The Besties - How to Keep a Child Entertained (and Other Impossibilities)

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

Today on the show we're answering a long-requested question: What sorts of games do you play with kids? The Besties weigh in on some of their chosen diversions. Games discussed include: Monster Legends, ABCYa/ABCMouse/PBSkids, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Kirby and the Forgotten World, Roblox, The Room, Humongous Games, and Chuchel. 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!

Beetlejuice is back. In what way? Beetlejuice is back on Broadway. I didn't know it had ever left. Well, a lot of things left. A lot of people left Broadway. Griff, I don't know if you heard. Well, I just assumed because Beetlejuice is such a nasty man

that he would not curtail his run on Broadway just because of the germs in the sink. You know what I mean? He's the kind of dude, the nasty dude. I'm going to keep doing my sink. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he's like the kind of dude, like the nasty dude. I'm gonna keep doing my job. Right, yeah. I mean, he's like,

welcome to the show, ladies and germs. Try not to cough on anybody. What's the matter? Afraid of a little cough? Yeah. But it's just him. Yeah, it's just a one man. It's sort of him doing,

or just a, it's him doing stones in his pockets but oh man he went out to the fucking boneyard yeah i did that's right that's because i couldn't i couldn't remember the number of sundays in billy crystal's show i think it's seven million i think it's seven million do you think he wore that suit when he was alive or was that a ghost thing i think do we know what he did was he was alive or was that a ghost thing? I think, do we know what he did? Was he ever alive?

I always think about him like an angel or a demon who was sort of created that way and didn't like die into the role. You know what I mean? Did he live as a man? No, he was definitely alive. Did he just live as a man? I remember it fucked me up really bad the first time I learned that angels

aren't very good dead people and i feel like that's kind of what beetlejuice has going for him like he's always been he was never like stanley jenkins he's just always been the nasty man beetlejuice who will keep doing his show because if not the terrorists win we've said his name more than three times Well, I think we're up to six at this point. So he's probably going away. Yeah, if you do it three more times, he leaves. Yeah. Big loophole. My name is Justin McElroy, and I have the best game for kids.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and let's put these games in these kids' hands, America. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and we're back to Pac-Man, baby. My name is Russ Frustic and I'm in allergy season. I feel like shit. I like the timbre, though. You got a nice timbre. You like that?

Yeah, I do. It's nice. Talk more. Talk more now. Hey, guys. That's enough. It's me, Russ. This week on the besties,

which is a video game club, just by listening to you are a member. Sorry for our absence last week. This week on the Vesties, which is a video game club. Just by listening to you, you are a member. Sorry for our absence last week. We were on the road. But we're back here with you now by our, I mean, Griffin and I. Unless Griffin secretly stepped onto the show. I did. I was in the background the whole time.

When you heard bug noises in the background. You know, like, that was me. Yeah. I apologize. But what are we doing this week, guys? I have no idea. I wasn't here. I didn't hear you say it at the end of the last show.

This week, we're talking about games that you can play with your kids. Probably the most requested episode of all time outside of Deep Rock Galactic. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to get killed for getting the title wrong. I know what it is. We'll do it eventually.

I've actually played it. It's pretty fun, but I can't say any more because that would make everybody too happy. We're saving that for a rainy day. The happiness. Yeah, the happiness of it all. Good. Today, we're going to talk about games that we either play with our own kids or games that we recommend playing with other kids, which doesn't sound quite right.

But, you know, like maybe they would be good for you and your kids or whatever kids that you're around. Yeah, we have a wide age range represented here, although it's pretty much seven and below, I would say, in terms of our parenting acumen. Well, that's fine. Honestly, I think that's the part that could use the most advice, because once you get to it, those motor skills really ramp up around seven, and all of a sudden, most games are probably okay.

Sure. By seven, they're probably better than you, right? Yeah. At this point, we can just assume that they're like headshotting you. I mean, my son will never be better than like me at gaming. Like it's actually pretty important to me to maintain that grip, you know? But maybe we should take a break. We have an assortment, a bevy of wonderful suggestions and uh i think we should

just get started i don't want to wait for this show to be over i want to know right now griff what do you play with your kids uh we're big we're big ipad users there's a lot of um there's a lot of games on the app store i don't know if you all know about this and it's you can pretty much find anything for any age on the app store and it doesn't and what's fun is that the quality of the game as viewed through the lens of a discerning 100 real old school gamer uh doesn't matter so much there's a game you just got to watch out that you don't accidentally press the wrong button and spend $100 to make the ads disappear

from the bug squashing game. You know what I mean? Because that is, there's traps everywhere and they're gonna get you one of these times. But don't you wanna be playing, I guess part of the thing

