The Besties - Black Myth Wukong puts the book in video game book club

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Black Myth Wukong is a sequel to the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. It’s also a AAA action game with a spectacular opening that channel’s the scale of Asura’s Wrath. You remember Asura’s Wrath, right? In this episode, the crew discusses the game, the book, and many adaptations. 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!

Here's the thing, man. I'm glad that the Gallagher brothers worked it out. Yes. But I didn't know that that was an option if you do the thing with your brother that you're allowed to just like- Break up for a little while. Stop?

Yeah. Like, I didn't know that was, I didn't think that was okay, cause you're like, I didn't know that was- When they were split up, how did they decide who got the hammer? That's a great question. So, Liam needs to smash fruit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Noel likes to smash fruit with the big hammer. But doesn't need it, like, medically speaking. He doesn't need it, but Liam's whole process is based around squishing a big watermelon to write Wonderwall 2 when he got back. And it's sort of a Mjolnir situation.

Sometimes one brother ain't worthy of picking up the hammer. Sure, sure. Yeah. There are two sets of Gallagher brothers, and that's amazing. I've only now just realized it, because your great Gallagher joke is also great because there was a Gallagher 2 that was his brother, and he, because your great Gallagher joke is also great because there was a Gallagher too,

that was his brother, and he would do shows that Gallagher didn't have time to do. You're opening your mouth like you didn't know this. Did you know this? Oh, like Tom Hanks' brother. Yeah. Jim Hanks, yes. There's actually a third member of Oasis,

and not a lot of people know this. And there's a third brother, sort of bonus Jonas situation. And his name is Balaber, Balaber Gallagher is his name, and he'll step in if Liam's not feeling it. It's usually Liam's not feeling it, or Liam and Noel have had a huge fucking,

just rowdy brawl backstage. Which is very rare, they don't generally go at it, but occasionally. You know, incredibly even tempered British gentlemen these Oasis brothers are. Yeah. I can't believe. I can't remember, have y'all talked on the show

about the other three brothers that you have that fill in when you're busy? The ones that you just keep in the attic and feed the fish heads? Oh, you mean Borvis, Jorsten, and Gourfin? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, Borvis, Jorsten, and Gourfin are, they're wild, Borvus, Jorsten and Gorfin are, they're wild.

They are three heads on one body. Yeah. And it's very economical that way. We only have to pay them one wage. And that's like a Jane Eyre situation where they're in the walls, right? They, we keep them in the walls and there's a little hole that we put their wine into.

They only drink wine. Right, but the problem is they only have one tummy, so they don't need that much, but they all wanna be the one to drink it each head. Right, I would say the bigger problem is when one of them steps in for the live show, all of a sudden there's five people on stage, and the desk has to be pretty high for them

to hide the fact that they're a sort of Hydra situation. Is there five people or are there eight people? That's a really great question, Chris. Thank you. But I don't know the answer. I don't know how you arrived to that number. Cause after all, you're my wonderwall. Two. Two, the sequel. That's in Balbirg. After all, you're my wonderwall.

Two. Two, the sequel. That's in Balibur. That's right. That's the other thing that I'll tell you is they're doing sequels to all the Oasis songs. Yeah. Their next album is a sequel, and their sequel is a sequel. Yeah, so they'll hit like,

it's a champagne supernova in the sky, and then Balibur will hop in and be like, again. Yeah. Yesterday would have been a great day in the sky and then Balibur will hop in and be like again Yesterday would have been a great day to hit the worst guy My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best Monkey King of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I flew in on a cloud and boy are my arms tired. My name is Ross Froschek and I'm the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we're talking about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It is a video game club and just by listening, just by tuning in on your radio dial, you are now a member of the team. This week we are going to be talking about Black Myth Wukong. Chris Plant, what's that? Black Myth Wukong is Chris Plante, what's that? Black Myth Wukong is a action, pseudo-souls-like based on Journey to the West.

Man, people get so angry when you say that about this. People get so angry when you say that about this. I know. Yeah, it's tough. And it's been in development for, I think, like six years by a team that broke off of Tencent and made something that looks real nice and really fancy.

And I can't wait to talk about it right after the break. Let's go. I want to start out by saying I didn't know nothing about this one. I think maybe if I was still at like as plugged into the industry as maybe Chris and Russ are it would have been on my radar. I didn't know nothing about this one. And so coming at it from a clean slate has been, was quite a treat, I will say.

The only reason I was aware of it was because it was the most wishlisted game in like Steam history. Yeah. It was like astonishingly high wish lists. It had, for what it's worth, three million concurrent players across all platforms at one point.

Fucking wild, man. Holy shit. People were freaking out about Baldur's Gate hitting like 800,000 concurrence. This was three million. Three million, that's, and that's not a game that you're playing multiplayer. Like it's just a bunch of people playing it.

It's wild. It's not like my buddies are all monkeying around and I gotta get in there. Yeah, they don't got pay to win hooks to like get you to invest that deeply. So this game is very loosely based on Journey to the West, which is a sort of like foundational Chinese story. And we're gonna talk about that after the break a little bit more is a sort of like foundational Chinese story.

And we're gonna talk about that after the break a little bit more and talk about some other adaptations and stuff, just because it's really interesting. We don't have an analog. I think we're already after the break. No, after the next break. Oh, God. Yeah, sorry. I was saying that,

because like that's a whole other kettle of fish, but this story is an extremely old and insanely popular story. We'll talk about that after the break. So focusing on the game though. I guess 500 years, I think it's written in the 16th century. I think that this is a very old book. Pretty old.

Definitely older than- Video games. Either the third or fourth Catching Fire. Yeah. Way older than Catching Fire. Okay, but great. No, no, don't cut that one. No, okay. But great. No, no, no, don't cut that one. No, that joke stays in.

