The Besties - Forza Horizon 5 is GotY material [Resties]

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

On this episode of Resties, Plante and Frushtick dance in the pouring rain of Video Game Season 2021. Forza Horizon 5 and Riders Republic are both a delight, so the Resties compare and contrast the two open-world racing adventures to help you find the right fit. In the second half of the episode, the pair discuss the first year of the Xbox Series X and PS5. Is now the right time to buy a new console... if you can even find one? Plus, the Resties share their recommendations of the week and open the AMA mailbag! Other stuff discussed in this episode: Demon's Souls, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Xbox Game Pass, The French Dispatch, Unpacking, Portal, Mario Kart, the films of Michael Haneke, The Last of Us 2, the Discworld series, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Speed Racer (2008), The Night of the Hunter, High & Low (1963). 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!

Welcome to the Resties, a video game podcast about the... Oh no, I forgot to put a new tagline. I forgot to put a new tagline. We're not using any of the ones that we came up with last week, so maybe we'll just leave this one blank. I think, you know, it's a feeling. You know, we can't put it into words so much as you can just feel...

feel it. What do you think about ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-I'm-lovin'-the-resties? I like that. I don't think we're gonna get sued at all. And I like... I think, um, uh... break me off a piece, that Resties podcast? Yep.

What's your name? Hey, everybody. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frushtick. Welcome to the Resties. Today, we are talking about a whole bunch of great stuff. There are so many great video games out right now that you will wonder why we spent 30 seconds riffing on slogans from famous fast food and

snack chains. We have Forza Horizon 5, we have Riders Republic, and that's just the first half. After that, we've got PlayStation 5 and and xbox series s and x uh we're looking at them on their first birthdays how did they do for the first year did anybody actually manage to buy one these are the questions we'll answer and are they walking yet are they oh no i hope not that would be i guess no that would be, that would be good. That would be about right on track. And as always, we'll talk about what else we've been playing. And at the end of the show, we'll share our recommendations of the week. So just to start, Forza Horizon 5 and Riders Republic, they are both open world racing games. Forza Horizon 5 is focused on automobiles if you will while riders republic

is more well i would say natural except for there's a jet pack in it which i i can't imagine it's good for the people it's it's more people powered yes it's extreme sports based um and we will be talking about both of them we're going to compare and contrast like this is some sort of SAT essay, but more fun right after this. Okay, so fresh. This is my week. Do you feel that? I very much do. Do you feel like it's my week?

Yeah, it should be noted you've also had the Rise of, what is it, Tales of Rise weeks. So you've been a little birthday boy for a while now. But I will say, even though I went into this week knowing what the assignments were, a little hesitant, I actually came out of it quite enjoying myself. So we're going to get into it. Okay, so which one did you enjoy the most? Oh, that is a good question um okay i mean we're this is encouraging already i thought you would have an immediate answer and then i would okay so i'll say where i'm leaning towards just as a starting point but i

do think it's actually closer than you might imagine the game that i enjoy most is probably forza horizon 5 okay but i actually enjoy the minute-to-minute gameplay of riders republic more but there are things that forza does much much much better than riders republic even though they are like bizarrely the same game like the whole trappings of both games is there's this like goofy like party in the desert or party in the mountains and everyone's like rocking and roll it's like uh whatever burning man but everyone loves their vehicles and they all gather together to do a variety of races and stunts in the middle of nowhere in like an open world setting. Both games have that as their trapping. So it's very bizarre to go back and forth.

Yeah, well, let's start with Riders Republic then because I do agree that it has a bit more flaws and then we can kind of like compare that to Forza Horizon, how I think it kind of remedies some of the issues with Riders Republic. And then maybe by the time we get to Forza Horizon, I'll be able to say it like you do which is the proper italian pronunciation oh i hope that you reach

that uh that peak one day writers republic for people who don't know and which might be more people because uh this is the sequel to a game called steep that i loved and is it the sequel played i mean it's not it's a spiritual sequel. Sure. So Steep was open world. You could go wherever you want, and you could change through all these different winter sports. You were on a whole bunch of mountains. Here, you are in a recreation of over a half dozen national parks in the United States.

So there are mountains. There are, like you said, kind of like desert areas um and you can mountain bike you can road bike yeah there are more things than biking um you uh can what is it wingsuit there's a wingsuit you can still ski and snowboard skis no worship jetpack all of these different things and it's kind of a mishmash of steep and then a game that i think a lot of people have probably forgotten called the crew two which is a racing game that let you change vehicles whenever you wanted oh yeah in this game you could be a jetpack and then change into anamorph style uh a person on a road bike, and then just hit the pavement going like 150 miles per hour.

It doesn't always end well for you. So there's a lot of room for playfulness, which they incorporate in the game at its best. The game is great when the playfulness is coming from the actual experience of play yeah it is very bad when it is um kind when it's trying to kind of like conjure playfulness from what it thinks extreme sports are in 2021 yeah so let's let's talk about just to to start at the positive let's talk about like an example of a mission or whatever, a race that you think matches that really well. Yeah. So for like,

for me with the multi sports races are my favorite. So that'll be like you against, you know, a dozen or so, uh, AI characters that I think similar to ports that are based off of, uh, like friends on your list Like friends on your list.

