The Besties - Getting Up Close and Persona(l)

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

With the impending multiplatform launch of Persona 5 Royal and its portable predecessors, we decided to sit down and discuss all the highs and lows of Atlus's super-social RPG franchise. Also, what's the best way to quit playing a game? Let's find out!Also discussed: Binding of Isaac: Repentance, In Memoriam series, At Dead of Night, Neon White, Rogue Legacy 2, Tunic, Sniper Elite 5 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!

Daddy's gone, and so the boys will play. Whoa, I don't like that. Daddy's gone, so the boys will play today is the theme of this episode. Russ isn't here to tell us, like... You guys gotta... No, you guys are getting off topic, Debra! And so the three of us can...

We can just say, like, whatever shit we want to talk about. Like, I know you guys hate games and want to only talk about books and movies. So, like, if you guys want to talk about like i know you guys hate games and want to only talk about books and movies um it's like if you guys want to do that like i promise i won't tattle to daddy or do you not like do you not want to do that idea you're talking about like the good book yeah like if you guys wanted to share some of your favorite bible stories and then um but like maybe for the first couple minutes we talk about games but but and then like as soon as we know russ isn't listening anymore um we we can do our favorite segment which is bible chat

oh thank goodness so like i'll do here hey welcome to Bessie's Halo's back. And this time they have, this time you can hold three guns at the same time. Master Chief and his best friend Cortana have killed all of the aliens. And so in this time, they are just settling down and they have a nice house. And we're going to talk about more of that

after the break. And then we come back and we're like, so one time Master Chief was walking past a fig tree. Yeah. That fig tree was not bearing figs. Well, you've got to twist it up a little. I don't know that we necessarily have to tell. Mario was a wee little man and he hid in a tree

so he could see the Lord Jesus when he came down. Yeah. And he was a tax collector. I meant to say. Yeah. So Tomb Raider saw a bush and was like, I'm going to light this bush on fire. Yeah. Like that? Yeah. That works too. That's pretty I meant to say So Tomb Raider saw a bush and was like I'm gonna light this bush on fire Like that?

That's pretty good I wanna say something to you guys Now I miss I miss Russ Yeah? my name is justin mcroy and i know the best game of the week my name is decades griffin mcroy and i know the best game of the time of the decades. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the time. My name is Christopher Thomas

Plant and I know the best game of the week. I'm a new Russ. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the new Russ experience. This is the Besties. It's a video game club and just by listening, you my friend, are a member.

Every week we talk about some new electronic confection. And this week we're talking about the Persona franchise writ large, specifically pegged to Persona 5 Royale. Or Royal. Nope, you got it. It's a Battle Royale. And you're a bunch of teens. Can you imagine if they just chucked all of the characters into one battle royale?

I mean, they did do a fighting game. I mean, they've definitely done a spinoff, one or two of them. We're going to talk about that. What's Persona 5 Royal, then? Oh, do you want me to answer that? Persona 5 Royal is a Japanese RPGpg right at this point i feel like you just call it rpg right the distinction is so weird um and it's about a bunch of teenagers who are fighting the very idea of bad adults and all the terrible shit they do and they're doing it inside of tokyo and there are demons and hey we're gonna talk a lot more about it after the break

are there people who don't know about persona 5 and persona 5 royal at this point because that game the original i think came out like 2017 uh so it's been out for a little bit and then royal dropped two years ago and now is coming out on switch and pc i believe actually next week when you are listening i i think there's probably a lot i think people have heard the name right right but the weird thing about this series is it's been effectively playstation exclusive up until this point right you know like which is weird because the game it has the kind of ubiquity of a multi-platform game i don't it doesn't feel like it should be a like oh this is a sony exclusive so there are a ton of people who just now are playing a persona game for the very first time if you know they only have a switch

or an xbox or you know pc had persona 4 yes it came out on persona 4 golden came out on steam i want to say either last year the year before and now i think in january persona 4 golden and persona 3 portable are going to be on switch also and i think persona 3 is coming out on pc and then they're all coming to ps5 and xbox so this is if you are curious why we're doing a persona episode in october 2022 uh it's it's because it's about to weirdly break break through those boundaries for the first time so for that reason i was thinking that we could start just kind of explaining what persona is on a top level and also like the weird thing of hey what's the difference between persona 5 royal or a persona

4 and persona 4 golden or all of these all these kind of idiosyncrasies that i think are unique to this series so i mean griffin you played most of these games yes uh i've i've played two through all of them uh i didn't play the first one because it's boring i've tried not really playable yeah they they remade the first two which was actually like a two-part game i want to say for like psp or ps vita uh and and so i played them a long time ago but But for me, and I think for like most folks who are fans of the Persona series, and I guess Shin Megami Tensei at large, Persona 3 is where this series really kind of took off and found its footing. That is where you sort of got into the main formula that remains through Persona. You are a teen living a year somewhere, usually away from home, and you encounter some dark supernatural plot that you and your friends have to go into shadow worlds to try and thwart.

And also you go on dates and have best friends. And yeah. and also you go on dates and have best friends and um yeah and i believe that the supernatural plots all in all of these games are about basically the conspiracy of adulthood that like adults once you become an adult you become just kind of a nefarious person actually no i'm going to take that back that's not true that's not true that's persona five is that persona four is kind of about like your inner demons persona four is about sort of public perception as as the as the enemy like it's it's it's it is about it is more about the shadow self uh if you if you want to get like into the the deep weird psychology of these games the i would like to mention that for a second.

