The Besties - Won't Someone Think of Alderaan?

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

This week's topic of discussion is the new Star Wars: Squadrons! Together the Besties unpack the lineage of Star Wars flight games. Offer positive reviews for the multiplayer mode. And explore how the game expands into the franchise’s extended universe like never before. Plus, offer up some recent releases they’re playing and answer the fan submitted question of which spacecraft they would eat if forced to? 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 know we don't do a lot in terms of continuity on this show, but I wanted to sort of end the cereal trilogy, if you will, with some interesting events that happened yesterday. Okay, okay. Let me see if I can predict which sort of storyline we're following. Does it have something to do with an egg sandwich? Well, no, it's about the cereal. Cereal.

I thought, okay, yes. It's a cereal cereal, right, technically? It is. Do you want to bring people up to speed with where we are so far? Russ had a lot of cereal. Russ had 18 boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats, and he got hit by a truck, and they went flying everywhere, and it was hysterical. Yeah.

I remember that. That brings us up to speed. So, last, I would say, month or so, I've been having some difficulty swallowing which was weird and so i went to and it's because you're trying to eat too many frosts in many ways you got too many of them in there at once you are surprisingly not that far off base i went to a uh ent an ear nose and throat doctor yesterday um and uh they were very curious as to why i felt that way and apparently the only way to look into it is by sending a camera down there to check things out yeah apparently the mouth is not where you send that camera it goes right up the old schnoz oh no oh beans yeah so they so they sent

a camera up my nose and he's like yeah yeah, you probably have acid reflux. Here's some medication and just like be mindful of what you're eating. And then I did a bunch of research. So now in hindsight, it turns out that maybe having a bowl of cereal every night before I went to bed for the last six months, not the best idea. I love that. I used to do that all the time i love that that's such a pleasant way to relax what problems did it cause you russ uh horrible acid reflux yeah follow the follow the plot but your body i don't think your body cares to digest that for you

i mean it was just it was causing a lot of problems i guess all that cereal i mean i had to power through what was the alternative not eat the cereal not eating the frosted minis yeah you have all are you talking in the scopes of bowls or boxes like you had to power through because you had all these boxes of frosted minis yeah i have boxes boxes and boxes you could just not eat that or give them to somebody or distribute them amongst your friends what he's no he's gonna curse somebody else with this terrible debilitating right order and we're also in the heart of pandemic country you think i'm just gonna share cereal all right it seems smart yeah who's gonna be like uh so how'd you get covet i went over my friend my broken friend russ's house to take all his cereal from him

and i got the covet that way i had him that would. I had to get a nose camera procedure done during this wonderful quarantine as well, Russ. And before I could get it done, I had to get a COVID test. And it was a drive-through thing. So a woman in full protective gear came to my window, rolled down my window, and jammed this thing up my nose.

And she pulled it out, and she looked at me, and she said, oh, I got a little boogie on there. And I wanted to be like, I'm 33. You can't talk to me like that. I'm a grown adult, man. It's a big boogie. It's a man's boogie.

This is probably our grossest intro yet. my name is just mcelroy and i know the best game of the week red three griffin mcelroy reporting in for the best game of the week and information my name is russ russing and i have no the best stars of the week gwyneth paltrow is one of them welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment uh this is a game of the year show that goes all year long. It's like a book club for video games. We are so happy to be back with you in this sort of, the games are back, folks. We had a little bit of a dry spot, but boy howdy,

the games are here and they are playable. Now, the four of us were doing a strafing run on a Star Destroyer. Chris Plant's A-Wing got blown right out of the sky. So he got blown up. playable now the four of us were doing a strafing run on a star destroyer chris plants a wing got blown right out of the sky so he's he got blown up so that's why a lot of chris plants died to bring us this episode of podcast well he's in that tube that like blue tube that lou skywalker goes into to like heal up so he'll probably be back in the near future but for this episode he's in the tube uh what are we talking about this week rest why it's star wars squadrons what's that star wars squadrons is a space flight sim from

the folks at ea motive um it basically comes in the vein of old school flight sims like x-wing and tie fighter if you've never played a space fight sim before, you fly through space and shoot bad guys and sometimes good guys in this case. This game is sort of a throwback to that era and has caused a lot of people to go out and buy flight sticks for the first time in 30 years. Big year for flight sticks. It is.

It is a big year. So we'll be back to talk about this very soon. But until then, stay tuned. We promise that this episode won't make you yawn. I mean, it's no Star Wars Episode I battle for Naboo for the Nintendo 64. Let's start off by saying that. No Star Wars Episode I podcast racer.

