The Besties - Kirby's Return to Dream Land Saved Chris Plante's Life

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Sometimes, in our hour of greatest need, a hero comes down like a shining beam of light from the heavens to save us. Sometimes, that hero is pink and round, and eats like a million owls and rabbits and stuff, like Kirby does in Kirby's Return to Dream Land.Also discussed: Pokemon Sleep, Destiny 2: Lightfall, Bloody Hell, Paranormasight 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!

Did you guys watch Physical 100? Oh. No. Do you think I could compete? I don't know anything about the show, but do you think just knowing me, I could compete in that show? I'm just thinking the title. You could compete.

You could compete. Russ could compete for sure. Is there a mental aspect to it, or is it just physical? I mean, in the sense that all endurance sports have a mental aspect. Muscles can only get so strong, gang. Uh-huh. And then after that, it's your strongest muscle, your brain. Yeah, and your skin.

And your skin is the biggest, strongest muscle, too. Yeah. It's basically nine episodes of 100 strong people complimenting each other. Aw. Which I enjoy, and I would love if we could try to maybe bring a little bit more of that energy to our show. Yeah. Like a positive gym environment is what you're describing. Sort of a positive, yeah.

Can you kind of like lead by example here for us? Sure, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Great reps today, Plant. Oh, thank you. I've been noticing that your body V is really in shape oh gosh my what your body your body v what's that oh no i don't know what a body v is oh plant go ahead tell him i mean it's that it's the it's the v shape at your oh of shoulders down shoulders it's not shoulders i wish it was is it it's a pelvic region situation that sort of guides the eye i thought it was like your

you have broad shoulders it can be both yeah who knows which one i'm talking about sure i just i just think i think i've been admiring your body, V. Okay. Should we do one for Rush? Yeah, Rush, over here. Rush, you've already broken the rules. Yeah. Did I? Yeah, you're over here shaming me.

I wasn't shaming you. I think you owe me. You owe me. You owe me two body compliments now. Here's the issue, is I had to picture Griffin's body, V, and there was just no way around it. You do two compliments for Chris now. Okay. Chris, fantastic presses.

Maybe the best presses I've ever seen. I've never seen anyone do more presses. And let me just say, hair looking toit today. Your hair is just top notch. Now, that's interesting, because they don't usually do, people don't usually think of their hair as being part of their physique.

But that kicks ass, actually. It's physically attached to you. And don't you think the hair grows based on how your physique is doing? Yeah, for sure. I find that when I pump iron at the gym, it sort of extrudes hair out of the top of my head. Yeah, a little guy named Samson. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. B-I-B-L-E, man. That's the good book. Today on Besties, it's the Bible. Happy Purim. uh hello everybody and welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest home interactive entertainment we introduce ourselves we've been doing this for my name is griffin mccarray and i know the best game of the week my name is christopher thomas plan and i know the best game of the week my name is russ fresher and i have the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas-Plan, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frushing, and I know the best game of the week.

Hey, welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game-ament. It's a game of the year club that goes all year round, and just by listening to you, my friend, I remember we got a fun one today. We do. Destiny's back on the menu, and so i've been you know i've been dipping back in on my boy rick kakis uh who is a guides creator for destiny content and he starts out he's really rick kakis here and today we are talking so very intense it's very intense we're

not talking about destiny though no not i mean i. Maybe a little. Today is going to be Kirby, though. Kirby Town. Kirby's return to Dreamland. They've been missing him a lot there. He left quite a footprint his first time around, and now he's back for vengeance. What is it? I'm glad you asked what it is so we can transition to the full segment. We're going to talk about what it is

after Plant tells us what it is. Go. It's a remake of the 2011 Wii Gem of the same name and and it's co-op we'll talk about it right after this break bye what griffin it sounded like you weren't super satisfied with plants description of kirby's return to dreamland i mean what could be why i'm trying to make this a more positive space. So like, well, but I couldn't deny your like, like you felt like we were missing some descriptive aspect to it.

