The Besties - A Desperate Dive Into the Grab Bag

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Look, we were gonna do Arkham Knights this week, but realized nobody wanted to hear an hour long dunkfest - join us as we pivot to talking about a bunch of good games, instead! With just a liiiiittle dunking for good measure.Games discussed: Case of the Golden Idol, EverCrawl, Binding of Isaac, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum, No Man's Sky 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!

Guys, I'm so excited to reveal and announce to everyone my new, the Batman OC, original character I've made up in Gotham Knights. And this is a new one, and I'm excited. I'm going to write a bunch of fiction about it, put it up on the internet for everybody's eyes to see and read it. Because I feel like they covered pretty much any category of character. It's been, what, a hundred years of Batman characters. There's no way. Batman, Man-Bat, Calendar Man.

Calendar Man. What do you have? Can I do my Batman OC? Yeah, I guess. Let me do my Batman. Can I just do my Batman OC first? Yeah, go ahead and do your Batman OC real quick.

I'm not like you. I'm not from the flowered streets. I'm from the numbered streets that's really good do you like that capricutie um no this is mine it's christmaka it's time so mine it was all a dream you heard me mine is called not uh i can i know that i could keep doing that because i go deeper and deeper to the OC and Griffin will continue to enjoy it. I will. I could abandon my bit right now.

No, no, no. No, no, let me tell you what my bit was going to be. Mine was going to be a new Robin, a fourth Robin for this game called Night Pigeon. And his alias, I mean, his actual identity is, of course, two first names because that's what it's got to be for a Robin. So his name is Jeff Roger

Jeff Roger the night pigeon is in this one what's his backstory? gun expert he's a guns expert he's already got one of those what's his backstory? his parents definitely died because of birds

they only lived like two years yeah they ate too much rice that's what it is his parents eat it too much they went they went pop um and so that made him so angry and he got someone's got guns is there a knives one yeah he does knives oh is that it there's nothing nothing more? Maybe Knife Pigeon. Okay, that's good. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Knife Pigeon.

I know. I certainly know the best games of the week this time. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know some great games this week. My name is Ross Froschig, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year show. It's a video game club. It's an experience.

It's a family. It's a network of resources. La familia. La familia. Welcome. Welcome. Pull up a chair. Have some bread.

Participate in the omerta. If people are going to join the family, should we let them in on some of the family sort of back channeling that happened about the episode this week? Because, I mean, these are our uncles, our nephews, all that jazz. And we all know that everyone gets along great with their uncle. Yeah. And that's it.

And so we're going to do the new Batman game. And then we played it. And it made us all think that people don't like when we do what can only be described as a festival of dunks. Or a sad, let's call it a sad. I don't even think this would have been a festival of dunks. I think it would have been like a championship of tears. The introduction. Let's just get through the introduction.

Finish the introduction. That is to say we'll talk about that later, but we'll also talk about. Oh, so now you say something about Pac-Man? Yeah, go ahead, Juice. Video games have come a long way since Pac-Man, and this show has come a long way since the beginning so I'm going to stop it here for a commercial and then after the commercial we'll talk more

so we're doing a we wanted to find things that we like because the Batman let me say up top we're going to talk about the Batman in the second half Gotham Knights there is no Batman in this Batman game yeah he can't even take credit he can't even take credit he he he saw what was happening and he said i'm gonna take a vacation i'm all right i'm i'm good the oh i can't do it

uh so i don't think it's the world's worst game i think that people who are absolutely obsessed with this series will want to play it. I'm just saying that. But I don't think any of those people were us. So we have a grab bag of games that we absolutely love. Because there are a ridiculous amount of good games out right now. Yeah. So we're going to start with one that everybody has been recommending to me especially hoops teenage exo colonist tell me why i have to play this i was a teenage exo colonist hey could we

do a thing on this we're like i never think to look up like platform something is on so like why i'll do that while you talk yeah thank you um so i was a teenage exo colonist it's like switch ps4 windows linux mac operating systems, and PlayStation 5. The genres are role-playing video games, indie game, adventure games, simulation video games, strategy video games. Who made it? It was designed by Sarah Northway on the Unity engine. It's Northway Games, published by Finji. This I was drawn to initially because there is a uh a sort of deck building

mechanic um it's much less of a factor and then that sort of thing appears in like grift lands or certainly like the pure deck based games like your you know your slave the spires or whatever uh but what this is is you create a character who is starts out as a 10-year-old, a kid basically, who lands on this alien world with your parents who are both sort of like farmers and scientists. And you just have to survive in this really harsh environment. But the survival is not the sort where you're like lighting fires and avoiding zombies, that kind of stuff. But it's more like how you spend your time as a child in this like alien colony. So each it's broken up like each year into four seasons and you choose how you're going to spend each of those. And that could be something like studying humanities. It could be

working in your parents' farm as you get older, a little bit older, protecting the barracks or what have you. And the way you spend your time in these time periods affects your stats. It makes you better at communicating with people. It makes you better at fighting. It makes you more empathetic. It makes you better at reason, whatever. And there are dialogue conversations that you can only have dialogue options or gameplay options that you can only have if you have a certain level in these different stats. Do you know what this sounds like? What? It sounds like the Yogg.