Yes, that too. Podcast racer was not the name of that. It's Episode I Racer, not Podcast Racer. That was a good game, actually. That game was sick as hell. Yeah. It actually isn't as good as that. There was a church camp that I used to go to

that had a Podracer arcade machine in the cafeteria. And while I maybe didn't get a lot out of some of the programming at this event, the Podracing was pretty tight. Do you think that's like a donation thing? How much of their donations went to just paying for the Podracing stand-up arcade? I mean, you had to pay money to go to Church Camp, Russ. I know that this is probably an alien concept but you did have to you didn't there was an entry fee okay so so what percentage

of your entry fee went to paying for the it was not a very well-maintained arcade machine so i'm gonna guess not very much uh we've immediately gotten off track this is kind of an interesting um it's not it's not technically a franchise right but there is like there's very clearly a lineage here of star wars flight games yeah you know uh do either of you have sort of experience going in with yes with uh this this sub genre yeah i don't have the years in front of me but i can give you ballpark years i mean it was a weirdly condensed it was like late 90s early aughts like there was like a five-year window there where there were star wars flight games coming out every single like two a year like it was yeah it was in the heart of the 90s and it started with

x-wing um which uh was effectively you, a traditional fight sim with like a narrative about how you're an X-Wing pilot and you go and fight the Empire and blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, pretty standard stuff. That was followed up with TIE Fighter, where same idea, but in this case, obviously you're fighting for the Empire. I think in both cases, actually, it was like narratively, they were very strong, interesting games. And the fact that they came out when they did meant you had like 3d games before 3d games were really a thing, or at least not super popular, because they didn't have environments, right? It was just in space. So you could really do a lot if you were just

having these like little models flying around the screen so after those two there was uh x-wing versus tie fighter and x-wing alliance and i think that was basically the end of this like run it was like those four games uh and they all basically followed the same model um and i think this game is very much comes that lineage. Well, there was also the Rogue Squadron trilogy, which was its own sort of thing, right? Like X-Wing, it's so funny because I feel like you do, if you look back at both of those sub-franchises, the Rogue Squadron and the X-Wing TIE Fighter thing,

like X-Wing TIE Fighter was more simmy while Rogue Squadron was a bit more arcadey. And I think Star Wars Squadrons like actually splits the difference between the two of them, like really very well. But I didn't have a lot of experience with those. And I will admit to like not,

this is not my like particular cup of tea, but this is also one of those cases where I recognize that I, This is not my particular cup of tea, but this is also one of those cases where I recognize that this is a quality title from those game wizards at Electronic Arts Entertainment. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Here's what I will say. I do not think any sort of awareness

of those previous games is necessary. No. It is very light in terms of hardcore i'm sure you could get more hardcore with it um there are definitely options for that um i i would say that though it's pretty basic i mean in terms of what you have the flexibility to do you're the only sort of uh real nuance is sort of diverting power between three systems, which is your shields, your blasters, and speed slash maneuverability, where you can just hit a button on the D-pad and sort of put more energy into those systems that make you faster or make your guns shoot better or make your shields better. You can also change the direction of your shields sort of on the fly. So if you've got uh bad people behind you um you can you can take them out that way uh i will say this wasn't really clicking for me at first um because it's very it's kind of a slow starter i would say the the sort of dog fights are at the beginning are very simplistic there's a lot of talking there's a lot of like follow me

to this place over here um but once you get, and there also wasn't that much need to sort of explore these more advanced systems. But I will say like, as you get further into the campaign and as you, these battles start to take on a bigger scale, you really do need to lean into those systems. And it feels good. Like it feels good to need to catch somebody and you switch full power to speed to catch them. And then you switch to your, you know, guns to blast them and like zipping around through. The mission where it really got me was I had to like defend

these two, a bunch of y-wings uh and chase down some tie fighters that were trying to blow them up and i was like slipping in between a huge chunks of debris yeah uh and it felt cool like it felt like really really neat and grounded in in a way that like space combat games aren't typically. Yeah, for me, it didn't really click until I got into the multiplayer, which I am absolutely dogshit at, but I've never had so much fun playing something that I am so terrible at.