So please. No, I mean, you don't really need much descriptive, like Kirby eats the man's and gets their power. And that's still there. This is a departure from, well, rather, I guess a return to form and to Dreamland. Because this is a this is a departure from uh well rather i guess a return to form and to dreamland uh because this is a more traditional 2d side scrolling kirby experience uh it's i didn't play the wii one i didn't play the original i don't think i even remember that

the wii one happened i think yeah when when when this was announced on nintendo direct i think last year i was like i do not hand God, I don't remember this game. I remember there was like a Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, I think was a multiplayer Game Boy Advance or DS Kirby game. But this one escaped my clutches first time around. And I think part of the reason is, unless it's like a Kirby spinoff, like a a tilt and tumble or like that one where he like rode the line to freedom whatever canvas canvas curse most of the like baseline kirby games kind of blend together except for the 3d one that we talked about last year which kicked so much which kicked a huge amount of ass so i think it's fair to say it's easy to confuse even though like gba era or the game boy era also had yeah

so there have been a lot of 2d kirby games i think the big thing that sets this one apart if you all need us to tell you sort of what's in a 2d kirby game it's really just jump floating and eating guys and taking their path it's not very difficult yes um and the layer of difficulty comes from the fact that you can play with four players at a time and even with two i played this with henry quite a bit because like return or what was the uh the forgotten land yeah realm kirby and the forgotten realm land Realm. Sure. Realm Land. Love that one. Love that joint.

We hopped into this one and it gives you so many opportunities to screw with the other players. Not since Super Mario 3D World, I think. Have I seen

a multiplayer co-op platformer where you can just sort of mess with your teammates as much as this game lets you do. Can you talk about how it works? How like who you're playing as? Right, so it's for a Nintendo game,

shockingly streamlined multiplayer experience. At any time, a second player can just pick up a controller, hit A and hop in and then like hold Y, I think, to hop out, and there's no, like, oh, gotta restart the level, gotta take it back to checkpoint, which is great, because if I'm playing Kirby with Henry, and Gus, you know, wants to eat a grape, and I have to cut that in half, he will die.

Yeah, no full grapes. I just hold Y, and then I go do my thing, and then I come back and hit him back in it. There's four characters this time around. You got your Kirby. You got your Bandana Waddle Dee, which controls how you'd expect it after last year's game. Then you got my boy King Dedede, who waddles around with a big hammer, and that's a lot of fun. And then Metaanite and you can switch between them at will and uh it's it's wild man but only kirby can steal powers to be clear

only kirby can steal powers kirby is kind of op compared to the other three because he can also suck up other players yeah he can just eat eat him and then you're helpless inside of his gob as your six-year-old son maniacally runs into the nearest open pit um i will admit i have not made much progress in the campaign of this game because it turns into a competitive sport with shocking speed in this household um but maybe your guys experiences plant what different. I know you also had some experience with a small child and this game. This game saved my life. Oh, wow. I'm not joking.

Okay, so here's what happened. Nintendo, did you hear that? Because if you do a re-release, that might need to go on the box. Put it on the box, baby. So this past weekend, Griffin's wife, Rachel, who maybe listened to their podcast, which is great. You should. And then my wife, Steffi, who does not do podcasts. Try again.

Try that again for me. My wife, Steffi. Oh, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, God. My wife, Steffi. Is that better? I know you're playing sick.

I know you're playing sick, pal. And I want to say that the effort is inspiring. It is. Thank you. I appreciate it. So my wife, they were on a trip together, and I was hanging out with my son, which, you know, whatever, cool. Except a couple days before that, my son got sick and then did this fun game where he created earmuffs with his feet around my ears and now i have an ear infection and a chest infection so i was not feeling good like all

week well it's it's wild that you it's wild you can sort of pinpoint the moment that the bacteria entered your like osmosis jones hopped from the foot into your ear and was like let's get this guy you know i couldn't figure it out and then i saw a doctor yesterday and she's like how could you know like how did this happen like do you smoke that does seem weird we could cause it and i was looking through my photos while waiting for a test and realized i had like 20 photos of him doing this to me um anyway the cool thing about kids is the second you get sick from them they immediately get a million times better and they have all the energy in the world it's like it is the green mile it is a superpower essentially they spit out the flies or you do i'm his picture of dorian gray um yeah

