The Besties - Just the Two of Us . . .

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

Who better to tackle a mandatory co-op game about divorce than the duo of Plante and Frushtick? The pair take on It Takes Two, the new release from the creators of A Way Out. And with Griffin out in preparation for a forthcoming child and Justin out because divorce makes him sad, it's a complete takeover! 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!

Fresh. I have to tell you. So, almost everyone I know is making babies right now. Like, that's just a fact. For sure. Because of the pandemic, people got bored, and they ended up making children. Yeah, not always intentional. Sometimes it's like a side effect, but it's nice. Yeah, and sometimes intentional too. It's a miracle either way. For sure. But I thought I would share some advice that I learned when I had my son. Because the first thing I wanted to do when I had Mo was not be a bad father.

That's a good rule. Yeah. Or be a bad husband. Because I think that's the piece that people miss often. You know, it's like they get so focused on, oh, I need to not be a neglectful dad. Sure. But then they end up being a bad spouse. Yeah, it should be noted you had been married

for quite some time before you had your child. That's true. We'd been married for like eight years. So true, true. Anyway, so I found this book that was like, you know, how not to be an awful husband and father at the same time. And the thing that it talked about was love languages.

Okay. And I have found this immensely useful. Do you know how these work? No. I'm going to probably butcher it, but I think it's helpful for us as people who are playing a game together to know how to communicate. And the way this works is you want to make sure that you are giving uh what the your partner wants to receive so say that like i i am providing for you you are very bad at video at it takes two sure and then

i'm kind of carrying your load okay right and i think that's like a nice thing that i can do for you right but what you want to receive i mean you did just insult my ability to play it takes two don't worry about that i'm i'm a very good husband but what you want to receive is just freedom to have fun right you're not here to like win yeah you're here to like enjoy time together sure so that's that's there's a conflict there in in our love language right okay so like what what would you think that like i want to receive from you as your friend partner while playing this game or just in general i think just in general um uh like bagel bites oh that actually you know what you you you picked it right off i thought you would not get it i i thought he's going to say something like praise for financial support.

But what I had in the top of my mind was bagel bites. Fuck yes. And you know what? Let me see if I can do what you want. Allergy medicine. Not yet. No, we're not there yet. Maybe in about three weeks I will want some Allegra. But until then, no, not yet no we're not there yet maybe in about three weeks i will want some allegra but until then

no not yet what is the gift that i can give to you um yeah anti-reflex medication would be great um uh and uh service just in general like providing service in my life would be helpful okay like goods and services goods and services yes you don't need goods you do need services desperately desperately need services okay cool cool cool well should we get to the video game part of the best game of the week you really really undersold it out of fear of starting in a tin you started out yeah that would be a lot again try one more time wait so are we building it up or building it down no we've already you started out of two we need to get to a tin we need to get people excited well i'm not gonna yell i already promised people i won't yell but yeah my name is ross frederick i have the best game of the week

and my name is christopher thomas plant and i know the best game of the week hello everyone and welcome to the besties a video game club it's a video game club if it seems like i've never introduced this show i think that's true i've never introduced this show um you might notice we are missing a couple of very valuable uh attendees to the normal podcast in just McElroy and Griffin McElroy. Griffin is busy. He's going to be busy for a little bit. Everything's fine. And Justin didn't play this game and decided he's just going to take a pass this week.

That's fine. It's a two player co-op game, so I totally get it. But I am joined by my lovely marriage partner here, Chris Plant. And what are we going to be talking about, Chris Plant? Today, we're going to be talking about It Takes Two. It is the new game from Hazelight Studios, which they made a way out. I don't know if people remember this game. It's the prison break mandatory cooperative multiplayer game.

