0:00

So I've been going

0:02

to the supermarket and getting these

0:04

like a frozen pizza for when

0:07

We're like I'm exhausted or my wife is exhausted

0:09

and we don't want to deal with cooking and

0:12

the frozen pizzas are like too small For

0:14

three people although one of the people is

0:16

my son who's like a little person a

0:18

little little child Yeah, so

0:20

it's not quite enough pizza for

0:23

us But

0:25

like pretty close and he's getting plenty So

0:28

we've been sort of managing it and then I kind

0:30

of supplement with some cereal the other

0:32

day I went and got a

0:34

like an actual pizza like a

0:37

true Pizza pie

0:39

and brought it home New York style and

0:41

New York style and which he had never

0:43

seen like a full pizza pie before And

0:48

it was like a life-changing experience for

0:50

him Imagine

0:54

if your entire life is like you've

0:56

only seen personal pan pizzas and then

0:58

someone brings you a fucking

1:00

like Four-foot diameter

1:02

pizza. He must have I can't

1:04

imagine that he must have thought he shrank Or

1:08

do you think that he feels

1:10

that there are large versions of everything

1:13

that he's been a baby size? So

1:15

like right now you're gonna give him

1:17

the big-sized marshmallow or like the

1:19

real size. Oh You

1:24

got to man babies crazy for

1:27

you never seen it it's actually

1:29

hysterical The

1:31

bunny game or you just use stuff like 30 marshmallows

1:34

and Toby bunny Yeah, a very child

1:36

of very very small child's mouth. It's

1:38

not dangerous at all. It's a

1:40

little it's a little bit You can't say okay. It's

1:43

a little bit dangerous and we don't recommend you do

1:45

it I think if you poke holes

1:47

in the marshmallows beforehand, it's fine. I

1:49

don't think that's how much I don't think that's

1:51

right accurate at all Why

1:53

isn't this a parenting advice show? That's

1:56

true Probably

1:58

cuz you guys just said shove as many marshmallows in your

2:00

kid's mouth with no pressure, no problem, no

2:02

jokey, you're guaranteed. Griffin,

2:04

you're just, I'm tired of these internet trolls

2:06

dredging through our history to find bad parenting

2:08

advice we give it just to discredit us.

2:11

Like yeah, if you go back into the

2:13

several minutes before right now, you're gonna find

2:15

some stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah.

2:17

But I'm living in the net. Yeah, po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po-pummy's

2:19

nerf act. Hey

2:21

guys, Gabagool, let's throw this show. What's

2:26

that? New bag life.

2:30

My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of

2:32

the week. My

2:49

name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the

2:51

week. My name is Christopher

2:53

Thomas-Plant and I know the best video game

2:55

fighting stance of the week. My

2:57

name is Ross Frostig and I'm the best game of

3:00

the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about

3:02

the latest greatest home interactive entertainment. It is a video

3:04

game club and just by listening, my friend, you have

3:06

become a member. Welcome to our illustrious

3:08

ranks. So happy to have you. Today

3:11

we're gonna be talking about Rise of

3:14

the Ronin. And what

3:16

is that, Chris-Plant? Rise

3:18

of the Ronin is an open

3:21

world action RPG of sorts that

3:23

blends together the work of Neo

3:26

from the developer Team Ninja and

3:28

also a little bit of Assassin's Creed.

3:30

And I can't

3:32

wait to talk about it. I really like this game,

3:34

but I'm very curious what you all think. Yeah,

3:37

well, we will talk about that and

3:39

so much more right after this brief

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commercial interruption. This

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episode of the besties is sponsored by Aura

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itself is a bit of a

5:18

A-U-R-A-P Before

5:21

we start talking about the game itself, I want

5:23

to talk about the

5:25

cover, I guess. Oh

5:27

wow, we never do this. How do you pronounce

5:30

the game name? Because there's

5:32

a line above the O in Ronin and

5:34

I don't know what that means. That's an

5:36

umlaut, clearly. It's not. It's a real umlaut.

5:40

Oh, fuck. Well, I don't know. This is

5:42

funny, though. I think we can

5:44

all agree. Yeah, visual gags are how I

5:46

like to lead out any conversation. Yeah, for

5:48

sure. Anyway, we can

5:51

talk about the video game, too. Great.

5:54

Good times. So Rise

5:56

of the Ronin, Chris Plant, why don't you... You started to

5:58

lay it out, but this is a... an

6:00

interesting game can you sort of spell

6:02

it out for us? Yeah so Team

6:04

Ninja the developers of this game are

6:06

best known well they're very best known

6:08

for creating the Dead or Alive series

6:11

a long time ago back in like 1996 and then moved on to

6:15

Ninja Gaiden correct. That's how I got

6:18

them really. They did a

6:20

Metroid game that is either loved

6:22

or hated depending on who you are and

6:24

more recently mostly hated they've

6:27

been working on the Nioh game which

6:29

are kind of a souls like games

6:32

set in which

6:36

area of Japan is it set in?

