The Besties - Diving Into the Best Games of Q1

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

With the first three months of the year behind us, we're taking a beat to discuss our favorite games so far, and there've been a lot. Did you know there's a Peaky Blinders VR game?? Games discussed: Dredge, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Yakuza: Ishin, RE4 Remake, Forward: Escape the Fold, Paranormasight, Dead Space, Metroid Prime: Remastered, Octopath Traveler 2, Tchia, You Must Build a Boat, Dark Souls 3, Brotato Premium, Minecraft: Caves and Cliffs Soundtrack Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Okay, so this is a little bit controversial, and I don't want to get canceled over this, but I've been very curious about artificial intelligence. I saw the news, right? Did they finally get that going? They did. Yeah, they're spinning that up in a major way, dude. And what percentage of that is small boys recreated with like a toy that you just buy? Half. Easy half.

Okay. It's like super easy. That's what I'm worried about is is i i made my own oh cool okay yeah does it have a bowl cut i i want i haven't gotten like tested a whole lot is his love real even though he is not um well that's what we can find out so i if it's cool by you i'm just gonna kind of like tap him in um and you can ask him like a few questions wow this is a long wind up let's hear it okay i'm gonna use i just ask it any question oh um write a letter to my question yeah not a gram. I thought it could be like a prompt. Can you write a letter to my

We can try whatever the hell you want. Can you write a letter to my grandma apologizing that I did not send her a birthday present this year? Okay, well let me just type it in. I mean, if the letter is just going to be sent, we're not actually going to read the letter.

Oh, I have to give it the prompt. Okay, okay, okay, okay. And here we go. I don't know if Charlie's silence here today is right or wrong. I'm not a judge or jury, but I can tell you this. He won't sell anybody out to buy his future. Frank Slade, scent of a woman.

What the fuck? So that was just a quote from a scent of a woman? Yeah, that seems kind of broken. Is there a way for the AI to dismantle? No, no, no. Let's just try it again. Let's just try it again. Let's just try it again.

One more time. What do you, what is, okay. Who starred in Superman 4 alongside Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman? And let me just ask you this, Chris Plant. Is there a way for you to just read the response instead of having the robot read? No, no, no. It only works that way. I think it only works if the robot reads.

Yeah. Got it, okay. So who starred alongside Gene Hackman and Christopher Reeve in Superman 4, Quest for Peace? So who starred alongside Gene Hackman and Christopher Reeve in Superman 4, Quest for Peace? I always tell the truth, even when I lie. Tony Montana, Scarface. Okay. So it seems like movie quotes is kind of the only thing that you're going to do.

And specifically Pacino quotes. Pacino quotes. Yeah. Should we try one more? Yeah. It seems like I know the kind of result. What date is Barbie releasing in theaters? All I want to talk about.

Say hello to my little friend. So that's another quote from Albert. You know what it is? Yeah, I know what it is, Chris Plant. It occurs to me that you maybe created an owl instead of an ai i think you're right i think that's what i did i think i think i switched up the l and the i do you remember justin when you said this was a long wind up in the first 30 seconds i was a fucking idiot man i didn't know what i was talking about. It was just about to take off, man. I didn't realize

I was stumbling into my favorite New Herald Pinter play. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the year. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the Q1 fiscal quarter. Actually, it's Q4 fiscal Q1 calendar. Yeah. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best games of the winter season.

My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. My friend, just by listening, you have joined our illustrious ranks. We are so happy to have you with us. We are going to be taking a moment now that we've made it through Q1 of the year, of the calendar year. We're going to take a moment to look back at these past few months and some of our highlights. Stuff that maybe you want to check out if you want to be, you know, all caught up for our game of the year conversation when that comes up. be all caught up for our game of the year conversation when that comes

up. Chris, plant, anything I'm forgetting to mention here about this bold stance on great games? It's the episode where you feel like you missed a couple episodes. Hey, you're caught up. Hey, you want to join Besties for

the first time? We've got a spot right on the beautiful train waiting for you. It's a train? It's a train. after this well let him do we're gonna do ads and then choo-choo uh so who wants to who wants to start off okay so we are diving into the best games of i guess quarter one january through march and i'm gonna start off with a little game called dredge we've talked a lot about dredge most recently so and i've not been there for a lot of that conversation and i i would love to hear more about it because i have played about an hour and a half of that game and i still feel like I kind of don't get it yet. Oh, not for you.

Not for you. Interesting. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's a delightful mashup of Lovecraftian horror and fishing and with like a pretty stunning art design and great music and very vibey and chill and you actually get to drive the boat around,

which is a surprisingly rare thing in a fishing game. A lot of them are just like- Love to drive a boat around. Driving the boat around, which is a surprisingly rare thing in a fishing game. A lot of them are just like... Love to drive a boat around. Driving the boat around feels amazing. My big problem is the boat is way too slow. Oh, well, you haven't upgraded. Like a super fast speed boat. Upgrade those engines, buddy.