So the idea of a persona was founded by Carl Jung. He's one of these psychiatrists. One of these psychiatrist types. He said it was... Understatement of the year. He says the persona was a social face, the individual presented to the world, a kind of mask designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others and on the idea of like the central idea of personas and you know, the blue room and Igor and all those cats.

But I think what's interesting is that the entire franchise is thematically connected by this question. Like it's always this, this question, this idea of the mask we show others is like always sort of central and like all a lot of the games like even mechanics I think are sort of like interested in that duality of like the real self

and I think that that's part of why the social connections which are such a big part of the franchise since 3 are I think that's what makes them so interesting and foundational to it is because it is about dropping that mask and letting yourself genuinely connect with other people, which is also tied back into mechanics. So I think it's something that not a lot of franchises have managed to pull off, especially not with the success that Persona has.

But it also dips into astrology and Kab like kabbalah and like it's all european folklore i mean folklore actually not just european just all japanese folklore like everything all of it hitler checks in in persona too i mean come on yeah uh everything everything's in these games it does it all uh i adore these games i don't think there's anything quite like them and i think lots of people have tried i think lots of companies have tried to make games like persona and have uh come up so so so completely short uh and uh i i just adore them so we're talking about persona 5 royal for the most part which i believe we did an episode on a couple couple years back uh but i would love to revisit it how much of five and then also royal did you guys play uh because i just

played through persona 5 royal all the way for the first time i want to say it like the beginning of this year uh on on i mean it was the ps4 version but I played on PS5. I played most of 5 vanilla. Okay. And then did not finish it for, I think, maybe I was, I don't know what was happening in my life. But, you know, something comes up. Then Royal I was so excited for. And the same problem has happened now twice. Which is I started Royal when it came out on ps5 or ps4 and was like

great i'm so excited and then the first four hours of the game happened yeah and the thing about these games and this is true for like really all persona games is you have to get to the point where it becomes the daily grind slash pokemon ish Pokemon's not quite the right comparison. But you get to this point where every day, either in the game, you have days, and you can use that time to grind in dungeons or just hang out with friends and literally build your relationships or pursue whatever the main dungeon

or main mission at the moment is. But to get there, you have mountains of exposition and you have to kind of just learn the system what's new about this game all of that stuff and it eats a lot of time and at four hours in the scheme of these games like can be over 100 hours not a big deal but damn if it isn't like a hump to get over, I just got through it on this new playthrough, so we could talk about it for this episode. Yeah. And I fell asleep twice while trying to get through that chunk, just because I know what it is already. Right.

I wish that there was a skip button just for that for people who have played these games in the past because woof isn't long. Yeah, I'll be honest at this point, y'all. I never finish one of these guys. I mean, they're huge. They're just – They're very big. They're huge. It doesn't bother me that much, honestly, because I really have to be in a specific place to even start one it's it's weird

how like i can definitely get into them but it has to be the exact i think twice now it's been like beach vacation you know what i mean where it's like yeah got something on a portable and i'm just like hiding from the sun all day long while my family enjoys each other's company in the sand and surf uh and those are that's like the context it has to be. I like legitimately, it would be, especially where we're like, we have to play new stuff every week.

I, I, I kind of wish there was like a, a, I don't know. Sabbatical. A hurried up version. Yeah.

Well, yes, I'm taking a persona sabbatical. Everyone make your own podcasts. It is. It is. I, I'm actually really excited for this to come out on

switch and obviously since steam deck i don't actually know if it is steam deck certified that's what i've been playing it on steam deck how is it awesome okay yeah because because i got into this series with uh persona 4 golden was the first one i played i'd never i knew about the series i'd never played it and 4 Golden, when it came out on Vita, I was like, oh, okay, well, a little handheld RPG. Don't mind if I do. And I played it and it was one of my, maybe top three favorite games ever.

And then I played Persona 5 and 5 Royal, which I love, but it's a much tougher proposition for me to sit in front of my TV for 120 hours or however long it took to get through these games the first time than it is to have my Vita and pick it up and play it on the go. And it's kind of perfect for that. So I think this being on Switch is a godsend. And I genuinely, I do think there are going to be a lot of people who play it for the first time now because of that thing. And they are fortunate because Persona 5 Royal is a much better game than Persona 5 was. I really, I think we, that game came out in 2017, which was kind of a weird year for games, I remember.

Like, I remember our Game of the Year discussion. I had some sort of, like, lingering disappointment around a few of the big-name titles that I was hoping for. That said, also, that was the year that, like, Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey came out, so it's not like there was a lack of dope shit coming out that year. a lack of dope shit coming out that year but persona 5 was kind of like uh not very well translated not very well sort of written all of the characters which are like sort of the big thing in these games is the cast of characters is always so memorable and lovable

by virtue of how it was sort of written and translated, they were indistinguishable and not very likable. And Persona 5 Royal adds a ton of gameplay shit to the game that I think really spices it up and makes the – particularly the dungeon exploring and combat way more fun. But I think the most important thing it did is added a bunch more cut scenes for all the characters. It added new characters. did is added a bunch more cut scenes for all the characters it added new characters it added a whole nother like semester to the school year for you to explore so that by the end of the game like i loved these characters a whole lot more than i did ever did in the original persona 5 so like if you are confused about the difference between uh like persona 5 and persona 5 royal or persona 4 and persona 4 golden uh the longer the title title is, the better the version is going to be.