about this episode is I kinda figured that we'd wanna be playing games with our kids that we would also want to play. Oh, that's very selfish. Rather than just like, maybe just having them play some garbage. I mean, we have moved up to the level of like

free to play pseudo gotcha games for kids, right? A big one that Henry plays is called Monster Legends free-to-play pseudo-gacha games for kids, right? A big one that Henry plays is called Monster Legends, and it is a Pokemon-like free-to-play game with like, you know, a billion different points of microtransactional goodness that you can mostly sort of skirt around. But it's got like a lot of meat on its bones. It's got a lot, it is one of those games,

and there's a trillion of them out there where like you have your town that you can customize with different habitats for the different monsters, and then you can breed them, and there's like 800 different types of things, and then they have special events, and then there's like YouTuber monsters. Like, uh-oh, gotta get Mr and he's actually he's actually a beast wait wait are you breeding

are you breeding mr beast you can make wealthy uh psychotic philanthropist mr beast with uh a big t-rex if you want if you really want him to. Maybe the most confounding figure in media today. I will say, on the scale of like... We can't get into it. I can't get into Mr. Beast. No, I'm into this explanation. I want to go further here. I want to see where we're going.

It's also one of those games, and I feel like a lot of... This is true of a lot of free-to-play success stories on the App Store, that it's been going for eight or nine years and so it is so uh dense with like shit like there's so many like oh now you've unlocked the cell laboratory sure yeah you can uh combine different like like, and it is too much for any child or adult to stumble into. But I think the biggest thing that I have learned in, like, enjoying games with Henry is to kind of turn off the critical part of my brain that I have developed from being a literal game critic for a very long time and that is that is hard to suppress but when you can do it uh and see the game through the child's eyes like it it makes you appreciate things about them that you otherwise would kind

of overlook because i am very quick to once i see a game's faults, write it off or go look for a better game. It's hard not to let it sour. But I don't know. We get a new fire gorilla and Henry's like, fuck yeah. And he doesn't cuss. And that's inherently pretty good, right? He just likes the visual of a fire gorilla?

I mean, he likes collecting monsters. It's also funny collecting like a gorilla that's fine yeah sure we we unlocked cthulhu like through some like special random lottery we like got this cthulhu monster who like literally destroys enemies with a giant eldritch tentacle and henry's like that's great and i'm like okay yeah that's wild but yeah i guess i guess that is pretty good stuff um but like that is that's only the most recent thing like we have done all of the sego mini world like that's great for younger kids that's my number one right there like you can get some sort of it's like i don't know how much the annual membership is is very cheap and then it's like 40 just super gentle interactive funny physics based sometimes

games that don't sound like a nightmare because if you hear a sego in the background it's like yeah pleasant it doesn't sound like oh my god i'm gonna throw this kid's front through the is it wrong that i'm ripping the batteries out of every toy that my son has. Oh, no, that's expected. There has to be. The FCC needs to regulate volume on children's toys because some of them are of a human, that are good for human ears, and some of them are like a little ice cream truck that lives in your house, and that's no good. Some are bops, though. Some are bops though some are bops of course i

mean you know i'm all about dj fisher price yes yes when dj fisher price is in this like you know it's going to be a party can you break me off do you have any in the in the chamber anyone's uh i mean there's underwater rainbow which is like the jam there's like a little uh aquarium toy and it goes like uh rainbow rainbow underwater rainbow red red orange orange yellow green blue purple purple purple like it's um it's a good way too much purple um uh i want to ask you griffin because you mentioned you're talking about gotcha light stuff and mobile games in particular sure do you ever get questions from henry about like well why can't we get this character or why can't i spend money every day every day every day every day but basically what i what i have done is there's you know in all of these games and this is just how i do it and i'm sure you know other

parents do it too uh he plays this game a lot, right? So I don't mind dropping some money on it, right? It's got a season pass that I don't go in for because it's like, nah, I'm not there yet. It's like 20 bucks or something like that. It's like, that's a little bit too much. But I'll, you know, I'll buy him some gems and I'll be like, this is all the gems I'm going to buy you for a while. So if you blow all these, then we're not going to be able to use them on other stuff he's like okay and then inevitably he will like spin them to like speed up a egg hatch and then he won't have gems for a while and because kids don't get time

no they don't they don't understand time uh as much as i try to encourage it so like you know there's a little bit of education about uh responsibility and uh you know fiscal responsibility um but yeah he's he he is pretty understanding about it i guess the i guess my question i mean my son is very young yeah and doesn't know what clouds are so it's gonna be a while right. I guess my question is, if you could go back and exclusively focus on like non free to play style, like gotcha style,

whatever stuff. Yeah. Would you? No, I don't think so. Because it's, it's also like, you know,