Friends on your list and how they play asynchronously. So you'll be going down. You'll start at the top of a mountain and you'll be skiing all the way down. And then you'll get to the bottom of the mountain. There's no more snow. And you'll jump off some ramp. And while you're mid sky, you will change into an off-road biker. So then you'll be biking through the forest down into the valley.

And then when you get into the valley, you hit another ramp. And then to get back up the mountain, you turn into a jet suit. And suddenly you are just zipping around this landscape. And it's all close to seamless. There's kind of like a half a second goof whenever you switch things so it doesn't feel like exactly like uh oh your propulsion from one is going to the next yeah um but you know considering the magic of being able to do this in the first place pretty excusable yeah that it's pretty good yeah that works for me really well i'm curious for you did you try any of the um like 40 person races or however many people yep i did it

so the i don't know if it's always this number but the one that i did was 60 people at once it's like online so they're all real players it kind of reminds me of playing Fall Guys or something like that, where you just have 60 people jammed into a very small snowboarding track and everyone's sort of bouncing around. So that was like goofy. I got, no joke, 58th place in a race of 60 people. Like you would think, and I genuinely genuinely tried and i don't think i screwed up that much and it made me think like is it using like do all these people have better gear than me or am i just like that terrible or i don't understand how the game works even though i got 58th place i still had a lot of fun like it was goofy to see everyone like bouncing around i mean i'm not that competitive

in that sort of situation so it's fine i don't mind losing i didn't have an urge to ever do that again but it was kind of a fun like jump into something wacky and i think that matches what you were talking about with the spirit of the game like feeling wacky um and there were other like things too where you know just just the things you unlock like by exploring the world you get like half of a wing of a plane that you can then use a jet pack or i think uh you know there's like rocket skis you can unlock or skis made of like wooden sticks um so like that goofiness i'm really into uh i think it's now time to talk about the thing that was like the biggest turnoff for me is they paired that with and you kind of alluded to this earlier with i can only describe this as

you know how in like gta or saints row there'll be those side missions where you're given like a mission by someone that's like clearly meant to be a douchebag, like not a cool person, like an idiot. Yeah. They, this game is filled with characters like that. Like everyone you like that talks to you is exactly like that. characters like that like everyone you like that talks to you is exactly like that but they are presented as like lovable rapscallions that are like funny and like having a good time when they say like yo let's listen to some tuneskies brah and that is like every single character that you meet in the game and most of those interactions are not skippable and it they are just like just let me go back to the races y'all it shouldn't be there so whoever i'm sorry but like whoever decided to

inject narrative into this game really needs to go back to the drawing board because it is painful yeah and it's not even that the choice to put narrative in it is inherently bad. No, no, you can do that well. I think Forza does it well, actually. Yeah, the slang here is, I truly don't know what happened. It's honestly hard for me. At first I was like, oh, wow, they must have had somebody much older than even us write this. Some of the slang they're using, early on they refer to something as brand spankin new which was outdated when brand spankin new doug appeared on disney's one saturday morning when i was a kid so i i i don't know who who comes up with that and then my like there's part of me

that wonders you know ubisoft games are made around the world, right? Like that there's people making it in Montreal and there are people are making it in, I don't know, Prague or wherever else. And I wonder if it was made by somebody who isn't from the United States or even like North America and they were googling terms or like yeah there have been times where like there's been like a French-based development studio and they've tried to recreate American culture uh Heavy Rain is the example that I always think not not a Ubisoft game but like that is a good example of like clearly something is not quite right about this version of Philadelphia and this game kind of reeks of that it also reeks the writing reeks of just like you know they talk about first thought and how you should avoid just using the first thought every line in this game is like the first thought you

would come up with for like how are we going to set up this mission uh just something totally half-assed and lazy and let's move on to the next thing because we have a ton of dialogue to get through and that's just like this the entire spirit of the game yeah if it was skippable i really wouldn't care but it's not so i care and you have to listen to a lot of it um you know ssX, which I think this game has a lot of similar DNA to SSX. And I love those games. But SSX also, like, did a pretty good job of, like, not making all of the dialogue super painful. Who was it? DJ Atomica?

That guy that would, like, pop on? And he was, like, goofy. But fine. Here, it's just now now i but thankfully you know you have the gameplay to fall back on and the gameplay is quite fun yeah yeah and i think i just kind of have accepted the visual aesthetic of i don't know what to call it fortnight chic yeah it's like oh get it you're dressed up as a mascot but you you're on skis. Can you believe it? A T-Rex skiing.