Persona 3 Portable, I don't know if you guys have ever even played that one. No, it's like the bummer is all of the quality of life improvements in these games has made it very hard to go back. I mean, I love Persona 4 Golden. improvements in these games has made it very hard to go back i that i mean i loved persona for golden even going back and playing that now i find a little bit challenging um and then three it just seems so intimidating to me three is yeah three is definitely a more uh dry experience what's interesting about persona 3 portable is that it was a pretty uh the way that they had to adapt that for psp which is what it came out on from the ps2 version uh

like a lot of stuff was different right like it wasn't uh you know in in the latter persona games like you're running around these uh you know either toaba or any of these – a Japanese rural town. And you are actually running around and exploring and talking to people and making social links and all this stuff. In Persona 3 Portable, the way that they adapted it for PSP, the way they had to kind of shrink it down is like you are like picking shit from a menu for the most part. And it's like almost visual novel-esque. Almost more visual novel-esque in the life sim part of it, which still worked. After I finished Persona 4 Gold and I went back and played Persona 3 Portable. And it's still, I mean, a great RPG.

But these games have improved over time. So I'm fascinated by the fact that that is the one that they are porting over come come january and they are not doing um you know the original persona 3 i think f e s it has some sort of weird post post script on it that i i've never actually played that version of the game i've only played persona 3 portable but that was an extremely long tangent. No, I appreciate it. I'll give the, I guess, kind of mandatory uh, but of all Persona games.

The uh, but is, it's not always great at representation, to say the least. And like, it's depiction of LGBTQ is... Heartbreaking, yeah. to say the least and like it's a fiction of lgbtq is heartbreaking yeah because it's it's it is such a warm and like affirming game and you get to love these characters and they form these it's a game about forming these deep meaningful friendships when in terms of who you are that's why it's heartbreaking is the perfect word for it because it of all games, it feels like it should be one that understands and is compassionate about this. And Persona 4 has a particularly clumsy sort of storyline about one of the main characters who is a detective who presents as male.

And then once you like dive into their story, you find out that they were, you know, assigned female at birth. And it like the game almost says something about that, but in not saying something about that, it like it does pretty great disservice to that character in not saying something about that it like it it does a pretty great disservice to to that character in the story that they have and also like there's a character whose whole story is like what are you gay which is so like mind-bogglingly bad it's so it's so it's just with again the entire point of the concept of the game yeah

yeah yeah yeah i i i think the other thing here and this is a your mileage may vary getting to other topics there are again this is about people psyche conversations about like self-harm and some just really touchy issues of family. What I like about this game is I am comfortable with where it's taking me. And. But the way that it does dig into these characters' psyches and the way it does ask some really hard questions about, like, what is it like to be a teenager? Or in Persona 5 Royale, like, how do people become adults? Like, what are the things that lead people in these directions? it lead people in these directions and it doesn't always work but it's so wonderful to play a video game especially a big budget video game like this that is at least asking questions yeah and like wanting to say something i mean it really hammers home how few games do that um when you when you spend more and more time in this world um but yeah oh man when it whiffs it it waves hard it was hard there's there's a doctor character in persona 5 uh royal justin did you make it to the doctor uh no uh yeah the doctor is effectively a pedophile who who you

wrote you can well i don't know if you are romancing them uh but that's the language of the video and there's also a teacher character that there yeah it's it's bad in terms of like it as a role-playing game i think it's one of the best out there mechanically speaking like the amount of stuff that you are able to do both in the like life's end part of it where you have like an endless array of activities to do either to like flesh out your social links which have you know countless gameplay ramifications or you know uh going to play darts to like improve your stats or collecting the different personas and yeah let's go deeper into that because i mentioned the pokemon comparison earlier and i know that's not

quite right but as someone who plays a lot of pokemon and plays a lot of this can you kind of tell people how that the is it shadows is that what they're like i mean they have different yeah different sort of things in in uh in each one actually it's funny because uh shin megami tensei far outdates pokemon shin megami tensei the original one came out on i think like super famicom in persona is a spinoff effectively yeah i mean the game title i don't actually know if they continue to do that. Even Shin Megami Tensei is a spinoff of the Megami Tensei. Yeah, that's fair. But hey, I wanted to mention something about Persona. One of the things that I think is also interesting about the franchise, and one of the big things that I took away from it was,

with the early adaptations to the to North America there was like really hard localization I mean it really like extracting you know most appearances of like Japanese culture that wouldn't be relatable audiences and then as the franchise goes forward Atlas continues to keep more and more of the Japanese culture that was already in the game. Mainly it's like a way of, I think, sort of testing the waters and the audience itself, I think, is looking for more of that. And I think for me, one of the big appeals was like feeling that sense of I'm getting, I mean, I know it's a video game, right? But like still getting a sense of like the culture in another place.