it's the prison break uh mandatory cooperative multiplayer game and before that they made a game called brothers which i believe we actually talked about on the best i think you're probably right 10 9 10 years ages ago yeah yeah uh and and this game is about a couple who probably should get a divorce uh who are turned into toy dolls uh by their daughter who does not want them to i guess hate each other and then they are given advice and put in scenarios by a magical talking book yeah that sum it up well done well done i'm looking forward to talking about it okay so it takes two you mentioned that uh this studio makes co-op centric games i guess it's the only sec only the second one because brothers their first game was played solo only you couldn't play it in co-op so this

is the second game that they've made that is co-op exclusive um you didn't play it a way out correct their previous game no i i watched quite a bit of it i know that you can play connect four you're supposed to be escaping the law johnny law sure you can stop and play board games i mean it's important for mental health to take a minute yeah i didn't play it either uh but i do know that everyone that i've spoken to that did play it is really in love with it like people really fell in love with uh i don't know the gameplay and the like campy like fast and the furious style story and um yeah people were really really attached a lot of people that like do not play games very often i think were brought in by people who do play games like uh a partner at home or something like that and i think that made for

like a really good experience for a lot of people so i'm not surprised that they're coming back and doing yet another uh co-op centric game. They're really making this their own, this studio. Yeah. And this seems to be bigger, like cost more for starters. The production value at time is quite high. For people who have not seen like a trailer or are having trouble picturing it, whether you play it on the couch or you play it online, it is still split screen. So in our playthrough,

I played as May and Fresh played as Cody. I was on the left, Fresh was on the right. And you need to have it split screen so you can see what the other side is doing to help you solve puzzles. And each chunk of the uh basically is a different type of gameplay so there's a chunk that is kind of like gauntlet or diablo ish where each person has different powers one of the parts early on that we really liked i think was fresh you had a honey that could weigh down um physics objects but could also detonate if I fired my matchstick rocket launcher. Yeah, it was like explosive goo that I would use to set you up to do something like cool and explosive.

And you mentioned the split screen thing, which I was really surprised by the fact that you are in split screen, even if you're online. But in playing it, it makes a ton of sense because because they wanted this co-op experience me being able to see like oh chris is stumbling around on the other side of the wall trying to figure out a puzzle that wasn't meant to be a neg but i guess it was no it's true but even when that happened i would be able to look at his screen and be like oh maybe you should try this or maybe you should go flip this switch so it actually does make for a more co-op experience. Whereas I think in a lot of co-op games like this,

where everyone has their own screen, there's a lot of moments that are like, well, I'm just waiting for the other person to figure out what the hell they need to do. Or maybe they're like clumsily trying to explain what they're looking at. And that isn't super fun. So this was kind of really helpful, actually.

Yeah, yeah. It sacrifices, I think, the visuals at times to do this. isn't super fun so this was kind of really helpful actually yeah yeah it sacrifices i think the visuals at times to do this but it's i think a smart trade-off i wish developers did this more often yeah i would i would i want to since you mentioned the visuals it's worth mentioning like from a like an art design standpoint i think this game is like incredible looking like you really there are a number of areas that are like really pretty detailed. You're basically shrunk down into like little doll form. So it's a very honey, I shrunk the kids style thing where you're in a tree, or you're in like a barn or a garden, stuff like that. But like, artistically, I think the game

actually really succeeds in creating these areas and making them look cool. Yeah, I think the game actually really succeeds in creating these areas and making them look cool. Yeah, I think the best part of the game is the visuals. And then the gameplay is a little more hit and miss. And we'll talk about the story last. Because that's a whole thing unto itself. But the gameplay, I'm curious how you think about this. It felt like a tour of like Nintendo 64 era game design or maybe Sega Dreamcast. None of the mechanics are particularly surprising or innovative.

