The Besties - How to play Elden Ring: a kind guide for beginners [The Resties]

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Elden Ring is amazing, but it's also intimidating. Since we'll be talking about the game on The Besties throughout 2022, we wanted to help newcomers and lapsed Dark Souls fans take their first steps into this beautiful, but sometimes unforgiving world. Join us as we discuss the best starting class, where to invest upgrades, and the many unspoken rules you should know as you grow from a timid target to the one and only Elden Lord. Plus, more talk on Steam Deck and Valve's surprise, free Portal spin-off. 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!

🎵 Hello, everybody! My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frustick. And welcome to The Resties, where the best of the rest discuss the rest of the best. This week, we are talking about Elden Ring. More Elden Ring, but here's the good news. One, we're not going to give you all the spoilers, but we are going to help you play and or enjoy the game.

Because after doing this week's best use episode, we realized, especially from comments on our Twitter, a lot of folks want to get into this game, but don't really know how. So we're going to help you with that and then in the second half we're going to talk about the new free spinoff of portal a game that we've talked about quite a bit on this show so that's it are you ready i'm ready i'll see you on the other side okay elden ring i I think there are two ways that you can get into Elden Ring and they'll sound obvious but they are different

me when you say you do you mean me Russ well no because you're actually better than video games than I am so I feel like I can't like patronize you but like as somebody who is maybe hasn't played a lot of FromSoftware games but sees that this is the conversation in all of video games and like kind of all of entertainment right now.

Yeah. And like, hey, I want I want to get into this. You can play the game and we're going to help you do that. Or you can watch the game, which is quite valid. In fact, I would say just as valid with a game like this and we'll talk about like what that means too because it's not as simple as like oh just turn on youtube so first i think we should talk about the play the game thing and then we'll talk about ways that you can watch it while still kind of getting a feel for the game that sound good to you yeah sounds good okay so if

we're talking about playing the game what would you say are the things that people should know just like right before going in uh yeah so we kind of alluded to this a little bit during besties but i thought we would dive in a little deeper here um if you've never ever touched a front software game before you we kind of need to know if you could reach through the podcast and tell us your familiarity with games like skyrim or similar large rpgs that would certainly help but i'm going to assume you've not touched those either and in that case the way to approach this game is basically think of it like you're walking your way you yourself not even like a fantasy character but you yourself are walking into a fantasy character but you yourself are walking into a

fantasy world and you should treat everything in that world like it can kill you every single thing so always you know it's a lot of like slow careful steps until you sort of ingratiate yourself with this world and familiarize yourself with it to the point where you sort of start getting some of the rules but there are a lot of unspoken rules as well so uh i guess we could sort of speak to that as well you know that book hatchet yes where he like he has to survive in the wilderness yes and it was either that or julie and the wolves for me and i read julie the wolves but i'm familiar you're familiar with the other one yeah and it's like you know it turns out being in the wilderness is very tough and unforgiving, but rewarding.

That's how this is. Where the biggest mistake you could do or make is play it like Assassin's Creed, where you can just run and run and run. And it's going to be very easy for you to just plow through the world. But because you're moving so fast you don't appreciate what you're seeing this game yeah it's slowing you down because it's difficult but because you are you know slowly working through the world watching how everything reacts to you and those things around it you actually develop a nice appreciation for this like semi-realistic environment that you're in. Think of it like a cornfield.

Okay. If you're, if you're harvesting a cornfield, how do you do it? You start in the center and you go in concentric circles until you get all the corn, right? I don't know. I don't know either, but I just made a big assumption about how you harvest corn. But that is how I would recommend you start this. You're going to start and you're going to be plopped into the open world after about 15 minutes of like throat clearing intro stuff tutorials and once you're there just do little circles how do you how does the corn harvester get to the middle of the corn they walk and then they

start doing circles you think that corn is harvested by hand i'm sure somebody's harvesting the corn by hand it can't be all machines this is the most bonkers thing you've ever said you've never i i am i am flabbergasted maybe i'm just thinking of the crop circles how they do crop circles okay well okay now that'll connect us back i'm pulling us back to our guidance here i think we are proud to say that the besties and rusties fully support people playing astrologer speaking of crop circles that are speaking to the the heavens yeah yeah i would say either astrologer or prisoner they're both pretty similar um insofar as they both use a little bit of melee and a little bit of magic

