The Besties - Cocoon is like a puzzle game made by Valve [Resties]

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Yes, Portal is technically a puzzle game made by Valve, but it mixes in the FPS genre. Cocoon is a puzzle-ass puzzle game. You play as a bug buddy who must zip in and out of universes contained within beautiful orbs that the critter can carry on its back like an adorable, spherical backpack. Or to put it plainly: You use carriable cosmos to solve puzzles. It's amazing -- and surprisingly easy to follow. In the back half, we discuss No One Will Save You, a new alien invasion movie exclusive to Hulu that reminds us a lot of Limbo and Inside. Find everything else we discuss -- plus links -- at besties.fan or https://thebesties.substack.com/. 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!

Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas Plante. My name is Ross Froschek. Welcome to The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week we're talking about Cocoon, which is not a movie about geriatric people who enjoy swimming with aliens. You are aging our audience. Our audience is not that old that a mid-80s movie with Don Amici would appeal to them in any way. Cocoon! This one is about the aliens themselves, little bugs and gross stuff.

And it's from at least one of the people who made limbo and inside games we both really enjoyed i can't wait to talk about it it's it is a weird weird game but you had something that you wanted to talk about first yeah so this episode will be the last episode that exists uh-huh until we're in a new era of video games. And I feel like people have not fully absorbed the likelihood of what's going to happen in the next two weeks. Okay. We are entering an age that is P M post post Martin a.

Oh, and I don't think people are ready for it because Super Mario Wonder comes out very soon and it will not feature Charles Martinet as the voice of Mario. Yeah. And that is just a world we're going to be living in from now on.

It was a him, Mario. What? It was a him, Mario. That's right. That should be on his gravestone when he dies. It was a him, Mario. What? It was a him, Mario. That should be on his gravestone when he dies. It was a him. Yeah, that's really true. I watched the Nintendo kind of like gameplay summary last week or whenever.

Of Wonder. Of Wonder. And what they've replaced Mario with is those sound effects that you have in children's youtube videos where it's like yeah wow it's like it sounds like youtube and mario merged and i say that i think it's a compliment i mean the verdict's out i gotta play play the game. I don't want to get ahead of myself. But if we are going to say goodbye to Martinet, then moving to a just kind of post-verbal

formula, I think that's something I'm interested in. I mean, it's worth considering that almost everything that Mario says is post-verbal, because it's almost all grunts. There is a rare, it's almost all grunts. Like there is a rare, a rare,

it's a me Mario. But if you, if you think of it like, like, uh, in super Mario RPG, which is being remade later this year, he doesn't talk at all.

It's all physical, like reactions and stuff. And so that is kind of the default, like him talking and saying how much he loves pasta is not normal for mario he talks like a waiter at waffle house have you ever experienced this i mean i know about waffle house i know it's uh very uh has a strong reputation for like a 3 a.m drunken spot like people have gotten their heads chopped off at him but no it's like a place where like you go and you are there at 2 a.m and you're like uh who what do i want and like the weird throws the thing in front of you it's like and you're like i i want yeah but more upbeat than

that mario has like a good attitude yeah he's he's positive waffle house he's like if if your shift at waffle has started at like 2.30 in the afternoon, you feel that way. You feel pretty good when you start. Yeah, that's true. And then by midnight, it's like Bowser level. Has anybody been inside of a Waffle House at 2.30 in the afternoon? Only if they were

also there 12 hours earlier. That sounds right. That sounds very right. I didn't think W waffle house has been kind of the future of language but it makes a lot of sense when you get down to it uh hey should we take a break and then talk about video games yes yes yes let's do it okay so cocoon is a new video game that i've been very, very, very excited to play. I had the chance to watch someone play the first half hour of this game at Summer Games Fest.

And it really wowed everybody who was there. It felt like the game that the people who attended this thing just came away from really positive. And if you go, whether it's Polygon or Eurogamer or Game Informer, wherever you like to get your video game news, I think you're pretty much bound to see glowing reviews of the first 30 minutes of this game. And should we just describe what – can you describe what this game is? I'm going to try. I'm going to give you that job. I'm going to try, but it's kind of hard. Okay. Go for it.