anyway this game came out and and i i pleaded him. I said, sweet boy, would you be up for playing a Kirby while I cry on the couch for mercy from a vengeful god? And he said, yeah, that sounds pretty good. And I just kind of laid down and watched him play. According to the meter on the game, of the game holy shit i mean it's not not that enormous of a game but that's still pretty significant that's a and also for a kid who just turned five pretty proud of him i'm not gonna lie i was being yeah for sure did you even bother to play with him or were you just staring into the void i i did a a little bit but he also liked side-by-side play.

So there were some times where he was like, you know what, you're going to slow me down. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, that's cool. So yeah, we kind of cuddled up, and I watched him do his thing. And the cool thing about this game is, because there are all the transformations,

there are really cute level designs, like the ice stage and the heat stage. The whole time we were playing together, I was talking to him about it kind of like a picture book with kids where I was asking him questions. And, like, he's very into story creation right now. Like, I bought him a bunch of, like, manga. He actually loves Kirby manga specifically. I didn't even know there was kirby i mean i'm not surprised yeah that's awesome and and he loves to tell me like you can't read yet but he loves to tell me what the stories are so while we were playing this i thought you're saying he loves to tell you that he can't read like what are you doing yeah yeah he's like why did you buy me this what a terrible gift um uh so yeah i mean that's i guess

a pretty unique experience not necessarily helping our our audience but hey i'm curious i think it's relevant i think it's relevant yeah well i think it's relevant and like so fresh and i were texting a little bit about this that this is a game for kids it doesn't mean that adults can't can't love it but i i wrote the series off for so long and um so many reviews that i read are you know they're like oh yeah it's good but it's the weakest of the nintendo series and it it's not it's i mean it is everything great about Nintendo. It just is designed for a very specific audience. Well, okay, so let me address this,

because here's what I sort of landed on, was the core of all of the Kirby games is fine. It's not amazing. It's not life-changing. It's fine. And to that extent, I agree with you, Plan. I think it's a simpler experience. It's not life-changing. It's fine. And to that extent, I agree with you, Plan. I think it's a simpler experience. It's an easier-to-control experience.

It doesn't have the same, like, oh, my God, this feels amazing rush that most Nintendo platformers do. Until that 3D game that came out last year, which I think really did bridge the gap. But obviously, this is more of a throwback to traditional kirby and to me it feels when i'm playing it it feels more like like an interactive toy than it is like actual level design because so much of it is just like here's this crazy fucking thing that's going to happen to you right now and you're just going to absorb that experience and that's totally cool you just need to know that that's what you're getting going in. You're not getting the, oh man, that felt amazing when I made that jump across that pit with Yoshi. Yeah. Well, I mean, I wouldn't even say that it's about being a platformer because you can, you can jump through

everything. Yeah. I think it is more about novel experiences. Like that's what the whole changing into things again, which is very, very like little kid friendly. I think, I think what's unusual like little kid friendly i think i think what's unusual about um the 3d game and why we championed it so much last year is it is a game for both yeah and that that rules but i i think it would be unfair to expect every kirby game to be that because i mean i'm still kind of astonished by that game the more we we kind of had that epiphany at the end of last year of like, wow, this really is like a, one of the best games of that year. It's such kind of an accomplishment. But as far as this game goes, you know, hitting that target audience. I mean, so we, we, we talked about like, you know,

the general game is yeah, you go around and you go from level to level, absorbing powers, you know, killing things and moving on to whatever's next. But there's also just tons of novelty around that. So there's now like a full minigame collection. Yeah.

Share your take on the minigames because I thought it was like... Well, I also want to hear Fresh's take on the game itself, right? Yeah. Again, I feel the same way that I do. I mostly played single player. Every time I try to play games with my wife, she gets angry at me.

