The Besties - Fun with Robosaurs in Horizon: Forbidden West

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

It's feast or famine out there, games-wise, and this week's a FEAST: We're talking about Sony's newest first-party blockbuster, Horizon: Forbidden West. Also, Destiny 2's new expansion is out! And it's pretty good! Other games discussed: Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Magic the Gathering Arena, Hollow Knight, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Celeste, Terraria, The Room 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!

Had a great moment in the parking lot of the daycare yesterday. Oh, yeah? And it was very affirming, because the only music Henry wants to listen to anymore is raps about Minecraft, which has taken a real detriment on my sort of mental well-being. I mean, it's good that a lot of words rhyme with redstone, so that's a good start.

I mean, you can laugh, but some of these things are fucking fire. Me and Harry were bumping to one as we pulled up with the volume just like cranking, rattling those windows. Sure. And I realized as we got out that there was a dad getting out of a car right next to us

that definitely heard me like rapping about enderman yeah um just like ripping the enderman rap and then i like got embarrassed and turned it off and then as i got out of the car he looked at me he's like enderman rap and i was like yeah baby i'm now realizing is it said you say it like Enderman, like it's a last name? Yeah. Yeah, it's not. Like John Enderman? Well.

Are you talking about Slenderman? No, there's a Minecraft version called Enderman. He's the Enderman. Enderman. Enderman. But there's more than one of Enderman. John Enderman DDS. Anyway.

I thought it was a cute story, but then you had to go and... No, it's cute. I thought it was a cute story, and then you had to go and just like, damn it. Did you high five with the dad after? No, I didn't touch a stranger. Are you out of your fucking mind? It's 2022. I'll never touch another stranger for as long as I live. I'm already married, and I have friends.

Why would I touch anyone? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. Really made a meal of it, huh? I'm Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. That's right. Chris Plant is in here.

Welcome to the besties. What else is new? Whoa, dang, dude. That's right. Chris Plant is in here. Welcome to the besties. What else is new? Whoa, dang, dude. Light him up. Drag him. Drag him. Welcome to the besties. We talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

I'm sorry I said that about Chris. He's a diligent young fellow. He is. And he's dutiful. In almost every episode. He's doing his best. think I'll agree on that uh but this is the best you guys got me all off my freaking rhythm it's the besties it's a video game club where we talk about uh games and I feel like it's so funny because we had this uh drought for a long time where we're like uh oh what's the best 3dx game and uh now it's like games games games games games lots of games it's not ideal quite honestly because they should just

spread them out like a little bit they should whoever decided that there should be a new destiny expansion and elder rain coming out in the same week. Sorry, did you say Elderman? Did I say Elderman? Yes, you did. If Elderman's coming out, I'm leaving. I don't need him around. We're basically in the like, Broom's Fantasia moment,

where they just keep fucking bringing shit, but only in a very specific period of time, and it's bad. Yeah. But it's good, because they're video games, and they're good. They're good games,

so that's good. That's what we talk about here. They're good games. And which one are we doing this? I honestly forget which one we're doing. Horizon? Yes. Okay. Is it Horizon 2 for Midwest or Horizon for Midwest?

Because if you look at the logo for it, it definitely looks like there's a 2 in there. It does. It could be a stylized text break. Yeah, it does. I think it is an intentionally stylized text break, in the official title there is no two so it's just horizon forbidden west got it but it is the second one and they can't try and trick us into thinking it's not so i don't know i mean there it is there yes i'm a grown-up man i i like i know numbers chris plant's not here so i guess i'll talk about what this game is. Yes.

Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, which was an open world game that was exclusive to PlayStation, coming from Guerrilla Games. This new one essentially expands in the classic sequel video game format, expands every aspect of the original game. Giant new map, better graphics, more robots,

more things to ride, more upgrades, more quests, a lot more of everything. It kind of feels like the Assassin's Creed 2 to the original Assassin's Creed.

That is a great, that is a great comparison. Thank you, thank you. And it's an open world game. Yeah. Well, we'll get into that, the merits of Re it's an open world game. Okay, well, we'll get into that, the merits of Reza's comparison, right after this.