My KD Rache is an absolute joke in these matches. But all of that stuff, like Justin said, it's really your your piloting comes down to how you push power to various systems stuff like your your aim and which like uh things you have slotted into your loadout things like repair droids or uh missiles or uh i think there's like a turret type thing. You can like switch between those at will. And then there's also your throttle,

which you can like burst to full if you want to catch up with somebody or you can drop down to zero if you want extra maneuverability. So like, it's very arcadey in that sense that like, it seems like you have a very limited list of things that you can do. But when you are in a match with four other pilots uh against five enemy pilots all using these same systems in a you know fully 3d space like the complexity of those systems and

the skill ceiling of those systems becomes immediately apparent when you get like fully shit on but it does make those instances where you utilize the systems to their intended zenith so, so, so, so good. And knowing that you have outflanked an actual human being in a dogfight is, for me, way more. The campaign did very little for me. I think it has great production values. And there's great voice acting. And like you said, there's really cool set pieces but for me the multiplayer is like absolutely

where it's at. Yeah I was able to do a match with like four other people from work and so we were all on comms and like coordinating and stuff like that and it really is pretty incredible on that front it's also I think a lot more approachable

than like most normal flight sim multiplayer games to the point where like you can be kind of terrible and still contribute uh which makes a big difference um i think um yeah i'd agree with a lot of that stuff i you know i griffin earlier said that it kind of splits the difference. I think this between arcade and sim, I think this is about as semi as the other games got, to be honest. Like you really are that like power shifting and shifting shields is constant and requires like a lot of spinning spinning plates. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's like a pick up and play kind of thing unless kind of thing unless you were to dial down the difficulty all the way to the bottom and you kind of don't need to worry about any of that stuff. I may just still have the taste of Microsoft Flight Simulator in my mouth. I think I just played this and recognized they could go a lot wilder with this.

There's no flap adjustment on your A-Wave. Not having to deal with gravity helps a lot. There's some interesting stuff they're doing with storytelling I don't have, there's no flap adjustment on your A-Wave. Not having to deal with gravity helps a lot. Yeah. There's some interesting stuff they're doing with storytelling that I feel like could be executed a little better. But they give you the interesting option to like talk to your crewmates in between missions. Like you're sort of, it's not like a fully realized like walking around free roam type world. But you're in the hangar and you can look around at your different compatriots and they have different things to say. And they have some really good looking like facial animations and it's well

rendered and well-performed and well-written I would say. But it, and it, and it's a cool thought because it really gives a little bit more like it takes the, rather than just a dot on your reticle. Yeah. You know, during a fight, it's like they're more fully realized characters i wish that they had found a way to integrate it more into the

like gameplay aspects because it really feels very separate sure and a lot and it's very much like do you want to stop playing for a while to talk to people or would you rather play some more of the game i wish there was a way where it could be like hand in hand a little bit more um the briefings i will say are so cool yeah they're so cool and it's one of the very few like ever briefings in a game like this where i'm like okay now this is where we're gonna go and you can see it because it's 3d and they're walking you through it and you can go step by step and flip back and forth between the plans. Like it really does actually prepare you better for the mission because you know these ships, you know what they look like.

Right. So if they're saying like, this is the weak spot on this thing, this is what you need to target. You can actually find it while you're playing. Now, of course, they will auto target it for you on the HUD or whatever. But like you can, the brief the briefings actually did prepare you for what was going to happen, which I thought was a really cool touch.

Who is making these PowerPoint presentations? I don't know, probably Mon Motha? Han Solo? Han Solo is probably doing it. You think they have that sort of time on their hands? Yeah, maybe. They just dive in? I think that it simulates for me...

Obviously, I think we're all talking about it, right? We don't have necessarily an affinity for the old X-Wing TIE Fighter games, but there is so much just, like, endemic Star Wars knowledge that going into this game, like, when you're playing as the Rebel Alliance, you can play as, you actually have to play as both factions, the Rebel alliance and the empire throughout this campaign and each one has uh four ships that you can that you can pilot uh which some missions let you play as specific ones and give you a certain level of customization but when you're in multiplayer you basically get to pick whatever you want and outfit it however you want and you

know when you're when you're playing for the empire it's different tie there's like a tie interceptor and a tie fighter and all those but when you're playing as the the rebels it's a y-wing and a-wing an x-wing and uh uh i forget what the other one's called i don't know it's but like it's a pash kiwi it's but like when i saw a wing it's a buffalo wing when you see those options though like when i saw that i could fly in a wing that was always like my favorite star wars ship and i got so stoked when you do the the briefings and you're standing around the hollow table and you're like seeing where like the briefings took place in in in star wars you know every star wars movie like this simulates i feel like we've had so many games

that simulates like being a Jedi and what the Jedi experience is like to varying degrees of success. And what's great about this game, and I'm sure other, you know, games in the TIE Fighter, X-Wing like series is that it simulates a different part of the Star Wars universe, which I always like really, really, really dig

because there's a lot more cool shit in the universe than just like, you know, lightsabers and stuff. I want to talk about two other quick things. First one is I did have some bugs while I was playing, two of which like, both of which like stopped my progress while I was playing. The first was while I was supposed to be, my leader Gunny, our leader of the unit gunny was like follow me and i followed gunny and then she eventually started

doing donuts around me so i followed her while she was circling me over and over and over again and then another ship from our fleet just came out of nowhere and like drilled her and sent her spitting. And then she zipped back to me and we just circled each other until I eventually rebooted my computer. And that seemed to fix it. The other one was I was learning how to drift. Oh, yeah. And it froze when I went right at the exact moment where it was telling me how to do the maneuver.

