The Besties - Best games of July 2014 - The Besties

Episode Date: August 6, 2014

It's fair to say that July 2014 will not go down as the most active month in video game history. There were so few major releases this July that we decided the best way to cope was to go into the deep, dark past. Each Bestie was asked to select one game from their childhood that they love. The rule, though, was that at least two of the remaining three Besties had to have not played that game, so some of us would be playing them with fresh eyes. It was an enlightening experience. Despite coming up with a whole backup plan for the lack of July games, it actually did end up as a pretty solid month, so we spend the top half of the show on some of the new releases, if that's your bag. (Oh, and Justin couldn't make this episode because babies. Don't worry, he'll be back next month!) 5:00 - Some actually good games from July 2014! 31:00 - Actraiser (Frushtick) 43:30 - Quest for Glory (Griffin) 58:00 - Half Time 1:03:00 - News 1:16:00 - River City Ransom (Plante) 1:24:30 - The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (Justin) 1:43:00 - Resties! Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes 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!

Okay, I guess we can talk about The Bachelorette now, because Chris Plant, like, broke the seal on our video game website. We probably shouldn't. I don't think I want to have to deal with that ever again. I mean, if by breaking the seal you mean, like, the Pandora's Box seal where, like, shit went down? It would be like if everybody hated what was inside Pandora's Box. Instead of, like, being full of, like, mystical energies. No, I'm pretty sure everyone sort of hated everything in there yeah no that's what i'm saying right like that in in myth it cracked that box open and they said let me receive your power and they're like wait a minute this i don't

like this right there's no power in here right it was like face melting stuff in there right i was expecting power no and not what you got. It was actually full of, like, old milk. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Russ Froschig, and I know the best game of the month. Fuck. Did you, like, trip over yourself?

I was going to say month, like a robotic month, but it just didn't work out. And I'm Justin. Hey, Justin, how's it going? Good. Justin's not here, everybody. This is the besties where we take a... I'm so hard doing what he does. He has the hardest job in show business. These are the besties. This is where we take a look at

sports, video games. Oh, you saved that one for last. Oh, sport. Yeah. One of the besties where we take a good hard look at sports, music, music reporting, music editorials, chiptunes,

chips, chip dips, dips chip chip monks video games with this month we're going to focus on video games i'm sorry everybody so justin is not here for this episode as you've probably figured out uh because him and his wife sy Sydney, are very, very close to the end of baby countdown. So, I mean, that's kind of the way babies work is we couldn't really put it off. I mean, we could have. We could have put it off for like 15 years. Well, I mean, people don't really know what we've been doing for the past eight months, right? How we decided at the beginning of this whole thing,

we were going to record nine months worth of besties in advance oh that's right we mistimed it by a little by a little bit here we are left i know people are like super impressed like how did you know what video games were going to be out and how to like talk about them the answer is that we knew all of that ahead of time and we also got nine month early advance early access and that's why we're in a pickle now that's what we are going to do today's episode which people are about to find out about people are about to find out listen this is a very special episode of the besties by which i mean not a great one because like we thought we thought at

the beginning of the month july is going to be a real stinkeroo. There's not going to be a lot of stuff coming out for us to talk about. Not a lot of conversation fuel. So we came up with this great idea where each of us would pick one of our favorite games ever that the other three people haven't played, make all of us play it, and then we talk about those four games, which we've done. We have prepared that content for you hot and fresh justin is gone and his game i think is um the one that will need the biggest champion i think it's safe to say i actually i i am not terribly uh unfond of his pick i actually liked

his pick quite a bit um so like we we did all that and then what happened some actual good stuff came out in july so the stuff i wouldn't say it was like a cavalcade of it wasn't amazing but there is certainly like i think if we hadn't prepared this other thing we could have definitely squeezed an ep out um that's why we're gonna start with resties up top let's start with resties and just like spend a little bit extra time on it and then let's just fucking patchwork this ep dumb episode it's gonna be amazing it's gonna be the best ever sorry um sorry justin uh so i guess how do you guys want to start? I mean, I mentioned at the end of the last episode that I was getting into Divinity, uh, Original Sin, uh, and I don't know if you guys dipped into that as well?

Yeah, I played a little bit of that. Uh, I really, really liked it. It was, um, I couldn't get into the, like, universe, because it's that same, like, generic fantasy universe that I never really get into. Oh, no. Yeah. You need to play more. It's like the, you know, in the same way that, like, I don't really get into no yeah it's like the you know in the same way that like i don't really get into the skyrim universe or the elder scrolls universe

for the most part but you're saying some really wrong stuff right now yeah it gets weird it's awesome i mean i yeah i guess i played like three four hours or so did you get to like the interdimensional oh yeah i got there with the weird gremlin guy whatever that's racist but go ahead um but it's though it's fantasy there's like orcs and stuff so just orcs when you see orcs you're like check please sense you off yeah okay i understand that i used to be you know like you you know misguided you did you used to hate me let me let me finish my point my point was like i wasn't super brought into the world but once i got into the big town and started doing like these mini quests i was like pretty engaged like there was a little like murder

mystery going on there were like these two like rival uh entertainers and i was like bribing this guy to like crowd like warm up the crowd at this other entertainer and it pissed off the other guy i don't know why i was doing any of this stuff but it was like pretty like interesting and fun and reminded me of like fallout one and two yeah it has that it definitely has that old school like tactical rpg feel to it my absolute favorite thing about it is uh the environmental combat system is so goddamn cool like for for the first time i feel like in a game like this where you control multiple party members um i felt like there was a different like a new kind of interplay between how those characters could strategize together oh Oh god, I didn't even mean to do that.

Like being able to as one character throw like a patch of oil on the ground, knowing that your next character is going to be able to set that shit on fire. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's really, really amazing. It feels like an incredibly good D&D.

When you're in good D&D, you're strategizing with the other players about what would be the most awesome thing to do? Can I... I'll throw that barrel, and you shoot it out of the air, and then do, like, a backflip. And it's like, yeah, that's pretty much what it's doing. You, like, ask your DM, can I pick up this barrel of oil and throw it, right? And that's, like, that is an impossible concept to get across in role-playing games. I give games a really hard time for not really capturing the true D&D experience.

But you can't. Right. Because it's all improvisational and and super creative. And unless a game systems are built around those sorts of things, it just can't. It just doesn't happen. It would be impossible. You need like a hyper complex AI or something to, to make that work. Um, but Divinity Original Sin like has so much creative stuff that it almost makes you feel like you're coming up with your own solutions. Like it makes you feel like you're breaking the rules. Um, and that's really smart. Like I, I, I really got into that.

I had a, I had a hard time like getting super into the characters and honestly where the game kind of lost me a little bit was when, um, I first took on the two extra characters. Um, because then you have these in Divinity Original Sin, you start out creating these two characters, um, and you have to sort of make them good co-op buddies because you can play the game uh online multiplayer and one one player controls one character one player controls another and there's some really clever systems in there for how they handle like conversation yeah and arguments and stuff it's really really super cool um but once you take on like uh like accomplices like you can bring on two other characters who like weirdly no other character in the world will want to talk to.

Like if you try to talk to somebody while you're controlling one of these like mercenaries, essentially, the person you're talking to is like, oh, I don't want to talk to you. I only want to talk to your master. And it's like, OK, guys. Well, yeah, they just didn't want to write dialogue. And that's fine. It's just, I found it like there's a lot of depth to the customization systems in the game between like equipment and learning new abilities

and like specializing in these like dozens of proficiencies and picking up perks that unlock based on how you level up those proficiencies like there is a lot of granularity and i feel like a lot of games do this too like um once you have four people like i almost lose interest in managing them like i almost say like this is this is too much too much for me and there is you can um i think there's like a lone wolf perk that you can give your first two characters and it like makes them a little bit stronger but um you can't take on those accomplices so it does make it like a two two like character

experience but um from what i've read like it's it's incredibly difficult to play through the game like that so i I just haven't tried. So yeah, that's kind of where I fell off a little bit. Also because I knew I didn't have time to sink my teeth into this huge hours and hours and hours long. Yeah, that's my issue. It's a game that I know I could just be obsessed with. But because I know that I end up not playing it as much as I would like because I almost can't let myself do that, which is, like, a weird thing to say.

And they're like, oh, God, I only have a limited amount of time in my day and have to, like, have responsibilities. Right. But it's the thing. The original Dark Souls was this for a while where it's like the, oh, boy, when I get fired, this is going to be the thing, the original Dark Souls was this for a while, where it's like the, oh boy, when I get fired, this is going to be the thing that I sink my depression into forever and ever. I like games that aren't perfect, that leave room for you to exploit them and don't really want to fix those things.

Did you see the treasure chest kind of hack? No. like did you see the uh treasure chest kind of hack no no so you can choose all sorts of different you know skills and powers for your characters they're very customizable and one of the ones that people love is telekinesis where you can it's so sweet pick things up and pretty much i mean tons and tons of stuff in the game can be thrown not just the traditional weapons so what somebody figured out was you can take a treasure chest, which has, like, a really strong one that has a lot of storage,

and then find more of those chests and put them inside of each other. Oh, my God. Indefinitely. So they weigh a ton until they're just this, like, hulkish, heavy object. And then you use that as your weapon

and you just hurl it at people you have it does like almost infinite damage like a nested treasure chest cannonball yeah you can just fire at people i love that that's amazing and like that type of stuff i i just love that and that that really captures that spirit of dnd where you can come up with something so stupid, but so obviously fun that your DM's like, eh, yeah, I'll let it happen. Like, sure, that's cool enough that, like, we'll let it work. And sure, it breaks everything, but it's kind of worth it. It kind of reminds me of a game that I actually almost picked

for, like, the game that i wanted all of you to play which was and i don't know if you've played it before arcanum oh i think i did play that uh sierra it's like steampunk right it was it was like steampunk but it also in like a fantasy like magic universe it was incredibly like it was so unique um because you could develop your character in i mean true to form like all these different ways um but in addition to like the good and evil sort of slider that you get uh there's also one that sort of moves up and down based on whether you're using magic or technology which has like an impact on on your character's development there was some really really cool stuff and a really amazing soundtrack for that game yeah yeah that was like it's also on gog i kind of want to dip back into it um so let's let's let's talk about a couple other games that came out this month

yeah i mean there were a few right like action hank i don't know if you guys that sounds like really really am into that game it's really really fantastic. Yeah, it's neat. The problem is that it came out on early access, and it is, like, super early access. I think there were, like, only 18 levels when it first launched. And I, like, I killed it in, like, a half hour. Like, I finished all of the levels. And it's such a great game. It's just like a runner where you can jump and you can slide.

