The Besties - Diablo 4 Lets You Smash Demons and Loneliness (feat. Ron Funches!)

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

We invited frequent Bestie and renowned demonologist Ron Funches to help us break down Diablo 4, a therapeutic loot-grinder for casuals and lonely hearts alike! Also discussed: Across the Spider-Verse, The Holy Mountain, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 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!

Ron, I've got a question for you, Ron. Sure. I feel like Activision Blizzard made a big mistake by not picking you to be one of the five adventurers in the Diablo 4 universe. And I feel like, I don't know, do you agree? Would you bring a different energy? Yeah.

Like if you're like the fifth Diablo person. There are five, so it's like a sick like a well we'd be replacing one of the dull ones yeah okay sorry necromancer yeah i mean i feel like people very much it's my it's a theme in my life people underestimate me you know as a as a warrior as a demon slayer, my abilities to destroy and cast spells and meteorites and things of that nature. Wow, you could do a lot of shit. I thought you would just do like one of that.

I could do it. No one ever read it. They just had to get the rest of it. Yes, they did. I just feel like everyone's so down and grim in the Diablo 4 universe, and you'd bring a level of levity to the mix. Yeah, you'd bring a lot of positivity to any project you're

on. I feel like that would be a nice counterpoint. And I wouldn't be British. That would be huge. Well, no, sorry Ron, I'm in your contract here. Yeah, it's gotta be British, actually. You gotta be British. It would be, people would be very upset.

You want more beans for breakfast, governor? That's great. I'm playing that game. An old monk is like, and then the demon Beelzebub ate all the children in the village. And then you just hop in there with some good cockney. Oh, no. That's an unfortunate combination. My name is Justin Mack, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frushing, and I know the best game of the week. Hi, my name is Ron, and I know the best game of the week. There it is. There it is. Ron Funch is most prolific uh besties guestie oh i didn't even like saying it when i said it i didn't like to hear you say it to say because the rest of us were here like and are on the same recording of you saying it which is

which is bad it's going to be evidence and some trial um ron i'm i'm always thrilled to have you back uh just so we can talk about it at the top and revisit at the end did you just really want to talk about video games or you got something that people can enjoy of yours a new a new product from uh funch's labs funch incorporated funchco always working on a new product i mean i really did just want to i've been playing a lot of diablo and i have strong opinions and it my opinions have strongly changed and i needed a format and friends in which to talk about it um i also am i will never not turn down plugs um i'm going on a summer tour with my good friend and great comedian blair sake um we're going to a bunch of places i won't name them all just go to rompunches.com see if i'm coming to your city because i don't tour all year around i usually

tour during the summer we go with water parks we eat cheese curds that's one of the places we're going madison wisconsin see you soon yeah we're going to the dales uh we are uh we're going to talk about diablo and it's going to be with ron it's going to be a lot of fun it's all going to happen right after this now ron i want to say one thing i i went to your website and looked at your tour dates and i couldn't help but notice on the website it says buy ticket now so are you encouraging people to go to a comedy show just on their own you can yes i certainly do don't i don't assume it's two yeah you can't just assume is it required that you go alone it's not required bring friends

bring family whoever you want but i've been doing more things i'm gonna go and i went to a concert alone last week and i'm very much that's great yeah hey ron you got to get over to um uh meow wolf while you're in denver oh my god fun it, it's fun. It's a best, man. It's amazing. Art installation is all this wild, like five floors of wild stuff. It's crazy. You gotta see it. Can we kill the devil already?

Let's kill the devil. Let's kill the devil. I don't even know if he's in this game. Ron has intrigued me with his, I wanna hear how your take has evolved, Ron. I mean, I don't think we need to set up too much. This is a pretty old franchise. It's an isometric action

RPG where you run around the sanctuary, killing a bunch of the devil's bad dudes and just some other bad dudes, and then you're trying to get to the devil, Diablo, so you can kill him. And this one, Lilith, who's the devil's cousin or best friend.

Niece? Niece, something. She is causing no shortage of of heartache so you gotta get your band adventures out there to go whip ass ron what did you what diablo 4 tell me about your tell me tell me how you play the other ones i guess we'll start there oh yeah yeah history would be nice yeah i mean my history with diablo has mostly been as an outsider when I was younger during the original and in Diablo 2 which people seem to be really excited about

at that time period I was not a PC gamer at all I was strictly console gamer yeah he said a lot of really fucked up stuff he was not PC in the slightest no not at all I was just you know Alvold have a ball for my hard R's, whichever word.