And this happened repeatedly. And it was so cruel to let me. They know how I feel about drifting. To let me get that close to drifting and then to yank it away from me. I literally could not progress past that point. Like I could not. It was miserable. Brutal.

So something to be considered about. Russ, I would love for you and I to address uh the vr component you know i thought griff did you try it oh yeah yeah it's okay i thought my weak little tummy had stopped being the focus of this episode but you know what is going to come back with a vengeance right here uh vr in this game is incredibly incredibly cool uh That first 30 seconds of you being in the cockpit and you're flying around and you look at your buddies and they're on your wing and it's amazing. It actually heightens play. I mean, it actually heightens the experience. I mean, beyond just like being immersive and cool as hell, it's integrated in a really smart way where like, I don't know how you did it, but like I just kept playing with the controller.

Yeah. And I just was strapped into my VR headset sitting in front of my computer so i could look all around the ship uh and it really does give you better situational awareness better sense of speed i think of how fast you're moving through the world all that stuff like very very cool and and it it was designed for sorry you mentioned like being in the the hangar and like talking to people you can't move it's just like a still like you can't move your character you just look around the hangar and if you see an npc you can turn and look at them and click a button and then you'll talk to them that was so clearly designed for vr like yeah the game was

designed for vr from from the ground up it seems like for sure and also just like the nature of like tracking enemies like it's actually a massive advantage in multiplayer because you can track a target above you or below you where ordinarily you couldn't right now with all that said uh the first 30 seconds in vr for me was very very cool about 10 minutes in is where things started to go a little awry um i can't play more than 10 minutes of VR in this game because it is far too much for my delicate tummy to withstand. Um, I think the, the turning point, if you will, was the, like changing the yaw when you like spin your ship to do like a barrel roll was like, nope, big, nope, not happening. Uh, and I, and I literally had to stop and stop. And I've tried it one other time.

And again, 10 minutes in, it was just not for me. So it definitely is for VR experts only. I got a lot. It was, I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to that stuff. After about 45 minutes of it, I was like. That's pretty good, 45 minutes. Yeah, I mean, it was good.

I will say I don't, I wouldn't necessarily play the whole game like this no it's like it's very cool to see though and like fun and short if you're just gonna do it in short bursts like great i just want to play a bunch of it you know before this episode but like um a very cool way to enjoy it but not but i said it was designed from the ground up for vr it's far from necessary because i have i never get nauseous or have any sort of problems like that with vr but like eventually i just started playing it on my tv because the headset is uncomfortable like i don't like having that stuff it's it's a comfort thing and not like a

nausea thing uh and it's it's totally fine to play it without someone did make an interesting point on twitter saying that the empire is like at a massive disadvantage because if you're in a tie fighter you can't look up which is a pretty fair point there's so there's a weird asymmetry there so we we mentioned shields uh empire ships don't have shields they just have stronger hulls so there is there is like an a pretty big like conceptual difference the the ships really do feel very very different uh both between the different factions and between the different ships if you're flying an x-wing you know you're you're in a pretty standard fighter jet but if you're in an a-wing you know you can

take maybe two hits before you go down but you are like a mosquito like zipping around the battlefield um yeah i i do wish there was a little bit more meat to the like progression system of the game like it is it is very focused in what it is doing to the game's benefit um but you know there's like a ranking system but there's a leveling system where you can unlock these points that you can spend to buy different uh loadout additions like i said like different lasers there's like a burst laser that you can uh they have to be a little bit more accurate with or there's a you know different sort of torpedo options uh or different like utility slot options but there's not like a ton of those like it's not like uh it's not like call of duty where like you're