It's like, I guess I can. I do want to take issue with that specific thing. And this is a big time Ubisoft thing that they have really have a terrible reputation for. Whether you like the mascot stuff or not, it should be noted that like all of the relatively normal customization stuff. So like you're wearing a shirt and, well, you know, snowboarding pants and stuff like that. You can unlock just by playing the game and you earn currency and so on and so forth. Anything that's like out there and weird, like the T-Rex or like the giant giraffe or whatever, is all premium currency. It's all premium currency. And the fact that you have this game that you're charging 60,

probably $70 for the next gen version. And the fact that you are like locking people out from accessing the more interesting visual customizations, you're there your taste or not is pretty gross and ubisoft has for a long time been pretty gross with micro transactions and this is just kind of one example of it uh where you really should at i realize maybe not everything needs to be accessible through in-game but like you shouldn't lock all of the good stuff behind premium currency that just isn't cool yes i i agree i so i think the way to enjoy this game for me is to avoid the game of it all it is a big open world. And pretty rapidly as you play, you do unlock all of these different modes of transportation. Yeah. And just going around the world, uncovering what it has to offer, which the game kind of does gamify too.

And there are like monuments to be found and natural landmarks, stuff like that. Yeah, I had fun finding that stuff yeah and and i think i think like that for me is when the game is at its best i i guess i break a lot of video games down into uh work games and weed games and i don't say like weed games like you have to smoke weed to enjoy them uh but they they are games that are about kind of entering a trance sure um and i think like i i wish more games this scale recognized when they were a weed game instead of a work game uh by work game i mean you know destiny where you sign on and it's like you have to do all of this stuff. And we're constantly giving you things to measure yourself by. And this is not that type of game.

It shouldn't be in any way. They've created this amazing, gorgeous world that you can just speed through. And that momentum is the pleasure of the game. And every time they get in the way of that momentum and slow things down, often quite literally with those cut scenes, that really hurts it. I think that actually can kind of help us transfer to Forza Horizon 5, which maybe threads the needle of work game and weed game better than any game in history has done that. So Forza Horizon 5, the way this one works is where Riders Republic

was a lot of human-propelled extreme sport vehicles or devices or whatever in the national parks of the United States. Forza Horizon 5 is automobiles, gas and

electric-powered in Mexico and all across it uh it is a massive massive map not one for one obviously but quite large and it is filled with cars and trucks and and anything that moves on the ground outside of i guess their motorcycles. Oh, yeah. There aren't motorcycles in the game? You race against them. But I don't think you can drive any. Okay. Maybe a DLC.

Yeah. I think that was how they did it in previous Sports Horizons 2. So when I mentioned this being a work and weave game, what I mean by that is this game, after the first I don't know, two hours, just lets you make it whatever you want. There are so many

things to do in this game. So many variants. There's an arcade mode where you can do all sorts of silly stuff. There's really intense, almost sim-style racing. There's off-road racing. you can go and collect cars you can set off speed traps uh there's just gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of stuff to do and if it'll be anything like ford's horizon 4 they will be adding stuff to it for years that'll

just keep going so if you want to make this a zone out game it is one of the most beautiful open worlds ever created and it will accommodate that you can just zip around it but if you want to make this a work game holy moly will it let you do that because every single car can be upgraded in a gajillion ways, whether that is like actually tuning it or giving it these XP based upgrades so that you could sink hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours into this video game. Yeah, that's about right. I am very selective in terms of the racing games that I get into. Usually it's just I mean, in terms of car racing games just burnout like burnout paradise burnout takedown burnout revenge those were like the only racing games that I really got hardcore into and I even played a little bit of forza horizon 4 and liked it but there was something

I think the intro the beginning of it was after, like first race where they show you a bunch of different cars kind of slow for me where I felt like I was kind of tottering around a very small area. The setting is the weakest of the bunch too. Yeah. Whereas this, the setting is really quite remarkable. You've got like volcanoes and you've got the deserts and you've got like beaches and and uh oasis oasis is away side jungles jungles um and it's uh amazing but also i think the pacing of it is very smart because they do i think give you a lot more freedom earlier on than the last game did to to go off and do whatever you want i will say like it was

a little intimidating and it took me a couple hours to like even know how i wanted to play the game i i remember early on i like started a race and it was like what car would you like to use and i just picked my you know they had showed all the cars in my garage and I had like 12 of them and one of them had the biggest number. So I did that. Oh, no. And I did the race and I think it was 12 racers and I got 12th and it was not even close. And what was even more infuriating is that I could see your little drive-a-tar in the distance just like mocking me because it was so i i almost got laughed it was like that bad because i picked a mclaren on like a wet road in a tiny like tight turning race oh no

it was just the worst possible thing and i was like okay maybe i should start paying attention to like all-wheel drive versus not offered versus not maybe like you know stuff like that so once i sort of learned the game it got much more approachable and enjoyable for me yeah here's my advice for people who are listening and you're like hey i don't normally play this sort of thing but i think i'm going to give this a try one you should um because you can fine-tune the difficulty everything down to like actually slowing down the speed of the game uh to make this playable and also there is a vehicle for you in this game so mclaren if you're new to this not for you yeah um but if you think about it like what would you feel comfortable driving if you were just starting? And that gets you a lot closer.

