The Besties - Hi-Fi Rush Surprise Drops its Way Into Our Hearts

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Nothing's better than when you don't know that a game exists, and then POOF! It's just right there on the homepage of whatever digital games distributor you use to get new games. Even better? When it's super fun, like Tango Gameworks' rhythm-based beat-em-up, Hi-Fi Rush!Also discussed: Forward: Escape the Fold, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Physical: 100, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Season, Letterkenny, 20 Minutes Until Dawn 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!

Russ. Yeah. Do you exercise? I do. Yeah, I actually do. I just want to, I'm having kind of a down morning. Oh no. And I, well, it's okay.

And I was thinking like, what would cheer me up? And I thought about imagining you exercising. I feel like with Bright My Spirits, it will be in like a full matching windbreaker with exercise pants. Yeah. with exercise pants. In my imagination, you will have a thick, plush, maroon sweatband around your head. And I do just all I need. The last component of this is just like what physical activity

are you doing to improve your situation? Well, I think I've talked about this, but I basically go. I live on the 10th floor of an apartment building and i walk to the bottom floor and then i walk to the 15th floor which is the top floor of the apartment building and then i walk back down to my apartment and then i'm done do you do it at like 5 30 in the morning just like tromp up and down the stairs no everyone it's rest time. You know that outfit in Mary Poppins, the one-man band?

It's kind of like that. It's been good. I'm on day 130 of doing that. It's been a very good streak. Have you felt it getting easier? I do take two steps at a time now and I couldn't do that before. I don't know if that's

more or less exercise if I'm doing that. You're cutting it in half. I think it's less, right? Do you think it's less because I'm having to lift my entire body higher up each step? It's more strength, less cardio at that point. You're going to have those thick, sinewy thighs. Yeah. I'm really confused because I assumed you did a bike

because you show up to work every morning wearing those bike shorts with the giant butt pads built in. Well, that's how I protect my bony butt. I'm just, I guess I'm just worried on some level that one of these days Russ is gonna take the carrot top challenge and just blow it out.

Get jacked. Fuck. Oh my god. No more bullying Russ cause he's fucking jacked. Well, I'm not a prop guy, so there's that. my name is justin mackleroy and i know the best game of the week my name is griffin mackleroy and i know the best game of the week my name is christopher thomas plant and i my name is russ freshwick and i was just so thrown off my name is russ freshwick and i Boop, boop, boop, ba-doop. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. My name is Russ Fruschick, and I know you. I was just so thrown off.

My name is Russ Fruschick, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and the greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is the game of the year show, folks, and it goes all year long. And it's a video game club more than that, even eclipsing that and i used to say that first part and i'm not supposed to anymore it's a video game podcast like i don't even know why the preamble we talk about video games it's a club you don't think it's a club it's a podcast it's a it's a video game we need to start collecting dues that's all i'm saying because i'm saying well here's the thing there's so many video game podcasts. We need to start collecting dues. That's all I'm saying. Because I'm saying, well, here's the thing.

There's so many video game podcasts out there, but don't listen to them. Just listen to ours. But how many video game clubs are there? How many video game podcasts are there? Also, we collect dues, like Wild Green or whatever, pays the dues on behalf of our wonderful listeners. That's true.

I guess, yeah. That's how sponsorships work. That's how sponsorships work. I think it's a video game family is what I think. It's a video game family. It is about that. This week we're talking about a surprise release from Bethesda and Tango Dreamworks. Tango Gameworks.

Tango Dreamworks. The studio that brought you Shrek and Boss Baby comes a new entry in the canon. It's Hi-Fi Rush. It's Hi-Fi Rush. It was a surprise release. It is very surprising. And we will talk about it right after Chris Plant tells you what it is. Hi-Fi Rush is a new game from Tango Gameworks.

You know them as a developer of The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2. Now they're back with a kind of cell shaded rhythm action game, somewhat in the style of Ninja Gaiden meets Elite Beat Agents. And now, we'll throw to the break. Hi-Fi

Rush is something that we don't, I would say very very broadly speaking, some things that are surprising about this one not a lot of promo for it leading up to it literally zero promo yeah just kind of out which is exciting i think there could be energizing for people it's a bold play you really gotta trust the quality of your product but uh and it's also a i I mean, B game in the budget sense. It's a budget title. It doesn't cost $60 or, God, even $70 like some of these things these days,

some of these discs. I actually don't know what it costs because I put it on Game Pass. How much does it cost? I think I saw it was like $30. Yeah, I think that's right. I know it's on Steam. You could play it on Steam as well yeah it's 29.99 on steam right now yeah 30 bucks overwhelmingly positive overall user review um that's all you

need to know folks so you don't need us to talk about it anymore it's got good scores go fucking play it man okay so so i didn't all i knew going in was that there was some like music element to it but i really don't didn't know what I was going to expect, like whether it was, like, a straight-up, like, hit X as the line goes by kind of rhythm game or, like, a Guitar Hero game or what. But it doesn't necessarily have a ton of analogs. It is a third-person action combat game

that makes rhythm and music, the core through line through the entire experience it's like if you were playing like a ratchet and clank game and like music was a key component to it yeah i would say that the the only parallel i can think of is like crypt of the necrodancer yes although this is way more uh like character combat combo-based. And forgiving, certainly. That Crypt of the Necrodancer was insanely difficult, and this is much easier, I would say. Well, you could tune it to be as tough as you want it, but yes. I think that this succeeds in a few places

where Crypt of the Necrodancer left me wanting. They are two completely different games, but the fact remains this is a rhythm-like action game where you will succeed the most if every light or heavy attack or dodge or really any action you take in a character action game like this, you do it to the beat of this pervasive music that is just constantly in the background. Honestly, in the foreground at every single level. It's cool instantly. From the start of the game, everything is like bopping to the beat of the music. Like every animation is set to the music.