unlocking all these different weapons and then you're unlocking different attachments and then you're you know tweaking here and there. And you don't necessarily have a great sense going into a mission what would be the best loadout for any given scenario. I mean it's much more a sense of taste. I will say to that point, one of the things you can have in your loadout is a sort of a missile interceptor. If you're getting hit by a missile, it's basically kind of a flare that will distract a missile. interceptor if you're getting hit by a missile it's basically like kind of a flare that will distract a missile but uh the main way that you uh avoid missiles in this game and i wish every game did this where if you see you're getting targeted by a missile you just drive all crazy

that's it and then you'll lose it and that's that's great what that's fantastic or in multiplayer i think uh all the maps except for one i forget the one there's one multiplayer map that has nothing. It's just like you're flying over like Yavin or something like that and it's just open space and that app sucks because the best shit is like when somebody's targeting you with a missile and you get the little prompt like you are being targeted by a missile and then you just sort of like

zoom between two big broken pieces of Star Destroyer and it like the missile bounces off of it and explodes it is there are so many cool juice was talking about like you not knowing which load out to bring into which mission that is completely ameliorated in multiplayer where you figure out very quickly like what shit you like and then you just get good with it and it is um it is very satisfying I have not played nearly enough multiplayer I like That is the thing of the game that has hooked me

in a way that I did not necessarily expect. I would be really curious to play it with other people on comms, like actually working together because there's five on five dogfight and then there's a bigger I think ten on ten objective based mode.

That just feels impossible without some sort of like communication but yeah also impressive they made the like and this is a this is a very uh i don't know uh trite point but like they made a star wars game with like about a bunch of bullshit in it and that is i feel like maybe maybe we've set the bar a little bit too low that i feel like that is a an accomplishment in and of itself. But this is just gonna really- I kinda wanna know what's the bullshit

that you're talking about. I mean, there's no like, I mean, there's no, on the surface level, there's no microtransactions. And I feel like that is still a wild accomplishment for EA. But there's also like, okay, there's not a ton of things to unlock in the progression. But like, there's also not a ton of things to unlock in the progression but like there's also not a ton of like unnecessary fluffy like what extra 0.05 percent by using this star wars card

that has you know uh grito on it like that shit is like so prevalent in so many games and uh this this game is not like about that like you can get the load out you want pretty easily. And then it's just you getting in fun dog fights, uh, which is, it doesn't have as long a tail because it is not designed to have as long a tail, but, and that's great because not every game has to have a collectible card game shit in it. Um, let's, uh, let's take a break. I'll come back and talk about more related and unrelated stuff. I wasn't kidding about the games.

They are here. They are prevalent. Uh, they are fun. I'll just say it. I like video games. Wow. I just finished Ori and the, uh, Will of the Wisps. What'd you think?

Uh, on the Switch. Can I take a little trip back in time? Because I remember when you guys, and I want to say it was when Elise guested, but I feel like you guys were talking about Ori 2 and you were kind of dunking on it saying like, oh, it's boring or I don't care about this owl. That's a little cute little owl. And I hadn't played it at the time so i didn't

fight back but i've now since played it and holy shit what a cold heart you must have had at that time i don't remember what i said i say a lot of fucking things the truth of the matter is i played maybe five minutes of it on pc and it was just not the right platform for it switch however is the perfect platform for it uh aside from like some some glitchy hitchiness uh from time to time um it runs i i shouldn't say glitchy hitchiness it runs smooth i had some crashes yeah yeah like it's it runs very well uh when you play it and man it's just like very clear metroidvania style uh action they've done away with a lot of the more uh esoteric elements like creating your own safe right things like that it's very uh organic how

that stuff happens and it just feels great it feels like like fight like fighting a bunch of stuff feels great getting around the world is like so fun because you have six or seven different locomotive abilities you can chain together. It feels like there are so many different options for that stuff where you start to feel like you are exploiting it because there's so much

in there. There are so many skips that you can do. You get an ability that lets you basically launch off an enemy. Like if an enemy gets too close, you hold in this button, it goes into slow motion time, and then you can aim where you go and where the enemy launches to. You can also do that off projectiles. So there's so many instances where there's like, oh, you're not supposed to be able to

get to that area until you get the double jump or whatever. But you can do it. If you like lure an enemy there, which is not hard, and then launch off of them, you're there. It feels so intoxicating to feel like you're cheating the system. It also has a very cool way of making actual main critical path stuff have to chain a bunch of weird abilities together in a way that doesn't make sense. It really does give you that mode of, certainly you don't want me to oh you do okay

you do want me to reflect this missile down into a portal follow the missile into the portal then jump on the missile and redirect it down a different portal so i can blow the gate up like you really okay so that's the actual thing you want me to do uh so when you figure that out when you actually execute on it it feels great it is fantastic i actually got some um like kind of breath of the wild vibes from it in terms of the structure because they basically give you your core abilities relatively early on you know you get your double jump you get your launch ability etc and a lot of the like you know latter half of the game you're kind of like free running with those abilities and having to explore deeper in the world you do get more abilities on top of that but generally speaking you have the bulk of your abilities and you have

