The Besties - 2023 is already full of great games [The Resties]

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

We expected 2023 to be an incredible year for video games with Zelda and Starfield on the calendar. However, we didn't expect to have so many great games by early February. This week, we talk about Hitman's incredible "Freelancer" DLC and the meditative experience collection game Season. Plus, Nuclear Blaze and our favorite language-learning app: Busuu. 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!

my name is christopher thomas plant my name is ross varshtick welcome to the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest this week we're talking about a whole lot honestly a bundle of smaller awesome releases those include hitman's freelancer dlc uh season a letter to the future and nuclear blaze along with a few other little little ditties that we're excited to talk about but before we get into that i have some news for you oh boy i got rid of my anime statue your giant 13 sentinels anime statue that i helped fund you've you've rid yourself of it i so i showed it to steffy it was 15 inches just for for people which is a lot more inches than you think is let me just tell you i showed it to steffy and her her reaction was so um unfazed that it made me question a lot about myself.

Sure. So I decided, okay, I need to take this back. I need to send it back to Amazon. Yeah. And I need to get something like that's not just like, I don't want to say 13 Sentinels was ironic. that's not just like i i don't want to say 13 sentinels was ironic but like i need to get something that i'm going to be really proud to have on my shelf that every time i see it i'll think i i won the resties that year i am i'm happy i'm proud sure and to be clear 13 sentinels was not ironic because you adore 13 sentinels no i do i do but when i see it it's very hard it was very hard for me to look at

a high school woman in like gym clothes and be like this is not embarrassing you know like i like to think that i'm okay and we're not judging no not at all i am you have a statue in your house that's fine totally fine i am not comfortable in my own skin. That is the issue. And to be fair, I would also not be comfortable with that, having that in my house. No. So I needed something that really spoke to me. So you have not seen it yet. Correct. I have shared a link with you.

I would like you to open it and describe to the listener what you see. Okay. So I am opening this link that Chris Plant has sent. It is gallerynucleus.com, which I'm not familiar with. Wow, look at this. Yeah? I don't know what this is, but it looks incredible. Isn't it cool?

It is a miniature arcade cabinet of Spelunky. It says Spelunky 3-in-1, and I guess i don't know what it is it's it's art it's just a little it's a little fake arcade cabinet designed by derrick you wow that's so cool isn't that neat yeah so gallery is it electronic or is it just like no it's just it's just like a little i I assume, wooden. It's mixed medium. And you can connect a Bluetooth speaker to it to play like some Spelunky music. But really, it's just a little... It's a fictional version of a Spelunky arcade cabinet.

Gallery Nucleus is a gallery in Los Angeles that I think people should check out. And right now, I think it will actually have already ended by the time this episode airs they were running a thing called fantasy arcade 3 which is where they get a whole bunch of designers to create fake arcade cabinets that's so they have some for like games that are real like this and abzu um but then they have some that are like for fake games. Like I think there's like a Frasier video game one that they have. Of course. Yeah. And they're awesome.

People are probably going to miss this go around. But Gallery Nucleus does lots of things, including 13 Sentinels sessions. Of course. Which is why I was aware of them to begin with. So it felt like, you know, spiritually correct. So this, I feel like this was a good choice i think it took us a while to get here yeah but i think i think for next year whoever wins like i kind of want you to win because i would like to get you like a really cool piece of art that like

that you're proud to have and sure and and to be clear i wanted to get you something that you actually wanted and it it seems like I missed Mark on the first time. Well, you did. And I think I steered you wrong because I thought I knew myself. And let me tell you, you knew me better than I know myself. That seems to be the case in this situation. This is great, though. Well found and very, very cool.

Thank you. Let's take a break. And then we can come back and talk about some video games. Okay. Okay, so we're back. And you're going to tell me about Hitman Freelancer Mode. In some context from the top, we have played Hitman games on this podcast. Yes.

