The Besties - A Bizarre Marriage of MGS5 and Spleunky (feat. Steven Spohn)

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

From outta nowhere comes one of the weirder titles we've played this year: Mr Sun's Hatbox, a "slapstick roguelike." Joining us to discuss is Steven Spohn, the Senior Director of Development at Able Gamers.Also on the episode: Dead Island 2, Meet Your Maker, The Strange (Ballingrud), Red Rising (Brown), My Neighbor Totoro, and much more!For more information about the Able Gamers Gala, head over to: https://ablegamers.org/gala/ 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!

Steve, I'm excited you're here because the last time you came, you brought the hottest game of the year. What game was it the last time? I don't even remember. It was Inscription. Oh, yeah. Shit. Wow. And he brought Inscription.

We were all like. Just as an honorable mention, it wasn't even the topic of the episode. Yeah, we were like. I was like selling it. Three of us were like, huh? And Steve was like, we're like, I was like selling it. Three of us were like, huh? And Steve was like, oh yeah. I was like,

yeah, I listened to some of the playback and I was like, oh yeah, I was like telling them about how great it was and everyone was like,

uh-huh, sure. So here's the thing, we are posers. We don't play games. It's mostly book reading in this podcast. We do some movie watching, Chris Plank can attest. And there's also

puzzles. We do tons of jigsaw puzzles. Video games, not really. Not our thing. Steven, I got where I got to today because of my perfect butt. I don't care. You know what? Honestly, same. Yeah. I'm a fake gamer.

I'm picturing the butts right now, I gotta admit. I'm picturing them. They look great. Well, thank you. That's the most I've gotten all day. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschig, and I know the best game of the week. Steven, jump in there.

My name is Steven Spahn And I don't know anything Oh That's very Zen Yeah if you approach it from more of an existential place You know could we ever really know Do we really know anything About anything ever everywhere all at once That's beautiful Thank you

Hey listen this is the besties to Video Game Club By listening to this show you have been conscripted into the console wars but we are the switzerland and you are in charge of snacks uh we're so happy to have you here and we're going to be talking about some sort of new entertainment electronic confection as we do every week uh this time we are joined by steven spawn steven's so glad to have you filling in for Griffin McElroy, who is on assignment. This week we're going to be talking about Mr. Sun's Hatbox.

What? What's that? Well, I'm very glad you asked. Mr. Sun's Hatbox is an adorable, cute, hootie game that looks like a mix of Spelunky, Metal Gear Solid V, and Vlambeer games for the old heads who've been listening to this show for a long time.

See, I was going to reference Mappy, but maybe a little bit newer is better. Yeah, a little bit more current. You really outdid yourself. Oh, you said Mappy. I thought Clippy. I thought the little tiny Microsoft little paper clip. Oh, man, there should be a little more Clippy in this thought the little tiny Microsoft little paper clip. Oh, man.

There should be a little more Clippy in this game, I'll admit. We are going to hear more about that bizarre sounding combination right after this. Hey, guys, remember Mappy? Russ, no. Nobody remembers Mappy. Oh, man. I do remember Mr. Sun's Hat box because i was playing it until about six minutes ago so i do remember that so so a little background on this game this game that i had not

heard of at all until uh probably five days ago when chris plant knows me he knows what gets my heart pumping and man this trailer definitely got me interested 2d roguelite platforming uh wacky people falling over slipping on banana peels shooting like boxing gloves out of a bow and arrow. This is my jam right here. And I'm very, very excited to talk about it. Should I do that? Well, we talked about, I thought we needed a little bit of context because we had talked about Dead Rising 2

at the end of last week. Oh yeah. We are going to talk about it. We're not, we're going to talk about it. A little later in the, in less, later and less. Later and less. We are going to talk about it. A little later in the. Less. Later and less. Later and less.

Yeah, our initial plan was to do that, but we will discuss why we may be pivoted in the second half of the show. Yes. I think that sounds right. So, I looked at this game, and I'm on a hot streak with this, like, sending fresh things. And I'm like, oh, this kind of looks like. I don't know about that. You just told me yesterday!

I know, but I didn't love Patch Quest. That was the last game you recommended to me. I recommended six games to you since then. But this one's good. Here's the thing. Russ is picky because he's one of the best game recommenders in the game. Because I personally craft all my recommendations

for the person because I know them so well. Oh, my God. Here's the thing. Imagine the guys in High Fidelity, except at any point they could burst out of their store and into your home and tell you what records to listen to. That's like Russ with his unfettered accents to me. Sounds like you have the chat GPT of game recommendations. Can I just like put in some parameters and be like, I like games that have

shooty McShoots and also fun. Give me game. Go. Here's the thing, no one's ever seen me in person. In Rustic Boy, so there's really no telling. Oh. Okay, what about snacks? Once the AIs got so powerful, yeah, they sent you from the future and now you're back.

I see how it works. Okay, I'm going to talk about what this game is really quick. You are a little dude who goes on missions into various 2D levels. And your goals will be like, kill everyone in this area or steal this file and get to the end of the zone and leave. Pretty simple stuff. But if you die, you're dead forever. And it's quite easy to die because, especially early on, each character has various, like, I guess, challenges that they're, like, trying.

Like, one is, like, you shit every time you kill someone i think they're called quirks in this game so yeah quirk so it makes it makes uh people know if you if you shit everywhere you're people are gonna smell it it's just basic quirks are neutral no no i think no i think all of the quirks whether they're beneficial or not are are called quirks oh no no i yes i don't remember quirk i don't think from deep space nine he was not neutral he was like a bad character are called quirks. Oh, no, no. I remember Quark. From Deep Space Nine, he was not neutral. He was like a bad character. That's true.

That's true. He only cared about money and females. But yeah, you're right. Early on, you're mostly getting folks that have very little health. You can only shoot

in one direction, will be one. Or if you get spotted, you immediately freak out. So what you have to do, especially early, is you have, what are those balloons called? Oh, they're called Fultons. Sure, yeah. And you use those to steal, like, other characters.