Did you ever play the Y yes i did oh yeah um and and it also is not dissimilar actually from like a much kinder gentler um what's that disco elysium is what it's yeah that's what it seemed like to me i cannot believe you got that yeah i don't think it sounds like that game at all well Well, it is in the fact that the way you react to people and the way you spend your time continues to inform how you will spend your time after that, right? So you're

making deliberate choices about that, but also the card building layer is after you have these experiences that your different abilities or statistics will let you have, after you have these experiences that the your like different abilities or statistics will let you have after you have these experiences those become uh cards in your deck and the deck is is how you uh the you play one of these rounds of the the card game whenever you spend time so you say i'm going to

do humanities you have to play um a uh a card game game to see how much of an effect it had on your stats. And the card game is sort of like a you need to get to this certain number by playing cards. And there are lots of like modifiers. Like if you put a yellow card in this slot, it's plus two or whatever. But basically you play the cards and the better you do with the cards the more impact it has in your stats so it's sort of a virtuous cycle that way you can access more stuff and then the memories that you get are actually turn into cards so like the time that you uh stood up to your dad about something is a car it becomes like a strong yellow card that

you can play that you see like a picture of that uh depicted strong yellow card that you can play that you see like a picture of that uh depicted on the card and you can play it so you like the memories you have are actual like make you better in the card uh building part of the game and just to clarify so first of all is like most of the game's hex based or are you like actually moving a character you're navigating around a world it's not um the the the combat is all um in a static screen but for most of it you're just wandering around the world and and talking to people and like are you managing like like what is losing in this no there's like there i there there is no losing as far as i can tell you know you can get a lower impact on your stats if you don't play the card game very well,

but it's a very sort of like open-hearted, like non-punishing, very- Does it end though? Is there- Show experience. Yes, there is an end after you play through, I think 10 years. And I think it's sort of designed,

I haven't finished like a run like that yet, but it feels like the kind of thing that's designed to like go back through and play a second time. The other thing that's interesting about it is that there are like real impactful story things that happen. Like characters, it's still like a harsh world, right? So characters die with very little warning in a way that like games don't normally. It just kind of happens, you know? And that is like, it really gives an immediacy to it. It's very well written. warning in a way that like games don't normally it just kind of happens you know like it and uh that is like it really gives an immediacy to it it's very well written um the the core mechanics

are really really interesting and it's just like a very relaxing pretty like open-hearted thing that i i really done it's funny that you went from characters die at any given moment to relaxing and open-hearted no it's chill though no i know i did at any given moment to relaxing and open-hearted. But it's chill, though. No, I know. Did any of you end up playing Citizen Sleeper yet? No. Oh, man, I tried, but when I saw all the words, I really. Oh, come on.

Chris, I did install it, and then it came up, and there was so much to it. Your game sounds like it has a lot of words, too, Justin. Come on. What? Your game sounds like it has a lot of words, too, Justin. Mine's got a little person that moves around. Oh. It's all in love.

Y'all have to play at least an hour before. But it doesn't have a little guy that moves around with a Mario. Y'all? Y'all. Anyway, here's why I mention that, because it also has a very dark setting. It seems like a

high-stress game, but it does the same thing where like, you can't really fail. Failing is like just there to provide enough of a motivation, but the game is extremely generous and patient with you. And like, no matter what decisions you make, you're gonna find it like rewarding, not just narratively, but like emotionally. And this sounds like the same thing, which I like that we're seeing more games take this route of wait why do we include this part of the game that is not enjoyable and rewarding and makes you do entire chunks of it all over again that's like it's so antithetical to like what what a game should be just because like we used

to have arcade games that wanted to eat more quarters. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, I can't wait for all of you to play my game. I'm going to play Teenage Exo-Colonist because I'm a good friend. And I care about you. And I take what you tell me. Should I talk about The Case of the Golden Idol? Another game that I want everybody to play? I just downloaded this.

Hey, bud. I'm very excited. Yeah, did you play it? You got me with a bullet, baby. Hey, bud. I'm very excited. Yeah, did you play it? You got me with a bullet, baby. You knew it 100%. Oh, I knew it. This is a clean kill, no scope, rated E for extremely my shit. You were right about- They don't call me 420 Hoops Hunter for nothing.

Yeah, you got me. You got- I was 10 minutes in before I like- I think I said out loud, oh, you got me. I was 10 minutes in before I think I said out loud, oh, he got me. I'll do a quick setup, and then you can talk a little bit about it. So, Case of the Golden Idol is, I would say, the closest we've gotten to an Obra Dinn air, but is also a very different game. It is not 3D. It is a 2D pixel game where there are, I don't know, like 12 or 13 murders and your job, or deaths, I should say, and your job is to figure out or deduce what happened.

And the way you do that is you look at this almost static, like very light movement, 2D image of the world. Like maybe it's just outside of uh a horse barn where horses live yeah they live on a stable yeah stable like a horse stable and they're like a man is actively on fire like fire is spewing out of his eye holes in his mouth and some people are running away and some people are like looking like they're almost like curious about it and uh and there are objects on the ground from that person and you can click on these little glowing marks everywhere so it doesn't force you just to click around randomly and it'll show you a close-up of like what that thing was and give you a little blurb about like what you can like deduce from it so you click the burning

man and you see like oh he was he was carrying, I don't know, some marbles and a little note that is like half burned. And there are some words on the note. And then you can take anytime you find words, you can take the words. So if there are names, objects, places, you take them into your inventory.

