The Besties - January 2018

Episode Date: February 9, 2018

Games discussed: Iconoclasts, SOS, Sea of Thieves, Celeste, Subnautica, Monster Hunter World, Shadow of the Colossus. 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!

Are you guys sure you don't want to talk about This Is Us? Are you guys sure that you don't want to talk about This Is Us? Have you really thought about how much meat is on this? I'm not emotionally ready to talk about This Is Us. My heart isn't in it. I love This Is Us. I mean, what's not to love? I bet.

Characters welcome. That's what I say. Characters welcome to die. Yeah. Characters, I love watching people get picked off one by one. Milo Ventimiglia, who of course has created three iconic television roles. Gilmore Girls' second boyfriend. Gilmore Girls' second boyfriend.

Heroes' fourth boyfriend. Heroes' invincible story hole. Is he in Whitney? Was he in Whitney? heroes invincible story hole and and Whitney was he in Whitney people were asking right now Chris Delilia last night after the big game we all tuned in to watch

this father of three die and the thing that he tweeted after that was just so everyone knows it hashtag Jack Pearson I guess that's his character from the show. Lives in all our hearts. He's you. He's me.

He's us. Thank you for supporting the show. Jack Pearson, a character from a program I do not enjoy, lives in my heart. I didn't realize, was Jesus already in there? Yeah. There would be room for Jack Pearson from This Is Us as well. Hang out. But he is apparently in there

you think you could find jesus a better roommate in your heart also what's the square footage of your heart because it's got to be getting cramped in there it could be like a duplex i think it's fine live in my heart are milo vitimiglia and jesus Hello, my name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the month. My name is Chris Plant and I know the best game of the month. My name is Russ Froschek and I know the best game of 2018. Welcome to the besties where we celebrate the latest and greatest in pop culture, history, news. This is us.

This is us. The guys who talk about fashion and sports, the big game. Going to do a recap of that at some point. But this week, we're going to focus in on, really drill down on video games. I was watching my nephew, Perry Wilson, play one of these yesterday. And let me tell you folks they have come a long way since pac-man yeah i definitely need to mention here that i did change my son's name to periwinson so justin was not lying there um his full name is jack periwinson

video games man video games i don't think it's... The January 2017 was so buck wild. I don't know if 2018 quite lived up to it, but man, that was a good old month, huh? It was a good little month. It was. There was a lot of games that came out this month. Does anybody have any honorable mentions? I have a huge one.

It kind of breaks my heart that we didn't have room for it in a proper discussion, but it's a game I wanted to talk about because I was so entranced by it. It was Iconoclasts um it is a it's it's out on i think steam and like console download stores um it's by oh gosh joaquin i can't remember his full name but he basically worked on it um solo for a long time the game's been in the works for like a decade and now it's finally out um and this is the developer behind the uh noy to love uh games i think it's a series i'm not

like very familiar with with his body of work before iconoclasts um but it is a really really cool game it's like a story driven like surprisingly heavily story driven, um, uh, like platformer action adventure game, uh, where it takes place in this sort of dying world with this sort of, um, religious monarchy, uh, where there is like a, a mother who's sort of a deity who talks to this space God who governs the things that happen on the planet. And it has a lot of things to say about like how these different uh uh different sort of societies uh have conflict despite the fact that they kind of believe in sort of the same stuff and it drills down really deep into how this religion like governs this world um and on top of that like it's a it's like a really good little metroidvania game with like really cool uh like mechanics and a really satisfying feeling like upgrade path you find

like different weapons different guns and uh like an upgradable wrench that you can use for not only combat but like some platforming puzzle solving stuff too um i played through all of it in like three days and i i was i was in love um yeah i played it i played a couple hours of it and really liked it uh it reminded me of cave story and yes as far as it was like story centric metroidvania um and with like interesting boss fights and stuff like that but also like actual cut scenes and fun like musical cues for enemies and yeah um yeah they they obviously put a lot of love into it the cave story comparison really hit for me also because it it like cave story is a game that kind of on the surface just looks like kind of a cute pixel platformer but actually has like a really like

ocean deep lore for you to for you to dig into and it's like really really great like the world is so rich and well developed yeah um another game that i wanted to mention for honorable mention is a game called darkest dungeon which came out like 100 years ago on pc uh and i never played it but it came to Switch and I put it on Switch this month and it's very very overwhelming but cool and interesting and like really high production value it's basically an RPG strategy game

where you are command you're basically running an RPG town for all intents and purposes and sending people out to like on missions and then you get a percentage of their spoils, as it were. And it's kind of an interesting shift, because like when I normally play these sorts of games, I play them like perfectly. Oh, I lost a guy. I can't, you

know, I'll just reload a save. But in this, A, you can't, because it auto saves almost constantly. And B, it's actually counter uh to like making money like you're supposed to be like be willing to sacrifice people and people go insane by like witnessing too many horrors it's got like a cthulhu thing and so you can like basically sacrifice people and be like well he wasn't doing great anyway i'm gonna send him in and i'll still uh get some money out of it um yeah and it's obviously for switch it's great because it's you know 2d you can stop at any point turn-based um just really a good fit for the platform i've tried three times to play that game because everything about it is so absolutely

my jam yeah but i find myself so turned off by how like if you have a bad run and lose several of your of your heroes in like one dive it always feels so punishing to me like in a way that is not like it makes me kind of not want to keep going because then it makes me think like well if it doesn't really it's sort of a and i'm not saying that like roguelike sort of these types of mechanics which i'm not necessarily sure this would qualify but anywhere where you can like lose a ton of progress if you fuck up too bad, like there's a way to do that that works. And there's a way to do that that just makes it feel like kind of disrespectful of the time that I'm trying to invest in it.

Sure. Yeah. I think it's a very, very good game and it's it's highly lauded, but I just don't. Yeah, I find myself bouncing off of it the first time I have a run where I'm like, i fucked up and i have to start yeah no that's that's fair it's it is punishing more punishing than a lot of uh roguelikes and i think it's again you have to wrap your head around like i don't care about these people i just care about my town and with that in mind what can i do to like further enhance my town even if it means dying a bunch but yeah uh i played an interesting one and i will admit i didn't think a ton of time into this but i did play uh uh quite

a few rounds and and really dug it it's called sos um yeah oh are you familiar i am familiar i've watched a lot of video of it trying to get it streamable but i don't think we could ever stream it no it's it's it's rough so okay, so basic premise is it's sort of a, it's stylized like a TV show. You have, I should talk about mechanically first. So there's 16 people dropped onto an island. And on this island, there are these five relics that you can collect.