And that's basically it i mean it's the sonic people say this with a lot of different things but it is really the sonic game that i want like it is gotta go fast just go across the course and the issue with the sonic games now when they try to make them is they try to make these giant lush settings so you get that one really fast level at the beginning and then they can't keep doing that because they obviously don't have the money for this. This feels like it's set in a child's bedroom, playroom.

And it feels like they have a level editor tool. I don't know if there's one in the game or not that comes with it. I think they are going to add one in. It's not set up now. It's relatively easy for them to add these like levels that still look really nice yeah um and it just has so much personality like there's when you're a character who's a toy is going through these courses that are kind of like hot wheels tracks uh and different things too and like building blocks yeah and but if you if you go over the floor or the gaps in it,

the floor becomes lava if you get too close to it. There's just lots of cute little... Oh, I remember that. Childhood. It's a really mechanically satisfying game, timing out your jumps perfectly so that you land on the decline of a ramp that you butt-slide on. Very momentum-heavy. Yeah, it is.

It kind of reminds me of a like mirror's edge maybe a little bit because especially in those later in those later levels you have to the momentum you start with you have to like nurture and and maintain or else you're not going to be able to make like the huge jump that's at the very end of the level that if you like stumbled once you're not going to have the speed that you need to get over it um i also like that it has the uh this is horrible the european sense of humor like when i'm playing it it reminds me more of like asterix and obelix like the cartoons i watched in french class than any cartoons i watched as a kid and i don't know what that is or where that comes from but it's like a little more grotesque than American cartoons.

I don't know, but yeah, it's super, super charming. It's like every time I see that game has been updated on Steam, and I haven't done this really for a lot of early access games. I think it's sort of the promise of early access. I just don't really have the patience for it. But every time I see that that game's been been updated i'll load it up because they almost always like drop two or three new levels in there they just released a patch that adds a lot rainbow rainbow metals to the game yeah so like the most difficult like times to try and beat and um

they've like fixed up some of the work in progress levels that they had um i do have a word of warning though it it is still pretty early access in terms of how you get around the game if that makes sense the menu system like choosing which medal you're going for yeah and then like what your ghost looks like and who you're running against it a little rough. I mean, it's just not like ultra polished. It doesn't feel like a final product. But that is by no means a reason to not play it. That's more of, when you first load it up

you're probably going to be like, this is a little busted but it's totally worth it. It's super fun. I'm going to keep playing it. I'm going to keep, every time I see it's been updated or if I go a few updates without checking it out, I'm gonna keep playing it like I'm going to keep every time I see it's been updated or like if I go a few updates without checking it out like I'm looking forward to playing new levels and once they put the level

editor in there like oh yeah I don't know that's gonna be that's gonna be pretty huge it's one of those games I think is gonna get a lot of momentum uh as the year goes on that was terrible um do you guys want to talk about gods we'll be watching either you guys played it or I didn't I played it

I played very briefly the demo and I killed everyone around the fire and I was like okay clearly this is a cool idea but I don't have time for it I played it for like a couple hours and I still can't beat the first level so I don't know how much I can talk about it

It's an incredibly difficult decision making game and I just can't I can't get past level 1 Now that it's out I an incredibly difficult decision making game yeah and i just can't i can't get past level one now that it's out i'm sure there's like a guide somewhere but there's like a lot of rng shit going there's a lot sorry there's a lot of uh like randomness to the systems in the game that i don't love like you are in a hostage crisis and you have to maintain the like calmness of these different uh what hostages i guess is the word sure while also hacking into a system but it like there's a percentile chance every time you take a turn that you could get hacked yourself and lose progress so there's like that randomness of like you could be doing perfectly and like keeping your keeping that

percentile chance low but it's still a chance that you're going to get screwed. And it's such a bummer every time it happens. And there's a little bit of stuff like that in the game that kind of throws all of your strategy in the garbage. You could be working really hard and keeping a perfect balance of maintaining this hostage situation, and then because the game's random engine decides to screw you over,

you get screwed over. Yeah. There are two games that I wanted to talk about, but I, a part of me actually wants to save them until we can all talk about them in mass. And one of them is Wolf Among Us, which finished this last month.

Yeah. I need to play all of that. Yeah. It's effing tremendous. I liked it. Is it really? I liked it more than Walking Dead season one. Holy shit. I think the pacing is a lot better. I really like the characters.

Yeah, I so it's that and Naxxramas, which just sort of just had its first wing, but it is going to be releasing a bunch more content. Wing 2 is out right now, I think. Like, right now. So I think we're probably better off waiting on those two until

next month, especially since August once again is going to be a little bit slow. Yeah. I will say that there are some holy shit moments in the Naxxramas DLC for Hearthstone. I haven't actually played through the first chapter yet, so I'm yet. Okay. They rival

any holy shit moment that I've had in a game. Like, I feel like Hearthstone is about as codified as a game can be right now. It is about as balanced and like, I know every card in that fucking game. Yeah. To see

a card or hero power get played that throws all that in the pooper it is like oh my god this card changes everything like it is it is so so so exciting i'm not going to take that from you and explain what it is but just like gird gird your loins because it gets it gets rough especially i haven't been able to beat anything on heroic oh because it's like it's the it's a fucking gamja bar it's it's the kobayashi maru it's so so so hard um yeah no that was really good there was let's see let's just i guess burn through some of this destiny beta the destiny beta which i did i talk about the alpha last month uh maybe a little bit i don't remember uh it's amazing that game's gonna be

my life i'm very excited about that game um what what class are you guys thinking about i'm gonna do actually so i'm gonna play hunter and oh interesting i didn't see i don't i didn't see a lot of those i played all three of the classes, and the reason I'm moving towards Hunter, you know how they all have different jumps? I don't know if you knew this, but they all jump differently. And different movement speeds. The Hunter moves a little bit faster. So what I found was, like,

I didn't really like the other two jumps. They were, like, very slow and cumbersome and, like, made you a giant target. So the Hunter has, like, the traditional double jump. Yeah, it feels like a double jump in, like, a game the titan does like a jet pack and the warlock does this weird like it's like a hover it's not quite a princess peach and uh yeah essentially which gives them like a stable a stable firing platform for their like magical abilities yeah it's not super state i mean it's more like a wide arc like a basketball shot

you can set I mean you can do it in a way where you just hover in a perfect horizontal line uh I don't really yeah I was never able to do that I think you the gravity still affects you but whatever I didn't that was that's seriously the deciding factor for me was like the jumping

the other classes were fine and also throwing knives the hunter throwing knives are absolutely sweet i'm going with the golden guns thing it was cool i'm going to titan because they have a super ability where you jump in the air and ground pound like donkey kong oh yeah that gets awesome that gets more powerful the higher up you get and uh works in in like competitive, and nothing is sweeter than watching people try and steal your territory, and then figuring out a way to jetpack up that rock, on top of that ridge, on top of that ledge,

and then dropping the goddamn hammer on it. Yeah, there's some really cool traversal stuff. It's so, so sweet. I wouldn't say it's to the level of Titanfall in terms of traversal. Oh, God, no, no. Definitely a lot of options you have. Although I will say that getting on a jet bike that's my favorite gaming animation

so good maybe ever it's not even the animation like the feel the whole feel of it is like perfect watching your legs kick out when you take a sharp turn is like whoever animated that great job that's the best possibly the best animation in gaming It was the first time I felt like I was doing the Return of the Jedi thing that I always wanted to do in a game. I mean, Shadows of the Empire notwithstanding. But that noise that it makes, the wheeze. Yeah, as the engine gives out. Oh my gosh.

That's pretty good. I love it. As long as we're talking about betas, I also wanted to mention I played the crew beta and fucking loved it. I played more of it. I got it to work. Last time we talked, it wasn't working at all. I didn't know what to expect from that game at all.

I like it a lot. They're doing some real cool stuff. It gives me that old school, like, Need for Speed underground level of customization for your cars. And then, like, has some really clever online open world hooks. Like, cleverer than I thought it was going to be cleverer than I thought it was going to be and deeper than I thought it was going to be. It's not just like driving around through like, I guess using the more recent Need for Speed games

as an example, like you're not just like crashing through signs and seeing how fast you can drive by like speed cameras. There's like honest to goodness challenges that you can just sort of hit while you're going from point a to point b and there's like one button restarts for if you screw something up so you don't have to like meticulously like drive back to the start of one of those channels like there's so much it's such a friction-free like huge game yeah it's

also nice to have a racing game with a personality like uh with criterion it felt like the deeper they went into the need for speed uh world like the less personality they were yeah i actually this past weekend uh a friend of mine came over and we really wanted to play a video game and we're like hurting for like a good multiplayer game right now yeah um because we've kind of expended i think tower fall and sports friends and all those uh so we downloaded burnout three takedown on it's on xbox 360 it's like 10 bucks uh and yeah that's like it's a different it's a different game right and it's perfect like the graphics are so like rough a little bit

and like doing those uh the crash junctions one it was an xbox one game yeah original it's an xbox original um and they up res'd it for 360 a little bit really but you watch like you hit like a bus and then you watch that bus like flip on its side and like grind 30 feet on a guardrail. Oh, that's fantastic. That's so great. I miss that crash mode so much. I can't believe that didn't make it into any of the other games. Yeah, I've really missed something like that.

I don't think the crew really fits that bill. Oh, yeah. No, it's more like for me, cruising USA in terms of personality. Like that dopey, like we kind of know what America would look like from our office. Although I will say... If we, like, use Google Image Search, we can get a pretty good taste for it. There's also, like, a really great progression hook to the game, where, like, you are leveling up as a driver, but each... Your cars level up, too, independently. And, like, they level up really frequently, because as you complete those challenges, you'll get, like, a muffler that's better than yours that you can equip with the press of one button and then your car's level like increases

and you know how your car's increasing like getting more powerful and you can feel it like you can feel your car getting getting better like i really dig that i will say that austin is not in Not in the game, but New Braunfels, Texas is. South Padre Island is. New Braunfels is where people from Austin go to get drunk and float on a river and eat sausage. And I love it. I love it. New Braunfels, keep it up. You're doing a very important job.