He's an equal opportunity offender. That's your problem. Come see me on tour if you can handle it. Leave your hangups at the door. The fudging show. And your your fucking phone lock those in this special vault uh but i just would always sometimes when you can't have something you just assume that it's bad so i was like this is just a nerdy game for dumb nerds and for i mean it is not wrong i'm not saying i was wrong from that perspective that's not where i made a mistake and i would just put it in the

same campus games of like world of warcraft and things of that nature where i'd be like this is for like 45 year old divorced dudes who hate their lives and don't want to be around their wives uh and just want to click click click and watch numbers fly because they're so overwhelmed by being a parent or being uh just involved in work and they're just like can i just turn my brain off and click click click and i hate it but i was like now that i am a 40 year old twice divorced man i'm like yeah you're right and you need that it is excellent like you're an ostradamus

you understood diablo perfectly you just weren't ready for it i just wasn't ready now i'm here and i'm i'll get all my friends together and we just go until the night got my level 30 sorcerer working and we just trying to build and avoid the go until the night got my level 30 sorcerer working and we just trying to build and avoid the rest of the world i will say from my from my experience that it is really night and day playing this with anybody else yeah versus yourself uh i i unfortunately just because of the way things work i'd spend the bulk of my time with it. I'm level, I think, 25 currently. I spent the bulk of my time just solo, and that can...

You could have asked, Justin. You could have asked. I'm right here. Well, I know, but you're always so busy. I'm so busy. And it really comes alive when you're able to play with other people. By yourself, I feel like the drive to keep getting... I know the gear and the loot is what these are all about,

but I didn't necessarily feel that push when I was doing it solo. But it was definitely improved by a group yeah i no no that that should be true unless you play with russ fresh dick in which case it could not be further from the truth i played with fresh well we played twice i played with him uh the other night and he's like oh hey don't worry We have like five minute little jaunt up north. We got to pick up this aspect that's great for only my character. You actually won't get anything. I'm like, that's fine.

He's like, don't worry. Afterwards, we're going to get something for you. There's something in here for you too. We're going to treat you right. And I'm like, great, great, great, great. We proceed to walk to, I shit you not, the furthest northern part of the entire map. I didn't know it went up that high. It is so far off the map that you are no longer even on the map.

We do an entire huge quest there. And he's like, oh, weird. There's no treasure at the end of this quest. There's just a door to the dungeon of the quest I actually need to do. Oh, how fun. Yeah, it was real fun. There's just a door to the dungeon of the quest I actually need to do. Wow. How fun. Yeah. It was real fun.

I didn't know, to be fair. And then afterwards, he's like, oh, man, this is so funny because not only am I getting the aspect I want, I keep getting these legendary items I want. I'm really sorry. I can't trade them, but the one I got, it's perfect for your goal. And then I had to leave. It was basically like I was on a roll in poker, and I had a giant stack of chips, and I was like, goodbye! It was like you were on a roll in poker where you were winning money that you could only give to me,

and then you're like, sorry, the rules are that I can't give it to my friends. That's true. They said not tradable. I can't trade legendaries to you. It sucks. It's against the rules. Anyway, the game's's great but don't ever play with your boy fresh ron what what what made you pick sorcerer uh well i just knew that this game could probably be very deep and very time consuming for me to pick characters and for to build a build so i just was like what's

the best character and what's the best build and people were like sorcerer was the best and then when i clicked on the sorcerer he had um my random generated guy was real cool he had dreads and he was seemed like a shaman a rastafarian who liked a lot of weed and and um like just hang out with jamaican people all the time so i was like yeah i'm going with this guy i do really like the fact every class can be any race you want you can pick the hair that you i wish there were more hair options there's only like 12 but it does have a a decent range in terms of hair options and where which is in contrast to like previous diablo games where

it was like well that definitely has to be a white guy or that has to be a whatever they look like it's nice yeah i went with the um the druid which griffin said he also got the druid but griffin said i switched i switched to barbarian um y'all. There is not a lot in terms of, I guess skill would be the word I'm looking for here. In terms of the different builds for Druid, the closest I got was if you have a lightning-focused build, your lightning strikes increase in size while you're casting. And there's an upgrade you can get where if it's less than four seconds between lightnings, then you can maintain the scope of that. So it's sort of like a momentum thing, right? You're trying to like kill as many people as you can with the lightning

and then hit more people to build up the resource that lightning uses and then using lightning again to try to keep your your lightning power combo going but in terms of like skip there is some like light um this was weird for me i i thought i had played more diablo it seems like something i'd really like because i like uh idle browser games and uh i never really have gotten into one very deeply and this is the first one that i've spent a considerable amount of time with. And I was surprised there's not even, there's like a dodge and for big bosses,

that's kind of, you can kind of sometimes basically avoid some attacks that way. But the rest of it just, it didn't seem to be a lot of skill focused. It seemed to be more, well, I don't know, not that. Was that the experience with the other classes? Oh, yeah.

Griffin, you just played as Bunker. I mean, I think I've played every class at this point, except Necromancer. I've played Necromancer. Okay. I don't want to play Necromancer because, like, when I see him, I'm like, you guys are some weird friends that i would not hang out with that's judgy well okay sometimes i see a skeleton i'm supposed to kill them and other

times i'm supposed to be like oh this one's my friend mine have jaunty hats that's how you can tell you know ron you do do that with humans every day so i don't know what's the murder uh yeah i i this is a weird game to talk about uh this close to launch which is not like a cop-out defense of it but diablo is is uh in the same vein of like a like an mmo in terms of uh what it is going for as opposed to a more traditional game and and so like i feel like this game is a different thing when you are like in the in the end game when you're doing the the higher world tiers um yeah i mean i played a ton of diablo 3 and yeah i got to that end game and I still don't feel it's like a quote high skill game as much as it is like pushing for specific things and then your build is awesome and then you kind of cruise pretty well. Ron, with the sorcerer, is there a skill based component to that?

