The Besties - Everyone should try Neon White [The Resties]

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Neon White is a speedrunning game for people who've never tried speedrunning, a Dreamcast-like game for folks who never owned a Dreamcast, and a visual novel for gamers who rather play than read. It's a ball of contradictions and easily one of the best games of 2022. Frushtick and Plante also finish the business they started on the most recent episode of The Besties: cleaning out the overstuffed mailbag.Movies discussed: The Thing, Mad God, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, KusoTV discussed: Players on Paramount Plus  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!

Hey everybody, it is me. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Frushtake. Welcome to the Resties. It is me! Sorry. It's me, Mario! Welcome to the Resties. We're the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest. Can you imagine if Chris Pratt just started it with, it's me. It's me, Mario.

That's how the movie started. I do. Honestly, do you expect anything different? No, that is where my head is at right now. He's going to sound just like Chris Pratt. And you know what? Garfield is also going to sound just like Chris Pratt. It might be the same movie.

They might just do a crossover. Why not? Get him. Pull off the Band-Aid. This week, we're talking about Neon White, a game that I fucking love. I love. This game really caught me off guard. It is by, I believe, the same creator as donut county that's correct country

donut county uh which i liked i liked but this is a very different type of thing and we'll talk about that in a moment but first i wanted to run something past you i this weekend i went and saw a double feature this was my father's day treat to myself wait wait let me guess uh movie a was un chien andalou you are not far off and movie b was babe pig in the city so interesting that you should you should say this movie a was the original john carpenter's the thing oh okay that's watchable most of the people in the theater had not seen it before um and i i think they thought like old movie this will be not that violent and then like you know they do chest compressions on the dude and you know their arms go through his stomach and it's

very violent very violent they were shocked and then i went and saw Mad God, which is this new movie by, well, I guess new. It's been in, like, the works for, like, 30 years. And it's by the dude who did a lot of the stop motion animation on, like, Star Wars and stuff. Cool. The other movie I saw was a film called Mad God, which is a stop motion dystopic, like, horror movie by one of the dudes who did the stop motion work on star wars and he's it's like his pet project he's been working on it with a small team for i think like 30 years anyway coming out of this i realized i've seen a lot of gross things in films both these movies have some very very gross things

in them and i was curious what is the grossest thing that you've ever seen in a movie oh that is relevant for on shenanadalu because they cut that sheep's eye you're you are right in the movie that i have in mind i actually wrote a review about it and i mentioned on shenanadalu but i want to hear yours first uh grossest thing i've seen in a movie i mean when i was a kid temple of doom was certainly up there seeing a guy's heart get ripped out of his chest pretty gross not to mention the bugs i think the bugs i found more disturbing than the when they reach through the like that hole in the wall and there's all the bugs in the hole and i'm like no no i wouldn't be pulling that i would not save short round and indie from that

collapsing ceiling they'd both be toast so that's probably what springs to mind i'm sure they're a grosser but i'm guessing that you didn't like the bug sequence in peter jackson's king kong disturbing as well but because they were giant bugs, it was like almost less disturbing than that. Yeah. Because a giant bug is just going to eat you and tear you apart. They're not going to like crawl into your ear.

Yes. I feel like I've seen more. Unless you're King Kong, in which case it might crawl into your ear. That's true. I didn't consider that they're king kong sized um did you ever see the movie kuso no so this is a movie that i saw years ago at a sundance i think it was like 2017 or something and it's by uh flying lotus the musician who also like does other stuff and it is the it is the grossest movie i've ever

seen it has there's like a moment in it with tim heidecker from tim and eric where his head comes up from inside a toilet and it's covered in like piss and shit and he has like boils that are like oozing all over the toilet seat um and you know who George Clinton is? Yes. There's a scene where George Clinton is a doctor and he Is he a doctor of funk, I should ask? I mean, he's that in real life. Yeah.