But, like, there's no Austin. There is an area called Hill Country, which has a big dam in it. And then you drive south and there's New Braunfels. What's up with your like... And is Kansas City like three blocks away from there? I don't know. I haven't gone looking for Kansas City. I think St. Louis is like their contribution to... So also like areas are labeled and it's like Chicago, New York, Midwest.

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's be honest. There's, we've got Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence, Boise. In terms of landscape, do you think it varies much? Actually, it does quite a bit. The Ozarks versus the Plains are pretty different.

Yeah, I'm already asleep. There are landmarks in each city, right? So it'll be like this is eight mile you found eight mile and sometimes just one big road right and sometimes there will be a landmark like out in the middle of nowhere and it'll be like you just found louisburg kentucky like cool okay austin didn't even get that it's some bullshit yeah cheap ed of cheap ass gamer actually tweeted an image of queens new york and it was just like a farm field it was like a legit meadow which i guess could be flushing meadow but i don't think that's what it looks like i don't know i i do kind of love it reminds

me of i i think i think you both brought this up in the overview one of which failed and one of which went up on the site, that it kind of reminds me of Pilotwings. Yeah, it's like that mini USA Pilotwings. Yeah, the jumping game that you did was really great. I'm going to jump from New York to Las Vegas and run a jump. It was fantastic. Only they're like 10 square feet a piece. Yeah, that game's going to be pretty tight.

Anything else? Oh, the Dark Souls 2 DLC. Oh, God. Did you play it? No. Play it maybe. I want to, but I'm going to be honest. I haven't finished Dark Souls 2 yet. Is there one thing about the DLC that

sets itself apart, apart from new areas? Is there a gameplay mechanic they introduced? Not really. They did a clever thing where if you haven't purchased the dlc you can drop a summon sign right outside of where the dlc kicks off and then there's like an area inside the dlc that's like closed off and it's it's relatively short it's just like a really punishing um like descent through these tombs and then you fight this three-person boss at the end of it, which is really hard. So you kind of have to summon people to get through it,

especially to beat that boss. So if you haven't bought the DLC, you can be summoned into that closed-off area and get basically a demo of what the new content is like. Bring that stuff to next-gen, guys. It's not going to happen. I will say they have nerfed to next gen, guys. God. It's not gonna happen. I will say they have nerfed miracles

in an enormous and profound way. And I didn't know it until I played the DLC, and like, that was like my whole build, kind of. Yeah, that's brutal. And so I kind of have to like, start from scratch. Well, you can respec, right?

I can respec, but i've spent so many materials and all that equipment i spent a really long time like getting the the most powerful like chime that you use to cast miracles and then i spent a bunch of resources like leveling it up to max level and then like my entire build is based around like lightning damage and high faith and like now those spells like they, like, cut the uses of them by, like, three quarters, so you can only, like, the spell that I was using, and I had, like, 20 uses every time that I left a bonfire,

now it only has, like, four. They do weaker damage, too. So, like... Sad. I think the reasoning was, like, it was sort of indiscernible from sorceries, which is, like, the traditional magic damage stuff in the game. And I'm sure they were running on PvP and stuff like that.

Yeah. But it's still, like, kind of a bummer. Like, it's... Unleash the hounds, man. You didn't just take it down. Yeah. I love that that's your point of competition. That's, like, is that the worst?

You don't play a lot of MMOs. That's the worst nerf you've ever lived through. No, I really don't. Is that the worst? You don't play a lot of MMOs. That's the worst nerf I've ever experienced. And it happened about a week after I started playing Hearthstone, and I bought a shitload of Hunter cards. I was like, no! But that's cool. That's so funny.

Also, Freedom Planet is really great. It's like a Sega Genesis game. Guys, I think we should get into it. I guess we should dip in. Let's do it. if you want to bail now no I think it's going to be honestly I think it's going to be really good I'm going to talk about our childhoods

a lot it is and I feel like we're going to be nasty about it like I've got more skin in the game than I've ever had on this show I mean I feel that way about anything except for your game except Except with my game? I think so. Oh, boy. Well, I think you didn't...

I don't think either of you played my game right. Let's... Should we start with one of your guys' games? Yeah, or do you want to start with Justin's? No, let's close to Justin's. Okay, let's close to Justin's. I think we should start with your game, Fresh. Okay, I can start with mine. So, the game that I chose for other people to play

was ActRaiser on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Everybody just turned off our podcast. So remind me, what was your guys' experience with ActRaiser? I had played it for like five minutes. In the history of your life, you'd only played it for five minutes? Yeah, I never dipped into it. And Plant, what about you? This is one of those games that I remember watching a neighbor play.

Yeah, that's about mine. It's a weird game. Having gone back and playing, like, while playing it, I realized, wow, I probably did not understand what was happening whatsoever. Well, I think when I was younger, I played through the first action scene, and I was like, oh, this is like Super Castlevania, whatever,vania whatever i get and then i got to the simulation part and i was like well i just don't know what's happening here so i'm done yeah it does not make it easy for you to understand what the hell is going on yeah i'm sure back then back you know well let me let me

explain let me let me structurally explain for people that aren't aware what actorizer is it's one of my favorite uh games of all time uh definitely like top five honestly there are there are a lot of people who are that like mitchie d is like tweeting about that constantly he's tweeting about actor like it's his whole life it's an amazing game i really really like it so uh you know as i think plant said um it starts off and it's just an action game. It's like a 2D side-scrolling. You've got a sword, and you hit guys, and it's sort of like Mega Man or Castlevania. You look like Thor.

You look kind of like Thor because you're a god. And you beat that level. You beat a boss. And then suddenly you're controlling this little angel that flies above a burgeoning city, and your objective is to build the city and help the people out. Okay, pause, because there's something that we skipped here

where I lost maybe 15 minutes of my life. Okay. So after you complete that first 2D level, you actually play as a giant-like temple on a cloud. Yeah, you're a cloud ship. And you have the option to fly around the world. Now, you can't do that. What you're supposed to do is enter the menu immediately,

go down to a specific option to fight, or no, to go to your city and click that option. It's not like the immediate option, nor does it show you where this option is. So what I did is I was like, oh, I need to go find the city. Well, it didn't look like I'm on the city. So I float around the map,

and I'm literally trying every option on every damn square inch of this map, and nothing is loading. And then I realized, no, I... You weren't supposed to move your cloud ship at all they let me be in the cloud ship but did not want me to use it well they wanted you to see the world as a whole and then you you know explore it i think what what this sort of brings to light is that there was a period of game which games which is no longer really in existence where we sort of

take it take it for granted that like when we were playing older games you spent like a half hour to an hour just like figuring out how things worked and what the developer wanted you to do to set this up i think all four of our games fell into that i think all i think all four of our games are i have have no goddamn idea what, like, the game is figuring out what you're supposed to be doing. Well, but I would say, like, after, like, for Actraiser, in the case of Actraiser, I think after you beat the first level, you pretty much get the structure of it. Or you just understand what you're supposed to be doing. The simulation system in the game, I would say, is so, like, simple, is so, so like simplistic that I always felt like I was screwing it up.

Like I wasn't getting like you build roads and then as, as your city expands, more people move into it and start building increasingly complex structures and farms of their own volition. And you have to lead those roads to points on the map where monsters are spawning from the whole whole time you're shooting down these monsters as they terrorize the village. Kind of like a shmup.

Not even close to a shmup. Like a very simple shooting shooter. Sometimes you will get messages from the villagers saying like, oh, we found this spell. Here, you can take it. Or there's a rock in the southeast corner of the map. Go blow it up with lightning and you'll find a spell then or my husband's going insane from dark energy

right so and that's where like i really like part of the reason i'm a huge fan of this game is because uh and i realize like it seems very primitive now but those like crazy shifts in like the story where like the two people that you've been talking to this whole time like one of them dies yeah and the woman is like devastated and you're like what can i do to help and she's like uh maybe put some rain on our crops or just go on and help other cities grow right exactly can i drop a spoiler sure at the end the game is one of the 30 years old one of the villages that you like raise up has a boy named i think timmy and you have to like find him because he's out lost he's being terrorized by monsters find him and bring him back to his parents great when you

finish the game it does like a montage where the cloud city pans over all the cities that you've helped, um, bring to life and tells you a little bit about like what, what's up with them, where they are. When you go to the city where Timmy was, you're like angel buddy talks about like, ah, you remember Timmy?

He was so great. I know we're supposed to love all of our inhabitants equally, but Timmy was just so lovable. By the way, they drew lots to decide who should be sacrificed to you. And Timmy was just so lovable by the way they drew lots to decide who should be sacrificed to you and timmy was sacrificed great great great i hope you don't mind that and that's what now timmy's in heaven with us yeah that's what i love about this game it really did not pull any punches it was like increasingly brutal that's like and like very

mature for a game that i played when i was like nine years old how much how much quintet games like how many of those have you played because one of my favorite games of all time is illusion of gaia um no i didn't or illusion of time if you are european um it's have you played it plant no oh guys oh It is amazing. It is sort of a more RPG-ish take on Zelda. And what's great about Quintet's games is that they use a lot of the same art assets and sounds between games. Like, Actraiser's sort of... I think it's called the Blazer Saga. It's a sort of continuation of a running narrative throughout the games that starts in Actraiser, goes on into Soulblazer, and then ends in Illusion of Gaia. I think I have that right.

So there's like a running narrative there. But there's also like you will see sprites that go across those games like maybe it's uh maybe it's like an explosion effect in one game and then another game it's like a fireball that you throw like it's really really fun like catching catching all of that stuff i it was so weird because i had no idea that that stuff existed and then while i was playing act razor i was like wait a second that's the that's a monster from from illusion of gaia uh that's awesome i didn't know that i hope i see the angel man i should have picked that because i i thought that everybody had played that game but apparently not uh yeah i i love

act razor and and one of the biggest crimes against humanity was when act razor 2 came out and it was just an action game yeah it didn't have a good one didn't have just simulation they got rid of the simulation it's a step in the like super wrong direction because i i really liked the hybrid nature of act razor i just wanted like i just wanted the simulation systems to be more robust more complex right i wanted to feel like i never felt like i was doing it right because of how simple it was. Does that make sense? It was so simple that I felt like, oh, God, I have to be missing something.