Yeah, it's kind of like old school, like Disney stuff where you'd see like smokestacks going off to the beat of whatever the soundtrack is. except for you know not racist like old school disney stuff yeah sure it's also really beautifully it's it's cel-shaded polygons in a way that you see it and i was instantly kind of like and maybe this is stupid because i don't know how hard it is to make anything but i instantly was like why don't more video games look like this like the the cinematics even aside from like the rhythm bringing the rhythm aspects into the environment they just look fantastic i mean it looks like a fantastic uh anime that that like you would have watched growing up it looks fantastic it looks a lot

it it reminds me a lot of the uh spider verse yeah um sort of animation style of that like uh variable frame rate like the way that that that things move the animations like drag a little bit a little jerky yeah there's like but intentionally so to give it yeah for sure yeah they also throw 2d animation into the game and they have these amazing transitions where you go from gameplay into a cut scene into 2d cut scene and then immediately into gameplay seamlessly um which is incredible yeah to justin's point though why more games don't look like this from like the 3d cel-shaded moments a i think it's very hard

like like for what they're pulling off like this is not a switch you flip in unreal engine to like make it look cel-shaded you look at a game like fortnite which essentially has infinite money and they started introducing cel-shaded characters probably like two years ago and the improvement that i've seen over like from like a pretty rough attempt at it to like spot on goku is pretty dramatic and it took again infinite money and work to like get that style right flawless goku flawless perfect 100 percent goku uh piccolo is really a little bit more about what the game is. Yeah. Well, you play a young man named Chai who goes to a robot factory,

gets himself a robot arm, and a magic guitar. An iPad implanted in his chest. He's super pumped. I just want to say, tonally, he is super pumped at the prospect of getting a robot arm. There's no like, oh, no, my arm is broken. He's like, oh, fuck, yeah, my arm is broken. I'm going to get a robot arm like there's no like oh no my arm is broken he's like oh fuck

yeah my arm is broken i'm gonna get a robot arm and that yeah they don't make it clear what's going on with his arm i hope it's something that necessitates this it looks like it's just broken yeah it looks like maybe he even just like sprained it it was like hell yeah bye-bye arm robot arm i i uh and that that they blast blast through that pretty quick yeah well i would say well i mean they they rush into the game uh uh very fast the game is like full of references too and i don't know if this one's even intentional i assumed it was like tetsuo from akira of like you're wearing the red cape and you have the like mechanical arm but the game is like i mean okay the top level thing that is amazing to me about this game,

the studio made Evil Within, Evil Within 2, neither of which I think met expectations. Ghostwire Tokyo, though, fucking Christ. And then Ghostwire Tokyo. Yeah, Ghostwire Tokyo. And then they made this, which to me is just, like, man, they just keep taking big swings. There's, like, a level of fearlessness because this game i think is a hit i would have never guessed that this game would be as popular as it is if you told me action rhythm combat game with cell shading in borderline snarky dialogue i i would have not thought yeah that's a winner. To talk about the actual mechanics for a second,

it is a 3D character action game. Your attacks and combos do more damage or more effective if they are timed to the beat of the music, which is represented audibly, obviously. You can pull up an actual display thing that shows you where the beat is or you can you know just look at the environment and get you know get a sense of it um you do more damage there's also uh you have the ability to i guess rest in between your attacks uh yeah skip a beat basically skip a beat basically right exactly and that lets you do like aerial that introduces

entirely new moves yeah i want to mention the the thing about staying on the beat this is an interesting um departure from necrodancer and something the developers have actually called out so in crypto the necrodancer if you do a move or an attack off the beat you'll basically like fuck up and freeze and you'll lose your combo meter and everything like that. In Hi-Fi Rush, every single attack you are doing will be on the beat, but you will only get the bonus damage and the increasing combo meter, whatever it is, if you actually press the button on the beat.

So the end result is that you still feel like you're being a badass, even if you're slightly missing the beat because everything is still perfectly on the beat to the music, but it doesn't have that dissatisfying, like, oh, that felt shitty because I screwed up the beat.

You also can't get in the weeds like you can where you have a very easy point to grasp back onto it. Because when that attack hits, you know it's time for the next thing. So visually, you can get back in the rhythm if you were off of it. And that is necessary because you're not just attacking.

You also have to make constant use of the dodge function because enemies are going to be firing at you left, right, and center. And that's where the game really clicked for me is when you start stringing together these combos. Your basic combo, the basic combat is pretty straightforward. There's only a handful of combos that you're really going to be doing. Where the game gets interesting is how you thread those together or suspend those combos so that you can get one beat of dodge in there, and then you get right the fuck back into it. When you can start to get that going, that is where this game hits that like tetris effect like level of flow for for me and uh i

think it gets you into that flow like really really quickly my my only uh is i think the the combat sequences in this game are glorious and And they're also, they do the awesome like Platinum Games thing where you get like a score at the end of each chorus or whatever. It is threaded together with sequences of platforming and dialogue that I kind of wish I could just skip through. So I could get right back into the flow because it never really lasted long enough for my taste. I always found myself frustrated when I had to jump on a bunch of like floating platforms that don't feel particularly good to navigate. I definitely felt that early on, like the combat is so quickly enjoyable and they are pretty sparing with it fairly early. Like I, it, and you, it really is a little bit frustrating. Like, please just let me, this is fun. I'll get it. I get it. I get it. Just let me like do it. But there's, there's a lot of

other, like, they don't have the dodge until like a few hours in. They is not like, it's the first level. The first level is very slow and kind of throws a lot of tutorial menus no no no i'm thinking of um the grapple um parrying oh yeah yeah like that which is a big concept that's not not introduced until later on in the game i i uh i really liked the base combat i was struggling at first because I kept wanting to focus on one enemy until they were dead. Yeah. And you really need to be moving and switching between them. There's a grapple that kind of instantly can get you to a different enemy.