But in this movie, he's just a doctor who coaxes a cockroach that's human-sized out of a person's butthole no yeah stop trigger warning is it too late for trigger warning i'm just saying it's in the movie i don't think there's anything wrong with talking about art gross um that's it that's kind of the whole intro that i had my goal was to get as many people to never listen to the show again

kind of the whole intro that i had my goal was to get as many people to never listen to the show again yay but we were going to talk about a game that i think we both absolutely adore it so that's worth looking for yeah we'll do that right after the break chris plan i feel like this year is one of the weirdest insofar as obviously we it's lighter in terms of big releases you know we have the elden rings we have the dying lights but broadly speaking there are not a ton of triple a major releases that have come out um but that's okay because we've been uh kind of feasting on these smaller but still profoundly excellent uh games that have been coming out kind of out i mean for us out of nowhere just because usually these games we don't follow the entire development cycle of and one of those games is neon white which is uh out and terrific how would you describe it

succinctly okay um so on on the one hand uh it's like a persona-style visual novel. You effectively play a character who has died, goes to heaven, and you're in heaven sort of interacting with angels and other people that died. given these mini missions, missions that last like a minute or less, 30 seconds sometimes, that are parkour shooting combos where you're sprinting through these environments, these like heavenly environments, shooting guns, activating special abilities

like double jumps in an effort to try to beat the levels as quickly as possible. So the game sort of bounces between those two, and it is a wild combo. And I think they do both quite well. I'm completely smitten with the gameplay. And even the writing and the voice acting is quite entertaining as well.

Yeah, and I think if... I like both, but you can kind of lean more on one or the other if you want to. That is true. So like the speed running levels, it really wants you to speed run the game and learn how to like beat these levels as fast as humanly possible. But you can progress a fair amount just by like kind of skating by. I actually don't know that that's true well you have to get golds eventually you for a while you can get through the game and i i also

just don't personally think it's like that hard to get the height the ranks needed to keep moving through the story right that's what i was gonna say that is like yeah plant when plant says speed running you might instantly be intimidated of like oh that is not something that i can do or want to do it's stressful whatever the way the game feels and how it's sort of paced everything in it is seemingly pretty attainable so long as you you know it's more it's closer to a puzzle in that way where you know when to use a certain ability at what time and if you do that you will always always you don't have to worry about it you'll get the gold required to sort

of progress the story yeah it really wants you to do well and then on on the story into things you can basically skip through all of it and just kind of like effectively juice it for any rewards that you can get there are some bonus stages and stuff but yeah i i kind of like effectively juice it for any rewards that you can get. There are some bonus stages and stuff. But yeah, I kind of want to unpack this loop a little more. Because I think there, you're right, it's a tale of two games. It is. And those loops feed each other really well.

So this like speed running loop, which you're doing because you are a sinner who is competing with other sinners in heaven for a place to one, one place to stay in heaven amongst all the angels. And you do this by speed running these courses and killing demons. And a very like typical example of a level is you're, you're running through the course doing your parkour, right? But the only way that you can do special jumps or shoot things is by picking up cards. So say there's a pistol. You pick up the pistol and it's just like a pistol. It's, you know, single shots.

Or if you dispose of the pistol, like throw it away, it gives you a double jump. So just one time use, you can double jump. There's a rifle. and if you grab that rifle you can shoot things at long distances or if you throw it away you can dash forward so fast you'll like crash through enemies or like certain walls um so it becomes this kind of yeah like it the puzzle meets card game meets shooter. And again, what's amazing about this to me is any one of those things could be too difficult.

Yeah. And put me off. And yet none of them are. It never gets as difficult as I feared it would. Yeah, they are very smart about making the platforming challenges very attainable while still being satisfying when you like actually pull it off you know they'll have these moments where you like let's say you just got a rifle and with that rifle you can use it to shoot guys obviously but one tactic might be okay i'm going to take two shots on these two enemies and then i'm going to activate its power to sort of dash forward and slice up the last guy that's the sort of mentality

you're going through and it seems like it would be intimidating or overwhelming or just like too much to handle even watching trailers i was like this might be a little much for me but i i think they're very smart because it it's not a game that requires like perfect aim there's like tons of aim assist so it's not so much about like the skill, it's more about like the strategy of how you're moving through these levels. Yeah, and unless you really want to speed run it and get, there's like an ace trophy, they call it.

