The Besties - Wolverine Is a Disaster

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Most of the time, we chat about games we enjoy. So many games debut every week, and picking promising new ones is relatively easy. But every so often, a game with high expectations ends up being a colossal disappointment. Wolverine, we’re sad to say, is one of those games. And yet, we’re making lemonade from lemons. Because all of Wolverine’s flaws make for a good conversation about what we expect (and hope for) from video games. Especially ones that cost so much. Speaking of expensive stuff: Frush shares hands-on impressions with the Steam Frame.  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!

What are you laughing? What are you giggling about over there, Chris? Yeah. Remember how, like, the Nintendo seal of approval. Kind of like, save the video game industry. We're like, oh, the darkest of times. The Nintendo seal of approval, it's building trust where trust is needed. Yeah, just a little backstory, historical backstory.

In case you're not 100 years old. Yeah. Yeah. They, Nintendo introduced the seal of approval because when the video game crash happened in the 80s, all these game companies were releasing these very shitty slopware titles that were like clones of one another. when you saw the Nintendo seal approval, you knew this was something that was officially sanctioned by Nintendo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm just sending you something like right now. And you tell me if you think this passes the Nintendo seal of approval because it's popping up on the Nintendo E-Shops. So the new Nintendo E-Shop game that everyone is into is called Hintai Project 6-7. And it costs $4.7. It's 80% off. Normally it's 1999, so you better grab it now. You're losing money not buying. And the title Hintai Project 6'7, the logo, has the hands behind the 6'7 doing the thing.

Yeah. And that's cool. The face is AI. This is AI, this is AI art, 100 fucking percent. Sure. Absolutely no doubt in my mind. Only AI could dream of gazambas that humonger. And it's just, guys, it's fucking, it's really, really wild.

I just got a spreadsheet of every Nintendo Switch game ever released to use on every game ever. And it is not a joke. You really have to hunt for my pal like Donkey Kong on there. He is in the vast minority. Now, to Hintai Projects 1 through 66. I was going to say that's the problem with this game. You are going to have to spend a lot of time catching up on the lore of Hinty Projects 1 through 66.

The mid-30s is where it kind of peaked. That was the height. In the 30s, yeah, I mean, when Peter Mollini took over in the mid-30s, like, that's for me when it really started popping. Yeah. You can create your own tentacles and imagine them. Where might they go? Who knows?

The tentacles grow and move on their own. We need to practice our Peter Malian aggression. We do. My name is Griffin McRoy and I played a game this week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the worst game of the week. Oh no. God damn, God damn, shots fire. My name is Russ Frasicca.

I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Bessies where we talk about the latest and greatest and home interactive. Entertainment. It's a game of the year club just by listening. You have become a member of that club this week. We're talking about Wolverine for the PlayStation, Station 5, developed by Insomniac Games, a big tent pole console exclusive for Sony. And it's, and I keep stepping on your business, Chris, but I'll remind you to just be

gentle and be Christian about it. You already did the mean thing. And also you're speaking in a minor key, so everyone knows where things are going. There's a few things that happened here. Let's let's analyze. Griffin spoke in a minor key. Griffin didn't have anything planned to step on my toes. And Griffin quickly passed to me, which he has said in his own words, is a sign that he does not give a shit about this game.

Here comes the rock, Chris. I do. I have strong fucking feelings about this game. I just don't want this one to be a bummer front to back. Chris Plant, what the fuck is Marvel's Wolverine for the PlayStation 5? Wolverine is an action game for the PlayStation 5 in which you play as the titular Logan slash Wolverine. who actually goes by another name, but I always forget what it actually is. Anyway, this time he is working for Team X, not Professor Xavier.

Mr. Bolivar Trask is ready to get hunted down. But wait, is that right? Yeah, yeah, you're good. Yeah, because then you're working with Dr. Nathaniel Essex, who's played by Troy Baker. And look, there could be a lot of cool stuff that we're about to talk about. Omega Red, Lady Death Strike, Tiger, Tiger. this could be one of our favorite games yet. And you're going to have to follow up if you want to hear more.

All right. I can't wait. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. It fucking sucks. It's really bad to play. I've not felt this strongly about a game. And it's like, I know that we're coming in.

This game came out last week by this is the nature of how we record the show. Sometimes it doesn't quite match up so that there's a bit of a lag. I mean, the game is out as of this week. So like, the humans. have played it at this point. I was terrified that this was going to be a Starfield situation because I literally was my entire time with this game, I was like, wow, I'm really not having a fucking lick of fun. I'm really, really, really super duper not enjoying this.

What if everyone comes out is like, this is absolutely my shit? But it seems like this game has been kind of criticized left, right, and center. We should table set a little bit for people that don't know anything about like the structure of the game, how this fits into the insomniac, development, whatever, just so people understand before we get into the sort of things that may or may not have landed with one of us. As Planned alluded to in the beginning, this is a third-person action game. I think if you've played any of the Spider-Man games, the linear chunks of the Spider-Man games, I think are relatively representative of the sorts of gameplay you're experiencing here,

although obviously you are Wolverine, so you have Wolverine Powers Clause, et cetera. But it lacks, fully lacks, the any open world exploration that I think the Spider-Man games are most known for. Yes. Yeah, no. I mean, yeah, it is a very linear sort of experience.