It's stuff you've seen in other games and it's kind of the first level of all those games. But, you know, having a WarioWare like tour of, oh, now we're doing puzzle platform platforming now we're in an action adventure now we're in kind of like an uncharted like set piece um it's fun when it's moving quickly the the problem at least for me was when it slowed down and it was like okay we're now at the 50-minute mark of doing the same puzzle over and over and over. Yeah, so I think the biggest struggle that this game has, and they created this challenge for themselves,

so I definitely know that they were sort of trying to tackle it, is because the game, with every chapter as it progresses, is introducing a completely different mechanic. So we mentioned the like goo explosive thing in another one uh my power is that i can shrink or get really big and plants power he can like flip gravity so like each chapter has its own thing and so you're really making like six different games in one game and all of those games need to be fun and they just a lot of them aren't i would say like maybe half of them are like pretty fun and then maybe half of them are just like

kind of a drag um i do agree that like when the game gets uh fast it's like easier to get through the like drag your parts when there's like a cut scene where you're running away from a giant creature or something like that that's exciting that's fine the epitome of this is there's a there's like a sequence where you're in like a toy castle and one of the puzzles you need to solve is that goddamn metal ball rolling wooden puzzle you know where there's the two wheels and you have to like shift the metal ball around you find it at like cracker barrel yeah no one i'm telling you this there is no one on the planet that finds that fun no maybe in like 1910 when it was either that or the cup and ball it was a fun toy to play with now there is no one on the planet that finds that fun and if you're putting that in your game as a mandatory thing that you need to do you just need to not like you need to cut that part out.

And I think that's the big thing about this game is this game is not short. It's like a 10 hour game for all co-op experience. That's pretty long. They really there was so much that really just needed to be trimmed to make every single moment be that like a really great, fun, exciting moment. And it just isn't that yeah there's there is a fantastic five-hour video game in here again ignoring the story if you i i think it really is the beginning um which if if you uh do decide to play this which you might be worth it especially if it comes to game pass um if if. If you are not connecting with the beginning,

I don't think you're going to connect with much of the game at all. But if you enjoy the beginning, I think you'll also enjoy the final two chapters. But it really is when you get in the middle and it starts to feel like, okay, this just had to get padded out. And I hate to speculate, even though I'm going to do it a little bit,

but I do wonder how much the pandemic affected this game, because there are parts of the game that feel significantly lower quality than other parts. Visually speaking, play speaking, the user interface looks like it's temp like it's just like uh it shouldn't even be there um and it's jarring when that happens yeah before we get too negative i i do want to like there's a lot of weirdness in this game well for better and worse and and i i think that's what will get people to give it a shot so can you tell me like one or two of your favorite truly bizarre moments well yeah i mean i mean i

know we shared this moment so pretty early on there's a moment where you're in a tree and you're sort of ordered by a bunch of squirrels to attack a wasp hive for a variety of reasons um suffice to say a lot a lot of things happen in that tree and at one point you start hang gliding on a pair of men's under like boxer shorts while the other player is manning a minigun to fire at squirrels as they're flying at you and explode them to death and then killing yeah you're killing squirrels and then uh there's like a street fighter style fight sequence on the wings of the uh hang gliding uh underpants the game i wish there were more moments like that because it was truly bizarre and that is like i think the like the heights of bizarreness i think there are lows of bizarreness that do not work nearly as well and

are honestly a little bit disturbing yeah well let's talk about that the big question this game uh is like who is it for and like especially what age is this this game for it looks like a family game yeah but it is a game again about a couple considering divorce um and they are i i found them despicable like i i one i don't think that they should stay together two i don't think that they should be with anybody yeah um i think they should take some time for themselves and then then consider relationships um but their plan to to uh become human again is to make their daughter cry on them um they think that like their daughter cried tears on on these toy dolls and that got them trapped in the toy bodies and now if their daughter can cry on them on them again they that will somehow revert this.

Why they think this will work, they have no reason to believe. Yeah, no, it's literally the first thing they come up with as, oh, this is how we're going to reverse the spell and they just spend like five hours trying to accomplish that mission. This is the first half of the game. Yeah.

And then the thing that they decide on to accomplish this goal is to murder their child's favorite toy, who is a very cute, small, plush elephant queen. Yes. And the way you do this is you do kill her while she begs for her life. Yep.