But that would require me to play more with slow boat. It's very easy to get a new engine, man. Your beginning engine is really bad. Yeah, that's true. It's kind of a video game thing where a boat is slow and then you put new stuff in it and then boats pass.

I think it's a delightful take on a genre that really has not gotten a lot of love at all, which is to say, I guess it's the fishing genre, but it's also an open world exploration game, I guess in the sense of like Wind Waker in that way.

Yeah. And it's ocean related, which how many games are ocean related apart from Sea of Thieves? Speaking of those boat engines, any of you put in two props that didn't match?

No, do you go in a circle? A fast one and a slow one? And it just, yeah, you're not going to have fun. That's pretty fun. No, no, no. That's false, Chris're not going to have fun. That's pretty fun. You're not going to be boating. No, no, no. That's false, Chris Platt.

He tells you, don't do it. I'm pretty sure you just go, it's just additive. It's like a stat. You've got to add a little slice there. That's fine. It's a really cool, it's a really cool thing. It made me really like it. If you get into the group event, I would be interested, upgrade the boat. i don't know how you played an hour and a half and haven't upgraded your yeah

that seems crazy that seems pretty wild to me i mean i upgraded my fishing shit i guess my i guess oh maybe you prioritize fishing too much all the better to catch more fish to sell to get more money to uh uh you know yeah it's like the old lady who swallowed the fly basically yeah um no i i i am going to play more of this one i oh my shit do you think it does sound like your shit griffin i i think i i'm not surprised you don't like it because i don't think it's like a it doesn't sound like a griffin game yes it is i like a lot of the stuff in it i like vibey fishing sibs yeah loves power curving i think it's i think honestly i'm playing a lot of games like this Vibey fishing sims with little crafty elements. And there's a power curve, which Griffin loves. I think, honestly, I'm playing a lot of games like this right now.

And you're not on the curve yet. And I'm not. Well, I feel like I have unfinished business in other titles before I hop in. I've been starting a lot lately and not finishing them.

So many games we've talked about this year I have not. I've played to the point where we talked about it on the show and then hopped into the very next thing. There are a lot of games. There's a lot of games. Well, and honestly, this is not one of my three games of the year. Maybe it should be, but I played, I think Lightfall

kind of sucked up a lot. I have not had a ton of gaming time this year, and I have spent, I would say, an outsized amount of it playing. Big mistake. Playing Destiny. I mean, I've had fun. You know what? We mentioned it by name.

I'm going to do one of mine because this is sort of the kind of throwaway, couldn't think of a good third game that hadn't been taken already, is Sea of Thieves, man. I feel okay bringing this because it's been such a non thing for five years i feel like it's been kind of at least in my mind sort of the butt of a of a joke like wow there's still uh still still people playing sea of thieves huh i am glad i have given that game another shake because it is, it has the most fun I have had playing games this year has been playing sea of thieves either with other people or even solo sometimes. It's,

it's come a long way, baby. I think, although I know juice, you've spent some more time with it now in our, our, our streams and it seems like you're still pretty cool on it. I don't.

Without the loop of some sort of like without any sort of power curve I find it hard to engage with. I'm just not motivated by treasure. I feel you. Who isn't motivated by treasure? Just the concept of treasure.

Yeah, I mean, it's just nothing good. I don't care about any aesthetic stuff so yeah where it has clicked for me i think is engaging with the pvp side of it um because it's that's sort of what the game has been based around always uh it's the reason that there is no power curve it's the reason for most of the design decisions that sort of create the framework of the game. And that was not appealing to me because that's like not my jam. But since I have started doing it and stopped, you know, running away from every fight because I have treasure on my ship and instead just turning and seeing how much of a fight I can put. three ship battle against two other enemy ships at the same time around this skeleton fort.

That was just sort of idly launching cannons, the cannon balls at the three of us as we duked it out. Uh, and it was like me on my baby ship and another guy on his baby ship against like a big old ship. And the two baby ships, I sort of teamed up. We formed an uneasy Alliance to take down the big ship.

It was, it was it was really genuinely very thrilling um and so i don't i don't play a lot of games like that and i think that once you get into that side of things the rest of the stuff kind of falls into place because you know there's plenty of uh competitive shooter based games where aesthetic shit is the only thing that you can unlock uh like your your your uh overwatches and your you know etc it also has one of my favorite online communities like really good really everybody there yeah so good and i know that like you're right it hasn't been getting a lot of press though yeah we have some folks at Polygon who have been obsessed through and through from the beginning, which I love.