Which, I mean... Not necessarily a bad thing. Except in the case of this. I genuinely don't really know where to start, but I suppose that that's a good sort of like, transition point is talking about the linearity of the game and how it kind of wants to have its cake and eat it too a little bit in that you are being constantly held by the nose and pulled along quite literally he's following his nose with his incredible wolverine senses the internet

has called them fart gases farcasses the internet has not been particularly uh helpful in having the conversation about whether it's okay to have trails of light telling you where you should be going in the game because sometimes that's good like in a you know a spider man where you're in a giant open city yeah whether or not you need that on a straight road through a dilapidated uh sort of uh a jungle or whatever uh that really only has the kind of one way to go maybe maybe we don't need that um no it's bad It's just, well, okay, can I, there are people who are going to listen to this and they'll be like, yeah, but the game works and it looks good. And the story is like pretty fine. And to that, I just want to like, set a thing, which we at the show, I think y'all agree with me on this, try to judge a game based off of what it set out to do. Like what it actually set out to do. And what this game set out to do was be a big, spectacular action game with all these rich animations and compelling stories. and thrilling combat that you want to keep playing and in any action game,

combat that will allow you to kind of express yourself. That is the appeal of big action games like Ony Mush or Devil May Cry, is that there are so many options that it becomes a very expressive form of play. And it does basically none of that. The story is utterly torture when you are having to walk around and do nothing and just get pulled from scene to scene, which is... Let me give in a specific example. I need to give a specific example.

So the game begins, and the first chunk of levels is set in a military base, and you're killing a bunch of guys. I actually was like, okay, this is okay. I'm like, okay. Not hating it. Immediately after, you are dropped into the home base of Team X in Alaska, the snowy, beautiful chalet, filled with ne'er-do-wells like Sabretooth, etc. and you as Logan, known feral, fast, deadly creature that you are, get the pleasure of walking at a true snails pace through this house

looking for clues and talking to people in maybe the most glacial exposition sequence I've ever experienced in a video game. It's fucking crazy. There's one part where you walk down a hallway and then Sabretooth knocks a refrigerator over and so you can't walk around or jump over the refrigerator, you have to back up and go down a different part of the hallway. And it's that one like 25 second long little segment of interactivity was enough for me to, I really probably would have put the game down at that exact moment. It's not just that. It's not just that the game makes you not stab dudes a million times for like long stretches of the game.

It is that like the writing is pretty good. the acting is great. I think, I can't remember the guy's name who plays Wolfram, but I think he does a, like, a really interesting job with it. The pauses between every goddamn line of dialogue between Wolverine and Nathaniel Essex are like Octomomom pregnant. Like, not a joke, two and a half seconds between every, I remember when I found you in the woods? Yeah. Like, every single line of dialogue, it was, it was, it was beyond belief, truly. I would like to, at this point,

copyright a rule that I think should extend from here on out. I don't know if you want to copyright it. You might want to make it open source. Okay, it's an open source. You're right. Everyone can adopt this. It's the rust-frustic slow walk rule. And here it is.

You ready? Yeah. Your video game gets two slow walks in total. I wouldn't recommend using both, but I'll allow it. You get two. If you're more than two, you have too many slow walks. This counts all those Assassin's Creed games from years back where the slow walking was tons.

The fucking last God of War Ragnarok game had a ton of slow walks. You get two people. You get two. And you better fucking use them good. Maybe Cretus twists his ankle or something and you can use it for dramatic narrative effect. That's all that's like taking away the slowness of like that stuff. My biggest issue with this game.

And it's like weirdly not the thing that I feel like a lot of people are talking about, but it is not fun to kill lots of guys as Wolverine. Yeah. Yeah. The combat is extremely repetitive. You have the X button, which, or sorry, the square button, I suppose, does his sort of like main attack. And you can, you really do stab guys pretty fast when you're jamming on that button. And then you have a, like a diving attack that you can use to move from enemy to enemy. you have a dodge. So if you see, and it does the kind of, you know, Batman thing,

or if you see a red flash, that means you got to dodge because someone's about to shoot at you. Yellow attack means get ready to parry because you can absolutely shred this guy if you get them weakened or whatever. And the biggest problem with all of that is, I mean, one, even when they throw like special abilities that you can unlock and all that, like it just is so, it's so repetitive that it stops being fun very quickly. but also everyone is really tanky.

And so it doesn't even deliver this thing that I felt like was going to be the shit based on all the trailers that I had watched for the game of like you're just going to be tearing through groups of dudes. They're going to throw so many guys at you and it's like a question of like stringing them all together and doing stylish. Yeah, if you're fucking Wolverine,

you should be chopping heads off one hit. I have chopped shit off. It's so every, every rank and file enemy like is going to take a few hits. to knock down. And then like the slightly stronger enemies take way more. And then the boss fights are hand crampingly repetitive. Before we get to the boss fights, because that's a whole other thing.

I want to talk about this combat because I think I figured out what it's trying to do. It took me a while to figure out like what is the actual gameplay loop other than like smashing buttons and killing people. And weirdly, I think the gameplay's hook is to undermine the entire power fantasy of Wolverine where you get overwhelmed, kind of like Neo Agent Smith style. They send in more and more and more enemies. And while this happens, you then like build up your rage and then you get a hit a button that makes you super rage. And then you finally get to like cut through enemies and like one hit, right?

And then you lose your rage and then you get a whole bunch of enemies thrown at you again. And sometimes you turn back into Wolverine baby when you lose you turn back into Wolverine baby. And sometimes you don't even need the rage. you just end up just kind of bashing your head against the wall of of these like swarms. I think the problem is, it would be like if you were like, okay, we're going to make a Spider-Man game. What is the power fantasy of Spider-Man? And somebody said, it's beating up the regular just dudes on the street. And they're like, no, the power fantasy of Spider-Man is swinging through the city.