What I was going to quibble about with, I feel like Horizon Zero Dawn succeeded a lot more than the original Assassin's Creed did. If that... Oh, that's true. Yeah, I think it started, this franchise started on stronger footing than

assassin's creed did 100 i will say this i did not enjoy horizon zero dawn really at all i feel like for an open world game to like hook me it needs to be fun most of the time i feel like that is a a bare minimum requirement for well all video games uh but open world. I feel like that is a bare minimum requirement for, well, all video games, but open world games, I feel like, are not great at that, at that sustained fun, and I feel like Zero Dawn suffered from that. For Midwest, pretty fucking fun game, man.

Yeah, it's a fun game. It's a fun game. I think if you're talking about evolutions over, and I think we have to assume like a baseline understanding of, well, you know what? Let's not. Yeah. Aloy is a, I would say at this point,

a hero of a post-apocalyptic planet Earth. It is our planet in the distant, distant future in the distant distant uh future um where uh because of various schemes to resurrect life on earth and or destroy life on earth there are uh robot dinosaurs yeah basically like that's yeah all life was wiped out and started from scratch like and so this is sort of like the next group of society and aloy in the past game basically became the hero that saved a large chunk of the planet from the reason there are robots which is too complicated we're not going to go into it i i could if you wanted me to but we don't have the time it's it's really it's it's fairly complex i dig it though i i feel like the like setting and world lore is actually one of my favorite things about horizon i never finished zero dawn

but they provide a very helpful sort of plot synopsis at the top of um uh forbidden west thank christ yeah but like it's a it is a uh genuinely rad and I would say thoroughly original setting. Yeah, it's cogent, which most of these super sci-fi, you compare this to Halo Infinite Story. This actually kind of makes sense. It does have a lot of variety and depth to it, so it can be a little overwhelming. But you boil it down, it makes a lot of sense. For me, so it can be a little overwhelming but you boil it down it makes a lot of sense it's even less for me it's less about the story the story of uh i i've not finished forbidden west either uh the story is good but the the world is like what really fascinates me

and that is i did not realize i feel like until this game how important that is for me to again like stick with an open world game is to be curious about the world and that is a that's a tough putt i feel like for for most video games uh but i was i felt myself pulled along less about like progression and like oh i gotta get a stronger bow and more about like where's this fucking ai though what's there what's this story about there's a spaceship what the fuck and i and i think it also is the they they're very smart in this game about environmental variety to like keep things fresh so you start in what's essentially like uh kind of looks like the cotswolds it's like rolling hills grassy it reminded reminded me of that beginning of Witcher 3, that

small, open-world environment area. But then very quickly, it goes to... You've got desert, you've got jungle, you've got swamps, you've got Pacific Island archipelagos and stuff. You've got snowy mountains. The amount

of environmental variety is pretty stunning. It's like a bad Magic the Gathering there's just lands of all of all types just scattered hither and yon and that was a joke from my magic the gathering fans that we love to see it we do um i i do want to mention one thing that i mentioned a few weeks ago and i was talking about being a little and this was like one of the snobbier things ever said but i said it which was i was a little bummed that horizon uh forbidden west was on both old and new platforms i like the fact that everyone could play it but it wasn't exclusive to ps5 and i was bummed because if you look at a game like the demon souls remake on ps5 that like screams next gen to you whereas a lot of these multi-platform games don't necessarily um that being said holy shit this game is absolutely

stunning to look at um yeah despite the fact and i've actually heard that it's it runs quite well even on old hardware but god damn it looks good on ps5 too um so i really received that comment about it being multi-platform being a bad thing the uh two places i feel like it stands out most is the face capture is like wow yeah really good it is bespoke for like big scenes and big conversations in a way that like really gets emotion across you know i i i struggle to think of a game that has done it this good. A little L.A. Noire, maybe? L.A. Noire, if you go back to it, does not age particularly well.