6:38

I don't know but it plays with

6:40

like Nioh the one with the with

6:42

the Englishman Samurai I

6:46

think so but like you're fighting Yokai which

6:48

is like the cool I'm pretty sure that

6:50

no era of Japan had actual Yokai so

6:52

it's fair to say that it's probably I

6:57

believe that was early Edo period I believe that

6:59

I learned that when I was 1600 is when

7:02

Nioh is set. Yes and there is

7:05

Nioh and Nioh 2 are known also for

7:07

being just quite difficult more even more recently

7:09

because they put out a lot of stuff

7:12

they also did Stranger Paradise

7:14

Final Fantasy origin in

7:16

Wollong's Fallen Dynasty. Two

7:18

games I liked

7:22

in some ways despite themselves. Wollong

7:24

especially I thought was like really

7:26

interesting I mention all of this

7:28

because here is a developer who

7:30

is kind of taking the most

7:32

recently taking the FromSoft formula and

7:34

spinning it out in all sorts

7:36

of very strange ways and Rise

7:39

of the Roan is a continuation

7:41

of that because this feels truly

7:43

like if you took Assassin's Creed

7:45

Odyssey and you hammered FromSoft

7:48

games against it plus really

7:50

great sword combat from previous

7:52

Team Ninja games like Ninja

7:54

Gaiden and Nioh all into

7:56

one package and I think

7:59

it's bizarre. I don't

8:02

I don't know how it came together like this, but it

8:04

really works for me It

8:06

took a while to figure out

8:08

what exactly this game is Yeah,

8:11

yeah for me like when I started

8:13

playing it it looks

8:15

like it looks like

8:17

a neo it looks like What

8:20

was the other one was the the? Go

8:23

to Sushima No, no,

8:25

that's all like it looks like yeah, it looks

8:27

like a soul like right so you're looking for

8:29

like a

8:31

Unforgiving combat you know it pitch

8:34

perfect like getting every input correct sort

8:37

of battles where you're like Pacing

8:39

it slowly it looks like that and I was

8:41

already a karo even it was a karo. That's

8:43

the the game is right Yeah, it looks like

8:46

Sekiro and like the level of mechanics and slaying

8:48

on you It's like okay, so it's kind of

8:50

like Sekiro and I would

8:52

say that vibe is like all the way through

8:54

the introduction And then once

8:56

you are past like the introductory period of

8:59

this game it opens up both in terms

9:01

of the the world and Also,

9:03

just in terms of like what it is

9:05

like all of a sudden. It's much easier

9:08

to approach any situation How

9:10

you want to so and that very

9:12

much feels like an Assassin's Creed Specifically

9:15

like around the origins period

9:17

where you could start out stealth, and

9:20

if it didn't work out You

9:22

can pan. Oh, you know you can switch over

9:24

to like open combat both are like completely Fun

9:27

and acceptable ways of doing it does that

9:30

does the ghost of Tsushima? Comparison not carry

9:32

much water with you guys because that was

9:34

the thought I kept having it's closer. It's

9:36

closer to that I guess not

9:38

really like Tsushima is

9:40

more of a More

9:44

of a stealth game than this to some extent.

9:46

I mean you can play whatever way you wanted

9:48

to play it No, that's true. I

9:50

will say this at its lowest difficulty Which

9:53

is I played it on dawn because I

9:55

was struggling in the introductory period with just

9:57

sort of like getting through So I lowered

9:59

it to its lowest difficulty. On

10:02

its lowest difficulty, it is the funniest

10:04

stealth I've ever seen in my entire

10:06

life. Like literally, I would blow a

10:08

man up with a barrel four feet

10:10

from his friend and he's like, gotta

10:12

finish the soup. And it's like, buddy,

10:14

I'm right here. You have to do

10:16

something. I feel bad about this. The

10:20

combat is sort of the star of the show for

10:22

me. Yeah, there's

10:25

there's a lot that I like about this game and a lot

10:27

that I wicked don't and we'll get into all that. But the

10:29

combat is just like really,

10:31

really fast and fluid and it feels

10:34

super great. There's different like

10:36

weapon styles and then different combat like

10:38

sub styles within those weapons and there's

10:40

like a ton of skills to them

10:42

all. There's like 14 weapons and then

10:44

within those 14 weapons, each of

10:46

those have like three different styles which change

10:48

like how you combo and things. It's wild

10:51

how much that is. There's a series of

10:53

like strengths and weaknesses and then you have

10:55

like stats and certain stats are better at

10:57

using certain types of there's like

10:59

a lot of different ways to play it and I have

11:01

not tried a weapon

11:03

style that didn't feel

11:05

really, really good. I think the

11:07

main kind of mechanical like crux

11:10

of it all is the counter spark

11:12

which is just bound to the triangle

11:14

button and it is that is sort

11:17

of your like parry button. It can

11:19

also do a little bit of damage

11:22

and you know you can do all of

11:24

the different sort of standard stuff like you

11:26

can dodge attacks, you can just straight up

11:28

block but it really encourages

11:31

you to use the counter spark to sort

11:33

of like break your enemy stance, send them

11:35

into a panic so that you

11:37

can sort of reduce their stamina making the

11:39

like rest of the fight a little bit easier for

11:41

you. Yeah, something about the counter spark

11:44

I really liked is that all

11:46

of these games have like a countering system, right? Souls

11:48

has it, Sekiro has it, whatever. What

11:50

I like about the counter spark is that

11:52

there's a visual indicator of when you're countering.

11:54

So if an enemy hits the line that

11:56

appears when you hit the counter button that

11:58

means you're going to counter. Whereas

12:00

a lot of these games I feel like it's

12:02

way more like you just have to learn the

12:04

timing and eventually you'll get it But you don't

12:06

know why you're failing necessarily, right? Yeah, it's a

12:09

very clear indicator I found it like

12:11

very doable in the game to like Counterspark every

12:13

every fight that I got into there's some cool

12:15

shit where like if somebody shoots you with a

12:17

gun you can Counterspark and it sets your sword

12:19

on fire Yeah, you could use your fiery sword

12:21

to set other people on fire which is really

12:23

good, which is really great What's also good about

12:25

the counter spark is if you don't time it?