They just launched a new season. It's season nine of the game that has changed a lot of the balancing stuff so that it's more approachable for single player experiences. All the events that you can run into in the world now scale based on how many members uh how many people are on your ship which means you can run into like a megalodon like me and justin travis did while streaming the other day uh while in the middle of like a big ghost ship uh fight and both of them not just like tear you up like both of them be sort of like uh possible for you to uh to to defeat i don't know i i think it's fantastic and i'm really really really glad i gave it a second shot because it's a i i see now what a

very uh special game that is that's awesome um uh hoops what do you got um well sir i uh i uh wanted to mention just so people don't forget about it. It's high fire rush. I didn't see on anybody's lists here. So I did, did just want to return to it. Cause I know we all kind of enjoyed, enjoyed that one is a cool rhythm action type game. I know we gave it a full episode.

It was kind of a surprise B release at a, at a bargain price, really great aesthetics, really fun, engaging way to incorporate rhythm into a game in a way that feels like fun and additive rather than punitive. And it's a very likable title that I just didn't want to get lost in the shuffle here. I feel like if I could move into the mountains for a month

and just live a sort of Aramite life away from my family and responsibilities and work and just game out, this would be the first one that I dip into just as a fresh little palate cleanser. Did anybody finish Hi-Fi Rush? I did not finish it, no. It's the problem with this freaking show, man.

You got to keep feeding the beast. Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. You don't make lists like this because you played fucking Dota for 600 hours. You know, I almost wish there was like a boss rush version of a, a non-platforming version of High Fire Rush. I would have torn that bad boy down already. My first one is Yakuza Isshin, the period piece Yakuza. And here's the easy way to sell you on it. It's Yakuza, but with revolvers and swords at the same time.

And you just tear through people um right what's it called yakuza ishin i'll check that out yeah it's it is it's like yakuza with way more emphasis at least in my opinion on the combat and the combat being like coherent very early on i love the yakuza games love them love love them. But even like a game like Yakuza 0, which I've been picking at for like a year at this point, and I'm pretty deep into, I think its combat upgrade system is a bit too opaque at times. And the emphasis is much more on the story. This is kind of a flip flop of that. There's plenty of a story here. It might be a little unfamiliar because it is like deeply rooted in japanese history but you just feel like an absolute badass and it's hilarious to play

this sort of beat-em-up game where you just have unlimited bullets and a gun and you just like yeah you just tear through uh through through japanese history it rules Through Japanese history. It rules. Tear through it, man. And this is a remake of the 2014 original. Correct. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say it was not for me, which is totally fine. I found it pretty glacial, which I think anyone that's a fan of Yakuza knows the pacing of those games.

And this is consistent with that pacing i would say it's faster by a bit and yeah yes but yes it is not your type of thing uh that which is again totally fun i did enjoy the combat quite a bit but i think it takes a lot of work to get there um so there i think are more welcoming yakuza games. I would imagine in the series than this for people that are curious. Yeah. I mean, I would say if you really want combat, this one,

if you really want story zero, you really want to play a fucking buck wild RPG. And my secret game that came out a hundred years ago, it's like a dragon. Yeah. That, that, yeah.

If you, if you like turn-based combat, that one is fantastic. Um, Russ? Uh, yeah. Well, my other two are games that I, If you like turn-based combat, that one is fantastic. Russ? Yeah. Well, my other two are games that I've been talking about, games we haven't beaten.

These are both games that I have beaten. I actually went through. The first one is the Resident Evil 4 remake, which we just talked about last week. Fucking great. I could not put it down. It was so much fun through and through. Just a spectacular remake and a great example of how you do this and modernize it while being true to the original spirit, but taking enough liberties to update the, you know, look, feel, everything.

I think what's been most interesting as I'm following, like, the community playing this there's an there was an enormous speed running community for resident evil 4 uh people just like finding every tiny little bit uh ways to cut down their times to complete the game that has continued on to remake people are already finding crazy skips where you can teleport through doors and all sorts of things. Drag his ass, Chris. Say one word wrong. I appreciate it. Get his ass. It's where you poot

and you send it across the room. Anyway, in addition to the glitches where you cut through things, you can also... the developers actually put stuff in the game that like intentionally let you skip areas so for example the the um the initial village fight you can skip right through by shooting the bell in the distance um and that's like by design that is so good would. Would you tell me that? I was so much like I was instantly sold on this game. Yeah, they put a ton of thought into it.

There's also, by the way, a golden egg in the game that you can find. And apparently the golden egg can like one shot one of the hardest bosses in the game. And I think that's so fucking funny. And the whole game is like hilarious. I think you got a mission to find one. Sorry? bosses in the game and i think that's so fucking funny and the whole game is like hilarious find one sorry isn't there like a isn't there like a merchant mission to find it there is yes there is yeah but you don't necessarily have to sell it back to the merchant you could maybe use it as like a fucking nuke on one of the bosses so funny it's logic it's great stuff i loved it

were you gonna say the other and? The Peaky Blinders VR game. I was looking, sorry, I was just looking at a list of stuff that came out this year and I cannot believe we're continuing the mass hallucination that Peaky Blinders exists by adding to a VR, a pretend VR branch of this ongoing lie. I just think it's really cruel to people

who may want to pick up a new VR game. No one on this podcast has watched Peaky Blinders? I've watched five episodes of Peaky Blinders, but I'm pretty sure there's not anything else after that. You might have fallen asleep and thought you watched all of Peaky Blinders. Oh, that's interesting. It does not exist.