Quite a few, I think. I don't know. I think it's just the third one really i think so no yeah because hitman 2 came out i don't know ages and well it's the show's been on for 10 years so maybe 10 years i think we played the ones that came up before all of that yeah i don't remember playing the other hitman games hitman 3 was the first one that really like clicked for me anyway we've played a lot of these i i keep feeling like i'm you know one great session away from falling in love with this series and i'm curious about freelancer mode and i want you to tell me all about it because it sounds like

maybe the thing that can get me there it's probably not okay but it is incredibly cool and incredibly like interesting from a design standpoint. So it's going to require some setup. So be patient. Okay. So just recently, Hitman 3 was the name was changed to Hitman World of Assassination. And all that really means is the developers behind Hitman basically baked in all of the levels from Hitman 1 and 2 into 3. So if you buy Hitman World of Assassination, you basically get everything all in one bundle.

Fine. So that just happened recently. And as part of that, they've been working on this mode called Freelancer Mode. And in the core Hitman game, again we've talked about the whole idea is that each mission which takes place in these like enormous world enormous levels with you know hundreds of people like crowd members stuff like that and you have a target and killing that target's like a very complicated like you know you're setting up like a variety of traps for that target to fall into but it's very kind of prescribed in terms of how you complete that assassination in freelancer mode

it basically totally randomizes all of this stuff so you'll start a campaign in freelancer mode and basically it'll spit you levels that have a randomized target it'll give you uh sub objectives like hey kill this target with an explosive or use um poison and um it'll allow you to basically build up an arsenal using the gear that you find on these missions. But if you die, any gear that you were carrying on that mission is lost forever. So it is very much inspired by roguelikes because you are in this campaign where you are trying to basically move your way through these randomized missions. And if you die, you'll essentially go back to the beginning there, there's a little bit of a, you know, it's a little more tame than that, but not by much, there's like very little room for error. And so the idea is, instead of playing

hitman, the way I always played hitman was very carefully and with a lot of saving and you kind of just like do it perfectly. And if you get spotted, you reload your save. And again, this is how I play it. You can't do that here. They don't let you save in the middle of a mission. You are really at the whims of your skill level. shit goes bad you're gonna have to either like maneuver your way out of it or you're gonna die and basically lose a bunch of stuff and have to deal with that um it's wild uh yeah i don't know if that kind of answers your how it works but i mean it sounds hmm it sounds

like both more welcoming and more intimidating somehow at the exact same time. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you why I think it's not necessarily great for you, Chris Plant, who hasn't necessarily played a ton of Hitman games. Yes. I'm coming in an interesting way because I didn't really play the first and second games. And these levels that they're pulling into the freelancer mode are pulled from all three games. So you're going to see levels from hitman three, two and one, the hitman three levels, I know, like the back of my hand. And when they look when they load up, I know, oh, if I go to this specific bathroom at

this specific time, there's going to be a guard in there who's washing his face, and I can lure him into the bathroom with the flooded sink and take his outfit and then i have a very good disguise that'll get me around most of the map for the maps that i haven't played uh i don't have that real like that background and eventually i could probably gather it just by like playing the missions but the normal campaign of hitman is kind of designed to teach you a lot of that stuff and like tell you like oh here's where like a secret doorway is or stuff like that so i feel like the majority of the people that are playing this mode probably played a lot of uh those first two well all three of the hitman games such that like this is like a new challenge for them

where everything's randomized but there are some uh carryovers from what they saw previously see this is interesting because the person who the other person who's been championing this i think probably to both of us is mike maharty yeah works atgon and also is on the Firescape podcast. Yes. And the two games that I feel like I hear from him constantly about are Hitman and especially this DLC as it was coming out now that it's out. And Total Warhammer 3 in its like mega expansion, which blends all of its like worlds and like characters and types together, right? Yeah. And it's very funny talking to him about these things because they they sound absolutely amazing. They sound cooler than 99% of what is like out there. They also sound like something that's only possible if I had already dedicated years of my life,