It feels so good. And I think it's pretty important to bounce around between them. It's the best, like, Batman feeling when the first Arkham Asylum came out and it kind of like revitalized the character act i mean that game was somewhat rhythm based yeah i mean they was intentionally they they used that as an inspiration for rhythm and so that it i think this game feels more like that than any other character action game i played in a really really long time yeah i i also really like the soundtrack choices i don't know if this would appeal to younger folks, because all the soundtrack choices are mid-2000s indie rock.

Early, yeah. They're rough. I mean, I like it. I like the song. It would have been cool if it had been songs that were very... I mean, I guess they got stuff that they could afford. I like the song. I mean, it's a taste thing. they can afford. I like the song.

I mean, it's a taste thing. I'm trying to be, it's when I was in college, I get it, but there was very little in this game where I'm like, oh yeah, like I love this track. Like it's just not,

it is. It's not my style. the, the boss fights in particular really highlight the music. The very first one is set to 1 million by a nine inch nails, which is like, not my, not my favorite band but i'll be

damned if it doesn't fucking shred for that boss fight i agree if the music had been more i don't know recognizable for for me uh then i definitely would have enjoyed it more but i i still really liked what was yeah it also doesn't really matter because it matches well enough with the game so even though it's not like music that i think is particularly enjoyable it it blends fine with the game and the game is kind of like weird late 90s early 2000s like attitude that it's going for i said it's you know it has a little bit of snark but it's not like that for spoken snark it's more just kind of it's a little silly yeah um i on the rhythm aspect something that i i really dug about this that is pretty uncommon and and we touched on it that like your your um attacks will visually always

land on the beat even if they don't um you can kind of you don't have to get that hung up on it yeah like you don't have to get like at first i was very fixated on trying to nail like perfect on the beat combos and it's really like as important as music is to the game and the concept is the game like it's really just a way that of enhancing it like it really helps you to feel like you're in the groove but it lets you pretend like you were in the groove the whole time wait let me okay so i was confused by this because that's why i i had that exact same journey and then when i started unlocking moves it seemed like oh there are moves that you cannot pull off unless you hit them on the beat i think in terms

of maybe the special moves that's the case but the standard moves i mean yeah like punch yeah yeah i mean if you just just smash punch but like you know across the whole game you would you know want to have more moves than just doing the same well there's a window I think there's there is definitely a window for triggering the follow-up I don't think that window is as tight as the bonus not that like there's a move where you can like fire I think it's like a laser you jump in the air and fire a laser down on an enemy and it even says in the description it's like this one's hard to pull off in some more or less words yeah and i think that's fine like that's not a there can be some moves that are a little bit more yeah this was my only issue the game is like i just am not

good at it i wish i was i wish i had natural rhythm i do not i was not a drummer i was a saxophone player and a bad one at that but i you'll get your game someday yeah don't worry i i mean i know this game still is awesome i'm just bad at it and it i i love that it does seem to like compromise and be like hey you don't you don't need uh you don't need to be good at this but at the end of the day it still does grade you afterwards which i do not like in any game it that always feels like pressure that is added back onto me are you flashing back to saxophone class and when you got a c- honestly i i was i was pretty good. I was second chair. Oh, shit. Oh!

I know. And second chair, that's the best saxophone player, right? Well, you know, it was because I didn't want to challenge the first chair because I was non-confrontational. No, I get it. In my head, I was like, always sure I would be first. Sure, yeah. I think they actually went to become a professional saxophonist. Probably not. Kirk Hamilton.

Can't beilton about that no what i mean is like it i wish that there was a full-on effectively easy mode of like hey just turn this off this game is awesome i get it i really wish i could enjoy i mean there is an easy mode did you try it oh i don't know maybe yeah there's an easy mode that makes the beats even easier to hit actually that would be great. Yeah. I will try that and see how it goes. Because the rest of the game is awesome,

and I said I'm embarrassed to even say this because it's not cool to be bad at video games, but I'm bad at this one, and I really want to enjoy it more. I will say, and this is something that would require more time than we wanted to devote to it here on the show. I did not, as much as I, like, enjoyed the basic combat, and it looks great, and the story is, like, it's a little, I don't know. Simple. Simple, I guess, is a good word for my taste. It's a fairly standard sort of hero's journey to try to take down the big corporation.