I was really feverish when I was watching. Wait a minute. Uh-huh. That's the show with all the snakes in it, right? Hey, can I tell you about a game that I love very, very much that I'm very excited I remember about is Forward Escape the Fold. Oh, yeah.

Technically, this one dropped on Steam last year, but it hit mobile this February. And holy shit, man. I keep coming back to this one. I did all of it. I did it all. You did all of it. Oh, Justin, I feel like it hadn't clicked for you when we first.

Oh, I don't know. Maybe I did all of it. Maybe Griff is really so smart. You did all the different characters with all the different powers? You did all of it? I did all of it. Maybe Griffith. It's really so smart. You did all the different characters with all the different powers? You did all of it? I did all of it, Griff. It's really good, bud. Wowzers.

It's like a really good game. I really like that one. I wish I was playing it again. It's really good. DLC. That one seems ripe for some sort of expansion. I don't know how the developer of that game is doing. I hope very, very good because that game absolutely whips ass.

developer of that game is doing i hope very very good because that game absolutely whips ass perfect distillation of the uh of the sort of card deck building uh rpg sort of experience a la slay the spire uh or monster train uh but it it boils it down into a just a sweet little portrait mode on the go mobile game that is is just my obsession this year. Really good. Yeah, I want to jump back into it. I didn't hate what I played, but it hadn't fully clicked with me yet. It's once you start playing with the different characters and different powers and seeing how many viable

kind of like routes through the game there are yeah in terms of like how you spec and how you build and how you like draft your your items and stuff uh it that that's where it really really clicked for me yeah play it what about you uh paranormal site which has anybody has anybody else played it yet no that one's on my list too, man. I think it just came out on iOS. It's on everything. Yeah, you can play it on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God, never mind.

What? I just heard the sound of Justin seeing an image of the game. Yeah, it's like a visual novel. It's reading. Murder mystery. Wait, Justin, you liked the Phoenix Wright, don't you? No, we didn't. Oh, never mind.

If I want to read, I'll get a book. Anyway, think like Phoenix Wright meets occult Japanese folklore set in the late 80s, early 90s, it it's great it looks sick yeah the story is very compelling if you like um yeah griffin it's very in your zone because the whole zero lost escape type of thing it looks it looks very yeah yeah yeah yeah uh it it is great i strongly recommend playing it on mobile uh if you have an ipad or ipad mini even better um the it's you you um each scene is in like a 360 degree space and then there are the 2d characters put into that space so you're moving or looking around by swiping the screen and that just feels so much better on a touch device than it does with a controller.

And there's a lot of reading. And that, hey, you read on your phone all the time. So it's a nice break away from a computer screen. I make a little potato man do shooting at bad guys on my phone. I don't do a lot of reading. I don't know what you guys use your phone for. Text messages, emails, right? Yeah, I guess I do a little bit of that.

But I would say my phone is mostly I make a little potato guy shoot other bad guys. Where would you say the reading does take place in your life then? I guess sometimes you have to look at what the little potato man is picking up in his treasure boxes, I guess.

How quickly does that – I find that my main criteria for iOS games anymore is how quickly I can get back into the game after I've furtively closed it. Because there's a lot of games that want to drop a few minutes of logos and title cards. Well, I'm not sure this is answering your question, but you could step away from this game because it's a story game and it's very easy to get caught back up because it has a clear, like, kind of diary of stuff you've learned.

What if you constantly fall asleep while playing? Then you should probably play something else, you know? That would probably be a good clue that you're not liking it. How scary is it? There are a few jump scares early on just to let you know they're there, and then not super scary. More like eerie.

I love it. Spooky, like Twilight Zone-y type of scary. My friend says that Brotato isn't out yet. Brotato's out, baby. Not until September, it says. I have Brotato on my phone. I don't know what to tell you, man. I mean, Brotato is not on your list Griffin

but do you want to talk about it? I'll do an honorable mentions Oh honorable mentions Okay Where it belongs Yeah That is a good place for it Speaking of scary stuff

can I talk about Dead Space? Yeah That's my favorite remaster of a year full of remasters This is one I finished this is one i sat down with over the course i was this game the release of this game and the onset of a pretty gnarly bout of insomnia for me really dovetailed in a b-e-a-utiful way uh when we got this one in our hot little hands and i played through all of it over the course of three breathless sleepless evenings

which is a probably maybe the worst possible way to play Dead Space or best but man scary fucking fun cool gory good RPG systems better writing

beautiful environmental storytelling 10 out of 10 it's interesting because dead space is like i want to say like 90 what the original game was but and and resident evil i think it's closer to like 70 what the original game was and they're two different i guess approaches to what a remake is and And both of them are great. Yeah. I love both of them. Both of these games make what was good about the originals much better. Which is like all you can really, all you can, you know what? I'd say that about Metroid Prime also. Yeah.