You can click all you want. Hey, uh, let's make sure we keep that one. Hey, right till that one's in. That's a good one. Anyway, uh, the arrow one. So, uh, I want to talk about the souls-like thing, just to start off with, just to give people a frame of reference of what this game actually is. Yeah.

Cause that souls- like thing is getting less and less useful. Honestly, I feel like it's deeply useful. I think it is useful for games that hew very closely to the original Souls formula, which this does not. This does not. Yeah, right. It might appear at a glance that it does,

but it really doesn't. This game, the structure of the game is third person action adventure game, and it has a focus on boss fights. I think those two are really the core familiarities, connections with the Dark Souls franchise. It is much more New God of War if Kratos was a very fast monkey instead of a very slow big man. Yeah.

I... I agree with that. The only reason I hesitate on that comparison is because, and this is more a taste thing than anything else, I don't think the combat feels nearly as good or satisfying as the God of War. Well, yeah, but I think structurally what Gryphonaut is getting at is spot on, in that it's quite linear. It is a lot.

Yeah, but the new God of War is not linear. Let me finish. Let me finish. Let me finish. It is a lot. Yeah, but the new God of War is not linear. Let me finish. Let me finish. It's quite linear and I understand the new God of War is not like an open world game. It's linear. You have to go like do the story beats and then get your... You can't just go to different places in the map and get different story beats out in different order. No, it's very much spoken hub kind of...

Yeah, spoken hub, which this is not. This is not. This is chapter-based linear progression. What I, what I, what I. It's like fucking Mega Man in a lot of ways. It's very much like Mega Man. So let me, let me plow through. So you have this like relatively linear progression where you're going through and fighting bosses, stuff like that.

Sometimes it's like an NPC you talk to and they might have a side quest for you, but you are on these, you're in these environments that are so linear that there are like invisible walls preventing you from like really exploring the area. Yes. It is designed to funnel you into these boss fights, which is where they spent clearly the bulk of their time.

These boss fights are much very detailed, have a lot of like different, you know, attack patterns and styles and the types of things you're fighting from like dragons to like, you know, wizard men into giant frogs and things like that. So if you're looking for like some light action adventure stuff, but mostly like a boss fight game, that's what- That's this one.

And those boss fights slap ass, man. Yeah, they're really good. They are good as fuck. I think that the strongest suit of this game is the presentation. I think it'll look spectacular. I think when the music kicks in in the boss fights, using sort of like, I don't know, traditional Chinese instruments.

Oh, the music is so, yeah. It fucking rips. I don't even know enough about Chinese instrumentation to talk about, but it's like, it really gives it a vibe. It's very cool. It does not sound like anything else I've ever heard in a game. And it genuinely, every time a boss fight pops off,

and there's lots of them, lots and lots and lots and lots of them. I think they are- It's almost like, boss fight is almost not, like sometimes it almost feels more like a, I don't have a good, like a, what was it? A Sura's Wrath, or like a boss rush mode kind of thing. Like it's almost feels more like a, I don't have a good, like a, what was it? A Sura's Wrath or like a boss rush mode kind of thing. Like it's almost like boss after,

like sometimes there's like three, four bosses in a row with very little variation. I think the distinction is worth making because for my money, I think the combat's great. It's very, very, it's very fast, again, to compare it to other stuff, like compared to a God of War, much faster. When you hit somebody with your magic shrinking,

expanding staff, you hit them 50 times. Like, you really get in there and just start fucking drilling them over and over and over again. So it's not like you're hitting them with this huge fucking chunky axe. Like, it's very fast. It's very much like dodge this, dodge these attacks in quick sequence.

It feels very, almost felt like a Platinum game to me. Yeah, Platinum games is like a good comparison. And so when you're leveraging that against the bosses and like trying to figure out like what stuff do I need to bring into this fight to win, it's great. I think that they spent less time on the sort of like exploration stuff between, because like the fights that you have with just sort of random enemies in the field

are fair, are kinda unremarkable. If we could, wait, if we could talk about the, before we like branch way out, because I feel like we're still kind of divided about the central combat. I thought it was like sporadically pretty good, but I did think when the bosses got bigger in size and there was a lot of them, I felt like a lot of the like strategy or technique for those was like just keep flipping out of the way and hammering on the

attack button and then the camera will get kind of loopy when it's like a big big character, especially if you're near a wall or whatever. And sometimes you don't even have that kind of an idea of what's happening. But if you just kind of keep dodging and hammering the attack button, it's fairly generous about that. It's not like really, it doesn't seem to be requiring much precision in that, like, but it can kind of, it can feel like it's kind of boiling down to that with the bigger enemies. I think that that's where the action game comparison makes sense, right? And the game

that this most reminds me of weirdly in the fighting still not spot on is like Bayonetta. Yeah. That is like a lot of cutscenes and a lot of like giant boss fight set pieces. And if you're really good at it, there is a way to find some strategy in it. But also if you're just going to bash your controller, the game like accommodates that. I would say though with Bayonetta, you do not have the same probability of like this game does have situations where you can wipe in 10 seconds. Like if you get hit by the wrong guy in the wrong combo, like you can, and I don't really feel like that's a Bayonetta thing, right?

It's much more of a long, it's more drawn out, right? It's a hundred mistakes instead of a few. I really like that though. Like I like the, you have to be on point. Because I do also think that this game has some pretty great progression hooks. Like it is not Souls-like where you're leveling up and you're like upgrading individual stats,

but there's a lot of, there's like hundreds and hundreds of skills for you to unlock when you like level up. And a lot of them are pretty meaningful in how they sort of like change what you can do in that basic like dodge, rush in, use some light attacks, build up your energy meter to like unleash a devastating like heavy attack. It starts to mix that up where now you can start

weaving heavy attacks in and comboing them and doing. Oh, and there's stances. The stances. There's different stances. Yeah, there's stances. Oh, the stances are actually really cool. Like I thought the earliest, there's a stance in this game that lets you like perch

on top of your staff. Pillar stance, yeah. And you're just like standing up there kind of watching. If you evolve it long enough, you can like stay up there longer, even have a healing potion. It doesn't feel like anything I've done in an action game before. And also the more energy you bring into that move, the higher up your staff gets.