I feel a weird lack of urge to go back to it when I finish playing it. It's a pleasurable enough time, but I think it goes back to that interruption of like the platforming sequences and the dialogue. Like if it was just the core combat, I think I would be a lot more hooked by it than I am. Because I feel like a session can often be – there's also ancillary to this. ancillary to this, there's a ton of, like a ton of crates around the world for you to smash to get like healing items and the money you use to buy your upgrades. And they're like all over. And for me, it really like you, you know what it is? The, the, the, the tempo is so important in the fighting and you feel like from a meta perspective though you lose that because they're willing to break the pace of the game constantly to have you like tracking down these

little collectibles and stuff like that it just feels feel fun in the same it feels like padding i feel like there there's a three hour game in this that is like the perfect experience but i don't know that you could justify a necessarily 3030 price tag or whatever it is for a three-hour experience. I really feel like, I mentioned Tetris Effect earlier. I feel like I just wanted this to be like a Tetsuya Mizuguchi game, like Rez or Child of Eden

or what was the puzzle one? Oh, Luminous? Luminous, yeah. Yeah, Luminous. Like if it was just that, I feel like there's a version of that game that exists in here. You lose, I think, probably a lot of the style, maybe,

a lot of the vibe. There's a lot of big characters in this one, and I think that they are pretty good for the most part, but it's not what worked for me about the game. What worked for me was just getting into that flow and it uh i i i wish there was a version of this that was just that it's kind of a meeting the middle between this and necrodancer where i actually think a roguelike format for this kind of game would be really good with the you know approachability of how the combat is and everything like that where you're constantly kind of replaying a lot of the stuff,

but because you're getting different upgrades and stuff, it kind of refreshes it, rather than, as we talked about, like those sequences in between that just kind of feel like filler. Yeah, I don't know. I think it is a very good game and a surprise and kind of came out of nowhere,

so I don't want to take too much away from it. Are you ready for this? Because we haven't had one of these in 2023. What? I think we're going to be talking about this game, the game of the year time. I think it'll be. I think it'll be. I think we will.

I think it's going to be a tough year, man. I think we'll warm up to this game by then. It's going to be a very tough year. I'm not even saying that it's going to be in the top 10. I just, something about this game, I feel like it's going to grow on us over time. to be in the top 10 i just something about this game i feel like it's going to grow on us over time i can see them if they released like some additional levels or something like that that had music that i was more into i think that i i could really uh get down with that especially if they would stream some of the locomotive stuff is okay i did want to mention like there is some

um like snapping around uh with your grappling hook and like swinging through the environment in a way that's like very propulsive and fun. That feels very good. I like that stuff. That stuff is good. It's just that, did you guys, did the crates not irritate you guys? Yeah, it's just in a huge way, yeah. Well, what's a bummer is the crates are done so much better in Ratchet and Clank that it's really hard

to not remember how much more satisfying it was to blow shit like crates up in Ratchet & Clank. So it's like, eh. But again, I think overall, I think they're succeeding a lot and it is a sick-ass game and definitely worth trying, especially if you have Game Pass

because it's included in that. Just as a closing thought, if I did like graffiti and stuff, do you think I could be called Hi-Fi Russ? And that's going to do it for us for this segment of the podcast. Now we're going to do another segment. And this one we'll try to make sure it is unspoiled by sort of comments like the one that you did just here. And I didn't say it, but I'll apologize for it.

Hello, everybody. We're back. And we're going to talk about surprise releases. We got a question from a listener, Snapdragon Send. And that question is, I keep seeing Hi-Fi Rush being called a surprise release by game journalists. What does that actually mean? I know game media folks get a lot of advanced information about games, some public and some not. But I'm not sure what's normal or how this one was different.

This is such a good question. It's a great question. We're going to answer it. And then we're going to also talk about some other surprise releases to give some context. Yeah. Fresh, do you have like an answer for this? Sure. So the answer is, I'm going to give you a perfect example.

Apex Legends is the perfect example for this because Apex Legends was, quote, surprise released to the entire world day and date when EA announced that it came out that day. Polygon, for what it's worth, knew about Apex Legends, I want to say, what was it, four days before it came out? Maybe a week, yeah. Yeah, maybe a week.

We got pre-briefed. I think there was even an event where we played it so in that situation we knew it was coming out so technically wasn't a surprise and usually in those circumstances um those sorts of games leak because someone that agreed to the embargo just like spreads the information out and that's the end of it so it's very rare for a game that's shown to press early to also get surprise released in the case of high fire watch as far as i'm aware nobody was pre-briefed nobody in the media knew about it so it was a true surprise to everyone watching and there have been a couple of those over the years uh some bigger and some smaller um that we'll talk about but i think that's the

distinction here why this is such a special one is because it truly was like i didn't leak no one knew about it and poof here it is here's a game in either version of a surprise release like that is still deeply unusual well the difference between this and a normal release is most video games have years long press cycles in which they drip information out to get pre-orders because that's the business model but for a game like this which seems to be like mostly built around digital and getting game pass subscribers there's no need to do that yeah right like they don't care about pre-orders they want you to download it and if the whole point is we want you to download it without thinking too much about it a surprise release can actually make quite a bit of sense yeah and i would just to speak to how rare it is like giant

bomb had a one in their wiki had a list of like similar surprise releases and it's like a dozen games over the history of earth so it's pretty rare i want to call out some of the some of the other surprise releases that are mentioned yeah I tried to find a list but I couldn't I don't the there's not a great term for this aside from surprise release yeah we have high five Russ yeah you should ask me the

giant bomb does have in their wiki someone made like a pretty good list of announcement like day and date announcements good job was one of the more recent ones this was like an indie game on switch of like a top-down like puzzle solving physics based indie game which is pretty good game uh i mentioned apex legends uh act razor renaissance was a remake of the original act razor that i kind of, but it did come out day and date.

The surprise is that you remember that. There was Castlevania Advance Collection, which I didn't write down here, but was also a surprise day and date. But that was a game that had been rumored for two years before it came out. So that is kind of in the other category. You have Drainus written down here.