Oh yeah. You spend so much time there. I really love that aspect of it. I think it's cool that those two have sort of evolved symbiotically, like the audience's demand and the additional Japanese culture. It's fun tours. I'm like, it's right up there with Yakuza in my book of just like, it's fun it's fun tours i'm like it's right up there with yakuza in in in my

book of just like it's fun to tool around tokyo and like go shop at uh you know unlicensed super potato essentially and and buy games that make your your pokemon stronger essentially uh there's a lot of i think conceptual crossover there if you've played a Pokemon game. But if you have not played one of these Persona games, I don't know that you are prepared for exactly how deep those systems are. team up with these demons that you battle and then collect them and then breed them and then take skills from one and turn it into a skill card that you can then drop into another

to create this like, you know, super powerful strategic powerhouse and then go into battle and look for elemental weaknesses to try and get extra turns. The great thing though is the game actually teaches you this time versus all of the previous persona games

where it's it's a little unclear to say the least um yeah no i i agree to go back to the the tourism thing i don't know if you've gotten to play as much persona 5 i know you played a fair amount of persona 4 but the like kind of hangout hub of this game is Shibuya, like at the crossing. And it's such a, it's not like a one-to-one recreation, but it just captures the feeling of hanging out there. I remember before this game originally came out in 2017, the original Persona 5, I had done a TGS right before that. TGS right before that and I got stuck uh in the crossing area with this like huge rainstorm and went up and hung out in the kind of like overwalk area and then months later I play this game and that is like where they meet to decide what they're doing for the day and it is this exact place where like I just like sat down and kind of like had lunch next to a window and it was just so cool again as somebody who doesn't live there to see like wow i

i remember the two hours that i spent here stuck on a rainy day and now i'm just like seeing that in a video game yeah um it's it's so it's so it's so in love with its locations. Yeah. And you can just feel it. It makes you want to hang out with the game. I weirdly prefer Persona 4 because it takes place in a rural Japanese town that is much, much, much, much, much smaller. But at the same time, it's just dripping with character. same time like is just dripping with character and is is is so like you remember every single screen of of the world of that game because it is it is a lot more sort of original and charming and and memorable yeah and a place that you haven't gotten to go very often right sure so video game standard in real life uh especially realizing that level of like detail and authenticity um

hey before we um move on i want to hit you guys with one last question if someone has been listening to this conversation and they're they're loving it they're into it they want to get on board what i was about to say gun to your head that's a little little person oh well that's actually a person three is the one where you summon your demons by putting a an evoker to your head yeah yeah challenging stuff challenging stuff uh what what which one would you would you recommend people start with oh i would honestly say persona 5 royal i think yeah i think getting that on on your on your switch if you've never played it before i thought it wasn't on switch yet uh next week uh oh okay

or or steam deck if i i think playing it on the go is the way to go because it's huge and is also like kind of structured in a way that makes it pretty easily digestible in small chunks um but it also trains you to play the other ones so i think like weirdly going in reverse order you will have on one hand it's like yeah you're losing all those quality of life but the other ones. So I think like weirdly going in reverse order, you will have, on one hand, it's like, yeah, you're losing all those quality of life. But the other hand, you learn how to play the game in the easiest spot. And then you can go back and play Persona 4 Golden

and I think you'll be, you'll have a blast. Yeah. We got a lot more gaming to talk about if we have put Persona to rest. Griffin, do you have something you wanted to add about Persona? I don't think so. Alright. We will be right back right after this. Okay, so this

topic got me thinking about something, and I wanted to sort of put the question, a few questions to you all about it, and that's quitting a game. When? When? Love it. I'm curious about it and that's quitting a game when when love it i i'm curious about this i've had a lot of experience with this recently um and i've been thinking a lot about actively quitting a game versus just realizing you haven't played it in a while and like if you're someone who says i'm done with this i'm actively going to quit it or in your head do you have like a you know thousands of of hanging threads that that you

did not intentionally stop playing man i don't know that i i think it's rare that i ever like take a stand and say i am now done playing this game because for one thing like and i know this is true for you guys too like once i had kids uh this conversation became way different because now my my gaming time has uh eroded in such a way that like even the genres of games I used to play a lot of, I no longer am really able to stick with. Chris, do you have any thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I feel like I only quit a game, like actually make that choice when it's a game that is like really not good for me. Like if it's like, you know what, I've been playing too much of this clicker game on the the phone and i need to delete it like this is not

taking me in a good direction yes i think you know we've been playing games long enough that when i bounce off a game and it's like oh i haven't played this for a while i just take that as me self-consciously knowing that i'm not interested anymore um i think we're unusual and that you know when i was a kid especially if i bought a game i mean i you know i got one for my birthday or christmas it's like well i'm gonna i'm gonna make the most of this right we're now you know especially being in the press you know i get codes if i'm not really enjoying something the only cost that I really tend to worry about is time. That said, I think our audience is going to get increasingly like that too as subscription services become the norm and free-to-play becomes the norm.

So I don't think – I think that we used to be somewhat detached or separated from the audience in that way where I think that's less and less the problem. I am a big fan of quitting games because I think there's plenty of precedent in things like TV series. Very few people watch a TV series to the end. Like of the audience,

I mean, it's becoming a little more common as seasons just get shorter and whatnot. But like it used to be that if you watch the show on network tv that show ran until there wasn't any audience left and then it died so like that just means that people are not watching it um and i i feel like with most video games i i can get what i need uh and it it's usually before the credits roll I have only quit games

definitely what Chris said especially with idle games where I realize I'm just poking at this these are my real life minutes I'm not getting anything out of this it's just a dopamine short circuit but I have quit games in anger for sure I can't, I'm not getting anything out of this. It's just the dopamine, you know, short circuit.