You have to get one, a successful run means finding one of these relics, you can collect. You have to get one. A successful run means finding one of these relics, calling in a chopper, and then getting off the island. And as you're on the island, you're kind of scrambling, looking for weapons or ammo or health, that kind of thing. And there are animals and monsters on the island that you have to deal with. 16 people all dropped off at different points. And the interesting thing about it

that keeps it from being really similar at all from like, it may sound like a battle royale mixed with like dust or what have you. But the thing that makes it really different is it really encourages social play in a way that i think is really cool it it um like when you find someone you can start an alliance by uh raising your hand and if they raise their hand also and the two of you high five you're immediately like joined into an alliance there are um like a there's a walkie talkie with different channels

on it. And people in your alliance can like all decide that they're going to go on a different channel and, and use the walkie talkie to stay in communication. Or if you're close to people, you can, you can talk to them that way. So it creates a lot of these really tense moments where like you see someone coming at you and you have to make a really quick decision. Like, well, am I going to befriend this person? Are they going gonna try to befriend me are they gonna try to try to get close and then put me down um it's really tricky and the it really like um there's like an audience sponsor element to it too right yeah so when you die or you can just join the audience one way like just join the audience or when you die, you're placing the audience and you can actually award players for not great technical play, like not great skill gameplay, but great performance.

And you build like a reputation for how good your performance is. So like in every time I played the vast majority, almost everybody was using a microphone and like there's an introductory sequence, right? Where it goes person to person and the camera like focuses in on each player for like three seconds. And it tells you when your time is going to come up and then you get like three seconds, just like pitch who you are, like what your thing is. And there are a lot of people who are playing like actual real characters i was in a

game once where a guy was just acting like the joker which was very unnerving because we were all working together and this guy's like i'll be fine with the real like you can trust me like like very creepy and fun um and it does a lot of cool stuff like if you it tracks what kind of player you are so when you get introduced says like, you're not very loyal. Like you turn on people or you're very generous. Like you give to people a lot. And if there's two players in a game, which I saw several times, two players in a game where one of them turned on the other one, they will actually get a little moment where

it's like the two of them standing across the fire from one another where they can like kind of talk to each other it's like last game what's his face betrayed this guy and like they they can talk about it for for a second so you get to see like oh shit it's you i'm totally gonna it's so good um so what percentage of what you've played has been like horrible slurs so the interesting thing about it is i saw like none of that there there are some people who i would say their their portrayal is maybe a little uh problematic problematic portrayals but because it's not really a game of like how good are you at shooting or what have you like the the game is playing that role like it's really there's no

point to playing it like it doesn't attract the sort of people i think that would just get on there to to grief um you're incentivized actively to not be a dickhead exactly or if you're gonna be a dickhead like be a dickhead in character like it it is not telling you're ready to be good guys you could be a total scumbag but you do have to be like a consistent character of a scumbag yeah sure how how close does this get to being the survivor video game adaptation that you've always wanted um the plus the pluses are that um people are really good with everybody using the voice chat um i plugged in my headset and i didn't even have it plugged in at first because I'm a human being and I live on the internet.

So like, yeah, no, I'm not going to do voice chat. But everybody is like, it would be weird to not play this game with voice chat. I think that you would probably just end up, you would be at a real deficit because you wouldn't be able to sort of like wheel and deal. The games that i saw like i saw fairly consistently like people who were in an alliance and then there's only three seats on the chopper so you have four people working together like something's gonna happen like that's that survivor shit like somebody's gonna get your guy yeah i i i've not checked

this one out but i really want to uh real real quick before we move on for like 30 seconds because we're going to talk about this again in a few in a couple months uh the sea of thieves beta was fucking fantastic uh i still want to know like what the sort of uh continuing progression loops really feel like if that's going to hook me and hopefully they will add some more enemies like npc enemies because killing skeletons over and over again is apparently not especially entertaining i guess the kraken is in there somewhere we just like never found it while we were sailing around but we streamed it a couple times and like big groups and i played it a couple times by myself on like a one-person

ship and just sailing around that game is so good. I mean, wave-wise, there's never been more realistic water effects ever. Well, yes, and managing that by yourself when you're on a one-person ship is really exciting because you are just running around the ship making little corrections here and there to try to get your ship going as smooth as possible. But working with a full crew of four people

and having one person steering and one person on the front of the ship making sure you're not going to run into anything and one person on the map downstairs making sure you're going in the right direction and one person uh raising and lowering sails and turning them in the correct direction to catch the wind is like it is so fun and when it clicks it feels like nothing i've ever really played before. Like it genuinely feels like you are out on, on open water, just like working, working together to do this difficult thing. It is.

It is so fun. Felt great. Uh, it actually kind of reminded me of a destiny raid a little bit in, in so far as everyone had very disparate, uh, tasks, but everyone was working for a greater good and had to be very vocally

coordinating with one another so i yeah i thought it was awesome uh but again well i think it comes out in march so we'll yeah we'll dive into it more than uh who wants to start or does somebody else have another i'll go first okay unless someone has another honorable mention nope three two one okay so last is the game that i'm going to talk about cel Celeste is a game made by Matt Thorson, who made a game that I believe I really, really tried to get to win Besties like three years ago, which was Towerfall.

He made that. He probably should have. I forget what beat it. Like probably Dishonored or something like that. Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds very Besties. So Matt made this game um in tower fall there was actually a lot of uh platforming stuff um like weird like trial

challenges and stuff like that and you could tell that he was kind of stretching his uh experience uh insofar as he wanted to bring some of the stuff he learned from tower fall on the platforming in that game to a an entirely focused platforming game which is celeste um it is a 2d i want to say like 16-bit looking um platforming game uh where you play as this hiker that is trying to climb up a mountain and um to that end you basically just have an air dash and a jump and the ability to like climb up vertical surfaces and that's it and um like any good platformer it it slowly but surely introduces uh different mechanics whether that's as simple as like a trampoline or as complicated as like um you know a piece of energy that you can pick up and then suddenly you can fly in any direction for a few seconds um so like as a platformer i think it's like a very well

designed very smartly designed platformer uh it's very hard but not punishingly so uh i think just about anyone could get through it without using the included assist mode, which makes the game like super, super easy. That gives you like infinite air dashes and makes it so that you just bounce when you hit a pit at the bottom of the screen. I'm sure there are people that like, actually, I know Allegra, for example, on staff, used that because she found the platforming to be too stressful. And that's fine. Like, if you want to do that, that's totally reasonable. Because the game itself is kind of cool like this the story of of your character and why they're

climbing the mountain and the things they learn as they climb it and the people they meet is like it's actually like there's a lot of game there it's not just like a dialogue free platformer like there's it has something to say right that was i think the biggest standout element for me apart from like gorgeous um graphics and a really great score it did something that like most raw platformers do not even attempt which is to have a story to have interesting characters to have like depth in on that front so i thought that was um absolutely excellent they really did an amazing job there um yeah i i know plant you played a lot of it what was your sort of take uh i like how forgiving it is i i mean so i don't know how to sound this without sounding like a jerk i i i felt like it was a surprisingly easy game but this is i think

coming from having played a lot of massacre games um and i never felt like there was that much of a challenge um until maybe the end and the b-sides i know those b-sides man the b-sides are are real but the thing that i did not appreciate on my own was all of the uh the what are what are the alternate controls called fresh the forgiveness controls assist mode assist mode assist mode like how much that has helped other people play it who i've recommended it to and i've seen the the sheer variety of assist mode is what i think is really impressive because i i have seen some people on our team play it with infinite jumps. I've seen some people play it who just change that the speed of the game helped a lot, like