I kind of want the opposite. I would love a simple simulation game that has Geometry Wars placed on top of it. I like the idea of having to do this kind of like twin stick shooter while trying to make big decisions about the fate of this like city that you're trying to raise um good on them for actors though like seriously one of the most original games no i honestly can't rip that off like right to any other game that exists right now. Will you guys do me a favor and play Illusion of God? I really wish I had made it.

Is it similar? No. I mean, it's like Link to the Past. Okay. But with more RPG mechanics and this crazy storyline where you are exploring the wonders of the world. But what I was trying to bring up when i mentioned that game earlier uh is that there is a lot of dark terrible shit that that

happens in that game there is there is one scene in particular where a character that has been with you the entire time sacrifices themselves in the most brutal manner like a game has ever realized before this is weird this is one of those boxes where i'm going to circle back to this when we get to another game on the show but it's one of those boxes i coveted but never actually got the game but i'm looking at it's like oh my gosh i i forgot that this thing existed uh it's really the illusion of Gaia written in this gold classic font over I guess what's like a version of the Earth

but not... Yeah, it looks like Zelda-y. Yeah, very, very. But it's nothing compared to the box that I really wanted which was just the old guy with the banjo. Oh yeah. Equinox? Was that...

That was a shooter right yeah that was a shmup yeah was it guys sorry was it it wasn't equinox i don't think it was equinox i don't it wasn't the gym phalanx or something yeah phalanx it was phalanx yeah um i will say playing actraiser made me bummed out that quintet just sort of disappeared yeah they did so many like they did so many great games they put enix on the map i feel like with with games like act razor and uh illusion of gaia and they did i don't know if you guys ever played uh terra enigma i don't know if that actually ever came to the states um and robo track they made so many amazing games on super nintendo and then i think in like this they put all their they took all their chips and then they put it on put them on the table on a space marked sega

saturn and then they died then they just vanished from the earth sad game dev story isn't that the way and how it goes uh yeah so that's act razor i really liked it i'm glad uh you got well plant was a little grumpier than uh griffin was i liked it i mean it's just it's not it's a game that you can still play today which is which is volumes better than most games it suffers from being so far ahead of its time when it was out but now like better action games and way better simulation games have come out and it's very very novel that those ideas were blended like it's novel that they even had the idea to blend that stuff in the first place but the constituent elements i don't think yeah i completely were the best yeah um but i liked it yeah um what what do we have next coming up do you guys just want to

start in on my i really was just here because i think i think justin would have had my back maybe a little bit probably um so my game i was hesitant to like pick a game from the series um because i think the series sort of is uh uh i think of it as like a one unit in my mind just because maybe it's just because like i've played all of the games and i'm so so much that i can beat them relatively quickly uh is the quest for glory series an old pc adventure series from uh from sierra that uh really cleverly blended adventure game mechanics and role-playing game mechanics in a way that uh no like visual adventure game i think zork beyond zork maybe had had a little bit of that going on but that was just text-based adventure this was like a an actual adventure game sort of

in the vein of king's quest where you had stats you had like a dnd character sheet uh that determined your strength and your intelligence and your your agility uh and also like specific skills again very dnd-esque like throwing throwing and climbing and lockpicking. And then you had to use those skills to solve puzzles in the world. So where like an adventure game might have you like combine a rubber chicken with a pulley in Quest for Glory, like you know that you have this set of skills that for a lot of the challenges are what you're going to use to to overcome a challenge like if you're good at climbing you're going to be able to solve a puzzle in a different way than my magic user who might have like a levitation spell would um so you can play through it multiple different ways

if that's your jam there's five games in the series and the best thing about it is you can import your character between games to keep uh your stats and some of the items that you found in the previous game into the next one so it's almost like reminiscent of a dnd campaign um because all of the storylines are blended there are characters who come across games the fifth game is basically all fan service like every character in the fifth game is from the past four um which is pretty great if you get into it so i didn't know what to pick russ doesn't have a pc so i had to pick one that was on mac um so i picked for them to play the fan remake of quest for glory 2 trial by fire yeah and upon further consideration i don't think that was the smartest choice probably not because you that that that i

think the series starts out brilliantly i think like quest for glory 1 is the perfect way to learn sort of the systems of the game it's not an especially challenging game um and by the time you get to quest for glory two it sort of assumes that you understand the structure of like playing your class and sort of the the tricks of the trade that that class has there's a lot of puzzles that are basically ripped between games like there is a dispel potion in every game and you know you have to find the ingredients for it and use it whenever a thing transforms. And if you don't have that knowledge,

I think that it can be a pretty punishing experience. I'm going to talk you through my experience with this game. Okay, are you ready? Also, Quest for Glory 2 has the most confusing map system in any game ever devised. Hey. That's assuming you have a map. This is fun.

Magic carpet ride. Well, here I am cat people okay i'm done like i immediately do not know what is going on i don't know why the hell i suddenly am having my outfit changed i i don't get any of it uh i struggle through everything i'm not good at point and click games other than monkey island so i what class did you play as uh i did i say fighter i'm gonna i was a fighter is that not what we're supposed to play as is that what you played as yeah i can't fucking believe you two i don't why it's unbelievable i mean that's the thing you you i feel like you didn't approach that from like the

dnd mindset of like as the fight so whenever feel like you didn't approach that from the D&D mindset of like, so whenever you start the game, you can choose from three different roles. Four in the later games. You can also play as a paladin. But you can play as either a fighter, magic user, or a thief, right? And the fighter, all of the solutions to the puzzles are like, I punch the thing, I kick the thing down, and I kill the guy. How do we know that without the context of knowing the series?

Okay, but you've played a fucking role-playing game before. I was shocked that there was a fighting option in this sort of game. Yeah. I'll give you my one second, because Plant's reductive experience didn't quite give it justice. My experience was, okay, so the game starts. Within the first three seconds, I'm like, oh, I the game starts within the first three seconds i'm like oh i probably should have played the first one because there's like a bunch of characters that like

clearly i should know that appear and talk to you and then i'm in this um i guess it's like a you know uh sort of an arabian city um and i'm like wandering around looking for a map because i need a map because the city is like enormous and full of like serpentine paths and but the guy who sells the map doesn't i don't have the right money for that guy that's the most hardcore shit whenever you start any quest for glory game the first thing you have to do is find the money changer because the money that you brought with you from the last game is no good here, sir. Yeah, so that took, like, a while. If you talk slowly, he does give you directions.

Yeah, but, like, it's still, I got very lost, and I wasn't, like, I should have been taking notes and, like, drawing my own map as I was playing, but I didn't um and were you playing with it so what's great about the remake the remake is like one of the best I think fan remakes of any game ever um so just for like a little bit of history the first quest for glory game uh had I don't even know what the style of graphics were like what were those old like look like they were made in ms paint like a lot of adventure games looked like that um there's a term for it that i just can't remember where all of the commands that you did were still text based like cast open on door like you would have to actually

type that out um and then the later quest for glory games were vga and uh meaning like the the graphics were better and there were uh there was like an actual user interface for the game so you would actually like click on the spell menu click the open spell target it at the thing that you wanted to open so they did a sierra created a vga remake of the first quest for glory game that added those interface elements in um that is like actually one of the first Quest for Glory game that added those interface elements in. That is, like, actually one of the best games in the series, and a really great point of entry into the series. But they never did it for Quest for Glory 2. Quest for Glory 2, the only version Sierra ever made, was still that, like, hyper-inaccessible

text-based adventure game that doesn't have some of the things that this remake has like for instance an option to make the streets like uh basically straight shots like if you play there's like a complex map mode and a simplified map mode i don't know which one you guys chose but the complex map mode is like the minotaur's labyrinth. It is really, really rough. But it also has like fast travel, the remake does. I don't think I noticed that. I think you might need the map to do fast travel. You do, yeah.

And I didn't even like try it after I got the map. I have a recommendation for anyone who is going to try playing this. And that is don't play it on a Mac. And don't play the remake as like fine as it is because i went and watched a let's play of the original and of the original wonderful of the original quest for glory 2 yeah the like vanilla flavor yeah the the pixar is like really really cool the music's great i enjoyed watching that more um if i if i buy you the quest for glory collection on gog will you give the first game a shot and not play as a fucking fighter because here's what here's what i love about this here's what i love about this game the guy illusion of gaia it's not my fault that you haven't played

any good games i think that this game has actually come closer to recreating that dnd experience because again like it's all about finding your own solutions based on how your character is you don't have to tie yourself down to a single role like yeah you pick a class but the way that you develop that class i my jam was always when i was growing up is i would pick a thief uh because i loved the you could like find different places to break into steal all their shit and fence it and then i would talk to justin who was playing through the game as a magic user and he'd be like yeah i really want to buy that magic armor but i just can't afford it and it's like well that's because you didn't choose a life of crime um i would play as a thief but i would put some points into magic

and that way i could go out and like, I could buy like the fireball spell or I could buy the like trigger trap spell. And then like I could come up with a cool blend of how I would play that character. Like, and that carries over as your character moves through the different games. So like in the last quest for glory game,

like a lot of the treasure chest and doors are trapped. And if you're playing through as a thief, you have to like play this like really tough mini game to try and disarm it using your thief's toolkit or if you play the game like I did you just cast spells on the door to make it explode and then pick locks on the like so yeah

so that's and that's I think where I had the most respect for it because my like classic growing up my classic Sierra adventure game experience was Space Quest. I played a ton of the Space Quest games, and I really liked them, and I thought they were hilarious and all that stuff.

But in playing this, it's pretty amazing because it's essentially Space Quest, but with a lot more variety in terms of like how you can solve situations. It broke the mold. And you think about like adventure games,, it was, it broke the mold. Yeah. And you think about, like, adventure games, like, that was the market back then. Like, those were the games.

Yeah. And it broke, it, like, shattered that mold. It really feels like a demake of Skyrim in that sense. A little bit, yeah. Like, it, you can basically do anything. Like, in the first game, you can skip so much shit. I think the speed run for the first game you can skip so much shit i think the speed run for the first game is like five minutes because all you have to do is like find the right items and then like finish the final quest but there's like tons and tons and tons of stuff you can do in that game that you can just elect not to do and if you do decide to do it you have a bunch

of different ways that you can go about doing it because of like the the way that the skills allow you to tackle challenges in in different ways do you think there's more going on i mean behind the scenes obviously not graphically and whatnot in these games than in the like modern telltale games um yeah like wait what does that mean so like i, the Telltale games, compared to, like, the way you're describing these games, sound way more rigid than... Well, they are. Absolutely. Just by nature of, like, how expensive it is to create the assets

that would require a truly 100% branching story. So they sort of have to pick their battles. Whereas here, theoretically, again, I don't know what it was like to make games back then, but you were able to make one animation of a guy walking in a window, and it didn't require full

animation, like animating a whole scene and voiceover and all that stuff. So I get why they are more... But yeah, they're more rigid, absolutely. I think, and I'm not sure the comparison really stands, because I don't think the Telltale modern adventure games really fit the mold of... No, they want to be more about a very specific story.