So an all-wheel drive, maybe something like a rally car that's not a drift car. It'll say if it focuses on drifting. Anything that has good handling and is going to kind of stick to the ground. Because that, I'm sure, is what you ran into. of stick to the ground because that i'm sure is what you ran into is that yeah when you drive the mclaren or a sports car if you're not constantly like basically one letting off the gas and then two very very very delicately turning and fluttering the brake you are yeah no i wasn't doing that you're spun out every it's also the other tip that i have for people is, and this is kind of a weird Forza thing, so maybe you can explain why they do this. The shittier the car you, like, if you pick a shitty car, so like a, whatever, a Ford truck, like, beater, and you bring that into a race, all the other races, racers will also use that shitty car and the races get like way easier

I don't know if they use literally the same car in the same category category yeah yeah yeah yeah that that sounds about right um I mean I it what was good about it is that after I had that awful

McLaren experience I like dialed it back I picked like a b-rank car or a c-rank car whatever i earned back my confidence by like totally creaming like six or seven different races in a row and then i was like okay i think maybe i can try an a now and i like started dipping into harder cars and like that was kind of a more welcoming way to do it i do almost think that there might there should be a little more direction for new people like that because it is overwhelming to just kind of guess but maybe if you're listening to this and you think you're going to try it let me be your direction yeah and the other good thing about trying this is now you

can like switch your cars on the fly. You're constantly getting new cars. Oh, could you not do that before? I believe you had to go, I could be wrong here, but I believe you had to go back to, like, wherever an event center was to charge them. Oh, okay. Or you had to, like, pay for it in, like, in-game tickets. It's been a while since I played the last one. Yeah.

But, yeah, I, this game's on Game Pass. If you have Game Pass, I would give this a download. You can try like three or four cards and just zip around the world. You do not need to go do races. The way that

you will find out if you like this game, if you don't like this genre, is just by zipping around. And then once you feel comfortable with it and you're having fun just doing that then try whichever race sounds appealing to you a lot of the early ones are kind of designed to feel like fast and the furious type of stuff so they're like easier and a bit more playful anyway but for me what i love about about forza horizon 5 and this horizon series versus just general forza is the way it feels i don't know how to describe this very well you can feel the ground underneath you does that make sense like i guess because you're off-road more so you feel like the the

shakes of the yeah and all the different textures like if i'm off road or if i'm going through water or it's like a slick road i i always i don't know it's it's weird how i i know i'm not literally feeling it but something about it um i'm blanking on the term where you like mix one uh sensation with another or like i'm seeing it but i can feel it somehow synesthesia yeah like like there's like a synesthesia happening uh where i just i really feel the ground in this game in a way that i don't in most games i don't think that's the thing that they even care about um yeah i, I think the physics are spot on, which is part of the reason you feel that way.

And then obviously there's rumble and visual effects as well when you're going over gravel or through water. There's a mission where you take a rally buggy up the side of a volcano as it's exploding. And just the, what is that called, shale or whatever, the just crumbly rocks up the side of the volcano It's exploding. And like, just the like, what is that called? Shale or whatever. The like, just crumbly rocks up the side of the volcano, like feels genuinely different than just like a dirt road or a desert or something like that.

And I just like that. They add narrative to, to races or missions that like make me care more, you know, when people fawn over gran turismo or even the like main forza most motorsport series i find them like dull as dishwater because like you know i'll find a car that i like and i just want to drive that so the idea that i can like tweak the horsepower to give me six extra whatever doesn't do it for me i need like a little more and a horizon series has always kind of given

that yeah it's also just really fun to get in a very very fancy car and just go bunny hopping across the hills crashing the cacti like yeah feels good hey are you ready for a segue oh yeah forza horizon 5 is the most beautiful game on the Xbox Series X to date. That's probably true. I'd say that's true. And that is why we're going to talk about the first year, the first birthday of Xbox and PlayStation right after this break. Okay, so do you want to kind of steer the ship on this one i'm sure i'm curious where your head's at well here here we are so we are now a year into the life cycle of both the xbox series x

the xbox series s and the playstation 5 i think mostly we're going to probably be focusing on the series x and the playstation 5 just because the we're going to probably be focusing on the Series X and the PlayStation 5 just because the S is sort of a different thing entirely. Also, I haven't used it, so I don't feel comfortable really speaking to it. But I kind of wanted to just go and take a look at both of these consoles and see how they've done in their first year

and whether we think they are succeeding or failing or whether one is doing something better than the other one um yeah i mean that's more or less it so uh why don't we just start with the most obvious area and that's games uh what which of these two consoles seems to be having the better game experience in terms of releases. I think Sony seems like the obvious answer, right? Because they have exclusives. They do have exclusives, yeah. Xbox still doesn't have any, correct?