Like, is there anything that's like tricky to keep going? Well, I mean, I just find that I do have a second airy dodge that I can use with my teleport. Yeah. And it seems a lot about just area of control. The main thing that I have is I've been doing a mixed magic build, but I have my ultimate. What this is, this wonderful fire serpent that reaches out and hugs and constricts people. And while it's active, any other fire based magic that i use does not cost me any mana so it's similar to what you're talking about i can kind of juggle

i can set off the snake and then just hit spam meteors for a while and hopefully murder a large group of people before my magic even runs out yeah it seems like positioning is the big uh like yeah strategy thing it's like holding doors there there is there i don't know it seems like positioning is the big uh like strategy thing it's like holding doors there is there i don't know i feel like this is one area where this game really succeeds because i have i've in all the classes i've played and messed around with different builds in each of them i right now i'm playing a rend barbarian which is about like stacking up bleed effects on enemies but his big thing is he has this super strong move called death blow that just like hits in front of a cone in front of them uh and it does a just a shit ton of damage and if you kill someone with it it automatically resets the cooldown and it doesn't cost any

resources that's like the only gimmick to it but if you don't kill someone with it it takes like 15 seconds to recharge and so with with this character it's about like hitting them until they look like they are in that that window and then smashing the the hell out of them which is like a kind of a different consideration from you know playing a playing a druid where you're trying to keep your health above 80 for a certain amount of time so you get this one super huge crazy hit every 12 seconds like there is there is a it's not challenging yet i think it does get more challenging when you get closer to the end game but there's there's lots of different stuff that you are kind of forced to think about depending on what what build you play and and i think that that helps you find the right class

and build for you that has like the right, you know, rhythm. It does seem like you build yourself into a specific like a specific build for your character. And that dictates the like 30 second loop that you're doing over and over and over again. So Necromancer, I start by generating a corpse. start by generating a corpse i turn that corpse into like something that like sucks in all the enemies into one big batch and then i explode the corpse and make a whole bunch of like damage over time pools and i've done that like a million times at this point and it's satisfying like it feels fucking great and i like getting loot that like in further enhances that ability but i think it does encourage you to mix it up a little bit.

And it's easy to do that. You can respec at any time. It's pretty cheap. It's easy to try different things. But I think if you fall into the same thing over and over again, it can get a little stale sometimes. Yeah. I just, I feel like I don't, I don't want to be, be negative about it because I've heard so much positivity. But just to give my experience as somebody who played by themselves quite a bit, the thing to me that I think was not necessarily clicking, because like I said, I do love idle games, and this is a similar idea, right?

I mean, when we're talking about dopamine distribution, like the way the level scale with your level it takes away uh the sense of like i've gotten more powerful because when you level up everything else kind of levels up with you and because of that you don't get the sense of going back to other areas and just absolutely laying waste to the stuff that used to beat you up pretty bad. And that's core to the sense of power in there. scale up with my level and I fight them and then my level goes up and everything else's level goes up and it's kind of similar for, for loot. Then I started to get this nagging sense of like, do you all need me here for this? Like it's like,

do you need me around or could this all kind of happen like on my phone? And I check it every 15 minutes to get my resources? You know, like it just – without that sort of like power arc feedback, I didn't feel a real compulsion to keep going. I feel like what you're seeing change is the fireworks, right? Like I agree with you that it's not the like oh i'm becoming more and more powerful um in terms of how i destroy enemies but in terms of like what the spectacle looks like on screen and then the game for me is like i don't know remember back in the day when we all used phones at home and you would like have a doodle pad near your phone and you would doodle while

you talked because you needed something to do with your hands, that's like... Not even at all. No? Not even a little bit. What you just said is one. That wasn't a normal thing. I did that when I was a reporter a lot, actually. I would always have something to sketch on. Thank you. But that's what I think of a game like this. Only old heads like us remember that. Thank you, thank you.

No, that's a diablo. It is an excuse for men who have stunted emotional capacities and an inability to, like, spend time with each other without doing something else to it. Hey, don't you mean people? People that have stunted emotional capacities? No, I mean men.

Whoa, bold stance, Chris Plant. What? What? It's true. That's like, that's where we have, like, sports and other cultural things, because there's, like, an entire history of, like, men being bad at this, and now we have sports and other cultural things because there's an entire history of men being bad at this,

and now we have Diablo. But anyone can play it. No, no, no. Let me be clear. Anybody can play it. I'm just saying. He's talking about the history of the concept. Of the human experience.