12:28

Well, it still counts as like an attack

12:31

You can still do like a little bit of chip

12:33

damage and you can weave it into a combo if

12:35

you like if you mess up Your timing it feels

12:37

it feels fantastic and I kind of found

12:39

myself like wanting to just be fighting all

12:42

the time It's also

12:44

got a grappling hook that like this game

12:46

has so many mechanics that I would routinely

12:48

forget about cool shit I could do. Yeah,

12:50

like I would be get so into Doing

12:53

my counter sparks and learning my moves Gonna

12:56

mention the stances but it's got this great

12:58

system that I wish I've never I don't think I've

13:00

seen this exact thing before where

13:02

if You have a

13:04

weapon type or stance that is a

13:06

bad match for the enemy you're fighting

13:09

You'll see that on the HUD and

13:11

it'll you'll see a little down red

13:13

arrow That's like hey this the

13:15

stance you're using is weak against this and

13:17

the button that you press to switch stances

13:19

will also highlight How

13:21

each of your stances would perform against the

13:24

enemy you're facing So like

13:26

on the fly mid combo you

13:28

can flick to a different combat style

13:30

that's more effective and that's actually a

13:32

distinct move called the violet wind and

13:34

if you Switch to a different

13:37

stance mid it does this like really powerful attack

13:39

So it's wanting you to flip back and forth

13:42

between combat styles I would forget frequently that I

13:44

had a grappling hook that I could use to

13:46

like zip two guys or pull them to me

13:48

Or eventually throw them And

13:50

also you use the grappling hook to like get up in

13:53

in Get up in

13:55

the air get some distance. I wish the grappling hook

13:57

was a little more flexible. It's very specific

13:59

about the instances you can use it, which

14:01

sometimes I think makes the game feel more ground

14:04

locked than it actually is. It's like

14:07

not hard to get up onto the

14:09

rooftops Assassin's Creed style, but it is

14:11

it's weirdly like restrictive

14:13

about where you can and can't start doing

14:16

that. I do want to I do want

14:18

to mention the groundlock thing and just broadly

14:20

speaking what I found really appealing about this

14:22

game that I think most Assassin's Creed

14:24

games do not do is

14:27

outside there's like there's a prologue you mentioned

14:29

it earlier then the prologue takes maybe

14:31

an hour maybe maybe a little less

14:34

after you get the prologue get through the prologue

14:37

they give you so many tools and so

14:39

many like fun things that you're not doing

14:41

the thing that almost all these Assassin's Creed

14:43

games do where you're like well I gotta

14:45

follow this guy slowly through the town as

14:48

I learn about the different characters and blah

14:50

blah blah blah they kind of

14:52

like just launch you into the fun

14:54

stuff within two hours of this game

14:56

you have a fucking flying kite and

14:58

you can like glide around the city

15:00

and glide around like the landscape wherever

15:02

you want. Russ did you try calling

15:04

your horse while you're gliding? Oh

15:07

I didn't that's amazing. If you call the

15:09

horse when you're gliding near the ground you'll

15:11

drop out of the glider and land directly

15:13

onto your horse's back it's fucking sick. That's

15:16

so fucking cool. So cool. Yeah they even

15:18

on your assassinations from the glider so you

15:20

you can glide over enemies and I mean

15:22

30 feet in the air

15:24

imagine this this samurai comes flying at you

15:26

and I'm like just drops down and slices

15:29

your head off a lot of decapitations in

15:31

this by the way it's great. Oh so

15:33

many. I feel like most of these

15:35

games really hold back a lot of these things for

15:37

like 10 or 20 hours before

15:40

they give you the really fun stuff as a way to

15:42

build that up and this game definitely does not do that

15:45

and I really love it. Here's how they pull that off.

15:48

All the sounds I think so far very

15:51

Sekiro from soft maybe

15:53

intimidating. There is also the

15:55

Assassin's Creed current Assassin's Creed action

15:57

RPG loot system in here. So

16:00

really there's two ways to go about playing this game.

16:03

Here's what I like about that system. If

16:07

you are not good at the like

16:09

From Software type of game, you

16:11

can really worry about the loot system and

16:13

every base that you come across and every

16:15

enemy that you come across has a level

16:17

to it. And you

16:19

can, if you're very, very good, go

16:21

way above level in terms of like

16:24

being able to get ahead of the

16:26

game and have that From Soft experience.

16:29

Have a really challenging, you have

16:31

to nail every parry experience. If

16:34

you are not that type of person

16:36

and you just stick to the loot,

16:38

it plays honestly like an Assassin's Creed

16:40

game where you could miss like 50%

16:43

of maybe more of the parries and

16:46

stuff. You could just go in and

16:48

start stabbing at folks and you'll do fine as

16:50

long as you're at level with people and the

16:52

game has like kind of a natural level growth

16:54

for you. I just wanted

16:57

to say the Sekiro comparison keeps coming up and as

16:59

this shows sort of dedicated

17:01

Sekiro scholar, I don't

17:04

actually think the combat feels much

17:06

like that at all. I think that and

17:09

it's not a better or worse thing. Game

17:12

Ninjas combat is a

17:15

lot more sort of arcadey

17:18

I feel like and a lot more sort

17:20

of fast paced and

17:23

outlandish frankly like the things that you

17:25

end up doing to other human beings

17:27

in this game are like completely outrageous.

17:30

Whereas Sekiro is much more I

17:32

feel like slower and methodical and

17:35

like hitbox like

17:37

specific. The

17:40

four hit combo in Sekiro does not happen

17:42

very often. Doesn't happen at all. Right. It

17:45

is that game fights are usually over and done

17:47

with within two or three hits.

17:49

Does Sekiro have a flamethrower? Sekiro

17:51

actually does it does yes. Not

17:55

quite as nut raised as the

17:57

one in this game. It's fucking

17:59

funny. The weapons that you get it

18:01

takes place in a really interesting historical period

18:03

where you and it may be

18:06

real And it may be imagined, but I

18:08

will say in this video game You are

18:10

not only collecting a lot of like the

18:12

traditional, you know samurai weapons and there's more

18:14

ninja style weapons There's also Western weapons because

18:16

the Westerners have started to make

18:18

the presence known in Japan. So you've got like rifles

18:21

and bayonets and Handguns

18:24

so you you know, you can do that that

18:27

kind of yeah You've got like Wild West

18:29

like suits and cowboy hats and things like

18:31

that. Yeah, you can get a really cool

18:34

Oh, yeah, the aesthetics are great. It does

18:36

have like a transmog system, which I I

18:38

appreciate I do need to say That

18:41

this game is a vile offender of one of

18:43

my least favorite things in games And I talked

18:46

about this shit all the time and I feel

18:48

like Assassin's Creed has fallen into this got a

18:50

war has fallen into This it

18:53

it gives you so much fucking loot.

18:55

Yeah, so much loot. Yes constantly constantly

18:57

constantly you're constantly having to go through

18:59

and prune your shit and then

19:01

when it comes time to figure out like what

19:03

loot do I want to Equip

19:05

and use it comes down to like well,

19:08

this has an armor rating of 50

19:10

and it gives you 6.3

19:14

it gives you two point one better

19:16

stealth damage and it's like that is

19:18

fucking nothing Yeah, that means

19:20

nothing to me. It is Not

19:23

appealing to me I think the problem is everyone

19:25

you fight in addition to like chests and things

19:27

like that which are around the world every single

19:30

person you Fight will drop like some fucking sandals

19:32

or like a shirt and you have

19:34

to like there's a part of your brain That's like I gotta

19:36

check out see if that's a better shirt and

19:38

and that's just like a bad experience At least

19:40

you're not worrying about like it's like I'm doing

19:42

every in case I want to dress that it's

19:44

like it's constant And it's constant. It's constant and

19:46

it's tough because The

19:49

weapons the way it works with the okay

19:52

All the gear in this is really messed up

19:54

It's like really it's it's it's weird how sort

19:56

of fundamentally flawed it is in addition to what

19:59

Russ just described You're also

20:01

getting new gear that's like part of

20:03

sets, but usually if you

20:05

see that in a game, it's like a high

20:07

level item that you're going to want to hold

20:09

on to and cultivate. And you do have the

20:11

ability to upgrade your gear, but you're

20:14

getting gear at such a fast rate

20:16

that you would be wasting resources to

20:18

try to keep up with it. And

20:21

it's to even try to keep a set

20:23

going where it's like, oh,

20:25

I've got three pieces of this like wise doctor set,

20:27

and that gives me these bonuses. The

20:30

speed at which you are getting gear,

20:32

it doesn't make any sense to do

20:34

that. You can't stay in anything long

20:36

enough to get a sense of like – especially

20:39

not friggin' 1.5% better key damage. It

20:45

feels like it would have all worked better if

20:47

there was just an XP system and you just

20:50

gradually get stronger and you can go and fight

20:52

different levels. There's a million different ways to get

20:54

that. And you can occasionally get gear, but if

20:56

the gear you get is like meaningful and has

20:59

like a big – like 20% more sword damage,

21:01

what the fuck. Like sure, that's fine, but the

21:03

fact that you're getting – yeah, it's ridiculous. There

21:05

needs to be – if you're going to do

21:07

it this way, you need to have the ability

21:10

– and maybe this is buried in the settings. You

21:13

need to have the ability to auto

21:15

dismantle anything that's like common or below.