So that's how you collect everything. When I clicked the burning man it just said little help is that a is that it i'm sorry man yeah i should know by now but is that a joke a little help it's gonna be a i thought you were gonna take it maybe wicker man or maybe like a concert in the desert or like a burning man your mistake was their plan is trying to graph something approximating logic onto it sure sure sure sure sure sure sure so anyway you collect all those things and then you have a deduction sheet that's like on one side kind of like a mad lib it's missing all the names objects and places and you can fill that in with the stuff you've collected

and on the other side is like pictures of all the people. So then you can put the names there to figure out who these people are. And the goal is literally just to write a report of what happened based off of everything that you can see. What's like wild about this game is it didn't have to be a video game technically. Like there's nothing here that you couldn't do, don't think without pen and paper um it would be incredibly complicated but this is not a game that like again you're not walking around in a 3d world it doesn't do any of those things and yet it feels so rich i mean hoops how did how did it hit you yeah once i realized like what the the the method of it was um and like it's very simple the first one is like it was so simple that i thought i was missing something like what

what is the gag here what is the trick uh but it was really just like one dude was pushing another dude off a cliff and like who are these dudes and what happened and it's like very obvious from looking at the stuff around them. But the way it like layers on these levels of complexity where like it's this very pleasurable sensation that I love in like deduction games or puzzle games where it's like you're waffling between is that too wild of a thing to think or is that actually what they're leading me towards and like not knowing that sometimes is very very uh it makes you feel very clever because it doesn't feel like you found a hint in a game it makes you feel like oh i really worked that out myself there is a hint you can click to get a hint but it gives you like a very sort of uh i don't a funcular maybe warning about about using hints like that's kind of the point of the game, are you sure

you want to use it? And that was enough to be like okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll figure it out so I haven't had to use it yet How long does it take to solve each one? For me or for you? For me. A little help? A little help?

Hey, is this guy supposed to be it was cause the guy hold on one second let's dial this in because the guy on fire all he wanted was a little help because he was on

fucking fire no I got it sure sure sure we understand we follow it wasn't a failing on our part and it's bolder

than that the technology of the microphones all all that stuff, it worked. It really dialed in. Yeah. So for me, how long would it take me to solve a crime? Hours.

Yeah, it varies. Like each one, as I have played through them, I think I've done like four so far, I really don't want to rush it because I adore it. But I think they've been sort of increasing in time. The first one was maybe five minutes and then 10 or 15 for the next few. They're substantial. I mean you're sitting and really looking at every inch of this thing.

Justin, did you use a notepad separate from the video game just to kind of jot things down? No. You know what I did sort of instead of that, though? There are usually when you're solving it, there are like a few different

sections that you need to piece together. And if you fill out one of the sections properly, it will tell you that that is correct. So you can use that. I was using that as a starting point

because it's like, okay, I'm going to figure out who all these people are first and just focus on that, which allowed me to sort of focus on one thread rather than just take it away. The inventory of words is permanently at the bottom of the screen, like the backpack almost in Resident Evil, and you can move the words around.

So you can also use that as kind of a staging ground for ideas of what you think is happening. It's very cool. Yeah, it's a great game. I think we'll talk a bit more about it later in the year once y'all have had a chance to play it because i i just i think it's a delight um oh and the art style is like the original monkey island type of like dos game like big pixelated characters to where there's like a little more detail but just because they're so they're so large um do they enter do they interweave or are they isolated stories or is that a spoiler so far it's been isolated

well there's well I guess the golden idol it seems like you're kind of following it here's the situation I got back from vacation yesterday and I played

very few games and the games that i did play while i was on vacation was no man's sky which i've talked about a lot yeah i can talk a little bit a little more i'm actually you know what i'm gonna say this i am curious about the second week of playing the new no man's sky expansion because i've never made it that far anytime no man's sky releases an expansion i'm like fuck yeah space adventures baby let's go and then i spend a week like exploring and building a base and getting a dope ship and then i stopped playing the game so i'm curious if you've gotten over the hump i i don't know about that i've gotten over the hump here's the thing i i still have stuff to do which i think is where most people like yank the ripcord when they're playing no man's sky and I still have

like a pretty decent number of like main quests and objectives I'm chasing whereas like oh I'm upgrading my freighter I'm sending my freighter folks on like missions and I'm doing missions for some pirates and and so I've got like app or whatever things to chase the rings to chase as Sonic does. And so, yeah, I'm still into it. And I still have like stuff that I really want. Like there's some dope like exotic ships that look really cool that I feel like I'd push towards. I want to get myself to a place where I basically have a really good setup such that when future updates come out, I can just like jump into the new content

without having to like do a lot of throat clearing. But I'm still reeling in. I mean, it's really perfect on Steam Deck. It's like, I think even with the settings, I don't know that I could like fully sync my entire focus on it. But being able to like pick it up and put it down um it's it's really been clicking for me it also they've been doing it's over now so i apologize for those that

missed it but they were doing like very good twitch drops over the last week so i would like before i'd leave for the day on my vacation like open a laptop up and just leave twitch running so i'd get all the twitch drops for the day so now i have like anytime i start a new save i'll have like an a-rank ship or a-rank multi-tool whatever um so that was kind of keeping my attention but man yeah i don't know i i don't it's not here's the thing about no man's sky and people don't really realize this i think when they first start for most people not everyone but for most people it is not a 300 hour game it is like a 30 to 40 hour game that is very enjoyable but that's sort of when you get to the point of diminishing returns is like 30 to 40 hours i am totally cool with that and like that is