The power fantasy of Wolverine is not just that you get to like slice up people. The power fantasy is that you are literally unstoppable force going up against immovable objects. The best Wolverine stories, Wolverine and Hulk is popular for a reason, right? Right. Because Wolverine and Deadpool is popular for reason. These things are like, nobody can win, so Wolverine has to be clever. And a game where you are given any space to have thoughts or creativity would be what you would want from a Wolverine game. and instead they have reduced Wolverine

to the most id mindless button smasher and that is simply just not what the character is. I would even say, I wish they reduced him to the most mindless button smasher, but like because of Griffin's point of like the enemies, even the normal ones take three or four

or even five hits. Like a part of me wants just a fucking like Dynasty Warriors Wolverine game where it's like a thousand guys. More sense. So much more sense would be a dynasty. Like, when you do a game, superhero games where the superhero's, like, main thing is either invincibility or in the case of Wolverine, this, like, mutant healing factor, that makes him famously pretty hard to kill. Okay, how do you make that into a video game where you can have fail states if the character, if the player doesn't do a good enough job with the, with the fights?

In this game, your rage bar, which is like a separate meter from, from your health. You build it by like hitting enemies. You lose it for like taking hits. And it's like separated into different chunks. Like Chris said, you fill the bar and you go into this super rage mode where now you can run around in one shot guys. Some guys it doesn't work on. That shit even doesn't feel good. If your rage bar is has at least one segment filled when your health, if it goes all the way down, you get like a last stand where you fall and you see his face is like the metal skeleton underneath and you jam on the square button.

stands back up, right? But if you don't have enough rage, then he falls down and the screen cuts to black. Takes a nap. It starts the fight over again. That is the, guys, it's fucking, we, that's insane. That's absolutely a crazy bullshit way to handle this whole idea of how do you have a

character who's basically invulnerable? How do we make that interesting? And you didn't, like, and it's beyond, they did such a good job with Spider-Man. I think the Spider-Man games kick absolutely. ass because they focus on the stuff that works and feels good about Spider-Man, and they did it better than anyone else ever has. But this, like...

I would say, though, I don't think anyone on the planet was like, you know, I love the open world stuff in Spider-Man, but give me that linear. Like, I want a whole game of that. And if you think back to those linear missions, Spider-Man, they're fine. I wouldn't say they're as bad as this. But they're not the highlight of, yeah. But they're definitely not the highlight. I would say this project seemed to suffer a...

the board on a lot of different levels. I know there was leadership turnover, but the larger issue is it's really hard for me to imagine that even in like a white box early testing format, this game was ever fun. It's really hard for me to imagine that. And so someone should have stepped in and been like, this is not working. I realize this is a smaller scale project than a huge open world Spider-Man game, but we're either going to move forward with this or we're not. Realistically, I think Insomniac will be fine. They have a Venom game that they're working on. I'm sure they'll have another Spider-Man game

maybe more Russian Clank, who knows? They're a quality this is truly shocking. They make largely good games. Yes. I feel like maybe with the leadership turnover thing,

maybe there was a too many cooks situation that would explain the weird nightmare trial level. Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. Did you have something? Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, I agree with you 100% fresh of

when was this game good? Like, even passable good, because the combat is not as good as what is in Spider-Man, right? Like, if you get rid of all the web, the thing, everything else. It's like not even remotely close to as good and as interesting and is varied as what's in Spider-Man, which bonkers. But then also, there are basic design choices in this game that you struggle to imagine getting past playtest. there are XP batteries and other various objects later in the game that you destroy for XP. It's one of the most ridiculous choices I've ever confronted in a video game. I felt like I was losing it.

I was texting fresh about this having, I don't know, like a panic attack of what is going on. Because the game already isn't fun, but at least there's a logic to it until you find these XP containers, which are scattered seemingly randomly throughout the world. In the fucking woods, there's a glowing. garbage candy Wolverine hit to get to get X. It's like, and they'll be in the middle of a battlefield that you're supposed to be sneaking around. So it is incentivizing

you to not play the game the way that the game would like you to play it, the way that would be supposedly fun. And here's the weirdest shit. You get the XP containers, you build up your like upgrade points, and then you're introduced to a skill tree that is

basically linear. That might as well just be unlocking automatically. It's like an incest skill tree. Well, that's an insane way to say that. Because it has no branches. I understand the point. It's just fucking deranged. You get more XP from doing these,

going out of your way, making the game less fun. And then you open the skill tree and it's like, sorry, you haven't unlocked, like you haven't proceeded far enough to unlock your skills. So your reward for making the game less fun, collecting these crappy items, getting more XP, is to find out that you can't immediately use it

to become a stronger character because it's ultimately kind of decided when you should be getting your upgrades anyway. Can we talk about the nightmare trial? Oh, please. It's the craziest thing in this case. I feel like you are off your nut, Chris, if you think that that's the craziest thing.

Yeah, the nightmare trials are really hard to dial it in. Sometimes you'll be running along in a level chasing like people who have kids. You have just seen a bunch of mutants killed and kidnapped and you're chasing the perpetrators who have done it And then a glowing purple vine appears, and it leads you by the nose to a door and you go in. A magic door. A magic door that fucking Mr. Sinister made for you or whatever.

And it's actually your memories inside a cabin. You're in your memory cabin. And inside your memory cabin, what you do is you do little trials, time trials. And those time trials, sometimes it's like fight a bunch of guys until you reach max rage and then kill 10 guys. and if you do it fast enough, you'll get more skill points. But sometimes they're traversal challenges, like half the time they are traversal challenges. And here's a rundown on Wolverine's traversal abilities.

