingly most unforgiving at the beginning. And I completely agree with you of all the courses to have the most confusing, where do I turn, to have it be the first one. The very first one is like, not awesome. There is one turn on it that I bounced out of like two or three series just because I thought I was supposed to take a sharp turn in one direction and was going the wrong way. I will say this. There are a couple of ability.

The ability that I kept turning to was auto drive because even though you can't use it all the time, any time that I would get to anything a little bit spicy, I'd slam the auto drive button. And when you upgrade it, it's fucking 20 seconds. You could go make a T in the time it's going to auto drive, which was nice. Like, I like that safety. What was your build? I was using that. And then I was pairing that with the RAM jet that, yeah, increases speed as you redline and then increase the amount of time you could stay in redline.

And that was doing pretty well for me. I had one on the speeder bike that was all about jumps. So it made it so that when I was in mid-air, I got a status effect called cooled, which makes it so the RAM jet. Already, I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, for sure. What it does is it slows down, like, how fast you're using RAM jet. I also had one that made it so if you have a perfect landing, you hit the ground fully level.

It resets your afterburner to full. So, like, I could chain jumps together and just be in pretty much a constant state of boosting on the speeder bike, which just, God damn, it feels so good. Man, it feels good. Let me ask you guys something. My, I really love the racing. I love all the, like, meta-game stuff, all that stuff. As, like, visual courses, like, I could have used a little more Beatle adventure racing, super bomb. bad, just a little more life to them.

Because they are largely, like, apart from, like, the, when you're in an arena, but most of them are like, here's an empty husk of, like, a Star Destroyer that you're going through. And for Star Wars, like, that's pretty Anodyne. Like, usually Star Wars tends to be more animated. I don't know. I think there could maybe, my fix for this would just be, like, another planet or two. Because for me, the track breakdown is basically. like Jaku Desert shit or

icy shit or there's like a tropical wetland forest going through ruins that one's really cool and then there's like the arena the red salt shit is so cool god damn the first time you actually race on that you know red salt course like from Last Jedi

it's man it's really rad if you can't talk enough about the Last Jedi I can't get enough of this all the pre pre sequels I feel like it could use maybe just a little bit more variety. There's like one planet that's just like also kind of frosty. And it's like, okay, that one doesn't have a ton of personality to it. But honestly, man, you're going through these fucking things so fast.

You could tell me like, did you guys see the elephants on Nabu? And I'd be like, no, I didn't because I was going so fast and trying not to explode the entire time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's also a performance thing or like the more you put outside it, it, uh, I understand. It was just, would have, a little bit more spice

would have been nice. Sure. There's, there's a ship that flies over you every time you land on a new planet and I am like 90% sure.

It's the ship from shadows of the empire. And every time I saw it, I was the Leo DiCaprio gift being like, let me fly that, baby. Bring that back. Oh, I thought you were going to say,

where's fucking Dash Rindar? Oh, man. For real. Like, I wanted to race him. He's somewhere fucking is what he's doing. He's definitely, you know Dash Rindar fuck. I haven't beaten the game.

I have not beaten the game yet. Maybe Dash shows up. He's got to. It seems. He rides a fucking motorcycle. Yeah. I mean a swoop bike. I don't want to talk about the pod race in the context of the story.

But like pod racing is in it. How did you like the feel of actually doing a pod race? It's so stupid. It's like imagine, imagine. It reminds me of like in like Grand Theft Auto where there will be a mission where it's like now you're flying a fucking rocket. ship. Yeah. It's like, oh, this is so, this is too fucking fast, you guys.

The way they layer in, and I guess this is slight spoiler shit, I guess, but when you first do pod racing, it is through a memory of Sibbalba's. So he's like on Tatooine, like on the course. It's episode one, basically. It's episode one. And I saw that and I was like, yeah, baby, like, I'm all in. I'm fucking here, dude. I'm all for it.

That in 4K is. You see it in 4K, Sebalba crash into a big rock and yo, poodoo. That's my shit, dude. Absolutely. No, it's great. But it's not as fun as the other shit, I feel like, because I don't know. It just didn't feel like the focus. That good boost jet of the speeder bike.

I like that of like the, I'm sorry, I'm put my pocket protector on and pull my calculator. Dude, they're in. Do you have no reason to apologize? I like that it is super fast, but a less complex ship than what would come out later. Like the ships evolved into something more complex. Sure. Where you're shifting between the normal boost and the ramjet. And on that note, one of the coolest things in the movie is when those engines kick on and then like jolt forward.