if we sit down and he's not feeling any of the games on the iPad, we can just download one and if we bounce off of it typically we won't play it again right yeah so like who gives a shit uh but if we have one game like monster legends has been that game for uh for a few months now he's been into it for a while then like of course i'm into that um yeah and and the big thing the the point i want to make and the bigger thing that i've had to like kind of learn is uh like fine motor skills take a while to to develop and i am constantly kind of surprised at the game like minecraft for example like henry loves watching videos of

minecraft but the twin stick control is like a lot to ask of a five-year-old uh and so like you know we will play minecraft for short bursts but he gets kind of frustrated uh and but he's getting to the point where like a 3d platformer that uses one stick like kirby the new kirby game is perfect um but before all of that like a touch screen is the the simplest form of of interaction uh we even did connect for a while and there's a few great connect games out there like we've played a lot of fruit ninja 2 on uh great xbox one it's a great game uh and you play it on connect and it's fun there's that i think it's called fru which is a platformer where one character one player controls like a little character in a platformer while another player uses their silhouette to kind of move them around the world.

That's very fun. If a game is funny and physics-based, he's going to be into it. But even the Kinect is a faulty form of interaction at times. But a touchscreen, he will always be able to figure that out. God, I wish Kinect was still a going concern. They missed a trick by not making that a... Like, since I had kids, like, my kids would love that. Like, I don't...

It's very frustrating. Yeah, I think there's a... Yeah, there can be a place for it, specifically for kids. But, I mean, I don't think that... I think, sadly, that arrived at the wrong point in time. Now, Justin, you, I feel like have mentioned Roblox in the past. And that's like a big thing with your oldest, correct? Correct.

Yes. And Cooper. Cooper is actually learning dual stick controls a lot, lot, lot younger than charlie did just because she saw charlie playing and she wanted to participate in it so she has like willed herself to learn how to navigate like dual stick 3d environments which is for roblox yeah does she use a controller or just like the virtual control two two thumbsticks on the screen wow now that is a game that is like i haven't played very much of it which i should because it's an enormous enormous phenomenon but also like potentially fraught with like there was something about kim kardashian the other day

that was like whoa yeah yeah so how hard is it to sort of avoid that stuff i mean you can turn on restrictions. I mean, I think the problem with Roblox is that a lot of people have a fundamental misunderstanding of Roblox. And I myself had a fundamental misunderstanding of Roblox. And you don't get Roblox until you realize that it is not a game

and it's not trying to be a game. Obviously, Roblox itself is an ecosystem, right? Like it's obviously Roblox is not a game. But they call them experiences in Roblox. And that's really like it's a better way of understanding it than like a game as you would think of it. Like the things that happen in Roblox, it is really like it is the metaverse. Like it's the things that happen in roblox it is really like it is the meta like it's like it's the metaverse like it is it is the best closest approximation of that ideal the things that are having roblox are social like the kid goes into it and they'll go in with one of their friends

i'm going to give you like a wild example one that my kids love is i forget the name of it it doesn't matter it's just like icons on a screen but it's like where the little mermaid is a murderer okay and you're i know and you're under the sea and there's like a base sort of is it sorry is it literally like they use aerial like imagery yeah i mean it looks like i mean not exactly it looks like a roblox aerial like everything's got it sure uh but like roblox aerial and then you uh can put on like outfits from the movie by standing on these different pads and then if you go to the floor of the ocean there's like other castles you can look in and stuff like that um if you go to the floor of the ocean then ariel has a knife and she's going to try to stab you and kill you okay and there's no reason for you to leave right there's no there's no like you don't

have to leave there's no reason to you you're like you can swim around and run around and and and like avoid her but there's no reason to. You do because it's funny. Like she's not gonna, she doesn't do damage. Your character doesn't die. Yes, no, that does happen. But like you're not incentivized to leave your base. There's no reason to leave the base,

except, hey, wouldn't it be funny? Yeah, you're LARPing, right? You're running around from Ariel and you're telling your friends like, come distract her so I can run away from her and then we'll run back to base and go change our clothes and do other things it's like what you would do in a play like in a playground making up a dumb game that is metaphorically exactly what it is like it makes no sense there's no rules there's no like incentives there's no

it's not like you're playing pretend right there's and these get more um uh sophisticated there are some that are like um they more like virtual worlds where you have your own house you have a baby you have pets you have uh you know you can buy a car or whatever there are some that are like um hunts like find all the pandas or find all the eggs or find all the whatever but the idea is not like look how good my score is or look how good i did in this game it's like lets you and me you know get on messenger kids and chat with each other while we you know fuck around in this in this virtual world and once you get on that point it's very easy to like i very frequently even when i was touring i would