Jump. And it's not even a good jump. It's not a great jump because it's really hard to tell where he's going to land. Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me just hop in right here. This is another, like, what's going on? You do have the ability as Wolverine to jump like 500 feet.

Yeah. If it is at an enemy, And yet your normal jump, as well of green, is one of the lowest jumps. Your normal jump sucks unless you see a little tiny, tiny, tiny ramp. And if you jump off the tip of that little tiny ramp where the game wants you to jump, they'll jump very, very far. It feels goddamn terrible. And I think anyone could have told you, playtesting this game, like, hey, it feels kind

bad to jump as well. Like, just trying to jump and land on this little bridge, I landed on the side of it, and I fell off. and that didn't feel very good. So maybe don't make half of your, like, little in-game challenges that interrupt the, like, tension that you are building with the rest of the, of the, what little tension you were building with the rest of the game, uh, to focus on a part of the game that is just a complete fucking nothing burger.

Doom, Doom, the remake of Doom had the exact same idea, which was, you'd, like, do these little side quests where you'd, here's a little side challenge where you have to kill 500 guys in three minutes or whatever it was. Right. So, but Doom did not have these narrative sequences they're interrupting. Like, even just having Wolverine walk up to a training computer and have the, would have made more sense than a fucking magic door in the middle of a dead sprint while you're chasing fucking Gene Gray. Yeah. Oh, crazy.

It's, it's really, it's truly. Crazy. I can't believe that this got, that this got released like that. It really feels like so, so obviously. There's some other historical context. Okay. Yeah, what am I missing? We should slide in here.

Which is, there was a leak that suggests that there are many more Marvel games coming from Insomniac, like many, many more, that there is a long calendar of games that need to come out. And it would seem that if you're making this game, and it's the MCU problem, literally in video game form, we got to get this one out the door so we can get to the next ones. and I don't know what would have happened. I can't imagine this game would have been further delayed because it's been in development for so long. But it feels as if it had to come out, as if there was no choice. This game needed to come out because this is pure speculation.

We have a contract with Disney. We're making five or six games. We need this one to come out so we can make the however many more. And I would say, like, I don't think six months or a year even would have saved this game. know that this game is salvageable. This thing is fuck sense jump street. I truly don't think that there is a core idea here that can be polished. No. And this is a problem that we've seen over and over again with superhero games, which is not every superhero makes for a good video game. It's the Superman game right? Like when you're making a superhero game, you have to take a look at the Superman problem,

which is how you make a Superman game about an invincible alien who can fly and kill guys with one punch and shoot lasers out of his head and can't be killed or hurt and is faster than anything else in the world. How do you make that a fun game? I don't know, but I do know that you should probably figure it out before you try because a lot of people have just kind of done it and said like, here's a character action game and you're Superman and if he gets hit enough, then the guys had kryptonite gloves on or like give me a kryptonite gloves explanation.

Don't make him just fall over cut to black. And then this fight starts over. It basically feels like this game was the game that came out a year before Batman Arkham Asylum showed everyone that superhero games can be like something dramatically more interesting. Yeah, you know what's weird though is that game exists? It's called X-Men Origins Wolverine and it's actually pretty okay. That is the Activision game. Oh yeah, that was not bad actually. You're right.

Yes, I think that is also the game that originated, they called it, I think, like, feral sense, but where you could like push the joystick in and like see the hidden stuff around you. That's like the big, okay, so that is, I feel like the big conversation that's happening about this game is how it is perhaps reflective of a trend in AAA game development that they think players are not very smart or good. And so there's things like, I've heard a lot of people talking about like the treasure chest in this game are hidden, but they do like make a noise and they also give off a radar PIN that is so comically large that you can see it from so very far away that it's like

not even like a little collectible that you feel great when you find it. It's just like, well, I got to go get that chest because it'll have 50 scrap in it that I can use to maybe make a new a third of an outfit. A third of an outfit. And it's like I understand why that conversation is happening and, you know, all of this. I think that I think it's a conversation worth having, right? I think about the yellow paint on the mountains of the open world segments of Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and being like, why is this here? Why are we even, why are even doing that? That's, that's, that's, that's never been fun even once. I understand that conversation. But the whole thing is so bad. Like, the whole thing is so misguided and not functional that it feels like, I don't know,

you're reading too much into a thing which is this is just not a good video game i i agree it is i don't think that it is um speaking down to the player intentionally i think the game is such a mess and was such a salvage job that they had to put in as many of these things as possible basically to just get you from one point to the other to ensure that you were going to complete the game i think the the skill tree, the incest tree, is a perfect example of that. This game only works. It's only passable if we basically play it for you. Otherwise, it actually would fall off.

Like, the wheels would just totally come off. And I know we're being extremely hard. I feel like the reception of this game has been, like, middling for the most part. It is coming out after, you know, our last two episodes was Blood of Dawn Walker and then Onimusha, both of which are fucking fun, well-designed, clever, original action games, action games where you are fighting and killing lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of enemies all at the same time.

This isn't, this is not even, not even remotely close. I truly didn't have a second of fun playing, playing this video. It's also very funny to me because this is the introduction of Sony saying we're not going to release single-player games on PC anymore. Okay. Like, oh, that's fun. Cool. With, with a level of confidence that I just don't fully understand.