It kind of gives you the cards that you need in the right order. Yes. For like at least the first half of the game. Yeah, it is basically a puzzle game in that way where they're giving you the pieces that you need. And also, even more so, if you find yourself like,

man, I can't get gold on this. It's impossible. If you keep playing the same level, eventually they unlock a hint for you that kind of floats in the world and you can jump into it and it'll basically show you a path that if you follow it, you will get gold.

Well, so let's talk about that. I think I could be wrong here, but the way i think this loop works is you can get bronze silver gold ace right yeah and each of those unlocks different things i believe it's silver you unlock a little present that's in the world and you collect oh i'm sorry you're right yes and if you collect these presents you can then give them to characters in the visual novel side of stories to like advance plot and learn more about characters and maybe some other stuff that we will not spoil. And I think if you beat gold, you get a hint that will show you how to beat Ace. I don't. I think you get the hint earlier than that.

I don't know. I could be wrong, but I think you might. I don't know. It could also just be different for different parts of the game. But, yes, anyway, what I like about this is it kept motivating me to go through it because assuming the gold to ace thing, I would complete a run. If I didn't get gold the first time, I would at least get the gift. So then I could go look for the gift.

And while I did that, I was learning about the map. And then I would get gold, which would show me the ace speed running kind of like again that little icon you're right that you like tap and it shows you a alternate path and then my mix of like oh well while searching for this gift i learned a lot about how the map works plus i have this little hint now i can probably speed run it so it's like it's really teaching you how to think about speed running without again i i think you were like spot on to almost not want to say speed running because that sounds so intimidating to me and this game is the exact opposite of that there i find nothing about this game intimidating i feel like it is

constantly trying to help me out and do me a solid i'll tell you what it feels like it feels like there's probably a level that everyone here listening has played hundreds of times say like mario 1-1 for example i can sprint through mario 1-1 more or less blindfolded i just know it so well because of the size of these levels and the sort of attainability what they're asking you to do it feels like each of these is a level that you've played a thousand times even if it isn't because of the way it's sort of balanced and and how it flows through the world um i think it's a perfect example of like great level design a great way to sort of introduce new mechanics like the new card

abilities stuff like progression is really great yeah yeah it's it's very smart um and and we haven't even touched on what i think is perhaps the most successful aspect of this game and that's the overall like look and sound of it is really quite remarkable okay so i i have some strong feelings about this that i will share okay so the look actually how how would you describe the look before i go into it you said it and i agree with it i think other people have said this too it's very dreamcast and i feel like there are people listening that maybe didn't have a Dreamcast or don't know what that means. It's low poly, but not, but like very bright and colorful and welcoming, but not like super hardware intensive. So like all the water texture, for example, is just like a shiny blue kind of ground that you can slide on.

It's not, you know, rippling and super detailed or anything like that because it's not the point. I mean, you compared it to Paradise Killer with me. Yeah, again, I don't know how many people actually play Paradise Killer, but yes. Mirror's Edge is another kind of similar example. But I would say Mirror's Edge, like, goes for a more realistic look, and this certainly is not realistic. This is much more

it almost looks like someone like took a level creator and built these levels using a level creator because it is again very simple but i think it works for what they're trying to do yes and and the like the worlds themselves it's like this baroque architecture like it's very like gaudy and yet starched like bleached so it's taking these you know castles and uh giant pirate ships but they are like bleached white with like hints of gold or silver it's like bayonetta if it came out on the ps1 i kind of yeah i mean i think run through a rinse cycle of just pure bleach but But yes, I think that's right. So, yes, I mean, when I mentioned the Dreamcast, the Dreamcast came out in 1999 in the States, like, you know, one of the most famous states of all time. Of course. And this is like, you know, right before 9-11, there is this culture, especially in the United States, especially amongst like middle class white families in the suburbs of like utopia of, hey, the economy has just been rolling along for so long.

People could afford to buy homes again in this very specific group of people. It was very like glossy. very specific group of people um it was very like glossy um this is the era like the end days of like uh boy bands of the uh spice girls i mean spice world i think is like an opinion of this aesthetic josey and the pussycats right there's all of that and then underneath that is this like angst especially of like teenagers who are seeing this and being like, well, this can't possibly be right. I don't know what's wrong, but something is amiss here. And that is why during this period we have this boom of pop punk. We have emo.