or at least hundreds of hours playing each of these games. I'm sure I could play them, but the joy that he is getting from them is effectively like this just unparalleled reward for getting to know every in and out of games of this scope and then because you know everything they can layer on this level of complexity or challenge that you know you would you would never start here for you know a video game if you were designing something well i mean you know it does feel like a roguelike so obviously there are you know spelunky for example like you will fail as often in this as you will in like games of spelunky it's just weird to see it in a effectively it's a triple a game so they have like all of the presentation and like uh detail and

also like these are three games worth of content so it's just a shitload of stuff that you can play through which is very very cool and i'm definitely a fan of it but it's again hard for me to imagine someone coming in and not getting a little scared off by the um just by like everything that's going on yeah but that being said like i have played map like i played this map i don't know where it was set it was somewhere in america it was like an everyday america like rural map and uh i didn't i'd never played it before and i just stumbled my way into like an fbi hideout which was regrettable because they instantly started shooting at me but i slowly like was able to run away and like get my bearings and figure out where i should be going and i was able to like do pretty well unfortunately as you go on uh the maps get harder and once you finish a series of missions

they throw you uh i think it's like a syndicate leader mission or showdown mission, whatever they call it in the game. And it's basically like a game of guess who, you know, that board game guess who? Yeah. So they've got three targets, four targets, whatever it is on the map. And they'll tell you your target has a hat, glasses, a tattoo, and they love food. a tattoo and they love food and so you basically have to tail people around and figure out which of these four targets are the target that you're trying to take out but you also need to you know use disguises to not get spotted because you know if you're just using your like black suit with a red tie people are installing your barcode on the back of your neck yeah exactly so it's there's a lot going on and

i want to watch people that are like pro league uh hitman people because i think it'd be a great game to watch because you really do have to like pivot your strategy dramatically from mission to mission for me having just played hitman 3 and i put a lot of it like a lot of it it's it's pretty punishing like i spent like probably three hours kind of throwing myself at this and it is pretty intense well okay so here's here's why i thought maybe i could get into it okay when i play hitman i try to play what i think hitman is which is like super sleuth world's best hitman player right and if i start to play in a way that i assume it allows me to play which is like okay you could just shoot things you know you can't just cause a mess sure and you can still like

pass you know you can get a pass grade and i wonder if playing this version if i would free me up kind of mentally to be like whatever my goal is just to get to the next stage um yeah it doesn't and i'll tell you why because of the objectives that they're giving you the the objectives are optional but you'll get an objective that's like kill the guy with a lethal syringe and the reward for those objectives is money like currency in the game and you use that money to buy items that you can then store to complete other objectives so for example you could buy if if you get a mission where you need to use an explosive to kill a guy and you don't have an explosive you could use the money that you've earned from previous missions to buy an explosive from a vendor that's like on the map.

So I, I know what you're saying, but really, really all you could just do that in the main game and get that experience where you just like kind of run and gun your way through. I don't think it's a very fun game to just like shoot everyone. It's like boring and not really designed that way, but you can do that. Yeah. I think, I think what's most amazing about this is just

they're totally reevaluating how their content is presented. They spent all this time and money making 18 or so levels, however many levels it is, that are like enormous and detailed and tons of like stuff in there. And they had this whole campaign that was built around those missions. And they're like, you know what? We don't need to spend the money to totally redo all this stuff. We're just going to change the systems around them. And we're going to come up with a game that uses these tools that we've already built in a different way and like a really interesting way that like totally reformulates what hitman is and i think that's what have that that's what has everyone excited that's certainly what excites me about this is that it just kind of breathes new life into a game that was already

good and now there's this free mode in it. It's like astounding how much content is here. There's a whole progression system. You're unlocking like a whole safe house that has like new enhancements and upgrades. So even if you do fully die and restart from scratch, there are still some upgrades that you're keeping. Like you can carry more gear into the mission now

and stuff like that. Yeah. So it's astounding how much is there part of me is like oh you know this is a great model for a triple a game development right and you're gonna you're doing the quote hard part you're making all the animation you're making all the models and the world and all this stuff and obviously game design tremendously difficult but in theory that a lot of the like heavy lifting is done and you know you could you could repurpose all of those assets and all that stuff but i think that gets it also

the challenge with a lot of you know kind of the ubisoft ea era of triple a game design which is by focusing on all of that stuff by focusing on you know the towers that you climb in an open world game effectively or the collectibles it allows you to not have to worry about making game design not like not making something this complicated you don't have to be super thoughtful if it's just like tons of stuff there's just stuff right and and yeah i think there's something at admiral about this that is hey we're actually're actually stripping things away and creating something entirely new. I wonder if this is something that's only possible because they are. Are they fully independent now? I believe they are.