an amazing experience for very small team and really for any game if any game can keep your attention for 30 40 hours that's amazing so i think that's the thing to keep in mind most people will not want to spend their entire lives and probably for the best in this world for those that do good for you that's great that you get like a ton of enjoyment of seeing everything whatever else you're doing for 300 hours but for me great fucking game for 30 to 40 hours cool should i talk about dead eye deep pick real quick holy shit okay y'all this game rules an indie team or maybe person i don't know how big this team is made this killer cyber punk game where you are you have been uh killed or a robot i don't know

whatever you've been dead and now you are in debt for your return to life a million dollars in debt which i think we've seen this with like hardship hardship space hard space ship breaker is that right no hard light hard breaker ship light yeah that Anyway, now you have to go and like do cyberpunk crimes. And you do that by breaking into various corporations. And you can like go in guns blazing. You can hack everything. You can hack the planet. A lot of the things that you're familiar with, with, you know, like a Deus Ex, right?

Except you are doing all of the hacking on your keyboard. So you get line of sight with a camera, and then you actually have to, like, hop hack that camera. But then once you've been given access to that camera, now you also have connection to the camera's hub. So just right away, you could hack all of the cameras and the way that it balances that is every time you see a computer you gain basically data points that you can spend on making these choices so you can't just do everything right away but if you want to burn the data points you can like take a lot of control of a very specific part of a game's world it's almost like making decisions about

how you upgrade your abilities in deus ex but doing it like moment to moment um and everything has repercussions so anytime you do these sorts of hacks especially the more valuable things that alerts the security system um but you can actually find the security system in each building and then go and hack that but that cost a ton of points so if you do that then you you're kind of like up shit creek so very very very difficult but here's the thing uh it looks like dwarf fortress almost it is like wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait so it's it's not full ascii i would actually say it's it's closer to like really classic roguelikes it's a little bit more readable i was a bit worried about this but after playing it it makes a ton of sense

because the game has to convey so much information because it's it's allowing you to do things i just like straight up do not see in video games especially cyberpunk video games and you need that space now i'm going to scare you off one more time i'm going to drop this image and justin if you can describe what you're seeing yeah i'm looking oh let's see the image. Justin. Oh, God. Hold on. Oof. Deep breath. Okay. You know when you're reading through a list of things

of how to fix your computer and then you get to the one thing that's like, if you hold these two buttons in while your computer's coming on, some really terrifying shit will come up. Yeah, it's like a bio screen.

It looks like a bio screen. Thank you. Yes. It looks like a bio screen. Yeah, or like you opened up too many tabs and then like you like yeah but sleep and woke up the next morning you're like wait what was i doing this screen on your computer you're already thinking about how to buy another computer

this is if you opened up too many tabs in 1986 basically yes and and what's cool as hell about this is so what we're looking at is like there's a kind of like a dnd style chart of like hey here's your character and its weapon and like what its attack versus defense points are and a bunch of different variations that here's your actual character and their health and their shield but then there is um the games core map that you're in that you're exploring a 2d world right but then on top of that there's like a central tab that is the map of the interface of all the electronics that you've discovered so far that you can hack and then the lower right is the yeah like where you would actually type in the hacking

commands and in the upper right is a compass that shows you how to get around the world and then there's the this like a little smiley face that is letting you know like the system's defense and how much data you have left. It is, it's so much. It's like if in war games, like when you watch war games and he's like playing computer games and it's like a fake made up computer game. Like that's what it looks like. That's kind of dope though. I think it looks sick. What's cool as hell about this is it works.

So, like, while you're playing it, you feel like you are in the fucking Matrix. Like, that all of this clicks together is incredible. It's early access, first word of warning. And two, it's hard. It is really difficult. But I just find it tremendously rewarding. And I really recommend people check it out, even in this early stage. It has like a lo-fi hip-hop beat soundtrack that is, thank God, because you need something

to de-stress while you're playing it. And the writing is just strong like really really strong writing um so yeah i i am like utterly smitten with it and i i can't wait to play the final version of that whenever that i mean that could be you could tell me that's coming out in a week and you could tell me that's coming out in 2025 and i would believe either option um and it's called dead eye deep fake simulacrum is the full name yes yes wild name yeah and it's on steam cool what else we should probably take a break yeah let's take a break and uh and then let's uh let's do it let's do it should we set a timer for how long we're going to be grumpy about the specifics of Gotham?

Grumpy is not even the right word for how I feel about it. It's depressing. It's a genuine, it's sad. Does seven minutes sound okay? Seven minutes in heaven? Sure. Some sort of heaven. Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good. And then begin Gotham Knights discussion. Now, boop, it's not good. And it's really puzzling. It's puzzlingly not good. It's puzzling. It's a mystery. It's like the Riddler made a Batman game. And his nefarious enigmatic fingerprints are all over it.

Can you describe what it is? Okay batman died sorry and batman died and there's four of his friends can i ask robin robin and not robin yes can and and did batman actually die because there is another batman game that starts with batman died yeah i know so i don't know batman seems it may be a pretty good trick if he's not dead. He keeps doing it. Yeah, I know. So, Batman died, and his four friends, Jason Todd, Red Hood, Batgirl, Barbara Gordon,

Dick Grayson, who's now Nightwing, and Tim Drake, who's Robin, the four of them decide they're going to pick up where Batman left off. You control one of them in this open world, and you fight crime, and you try to figure out what Batman was working on before he died. That's the main thrust. It involves Rajagul somehow, and Talyagul.