if you prefer like ranged magic go astrologer if you prefer more melee go prisoner but having a little bit of magic is really important if you're new to from software games because it means you can kind of pick away at people from range and not have to like memorize counters and memorize special attacks and stuff like that. But you use a range as your friend in this game. Yeah, if you're familiar with games like Skyrim and Zelda, Prisoner, a great option. If you truly have never played any game like this

and you are just diving fully into the deep end, Astrologer, 1,000%. Because what that'll allow you to do is keep a very large gap between you and everything that is trying to like eat you alive yeah they're only there is one minor downside to astrologer and i and again i mentioned this briefly on besties but to go in a little bit deeper it can be a little bit difficult to see whether you're fighting the things that you should be fighting because frequently i found myself fighting things that were like much later in the game for me but

because i was able to kind of pick them off and like chip their health away using ranged attacks it was doable for me this seems like a great problem for us all to have i think that is kind of a good problem you're right yeah because then you that just means that you're having a nice time and yeah probably getting there you will get to a it should be noted you will get to a point where you just get your fuck your shit fucked up like you you'll just get like wrecked which is what happened to me eventually it just takes longer so if you're looking to see more of the game it probably will let you see more of the game quicker than you would if you were just meleeing your way through which gets us to the next point which is you want to walk around this

world and talk to everyone who will talk with you and keep talking to them until they keep saying the same thing over and over again because you will think hey i talked to this person i got what i got what they had to say then you will talk to them three or four more times they'll keep telling you new things and then they'll give you some crucial item that you need to enjoy the game only after you've talked to them three or four more times yes yes so if you meet a a person who you cannot target them with your weapon by pressing down the right joystick, you should talk to them and you should keep talking to them until that option is no longer available to you or they're saying the same thing over and over again.

At which point, if they're a merchant, you can buy or sell something or you can do whatever else you want. But talk, talk, talk, no matter how silly the story seems. I do think the story is more enjoyable in this one, even if it is like still kind of meaningless. Yeah, I don't fully understand every aspect of it, but that's how i put all of the fun software games i do not for all i understand is i'm going to try to break down what i've like grokked after fucking 50 hours or however long i've played okay there was a ring it was like really powerful it got broken people were upset about it some people took the pieces of the broken ring and like went off to their little corners of the land and went like mad with power.

And now it's up to you to bring the pieces back and fuse them together to make the Elden Ring and become the new Lord of this realm. It is not far off from like Lord of the Rings, basically. Yeah. And, uh, that's fine.

The, the stories that I actually personally engage with are not the overarching stories in this game. Focus on the little stories. There's like, you'll meet people, and they'll have like a little background, and they'll, you know, have their own motivations and own requests and stuff like that. Just focus on those little stories,

and you'll be really engaged. Okay. So we've got it figured out that you talk to the people that you can talk to yes keep talking to them keep talking to them it's like converting to judaism if you ask once they might say no if you ask three times maybe they'll say yes after three times wait are you for real yeah that's actually a rule when you i mean it's traditional but the idea is you're supposed to be turned or what turned away multiple times when you're going to convert to Judaism as a way to prove that you're that interested in converting to Judaism.

Wow, I didn't know this. It came up in Sex and the City. Okay, so. We cover a lot of bases on this show. You've talked to your friends as much as you can. Let's say the opposite is happening that you are trying to engage with your enemies in this game and you're fighting them and they keep killing you over and over again what do you do well you could be sad you could quit the game

uh or you could just run past them it is shocking how much of this game you could just run right past and i i don't mean like you should just skip everything because you really shouldn't but if you find yourself let's say there's a boss fight and you're having difficulty with the boss fight and in order to get to the boss fight you've got to kill the same dozen guys over and over again more often than not you really don't have to kill those guys. You can just sprint right past them into the boss fight and not even worry about it. And it saves much more time. So highly recommend just doing that. The other thing you could do is say that you get to a boss fight and you're like not even

getting 50% of the health knocked down and you've tried like six or seven times. Just leave. Yeah. Go somewhere else the world is big and rich with things to do much like the real world go and do that and then you know come back four hours later having learned so much from your journey and having gained so much power from harvesting runes that you will find this boss fight is much easier. One, because you're more powerful. So it's just easy, quite literally easier in that way.