So you are a little alien bug person. And the gameplay is mostly from a top-down perspective where you're kind of running around these alien worlds trying to progress in these worlds. And the way you do that varies, obviously. The way you do that varies, obviously, but mostly if you think of it kind of diving into layer upon layer of worlds within these orbs that you carry around. You have like a water orb. At some point, you can put that water orb down on the ground and then jump into the orb. And then suddenly you're in a different world that's like raining and watery. There's a scene, I think it's at the end of Men in Black 1, where the cat is wearing a little cat necklace and there's a marble on it. And it turns out that inside that marble is like all of the cosmos.

Well, that's a plot point in the movie. But then it and then it kind of reveals that like, yeah, some random alien was playing marbles with all of the galaxies, basically. Right, right, right. Yeah. And that is kind of what's going on here. These balls that you carry around and these little spheres, you know, you throw it on your back like a big old backpack they can solve switch puzzles they can be used as like weights and things like that yeah they can um be used to they have like different properties so there's like an orange one that lights up hidden paths

so you need to carry it if you want to light up those paths to be able to walk on them. But the puzzle, I would say, of the game is just getting them from place to place. And as the game moves on, you collect more and more of these spheres. So you're having to figure out how you can transport them. So one example would be, say that you want to carry the orange sphere. And then you have a green and a purple sphere you could go into the orange sphere and then you could with with the green sphere and place it on a little shelf and then you could go out and then you can grab the purple sphere and you can go back into the orange sphere and place it in there and suddenly you are carrying the orange sphere and inside of that

world are two other spheres so you're carrying all three while really just carrying one yeah it it's it sounds complicated and it is complicated well so that i think it's the trick of the game is it sounds really complicated but the way that until a point we'll get to in a little bit they make it work is there's kind of only one right thing to do at any given time right exactly pretty obvious so it well well yeah so we'll so it takes let's talk about the first hour of the game okay because i think it's like that the first hour of this game is absolutely fantastic it is you compared it to like valve deciding to make a puzzle game yeah i think that is i mean important portal is a good comparison because portal if you think about the first hour of portal you don't even have the gun

you're just like learning how portals work and they're like firing off on their own. So it is like just kind of showing you the ropes in that first hour. Yes. And in that period, you, it feels really complicated. You are going in and out of these globes, kind of like stacking them within each other. And it feels like 4D chess or whatever. But you're really only, it's only two orbs really at the beginning yeah juggling between and you're kind of just going in a straight line like again it feels very complicated but there's very clearly the right thing to do and it's always just like five extra seconds worth of thinking in front of

you yeah and and they're pretty smart about they'll like lock you in areas to make it very clear that like, yeah, you should not be backtracking. This is where you need to be. So of the three variables of things you can do, it's going to be one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that might sound silly to people because like puzzle games are supposed to be challenging, you know, brain teasers. A lot of the great puzzle games that we all love are not that like again portal it is always conveying where you should go with especially with light um that's kind of i guess the the weird pickle of this game we should touch on this and then get back to all the great things about it. But there does come a point about an hour and a half, two hours in where I hit a puzzle that completely felt, I mean, in total contrast with the rest of the game.

I have truly no idea what to do with it. I bashed my head against it for 30 minutes. I like I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it as these things go, because I keep feeling like, well, there's probably some really obvious answer that is just right in front of me and I'm missing it. But I I did everything. I got out a sheet of paper. I was drawing out like diagrams. It's kind of hard to draw out diagrams for this again, because it's like you're burying realities within other realities. But yeah, I just got to a choke point in, you know, guides are great. We don't have access to guides before a game launches. But this has a reminder of why I appreciate them.

I have no idea how you would search for a solution in this game for what it's worth. As somebody who's going to figure out how we write about it on the site i will come up with an answer but i i think it will be how do i get past that damn spot in cocoon um because i think that's just what people well i'm on i you sent me a screenshot of where you're stuck and i'm actually before that and i didn't spend a ton of time trying to figure it out but i am stuck too some of this is also like, I think there's some accessibility stuff. I haven't looked in the settings to see if they allow for it. But like, I didn't totally realize that like the colors of the orbs was important because I couldn't totally differentiate between them. And you just saying that, I was like, oh, that makes sense.