Yeah, I mean, this is a game that Chris Plant loves. I don't know if we've talked about Drainus on Besties. We have talked about it on Rusties. Everyone say Drainus more. Drainus? We should just change the podcast to the Drainus Hour. Wasn't there one? Okay, I'm having a memory here.

A game with like Unbound. It was like a bird one for the, it was released during a show. It sounds like a Ubisoft bird game. It sounds definitely like a Ubisoft. Oh, yeah. The one where you planted seeds and then you climbed up. Oh, shit.

Yeah. What was that one called? Let's Grow Up? Grow Home. I don't think that's the one i'm grow home grow home grow home uh yeah we have neglected the biggest surprise release in video game history which is not video game at all but was indeed the sega saturn that's fair can i take you back real quick please do if you're a youngin sega in the year is 1995 sega, in March of 1995, comes out and is like,

hey, the Sega Saturn is already out in Japan. It's going to be dropping on Saturday, September 2nd, 1995. God, I hope that was a Saturday. Yes, it was. Okay. But then, in that year, it was the first E3 in LA, 1995. Sega gets up on stage and they're like... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You should talk about Sony first. You need to give the setup of why this happened. Important context is that Sony is ramping up to the release of the PlayStation. Japan thinks it's important, the Japan wing of Sega, not the entire nation, Japan.

Japan Sega says we gotta be in the market. So on in May during the first E3, Sega gets up on stage and they're like, hey, this guy's coming out at 400 bucks and we just

shipped it to a bunch of Toys R Us's. So it's available now and you can go buy it frigging what it was six months or four months before we said it was actually going to launch. It's just out there and you can go buy it. And there was no support for it other than Sega games because all the third parties were caught unawares. KB stopped selling Sega

stuff because they were so mad about it. Everybody was mad about it who weren't included. Best Buy, Walmart, KB Toys, they were all like, screw you Sega, we're not carrying your stuff anymore. Right after this,

Sony gets up on stage and what's the name here olaf olofsen who was the head of scea at the time uh got steve race up on stage steve race comes on stage and says 299 and then walked off the stage and that was basically it was the I think in a sense that's the shortest console lifespan that has ever existed it was launched and then Sony gets on stage and says it's $100 less and then that's it for the Saturn but that was the

I think that's probably the most notable surprise release it's a wild story that pretty much I mean we're having a lot of fun here it it is a decision that basically undid the hardware like arm of that company yeah uh or at least did it no favor well they released the dreamcast later but that was well bud the damage was done yeah right um i think nintendo does a great job with this. I think in most Nintendo directs, they do a surprise release. And a lot of the times it's a port, right?

Yeah, Hollow Knight is probably the biggest one of those, right? Yeah, but then they also do wild shit. Like there's some on this list, like NES Remix fucking ruled. That was a surprise release. Tetris 99, which was, I think, kind of a killer app for a little while on the Switch, was a surprise release.

We also recorded this episode pretty early in the week before the Nintendo Directed happened. But now that it has happened, you know that they have a surprise released Mother 3. Yeah, Mother 3, Metroid Prime 5. You could Entwined. Sorry, I finally found it. Entwined. It was released during E3 in 2014 onto the PS4. It's like two origami birds that are flying in a circle.

If you look it up, you'll recognize it. Hades, I would put in this category. Hades was launched at the same time as the Epic. As early access, right? As early access during the Game Awards, if memory serves. We didn't know it was going to be as big as it became, but certainly it was playable that day that it was announced. That is very cool.

You can go play it now. I remember downloading it that day on the Epic Games. Man, you can't remind me that at any time I could just be playing Hades. I know. That's a dangerous reminder, I think. Oh, man. I'm psyched about Hades 2.

Okay. Hey, y'all want to get into some listener mail? Because I have a Dreamcast-related question. Let's do it. I would love to. Cool. So the first one is from Malik, and it is, I've seen folks compare

hi-fi rush to games from dreamcast era because it's vibrant colors crazy premise and unique gameplay mechanics do you all share that comparison if not what other games would you compare it to yeah i mean it is what's it called the jet grind radio yeah yeah yeah yeah i i i have feelings about this i think that anything cel-shaded at this point now is compared to dreamcast in jet set radio um which i also think a lot of people it's more than just the cel-shading it's also the tone it kind of is this doesn't feel like a sega game like nah really i don't know i i think we're we're far enough away from the dreamcast era that we now have a lot of people who know of Dreamcast but have not played the Dreamcast. I'm not saying that about our friend Malik.

I think Malik knows exactly what they're talking about. But I think that it's become kind of a weird shorthand in the same way that Soulslike became a weird shorthand where it sounds right but isn't right. I don't think this is like very dreamcast at all if anything i mean i'm going to mention delete the agents it feels more like a ds game despite being a 3d game these are all we know that these are what i think the problem we're having actually is this like vocabulary is not very busted right like it's there's not i mean we're talking about a certain sort of like aesthetic that was big at the time of these releases

and Dreamcast is just the one system that could sort of render them like Crazy Taxi, Samba de Amigo. This feels like that tone to me. What is it about it? I think it's of a piece with those. Power Stone, maybe. I guess i am focusing

on how does the game actually feel right and i might say this feels like ds or nintendo not even nintendo but ds ish i think of stuff like rhythm heaven or leap beat agents or these games that mix cartoony aesthetic and rhythm this just happens to be an action game when i think of dreamcast i think of like arcade games and this isn't this isn't like an action game. When I think of Dreamcast, I think of like arcade games. And this isn't like an arcade game. Like there's nothing about this that feels like an arcade game. You think it's more of a 30-second loop experience versus a two-minute loop. Yeah.