Well, that was the other one that was on my list. And that's the other one I beat. I need Resident Evil 4 original fans help here. Do you think it's 70% evil remake uh versus 90 dead space because dead space is a little bit deeper into video game development like you know they knew how to make uh 3d games where you could walk and shoot at the same time for example and they designed levels around that we're like yeah when you're remaking resident before you have to kind of make some changes because honestly they didn't change that much

about the level design. Like, they did change the level design pretty dramatically, but not because you could move and shoot at the same time. The amount of muscle memory I have utilized in some of those big, like, shootout set pieces, like, particularly in the village, that's one-to-one.

Yeah. And so, like, I knew where to dip into to grab the shotgun from the second like all of that stuff still definitely works for you but they also do stuff that i kind of wish a dead space did a little more of which is if you're a huge fan of the original confound those expectations by throwing some fucking wild curveballs at you like a really simple one is like after the village onslaught in resident evil 4 everyone you know hears the bell they all like walk towards the bell and the town is empty and he makes that joke about them all going to bingo which is still hilarious

and then you like kind of comb the town for pickups you might have lost and stuff like that and as you're going through one of the rooms a fucking cabinet bursts open and there's just a dude in the cabinet and it's just like a nice little surprise that i wasn't expecting and the game is full of that like curveballs now everybody will be though yeah that's true i kind of stole that magic joy hey and i ruined the bingo joke which is real quick do we have any others we've been on this for a bit. Yeah. Uh, I, uh, let me just talk about Metroid prime, which I also finished, um, that I would say from a gameplay standpoint,

change the absolute least. The only thing that really changed with the controls, but everything else is almost identical. And that is an area where I kind of think they could have gave it a little more love because the end of that game is like very, uh, fetch questy and the the best but overall i think it's spectacular it's just of the remasters that came out this year it's very clear what a new

developer can kind of bring to modernize an experience and i think metroid prime remastered although excellent could have used maybe 10 more love to get it over the hill. But great game. Great game. Let's take a quick break. Are you going to talk more about Octopath Plant? I mean, we can go to the next segment. No, no, go ahead.

No, I'm talking about plenty. Let's go. Octopath, it's good. I think everybody should play it. I've been playing a lot more of it. It's great. Let's go. You also didn't talk about Murderous Muses, Justin.

Yeah, I checked that. That's not actually out till april so it wouldn't fit into our criteria so q2 q2 let's uh take a break now we did promise at the end of the last episode that we would spend some time talking about chia and uh russ and i dipped in this week and I want to make sure we spend a few minutes talking about it because it's a really delightful thing. It is wild. It's so wild. It's really unlike anything. I mean, it is similar from a gameplay standpoint

to a game like Breath of the Wild, for example, but the actual way the game is constructed and the methodology behind it is pretty fucking unique and great um it's it's seriously one of the most like i thought that i had was doing it wrong like for quite some time playing it like this can't be right but once i like relaxed into it it was it's so nice yeah so so nice let me set it up real quick. Please, yeah. So Chia, which is spelled T-C-H-I-A, is created by a team based in New Caledonia,

which is just north, I mean just north, I'm sure it's several hundred miles north of New Zealand, kind of in between New Zealand and Australia. It's in that neck of the woods. And the whole game is kind of built around new caledonian culture so uh the music the like uh festivities the um clothing the fashion the um uh architecture everything is like very much pulled so much that before you start the game they actually provide this context like hey we're from here this is what inspired us

to make this game and so we've just infused the whole thing with um you know our culture and and they say very closely like this is reflected in this game and this isn't like right this this some of these things will match and but these other things i mean mean, yeah, there's like bizarre, like sci-fi, almost cyberpunk-y type stuff in this game, which I would imagine, I mean, I haven't been there, but it's possible they're way ahead of the curve.

Let's talk about what's like important about, like, yeah, the, the quest that you get, okay. It's, it's,

it's very much built around exploration and travel into, to, like, you're not reflected on the map you're this girl who uh her father is is basically kidnapped by the person who runs um the the who is in control who's in power um and you are going to collect some items to try to win your father back. But the world is, it's all built around exploration, right? To an extent where you are not reflected on the map. When you push a button to say, like, where am I on the map? She makes a circle of a basic, like, region.