There's a lot of eyebrows going up in that game. It stands out. And I think that the performances are across the board really doing a lot of heavy're doing a lot of heavy lifting i would say to to elevate it and make like the the uh the script which is i would say serviceable but not necessarily a little dry well it is dry i would say yeah dry for sure i think the script um for the main story i completely agree with you it's a little dry the it feels this feels again i'll bring back the witcher as a comparison the side

quest in this game i think is where the writing really soars and that's not really surprising because it because it uh relies on telling smaller more bite-sized stories that are like have like interesting arcs rather than having to tell this like grand sweeping 60 hour thing um so they're also more they're more fun the story of the side quest and and i feel like just as a sidebar game devs of especially of open world games you don't have to make your main story like a very super serious and sometimes dour affair, but then you like walk off the path a little bit

and then there's a guy who's like, oh no, I sewed myself to my horse or like whatever. A classic. A classic side quest bit. The other area where it really shines is like just the vistas and the beautiful landscapes uh which is fortunate because that is what got me through my what is maybe my least favorite thing in games now which is scripted climbing um which was cool and uncharted when you climbed up a train and you just sort of followed the path

that your good friends and family at Naughty Dog had laid out for you. But they do that a lot in this game and it feels like filler every time. I do not love the like, oh, there's the bar I climb up to get to that thing and there's a hand like it's not dynamic really at all it's just like oh i am i am going up the way that they want me to go

and it's slower than walking it it is uh there are some instances they introduce uh what they call a pull caster which is um grappling a it's a grappling hook. It's funny, you hear Aloy sometimes come up with the names for these things. She's like, well, with this pull caster, I guess I'll call it, I can do this. And that actually can help.

You sometimes have to look for, it's not so obvious, right? It's not just a handhold away. Sometimes it's like, oh, there's a place I have to run and grappling hook up to, to keep the chain going. But I mean and large i i would i would agree but like in the open world though there's so much of it i kind of appreciate it because it really eliminates the is that something i can climb up is that something i can climb up because you just pulse your uh you know scanner deal and you know you can see handholds whatever which is nice it's

also it's also like you can you can skyrim your way up a mountain frequently that even if there aren't handholds like just by like jumping a lot which it looks a little janky to be honest but i'm totally fine with that like i keep it up the the alternate way of doing it is the is the breath of the wild way right where you can climb fucking everything and so they have to design the whole game around that so you get to an area where there's just a building on a giant pillar and you're like oh i can't go so i'm not going there then because they've specifically made it unclimbable okay um yeah there were there are moments in this game where uh areas that you just can't access until you progress deeper in the story and that's effectively not possible using the breath of the wild technique yeah of course unless they do like stamina gates but even then people figure out ways around it it doesn't feel

as totally like freewheeling as breath of the wild it's definitely a much more guided uh insofar as like what you can actually do from minute to minute that doesn't bother me again it's a different experience i don't think you can do a narrative game with the level of freedom that's in breath of the wild no no and that's not appropriate for all guys i i understand why it is the way that it is it's it's just not my uh i i i don't feel challenged it's like not necessarily a challenge doing one of those climbing segments. It's just like, well, I'll go the way you want me to go and I'll take a little bit.

I will go back to a game where the climbing was fantastic, which was Dying Light. Sure. And that was an example of not scripted climbing necessarily, but made you feel a lot more agency than this does, which again, feels a little more gridded. But I do want to talk about one thing but made you feel a lot more agency than this does, which again, feels a little more gritted. But yeah, I,

I do want to talk about one thing that I think most open world games get kind of messy. And I would count breath of wild in this. I'd count Witcher in this. Um, the combat in this game is fucking great. Like much, much better than I think it is in most of these games,

just because, uh, you know, a lot of this has to do with game feel. And, like, knocking little parts off robots. And then seeing their health go down, like, a huge amount. It's super fucking satisfying. I know people that play this on... I played it on easy. Just from an interest in, like, seeing as much as I could.

I know people that play these games on hard. And, like, play it like a Monster Hunter game where every encounter, like you're setting traps down and all sorts of stuff. You can do that. But for me, I was just like enjoying like fucking wrecking some robot dinos.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was struggling with this part specifically. And this is kind of what I wanted, like something that I wanted to touch on. You brought up Witcher and it's, again, I think it's such a good comparison in this regard too and i was struggling to click with this and i and i i think i had the same problem with the first one uh i think that horizon is i am somebody who is very averse to consumability in game like using stuff using things right like i hate to use like if something's like non-renewable yeah um i hate to use it and it it is uh not like um