Because I was like, why is this bridge not forming under this orb and it was weird um yeah so hopefully in the settings or they add post-launch some like colorblind setting stuff but yeah uh i that there is something weird about it that like if you get stuck because the solutions are so rigid, and they are like very rigid. We've talked about like the fact that one of the creators of Limbo made this game. Limbo, even though the solutions in Limbo are pretty rigid, because it's a physics based game, there's a little bit of mushiness to it. of like oh i can like kind of hop and skip my way over a problem or push a block in a weird way that like allow me to solve something in a slightly different way as far as i can tell there's no like slightly different way in this game it seems very rigid yeah i think there are pluses and

minuses to that i think at the very least you know you know when you get it right or wrong but if you get stuck like planet stuck and honestly i'm stuck right now it doesn't allow for a lot of like experimentation it just kind of feels a little bit frustrating yeah yeah yeah it's it's a bummer i i love the beginning of this game so much and i really don't want to scare people off from this game. And we're going to talk about all the other great things because I do have a feeling once I can see a YouTube video of how to get past this spot, I'll be right back into it. And I will be so in love with this game. So don't necessarily let this be a deterrent. I would definitely check out reviews alongside what we're talking

about because i have a feeling that they will talk about the later game puzzles but one thing i do want to dig into is how this game looks and sounds um how how did it how did it hit you my immediate thought was you talk about old references i thought it was like what if you were inside the alien ship in fire in the sky starring keifer sutherland it was just like a very like organic creepy but also like very uh i don't know weirdly welcoming as well um i yeah, yeah, it's just very alien, like, like insectoid. Yeah. It is the most welcoming version of, uh, trypophobia that I've ever seen, which is the whole one. You're afraid of holes where it's like, like wasp nests behind that sort of thing.

And there's, there's a lot of that. nests, beehives, that sort of thing. And there's a lot of that. There's a lot of geometric rock formation things. And there's a ton of contrasting really hard shelves with really gooey insides. There's a lot of goo in this game. A lot of birthing imagery, I would say. Um, yeah, there, there are these moments.

The puzzles tend to be at least the ones that I've seen relatively static. Uh, I mean, there was animation certainly, but they're not like, you know, constantly moving, very vibrantly detailed things that are going on. But you'll get to these moments that are like effectively either boss fights or like mini cutscene moments that are like so incredibly animated that they feel like living puzzle boxes that are like opening up in front of you that really made it like a very rewarding experience when you get through a tough puzzle sequence. Yeah. Well, I mean, can you talk about the boss fights a little bit yeah i i love the boss fights i think i've only done two

of them yeah um and but in both cases the boss fights in a in and of themselves are puzzles not dissimilar from like zelda boss fights where the things you're fighting have weaknesses that you just have to um kind of master and then the fights become relatively easy once you figure out the trick so for example one of the second boss fight was uh there are these like orbs that you're able to pick up in the middle of the fight and once you're holding them they kind of turn into these jetpacks and you're like floating around above the ground. And you have to like bait the boss to the point where it ends up like flat on its back. And then you can drop the jetpack thing on its back to explode it. And like that felt really awesome. And also the boss fights do something really cool. As far as I can tell, you can't die at all in this game it's impossible to die but the boss fights

the way they handle quote death is it'll if you get hit it just spits you back out of the universe that you're in so it's sort of a diegetic way of representing death without like breaking the illusion of the game yeah and invariably like that's not a big deal because you just hop right back in and like start over again. It's like, you know, you just reverted back to a bonfire more or less. But the fact that it's all animated just makes it feel like so fluid and part of the same universe in a really smart way. Yeah, I can think of two types of good boss fights. I'm sure there are more out there.

But there's the test your skill from everything leading up to that boss fight where, hey, you learned all these new things over the course of this stage, and now we're going to put it to the test. And that is what I feel a lot of boss fights are. Then there's also the, this is a reward. You did a lot of hard work just to get to here and now you're going to see something really cool and surprising and have fun and it might not be directly tied to all the stuff you were doing up until this point and that's kind of the point is that it is like new and novel and fresh and i feel like this skews a lot more in that direction i think yeah maybe why people like dark souls bosses so much is it's a bit of

both um but no i think in terms of it feeling like a really cool treat that i look forward to that's part of why i'm so dang frustrated with the part that i'm at is on the other side of a wall i need to get past i can see the thing that will trigger the next boss and it's just like oh come on like well that's the other thing with with puzzle games like this we we mentioned valve and portal that game and really all of their games are play tested within an inch of their life they bring in people every single week for like five years and they're playing the same levels and you know one person gets stuck and they're tweaking the level tweaking the level on an indie level and this is like a mid-tier this is annapurna so like this is like a mid-tier

indie publisher certainly they probably have a decent sized budget but not a budget to like bring in people constantly for QA testing over the course of many years. So it's not surprising that there might be these moments that are like, oh, this is, I'm just stuck on this moment. And it's really, really hard to design a game that is both challenging and also going to be, you know, something that you could piece together regardless of like how long you spend on it.