Yeah, she'll be like, well, I can see this tower. So I'm probably somewhere around here, but you don't have like a specific GPS location on the map, which I guess is an attempt at like kind of, you know, you have to orient yourself based on what you can actually see to figure out where exactly you are. And you can find signposts. And if you see a signpost and you interact with it,

it'll place that signpost on your map which doesn't seem like a big deal but it can be like if you get a couple of them then you can start to orient like your direction um and you have uh there's a lot of sailing like you you are using raft a raft to get around and you can unlock docks which let you sort of fast travel between these points but uh y'all y'all burying the lead well we haven't gotten there yet yeah yeah yeah um but that's what i that is important because it's gonna feel like well this is irritating i'm trying to get through but like this is that is the experience the experience is like finding your way through the world. And you find these like little vignettes of like,

that are just like so pleasant. Like one of the big like missions that I did in this game, one of the big quests that I did is this lady, I stumbled into this small village. This lady's like, will you go find me a red crab? And you're like, yeah, for sure. And you just kind of wander around in a general area and i didn't find any and then i'm like oh you know what maybe at night so i waited until night

and there were some crabs i brought crabs back and she's like ah choice do you want to stay for dinner you can my daughter you can help my daughter make food and then you chat with the daughter while you do a mini game of making this delicious looking food and then at the end of the night they have a concert and you do this ukulele mini game to jam with people and there's like a song that everybody sings and dances to and that's the quest that kicks ass fucking great and what's crazy hard you can skip any part you don't like yeah you can skip gameplay sections you can skip cut scenes but you shouldn't because they you can skip gameplay sections you can skip cut scenes but you shouldn't because they're actually genuinely fun i found myself like jamming just because i

wanted to but like with the ukulele thing you can stop you can say like i don't want to do it anymore just do it for me and they're like yeah no problem there's no score or anything okay but the crazy thing about this is you know justin was saying oh i'll wait until midnight the game gives you so many tools to just kind of create the experience that you want because they give you a ukulele in the first like five minutes of the game that can literally change time anywhere you are you pull out the ukulele you play the ukulele song that sets to sets it to dawn and it's instantly dawn um not only that yeah we haven't talked about it yet the core gameplay mechanic i'm i keep waiting i'm like where's it coming when's it coming here it comes you can possess any basically any object in the game um whether that's a life preserver on a

uh on a boat or a crab that justin mentioned or a bird or anything that's not like a human you can possess and like flop around there's a mattress on the ground you can jump into the mattress and like flop around if you want i don't know why someone would do that but you can but you can imagine like if you're trying to get oriented right like oh i'll just grab a bird yeah you hop into the bird and you can like look around and figure out where you're where you're at to get like a better perspective there's a a bar on it sort of stamina thing so it's not like a permanent situation but you can use that to like get get your bearings or i'm trying to get to this dock and i'm stranded out in the ocean and my i lost

my raft somewhere i'll possess a fish and swim back to where I'm trying to get to because they're so much better at swimming. It's just, you know, it doesn't necessarily have the, which is expected based on the size of the team, which I think looking on the credits was about 10 people. It's obviously not the polished Breath of the Wild experience,

but at every turn they were like, what would be the most fun thing you could do at this moment? A simple example, you can climb a tree, like a coconut tree, for example, palm tree. And when you're at the top of it, if you move the left analog stick, you'll kind of like fling the tree, like move the tree, like you're shifting your weight. And you can use that momentum to literally fling yourself like 50 feet ahead and jump from tree to tree that way so you can get through a forest in like no time and that and you've got like the classic breath

of the wild like glider for mobility like at every turn they were like what would be the most fun thing fuck yeah i'm gonna jump into a bird and fly to the top of this hill rather than climbing the whole thing like It's a delight. I am so, so, so excited to play this game. I've been traveling, and unfortunately, it was on Epic Game Store and couldn't run on my Steam Deck. But finally back home, I can play it. One of my favorite video game moments like the past—

Oh, it's also on PlayStation, by the way. Yes. It's part of PlayStation Plus. One of my favorite video game moments of the past few years was, do you remember that game The Crew 2? Hell yeah. The driving game where you could go from plane to boat. Yeah, yeah.

And that, where you're a plane and you're driving over Manhattan and then you just in midair turn into a car and land on Broadway and you're just speeding down. Such an awesome hook. But unfortunately, you were like in a really pretty basic racing game at the end of the day. Here, just seeing in the trailer where you are a kid, and then you're a bird, and then you dive down

towards the water and take over a fish. And it's like you said said uh fresh like kind of create your own fun that it doesn't have the burden of that sort of game yeah that's what sounds so exciting to me is it feels weirdly like they captured that that feeling that i loved in the crew and put it in a game that is more open uh and and weirdly like that makes for a better experience it also does momentum better than most games i've seen it it reminds me a lot of like just cause or or portal for that in that way oh man because as you're like let's say you possess a bird you're flying as a bird first of all there is a poop button you can poop as a bird don't worry very good thank you but as you're flying when you

basically run out of energy or decide you're going to unpossess the bird you maintain the momentum of that bird so you will continue as chia which is her name flying in the sort of trajectory of that bird and then you can open your glider to like continue that through um it just feels like great to explore the world and and i hope more people experience it because there just aren't very many games like this which bums me out like i thought when breath of the wild came out there'd be a ton of copycats of like just fuck around in this world and have a great time and there are like very very few it's like this and uh immortals phoenix Rising is kind of in the same boat. Cannot believe you remembered the name of that game.