I think that IO is fully independent. I don't think they're owned by a bigger publisher. I really do think, I mean, this feels like a mentality that was pulled from true tiny indie games, which did this only because they didn't have the resources to do anything else. Like they didn't have the option to make tons and tons of levels over and over again. All they could do was make a few, a handful of levels and there were very good levels and then make systems that make those levels constantly fresh and interesting. Hades is an example. Spelunky is an example uh rogue legacy and so i think this is just like bringing that indie mentality to a much bigger project which is really exciting that sounds good

i i need to check oh i don't i think i need to watch it yeah i think i think that is a good approach find a youtuber a twitch streamer that you really like that's playing it and just watch them play. I think that would be like a fun way to experience it because I think for a newcomer to Hitman, it'd be a lot to take in. Okay, I'm going to do it and I'm going to report back. And who knows, maybe next time you talk to me, I'm going to be, you know, no, there's no way. I'll never be good at these games. Yeah, probably not. They require so much patience.

They do. And I, it's just not me. You're not a patient boy. And yet, we're going to take a break right now. And when we come back, I'm going to talk about a game that is going to completely contradict everything that we're saying. Oh boy. Here we go. We're going to talk about a game that is going to completely contradict everything that we're saying. Oh, boy. Here we go. We're going to talk about Season right after this.

Okay. We're back. I have a fantastic game to talk about. And I don't know if you... You should play it. I don't know if you'll like it. Okay. Okay?

So, it's called season a letter to the future and it is it's a story game for sure um it's also kind of like a pokemon snap you know collect memories in a scrapbook video game like Like taking photos? Yeah. So here's like the top level premise. There is a person in the future, and this is the book ending of this story. There's a person in the future, and they are reading the travel diary of a young person, okay?

And then pretty much right away, you zoom into the life of this young person. They live in a town on the top of a mountain it's like surrounded by walls kind of like a beautiful i guess i'd kill like maybe swiss alps or italian type like anyway you know european town very fancy very fancy um and they a prophecy has come from um this person's friend that there is a change of season. And the change of season in this world means like a pretty, maybe not cataclysmic shift, but a complete change in how the world works, right? And you don't know what that means.

It could mean something like really serious, like effectively the world's ending. It could be there's actually a page in the diary at the very beginning that is a timeline of seasons. And one is like industrialization. Another is modernity. Another is war, like a season of war. So it's like decades of war, right? Just a big change. So they decide that they're going to go out and see the world before this has happened. They know they've been locked up in the city forever. They're going to go out and see the world before this has happened.

They know they've been locked up in the city forever. They're going to go out and see the world. And their mom, like, sends them on the way. And that game is you going around, taking pictures of the world, drawing pictures of the world, collecting stamps and little knickknacks that you can put in your scrapbook, recording audio of various things. It could be the sound of rain falling on a bus stop. It could be the sound of a frog or whatever.

And then you deciding what goes into your scrapbook. So each kind of stage, you only have two pages for it. So you can't fit everything in there. So you're both documenting what's in the world and you're deciding basically like what gets preserved of the memory of this world that you live in. How are you interact? How is the interaction like? So the interaction is you walk around in third person and probably about an hour in, you get a bike. And that's when the game really opens up.