In terms of Series X exclusives. I think Flight Simulator might be exclusive. No, I'm pretty sure it's not. I think it's on Series S as well. Oh, sure, but I don't think it's on the old consoles. Oh, that might be true. But I think, yeah, Sony has had releases that feel, even if they aren't technically exclusives,

like Spider-Man Miles Morales, that feel like PS5 games. And they have had true exclusives as well like i'm sorry returnal and uh ratchet and clank as you said true those were like true exclusives yeah so they've had those games that said i xbox still has a game pass which continues to just feel like a huge advantage and while um while maybe forza horizon 5 is technically available on the other consoles forza horizon 5 by every definition looks like a next-gen game sure when you're playing it on you know an xbox series x um microsoft flight simulator certainly looks like a next-gen experience um it on you know an xbox series x um microsoft flight simulator certainly looks

like a next-gen experience um it's you know it's breathtaking that said i don't think either of those games are the traditional things people think of when they think of big next generation entertainment right they think of oh god what an awful phrase but they think of you know big properties they think of god of war they think of halo infinite which you awful phrase but they think of you know big properties they think of god of war they think of halo infinite which you know is about to come out but because of that early preview a year ago i think now kind of doesn't have the cachet of being a next gen game um i mean and it's also multi-platform like it is and it's multi-platform uh original xbox one and and pc and everything so it seems like i think for the for a first year i think the playstation 5 has done a good job

of having those titles that kind of make you feel like you're justifying your purchase the death loops of the world the you know ratchet the demon souls uh you know even the ps5 you know enhanced games like miles morales it does feel like those have been there whereas on the xbox for me i treat the xbox series x mostly as like a pc gaming alternative and at 500 for a very very capable uh gaming device you have a lot of options here that you would probably have to spend two grand to get a comparable gaming PC. So I think they are serving two different goals. I think PlayStation 5 is just like a splashier option and continues to be like i think you could probably play a lot of the games that are you know series x games on even on xbox one or you know a

previous gen xbox one or an xbox uh god all the naming is terrible uh xbox one x and have a pretty close experience whereas on the playstation 5 I've played games that like are very clearly could never ever run on a PlayStation 4 you know the Demon Souls remake is the biggest one for me like that continues to be just awe inspiring Returnal also

like really impressive you know I but I agree with you with Game Pass I you know I don't think there's PlayStation is giving, is offering anything that is remotely close to the value proposition that game pass does just because if you want to like stay abreast of games and don't want to spend a ton of money, game pass is kind of an outrageous deal. Um, and every single month there's been at least one game that was worth playing, if

not multiple games that are worth playing if not multiple games that are worth playing so yeah i don't know it's it's tricky i i would i think because of game pass if we're including it i would probably give the the edge to xbox but again game pass can be experienced on the last gen as well and most of those games run great on the last gen so i don't know i'm i'm. You know what? I'm going to change my mind. PlayStation 5 games. Yeah.

I think it's funny what Sony is actually doing, though, after this year, which is here they had some exclusives for PS5. Yeah. And now they're like, no, no. It's going to come out on PS4, too. Horizon, you know, Zero Dawn 2 coming out on PS4. The New God of War coming out on ps4 too uh horizon you know zero dawn 2 coming out on ps4 the new god of war coming out on ps4 i think i have to wonder if they realized well people are gonna buy this console no matter what because there's a shortage of it so we don't have to use the exclusivity as an incentive and two i mean i know that these um these big games are you know designed at a cost

to help them move consoles right like sure i don't know if all of them are big money makers but at a certain point like you do need some copies to sell and there are just so many ps4s out there and so few ps5s uh out there that it seems like the business part of it has kind of caught up to them maybe a little bit. Yeah, I would say like you mentioned God of War and you mentioned Horizon Forbidden West. Both of those games have always been PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games.

I'm sure they look a hell of a lot better and run a hell of a lot better on PlayStation 5, but they were never presented as exclusives for the PlayStation 5. I do agree with you that there might have been a time where Sony could have been like, well, actually, they were now PlayStation 5 exclusives. Sorry, that is just for the best of the experience.

But it does seem like Sony is leaning towards Xbox's Microsoft strategy and just like let's open the floodgates and get as many people playing these games as possible and maybe they'll start playing them and be like you know this would run a hell of a lot like who knows how horizon's gonna run on a launch ps4 probably not great and that might uh sell a few consoles as well yeah yeah oh i wonder uh i mean speaking of that play it wherever we're now seeing sony put these games on pc too uh yeah that's true so it's like yeah i i just pc has weirdly become the place if especially if you're patient and you don't need to play it literally at launch where you can kind of start to assume that everything will be there,

um, either on launch date for Xbox or, you know, maybe a year and a half later on, uh, for all the PlayStation games. I, I,

yeah, obviously the downside is to make that the spendingness of like, you know, running these games on PC gets, gets pricey, especially the higher end next gen games. Um, so, you know know that's sort of the trade-off i like the brainlessness of console gaming insofar as like you know it's going to

work you don't need to update graphics drivers it just works but obviously there's the downside of you know it might not look as great and uh sometimes it means having to wait for those console patches to come out yeah i have a question for you when we talked about these consoles uh you know a year ago you loved the playstation 5's uh triggers yes well haptic triggers yeah well let's we should check the tape so i I did know. Oh, you loved them. You, you, you were a gaga for them. You're right. You're right. The thing that continues to amaze me about the PlayStation 5 controller and kind of makes it leaps and bounds better than the Xbox controller in this