It's more about storytelling. It's not about like, here's an obstacle. Do you have the right item to get through this obstacle? Do you know how to use that item? Like, it's less about that. I do think that nobody's ever made an adventure game like these games because so many adventure games are based on that model

of solution discovery and less about like character development and experimentation and and yeah and i mean it's crazy to me that those systems existed in a game that old like the challenges that must have gone into like you can tackle this challenge however you want, and then you start thinking about, like, hybridizing, so it's not just, like, three set paths of solutions that you have to go on, you can, like, pick and choose as you develop your character, like, whether you want to solve this with magic, whether you want to solve it with brute force, whether you want to, like, get clever about it, whether you want to, like, there's also, in the later games, like, a communication skill, so, like, you're tossing another element into it, can you convince a person to, like, complete the challenge games like a communication skill so like you're tossing another element into it can you convince a person to

like complete the challenge like and I think why we haven't seen this really done in adventure games before is that essentially all the things that we're talking about just evolved into what our modern day RPG I think so too yeah like they just like adventure

games went off and stayed like the more simplistic story centric idea and and all of these elements that we're seeing in quest for glory just got added on to every adventure game and that's why i think it captures that dnd feel is because i think role playing games like early role playing games i think are i mean don't get me wrong i think are amazing games like you know ultima and genre stuff like that. But those didn't have that element of how can you use your skills to overcome a, what is most of the time, what is most of the time a non-combat challenge? Like, how are you going to get in this house to, like, steal this thing from a person?

Are you going to use magic to do it? Are you going to use stealth to do it? A lot of old role-playing games didn't really have that stuff in it. It was just mostly like, how are you going to use your magic or swords in combat? How are you going to keep yourself healed as you explore this dungeon? And that's really not what these games are about. They're adventure games, first and foremost. They just let you feel like the smartest person ever

when you use this character that you've been growing across games to like figure stuff out. It's incredibly, incredibly rewarding. And like, it's crazy to me that that hybrid adventure role-playing game idea didn't really take off. Like, just now you're starting to see people explore it again. Like, the Coles, the creators of the Quest for Glory series,

are working on Hero U, which is, like, a Kickstarter game. And there's a few other people, like, trying to do it as well. But I don't know, man. It's just crazy to me that that died out. And the settings for those games, you guys only played the second one which has like a you know uh arabian knights feel to it but like they bounce between germanic folklore to arabian knights to like african egyptian folklore to um uh like slavic folklore and like Transylvania to ancient Greece. Like there's so much inventive stuff going on.

I just, man, I adore this series. And if you haven't played it, don't do what they did, which is play the most inaccessible game with the worst character type. Yes. Lesson learned.

Lesson learned. Halftime. Halftime. yes lesson learned lesson learned half time half time so listener to the podcast will remember that my building is going under construction and they also might remember that i received an anonymous note indicating the dangers of the paints that the building would be using to paint the hallways this is some house of cards shit did you trace it back to the source? Did you do a fingerprint scan? So the original author of this letter still remains anonymous. It was anonymous, the Internet Hacktivist Group? Yes.

Actually, I think it's Max from Mission Impossible 1. She uses anonymity to her advantage and then buys the knock list. So, yeah. So I got this letter letter dangerous paint being used in the building be careful about it you know yell at your building manager so the building about a week later sent around a letter saying hey we know there were concerns so we're going to like add a ton of fans to the hallways and do the painting in a much seems seems legit shorter span of time it seemed like they acted on it get all those stinky fumes out of there now i don't know that putting fans in the center of a new york city high-rise is going to do a whole lot given that there's no windows

oh terrific you're just moving the stinky fumes around sure um and and that's sort of what they did anyway about a few weeks or i guess a month or so passed and um i work from home a few days a week and i was working from home i would say two weeks ago and things were going great like window was open i was chilling out i knew they were painting the hallway but it was fine because you know i had you know windows wide open uh around 3 30 p.m in the afternoon i um passed out fucking fantastic literally like felt woozy sat down on my bed and passed out for an hour and a half um it seems that the uh efforts of the uh the fans were not indeed quite up to snuff. Or perhaps they were channeling

those dark energies somehow directly into your apartment. That might be. Or was there a semicircle of fans all pointing towards your front door? And they were shaped in like a six-sided star sort of situation. Wait, that's the Jewish star.

What's the devil star? Five? Pentagram, yeah. Pentagram, there you go. They were shaped like that. Okay. And apparently all of the humors, bad and otherwise,

entered my body and killed me for about an hour and a half. So using adventure game logic, because I think that's a pretty good transition if you get a fucking note from an anonymous party yeah warning you of dangers yeah you have to you have to pay attention to that you can't just let that slide but what about like dark souls yeah like what if they were like hey treasure, treasure ahead. And they were going to, like, rob me when I left the building. Oh, that's a good point.

Yeah. Or, like, it's safe to walk out this window. Mm-hmm. There's treasure underneath this window, Russ. Jump on out here. So, yeah, fair to say that I think it was oil-based paint. Not so good for the humors. I had a tough couple days there is your are you okay now

are you having trouble breathing i mean breathing's fine numbers don't mean as much as they used to yeah they just sort of abstract shapes yeah i mean i get what they're trying to do but you remember that they you remember that they have meaning. Yeah. You're just having a hard time piecing that together. Yeah. I feel for you, man. I'll be fine in a few years or so, probably.

Worst comes to worst, I'll pass it on to kids. We don't really need math for our career path that we've chosen. You know, calculators exist everywhere. They're on my phone right now and i can't make sense of the numbers but it's fine i'm sure they have the right answers um any big news stories we can chat about it's been kind of slow as well i know griffin you wanted to talk about the ea subscription thing um only to the extent that i want you to explain to me what it is now i think i think I get the general gist, right?

Five bucks a month, or is it 30 bucks a year? Yeah, I think that's what it comes down to. Which, can we just talk about, that's fucking crazy. Is that just an offer that is for this year? Because that's like... I think it's in perpetuity. Oh, you mean... That's a pretty crazy discount, then.

Like, usually you get maybe 5-10% knocked off the top. That's half as much, right? I don't know what you're telling me. I mean usually you get maybe five ten percent knocked off the top that's half that's half as much right i don't know what you're telling me five bucks five dollars a month is sixty dollars a year yeah they're giving it to you for thirty dollars a year if you could yeah because they really really want you to buy the for a year deal because they know people just forget about it and renew it for the next year so here's what what I'm saying. There are a few companies on this earth in the games industry that have a line of credit with me that is as shitty as the line of credit that EA has with me vis-a-vis customer treatment policies, right?

Like it's EA and then just barely above that most people who have kickstarter campaigns that's basically king.com king.com um but like i don't know man it sounds like pretty good deal like madden 25 like i i love watching football i don't play those games because i'm not going to drop a 60 on a football series that like i've never really dipped into and honestly i think has evolved to a level of mechanical complexity or at least it seems like that from the outside looking yeah i can't that i that i will never be able to like compete in um but i'll pay 30 bucks a year to play like to play that you know yeah i think the idea that like if they were able to lock in people do a 30 hours a year just like and again like the whole model of

this is not that they make a shitload of money to start off with it's that people just don't cancel their subscriptions right it's like a magazine subscription model. And I'm not mad at the early access idea. Sure. As a perk of that, to get early access to Dragon Age Inquisition and then have my save carry over to the final game, that's actually pretty clever. It's essentially a demo, but yeah. I think you're just paying them to do things

that will get you to spend more money. Absolutely. You're giving them 30 a year for the opportunity to buy games directly from them so you are limited in where and how you buy like i i don't i mean and a lot of people were upset i wrote an opinion piece about this yesterday and people were upset because uh it's not out yet and it's a beta and beta is now a marketing term that is used for uh not it's basically used as a shield like don't criticize us uh we're going to make this available to people uh but we don't

really want any feedback on it right now uh any negative press, so it's a beta. And I think that is horseshit. Well, they never want negative press. That's not a surprise. And also the whole beta thing, people have been using beta as a shield forever. Oh, for sure. But what's frustrating about this to me is like,

so it's fine for people who I guess don't play any of the sports games and are curious but i don't know why then they would want it for a year right i don't i don't i don't think it's for everybody it's meant to get you to start to want to buy these games every year maybe it's like oh that game was better now i actually know what madden is. Oh, and hey, I get a 10% discount? I'm also thinking about it like in the PlayStation Plus mentality where, like, I'm not going to buy Madden 25. I will pay, you know, half the price of a, you know,

AAA new release to play that and then just, like, wait for the next madden game to come out on that and i i mean and it's not just gonna be madden games right i think the sports games i think the um uh like rapid degradation of sports games just by the nature of the fact that they come out at the same goddamn time every year um has led them to like come up with this new business model of like how can we get anything out of these games that are ancient right 52 weeks after they come out you know for people to trade in those games they're worth a dollar yeah if you've never worked at gamestop um it's amazing like you get you get weekly emails like that madden game trades in for 30 bucks week one and then like

eight bucks week two and then like 25 cents half a year later it's it's a joke so yeah that makes perfect sense and i mean what is it battlefield four is also in there i mean admittedly a broken game but still like i guess if you haven't played it like that's not a bad i feel like gamers like sense of how much things should cost is all fucked up i'm not saying like the 60 pricing structure is ideal and god damn it like i'm so glad that there's competition and there are platforms like steam that just like cut the floor out from under everything like all of the time i love that i genuinely do but like i don't think 30 bucks to play like four games at a time if they keep rotating that library out as long as they do you know keep up with it and offering discounts

for other things and also give you early access to games that you're going to want to play anyway like that's they're not selling me dragon age you know like i'm gonna buy that shit like i'm gonna play that game anyway um yeah i mean it's very clearly uh based on the playstation plus model and i don't think it's bad like i don't think it's bad i i do wish it was a different company doing it but like i you know what i guarantee they are not going to be the only ones of the third part like i'm sure activision will do this with call of duty like why not like last year well call of duty keeps its value for much longer but but that's the thing I'm sure Activision will do this with Call of Duty. Why not? Call of Duty keeps its value for much longer.