But two, by playing the more of the game that you play, the more familiar with its kind of tempo and energy you'll be, which will make dodging or maintaining your distance from an enemy or parrying or anything, all the easier. So just not spending time on something that is annoying you. If it's annoying you, like not just frustrating, but just straight up annoying, stop playing it. Just stop.

Be nice to yourself. I would also add, if you do decide, hey, I can't do this right now, it's too hard for me, you can pull up your map and put a little marker down. They have these little like different icons that you can choose. So, for example, when I fight a boss that is too hard for me, I put a skull icon on the map. So I remember, oh, that was a tough boss. I got to come back.

And when I beat it, I put a little flag on that icon. And I feel really satisfied in myself. I beat it, I put a little flag on that icon, and I feel really satisfied in myself. There are also a lot of things you can do to make yourself more powerful, whether it is try to get the enemy stuck in the environment, and then cheese shots at them. And there's a lot of spots where you can do that.

You can do that. You can release the spirit ashes, which you should unlock a few hours in, which are these ghosts, non-playable characters who will support you you can uh use the items in your inventory that invite other people to play alongside you and fight alongside you uh there are any number of of ways to kind of put the odds in your favor and oh here here's one that's simple if you i think it's l1 and r1 and the y button or the top button on your d-pad or not d-pad your uh button pad you you can dual wield so use two hands to to hold a weapon and that makes you more powerful uh which can be a humongous help

when playing uh against a boss because the difference between winning and losing can be just a fraction of health that both of you have left at the end of it does that work with spells as well or is that just melee i think it's just melee i i should look at the numbers but i've i will do we do dual wield with spells but don't notice like a huge difference yeah yeah i've uh i've mixed and matched and and haven't noticed a huge difference either but um i would actually recommend if you are casting use your other hand for a shield is the obvious answer but even more useful for me at least go buy a torch there are um there you have two lighting options in this game that i've found at least you can put a little light on your belt it's called a lantern you buy them from a vendor

that you might come across and those are great you just hit x and there's a lantern on your belt but it's very dim and it only kind of has a small circle around you. But if you're holding a torch and you hold it up in the air using L1, for example, the entire area is going to be lit up. So if you're going through like a cavern or something like that, you'll be able to see enemies

before they start moving towards you and you can line up ranged attacks and stuff like that. I love using torches, even though I try to like keep a very light class so I can roll fast. I always have a torch on me. Never, ever, ever not have a torch.

It's extremely useful. I have never used a torch in this. Oh my God. I know. I just, you know, I, I just spam the lock on button and I wait for it to find an enemy.

Have you fallen down any holes? You know what? I haven't, but I'm also a pro gamer. Yeah, I might just have terrible vision. Speaking of falling down holes, spend your runes. Runes. And that means, so when you kill things in this game, you get runes, which then can be used to upgrade your attributes like intelligence, which makes your spell stronger, or strength, or dexterity, which makes it so you can cast more spells faster. All these different things. The issue is, when you die, you drop all of the runes that you have acquired and haven't spent and i have seen a number of people on twitter who are new to these games

basically be like well it's okay i'll just earn some new ones now yeah keep building up the runes and and and spend them when you have an opportunity to finally spend them there's no reason to sit on them um they basically building up your character is what is going to make this game more uh approachable and enjoyable and that that's like the whole process so if you are going out for a couple hours uh killing things and then dying and then just doing it all over again and not not actually building up those runes i don't want to say that it's a waste of time because however you want to spend your time is up to you and i hope you get pleasure out of it but it certainly is not going to be the most effective use of your time if you want to make

progress in the game and i would say of all of the things there's not actually a lot of things that you can like vastly screw up when you're uh leveling up your character spending the runes on certain attributes is the one thing that you can actually like almost permanently screw up for your character because the only way to undo that is going to be many hours in so i'd strongly recommend if you're playing a caster for example just focus on intelligence or and your hit points i think it's called vigor in this game if you're getting one hit if if enemies are hitting you once and you instantly die you probably need a little bit more health so intelligence health and then if you're running out of mana drop some in the mana and and with those three stats, you will be golden.