Hot topic. We have hot topic. We have, yeah, the nightmare before christmas type of aesthetic right so you get this mishmash of very gaudy bright colors um and i think around the same time you can see a lot of anime finally making its way into america like sailor moon things that were also appearing at hot topic clashing with the kind of like emo look and that to me is this game yeah the characters look like a like my chemical romance cover art totally 100 right um and yeah i i just find it i find it interesting for that to come back today because it's coming back everywhere this isn't limited

to this game or even games in general like if if you look at fashion right now, the Millennium aesthetic is just back. And I like, I don't know what it means. And I kind of don't know entirely what it means in the context of this video game. It feels very purposeful because it's not just the Dreamcast look, right? Like there are other things here that I think kind of look like PS2 Persona-y, especially in the visual novel. It's kind of combining a bunch.

I don't know if it's actually pre-rendered 3D backgrounds in the visual novel, but it looks kind of like that pre-rendered 3D you would see on Donkey Kong Country or Resident Evil, which for people who don't know that term, back in the day since like a video game console couldn't actually produce 3d they would make a 3d image they would render it

somewhere else and they would literally just like take a photo of it yeah and then put it in the game as like a background it was a way to sort of trick the game it's trick you into thinking that it was actually 3d rendered but it was yeah using that as an asset yeah so i mean i maybe it doesn't mean anything maybe it's just this is purely just what the developers liked but i was curious for you if there was like what about the art clicked with you because i'm still trying to piece that for myself i mean the the visual novel art i think is good but not doesn't necessarily stand out to me against you know we're talking about like the characters as they're drawn which are

good but i've seen as you said persona it feels very true to that i think the world art itself feels very different from most games that i've played recently. You know, we talked a lot about what it looks like, but it just doesn't have a lot of analogs to a lot of games. I just feel like that era of games, that early two thousands era has not been explored in a modern game design setting. Yeah. Often when it was so,

it was so brief. Yeah. It was such like a weird little thing. I don't know. It feels like that the Dreamcast especially is like caught between worlds where it's not quite. Yeah. I mean, it's tricky because you had, you know, pixel art, obviously in the 90s and that sort of like hit its peak. And pixel art has since been explored over and over again.

But the idea of like early 3d for a long time was like oh this just looks like shitty modern games like they just couldn't you know chrono cross couldn't do super hd models and textures so it just kind of looks shitty obviously in retrospect we realized that even though there were technical technical limitations that were that ended up causing that that whole look and feel has its own real charm and uh and i'd love to see it i you know again i think it really manifests in this i you know i'd also say i think there are a lot of games that like i was talking to you about pseudo 51. I think there are a couple games that I enjoy of Suda51. What is that? Shadows of the Damned, I think, was one of the games that I liked of his.

And, you know, obviously No More Heroes. I don't particularly like a lot of his stuff, even though I like his aesthetic and his, like, outlandish storytelling. And I think this game has that same style. But it also carries with it a really strong like gameplay backbone which i think a lot of his games don't necessarily have all the time yes and the fact that this is happening within an independent environment is pretty staggering it's very rare that both sides of these very divergent coins are so strong. Yeah, I mean, Suda51 is a great example,

especially No More Heroes, because so much of what that game was about was the mix of the gaudy and the austere. Because it's a satire of America. You have certain areas that are just full of junk, and then you can drive 50 miles in another direction, and you're in an empty desert forever. Everybody's inside on a computer, so the streets are empty.