But that's the thing. That's the fucked up thing. As competition for this model starts to pop up, I'll start using none of them. If I am faced with the proposition of paying $5 a month or $30 a year to EA, Ubisoft, Activision, fucking THQ from the grave, I'm not going to do it. Sure.

Like, no way. And it also would be a shame if this, like, degrades the quality of something like PlayStation Plus, where it's like all these publishers want to just get those games on their platform. We're not going to put it on your PlayStation Plus. We're going to put it on our PlayStation Plus. It is funny when you think about it, because you're talking about hardcore brand loyalty, and it's EA that's doing it.

And right now, again, it's like, who has brand loyalty to EA, except for people that play Madden? I mean, they're working their way out of the garbage, I think. They're trying. They're definitely trying to make things better. I think there needs to be a not broken battlefield game for them to like really show the world hey we've turned a corner

and the fact that they delayed uh battlefield hardline is a good sign of that because yeah they could have shoved that out in the holiday season and it would have been broken so i don't know if that's well you don't think that's why they delayed it i think it's not finished they've had teams trying to wrap up dlc that is now months late right i mean i think everyone's so spread out that i i i mean i think they want to make sure that they don't have a battlefield three or four on their hands again right but i also think they just like have to finish the work on the stuff they've already promised people. They're spread pretty thin. If there are press conferences any evidence, they have a

huge team of people that is currently just drawing pictures of Ewoks. That's pretty much all that they're doing right now. They're knocking the heads of ATA teams. It's adorable. Before we wrap that up though, what I find

troubling about these services is the intention is to control where and how you buy the games. It's, you're literally paying them so that you can buy directly from them. would want to and even should make it so you know gamestop is out of the equation and that they're not just losing month losing potential you know customers on trade-ins but at the same time i don't see any reason why we think that these companies would offer competitive deals you know with the type of stuff that we see from other retailers who actually have to compete with each other in terms of how much a game costs when it's new. I mean, I think where the wheels are going to fall off this thing

is when they stop using it as a way to monetize and offer a very low barrier of entry to back catalog titles. And when they start thinking about it, like how can we make this our only sales stream right like if it evolves into that it is not an interesting proposition to me at all if they are offering games that i otherwise would never buy at like a pretty crazy low amount like that's interesting to me but if they start like releasing new in order to even be able to buy this game,

you have to be a premium. Like, no. Do you know what I'd love to see from a service like this, though? Is actual premium things. Like, if I could buy my game directly from EA, I would pay full price

if I knew it worked on everything I owned. So it's like, I'm buying it from EA, so they know that I've paid for it. Now I can play it on playstation and xbox yeah but that's even better i can have it connected to their cloud and i can stream it like that factoring licensing fees and stuff like that sure i don't that's their problem for me like yeah i would like i'm just saying why they don't do it. Figuring out actually offering a premium service that is more than a motivator to get people to buy more games. Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of games. I mean, I'm kind of on the fence about it only because I do like owning games. I've talked about my fetishism in that respect. As much as I love PlayStation Plus, the knowledge that one day when the heat death of the universe comes

and those servers are no longer online, then I don't have that stuff anymore. Yeah, I don't care. It doesn't bother me. I get rid of consoles all the time. I'm not. But I get where you're coming from. There's two types of

people in the world so but it's hard for me to like justify that when we just spent a month playing old ass games that if i got it through some sort of subscription-based service i just wouldn't exist anymore like if if there was if you had to be a s Online premium member in 1993 or whatever, those games just would die. Those games would not exist anymore. And that's horrifying to me. Somehow, in some format, some delivery mechanism would exist for older games to be re-downloaded.

But what about Xbox Live Arcade? What about them? How are we ever going to play those games again? When they shut Xbox Live Arcade down, what's... What do we do? I don't know. Someone will throw them a bump. Yeah, sure. I don't know if someone will handle it. Okay. Sounds like... Hey, you want to hop into

old games that you still can play? Sure. You want to do yours, Chris Blank? Yeah, I'll do mine. So, my game is River City Ransom, which, for those who haven't played, it was on the original Nintendo, and it was a basically side-scrolling beat-em-up

with a lot of role-playing elements and just more to do, I would say, than what you'd think of really any beat-em-up. I mean, I think maybe the closest thing is... Ah, shit. What? Oh, Dragon's Crown. Yeah, yeah. I think that is maybe a close modern comparison in some ways.

But yes, you are a bro, a kind of double dragon-ish bro, going through a very normal-looking city, beating up people with normal names like Pod and Ryan, and, you know, going to shops and buying new equipment, or basically kind of moves,

and drinking soda and eating food. It's pretty much America. It's pretty... Well, it's never said it's never said in japan soda this food yeah it what i what i loved about this game when i was a kid is i always wanted my games to be set in the real world and i think that's why i have such uh an affinity for earthbound uh like you know you're a little kid you want to be like an adult i guess this is what my idea of being an adult was i was gonna like go to high

school beat the shit out of high schoolers shit out of other high schoolers you can't do that gash open their face yeah um but there's all these small details that i really love in it too um i don't like games where i feel like they're canned like it's just doing the same thing over and over again which is a beef i have with some beat-em-up games well here like things bounce around if you throw uh like a can against a wall it'll bounce back and hit you in the face and deal damage uh and there's weird things like the environment looks kind of plain and static and 2d uh like what you think of when you think of you know kind of beat-em-ups except for there will be like large holes that you can fall into or the uh gate on at the back of the screen you can actually jump up onto that gate and then evade people by kind of giving

yourself vertical go to new screens by just like walking up into like an alleyway where ordinarily like in a game like final fight that's just drawn on to the background well that actually takes you to a new place right um and then also the upgrade system is really interesting and really complex and it was funny i was looking at different youtube videos of this of like the later game um and reading people's comments. And it's funny how people have these, like, basically builds that they still remember from this game of how to just dominate. You go eat the spicy roll three times,

and then you buy the, yeah. Texas boots and dragon twins, and then just do jump kicks, and you'll just tear through it. Like, those sorts of things that I feel like weren't replicated for a long time uh and yeah i i think it's kind of an important game too because in maybe this is way off base but i feel like it inspired grand theft auto in a lot of ways and

when i play especially like grand theft auto san Auto San Andreas, I always think about this game because it felt to me like the first open world modern set game that I played. So maybe, I mean, maybe that's not, they're not perfect comparisons, but my brain always ties the two together. I'm curious what you guys thought, because I know it's really difficult to go back and play it now it's really pretty opaque in terms of like where you're supposed to go that was my biggest problem I've played it before not like a ton because I never got especially far

because there's an order in which you have to beat the different gang leaders right to eventually get to the high school and it's like you don't know really you'll get like one beginning person at the very beginning of the game is like you need to go beat up todd he's over in the construction yard like cool i don't know who that is where the fuck that is who you are who i am yeah it's vague and they also like I got that there was a really complex upgrade system and like stuff you can buy and stuff like that.

I have no idea what spirit means. Right. You eat sushi and it's like your vitality increases by five. It's like, great. I don't know what that fucking means. I don't know what I use my vitality for. Like, I'm glad that i'm getting better but like i found myself like just going out into a screen beating up all the people there getting their lunch money going back probably doing that again

like five or six times and i was playing it like way rpg ish where i was like collecting money hoping i didn't die where you you know you lose a ton of the money that you found and then like i go back into town and i'm like oh i can finally afford that bowl of pasta and then i eat it and it's like your vitality and spirit increased i was like great like what am i do like yeah that's the other thing you do have kind of like the dnd character sheet again of upgrading all these things and doesn't make it clear whatsoever what any of them mean right sometimes my life bar would increase and i'd be like oh great i can like see that yeah yeah i was also explained to fresh that the trick often is to run away uh which doesn't seem like the obvious thing to do in a beat-em-up uh especially like as you're upgrading you don't

think like oh you know i should do i should just bolt uh as far as i can get and see what is out there uh and i that's what i remember loving about the game when i was a kid is i felt like i was breaking it when really i was probably playing it how it was meant to be played it was like oh i wonder how far i can get uh by just running past the game and it's funny because that's something that has actually existed and like stuck around in modern games where it's like i'll play Fallout or I'll play Skyrim or whatever. And like just like go into really dangerous places and see how far I can get to like get good loot. I was just literally just playing Rogue Legacy last night on Vita and I was like level 10, which is very low, and going to the hardest area and just dodging guys seeing how fast you get the high-end chests to like get really good gear early on in the game and that's kind of a cool idea but again

the problem is like without a map without any indication of what's there especially in river city ransom the game does not encourage you to do that you just sort of like i guess would eventually fall into doing that, but I never really got to that point where I was like, oh, that's I should just run. It's not just the lack of the map, it's like a lot of the areas kind of look similar. Like, this is a street. This is a street with

trees on it. Yeah. This is a, like, it was really, I could have probably found my way around easier if there were better, like, visual indicators. You get you get like a text thing that pops up and is like now you're in the internationals turf and it's like okay but like i don't like it's harder for me to remember the internationals turf is like one screen east of the oak city mall you know what i mean like it yeah it's tough distinct it's it's really really

it kind of put a hamper on everything else because I feel like in a game like this, all of the systems of, like, combat and progression and navigation are so, like, thoroughly entwined. And I don't know, when one of those systems isn't, like, firing on all cylinders, like, it's really tough for me to to follow along i think the issue is i mean and we're going back to the act razor problem here is it's a game that i think is so far ahead of its time in terms of stuffing multiple genres at that time into one thing

and it's impressive for how much it gets right. But when you go back and play these games, the first thing you notice is what it gets wrong because they seem so obvious to us now. And I wonder how well it would do. There might even be a remake of it coming out. I mean, that's what Scott Pilgrim... Well, there was actually... Yeah, Scott Pilgrim's kind of that.

I think like a decade ago, there was a GBA remake of it called River City Ransom EX. EX, yeah. Which might have added some of this stuff, I don't know. But what I'll say about Scott Pilgrim, and I adored that game, is that the different areas were bound to an overworld map, which I think would have made a huge...