And so enemies just can't fucking touch you. And then when you let it off, you come down with a huge attack. Or you pole dance, run around and kick. I think the combat in this game kicks ass, especially once you start mixing in, well, if I bring this transformation, there's a bunch of spells and transformations

that you can use. You start to figure out, okay, this enemy is, I can set them on fire pretty easily and so I'll bring this transformation. So I think the combat's really strong. You're saying the open world. But the open world stuff, I mean, it's not open world, right, it's linear level stuff,

but it very much encourages exploration so that you can find maybe a treasure chest with some resources in it, or some hidden mini boss that will almost certainly stomp your ass until you come back a little bit tougher later on. My biggest issue is that a lot of these environments are big, sort of natural, you know, forests and jungles and mountains,

and there are invisible walls everywhere. And so it is a... It felt so bad at the beginning. You know that like possibility space when you're in an open world game and you're like, I wonder if I can, oh, and it's exciting. Like, oh, I could climb up on these. And like, I have that kind of mobility. This game is like, I'm looking at a rock.

It's three feet tall and I'm a monk. Part of the problem is your jumps are so big that it feels like, oh, you guys want me to really get around here because I'm a monkey, part of the problem is your jumps are so big that it feels like, oh, you guys want me to really get around here because I'm a monkey, right? Yeah. No, it's not really part of it. It's just like, that feels,

that kind of turned me off at the beginning. Like I really wanted more mobility. The knee-jerk reaction to that I've seen is like, well, not every game has to be an open world game. Yeah, dude, like I don't fucking care for open world games for the most part. My problem is like, when you tell me explore this environment,

there's hidden stuff all over. And then like, I can go up this hill, but I can't arbitrarily can't like go between these two trees. Like it starts to feel like pretty bad. Is there a map that you all were able to find? Cause I did not. I did not see a map.

And like, I think that's part of the issue too, man. If you don't put a map in a game, you're telling me it's a certain kind of game, right? Like if it's an action adventure, like where you're wanting me to get to the next cool boss fight, then put a frigging star up there. Let me run at the star if I wanna go attack that guy.

They do a little bit of like a little golden trail will sometimes, if you get close to a checkpoint, a little golden trail will appear that you can follow. But I spent a lot of time in the first few areas, like really turning them over, exploring, trying to find like maybe there's some armor piece. There's like, there's really great armor mechanics in the game where you get like armor sets with like different bonuses. You can kind of mix and match them. So like there's a lot of carrots in this game that look delicious.

And I wanted to hunt them down. But after the first few areas, I was like, it doesn't really feel like there's a ton of consideration that went into like this. It looks amazing, sounds great. Some of the enemies are fun to fight, but like between the boss fights, I kind of eventually just started hurrying up

to get to the next boss fight and not necessarily pouring over each individual area. I got two questions for y'all. Question one, how do y'all feel about the headless guitarist? Pretty good. Good. Yeah, pretty good. I like it, pretty good.

What do you think about the headless guitarist's Scottish accent that sounds like Desmond from Lost? Very confusing. I thought that was so confusing. It was very disorienting. I thought he was gonna sound like a lot of different things and that was not on the list. I don't was gonna sound like a lot of different things and then I'm not on the list. I don't know a ton about Journey to the West, right?

Aside from my exposure to the story as it's been portrayed in different video games and I guess Dragon Ball a little bit, right? Yeah. The number of characters that show up that are just fucking bonkers that are like from the source material is so rad. Like I normally would get annoyed if I'm constantly being interrupted that are just fucking bonkers, that are like from the source material, is so rad.

Like I normally would get annoyed if I'm constantly being interrupted by like this weird little potato man shows up and teaches you a magic spell. It's like, I'm trying to fight wolf men. Like, come on, man. But now I wanna know about this little potato man because he's very interesting.

The headless guitarist is like, what's your fucking deal, man? Where'd your head go? If you are interested, the pause menu, I guess, has pretty robust details around the characters that you meet. Oh, that's cool. I didn't realize.

Yeah, lots and lots and lots of details. I appreciate that. I guess that's probably a better solve than the alternative of giving you a ton of exposition to try to explain who the fuck these people are in game. But I could see people that don't wanna dive into the pause menu as being like very confused. Sure, I think that maybe this will dovetail

with the second part of the show where we talk a little bit more about like the lore of Journey to the West. Very quickly, this game establishes that this is not a retelling of Journey to the West. This takes place basically after Journey to the West. Sequel style. Sequel style, and you are following

in the footsteps of Sun Wukong, and you are trying to find these vestiges of his power throughout the world and encountering a lot of the stuff that he encountered. And so I felt like I was on the back foot for a little bit because I didn't have a deep familiarity with the story. I did watch a couple of YouTube videos, which I don't regret,

because I do feel like I understand this pretty formative piece of literature a little bit better. But I do think there's solver that is like, anytime you beat a new enemy or a new boss, you get a little notification like, this journal entry has been added about this enemy. You can go into it and learn a lot

if that's what you want to do. And I actually enjoyed doing that part of it, mostly because I wasn't so compelled by the exploration part that I'd be like, ah yeah, sure, I got some time to kill. Second question, Phil. Actually, very quickly on the guitarist, one makes a strong case for playing the game. There's English versus Chinese audio options.