And this game does that so many times. When you are starting the race, you have to do like Konami Kodas props. Dude, so good. To turn on the engine. And it feels like if you've gone and done the Millennium Falcon Ride at Disney, like flipping all this. switches and getting everything going. But then also, when you switch to the Ramjet, you jam like the R3 button and it just briefly like pulls your car out of, like, it's like you're like in manual basically.

And then you hit that gas and jolt forward. Yeah. And between that and the sound design, it is, it's unbelievable. Like it is, it is like a child. like emotional levels of oh this is this is like this moment is magic and it happens a dozen times each race it's so god damn cool I really I'm so surprised there's features we haven't even like like the fact that you can visually customize like all of the parts of your racer the fact that you can play as the other characters in the game like did you guys do any of

those like mini campaigns as the other characters no I didn't fuck with that I didn't do any of the multiplayer I've honestly just been in Enjoy doing the different sort of rogue-like seasons so much that there's actually quite a bit that the game offers that I have not had time to check out yet. I think we should actually take a break and then come back and talk about what's going on with Star Wars games in general because I think some of the things that are interesting about this game are part of like the bigger. What the hell are they doing? Star Wars picture? Yeah. I think that's a good.

I think that's a good idea. I want to just say like I didn't think much of this game. and played it for even like an hour and was like, oh, like, it feels good and it's cool to race in Star Wars, but like it just, is that just kind of a novelty. The structure of this game is so fucking brilliant. And I think I'm probably going to keep playing it because I don't really have anything else going on right now. And I sort of want to fucking kill Kestar Boole.

And I imagine at some point I'll get the chance to do so. I just didn't think when I saw this on the list coming up, I was not like, that's a goody contender for sure but man I've had some real real fun real just cackling playing my rog ally x and my kids being like what are you laughing at being like nothing subalba said poohoo you guys don't understand um let's take a quick break and then we'll talk more about star wars shit Chris this is a good opportunity for you to talk about zero company this is a good opportunity yeah for that well I'll fall into it sideways through this game and what it's doing well, which is these games as a whole have figured out two crucial things.

One, some of the best characters in Star Wars outside of the original trilogy have come from the like modern video games, especially like the side characters. BD1 is such a brilliant bot design from Star Wars Fallen Order that there are BD1s all over Star Wars land now. They're absolutely amazing. the bad dudes in this game, they're so good. Kesar Bowl or whatever.

This is a guy that you want to, he has a glass plate over his face, I think just because you know how fun it would be to punch it. It looks like a futuristic space golf visor that like a douchey fratbro would wear. It's very clever design. And Fiddy Blas is a masterpiece.

He's a crocodile that's just a very petty and always finding out that he wasn't invited to the coolest parties. He will crash your ass so many times on the course, and then the very first time you meet him, you realize that he's a two and a half foot tall little crocodile boy. That's really, really good. So good. And I think the reason that they are nailing these characters

in a way that a lot of like the films and TV shows are not always quite pulling it together, is these are the stories that I've always wanted since I was a kid, which is what is going on in Star Wars when it's, not Luke Skywalker in the Skywalker family, and it is not life or death with the empire versus the rebels. That it's just, I mean, this story in this one really is there is a league and one of its top contenders wants to take it over. That's the story. And it sticks to it. Like, it's basically a lot of trauma. Let's be honest. It is like pretty close to a cars movie plot. I've never enjoyed a

car's movie and I've liked this quite a bit. Yeah, no, I'm telling, I'm telling you. I'm telling you, in terms of all the representatives of the, or like real life F1. Yes, I would say cars are any sports movie. You know, it's like a pretty classic sports movie that happens to be set in Star Wars. And that Zero Company does this really well too. And the stakes are higher there because that is ultimately about a cult. But what that game also gets is this cult is separate from what's going on with the Sith or the rebels or any of those things.

It's a story that is happening on the ground. And we talked about it during that episode, the opening of Zero Company, how you start in space. This was in Rusty's, by the way, in case people were thinking that they missed it. Yeah, the beginning of this game is a cinematic where it's like the giant ships in space, down to their dogfight in space, down through the clouds, down through like a battle happening on the ground with all the big ships, down to like a group of foot soldiers. And it completely sets up what that game is, which this is. which this is a game about four to six people on foot. It's about inches. It is truly, the stakes are comparably low.