21:17

Hey, let me stop you right there, friend.

21:20

You can actually – man,

21:22

you can set it to

21:24

auto dismantle or auto sell

21:27

anytime you touch a flag

21:30

and you can set whatever rank you want it to do. Oh,

21:32

that's pretty good, Ernie. Okay, we'll leave that there. It

21:34

does. But it is – it's tough when you want

21:36

to try to – you also though are like –

21:40

another sort of like fundamental flaw is

21:42

that you're increasing your experience with weapons

21:44

the more you use them. But

21:46

it is not like – I would

21:48

routinely get a weapon that was literally like 50% more

21:53

damaging than the one that I was trying to

21:55

level up, and it just feels insane. I'm not

21:57

going to waste my time trying to build the

21:59

skill set. level up. If you

22:01

can ignore it, I just stopped

22:03

caring about this and did not check

22:06

my weapons until either the end of a session or

22:08

the beginning of one. Yeah I would do it like

22:10

every 15 minutes or so. Yeah but that said I

22:12

know there are certain

22:15

things in games where like I can't turn that

22:17

part of my brain off. This fortunately for me

22:19

this is a thing that I could just forget

22:21

about but if you can the

22:24

game works relatively well without it. And just

22:26

to go back like I love

22:29

exploring the world and the combat of it.

22:31

So like when I am able to turn

22:33

off that like digging through menu stuff like

22:35

I was having a really good time. It

22:37

feels like just this really in

22:39

ways that I wasn't able to click with

22:41

Ghost of Tsushima because the pacing would get

22:43

thrown off by like long cutscenes and dialogue

22:45

sequences. I never felt that way with this

22:47

like everything can be skipped if you want

22:50

to and you can kind of just jump

22:52

into the action very quickly and so that

22:54

would kept me going and I just felt

22:56

like the power curve kept going in an

22:58

interesting ways. They've even got a friggin you

23:00

can mark a spot on your map for

23:02

your horse to auto run to. You

23:05

can just mark like hey I want to go there

23:07

and the horse like yep I got it no problem.

23:09

Now 10% of the time the horse will run into

23:11

a tree. Yeah that horse does not know what the

23:13

fuck it's doing. So while I was

23:15

playing this

23:20

the game that kept jumping to my

23:22

mind was the Saints Row

23:24

reboot. And the reason

23:26

I say that is because that was a

23:29

game that all of us more or less

23:31

enjoyed because it was like a relatively like

23:33

low impact easy to jump in easy to

23:35

have fun with game that

23:37

when it came out got absolutely shredded for

23:39

a few reasons and I worry that this

23:41

might happen here as well and one of

23:43

the reasons is this

23:45

game doesn't look great

23:48

and does not run great either

23:50

and I want to kind of

23:52

dig into that a little bit because even

23:54

though it doesn't look bad it to

23:57

me looks like an early gen ps4

23:59

game. game and that

24:03

would be fine but the game also can't

24:05

hit 60 frames a second even if it

24:07

was on performance mode. It seems

24:09

incapable it hovers it feels like it's hovering around

24:11

45 or 50 when you're

24:13

in the open world and for a

24:15

game to not look super great and not run

24:18

super great is is just

24:20

kind of a drag even though I'm enjoying

24:22

it I was kind of taken aback by

24:24

that. Hmm yeah I

24:26

played a lot on the portal so

24:28

I didn't notice that as much as a point

24:30

of view. Yeah

24:33

when you were when you were streaming in a 700p image

24:36

you didn't notice. Yeah I didn't notice that. The frame

24:38

rate is weird. There's

24:40

also, if I can just mention

24:43

there's so much in

24:45

this game I feel like a

24:48

lot of it feels extraneous

24:51

especially when you

24:53

have things like you have a longhouse which is

24:55

like a base that you return to and there's

24:57

a lot of stuff happening in there that I'm

24:59

it feels I don't know what's

25:01

happening at my house like I roll into my

25:03

house and there's like two people that I sort

25:05

of know and I can talk to

25:08

them if I want and give them some books

25:10

and gifts and then you can

25:12

get a dog that you send out

25:14

our missions called a pilgrim dog and

25:16

the dog goes to everybody else's lancer

25:19

oh this is a there's the online

25:21

parts yeah running into people's pilgrim dogs

25:23

there's a cool thing where if you

25:25

go into like an enemy

25:28

base sometimes there will be a captured

25:30

samurai which is like a real other

25:32

player not controlled by the other player

25:34

but it's like a real model you

25:36

can tell because they look crazy like

25:40

pajamas and cowboy

25:42

hat on and then they will just go through and

25:44

like level the place because they're you know inevitably higher

25:46

level than you are but I

25:48

had that stuff seems so like the pace

25:50

of it was so much lower than the

25:52

action I don't know who

25:54

they expect to engage I liked sometimes

25:58

you will get into like missions And

26:00

it is a sort of self-contained thing

26:02

and that is where you

26:05

can do the like online stuff Which I never got

26:07

to work. I wasn't sure if that Part

26:10

of the game is even working when

26:12

I was playing it. It was pre-release.

26:14

So, okay Yes, and and you also

26:16

have like buddies you have there's a

26:18

bonds System in the game and

26:20

you can find more of them throughout the game Right

26:22

exactly and there's some like choices that you make throughout

26:24

like do you want to kill this thief that is

26:26

like been ransacked in This village or do you want

26:28

to spare him and maybe recruit him later on? and

26:33

I always liked the missions part of

26:35

the game better than the rest of

26:37

it because I Am

26:39

NOT like a big open-world guy

26:42

and this one feels pretty sparse

26:44

to me Like the I was

26:47

very grateful that there's a system where you can make

26:49

your horse Go from place to

26:51

place because then I was basically just sort

26:53

of Getting on my getting

26:55

on my phone and checking my my

26:58

messages and stuff as my horse ran

27:00

me to another like fun combat encounter

27:03

But the I don't know the missions are very like very

27:07

Well designed I feel like and very it's just

27:10

in combat and stealth and all the good shit

27:12

just sort of non-stop Which

27:14

I yeah This to me felt like as

27:16

close to like a crackdown experience for this

27:18

sort of game as I've seen In so

27:20

far as just there's so little cruff because

27:22

that you could fast travel everywhere There's the

27:25

auto horse there's it just feels like they

27:27

gave you so many tools to like skip

27:29

ahead to the fun stuff in

27:31

this case Yeah before

27:33

we wrap one other thing

27:36

There are historical figures in

27:39

this game. Yeah, they are

27:41

central characters So the

27:43

first I did not a big

27:46

spoiler the foul hours ends with

27:48

you fighting commander Matthew Perry Dicing

27:52

him up in not great all

27:54

all is not friends Matthew Perry. This is a different Matthew

27:56

Perry. No, this is a real Yeah,

27:59

this is a real There's a real

28:01

dude from from like not I really

28:03

50s. Yeah, I I was honestly I

28:05

was tickled by the decision to just

28:08

take Random historical

28:10

American military figures and make them into

28:12

boss battles. I mean that's what that's

28:14

as Creed has been doing that for

28:16

years Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Thank you

28:19

Also, I mentioned the dice thing

28:22

The violence in this game I found very

28:25

cartoonish so it worked for me, but holy

28:27

moly This is terrible.