It's, for people that, like, bought a PS5, because we need to play all the PlayStation exclusives, like, all the last of us and whatever else, to have, like, your one of two games a year be this is, like, woof, that is a tough pill to swallow. So. Before we wrap up this section, just to build off what Griffin said, there are so many great things to play. And even episodes of the show to go back and listen to, we've talked about Star Wars Zero Company, Big Walk, Onimusha, Blood of Dawn Walker. We haven't even talked about the Metal Gear Solid Collection in Sprawl Zero yet, which are fantastic. We talked about Knit Classic, The Mermaid Mask Fields of Mysterio, Marvel Tokon.

The amount of, like, good games in the last few months. There's a good Marvel game in there. Yeah, don't sleep on that. Yeah, you can play as Wolverine in a good video game this year. It is just a colossal bummer in disappointment. And just a huge bummer for Insomnia Act. It really does feel like there is probably a lot of stories. It's the destiny thing, right?

Of like, gosh, I bet you guys didn't really want to make this like this. I'm sure that that's like... Well, I don't think they wanted to make it like this. I think they certainly said like, yeah, we can do a Wolfring game. But when you are being asked to do, so many things in this game are so disparate and weird that it does feel like a salvage job. And that's got to be, I truly do sympathize. I understand that that must be so miserable to like dedicate that much of your time and life

and creative energy into something like this. It's just like. Yeah. I mean, as I said, I think the studio will be fine largely. Like they have a slate of games coming out, including. what will probably, I don't actually know, but what will probably be an open world Venom game, and based on the Venom sequences

that we're in Spider-Man 2, like, fucking count me in. I want an open-world crackdown game set in New York City. Like, that sounds fucking awesome. Bring it on. So, the studio will be fine. They make very good games. This feels like an aberration, and hopefully not only them, but Sony

and really the AAA world at large will learn a lot of lessons from this game to say like, hey, let's pump the brakes a little bit before things get too far down the road. I do think every game developer is having a conversation about their fart line and whether or not the game needs it. I mean, I think the thing, to some extent, the white paint thing is overblown because I think

there are games that do it very well in a diagetic way that doesn't feel out of place. But, yeah. When it's lazy. When it's lazily applied. And no other sort of option was considered. If you ever get the chance, listen through to like any of the valve, like, developer commentary tracks in their games, because half of them are like player guidance

and how do we edge the player in a direction without painting a giant fucking neon arrow on it? Yeah. It's very, very interesting. Some of those nightmare trials have literal glowing arrow, like literal glowing neon arrows for you to follow on this living your pet.

Okay, I don't want to, it truly sucks to talk about games like this. I'm sure it'll come up in Goaty conversation. We'll take a quick break and be back. better stuff than that. Real quick, I have been using the Steam frame, which is the new VR headset from... This is the one that I cared about of the announcement.

Like, I want a steam machine that would be cool to have, but like this is the one thing that I've registered my interest in... This does... Also explain why you look like the lawnmower man. Yes. I am still wearing it. So just a heads up for people I know were audio. It's so sleek.

Steam frame, yeah. It's a VR headset. It starts at $1,050. It's actually the exact same price as the steam machine starting price, which is kind of funny. All right. Here is the,

I think the big question is, like, who is this audience for? Like, who is the draw for this product? And I think the answer is pretty simple. For people that want to do high-end VR gaming wirelessly, like streamed from your computer,

I've literally never come close to any stream game experience that is smoother than this. It is peerless and incredible. I was playing Half-Life Alex on max settings wirelessly, and I could not notice a difference between that and being wired. So that... Let me ask you a question. I think I remember the answer to,

but it also can play games on it, right? Like an Oculus Quest, like it has enough juice in the tank to play games. Correct. So the language they use is standalone. So anything that has standalone support, which includes Half-Five Alex, they actually designed a version of Half-Five-Falix that runs standalone on the headset, you can also do. And those games obviously look good, but not nearly as good as they would if they were being streamed from like a beefy gaming PC.

Right. Half-Five Alex in particular, yeah, you can notice the difference, but it's very playable. And honestly, as with all things in VR, if you're in it for 10 minutes, you don't see the details. You just sort of are in that world. then you kind of forget. So that's very cool. I think all the standalone, like, on-device gaming, to me, does not feel markedly that much better

from what I was seeing in, like, a Quest 3, for example, which also obviously has standalone gaming. So if you're doing it for that, and you already have a Quest 3, there's no, I don't think there's any reason to do that, apart from the fact that, hey, you can also use your Steam library. That's it for me, is the ecosystem, the whatever it's called now, the meta ecosystem.

Metagaming World Peace VR platform is like, it's like I always feel when I buy a game on there, like I'm just kind of, I don't know, that marks, something and then putting it in a little boat and then pushing that boat into a river leading to a waterfall of just like, well, I'll never see you again. And also Mark's eyes are on the other side of the headset, staring at you three inches away. And it's distracting, yeah, having his glowing eyes in the background of every game that I put. But having like, I don't know, the. the steam ecosystem on there.

Like, yeah, that sounds good. That's where the rest of my shit is for better or worse. Yeah. And I think if you are, look, if you play a lot of VR games or you think you're going to play a lot of them, headset is from a comfort standpoint. Probably the most comfortable headset I've ever worn. It's still a headset. It's still bulky.

But very, very comfortable, incredibly comfortable. Controller can be used as like a normal controller. So you can play flat games as well on it, like on a giant 150 foot tall IMAX screen in your living room, that kind of thing. So I think all that stuff is like from a VR gaming standpoint, like people that love VR gaming, they will find draws in it if they have the money to spare, which is not a small amount of money. Yeah.