bumping it to 80%. And the ability to kind of like alter it when you need it and get rid of it when you don't is really interesting. And I think in some ways it makes a lot of sense because the way the strawberries especially if you're playing for like earning the little strawberries throughout the stage these they're like meaningless like pickups just to show off like hey i got 80 strawberries but i at first i was like oh what's the point of the strawberries if you have assist mode but what i realized is so much of those strawberries are kind of like puzzles where yeah you you figure out how to do

it and then sometimes your skill can't match it but you know how to do it and assist mode i think lets people kind of solve those puzzles um and enjoy like that discovery without feeling like oh well i just don't have these absurdly developed reflexes from being uh total shut in um like myself and well everybody on this call the pacing and structure of the game is so smart and so digestible where basically you only need to put in like perfect inputs especially and i'm talking about like the b sides the regular game is a little bit more forgiving uh but some of the some of the levels are uh really difficult especially when you're being like chased by a essentially an enemy that if it touches you you die you you basically have to you have to be on point during that um but but the pacing of the

game is really digestible because you like each room really only takes like 20 seconds or so of like really or less of really good platforming to clear and if you die you just start at the beginning of that room and you can uh there's like a checkpoint system so if you miss something you can just hop back in to whatever like section of each level you want to get into and it's really fun just like attempting doing attempt after attempt after attempt of a room until you find that perfect you know 15 20 seconds that you need to to complete it like that that loop is really satisfying and not like not super punishing either that ability to restart like i don't know so when i when i was playing it through the first time it seems obvious at this

point the instant restart uh mechanic for these games but on the flip side i've been playing the cinders which i can't go a ton into but i think i can speak about it like a preview since uh that is coming out i don't know around the time that this episode will go live and for people who don't know it it's by the people who did action hank it is this downhill uh off-road biking game and it's really really fun but one of the downsides is it's incredibly punishing for when you screw up as in you can reverse your progress so if you are just trying to learn it or you want to take like a really big risk and do a wild jump um and you eat up your lives on a round going down the mountain you can at your character can actively get worse um what yeah

yeah your xp it goes in the opposite direction so there's a there's like a mode where you can turn that off and practice but it it just feels really bizarre um to have that on really hardcore games and i like i said it seems like an assumed thing but it is not it is very much a choice that i think matt made yeah pays off really well and makes you never feel terrible same with making strawberries not mandatory yeah and it being on switch again like i feel like we despite the fact the switch has been out for a year now like it's worth saying like it's perfect like it is a perfect game for switch especially especially in these little digestible chunks is a really nice game to just like pick up and start,

you know, trying to knock out a few rooms and then put it back down. And it is, it took me just speaking of the B sides for a second. Cause I do agree. Like the, the main game is not that hard. Uh,

it's probably like six, seven hours. I would say for most people. Um, one of the B sides took me the entire length of 500 Days of Summer, which I just left it on Netflix as I was playing on the couch.

And I was just stuck on this same, I died 200 times on the same level. So I like the fact that the B-sides are separate. There's not an obligation to do them. Um, I like that they're super hard and they give people that Massacore like itch. The, um,

only thing that I kind of critique in terms of the difficulty and game structure is that when you beat the game, um, there is a level that's locked. And the only way to unlock that level is to get four crystal hearts which are these hearts that are you know they're collectibles essentially and the most obvious way to get hearts is to finish b sides uh there are also hidden hearts throughout the levels um that are uh you know off the beaten path and pretty tough to find um so technically if you

don't have like extreme platforming skill you could still get these crystal hearts but this last level that's unlocked or locked is actually one of the best if not my favorite level in the game and it's kind of weird that it would be so inaccessible to most people i think a lot of people will like get to the end and be like i didn't see a single crystal heart i'm just gonna stop now and so that was kind of a weird choice but um overall i think it's a great game uh cool who wants to go next uh i'll go um the game that i uh am bringing this month is called subnautica and this is one that i kind of picked up a little bit on a whim just because there'd been a lot of discussion about it sort of before it was released. And I think it finally came out of early access. Yeah, it's been in early access for like two years.

Yeah, it's been a long time. So basically it's a sort of survival crafting sort of thing. Not unlike, I know I referenced i referenced earlier but this is a better comparison of like dust or you mean rust rust yeah not dust the dust is the anime uh metroidvania right uh and the like ccp first person shooter right yes so uh rust uh or minecraft or what have you not not really that much like Minecraft. So you're dropped off in the middle of the ocean. You have a base that is really just a floating escape pod that has within it a crafting station and some storage and a radio that you get occasional transmissions to.

And you're dropped off with very little guidance as to what to do. It's very much you're only in this sort of exploration. You see a giant ship in the background that you might be able to access, but that looks like the ship that crashed and dropped you off of it. But that's really your only waypoint. And really the only charge to you at the beginning is to sort of explore and expand your capabilities to explore. And, uh, that happens through, I guess, a loop that's fairly traditional for games like

this. You go and look for items that are going to increase your ability to survive. Or, uh, for example, um, you need water and food, uh food so you can swim after little animals and fish that are swimming through the ocean and grab them and then take them back to your base. And one of the fish you can turn into bottles of water and the rest you can cook up and eat. There are plants that can be turned into rubber or minerals that you find in the ocean that you can use to build new equipment, like a new tank that lets you stay underwater longer. And as you sort of progress, it is a very satisfying, I think more than any of these I've ever played, it it is while it gives you very little guidance it's very easy to sort of create goals for yourself that feel really meaningful

like uh i today i'm going to go out and make myself a one of these little hovercrafts and there are like a bunch of different items you need to find to get it together. But like swimming through the ocean, trying to find the stuff you need to put those together is really pleasurable and really encourages like experimentation. It tells you very little like in terms of, hey, you should try this now. And you're really left to your own devices. But it's really easy to say like, oh, cool, like better flippers to help me swim fast. That's neat. I'm going to go figure that out. And it's not really that inscrutable in terms of finding this stuff it's really about like just kind of poking around for it and the whole time you're like avoiding sea life that is uh a

huge threat to you and uh you know trying to manage your water and uh hunger levels um this sounds a lot like no man's sky is that okay so yes the good thing though is unlike no man's sky you can turn off most of those things that you're required to do like you can basically just oxygen that's how i'm playing it and it you can here's what i want to say yes so i think the comparison to no man's sky is very accurate i think this game does what no man's sky was trying to do so much better than no man's sky did which is to say it makes progression and exploration feel very satisfying as justin alluded to i personally think that the survival stuff is not so incapacitating um and i kind of it's pretty benign it's pretty benign i would say it's not

like frustrating to the point where you're constantly starving or needing water and stuff like that you would be well served though i i think at least i kind of agree with chris i wish i had done this but i've gone too far down the rabbit hole um you can turn off water and food concerns and i think that's like very legit way to play and i would recommend it because it's like it's not that it's the same stuff. But I mean, there's ways to make it a little better, but like by and large, it's go out and grab some fish and turn them into food and water. You just go faster.