And you send them to your base. And then once you've either died or won the mission, you go back to your base, and you can begin to brainwash some of the characters that you've stolen. And then you can start building out your base with research and science labs and health recovery bays and all these different things. And slowly but surely, you are getting stronger characters. You are either by brainwashing them or just upgrading them through playing enough stages. Characters start getting actual benefits instead of whatever the setbacks are. And you gradually make your way through the game collecting five absolutely fantastic and precious hats. And that's it. There's so many systems in this game i feel like

you could talk for another five hours and i don't want to do that so i do want to say for people that have played metal gear solid 5 a lot the like meta game of this is like uncannily similar and obviously inspired because of the fulton aspects and like but the fact that you're assigning all these people to different jobs back at your home base and that makes future missions easier and unlocks new perks, all very, very much inspired by Metal Gear Solid V. I'd love to hear from you, Steven. What was your initial impression and how did it work? Let me first ask, had you heard of this game before I sent you the link for it? No, I had never heard of the game before.

I assumed that it was some sort of. Because that was like the ninth game. That you proposed. That's true. I was pretty sure you were just at this point. Like I don't know what do we do. This one's true I know. No but it seemed like.

I definitely felt the Solid Snake. Flavor to the game. I like that. I like that rogue light bringing in other characters to supplement your gameplay and add additional perks. I'm really into that rogue light. Rogue...

I don't even know what the difference is. I think it's a rogue light. I think that rogue lights are the ones where you die and you start totally from scratch like a Splunky. Rogue lights are the ones where you die and you start totally from scratch like a splunky rogue lights are the ones where you're unlocking things that make future runs easier not to be a pedant about it no i think i think you can use either and it's fine yes also true i remember there was a wasn't it one of the steam things last year they did like a whole thing on

okay these are lights these are likes y'all can't get them straight but here's the games that are like gabe is in his tower to korean juggling knives uh i liked it though i thought it was kind of neat it reminded me um in a weird way almost of state of decay too it kind of had that like you have different characters that can do different things and help your overall only not as broken yeah i didn't play a ton of that game is this is this the sort of game you like play a fair amount or not really in terms of like 2d i know you play shooters a lot and stuff like that i don't know what your tolerance is for this sort of game yeah i think those kind of games are actually my favorite. Again, listening to the playback before,

we've talked a lot about progress games, and I think what's interesting to me was how that really sung to me as a gamer. I really find my lizard brain enjoys the little dings of progress. I love that in Power Wash Simulator. Just give me the feedback. It just tells me I'm doing a good job video game. Thank you. proud of you son thanks dad i mean video games now justin you uh made fun

of me because again you also agreed that this was like a frosted ash frosted game and also very spelunky and i yeah you snuck aunky, but I know how you feel about, well, I'd feel like you came around on Spelunky eventually, right? Did you? Maybe not. I like Spelunky too.

Okay. I got it. Eventually I, I, I actually, I, I like this one a bit more. Actually.

I'm, I'm, I'm not like, uh, it had a very, um, how can I put this? The way it introduced a lot of frustration in with those very pleasurable mechanics,

for me, gave it like, funky is like the best word I could think of it, from like a gameplay. The way people use that in like flavors. Like an orange wine. Huh? An orange wine. Huh? An orange wine? No?

Like a pleasurable bitterness. You know what I mean? It's like, I would get really mad at this game. Like, really frustrated. I would say, you know, 75% of the time it was frustrating but fair. Like, okay, if I had taken a bit more time there, you know i wouldn't have died there and it's probably my fault i would say like 25 of the time this is not dissimilar from spelunky um everything will just sort of happen at once for net for for no discernible reason everything will just sort of like fall apart like they'll just introduce a

weird trap for no reason or um you know you'll be wearing the hat that fires a gun and then you jump up and your head hits a platform and that fires a gun into another guy that then hears you and comes in to kill you that kind of thing um but like it's so sort of inconsequential it's not like you start to run over again when it falls apart it's like you start to run over again when it falls apart it's like you start to run over again but really you may not even be losing anything hell you may have finished the mission and are just sort of like letting that guy go and getting a new guy or even like the stuff that you collected before the mission went awry like you still have like the stuff that you sent

back to your base you still have so you still get some stuff and when i first started playing i was like oh man i've got a few guys that i've been using like a ton in these missions and they're super leveled up and they've got all these perks to them and i was worried that if i lost one of them i'd be like fuck this game i'm never playing again so frustrating whatever and i was playing a mission it was set in the clouds there's an area that's like in literally in the clouds and you it's really the only area where you can fall to your death because you just drop you know through an infinite void and i i guess i killed someone who had a boxing glove helmet and there that fell to the floor and it ended up launching my character all the way across the screen, through the clouds, hitting two walls, and then eventually plummeting to their death. And it was, again, one of my better characters.

And I thought it was the funniest fucking thing ever, and I just, like, started another run. Like, it didn't matter, because they just load you up with guys that you get so many units to play with and you can craft as you get deeper into the game you can craft specific units to like instill quirks into them or remove certain quirks so eventually you can like very carefully and gingerly like make this unstoppable like killing force so the guys that you get generally speaking they are disposable and it's fine you just sort of have to like roll with the punches. We're leaving out like one huge thing that's in the name of the game, which is the hats. Oh, yeah.

Steven, could you, what was your take on the hats and kind of like how they work? I think that it, go with me on this. This is a, this is a Russ level jump here. I'm ready. It felt a little like lemmings. Like it felt... No, I absolutely see that. It felt very much lemming-ish.

Is that a word? Sure. Sounds good. Yeah, of course. You have like the class-based specialists, if you will. Yeah, almost like you have your own little they each have their own function and you can definitely feel where the game wanted you to lean a certain direction for a task to be accomplished so it was almost felt like um here's an area and here's a bunch of different items you

could use to get through this wall but here's a sledgehammer don't you want to use the sledgehammer i think the sledgehammer is probably the best part yeah and it just like so it felt a little bit like the game definitely kind of wanted you to to use certain hats it felt like there was times that were more appropriate where they definitely said all right we needed a hat to do this and i i kind of enjoy that in a game where it gives you that choice where sure you could go the hard road if you want to but also here's a hat that directly fits into that slot don't you want to use this hat yeah i also like the fact that some of the hats have like basically no purpose whatsoever you there's like a blindfold that you can wear that literally puts like a big black bar on the center of the screen that has like no upside for you there's

like uh earmuffs that like muffle all the audio in the game, which is definitely a disadvantage, but they're just like kind of silly. And then there's headphones that put on different music. Yeah, you can put on different music. There was one more that I was like, oh, that's, oh yeah, the camera. You can pick up like a camera. This isn't a hat. This is just something you pick up.