Yeah. you know something that you could piece together regardless of like how long you spend on it yeah so i'm sensitive to the struggles that they are experiencing and chances are like as stuck as you are it's possible that like people will get stuck in other places and might find the puzzle that you're on totally easy so yeah you know yeah i think that's right i I did want to wrap this up. I mean, to put the game aside for now, I really like this game. I think both of us are trying to figure out exactly how we feel about it once we finish it. But I overall really, really like it. I know we'll come back and talk about it more later. I have a feeling it'll come back maybe in a B segment of the besties at some point. But one thing I did want to hit on before we go to the next segment is guides in general. And when you use a guide, because like right now I am at that point where, yes, I want to use a guide right away. But I know you tend to be like really picky about

using guides. And I'm curious, like what triggers you to use a guide? It depends. You know, I've talked a little bit about this, but a lot of it has to do with trust in the developer. If it's a developer, I know, you know, Nintendo, broadly speaking, I'll trust them to design games in such a way that like makes general sense. And if I'm stuck on something i probably won't be stuck for very long so i'm going to kind of tough it out a little bit but if it's a really tough boss fight and i've died five or ten times and i don't know what the

game is trying to tell me i'm more than happy to look it up like it doesn't frustrate me at all i don't feel like i'm missing something all it's doing is speeding up the process of eventually getting to the point where oh no i got it and that's fine but i do think there are some games that are just like better you you have more of a sense of accomplishment if you piece it together yourself even if it might require like pulling out a notebook and like really like thinking about it for a while i don't know if this is one of those games and that's part of the struggle is like you don't always know was it a bad design decision and like it's bad signposting or whatever or are you just not thinking of it in the right way so it really just depends on the on the game and the project

yeah and i think it depends on the person and what they like to get out of games for me i i i'm not quite as a guides avoidant as you are but especially with something like this if i work on a puzzle for a half hour and i'm not getting it and it's not something like the end of tunic i'm grateful to just have a guide because yeah i at that point it's like well it's that or just never play it again um because i i i personally don't want to be that challenged midway through a puzzle game that to this point has been quite easy um it did you know it's just not gelling with what i expect from the experience um yeah i think i'll say for my taste the rigidity the rigidity of this game doesn't super appeal to me because i do

prefer to feel like i have a little more agency within the world just as just as an example like there's no jump in this game, which is fine. It's not designed to support a jump. But the fact that there's, like, a lot of, like, invisible wall kind of things that keep you on the right path, it just makes the experience

a little less naturalistic for me. Okay, so I have to tell you about the puzzle that I'm stuck at, actually. Okay. Because I think it has to do with this. And this will spoil nothing about the game whatsoever. I am at a puzzle where I need to get, there's little drones that you can get to follow you. And they knock down certain barriers.

Yes, I've seen a few of them throughout the game. down certain barriers yes i've seen a few of them throughout the game yes but the counter to the drones is these little gooey uh i don't know sea urchin type of things they're like lasers right that kill the drones like goo lasers yes and they will catch the drone and then bring it back to a starting point and then you have to like recreate the drone and then you have to try to get past it again and there are ways to get past these goo lasers yeah the way i need to get past the goo laser appears to be that i've created two portals on opposite sides of the goo laser and when you go into a portal like i create orange and i go down when i exit i'm going to come out of orange right so i'm trying in my head to think like, well, how do I create orange in one area

and then come out of orange in a different area? That is like, how do I effectively teleport around this is what I'm trying to figure out. Or, and this is where the rigidity comes in, I can go into an orange shell with my drone but i can't leave the drone inside the orange shell right and just carry it past this this thing and that is the sort of thing that feels frustrating where it's like there's a very clear way if i were in this game how i would solve this thing but i can't do it the game well the drones are programmed

to live to follow you around yeah i it i like literally spent a while because again i was just getting frustrated trying to like sprint away from the drone to see if i could get out of it and like that's the sort of thing where you're right. The rigidity is, hey, there's actually a pretty clear answer to this. And I do love in a puzzle game when I'm like, this should work. The game agrees. Not like, no, actually, yeah, technically that would work, but that's not the rules that we put in place. That doesn't feel very good. Anyway, like, I'm sorry.