You don't have to worry about any other stats. Don't touch strength. Don't touch dexterity. Just worry about those three stats and you're terrific. Okay, so the next point I caution because I realize it ties into one of the questions that we got on the Besties Twitter account. So I say go in any direction, not just where the game points you. That said, from Kami Esquire on Twitter, they said,

This is my first Souls-like, and I have pretty rambunctious ADHD and executive functions, so entering this open world with no discernible objective is overwhelming. How do you decide what to do? Here's how I think we can split the difference. The game will kind of point you in various directions. Sometimes on the map, literally, you will light a campfire, they call them sites of grace, and it will create an arrow of a direction that you could go next you can follow that you could also go in any direction but when you go in that direction and then you reach uh an area where a new name pops up on the screen like misty's thornvale castle stormville castle sure maybe not that one because that one's quite difficult but it when a name pops up that's when you can say

great i'm gonna chill out here for a minute see what the deal is here and try to make kind of a game session of just this spot yeah most places that have a name have something to gain from it whether that is a seed to help you increase the health that you can use over your game or the magic spells that you can use maybe it has like a dungeon if you like see ruins anywhere separate from runes uh if you see ruins there is often a stairwell going into the ground and a little micro dungeon there that will have a small boss fight and a reward uh so i i think that's kind of a nice way of not totally getting distracted but still not feeling pressured to stay on the critical path yeah completely agree i do want to mention one thing that i think some people might

roll their eyes at especially souls fanatics but um i would definitely recommend going into this without looking things up walk throughs or you know advice stuff like that beyond what we're saying here which is again pretty top level but if you find like you're that you're stuck or having a really miserable time there are actually moments in this game plant can speak to one of them where you will literally feel like the game is just like like you have to start from scratch because you've gotten yourself into such a bad situation that there's no escaping it don't be afraid to look stuff up plant do you want to talk about your moment i emailed a publicist because i thought the game was broken it's not great uh yeah no i mean i i opened a treasure chest it teleported me to hell and i was stuck in a cave full of evil prawns that shot needles at me

and i fought my way through that cave up and up and up for a couple hours and then at the top of the cave was a boss fight that i didn't want to do this is like great i'll teleport out of here i don't give a shit anymore and the screen was like nope you're stuck you can't teleport until you find a spot of grace which are these kind of like teleport spots i was like well that's bad because I've looked at every inch of this cave. I've gone all the way up and there's nothing here. That's because I didn't look down. If you just literally go down, like literally if you just sprint from the place that you get teleported to, just sprint down for a minute, there is a way to exit the entire cave system it does take you out into a place that's

equally dangerous but you can at least teleport from there and you can go back to where you came from go back to where you came from so it's totally totally fine i personally if you if you played some souls games yeah i think that's good guidance. If you haven't played anything, watch as much as you can, because there are so many little idiosyncratic things about these games, from all the stuff that we've talked about already, to how the characters move and strategy, that just seeing it and knowing what it looks like to play it well helps a lot. and knowing what it looks like to play it well helps a lot. We have a bunch of questions here from listeners, but that's the one that we got more than anything this week. I just picked a random one, but Joe asked,

if I bounced off of every other Souls-like, do I stand a chance of enjoying this game? And the answer is yes big time yes uh because it is just that much more approachable and all of the time that you've put into souls likes will pay off here i i really believe that if you've already put some time into those games it will make this game so much more uh welcoming and enjoyable from the firm early early hours if you've played none of these games that's like a tougher yeah it's a tougher sell yeah i'd also add if you have been bouncing off

souls games you're gonna start this game and they're gonna kind of nudge you to like go to the big giant castle that's right in front of you don't do not do that that is the most soulsie place you could possibly go with the you know long space between checkpoints and super hard enemies and stuff like that stick to caves and stick to like little little castles are fine little towers ruins all that stuff is fine. It's all stuff you can beat in 15, 20 minutes tops. Save the big, big castle for later when you feel more comfortable and you want to try to take it on. And even then, if you find it too frustrating,

leave and go to somewhere else because there's no reason to drive yourself nuts. There's so much in this game that will give you alternative fun. So yeah. We're going to do a rapid fire set of questions. But before that, on the watching this game part, because I do want to talk about that.