to use those in like really creative ways to solve puzzles and um i i found that to be in contrast to ori one which is also a game i loved but that was a game that was very directed uh it was very like you go here next kind of thing whereas this i really feel like i have a lot more freedom in terms of where i go it's also it's just more fun like ori one was a great game but it was also like a it was a more contemplative innovative sort of metroidvania this one is a more straight down the plate but like the flow of this game is un unbelievable i i was absolutely obsessed with this game for the the period of time when i was playing it on switch and i think it's a sleeper like game of the year yeah contender absolutely i think everybody should should play

it yeah immensely playable immensely playable i uh i recently uh i talked about it for like a second i actually talked about how i wanted to play it last episode uh and then i downloaded it that night and i think finished it over a like breathless three-day period was uh paradise killer uh which chris plan know, is very enthusiastic about. It's a shame that he's not here. If I can sell Paradise Killer in two minutes, it is a vaporwave detective story in the vein of Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright, where you are on this island that is an artificial island created by basically a cult who kidnaps human beings and puts them in this like psychic paradise island to generate psychic energy to revive dead space gods. And then in this artificial island, all of the leaders of it are murdered in this one heinous act and you play as

lady love dies who is a a detective who has been exiled from the island after being after sort of opening the gateway to to this horrible demon uh event uh and you are brought back into the fold and you have to like figure out what happened by going around and finding clues and piecing together all of these things and talking to all these really awesome NPCs. And it is with names like names like Lady, Dr. Doom, Jazz, Dr.

Doom, Jazz, Lydia Daybreak, Carmelina Silence, The Witness to the End, Crimson Acid. They are all super, super memorable.

And there's unlike a Phoenix Wright game and unlike Danganronpa, which has like a series of murders that you have to solve, there's just one. There's like one case that you have to solve. So you go around this huge open world finding clues

and trying to find this very, very, very intricate, intricate web between people and like breaking alibis. But it's not like, it's not like the game is, nothing is force-fed to you it's not like oh if you find the knife then you can start the trial there's just one trial you can start it whenever you want and then you have to figure out your own sort of justice uh and after

i beat it i went online and found out like other people had found other like had convicted other people had other things it is it is way more open ended than any of those games but the big thing is the the aesthetic and story of the game like it deals with uh all of these people like dr doom jazz and crimson acid who's like a pop idol whose head was replaced with a like a deer's head like it has all this this wild shit but it contextualizes it through like yeah we're immortal we've been alive for millions and millions of years so we made us insane yeah it's wild everything is fucking weird now we worship these horrifying astral gods so like yeah everybody on this island fucks like yeah but the practicality of the mystery is very mundane which is interesting as an interesting counterpoint to

like yeah anyway we're all immortal sky gods and we get high off the souls of chaos or whatever and the door was locked between 9 and 903 p.m so i don't know you tell me uh i will say this that it uh it was a slow burn for me to get into it as cool as the aesthetics are the it takes at first it just seems like a bunch of nonsense like because everything is so uh they throw so much at you at once that you really have to start like and getting around the island is kind of arduous uh but you have to once you start meeting characters and fix them in your mind then i think a lot of the pieces start to to really come together and congeal um it's a very

cool thing like obra dinn also you have a really good method of tracking all of your clues and things you have a computer called starlight that whenever you find something it will file it into the different sort of cases there's like eight sort of sub mysteries within this murder that you're trying to like piece together but it will also file it under the the there's only like 10 characters in the game and it will file clues under them as well so like if you talk to dr doom jazz and he gives you an alibi breaker for lydia daybreak then you see that under her file so it like categorizes everything really really neatly and you have a list of leads too so it's like hey i heard that lydia and sam were hanging out by the beach a lot.

I should go check that out. And you know to go there and look for clues so that you feel like when you go to trial, you feel ready. I've never played a game quite like it. It is really, really, really cool. It's very neat. I would also reference Deadly Premonition.