The thing that I really was amazed by was that like at the start I was expecting like No Man's Sky, like, oh, well, whatever. You have a base and you craft stuff. And I was surprised at like how many, uh, mechanics slowly get layered in to make it a much more complex, a complex experience. Like I thought, Oh,

whatever. It's, it's pretty straightforward. And then they start adding base building and ship creation and like all sorts of stuff that they only like alluded to at the beginning but really was not the reason you were there it it's i think they did an amazing job and it really and and and to to honestly the no man's sky thing had not even occurred to me but i guess it is sort of legit um the other thing i would say though is that you exploration no man's sky really

boiled down a lot of the time to something boring like you find another boring thing in in this game when you find something new it's like a lot of times and and being underwater helps with that because i i i find that i find that really sort of like awesome in the literal sense of the word and terrifying. But like when you find a new place in Subnautica, it can be like, oh shit, like this is really you. One of the first times I was in that deep water, I came across a, I mean, skyscraper-sized fish so big that you could harvest stuff off of the top of its shell. And it was terrifying. I took a wrong turn in a cave while I was looking for something and found a huge cavern full of glowing pink mushrooms the size of Buicks.

And, like, you want to explore that stuff. You want to go find uh those things and you get these beacons uh that are basically like um alerts or uh messages from people that were have also crashed and you get beacons alerting you to where they are um and those often lead to like new tech that you can that you can build out like build a little mini sub or something like that or you can uh they'll lead you to like little story kind of things but like if it helps to guide and uh and push things along juice do you know if uh the map is like procedurally generated at all or is it handmade the map um yeah i think it's hand i think it's handmade i think i which obviously is part of the reason why it sort of stands out you know they didn't you

know if you're handcrafting something obviously it's going to be much more identifiable um yeah i i was wondering about that just because you're right like no man's sky like once you've been to six planets you've seen everything there is to offer it. Not to mention like the animals start getting redundant, but here I was like, there was a fish that was like looking at me. And then I heard my, my suit computer go like,

you should approach that fish. And it was like pulling me in. And once I got close enough, I saw the fish was called a mesmer and it was like hypnotizing me to approach it so that it could eat my face off like that is freaking cool yeah it's really cool they do such a good job um it's really neat like all the all the there's so many cool little vignettes and like i really liked the the loop of upgrading stuff it felt very satisfying to me i really enjoyed it i just googled also apparently there's a vr version which i would be very curious

well the main version you can play in vr i didn't have the balls to try it yeah i i didn't i didn't have the setup for it currently but it sounds kind of perfect for it though like this sounds exactly like my favorite favorite type of game here. It sounds really good. I've read about some people bouncing off of it, and I think it's because it doesn't necessarily walk you in very well. But if you enjoy that idea of, like, exploring the ocean, I think it's, like, it has a great sense of, like,

you get this in Minecraft sometimes with, like, these survival things. Like, survival things like oh man i am and you never got the snowman sky this sense of like oh i am way i'm out way too far i should not be here and like there's something about having that feeling underneath the ocean where it's like oh like i am really really boned at this exact moment and i gotta find a way to get back but there's some cool stuff that i really want to look at down exact moment and i gotta find a way to get back but there's some cool stuff that i really want to look at down there so maybe i'll push this a little bit farther um but i i really i really dug it yeah it's freaking awesome russ you mentioned you had something for halftime and when you say that i need you to know my anxiety um uh spikes this is there's no one joining us this week.

When you say that, like the anxiety spike, I need you to know, my friend, does not get any more shallow, because I've been fooled more times than I can count, and each one hurts really bad. As far as I'm aware, it's just me. I had a bit of

a situation yesterday regarding hot wings that i wanted to share with you guys for half time perfect perfect right on a scale of one to ten the amount of butt related material i'm about to no no no butt related material okay i mean i had but really but that was not i regularly get texts from russ about his poops i mean i don't mean that as a joke i mean like every couple weeks if russ has an exceptional dookie i'll get a text about it yeah well yeah either pro or con hashtag fringles um the uh so i went to buffalo wild wings a local establishment uh in my uh town here to procure some wings for the super bowl now uh i went a day early uh because everybody loves obviously old wings for the big no i know i went a day or put

the to put the order in because i knew how much demand there would be on super bowl night i was having people over i wanted to have wings so i i was very responsible and put the order in early i showed up at 5 30 and i want you to picture buffalo wild wings is like in case people aren't aware it's like a sports bar um there must be people that have never been they sell hamburgers and fries is really that many people have been into buffalo wild wings if you don't know watch the sporting event you've seen like a trillion vw3 sure well imagine that buffalo the tv friendly buffalo wild. If you've watched a sporting event, you've seen like a trillion VW3 cars. Sure. Well, imagine the TV-friendly Buffalo Wild Wings that you've seen on television. Got it.

But on the inside, it's the Thunderdome because the wings, all wings, have been delayed by two and a half hours. Oh my God. Oh. There is a crowd. They have people in a pen. So there's the normal restaurant part of Buffalo Wild Wings. And then off to the corner, there is a pen with like the dmv for about 30 to 35 people uh there are about 60 people

crowded into this pen all with receipts all screaming in queen's accents at poor people working there saying where the fuck are my wings what's's going on? It is absolute fucking mayhem. Okay. So I put my order in. It was supposed to be ready at 530. They are like, come back at 615. Meanwhile, I have people coming to my house at 545, figuring this is all going to go smoothly. So I leave.

I get my wife to hold down the fort and I come back 45 minutes later. The crowd has doubled. It's like people are out the door screaming, yelling, kicking. This is not Philadelphia. No one cares about the Super Bowl. This is just about wings. It is total chaos. Okay.

In front of all these people that are in this pen, there are bags, plastic bags, piled high with other orders. Now, these are orders that have not been picked up yet. Did you witness buffalo wing theft, Russ Frushtick? I might have committed buffalo wing theft. No, Russ Frushtick! Russ Frushtick! Okay, let me lay it out.

I'm going to lay out the situation and see if you think I did the wrong thing. Yes. Can I answer now? Do we have to wait until the end to answer, or can we answer now? You can answer now, and maybe you'll regret it. You did the wrong thing yeah can i can answer now do we have to wait to the end to answer can we answer now you can answer now and maybe you'll regret it you did the wrong thing i'm not going to regret it go ahead okay let's let's also keep in mind i have eight to ten people in my apartment waiting to eat i don't try to justify your crime there jean valjean i needed the buffalo wild wings to feed my family okay so i go back there um all the tickets are out there's probably like yeah 15 20 like bags just sitting in the front of the table now each of the bags

are labeled based on what time they were supposed to be picked up mine for 5 30 obviously but there another bag that was labeled 4pm and it had been there for two hours and had about what my order was give or take 50 wings mango and sweet barbeque close enough so

you got a little confused wink wink about which was yours was that the excuse that you created in your head So you just got you got a little confused. You got confused. Wink wink. Yeah. Confused about which was yours. Was that. Yeah. Was that the excuse that you created your head for when someone was like, hey, get that