see what the kids were playing and then i would just hop into the game with them you click on a friend's name and you instantly teleport to where they're at like that is what it's built for sure it is easier to play with your friends in roblox than any platform that has ever ever ever existed that because that is the goal it is like hop in let's mess around let's see this goofy thing and when it gets boring we'll go to some other goofy thing and that that's what roblox is like it's it's there is there there's obviously like content on there that is like it you know great and funny and good for kids yeah well but there's restrictions you can turn on like restricted things but then that'll restrict one of the games they really like and then they'll be pissed at you and you just gotta live with that

yeah but like it's a fun way like sydney and i will like hop in on our phone sometimes and just see what they're what they're doing and and play you know they'll ask us to play with them or the four of us will like go into the same thing and like goof around it's like it's really fun and it's it's very you, it plays on everything. And I get frustrated sometimes because it doesn't fit into the idea of what I want a game to be. Sure. Like, but it, but it as a conceptually, it is great. I mean, it's hilarious. And there's like, they do a lot of, and IP is weird in Roblox.

There's like, there's an Encanto RP server. There's several of them actually actually where they have recreated the entirety of casita and and all the madrigals are there and you can go in all the rooms and it's playing the music on a loop and you can dress like any of them you want to and i don't know how that is okay but i'm sure it's not it's just a matter of like ban you know yeah getting a hammer to knock these things down takes too much time it reminds me of old little big planet when they would people would use like the playstation 3i microphone to record music and put it in there like spider-man mario brothers and stuff yeah for sure so are there monetization hooks as well oh yeah, yeah, baby. That's the whole.

How do you avoid that? Yeah. I mean, the kids don't have the ability to buy Roblox. Robux. They get Robux if they clean their room. You know what I mean? You give them some Robux and that's the in-game currency that they can spend on whatever they want to in Robux. And like, I've seen everything from buying costumes to like level skips.

There are these things called obbies that are obstacle courses that are very popular. And you can buy like level skips or hilariously. And this is like quintessential Roblox. You can buy a jet pack that just lets you fly over all the obstacles and land on the other end, which is, or is not funny if it's a game,

but it is hilarious when my wife and children are running the half mile to the nursery or whatever and adopt me, and I pull up because I'm an adult man with my own income. I pull up in my sleek Lamborghini that I just bought for no reason and blow past them. And that's not funny. Like that's not good gameplay, right? It's been insane for you to buy a Corvette that lets you get faster than

everybody else, but who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. It's only like, it's a goof. Like, it's just funny to have a Corvette.

Yeah. Your kids don't get pissed at you for having a huge advantage. That's what's good about it. Why don't you understand? It's just funny to have a Corvette. Yeah, your kids don't get pissed at you for having a Supervan. Yes, Russ, that's what's good about it. Why don't you understand? It's a flex. It's all about flex. I'm flexing on my kids that are broke. Sure.

I'm flexing on my broke children. But there's stuff like that. But honestly, it is rare that Charlie asks to spend money because it's like her friends aren't going to spend money so they're like you know we're just kind of playing around in this world and if it gets boring there are a million other experiences to play at any at any given time does the money pipe feel inevitable though like I I just wonder if it'll end up being like you know when junior high when kids I mean they probably discovered clothes much earlier now but you know like the idea of fashion

kicks in and suddenly it's like well now my friends are spending money and I mean I'm certainly at some point I would guess but like to like wanting stuff like that when you're in junior high or whatever does not seem out of step with how I grew up I mean like that was when I started wanting to buy you know Lamborghinis and CDs and yeah uh you know to buy, you know, CDs and, you know, Walkmans. Yeah, like you ever bought CDs and didn't just get them through the fucking Columbia, like... I paid for those. I did my time. One penny for ten.

I mean, it's funny because, again, my kid is too young. But I am experiencing this, like, push and pull of modernization right now because I continue to play Fortnite. this like push and pull of modernization right now because i continue to play fortnight and fortnight has like kind of mastered this art of like how do you get other people to spend money in the game and one of the ways they do that is when you start games they populate the lobby the waiting lobby essentially with bots that just sort of hang out and play music at you but all the bots have like premium skins it's like oh i want to be fucking boba fett or whatever you know they just announced blanca in his strong in his suit um so with all this but the way that i play that game as i've talked about previously

is i just play it free to play because there are methods that I can use that like use the save the world mode and stuff like that to like earn currency that way. So that when I do spend the bucks, I'm not actually spending money. I'm just spending my own time. It feels like a little better to me, but it's sort of six and one half for people. If I can give one more plug real quick. If I can give one more plug real quick, all the Humongous games, Humongous Entertainment games are available on, I don't know if they're literally all available on every platform, but there's a ton of them on Steam and on iPad. I don't actually know think it's more like a licensing thing but they had a game called they had a series called pajama sam oh they had putt