If you do feel too intimidated by this or it's just not your cup of tea, I would recommend watching a stream of it, honestly, from the beginning and just poke around. Don't feel pressured to watch all of it. It's a long game. But I think finding a YouTuber or a Twitch streamer who is playing the entirety of the game, that that is a fun way to see kind of the weirdness that the game has to offer. Because I'm going to contradict myself in a second.

It doesn't boil down to 10 minutes especially well. What makes these games so special is all of the surprises and the breadth of what's happening. And I think you'll only get that by turning on a stream of the game from the beginning and then skimming through it. That said, I think a YouTuber like SkillUp, who does kind of long reviews that is kind of a fun way to get an idea of what is cool about this game and actually see it not just hear us

talking about it and i mean really just like youtube search elden ring and look at all of these silly stuff like elden ring overpowered or Elden Ring a trillion runes in one minute or Elden Ring all of the spirit ashes. The sillier the video sounds, the more fun it will be to watch, especially out of context, because it's just people trying to break this game. just people trying to break this game. Yes. And as we get further from release day and people find more and more ways to break the game, those videos are going to get all the funnier. Yeah, I'm very excited.

This game is going to exist in TikTok and YouTube for as long as Breath of the Wild has existed, if not longer. It's going to be pretty great. Yes. Okay, so we asked Twitter for some guidance that we could provide. We're going to go pretty great yes um okay so i i we asked uh twitter for some guidance that we could provide i'm going to go through that really quick first from josh i'm awful at souls games and really want to play eldering what's the best beginner friendly build for newcomers we talked

earlier about prisoner and uh and astrologer the one caveat is where should you invest your your experience points for those yeah just to reiterate uh so if you're cat if you're primarily casting intelligence um uh mind which increases your mana um a little bit of vigor which is for health not a ton you can stop at 20 that's fine and um you want a little bit and yeah you can ignore dexterity don't touch it oh i'm telling you moron ignore it um uh you need endurance though because endurance not only lets you wear heavier armor it gives you more stamina which lets you cast for longer if you run out of stamina you need to wait for it to recharge before you can cast again. So, endurance,

intelligence, mind, vigor. From Brett, I know the game is hard, duh, but it's also open world. That was Brett's duh, not my duh at Brett. It's also open world. So, how do I balance between wanting

to continue the critical path, but genuinely not having the skill level to continue? What are some fun things to do when you feel like you can't do anything? We mentioned the going from one place and just really dedicating yourself to that area. But in terms of fun stuff, the horse controls like a Sega arcade game. mega arcade game and just like hopping on the horse and seeing what weird places you can get to with a horse that can double jump and effectively drift is a nice way to kill a half hour yes um i am many many hours into this game and i frequently go back to the starting area and find things that i missed so you will not hurt for like new things to see

or new places to find. Take a look at your map. And if there's anything like weird on the map, so like if it looks like a little city or a little house on the map, but there's not like an actual waypoint delineating it, head there and see what's up. I did the same thing in Breath of the Wild.

And in both cases, it always works out. There's always something interesting there. Yeah, the map in this game is so useful for looking not useful at all at first. I mean, it tells you tons of stuff if you actually just look at the artwork. I know this is a question that you will have strong feelings about, Fresh,

from Goo the Mighty. Actual question, do you guys have a favorite spirit summon? So, well, Plant will be surprised to learn so originally i was using this there's this hawk like a giant hawk that you can summon and he flies around and helps you um i've since abandoned the hawk i'm sorry to say in favor of it's I forget his name. It's like a bloodhound warrior, not bloodhound gang, but a bloodhound warrior or something like that, uh,

who is very, very good. And I mean, effectively, cause I'm a caster, I'm just looking for guys that will maintain the attention of a boss. So close range melee, like high damage, or even like a crowd of melee guys anything that'll

just keep the attention on them while i stand back and cast stuff yeah so these spirit summons these are like ghosts that you can call on to help you during mostly boss fights and some open world stuff mine is a effectively a boss they are the size of a boss it is a headless warrior who has a giant shield and a giant flaming uh pike that he will use to attack up close or throw from a distance and he can uh effectively teleport across the battlefield. That's amazing. I have not found this ghost yet. So, so overpowered.