Anyone can play it, but only men are using it to replace emotions and connection. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. anyone can play but only men are using it to replace emotions and connection yes thank you thank you i just i feel like okay this is what is actually confusing to me when you're talking about and i completely understand that but it's almost always my argument also that like if you're just having a game on kind of in the background where you're chatting with people like pretty much any game works in that context. So what about Diablo? No, I don't agree with that strongly.

Well, okay, sorry. No, that's what I wanted to say. Almost every game is improved by that, right? Like it's like a better experience. Yeah, what? What is it about when you're playing with other people that, and this is not a challenge, it's a question. Like what is it about playing with other people where diablo is like a smooth experience for for everybody obviously the scaling that i just complained about is a big part of why

that works well right yeah ron you've done a lot of multiplayer so like just in terms of yeah what makes this a good like yeah oh absolutely and i gotta say that i agree with with most of the things you said as well there's that's one of my complaints that i've said to myself about the game is that i do wish that there were just certain areas that i could go back and go like oh this was the beginning area and now i can go back and just one hit kill a bunch of things i agree with that completely but i also agree we talk about where the spectacle of the screen where my spells me noticing that my spells seem to be getting bigger and grander is very enjoyable for me. But to answer your question that you just asked, I think it's the ease of use mostly.

That is such a great drop in, drop out game. Any friends that I've had, it's like two buttons to get them in. They send me a quick request and then i get to just notice the request which is a button and then accept or deny and then they pop right in um and sometimes um it's one of those games where it's like okay you can come in and help me out in this area but they can also just go in and shop and do their own thing and and go off and do things in the main overworld we can be completely other sides of the map with no issue but if i go to initiate an event then they are like teleported to me so you kind of get the best of both worlds and it's been the game that we've

been playing the most in my group of friends to just kind of relax and talk and i mean for my life i i love a game that's a great like okay i can play this for a little bit and put it down and pick up a bong take a bong hit put it back down i didn't die nothing happened not every game provides that for you oh i thought you meant like in life you didn't die irl from the gnarly bong speaking of easy use i i love how this game is like bending over backwards to make it like a pleasant experience like it is not trying to get in your way at all in a way that feels like uh like for example when you're in and i know this is like just diablo but as somebody who's a little bit newer to this like the idea because i think they've had scrolls that do this before but the fact that when you're in a dungeon and your inventory fills up you just press a button and just be back in town to do the stuff you need to do and then hop right back into your dungeon

where you're at that's great that's a lot more fun than like looking at a bunch of treasure that you can't pick up because you're like buried in the middle of a dungeon um it's a very it's a it's a it's a really nice consideration um i yeah i agree about the power curve being a little weird because of how the game scales but i also think the multiplayer is so good and easy that it is well worth the trade-off. Who were you playing with and not inviting me? I was playing with our buddy Slice a little bit. Oh, you guys couldn't send the... That's cool.

Well, we play pretty late at night. Oh, okay. It's dad time. It's dad time. I was going to say, the reason to address Justin's point, and Ron mentioned it too, the idea that there's not an easy area,

when you play multiplayer pretty much everything this isn't the case for late late in the game but pretty much everything in the first let's say 10 hours of the game will scale to the player not the player party so yes if i'm level 23 and my wife i've been playing with my wife a lot she's level 18 everything she's fighting will be 18 everything i'm fighting will be level 23 and the loot will scale accordingly it's incredible so you can go anywhere with anyone who's any level and really have a great time for everyone where you feel like you're being productive except for chris plant who i kind of screwed over but everyone else has a great time oh well i want to talk about that too but our our friend slice also plays a barbarian and he's like level 44 i think i'm like 26 and we're playing basically the same build. So it's like I was right. It was like take your son to work day. And I was watching like him do all this cool shit that, you know, once I get legendaries that fundamentally change how my core skills work.

change how my core skills work one one day i'll be able to get there uh i i wanted to say you talking about you guys playing it really did remind us of how a session that i had last night where our friend was like hey i you're a barbarian i'm a barbarian i'm gonna take you to the cool barbarian hangout spot where you can get this great aspect that's gonna let you like do open up the door to all these different builds and so we trekked there through, I would say a very visually impressive, but like pretty sparse open world for quite a long time. And then when we got there, the dungeon wasn't open yet because I hadn't progressed in like one part of the story enough.

And that was, the open world I think is kind of a mixed bag it's huge and it's cool to explore and find out like the the dungeons represent like a really neat little rewarding gameplay loop you know 15 minute 20 minute gameplay loop uh there's like statues to find that like upgrade your stats i just wish they kind of had the strength of their convictions a little bit more with the open world to make it not like uh gated as as much as it kind of so if your buddy goes in there and you you can't join them well in this instance the the dungeon wasn't available for for either of us because we were playing in in in my uh realm got it or Still under construction. Was there a little gif of like a spinning traffic cone?

Yeah, there was a guy with a little stick figure with a hard hat and a pickaxe. Was it Mr. Resetti? It was Mr. Resetti. I actually, I don't know if you guys messed around with the way that legendaries work in this game. A little bit. It's interesting.