I'm sorry, can you try that one more time? My wife, she gets angry at me. So I mostly played single player, and I feel the same way that I basically said. Kirby games are fine. I don't get super jazzed while playing them, but I don't find them miserable. But I went ahead and tried the mini game area,

which is like, actually the mini games are not new. So we should be clear. There's like the mini games were in. They're new to this game. They are taken from other Kirby games. Yes. Is that?

Okay. It's yeah, I think that's right. So anyway, there's this whole separate area that's like based on a carnival or whatever featuring this guy magalore who is a fucking space wizard whoever it is and there's probably like six eight or ten or six there's a shitload of like minigames in there and shockingly every single minigame that's in there is dramatically more fun than anything Mario Party has ever made ever. Wowzers! Holy shit!

They are all, like, feel great to control, or, like, the art design is really satisfying. They start simple, where it's just, like, a samurai Kirby minigame, where you're just, like, waiting for an exclamation point to appear on the screen. You hit A as fast as possible, and hits hits a slices the other guy in half i believe this was superstar sagas when that one was was introduced which is mario and luigi oh shit you're right what was the fucking six and one uh collection i don't know man you're the kirby expert anyway all stars racing transform it's a very simple game but like because of the presentation of like seeing kirby slice someone in half super fun and then some of the other ones are like you're in like bumper cars or you're like

throwing ninja stars at like a target and all of them are just presented in like a really light hearted silly way all of them have like mini objectives that if you complete objectives, you unlock masks that you can then wear no matter which character you're playing as. So fucking- This was a highlight in my household. Oh, spectacular. Fucking Kirby's running around with a hamster mask and it's the best thing I've ever seen.

Yeah. You can take the mask on and off at will. There's a dedicated mask on mask off button. And all of this is just like presented in like a super approachable easy to jump in way that made me like super like into it and jazzed and like really happy it was there in ways that like usually minigames i'm like yeah who cares yeah but they did an amazing job um there is another i thought i was the only one who was going to say that they enjoyed the minigames. I didn't think there was much there. I don't think all the games are a smashing success.

But there's a bazooka one where you just run around with like a blaster around like a little maze trying to take out, you know, Waddle Dee or whatever. We've played that probably more than the actual game itself at this point. Henry is obsessed with it. So, yeah, I think they did a very good job on that we should also mention there's like a whole other like mini campaign that unlocks after you beat the main story which i don't think any of us have done yet no which is where you play as i think magolor and there's like rpg mechanics where you're like upgrading his abilities and shit which sounds pretty dope it sounds dope it also sounds like the spot where i would lose my son's interest he doesn't like magolor he's not yeah he he you can't trick him like we've all been

so sufficiently tricked by rpgs at this point yeah it is math though it like it is math it is math, though. Like, it is math. It is math class, essentially. Yeah, that's fair. And he's very aware of that. I don't think this game moves the needle in the way that Forgotten Land did. Yeah, I agree. I think this is a return to form predominantly for Kirby, but it's gorgeous. It's, like, really pretty to look at.

Yeah, I guess. I don't think it's going to... I guess. I don't think it's going to. I mean, I don't think it's going to be anywhere close to the footprint that Forgotten Land had in our household last year. I'd be surprised if we are playing this game next week. Yeah. But I don't know. It's for you. If you have kids in your life that like to play video games and was into Forgotten Land, this seems like a pretty easy recommendation.

Yeah. I mean, people ask us all the time, like, hey, what game do I get to introduce my kids to video games? And my go-to used to be the Yoshi's Crafted series. Yeah, sure. I think I would put this actually above that. I think this is a little bit richer. Especially with multiplayer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Oh, and there's also like an easy Magalore mode where he likes, yeah. I wanted to talk about that because I feel like, I remember when it was like New Super Mario Bros. 2 or something like that, put in like this golden Tanooki suit. And so if you're just having a hard time with the game, you pick up this golden Tanooki suit. I, as a non-parent at that time was like it's fucking casual i need i can't even feel it with the golden tanuki suit i need the challenge i love that kirby starts out and is like hey do

you want to have twice as much health and also not die when you fall in pits i've never smashed the yes button like do you want to remove the elements from games you play with your kid that make them really fucking mad? Like, oh, the game just stopped because I didn't make that jump. That's cool. I guess I'm done having fun now.