It's a very weird way of doing a game, of making it like purposely boring. Yeah. And I think that this game does almost the exact same thing in certain ways. Like you're in heaven, but no one's around really. Yeah. And there's all this beautiful architecture but it's empty um and it's getting a lot of those same kind of questions but the game is moving at breakneck speed and is fun pretty pretty much every second right like it's not it's not doing the like brechtian thing of we're gonna this is a wild episode but like we're not gonna purposely break

you out of your immersion to make you feel that you know something's amiss here we're gonna like if you spot it you spot it yeah um which i i like i i honestly i mean honestly i probably prefer it because i think at the end of the day expecting people to play a video game for more than five hours that they just fundamentally don't enjoy being in is an almost impossible ask. Yes, agreed. Very quickly, we should probably touch on the visual novel itself. Yeah, I mean, it's difficult because I have I've gotten through like two chapters, so I'm only kind of scratching the surface of it. chapters so i'm only kind of scratching the surface of it the way the sort of story unfolds it actually requires some level of completionist aspect because as you collect these presents

through the levels it unlocks dialogue sequences with the various characters in the game so you can decide it's similar to hades in that way you can be like oh i really like this cat secretary i'm gonna bring this cat secretary a present and then they'll be like tell you tell their backstory and stuff like that which is which is funny to me um yeah but again cats are there there are angel cats who i think i think like kind of the business workers or middle management of heaven right but they're not actually cats yes they look like whatever brings you comfort so to your character they all look like knockoffs of like Garfield and Heathcliff. Yes.

Someone else sees John Cena, which is pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's hard. Again, it's hard for me to sort of say how well it sticks the landing because I think I need to see to the very end to know whether it does. But I think from a voice acting perspective and from like a writing perspective, I entertained and that's you know it's difficult for me to be entertained with a visual novel i do want to also call out the voice i'm for i think it's steven bloom uh the guy who did the voice of spike spiegel in the uh dub version of cowboy bebop plays the lead neon

white so it's great to hear his voice again it has not changed in the 30 years since he did cow booby bop that's wild i'm sure the rest of the cast is also like anime mainstays and and folks like that um but yeah no i think i think they did an amazing job with this i'd be shocked if it didn't make it into our top 10, quite honestly, at this point. Yeah, yes. So, yeah, with the visual novel, I think it's overall, I'm really enjoying it. I think that the dialogue can be a little cringy at times, but I think that's on purpose. I think. I'm not sure.

And I think it can be a little, like some story beats are slower than others. Sure. That said, I'm probably, I think I'm like six days. The game is perfect for days. Oh, wow, yeah, okay, you're pretty. Into it, and that's with like every gift. Yeah. So a lot of story.

And when it kicks into gear, I think it really starts moving. There's a boss fight that you are always away from um but for me it was once i got to that boss fight it yeah it really kind of found itself and it's kind of similar to hades it it opened up in ways that i found pretty surprising yeah um i still don't entirely know what the story is about i i can say that it kind of has one or two very key mysteries that it reveals after about two or three hours the one thing i do want to talk about is the the boss angels so there's kind of a um the good place energy yeah to all of this where you there's just a lot of questions of like wait why the hell are we here like there are these monk ball like like angels like traditional angels like a hello

yes you're very holy yes but they're also like huge snobs and like elite jerks so they talk about like how they're always eating foie gras and they're always just doing all these decadent things and how they will you know not even let you eat their own trash um and they're effectively watching you all all the neons these characters these sinners participate in a blood sport um for their like main entertainment um and it feels like it is a commentary maybe on like i don't know kind of like neoliberal politics of these people who like know what's best for you as they like watch from their place of comfort or maybe it's about like management versus the proletariat i don't know knowing again there was like kind of a political undercurrent to

donut county i think i'm very curious where this game goes and it's it's cool to have a game where i both really enjoy playing it and i'm legitimately curious what the story is about yeah that is very rare hell of a double whammy um cool that's uh i mean i feel like i could talk about this game forever but i know that like you said we'll we'll be talking about it more later any any other thoughts on your end no just a heads up the game is only available on pc and switch uh plant you played it on pc i'm guessing i played it on pc and steam deck and it was great on steam tech i really enjoyed the joysticks on the steam deck and i'm curious how it handles on switch yeah i have not played it on switch i've only played it on pc on my computer

and it screamed like it was not at all uh a problem to run the game uh so i'd be the only thing i would say is if you're interested in playing on switch just do some research before and make sure it runs okay um because i it should i'm presumably uh but i feel like 60 frames a second steady is very important for this game and um so there's yeah yeah there's a question that we are going to get to in the next second perfect perfect uh switch right here sure uh that's going to be about controllers that I think will be the second half. Oh, I love talking about controllers. That's why I added it. I knew it would be for you.