But I have quit games and anger for sure. Because I, I deleted Returnal after like a very long run. And I was, I started yelling, this is how you feel. This is how you feel when this happens. This is how you feel. And while I was deleting the game, like I just reminded myself that like, you feel when this happens. This is how you feel. And while I was deleting the game, like I just reminded myself that like, you don't like this. I'm going to make it harder for you to do this.

But there's a lot of games that like, I didn't actively quit. Do you have one in your head where you think, God, if I could just like retain all of my, like bring back all of the knowledge that I had about it at the exact moment i stopped playing i would love to like get back into it and see it to the end one's like um i think the witcher two and three are games like that for me where like i would like to see all of it and i just i can't bring myself to play another you know 40 hours to get back up to speed uh for for me you know it's funny for me for a long time that was uh final fantasy 10 because i it is one of the very

few games in the series that is one of my favorite game series of all time and it's for a lot of people like one of their favorite installments in it that i had tried maybe half a dozen times to, to, to finish. And I only just did that because on the PC version, you can make it go a billion miles an hour, uh, which helps a lot. Um, that that's, that's the one that I, I think of a lot, uh, usually big RPGs that I feel like I should play, that then I play them and just, especially now that my time is much more limited, like I do not, I'm not able to stick with it to the end. Yeah, RPGs are, that's the tricky one for me. I feel like games like Xenoblade,

where I haven't played in a while now, that just bums me out because I want to play more. Right. But I know, okay, I need to decide, is this the only thing that I'm doing in my life? Am I going to cut out movies for a while and books? Am I going to cut out everything else so I can actually see this to the end? And that's a really hard bar for a game to pass, right? Where it's so good that it's like, yeah, sure. I will cut out everything else to this.

And again, that's not, oh, hey, we play games here every week. Because I can play games, other stuff. And then, yeah, I'll just cut out all these other things that you know are part of my life that i enjoy and i think that's why you know very rarely i can count it on my hands do i finish games that are you know over 100 hours yeah um just because it's a lot i mean it's just a lot. I feel that way about the Persona games. I've gotten, I got a really long way into four

and then, I don't know, maybe 10 hours into five and I just, I get distracted too easily. I wish that I could return to those and just sort of hop right back in where I was. I really feel like

if you can get over the starting hump in Persona 5 Royal, it is a much more like kinetic like game experience than you know what i might give it a whirl it's also broken up into chunks so well like it is a great before bed game because you can just get in a day worth of work except for like if you're going to go try to tackle the main dungeon. Yeah, really quick burst of, well, I don't know if good vibes is the right phrase, but vibes. Yeah.

Should I open the listener mailbag? Do it. Let me step back a little bit. Cool. Whoa. They smell so good. Do you smell your mail? They smell so good. Do you smell your mail? Those are so attractive.

I just imagine every day you smelling the package as the UPS man hands it to you. And then being like, I'm sorry, sir. Can you please stop? Please stop smelling the boxes. First one from Jim. Can you give us a brief glimpse of who are some of your current maybes for the Gotti bracket? Not your Elden Rings, but more your Dark Horse contenders. Whenever I have a question like this, I instantly forget every single game that I've ever played.

I'll say Neon White. I fucking love it. That's one I played, aced every single level over a breathless, like, week and a half long period. And since I finished it, like, I think about it a lot. And I think it's maybe because it's one of those, like, run-based games that you, like, play in these really intense, like intense like 45 second long increments that it just kind of burrows into your brain and stays there um i'd say that i'd say rogue legacy 2 uh is is definitely up there for me uh if we're if we would count that uh definitely definitely up there citizen sleeper if we're talking about dark horses, did we talk about Perfect Tides?

Yes. Can I tell you all about this? Yes. The adventure game that's like Pacific Northwest emo scene in the early 2000s. That game, what a joy. I mean, is it like micro-targeting just me? Yes, it is. Yes, absolutely.

Unquestionably. But I feel like it'll be up there and then other i don't know if this counts as a dark horse because i think it should obviously be there but that kirby game kirby in the forgotten land it's maybe the game i've played the most this year just because my son's obsessed with it it's fantastic um yeah i mean there's a bunch of other stuff in here i don't want to spoil it i can play that it's not last year no that was this year man oh my gosh hoops you got any um i think it uh i think immortality was up there yeah that was a real that was a really amazing

thing um i'm looking forward to the end of year episodes and talking with you more about that. I'm interested to hear all the critics because it is becoming so much harder to, and this is a good thing, to like, there's not just the five games that everybody, it's not just like, well, it's this year's Assassin's Creed. It's like, it has,

the landscape has changed so dramatically that like you know you're gonna see people talk about stuff that you've never even heard of before when they talk about like their favorite games of the year i also gotta say i'm having a pretty good time with uh grounded yeah man it's pretty fun if you gotta come back visit i have just got stairs built out to the upper yard, just knocked over a shovel so we can climb on the picnic table and kill some bees. I wanna fuck up some bees for real.