So the game does a really good job of very slowly revealing what it is. The first maybe half hour is in your house, and it feels kind of like we've gone home at first, very, very much at first. Like you're in a room and there are objects to look at. It's like, okay, you know, I've done this before. And I'll spoil just the first 30 minutes. You know that you're going on this trip and your mother is like, okay, you've looked at a lot of the objects around the house. I'm going to make a pennant for you that is going to protect you while you're out there. You know, familiar trope and she's like but the only way to make it is we have to take uh an

object that represents each of your senses so something that has a smell that you like something that you know has a look a feel and we're going to incinerate it and when you incinerate it i will lose that memory forever what so you're like looking at your mom as you like put in the only photograph in the house of her with her or her late husband and being like okay i you don't get to remember this now forever and i'm gonna carry this with me it's like really heavy and it's quite beautiful because you know the thing that your mother tells you is okay. You know, whatever you put in here,

you're going to carry with you. So you want to make it important, but I will lose it, you know? And like, I'm very okay with that sacrifice. That sacrifice is actually quite important to me. Yeah.

In, in the objects that are in the house, like there's like candy, you could pick something pretty inconsequential. I would do like Beetlejuice. And then she could just watch Beetlejuice for the first time again oh well she she can never see it again or else it like breaks it so like you really can't even you can't even tell them what they had forgotten oh i know i know but that's a great point when you say beetlejuice you mean

the musical right of course yeah yeah yeah it's unfortunate because it's closed but otherwise we we could tell them a lot about it that's true which would be quite enjoyable actually um so yeah so it starts pretty intimate like that and then after that you're walking around your village uh in the town and then yeah and then and is it just like objects that are highlighted of like i'm gonna walk over here and like no oh yeah so nothing is highlighted it's just the world and then you kind of decide what is important and the game obviously it it's thought of ahead on all of this almost everything that i think is like neat the game has something kind of like pre-recorded to talk about that sure so i'll be like oh you know like this little string on a tree and i'll take it and i'll like give like a whole thing about the history of why people hung

these little banners from the tree or i'll be like oh this poster like this seems like it's probably just background art and i'll take a picture of it and i'll talk about like why the kids hung these posters so you're basically unlocking the story of your environment whenever you take a picture or record audio of it yeah i mean that sounds very cool it reminds me of alba did you play that game alba yeah it's similar to that yeah um and it man it walks a tightrope because again it's a slow game it is there there are some goals like there's a page i've seen a page where it encourages you to take photos of certain things but for the most part it truly is just like walk around collect stuff for

your scrapbook decorate the scrapbook as you like you know and then move on to the next place is it like an open world or are they levels yeah so. So that's when it opens up. So again, first level, you're in a house. Second level, you're in your like town. The third level, you finally get this bike and you are like zipping down the mountain. So the world's flying past you. And it's this very disorienting effect where previously you're taking a photo of like every little object. And now like entire vistas are, like, passing by. And the instinct is to stop and, like, take photos.

Yeah. But also, it's really fun to ride down a big hill on a bike. But can you stop? Yeah, you can stop at any time. Yeah. But, like, that's... Okay, so all the mechanical stuff is, like, neat. yeah but like that's okay so all all the mechanical stuff is like neat but what i've like loved about the game is how it just makes me think about how it's applicable in the real world right

because i mean how like that is such the perfect metaphor of just anytime you are trying to retain a memory or take a photo anytime you point your phone to take a photo right. And it's this dichotomy of like. Okay the second I do that. I am now distancing myself. From the moment I'm actually. And I have not really had that many times. In a video game. Where.

I am purposely. Going against what the game wants me to do. Which is you know take photos. And document these memories. Knowing like effectively effectively okay everything i'm zipping past is not saved for the future world it's gone like it is it is for me and me alone and now it's gone from history um and at the same time wow it's just really fun zipping past in a bike and that's cool as hell it seems pretty ambitious for do you know how big this team was i don't know it so i think it was partly funded by the canadian government which is another thing of like it must be so nice having a canadian the canadian

canadian oh my god the the canada media fund is i think one of the funders of it so it must have like some team but it also does that thing of just making really smart choices of um development prioritization so the character models are beautiful it's kind of like a cell shaded look but they don't um their mouths don't move right they're like, their animations are very simple, almost like dolls kind of or figurines. Yeah. But then the flip side is the world is stunning, right? Like in very detailed. And the voice acting is fantastic.