So overpowered. And the great thing about him is, like Fresh said, you want somebody who will be able to distract the bosses. Most of these characters don't teleport or have shields. So they might be useful for a little bit and they'll bring the health down on a boss but then the boss will just slaughter them this character the second he starts to get attacked just disappears and goes somewhere across the battlefield and starts attacking from range immensely helpful like just immensely immensely helpful uh do you want to give people a tip as to where they might find this fellow headless elden ring let's see what this says lu lu tell l-h-u-t-e-l the headless

i'll let people google that if they want to um and you can upgrade this character and if you want to figure out how to do that, I'll also let you Google that because I don't want to spoil that for folks. That's nice. Okay, let's see what else we got here. From Coda, do the quality of life improvements equal an easier game? Particularly mounted combat feels like cheesing it. I don't think the mounted combat hmm for spellcasters it can help it can it can help but i would also say like when you're able to do

mounted combat which is to say in the open world like you can't do it in a dungeon but in the open world usually those uh fights are balanced for it so if you're usually you're fighting like a big dragon that's super fast and if you're on foot you just have no prayer whatsoever so it is balanced for mounted combat it's tough unless you have like a really long range melee weapon to be able to mounted do like melee effectively unmounted um but i do you know to the first part of this question quality life improvements of like even just having a map there's never really been a souls game that had like an actual usable map so that's a huge help being able to put markers down huge help even just like being able to like

hit a button in the menus and find out what each of the things does so like you can i think it says like explanation in the menu and you can just scroll down and see like oh i know vigor increases my hp or whatever uh this this increases my stamina so like explaining everything about the ui um all that stuff is really helpful there's tool tips and stuff like that that weren't there before so yes i would say it's easier insofar as you get more information uh last question for us uh this one is from dat fiorini uh what do you think about the npc and quest encounters i've enjoyed the more overt storylines in this much more than previous Souls games. Do you prefer the old, more mysterious Nametooth storytelling or this?

Oh, man. I love this question. Good question. There are two types of quests in this game, and both were referenced in this question. There are the overt, like, hey hey you should go to this place and find this person and talk to them and they'll help you out um and those are usually pretty precise but there are also the obtuse quests that are a man i had one where it was like go to this location and he he's in this spot but the spot that it was uh calling out is like a third

of the entire map it was like an enormous portion of the map was covered by this spot and i spent a lot it's really the literally the only thing that i've ever looked up for elden ring was this quest and when i looked it up i was so glad that i did because not only was it in that like giant giant area in one like specific corner but it was behind an invisible wall that in a million billion years i would never ever think to hit that wall to find uh an opening it wasn't marked there's no indication now if there had been a convenient note written by someone in front of the wall maybe but even then the area is huge the idea that i would even see that wall and then see the note very unlikely so if you like one versus the other you've got them both in this game yay yeah and i think the story like the top level story, is just parsable enough to be enjoyable now without having to feel like I got to read every single weapon description to even know the basics of what's going on.

But that is a good tip, by the way. If you are stumped on a quest, make sure you read the item description. You usually will get a clue as to where you should be going yeah that's a good point but you should also read the item descriptions in full of your uh weapons or armor because sometimes they have special attributes that you would never know unless you you read those things so in that way still dark souls baby they still got it um i think that's it do you have any do you have any final tips no man i i would say just don't be afraid take it all in take it slow

and uh have a good time with it there there is just so much this game and i'm consistently blown away by how high quality all of it is there's's just no cruft. It is just all the prime beef in this game. Yeah, and if you don't meet any boss and you still have a nice time, that's a great way to play this game. Because most people don't finish any of the games they play anyway. So there's no difference.

I think you said earlier, there is no measurement of success other than you having a nice time. And that's all that matters. Yes. Okay, let's talk about another game in just a moment. Fresh. I have a Steam Deck.