Deadly Premonition, yeah. Like in that sort of aesthetic vein if you like that you might uh it is on pc but it is also on switch that is where i that is where i played it uh and it runs just fine on switch quick plug i want to do one more uh for me the solitaire conspiracy which is the new joint by biffle oh yeah as mike biffle has always called it a biffle joint as he always says um this is the creator of John Wick Hex, Quarantine Circular, Sub-Surface Circular, those sort of like,

and he does shorts, which is cool. But this new one is called Solitaire Conspiracy. And here's what's up. You are, it is a, it is an FMV Sega CD ass game, which feels like a modernized one of those where you have a FMV

direct address sort of like partner who is like hey you're the only one who can help me it's very double switch very night trap like hey you're the only one who can help me I've woken you up I need you to shut down this thing to reconnect my power.

It's, and it's, uh, Greg, uh, it's game over. Greggy Miller is your, is your like partner and guide who's talking to you,

which I adore Greg. So that's very, very fun. Uh, and the main way that you play and interact with the game, the only way is by playing solitaire. And the, play and interact with the game the only way is by playing solitaire and the the type of solitaire that they have is your each suit of cards represents which cards is an acronym by the way and it addresses how you're supposed to give orders to these crews each suit of cards is a different crew, and the face cards of each of these crews have different powers.

So there's one crew that is like an exfiltration kind of Fast and Furious style thing, where if you play one of their face cards on a stack, it will find the next card that you need to play in your solitaire game and zip them out and extract them in there's one that like uh is uh has an ability called nepotism where they reorder the cards in a stack when you play them to uh highest to lowest to make it easier for you to and each of the different gangs or crews have these different abilities and you go when you go and there's always like two paragraphs of story flavor text that's like what this mission is and it's like you're gonna get in you're gonna we're starting an underground fighting league and you're gonna cover the this one gang and these other uh humanism plus is going

to be uh selling some of these nanomachines and it's like all this description what the quest is and it's like then you play solitaire every single time it does not matter it's so funny um and i don't know it's just very neat at first the solitaire is like bone easy like absolutely like i don't even know why you. Bone Easy is a new one I came up with just now. At first it's incredibly easy and then all of a sudden you're dealing with four different suits and you can't get to the card. You see where all the cards are

so you know what you need to get to but it's a lot of like moving them around in as few moves as possible and like really puzzle game-alizes. Solitaire. It's a short. It's 10 bucks. It's on Steam and bucks it's on steam and epic he makes great games so I he makes great games you'll love this game it it's it's great it's great well written and props to Greg Miller the next uh uh Nolan North and Troy Baker uh oh I just wanted to say I recently discovered steam link on my phone and it works so fucking good I played a lot of no man's

sky on it just plug it into DualShock 4 controller and just go into town. But the game I've been really getting into is Monster Train. Justin, it's a good one. Thank you for... Thank you? Fuck. Really? It's so good. It's real good. I promise I'll play it. I know we've talked a lot about it on the show.

You can play Steam Link on your phone. I think it's a really great fit for iOS and I'd be surprised if it doesn't come there natively, but like being... It's the best! You can play it really easy on your phone with think it's a really great fit for ios and i'd be surprised if it doesn't come there natively but like being it's the best you can play it really easy on your phone with steam link and uh i'm like i'm all about it there's so much depth there there's so much like i thought it was not going to be anything more than grift lands and slay the spire have already kind of given me but there there are what a delight that would have been if it was only that because those are two other fucking great games excellent games it's really cool and it has enough to kind of set it apart from those and it has its own own niche and it's one of those like games that i played a lot and

then i would kind of have dream strategies at night like oh well if i could upgrade that to six pips then i could put two of the hollows together it's it's it is really good i want to be a fly on the wall of griffin's dreams oh man it's fucked up i did so much terraforming in animal crossing i've decided to destroy my whole island and then like last night i was dreaming about making curved edges on like cliff sides and stuff it's yeah my brain is a tangled web uh should we dive into reader mail yes yes okay before we do that i wanted to uh reach out to uh our loyal loyal dedicated listeners and um you know i know we normally say this at the end of the show but i'm going to do this right in the middle do do us a huge favor and and uh share the show with people um i uh know it doesn't seem like

it makes an impact uh you know we want this show to keep going and thriving and doing great and and it has been doing great but we obviously always have room to grow and find new folks to enjoy the show so please uh take a second if you can uh the link is besties.fan that's all you need to type into twitter and that'll send people to the show but please yeah that'd be real cool of you that would be real cool uh okay so we're gonna get to reader mail from j jasper one two three uh the only real criticism i've heard of the game this is star wars squadrons is that you have to play as the bad guys attacking civilians i finished the campaign and found that that didn't affect me did you find yourself wrestling with that? Does being Star Wars make a difference?

Am I a monster? I think, is there, I'm gonna ask a question. I'm kind of on pins and needles here, because I could be really, I don't know, outing myself as a monster, but like, I have seen Alderaan explode so many times that I don't really, and I understand.