one particular way is not the triggers, but the rumble the rumble in playstation 5 controllers is so much better just technologically speaking it feels more realistic more naturalistic than the xbox controllers it made me wish actually this is a good example so i played um riders republic on playstation 5 and i played forza obviously on xbox rise of republic with that rumble feels wild like it really feels you talk about fueling the road you really feel the road with that rumble i felt it on xbox as well with forza but i could tell how much better it would have been with that rumble now the triggers you're right gimmicky for sure i think developers have been very smart about using them occasionally uh in interesting and good ways but whenever there's an instance where like i think they're

overusing it or it becomes a pain in the ass i just turn it off and that's fine yeah that that's where i was getting with it i i just had a mince i know you wanted to shove it in my face i get it i'm just saying it's me i was right you know what we were both no no i like look bug snacks if you take a photo in bug snacks and you like you could feel the click of the camera that's awesome i want more of that that's i don't necessarily need to feel the weight of a heavy machine gun in call of duty but clicking a camera to take a picture of bunker count me in okay before we wrap the the segment what do you think people should do say they're getting into gaming right now right yes they let's say they don't even have a console because we do have quite a few listeners who either don't

have any video game console which if you're listening and that's you thank you i don't have any video game console, which if you're listening and that's you, thank you. I don't, you, you mystify me and I adore you. And then there are, I think even more folks who have a Nintendo switch, but don't have anything like this. Would you recommend them getting a kind of like a mid range PC,

a net, one of these consoles. So Xbox series X, PS five, or just, you know going out and getting an old ps4 xbox one yeah so if you have a if you don't have anything i would recommend a switch i think the switch is like the best gateway console maybe ever um the portability of it the fact that it works also on a tv the fact that the games are like by and large very approachable so switch would be my number one recommendation um if you have a switch

and you feel like you want to like dip your toe into maybe more quote-unquote serious games i don't really believe that but like you know what i mean like hard quote hardcore hardcore games makes me sick when i say it um i think the solution is probably buy a either a series s if you want to save a little money or an x if you want something that's going to last for like three or four or five years um buy that and you buy game pass i think that like is such an easy option but for just like i don't want to have to think about what games i'm buying game pass is going to throw me three or four or five new games a month and i'll try some of them and some of them i'll like and some of them i won't like but it will help you develop a taste for what you're

into genre wise and um it lets you like check out a bunch of stuff so that's that's like that option playstation 5 is like the mclaren option which is to say like you better know what you're buying it for because if you're just buying it because people really like playstation like are buying playstation 5s you know i think you will have a tough time justifying it like for these first couple of years while we wait for these releases to come out. Um, yeah, if it wasn't for game pass,

it'd be a lot closer. I'd say it's six and one half, but because of game pass being an option, you know, man, it, it really is pretty good. And,

and Microsoft does not pay us any money to say that. You'll hear that from a lot of people. It is a genuinely really good thing. And it actually makes me wonder, will that keep up? I remember when Xbox Live and Games with Gold launched 10 years ago, whatever it was, and it started out and the games were so good. The free games you'd get every month were just like you know oh super meat boy and like like like big indies that i was really psyched about and over time those free games have really

fallen off and playstation plus plus same thing it's very hit or miss in terms of whether the free games are good sometimes they're great you know hitman 2 was free uh a month or two ago that's a great game um but uh it makes me wonder whether game pass will be able to keep up the pace but certainly you know purchasing bethesda is a good way to sort of guarantee that long term yeah i i think the the best shot it has at keeping the pace is yeah one it's just going to keep buying studios so acquisitions will help with that yeah to the indie market is just huge and in need of money so i think they just have more options to choose from in three look at netflix right netflix had everything until competitors came around

yeah and we haven't even begun to see the the start of competitors for game pass and i know playstation has an option it is it is not good not good yeah sony has yet to kind of make especially that big commitment to hey we're going to release our big games day and date it's telling that mlb the show a you know long time playstation exclusive launched day and date on xbox game pass yeah which is just wild even if you aren't into those sorts of games so yeah i i i agree with y'all i agree with you on all of that um i i certainly would not recommend a PC for a newcomer. Yeah. Even though it has any number of advantages, it is, yeah, it's just too much of a headache.

So I think that is it for that. It's been a fine year for these consoles, but unlike anything we've ever seen before. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a normal year, certainly. And I don't know that it ever will. This kind of bridging the gap between two generations has never happened to this extent

before, and it's very bizarre, but on the bright side, it means that a lot of people that don't have the new consoles get to play new games, so people aren't cut out. Okay, so this is where we share our one recommendation of the week before we get into reader mail. I will keep mine brief. The French Dispatch, the new film by Wes Anderson. It is a collection of shorts loosely inspired by magazines like The New Yorker.