It is so understated. I mean, it's really really really next level stuff and thank goodness because there's kind of a poetry to the language here that who i mean high risk high reward you know most of the time when people start sounding like they're in um the tree of life or you know any other terence malick movie sure that's that's gonna be a big no for me uh in most video games and here it really strikes a balance of um kind of like poking at some big ideas but not falling on either side of the okay this is like unbearably pretentious or okay this sounds like a poster i would like see at my third grade teacher's wall.

It just is right down the center. It's in that sweet zone of, oh, that, again, it's meditative. That is helping me process some thoughts that I think I would have not prioritized where I'm playing Dead Space. Not that there's any problem with Dead Space. Love that game too. But it's cool to play something that gets me thinking in a different way yeah it's interesting it's hard in describing it you're right i i'm not entirely sure if this is a game i would like because i wonder whether i would need more of a like objective than just absorbing the world like i remember when i was playing elbow

which is a story it's a game where you're like a little girl on an island taking photos of birds and various other like creatures on the island and then you fill up like a stamp book of these photos um and there was like a lot of narrative stuff that came out of that, but you also like felt this like goal that was kind of hovering in the background that kind of propelled you through it. And I wonder without that whether I would be engaged with it, but it has certainly piqued my interest. Yeah, I mean, I think the the weirdly the framework of the game of, you know, you knowing you knowing i mean it's quite dark everything that you see and that you are playing this game is dead already yeah right like from the future yeah because it's from the future well maybe the season is good maybe it's like pizza falls from the sky that's true good season could be coming you don't know yeah but but either way this season is gone like right all of this is

gone now all the problems all the good things everything's gone and and the idea of you know you making a scrapbook it's kind of awesome in that what you're doing aligns so well with what the character is doing and that it's an act of faith for both of you right like what this character is making a scrapbook under the act of faith that somebody eventually will see it and it will be important and meaningful to them in some way, right? And they have no way to know for sure of any of that. And you are making it.

And one, it's a video game. It's not like the scrapbook is real. So there's that. But two, you also don't know like on a kind of EA Bioware level, is any of this going to mean anything to a story in the end? Right. You know, like I think that there is a version of this game that is the Peter Molyneux version, the director of Fable, where it'd be like, oh, every choice you make, you know, has an impact on the end. And I think the only answer here is it shouldn't have any impact right because the whole point is yeah is that it's smooth is that it's going to be put in a

chamber and locked away for centuries yeah the important thing is the experience of doing it yeah bearing witness right um yeah it's and i i think why i think the reason that you might like it is the the actual doing of the things just feels good. That is important. So using the camera feels good. And this game is so staged beautifully that you kind of aim the camera anywhere. And right away, you're like, damn, I'm really good at photography. They just perfectly lined up everything.

So you constantly feel like you're getting the best shot um you actually really stop and savor every bit because when you know oh i need to really listen for new sounds because i want to i want to document them suddenly you're paying so close attention to the sound design of the game and and you you enjoy it more because you're like really really listening to it and paying attention to it. And the bike is just good. Riding a bike in a beautiful world, why every game doesn't just have a bike in it where you can just roll around on a bike in a beautiful world? That is beyond me because holy moly, does it feel great? And every time I play a game with a bike in it like lonely downhill racing or whatever it's called um yeah it just reminds me how much i love this vibe of just being chill out in nature

on a bike in a video game yeah there aren't many bicycle games no there's like a lot of motorcycle games but bicycles are pretty rare you don't see that a lot you played lonely mountains downhill right yeah it was amazing game it was great yeah there's like it's very weird because it feels i mean pokemon has a bicycle but it never felt good didn't feel like a bike yeah um so yeah i mean that that's it there's there's not a lot more to talk about with it without kind of getting into the spoilers of it and the story of it. Yeah, no, I think that was a good summary. Again, my interest is piqued. What platform did you play it on? So I played it on Steam, and I played it on both a TV and Steam Deck. You would think that this would be very good for a Steam Deck. Maybe. deck you would think that this would be like very good for a steam deck maybe but i i don't recommend

it i actually recommend doing it on on a large tv because the photography is so much about like the beauty of the world yeah having a really large screen actually it actually helped a lot yeah um yeah similar to i was able to play Hitman on Steam Deck. It's better on a bigger screen, not because you're taking a lot of photos as much as it is like just, yeah, again, detail is extremely important in that game as well. And it's very hard on a, you know, 700p screen. Should we talk about our other stuff for the week? I think we should. So recommendations for the week? I think we should. So, recommendations for the week.