And when you use it, it just takes screenshots of what you're looking at. Like it doesn't have any attack use whatsoever. And it's just like full of like cute little like funny interactions like that that I thought was just like so in line with what they were trying to do. Yeah. Something else along the same lines with the tone thing. It's not. the tone thing, it's not, and with like choosing your hat,

you'd take a hat and a weapon, you know, or a baguette into every level. And by and large though, it's not really that hard. Like it's not that hard to avoid a bunch of people usually. Like you're much more mobile than a lot of them. They don't have a lot of ways to catch up with you. It's not that hard. Almost every time I i died it was because somebody had something i wanted like i it was almost all every time brought on myself of like wow look at that hat i wonder

what that hat does i gotta kill yeah and take one of them as a freaking soup container that's adorable yeah you can pick up the soup container and if an enemy falls on your head while it's in the soup container you can then use a fulton to rescue both the soup container and the enemy that's stuck in there back to the base in one in one go so fucking cool it's like yeah not in the water not a shark actually it's nothing the the uh the hats basically almost every character that you come across is wearing a hat of some sort and what steven was saying about like there being like a right one to use i found that like yeah you would have um like in for example the uh the cloud level you have to climb upwards to do it and you're actually jumping up through many platforms.

And in, like, that one, having a spiky helmet or the punching glove is useful because you can actually jump up into enemies intentionally to knock them out. So, like, that would be extremely helpful. that would be extremely helpful having a hat that like shoots sideways like there's a turret hat basically that when somebody jumps on it it shoots to left or right that's actually like yes less useful in a level like that so because you have those balloons you can store up that balloon and then next time you are going into a mission where you would actually need that you can pick it from your list or all of these hats are kind of like a currency so to do certain upgrades it'll be like you need five hats that are just sharks that sit on your head uh with the jaws reference and you would need to like have gone into missions found a way to get

those hats off people's heads without being bitten by said shark um and the game is really clever about it because it'll you'll eventually get a very early on actually you get an upgrade that will highlight any hats that you need for future upgrades so you'll be going through a mission super careful like and as justin alluded to like you'll see a glowing propeller hat in the distance and maybe there's like three guys around it and you like can't help yourself but have to like risk it and go even though you don't need to you could just wait for another propeller hat to show up but man i gotta i gotta go for that i will say that what will probably keep me and this is personal but not like intimate this is like a personal thing for me but if you are

of a similar proclivity what will probably keep me from sticking with this for a long time is that, at least in my experience so far, the curve of the difficulty and the power, it stays relatively flat. a hat or a gun or an upgrade or any one thing that really changes the dynamic that much. Like even with a great weapon and great loadout, it could still be undone like really quickly by randomness in, in the level. So it's a much more slight sort of power curve. And that's just for me, usually not as, not as a hooky,

I guess. I was in that same spot a couple days ago and it changes um and and credit to russ rushick before he credits himself here i got to where it got quite difficult uh and got heated and this is a game where like if you get um in freshest words on tilt it gets bad very quickly because because you just start losing a lot of characters a lot less palatable when it's like all of your decent guys are dead and they all lost all their hats and no guns yeah yeah and and i was not being very careful about like what type of loadouts i was taking into a mission or just like playing it slower like yeah not trying to get in fights and once i did that i i got moving and now uh did anybody here yeah i beat it yesterday so

did you do any of the new game plus i just dipped a toe in but i do uh like related to the end of the game and i'm not going to give major spoilers but the end of the game has a mission that is like 10 to 15 levels in a row and one of the um one of the i i always like look at steam achievements even though it doesn't really matter but like i'm curious and one of the achievements was beat that final mission with one guy uh normally you can bring backups uh where like if your first guy dies you have a backup come in and i was like i think i can do this and to justin's point about the randomness i was able to like handcraft this dude using a variety of different like perks and upgrades or whatever it is that eventually it took me like

three or four tries but eventually i was able to beat 15 levels in a row with the same guy so so you can kind of overcome the randomness to it to the point where I'm not unkillable, certainly. It took me a few tries. I'm not a god! I mean, I'm close. I'm a simple Russ Frushtick. I would say there are ways.

There are ways. Listen guys, I'm not saying I'm good at the game, but I did beat 15 levels out there. I'm just saying. Yeah, I mean, they do call me Russ Humblebragfrustix, so. Sure, they're very outdated. Did any of you play multiplayer?

No, I didn't try it. I want to try this. I didn't even realize it was there until just yesterday, and I saw a video of the kind of like four-player, looks kind of like four-player. It looks kind of like Splinky multiplayer, a little bit of that, a little bit of Power Stone in 2D.

Yeah, so there's a deathmatch mode. It's all local. There's no online play, but you can play over like remote play and stuff. So there's a deathmatch mode, but you can also play any of the missions in the game in co-op with four players, which is incredibly cool.