The latter, in my opinion, significantly better. I was reading about the translation being kind of interesting on this game, because there's a lot of sort of like, you know, poetry in Journey to the West, and like sort of these more sort of floral prose that doesn't necessarily have like a great one-to-one. Yeah. But I think they did a good job with it. I didn't feel like it was like confusing or anything like that, but I did feel like

I was getting a different version of it. I kind of liked how much internal like logic and narrative there seemed to be that was like consistent yet obfuscated. It kind of made me feel like I was playing an ACE team game like where the world has all these rules And it's well. I don't know what ace team like um They what is the name of the

God, I'm gonna say it you guys remember Donkey Kong no Lucky Kong Q they made the rock ages rock of ages And deadly power of monsters. It's, like, the world is very filled in because there's a lot to pull from. There's a lot going on. And like, you just kind of vibe on it. Or at least it feels like more of a vibe, you know what you're trying to do,

you're a monkey, you're trying to get this done or whatever you're doing. Yeah, I wasn't bothered by not being able to really know exactly every reference that they were going from. Everybody hates you. That's pretty, that That's pretty short version. Yeah. Everybody hates the monkey.

Putting it on guitarist, I want to include a video in the newsletter of the actual guitarist that did all the music for those chunks. The YouTube videos of this dude are incredible. Fuck yeah. A second question though for you, before you wrap this section, boss fights. We talked about how there are a ton of them. Which was your favorite? Golly.

I feel like the answer's easy because it's Captain Y's voice. It's the giant, like, it kinda looks like tree roots with a humongous golden orb of like steel dragons connects to it and it turns into a giant living being that spits lasers. My favorite vibe was Snake Man because Snake Man, you fight in a little lake and he summons snakes to help him out and he's such a little prick. He's such a little, he's such a fancy little prick. And he's like, I guess I'll see you on your way. And if you want to conflict with me,

then let, I fucking stomped his ass to the ground. And it was incredibly, incredibly satisfying. Shortly before you fight Snake Man, you fight a big frog. It's like a side boss. It's not like a main boss. And that fight is fun, because he's like doing his like back leg kicks

and things like that. And then after you beat him, you can become the frog as like a power, it's one of the special powers you like transform into the variety of. Yes. And that I thought was great. Like I want more games. That's very much from Journey to the West, right?

Is the idea that Monkey King has like hundreds of transformations that he has. It's like the core. And so this game takes on a sort of Mega Man-esque sort of level where like you'll be fighting a boss and you'll see like, oh, this guy sets his staff on fire and then does like eight like brutal dash attacks. And you get murdered by that, but then you're like,

I'm gonna get that shit. I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna take that and I'm going to use it all the time, which is very, very satisfying. I'm enjoying this game. I feel like it speaks to the strengths of what it does well, that I think there's big swaths of the game that I would do completely differently,

that I wish were pretty wildly different. And yet the stuff that- Do you think that without the narrative that we're talking about, that narrative pull, do you think it's gonna be compelling enough to go to see it all the way through, or do you kind of feel like you're gonna have your, because I will say this,

what is propelling me forward right now is continuing to get these new powers that feel very different. And I think that that's really neat. If that levels off at a certain point, I'm not sure the world itself is gonna be enough that feel very different. And I think that that's really neat. If that levels off at a certain point, I'm not sure the world itself is gonna be enough to keep me playing it.

I almost wish that it was a more straight adaptation of Journey to the West, right? Because that story, while enormous and buck wild, I feel like does have a bit more of a through line to it, a bit more of a through line to it, a bit more of a like character arc. Whereas like, it's, what's, to answer actually, to go back to the first question of best boss fight, I think the opening of this game fucking rips

because you are Sun Wukong, the original, the OG, fighting a bunch of 50 story tall deities and he is just cracking wise and saying like, a bunch of 50 story tall deities, and he is just cracking wise and saying the dopest shit. His voice is, I couldn't believe it because I thought I was gonna be hearing him talk through the whole game. He doesn't sound like a hero, he doesn't sound like a monkey, he sounds like fucking Starscream, man.

He sounds like- He sucks. I think it rules, I think it's great. But he doesn't talk in thecream, man. It sounds wild. Yeah. I think it rules. I think it's great. I think it's great. It's fine, it's fine. He's like, you can step to my mountain and kill my monkeys. It's really gargamel. It's fucking radical.

It's so rad. But then after that scene, you take over, it jumps forward in time, and now you're like following in his footsteps, and you are a largely silent protagonist. And that is disappointing, because I liked the voice. I was really, really into that stinger.

But I feel a little bit of detachment from that, because now it's just a silent protagonist going through these different environments looking for powerful relics or whatever. And I don't think that's as compelling as like. I feel like this is also knowing your audience, though, right? I imagine a lot of the people who are playing this are familiar with Drain to the West and like,

now you get to see all your favorite characters in these wild new ways. Hey, should we get to the back half of the episode? Let's do it. One thing I'll say, there have been like controversies around this game and the developer, I'll just include a link to a story on Polygon about that. If you want to know more about that,

you can go read it on our newsletter in that set besties.band. Cool. All right, let's talk about this more right after the break. Yeah, so Journey to the West is one of the classic Chinese novels. If you could summarize it like two minutes, just like just go for it. Hoops.

We got it. Yeah, I actually can. Cause I don't understand. I don't, I'm not an expert at what all, but I did volunteer to do the cursory research here. Uh, there's one for tradition, uh, the foundational novels in Chinese literature. And I don't think we have a good analog for these in American literature because there's nothing like Journey to the West, I think in America.

It would be like, if Star Wars was written by Shakespeare. That's interesting. It's like, okay, I'm only kind of kidding. Like if Star Wars had been written by Shakespeare back 500 years ago, you know what I mean? And everybody's like, that is the level of like impact. And that's like not even actually approaching it, but it's huge.

And it's because of that, and because it's hundreds of years old, it is both like a serialized adventure story, but also it is a long allegorical story for religion and other facets of Chinese culture, which obviously this is the spot to unpack here on the best pieces. Yeah, right, we're the right people. We are the ones to be doing this.