I have a game called Nuclear Blaze. It's on Steam. It came out in 2021. Totally missed it. It's by Deep Knight Games, which includes, I guess, according to the description, one of the creators of dead cells

uh made this game that sells the the metroidvania roguelike um but this game is very different from that you are a firefighter it's a 2d platforming game with like pixel graphics and it's kind of it's like um a puzzle platformer where you're basically trying to explore these environments that are totally filled with flames like after the ceiling the floor everywhere there's fire spreading everywhere and you're trying to progress through and to do that you basically got you know you can fire your hose straight ahead you can fire it up you've got like a dodge you'll get other abilities as you go on and you've got a limited amount of water so you're using these tools to basically clear these areas of fire and progress deeper and deeper into the world. It doesn't,

it's not like, uh, what you would think of a firefighting game where it's like, oh, here's a level where I have to like save this house or I have to save this bank or whatever it is. It's like, almost feels like a Metroidvania,

even though I don't think there's a ton of backtracking. Um, but it's very interesting. Cause like, it's just like this constantly evolving world that's totally tied in with itself so you start just like on the street with a bunch of other firefighters and you slowly go into this like looks like a military base that's on fire and you're clearing the fire out and you keep moving down deeper and deeper and suddenly you're like seeing these like nuclear tanks and you're finding all sorts of like weird you know mysterious things down there

and there's also cats that you can save because it's a firefighting game um it's very interesting i don't know i like i really can't think of a similar game to it. It kind of feels a little bit like a Lek head and other puzzle platformers, but because it has the firefighting aspect, it feels a little more narrative than that. Cause you are getting like radio calls and stuff like that. And I just like the pixel graphics. They're like simple, but very clean.

They kind of remind me of Celeste, maybe a little more D- remind me of Celeste, maybe a little more demaked than Celeste, maybe like an NES or SNES Celeste. And yeah, it's just very interesting. You know, I don't think it's going to keep you super busy, but, you know, it's a small 10-buck game on Steam. And if you're looking for like an interesting puzzle platformer, I really dug it.

This is so interesting because I couldn't figure out why had I not heard of this if it was the Dead Cells person. So it's not the same studio that made Dead Cells. Correct. It's a one-person design studio now.

Sebastian Bernard, who was the lead designer on Dead C and then i guess left to to make their own studio yeah i guess so that's that makes sense actually huh yeah it's a it's a really interesting game uh i found it uh you know we mentioned derrick you the developer of spelunky uh earlier in the episode he has a steam list I believe the Steam list is called Derek Likes It. And it's just like a bunch of games that he's played and enjoyed. It's not the first time I've pulled a game from this.

He also recommended Trez, what was it, Trez Bashers? Remember that game? Oh yeah, yeah. That was also on the Derek Likes It list. So if you're looking for games that are kind of like Spelunky or it's mostly 2d games on

that list um that's a very good steam list to google uh derek likes it yeah this looks cool and there's a gif of like um a backdraft when you chop open a door and just looks awesome yeah there's a kind of a slow down thing where if you open a door and there's like a big fire in there the fire will like shoot out towards you like a backdraft, but you can spray your water up in the air to like act as a shield when that happens. Is a backdraft a known thing beyond the movie? As a son of a firefighter, I don't know if that's like a...

Oh, everybody knows what a backdraft is. I mean, my understanding was the movie just popularized the idea beyond firefighters, but it existed certainly before the movie came out. Oh, sure, sure. The movie didn't invent the back drafts. Or the term for back draft, yeah. But that's the only reason I know about it.