I mean, again, like if I'm thinking about that, like this game just has so much more in common with Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. And, again, that isn't that era of games. It's more of the Sony thing. I think visually, yes, but the music does not align with it. I don't know. For me, personally, if somebody is a little obsessive about the Dreamcast, I don't think that connects. Also, if it was like the Dreamcast, it would have way better taste in music. We'd have so much offspring music. We wouldn't know what to do here's here can i ask you guys

this question because i i think about this one from often and this one actually specifically had me thinking about it will we see uh this uh let's see this is from not a clever username will we ever see a resurgence of in-person band games like rock band and guitar hero on vr or online multiplayer god i miss those games no i don't mind i mean it's my favorite the peripheral based rhythm genre is arguably my favorite genre of all i had all of those fucking games i do not think we will ever yeah no i don't think so i i disagree we see everything comes in cycles well i don't think it'll ever be as big as it was but i think i don't think when you bought rock band you were spending 200 up front for that experience just for that experience

you're not using the rock band drum kit unless you're like a fucking mad lad doing a dark souls challenge or whatever like you don't use that shit for other stuff i don't think that i don't i don't know that people are gonna ever do that again well here's whoever's he like i'm beginning not like that but like rock band uh mini classic or whatever like they did with the the nintendo's where it's all in one where you can buy rock band 2 and a guitar and you don't need literally anything else it plays automatically and like streams to your tv well here's the issue the issue is that doing these having this experience and it's not as good of an experience but it is kind of close already

exists on mobile like across many different apps there are a number of apps that like do the licensed music rhythm game thing enough i think to check the box of people looking to do that without having to make a huge investment i do agree the physical instruments feel way better and it's a way more social experience but i think because we're able to like scratch that itch in like a cheap way not being specific what you mean is hatsune miku project diva mega mix plus precisely right yeah that's exactly what we were all thinking of i cannot you heard so many like i remember reporting a lot of horror stories from companies that are like we're just shoving these things in a wood chipper like Like, please come take these guitars.

We made way too many. And like the idea that these companies are going to overstock or like risk having to eat the costs on buying a bunch of instruments or manufacturing instruments that don't sell. I just, there's a lot of other ways to make money as a video game company.

I cannot imagine anybody willingly wandering back into that again. I would love to be wrong. I don't necessarily think I am. I would also say that you, if you were not real plugged in at that time or you're maybe a little younger, you might not remember that like rock band itself,

the rock band experience was hugely benefited by the wild success of the Wii a year prior where it had normalized this idea that you would actually have people come over to play video games. It was a, this is something we could do as a family. This is something we could do as a family this is something we could do as a group is fire up the wii and pass around the controller and rock band benefited from that because it's like oh and now also we have this other thing so that has extended this idea of like social gaming or playing games together it's hard for me to divorce this from this feeling of

like you can't go home again like all of that stuff happened perfectly in the time window where i was in college and so like i could i can't imagine a better time for for that to have happened uh in in my life i i just i just don't think i think if that ever did happen i think it would be like uh like like she said like a nostalgia play, like, uh, Or at an old folks home when we're all old and we're stuck together. I think that, I think it's a real long shot of, of there being a full band game. I could see someone trying the guitar thing again, especially if you could integrate a little bit more.

And this is one of my problems with, with rock band that other people did try to solve. Like if you could integrate a bit more uh actual guitar learning like you would be uh learning something while you're playing it i could see a product like that maybe rocksmith does okay right like it still exists and does i don't know if it does well but it doesn't have any idea no one would could know uh yeah to know yeah that's like one of those tricky things i'm like is this game as secretly successful and being sold like guitar center or whatever or is it like some weird tax write-off that i don't understand i went to route

60 music yesterday to get a guitar stand and they did not have it uh okay good to know good to know i think about how uh guitar hero try to try to reboot and had that new style guitar was like this it was really good it was fucking great and it had like a really interesting uh not not free to play because obviously you're buying the guitar but then there was like a guitar hero channel that you could get like a membership to and then you could play all the songs on it or you could like pick pick and choose and sometimes they'd have like free weekly rotations it was so well conceived and really fun like it was a really fun game to play hero team and maybe the dj hero team which i still have my dj hero board it's my uh my two-year-old's like favorite toy in the house just pick up the dj hero board and not play it but just press all the buttons and spin the disc

and stuff uh but it didn't do great and it instantly hit the clearance aisle and i i i i i would love for this genre to come back there were a few people who tweeted about that game to us i it's interesting how that game has like it does have a weird cult following dj hero no no well dj hero too but no guitar hero live oh yeah yeah guitar Live was cool. There's a lot of warmth to that game. I still, I will say, and I don't know if this is a plus or minus, but when I walk past a guitar, I feel like I see the Guitar Hero arcade game everywhere.

Yeah. It's always in the arcade, and I will almost always fire it up and hit Knights of Cydonia and have the kids all around me, and they're chanting. They're chanting, go juice. Justin, Justin. We love this. But not to the beat, so me and they're chanting. They're chanting, go Juice. Justin, Justin. You love this.

But not to the beat, so it makes it really difficult. Arguably, the grossest, grubbiest object that you could touch in any given arcade is the Guitar Hero guitar, I think. The amount of just sort of like hand contact friction that that thing goes through on a just a daily basis um makes me not ever want to touch one of those and it wouldn't be so bad if justin didn't feel the need to lick it like prince he did lick it like prince every time like prince yeah. Hey, I got another question here

from I Don't Want to Work Anymore. Since video games now exist on a whole other level than when we were kids, when past generations were growing up, do you think we will be playing video games later on, like in your 60s and 70s?