It's like a great couch co-op game that would be very... probably make it harder to play with multiple people, but probably pretty silly and fun. But it's all local. Yeah, it's just local. But on Steam, that doesn't matter because you could just... Yeah, I mean, it depends on the connection. You know, it can be hard if you're playing... like, you and I,

if we played together, probably wouldn't be super playable. we'll try okay do you guys normally do a lot of new game plus stuff or like i i feel like it's new game plus seems to be like you either like that kind of mechanic or you don't it depends on the game i think certain games are like like rogue legacy 2 is like a perfect example of like really clever new game plus mechanics this game actually does have some uh twists to the new game plus format as well um so i was actually pretty encouraged but it really like a it needs to be a game i'm really into like if it's a fucking souls game yeah hell yeah bring it on but if it's a game on luke ormon i'll just stop right there what about you steven yeah i mean i feel kind of the same way there's a weird uh you get into a game and you're just like i would like to

play more of this and it doesn't even matter if i've already done it and seen all the story and then there's other ones where i'm like you know what it rolled credits i'm good now uh goodbye game and then you just like never think about it again and it's not that you didn't like the game it's just that you're like, you know what? My time here is done and now I shall walk into the ocean. Yeah, for me this game feels like the pre-New Game Plus is I guess

maybe the training for a kind of endless roguelike type of game. Because the game itself is like maybe six hours. A little more. Wow, maybe you are good. It's a little more than that. I think I spent like eight hours on that first run. Okay, maybe you should get

good. I mean, I haven't done the 12-hour yet. So I'm right near the end, so maybe that's going to take me a lot longer. Before we wrap on it, two very important details about it. One, i believe it's only 15 dollars yeah which is a great price for this um in my opinion and two i think it was largely made

by one person yeah i believe his name is kenny sun which is funny because it's called mr sun's hat box and um i mean mean, obviously there was support in the form of like marketing and audio help and stuff like that. But the core team was really Kenny Sun, who has been making indie games the last 10 or so years. So yeah, pretty impressive and love to see these original ideas

come from like auteurs like that. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back and just sort of get loose you know just sort of get loose steven i know that you've been uh i've heard some chatter about a game called meet your maker lately and i know that you have have spent a little time with it and i'd love to to get get the pitch because maybe this is the new inscription i don't i don't know uh no i'm good good no just saying that just like no oh i love doing that uh no if you if i didn't respond there that would be the end of the podcast like that would be like oh the entire podcast. That would be it, yeah. That would be like... Oh, the entire podcast, yeah.

Yeah, of like all podcasts. It's my podcast fun equivalent of, did you ever play, there was a Far Cry game where it's literally, you have to make a choice, you make a protagonist to go onto the bus to begin the game.

But there's an Easter egg if you don't go on the bus. The game's just like, all right, well, you didn't die, you didn't, nothing bad happened. The game's just like, alright, well, you didn't die, nothing bad happened. Good job. Good job, you won. No, meet your maker.

Oh, the guy leaves, and he's like, I'll be back in a while. He comes back after like an hour. That's great, yeah. No, meet your maker is really fun. It's from the creators of Dead by Daylight. It is really, I don't want to say intuitive, but it's also very, it feels very familiar. You know when you jump into a game, it's got a new concept, but you kind of feel like,

I've been here before and I don't know why. It's got that feel to it. Imagine a game that has a lot of, like, Lego blocks. And you, of course, are trying to murder other people who are building with Lego blocks, you know, normal stuff. And you have a base and you're building your base out of these Lego Lincoln log kind of things of different parts that you can put in the base. You can put traps, you can put walls, you can put different things. And there's a treasure chest and you can bury the treasure chest anywhere you want in your base and then other people come and they try to take the treasure chest and there's no like loss

for for somebody coming in and getting it from you as soon as you get into the multiplayer part of it you your base is just available for people to come raid and then to see if they can get it and so there's really there's no losing quote quote-unquote, which I think is a phenomenal way to encourage people to keep playing. And you just kind of jump from raid to raid, and you can bring in friends, you can do co-op. It's not really PvP. It's more like you versus your brain

and whether or not you can navigate this Lara Croft space marine. Oh, did we just get sued for mentioning space marines? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, the game is just very fluid in kind of a blockish kind of way that allows you to just sort of expand on your creativity at the same time as just kind of getting

your inner Laura Croft on. Yeah, I didn't play a ton. I actually didn't play at all, to be honest, but I have watched trailers and people playing, and it looked like the gameplay was like Doom-era FPS, but with the level building. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I would say that's exactly it.

Yeah. And are you able to watch people as they go through your level? So there's a replay feature to watch yourself go through, and you can actually just jump in at different points and see where you messed up and where you didn't, which is kind of cool. You can't watch other people unless you're on Twitch, you know, doing that kind of thing. Oh, yeah. But you can see

where people mess up in your own base, which I think is kind of cool. And as you level, you're actually leveling your dude, which allows you to have better access to beat bases easier with more armor, weapons, crafting, allowing different blocks to be there.

Because you really start with a very basic base. It's just like, here's four walls and a treasure chest, guess where the treasure chest is. But then you get more, you get little NPCs that walk around and shoot people. And there's even like, speaking of Metal Gear, there's even a little like a robot helper dude that has like little legs and he's a block and he can show people how to get into your base if you want to be nice and it he takes the

shortest path to lead you into the base uh but he also takes the shortest path which means you can set people up to follow it thinking oh this person's really nice oh there was a trap there now i'm dead oh that's funny are people doing like stratigo style like putting the chest like right behind the starting point kind of stuff yeah i've seen that a couple of times it's interesting but you have to get through you have to get the thing you have to get out uh but like i said the co-op is kind of cool because pvp is on so uh you know russ and i could jump in there together and play we can help each other but also if i decide to shoot you on the butt right before you touch the chest and take it for myself i can do that oh that's funny

yeah that's interesting how do they do like the balancing so like how do you balance if someone's like a really low level are they not seeing like the later level bases basically uh you can choose the difficulty of raid so you can do like master level or master master level or whatever it's kind of neat in that you can choose the difficulty setting so you can stay to the lower level difficulties if you want and just go in and have some fun goofing around on the easier bases. But in order to advance like all games, you know, experience bar and getting more better weaponry, you have to go for the harder stuff. Yeah, that sounds dope.