28:29

It's funny violence. It

28:31

is a game that finally says hey, you're

28:33

using a sword Do you know what sort

28:35

of do the bodies? Yeah,

28:37

I'm good and and then after you

28:39

cut six heads off you go and pick up a cat

28:42

and stroke its little head Oh, yeah,

28:44

there's a cat collection. Yeah, that's

28:46

weird. It's a weird game that I feel like this

28:48

is the kind of game We're in a few years.

28:50

You'll be like what should I play? I need something

28:52

fun to play get this one

28:55

out. It's fun It's fun

28:57

if you can get on its wavelength It's really

28:59

but I would recommend also if you

29:01

do bump the difficulty down You don't have to worry about

29:03

the gear stuff You use the weapons

29:05

that you like and then you know upgrade your gear when

29:08

it when you think of it, but yeah,

29:11

I just like the idea that team ninja

29:13

has been making these games specifically the neo

29:15

games and Very

29:18

clearly like was like, okay We spent all

29:20

this time on a character creator on all

29:22

these like weapon animations and all these features

29:25

How can we port all this work into

29:27

a very different style of game and that's

29:29

effectively what they've done here and that's that's

29:31

cool I that's like you're using all the

29:33

skills at your studio Hey speaking

29:35

of games that you a few years later go

29:38

back and I just want to play something really

29:40

fun Just let me pop into an open world

29:42

and have it have a grand time Yeah, I

29:44

think we should go to the B side because

29:46

we have a whole slew of them to dig

29:49

into. All right, great Let's do it Planet

29:56

you were talking a big game bunch of not

29:58

a bunch talk a big mess about about all

30:00

this fun stuff you want to talk about. It was time to

30:02

deliver. Well, I

30:04

just shipped you.

30:06

I want us to talk

30:08

about underappreciated open world games,

30:10

which, oops, I think this

30:12

is kind of like you and I right here.

30:15

This is a lot of our, this is

30:17

where we butter our bread. And

30:19

I, how

30:22

about just to kick things off? I'll share

30:24

one, which is sleeping

30:26

dogs. Yes, sleeping dogs. It

30:29

shouldn't have existed. That shift in

30:31

such a remarkably bad state that I still

30:33

remember it to this day. I mean, it

30:35

didn't ship as a true crime game and

30:37

then they changed the name. No,

30:40

it was a true crime

30:42

game until it got sold off. Activision

30:44

Blizzard was like, we're not going to do that.

30:47

We're talking about series. And

30:49

then it got turned into sleepy dogs.

30:53

Peasy dogs is set

30:55

in contemporary Hong

30:58

Kong and it is a game

31:00

about, you know, kicking people's

31:03

asses, basically. You

31:05

just beat the shit out of people. And

31:08

speaking of sharp objects, no

31:11

interest in guns here. Lots of interest

31:13

in various types of knives. You

31:16

go around from place to place in a very

31:18

beautiful setting that really showed off PC hardware at

31:20

the time. And still, I think looks pretty good.

31:23

The open world Hong Kong, I think, is quite striking

31:26

and beautiful. It has kind of an unusual

31:28

art style that's neither

31:31

cartoonish or realistic. It's somewhere in the

31:34

middle. And

31:36

it's a delight. It has

31:38

a whole bunch of cool DLC where

31:40

you could take on

31:42

the personality of Journey to the West, of

31:44

Monkey and Journey to the West. It's just

31:48

good. Just good. That's what

31:50

it is. I'd also add that it came

31:52

out at a time when open world games

31:54

were obviously very popular in the world. But

31:56

none of them had good combat. Like think

31:58

of GTA 3. GTA Vice

32:00

City combat not good and

32:03

this game had genuinely fun like

32:05

third-person Like beat-em-up combat. Yeah, so

32:07

that was a nice Shift.

32:10

I mean I gotta give it up

32:12

to infamous to specifically like

32:14

infamous one All right infamous to

32:17

fucking kicks ass with the

32:19

Pacific Northwest one Yeah, no, that was

32:21

third. No, that was no. No,

32:23

that was second son infamous to was

32:26

set in New Orleans, basically And

32:29

I had like the whole sort of vampire DLC thing that

32:31

they came out on top of it but

32:35

Yeah, it infamous one kicks ass.

32:37

It was Sucker

32:39

punches sort of big passion project after

32:41

the like slight Cooper games But

32:44

infamous to like gives you different sorts

32:47

of power sets and the traversal of

32:49

that game is Incredible,

32:51

right you can shoot yourself up

32:53

into the sky with like electric sparks

32:55

and then grind on you

32:57

know The rail

32:59

system and there's just a million different

33:01

ways to move around that world and

33:04

it feels so so so so so

33:06

good I didn't really

33:08

click with Second

33:10

son I think is what that the ps4 one

33:12

was called But infamous

33:14

to has a very special very special place in

33:17

my heart Who've you got

33:19

to tell people about prototype the

33:21

the evil doppelganger of India? Yes,

33:23

right. Yeah prototype was It

33:26

was that it was the deep impact to his

33:29

arm again, I would say it's the it's the

33:32

venom to infamous

33:34

spider-man, but prototype was about

33:36

a It

33:39

was like an experiment gone wrong All right

33:41

Like somebody who escaped from a lab where

33:43

they were trying to do this like research

33:45

and what this person had developed These

33:49

superpowers that you could upgrade with

33:51

your that are like all very

33:53

nasty Eight

33:55

times eight different kinds of knife

33:57

hands basically. Yeah, and you Eventually,

34:00

definitely there was a lot of mobility. I

34:02

remember in the in the prototype series, right?

34:04

Like being able to to move very quickly

34:06

through the city. I barely remember prototype man.

34:08

It was good It was good, but I

34:11

it was not Like

34:14

Alex Murray gimmick is you could like

34:16

run up skyscrapers full sprint, right? Yeah,

34:18

which arguably you can do now in

34:20

spider-man games They can't answer who cares.