I haven't gotten any. You haven't done any of the dungeons? No, he hasn't gotten legendaries. in this game yeah a little bit it's interesting power you haven't done any of the dungeons no he hasn't gotten legendaries oh okay no yeah if you by beating the dungeon it's it's a really smart idea that is maybe a little in the you know get getting in the weeds to explain it but legendary items like really do make builds what they are right they there's one for the whirlwind barbarian where it creates a vacuum that sucks enemies in like it's huge things like change how the skills work but they don't start dropping until much you know later in the game or if you beat dungeons you can basically unlock

slightly weaker versions of these legendary effects that you can slap onto pieces of gear at will and so you can get access to that really what is traditionally like high level end game stuff in in in diablo like as early as you can go to those dungeons which will be scaled to your level uh and and run them which is and it removes the rng aspect of like oh i hope i get this thing yeah there's definitely a lot of legendary like effects that aren't available in that in that collectible codex but there's enough there that you know i have made diversions to clear most of the dungeons that i see just so i can like start padding out that codex because it it works for every character you have from that point on which is huge hey ron did you buy horse armor i think i did i haven't

used it because i can't use them out yet i haven't reached them there's a mission i haven't unlocked to be able to use my mount but it does say that i have a pre-order horse bonus right but you didn't go to the store the like in-game store to buy more horse armor no it seems like the monetization as it is right now before the battle pass is launched is a fucking joke it's so rough man there's like 28 single set uh like aesthetic only works for one class like that only works for one class yeah it's who is it for i mean it's for whales i guess how nice some of the things are where you can like when you salvage your gear and so then you can take pieces you can continue to upgrade your score and your level but then you can take the pieces of gear that you like and still wear those and i think that's a wonderful take i didn't know that

oh that's great yeah the transmog system is so fucking great and there's so much armor that i don't know why anyone would pay 30 for a fucking skull helmet it's uh it it's also free like the not the that stuff but the uh wardrobe system it's not like you're consuming so compared to like destiny where it's like okay you have to do these weekly quests to get special special cloth that you can then use once a week to unlock one piece of aesthetic upgrade it's it's cool to be able to just mess with that stuff at will because so much barbarian armor looks so shitty did the open world to you guys can i get your thoughts on that because i was really desperate hoping that i would get a mount because i found like uh navigating through the

open world it feels like it is definitely with multiplayer in mind and that seems like the point where you're supposed to be like bringing the conversation more serious, right? Like we're going to be wandering through the snow like, so how's your sister doing? That seems like, you can't do that where you're fighting the devil but that's the moment to be like,

hey, you holding up okay? Hey, did you buy tickets for Ron's show yet? fight the devil, but that's the moment to be like, hey, you holding up okay? Cause I just wanted to check on you. Hey, did you buy tickets for Ron's show yet? Yeah, cause we could go together. It's not weird. I know it says just ticket, but you can get more than one. So you're asking, do you think it feels sparse? Don't you think it's boring?

Yeah, so I will say this. I did prioritize over every other stat. I could be speccing for intelligence or other damage doing stats. The stat that I prioritized was my run speed. I have run speed boots and I have run speed amulet for whatever, necklace. And I can now run, I think, like 15% faster. That definitely helps. I'm still waiting to get the horse.

I know the horse takes a while. You have to go through to get the horse. I know the horse takes a while. You have to go through like all the first three acts. So it takes a while. I think it really only became a problem for me when I was traveling like great, like when I was walking with Plant and it took forever. But if I'm mostly staying in the same region, the walking doesn't feel too bad.

And people can tell, like if you're in a party with someone, you could teleport right to them.'s nice so that helps it's definitely like there are definitely patches there that are pretty dull um i had to go out west to do the druid like class quest kind of oh yeah yeah i just did that last night and the it the waypoints got like weirdly sporadic out that way so it's like it became this thing of like wow i've come a really long distance and there is nothing around me that i can like unlock to teleport to yeah some of the waypoints are story gated which is like oh weird yeah so so some of those like you won't unlock until you start dipping into Act 2 and 3. Well, and the Druid quest actually unlocks a waypoint right where it is.

Okay. See, I had to do that for the Barbarian quest. Like, at level 15 for each class, you unlock this huge sort of class-defining mechanic. And for me, I had to go literally across the map, east to west, to get to where this thing was. And I started Act 3 when I hadn't barely dipped into Act 2 yet, just because it was like, well, I'm fucking here, and I don't want to have to run all the way out here again. And if those are the kinds of things that you're thinking about

while exploring an open world, then maybe some more thought should have gone into making that open world fun and interesting to explore. Like, man, this is going to be very unfair for the rest of the year. But compared to Tears of the Kingdom, which is just like, I want to run around and open up all the open world bits. Or I'm just going to run around and do all these shrines that people have been talking about. Like, you can't always do that here. That's like the years of updates right we're gonna come back in like three years and i'll be

like oh yeah we we we did not prioritize it so that you're you're not just repeating that you know like destroy the three pillars side thing yeah i've done that a lot yeah yeah and like five years from now there will be trillions of these like i don't know it feels like that's the thing that that is left to repair as they do updates. I'm not saying that it's not bad now. I'm just saying I think that it'll get a lot better. So we don't know what's in the Battle Pass. I think they've said it's two armor sets in the Battle Pass.