nerd. Well, yeah. What about the additional details of that story that you just told us made you think that I would then think it was an acceptable thing to do? The fact that it was. Well, I don't know if you're mango, right? Yeah. Well, hey, the mango. think it was an acceptable thing to do the fact that it's closer i don't know if you're mango right yeah and b i would say i don't know if you're aware griffin but there is a food crisis on this earth and whenever i hear of food being wasted a tear rolls down my eye yeah but you're not like you're not food batman this person's gonna show up looking for their thing and they're

not are they gonna show up they were supposed to show up two hours before yeah to pick up their way i mean new york city traffic baby best in the world um what yeah that's a good accent so like they're not gonna know unless you left a note like hey jim if the bag comes out for russ fresh jake you did theft and you did a crime the fact you're bragging about it kind of disgusts me i'm not bragging about it i'm saying what would you do what what would you do oh i would wait politely for my wings that they made for me with love and care and attention for me griffin to be ready not steal but they're two hours late that doesn't matter it's still there's also there's an entire group of people in my apartment that i care a lot more about than random person that didn't

pick up their wings for two hours. Oh, I see. It's an act of charity, really, if you think, if you really boil it down. I'm a giver. He cared too much. Yeah, that's his problem. Alright, well, I'm gonna call the cops. Turns out the wings were too spicy, and I got a tummy ache. Well, that's God for you. That's karma. Yeah.

I've called the cops. They'll be there soon. I actually had a similar tragic story than mine, and mine, I'm the victim. We were worried about a similar thing over at mine and mine. I'm the victim. We, we were worried about a similar thing over at city's parents' house. So we actually ordered our, um, our pizza.

I like four, assuming it's going to be a shit show. It's going to take that four would be the, the latest same day, right? Four o'clock the same day. I guess it's going to be a couple hours. You were even less responsible than me.

Sure. We'll eat. We'll eat at six um and the the pizza arrived at 4 45 oh no it was tragic because i can't imagine i'm gonna get choked up i can't remember a time in my life when i've ever seen pizza being delivered and thought, ah, not yet. You know what I mean? Like I've never thought like, ah, a little too soon. I've never met that moment with anything other than just like sheer relief. Relief and delight. And I had this experience where I was like, ah, pizza, not yet.

What? It was heartbreaking. where I was like, oh, pizza, not yet. What? It was heartbreaking. Even though Eagles win, and you know how much I love football, even Eagles win was no bomb for it. It was really a tragedy.

I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you. Chris and I are bringing very similar games now that I think about it. Do you want to go first, or do you want me to? You can go first. All right, so I'm bringing Monster Hunter World, which is a game I've been looking forward to for a long time, basically since I think they announced it last year at some point. I remember seeing a presentation for it at E3 and being very excited for it.

And then it just kind of snuck up on me because it came out last Friday or the Friday before last. If you have not played a Monster Hunter game, Quick Pitch is it's a game all about these big boss fights where you take down these monsters, you pursue them and locate them in these various territories. And the territories are full of other sort of endemic, smaller creatures and resources that you can gather. And then when you find the monster, you have a big fight with them. Big, very technical, very sort of precision requiring fight that if you are successful in, you get to carve them up or you can capture them and then you get their parts and you can use those parts to craft or upgrade weapons and armor and then rinse, rinse and repeat. Basically, as the fights get harder, the monsters get bigger and you progress down

sort of the story or unlock new optional hunts that you can go after just for more resources that you can use on your gear. And that loop exists in some way in most RPGs, right? Especially these days where there's like every fucking game has crafting in it basically at this point. But Monster Hunter was early in this sort of pursuit. And in various points in the franchise this loop has been anywhere from like almost completely incomprehensible and player unfriendly and

punishing and shitty to where it is now in monster hunter world which is i in in my opinion like actually very approachable uh and very fun um i i started playing with monster hunter 4 ultimate which was the 3ds game that came out uh i don't know five or so years ago and then i got really into generations the other 3ds game and then this is the third one i've played and the the the thing that really stands out first of all it looks and plays fucking fantastic it is very pretty like playing this game at 60 frames a second is like really something else because um i know people are kind of tired of the the souls comparison but that is a game all about these big boss animations and

uh player animations being like flawless in this 60 frame window uh where everything feels everything has such a good feel because of that and and monster hunter world really benefits because of that like it feels really uh really good to play there's 14 different weapon types and like each one that's like the main decision you make because each one handles differently and is sort of equivalent to like how you pick a class in another sort of class-based rpg and for the first time like i want to play all 14 weapons because they are all like a lot of fun in very very different ways um but but on top of all that stuff the thing that monster hunter world really brings to the table is dozens and dozens of these quality of life

improvements to make that, that pursuit of, uh, finding a mission or joining a multiplayer mission, finding the monster you need to fight, killing it, and then getting the stuff you need to make new stuff like so much easier than it has been in the past i cannot stress it enough like one one big example um is in past monster hunter games once you sort of there's like a central hub and that exists in world too but whenever you go out on a mission from that central hub at that point your equipment loadout is locked your item loadout is locked there is no way to like change what weapon you want to use. Okay. I saw a tool tip that said you could change it in camp.

Yeah. And I, you can do that in world now. That's, that is what I'm saying. And if you go back to camp, where do you do that? There's a little tent.

You just pop into your tent. Yeah. So, but that's a big improvement. Like in past games, you spend some money to like buy a meal and you eat that meal to like get a buff. And then you,

maybe you spend some money to purchase the right to go out on a quest another thing that world has done away with uh and then you go out on the quest and you realize like oh shit i brought the wrong weapon well abandon quest let's start over and in world like you don't have to do that it drastically cuts down the need to go back to that central hub even if you complete the mission you can just pop right back to that the starting zone of the area you were in and just jump right into another mission it is so much faster and so much better than it ever has been if i can hit one that i not to like list a bunch of these but like they this is what makes this game uh such a best improvement like wet stones uh which used to be a resource that you would use to sharpen your weapon which you have to do a lot uh is now just a permanent resource that you would use to sharpen your weapon,

which you have to do a lot, is now just a permanent item that you can use as many times as you want to. Tracking is huge. You used to have to randomly find the monster and then throw this thing called a paintberry at it. Did you remember to bring paintberries? I hope you did because you have to throw a paintberry at it and then you can track the monster on the map. But also the getting around the map is inscrutable.

And also the paintberries wear off after a certain amount of time. So like you have to remember when you see the monster, like how long has it been since I threw the paintberry at them? I better throw another one just to be sure. Like miserable. And now you have little flies that when you tell it i want to see this monster they will fly to it but like and they will show you a glittering path directly to the monster but the thing that's cool about it is that it isn't just um it isn't just

like nerfed it isn't just like well this is easy now the when you're in the world you find things like monster tracks and scales and uh stuff like that that actually improves your scout flies which is what that's called it improves their ability to find the monsters so like you do need to be smart and thorough and like like an actual hunter like learn how to track this stuff yeah before that stuff and the fact that it's hugely improved in past games there were no like footprints you find there were no trails to follow and so in doing this i don't think it's a nerfed thing at all i think it's more like hunting like there's a lot of stuff about this that feels like hunting because while there are a bunch of quality and life improvements to make things that were annoying just annoying for no reason before a lot easier especially for

the late game hunts you have to be fully prepared like a lot of the time i spent playing the game i actually finished the main story of it last night like towards the end of the game a lot of the stuff you're going to be doing is not actually going out on the hunts for the monsters you need to kill it's going out on hunts to get the stuff that you need the armor and weapons that you need to kill the monsters you're going to kill because if you just run into it with the same loadout used for everything else, you are going to get massacred. Okay.