How weird. Yeah, I adore that. It's cute. You fall in a pit and Magalor comes and floats over and just grabs your hand. Yeah, he's like a little locky too. Like a little locky. That's really right.

Hey, I think this game is a delight. And I heard Justin say it was his game of the year. Yeah, Justin loves it. He's not here because he actually is still... We could not tear him away from it. He's too obsessed. He is crazy for it yeah um all

right we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about i i guess i'm if i'm reading this correctly having sort of a an affair with pokemon like sleep like like sleeping with pokemon is that right guys yeah that's gross but we're gonna do it after this break i'm gonna take a peek at you i did not watch this pokemon direct which may come as a surprise uh but i know that they talked about pokemon sleep that's how i'd like it if someone who did watch this direct would tell me what the fuck's going on over there. I have questions about how I think this thing works.

Okay, I'll do the basics, because I really... I was going to describe the basics, and then you can tell me how it works. Oh, God, I guess we'll try. I know probably as much as you do, but go ahead. Pokemon Go Plus Sleep thing. Just call it Pokemon Sleep. Pokemon Sleep.

You're doing terribly so far. There's a plastic Pokeball, like disc, right? And at night, you pair it to your phone, you press the center of the Pokeball, and it's like, okay, you pair it to your phone. You press the center of the Pokeball. And it's like, okay, you're sleeping now. And then you go to sleep. And then when you wake up, you go over and you press the button again. And it's like, okay, you're awake now.

And then it monitors your sleep. Sells your biometric data to Professor Oak. Here's what I'm confused by. One, honor system has to be able to tell. But two, when you see this in the video, there's like a chart of your sleep. As if it's monitoring it somehow. Okay, sure. I can explain all this.

In the video, the guy, he sleeps next to the, like it sleeps in bed with him. Yeah, it's in bed. Right, correct. Okay, let me take a step back because i think you jumped into it in too quickly with the pokemon in your bed okay the there's an app called pokemon sleep that's always my problem i can't help myself amen it ties in with this piece of whatever this plastic pokeball that yes you put in your bed and when you're ready to go to sleep you sync it with

your phone you push the button okay i'm sleeping now and how it measures your sleep is really how a lot of these devices these days like your watches and stuff like that measure sleep is mostly just by movement right so i think it's just if you're tossing and turning oh pikachu's gonna be really upset in the morning when it tells you that you slept you don't think that's how it works like rolled over i'm just i'm just sometimes i i stay up a little bit too late because of video because for instance a massive expansion to one of my favorite games of all time comes out and i want to fucking play it because i have zero time to do that during the day between work and kids and and everything yeah and so i come to bed

a little bit late and every time i do that i feel a little bit self-conscious that my wife the next morning is gonna be like really like you were up so late fucking grinding out engrams uh the last thing i need is is our reinforcements there in the way of Mr. Mime or, well, I guess Mr. Mime's a bad one because he wouldn't say shit. Yeah, you would not sleep with Mr. Mime in the bed. But like hit him on Chan the next morning, like, hey man, are you okay?