I know. I've been loving it. It has been revelatory. I have put in so much time into Elden Ring. Also, Dragon Quest XI. Oh my gosh. I mean, that game is already on Switch. People, Dragon Quest XI. Oh, my gosh. I mean, that game is already on Switch. People should just be playing it wherever they can play it.

But it looks so gorgeous on this device. I am absolutely smitten with it. A game I am not as smitten with is a new free game called Aperture Desk Job. But I feel like we should talk about it. Yeah, I heard about this, and I was really excited because, as people might know, Portal, and specifically Portal 2, one of my

favorite, favorite games of all time, and I really, really love the VR Aperture demo game that came out with the Vive, where people could sort of like it was like a little like set in the portal universe that's like demo of like what vr can do so my impression was this game would basically be the same idea but for the steam deck yes and i think that was a good idea so

you are a effectively a toilet tester in this game to talk about this game is going to require talking about spoilers it's a 30 minute game so if you if you really want to play it before we talk about it totally understand hit pause right here we'll catch you on the other end uh and and and i hope you have a better time than i did honestly with it um so you're a you you are a uh toilet tester and uh that changes quite rapidly as you modify a toilet to become a weapon and then uh things just go haywire from there you just chaos and true you know uh aperture science fashion like in the portal games uh the problem is they want it to feel like you are testing i guess the steam deck in a certain way so you see the buttons that you are using on the steam deck on the screen sure in front of your

character first person point of view is this testing tablet and it has like two joysticks and it has buttons and when you press or move the joysticks or buttons they that responds on screen it's a neat idea especially for new user interfaces like uh in virtual reality right where it's like oh i am i am learning to use this at the exact same time as the character I'm playing is learning how to use it. Yeah. And it's teaching me in a cool fictional way. I think that was the intention. Here's the problem, though.

It's just a controller. Right. So you're learning to use a controller that, if you're the type of person to own a Steam Deck, presumably you've used, I don't know, for at least a decade, maybe more, probably more, which is weird. So it's like, oh, press A and you press A.

But I will say it's interesting because I have seen that exact thing done quite well, which is with the Astroot games like there was the initial like tech demo for i think playstation 4 and then obviously astro's play whatever so there's astro's playroom and then the new astro game on playstation 5 and both of those cases you are using a controller but you're using like all the weird bells and whistles yes that don't frequently happen on the controller exactly and is that not happening here well there aren't many weird bells and whistles yes that don't frequently happen on the controller exactly and is that not happening here well the there aren't many weird bells and whistles got it the weird

bells and whistles are there are two trackpads yeah which you don't really use in any interesting way in this um there are buttons on the back of the device but that's still just kind of buttons yeah the touch screen touch screens have been around in portable gaming for a long time now um so yeah it it doesn't it's like surprisingly thin and then the actual play of it all just feels very imprecise it's not like a um what is the qte's quick time events yeah sure controlling like a movie but at times it kind of feels almost like it because it's so structured and i think that is because they built it around a story that is like a little bit of additional context about a popular character in portal 2 and getting to hear from

that character again it's neat it's pretty cool um but that's about it and i think that they i wonder how much they were aware of this by the decision to call it aperture desk job and not tie it to portal or half-life really whatsoever well I think the last one, the VR one, was also not mentioned as a portal thing. I think it was called Aperture or something. Yeah, and it seems like this is part of what they do when they have new hardware. So I'm glad they made it.

I'm just a little bummed. I'm a little bummed because they tend to only make hits, right? The stuff they make tends to be pretty great. And this is just fine. It's just fine. I mean, yeah, no, that's fair. It's free. And also you don't even need a Steam Deck to play.

Anyone can play it on their PC is my understanding. So I guess you could try it for yourself. I haven't played it yet. I plan on playing it because again, I'm a huge Portal fan. I'm wondering if I should just wait until the Steam Deck arrives, whenever that's going to be, but no.