That actually sounds something I'd be really super into. It's kind of, I like to think that, I don't know if anybody listening or y'all ever played the DVD and how great they are at, you know, keeping the balancing, Dead by Day daylight has a lot of faults, but they are pretty good at balancing things out. So I think it's going to be kind of in that same vein where they'll, they'll probably do pretty good. And I think it's only going to get more complex as people build these super

mega bases. Cause it's only been out for, I think what, three weeks. Yeah. Yeah. I find dead by daylight intimidating just because people are so plugged into strategies and stuff like that this seems a little more welcoming at least you can you know kind of scale who you're playing against or which bases you're playing yeah a little bit more customization and your playability and your experience in the game but also at the same time it's's got that same PVP. They put a dead by daylight building blocks in there as their little nod to

their other game. So it's cool. Yeah. Cool. I, I played some dead Island too, which the reviews are out for. It's a long winding journey to dead Island too.

I was confused, honestly, I like couldn't even parse it out in my head so here's the very quick recap of how this happened dead island one came out in 2011 it's like a 360 era title yeah yeah and then there was riptide which was a direct like expansion of dead island then there was Escape Dead Island in 2014, which I reviewed for Polygon and was one of the worst games I ever reviewed. Like look up my review for it. I don't even remember that game.

Wow. The review was great though. Like the review was great, but no one reads it because who cares? And then there was a MOBA that got canceled in 2015. There was an iOS game that got shuttered in 2020. And now Dead Island 2, which has been in development for something like 10 years, is out with a new development team. The third development team on this game.

And what they came out with was a very sort of down- middle, like open world zombie action RPG. If you haven't played one of these similar, I guess I was going to use Dead Rising as like a reference point, but that's just as antiquated at this point. Basically, zombie apocalypse, you're running around, you're grabbing whatever sort of like loose weapon like items you can find, including like some upgrades and, you know, electric electrical upgrades. Or you could turn it into like a flaming weapon or whatever. And you have to find workbenches to repair it. And you're trying to stay one step ahead of the zombie apocalypse as you continue to upgrade your skills. There are six different characters who have a variety of different skills and weaknesses. Who did you play as, by the way?

There are Carla, who's kind of more, I think more tanky, I guess you would say. It's interesting, it's kind of D&D-like tanky i guess you would say it's interesting each is kind of dnd like because when you're picking your character each one has like something they're great at and then everyone has something that you are like bad at like actively bad at it's frustrating when a game puts you in that perspective before you've played a single second of it because it's like i have no idea what yeah this is a major decision you're making that will impact theoretically the next dozens of hours not dozens in my case but depends on how much you played i guess you know a few um it it uh you know it's just like all very passable and pleasant it's

just flat it's like there's not a lot of uh variation You run into a house or a hallway or a street and there's a swarm of zombies and, you know, you gotta take the zombies out. And usually, you know, I don't know, there's a key you're trying to find,

or, you know, some character who's locked their home and you're trying to get to them, you know, that kind of stuff. It's just like, not like the arc of it is very flat.

It's one of those where you walk into an area and there's like no expectation that you would thoroughly loot it. You know, like it's just like it would you could just keep on doing that for quite some time. So you you loot what you need and then you kind of keep moving on. So it doesn't feel like that. There's not that sense of like, you're in a new environment. You want to pick up every single thing. That's like,

like Skyrim in that way where like Skyrim dungeons are packed with garbage that you really don't need. Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and you know, there are,

like I said, the workbenches where you can upgrade your, your stuff. The combat is, is very, a lot has been made of like the zombie dismemberment, like if you attack a zombie and its arm, the arm comes off.

So if you're a sicko who gets off in that sort of thing, that's even an option. Yeah. Is it that it's available to you? There's one guy listening to this right now. He's like, I don't like that you're judging me right now. Now,

hey, listen, no judgment. what you do in the digital world is um that that you know the writing is like fine it's going for for zombie land it's snarky irony yeah snarky kind of yeah now justin i i will fully admit so i played like a half hour to 45 minutes so i this is yeah what rubbed you i'm gonna tell you because i'm genuinely curious so a couple things one the opening cut scene is the one of the weirdest fucking things i've ever seen i didn't know what the tone was going for because it's like both wacky and like you know sunset overdrivey but also like genuine horror by the people that are

dying and like early on this guy is like i can't hear you because or like someone's like oh he can't hear you because his ears are bleeding and the guy is then like i can't hear you because my ears are bleeding like that's the sort of tone that seemed where it was going to permeate through the whole game so that was like not necessarily landing for me. And then I started fighting guys and it, it didn't feel very good. Like it felt very mushy and soft. And I feel like these sorts of games,

what was the free running zombie game that came out a couple months ago, last year, bike, whatever that was called. Oh God. Oh yeah. Dead daylight. Day.

Anyone remember? Dying Light. Dying Light. Dying Light. All of these games, when you start out, don't feel great because you're weak and you're using melee weapons and there's a lot of puny swipes at the enemies

that don't go down. And I started doing that and I was like, oh, this doesn't feel very good. It felt okay when you were doing heavy attacks, but then you run out of stamina, and you wouldn't be able to do heavy attacks for a while, and then I started picking up fucking napkins in a room, and I was like, nah, dog.

I just can't. I can't. I played a ton of the first one. It was fine for its time, but it just felt like they hadn't evolved the format in any way apart from the visuals and i just that is a hundred percent accurate i mean it definitely feels like they got it to the point where the other one was and they were like well it's been 10 years people

have probably forgotten that so let's just kind of do that it just didn't feel like it was modernized i will say one thing the environments are really cool um the environments are extremely richly detailed like you go into someone's house and it feels uh like a very well thought out environment and that is cool and that helps to like uh add to the realism there's weird stuff in the gameplay too like you could there's like a very forgiving block where if you block at the same moment as the attack it stuns the enemy and you can basically one shot them um and it's one of those blocks where you can just keep tapping the button and you'll probably get it and so you can do that in a crowd of zombies who will patiently wait to

like be eviscerated and you can add power-ups to your block where it's like every time you do a successful block you get more health and trigger like an explosion that stuns enemies so just like that move yeah with add infinite because okay because you got you gotta tell me so number one everybody listening send your hate mail to judge tin mickleroy if you don't like what i'm about to say but i'm not a big fan of uh of zombie games i'm actually giant chicken i i can't i can't do zombies um. But I'm not a big fan of zombie games. I'm actually giant chicken. I can't do zombies. But so I'm not asking this as in a man I hope this is true kind of way but

do you feel like those, like that genre has just reached the point where they don't have a story? Because I keep hearing that. I heard that about Dying Light. A friend of mine actually who loves, love, love zombie spooky that about Dying Light. A friend of mine actually who loves love, love zombie spooky games returned