You were up to like two in the morning playing desk. Are you okay, my man? It also seems like a missed opportunity to not have like Drowsy as the mascot of this please and well that's scary because he does have a move called dream eater where if you are asleep it instantly kills you so that's not like ideal yeah um it's it's an odd thing that kind of is not uh far off from like all the other odd shit they've ever done with pokemon um well and all the wild shit they've half done with biometrics like yeah what was the what was the what am i

thinking of right now but i can't they had some sort of like uh heart rate monitor thing that was supposed to be a peripheral i want to say for like the wii oh yeah that was the nintendo vitality sensor oh yeah the vitality sensor did that actually happen no it never came out to say for like the Wii U. Oh, yeah, that was the Nintendo Vitality Sensor. Oh, yeah, the Vitality Sensor. Did that actually happen? No, it never came out. Right. Because it's fucking patently like the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Or they secretly snuck it into the Switch and didn't tell anyone, which is also possible. That's right. Yeah, that's possible. So let's let me edit my review of Kirby. When you play this game, Nintendo steals your biometric data. I have a question. Yeah. Does it come with like an instruction manual on how to talk with your partner about introducing a Pokemon ball to your bed?

Yeah, you need to be upfront and honest with your partner about what you need from the relationship. It can't just be a one-sided thing where only one person in the relationship is okay with having a Pokemon in your bed. Yeah. Both partners need to be okay, and you need to agree which Pokemon you're comfortable with. That's huge. Maybe let them pick the Pokemon to make them feel a little bit more comfortable. Hey, y'all, I know you're being cute, but I'm just talking about how embarrassing it would be to have to go to Steffi and be like,

sorry, I know I can't spoon ever again because I need to keep my Pokemon plastic ball between us. And also don't move too much because I don't want you to confuse its health metrics. Yeah, that's going to decrease the power of my Pokemon when I wake up. Yeah power of my pokemon yeah like you know what actually i'm gonna go sleep in a separate i need to go get a separate bed i don't wanna i don't wanna risk it i mean it it all ties very directly into what they were doing with pokemon go which is like how do we gamify you walking around town every year and encourage you to sort of be healthy, I guess. And same thing here.

I do not... So it connects to Pokemon Go, right? Yeah. I think they have delayed what exactly the transfer abilities you'll get from Pokemon Go are. In the short term, you can use the disc, the sleep disc, to open Pokestops and stuff like that in Pokemon Go. This is just me.

But I would read all the legalese before using any of this because an app collecting my data of everywhere I go along with my sleep metrics sounds not ideal. Well, you gotta know that that's definitely already happening it's just that the pokemon company wants to get a hand on you know what i mean like you are being sufficiently hunted they know when you're sleeping and when you're awake the Santa Claus has been rocking that shit for years yeah i know i i have no i i have no doubt i just i don't Niantic is like on the top of my list of companies that I need to, I don't need to keep giving it out, you know?

Yeah, sure. I suppose. Make them work for it. So that's fucking bonkers, man. I did see that they announced a new Pokemon animated series. Oh, that looks amazing. It looks great. They like run a resort or

whatever well you to be clear you run or whatever the protagonist runs the resort it's i believe it's called pokemon concierge and the whole point is that the only beings allowed at the resort are pokemon so presumably like fucking psyduck walks up to you and is like, yo, I want a deep tissue massage, and you have to make that happen for him. Psyduck is a very demanding little guy. He's a hassle. He really gets in your head. No, that's, I guess, a joke. Sounds great.

Is there any other part of your life that you think would be better if we Pokemon-ified it? I mean, my mind instantly went to pooping but you know what that is interesting speak on that i mean what more do i have to say how do we gamify pooping you know pooping is important for your gut health and bodily health as much as sleep or walking around so you know drop a one of those things in the toilet and see what happens don't drop a pokemon go puck into the toilet i should maybe it's like one of those things that cleans the toilet they look the same no no legally i think we should clarify that you shouldn't do what russ just said

uh it's a way a terrible waste of money um yeah maybe or maybe it works out great one time in japan i was at a bath i was in a bathroom uh i believe on odaiba and i fucking went to the urinal and a whole screen popped up and i had played a little p p game i think sega made the p game i remember maybe it was i saw some publisher pop up it was like this p game brought to you by the sonic do you think there was like a bidding war over who got the p game um yeah for sure i mean yeah for sure i think maybe i'm thinking it was sega because we also just i think this bathroom was at the sega amusement park yeah um yeah hey for pokemon potty which pokemon would it be would it be grimer or a muck that would be well i would say in both cases you need some uh work because things are not quite as uh solid as

they should be i actually regret doing this bit me too do you know that one of Grimer, or sorry, Muck's abilities is called Sticky Hold? He's a sludge type. Hey, should we talk about listener questions? I would love to talk about literally anything else. That sounds cool. Okay, so we've got

some listener mail. This one is from Big5. If you could give Kirby a never-before-used copy ability, what would you come up with? Gun. Nope, that's in the game. Yeah, that's so many guns. So many guns.