Would you describe it as twee? Oh, I mean, why, certainly. I would say that's probably it's it's the first ingredient on its list of ingredients. But what I really liked about it was it's about writers and editors and their relationship um obviously they're the stories that are actually in in the short films but between them are these interactions between bill murray who plays the editor of of this fictional magazine and uh all of his various writers and i think that's where the heart of the film lies. I've seen a lot of people call the film cold, but I don't know.

I really, really, really connected with it. And I thought it captured the compassion that writers have for writers and the passion that writers have for their careers and their subjects. And I don't feel like I see that very often in film. I think when you see reporting and journalism in film, a lot of the times it's like hard news. You know, it's we're going to, all the president's men,

we're going to break open this big story. And it's not what the majority of of journalism is which is curious people asking questions about stuff they find interesting um and sharing it with the world and i liked that we got to see that from somebody who is just an immensely talented director um how about you what what else have you been enjoying this week that you'd recommend? Yeah, it's, uh, I wish I wasn't, it's really tough to like watch stuff at night. Um, yeah, just cause baby. Uh, so we, where I talked about, uh, watching succession, which I continue to absolutely adore, but, um, I do want to talk about one other game very quickly and that game is called unpacking

it is available on switch it's available on pc and it's on xbox through game pass as well and the premise is really just you are unpacking a bunch of cardboard boxes in a pixel art apartment um and each level is basically a year in your life so it starts and you're unpacking your like childhood bedroom basically and you're putting toys out and stuff like that and as it progresses uh that there's more challenges in terms of finding space for things and like it it you know i don't want to spoil too much but like as an example uh you move in it's not explicitly ever stated but you move into what is effectively like a single guy's apartment uh you know there's like neon signs on the wall and like weightlifting and a guitar that's like framed it's like it's a dude apartment and uh it's uh funny because there's just like no room for your stuff so you're trying

to like hang your diploma on the wall and there's nowhere to hang it so the only place you can put your diploma of all the options is like in a closet somewhere. So there's like this interesting narrative that happens throughout that game that's like very subtle. There's no real dialogue. All you get is like a single line of like writing at the end of each level,

talking about like your vibe, like how you're feeling when this happened. And I find it very soothing, the great soundtrack um that i've been listening to after i played the game i've just been listening to it on spotify uh the soundtrack's really good for unpacking and uh if you get a lot of satisfaction of like just putting stuff away and then my favorite part throwing away cardboard boxes that are now empty oh man that is my stuff right there.

And you can do a lot of that. So, yeah, really dig it. Highly recommend unpacking. That sounds great. So we got some questions from our listeners and can go through those before we wrap the show. The first one is from Lex, who asked, what games would you recommend for someone who didn't play tons of video games as a kid to learn the basic mechanics while still having fun? This game unpacking is actually really good for people that aren't necessarily like, quote unquote, gamers. So that's definitely a suggestion. If you want to if you I had mentioned this in a previous episode, but I'll reiterate it here. Portal 1 and Portal 2, if you ever want to like get into first person shooter games, but feel very intimidated by like all the mechanics, both of those games are like tremendous for that.

So I definitely recommend. I also think, I mean, you mentioned the Switch as like the perfect entry space for video games. The great thing about Nintendo's own games, not every Switch game, is that they really do work as stepladders into their genres. So Mario Kart is a great entry point for racing games. You love the Fire Emblem series, which I think is a great entry point into strategy games yeah splatoon is a very friendly and not super violent shooter so if you want to try these different genres without you know jumping into the deep end all of those games are are nice ways to do it um this is a question from t. Do you think, quote,

fun is the core concept of gaming or do you sometimes sacrifice that in order for importance or artistic value? Yeah. Wow. I do think, okay, I would not call fun a core concept. I think it is a very common and important concept i don't know necessarily i

wouldn't say it's a required concept i don't think every game you play needs to be fun every moment needs to be fun certainly you know yeah last of us two certainly is not fun for a lot of it um and i think developers certainly sacrifice what would be like a fun experience in favor of telling maybe a more important narrative beat so yeah i would say that pleasure is a core concept of gaming and quite honestly like all of entertainment and that doesn't mean a thing can't be sad or upsetting, right? But there is pleasure to be had in it. So if you look at like the films of Michael Haneke, who made Funny Games, some really violent and upsetting movies, looking at his films is pleasurable, right?

And playing The Last of Us 2 is extremely pleasurable even though you're seeing all this horrific stuff it feels very good you want to keep playing it because it feels good and it looks beautiful um and i think pleasure is the thing that the vast 99.9% of art has in some form. Again, it's kind of a nebulous term. I just think in video games, pleasure also happens to be fun because we are voluntarily stepping into a virtual world, right? So if you're going to do that, you are doing it, I don't say escape like

in the escapism escapism sense but you're doing it because you are wanting access to something that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get in your real life in real life not hard to find a lot of like sad things or like menial things or work things but it can be hard to you know get in a car and drive anywhere you want in mexico um that is fun uh i think for me if you're gonna like your version of pleasure i think is just like interest like it needs a game needs to be interesting in some way it needs to keep my interest if it's boring whether it not just for a game for any piece of art if it doesn't like spark my imagination or make me think or whatever, it's a failure, complete and utter failure. So that's really all I'm looking for is like something that is trying to do something. Some of them will be to my taste and some of them won't.