Dying Light 2 because there was no story. They said the story was bad and the acting was definitely, you felt like they must have just put the actors in a room and said, read the line right like this and that was it. I'm kind of hearing the same thing about this game

where a friend of mine who I trust about zombie games and which one's good so i can come on podcasts and not sound like i hate zombie games even though i do um basically said if you like zombie bashing this game is amazing but if you want it to do literally anything else don't play this game yeah i mean there's nothing really you know in movies especially, I think zombies are used in an interesting way to like say something about herd mentality and individual individuality and and, you know, how, you know, that informs them to make some sort of statement that that i would say is not happening very much at all in in this game it just feels like we want you to be able to murder a bunch of people but like it would be weird to make them nazis so let's go with zombies like that it kind of feels that way and also it's it's easy to i don't want to be um you know reductive because i don't make games but it does seem to me it'd be a lot easier to program the AI of a zombie than it would be to program the AI of a living human being, if I had to guess.

But it's not really saying anything or doing anything interesting with that. It's not even really scary. I will say there was one genuine, big, gasp jump scare that got me jump scares that were like not that that does not impress me that much right like quite quite an easy scare like it's yeah it's an easy scare but it did get me once but most of the time it's like not not that unnerving um especially if you don't let them corner you it's fine it's not particularly frightening it's just like it's just also and it makes me feel like a bad critic

when I can't think of like anything more interesting to say than this but it's just it's absolutely fine it's flat and if you want something like this just don't be surprised if you feel like you could be playing the exact

same game from from 10 years ago with admittedly like really well done is that okay like i guess i'm probably opening up a really big big question at the uh three quarters of the way mark of a podcast but uh is is that okay though like i i kind of do feel like and maybe this is my age but i kind of feel like we're the plane of gaming now where it's like either something is a nine and a half ten or else we're just like meh whenever but i kind of feel like it's okay if your game is just a solid six and a half like it's all right i mean i'm trying to communicate that if if you're in the mood like i think it didn't bother me as much as it did russ right because we i was just in a place where it was fine by me.

You know, like I was, I was in a place where I was ready for it. It does like, I do get in my head a little bit when I think about, well, there are other experiences that you could have that would be more fulfilling than this or would like offer you anything else. That's what, that's what I'm trying to communicate. There's games that I'm not getting anything out of on anything other than like lizard brain level i mean like stuff like um slay the spire or hell even chess right is like oh that was fun i'm just playing it for the for the fun of it i'm not really like getting anything

out of it i'm not playing with a goal right which is usually my my thing i think you're supposed to win in chess actually yeah you win or you lose but every time you're boring but like that's the thing uh but i yeah i mean i think it's fine to make i think it's i i think i i for me there's a screenshot i saw on twitter of this game that captures all my feelings in a single screenshot and it is this like very fancy very fancy house with like a full walk-in closet and all this custom uh clothes in it and some of it's like perfectly hung and some it's disheveled and all every piece of furniture is beautifully rendered right and it's just one fancy house with one walk-in closet in a zombie game in la a ton of effort yeah into this and then you think about like wow they first reviewed the trailer for this game what

10 years ago so people have been sweating over this game for so long and on one hand i find that like kind of depressing because wow this is a lot of effort a lot of people made like put really good work into this game and what they released into the world is like the definition of you know straight down the middle right it is it is it is what we would have gotten 10 years ago it is familiar on the other hand i'm glad it came out because there are plenty of scenarios in the history of video games where people work on something for many, many years, and then it just gets killed. So then you did all that work, and it's not shown to the world. I think it's like obviously it's fine for these games to exist. I think it will have, what I like about that question, Stephen, is like, is this a six, like, if we see this as like the definition of like mediocrity, 6.5 is an already inherently generous, right?

We don't even register that like, oh, for this sort of AAA game, this is just actively bad compared to what else is available to spend your time on. And I would add that like AAA games are becoming more and more rare these days because of how outrageously expensive they are to produce. So if you're going to spend this much money, you know, I think you look at a game like suicide squad which just got delayed until 2024 after like a really dismal yeah did it i didn't know it got really dismal showing of a gameplay demo and like it is such a huge investment that for your outcome to be even mediocrity let alone bad is a total disaster i i like i don't think there's any excuse for that. You need to know you're at least hitting some level of good. And so, yeah. I mean, if it's an indie game

and someone one-manned it and they're charging 10 or 15 bucks and it's fine, but there's problems with it, like, whatever. But if you had a team of 200 people working on this thing and millions and millions of dollars

have been spent, like, you all better make sure it's something so i don't know to me i guess the reason i brought that up is just and i realized it was very in-depth long-winded answers from all of us on that question so probably shouldn't have been brought it up but it feels to me a little bit uh so we were talking about Netflix film, book, versus game, and I feel like it is kind of the one area that I'm starting to see a bit of a division on is you can

pick up a book and read it and it's not great, and you'll be like, you can pick up a Netflix show and you can watch it and it's not great. And you'll be like, eh, alright. But a video game, if it doesn't knock your socks off, when you talk to your friends, you'll be like, yeah, it's all right. But a video game, if it doesn't knock your socks off, when you talk to your friends, you'll be like,

yeah, I don't know, man. There's probably better stuff out there. It's a little weird. And I don't know if it's just because we're gamers, so we hold them to higher standards or what it is. But it feels like just because there are, like, what is the Steam statistic? Something like 10 years ago,

there was 360-some games released on steam every year now it's 360 every week like like they're so coming so fast right and you can't keep up with how many things there are to play so maybe that's losing the part of why we're so harsh on games now i don't know and i think it's the time investment like if something's like are you really going to spend 20 or hours 30 hours doing it? Like that makes a huge difference. Whereas you're right. Like if you'd spent whatever, 10 bucks on a book and it's not landing for you, you could just put it down and not feel bad.