I want to know what happens if he finds another Kirby and swallows that Kirby. You can do that in this game. You can do that in Smash Bros. 2. That question has been sufficiently answered. Yeah, but what happens in Smash? I actually don't know. I mean, nothing? Well, that's

a big mistake, because it seems like it would further enhance his swallowing abilities. Okay, but then could you not just get an infinite sort of chain of... I guess there's only so many Kirbys, huh? Yeah, there's 16 Kirby's in the world so if they all united and brought their their hearts together they'd get to make a wish and with that

wish they would swallow the world like galactus what about like science science kirby oh what would science kirby do chemicals kirby oh poison kirby wow i want kirby to be able to transform into a pill and then get in like inside of other creatures so like yeah recursive so you can go inside like a belly and then and then you know i don'tulling. This conversation's trending in some directions that I don't necessarily want to explore. Too familiar with? Specifically Kirby going inside other creatures? Yeah, sure, sure. I think it's the vore of it all, to be honest.

It's just the dang vore of it all. This question's from Lightfall Kane. How do you feel about Kirby as a, quote, kids game when the final bosses take such a left turn into being dark at the end? Um, I don't think that, uh, that's an,

uh, like incompatible thing with kids. Like stuff is dark. Yeah. Kids stuff. Like Moana gets fucking lava shooter all over. Like, yeah,

it gets dark. Yeah. Moana gets shot with lava remember that big lava fight it's scary yeah but i don't i didn't walk away from moana going like man they really explored some dark place some dark themes in that one i um death the grandma dies in moana oh damn that's actually a good point. I didn't think about that. My son, he loves documentaries about the making of movies. He was watching that Light and Magic thing on Disney+. And he's really into that episode about the making of Indiana Jones and Poltergeist. But they spent a lot of time on the dude's face melting.

Do you think I'm a bad dad? I mean, Henry has asked questions about indiana jones of course he's at the age where all children become curious about sure who this handsome man with the whip is yeah um but we i have not shown it to him because the it's fucked up that all those movies in with some of the most horrifying gore I've seen. I've seen a lot of sort of gory horror films. And not just in. Indiana Jones is pretty gory throughout.

Yes. Alvin Molina gets pretty well stabbed like three seconds in. Didn't somebody get steamrolled? I may be thinking of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone gets steamrolled. I'm not saying we watch the movies. I'm saying we watch the makeup specials that just focus on repeatedly showing those scenes.

Did he have questions about the Nazis face melting? No. I mean, you know him. He's been ready to watch Nazis get squished since the day he was born. But was he like, okay, I'm down with this? Or like, how do we do this at home? How do we squish Nazis at home? do we squish nazis at home no no just like melt faces like he understands he's the nazi face he understands that we don't like melt

dada's face that's good no we just give dada's face horrible disease yeah yeah exactly for that we we we give him ear infections um okay let's see what else I got. You're doing great, Chris Plank. Keep it up. This one's from Basil or Basil. I think it's Basil. Depends on the country. What games are good ones to start with if you're new to the franchise? This one's about Kirby. They also asked,

do we think we'll ever get a Kirby Rite 2? No. Will you guys cover Sons of the Forest at all in the future? I don't know. Probably. Probably. Maybe.

Scary. Okay, good ones to start with if you're new to the franchise i i mean i think if you're under 10 under 10 this is probably a good place to start with if you're over 10 start with a 3d one uh i don't know man oh let's hear henry's henry six and cut his teeth on forgotten land that game taught him how to play video games i i i think's, I still think it's a better option. If you have, I will say this, if you have several kids, this is the better one because you can play with up to four players. How many kids should I have, Griffin? I'm stopping at two.