So here's, um, so, so Griffin's obviously like an old master at this. Justin, um, has not really enjoyed a monster on our game until this one. Is that fair to say,

Justin? Yes. And I have, I have tried. I've had people who know the game literally looking over my shoulder this past three was me and Pat Gill Doing yeah multiplayer sessions of generations with Justin like okay, so you get your paint Barry out and then and Didn't they weren't frustrated with me like Pat's Pat's final thing when I gave up was like yeah, it is like that it is Yeah

The question here was like when you started playing world was griffin like over your shoulder walking you through it no no i didn't even have to google at first which is wild because i was doing that constantly with with monster hunter if you pay attention to what it's telling you and like don't get obsessed about all the things that you don't understand just focus on the things that you don't understand just focus on the things that like you need to understand like and and not worry about additional systems until you need an edge uh or you're bored and you want to like vary what you're doing like i don't think that you need yeah those those things those things are a little bit more complex are like percentiles of support on top of your skill or whatever um

like the the bulk of the game is finding a weapon that clicks for you and then using it to kill monsters and if that's all you do that's that should get you where you need to be especially in the early like low rank stuff but once they start getting a little bit tougher then you do need to kind of drill down into some stuff. I wonder, Justin, whether you would have had the same experience had you not had that like hand-holding experience with the other Monster Hunter game. Because I played this essentially, I played like for a half hour, 45 minutes alone and have never really played a Monster hunter game before and i found it like extremely overwhelming uh in terms of like the hud and the mechanics and everything to the point where like i definitely in order to try it again would need a guide either a physical person talking to me or reading online because

like a lot of it although it made sense to me i found it just like in the way that like when you play an rpg and you get a health potion and you never use that health potion because you're like i want to save this for the next time i really need it like i felt like i was getting 30 items every time i did anything and didn't know when to use them or should i use them or what they even did yeah i here's here's that's a thing. To answer your question, Roz, I absolutely, I think that's absolutely, that is probably a factor. Stuff like, there are things that definitely carry over that like, like sharpness is a good thing.

Like there's a meter on the screen that shows that your weapon is getting dull. And like, that's, that's like a carryover that I probably internalized. And, and definitely some, like the weapons feel similar enough that i i remembered uh from from last time um but like it the thing about monster hunter is it is not like any other game and and it's that reason why i think it is kind of like a game you should really play and a game even if you don't like it um a game you should check out and become sort of literate in because yeah that's why you mentioned the rpg thing a game you should check out and become sort of literate in because yeah that's why you mentioned the rpg thing getting a bunch of potions and items and shit and not

really knowing when to use them so you don't use them that that is my experience in virtually every rpg but the thing about monster hunter is when it was like created the idea was like what if we did that but you had to use every like you did not have that option because the answer to your question is like you don't know when to use your potions or whatever like the answer is like right now is it like when you need if you are about to die use those items do not be sparing about it but it has like a pace that is unlike any other game like sometimes you're just gonna have to go out on resource runs and go collect some stuff and maybe when you go out to like collect some stuff that you might need to make a you know a stockpile of potions you might find like a rare gem while you're mining and then oh okay well i'm

gonna pop back to the base and see what i can craft with that so so it's not just like mindless farming like there are these constant constant constant hooks uh that will open up new sort of avenues for you and in all these different directions in a way that i think is like is is really exciting like my my, my whole jam. And if you've listened to this podcast before, you probably know this is like really solid RPG progression hooks. And I am hard pressed to think of a game that does this better than monster hunter. Um, because it's just, that's, that's entirely what it's about.

Um, what, one huge improvement is there's now a wishlist. So while you're at the armory and you're looking at like the different stuff you can craft down the line, if you see something really good that you want to craft, you can put it on your wish list. And then anytime you collect a thing that goes towards those things, it shows up as like an objective that you are working toward, which is a really, really smart way of just constantly displaying those hooks. And then like, it's not all farming and grinding though because the payoff for

that stuff is phenomenal like the last few boss fights in the game are these white knuckle for a half hour it sustains this like white knuckle terrifying if i fuck up once i'm i'm dead pace that if you did not put in the work to like prep for, you are going to lose. But then when you pull it off, it's like all that work then accumulates in this like hugely satisfying moment. Um, that is,

that is like, unlike, unlike anything, unlike anything in games. Um, and, and that's always been true about monster hunter. But on top of that,

there have been these layers and layers and layers of bullshit. Bullshit. That literally exists for no reason at all. They are just annoyances. And if you talk to even the franchises like most devoted fans, it's like, OK, so here's like the 10 annoying things you got to know. And it's going to suck every time. But you do that and then you do these awesome boss fights and you get these great payoffs. And now a lot of that stuff has been sort of skim skimmed off um i i would encourage everybody to watch um pat did a like a beginner's

guide video on on monster hunter which because again like some of the loops are a bit arcane uh he did he did a like a 10 minute long video that sort of walks you through sort of what you will be doing when you play the game because i feel like when you're just dropped in this huge world and it is a huge world with tons of stuff to do it does feel like if you don't know what's up you're gonna just be stumbling around for a while unsure of which direction to go and and a video like that is gonna really really give you at least like the first few stepping stones you need before things fall into place yeah for sure but it's a great game like i'm i'm someday i'm i'm in love with it and for grindy games like that i i feel like i would i mean as we routinely say on this

podcast these days if it was on switch and i could like play it while like half watching netflix i think it'd be much easier to like grok but the fact that i'm like sitting down staring at a tv and trying to um learn these systems makes it feel like a little more time investing than i want to right now but i i also know like given the fact that monster hunter as a franchise is not going away i just want to like get it like i want to understand it i also just wonder if maybe your relationship with it will be similar to what my relationship was with the Dark Souls, with Demon Souls,

then Dark Souls, then Bloodborne. But you bounce off of it enough times, but each time you learn a little bit more of the thing so that at a certain point you hop on and it clicks. And I kind of feel like a number of people I've seen hop on monster hunter this time are people who tried other versions of it and have done some of that legwork and now it's like oh

i've done the legwork and this time i can skip that part of the learning phase yeah i think that also multiplayer was kind of rough the first like weekend that the game was out but it's actually really uh very streamlined now and uh like the community is for the most part pretty good and like i i would be i i've hit a point where now like helping people out is kind of the main thing i can do aside from like going for a few last big pieces of gear so i would be happy to to to go on hunts with you because this this game really shines in multiplayer how are these games supported like i hear of people playing like 200 hours yeah yeah there's like what do you just keep unlocking like higher more difficult tiers of of uh mostly the same monsters that you've already that you've already taken down blue now yeah and