Awesome. Okay, let's get right to it. Okay. Okay, so if you all listened to last episode of Besties, you know that we are emptying out the mailbag. So we're finishingying out the mailbag so uh we're finishing that out right now we've got a handful of final questions let's get to them actually you know what i'm gonna move one up that is about the switch controllers because i know that we kind of love

people hanging there and i i think that's important so this one fresh is for you okay this one is from aaron what are your favorite recommendations for all for alternatives to switch joy cons for those of us experiencing drift and are looking for a more permanent solution than just buy more joy cons sure i mean i've talked about it before but i'll reiterate it i use the hori split pad pro controllers on my um switch uh they are considerably larger but they basically replace the joy cons if you're in handheld mode they are not really useful if you are in docked mode so just keep that in mind if you're in docked i would just say use a pro controller if you can but in handheld mode the hori hori um split pad pro controllers are dynamite they have not left my switch in the two years since and

i've not had any drifting issues with them whatsoever you might have different experience but just for me they've been tremendous yeah they rule i i keep them in my travel backpack all the time. This question is from Matt. Is there a game from your childhood that you would like to see remade or just remade into a modern video game? This is similar to what we talked about with Deep Cuts getting revived and I mentioned ActRaiser,

even though, again, it was literally remade like a year ago and I just wasn't super happy about it was literally remade like a year ago and i just wasn't super happy about it um you know what a game i would love is there was a series where you played as a demon it was called demons crest and there was a game boy one called demons legend demon legend something like that um and both games were really good you literally played as like a demon going through hell and then getting powers i actually think you played as the little flying guy in ghosts and goblins i think there might have been the same oh yes that's correct yeah

so made by capcom yeah made by capcom and so those games were great and they basically have been dormant since i want to say the game boy one was probably the last one that came out um and uh yeah i'd love to see that get revived yeah i i feel like this is like a little bit of like a monkey paw wish sort of thing here because i've i've wished this before i wanted a mutant league football game forever, and eventually it came out, and it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted more Cho-Jam and Earl, and that came out, and whatever. It was fine. It's not bad by any means.

I have impossible expectations for whatever I obsessed over as a kid. So instead of picking a game that I really love i'm gonna pick a game that i'm like actually kind of like luke warm on but i just think should exist which is bringing back the twisted metal series oh um i feel like it will happen because now sony is like well so you have a tv show coming out yeah they have a tv show coming out and i i just feel like sony's in need of something like more ip more exclusives um there was a while where they were still trying to act like twisted metal was an active brand i believe the the character sweet tooth uh evil clown who drives an ice cream truck uh appeared in that playstation you know battle royStars, whatever it was.

Yeah, for people who are not familiar with the series, it's this, like, very grimdark 90s metal tool cover album that's also a, like, open space car shooter, vehicle shooter. It's like a car combat game in it yes thank you you know like an arena i yeah i don't find those games as like i i think they're visually interesting i the actual minute to minute of twisted metal i've never found super fun because i think it's kind of clumsy to have car combat games but i have always had a soft spot, as you had, for just like the franchise overall. I think it has, I think it touches on like a lot of things just nostalgically for people. And that's why it's getting rebooted as a TV show. So I'm definitely curious.

And especially as like 90s nostalgia comes back, I feel like there's a place for it. This one is from Sterling. like there's a place for it um uh this one is from sterling uh by your expert opinion what is the oldest ancestor of the modern video game thinking pre-digital here what's what do we count as a modern video game oh well if it says thinking of the modern video game i think just video game and then thinking pre-digital. So, I mean, Go? Like, if we're talking about... I mean, that would be... Or Senate, I guess, would be the very first board game ever was Senate.