potions and dark souls whatever because i know those refill if i hit the thing right so it's more of like an extended health bar but like like, if I have, you name it, like potions, arrows, weapons, traps, whatever, I'm really, I don't know why, I just hate that feeling. Like, I don't like to feel like I'm turning. I mean, I get the logic, because you don't understand the economy yet. So you don't understand,

is this something that I can spend now and not be screwed over later? Exactly, right? Do I need to save this for a bigger fight that's coming? Then inevitably, like, the value of that resource declines as it is outpaced by other better potions or whatever. And this game, much like The Witcher, I would say, more so than The Witcher, is very much about, like, burning through your resources and not being, you will have much more fun,

especially since so much of it is projectile based. Like you will have much more fun if you just decide I'm going to unload all these things and trust that I will find more of them later. And I wish that I had started doing that earlier. Cause it was very much like just sticking to my spear and like the bow that had the basic arrows that I know like I can find the resources for wherever because I didn't want to be in a situation where oh I need these arrows and I don't have them but like that's never happened yet so far I am always like loaded down with

resources which although I did start to have more fun and I enjoyed it more when I started letting myself like experiment with other weapons. That's the other thing. Like the boring bow is like the most boring thing you can use. And the other things are a lot more fun, but because I didn't know how limited those would be ammo wise, I avoided them. So I,

I, once I experimented more, I had more fun. It kind of ties in though, to an issue that I have with it is that you're picking up stuff in this game constantly I mean it is constant and there are resources everywhere um that you need to make weapons and arrows and stuff not just the fun to get resources like the ones that are attached to dinosaurs but just like lying around there's like a thousand plants or or whatever um and i've and like infinity treasure

chests that you're constantly opening that are full of stuff and there are so many resources in this game i mean innumerable that it didn't make picking anything up feel particularly rewarding or satisfying because i never really had an idea of like what do i need what do i have what is yeah the only time that i like felt like pumped to pick something up was when like i'd open a chest and there'd be a bow and yes right that's concrete like that's solid you know i i've picked up innumerable like random watches and like ingots of iron and i have no idea what they do um and so i agree with you i think that definitely could have been boiled down but i do think like the think the whole difficulty conversation,

as I mentioned, I played it on easy and you guys started struggling early on before I think you did dial it down, right? Yes, I did. And that really did help a bajillion percent. I mean, it was much, much, much more enjoyable for me. Yes, switching it from normal to easy essentially uh takes a lot of the focus off of the witcher style like preparation and exploitation of all the tools

at your disposal and makes it a more straight straightforward action you think i i did not i wouldn't say i was struggling with it on normal it's just that i didn't like the pace of combat like yeah it's much slower it was much much slower much more uh bullet or i guess arrow spongy and if you like set up traps and something didn't go your way it wasn't like oh now i'm fucked it was well god now this is just gonna take that that much longer and uh that's that is annoying uh but uh and for an open world game i feel like having sort of extended combat sequences like that like really is is at least for my taste kind of untenable but once i switched it down to easy mode and didn't necessarily have to worry about,

you know, having a bullet point plan for how to take down this, you know, robot raptor, I started to enjoy the game much, much more. And this goes back to, you know, we've talked a lot about accessibility and like this is accessibility for people that want you know maybe have limited time to you know aren't going to sink 60 hours maybe they only have 30 hours to play this game um and being able to see more in a limited span of time is a real asset um and i um

i continue to be totally amazed and impressed by sony's first party efforts to include this in every game they put out like very minute difficulty settings and accessibility settings so that people can really craft the sort of game that they want to play um so props to them for including it because they didn't have to and And there are a lot of open world games. It's very hard to balance an open world game because you have no idea how thorough people are going to be with doing every side quest or not, or every collectible or not. So this allows for that. If they're going to like the, the, the systems that are in the game right like i i was not enjoying the combat of this game and the idea

of playing 30 40 hours however long the the main campaign is i'm guessing but because it's an open world game i'm assuming it's quite long uh was not great for me uh but then you know being able to sort of change the systems a little bit to something that was more palatable was good. I will also say one place where this game succeeds wildly where other open world games fail is the progression system specifically for skills. Yeah. There are six skill trees in the game, each kind of like pertaining to like the major systems of the game. Right. So there's a combat melee combat one there's a