But it couldn't just be simple as like, oh, you push her off the, I don't know, the clothes drawer and she breaks like do you want to explain what precisely happened yeah so it's and it's important to note that they are saying repeatedly oh we need to kill her we need to assassinate her they don't say like oh we need to like break a toy they keep using like kill and assassinate like this is a living person um but like them they are like living dolls this is also a living stuffed elephant um and the way they go about this is they essentially

rip one of her legs off and again it's a stuffed elephant so granted the visual is just like an elephant stuffed elephant getting its leg torn off whatever but while that's going on you hear a very well voice acted person acting out hey no please stop don't don't why are you doing this i love rose your daughter do not do this to me and slowly but surely you drag this elephant while she continues to scream for her life to a cliff. At one point, her ear gets caught on a thing. So this is, it's played as a joke. And to be clear, I think this would be funny in a different game.

I think you're probably right. Because up until this point, the game has not been South Park. No. But at this point, while you're dragging her her it just so happens to be that there are lots of sharp pointy objects on the top of this piece of furniture and she keeps grabbing onto them which sends them flying into the air and then pinning parts of her body so that when you try to drag her it will rip off that part of her body so she like sends like a clothing needle up into the air which pins her ear down so you have to keep

pulling on her which rips her ear off yeah and you're like she screams in agony and you're tapping y to like a comp it's like an actual like mini game where you're tapping y to like accomplish these like graphic tasks against this elephant i was shocked i was like literally stunned uh in watching it and i found like yeah there's really not a lot of moments where i've played a game that i had that quite that reaction to it um because it was so disparate from the rest of the game which tonally is like a pg like family comedy and then we could talk about whether it's actually a comedy or not is another story entirely but it's like totally out of the out of the blue uh yeah well i think i think the the transition between this and the story is the book of love yes um the book of love

is this book that may or may not be responsible for you being trapped in these bodies. Your daughter found it somewhere. It is clearly like some trashy 1970s relationship self-help book. But it, too, has been anthropomorphized. And it has an accent that is, I guess, offensive would be the long and short of it. I mean, it's like vaguely European. And as someone that has had a number of guests on the show that occasionally dip into various accents, I'm going to be a little bit sensitive here. I don't, but it's at the very least not great.

At the very least, not great. Yeah. It rotates between French and Italian and Spanish. Yeah, nondescript European would be the best I could describe it as. Yeah, yeah. It's not great. On top of that, it's not funny. That's the cardinal sin of this character is he is intentionally annoying. The characters in the game despise him,

but it's not like a funny annoying. It's like that movie Clifford. He is a very bad Martin Short character. Oh, yes, Clifford. I thought you meant the dog. No, but he's awful. And every time the game does seem to be finding its soul and it has like a run of fun going,

out of nowhere, he appears to make it just completely dragged to earth, like be forced to a halt. He's awful. And he epitomizes really what the story is because he effectively is the story i mean yeah there are a few cut scenes without him he is uh trying to make this argument of like why they should get together why they should fix their relationship through like going through like very

tropey cliche like you should work together and you should find your passion and like those sorts of like cliche self-help book stuff um but it's delivered in such a way that like every time he shows up you know oh we we've got six more tasks to complete for this stupid book that we all hate he literally halfway through the game after you have murdered your child's favorite toy, the game feels like it is ending, and the book appears and is like, actually, I physically will not allow you to finish the game until you collect these four pieces of paper.

So then you know, like, okay. And then that's when the game really shifts into, okay, to get this one piece of paper, you have to go to this world. And there are five zones in it. And each zone has three puzzles. And it just becomes a checklist. Yeah.