I'm 34, and I think I always will. Love you, boys. I mean, I said the thing about the old folks home. I 100% mean that. You will. Love you, boys. I mean, I said the thing about the old folks home. I 100% mean that. You will see, you know, the retirement communities that are thriving video game locations because everyone is stuck together and with limited mobility. And what better option is there? I think it's going to be VR.

I think it's going to be rock band. It's going to be like all sorts of retro games like that. Unquestionably. Sounds like a pretty fun retirement my dad's in his mid-60s and he's still playing a lot too many probably video games but so i probably that's historical what's his favorite game elden ring right now he's been playing for about a hundred years our dad will come out like years later like just and it's almost like you find like it's like you find your cat locked in the bathroom you know what i mean that feeling of like oh my god i should have checked on you dad like six months after the fact be like well i finally got all the jars in skyrim. Threw them into a well. It's like, oh, good, Dad. You 1,000%-ed it.

Excellent. Play anything else, please. Last question from our tricky bunny angel. Which early 2000 band are you disappointed they didn't include in the music of this game? Any that I like. Neutral Milk Hotel probably would jump to my mind that's like it what what energy what what song is gonna have the energy for this game uh

you know i think there's a few tracks yeah um i mean if i want something that still fits inside of this game i think block party would be like top of my list yeah so like a block party arctic monkeys i think of like a lot of uh the strokes strokes yeah when did orinoco flow come out when did orinoco i'm gonna say like 87 probably oh okay a bit more of a throwback. Electric 6 would have kicked ass. Yeah. Like Danger High Voltage in a game like this? That'd be cool. Remember that SSX remake game that some of us loved? Me?

The soundtrack for that game basically just put it on this game and it would work just as well. Hey, do you remember the THQ You Draw Game tablet? I was just thinking about that when you were talking about wood chippers i was trying to think about what yeah when you said that i was like who was the company that completely fucking obliterated itself making a peripheral that nobody liked it was thq baby oh man that is why you don't let the writer of

the rocketeer be your ceo you know, that's just a little rule for me. Hey, can we talk about other stuff we've been playing? Yeah, please. Because I got one I've been pretty obsessed with that I dropped in the room. Oh, I played this game. It didn't make much of a splash, but it's an iOS game, and it's called Forward Escape the Fold. game and it's called forward escape the fold um it is uh actually kind of similar to a game that i brought like a few months ago that was an ios game that i actually can't remember the name of

which is not great uh in in this game you uh play as different classes and you move along a path that is basically three columns of cards. And if you've played, like, card-based dungeon explorer sort of games of this ilk, like, you'll see a lot of, you know, very familiar stuff. Like, there's gold coins cards. And you move over those and you get gold coins. And there's potion cards that heal you. And then there's enemy cards. And if you move in front of them, they attack you. And there's potion cards that heal you.

And then there's enemy cards. And if you move in front of them, they attack you. And you have to move across these different sort of pathways, making just these constant decisions of what to pick up. What this game does that's really cool is that there is this catalog of like almost 200 items that contribute to your build throughout the run. And it starts to like add interesting stuff like uh every time you pick up a potion card it deals damage to enemies nearby you or uh every time you start a level you you know gain five coins automatically but you're inflicted with this status ailment uh and they all have all these like really interesting interactions and each character starts out with like a set of items that kind of make them feel uh different from the other ones

uh it is a pretty like straightforward concept for the game but i cannot put it down uh yeah it feels like fast slay the spire like you can play extremely fast really really streamlined slay the spire not nearly as i don't think it scratches the like you know that cerebral itch in the way that slay the spire does but i've played it a lot now to the point where like i kind of know what builds can be successful um because of of the way that the cards interact like there's one card that you can find that every time you touch a poison card it activates all of your like abilities that you get at the start of a level so you can stack up on those like every time you start a level you get five coins every time you start a level you heal six hp yeah and then all

of a sudden poison cards become like this incredible resource uh that that changes the way that you move through uh the the pathways um it's it's great it's dirt cheap i forget how much it's two dollars yeah it's definitely worth two dollars i wasn't like totally smitten by it just because i wasn't seeing i was having a hard time tracking like my build and what i was capable you know what i should be working towards because the the way the menus work it's all kind of buried a little bit but i i again i had fun with it i probably played for about an hour um i'm also still like so fucking deep into yakuza like a dragon uh i'm doing there's a whole mini game where you manage a confectionery business uh

that is so like like, wildly deep, and I am really, I have not fought, I have not punched a dude in several hours at this point because I'm trying to get my fucking Japanese candy shop up off the ground. That's important. And it's, man, what an excellent game. I feel so embarrassed for sleeping on it

as long as I have. I'm playing uh with this turn base yes uh yes it is oh can i mention one more thing because i know plant wants to talk about it too i bet is physical 100 on netflix oh yes this is a game about 100 strong people uh it's a korean competition reality show that has really heavy Squid Game vibes, only in a way that is just sort of deeply fascinated, almost on a clinical level, with human physique.