they had freddy fish uh spy fox huggy bear i think is one um but like they're very basic kids adventure games which are really cool ways of getting them to start doing like some lateral thinking sure um there it's just point and click the aesthetics are like for me the best part because it's like really takes me back to this this time period this like mid 90s sort of like aesthetic they all run on uh scum vm so it's like it it feels very authentic to you know do kids get into that or is it not that aesthetic doesn't do anything for them i think that they're kind of ambivalent to it i mean it's still big animated characters just your fidelity is a little bit lower um and the sound clip you know audio is not great but it's like

the idea of being able to solve puzzles and experiment with things and it's also almost anything you click or tap on the screen is gonna have like it does something fun you know so it's like it's fun for them to just sort of like poke around and experiment with it but i think they're all like you can get packs of them for like 10 bucks and they're all like um and there's some replayability too the puzzles change they must have loved there is no game though right oh for sure just there is no game i'm off there is no game i'm oh god no i wish that seems like they'd be open about that it's like silly but complex that's that you know what i should try it i charlie really likes the room we'll play the room yeah series together on on ipad so she gets

into those you do need like a baseline understanding of what normal is in a video game to appreciate there is no game because it's all just satire but i think that's probably she's probably there right also i i was thinking you meant was it mom hidden by a game or hidden my game by mom oh charlie loves hidden my game by mom yeah charlie loves that series too those are really good actually probably really good kids games uh they're basic point and click kid trying to find his his uh ds that his mom is hidden and if he finds his mom first she kills him she doesn't kill him but that's the idea sure fresh are you able to like where what is your relationship with your kid in a video game at this point uh i mean yeah like 10 months old yeah so i was gonna say like not does he like literally nothing that's that's what i would yeah and i like i haven't really even played game like i'll sometimes on my iphone a little bit but like i you know i'm not in the

living room playing a console game and he's staring at the tv just because yeah whatever but yeah no so he doesn't again he doesn't know what clouds are so that's where his levels are at uh plant i know you uh the Hedgehog is obviously very big in your house. Oh, huge. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know if y'all have done the ABC Mouse PBS Kids apps. Oh, yeah.

Kind of the go-to education. I mean, you know, raising a child, it's a learning process. So, we gave Mosey an iPad to use and not like free roam roam he had like youtube kids on it for a while yeah and that was cool and that he discovered sonic the hedgehog and mario on his own and like weird feels great feels like very cool that he found it and like i didn't push on him and he likes that naturally and now I can like artificially encourage that.

Does YouTube Kids also have the like weird Spider-Man lives in a house with Elsa? So that's the problem is basically that YouTube Kids lasted about a week to two weeks in our house. And then it got deleted hardcore because YouTube Kids is a fever dream. And yeah, it was not encouraging the healthiest relationship with media. So we stripped away a lot of the stuff. We downloaded ABC, ABC Mouse, PBS Kids, which are all these educational, in the loosest term, apps,

but at least not too awful, filled with some truly awful video games. Oh my God. Like just the most rudimentary platforming. But here's what I say is quite great about that. A few months ago when Mosey was like, learned about Sonic the Hedgehog, we downloaded the games

and he could not make heads or tails of it. Just instantly frustrated, which makes sense. It's like learning the on-screen controls and like, there's just, video games are complex. But then he played the like a very rudimentary ABC kids games where you like can't die. And it's mostly just like here, learn to go left and right. And then like learn to go left and right and jump. And this weekend, for the first time, I was like, you know what, let's put Sonic the Hedgehog 2 back on the iPad. And it was all consuming.

Like, he just immediately got it. He was, like, blasting through the game. I, at a certain point, he loves watching the casino levels on YouTube. And he was like, oh, take me to that. And I was like, oh, take me to that. And I was like, oh, dang. I don't know if you're going to get there

with enough lives. So I looked up how to level skip on the iOS app. Of course. And taught him how to press S-E-G-A and then two fingers

on the bottom right, which opens the level select menu. That's really good. Oh my gosh. And he will pick it. And then he was beating those levels.

It was just one of those proud dad moments of like, will pick it. And then he was, like, beating those levels. It was, like, it was just one of those, like, proud dad moments of, like, holy moly. You went from not playing this to... Yeah, oh, I mean, definitely. But also that he cheats, but then he's ready for it, you know? Like, he gets on that casino level, and he's ready to bop around.

I actually, I bounce, we bounced off Sonic for the sole reason that sometimes you will be running very fast in sonic and hit a plunger that knocks you backwards and then you have to jump up a couple platforms to like get past that without being bounced like right the fuck back where you were moments ago which is something i struggle with as a as an adult in my walk with sonic and uh it it proved a frustrating barrier for for henry yeah it definitely pissed off uh mo uh it'd be i mean at the same time i i the thing that i i have liked about it is it does seem again this is like a relatively fresh uh that he's like learning

patience from it. Like I can see him get frustrated and then like gradually figure it out. So yeah, I mean, I think all those kids games, like they're great, not just because they're educational, but because they're actually teach a kid how to play video games.