Um, but at least like put yourself out there game wise and say like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to try to like actually take a stand and, and do or say something that's genuinely interesting. Um, so it doesn't always have to be fun. Uh, a question about, we're staying on the, uh, the smart people stuff, uh, from cactus girly. Is there any book book series that you would want turned into a video game and don't think about it too hard hmm uh man uh i growing up i i love the disc world series uh terry pratchett uh which is like a parody of fantasy novels. They've actually made Discworld games.

I've not played them. And I don't think they are like standout, known as like spectacular releases. But again, I haven't played them, so I won't speak. But I do think that world is so rich that the idea of like a Skyrim, but in that world would be pretty spectacular. So that's what jumps to mind

yeah mine would be um so there's this book called the thousand autumns of jacob dezoit which is by david mitchell who did cloud atlas and he actually is a co-screenwriter on the upcoming matrix movie um but this book is it seems at first like one of his more i don't know not plain but um not science fictiony or not you know fantastical it is set in the 18th century and it's uh on this like dutch trading i guess inlet or island on the coast of japan And it's like very, very small, because they Japan did not allow the Dutch into the rest of Japan, it was a controlled port for trade. And when I read that, I just kept coming back to the idea of how wonderful a setting this would be for a video game, because it's such a unique environment. You know, it's like, it is a place between worlds. It's not Japan, it's such a unique environment you know it's like it is a place between worlds it's

not japan it's not dutch uh it is uh its own little thing and there's just immense conflict because of the skepticism on all parties and uh each party trying to know, get the best of the other. And then gradually the book does introduce some of Mitchell's wilder ideas. So, yeah, that is like a thing that I will never get adapted into a video game. But I have always kind of dreamt would be getting that treatment. Just very quick answer for us on this one uh from spinosaurus dan uh what's your favorite anime um it's cowboy bebop which i talked about on a previous episode but if you're gonna hold me to pick another one because i already talked about it i would say samurai champloo which is from the same creator of cowboy bebop uh you mentioned you know uh that era in japan

samurai champ blue is actually focused entirely of that era of the outside world slowly sort of having its influence affect uh japanese culture um and uh sort of the death of that era of samurai uh so super super great amazing music awesome series i've only begun to get into anime again in the last kind of couple years i guess during the pandemic i liked it a bit in junior high but keep your hands off isaacan which i maybe i've talked about on the show which is about a group of it's three uh young girls in high school who decide to create their own anime creation club. Like they actually draw and animate anime. It is so delightful.

And even better, it's on HBO Max. So if you are not the type of person who has Crunchyroll just yet or Funimation, anything like that, this is a good way for you to try a great series and kind of whet your appetite to the form um before we move on for this i do want to one quick mention of several resties ago we talked about we were struggling to come up with a good live action anime recreation uh in the context that we were talking about the Cowboy Bebop live action show that's coming to Netflix.

And people very rightly called out Speed Racer, the movie, is more or less the best example of an anime turned live action that anyone could come up with. I certainly agree with that. So, well done everyone that suggested Speed Racer certainly agree with that. So, uh, well done everyone that suggested speed racer.

And with that, um, I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews, uh, on Apple podcasts. Um, specifically, uh,

I know a lot of these people called out the resties, which we really, really appreciate. It feels great. Um, tiny cuffs, New York draft fan, Dwight W.

Davis, Nick Colas, uh, Jossaspe abby oaks read the rose clay three four seven six the uncool and bernie bernie sports bernie s ports something like that um thank you uh and thank you to everyone else who has written reviews that was a double length one because i know i forgot to name names the last time we did resties uh but we really really appreciate the reviews okay so here's what we talked about this week we spoke about forza horizon 5 the car racing game and riders republic the bike and people and snow racing game we also spoke about the anniversaries of the xbox series x and playstation 5 mentioning games like demon souls uh and very briefly i guess microsoft flight simulator

ratchet and clank stuff like that uh we also spoke about uh the french dispatch and unpacking and got a few shout outs for stuff like like Portal and Nintendo games like Mario Kart. And that's it. I mean, we talked about our favorite anime. You know, Cowboy Bebop, Keep Your Hands Off Isaac. And, you know, maybe I had buried one bonus question here from Cuddly as a Cactus asking for my real favorite Criterion top 10. I'm not going to give that right here. That's so many things to say. But I will say a good starting point is The Night of the hunter and high and low so maybe i do have an answer that's it

that's it for this episode we did it we did it again it's another episode of the resties in the books uh because uh taglines are hard i don't have really any way to outro this episode. Next week, which is actually two weeks because that's the cadence, we're going to be talking about something. What is it? I don't know. That's a great question. Maybe Battlefield? Maybe.

Maybe. You'll just have to tune in to find out. Otherwise, I hope you have a wonderful week, a delightful weekend after that. And the holidays are almost here. So get that holiday music playing. Hanukkah comes early this year. It is a great time to be smiling.

We will see you next time.