As we've sort of talked about, the larger thing that I'm most interested in is that this will continue to open the door for Steam OS to be running on many, many more devices, specifically armed devices, which are all like cell phone chip. devices like all the handhelds we've been talking about. Currently, you can run SteamOS on a lot of those handhelds, but you have to do workarounds where you're installing like Rocknix or Armada OS. There's like workarounds to do it, but this hopefully will lead to the eventual release of a full-on native version of Steam OS on these devices.

I am so happy for us to get a trickle-down win. You know, tech has been doing all this bullshit. shittery that has made it more expensive and miserable to play video games. And the fact that all of this VR headset has somehow led to I can play Steam on my phone when I want to finally, that's the good stuff. I'll take it. I mean, my interest in this thing is way more, I don't know, direct and straightforward in that like I have played VR games that aren't like anything else.

Like I've, there are, there are just not a ton, but there are VR games that I have played that I, you don't, you just simply can't sort of have that same experience. Even half-life Alex, I don't think there's any one-to-one comparison for that game. I know you've played more involved VR games that I can't play because I throw up. Yeah, but even like taking out the like big major tent pole VR game, like I still will go back and play super hot VR on the quest because it's fun and it's, there's not anything else like it really. in non-VR sort of format. So, like, I don't know, people get so weird talking about VR as a platform, as a potential future for, like, games. And I know that a lot of that gets bound up in the, like, meta's decision to, like, make it so intrinsically linked to your Facebook and, you know, the people who run that platform.

I understand all of that. But it's so rad and it's so promising. And, like, I could show you a game on the VR. headset that I think would sell you on like this as a thing that would be fun to play other similar games on but but it's so rough right now for game development and it feels like you're really not seeing as many people talking about making games for VR not as much as uh you know I think that that was short up by uh the the PSVR is that still are they still making PSVR two games no no okay I didn't think so uh but

then like, I don't, but there's, moss, the studio that made Moss, that little mouse VR game.

Moss is great. Yeah, that studio just closed. Yeah, so it's like, it's, things are tough for everyone and I feel like the

market for, we're going to spend a bunch of time making a game that is on a platform that is maybe not so widely adopted. And also the like ecosystem is like inherently so fractious of like, well, you got it's got to be on meta and then it's got to be on. I think Steam sort of stepping back into the game will be,

That helps. Very good for this. It helps. But that is what I am interested in and what I am hopeful for, because I really like playing games in VR. Dungeons of Eternity. Yeah. That like multiplayer hack and slash VR first person game is like so fun and so good.

And it's risky, I think, to make a game like that on a platform that's not so, that's not in everyone's house. But it's, I don't know, it gets me so excited. The challenge with any of these boomer bust, I don't know, moments. in gaming and technology is initially there's a ton of investment money coming in from people outside of the hobby and outside of games. And suddenly you have a ton of games. You have a whole bunch of big games.

And as that money disappears, it's like we've created a false idea of how interesting and popular the platform is. Sure. And that is what I worry about here is how big is this audience once you pull all that money away and all of those resources? and suddenly you're having to charge people over a grand for this headset. That's the other thing, man. Yeah.

This is that it's, it's almost twice as much as the Quest 3. Well, and I'll say the Quest 3, notably, massively subsidized by meta. Like, they would not be able to sell that at that price

without that subsidization. Yeah, that's probably not super sustainable in the long term. Correct. But, yeah. I don't know. We've seen so many major tech companies,

they should have run out of money at some. It seems like that, but it doesn't happen, and that's weird. Hey, should we talk about some of the stuff that came out in that Nintendo Direct? Yes. That aired after we recorded our last episode. So we were able to talk about the Zelda stuff, but then they announced some new games, including one that has really set this household alight, and that is Kirby in the world beyond, a new 3D Kirby action platformer that looks like maybe an open world version

of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite games on the Switch. Yeah, I think we all knew that that Kirby team was working on some 3D follow-up to forgotten land, a forgotten Realm, I think is that game. No, forgotten land. Forgotten Land. Sorry. Forgotten Realm is like a D&D thing.

But I did not expect them. Yeah, this game, as described in the trailer, it is an open world game, like giant open fields, Breath of the Wild style fucking Kirby game, which is a wild move given when you look Kirby and the forgotten land, like, largely those are relatively linear levels. Yeah.

So, I mean, with little, little, you know, side path stuff to kind of find and uncover. But yeah, it was level based and this doesn't seem like that. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still somewhat like that. Like a hub and spoke kind of thing. Yeah. If you're kind of like entering little spaces that give you more of a traditional Kirby level. We'll see. The trailer is great because it promises the Truman Show experience for Kirby,

suggesting that Kirby has been trapped inside of some smaller reality all along only to break free from it and then discover the open world waiting for them. Kirby, how did this happen? Like, how did we go from Kirby being kind of like, see in terms of resources committed to the game? Kirby always a hit in terms of the merch. But, you know, smaller Kirby games. Then we get forgotten land, which is one of my favorite game Nintendo has ever made. I adore that game. And then to get this, even big, I, I'm not arguing.

I just don't know how it happened. I mean, maybe they, maybe they're like deep in debt to Sakurai for all the smash stuff. So this is the, this is the price that he has to me. I don't know. I don't know the reason for it. But like, I, like, forgotten land is so good. It's so strong. It's such a great fucking platformer with, with two player function.

that is really just kind of the best, really just kind of the best on the platform. I'm really hoping that that exists in here, by the way. I would be heartbroken if there was not a little, you know, spear toting waddley that, you know, you could play on because it, this, that was like one of my favorite games. It was maybe the first game that me and Henry got like really into and 100%ed

because of how fun the co-op stuff was. I really hope that that's in here too. The other big one, Metroid Ravenus, a new 2D Metroid game. It looks a lot like Metroid Dredd. But flips it, flips it. And now I'm excited. Metroid Dred, I didn't need a horror game. I like horror movies.