And it's a really, it's just a neat show. Everybody is really supportive of each other's sort of work that they've done to get their bodies to become these incredible power machines, and there's a lot of drama. work that they've done to get their bodies to become these incredible power machines and uh there's there's a lot of drama there's a very famous mma fighter that like everybody's super

deferential to uh and uh it's it's it's it's phenomenal it's my uh mine and rachel's obsession right now is physical 100 uh i play a lot more season which i talked about on the resties if you want to hear about it you should go listen to it it is extremely extremely my shit i am absolutely in love with this game uh and i've been playing a lot of stuff that is embargoed so i can't talk about it uh he's just a cool guy like that i'm a cool guy he's just a cool guy like that. I'm a cool guy. He's just a cool guy. Just an ordinary man. Vampire Survivors on the exercise bike I'm talking about before. And I got to a point with Vampire Survivors where it's still very fun,

but it's like it got to a point where unlocking things got to be kind of clinical. It would be like. Very specific. Yeah, exactly. Like a very specific thing i needed to do and it wasn't necessarily hard it's just like you kind of needed a wiki page open the whole time it's i mean 100 yes and and on the on the bike that's not as fun so i've kind of pivoted away from that even though i did get the dlc. They're pretty cool. It's still such a wildly deep game. And it's, I don't know how to talk about that. So I pivoted over to something new in a similar vein.

It's 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Have you guys played it? I've seen it on my various iOS gaming circuits that I follow. I haven't played it on Steam. various ios gaming circuits that i follow i've been playing on steam it's uh so it i'm just going to grant the conceit that you understand what vampire survivors is we've talked a lot about it so yeah yeah we've talked a lot about it um you are equipped with a a gun you choose a starting gun it's like a pistol or shotgun or crossbow whatever you can unlock new ones you get it um and you get summons which are basically like the weapons in uh vampire survivors like a scythe that spins around you and a little

ghost guy that shoots for you and stuff like that but what is cool about it is that you are rather than just picking like abilities that uh you think will mesh well together it's really like uh first of all you're choosing what direction to fire when to fire and you auto reload when you stop firing so that's very kinetic and firing slows you down so it's kind of like picking your moment for when to stand your ground and fight and when to move which is a cool calculus to run but it's also uh cool because the upgrades that you get augment mainly your basic attack um so you're getting like uh you get for example an upgrade to your gun that lets you shoot fire and catch enemies aflame and then later you find an upgrade that like for every uh 50 enemies that you set on fire, you heal.

So and then it's like you get an upgrade that flame does more damage. So it's kind of like picking a build rather than just picking a few weapons that you want to use together. And it really ramps up the possibility that you're going to have like an outrageously powerful thing that just sort of comes from your strategically picking the upgrades you like and choosing when to use them. And then there are a set of perks that you can take that also augment these further. So there's like a close combat build that you can kind of do that damages enemies more when they're closer to you.

And you can choose a loadout that like fits that. It is 20 minutes every time um and you just kind of the it ends at the end of 20 minutes it's not like a big boss fight or anything um but it's i'm really enjoying it it's it's really fun and i really like the the added level of like choosing your direction and when to fire and stuff like that um i've really been enjoying it. That's called 20 Minutes Tilt On. I will say one thing.

It is a little hinky with the controller in the UI. Sometimes there's stuff you kind of need the mouse for, specifically with, like, the upgrades and things like that. But overall. Did you play on Steam Deck? I have played on Steam Deck, yeah. I wonder if it works with touchscreen. It probably. It does.

Yeah, okay. It does. Yeah, it's only when I had the 360 controller or the Xbox One controller put into the PC that I had issues. I've been watching a show called Letter Kenny, which came out in 2016, and I'm sure fans of it are mocking the idea that I'm just discovering it now. But for those that aren't familiar with it it's

basically rural canadian gilmore girls meets uh king of the hill which is to say it has the writing pace of like a gilmore girls but the kind of dry humor of a king of the hill uh it is also like a bit crude but the writing is so good that it's like kind of impressive that they can do that um i don't know it's it's kind of hard to describe why it appeals to me i think it really is just like a writing exercise that is extremely impressive i believe the the lead creative guy is called jared see so i want to say leto what jared leto leto i think it is jared ciso leto what jared leto leto i think it is jared leto on this one uh jared kiso is his name and uh he's uh incredibly talented as is the rest of the team making that show and they just released a spin-off called shorezy which is like hockey centric um and he plays the lead in both shows different characters um and is sort of uh

incredibly impressive because he's also doing a lot of the writing so uh yeah both those shows are great highly recommend people can find that show 30 seconds from mars is that is that where it's located get him he got you is that is that it he got yeah that's the show that I watched. That was good, man. I love Jared Leto humor. I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcast. We have CC Person and a bunch of numbers that I'm not going to read out.

BrowheadGRH and Freddie Murdury is how it's written out. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcast thank you to everyone else who has written reviews or shared the show or talked about it or whatever we really really appreciate it y'all are great keep it up um okay so stuff we talked about this week we talked about hi-fi rush and we talked through a whole bunch of surprise releases i'm not gonna list those because we didn't go deep into them.

Right? Like, that seems unreasonable. And then next week, here's the deal. Here's the deal. Wonderful listener. We appreciate you so much. We might be releasing next week's episode a little later than usual. What?

It will still be. We might. We haven't even talked about this. What are you? I don't even. If we cover the game that we think we don't we haven't even talked about this what do you i don't even if if we cover the game that we think we are going to cover next week we will not be able to release the episode until maybe like like a little bit like midday early midday friday oh because the embargo is that day yeah because the embargo is that day um so we can't say what

that game is right now but if if you if you open your podcast app on Friday and you're like, I'm just ready for the besties and it's not there, don't worry. That would just mean, hey, you are getting to hear about a brand new game and you're going to be the first to hear about it. It's just going to be a few hours later. And if you open your podcast app and you see besties waiting for you, that means we're talking about something else. Because we didn't get code early enough.

So it's like, that's probably why. Well, I've been playing it. Okay, settled in. That's going to do it for us, folks. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!