34:22

Yeah, they came around to it. This

34:25

was also I believe the team that

34:27

made The Incredible

34:29

Hulk ultimate destruction Yeah,

34:32

way back in 2005 and kind of

34:34

set the stage for this they also

34:36

made Scarface the world is yours

34:38

which is a set up to fresh tick

34:41

I assume you're going to tell the world

34:43

about Scarface to Why I'm

34:45

gonna talk about no not Scarface

34:47

to the godfather to I was I

34:49

was about to miss a godfather Scarface

34:53

to the underappreciated Sequel to

34:56

nobody because the main character Scarface

34:58

died at the end spoilers and

35:00

godfather 2 is a bizarre fucking

35:02

game So

35:04

there was an original godfather that EA made

35:07

and that more or less like thought a

35:09

lot of the events of the godfather Boba

35:11

third-person shooting not very good, but it came

35:13

out It was

35:16

okay. It was okay. Godfather 2 went

35:18

in a completely different direction where you

35:20

were basically like building up a gang

35:22

and You would have

35:24

like NPCs we're gonna talk

35:26

about dragon's dogma next week Not far off

35:28

from dragon's dogma where you're building up this

35:31

group of NPCs that have different skills And

35:33

they'll like follow you around and go on missions

35:35

and protect your back and things like that And

35:38

the game was kind of jank as fuck like

35:40

super jank but from

35:42

a Conceptional standpoint it was pretty

35:44

cool to like be slowly taking

35:47

over the city with your like

35:49

pre-made like personally adjusted gang members

35:52

And they had like a whole other area where you'd

35:54

go down to Cuba and and and do things there

35:57

And it was I was just like really impressed by

36:00

I like just Creativity

36:02

of the gameplay itself even if the game

36:04

itself was kind of busted as hell I

36:06

think the first Godfather game was on came

36:08

out There's like an addition that came out

36:10

on a Wii and I played the

36:12

shit out of that one because there wasn't another

36:14

Like open more there wasn't a Grand Theft Auto

36:16

game for Wii So

36:19

I remember putting a lot of time into that and having

36:21

having a lot of fondness for it Yeah,

36:24

I don't think I played Godfather 2 though now

36:26

I'm looking at the document and somebody

36:28

just wrote Mad Max. Fuck you. I

36:31

like the Mad Max game I watched

36:33

the man a lot of people like that.

36:35

I will it was it suffered.

36:38

It was a weird It

36:40

was really weird because it came out

36:42

around the time that people were getting

36:44

pretty excited for Mad Max Due to

36:46

the extremely popular and well

36:48

received Mad Max fury road, but

36:50

this game isn't really like fury road very

36:53

very much It's it's

36:55

very it feels more like a sequel

36:58

to the Mel Gibson

37:00

movies, I guess like more accurately. It's it's

37:02

sort of a standalone

37:04

thing but it had like really

37:07

great vehicular kind

37:09

of combat and The

37:13

bases were fun because there was always like a

37:15

bunch of different ways to approach them and it

37:18

looked great I don't know it was

37:20

it was a pretty flat experience like

37:23

once you Start going into

37:25

it like you you kind of get the idea

37:27

of what it is a few hours in But

37:30

I liked what it

37:32

was. I played all of it. It was good. I

37:35

liked it I am just

37:37

reading also right now that two other Mad

37:39

Max games Were

37:41

in development one developed by Cory

37:43

Barlog another right

37:46

I both in production both got canceled

37:48

I I The

37:50

Barlog thing is very very

37:52

very messy. He was tied

37:55

to the avalanche project I only mentioned this because I

37:57

literally asked about this to the

38:00

the head of Avalanche at the time at

38:03

E3 once and he told me Barlog was never

38:05

attached and then I went to a Barlog interview

38:07

where he was very very grumpy with me about

38:10

Reporting that he was not attached to a game

38:12

with which he was and had to play back

38:14

the audio From the

38:16

previous interview. Yeah, it was not my

38:18

problem. Great. Love it video game industry

38:22

I I wish I liked the Mad Max game

38:24

more because just cause is the same developer and

38:27

Why do you like that one more Chris? Just

38:31

just just cause One

38:37

other game I guess have to say well

38:39

two things earth Defense Force I've

38:42

got doesn't count really in time not an

38:44

open world game doesn't count. Nope. You're not

38:46

an open world game No, what a lot

38:49

of open worlds? Okay.

38:51

Yeah Around

38:54

an open world in that in that game in those cities

38:56

that you're not in an open world That's

38:58

making the argument that a fucking Mega Man game is

39:00

an open. Yeah, you're being contrary That's why I think

39:02

how about making man is happens on a 2d plane.

39:04

You go from level to level This is an open

39:06

city is held hours in a pool game I

39:12

Know it's not stop. Stop.

39:14

It's you know, yeah, you know,

39:16

we shot Do we leave the other

39:18

game something about Far Cry 2 do we legal

39:20

do you legally? Oh, yeah Yeah, I'll try to

39:22

you can get sick in it You'll

39:24

lose your bona fides bases the people

39:27

come back the grenades. They'll roll down

39:29

a hill. No problem. Don't Spreads

39:33

the first spreads it's incredible.

39:36

It's not fun, but it's incredible Fresh

39:39

are we gonna talk more about this soon?

39:42

Well, we're gonna talk specifically about one of

39:44

these games that I know plant and I

39:46

love and I think others on the podcast

39:48

Might love as well on a forthcoming episode

39:50

of the rest ease which is coming up

39:53

this Tuesday We're gonna be talking about the

39:55

saboteur which is a game by pandemic

39:58

set in World War two surprisingly

40:00

wacky in tone given the setting.

40:04

But yeah, that game kinda rules and it

40:06

is now currently available and I think on

40:08

sale on Steam for like five bucks, it

40:11

just got re-released. And

40:13

with some very slight tweaking, runs fucking great

40:16

on a Steam Deck and looks fantastic

40:18

on a Steam Deck. It is definitely of its time,

40:20

but we have a lot to say about it because

40:22

it is a very interesting game. Hey,

40:24

you listening to the show right now, here's

40:27

why you're gonna wanna listen to that

40:30

episode. You play as a professional race

40:32

car driver from Ireland who goes and

40:34

fights Nazi scientists

40:36

who also happen to be

40:38

professional race car drivers. Amazing.

40:42

It's good. It's good, good idea for a

40:44

video game everybody. It is, it is. Do

40:48

we have some reader mail? To kick off reader mail,

40:51

a bunch of people let me

40:53

know that my explanation of Freyrin

40:55

the anime is incorrect. I described

40:57

it too cynically and nihilistic and

40:59

they wanna make sure that everybody

41:01

knows that it is actually a

41:03

very uplifting show. I

41:05

will say it starts out dark, and then

41:08

characters change and evolve and they become much

41:10

happier. So I hate that. I

41:13

know, I know, I know. I just

41:15

get one show where everybody's just like, let's kill

41:18

nazis. I know. I

41:20

know, I know. But however

41:23

you wanna perceive it, I

41:25

don't mind as long as you watch it

41:28

because it's really something special and I think

41:30

you will love it. It's on a crunchy

41:32

roll right now. So

41:34

speaking of things we got completely wrong,

41:37

this letter comes from JKL. Griffin

41:40

is way off base on the Ogre

41:42

Battle series. Tactics Ogre is the game

41:44

that came before Final Fantasy Tactics and

41:46

they're the same style. Grid based tactical

41:49

combat with individual characters as units. This

41:51

is relating to the unicorn overlord discussion

41:53

from last week. Ogre Battle 64

41:55

and Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen

41:57

are both exactly what we're talking about here.