I really don't want to dunk. It is like literally one puzzle in an otherwise great game. I want to go back to the guide saying, just because my experience I think is different. Normally, I like guides for this sort of thing. What I've discovered recently is YouTube videos that are like build guides. And this started with Elden Ring where it's like, make the fire merchant of death build.

Sure. Those are my allergy. You don't like- Because that is what triggers my FOMO. And this happened with Zelda a little bit. It almost happened with Cyberpunk. And then I was like, no, I'm just not looking at any of this stuff. But I see that and they're like,

hey, to get this, you're going to have so much fun. But you have to do this 10-hour step. Go here, here, and here, and here, and get all this. And it's like, well, now I'm doing homework. And I'm also not enjoying the game on my own. I'm just like. And you're not having the thrill of discovery. Yeah, I'm just following a script.

Of finding that super powerful thing, whatever. Exactly. I'm just following a script. Super powerful thing, whatever. Exactly. And that is the type of guy that I've started to not follow as much anymore. But again, different strokes. That is not to say that those are bad.

I think there's a reason those are like so popular. I think a lot of people like having that guidance. And I also think there are certain games and I wouldn't count Elden Ring necessarily in those, but there are certain games that maybe aren't balanced great. And maybe there are certain skills that are much more powerful or items that are much more powerful than like the normal fare. And so you kind of are forced in a direction, but you might not know that. So maybe you don't want to waste time spending points and skills that are worthless. Yeah, I think that's right. Cool.

It's an interesting game, Cocoon. I think you all should keep your eye on it. And if it seems like a thing that you're really into, give it a look. And the good news is, if there is a part that you get frustrated by, those guides videos, you know, they're going to be up

the second this is live hopefully we'll have that moment figure it out on polygon and you'll be able to find it there hey everybody it is plant i just wanted to come back one more time before we go to the next segment to say i got past the puzzle and it turns out that it's a me problem and not a the game problem as most of the frustrations that we had still stand but here's the deal this is a really great game and we recorded I think at peak frustration for me with this one dang puzzle the answer is so easy. You can find guides on polygon.com. You'll get past it. I do think this game is worth checking out. It'll be in the gaudy conversation, probably on besties. And yeah, that's it. I just wanted to come back and give you an update. Anyway, we're going to throw to

an ad break. And after that, we've got an awesome conversation about no one will save you. We will catch you on the other side. Okay, fresh. So Disney 20th Century Fox did this very weird thing that they now have a habit of doing every year, which is they make a really cool movie. Last year, they made Prey. This year, they made No One Will Save You. Oh, I actually didn't know it was the same studio. Yeah. And then they're like, you you know it'd be great not letting you go see it in a movie theater um but you can watch it at home hey that's cool don't get me wrong very excited i could watch this right away but a little bummed that there's this awesome horror movie that just inexplicably skipped the theaters that said it's available for all of us to watch right now

assuming you have a hulu membership or you can get one password from family member or you can get a free whatever um and i think people should check it out because it is an alien abduction sci-fi horror thriller that has a lot in common with limbo and inside in this type of video game. Yes. So how about you kind of set up what the movie actually is? Sure. The movie stars Caitlin Deaver, who you might have seen. She had a great role in Booksmart, one of the two leads in Booksmart, as well as I first saw her.

I think she was very young. One of her first acting roles in Justified. She did a season long arc in one of the seasons leads in Booksmart, as well as I first saw her, I think she was very young, one of her first acting roles in Justified. She did a season-long arc in one of the seasons of Justified. Anyway, dynamite actress. She is playing a character who lives in a small town and she lives in like kind of a remote farmhouse

and she's like, you know, got the manic pixie thing. She like builds these little like wooden houses in her home it has like a very beetlejuice vibe um and i think there's like a lot of inspiration from beetlejuice throughout but uh so she's living kind of this isolated life but you can sense that there's something up because every once in a while she'll go into town and everyone in town is like very standoffish with her and kind of like looking at her

in an odd way. An important note, no one talks in this movie. Well, yeah, I was going to get to that. So you don't, it doesn't really click for about five or 10 minutes. And then it kind of clicked

that like there's no dialogue in this movie and there isn't there's like a tiny tiny tiny little bit of dialogue but broadly speaking there's no dialogue and why that works is because it's a 90 minute movie and like 80 minutes of that is her getting Her getting more or less invaded by aliens, like giant-eyed kind of cliche designed aliens that are invading her house more or less. If you've seen Signs, think of like the last scene in Signs, but for 90 minutes. And as a hardcore action movie. Yeah. but for 90 minutes.