range combat one there's a stealth one there's a mechanic traps and survival yeah yeah and the skills in them are not trivial like they are they i i would look at things on the trees and be like oh i gotta get me one of those like that is going to make my my sessions go much more smoothly in this game uh which is so huge for for me to like want to continue playing a thing to have like carrots on sticks uh which is the fuel that sort of keeps the the open world genre a burning uh yeah i think i think this game does i'm less into like the loot stuff just because it is a little bit like you said like overwhelming there's just there's just i think a bit too much of it um but the like skills and all that stuff are really really you

can you can definitely feel them when you unlock them which is yeah 100 i yeah i just so we don't miss it there's a couple more things i wanted to highlight one um ashley birch's performance i the ashley birch's full disclosure somebody that i i know a very little little bit we met once that she helped us with a taz event once um and i've talked a little bit about but uh she's fantastic i mean it's like really brings is doing so much much elevating of the story and like really carrying it. I think her performance is really fantastic. I also can't underestimate

and want to make sure we hit the, can't overstate the scope of the world is like, it's big, it's wild. Like, and not just in in sheer size but like you are constantly just cresting a hill and seeing like some wild like you know it's a broken down building or like uh i found a field of like solar panels yeah that were just sort of in the middle of the desert um i haven't made it to i guess there's a a vegas you know area where it's like broken down vegas i haven't been that far yet but i'm sure it'll be outstanding too just like the way that they blend the uh natural world with the like former built world uh is astounding and like just the variety and scale of the world like it feels like

a like when you use a fast travel to get back to like a starting area it feels like forever ago like you feel like you are pressing west and making like a bigger dent into this world and it really gives it the feeling of it being a journey and more of that like epic scale, which is amazing. As long as also we're giving shout outs for voice acting. Lance Reddick, again. Yeah, man. I mean, every time my man Commander Zavala just rolls up in there and just smashes it every time.

You cannot go wrong. You cannot go wrong. Did you know he was in 50 Cent? Can you imagine waking up to that voice every day? Oh my God, I can't. His first video game voiceover role was in 50 Cent? Can you imagine waking up to that voice every day? Oh my God, I can't. His first video game voiceover role was in 50 Cent Blood on the Sand. It's just like coming out

with strength and power like that is a boy. You can't go wrong. He's great. And he's dialed in. Everybody's dialed in. I think the story, I must say, if there's too much resources, say if there's too much resources I think there's too much

story I think there's too much going on in the world a little bit it's a little bit hard to follow if you're very bought into the mythology I think that you will probably have no troubles but

I struggled to sort of now to be fair i might have been clicking through some of the more more um jargony discussions where somebody's like so telling me about some dead robot that is also kind of a god but also it's just like just tell me where the tower i need to climb and you could do that you could skip through cuts yeah i mean yeah you can't do that after that you can't say the world doesn't make any sense because you've been no no i did but i did just do that so you can it lowers your credibility sure for sure okay you can say it understood uh yeah this is a great game i really liked it and uh it'll be a while before another like huge huge uh first party exclusive from sony so the current

pace it's one a week we get a massive open world but first party sony stuff it'll be a while so enjoy it while you can i could think there's probably one before God of War, right? Oh, I think Gran Turismo comes out soon. Yeah, Knack 5. And Knack 5, yes. I can't fucking wait for Knack 5. I hear he dies in this one. Yeah, like for real.

He died in 4, but they brought him back in 5. He dies for real. For real, permanently. Knack 5, he dies for real in this one. This is the one where he dies. Yeah, for real. We know he said that in four, but in five, this dude's fucking toast. Anyway, let's take a break.

Griffin, you've also been playing, maybe you've been playing, it just launched yesterday, so I have a feeling the servers were pretty bogged down. Surprisingly, I got in after like an hour, which is not nothing, but it is the fastest I've gotten in on a Destiny 2 expansion. Yeah, we're talking about Destiny 2, the Witch Queen expansion pack. This is, if you do not follow Destiny, they have basically throughout each year, they have four seasons. And each season introduces some new story beat and gameplay concept and new weapons and armor and usually some new like multiplayer activity for you to get embroiled in. Usually a new raid also, which is like the big end game thing.