And I think they're doing the thing where you, by finishing the Battle Pass, you unlock the currency that you would have bought for like the same cost as the battle pass which is right it's free money folks right i guess the question i have for the room is are you guys that into this that you would like go through that i think i will i think i think maybe i think i will too i love cosmetics so like it's i I like something to work for. I'm not going to pay $30 for one set of armor, but if it's $10 and it lasts me a month, I would do that. Yeah.

And Griff, you gotta show out for your buddy Slice when you guys are playing together by yourselves. You gotta make sure you're looking good. You don't want to embarrass him. Yeah, no, that is huge.

Just in barbarian culture, that's such a, that's a problem really. Would you guys wear shirts? Like you wouldn't understand it's a barbarian thing? Yeah, don't talk to me until I've had my barbarian, is what it says. I was a strong barbarian's wife. Barbarians do it with their dicks covered in animal skins yeah big johnson plant did mention this which i agree with is i don't have a driving desire for like more grimdark armor which is

gonna be kind of the rule of law probably for the first year but the second they start adding like cartoon monkeys and shit i am like all over that weird rainbow breaking the aesthetics. You think those will be a focus for the... I think anime characters by 2025. No joke. Fucking Halo Infinite added bunny ears within three months. That's fair.

It's gonna happen. It's how it goes. You wanna make that real money. Weaker position. A little bit of that fire sale desperation over at bungee halo h343 that's what i love about call of duty you see all these packs and sometimes they're like contradictory to each other or they'll just be like here's the 420 pack and the say no to drugs pack the cinco de mayo pack and the build that wall pack oh man it's uh it's it's you know what it's a it's a lot of especially if you have a group of

folks to play with it is a lot is a lot of fun i need i realize you know what i realized though what playing this i need to buckle that i was trying to savor zelda i think i need to buckle down and just finish it because it's tough to put any game up against that like like boy it'd be more fun to be playing zelda right now i really gotta finish zelda so i can like properly enjoy non zelda other video games have games. Have you finished it? We'll do it in segment B. Let's take a break and then we'll talk about other stuff. Ron, you on that Zelda train?

Of course. Yes. Where is your mindset at? Are we back now? Yeah, we're back. That was the break. That's it. Okay. I know. Sometimes it flows so good sometimes that it's hard to tell what is showing.

Yeah. It's just hanging with buds for me. I got so many. I mean, again, I'm happy to have a place to express these feelings. I have so many feelings about this game i love it so much um everyone's so pretty and beautiful um i had a crush on raru for like 30 minutes and then i saw um i forget how to pronounce her name i think it's pira uh where sure i was like okay when i last saw you were a little girl but you done grown up you a full

woman now and you like 120 so it's really messing with me in all types of emotions i mean it's exactly what i wanted a sequel for breath of the wild and the fact that i'm the mechanics in the building are so fun and so enjoyable and the game is so much deeper than before um and but my only and i love like going between the world and the sky and and um like the going down into the chasms and stuff i think loses its luster after a couple times you go through where it feels like scary almost it feels like an unfinished area almost just where it's just like okay you're gonna come back in and put in some more colors and some npcs down here at some point but it's just no it's just empty in flora and fauna and uh the game's ugly that's

just downstairs i understand what happened here see you gotta light it up down there The game's ugly. That's all. Just downstairs. I don't understand what happened here. See, you got to light it up down there and turn on. Yeah, but this is dark. It's hard. It's dark. It's very dark. No, I have to put in the bulb.

It is not. I agree with Ryan. It's not a gorgeous experience down there. It's like they figured out they could do it. Yeah. Like, you know, guys, this is hard. We just push invert sky and then there's a basement on here it's wild no i just finished the um i just finished the uh well

i'm like mid i'm on the boss of the fire temple the which it's been the boss is pretty annoying i'm sure but anyway i like that boss i like that boss me enough because you can do these out of order I'm also in the fire temple but this is my second temple yeah it's my third I did lightning and wind before this

and I was pretty excited that I could just make a little hover bike and scoot around the fire temple, get my business done in like five minutes. And they're like, well, we've got an intricate map of a mine cart tracks.

Like, Oh, that's interesting. I have a hover bike. So I'm just going to bop up there. If that's cool by you. And my little, my little chode buddy starts Sonic spinning on the front of my hover bike.