I set up a Frankenstein base, Griffin, next to the Franken-Line. I made a little cottage there near the Franken-Line. Did we talk about Sniper Elite 5 on a Besties or a Resties? Did either of you play that game? I've never heard of it. You told me talk about Sniper Elite 5 on a Besties or a Rusties? Did either of you play that game? I've never heard of it. You told me to play Sniper Elite 5, and I still can't get there.

Y'all, you need to. Come on. I know that you all like Dishonored. Yeah. You got to try just this one level. How do you activate your magic powers in Sniper Cell 7? That is the one that I can't believe it's on my list, and yet here it is. Knowing me, I would end up playing the wrong one.

I don't know, Chris. I shot people for 20 hours and felt nothing. Justin, that was Doom 2 on your calculator. That was Doom 2 on your laser printer. This one is from Standing some deaths uh when reviewing a game how much do you consider content that was originally planned but did not make it into the final product does its absence factor into your overall impression or do you just review or score the games on what is actually delivered i can give like the polygon line on this which is

just what's on the game yeah the the people who make the game are not the marketing department, except for rare indie cases. And you just have to trust what's on the game because marketing departments have totally different goals and totally different measurements of whether or not they're doing their jobs than the game creators do. I think you look at an example like No Man's Sky sky and i think that's where it got really kind of messy because it was a small team and i think people felt like hey these are the people who are making the game and they're telling

me that i'm gonna get this but that said has anybody responded to uh that kind of air better than hello games no i don't think so i mean they do incredible work still and we're six years in or whatever um but do y'all i mean do you have any other thoughts about that i consume at this point like almost i i do do gaming reviews still uh but i consume almost no marketing i mean for for anything uh i am i stay pretty in the dark about stuff i like going in i don't even do like betas or demos or anything. So I really, I have no choice but to judge it on, like, what is there, which is a lot different from when I was a lot more plugged in

and, like, paying attention to the entire industry every day. It's Halloween season, so we have a returning question. This one's from Basil. What games do you recommend to get in the mood for spooky season also i'm sorry if it's basil or basil i don't know but spooky season i'm gonna i'm gonna adjust this question because i feel like last week we talked about kind of like almost scary games that aren't scary yeah yeah and i think like let's go the opposite direction here like what's a mega scary game that you recommend? Yeah.

I'm just so not scared. So it's like, I'm not scared of, like, basically anything. Yeah, you're a big shot. I find, honestly, if I'm being honest about it, I, I, the, uh, um, FMV games are the only, only ones where I feel like I have consistently been like scared, uh, scared of them because there's something about the,

the experience of someone looking at you and it being like an actual, it's why it doesn't happen a lot in, in cinema, right? Barreling the camera to achieve an effect. It's unsettling. It doesn't feel good. Uh,

despite like what, what love joy and, those parts would say by the bell when time would freeze. Um, I find those very, very scary. The one, God,

I can never, the name is terrible. Um, the one in the hotel, uh, it's like, we just talked about it's like we just talked about it like we just talked about it um at dead of night at dead of night that is probably the scariest thing i have played like it is it is genuinely super unsettling yeah um my definitive answer i i i scary games Definitive answer. Scary games typically don't leave a huge impression on me, right? Especially jump scare games like Soma or the...

What's the one that takes place in a... Amnesia? Yeah, stuff like that, right? Where a big scary thing is chasing you to kill you. Five Nights at Freddy's. Another, like, you know what I mean? It's, it's, this is a scary game. It's all about scary atmosphere and then something jumps out and fucking kills you.

That's, that's, that's scary in small chunks, right? But is it like, do I feel a sustained meaningful sort of like anxiety while i play it no but in the souls games i do because i don't want to lose my shit and so for me bloodborne is like with a no pun intended with a bullet like this the a game with jump scares in it scary atmosphere scary vibes all around and also like the structure of that game and the risk reward system of that game and all the souls games are like are just are just scary like they are all built around this one sort of uh conceit that i think works really really really well um yeah outside that, Dead Space and Dead Space 2. Yeah.

I mean, PT is like the go-to answer here to the point where it's like, I feel like almost cliche at this point. But if we're talking unsettling, do y'all remember Infinite Paperclips? Yeah. That's a game that I, it's not scary as you're playing it.

Universal. Universal paperclips. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Universal paperclips. Thank you. But it's like after you play it, you just feel upset. Like it's unsettling to think about what it is telling you about the universe.

And like the plot here is that there is an artificial intelligence that you effectively are playing as that has one goal, which is to make paperclips efficiently and be the best at it. And in pursuit of that goal, it effectively destroys all of reality. And it does it exponentially. So at first, it's like, oh, you're doing this you know get the best deal at walmart and then by the end you are you know sending death bots out to the farthest corners of the universe yeah to mine it for whatever is left of matter um and that is yeah that's terrifying because that is what i always figured the like ai apocalypse will be. It won't be like Terminator. It'll be we told

the refrigerator to be the best possible cooling device. And in pursuit of doing that, it's going to cause a mass extinction. That's easy to fix, so you just tell them not to do that. Don't do that, please. Oh, that's true. Just tell them not to.