If you knew you were moving from the International's turf to the, like, the mall to the high school, like, and you knew, like, where that stuff was on an overworld map and they were sort of their own little instances, like, I don't know. I know I'm giving, like, pointers to a game that came out in, what, like, 1990, but I don't know. I enjoyed it. I liked the feeling of getting more powerful i think eventually the more you play like the longer like the the more you figure out like what it means when your spirit increases um but i i i haven't been able to finish it just because i don't know where to go next yeah should we talk about justin's game We should. Does it have RPG mechanics? Yeah, sort of.

It doesn't. It sort of does. Let's talk about Justin's game, which is, of course, a full motion video game. I would say one of the better full motion video games, although that's not an especially high bar to clear. It's Gabriel Knight 2, The Beast Within. Or should I say, The Beast a gabriel knight mystery now before we start talking about the game i really want to talk about the box because it is a good box i had not played the game until recently but uh the box it left an impression on my child yeah i so you had mentioned when you mentioned the box like it didn't occur to me to even look this up when i

went to play it um and now i'm looking at a picture of the box, and it is maybe one of the most memorable pieces of box art I remember growing up. What it looks like is almost like a vampire, which is not what's in the game, but as if a vampire's face has been pressed to white satin sheets or been put in marble, and it's kind of biting out towards you from the box and then underneath it it says the beast within and in very very tiny font up top a gabriel knight mystery a gabriel knight i remember when i saw this it's it was one of the first games i think that was rated mature uh so it has this really like i don't know it has like the bed sheet look plus this like terrifying monster that kind of reminds me of the frighteners poster plus the mature rating

plus it runs on five no no no six windows 95 discs so i thought this game is the most adult thing that has ever been made and i was so afraid afraid that I would be seen with it at the game store that I always wondered what was on the back of the box. Like, on the back of the box, it must just be, like, a vampire biting open, like, a naked human. It's just a dick. Like, everybody's naked. It's just a huge vampire dick.

And there's a giant wiener. Like, I could not imagine or comprehend what was on the back of the box let alone what the game was like um i get it confused with the box for phantasmagoria that's what i was thinking too right because it's very much the predecessor to that or was it the successor which came out first oh i have to figure this out hold on um yeah i the box art definitely made an impact um but i never played it i don't know and the twist is it is so much cooler than the game the game's very fun but the box art is for like a horror movie right about vampires or something and that is not what the game is at all the box art also looks like it's

like it has really high production value and boy are you in for a treat when you hop into another gabriel knight mystery right uh phantasmagoria actually came out the same year um i think they were like using the same system right because it's full motion video with the the adventure game interface over it um phantasmagoria was seven discs beating beating the record there i guess by a little bit um i never got past disc two because it was so fucking terrifying that game way too scary for me um but let's talk about beasts within it here's here's what shocked me it is a full motion video game where all of the actors in the game are not bad community theater actors.

Not all of them. They're above community theater. No. They are below theater that I would pay for. Here's where I would put it. I'd say on the level of community theater and I would say

mid-range professional porn actors i'm gonna say sci-fi movie actors like sci-fi sci-fi porn no that's good it is a it is a sci-fi from the same base right yeah um it's and what's more amazing the absolute star of the game sir gabriel knight who's investigating this mystery in germany about werewolves is no better or worse than any other actor in this game no yeah it's it's not like they got like it's not like they got like tim curry to like but tim curry was in the first one i believe i i don't know like he did the voice of the first Gabriel Knight. Yeah. Yeah. No, Tim Curry was the first Gabriel Knight.

Oh, my gosh. Justin told me that. That's unbelievable. So they got Tim Curry, and then they're like, hey, maybe we shouldn't spend money anymore. So they got this guy that did porn. Let's get Jim Jury. He has mid-'90s porn hair.

It's like that silken, way-too-much-product kind of hair. How much porn were you watching in the mid-'90s porn hair it's like that silken like way too much product kind of hair how much porn were you watching in the mid-90s you know grainy the normal amount um yeah so the acting is he does not look like a hero of the game that this box is selling me he He looks like, he looks like, we, in the script, it was like, in a burly, you know, brooding, noir type. And they were like,

well, we don't have that, but my redhead friend here, he might be available. My redhead friend who is speaking with a southern accent, sometimes. Oh yeah. Occasionally,

from time to time. Well, dang, dang, y'all. We gotta solve this mystery. Like, what? Pick one. Do one dang, y'all. We got to solve this mystery. Like, what? Pick one.

Do one. I was going to ask about this. Is that intentional? Because there are two lines I had. Who should I call? Already made a one call to Gracie. Like, I don't know. Where is he from?

Where is he supposed to be from? He's from the south. Yeah. I think New Orleans, I think. Well, the first game is set in New Orleans. Right. But that's where his bookstore is. where is he from where is he supposed to be from he's from the south yeah i think louis new orleans i think the first game is set in new orleans right but that's where his bookstore anyway let's talk about the game we made fun of it enough like it is i mean if you've played phantasmagoria i don't know why you would have played phantasmagoria and not played this game um but imagine like a full motion video game where instead of just like pressing a direction to make the next scene of the actor moving into that direction play, which was sort of the Sega CD style.

There is like bespoke scenes for like every action that you take in the game. Like if you open a backpack, like it actually shows this the full motion video scene of you going in and opening it up to see what's inside of it i mean it's a point and click adventure with people basically like green screened onto i think like static photos of also the real world is that how they made it uh some some of its real sets i mean it is i mean i think it's real sets but i think like because the person has to be able to move around and stay in static positions right and the lighting can't change it is it is i think it is truly impressive how much they had to to film yeah i get this done nobody nobody would make no i mean nobody would make a full motion video game now but nobody would like do it to this extent you know like that is like a feat of engineering They clearly had to think so much

About like how are we just gonna Make this work I didn't understand The extent of it so my full motion Video game experience Begins and ends with Seventh Guest I played that when I was very young I remember the real actors

It scared the hell out of me You never played Night Trap or Sewer Shark? No. Didn't play any of those. You didn't play Sewer Shark? No. We gotta change that. Okay, well.

We'll do this next month. We'll do Sewer Shark, Illusion of Gaia, the right Quest for Glory game. So I didn't really understand that there are whole entire games where every single scene is a full motion video scene that's being acted out.

Yeah. And that is this game. And it's kind of, it is like, I'm sorry, Griffin, it was way more playable than your game just because it's like kind of,

I don't know. I mean, it's a lot more accessible. Yeah, a lot more accessible. When you started playing Gabriel Knight 2, you didn't have to fucking find a money changer without a map to figure out how to like get money to buy the map that you need. It's also really watchable. Like as silly as the acting is, like I was,

I mean, the beginning of this is not a watchable thing. The game begins with a child being murdered. Right. And then being like, you are told essentially torn in half. Yeah, it's brutal. And then parts of the body are taken away. It earns that MA right off the bat.

Yeah. I don't know if there's anything MA about it after that because otherwise it looks really generic. And you don't see that, but... There's a hyper-uncomfortable sex scene. It's... I agree. I think that...

I think it's because, I mean, it follows a traditional adventure game structure. Like, it's exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about Christ for Glory. Like, the game is separated into six chapters. In order to beat a chapter, there's, like, a clue that you have to find or a mystery that you have to solve. And the way that you solve it is by using the right item in the right

situation and you have to like acquire that item and figure out what you have to do there's some really great um like outside the box thinking that you have to do to solve those puzzles like um in the very first chapter you have to get into this uh wolf pen in a zoo to examine these wolves, but the caretaker won't let you in. So you have to use your tape recorder to record the like owner of the zoo talking and then splice his like conversation together to create a tape of him saying like, hey, it's me, the caretaker, you can let this guy in and then sneak back into his office and then call the caretaker on the radio and play the tape back to him. It's pretty convoluted,

but once you start moving in the right direction, and the game has a pretty great hint system to help you figure out stuff when you get too stuck. I don't know, that's like a really good puzzle. It's like a really good solution. There is a weird moment, though, because it's an FMV game and you do see these scenes playing out.

There's a moment even earlier on than that where you find, like, a paw print in the ground. And then you're in the garage and you get a bucket. And you, like, I, like, clicked on something on the shelf. And suddenly he was mixing cement. And I'm like, why the hell is he mixing cement? So that's the thing. I did that before I found the paw print. And he was like, oh, it's instant dry cement. And I'm like, why the hell is he mixing cement? So that's the thing. I did that before I found the paw print. And he was like, oh, it's instant dry cement.

Interesting. That might come in handy later. And then you walk fucking 10 feet to the right. And it's like a paw print in the ground. And he doesn't say anything. Right. He's like, oh, a paw print. That's crazy.

And then if you walk back to the garage and click on the cement again, then you make the cement. And then you're just carrying it. And you have to know to go to the paw print and dump it in there like it's it's a it's a that's like an adventure game like if then sequence that i kind of despise yeah because it's like if you know that if you've played the game before you know the paw prints there you can't just go to the cement and pick it up because he will refuse to do that until he looks at the paw print even though when he looks at the paw print, he doesn't go, God damn, it would be tight if I had some instant drying cement right now.

Like, it's, it is, that's not great. That's not a great thing. Yeah, I struggled with that. And then after, like, playing through some of the game, I went and watched a Let's Play because I had so much fun doing that with your game, Griffin. And what was funny watching that was the guy who was doing it besides talking about how he was having a beef with his brother-in-law at a christmas party which i am now getting why people love let's play videos he he he had played through

tons of point and click games uh or specifically adventures but hadn't played through this one so he like walked up immediately to the paw print. That was the first thing he saw, and he's like, ah, you know what I'm going to need? I'm going to need something to cast a paw print because I'm sure I'm going to have to show this to someone later. And then he, like, walked into the next room, and he's like, submit, perfect for casting a paw print.

And he even admits, he's like, all of these games have this language where you're just learning what the developer wants. And once you learn that language, you just coast through them. I will say there are, when it breaks off that language, I think we know what that is.

I've certainly played enough adventure games to know that language. When Gabriel Knight breaks off of that structure, it's the fucking worst thing ever. I got hung up at the end of a chapter that I had solved, and it was a really, really hard chapter. It was one of the ones where you're playing as Grace, who runs the bookstore with Gabriel Knight.