It's very much, I don't know about an American analogy, I think it's very much like the Odyssey, like epic poem level sort of structure. Or maybe like Gilgamesh, does it have that kind of vibe to it? Yeah, I mean, it's like a hundred chapters, a lot of different lessons in each story. I mean, it's-

A bunch of different arcs like within it. It's like he wants to be the strongest monkey. He wants to be immortal. He has to trick Buddha. You know what it sounds like, which I actually know is the direct reference from Journey to the West. Sounds like Dragon Ball.

I mean, yeah, man. Like, sure. Dragon Ball is a direct reference to Journey to the West. But I mean, the problem with the Odyssey is like, it would be like the Odyssey if it was just a thing that every few years the Odyssey got rebooted as a new movie series or maybe a TV series. The impact isn't the same, right?

It's that long of a time, but also like that much of a force. There have been games that have touched on Journey to the West. I think the one that we are probably sort of the most familiar with, or at least just probably had the biggest impact over here was Enslaved. That was a Ninja Theory game that came out in 2010,

which is like, when I say loosely based, I mean, it's really loosely based. Your character is named Monkey. He has a stick. Well, and for everyone listening, I want you to just take a minute. If I say there is a human actor who played Monkey in this game, who is the first person that comes to mind?

You're right. Candy Circus. That's exactly who it is. You already knew. Even if you didn't even know the game, you knew the answer already. I don't even know if you can play. Can you play Enslaved right now? Is it on PC or something?

They shut down the 360 store, so I'm not sure. I don't know if you could play it. It was fun though. It's on Steam, so you can just play it on Steam. It was on Steam? Yeah, it was a good one. I should mention, I should have mentioned this earlier. Journey to the West is the story of a monk named Tripitaka

who is taking a very long journey to India, and is joined by some companions who are sort of like, I guess you'd say like almost demigods, or sort of, I'm sort of like converting to, but like fallen god warriors, celestial heroes. And Tripitaka is technically the main character of the story, but Monkey is really the one who's had, I think, the biggest sort of like impact. He's wild, Monkey's just-

The best. Before, Monkey has a prologue at the beginning of Journey to the West during which he becomes immortal five times over. Yeah. And the staff that he has, it weighs thousands of pounds, but he can shrink it down to a needle, it fits in his ear. He basically goes to heaven and, and makes all the gods so angry, including the

boss guy, the Jade Emperor. And they, that it makes them so angry that they give him a job in heaven, but it turns out that it's a pretty low level job. So he gets mad and he fights everybody in heaven. And then they're like, okay, here's a better job where you gotta guard these incredible peaches that give you immortality. And they're like, okay, thank you, perfect.

And he's like, psych, I ate them all. What else do you have? Eventually, the way they get this dude, they get this dude, he can transform into 72 different things. This isn't the first seven chapters of the book. The way they get this dude is he pees on one of Buddha's fingers when he thinks it's a

stone and Buddha's like, I'm done with it. I'm through with you. And he puts him under a mountain. Lost patience. He buries him under a mountain for 500 years. And that's when Tripitaka meets a monkey. My man is already like immortal. Is that what we're seeing at the beginning of this game?

What? Is that like what we're seeing when he gets like thrown under that rock? It's, I mean, it's like- Again, it's a pretty loose- It's different. So like, but the, the, the, the circlet that he puts on Yeah.

Is what Tripitaka is given to control Monkey. So because Monkey wants to murder everybody and Tripitaka is like, that's kind of not our thing. And Monkey's like, are you sure? It's worked out pretty good for me. I like went to hell and killed everybody in hell. Like, are you sure?

And then they put the circlet on. It's like, okay, you gotta listen. He's like a scoundrel. This is like- The original scam. This is so cursory as to be- He's living Brad Summer all the time. I can hardly recommend, there's a YouTube channel, Overly Sarkastic,

that did a like beloved sort of like animated recap of the entire story and multi-part series. Lost in Adaptation also is another channel that does a lot of like this kind of work. And they have like a review of all the different, not all the different, but like some of the biggest adaptations of this, which has been so many different movies.

But we're talking about video games, right? Journey to the West, obviously Dragon Ball was one. There was Monkey Man. Wait, I wanna talk about Dragon Ball real quick. Talk about Dragon Ball. I didn't realize it, because I'm pretty familiar, reasonably familiar with Dragon Ball,

but the connections are wild, because it's like, Goku has a staff that increases in size, can turn into a literal monkey, comes from this mountain, and goes on this journey to collect six objects of power. Flies around in a cloud.

It's an adaptation. Yeah, it flies around in a cloud. I know, it's just like, it didn't occur to me until I started looking into it. Do you know what Goku translates into in Japanese? No. Monkey. Goku means monkey. Goku means monkey.

Wukong can also mean monkey. Wukong is what Goku is referred to in Chinese dubs of Dragon Ball. Interesting. Yeah, interesting. So the Monkey King, Tripitaka, they also appear in, what other video game stuff?

I've lost my page here, hold on. There is references to it in Sleeping Dogs. There's an entire DLC where you can get the cloud car. Really? Yeah, it's awesome. That's wild. And there's a full monkey outfit. That came in rules.

There's a wide range of, the the story is so old, it's really and has been adapted so many times. It's wild how many how loose you can be with adaptations of it. And still people like get it like it's still like there are movies that basically are just the the title. And that's it. And people still like, it's still a thing. Is it anything that's like Western origin stuff? Apart from I guess enslaved?

How do you mean? It's stuff that we like. It's stuff that originated, was produced in the West but was based on. Like Western adaptations of it. Yeah, because I'm looking on Wikipedia and not seeing a ton. And I'm curious if anyone is like subtly like does like Save the Last Dance have connections to.