But then I'm not sure exactly what the exact pace is i feel like it's been a while since you've gotten one of these like big expansions it used to be annual and now it's uh this one was delayed so this is like a year and a half yeah beyond light was the last one beyond light added like a whole new element to the game it added uh stasis which lets you know gives you all kinds of cool freezing powers. And it was the first time that Bungie had ever done that with a game. And when was the last time you played Destiny before playing Witch Queen? So I picked it back up basically at the beginning of the most recent season. So I've been playing pretty steadily for a couple months now okay um uh and so witch

queen uh has a whole sort of big storyline that is kind of trying to uh cash in on this character savathun who they have been uh you know building on since the beginning of daughter of crota uh sister of oryx okay sure uh i haven't played in like four years so i'm a little behind yeah the story of destiny has never been that important to me here are things that are important to me that witch queen adds a whole new type of weapon glaive which is basically a big long spear that you can do dope melee combos with but you can also shoot these huge heavy projectiles out of uh but it's in first person and it feels fucking awesome it feels really really good uh they have changed uh one of the subclasses for each of the different classes the void subclass they have changed to be like completely customizable now uh so instead of like having

these trees effectively that you can switch between and not having a whole lot of choice between that they have basically shattered those trees into like little bits and pieces that you can pick and choose from to really put together your own thing which is basically how the stasis subclass works they've done that for void and it's really good it works so much better it gives you access to strategies that like these subclasses wouldn't otherwise have which is my favorite thing about destiny like i like a a subclass where i can get sort of auto healing whenever i get ability kills and can weaken enemies with my grenades so that i can combo off of them with like all of that stuff is

let me ask does that leave the, like, remaining elements? I think it's solar and arc. They are going to be getting to solar and arc, basically, they have said, like, over the next year, they are going to be getting. Oh, okay. Everything is moving in that direction.

It's just void is the... Do you just, like, not use those now? Do they feel, like, full-time-y? No, I mean, they're still absolutely, like, essential, but, like, everybody's fucking around with void right now because yeah void nobody has been void subclasses have been like underused for a long time sure a lot of this is affected by like um like seasonal mods so every season it's like here are different modifiers that you can equip that can make you very effective against this or give

certain powers more uh effectiveness and so void is kind of the flavor of the of the week so to speak yeah um they have added weapon crafting to the game and it's pretty complicated uh but basically like you can find weapons in the world that you can learn as you use them to create frames that you can then customize with different like the different perks in the game and it's expensive to do that but it also beats like farming for a god role of this weapon you really like for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours um the big thing for me and it's the reason i think i've been enjoying it more than maybe any expansion is uh at launch there is a legendary version of the campaign that you can play alongside the normal version um and if you play it all the way through

it gives you a set of armor that is like that lets you skip a lot of the annoying grind of are you basically like raid ready at that point with that armor not raid ready but you're at the end of what is called the soft cap so then like you don't have to go around doing a bunch of like bullshit to get to the right like it it skips a lot of that uh but moreover it's fun as fuck it's it is challenging in a way that is like perfectly balanced which destiny has always struggled with like the campaigns for Destiny are usually just a slog, but I am soloing it and finding that I have to be like super tactical and bring all of my weapons in

so I can change my load out to fit each encounter. And I am like bada-ba-ba-ba loving it. It is making me feel like the time that I spent sort of getting ready over the last couple of seasons like not feel totally wasted right um and i mean there's other stuff too like they have just cut out a lot of the little annoyances of the game so every time you finish like a big fight in the legendary campaign you get two treasure chests that drop like a bunch of upgrade materials so that you don't have to just like use a bunch of garbage. You can just like keep the stuff,

keep the gear that you like and the loadout that you like like up to date. It came out yesterday and I spent a bunch of time with it last night. I think I'm almost done with the campaign. But there's like all kinds of activities and stuff that I have not dipped into. But there's a lot here it would require

for me like a very long period of time of no games whatsoever i think to get back into destiny just because of the amount of time required even though i love it and there's really no shooter that feels better than destiny to me um it's really just that time investment that's like kind of scaring me away well here's what's here's what's kind of neat though i feel like if you have played destiny 2 before the legendary campaign is fun and a good way to get back in right if you have like some strong weapons from any point in the game's history you can hang with it because also the legendary campaign is like power gated so you can't grind to get like over leveled you are always going to be like at at the level that you need to be at to play it so