And I'm a fully operational battle station. It fantastic i that that whole dungeon i think i alluded to this in one of the earlier episodes it's like they didn't think about the fact that you can grind on rails on on your shield now and man i just fucking popped on the offspring and beat that whole dungeon in like 10 minutes just tony hogking up. It's like, you have to flip the switch here, and then obviously you're going to stick the fan to this minecart. And I'm like, or I can just take a big run at it and then hop on my board

and grind my way to the objective. I love that temple. I think that's one of the best things about this game, right? Where so many things you solve and you don't know if any of these are the right way to do things you just are like oh i just this is the way i did it and i think that level of freedom and creativity is what makes this this game so magical and why it's probably

going to be i mean right now my i mean i don't know if you guys ever do a mid check-in mid-year check-in but uh my three favorite games of the year are of course the zelda game um probably this diablo game and then hi-fi rush those are my current three favorites that is a good game used to have a weekly check-in where it was like king of the hill oh god was how besties used to be formatted so you'd pick a game of the year and then each week you'd have to see if that new game knocked out the old game yeah that's a wild structure but yeah there's a really mean spirit it was me too high fine rush was good why don't you play resident evil 4 you like that one oh of course that would be right on the list as well but it's always harder for me to

um give that much patience to remake even though they did a bunch of new things to it i'm loving it i've been stuck in a fight for past three weeks i've been playing on nightmare mode oh my god well that's what they told me it said if you played the game before starting nightmare mode and i was like i played this game like eight times so i should probably do that and i agree it's been thrilling and very difficult but it also been very difficult and i'm fighting mutant crawzer i don't remember exactly his name oh yeah that's pretty late yeah fucking fight yeah and so i've been stuck in that fight i got low low ammo low everything And so it's been a battle.

Anybody been playing any other cool stuff? I got a couple hole-in-ones in mini-golf recently at the Sherman Oaks Castle Park, and I just got to give that a shout-out. We weren't keeping score. Were they on the trickier holes or the easy ones? I mean, I don't feel like

that. It's not a judgment. It feels like old besties in here. or like the easy ones? I mean, I don't feel like... It's not a judgment. Wow, Rust. It's not a judgment. It feels like old besties in here all of a sudden. Is it on one of those old... Let me challenge that. These grons are guests, man. Let me challenge your accomplishment, Ron, real quick,

if I may. Poke some holes in that real quick. Hey, Ron, could fucking anybody have done that or was it like cool or something? Anybody could have done it, probably. Was it one of those ones where it just like you hit it in the tube and then the tube does all the work are you just let it go no bumpers um wow but you don't have to

defend yourself wrong you know i get his point he got thinking it's just i went there that day being like you know what i've come to this place hundreds of times and it's i've never gotten a hole-in-one this will be a little dream come true to get a hole in one and this may go forth for me. And then I got two in one round and so I just, you know, and I had nowhere to share this joy. You probably have been riding that high

all the way up till now. I gotta say, the anecdote was a lot more exciting with that context that you just added in Russ's defense. I didn't know it was an underdog story. It is a lot more thrilling. I know how bad you wanted it. I'm going through a divorce,

I got a custody battle tomorrow. So it really had been like, what been getting me going and getting me through is going like, oh, hole in one. Maybe that means things are gonna go. Wow, Russ, you've taken so much. You should maybe bring the scorecard to the custody battle, that might help.

What a power play. That should seal things one way or the other. Your honor. Hey, hold that gavel for a second. I'm going to need you to peep something real quick. Take a look at this. Yeah, that's a one, my friend.

Mr. Fungus, you need to stop yelling objection and holding up your mini golf scorecard you're not trying to contradict anything um i want to i mean we talk about film sometimes here i went and saw that new spider verse flick and that's a good that's a good moment i want to know nothing about it that is a movie yeah i went into i'm not going to say anything because i i also wanted, and I'm glad I did. A little heavy for a six-year-old. Yeah, I wouldn't bring it. Even the last one was heavy. A little bit, but the last one was also one of Henry's favorite movies ever, and one of mine.

I mean, mostly heavy in a narrative narrative mechanics. Yeah, thematics. Sort of. Yeah. Yeah, people are dying. Well, no, like almost like sci-fi jargony, like multiverse-esque stuff. It really dives into that stuff a lot harder than the first film even. And so I could just see Henry's eyes glaze over sometimes. But man, holy shit.

could just see Henry's eyes glaze over sometimes but uh man holy shit some of the best I mean the best like animated action sequences in film uh take place in this in this movie so it's uh I'm excited to watch it uh again because there's it's very very uh like I said it's very dense there's a lot happening there that I feel like I didn't even catch my first time around has nobody else seen it I haven't seen it I I saw the holy mountain it was really it was really upsetting it was really gross it's like a religious like a really is this kurt cameron in that one no no it's like it's like a 70s like midnight movie where they like it's there's just lots of lots of blood and like and and wieners is that the yodorovsky movie yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sounds like you've been through it been through it man you know i saw that and now i my life has changed anyway we don't need to talk about it anymore it

was really dark and upsetting let's talk about. You could have gone to see Spider-Man instead. I saw that too. It was pretty good. I saw a fun movie that I enjoy. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen it. I love to promote praise because it's a smaller movie and it's in the original IP. And I love, those are rare to see these days. I saw a great movie called Polite Society. I don't know if you've seen it. Oh, don't know oh yeah how was it that movie looks

good i enjoyed it so much it's so stylish so well written very funny um i always judge a movie by the fact that i was jealous that i was not in it so that made me i'm like oh i wish i could have been in there i don't know who i would have played because it was mostly about teenage girls. But it was a great movie. Anyone who's thinking about seeing it or if you've not heard it, please go check it out because I love seeing more original movies like this. Great trailer. I saw the trailer. I haven't seen it yet, but I was like immediately like, oh, yeah, I'd see this shit.