Yeah, Save the Last Dance has a lot of. OK, cool. Again, it's sort of loosely based on Journey to the West, but Save the Last Dance, Step Up to the Streets. A lot of sort of dance movies of that era are pretty, pretty direct. Cool. a lot of sort of dance movies of that era are pretty direct. Cool. This is, okay, so this is a deep hole that you have to go for, but The Wily Wars

was a Mega Man release that was released on the Genesis, and it looks like it might've just been on the game channel. You can play it on the Nintendo Switch Online though, it's there. It looks like it might have just been on the game channel. You can play it on the Nintendo Switch Online though, it's there. And in Wily Tower, Mega Man travels through three different stages fighting against a tree of new bosses called the Genesis Unit,

which are based on characters from Journey to the West. Buster Rod.G is Sun Wukong, Mega Water.S is Shao Wujing, and Hyperstorm.H is Zhu Baiji. So that's another. But yeah, it's- It's all over. It is a-

Wait. But it's much more like it's influences obviously- What, Russ? I was gonna say, there's another video game reference that I greatly appreciated. This is in Rabbids Party of Legends, the Ubisoft Zany Rabbids games. It's a party game where the Rabbids travel themselves

to the journey to the West story thanks to their time washing machine. The awakened one, Buddha, trapped in the time machine inside a magic bell, tasked them to retrieve sacred books. So, cool, if you want the Rabbids to tell you the story, you can do that. It sounds authentic. There was also a PlayStation game

that was released in North America that was based on an animated series called Monkey Magic. And Monkey Magic was a PlayStation game that Sunsoft put out back in 2000. Cool. Anyway, I think it's a really interesting story. We don't really have anything like that over here. I would follow up on those other YouTube channels. We'll have links to other resources if you want to learn more about it. But I thought-

There's not a short explainer video. I found there's not a tight in and out five minutes. You get what you need to get. Like an hour is, I feel like, a common thing. Fair amount of them. Like the most of the ones that I've found that I'll include. But freaking watch a video recapping fucking the Clone Wars, you know what I mean?

This isn't, not a complaint. What else are you doing? Not a complaint, not a complaint. Why are you such a hurry? I will say, I found what looks like a really promising, well-reviewed abridged version of Journey to the West. It is 511 pages. Okay, just the hits.

Those were actually, it was much more, it was only like a bridged versions in English for a long time. Like whatever like American awareness of it, it was always like in a really truncated state. One more question before we wrap that's about the game and the story. What did you all think of the different types

of animation in this game? What do you mean? So like there's 2D animation, but then there is a sequence relatively early on that is like beautiful, fantastic, Mr. Fox level stop motion. It's so weird. It was like a real surprise.

It was very lovely, it was like kind of disorienting. Yeah, and I wasn't sure why that change happened, but I was vibing with it, but I didn't know if y'all, I didn't know if there was like a reason for it that y'all sentenced, or if it was just like, it looks nice. If I had to guess, I think that, I mean, if I'm pulling out of here, but like, if you're connecting something to a really old story

and a really old tapestry, it probably behooves you to have a lot of different interpretations to give it more of an, like, a sweeping saga-type feel if you're, like, shifting that, but I don't know, it was very, that was interesting. I don't know what the... I was wondering if it was also supposed to be a nod to the fact that there are so many adaptations of this.

I like found a YouTube video that's every animated version, every animated adaptation, and it's just dozens and dozens of these, including some stop motion. I didn't know if it was a wink to maybe some popular adaptations of it. But yeah, this is a game that I very much look forward to YouTube explainers from people who are very familiar with the text and the history over the coming months.

I think it's gonna be very enjoyable. Should we do audience questions from the mailbag? Yeah, we have a couple. I'll tell you, man, can I say one more thing about Journey to the West? Yes. The more I learned about Journey to the West, it did kind of mess the game up for me a little bit

because I kept thinking about how incredibly powerful Song Wukong is and how what a dork I am. I can just freeze people who gives a crap. I can only transform into like four things. Four things. He's like way, and people beat your ass and then they're like, you're not him. And I. He's like, wait, and people, people beat your ass and they're like, you're not him. And I have to be like, yeah, I know, man.

I can only transform into four things. Working on it. I'm working on it. Let me eat your butt. Let me steal its power. And then I can do five things. Jerk. That's the dream.

Reader mail, we have a letter from J. Brian. Is there a mini game within a game that became your favorite part of the game to the point where that's why you played the game being a kid playing Kingdom Hearts 1 and the gummy ships became my absolute part of more hours when it showed up, more hours went into designing the ships than anything else.

I play Fortnite Battle Royale more than I play Save the World at this point. I mean, but. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. Fair point, minigame. That card game in Final Fantasy Rebirth is probably the only thing that I fully question.

Of the Final Fantasy card games, I would say Tetra Master and Final Fantasy IX is my favorite. Of the fucking triple tri Of the Final Fantasy card games, I would say Tetra Master and Final Fantasy IX is my favorite of the- Oh, I don't even know what that is. All the fucking triple triad in Final Fantasy XIV. I don't know if you guys know about this, the Final Fantasy MMO has an entire like, card game element of triple triad

that you can just go to the gold saucer and not do any other shit but do that. I really wanna know how those come about. Like, is there some dork in the back of the office being like, I want to make this fucking action game. Let me work on my card games. And they're like, fine, we'll just give you this thing. And then he just works on that.

One guy. One guy working on it. I never watched a single episode of Bones, but I'm really into Drop 7, which is the game within the Bones universe. So confusing what you just said. Bones? The TV show Bones? No, I understood all the words that you said, but when you try to put them together into a thought. Drop 7 was made as part of the Bones universe.

And then they were like, hey, you know what? This is better than Bones. It's a separate thing. This is so insane what you're saying. I don't even know if it's a joke. Was there an episode that featured Drop 7? Yeah, it's like an ARG thing, and it was called something slightly different. And then they're like, you know what, we made Drop 7. Maybe we should just sell Drop 7.

Yeah. At first it was a game in the Bones universe. Amazing. I sometimes, when I try to think about what my current goatee of 2024 is, I'll start weighing things in my head and then I'll remember Dondoko Island and then it will place-

Oh, Dondoko Island is a great- Yeah, that's a great- It's maybe the best mini game of all time. You could even call it that. It's just a game. I mean, at what point does it just become part of the game? For me, Dondoko Island is close enough to the main mechanics that I feel like that's almost like a, I wouldn't classify it in my head.