and getting stronger so that you can like make it a lot faster for you to take those monsters out is just a con just a non-stop pursuit but again that's not really uh anything new that is like you know destiny end game any any any like rbg with an end game thing totally speaking of big monsters let's talk about shadow the colossus a game that didn't come out this month but we reviewed on polygon.com this month and also chris is about to leave forever yeah i'm gonna be gone for for a month i don't know if i'll be here during february maybe i will we'll see but i want to talk about this just in case because it is a very very very good game uh and oh my gosh um so yeah it is a i don't know remake remaster thing uh by an austin studio

blue point games and i don't know they made this what yeah they're very talented um and it plays exactly like uh the playstation 2 shadow of the colossus there are some tweaks there to make it a little more uh enjoyable there's a refined control screen control scheme option that like changes where the bun oh my gosh where the jump button is i am like really falling all over myself today um and they say that to navigate uh this big open world you like hold your sword to the sky and if it's in sunlight it points to where you need to go they say that that has been refined i did not have that experience at all there were still a number of times where the way it kind of branches out to fights is there's a big central open space, and then you kind of go down these paths,

and you have to choose the right one. And I, on more than one occasion, went down the wrong path and lost probably 10 minutes just wandering, which isn't so bad because it's a very beautiful open world. Also, your character's named Wander, so that's appropriate. What? Really? And what's the name of the horse? I didn't know that.

Arrow. Argo. Argo. Argo. What is that, Russ? That's what they sound like, I guess. He's just like a jerk. Because he doesn't speak any known language. It's like a made-up language.

Every time he goes, Argo. Oh my gosh. I think you were listening to some bad speakers. I mean, when I last played it, to to give you an idea it was on a ps2 uh ps2 and i was playing it on a crt tv yeah i can't i can't think about how this also got a ps i'm looking at the ps3 remaster that came out are they just gonna keep keep on doing these well but this is a this is a total redo that's right this is not that's the weird thing about it is if you go back and you actually like watch the PS2 version or if you can try your best to remember playing it on a CRTB, it has this weird effect

where that game, because of all the technical limitations, the textures were very low res. You couldn't make out like facial features on your character. Everything kind of had this washy vibe uh they over lit everything so it'd blow out the light uh in the distance that way uh you didn't have to load things so it was very it was very like blown out bright game um and then you play this version of the game which i in the review i compared it to like 1980s fantasy films it kind of looks like um labyrinth or never ending story so very very realistic um but at the same time fantastical but it it's weird how much a game feels different when you shift the graphics that much and in that it's strange

to say that because they tried to recreate the ps2 thing it's not like they completely changed the art style but by virtue of the power like having the power to make a game look realistic it has a huge impact and the thing that i found this time around is it felt very fairy tale like when i played it on the ps2 and when you play it now it feels grimier and in a weird way sadder like it didn't feel like quite as much of like um like playing a metaphor it felt like oh this is a person um yeah and it hit me in a different way i i i don't know i i find that really exciting that you can play that we have the opportunity to play both the games and that they that they're somehow different

even though like what's happening underneath the the skin is like literally the exact same well so a couple first of all i want to say, you can play it at 60 frames per second. The original PS2 version like never came fucking close to that. Yeah. Yeah. And that I think makes a big, big difference in how it plays too. And also supports the realism like concept. Like when you, I mean, he moves around like, like Nathan Drake.

Like that's what it feels like when you're running and jumping. Like you feel like you're running and jumping. You feel like you're playing an Uncharted game. And that makes... Yeah, I mean, that reinforces the realism thing. But I would also say, yeah, the level of increased detail, not only on your character, but on the colossi characters' faces and arm, all that stuff, really, I think, better... I don't know if it better serves the thesis of the game which i don't really

want to talk about for people that haven't played it like should experience it on their own but it definitely you're right plant it's a sadder yeah that's that's i think we can talk about that in broad on non-specific terms because a lot of the and it's interesting really about how much this conversation's mirrored in monster hunter world stuff i've seen from from folks who've never really played this game on on uh on twitter is like i don't i don't it's kind of sad to kill these monsters and i think i think it's because the animations are so much more expressive and so there's a lot more personality in in the things that you're fighting in both games especially in like monster hunter world when an enemy's weak they start like limping and uh in shadow of the colossus like you

don't want to you don't want to kill the big dog like that's kind of sad um and while monster hunter world is in in this regard doesn't really consider that it's like yeah kill him and turn him into a shirt the shadow of the colossus is like kind of completely about that it is complete it is explicitly about the impact you're having on the environment and and i think that's i don't know i think that's really interesting that like this is not just it looks better there's a lot of stuff about the tone of the game that i feel like would improve because things feel more things feel more real real like the things that you are doing um the like ethical questions that it raises about the things that you're doing have like a lot more weight because it it really feels like you

are ending a life even if that life is gigantic and made out of you know stone and moss and stuff i think it is funny i'm sorry go ahead go ahead i was gonna say it is funny you know making that comparison because yes they're both about giant monsters um but structurally like couldn't be more different it couldn't be more different to the point where it's like it's weird when i hear griffin talking about like you know i want to grind to get more powerful to like see the next great monster like shadow of the colossus throws crazy awesome monsters at you back to back to back to back to back to the point where like you know and there's nothing else there's nothing else like there's no cruft to it at all like there's no you don't need like potions you don't need to hone your weapon it's

about like how do i conquer this monster giving that given this limited tool set and obviously a very different game but it's interesting because like i don't know time is short yeah and i think for people that want to experience the idea of having like big monster fights this is like a it feels like a much more honed at let's like this comparison is very clumsy no because that that intuit that that suggests that like the hunt side of monster hunter where you are going around and collecting stuff and like making better shit and like figuring out what kind of build you want to work towards and then is work and it's not like it's really fun because that is that is the game i think any comparison between these two aside from the fact that they are big

monsters that you maybe feel a little ethically torn about uh slaying is about as far as the comparison should go because otherwise it is it is fucking apples and oranges i i i do sue it fresh means though in the sense that the i think the average person if they're like i want a video game where i hunt big monsters ironically the what the art of monster hunter is i would 100 recommend this to pretty much everybody who is a casual person if they if that was the description they told me i think if somebody said i was really into uh collecting things and uh the intricacies of rpg systems and like questing i think monster hunter world would be the jam i think the only thing you're right they're totally different but because the name of the game is monster hunter i i can see how people might be

a little confused it's not honey honey seeker yeah um but anyway the one other thing i did want to say that's kind of connected to this is the what i also enjoy about playing this game now after having played a long time ago is i feel like these big risky art project games of that period are getting i feel like people are finally starting to borrow some of those ideas again. And by that, I'm talking about shadow of the process, but I'm also talking about no more heroes. Do y'all remember that?