It's a big jigsaw puzzle. ghoul somehow uh and talia ghoul um and it's a big jigsaw puzzle if you i mean there aren't huge departures from the rocksteady games of of old it's it's not huge huge disagree well no no no no no no okay i'm griffin you and i will agree on this i guarantee i'm saying like if you were saying here's what this game is to people like it it is in the same lineage right like this is what i'm saying it's it is art style the combat style and just and for people that aren't aware art style is much better i i think that they have uh they issued a lot of their like crappy uh like meaty grim unreal engine sort of thing.

For people that aren't aware real quick, Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Knight, those were the Rocksteady games we're referring to. Generally, critically, extremely well-received. Right. Arguably some of the best. Not as much Arkham Knight. I mean, even whatever, most of them.

And people liked Knight, the game. A lot of that was the technical issues at launch. That was a big thing. The first two games, though. It's like an A minus and above kind of thing for those games. So there are many things. Okay, the good thing. Can I say the good things I like about this?

Yeah, sure. I think the music is great. Great music. I can't notice it. Did you guys notice it? It's really good music. It's very good. It's really good music. And I think presentation-wise great. Great music. I can't notice it. Did you guys notice it? It's really good music. It's very good. It's really good music.

And I think presentation-wise, I like it. I think that it strikes a pretty decent balance of aesthetics where, like, I despise the aesthetics of the Arkham games. I think they look, like, really bad. bit more color a little bit more like um incandescent bulb sort of lighting that feels more like christopher nolan's gotham uh the the like driving around in your bike which you can summon at any time like looks and sounds really good not everybody looks like they're on that like chicken only the rock diet yeah right i mean definitely batman is batman's you see for a little bit, he's yoked. He's fucking huge. His body is huge and amazing.

So you've probably been listening to this stuff, and there's probably a part of you that's like, this sounds kind of cool. This sounds pretty good. So why is it bad? Okay, I want to start out by saying I disagree with the comparison to the Rocksteady games specifically in the combat if you did not play any of the the uh arkham games the combat that it introduced was

i would say pretty foundational for a lot a lot a lot of character action games that would come after it where it was all about maintaining flow as you sort of like did quick attacks against enemies. And then there were like vaulting dodges. There were side dodges. It felt like a rhythm game almost. There were counters, right. And the higher that you got your sort of, your flow to like the more benefits

that it would provide in combat. This game has simplified that down to a point where it is unrecognizable and simple to me. So you have like quick attacks and you can charge a quick attack. You have a range attack, you can charge a range attack. And then you have like special abilities on cooldown timers, but there's no like counter.

There's no, you don't just zip from enemy to enemy as you chain stuff together. Like for me, it was the very first fight I got in. I was like, oh, okay, this is not an Arkham game and that's fine, but it is not as fun at all. The other thing that jumped out at me, where I was feeling, I was trying to figure out like, why does this not feel good?

A huge one is there's no combo. Which, especially when you're fighting 20 dudes in a row, there's not a combo meter to keep track of. I always really like the combo meter specifically in Arkham games because I feel like it would be a game Batman would play in his head.

These guys are so easy to hit. I want to see how many of these dudes I can hit before one of them hits me. that it it and it looked fucking cool and it felt so cool and you also you also increased the amount of damage you were doing based on how high the combo meter went so it actually went faster the higher when you got that combo up and you punched a dude it sounded like a meteor hitting the earth like the earth it was the best combat in any character action game I had ever played and you saw that sort of spread

throughout like the Spider-Man Insomniac games. The Assassin's Creed The Assassin's Creed definitely had some of that stuff going on but it people learned from Rocksteady Some of the attack animations are pretty cool they don't flow well so it's very noticeable.

Sometimes you'll see a character slide into place to begin cool animation. It's a little distracting. We have one minute. No, no, no, no, no, because we've sanded all nice stuff. Yeah, that's a good point. We should have started the timer right when we started to talk shit. You're a detective.

You're four detectives. The detective, sometimes when you're on a mission, the game structure is, I still don't necessarily understand it. It feels, so you can play multiplayer. You can play two-player co-op, right? And so automatically, if you've played the Arkham games, like trying to reconcile that with that, like doesn't make sense. So they have made certain concessions. with that like doesn't make sense so they have made certain concessions the game has a structure where you stay in the belfry instead of the bat cave and you go out on missions from the belfry you go out on patrol and you beat up dudes and you get clues for crimes that are happening you do you

stop little crimes so then you can stop big crimes which then gives you it's not a bad it's not a bad idea when you stop the small ones you get clues that lead you to bigger crimes. I thought that was kind of cool. It's not a bad idea. It's just, it needs to be one of many, many, many, many ideas of things to populate this open world. And that's not true. But then you'll find a crime scene, right?