And as a hardcore action movie. Yeah. It feels like a, yeah, thriller is certainly like the way I would describe it. I wouldn't describe it as a horror movie. It's PG-13. There are like kind of gross moments, but it's not like a gory movie.

It definitely has some scary moments, but it also feels like, and you're're right like a perfect movie hitter movie because it is like kind of a thrill ride like it feels like you're on a roller coaster in a lot of ways yeah so i mean i think the comparisons to limbo and inside are kind of obvious when you describe it like that which is it is silent for starters there's like grunts and like screams and yelps and stuff and you'll hear the aliens speaking but they speak in their own language so you can't understand them yes um and like a video game the game is kind of just like a series of encounters and she faces off with very we should probably say very light spoilers we're not going to spoil the ending or anything like that here but

just like top level first half of the movie what is happening um she's facing up against like different types of aliens yeah i mean yeah the i think it starts off and it's pretty like typical like a gray like the big eyes and the giant head and their long fingernails stuff like that and then over time they get like a little weirder and more uh well alien to the point where she's trying to like conquer each one yes in interesting way. Yeah, and each wave that she stays alive is its own little puzzle. The reason I was so glad that you wanted to bring this up, because I feel like it had to have been influenced by video games, whether directly or indirectly.

The writer has experience with games because it has a pacing that i associate more with video games than than movies yeah um i think like the natural comparison that a lot of people are going to have is silent films which yes that is there too but yeah the the story structure is so gamey that i also think it like it's kind of a good text to go the other direction and that i think games could take a lot of lessons from this movie in that you really can tell a really clear emotional story without well without any real dialogue um but also without a lot of time spent on the story part of it um the the actual meat of the story that we see in the game or in this movie is a bookend you know it's a little bit at the beginning and a little bit at the end

and then everything else is kind of told through the action or during the action yeah but i would say like it is it is weaved throughout like it's elements of that narrative which is a really core to the story like it's very very important that you understand what happened to her previously and what is going to happen to why she makes the choices that she makes it's like extremely important to it in the same way that like i think you know knowing that the little boy in limbo is trying to chase his sister or uh and inside you're trying to like escape this factory that is like clearly doing something wild like you need to have kind of a grounding point to humanize something even if it has no dialogue, because then you'll

get more attached to the characters. It's actually interesting that we're bringing this up in the context of an episode that we talked about Cocoon, because I don't know if you've seen anything, but as far as I've seen, there is like no narrative in Cocoon. There's like none. And that was one thing that I really, I think would have helped me propel through a lot of those puzzles if like I felt more attached to the character. more and more like science writing about the interior lives of animals and how you can't think about them having you know human morals or human perspective and you start to think about the world through their eyes it it's both completely unfamiliar but also really interesting there's a little bit of that in cocoon but i i do agree and i and i and i think i mean i would counter that by saying like look at a game like Ori and the Blind Forest, which has extremely little dialogue and really is alien, right?

Like, everything in Ori is still kind of like a Disney personified. Sure. They're having pretty human emotions. Yeah. you can have alien characters doing very alien things and still like if there was like a little baby alien you would understand oh this is something that I need to protect or you know make sure it's okay

or whatever it is there just isn't any of that at least early on in Cocoon that may change but yeah I mean not where I'm at either I am curious how it ends because they are so yeah um yeah i i also think this movie nails how just having one core emotional motivation can be enough yeah really is just one clear thing that is the, the, both the engine and the gasoline for,

for the entire movie. Um, yeah, it is. It's awesome. I, yeah, it's shot really well for like,

uh, it reminded me of like the Cloverfield movies, 10 Cloverfield lane in particular. Uh, I thought it was actually Dan Trachtenberg that worked on it. Cause it's a very similar filming style. But just I mean, especially just the props to Deaver, who that is such a hard job to do what she is doing in this movie with no dialogue and having to carry the movie when it's really just you and CG aliens and you have no dialogue to lean on. It's all in her face, in her body movements.