And don't make them so good that they can. You know what I mean? It, please. Oh, that's true. Just tell them not to. And don't make them so good that they can. You know what I mean? It's not that hard. That's true. When you put it that way, it's so easy. Programming that they don't do bad things to people. Special shout out to the early 2000s adventure

game series In Memoriam, which was released in the US as missing since January. Hell yes. Evidence, I believe, Evidence the Last R was released in the u.s as missing since january and then hell yes evidence i believe was in it evidence the last ritual was the sequel yeah those were fucking wild those were like anything to play a new one of those i know they were an arg style adventure do you know that wait do chris plant do you know these i don't think so. Holy shit. You're, you're, I was about to say you're in for a treat. I don't even know if it works anymore, right? Oh, no.

You play a, not you play, you are like an investigator looking for a missing journalist who was investigating these murders. And you receive a CD-ROM that has like all the evidence on it and like the CD-ROM has like communiques from this like agency that is helping you figure out these murders and this disappearance and then also the murderer starts sending you messages like to your email account, like to your actual email that's like, hey, up you'll never fucking catch me calls you on your fucking telephone i don't know about that

that feels like and but a lot of the um and and several games have done this there was one that the name escapes me but like inserting like creating, like a lot of web presence with like embedded answers to things. Like a lot of websites you could find that would like, you know, get provide the clues. They build a huge web presence for it for you to search. That is the part that I don't actually know. I don't know if that shit works anymore.

There's two, there's two of them. They're so God, the first time you get an email though, from the, from the Phoenix, maybe the killer. That's two of them. They're so... The first time you get an email, though, from the Phoenix, that's like, hey, I bet I could search my email address right now, my history for Phoenix emails.

Crawl off my fingers. It was terrifying. Just one more very quick question. What's your favorite snack or beverage to have while gaming? That's from Easter Egg Gamer. Man, I don't really just snack that much anymore. I get ginger seltzer.

I'm very into ginger seltzer. Sorry, I found back in 2004 is when I first played these In Memoriam games. And I've got some great emails from the, from the, the team, from my crew, Jack and Karen are, we found them.

I'm watching anyway. Uh, grapes, grapes are like my go-to. I'm just chomping on something these days is it's, it's usually, it's going to be grapes. Um,

not for, not for any kind of like diet reasons because i don't really fuck with that but i don't i usually uh if i like eat a bunch of chips or candy or whatever like i don't feel particularly great uh because i'm an old man but grapes they make me strong grapes are such a good chip replacement yeah like if i feel like if i have grapes in the fridge i'll always always choose grapes. Always got to go for grapes. Hoops, you got anything? You know, I love popcorn.

Popcorn's so good too. I've worked on my popcorn recipe over many, many weeks. And then I now have perfected it to a point where my wife demands it every single night. If you have 30 seconds, I'll tell you how to make the greatest popcorn in the world. We're listening. Get a big pan. Dump in three tablespoons of oil. I like coconut.

You heat it up on hot. You throw in three kernels of popcorn. When those pop, you take them out and you take the pot off the heat you dump in a half cup popcorn get the good stuff type it dump in a teaspoon of flavor call that's popcorn salt baby and then you put in the secret ingredient that's one fourth teaspoon of msg the king of flavor himself then you put the whole thing you give the whole thing a good swirl put it back on the stove put the lid on you know swirl it put it back on the stove, put the lid on, you know, swirl it a little bit till the popping

stops, and you got popcorn, baby. You can put it on some, I like some non-caloric popcorn spray that they got. I don't like it because it's non-caloric. I like it because it's easy to spray the popcorn flavor out of the bottle. I use that spray, but you can make yourself some ghee real easy and pour that on there.

Clarified butter, yum, yum, yum. But that basic recipe, you can't go wrong. You'll love it. That sounds good. It's really good. I made myself hungry with it. Yeah. But I know I'll be eating it tonight because I do every single night.

That's marriage. That's how it works, folks. You just make the popcorn. Anything else y'all been playing i wanted to say that after he talked about it last week i got uh binding of isaac working in the extremely specific way that russ mentioned uh and have have dived back into it if you didn't listen last week russ uh mentioned a workshop mod for Binding of Isaac Repentance. I mean, all the Binding of Isaac games and DLC called External Item Descriptions, which if you haven't played those games, there's hundreds of items in it that all are sort of important for you to know what they do so that you can plan your you know your your runs around them but the game

doesn't really tell you a lot of shit about the things that you pick up so this mod basically like anytime you walk close to an item it had has a little pop-up that's like increase increases tier shot speed by 0.7 uh and uh yeah it's it's it's really great if. I played it all on Switch, and so to play it on PC, I had to first buy Binding of Isaac, and then Afterbirth and Afterbirth Plus, but not Repentance, because there's a save editor software you can use that goes up to After birth plus and so i sort of went through my switch like the log and rebuilt my save up to repentance and then i downloaded repentance so it would work and now i'm sort of digging my way back into that again but if i haven't played it on steam can i just like get get it uh yeah i mean if you haven't played it at all you should just you should play it on switch how much i don't know. Some? Okay. I mean, if you haven't played like a ton,

I would not go through all the hassle that I went, but I'd put like over 100 hours into the Switch version and didn't want to lose that shit again. But yeah. If I had that kind of time, I'd play Persona. That game's great. It's a great game. That's actually one that we talked about quitting games

that like I can fall off of Binding of Isaac for a year and pick it back up and it's still great. It's still really fun, especially with this mod. I downloaded Survivor.io. Yeah! Which is really interesting. Have you played any of those Archero, the games by that company?