Yeah. And then, or like all those sports. I mean, I know there are a lot of people who don't like when we talk about sports on the podcast. But like, come on, sports. The competitive games? Sports. Yeah. cats but like come on sports that competitive uh games sports uh yeah i guess that's probably the closest we can get uh because you're talking about basically to like try to define what a video game is it's a series of rules where you have an objective and you follow that objective to have

fun basically yeah and so board games and or sports are both examples of that and and you can read more about that in this new book called the history of fun now i promised i was done plugging i'm not i'm never done plugging you can't stop me um uh this one is from tomas uh what's the best pickup and play game at the moment for you when you literally only have five minutes at a time to play? Oh, that's a good question. Are you ready? Because I have a mobile game that I have beaten before you even start. Wait, wait, you did start it.

Never mind. Damn it. What? You've started Point P, haven't you? Oh, I did start playing Point P, yes. Okay, so Point P is by the person who made made down well which is a game you and i obsessed over and i can't believe it's actually been that long since that game came out because we played that in the vox media offices when it was back i don't know like what yeah what is it six years old at

this midtown yeah six or seven years old yeah seven because yeah it's been a while um anyway that was a game where you went down a well and you fired bullets at enemies this is a game where you go up a well and you feed uh fruit to a giant cat creature and it is so good if you like that feeling of slingshotting little characters across worlds oh this is it um addictive as hell gorgeous great art it has like a kind of adventure time art style to it or like a cuphead almost yeah it's super fun really great mechanics it does for what it's worth require a Netflix account because it is part of Netflix games and they actually ask you to log into Netflix to access it.

You still just download it off the usual App Store. Yeah, it's in iOS or Android. But if you have a Netflix account, it is unquestionably the best of the exclusive Netflix games releases they've done so far, and it does make me optimistic that they're going to have a lot more good stuff coming. Yeah. And they also have Into the Breach coming on mobile.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, which is smart on their part. I think it's like an updated version of it. Wow. This one is from Luke. What's your wildest how this happened sort of game where a beloved gay mascot showed up in such a weird

property uh i mean the example of it uh they gave is you know sonic at the olympics or kazuya in uh smash brothers well it's gonna be boring but i'm gonna say in a million billion years i never thought it would be possible to watch darth vader of star wars do gongam style while wearing a pac-man backpack and it is now in fortnight you can do that you can literally do that yeah i i feel like fortnight blew up this entire question yes it's always gonna be the right answer mine's kind of a cheat and i know i've talked about it before but jerry rice and nidus's dog football oh sure which famed football player retired football player jerry rice and nitus's dog football oh sure which famed football player retired football player jerry rice and his dog nitus have a football game called dog football on the wii

and i believe it is actually sponsored by the the pet sports league which has its own logo as that's some good that's some good video games that I never thought would happen. And I'm just grateful. I'm glad it exists in the world. Dog Football, for what it's worth, is on Steam. It's $1.79. And it's got a 92% rating according to 27 user reviews. You are $1.79 away from playing Jerry Rice and Nidus dog football, folks.

And it looks, you know what? This might need to be an episode. This can't be right. I'm seeing that its release date was 2011? That was probably a re-release. That had to be a re-release, right? Yeah, I see. I was going to say, are we really ready for an anniversary of this game? Let me pause one more moment and say, I'm watching the trailer now.

At one point, someone gets a first down, and on the screen it says, first down. Wow. Wow. Fucking spectacular. There's also a dog riding a skateboard for some reason. I don't know why. So the game was released in 2011. I could have sworn it would have been much longer than that.

This is like late days Wii. Yeah, I guess it must have been one of the last Wii games. Yeah, so I think maybe for its 10th anniversary in August, it might be time. There's a quote from IGN here. All around, the game is surprisingly well done. I could see lots of families having fun with good old dog football here. 7 out of 10, IGN. Bless it.

Okay, last question. And I didn't prepare for this because I wanted to be off the cuff. It is from ALAG. Yeah. Top five films. Nothing concrete. Off the cuff. Yeah. Top five films. Nothing concrete. Off the cuff at the time of asking. Five is a lot.