Which is a huge drag. And I think even without the book, like, I think this game desperately needs you to care about the characters within it. Cody and May, who are dealing with this, like, like relationship drama and the writing just can't sustain that uh the you know they constantly constantly are relying on puns and like goofy like like references like double rainbow which are as old as time and the pringles jingle yeah uh once you pop the fun don't stop like references that like no one is has any affinity for anymore and i just like again it sort of just reiterates that like we don't know who this game is for because for kids you know i don't know might find that like punny stuff funny but the gameplay is so like dark at times

and then adults certainly won't find it funny and we'll probably find the gameplay like really slow at points so like it does really struggle to like find its footing to the point where like I think they needed to bring in like a more experienced screenwriter or something to like fix the actual dialogue and i think they needed a producer to come in and say like hey let's cut these chunks of the game and make like a really great five to six hour game instead of what feels like a very padded 10 hour game yeah i there there are just a number of choices where it feels like less would have been more i mean down to the fact that these this couple having a child seems like such a mistake.

The game has such little interest in this kid. So while you are having this adventure, Cody and May's bodies, like their human bodies, are still in the house. Cody is at his office staring out a window um totally vacant may is on the couch in the living room and their child is just walking around the house trying to talk to them and they're just not responding and for may she's like oh this this usually happens when you have a migraine and for cody she just kind of like it's like okay bye cody is sitting at his desk literally nothing on the desk staring at the wall in front of him and she's like talking at his back and he is just like a zombie sitting at a desk because he's a lifeless body it is really fucking bizarre and at no point during

the adventure does the couple when they're dolls like, man, I'm really worried about our daughter. I hope she's okay. None. The daughter seems to think this is relatively normal. She's like, she's accustomed to dealing with her parents in this state. So, unintentionally, I'm sure, you get this sense of like, wow, this couple is extremely neglectful. Then on top of that, all of the relationship stuff that the book gives has nothing to do with like being parents or being a married couple. It is so much of it is devoted to, hey, remember life before you had that kid.

It never has the stomach to go into the problems that actually lead to divorce, which is like finances or people having different plans about their futures or one parent being neglectful. It walks around it, at best, but never looks directly into the sun, which ends up being a problem, which we're not going to say what happens in the ending here. But here is the skip ahead two minutes if you don't want to even get a sense of what's going to happen. Yeah. I want you to picture just the least thoughtful way this story could possibly end, the most tropey like abc family style before

abc family got cool tropey way that this story could end and that is how this story ends it is just like the most half-assed like well kind of ending in and and like i'm not surprised because that is consistent with the rest of the game to to be honest. But I am kind of surprised that anyone spent so much time and energy and money making this game that just ends on such a. I genuinely feel it. We talk about who is this for? I genuinely feel it would be irresponsible to play this with a kid because I think it is so reductive and so simplifies a really complicated and challenging thing that a number of families go through

in a way that would be misrepresentative of those challenges. Like I said, I don't want to say all of it, but I really would not play this with my child whenever they could play it. Which is, again, at that point it is, who is this for? I do not know. So that's that. It's a bit of a disappointment, I'll be honest.

I wanted this to be better especially um because of all the weird stuff i do think if it's on game pass you're we're still in the pandemic you need something to play with a friend download it you can play it in hour-long chunks the chapters break down to about an hour an hour for what it's worth we don't actually know if it's going to be on game master yeah but it'll be a thing eventually if you are interested a way out is on game pass and people seem to really like that so maybe that's another option yeah and i and i think this game if you skip the cut scenes honestly um might be enjoyable you know in an hour an hour and a half chunks uh but i would go into it knowing what it is yes uh so yeah that's it it takes two we did it we played we did it we did it

yay plant nominated me for playing this game so i thank him uh okay cool we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back cool so uh we are going to try something a little bit different for the second half obviously we've frequently had reader mail but we're going to actually do an entire reader mail section uh for the second half but these questions are not directed at it takes two or anything in particular this is like an ama style series of questions that y'all sent to the twitter account which is the besties pod on twitter um if you haven't followed please do uh it's a good place to get your questions in and learn what's going on with the show and stuff like that so with that said uh plant you want to start off uh sure i'll ask this because i have a feeling you'll