And you go into detective mode and then it'll be things like, oh, so here he had a microwave with a three digit lock on it and a phone with a four digit lock on it and a safe with a six digit lock on it and then over here is a calendar with four digits on it and a piece of paper with three digits on it and etched into the wall here is six digits and then it's like go solve it and you have to match the two things you know in a like straight up like ios game seek and find level of complexity like slylock fox level shit and i'm not saying that the arkham games did that necessarily better it just didn't do them as much it would be more like

you know turn on your ar vision see a thing and then follow it like there wasn't a whole lot more to it but it was it's so mind-numbing it's it is extremely mind numbing and and even if this core thing was okay it has layered onto it so many where you can just feel the studio trying to find like here's here's something that's in other games that are good. Like, okay, I'm just going to run real quick. Sometimes you'll find chests, and they don't make any effort at fucking all to explain. It's just like, it's a chest. You just open it in the world, and there's a, you know, it's like the chest that you sometimes see in a grocery store.

It's a chest that you unlock there are resources like a bajillion different resources that you use to craft things that are all tiny incremental bonuses over the other things it feels so uh out of place it's like a much less meaningful like destiny kind of progression where you're just like it feels like a much less meaningful Avengers, which is like really saying something. It feels very games of service in the like, ooh, I got a green bo staff for Robin in this one. There are these absolutely infuriating design decisions. Did any of you guys unlock gliding?

I just did before I started playing. So the way you unlock gliding is at first you're in the open world and what you have is a grappling hook and that's it. And a bike. And a bike, yes. So I'm thinking of aerial traversal. You have a bike that you can summon at any point.

And that's fine. That works fine. Again, looks and sounds cool. But for the aerial stuff, which is such a big part of those previous Arkham games, for the aerial stuff, it's just a grappling hook at first, right? So you shoot the grappling hook, and it pulls you towards the thing, and then you kind of like jump and look around, and maybe you'll find – it feels terrible. It feels so bad. It feels so bad without the ability to glide because you'll fling yourself up in the air and there's nothing. So to get the ability to glide, you have to do – you have to prevent ten premeditated crimes, each of which is like three or then you have to do what's called like perfect strike training,

which is like timing your attacks to get attack bonuses, right? And so that is how, it's called like knighthood is this quest line. And to get like the stuff that you actually want, you have to do this garbage. So you do that garbage and you finally unlock it, okay? If you want to do that with one of the other four characters,

the three other characters, you have to, again, do 10 preventable crimes, fight three mini-bosses, and I shit you not, guys, you have to do the perfect strike training again. Like, are you kidding me? Seriously? When you start, the first time you're ever on the bike, the tutorial that says how the GPS system works

blocks the tutorial that explains the bike controls. You will only ever, these two will definitely always appear at the same time. Like, you know this will happen everywhere. And that is time. We're definitely in time. We're the same time. And that is time. We're definitely in time. I want to talk about a big... One more thing. 30 seconds. Sorry.

Okay. If I would have fixed this, just make it a Batgirl game. Yeah. It would be such a big... Or make it one game instead of five lousy games. This is an alley-oop to what I want to talk about.

Perfect. Good. Right. So, some history for both this studio and Rocksteady. The last full game that this studio shipped was in 2013. What's this studio called? It's Warner Brothers... Warner Brothers Montreal. Montreal.

And this is Batman Arkham Origins. And then it played support in 2015 on Batman Arkhamman arkham knight and like i think rocksteady shipped to arkham knight in 2015 2016 right like something like that so it's been a long time since either of these studios have been working on the games or shipping games yeah rocksteady did not make this game despite making the like main batman games right they are working on a suicide squad game that has been in development for roughly forever um uh and still very unclear like what's going to come with that game this game feels to me like i mean justin i think maybe you said on this episode already like notes to death where somebody at some point was like, yeah,

Batman's good, but we need to, we need more of that destiny thing, or we need more games of service, or we need multiplayer, or we need to take it in a new direction, not Batman, or we need bigger open spaces. So like, we'll, I guess, blow out the streets and make them large. So they feel like these like larger open world games versus the claustrophobic feel. But it just felt like a million notes.

And because the game was in development for so long, I just imagine they kept getting notes. Yes. And this feels to me like the problem of game development right now. And like why it's so difficult which is games now are more expensive than they've ever been to make they require more people and they require more time so if you don't have a consistency of vision on every level from

the people who are making it uh you know at entry entry level, we're actually designing the thing and testing thing to the director of the game, to the publisher who is actually financing it. If you all don't agree on what you're making, that seems like a recipe for disaster. And I think that's why we're seeing this sudden glut of AAA games that are having similar problems like this. And I mean, WB Games, again, this is just speculation right here. But there have been rumors for years that WB Games was trying to get sold, that it was unclear why they had this interactive division, especially when they were trying to create this massive streaming company, company right with HBO Max and Discovery and holy moly do you feel it here like it just this feels like a game that did not have a champion I don't know on various levels and then what bums me out is do you remember that story with

Overwatch that Blizzard was making an MMO and at a certain point somebody came around was like you just need to ship a game and make money and then they took all those assets and they made overwatch yeah and it ended up being like wow it actually worked this game it literally feels like that it literally feels like they were making other games and then at some point somebody came around was like hey we've been doing this for five or six years we have to ship a game and then the decision was okay let's just do all of the traditional things that make a video like a modern video game a modern video game i feel like i haven't i don't believe in my heart of hearts i don't believe someone pitching a game that stars these four characters like i don't believe it's such a weird idea that it feels like something just like

i don't know like these are the ones we have licenses for and we could do a lot of different costumes and sell a bunch of stuff i just feel i mean arguably that's to some extent multiverses has that same mentality right they have all these ip let's use them but it goes so much further that it becomes its own thing i just i i i feel i feel awful for the people who who made this game because there's like clearly talent yeah for sure going into this game and the the game itself i don't know a better way of saying it's like not the problem it seems like all of the very very high level decisions like each one of them was a mistake even just like the idea of including co-op can derail the entire rest of the game's design because it needs to allow yeah yeah and i i mean i was i was in la last week meeting with some friends and a number of people in games

i spoke to i was like you know what, how hard would it be to make this? And they're like, making one superhero is a nightmare. Right. Because you have to think of an entirely new way of getting around the world. Right? You have to think of new combat. Making four? Yeah.