Okay, okay. I mean, there should be a new movie to bring awareness of this problem, you know? That's true. You might open a door and allow too much oxygen to that fire and boom well i think that's why you check the handle right that is that's true that's what happened when the car crashed into my house did we ever talk about on the show that the car maybe briefly i can't remember it's an old house so yeah i won't live there anymore this is awesome

i'm definitely gonna check this out my my thing i I wanted to talk about Busuu, which I think is how it's pronounced. This is an app that I have become just completely obsessed with, and I use it for language learning. And I've tried lots of other ones like Duolingo, but this is kind of like the all-in-one answer that I am in love with. I sound like I'm doing an ad. Right now, I'm kind of doing a free ad. But I want more people to check it out because it seems so strange to me that it feels so useful and so much better

than so many of its peers. And yet I never hear people talking about it. So if you, it's the new year, if you've been thinking about like trying a new language, I use it for Japanese. I'm sure it works just as well for lots of other things um i would check it out because it does it does vocabulary and grammar and um oh i guess the coolest feature you um either write or say things into the app and then it pairs it with people who are learning say like your language but already know the

language that you're learning that makes sense yeah like it pairs me with like random japanese native speakers and it's like hey is this good and they'll like give me notes and likewise i'll give english notes and now that everybody knows how to use google translate the great thing is you can give like pretty thorough notes knowing oh that person is just going to copy paste this into a google translate right and they'll actually get some pretty decent help yeah that's pretty cool yeah it's it's super cool um i like feel like a very close bond with a few people who i feel like i'm always helping or they're helping me and like never met these people did you talk about your 13th Sentinel statue with them?

I have talked about 13th Sentinels, but not the statue. That's too embarrassing. I do actually have a threshold of cringe, and we've really found it. I think that's it. That's cool. What are we going to talk about next time? Well, I know that you wanted to talk about this game called wanted dead which is like a very outlandish throwback game yes it's in two weeks so it'll be a while before yes it's embargoed so we can't say anything about it right now but i definitely want to talk about it yeah

the moment i can um and are we going to talk about are we gonna have a conversation about the i think we will have a conversation about the wizard game that is coming up the extent to which i don't really know because obviously like there's all sorts of baggage it's associated with said wizard game which is rightful baggage like there's a very shitty person at the head of you know this franchise so i'm like but i also feel like i don't know i need to we need to at least acknowledge the scenario in which this wizard game is coming out so uh we'll probably bring it up in the next rest season and hopefully we treat it with the uh respect that a wizard game deserves yep um i think that's it do we do again? Oh, here's what we talked about.

Oh, yes. We talked about Hitman's Freelancer DLC, Season, A Letter to the Future, Nuclear Blaze, and Busuu, an app that's spelled B-U-S-U-U. Busuu. I think that's how it's pronounced. It's weird that I don't know how to pronounce it. That is. And otherwise, that's it. Do you want to do the ending in Japanese?

No, because even though I know how to say it, I know it will be deeply embarrassing, and I don't want to record it. No. Just try a little bit. The only time I am going to speak in Japanese is like five years from now when I have confidence. But people, don't people want to see the progression?

They really don't. In fact, I can assure But people, don't people want to see the progression? They really don't. In fact, I can assure you, they don't. You can't give us a word? No, I'm not, I'm not,

I'm not. I think you're faking it. I think you're just going, doing fantasy football on your phone when you pretend to be learning Japanese. That's the goal.

I want people to think that it's a BS. That way, when I, when a certain point, I will come back and sound... I'll never be fluent, but at least sound confident.

Maybe that's the next season. The next season of my life? No, the next season. The next capital S season is a plant being Japanese. Are you talking about in the show, in the Bastille show, or the game?

Both. There's too much going on here. We should wrap it up. His name is Rust Rushdick. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. We are the Rusties. We're the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest. Rusties! Arigato gozaimashita!

How was that? It's arigato gozaimasu mashita would be like past tense but sure bye