And because of that, you can get people who are just human, which makes them so much more relatable. There are entire chunks of story completely, you could skip it, in Zero Company, where characters talk about pod racing the way that they would talk about, like, football over a water cooler. And all of that, especially when I've taken these two games together, is such a cool experience because now Star Wars actually feels like a universe, which I think was like always the goal when you're kids, when you're playing with the toys, versus what I think it's felt like for me a lot since Disney took over, which is, oh, this is the story of like a massive war and like the very powerful people who are involved. And there's exceptions. I know Andor, I think is like the big one.

Andor certainly. And then skeleton crew, which I haven't. scene, but it's about. But even that is still about the war, right? Like, this game, it deals with a little bit of like post-imperial shit, but truly, I feel like it gets that shit out of the way. And the conflict is not just like about racing. The conflict is very much about, you know, class and specifically like this one douche who you are trying to take down, who has like way more money than you. And that is a, that's a tale as old as time. Yeah.

I think it's really, really smart. You never hear the word Jedi in this whole fucking thing. And it really, you're not fighting in any kind of conflict. You're just racing. Yoda is the final boss. We haven't gotten to it yet. You do have to fight Yoda with two lightsabers. Yeah.

Here's what I'm going to say. I think you're right. I think there have, again, over the years, been examples, not generally in the movies. It's usually in the TV shows or like extended universe stuff where people are telling side stories. And I think when Star Wars works at its best, it's being used as a platform for a genre. So Andor is a spy genre. This obviously is a sports genre.

And the fact that, you know, their names are silly and their aliens or whatever else is secondary to we're going to make good characters that are telling good stories. Well, and machines that look so goddamn cool. Yeah. The vehicles in this game look so radical. And I could really, you can cut. There's some customization stuff. Like you unlock new models and you can kind of like swap bits and bites it. I would love a full-blown.

Let me explode these things, Forza style and like get into the gully world. Like give me another. I hope the next Star Wars Galactic Racer game lets me get like into the, the copper tubing inside of each engine and really let me get it. Because the models look absolutely fantastic. It feels like there's warring within Disney about how to deal with Star Wars as a franchise. because there's going to be people.

They're like, I'm going to tell this ultra-personal story. It happens to be set in Star Wars, but it's going to be an ultra-personal story about people being friends or whatever else. And then someone's going to come in and be like, yeah, but how does this relate to fucking Ray

and her quest to do whatever? And so that's where I think you have these competing interests. The way you said Ray's name just there, let me know everything. Wow. I have no... I genuinely think Ray is fine. I thought the last movie was a war crime

that should never be committed again. So whatever we can do, if someone writes a really great story about Ray going to, I don't know, Naboo, great, count me in. Is that the love algorithm? What's that movie called? You love Nabu.

It can't rely on the fact that Ray, spoiler alert, is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine and because of that, she has great eyebrows. Like, it can't be about that. I, Palpatine, famously amazing. the eyebrows. In human form, before he gets all desiccated, that dude's eyebrows on fleek 100%.

Yeah. Frutche, what you said about the genre of stuff, I think that is spot on in closer to the truth. The one thing that I think is, uh, Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think got a lot of credit for doing something, quote, similar to that where they're like, this one's a 70s spy thriller. But I think it didn't actually do it in hindsight. I think most of those are Marvel cinematic universe movies. And I agree with. you when Star Wars is at its best, it's when it earnestly commits to the bit. And it doesn't try to still then fall back into what you're talking about. And I feel like that's happening in the games, either quietly because nobody's watching or what's probably more likely is the

rules that are put around the games where they're like, hey, it's going to be in universe. So we don't want you messing with this, this and this have actually encouraged it to be about these more just per like normal people stories to what griffin was saying earlier of like the war has happened but we are just seeing kind of the side effect of it i think that's the other stuff that makes these games so relatable like with your character there is a lot of talk of oh you were in jail how did you get out of jail and they're like well the administration changed like it's really boring reasons for everything same thing with like zero company there are these moments where what's happening in the wider universe, without spoiling it, take place. And suddenly, your entire

story and world has changed. Not because of anything you're doing or your enemies are doing or anything else. It's that the world, what's going on in the world is bigger than you, and now you have to kind of adapt to it. And I think this game does that really well, too. I also think that as they did with the um the pod racing and as they do with a couple cameos in zero company i much rather just have the big star wars star wars moments be the spice you know like we can peek in give me that moment now and then and then like dip out and let's go back to our own thing spice is illegal by the way you can't he can't have spice yeah man we caught you me and me and russ are space cops and we've been deep undercover for a long time

Um, hey, you guys been playing anything else you want to talk about? Uh, I'm closing in on the end of control. I'm like very, very, very close the end of control. Resonant, I'm assuming. Resonant, yes. Which like, it's like Revenant, but. If you said it really fast and a bee, just dumb. Yeah.