And, you know, one of the questions that we have later on is like, I think Steve asked us uh can you think of any red flags that you would tell uh a seemingly great like that would tell you a seemingly great kid game will actually be disappointing less so content wise but more uh so the kid is getting frustrated bored confused etc a big one for me is like you don't realize how easy it is to die in like what looks like kids games so super mario odyssey is great or like classic mario's but no you you can die very easily once you're outside

of like the first stage i do want to mention on super mario odyssey i actually put that on my list not for my son who again is too young but my niece who i played she was probably three it was like the first game she ever touched wow and i had super mario odyssey had just come out and because that game has a cap i don't know what they call it cappy mode wherever there's yeah where i'm controlling mario and she is just controlling the hat which literally just requires movement of the analog stick it's kind of a really good introduction because there's very very little like she's not even moving a character around she's just moving the hat and the hat will touch things interact with things and stuff like that that very low barrier is actually a really good way to sort of introduce games to kids because there's no way

they can be frustrated and they get a kick out of like interacting with the world. Yes. So that stuff is really good. I agree with you. Like I would never like hand Mario Odyssey to a kid just and have them play. Yeah. That's too much.

And the cool thing is like there is kind of like a natural ramp up these days. So I mean, again, using Sonic, my son loves watching Minecraftcraft videos he especially likes watching like disney rides and there's like a sonic minecraft big dlc so he wants to watch that and then like once he's done that for a while he kind of gets how the game works and then he wants to go play like to watch me play the game and he'll like carry a controller and can play his tails so then you know finally i can give him the ipad and he can play the game and he'll like carry a controller and can play his tails so

then you know finally i can give him the ipad and he can play for himself and that that path seems like much chiller than what it was like when we were kids where you'd be handed a controller and just i don't know for the best yeah sure um should we take a break and then talk about either this more or other stuff wow thanks one of the greats yeah thank you we're back to talk about this more or other stuff so which one let's take a vote well i was gonna say you you guys just got back from a tour of the Midwest. True. Were there any go-to, because I feel like people obviously are starting to get a little more adventurous in terms of traveling.

Were there any go-to games that you guys were playing while, you know, on the road? playing while you know on the road um i have been uh continuing my sort of uh dragon quest uh retrospective education i've been having a really good time with it i've been playing seven which is the longest uh entry in the series i started playing longer than like the 120 hour 11 or whatever it is this is longer than that by it is the i think it's longer than the 120-hour 11 or whatever it is? This is longer than that. I think it's one of the biggest scripts in video game history. It's too big. I was playing it on 3DS, and I realized if I try to play this on my 3DS, I will never even make a dent out of it because it is very repetitive,

and I will get tired of it like that. So instead I loaded up Dragon Warrior 7 for the PlayStation on my RG351V and turned it up to 10 times speed and I'm nearly finished with it now. And really, really enjoying it. That's different from Dragon Quest? It's the same game. It's just when they brought Dragon Quest to North America, they called it Dragon Warrior for some reason.

Got it. Dragon Warrior 7 was the last game that they did that to. But it's a neat game. There is something... I feel like I have a pretty good vocabulary when it comes to talking about RPGs and what makes them work work and for whatever reason like i can't stop playing dragon quest games despite the fact that like i i have a lot of criticisms about them there is something about

the the vibe and if you've played dragon quest 11 i think you that game does a really great job of sort of encapsulating this like it has a vibe and a sense of progression that is so compelling uh and the games also get pretty buck wild like dragon quest 7 eventually you hit a point where you are attempting to resurrect the judeo-christian god and it's like and then the whole world is like hey god's back and it's like this is a bonkers thing for a video game to have in it uh and and i there's i don't know there's something about these games that i absolutely adore and they are so different from other jrpg they're so different from final fantasy like that is the most surprising thing i think i expected them to just be like you know kind of more traditional like fantasy things than final

fantasy but they really are doing uh something of their own and it's kind of neat to watch this like airsoft versus enix uh you know design ethos rivalry uh at work so uh just in general i think loading up some some rpgs and jrpgs is like since i was a kid the way i always go with traveling um i played some kingdoms two crowns, it's just one of the most, like if you need to pass some time, you really can't beat it. But, um, I checked out something interesting,

uh, called Chinatown detective agency. Have you guys heard about this? No, I've heard about it, but I, it's a point and click, right?