have more feelings okay uh this is from uh posimandias thoughts on the newly announced pokemon games uh the sino remake are how do you pronounce it arceus legends arceus i believe yeah sure uh in the new pokemon snap game are you looking forward to any of them any apprehension etc yeah so i will say this about remakes and i know a lot of people don't necessarily feel this way, especially with Pokemon remakes. I have no real drive to play them. I've played a lot of those games before,

and they tend to play very similarly to how they did previously. I know they have new graphics and stuff, but it's not like a Zelda game where I'd want to replay it. I don't know. It just doesn't really drive me. I'm sure Griffin feels differently, and we'll play it 10,000 hours of it. I'll mention Arceus Legends.

It's called Pokemon... I think it's called Pokemon Legends Arceus or something like that. It is based on feudal Japan. It's set in feudal Japan. Looks really interesting. It's like the gameplay seems different enough that it's more open world.

You actually throw pokeballs at things which is like a first in in most pokemon games are much more uh directed uh and the pokemon catching happens in like a turn-based scenario so that looks kind of neat i'm worried from a engine standpoint because that trailer looked pretty rough there was a lot of like 10 frames per second stuff in that trailer but i do like them trying new things with the pokemon franchise i think it desperately desperately needs something on the level of like breath of the wild just in terms of like rethinking what a pokemon game could be and maybe this will be that game or maybe it'll be the start of them moving towards that game uh Last one, Pokemon Snap. I'm excited to some extent.

I played this great game, Alba, on Apple Arcade. I think it might be on other platforms now as well, but it's definitely on Apple Arcade. And that was like, you are a little kid and you run around and you take photos of animals on this island. And it totally triggered my desire to play that sort of game the difference with the snap games is that they're on rails and you kind of like follow very set paths

and that is less engaging to me i played the original on n64 i had a good time but it wasn't like my favorite pokemon game by any means so i'm like kind of excited but not like over the moon okay next question uh this one's from chuck duck 365 if you had to pick one game absolutely everyone should play what would it be you can go i'm not going to say the game that you think i'm going to say you expect me to say like near automata or splunky or 13 or earthbound or uh no i actually wouldn't i wouldn't recommend that anymore um as much as i love it maybe mother three but probably not i think the game that i would recommend everybody play which is not going to make them all smarter or better people is red

faction gorilla uh i think that game rules umaction Guerrilla is an open world game from the 360 era. It is set on Mars and you can destroy all of the environments with a hammer. You're effectively playing as a guerrilla terrorist, the video game. It's a wild, wild game and I love it. And you should probably play it on easy as as freshek recommends how about you what would you recommend uh yeah i'm gonna go in a very different direction and recommend portal 2 uh i'm gonna take a very broad definition of what everyone means in this scenario to include people that like do not play a lot of games and I think portal two for me does is sort of the like epitome of bringing

together everything that games do really well on a lot, a lot of fronts while also being very approachable. It's obviously a puzzle game. It's incredibly well written. It's very funny. It's very cinematic, visually interesting, constantly moving,

but also doesn't require like reflexes really. I think it's a great game to learn if you're like, I don't know how to play like with an analog stick while aiming. That kind of thing, like no one's shooting at you. So you can really learn. That's like a good starting game. Obviously the humor might not land for everyone

and I'm sensitive to that. I personally think it still holds up, but like I know certain aspects, it I'm sensitive to that. I personally think it still holds up, but I know certain aspects. It's really tough to make a humor game last for, you know, still be okay after many years. But I do think that game is really spectacular, and I think just about anyone who is interested in video games should play it. I have some rapid-fire questions. Okay. So we have to answer these like concisely

oh boy uh buzz buds said what is your favorite gimmick controller game bongos fishing rod skateboard etc yeah uh i would definitely go bongos good mention there are probably other ones but but bongos jumps to mind i i got very into donkey cona when I was in college. So yeah, bongos for sure. Wii Sports. I know that's technically not a gimmick controller, but in the grand scheme of video game history, I think it will be. Okay, maybe.