Uh, they, it definitely takes some fucking curveballs. And from a art design standpoint, there is no fucking game I've ever played that looks like this. That last, that last area is fucking bananas. When you are just zooming through that final zone, that shit is some of the coolest stuff I ever did see in a game. Yeah. It is taken some pretty wild swings, and I'm excited to see it wrap up.

And maybe I'll just continue fucking around the world. I'm not sure. I'm like a little bit on the fence about the combat and whether I feel like it's still sticking with me. But narratively and visually, holy cow, I'm like so into it. It's been great. I can't say a whole lot about mine,

just because Ace Combat, Wings of Thav. We'll talk more about it next week. But, I mean, people know my feelings on Ace Combat. They can kind of guess where I'm at with these things. Yeah. Good. Good, then? Yeah.

I've seen people preaching the praises of this game that I would not expect to be preaching the praises of it. So maybe, maybe this is the Ace Combat. It is an even better entry point than Seven was. As long as they explain what a thav is, I'm down. Yeah, what's the time to, what's the time to Thav? The explanation. I don't know if this is exactly what a thab is, but basically the plot of this game is you are the other pilot

who's Iceman or whatever in Top Gun. And imagine in this alternate reality, Tom Cruise dies and then gets trapped in your brain. And now you have Tom Cruise from Top Gun trapped in your brain as you become the new Tom Cruise. I actually have Tom Cruise from Digger trapped in my brain. Oh, no. Oh, no.

And he's constantly like, heard a hand around me Why did my money make more money? I haven't seen digger. Nor do I plan to. Do you want to talk about well-dweller? Oh yeah, I'll briefly mention. We talked about it on Rusty's,

but I continue to play Well-Dweller. It is my chill-down end of the day. I need 20 minutes to vibe out with a Metroidvania. This was previously Mio, memories in orbit, which I really enjoyed. It came out earlier this year. And Well-Dweller. God damn, did it really?

Was that this year? I think it was January of this year. of this year. It's been a while. But Well Dweller has been so fucking good and delightful and well designed and highly recommend it. You're a little bird and you have a matchstick as your weapon.

He's a little cute guy and he's sliding around the ground. He's sliding around. You can slings shut your matchstick into the wall and now it's a little diving board. You jump on that thing. I like that game. It's very cute and then I'll be like come with me to my house. Okay. And you go to their house and it's a fucking dead body. You're like, whoa.

Spooky, spooky stuff, well-dweller. I've been playing Minecraft Dungeons too, which I was looking forward to, mostly because it is a, you know, hack and slash ARPG Diablo-like. And Henry, my nine-year-old son and I played so much Minecraft Dungeons One because it really met him where he was at sort of, you know, mechanically, it had Minecraft stuff. But then the game had like a shockingly solid tail end, like a long. tail of, you know, grinding and finding different stuff. The game did a very clever thing with itemization where, like, in addition to your weapons and armor that have, like, different perks

and stuff, you also have different items you're equipping that are all very, you know, Minecraft-based. There's the fishing rod and, you know, a horn that summons a pet wolf that follows you around. And those are like your abilities. Those are like your main kind of avenues of customization that are like what your character can do. It was a very, very, very rich. We played it for a very long time. And now Minecraft Dungeons 2 is out. I will say the launch of this game was disastrous. Oh, I didn't know that.

Truly, truly bad. I had it ready day one. We got home from school like, let's play. And then it didn't work on Linux at all because it had to run the native Xbox layer behind everything else. And I searched and there were so many people like, yeah, I can't play it on my steam deck. This fucking sucks. And their response was like,

We never said it would work on Steam Deck. Okay, cool. They managed to patch that, get that fixed. Now you can play it on Steam Deck. There were server issues because you have to make a character who is either an online character or an offline character. So if I wanted to make a single player character on my RogalliX, I couldn't then take that character and play online with them.