Yeah. It's a, it's a point and click, uh, adventure, uh, where you play a former cop who is now uh she's opened up her own detective agency and you know case based you get a mystery and then you're working that case um most of it is like

looking for clues and interacting with stuff and you know classic point and click adventure stuff um there are occasional like shootouts where you're trying to like take a shot at usually like climactically. What's interesting though, is rather than the puzzles being like, you know, use pulley on chicken. They are largely real world based.

So like you find a quote, a scrap of paper from something and you have to figure out the source of the quote. And then the source of the quote leads you to a book in the library that has a cipher in it that, you know, that you actually have to solve. You know, kind of like a modern updated where in the world is carmen san diego there's like some geographic like someone uses a nickname for a country and you have to figure out what nickname uh it it is and you know that's where you book your next ticket to to go look for your next clue um a lot of voice work too which is surprising for a game of this scale um but uh it's really

neat it's really interesting it's it's it's fairly slow paced i have some problems with uh it doesn't save until you finish a case which is kind of like yeah that makes me nervous i don't i don't enjoy that uh but they're trying to keep you from saves coming i think especially the shootout parts um just like who cares why don't just let me just like it's not a fucking PvP game. I have other things to do. It's cool, though. It's a very interesting concept.

What are you playing it on? I'm playing it on Switch, but I know it's available. It's produced by Humble. I think they've got it on Steam as well and other places. But I am playing on Switch. It works fine. Anyone else? I mean, I guess you all didn't travel last yeah i

haven't really gone anywhere for a long time um i still play like when i when i do travel like finding of isaac's usually my go-to just because i can turn it off and on whenever i want still haven't checked out that uh that new expansion you were telling me yeah they well they keep uh yeah updating it which is pretty amazing with free updates so there's like i'm i'll step away i'm currently sort of in hibernation with it but i'll step away for like six months and then come back and there's like they've reworded six classes and all sorts of stuff so it's it's really evolved in interesting ways uh do you want to get in a few quick questions yeah yeah let's do it so kind of two things together uh grayson uh said what's your opinion on the practice of giving an unconnected unplugged controller to my nephew who

is too young to play i am i a bad uncle uh in in like to trick them into thinking that they are controlling the game but i mean that's i mean it depends on how old they are i find that children don't like to be insulted like they don't like to have their intellect insulted uh when that is that is very bad for for kids but if it's like a baby then yeah babies don't know babies don't know anything man uh this is an idea from uh robbie not a game but a method playing a switch game where you have one joy-con and the kid has another i did this with my oldest kids on super mario odyssey in breath of wild where i would walk and they would jump attack works especially well with marios and shaking the joy-con throws that's that's pretty clever yeah i've done that with

henry for for a lot of games we liked playing actually most recently ollie ollie world uh that way because you can really uh you can really make some big big crashes happen in a way that children find very enjoyable wait wait i had a question related to that has there ever been a moment where you thought that controller might go flying and the tv would get destroyed well i mean we're not flailing them we're not like no i know but kids you could also put on the the strap that's true you can put it on the child yeah just an idea um uh i got two recommendations one from trails of cameron which is just donut county it's great first game for a kid simple control is really delightful that's a great idea i like that one yeah just like silly there's no way to go wrong um and this one from david the assassin's

creed discovery tour extensions are great my son five just likes climbing and jumping off of stuff and i don't have to worry he's going to storm into a bandit camp that's a good idea yeah i haven't played the i know they're like educational offshoots of the main Assassin's Creed games where you like explore Egypt, which seems pretty cool. Yeah, I like those a lot. Yeah. The only thing that would be boring is like all the reading, but I mean.

Yeah, who needs to learn? That's the worst part of it. I just want to go and eat a pyramid. That's not asking so much. That's in Roblox, actually. And then just one final question from it's game cat if your kids like video games but you want to go analog for the night what will keep their attention in the same way a screen will oh good question nothing in a million million bajillion you know that on a screen you can have spongebob squarepants flossing right

and to recreate that in real life would cost an arm You know that on a screen you can have SpongeBob SquarePants flossing, right? And to recreate that in real life would cost an arm and a leg. Oh, man. I wish you were wrong. I mean. I can press. Let me think. If you give me 15 seconds on an iPad, I can show you SpongeBob SquarePants flossing. I cannot do that in the real tangible world in any way.

I don't know how I would accomplish that aside from going to a costume world and doing it myself. Yeah, I think it's GameCat is implying in a pinch, like an EMP goes off. I mean, making slime, anything that is destructive or makes a mess that you have to clean up and they won't help with, kids love that. Especially slime. Oh, God, my kids love that. What is your go-to slime recipe? Sydney is really this. I refuse to participate.