I don't think about it the same way I think of it as like, Gantt or something like that, you know what I mean? Where it's like, you're not supposed to be. The problem is, it's all of those games. Like, you know, like a dragon, it's hard to even say that because it's's all of those games. Like, you know, like, Like a Dragon, it's hard to even say that because it's a game of mini games. Sure. Yeah, but I feel like,

all I'm saying is that I feel like the scope of Dondoko Island is so big that it feeds more into the main thing rather than like, oh, you got, sometimes it's that feeling in a game where you spend so much time on something and then like the developer like opens the door and you've pissed on the floor and they're like,

you're not supposed to be in here. No one's supposed to be in here this long. Go do something else, please. It's like, no, you don't understand. I've almost got them all of the things, the stars and the feathers, you know. Should I be playing this like a drag? What is it called?

I can't with you, Russ. Okay, next question. Russ and I are getting divorced. This question comes from Slim Leaper. Hey guys, love the show. I often hear you reference the times when you play online with friends. I'm curious, did you have any advice

for finding a gaming community to be part of? Most of my friends aren't into gaming or willing to coordinate online play and I feel like I'm missing out. You know, I don't have a ton of experience at this. I do have a couple. I will hop on the Sea of Thieves Discord every once in a while,

and there's just open crews that you can chat with while you go on ships. I haven't made a lot of lifelong friendships off of that, which is not to say that it can't be done, it's just that I'm personally, I guess, not comfortable enough in like an online setting with strangers to feel like making that actual friendship connection.

I do think it takes effort though, right? Especially getting older and all my friends having kids and responsibilities and stuff, it takes effort to reach out to people and say, like, hey, what are you playing right now? I have friends who I know play games and it's not necessarily the same games that I play, but I make an effort to say, hey, do you wanna,

what are you into right now? Do you wanna find a game that we can, there's this new game that just came out that's really good co-op, do you wanna give it a shot? It's not like it used to be when everybody was playing Destiny 2. There's this new game that just came out that's like really good co-op, like do you wanna give it a shot? It's not like it used to be when everybody was playing Destiny 2. What?

Don't hold out on us. Call Towerfall. I mean Towerfall is pretty fucking god. Yeah, okay, shit man. We'll talk about that in the honorable mentions I guess. Yeah, the other pro tip for this is, okay, go to a Discord for something that's not game related

So you like horror movies? Go to a horror movie discord. Here's the thing about discord on all those channels There is like 99% of the time also a gaming discussion in there And then you will find people who are like-minded like you But also enjoy playing games and then you can play that much easier than like going to a Discord for like Call of Duty and then trying to find people in the Call of Duty Discord who you're gonna like be happy to spend some time with despite not knowing. Yeah, I guess I, for what it's worth, have met some nice people playing Call of Duty.

No, that's not to say that it can't happen. I'm saying if you go to, um, I like listening to the show with Gordly and Rust, which is like a horror podcast. And if I go to their discord and go into the gaming section, I think I will like have a better chance of finding somebody to play Call of Duty with that I will enjoy and just going directly to the Call of Duty Discord. The other benefit of that is like, I have Destiny pals, like people I've played Destiny with a lot and added to my friends list

and then just like would continue to kind of play Destiny with the problem is that when you stop playing Destiny, that's gone, like those, it's hard to make the leap, the connection to like a new game. But if you do what Chris is suggesting and find people who you vibe with, that's more important than like finding players of a specific game that you vibe with.

Should we jump into honorable mentions? Let's do it. Chris and I went on a wonderful trip this past weekend with some of our friends back in Austin and we brought the Switch and we played Towerfall a lot. Just a quick Towerfall check-in. Still the most fun fucking game ever made. It is, it is a, just all these years,

it's been years since we've played this game, fell immediately back into it by the end of the first match, just howling with laughter and excitement and joy. It's, it is, it really cemented in my mind, like this is one of my favorite games ever made, with laughter and excitement and joy. It really cemented in my mind, this is one of my favorite games ever made, because it elicits moments while playing it with other people that I've never had playing it.

What was that, real quick, what's the setup that you're going into with that? From a hardware software perspective, how are you- I brought a fuck ton of pro controllers, and then Chris had it on the Switch, and you can play with up to six players on Switch, and there seven of us. Oh, we've been trying to plan with your kids Is it one that kids can do or is it too? I think they get too frustrated It is very like you can lose instantly kind of exactly

It also served the purpose that I needed video games for in childhood Which is we were mostly hanging out with outdoor kids and And when Griffin and I humbled all day every day, yes, we still had a nice time, but we were humbled on the golf course in the lake. But then we came home at night and we put everybody in their place. You were kings. That's true.

We truly were the kings. You know what? I'm gonna keep the train rolling to, say another honorable mention, Can Jam. It's a game, it's a yard game. You got these black plastic sheets that fold up into a cylinder, and there's a little slot on the front,

and you have a teammate on the other side, you got two cans, and you got throw a frisbee, and then they gotta fucking jam it in the top. Just fucking dunk it. It feels so good every time to jam in the can. Can Jam is the new yard game that's sweeping the nation. I love jamming in the can. I love Can Jam.

I wanted to call out a game that I haven't played yet. What? Great. But the game is, it was just announced and released this week. Oh, I played it. It is the Castlevania Dominus collection, and it includes three Castlevania DS games.

It's basically the follow-up to Castlevania Advance, which had the Game Boy Advance Castlevania games. These are the DS Castlevania games. And- What is it? Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia. Portrait of Ruin, it's Dawn of Sorrow, and it's Order of Ecclesia. Yeah.