I mean. It's ambitious. I kept coming back to Avengers because I think the similarities are pretty stark, no pun intended. And I think that this game makes Avengers seem like way more competent and way, way better. Like I had moments of Avengers that I enjoyed. it on on the show not for very long uh because so many it had quite a few sort of conceptual flaws and the same sort of like um feature overreach that was clearly the design of some maniacal like executive uh who wanted people to play this game only this game forever and i maybe it's just like you know this could could also be sort of like COVID fucking everything up.

The fact that this game came out seemingly like ignoring a lot of those, like they made a worse version of Avengers with like all the same problems, but like magnified in a way. It's man alive. It's so rough. I had zero fun playing this game for the whole time that I played it, like start to finish. It really – it should have just – if you do – if you just do like the Miles Morales, but you do it for Batgirl, I feel like that would be a solid way of like putting your own spin on what Rocksteady has already done. Because you're in – you know, it's like in an uncanny valley with Rocksteady's games. Like it is in this like, well, that's sort of like it,

enough where it just feels off, off, off. But just make Batgirl, just make a Batgirl game. It could be like about her learning how to, because there's some interesting stuff in here. The only narrative stuff that works for me at all is that Alfred is also hanging out with these four college students uh probably having the time of his life loves it loves their energy loves their show them tiktoks and he's like i've never had pop rocks

before and this is you know but um he has these conversations like they go in to see penguin and penguin's like eh you should go get out of here like i'm not i'm not fucking around you're back girl go away and she complains to alfred and he's like yeah this is something that batman had to deal with and here's how he like sort of handled that and grew past it that would be a cool game if it's like barbara gordon reckoning with the loss of both jim and batman and like learning how to protect the city the way he did. That's a cool thing. This is nothing.

This is nothing. Well, that was so much more than seven minutes. It really was. I tried. I couldn't have the time I spent on this be – For not. I kept thinking it would – there's so much stuff that I kept thinking it would click. I kept thinking, but, there's so much stuff that I kept thinking it would click, you know?

Yeah. I kept thinking, but it's just no dice. If you haven't played it, go play, go play Arkham Asylum in Arkham City. If you have not played those games. And I've also heard that Arkham Origins, which I haven't played,

but I heard once all the bugs were fixed, which took a while, but, but it's pretty good. I've heard with all the bugs taken care of. So, and you could probably get it for a song. So go for it.

Um, can we jump right into the honorable taken care of. And you could probably get it for a song, so go for it. Can we jump right into the honorable mentions? Yes, let's do it. Because we talked about great games at the beginning, and it would be nice to sort of sandwich that. Great games to the end. Great games at the end. I'll go real quick.

Binding of Isaac, pretty much nonstop. Thanks, Russ. Yeah, yeah. That's hooked on me in a big, big way. That game is one of the best games ever. And let me just say, we said this before we started recording. I was talking to Griffin about what mods he installed. Yeah.

And Griffin mentioned that one of the mods he installed was this feature that allows you to change. There's like these hidden rocks that if you blow up, you get items from the rocks. But they're very hard to see. And Griffin installed a mod that makes the hidden rocks much easier to see. And I gave him a little shit for it. I would say slightly easier. There's a mod that turns these bonus rocks into circular bright pictures of Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

So I did not take that one. What I was going to say, though, even though I gave Griffin a little bit of shit, what's great about playing Binding of Isaac on on pc specifically and i wish consoles had this option is you can really really tweak it exactly to the level of accessibility or difficulty that you want to get it to um where like i keep it relatively pure i really just have the item description thing on but if you wanted to like for example give yourself a little more health or whatever find out what like random pills are

before you take them you can do that stuff and it'll make the game a lot easier but honestly like it's your game you spent money on it so go ham yeah i guess i guess do your thing uh it's it's huge and there is a reason why this game has the like diehard audience that it does. And I would say it is unfortunate that you really have to put some time into it before that shit starts to reveal itself. But it is, I think, a scalable mountain because there are plenty of like YouTube tutorials about like these are the missions to prioritize. So you can get these unlocks that will really help you out uh and not dilute your item pool yeah you don't have the griffin's obsessing in the way that griffin obsesses you don't have to you at least need to know how like the progression of

the game works because it's there's some things like well you have to get to mom's heart and beat it 11 times in order to unlock uh the, like that stuff is like completely. Yeah. It is a little opaque on that front. Super opaque. But I'm, I'm, I cannot,

once again, I don't know. I can't think of too many other games that I will fall off of for long periods of time. And then when I get back into them, I get back into them fucking hard. But that is true of Binding ofic uh i also wanted to give a shout out to an ios game uh my baby has been on sleep strike uh for about a month so i've been diving diving back in first of all melvor idol that uh uh sort of idol game version of uh runescape big

expansion dropping tomorrow can't wait for that but uh ever crawl is a new one out on ios it is uh a procedurally generated sort of dungeon crawler almost by way of crossy road uh where you just have these different yeah you have uh different character classes and you move along a path that's five tiles wide, sort of, and you can only move forward or in diagonals. And there's monsters and traps and boxes and coins, and there's progression systems. And the art is fucking amazing.