No, just play it. Okay, I'll just play it. And like, I think that is like a much better way of going into it. If you know, hey, this is just like a fun half hour. Yeah. And especially if you like the Portal series

and you like that lore i think you'll like it a lot more you were expecting a life-changing moment no i was expecting anything that made use of the steam deck in an interesting way sure i was expecting one kind of oh that's that's pretty clever and i did not get that um and if I had my expectations reset, it probably would have come out of it better. But hey, it's free. Okay, so you mentioned Aperture Death's Job. You mentioned Dragon Quest. Was there anything else that is like sucking your life away

in terms of the Steam Deck game-wise? I mean, Elden Ring. You've been playing a lot of Elden Ring. Yeah, Elden Ring has been like my number one thing I'm trying to give like the stuff that what is the oldest game that you've booted up on on Steam not not this isn't the oldest game but the one that I put the most time into that is older is Half-Life Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 um just because you because I haven't gotten to play those on a portable and they feel quite good.

Half-Life 2 especially, it feels really cool playing that on a portable. I think one of the games that I'm going to play is weirdly Dark Souls 2 because it was updated like a year after launch and apparently they fixed a lot of stuff in like the Sins of Assault, whatever.

I forget the expansion pack name but it's a game that i've always wanted to play it's like one of the very few from software games i've never played um it was very recently game of the year apparently by the besties uh but honestly like even so so souls you know from software souls games are still pretty damn good. And it'd be cool to be able to play one that I've never played before. I really liked that one. That was the one that I really got into for a while. Dark Souls 2?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other stuff, I mean, Red Faction Guerrilla is just a game that I feel like I always want to play. And I'm trying to get into the zero escape and dango naropa games um which are like visual novel mystery games um zero escape especially i think they were available on 3ds and vita um but i missed them then and now that i like stuff like 13 sentinels i I keep hearing that I should check them out. So, I've started Zero Escape, but I have not made

nearly as much of a dent in it as I would like to have, because Elden Ring, I mean, it just, like, eats your time alive. And then we have other stuff that we need to play. I'm gonna be playing Tunic on this, I'm sure, this week, because we're gonna be playing that next week. Well, not next week. sure this week because we're gonna be playing that next week well not next week well yeah we're gonna be playing it soon enough soon

enough uh i will we'll jump right to recommendations this week i'll be really honest uh-huh every spare minute that i have not been either caring for my child or working has gone to uh playing elden ring so i wish that i had other recommendation i mean i watched an episode of doom patrol that was like it in terms of not like elden ring centric things that have happened so i wish that i had recommendations but i really do not i saw a sad i did see a sad movie that i like didn't love so oh you would probably like it but no what is it was it was first reformed the trader movie from a couple years ago movie yeah i'll bet you do i saw that movie in a in a theater um and it was just me and uh two much older uh women and uh

after the movie ended they went really that's it um which is almost identical to an experience i had with watching a serious man and i like that i seem to be a magnet for that sort of reaction yeah um yeah you're right that That movie's a hard hang. I don't know why you watched that. It was, yeah. We have a movie club. It was an assignment. Yeah, that sounds like work.

Speaking of the sad movies, After Yang comes out. Yeah, I actually am definitely interested in this one. Yeah, it's actually, I realize, it is out. And I think you can stream it on Showtime. I think A24 is releasing it in theaters and on Showtime. And it's fantastic. It's like a horror thing, right? No.

Robot people? Yeah, kind of. A little bit more AI in terms of its, like, deep sadness. Oh, got it. And it has to do with children children and yeah replacing yeah kind of yeah i don't want to say too much about it because the movie really is about kind of its own discovery but colin farrell is in it and he is excellent the director also made a movie called columbus um which uh is great and i think on hulu um if you like brutalist

architecture which again i understand it sounds more pretentious than i'm trying to be here it's just this is not the gerard depardieu columbus no this movie is like what if you made garden state but good okay is my pitch for it like legitimately it's very good um but it has a very similar premise to to garden state also parker posey's in it so right there you know it's gonna be fun a little she's great she's great indie darling parker posey indie darling parker posey i cleaned up her dog's poo-poo when i worked on a TV show, Parker Posey. But that's a story for another time. For now, I think that's the episode.

I think so. Great. We did it. Thank you all for listening. This has been another episode of The Rusties, where the best of the rest discuss the rest of the best. I think that's right. Don't have it in front of me. Next episode of The Rusties, we're going to talk about tunic that will be in two weeks uh it is a uh banana zelda like

video game did you say banana yeah it's a little it's a little callback to friday's besties oh right um and and that's it and we did it i will we will see you all next time bye