It has a great blend of Elmer's glue and shaving cream and contact solution that makes a great fluffy slime that i delight in throwing in the garbage uh when my kids aren't looking yeah um running running yeah just sprinting kids will just run and you can sit back you can watch them you cannot watch them and they'll just run run run all to all his day as long as the day is long they'll just keep on running and it's great i feel like they'd like one of those trampoline factory i have a i have a trampoline i don't want to brag no i i i mean like a balance house no they have these like facilities it's like a dz discovery yeah yeah yeah yeah there's like 60 trampolines in a row yeah that's good i mean not yeah maybe not in these uh you know plague times that's true yeah yeah for for for mo um like where's waldo type of books there's a ton of them

of like uh like disney whatever whatever it is the interest to your kid um having a book that's like kind of a game in a book yeah it's great this is also kind of cheating because it's still technology but have y'all tried the tony's box oh yeah big tony's box what is that so tony's is imagine like an alexa right but it's like a cube it's a little cube speaker and instead of talking to it you put tony figurines on it and it will play whatever is tied to that figurine so if like you put woody from toy story on it it like plays some like toy story stuff for you there's a thing and like a little a little bit more but but the really great thing about it is there are empty Tonys, just like generic figures.

Hollows. Hollows. Oh, yeah. And you can upload your own. Like you could record your own story time of like you, Freshik, talking to my kid. Please don't. Never.

Or, and I'm not saying I do this, you could choose your own music and put that on there illegally and have a legal tony um that you have a pony tony from genuine there is that that would be amazing if you just had one horse that when the kid puts the horse on the tony box and plays genuine uh there's also like that they almost all of them have like stories like sort of read along type deals and then some songs on it and um sometimes it's really bizarre who's doing and it's got to be they're sourcing it from somewhere but i got a minions that were the story of minions was read by tim curry wow and it And it's unthinkable.

Justin, I'm about to change your life, Justin. Do you know that you can order Tonys from the UK that aren't sold in America? Ooh, nice. In the UK Tonys, you want that Mr. Bean Tony? It does exist. Okay. Do you want Peter and the Wolf?

And it's a wolf with a david bowie lightning strike across its face oh my god you know it's david bowie reading it that's so choice um yeah the the the the secret import tony's market for the hardcore fans is it's something else just bringing back all the joys of ordering dreamcast games from japan as a kid um yeah it's great tony's rule uh any any other things that would be good for kids do y'all do any board games or anything like that not not really not really yeah train sets are really popular in our house you can get like this is not cheap, but as like a birthday gift, which is what we did for Moo, there's like a $150 inflatable bounce house on Amazon.

It's not huge. And I'm sure it's going to break probably very soon. But right now. Probably made of lead. Living the dream. It's great. There's one called kids on stage that has been released a couple different formats but it's a um uh charades board game where you don't have to be able to read you can just show see the picture of the thing and then the kid has to act it out

it's always like an animal a thing or an action and it's like if you if the other people can guess it you have to move ahead a few squares but that's a really good basic kind of thing if you want to avoid like hi-ho cherry or whatever uh chess if you don't mind not following the rules of chess it's good chocable items so probably wait till they're a little older well yeah yeah i mean okay. Should we do that for everything on this that we talked about? A baby will try to swallow an iPad. Better not do an iPad mini. Better do a Pro, just something that won't fit in the mouth.

Runs in the family. Honorable mentions? Well, Frosh, you have something? Sure. Zach Gage, who made Spell Tower and really bad chess and good sudoku and a bunch of other very cool uh mobile puzzle games as a new game it's coming out it's actually out uh by the time this episode launches it's called not words k-n-o-t words um it's very cool

i've been playing it for the last couple days It's basically a mashup of a crossword puzzle mixed with Sudoku. So you don't get clues, but you do, you are told what letters go in groups of boxes and you have to use all those letters. So it's basically a logic puzzle using language. It kind of reminds me of me like if you mashed wordle and sudoku together it's kind of like that because you're again you're not given like clues

there are clues in it but yeah really cool if you like word games um and sort of logic games like that on ios it's also on steam um might be on android i'm not sure but definitely ios and and uh steam and it's called not words very cool uh and i have been playing switch sports the sequel to esports which we're going to talk about next week which we're going to talk about next week but there's a review of it on uh polygon kind of uh when i had to review it for the embargo. They didn't have the online mode available yet, which seems like kind of a problem. That said, kind of doesn't matter because the game rules. So we'll be talking about it next week.

But if you're curious about it ahead of then, I think you should just go ahead and get it because it's real good. Thank you to the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. ChickenVajita12, ColesMarcus313. Oh, that's like 313. Is that like Master Chief?

Are those his numbers? No, it's 343. Anyway, PanzaCool, MusicFriendlyMan, thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Thank you to everyone else for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Please share the show. We always appreciate it and it it helps us a lot in spreading the word about the show and keeps uh things running smoothly thank you so much for listening be sure

join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Best games. Besties!