You spent 60 or 70 bucks on a video game. That's a different story. It also takes longer to figure out. Like I can figure out if I'm going to enjoy a show usually within 45 minutes you know of the first episode of like okay that worked for me or it didn't there have been a few shows where it hasn't clicked and someone has talked me back into it or it hurt so much that i would like power through but even that max like two three hours a lot of video games are like just getting going at that point and it takes takes a lot longer to get moving.

This is really interesting. I'd like to keep talking about it. But we have to get these final beats of show in. If I could be in our honorable mention segment, I would like to talk about speaking of books. Can I talk about a book? Yeah, I know. I know. My book is called The Strange by nathan ballingrud um and it is a western

set on mars uh which is in sort of an alternate reality where we went to the moon or sorry where we went to mars uh around like the civil war era um so this is like a Western style colony, but is on Mars. And the concept is basically 10 years ago, this colony lost contact with Earth in what they call the silence. We don't know what's happening on Earth. We can't go back.

No one can go back because we don't know what is going on there. So they could get stuck or stranded. And this colony doesn't have the resources to get back anyway. So they've been living sort of isolated for 10 years on Mars. And the action that sort of starts the story is a young girl who runs a store with her father. Their store is robbed by cultists who steal a mechanical cylinder that has her mother's voice on it, the last recording their mother made

before she went back to Earth to be at her mother's bedside as she died. So they steal this cylinder and loot the family's store and this girl decides that she's going to go into the craters of Mars to basically destroy these cultists and take back the cylinder.

And the only protection she has is a dishwashing robot named Watson that her family has at the store. And it is really, really good. It's beautifully written. Every sentence feels just like loaded with imagery and meaning um and it is a great story like uh great sci-fi i it's called the strange which is a forgettable enough title that if you don't do something about it right now you're going to forget about it so please go download it or get it it's it's his first book it hasn't been making like a major splash I guess he's done a lot of like short stories before this was his first like

novel but it is fantastic it's called The Strange by Nathan Ballengrad and you should read it you playing anything? or watching or whatever yeah I like really went deep on this and I'm still

just going back and picking at resident evil and uh octopath traveler 2 which we talked about a bit you think you're gonna bring that one home you think you're gonna bring octopath traveler 2 home for everybody i really i really want to but we'll we'll see i i'm like i'm not gonna commit to anything because Fresh Dick will immediately shame me. And then he will probably be proven right. And I do not. I can't allow that to happen. And then I also saw Suzume.

Oh, yeah. Do you all know about this movie? Sorry. Sorry, Plant. Your tone there was like a kid whose dad bought him a carton of cigarettes to dissuade him from smoking. And you're like four packs in. You're like, no, no, no. I love it.

I love this rich tobacco flavor. Everything I've said about how much I love cigarettes still holds true. No, no. Justin. I genuinely love it. If anything, I'm afraid to show how much I love it because then if I don't finish it, it is going to be rubbed in my face. The cigarettes in this is spending time

with Frustic. It is not playing Octopath Traveler 2. Not the first time that's been said. Let me be clear. Anyway, Suzume is good. People should go see this movie. It's about a person who turns into a chair and a

teenage girl who saves the world. Oh man, that old trope again. Yeah. That's not to be confused with Jim Carrey's fart chair from 1994 where he gets turned into a chair and all of his friends and family fart into him.

Because they did not realize his shifting identity. It's a classic. You know, I ask also that every single into him because they did not realize his shifting identity. It's a classic. What's happening on this podcast? You know, I ask also that every single week. Steven, anything else you're playing, watching, anything else you want to? You know, I kind of want to go to Justin's route here. Listen, I always get dragged on the podcast to talk about accessibility, blah, blah, blah, disability.

Who cares about all that stuff? Let's talk about sci-fi. Like, let's talk. a lot of disability who cares about all that stuff let's talk about sci-fi like that's let's let's talk um i actually was just uh going over my perennial favorite red rising by pierce brown man i love that series so much um for those of you who have never read it it is a well it's kind of like two trilogies almost star wars--esque, but the first set is good. So it's fantastic. It's about, again, another book set on Mars, and it is all about a red, which is, they

have a color-based system, but it's not skin color like we think of it as. Society has been segmented off into, you're a red, so you do hard labor. You're a blue, so you do science. You're a green, so you do medicine. And these different hierarchies of where they play. Golds are at the very top, and they are the people that control everything.

And the reds are at the very bottom. And the story takes place on Mars where they're digging it out and getting this mineral that can only be found on Mars. Humans have colonized the entire solar system. It's supposed to be a realistic future, so it's got that expanse-level technology where it's not lasers and swords, it's technology that might exist, like propulsion engines and swords instead of guns, because you can't shoot a gun with no atmosphere.

These kind of weaponries are really cool, and it's all about in the future, golds can manipulate their DNA, and there's people called carvers that you can go to, and you can carve out exactly what you want to be, so there's this little Steve Rogers

Captain America before the serum kind of guy that's like weak and then gets transformed into this badass who can go and kick butt and becomes the leader of a rebellion to basically uh anomalize society where it's not the golds who are running the show and just ruining everything but it it makes society more even, and it goes over six books. It's fantastic. One of my favorites, if you like Betrayal Amongst the Stars, Game of Thrones

meets Medieval Times kind of sci-fi, it is absolutely fantastic. Action adventure book. It has a lot of action scenes and over-the-top battles, but it's sold through the eyes of the hero darrow and you actually get to like feel like you're with him on this journey to make life better by becoming one of the the ritzy top people and changing society from within

it's fantastic that sounds awesome uh i i love that series by the way let's talk about it great taste i know uh i here's what here's where i fell out though i did the first three the first trilogy and then there's like a gap um in between the first trilogy and the second and i got like into iron gold and i had trouble like getting like i had trouble getting re-engaged with it did have you ever had any because these are like big chunky books um Have you ever had any? Because these are, like, big, chunky books. Did you have any issues like that? I felt exactly the same way. The first three are in my, like, top ten, maybe top five book series ever.