It has unlockable palettes, like Downwell, which I am very, very into. This is the most Froshy looking game i think i think i think you like i think it just dropped like maybe yesterday or the day before but it's uh ever crawl it's really good i've been playing it a lot and i would encourage everybody to check it out because it's it's pretty big and has a lot of cool unlocks and stuff. That's it. Hoops. Domekeeper is a game that I started playing this week. It is a

2D retro style in the aesthetics game where you are you land on this alien world to mine minerals, which the mining of minerals in this game is basically, it looks like Dig Dug. You're like, scoot, scoot, scoot down, go over, you're looking for gems.

You're finding the gems, which are, there's different kinds of resources that you collect. Then you take those resources you find back to your dome that is sitting on the surface of the planet. And when you're digging for gems and resources, you're completely safe. You're completely fine. But you every once in a while, not once in a while, on a pretty regular schedule, your dome is attacked

by alien creatures. So you have to get back to the dome. There's a dome that has a giant sword and then there's a dome that has a giant sword and then there's a dome that has a giant laser and you have to use the laser to defend your base from the wave of enemies and then get back to mining and the mining resources that you get can be used to either upgrade your or both more accurately upgrade your suit and your digging abilities and your ability to like carry a bunch of resources back to your base

but they are also used to increase the defenses of your base, make your laser better and more powerful and increase your base defense. So you're weighing how you're going to spend those resources versus you know on collecting resources versus defending the base. There are also

these little relics that you find that give you different abilities. So there's a relic that you can use to create a lift that floats your gems and resources back up to your base for you. There's a relic that you can get a little dinosaur that digs for you. You just pick him up and chuck him where you want to, and he'll start digging and exploring and finding resources. And you can find a pulse that lets you locate resources easier, but that is the game. It is a great loop. It is very fun to find a big patch of resources

and then get the alert that your base is under attack and have to decide, am I just going to leave a big pile of stuff here so I can fly quicker back, or am I going to try to haul these resources back up while my base is being attacked attacked it's very yeah i like the the everything has weight and physics to it so if you try to bring like three gems back versus two that's gonna like really slow you down so there's this definite balance and eventually you'll you know you've upgraded

enough that you've got like 15 gems that you're lugging behind you like a a bunch of dead weight it's really cool yeah uh before i get to my recommendation i want to go back to uh i'm a teenage exocolonist okay northway games we should have just said that to me yeah i would have been sarah and colin northway the people who make our Northway games, two of the nicest people in the industry. For anybody who's curious. They are very nice. They made Incredipede. They made Fantastic Contraption, which is like one of the best VR creations out there.

They're an absolute delight. And here's where you might recognize Colin. He's a character in Spelunky. That's true. He is. He has a pith helmet. He's the blue character with the mutton chops. That's true. He is. He has a pith helmet. He's the blue character with the mutton chops. That's

Cohen. Yeah, it's great. My game is Riley and Rochelle, which Polygon described as a romantic story game where Elliot Smith fell in love with Celine Dion, which I think is a pretty perfect

pitch. It is by the... in part by the dude who made Rivals, which I think I recommended on this show. Did any of you play this? It's like a story detective game that's basically about Wilco. No.

Oh my gosh. Justin, I'm calling my shot again. Oh no, you can't spend. No, don't get greedy, Chris. I mean, it's coming for you. But, yeah, Riley and Rochelle is kind of building off this weird corner that this very, very small team effectively is making in story games. And I really like what they're doing i feel like we're getting a release every year now um and yeah i think people should check it out there's a free

demo on steam i'm seeing a lot more demos lately has anybody else been noticing that yeah it's because of uh it's because of steam next fest is going on right now yeah even before that i i've been i feel like i just it's like it's coming back in a big way. Anyway, Frush, how about you? I know. Again, I was on vacation and really only had time for No Man's Sky. Did you read a book?

No, I didn't read a book. Are you kidding me? Did you hear when he says vacation? Okay, dorks. That's it. We're going to play Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope next week. I am so excited. Here are the games we talked about.

Are you ready? I was a teenage exocolonist. The Case of the Golden Idol. Dead Eye. Deep Fake. Simulacrum. No Man's Sky. Gotham Knights. Riley and Rochelle. The Binding of Isaac. Idol, Dead Eye, Deep Fake, Simulacrum, No Man's Sky,

Gotham Knights, Riley and Rochelle, The Binding of Isaac, Evercrawl, Domekeeper. Wow. That's it. There's a lot of games. There's a lot of games. There's a lot of games out there. There's a lot of things to play that aren't Arkham Knights, so please check them

totally out. Yes, next week, Mario and Rabbids. And then we've got God of War on the way. We've got the Resident Evil expansion on the way. There's more video games. They're happening, baby. Pokemon is a little thing called Pokemon? Fuck yeah.

Yeah. We're going to get real nasty with all those coming up soon. We hope you'll join us for all that. Be sure to join us again every week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? A little help here. Besties!