There's also a bonus Castlevania game, which is the Castlevania arcade game that came out. Haunted Castle, I think. Haunted Castle, it's called. And I don't love Portrait of Rune, but I think the other two are fucking spectacular. Yeah, don't wanna start with the classic. I downloaded this and started playing it.

The big question is like, how do they integrate the touchscreen stuff? Basically on the Switch, you have like, it had separates the, you know, widescreen kind of real estate, so then the left two thirds are playing the game, and then on the right you have your like status screen in the map.

The map is very small and I haven't found a way to like, blow it up so that you can see it really big. There is a way to change the arrangement of the windows. Okay, I haven't figured that out yet. But I will say that the big thing with Dawn of Sorrow that makes it difficult to emulate is that it uses the touchscreen quite a bit. Like you get a power that lets you break blocks

by using the touchscreen, and then every time you beat a boss, you're supposed to like draw this glyph. You can do the glyph stuff with like quick time event button presses. Okay. So it'll say like X-B-A-R and you like pound through those so that you don't.

But that game's remarkable. I love Dawn of Sorrow. And I, as soon as I saw that it was out, I grabbed it. Between the Game Boy Advance ones, between the Game Boy Advance and the 3DS ones, which one should I prioritize if I wanted to try to get into California? So there are 3DS ones, those have not been remade.

No, it's just the DS ones. Oh, sorry, did you ask? I think the first one to play is Aria of Sorrow. I would agree, yeah. Okay. Which is the prequel, I guess, to Dawn of Sorrow, but that more or less they are of a kind, and then the rest of them are pretty standalone. Okay. Yeah.

But they're both fucking fantastic. Yeah Hoops, okay. I checked out something that I think was plant that recommended it called knock on the coffin lid Oh, this is recommended by one of our listeners. Okay, cool so knock on the coffin lid is a Sort of rogue like deck building game It is probably most like, if you imagine it like Slay the Spire, it's a pretty good place to start.

And it's got the same sort of like branching path idea that Slay the Spire has. But what's cool about Knock on the Caulphone Lid, and this is kind of one of those things, it's a cool game concept because it's easier to understand it through play than it is to understand through, you know, like explaining it. But the path that you go down where that's normally like randomly generated in a game like this, you have this like branching path that lets you go this way and that way and

you choose which way you cut through. The path is fixed, but you don't know what all the points are yet. And there are a lot of them are more narrative. So when you go to a question mark in the game, like, say, the spire, you never know what you're going to get when you go to a question mark here. You are uncovering a story beat and sometimes they'll go good. Sometimes they'll go bad. But the next time you go down the path, it will be the same situation.

So that is folded into the concept of the game and the narrative of the game where you're investigating your own death and the way you're doing it is by experiencing these scenes in different orders or with different characters. Like there's a goblin family that's really hostile to humans, but if at some point you are not a human being,

go to this place and you can reveal a new story beat. So it's a really cool concept. I haven't put enough time into it to figure out how well that's realized. And I will say at the beginning, the first time you play through it, it feels so close to A Slay the Spire or something like that.

I kept kind of waiting for the gimmick. so close to A Slay the Spire or something like that. I kept kind of waiting for like the gimmick, like why did you make this game? So it takes, I would say a little bit to figure it out, but it's a really neat concept. It's called Knock on the Coffin Lid. I played it on Steam. I will say that while it technically runs on Steam Deck,

there is not, right now it seems very mouse dependent. If I hate using that thumb pad to do mouth stuff, stuff really, so if you're not into that, like I would say that at this point, it's not real controller friendly that I could figure out. Swipe the Spire is very controller friendly now, right? Yeah. Yeah, it seems like- I play that on Steam a lot, it's easy.

It seems like if you're making a digital card game at this point, just kind of swipe, swipe the spires control scheme, right? Yeah, that's how you do it when you're developing a game. You just look at another game and just like copy. You just ask them, like, can you send me your controls? Yeah, it is a.ini file that you just drag and drop into your install.

It's easy. It's easy. It's easy. That's the thing people forget when we criticize the games, we could do a better job if we just had a little bit of the time and stuff. We're just busy is the thing. We could just make them better. We always have better ideas.

Like check this out, Black Mouth Wukong, what if I would have made it more levels and more weapons? Yeah. Okay. I think we did it, right? Is that everyone? Yeah, that's every- Oh no, plant didn't go. Plant did?

They did. They did, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I talked a little bit about Towerfall. You know the other thing that I'll say is Fields of Mysterio. We're gonna talk about this more in a few weeks. But if you are the sort of person who loves Stardew Valley or Rune Factory, games we've talked about on the show a lot. Holy moly, don't wait for us to do the episode. Just go check it out. It's technically in early access. I think they've been making this game for like five years. So there's plenty to play here.

But wow, I think a lot of our listeners are going to really, really, really vibe with this game. I think a lot of our listeners are going to really, really, really vibe with this game. Cool. What are we doing next week? I can tell you, because I know the answer to that question. It is Star Wars Outlaws. Oh, big game. Big one. Big one. It's a big one.

Not too many AAAA games coming out these days, but that is one of them. I'll tell you, it didn't help Blacksmith Wukong. It was a really tough bar because that game was also on my hard drive. So I was like, oh man, anytime I would slack a little bit, like, I got another Star Wars game over here. But yeah. I wanted to thank the following patrons over at the besties patreon you can go to a patreon.com slash the besties we have

Melanthias Published salmon book of Mike and nurse walk a walka. Thank you for being patrons of the besties Thank you everyone else for being patrons of the besties. We have a new bracket episode coming at you this coming Tuesday on Best Console. God, we gotta record it. What? We gotta record it, hurry. No, we're shit, we gotta record it.

No idea how it shakes out. It's a mystery. We record all these lives. So as you're downloading it, that's us talking. It's just happening. Yeah, and it's bespoke. So Michael, I hope you enjoyed this one. OK, I think we did it.

Justin, you want to take us home? That's going to do it for us this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next week on the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!