No, it is Vampire yeah on on iphone like it is vampire survivors with a lot lot lot lot lot more monetization but like i don't mean that was like it's the same concept like i mean like almost every weapon maps one-to-one to a vampire survivor's weapon i mean it is it is indistinguishable in many ways. I don't know. I've seen people say that both have come first. I believe survivor.io came first. I wish I had more clarity on that, but I will say it's very good. A lot of fun weapons and evolutions

and all that cool stuff and customization. And it also includes like upgradable gear and things like that. A lot of monetization, I'll say, like a lot of different currencies and, and, you know, ways to get stuff and what have you.

But, um, uh, it's cool. It's, it's a cool thing. It also has, uh,

some fun, like challenges where they'll add, after you beat a stage, you can add like modifiers to it. And I know that vampire survivors has like hyper and, uh, when they increase the speed when the difficulty i think but this has like a lot more variability like it'll spawn two bosses at a time

or your vision you won't be able to see as far as you as you normally would um stuff like that uh you can do like challenge stages and things like that but it's it's a really good vampire survivors type thing on ios that company makes a lot of games that are sort of very rpg hook like they their biggest one was called archero they had one that was like a block breakout rpg type game that i can't remember the name of right now that i got very very into when when that one first dropped uh i'll see if i can find the name of it oh uh pun ball is the name of it uh that's that's another one by that company but yeah they make they make really solid stuff if you'd like sort of bite-sized mobile games uh my thing i am still

making my way through the criterion channels 80s horror collection for the month. Let me tell you, it just rules. I cannot recommend it enough for everybody. There was a movie that a listener named Joshua recommended called The Hidden, which is basically Kyle MacLachlan from Twin Peaks. It's kind of him doing the Twin Peaks character before he did Twin peaks and it is wild the hidden the hidden he's a detective and he's chasing uh a alien being that inhabits

random people and uh all it wants to do is drive fast cars, kill and have sex and do drugs. And it's like an alien embodiment of the 80s ethos that just infects people. And all the other detectives are like, no, this is just like a string of random coincidental murders from people who had never previously committed crimes. And our guy, Kyle's like, no, it's an alien that likes to get barfed out of one mouth into another mouth.

It's a delight. It's a real delight. One other thing that I want to say, because we were talking about it this season, right? I wanted to very quickly mention a movie I watched on, I think. Shudder? It was Apple TV. No, it was about to say Shudder, because I've watched, I think, Apple TV. No, I was about to say Shudder, because I watch most things on Shudder. It's called Gatlop.

G-A-T-L-O-P-P. Have you heard of this plant? I don't think so. It's about a group of, like, reunited friends, people who are really close in college, and they get back together. One of them just happens to be in town, and they pull out a board game

called Glop that's finds in a in a old credenza that they just inherited or bought from a pawn shop and the game um basically it becomes clear that the game is like sentient and is asking uh the the like a lot of the trivia questions become very personal about like their their lives and fears and stuff and if they lie they start lying they start getting punished like getting shot by an arrow out of nowhere getting banished to hell or whatever for a while and they have to start like basically becomes this thing where they're trying to face like their own sort of personal demons like through

this board game by playing along and like reconnecting his friends and it's funny and scary it's very light but it uh i i dug it so that sounds great i would definitely check that i i had heard about this i think tasha on polygon had mentioned it and compared it. It's not Jumanji. It's like an adult Jumanji. Yeah. Like instead of, instead of animals, it's like your own personal demons coming, coming to life.

It's really upsetting. Hey, and very persona related right there. I think we did it. Stuff we talked about. I'm going to watch the hell out of the spirit Halloween movie. I don't care. I'm going to watch the hell out of the Spirit Halloween movie. I don't care. I'm going to watch the hell out of that thing.

As you should. Don't try to stop me, Chris. Why would anybody shame you for making great choices? Not me. 55%. Hey, that means 55% positive. That's more than a half glass full. I'm going to watch this movie.

My kids are going to watch it too. This week we talked about the Persona games. That's the recap. We talked about all of them, 3, 4, and 5 are coming to Switch 5 very soon. I think also maybe Game Pass. Is that right? I think that's right. I think coming soon.

Maybe I'm wrong here oh uh yeah persona 5 game pass fucking wild um uh so dang you really should give this game a try everybody um and yeah and then we talked about just other stuff like survivor.io we talked about binding of isaac again we talked about the hidden on criterioniterion Channel. And that's it. That's an episode. We did it. Next week, we're talking about Spirit Halloween, the movie. Everybody got to watch it.

Next week, I'm just trying to think of something that would irritate Russ. Next week, 3,000 Years of Longing. We're just going to talk about it. I think you'd like that movie. I would love to see it. I need an excuse to watch it, Plant. That's what I just going to talk about it. I think you'd like that movie. I would love to see I need an excuse to watch it, Plant. That's what I'm trying to do. I'd be happy to talk about it. I like

George. Love George Miller. I've seen all his flicks. Let's wrap it up. Okay. Thank you so much for what we don't know we're doing next week. It's tough out there. Next week, we'll talk about something great. And you know why it'll be great? It's because you'll. Next week, we'll talk about something great. And you know why it'll be great?

It's because you'll be there with us, the besties. So be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!