Can we do like three? How about three? Okay. And I'm just going to do the movies that immediately spring to mind. Hudsucker Proxy. Beetlejuice uh indiana jones in the last uh the last crusade okay those are good those are good um i mean it's hard for me not to do it because i

i'm my letterboxd i have my like you've been you're way more prepared than i am yeah i mean i feel i'm trying to think of like something that's not in my letterbox because if it's letterboxed it'd be easy it's um the wind rises after that probably high and low uh which have you seen that high and lowest that cartoon no high and low the it's a kurosawa like kind of like action thriller about a child abduction no it's unbelievably good um it's like almost hitchcockian it's it's wild um yeah i think you would think you'd really like it um and after that, it gets pretty hazy. I mean, I think on there, I don't even know. I think I have a stalker on there, which is a movie I love. But I know that you are not a huge fan of that director.

You saw Mirror, right? Yeah, unwatchable. Tarkovsky? Yeah, I'm just looking at my Blu-rays next to me. I don't know. That's a good collection, I feel like. Yeah. No, that's good.

Okay. I think we did it. I think the mailbox is fully empty. I'm digging around and I don't see anything left. These were great questions, both on Besties and now today. Thank you, everybody. You really did it. You did it. You did it. To to wrap things up recommendation of the week i mentioned mad god at the top you can find

it on shutter if you can see it in a theater definitely see it in a theater again if you have the stomach for like very weird dark stop motion animation experiments. It's incredible in a theater, and it will probably be the only opportunity you ever get to see it on a large screen is like in the next two weeks. That said, not possible for the vast majority of people. So I recommend watching it on Shudder. I believe it's available right now.

And Shudder pretty consistently has one of those, you know, free trial periods on, like, I think Amazon and on Apple TV. So you can try it. Watch that. Watch their, like, four- or five-hour documentary on Fultcorer, which is also great. And, you know, by that time, your weekend's pretty much done. There you go. Oh, man, your recommendation is also great. And by that time, your weekend's pretty much done. There you go.

Oh, man, your recommendation is so good. So my recommendation is Players, which is a TV show. It's on Paramount+, so I apologize. I'm sure a lot of people listening do not have Paramount+. But if you happen to watch American Vandal on Netflix, this comes from the same creative team behind American Vandal. vandal on netflix this comes from the same creative team behind american vandal that show was a mockumentary sort of uh making a true crime recreation out of like kind of ridiculous high school like pranks uh and the new one players is the same format but covering basically an esports team that is playing league of legends

and it's pretty interesting because they clearly did a ton of research to get a lot of the nitty gritty of like an esports team correct and right without it feeling like total parody but obviously it is written for comedy so it's very trumped up and ridiculous and um i don't know one of the guys is named nut milk i don't know what it is so good and i say this is somebody who has never played a single game of league yeah and largely finds esports culture completely unbearable um it it's clearly made by people who love both league and esports while also understanding the gobs of flaws with all of that yes um and it it's wild i mean they kind of did this with American Vandal, but I feel like even more so here, they really allow for moments of like humanity.

Yeah, they tell very tender human stories in these like very outlandish formats, which is surprising. You don't expect it, but it kind of sneaks up on you. Yeah, I really hope a ton of people watch it even though again it's on paramount plus but hey i guess if you still have your halo subscription that's true then you can maybe it's amazing yeah this show probably costs like what 150th of the cost of halo yeah and it's looks so much better yeah yeah actually you're right it just on a on

a pure visual level it looks better well it's directed by tony ascenda who did uh dave which is also a show that i really like on fx yeah he's it's a very talented team so that makes sense wow that is that is a lot of talent um cool okay i'm gonna wrap things up uh with the games that we talked about. Today, at the very top, we talked about some movies. The Thing, Mad God, Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom, and Kuso. Then we spent a good long chunk of time talking about Neon White. After that, we answered a bunch of your questions, just kind of all over the place at that point and then uh our recommendations for this week are mad god on shutter and players on paramount plus did it that's it next week do we know what we're

doing well next two weeks two weeks yeah no i don't think we do i've been playing for what it's worth the dlc for cuphead so i'm sure I'll at least talk about it a little bit. I don't know if it's going to be a full episode. But if you're curious about that, it is very interesting. And I'll probably talk about that new Capcom fighting game collection that has a puzzle fighter in it. Oh. I know.

I'm very excited. Capcom made a fighting game collection that's just everything that isn't street fighter it's pretty great um cool well i think that is it for us uh thank you all for listening this has been another episode of the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest resties nail it every time