I don't like horror games where I feel like I'm just having to hide, even for a few seconds to wait for somebody to pass me. This time, you are the horror monster. You are like the slasher villain. You are hungry as fuck. And you're just going to start. I don't know. Eating the souls out of your enemies?

It looks good. I mean, it looks like she has a magic gauntlet that lets her absorb power or whatever. I mean, spoiler alert for the last game, but she basically like became a Metroid. Yeah. It's been so long. Or something. It does rock. It really grew on me.

I love dread. I'm stoked for this. This studio, which is Mercury Steam, has been making these 2D Metro games since the 3DS 1, Metroid Samis Returns where they remade the second Metroid game and all of them have been bangers I mean the first two certainly have been bangers They also did the Lords of Shadow

Castlevania games as well Yeah it's a great studio And it is a reminder of like Hey you can bring in new blood to a franchise And see what they can do with it And clearly they have a lot of passion for Well except they did do that

With Metroid A couple of times with less success Well, originally, Retro, they gave it to Retro, and Retro crushed it originally. And then Retro didn't crush it. That's true. There was also a Other M, which is not. Oh, yeah, other M is bad. You're right.

But yeah, I mean, this looks fantastic. I'm so excited. It does also, I am generally pretty good about not buying things for my house, but they are selling a $45 Chozo statue that looks fucking awesome. It's a scale. It's an amoebo. it is one to one scale, so it's nine feet tall. Okay.

No, it's about, I don't know, size of a football, something like that. It's big. It's got an orb you can smash? Well, I think you put the orb in there. You can put an orange in there or something. Nice. It looks fucking awesome. But I'm so excited.

I love these games, and I'm replaying Dred right now. So it's well-timed, and it's January. Like, it's closed for this title. Yeah. I think those were the only big sort of take away. I mean, they announced like Persona 6 is coming. There was a lot of like, and this is coming here too. Monster Hunter Wilds.

It's also coming to the Switch too. Metchoc chameleon. You guys know that one. It's on here now. I was surprised at how quickly that came on. Good for them. Yeah. I think let's jump into honorable mentions.

Do you guys have anything you've been applying or watching or et cetera? I mean, I've been playing a game that we're going to talk about on Resties. A little game called Metal Gear Solid 4. And here's my little, it's just a little moose-bush. I have found the least Russ-Rush-Dick game ever created. It is. I played it. Stonishing.

I know. I know. And yet I played it too. And I thought, I don't know what I thought. But I cannot wait to talk more about this game. We're going to be talking about that. And then also I've been playing, you all get into that sprawl zero yet? I have not played it yet.

Yeah. I played a little bit of that. It's not my thing. It's not my shot. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's not more, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not more, uh, it's almost boomer shootery, which is just kind of not. I think that's more your jam than my jam, but I, I, it is, when you get some shit sort of comboed together, it does, it does feel quite cool. Yes. We'll, we'll talk about that more in this episode too, but my short version is boomer shooter bullet storm and that is a very good way of putting it. It's delicious. Yeah. I've been playing a game called The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Really? Yeah, I was looking for something. Is it about a house full of puzzles? No, okay, so I have not touched blueprints since we got to the point that I last talked about it,

mostly because I have not had any spare time to do the very intricate preparation that I need to do before I can jump into that thing that I'm at. So we're going to pause on blueprints for a second. I've been playing Breath of the Wild with my son, because I was looking for something that I could play with him and I was like, do I start with Tears of the Kingdom? Do I start with Breath of Wild?

I am so happy that I start with Breath of Wild because it has given me a new appreciation for this game specifically because the two games are surprisingly different, which I think people sort of got, but I think the general response is like, Tears of Kingdom, just a better version of Breath of Wild.

Like, in every way, it's just better. And I think Breath of the Wild in some ways is a more precise scalpel of a game. Because you're really, all you have is like the world around you. Like the environment, the enemies, that's all you have. You don't have, you can't build a fucking helicopter that can drop bombs from the sky. You don't have that option. So you find yourself in these situations where it's like, what can I do?

And it just feels so organic. The other day we were playing and we got to the bridge of Hylia, which is a very tall bridge across the lake, and my son, who's five, was like, my turn, grab the controller and leapt off the bridge. And we landed on one of the pillars underneath the bridge, but we have no stamina. And so I spent the next like 20 minutes

trying to like math out a way that I could somehow get back to the top of the bridge without fast traveling, which felt like cheating. That shit is cool. Like this game is filled with stuff like that where you really have to problem solve. And... Especially in MasterQuest mode,

which I doubt you're playing that. It really turns it into a true sort of survival game. And like an amazing immersive sin, one of the best immersive sims I've ever played, unquestionably. It's such a cool experience, and I'm playing it on the Switch 2, so you've got the 60 FPS going, and it just looks fucking stunning and sounds great, and I'm like totally reinvigorated by it.

The only other thing I want to mention is I watched, and I'm very late on this, but I watched Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which was the Netflix series that came out, few years ago, initially build as a, just an animated version of the original, like, story.