If I have to choose one beyond that, not that it's a good game, but the sheer audacity of it, Tony Hawk Ride is just the funniest thing. They thought it was a good idea for people to put wheel-less skate decks in their living rooms yeah very just bold um another quick one from joe bets what other art do you enjoy on the same or similar level as vidya games oh yeah i really enjoy like very thoughtfully produced television stuff.

So like the what's his name? Noah FX, who does Fargo and Legion? Yeah, Noah Hawley. Noah Hawley. His stuff, I think, is really great. I like self-contained stuff, stuff that like is, you know, starts again after every season. I think generally tells more interesting stories within that structure. that's probably the like thing that jumps to mind for me yeah i like audiobooks um for walking mostly fiction every once in a while a little non-fiction

and uh during the pandemic i become obsessed with the criterion channel app. And that sounds like, oh, very hoity-toity. I love my art films. And yeah, there's some of that. Like I watched Kurosawa's High and Low, which it rules. And I recommend everybody watch that movie. It is so good. But it also has stuff like Death Race 3000 on it.

You know, I've watched a ton of 1970s horror um during the fall um including like some really weird early stuff like let's scare jessica to death i love that stuff and i recommend it um one other quick one from jish while justin is gone what are your real feelings on fmv games okay i think if there was an example of an fmv game where the acting was like particularly Justin is gone. What are your real feelings on FMV games? Okay. I think if there was an example of an FMV game where the acting was like particularly good, I'd be like, okay,

dope. Totally. Generally speaking, it's really super not. And I think they're dumb. I, I, I,

I love sewer shark as a nostalgia token. But that's about it i i don't have i don't really have a lot of love for um i don't know what i'd call it like adventure point and click games in general and i think a lot of fmv relies on that um yeah i'm trying to think if like there's ever been a moment where i thought fmv like elevated the experience but i do not i can't think of anything mostly in like an ironic or cheeky way yeah you know sure like that's all i can think of uh dog of thunder said i've never played near why should i play it now that it's on game pass for pc so fresh you're actually playing it right i am actually after three years or however long it is, I am actually playing Nier.

I'm playing it on Xbox Game Pass, but it is also just recently added to Game Pass on PC. Here's what I want to say. Man, so the beginning of the game, I'm like probably five hours in, is not fast. It's fun. I like the core gameplay of it, but like it is pretty damn slow um and the old and

i probably would have stopped playing had i not known the like extreme praise and everyone's over the moon in love with it and i would say the music is absolutely spectacular like that is instantly apparent very early in the game but the game itself you know i don't as we probably all know i don't get down on jrpgs very often and tonally like that's what this narrative feels like like it's a lot of stiff like robot people talking to each other and it like doesn't do anything for me but i hear that it gets much more interesting later on if you've got anything else to play and you subscribe to game pass given all the praise and everyone absolutely loves it seems like a good time to play it but keep that in mind slow yeah it it is definitely one of those you need to give it 10 hours and i

know that is a ridiculous demand so i don't expect people to play it pretty regular i would say on twitter i get a lot of people saying thank you so much this game rules i'm so glad i played it and i get a lot of hey hey, I'm 20 hours in. Do I need to keep playing? And my answer to you, if you get to that point, is no. Sometimes a game just isn't for you, and that's totally chill. You shouldn't feel bad about that. Are there any other questions here that stick out to you? Yeah, you want to talk about how you got into game journalism?

No. I mean, sure. to you yeah you want to talk about how you got into game journalism no um i mean sure i i i fresh and i started at the same company um it is no longer in existence of both of us freelanced for a while and then we co-founded polygon that's the long short of it i i don't think there's a lot to glean from how we got into it for other people to get into it. I think most people who get into game journalism get into it in a variety of different ways. And I think every year has changed. Like the best quote best method for doing it has changed dramatically. I cold called for an internship. Zero percent chance that would work today.