I mean, we're talking about like what? Terracide? I forget what it's called when you blow up an entire planet and everybody on it is killed. It's so bad. I feel like, but I feel like if you really tried to internalize that,

nobody could make it through A New Hope. Like people, were there people in theaters seeing A New Hope and then the Death Star blows up Alderaan and people are like what the fuck there were you just killed billions of people weeping in the seats i think you got it's so cartoonishly awful that i don't think you can even come close to internalizing it so that you extrapolate that by like you just don't care about a ship gets bigs and wedge get blown out of the sky and you're like oh well okay if you look at like

all the star wars canon alderaan is that planet that got blown up by darth vader that's like you had to be watching that thing like man no one's gonna remember we had killer chili dogs but alderaan is just like they're only gonna remember that we got blown up i i uh i pitched a i i got asked like hey do you want to pitch a star wars uh like young adult like comic series uh after i did the the uh certain point of view thing they were like you can come up with whatever pitch you want i was like oh hell yeah what if i do a book about uh like a kid who was like off world when alderaan got blown up and like what does it look like to like try and preserve the culture of your exploded planet and like preserve the history of it i pitched that to lucas uh to to not lucasarts whatever like you know publishing house handles those. And the person who offered me was like,

you know what, we're going to pass on this. It's pretty, that would be pretty heinous, bud. That would be a little too dark for our seven to ten year olds that we want to read this book. Yeah, Darth Vader blew up a planet. Like, are we just going to pretend like it didn't happen? Just because, like, Porky Pig dressed like Darth Vader one time, it doesn't mean that he didn't blow up a planet.

Dude sucks. I turned good. I saw him as a little boy. He said wizard. Yeah, he blew up a planet. He blew up a whole fucking planet. But he killed the old wrinkly lightning man. Yeah, but he blew up a whole planet.

It's actually wild that you get to see his ghost like chilling and watching his family he should be burning in space hell he should be burning in space hell uh yeah okay we have one last question uh this is from games and culture uh which star wars ship would you have it be happiest to swallow griffin no this isn't my thing anymore man i can't even i can't you how dare you put that poison back on my plate uh i mean let's roll let's rule some out it ain't an x-way it ain't an x-way 100 right like 100 don't want to eat an x-way for sure i don't yeah i don't know that there's any uh i i there's no are there any capsule-shaped ships? I mean, TIE Fighter doesn't seem like it would be,

or maybe a TIE Advance with the rounded wings doesn't seem like it'd be that bad. Yeah, I don't know. I think Y-Wing would be okay, even though it seems kind of bulky. If you did the pilot part first, and then the back parts. It's literally a wishbone. You're talking about eating a wishbone.

There's no way that's going to be a pleasant experience. I don't think there's any precedent of things going wrong when that happens. The Starfighter would not be bad. The little arrow-shaped- Oh, the Nippoo? No, no, no. The one...

It's the one from jedi starfighter um it's not the naboo so i don't know what the i don't know what the ships are called like yellow one right a nerd i'm like i'm a jock morbid jock so i i don't actually know but i think slave one might be the most sort of oh yeah that seems pretty doable Yeah the most sort of pill shaped Vessel Yeah I'd eat the Death Star Oh that's it right if you could shrink Death Star down really really tiny it's basically A big skittle that blew up Alderaan and killed

Everybody on it Just want to remind everyone Next week we're going to be talking about We're opening the Don't lock the gates it's Baldur's Gate 3 and we're gonna be talking about we're opening the don't lock the gates it's balder's gate three uh and we're gonna be uh getting playing on that one hey so what kind of game is balder's gate it's a crpg it's a it's like a isometric what a kirp it's a kirp it's the it's the same like rpg it, it's the same developer

it's Larian who made Divinity 2, which is the best, like one of the best RPGs ever made. And it's like in that system, but using D&D like rules and stuff. It's hot. Cool. I wanted to mention you should, if you haven't yet, I feel like we're so many episodes

in this season since we created the Twitter account. So it's hard to imagine people still listening to the show, not following the Twitter account. But you should. It's the besties pod on Twitter. Go head on over there. Chris Plant drops all the questions for the week. So if you want to get your question and you could you could do it there. Any other business?

Yeah. Well, if you have thoughts on balder's gate three or questions about what we thought email us your your uh your your salient points and you can email us at and i'm opening my mouth and the rest of his voice is going to come come out of it all right it's mail at besties.fans uh i think that's it yeah it's going to do it for us for this week uh so be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Fox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter and produced by Ben Hosley.

And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!