Like, just like a... Fun bait and switch there. Fun bait and switch. But in fact, you learn after the first episode, it's actually like a semi-sequo... I don't know. It's like an alternate reality story that is, like, completely different

from what happened in the movie. What if Scott Pilgrim loses that first fight against Matthew Patel? Right. And then what, mostly what does Ramona do kind of like after that. Yeah. Very charming,

beautifully animated. Oh my God. The animation is through the roof insane. They got all the original voice, the actors from the movie to do all the voice acting. They got the gooch. They got the gooch. They got the gooch.

Yeah. It's really good stuff. That's what I call on a goch. I was getting close like that. So it's great. It's on Netflix. I've been watching something on Netflix with Rachel called J-Sox B&B rules.

So they're back story. During COVID, we watched a show on Netflix called Hayori's Bed and Breakfast, where Lee Hayori, who is a very famous Korean pop star and her husband, run a bed and breakfast out of their little cabin in the woods of Jeju Island. And it was so charming and so chill. And they really, they, like, cooked all the meals and cleaned and, like, really worked very hard, opening up their home and making it into a B&B that people can come and stay at. And then Gary Busey shows up. And Gary fucking Pusey.

Well, no, the show ran for two seasons and then people figured out where the house was. And then they had to cancel it, which is unfortunate. J-Soc is UJ-Sok. He is a like TV, variety TV performer. He's been on a fucking ton of Korean reality shows and different sort of TV entertainment things. And it's a very similar style show. Only instead of having like his house that he's hosting people at, it is like a special facility he had built that has like a gym.

nasium and like a kitchen and uh but otherwise it's like four Korean celebrities running a bed and breakfast for 24 guests uh who have come in and uh at one point. Hiori and her husband show up to like help with one of the like the second half of the season or something like that. I think it's a very acquired taste, a very specific taste, but like I this this format like the Korean variety show format is one that is like a vibe that I really, really do enjoy quite a lot. And it's, truly entertaining watching celebrities. There's like a moment of realization in the very first episode where they're like, oh, no, this is going to be hard. Like, we just finished making lunch and now we have to start making dinner. Uh-oh. There's a scene where they have to go buy

coffee for everyone and they bring like a big container, like dispenser to a cafe and get it filled up. and then realize while they're driving back up the mountain to where the B&B is, like the coffee is just sloshing all over the car and watching them like panic and try. It's like, you guys aren't built for this, but watching you try to do it to like make a comfortable space for your guests is like is really fun. Is that so nice? Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice.

It's a hell of a vibe. I've also been playing a game called Restory Chill Electronics Repairs. Yeah. I have it, but I really want to. Is it good? You run an electronics repair shop in Akihabra, and people come to you and they give you their broken electronics. And then almost like auto mechanic simulator style, like you strip them for parts and you

clean up the stuff that works and throw out the stuff that doesn't. And then you can buy like secondhand broken, you know, versions of that, you know, maybe, you know, a Nintendo DS. And you can strip it for parts and combine them. to one functional product and then get paid and buy new stuff. And again, the vibe is like really cool. The vibe is really fantastic. It looks really,

it looks really lovely. And I mean, did you play with a controller or is it like a touch? I tried to play with a controller. I downloaded it on the, um, Rog Ally X and it's, you can.

It's just like so much better on mouse and keyboard. Like dragging shit and dropping it on your little workstation. Like it just makes so much more sense to do that mouse and keyboard style. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. Stripping a PSP for parts in a video game and repairing it. And I'll bet they have like fun off-brand. Yeah, like they can't call anything.

Their actual names. Yeah, that's cool. Been playing that one and enjoying it a lot. I think we've done it. Awesome. You want to recap the games we talked about? Oh my gosh. What didn't we talk about?

We talked about Wolverine. We talked about the Steam Frame. We talked about the new Kirby and Metroid Raven Metal Gear Solid 4 Sprawl Zero Breath of the Wild Scott Pilgrim takes off Rehistory And Griffin, what was the name of the show? Jay Sox B&B rules

Thank you. We will have all of those I spelled it out for you in the runoff. It'll be in the show notes. Yeah. We also talked about Hintai Project 6'7. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, I don't want to sleep on that. Folks, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the best. Did you know we have a Patreon that you can go and you can support us directly and get access to episodes of the Resties that Chris and Russ do where they talk about the games that we don't talk about here on the Besties because they're so dirty like Hinty Project 6-7. And it's also where we put up our monthly bracket battle episodes where we get special guests to come and help us decide like which video game has the most delicious looking food because that's all, I mean, it's all there and it's so much fun. Besties. What is it?

Patreon.com slash the besties. Yes. Do you want to tell us about some backers? Oh, I would love to. Some backers over at patreon.com. So I have the besties. We have Jason K. We have Mark.

We have Ehrlich or Ehrlich. I'm not sure. It's one of those. And we have Sean M. Thank you for being backers. Thank you to everyone else for being backers. You make the show possible. You make the main show possible.

You make the Patreon possible. The whole shebang. Yeah. Thank you to everyone else for listening. I'm going to add here that it's very possible that that name was just Eric. I think it might just be Eric. It's very possible. drew a phantom l in there.

E-R-I-C-H. Right. So where was the L that you... Oh, yeah, no. Eric. Yeah, you're right. It's probably... Erich.

Oh. E-Rich, yeah, possibly. Eric's is a good. I feel E-Ritch with the game we're going to be playing next week. I feel rich in electronic entertainment.

It's Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave and the Nintendo Switch 2. Can't fucking wait. You're going to play all 200 hours of it, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think I might actually do that. So join us again next week and every week here on The Besties

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