42:00

specifically Unicorn Overlord, RTS overworld

42:02

maps with auto battle clashes

42:04

to resolve conflicts. The

42:06

wild thing is that both of

42:09

these genres were honed under Yasumi

42:11

Matsuno's directional influence, not to pin

42:13

an auteur role on him, but

42:15

these were the flagship game genres

42:17

in the strategy game space on

42:19

consoles for a long stretch there,

42:22

and, incidentally, the two worlds created,

42:24

Zenobia and Ivalis, are both rich

42:26

and subtle. So that's

42:28

a little history lesson. It's interesting. I didn't

42:30

know that Tactics Ocarina and

42:32

Ograbau were two different games,

42:34

if I'm completely honest. Don't

42:37

be yourself. Yeah, we're going to be noted. I

42:39

wasn't there last week, but I knew all of that. So

42:41

that's part of the reason I didn't really... I gotta start

42:43

fucking getting more episodes, man. I'm gonna start fucking getting more

42:45

episodes, man. I'm gonna start fucking getting more episodes, man. I may

42:48

have mentioned this, but... Well,

42:52

got a lot of letters. We

42:55

also have a note. This comes from S. Payne.

42:58

I have heard so much about Slay the Spire, and I know

43:00

that I would love it, but I just haven't gotten around to

43:02

it yet. What are some

43:04

games the Bessies know they would love, but

43:06

haven't made time to play? I

43:10

don't have any of these. Yeah,

43:12

I don't know what that would be for me. If

43:15

I know I would love something, I would probably play

43:17

it. I

43:19

can think of a lot. I actually,

43:21

I have one. And that

43:24

game is Gloomwood. And

43:26

this is a game that's been in early access

43:28

since 2022, and it is basically a kind of

43:34

indie recreation of the Thief franchise in

43:36

a lot of ways. The gameplay is

43:38

like all immersive gameplay, stealth, stuff.

43:43

And it looks incredibly my shit. I

43:45

am so psyched to play this game,

43:48

but because it's still in early access, I

43:50

much rather just wait until the game is

43:52

actually out, out, and then I will play

43:54

it. But that is a game that has

43:56

always been top of my mind for some

43:58

people. For me, it's the entire history. of

44:00

like role-playing games. I did not

44:03

get into role-playing games until like much later in

44:05

life because I mostly had

44:07

to rent games as a kid and

44:09

renting a 40-50 hour RPG

44:12

was not sustainable. So

44:15

now there's a lot of like gaps where I'm like

44:17

man I wish I had the time to go back

44:19

and play through the early Dragon Quest games. What's top

44:21

of that list? Well

44:23

honestly it's an MMO is Final Fantasy

44:27

14. Yeah baby. I really

44:29

wish I had the time to go play that

44:31

game but it's so big that I know I

44:33

will never play it. I feel that way though

44:35

a lot of I mean I guess

44:38

the question if the question is like what would

44:40

you get into but you can't allow yourself to

44:42

get into like there's a lot

44:44

of I mean I live

44:47

in a perpetual state of I could get back into

44:49

WoW. Like I could I'll get

44:51

back to back into WoW. What it usually

44:53

takes is one of my

44:55

friends from college texting me like

44:57

let's get back into WoW real quick. I'm like yeah

45:00

that sounds pretty good. Let's get in a little let's

45:02

hop in or lately it's been my friend Jason trying

45:04

to get me to play EverQuest 99 a

45:07

EverQuest version that is locked to the original launch

45:09

of the game and I bet if I got

45:12

into that yeah I could get pretty deep into

45:14

one of those MMOs but I just I don't

45:16

have the the bandwidth to

45:19

keep up with it with the pace we have to have

45:21

for the besties here. A lot of games. Yeah a

45:23

lot of games folks. Speaking

45:27

of other things do we

45:29

have any honorable mentions? Yeah

45:31

I've got a big one. Okay okay.

45:33

The other night I went and saw One

45:36

from the Heart. Do y'all know about this

45:38

movie? No. So

45:40

Francis Ford Coppola the guy who made The

45:42

Godfather we just talked about it and

45:45

also made Apocalypse Now. He makes

45:47

all this money and then

45:49

he's like you know what I'm gonna do? I'm

45:51

gonna fix the film industry. I'm gonna make my

45:53

own studio. I'm gonna get like a giant sound

45:55

stage. I'm gonna make a movie for me and

45:58

this is gonna be a movie for you. going

46:00

to change the way movies are made. We're

46:02

not going to need these studios anymore." And

46:04

he says, I'm going to make an American,

46:07

gaudy musical, romantic drama

46:09

comedy, and it's

46:11

going to rebuild Las Vegas

46:14

inside of a sound stage. And

46:16

this is Jack you're talking about? And

46:19

this is Jack. No, this is one

46:21

from the heart. Some interesting

46:23

choices about deciding to make a musical set

46:25

in Las Vegas. One, building an entire sound

46:27

stage version of Las Vegas, have

46:30

to imagine, quite expensive. Two,

46:32

it's a musical, but basically none

46:34

of the characters sing. Instead, there

46:37

is just Tom Waits music that

46:39

is played over moments where musical

46:41

stuff would happen. Not a

46:43

musical, I would argue. And

46:46

there's like only like one big dance,

46:48

well I guess maybe two dance numbers. The

46:52

idea of it being a musical is a bit

46:54

strange, and yet I get it while watching it.

46:57

I, this is like, this

46:59

is just my catnip. This is

47:01

somebody going for broke and making some of

47:03

the most wild decisions imaginable. He

47:05

was doing all these weird 1920s, 1930s, very

47:07

early special effects in camera techniques for

47:15

like a romantic drama. It

47:18

is nuts. It also has Harry Dean Stanton

47:20

in it and Raul Julia, which is a

47:22

good enough reason to watch any movie. I

47:26

think it is in some theaters right now.

47:28

They're doing a rerelease, which I would guess

47:30

means that it will be

47:32

streaming at home very, very, very soon.

47:36

I wanted to call out the Stardew

47:38

Valley 1.6 update, which is

47:40

now live. I haven't actually played it, but I'm

47:44

pretty pumped about it and it sounds

47:46

enormous. There's a whole new farm type

47:48

that they've added called the Meadowlands farm

47:50

that has blue

47:52

grass that's supposed to be good for your pets.