So like that gives you an idea of like how much everything has changed. Yeah. For, for people who ask, cause we, we do get this question a lot. I think Mr. Crafty,

Mr. Crafty was the one who asked this one. Not Robert LePage was the one. Okay. Sure. Um, right now, what I would tell people is like one, write for yourself. And two, if you

are comfortable writing for very minimal rates, but want to participate in like a group of people who are pursuing a common goal, I think a place like Uppercut Crit is a place that I really admire the work they're doing. And I think partnering with other people who are at a similar point in their career, maybe a little bit ahead of you, is a good way to climb up. The first place I wrote for was a place called Game Set Watch, which also doesn't exist anymore. But that was where a lot of people who were around my age were writing at the time, like Lee Alexander and I, Chris Kraft. And now we're all at kind of

different points in our career so i think finding peers who are about where you're at in in your path uh is really advantageous yeah totally uh i like this question from rosie button cups what the actual shit is a exercise game periodically on the show someone will say something is a good game to play while exercising and i cannot wrap my head around what kind of exercise you boys do that allows you to play video game i feel the totally same way so this goes to chris plant okay so i have uh a i don't know like a standing desk bike or or indoor cycle i don't know what you would call it right so i can just pedal and i've gotten to the point where I can turn that to the maximum setting while still holding a controller and playing a game on my PC. So I switch out my chair for the indoor cycle. I pedal away. And then I do

have to play a certain type of game. It can't be like really precision based. The Assassin's Creed series, great for this. Because everything, that entire game is broken up into like three minute bits, right? You're like moving into a camp or you're traveling or you're pursuing a little item that you want to find. There's not a lot of load times. I think that's really important. If this is something you're serious about, I would recommend getting a good hard drive

because cutting out load times is a top priority. Weirdly though, my very favorite game seems to defy this logic of playing on the bike was Death Stranding. I played the entirety of Death Stranding on the bike was death stranding i played the entirety of death stranding on the bike and it was fantastic and i i have to wonder if there was something to the physicality of the bike matching the physicality of the game yeah um i don't know it it never felt tedious or like a grind uh when i was on the bike so that that is the sort of thing i play i do i've done one or two mouse and keyboard games i don't recommend it it's gross like sweatiness alone

is not great um but yeah uh i i think action games and uh shooters i played most of doom eternal on a bike um stuff like that eventually i think i've just kind of gotten good at it um like any acquired skill one last one i think for the question section uh this question comes from milzor 2890 please finally put this to bed which game won besties game of the year 2015 the wiki is still inconclusive here's what i'm going to say about this the episodes are canon so what happens in the episodes is your answer look within the episode and there is your answer i cannot expound beyond the core canon that is the episodes themselves wow i feel like i know even less after that answer uh cool uh thank you so much for all those great questions uh we got a bunch more so we really

appreciate it uh we might bring this uh segment this broader ama segment back uh sooner rather than later because it was really fun and interesting um But Plant, do you have any honorable mention stuff you want to talk about? No, I don't think so. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. I'm playing Nier, as I already mentioned, and we'll hopefully get to the good part soon.

Next week, very exciting, we are going to be playing Monster Hunter Rise. Y'all, this is a legit game this is a game this is not like oh maybe this is a game that just came out of nowhere no one had ever heard it before this is a game that was one of my top three most anticipated games of 2021 i'm very excited to play it i've only played the demo which i enjoyed but this is a game that we're all very excited for um and so yeah tune back uh justin will be back uh it's my first monster hunter so if you if you if you have not played a monster hunter i will be your vessel you've never played about any monster you didn't play

world zero wow i spent zero minutes in in the monster hunter world that'll be interesting that'll be interesting i'm a little worried i'm me too um okay cool well i think that's gonna do it for us here at the besties uh for chris plant i am russ frushtick thank you so much for listening we'll be back next week with more video games does justin say anything else at the end of the episode yes shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. There you go. Besties. Well, at the end of the music, but yeah.

Besties!