it's not the kind of thing that because i have played it like sure you may not have a galahorn with the uh you know with the catalyst equipped which has certainly been helpful for me and a lot of these things but like it is achievable because like at the beginning of every expansion, like everybody is on equal footing. Everybody starts at the same power level and you know, you, you, you kind of go from there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I, I, I feel like these big expansions, if you have played destiny is always a good time to kind of get back in just as, because it's a very exciting time. There's so much stuff to discover and, and so much stuff stuff to do and in the like pantheon of destiny expansions i would say so far based on my

experience uh witch queen is a a very good one so that's my official review and i okay yeah no this is it good as always i feel compelled to ask is it a good time is now a good time to uh get into destiny get back into destiny if you've been if you've been out i think so we uh i i don't you don't hear that often about people getting into it now uh but uh uh mck, who's our merch designer and liaison, just got into the game, and it's cool seeing somebody hopping on board when there is so much shit that is already there. And I know she's been having a really good time with it. I think if you can just enjoy it moment to moment

and not think about like the enormous backlog uh of of stuff that is available for you and you know you try not to feel like oh my god i'm so behind everybody else has all this dope shit i don't think it takes that long to get into it and get like uh especially now with this new expansion and everybody essentially starting at the same power level. Uh, it's, it's, there's just a lot there for you to dip into.

And I still believe like to this day, nobody has made a first person shooter that is just pound for pound more fun to play than destiny. Um, so yeah, I would, I would definitely say this is a good time to get into it. Um, we've got some reader mail most recently uh chris plant and i had a discussion about games that are good bang for your buck you

get a lot of value out of them certainly destiny would qualify given the amount of hours griffin and i have both sunk into destiny and then it's free so that's yeah i mean ish it's complicated how free it is but yeah um but uh some folks uh mailed in their favorites uh friend of the show miles luna uh wrote to say that hollow hollow night isn't just the best 15 i've ever spent on a game it took the crown as one of the best metroidvanias around at least in my opinion i would alter that by saying i think it is the best metroidvania ever made and i 100% agree for 15 dollars and even sometimes on sale for 10 dollars which seems outrageous uh an absolute steal and a spectacular game have you been checking out silk song yeah i've been playing it for the last i've actually been into it no i can't even fuck i i can't fuck around with any silk song yeah i've been playing it for the last i've actually been into it i can't even fuck i i can't fuck around with any silk song jokes they'll come i got so much shit the last

time um i was i don't know when it's coming out the metroidvania genre i feel like is really big for for this for like yeah i i got death's gambit on sale and then proceeded to play it for like a hundred hours and that's i mean it's on them hours. And that's, I mean... Jokes on them. Yeah, I basically stole. Suckers. I would have paid so much more for those dummies. We have another one, another friend of the show.

Actually, they're all friends of the show. I don't want to call specific, but Sean McElroy writes, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Oh, fuck yes. Bought it in 2004 on sale, and I've been playing it on and off for every year since. It lives in my DS Lite,

and I don't think there's ever been a better example for me that fits hundreds of hours, is what Sean says. Yo, I plugged that bad boy into my analog pocket and was rocking it for a long time. That game looks so good. So good. So good. So crisp. Yeah.

I've never gotten into final fantasy tactics games, um, but I love fire emblem. So it seems like I would. Yeah, there's definitely a little, there's, it is way more RPG than fire emblem is.

And both final fantasy tactics and tactics advance are pretty like uh you will need to use copious game facts to sort of understand the systems in those games because they're very deep and don't do a great job of explaining them sure because these games came out in the 90s and 2000s when it was like read the instruction manual um but yeah that game rips we got one last one from Bart Oliver Celeste is regularly on sale for five bucks has tons of content and even if you only touch the main story it's eight to ten hours of flawless and

beautiful story visual and mechanical design it is a great teacher and will make you better at all games ten out of ten would spend 200 hours again it's had like multiple free content updates since launch like huge content you better at all games 10 out of 10 would spend 200 hours again it's had like multiple uh free content updates since launch like huge content updates i mean we've talked a fair amount of that celeste on this show but um if you like 2d platforming games it is one of the best ever made

uh i don't know if you guys talked about this but terraria is i feel like the or maybe number one for me because i got that game on sale in some e-shop sale for like 10 bucks and then it was i think my number one or number two played game on on switch that year uh i can't remember how many hours i locked in that one but oh boy um you know it's funny i feel like i feel like the question's kind of uh challenging because what you're really talking about is like, what did I spend? Like for me to be like Hades, right? Like I got it for 15 bucks and I spent hundreds of dollars on it.