47:55

So if you wanted to start another

47:57

300 hour run of Stardew Valley, there's

47:59

never been a better time. Are we gonna do

48:01

like that maybe in May or something? We probably

48:04

should. That seems good. Yeah. Hmm. We'll

48:06

think about it. That

48:09

does seem good. I also wanted to preempt what

48:12

will be letters and I'm actually surprised

48:14

the people actually studying Japanese didn't correct

48:16

me. The letter O, the circle with the

48:18

line over it, is used to write Japanese

48:20

words in the Latin alphabet. For example,

48:23

Tokyo and Osaka all have that.

48:25

The line is called a macron.

48:28

Macron, I guess, not like the

48:30

snack. And it means that

48:33

the vowel is long. In the case of

48:35

Japanese, it's pronounced like a longest version of

48:37

the vowel in English words like go and

48:39

hope. Like a heart-o. I

48:42

mean, I gotta be honest, man. I stopped reading

48:44

romaji as soon as I learned katakana in Hirakana.

48:47

I don't have any use for

48:49

it, man. Why

48:51

would I bother if I want to experience the

48:53

language? I'd rather read it in

48:55

its true form rather than... You only

48:58

read kanji now? I only read kanji.

49:00

Can I tell you something, Chris? I

49:02

have forgotten how to read English. That

49:05

is how that is by now. I can't read

49:07

romaji anymore. I have to have someone translate it

49:09

into katakana for me or Hirakana,

49:11

you know, and then... If you

49:13

must. If I must. If

49:16

I must sully my eye jellies

49:18

with katakana, as

49:21

long as it's not that he's in romaji,

49:23

I am very happy. People think

49:25

that Justin's joking, but he does carry around

49:27

one of those Google apps that lets you

49:29

translate through photos and has to take photos

49:31

of like every sign he

49:34

sees. Yes. Yeah. It actually makes for

49:36

a... I should stop? It's

49:39

a driving experience that

49:41

is really, really chilling

49:43

for my family because I am...

49:46

I'm a wing and a prayer out there. I

49:49

watched the first Anna Griffin recommended it before,

49:51

but it's just such a great companion

49:54

piece to this week's game. I watched the first episode

49:56

of Shogun. I watched it

49:58

on Hulu, I think

50:00

it's an FX series and none of these

50:03

distinctions matter anymore. But

50:05

I, it is so, the best,

50:09

I only watched the first episode and there's a

50:11

lot, lot, lot, lot, lot going on and there's

50:13

a lot of things to keep track of like

50:15

plot-wise. But it is, even though

50:17

I'm not like a hundred percent with

50:19

the story, it is so lushly

50:21

produced and like shot

50:23

and perform, it's just a joy to

50:26

watch. Like it's, it feels really immersive.

50:28

It's a really interesting period of history

50:30

that I'm like very sadly

50:34

ignorant of. So I'm

50:36

gonna keep watching it. I really, really, really

50:38

enjoyed it. I'm excited. There's a moment in

50:40

the second episode where everything kind of clicked

50:43

into place for me. So I'm excited for you

50:45

to get to that part. I will

50:47

also say I'm starting to become a mind that Bellatro

50:49

is going to be the game of the year. And

50:53

I want to, as that thought has started to percolate,

50:55

I wanted to go ahead and just start warning people

50:57

about it because it's going to be, I've

50:59

already played two this year that are like, only

51:03

rolling gun. You think I should play it is what you're

51:05

saying? Yeah. It's

51:10

Bellatro and Yakuza.

51:12

Yeah. Sorry. Like a dragon informal. Yeah.

51:15

The pressure, you're not playing Bellatro is

51:18

bizarre because it is so extremely shit.

51:20

Are you fucking with me? No,

51:22

I'm not. Because we do

51:25

a fucking podcast that requires us to

51:27

play too many games. Hey, I know.

51:29

I know. Okay. You have, I understand

51:31

the confusion. Let me help guys. The

51:34

video game time is for video games. You're

51:36

going to have to make cuts elsewhere.

51:39

Oh, I thought about it. Okay. Like,

51:41

hey kids, trying to potty train my

51:43

son. Sort these pennies for dad. So

51:45

I can go get some Bellatro. You

51:47

know, you can find the oldest quarter.

51:49

Like whatever. It doesn't have to be

51:52

coins. Good

51:55

to know. Keep

51:57

talking about Bellatro and they are talking about. I've

52:00

been playing this game so much and they are still

52:03

talking about things that are Exponential

52:05

levels of understanding a boy. I

52:07

have done some truly Yucky

52:10

shit to this guy like I I have

52:12

I have I've had a couple runs where

52:15

I have broken this bad boy Right the

52:17

fuck open and could go on

52:20

forever and ever and ever scoring

52:22

a billion trillion trillion points With

52:24

every hand the problem is when

52:27

I listen to people talking about their Bellator

52:29

runs Not having played it it's about as

52:31

interesting to hearing people talk about their fantasy

52:33

football like scores I would let it is

52:35

play it and then you can be like

52:37

me grip this at folks This is what

52:39

sports is like, you know, it's the exact

52:41

same thing You just start playing sports and

52:44

then you'll love them. It's like someone describing

52:46

their dream. It's about that in I

52:49

want to give a quick shout out. I haven't watched

52:51

all of the episode that is up

52:53

yet But yesterday fucking physical 100 return

52:56

baby season 2, you know, I'm about

52:58

it You know that I'm gonna watch

53:00

these big big big big strong Sometimes

53:04

sometimes they're small but like fast with

53:06

like lots of endurance It's the Korean

53:08

reality show where a hundred very

53:10

strong people compete in physical challenges to see who

53:12

has the best physique and it beats ass The

53:16

first season came out last year and it was

53:18

ruled and now it's back. So get on board

53:21

Okay, I think we did it. I

53:23

wanted to thank the following patrons on

53:26

the patreon, which is it? patreon.com/the

53:29

besties Marty day

53:31

mr. Blue Fox. Um, Judd Doth and

53:33

low-key Thank you so much for being

53:35

patrons on our patreon and thank you

53:37

to everyone else who has backed us

53:39

or talked about The show or

53:41

share the show even if you're not backing us on

53:43

patreon, that's cool, too Just

53:45

a heads up for patrons. We do have the

53:48

episode the rest of these episode coming on Tuesday

53:50

where we talked about the saboteur and Some

53:53

other cool things about AAA games of

53:55

that era. So stay tuned for

53:58

that and we also have a bracket episode That's

54:00

coming up in early April, which was

54:02

very exciting. We did the very

54:04

best twists and video games And

54:07

don't worry about spoilers because we only talked about games that

54:09

have been out for 10 years Yeah, lots

54:11

of fun stuff on the patreon if

54:14

that is a good reason to Subscribe.

54:16

Oh, I forgot one of our backers blank

54:18

space also one of our backers. So thank

54:20

you Next week we're

54:22

gonna talk about dragons dogma to believe it

54:24

or not. They did it.

54:27

They finally did it Dragon's dogma to that'll be

54:29

next week Be sure to join us again

54:31

next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends

54:33

take the world's best games You

55:02

Best fees