And you're just investigating stuff across like five or six different locations you have to do them in a certain order and you have to like get the clues and then go to a different location and talk to somebody about that clue and then get a clue from that it's like a crazy web and i finished it and the chapter didn't end and i was like what do i need to do and i looked around i was trying really hard not to use a walkthrough. So I like walked around for a long time looking around. And then finally, after I'd spent enough time, the hint system was like, you need to go to this one location because the thing you need to do is there. And I was like, well, that's nice and immersive.

And I went to that location, looked around for another hour. I couldn't find it. And I had to look at a walkthrough. I had to go to the post office in that location and click on the fax machine where a fax was waiting for me with no fucking indication that you get faxes in this game. And hey, make sure you check out that fax machine

from time to time because chapter ending clues are squirreled away there. Faxes were pretty common. Maybe, but it's a thing in the environment I didn't even know I could use, should use, need to use,

have to use. It's not like I got a call at my hotel like, there's a fax waiting for you. Like, how am I supposed to know to go to this post office and then click on this one,

like, box, this one hit box that's gonna like move the game forward. Like, that's terrible. I think there's some really cool elements. I think it's the best FMV game forward like that's terrible i think there's some really cool elements

it's i think it's the best fmv game i've ever played and it was like you said playing like it's watchable like i'm not just reading dialogue and clicking through it as fast as i can like i'm watching acting taking place and that's a weird that's like a surreal experience to have in a video game and a lot of times the acting is so bad that it breaks like the surrealness of it like you just can't get over how bad the actors are they're not great but they're not so bad that they're distracting i don't think so like that's really engaging and really cool but there are some like there are some clunkers up in this game i do think it's funny that like you keep you keep saying watching and i think that's become kind of like a bad word amongst really hardcore game people.

It's like, you play a game, you watch movies. I think you watch those Walking Dead games more than you play them, and I adore those. Well, and I found this on the original Gabriel Knight Games box. The poll quote that they use is from Computer Gaming World, and it's the first time we have actually experienced fear from watching a computer game they gave uh this game their game of the year in 1996 wow so that really is like this would be the equivalent of like this year someone giving game of the year to what was that weird japanese game that was like twin peaks oh uh uh oh my god deadly deadly deadly premonition like Twin Peaks? Oh, uh... Oh, my God. Deadly Premonition.

It'd be like giving Deadly Premonition Game of the Year. Well, if Deadly Premonition was, in fact, the best game that came out that year. I mean, what else?

How much competition? Wait, that was 1996? This game came out in 1996. The game came out in 95. 95. Oh, my gosh. That was, like, one of the greatest years.

It was, like, one of the best years. But if you're a PC gaming... I don't know, actually. No, every game came you're a PC gaming, I don't know actually. No, every game came out on PC. Yeah, I guess that's true. Or a lot of them did. Yeah, it is kind of weird when you think back.

I mean, even Dark Forces came out that year on PC. This was like when we played through Bioshock 1, we felt the same way that they felt about Gabriel Knight, Beast Within. Yeah. It's very peculiar. But like I said, it's an impressive game. It is an

accomplishment, right? It is like a feather in Sierra Online's cap. It was proof that they could do things that no other developer could do. I think that plays huge in the 90s. I get why Justin after this game I understand why he's so fascinated

with the whole idea of it because i can like while i'm playing it i can just like picture like the production of like the camera crews and like it just simple like the food being set out for these actors right just weird it makes you it makes me like kind of bummed like i feel like that's been a running thread for this episode it's like why don't they make a game why don't they make more role-playing adventure hybrids like quest for glory why don't they make more role-playing beat-em-ups like like river city ransom why don't they make more strategy action games like act razor like if they made a full motion video game and did it like for serious not like a loco cycle like if they actually did

it and made that the crux of the game they could fucking knock it out we could crush it yeah no it's not no because you can't I mean there's so much writing against that from like especially in areas that video game people are not well versed like

casting and like acting in areas that video game people are not well versed like casting and like acting and writing that and like and then you throw in stuff like cinematography and lighting and all that like the fact that Telltale was able to do it as well as they are using

game graphics like I'm satisfied you don't need to start throwing real actors in there not to say that they're not real actors, but, you know, like, filming actors. But they could. They could. Or we could be happy with, like, the fact that there's powerful, like, Last of Us is, in a lot of ways,

like, feels like a full motion video in the sense that, like, they feel like real actors that are in these cutscenes. Yeah. So, good riddance, Gabriel Knight. Stay bearish. God. are in these cut scenes yeah so good riddance gabriel knight stay buried god uh it makes me more excited for zoe quinn's game that she's doing starring greg sestero the full motion video game starring through rooms greg sestero yeah it'll be interesting i need that in my life right now uh so we already did the resties but russ did we get any tweets and toots yeah we got

a lot of the rest a lot of the games that we mentioned the resties were covered uh sebastian lavalo uh mentioned the destiny beta which we talked about curse of curse of next ramus was mentioned by seth rider can i can i jump back in real quick because i don't think we taught what what platform y'all gonna play destiny on ps4 oh ps4 okay me too i just want to make sure i want to play with y'all dang y'all and and that is a major, major departure. No, that's huge. I know. Like, I never in a million years would play a multiplayer-centric game on a PlayStation platform.

Shit feels right, though. It really does. Parties and all that stuff feels great. Let's see. I do need a headset. I'm still so pissed off that my expensive PlayStation 3- branded bluetooth headset that gold headset like doesn't fucking work with the playstation 4 yet i just use any head i literally use my like normal walking around headphones for the playstation 4 i mean i have the apple 5 headphones they do not work

doesn't really just doesn't work just does not work those work justin got it to work but there's this high pitch feedback like scream just let me use the Bluetooth headset that I bought, like, two months before the PlayStation 4 came out on it. So, a Rusty that we did not mention, actually, and a good one, is Super Smash Flash. I don't know if that is. By Saren. This was an indie-developed, basically, it's Super Smash Brothers. I don't know if it's made in Flash literally but it's all done with 2D graphics and

they've just like added a ton of characters that you would never like Nintendo would never get the rights to and it's sort of just like a very trying to be authentic recreation of what makes Smash Brothers amazing but like without the limitations of like having to get the rights to

things it's probably not super legal but it's free but without the limitations of having to get the rights to things. It's probably not super legal, but it's free, and you can download it if you want. It's Super Smash Flash is what it's called. I like that. Valiant Hearts, which we talked about last week. That wasn't in July, was it? I don't think so.

And a lot of mentions for Rogue Legacy, which just came out yesterday. Yeah, like fucking obviously. And it's spectacular. I also wanted to bring up Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake. I don't think we brought it up. It's a Cartoon Network games game. It's a super charming puzzle game.

Didn't it come out ages ago? No. You're thinking of Monsters Ate My Condo. Oh, yeah. Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake is like a puzzle kind of platformer. Are they made by the same people? I don't know. It doesn made by the same people? I don't know. It doesn't have the same aesthetic at all,

but it does have a soundtrack by Disasterpiece. I brought it up during the overview because I was like, you've got to hear this soundtrack. It's like a mix between Wind Waker and Secret of Mana. It's fucking incredible. And I had no idea. Of course, it was Disasterpiece. Sorry, guys.

The best name in the game right now. The best soundtrack maker around um so yeah i would check that out it's on steam it's like 15 bucks on steam but it's five bucks on ios and it's a pretty good platform for it cool i've been enjoying that a lot anything else any other uh no i think that's about it. That Rogue Legacy. Yeah, we mentioned it. Well done, Stain, tapped in. What do we got around the bend? Anything for August? Well, we're going to talk about Wolf Among Us in August.

We are? I think we should. Okay, we can do that. Oh, Shadowgate is coming out in August. The remake of Shadowgate. Yeah. Wait, I always get confused. This is not Shadowrun.

No, this is Shadow. Shadowgate's like the adventure game. It's the adventure game. Okay. They've done like a bunch of remakes in the past. No, they haven't. You're drunk. There was one on Game Boy Advance, I think.

No, there was one on Game Boy Color that was not a remake. It was a port. Oh, okay. Listen. Don't be so grumpy, Griffinumpy i'm just saying don't say wrong shit about shadow game um no i'm excited for that they they it it seems like a pretty true recreation of that do you think they're gonna bring like the teleporting elves back the what the oh my god stop it no um uh what else is happening? Yeah, we'll talk more about Hearthstone

because almost all the chapters will be out by then. Yeah. Oh, Metrico, Crypt of the Necrodancer. I played that for the first time. Counter Spy, HoHokum, Infinite First Light. There's a lot. Holy shit. Madden.

Oh, Metro Redux. There's a lot. It's a good one. Wasteland 2 is going to be right at the tail i don't know if we'll get it in on time but i played uh i played crypt of the nectar dancer at a indycade annex event here in austin and oh my god with a ddr pad yeah yeah it was i i went with my my wife and a friend of mine and his fiancee um and like we don't play games like that together like dance dance revolution roguelike like that's not our our sort of we sort of as a group our gaming sort of begins and ends

at like mario kart 8 and like maybe some tower fall sometimes so like it was crazy how quickly we all like hopped on ddr pads and played a roguelike together. That's awesome. It's pretty great. Yeah, there's some stuff. We'll have stuff. Don't worry about it. So yeah, tune in next month. We'll have Justin back. I hope. And thanks for sticking with us through a pretty unconventional month,

I would say, of releases. Yeah. I think there's a new Dark Souls DLC that's out next month too right enough for ready uh so yeah uh you can go to polygon.com for the rest of the stuff that we make um you can tweet at us i guess yeah well there's not like a bessie's twitter account though no but like we're individual people we are treated at yeah i know you think of us as like a blob hive mind monster fusion monster but we're individuals uh also uh review and what is it rate and review

on itunes that helps us a bunch it gets our thing up higher and stuff so do that um diablo 3 ultimate evil editions on out next month too oh my god wow here i thought august was slow but man crazy there's some stuff we're ramping up stuff um so yeah i think thank you guys very much for listening and for um i there's like i keep getting these weird reminders that like people actually listen to and like this show. All of the people who tweeted at us to tell us about the story of the kid who was racing against his dad's ghost. And they're like, you predicted that in the first episode of Besties.

And I was like, I just thought that 30 people listened to the first episode of Besties. So I don't know. Thank you all for listening and for being so kind to us. Yeah, it's appreciated. So yeah, we'll be back next month.

Until then, this has been the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games that's a pretty good justin impression i thought that's good yeah besties