So like, is it, but I tend to think of this question in terms of like, what gives me the most, like the value of my time? You know what I mean? Like what, what gives, delivers like constant reward for the time that I'm investing in it. Where like a lot of games, I especially open world games. The one that I feel like jumps out to me when I think about that is the

Stanley parable where it's like every time you play it and every time you go through it, you're discovering like there's new things that you're doing. Like every, every time it's like a, it feels like a very new experience and it really rewards the time that you, that you're doing like every every time it's like a feels like a very new experience and it really rewards the time that you that you spend on it um i don't know why that one jumped into my head but that's definitely uh the the number one that that occurs to me yeah i mean

i would say and i've talked a lot about this game binding of isaac is certainly on my list as well it didn't uh come up in our resties episode, but even though it's a game that does not frequently go on huge sale, at least for all the expansions and stuff, God, time and time again, I've gotten value out of that game. So definitely. What about chess?

Chess is pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. Expensive though to get into chess. I mean. You need a good set. That's because you're always getting hustled at the park. Oh, that is true. Yeah, I always getting hustled at the oh that is

that is true yeah i do get hustled frequently for you you guys been playing anything else um i've been playing elden ring but we're going to talk about it next week that's the next week episode so can we talk but wait this comes out on friday which is yeah we're if the game is out as of right now as we're recording this so it's out it fucking rules very good hope you guys are ready for a long one this time um there's a lot to say about it uh we had some friends uh from out of town stay with us over the weekend who uh got really into magic the gathering with their kids during the pandemic and brought some decks and i played a little bit and remembered like, hey, trading card games are pretty fun. So I downloaded the Magic the Gathering Arena app

on iPad. That does explain the Magic the Gathering reference you made earlier in the show. Yeah. Oh, did I? It's totally, it's just, it's all. It's in your brain. It's in there.

It's wound its way in. I have an honorable mention. Okay. It's kind of a weird one, but my kid, I'm always looking for stuff that like charlie and i can play together that like engages her but it's still like worthwhile um i had that with cooper our four-year-old she really liked the um the guitar one sorry oh uh yeah artful escape artful escape that's a great guitar man lives on psp it's artful escape if you have kids you can't really lose in that game it's really fun but uh

the thing i'm gonna play with charlie is the room on ipad we we went through it's one of those where like if you can pick it up faster than they can, which you usually can, because I'm a grown man, then you can like gently sort of nudge them in the way towards a solution. And, but still give her the satisfaction of like solving each individual thing. Those are great. They still look,

it's probably 10 years old now, the original. And it still looks great and sounds great. And the music rules and the puzzles are fun and it's tactile and it just is great. Those games are great. It's a ton of sequels too and one of the best VR games I've ever played was

The Room, I forget the full name of it, but The Room VR. Oh yeah! So yeah, great series. If you like sort of like puzzle box style games. But cool, that's honorable mentions. They invented escape rooms. They did.

I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties. Frank Zed, Patricia HB, Dan Dan, 5M, Starfish Kid, and D Gromry. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties.

Thank you to everyone else who wrote reviews for the besties. If you dig the show, please feel free to drop a review on apple podcasts or spotify or wherever you uh listen to the show overcast is my personal favorite um podcasting app and um yeah i i should recap because plan's not here so to recap games that we talked about we in the beginning we talked about horizon forbidden west the sequel to horizon zero dawn uh we also talked about destiny 2 the witch queen expansion pack we talked about hollow knight uh final fantasy tactics advance celeste um i briefly name dropped elden ring we didn't really talk

about it uh magic gathering the what is it a pc game as well as the card game? Yeah, I guess. And The Room, which is on iPad and its many sequels are on basically PC, iPad, and VR. So, there you go. So, yeah. Elden Ring next week. Very exciting. Very exciting. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends get the world's best games? and the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends get the world's best games Besties!