The second set definitely felt like it lost a little bit of magic because they started jumping POVs. And I've gotten to talk with the author. He's a really nice guy. He said that he basically wanted to flex his writing muscles and he wanted to see if he could, because multiple POV narrative is considered harder than sticking with one character. So he kind of wanted to see if he could do it.

And also, an asterisk on that, what Justin was bringing up here is they want to turn it into a hbo max series so it's it is being made into a series you will be able to watch it in a couple of years if you don't like reading books um and i think because they wanted to do the series they had to bring in other character pov but yes i felt exactly the same first three were way stronger the first they're very they're also like as expansive as what steven is saying they're very like focused like you it has almost like a hunger games

structure in the beginning where it's like one person up against this whole society it's really this one person that you have to follow um but they're great i mean you really if you haven't read them uh the first one's called i always also have a problem remembering what they are called but the first one is red rising and if you just read the name of the next book at the end of that book you really you'll you'll be able to keep track yeah it's great i i think for me um i'm not about you justin but the for me it was that he was really good at heartbreak you know how the one thing thing R.R. Martin did go to Game of Thrones is he immediately lets you know that all characters are vulnerable by killing off the main character in the first book?

That's what they did in Red Rising 2. One of the characters who seems like there's no way they die dies. And as soon as that happens, I'm like, oh, oh, you're willing to go there. I mean, yeah. Did you know he picked that name out of a hat? No. I just read this. He picked that name out of a hat? No. I just read this. He picked the name out of a hat,

and he had the thought, like, I could put this name back in the hat, but no, I kind of have to play it where it lays. I don't know. I thought it was fascinating. It's great books. Anyway. Yeah, real quick,

I'm going to plug My Neighbor Totoro, which is obviously a movie that almost everyone has seen. It's streaming on HBO Max, and I picked it only because my son is uh starting to get to the point where he now like pretty much understands what fear is so a movie like a little mermaid which previously he found very engaging now when there's a shark chasing the little mermaid and uh flounder he gets kind of upset and i was looking for movies kids movies specifically that have basically no stakes and

there are very very few of them um you picked the saddest yeah but he doesn't understand what tuberculosis is it's fine the rest of it is not there's no scary scenes in that movie it's just like chill japanese life and so if there's maybe another one that anyone has that can recommend would be great because right now i'm i'm kind of just like looping totoro spirited away yeah is it uh i think there'd be scary stuff in Spirited Away. Scarier than I mean, his parents turn into her parents turn into pigs. That's terrifying. That is pretty upsetting.

I don't know. For me, I laughed as far as Justin did. It's like, well, we were showing off how there's no fear. Also, by the way, the whole movie is about a hallucinated animal that doesn't really exist because they're losing their parents. Other than that, it's great.

That is one. All are valid, of course, here. Fresh, who do we have to thank today? Well, before we do that, I wanted to call out. So this episode is going up on April 21st. There is an event going on on April 22nd that maybe Steven could fill us in on.

Yeah, so speaking of never getting to not talk about accessibility, so my charity who helps people with disabilities, Able Gamers, is putting on its very first virtual gala that will be on April

22nd. It is going to be an event that is specifically tailored for people like us who love video games, love people, but don't necessarily have the $7,000 to $8,000 it takes to go to GDC or to PAX East in something that

maybe you are immunocompromised. Maybe you just have a young child. You can't leave your house. So you want to participate in these cool networking events where you get to hang out with cool people, but you can't afford to go all the way to Boston, all the way to LA. Well, so we came up with this cool idea

of imagine Stardew Valley meets Zoom, where you have a microphone and a camera, and you're in a 2D world, and you get to walk around and talk to people just with proximity chat, just like we're talking right now, and enjoy your favorite content creators. We have really cool people like Little Simsie,

Bruce Green, Apocalypto Moisturum from Markiplier's World, like all these cool people who you might not ever get to say hello to who are going to be at this event for a couple of hours on Saturday and then rolling right into cool headlining with Brian, Ninja Brian, from Ninja Sex Party going to be headlining the show with DJ Knee. And this kind of event where it's all about going and having fun with people who also support people with disabilities as a charity,

all ticket sales go directly to the mission of able gamers. So it's a text, uh, right off. If you, your CPA says it is, uh, for 25 bucks,

you can go join the event, get to meet cool people and, uh, get to have a good time. Cool. And where, where can people go to find more information about it? If any of my rambling there sounds interesting, you can go to ablegamers.org slash gala, G-A-L-A, and learn all about it.

$25 is the ticket to get in the door. There's also a cool at-home box you can buy for $100. Logitech came in with a really cool upgraded box for $300 that has almost $1,500 worth of microphone, keyboard, headset, mice that come with it. It's exciting and really a good place to go. If you're listening to this after

the 22nd, all that will still be available that you can go and you can support even if you don't attend the event. That's awesome. Super cool. I think we did it. i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast we have horseness we have m sun 19 and tyler tullis thank you for writing reviews uh for the besties on apple podcast and thank you to everyone else for writing reviews. Plant, recap those games.

Oh my gosh. So many games this week. We started out with Mr. Sun's Hatbox. Then we talked about Meet Your Maker, Dead Island 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Octopath Traveler 2. We got in a movie with Sousa May. We got in another movie with my neighbor Totoro.

And we got in two books the strange and red rising cool uh next week kind of tbd dependent on like whether we get early code or not but we might be doing star wars jedi survivor which i'm pretty excited about or we might be doing advance wars 2 which i'm also i guess advance Wars 1 and 2, which I'm also pretty excited about. We will see I guess keep an eye out on the Twitter and we'll share what we're actually doing. It's again dependent on early code, but

stay tuned. Stephen, thank you for joining us. It's been a delight as always. Thank you for having me back. I appreciate the opportunity to once again take over this podcast. You know what? I'm going to keep y'all for another couple of months.

Oh my god, you're so generous. You know what? I'm here for y'all. I'm here to support you and your endeavors and I think you should keep going with the podcast for at least six to eight weeks and then we'll review. Fucking dare. Alright, sounds good. Thank you. That's very fair. Thank you. Thanks, folks.

This is going to do it for us on the besties. But be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!