I know, I'm very impressed. I was trying for the life of me, this whole segment couldn't. And there just aren't that many of them. And this is, I think, a great example of that. And in addition, just as like gravy on top, I'm also learning about a culture that I knew absolutely nothing about and find it like super fascinating. It's a fascinating play. I mean, like just reading about it more because I was in the same boat I had no idea uh it's fascinating and I was like poring over wikipedia pages of New Caledonia just like I have them on my phone like yeah absolutely I was like this can't be wow this is

this is uh a very unique play I I loved it I and like it. I got emotional just from how pleasurable it was, just from how kind and nice and transportative. All the music is so great. It looks wonderful. I don't know. I love it, man. It's also a great mashup of traditional New Caledonian culture, dating back obviously hundreds of years and

modern day to the point where like you start with ukulele and then you can like unlock a cosmetic for it and now it's a electric guitar and she's like rocking out an electric guitar during like a traditional dinner ceremony it's it's wicked definitely play it. Should we go to honorable mentions? Yes. Brotato. Brotato is out on mobile. It came out on computers and I think maybe other platforms last year. Here's what's confusing.

If you search for it in the iOS store, if you search for Brotato, There is Brotato Premium, which is available now. That's what I'm playing. And then there's Brotato, which says it's not out until September. I don't know, man. I'm playing Brotato Premium. This is from the same people that brought us 20 Minutes Till Dawn,

which is one of my favorite ass games of whenever it came out. It's up there. It's a top-down arena shooter in the Vampire Survivors, Survivor.io sort of vein. Where it sets itself apart is that it is wave-based, and between each wave, you get to do what is essentially an auto-chess-style drafting system.

You level up and you can pick stat upgrades, but then the meat of it is you are spending your resources in this store where you have a limited set of options and you are picking up weapons that you can hold six of and upgrading those weapons, or you're picking up

items which you can hold infinity of, but they cost money. And there's like weapons sets that give you like huge stat bonuses that you have to keep in mind which is sort of a auto chess conceit and there's dozens and dozens of different characters to unlock all of which have like sort of different huge stat differences that kind of uh push you in different build directions but it's fun as hell to play

and it's I think six bucks on the iOS app store it's five dollars oh is it okay well it's hold on one second the white house helicopter is flying overhead that is the loudest helicopter I've ever heard in my life. I think it might be, what is it called?

Big Condor? What do they call President's helicopter? It's Big Condor. I'm bringing in Ray Liotta bot. Joey's tall one. Anyway, Brotato Premium is fantastic. It's not my biggest gripe. This would make it go to territory for sure.

It's only in landscape mode. Who has two hands to dedicate to touching a screen? Brotato. For Brotato. But you can play it with one hand in landscape mode. It's just it doesn't. I am so curious about what the difference is between Brotato and Brotato Premium. I'm really. It's all because I'm like. I mean, Brotato and Brotato Premium. I'm really...

I mean, Brotato's probably going to be a... They'll probably have some sort of different free-to-play model for it. Yeah, that's probably true. But it's... This drives me wild. It's five bucks. I don't understand why they need a different one.

It's $5. I understand that that's not nothing, but it's certainly much less than any other game we've talked about today. Interesting. Does anybody else have any other honorable mentions? Finished

Psych Odyssey, the two-player documentary about making a Psychonauts. Y'all, I didn't even finish psychonauts too i'm definitely gonna go back and play it now that i finished this but it is i'm pleased it's remarkable this is how bad do you feel that you didn't finish it now that you spent 40 hours like actual physical pangs of guilt so yeah i'm gonna go back and do that i wanted to finish it

all the way first i finished dredredge. Dredge is great. Yeah. So I've been kind of checking. I went back and played some Curse of the Golden Idol. I'm trying to just finish some stuff up. I feel like I've been leaving stuff that I've been enjoying hanging just because we have to keep playing the next thing or I keep returning to the same stuff.

Oh, you missed Build a Bo a boat and saw that again how come there ain't one of them every hey where's that where's that guy hey guy you made is it luca luca red redwood is that it if you could just get one of those going for me every few months just i don't care if it's i've played you as well to boat seven times you could literally just put a two at the end no just change the colors so many vehicles he could pick from car plane okay right you're getting me actually like too excited did you play did you did any of you play infinity island that is the latest luca redwood i don't think i did it didn't it didn't work for me in the same way it's an idol game which which should have worked but it just didn't i i i thought it was pretty great um but

it's it's yeah i just i want a million more of these uh i've been playing a lot more octopath i played uh one session this week where i was like you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna i'm really gonna start getting through the quests here and then i went into a town and the first person i talked to i was like oh you seem really nice. I wonder what's in your pockets. And I checked their pockets and they had a really nice axe. And I was like, oh, I'm going to steal that. I'm going to find a way to do it. And I did right away. I got a really lucky roll. I pickpocketed them and I went and met the next person and they were nice too. And I was like, I wonder what's in your pockets and had a really nice dagger and uh then i thought

i could get away with it again not as much luck and then i spent the next hour and a half concocting a plan of how i would uh fleece them of of their valuables despite them being seemingly a really really good person i love this game uh i'm i have played a little bit more it is very good i i feel like i'm going to need to make a lot of room for this one in my life, but I'm also about to start touring again, so seems like a pretty good opportunity for that. You have one month before Zelda.