The costuming and the makeup and stuff does a lot of work as well. But that is a really, really tricky, challenging acting job that I think she did an amazing job doing. And also I would say the lead actress in Prey did something very similar where there's very little dialogue in Prey. Broadly speaking, like it's her and you see in her face the importance of like what's going on. So, yeah, I think this is like a really pure representation of like how an actor can carry a movie in a really powerful way. how an actor can carry a movie in a really powerful way. I think that Cloverfield comparison is also right in that part of the pleasure of this movie has been how little was known about it, how much, how little hype there was. Yeah.

Right. I feel like Cloverfield. Was there a trailer for this movie? I don't even know. There was, there was, but it didn't. Okay. It was not heavily marketed. Yeah.

I will say. Yeah. It is. I said it. Yeah, it is. I said it's awesome. It is. I will set expectations that it's like great in the way that in the 80s and 90s, you would go to the movie theater not even knowing what you're going to see. And you would see a good movie. It's like that.

And it feels like you don't get a lot of those if you factor the ratio of good to bad in terms of straight to streaming movies this is one of the best oh this is yeah this is like the average is pretty poor in that especially like on various streaming platforms it can be a little hit or miss and this is definitely not that like i think most people having watched this will leave having a good time yes this is it is confounding why they would not have released this in theaters especially right now with the strikes going on i mean the wga is wrapping but the sag after a strike still going. There's not a lot of stuff to compete with it. People are in the mood for a horror movie this season. I am baffled why you would not put something this good out in a movie theater,

but hey, teach their own. You want to share any honorable mentions? Anything else you're enjoying right now? Cyberpunk. That's pretty good, right good it's an awesome game i'm just like so amazed at how good of a job they did in reviving that game and and i hope more people get to experience either a for the first time or b re-experience it because they were like oh i'll buy this because it's a whole phenomenon and then played it for an hour and then was like oh this is a shit show i'm never touching it again yeah i hope all of those people go back and try it because it is unquestionably

one of the best open world games i've played ever and it's a genre that desperately needs new life and new approaches and games that don't look like all the other open world games. And Cyberpunk is certainly that. And I'm so, so glad that all that time and energy that people put into it has paid off in such a way that like, we now have a fucking great game that we didn't have before. And you were like kind of mixed on even the 1.5 update, right? Yeah, I did not care for it.

And a lot of that, i didn't spend a ton of time with it but a lot of that had to do with the combat because the combat was not really that engaging you're more or less doing the same thing over and over again and because since they changed the skill tree i feel way more ownership of what i'm doing and how i'm playing to the point where it makes everything else feel so much better um so yeah i mean i think this is even if you bounced off the 1.5 update this is the time to play it they've changed we've talked about the skill tree but they've also changed you know all the currency system the way you upgrade things how you um crafting is no longer uh you know a perk that you need to unlock it's available to

anyone so they just put so much thought into it and it really has set a new high bar for what an open world game can be and i'll be really curious to see what this means for other open world games whether it's a bethesda open world game whether it's a um gta 6 for that matter like really it is a new bar that has been set and uh i'll be curious to see if anyone can can hit that yeah i i just want to go play it right now to be. That's probably what I'm going to try to do this evening. I do want to mention the other game that I'm still playing is Lies of P, which I know you really, really liked, but maybe didn't get as far just because there's so much to play. And there has really never been a 3D Souls-like that comes as close to a FromSoftware game as Lies of P does. I don't think it's at the level, but it is damn close.

And honestly, the more I play it, the more I like it. Because of the weapon system being so modular, I feel like I'm constantly given new toys to mess around with in really smart ways. Do you get more P-organs? Because I feel like I only had one P-organ. I think I just have the one P-organ. Honestly, more P-organs seems like overkill. No, I'm so confused because you get the P-organ upgrades. It looks like

there's an entire tree for it in Geppetto's room. I thought you were making a joke about multiple P-organs. No, no, I'm actually genuinely curious. You go to... Yeah, you get more quartz. Oh, yeah, the quartz. But do you get more of that? Yeah, quite a bit more.

Okay. I've probably found like 15 quartz. Oh, wow. Okay, that must be like right after where I'm at then. Yeah, it starts really picking up. Early in the game you can't unlock very much, but yeah, later on it definitely picks up. Okay, and did you find the character that lets you get the umbrella?