It's separated. And if you're playing online, it's got to always be connected because they don't want you cheating because it's fucking Minecraft Dungeons 2. and the economy depends on you not duping items. It's that level of protection of your shit in Minecraft Dungeons 2 drives me absolutely up a goddamn wall. It drives me crazy. So that stuff has gotten better.

The servers are more sort of consistent. It's not too. He's playing on Switch 2. I'm playing on Rog L.I.X. It's actually not too bad to like get into his game and play along with him. If our quests are synced, then we'll progress alongside them at the same time. If he's on a quest ahead of me, then like, I just don't get any progress for that. That's fine, but I might get some items and shit.

The game's open world now. The first one was, had like a central hub zone where you would go to, like, buy new shit and customize your stuff. And then you would set off on, like, standalone missions that you could look at through a list. And then you would unlock, you know, very Diablo-like, like difficulty tiers where you could get, you know, more exotic loot. The harder it goes. Now it's just like open world. as you get stronger, the world gets stronger alongside you, so you don't have that constant kind of like difficulty to your push

that you're feeling in the original Minecraft. And you have to run to, you know, wherever your missions are taking you, it's fine, but I immediately was like, I would much rather just have the spoken hub. Yeah. Let me go out on a mission and know exactly what I'm getting into

because it kind of sucks to like not know if this thing we're about to go set off and do is going to be 15 minutes, or is it going to be like an hour-long quest and in a super difficult boss fight? That shit is kind of annoying. And then there's like a million little decisions they've made that are so weird and bad. The chief among them being this.

And it's truly unfathomable for a game in this genre that you can't see the stats on any of the items that you have. Stats have like a flat numerical level. So it'll be like, oh, I found this level 18. sword. Sure. And I guess that's better than my level 16 dagger, but it doesn't tell you what the damage is. It doesn't tell you like attack speed, anything along those lines. It doesn't tell you, you know, what the damage resistance of your armor is. It's just like, here's the level of the thing. And then sometimes like you'll find enchantments that you can like bake onto your items.

It'll be like, this thing does a little bit more damage. How much, this will do 20% more damage. 20% more than fucking what? Like, I don't, it, it is really a detriment, I think, to the game that it doesn't show you any of the fucking math whatsoever on a game that is like all about farming items to have better math. Like, it really is kind of taking the wind out of our sales. So, like, I don't know, it does a lot of, it gives you a lot more customization options. You have like these passive perks you're equipping and there's like a, you know, a bunch of

stuff like that. but it feels a lot shallower than Minecraft Dungeons 1, which had the benefit of like DLC and a bunch of expansions and stuff to add on to it. And maybe they can, maybe they can, you know, build this out a little bit more. But it is not set our world on fire to the extent that I was sort of hoping that it would.

Because I really liked playing kind of a crunchy action RPG with him in this, you know, in this format. It's not like really any other, he's too young to play Diablo or, you know, any other kind of game in that genre. And I don't know, this one just hasn't, this one has not kept us, kept us coming as much as the first one did. Interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have, wouldn't have guessed, but I guess maybe I should have guessed. Yeah, I, yeah. I could see them tweaking some stuff showing what the goddamn stuff does in the game.

It would be a great start. There's one really great tool tip I saw online where there's like different levels of this at champion. you can apply. But because it doesn't show you any of the math, the description is the exact same for all the levels. So you dash forward and do some damage to enemies. Cool. It's like, okay, great. That's awesome.

Great. I got to make sure I save up for that. That's so funny. At the open world thing is like, I don't know, kind of a whiff. We've hit a couple parts where it's like the, there's a little guide fairy that can like show you where to go, but sometimes it does not tell you to go the right place

and it'll take you to a locked door without like any information on, how you're supposed to get past, so we've gotten stuck on that shit. Griffin, have you played any of the Hammer Watch games with him? I've not. You know, I had that thought, actually, with the kind of cool reception to this is that Heroes of Hammer Watch just had an expansion,

and I had to, I lost my save file somehow, so I didn't really want to start over, but like, if we played it together, like, could be fun. I also really like the first Hammer Watch that ever came out, which was more of like a gauntlet style thing. It doesn't have the permanent progression, but like really fun and interesting as well.

So that's great. That might be a good. I was genuinely truly hoping that this one would get its hooks in us because we really played that last game for such a long time. And I doubt very much that that will be true here, which is pretty disappointing. Anything else, guys? I just saw some news. Donald McDonald, Donald McDonald, not Ronald McDonald, Donald McDonald in Japan is having his name change to Ronald McDonald. Is his name Donald in Japan?