Yeah, that's a good point. Well, yeah. The Evangelion countdown has begun. Before the third impact. Yeah, I'm very curious about fucking Zelda. But before that, I'm playing through Dark Souls 3 again, continuing that. It's a nice before bedtime, get a boss in kind of situation.

It's kind of amazing that like, I can play that game with way less stress now that I kind of like, oh, I know what items to go for, builds to go for, where to spend resources. And the game becomes so much easier when you know all that stuff that it's just like a different experience. It really matches the experience of like playing through Elden Ring, which has so many of these tools, but they're just way more surfaced whereas in the classic dark souls games it's a lot harder to know where you should be spending resources stuff like that um and it's been a delight i i find it uh very chill and relaxing ironically given the given the history

of it can i i don't know who usually do this do a quick music suggestion whoa i've been playing more minecraft henry plays minecraft like a lot and so i've been playing more of that with him and we only just kind of like explored what they added in the most recent major update which was uh caves and cliffs the music in that game has always been like great uh but the soundtrack for the minecraft caves and cliffs expansion uh is phenomenal uh it's mostly uh lena rain the the composer of um celeste and a couple other major titles and uh a japanese composer did some piano tracks for it, whose name I don't remember. But it's great work in music. I've been really, really, like it's, that game's environmental music is phenomenal

and this expansion's stuff is really, really good. So I know that C418 composed the original soundtrack. Do you feel like it's all pretty consistent throughout or do they take kind of left turns i think it's a i think that uh it's it's it's a bit different i think uh the the the music that uh c418 daniel rosenfeld was uh can't imagine you know it's sort of i mean it's about as iconic i think as music that exists in a game that's every person on earth has played yeah i i feel like there's a little bit more of

the sort of celeste dna uh in the the caves and cliffs stuff but i mean it's all genuinely sometimes i will just put on any kind of minecraft music in the background because it is intentionally kind of when i'm working like because it is intentionally kind of – when I'm working, it is intentionally the kind of music that is meant to be heard a trillion times. That's sick. One of these days I'm going to get back into Minecraft. It's been many years.

Yo. Yeah. Next week. So there are some games that we could talk about, but here's a question. Mario movie. I was about to say there's no way we're not doing Mario. You know that I'm going to see that shit. You gotta do the Mario movie, right? Gotta do the Mario movie.

Gotta do the Mario movie. I already got my tickets. Easter afternoon, he is risen, mamma mia. For God so loved the world he sent us a mamma mia. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. It's got to be the episode, right?

Roll the stone away in front of the Cinemark 33. We're walking into Mario, and he is risen. Up from the grave he rose. And he's power blocking all of his foes. He is stomping the devil to the dark domain. Up from the grave, here we go! Where's Moses? Where is Moses?

Fresh, we have a celebrity in our reviews. Yeah, I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for Vesties on Apple Podcasts. We have MfishKing. We have JTingle87. And we have, Justin might recognize his name, James Marion of probably Double Fine Productions. I mean, it could be another James Marion. Yeah, he's still there.

Maybe? No, I just was speculating maybe another James Marion reviewed the show, but I'm pretty sure it's him. Thank you for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. I think this was written before we started talking about the documentary so it's not even influenced by that um and thank you to everyone else who's written reviews for the besties on apple podcasts we really appreciate it thanks y'all appreciate it go see this fucking flick y'all cannot wait yeah i'm trying to be spoiler free as much games games we talked about very quickly uh octopath traveler 2 paranormal site yakuza ishin murderous muses which we're actually didn't talk about but we're gonna talk about it soon hi-fi rush dead space forward escape the

fold sea of thieves dredge resident evil 4 4 Remake, Metroid Prime Remastered, Dark Souls 3, Brotato and Brotato Premium, Minecraft's new soundtrack, and You Must Build a Boat. And Chia. And Chia. Oh my gosh, thank you. And their entire B-segment, which I'm going to go play the second we're done recording this. And just a reminder, because it's not necessarily phonetical to English.

It's T-C-H-I-A. Yes. And that's on PlayStation 4, 5, and Epic Game Store on PC, right? Yeah, I played it on PS5, and it has a 60 FPS mode, which was delightful. Nice. I think we did it.

We did it. We did it. Thank you all so, so much for listening to our program. We hope you join us again next week for the best games. Because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!