I did, but I did not get the umbrella. What did you get? So what Plant is alluding to, and if you've played a Souls game, you would probably know what this is. When you kill any of the bosses in the game, you get a boss ergo, is what it's called in Lies of P, but it's like a boss soul. And you trade that in don't don't spend those don't like turn them in

for ergo whatever you trade them to a guy that you meet later in the game and you can decide you can either get a weapon or an amulet and the amulets are fucking good so for example that uh umbrella that you got instead of that umbrella you could get an amulet for example that lets you dodge without having any stamina whatsoever oh wow so there are like major gameplay implications yeah for some of these amulets it's balanced because the amulets that you unlock are like massively heavy. So there'll be like 20 pounds or whatever it is just for one amulet. So they balanced in that way. But there is definitely a choice. I would not recommend getting every single boss weapon.

Almost all of the amulets are like worthwhile. It depends on what like build you're going for. But because I dodge a lot, I was like, oh, like oh damn i'm gonna get this dodge amulet instead i i that is on my um i'm having some travel coming up and i'm really looking forward to digging back into that because it played so well i know it worked well on steam deck for i think justin was working really well on the uh rog ally for me too yeah i'd also add that they just recently patched the game to make it i know you thought the game was too easy or whatever easy quote easy um they made it even easier i i am of the opinion that the game was not easy but uh they definitely made it easier

because a lot of the later bosses, and I think as you get deeper at the game, you'll probably experience this as well. A lot of the later bosses are fucking tough. It's a hard game. And so they realized that there were a lot of people really struggling. So they made a few tweaks to a lot of the mechanics that made the game much more approachable. I don't think it's an easy game still, but I think it'll smooth out some of the left edges. That sounds great to me.

Like that, that's what I liked about Armored Core, to be honest. Like I don't mind one or two, hey, really go hard on this. And then the rest is not smooth sailing, but like not too choppy. That's cool by me. Yeah, I think it's pretty common, honestly, in Souls games, even from software Souls games. but like not too trappy. That's cool by me. Yeah.

I think it's pretty common, honestly, in, in souls games, even from software souls games, they'll look at where the trouble points are. And usually like a few weeks after launch, they'll address with some balance updates. Sounds good.

I'm going to do that. Um, my, my thing, uh, I watched the movie belly for the first time. Have you ever seen this? And it is like a crime movie, but like there are 12 movies happening inside of this one movie. The movie is only 96 minutes long.

And the way it's shot, the way it's told, it is so damn cool. And it's wild whenever you go back and watch a movie from, I don't know, this was like 1998, and you immediately realize, oh, that's what everybody was stealing from. That's where those ideas actually came from. That's this. The cast is great. It has DMX and Nas as the two leads, but also Method Man is in it. Kurt Loder makes an appearance. Your former co-worker.

T-Boz is in it from TLC. Yeah, yeah. It is a really enjoyable movie and I thoroughly recommend it. I think that's it. I think we did another episode. Did you confirm the candy? We talked about the candy last time. The candy.

In your movie theater. Oh, no. You forgot. I'm so sorry. I promise I'll remember it next time. Okay. Yeah. I mean, hey, if anybody lives in the Southern California region and you want to come to a horror movie festival, we're doing a thing called Camp Frida that is a 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. horror movie marathon full of secret movies that I can't say.

But I can tell you they're awesome and you should check it out. If you happen to be, I don't know, there are a lot of people who live in Los Angeles. Surely there are some people who would be interested in this. I feel like you should do it like 1 a.m., put on just like Land Before Time or something. See if anybody notices if they just all passed out. I mean, Land Before Time, wait, no, not Land Before Time. I was thinking Neverending Story and what happens to that horse,

and I was like, that's a horrible movie. Oh, yeah, that's pretty fucked up. Land Before Time is pretty fucked up. That's true. It does not end well for their parents or really any of them, I guess,

on the historical level. Eventually. Yeah. Cool. We don't know exactly what we're going to talk about next time because there's a-

Next time we're going to be in the heart of the holiday season. October is insanely busy with big releases. Yes. So it would not surprise me if we had to shunt one of the biggest releases over to Resties, whereas normally we would catch it on Besties. But we'll see.

Yes. Yeah. We will report back. But otherwise, that's it. We did it. This has been another episode of the Rusties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. I am Christopher Thomas

Plant. You are... My name is Russ Vrstic. And that's it. We are Rusties. That's not how it is. I kind of did it in a different order. Let's try it one more time together. Everybody who are listening, say it with us right now. Rusties.