His name is Donald McDonald in Japan, and he's just becoming yet another Ronald McDonald in Japan. Sorry, so he was called Donald McDonald, but they're changing his name. The McDonald's mascot in Japan was named Donald McDonald's, Donald McDonald's, but now he's Ronald McDonald's. Yeah, so now Donald McDonald's is Ronald McDonald's. Why is this happening? Why is this happening here, of all places? Is it your, because you're a tattoo, Chris? My Donald McDonald tattoo is completely meaningless now

Yeah, there's no way you can change that Is meaningless Yeah And the D is huge The D on Donald is like enormous I'm realizing as you say it though Not hard to turn a D to R No, you can really just kind of give it some pants

I'm less worried now Never mind I was like Am I going to have to close the show? Like what are we going to do? Hey, if you live in New York City And you're listening to this the episode This episode of the day it comes out You should come and see us live

because we're going to be performing at the town hall theater in New York City. That's right. Tonight, October 9th, bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. It's tonight. Get your tickets now. Oh, I skipped over the part of the show where Chris tells us about all the games we've talked about. Sorry, Chris. Oh, yeah, we talked about so many games.

We talked about Star Wars Galactic Racer. We talked about Star Wars Zero Company, Ace Combat, Wings of Thave, Minecraft Dungeons 2, control resonant, well-dweller, Donald McDonald, Ronald McDonald. sure all of it yeah we got a patreon over at patreon.com slash the besties if you go and support us there one thank you that is a very direct way of supporting the show and also you'll get access to episodes of the resties where chris and rest talk about other games that we don't talk about usually here on the show like welldweller and you can also get access to our monthly bracket battle episodes where we decide a very very inane things related to games with very funny friends.

Do you want to thank some of our backwards? Well, I want to mention actually speaking of a funny friend, Jordan Morris just joined us. And we actually have a clip from that episode. What's the best healing? From a utility standpoint. Yeah. Yeah.

And maybe it's not just heals you the best, but also like how valuable is it in a healing situation. Yeah, that's insane. The fucking sentence you just said is going to make me go crazy the longer I think about it. I can explain it to you. Yeah. Before you explain it, just repeat it back for everyone to hear. Word for word, don't change anything.

Don't change words. Which healing item is more valuable to you in a healing situation? Yeah, no, it's still fucked up. Do you want me to explain it to you? Yeah, please. Okay. Okay. So the example that comes to my mind,

look at the Maximum Tomatoes. A good example. We talked about it previously. Throughout Kirby, there's fucking food everywhere. Maximum Tomato is the best food. Right. But it is not necessarily from a feast or famine. I see what you're saying, or I'm toast situation.

This is a lifesaver. So you're taking into account, like, how difficult the game is, how often you're offered healing items. I like that. Hunger is the best condiment, I think. It's the more seasoning. And so I need to write that exact language down so we don't forget it. Which healing item is the best? Is the most valuable in a healing situation.

Uh-huh. We've all been in healing situations before. Bernie, for me, this year was a huge healing situation. situation. Oh yeah. Right. Yes. Really discovered my wounds and saw to them. Okay. And then tiebreakers, if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, which would it be. Okay. Yeah. Or I guess drink. There are drinks in this. Yeah. And we actually, their first matchup has two drinks. So we're going to come out. It's so interesting that you think one of these is a drink. But let's get started. Chris, what have we got? I was just going to be a hot dog as a sandwich shit. Because I can't do. I swear to Christ. Hey, Jordan. We're not delineating. It's fine if they're a drink. It's okay. Of everyone we've ever had on the show, Jordan, I would I would never put you through that.

Never. I would never make you listen to that. And if you even suggest that we need to argue about if die hard is a Christmas movie. That was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun with Jordan, and we thank him for coming out. We do have some backers. I want to thank Alex R. David B., Michael V.

And Robert L. Thank you for being backers. And thank you to everyone else for being backers and making the show possible. And thank you to everyone to everyone for coming to the live show tonight. If you're there, if you're not there, that's okay. We're with you in spirit. Crazy. Crazy thing to say.

I mean, we are. Next week, we're going to be doing ace combat wings of theft. Chris Plan has brought this upon us. So it's going to happen. It better be good, Chris. That's all I'm saying. Are your asses great, my friend? So join us for that next week and every week here on the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!