The suit of 51 game? Yeah, of course. It's like a big open world and there's nothing to do in it. And it was this like weird period of time where everybody to make an open world game didn't mean that you had to pursue like perfect uh hyper-realistic graphics which in turn because it costs so much to make something hyper-realistic you have to fill it with a trillion things to do to like net a certain amount of value out of your

game like you could make an open world game and the design of the open world could be as purposeful um and uncluttered as like a a true you know traditional linear game and i i feel like we're seeing a little bit more of that i feel like we're seeing a little bit more of like open world game design like not feeling like they have to have a mini map that is covered in things to do or at least not have a screen that's covered in just junk um and it's so refreshing going and playing something like this that doesn't have those expectations and does feel like it has this holistic sense of purpose in its design and it's not afraid to have an empty world. And the point is that it has an empty world. I almost can't imagine what being built today.

You are making actively emptier. And that's what the game's about. I do feel weird, just to go back to the realism thing real quick. There's something about the main character, and I've only played the first couple of Colossi, but there's something about the main character and i've only played like the first couple colossi but there's something about the main characters like face i don't know it makes me feel very uncomfortable i think it's because of that fairy tale thing that you're talking about which is like when i think of him as a hero in the past he was like an iconic like i don't know a representation of like a man and now this is this kid yeah it's

it's very strange very disconcerting the faces across the board is upsetting now the big question on everybody's lips is are they also going to do a remaster of the 2007 adam sandler drama rain over me which inexplicably featured a lot of the original shadow of the colossus love that game in that movie um very sad it feels weird deciding what the best shadow of the colossus love that game in that movie um very sad it feels weird deciding what the best game of the month is because shadow of the colossus is one of the best games of all time but is the re does the remaster get that right so i like yeah i'm gonna dq it to be honest one because yeah i think that's a fair but two i in terms of like the conversation at the end of the year we can bring it up there um but i'd rather be something that we can talk about that's

brand new but i would second chris plant's note which is to say like if you own a ps4 and haven't played this game holy shit lucky play this game yeah it is really phenomenal and and if you especially if you like bounced off of uh what cat dog game what was that game called trico trico what is it yeah trico the glass guardian yeah last guardian thank you if you bounced off of that um i think this is by far my favorite of his of the trilogy um and i think it nails a lot more of what it was trying to do than Trico the game did in my opinion my votes for

for Monster Hunter I think it's a I think it's a masterpiece yeah it's a slam dunk I'm in love with it Subnautica is very cool though and well worth your time if you if you want to check it out I mean all these games are it was a fucking it was a killer month I know what I said at the beginning but it was I do want to say one thing about Subnautica that I meant to mention during it because it was and it's actually

Really it's kind of a funny problem But because it's been an early access so long a lot of guides and videos for this game are completely useless Like they're completely how I cannot tell you like three or four times I was like where the fuck is this thing I would follow a video For several minutes until I realize like wait a minute this ui looks pretty different from the one i'm used to it's like yeah this is called a different thing it's a completely different world and also all the water is jelly beans it used to be jelly beans and now it's water that that sounds like a better game sounds fun yeah it does sound good so bob to the open world

boy is bob well it'll be boy is bob three thank you um so we're doing monster hunter i yeah i would vote for subnautica personally because monster hunter still hasn't clicked for me yet but uh i'm fine with that same thing okay let's make a run yeah i like subnautica a lot um i think subnautica is really cool i i i think subnautica does something in a survival game that like I haven't really experienced in a very long time, which is a you were talking about satisfaction. I think it's extremely satisfying to explore. And B, I did not feel like I played for two or three hours and did not need a guide. And for survival games, not requiring a guide for the intro is like a really fucking well-designed game yeah um yeah my only problem is i haven't played it which it's the only it's

the only kind of do a thing where we say like hey what games are we doing so we can all kind of like play them and have something well here's the problem is also the bigger thing that it's three to one yeah yeah no i, I'm fine to find I think something tells me Monster Hunter world will show up Yeah, it would have to be a it would have to be a fucking good Year for me not to like try to get monster on the world. It also seems like it's not gonna be that Yeah, hey, this is a fun thing we can do in our January episodes 2018 is a fun thing we can do in our january episodes uh 2018 what's uh what's what's going on here

and i think maybe this is an expectations thing because 2017 was uh fucking was fucking great and it's gonna be i mean with the switch launch and like pretty much most of the games we talked about in the year-end thing had some switch version of some kind or were switch exclusives i i don't i'm worried that we're gonna hit that sort of nintendo year two slump a little bit um but i don't think i mean you're not gonna have a zelda but i'm gonna hit it i'm gonna hit a quick list provided to me by uh partner site ign uh partner site in the sense that i'm reading this and please don't sue me uh but they've collected this data handily just some games that might a way out it's coming 2018 anthem that's the zombie one no anthem was delayed

the spring 2019 but okay so thank you ign for the shit in the bed um um oh red dead redemption Red Dead Redemption 2, Sea of Thieves. Red Dead. Crackdown. Maybe. Darksiders 3, maybe. Metroid Prime coming out this year. Maybe. Oh, I would doubt that, but Detroit become human. I'm kidding. Please don't say anything. Far Cry 5.

Kingdom Hearts 3. I don't know about Far Cry 5. Shenmue 3 definitely coming out this year. God of War? I think it's too early uh i don't think in january of last year we knew well we knew all about the switch yeah uh game of the year future game of the year uh marvel's spider-man that's coming out oh yeah that looks good great it looks great looks great. Looks great, sure. Yeah, I don't know.

And all the Microsoft exquisers. It'll be alright. It could happen. Here's my prediction. Half of everything that you just listed will get bumped to $29. Thank you. Yes, I agree. Pretty much nothing I feel like we've seen at recent E3. It feels like it's coming out this year.

I'm hoping it will. Here's my other prediction, though. Are you ready for this? Four big, like, big, big games will be announced and come out within three months of the announcement. They're doing that now. I think that's what we'll see most of this year. I think, especially Bethesda.

I think Bethesda does that with, like, three games. Are they able to do that because we're getting worse at our job no they're doing it because we're getting better no it's true they they don't want the hype the hype now doesn't benefit them yeah it's also worth mentioning you know not to dog on on all old video game things but you know they can kind of count on a certain degree of like yeah this is going to be the best game ever you should definitely reserve it and um not so much yeah that's i we can also like uh two of the last few years like my games of the year were smaller games that i didn't know even existed in january uh like i'm thinking like stardew valley and

undertale uh and i'm sure there's gonna be stuff shit war groove comes out this year that one looks good as hell that's gonna scratch that uh oh that's the like fire emblem yeah that's the advanced wars one that looks really really sick oh shit the actual fire emblem switch game i'm very excited about that i can't wait to tuck into that shut up justin wait to tuck into that one. Shut up, Justin. Shut up. To tuck in. Yeah, it'll be a good year. It's called Fire Emblem World, and you're gonna love it. It'll be a good year. It's just like, not

at, in 2017, I feel like in January we were like, new Zelda, new Mario, new everything, and it's a little bit less obvious, I think, with the James. Oh yeah, PUBG was like a total dark horse too last year that no one saw coming. I think we'll have surprises. I think there's going to be an interesting year.

Cool. Well, that will have to do us for right now until next month. We hope you will join us for that. Meanwhile, you can visit Polygon.com to read a lot more great stuff. But until then, be sure to join us again next time for the besties. But until then, be sure to join us again next time for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!