Totally. That's what happened to me. I saw the trailer and I was like, is my jam there's fun outfits there's karate martial arts stuff going on and then there's comedy and a strong female perspective i'm in hell yeah hey uh ron you that new trolls movie it's gotta be cool i bet if you're not but that's cool that that's cool to be asked back you don't have to go from her to now I am in the new Trolls movie but if it makes you guys feel any better

I think I recorded for about 20 minutes and then they were like we're gonna need you back for another time and then next thing I knew they were like we're gonna need you back for another time and then next thing i knew they were like movies coming out i was like oh so you didn't okay it was just gold the first time you crushed it here comes the trolls with oh your favorite trolls are here the whole thing

you won't be missing a single troll so I think I'm in for perhaps two minutes or maybe they you know they also could just have my face you could be like oh cooper's here he's over there busy doing something and then they'll move on with the story also two minutes takes like six months for them so that's like a lot yeah it's true i wouldn't give it

anything for two minutes oh i'm not complaining i'm not complaining i did voice work for the video game that's coming out and that made me happy i always wanted to be a voice in a video game is that your first one yeah i did another one but it was such a small thing and nobody ever played it and i don't even bring it up you just did it's a game called thief of thieves yeah exactly no troll in the title oh this is a different game that was a different that was the first time I did a voice in a game. This is the only time where people might see or play it, maybe. You could be like Griffin and I, where the game we were most prominently featured in

on a robot golf, we were like the voice of our announcers. And it was an aspect of the game that was actively actively derided like not just like oh that were the were you guys you know it was actively called out as like detrimental to the core product they just make so many jokes all the time and it's like that wasn't our we recorded the jokes we did not determine the density of said jokes and how they were implemented in the game yeah that's not it's like if they were like, man, Ron Funchess' performance in the new Trolls movie is not great because they play all of his lines all at the

same time. And you can't really make out anything he's saying because all 20 of his lines are happening simultaneously. 100 Foot Robot Golf came out in October of 2016. I love that game. I think it's a good game. The reviews all said this is the worst thing that has happened

this entire year in this season. This is the worst thing about 2016 is the McElroy Brothers and 100-foot RoboGolf. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. Do you want to thank people for reviews, Russ? I would love to. Thank you to the following people for writing reviews

for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. We have ItBeRavi, we have Dominic Vesey, and just another McElboy. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast we have it be ravi we have dominic vc and just another mackle boy thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts um and uh yeah let's recap what games we talked about yeah we talked about diablo 4 we talked about zelda and talked about that new spider-Verse movie, Polite Society, and The Holy Mountain, which you can watch all of them at home. I think Polite Society is VOD. Spider-Verse isn't out. No, yeah, Spider-Verse.

You're going to have to go to the theater for that one. Ron, again, remind people where they can hear about your tour. They can go all about things and learn about me. RonFunches.com, go go see me i'll just name some random dates i'll i'll denver by the time this is out i'll probably be back from denver but i'm going to uh baltimore maryland i'm going to olympia washington the hotbed of comedy i'm going to chicago i'm going to bloomington indiana i'm going all over the place. And the best way to find out is go to RonFunches.com. Come see

me on this summer tour. You can also watch Loot on Apple TV+, which is a show I'm on with Maya Rudolph. And watch Harley Quinn on HBO Max, because we got another season coming out. So that makes me feel good. Love that show. And where exactly can we stream 80 for Brady?

You must. I think it's on Paramount+. It's on Amazon. It's everywhere. Purchase it. I got it on Blu-ray. Yeah. And I'm not lying.

I have it on Blu-ray sitting right next to me. They sent me a press copy. Don't tell me you didn't open it because then all the value is lost. You got to keep it in its original packaging. Is it in Criterion yet or are they going to add it later? Oh, it was pre-added, I believe. They knew.

Who added next week's game? I probably should have written a game because someone has replaced it with Leisure Suit Larry. I can't even say it. Why not? Leers of the King come. Like, I just think it's Le even say it why not layers of the king come like i just think it's leisure suit larry layers of the king come that's fucking nothing juice oh i came up with it really quickly i mean to be fair i didn't like think about it before a time like i just kind

of went for it i think we're gonna do system shock the remake next week oh are you absolutely sure is final fantasy out next week that'd be an interesting retrospective on that franchise all right um i'm looking forward to that ron funchess thank you so much man it's always so nice to have you here you're such a delight it's a pleasure just like talking about games thank you for having absolutely and thanks to you for listening we'll be back with you again next week until then be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!