Okay. Because then they would outnumber us. I literally don't even, sometimes two, I'm like, I don't know how to, how we're going to do this. Yeah, but for me, tell me how many kids I should have to three. Oh, well, I want there to be a lot of just little Russ's. Yeah.

Scampering around. Yeah. I think, I think one's enough. I think, I think you've done enough. Uh, okay.

Well, Griffin says forgotten realm is a good place to start. I mean, I think it's a tremendous game, and I probably agree with him. It is certainly the best of the Kirby's. It might diminish all other Kirby's moving forward. Right. But that's just, you know, you're starting with Flamin' Yon. What can you do?

I mean, Kirby's Dream Course was sitting right there the whole time, and one of you picked it up, but okay. I tried playing it with Chris Plant. It does not age well. It's all right. Oh all oh dream course i was saying i was what was the golf one yeah i don't i we played that game on stream the other day and embarrassed humiliated ourselves yeah it's a hard game hey this one's from lawrence uh last one if kirby inhaled each of the four of you what would his copy powers be and what little costumes would he wear okay uh justin's not here it'd be insulting no it'll be fine justin's not

here so uh we can just assume for him i'm thinking like a little woodworking with like a little like oh that's cool he gets like a hammer and chisel or something i don't know how woodworking works no i assume a hammer and chisel is... I think with like whittling, you probably need a big whittling. Yeah. Mine would just, I guess, be like a really strong,

like I don't know if there's a Kirby who's just like... Super strong and smart? Really strong and smart. Yeah. Cute. Yeah, I think fresh would probably be like an egg and cheese bagel sandwich.

Oh, my God. Chris Plante, do you know anything about me? Do you know anything about Russ other than the sandwich he eats in the morning? And specifically, have you ever seen me eat cheese willingly? Or do you know what happens when I do? Can you just let me finish? It's called artistic vision because we need – I'm not just going to say eggs, team, whatever. You know, like I don't i sure i i

need it to have a power so i thought i mean if the power is diarrhea then mission accomplished if you would let me finish it's a it's it's a bit you turn to the bagel right and you roll around the environment and you leave behind your like toxic cheese shits. Yeah, sure. And that poisons the enemies. We need Justin to never leave again.

Because I can't control you rowdy, nasty boys. Chris Plant. We need a power for Chris Plant. I think Chris Plant swallows a Blu-ray that no one's ever seen before. That's interesting. And then starts talking about how important French New Wave was to the medium, but realizing that it is no longer a watchable series.

There's already a power that puts people to sleep. Yeah, that's a good point. That's true. Hey, what else y'all been playing? Oh my gosh. I have such a good game to recommend, and I'm not being ironic. It is fucking great.

The game is called Bloody Hell. Oh, yeah. It is on Steam. It costs $0. This makes no sense. That's a great price. Well, I don't know the full backstory of it and why it's free.

Let me just say right off the bat if devolver went and sold this game for 20 i would not be in the least surprised it is one of the best freeware games i've ever played in my entire life please yeah um it is a top-down metroidvania rpg set in hell where you play as an angel and your goal is to kill satan yeah and you go through these levels and you know top down like 360 shooter style you're like finding new pickups and abilities uh just one gameplay aspect that like blew me away you'll find like you remember in Hollow Knight or games like that where you find charms and you have a limited number of charm slots?

Yeah, sure. Same thing here, but the way they do it, you have a Resident Evil style grid system that you can slot these charms into. So you have to arrange them in such a way that you have all the charms you can possibly fit in there. And you can then spend resources to increase your briefcase of charm slotting abilities. And they're like different shapes and stuff.

And it's such a creative idea. So like a Tangram sort of situation happening over there? Yeah. I mean, they're all they're not like angled. So it's all just like squares. But they'll be like Tetris pieces, essentially. And you have to fit them in, and more powerful charms take up more space.

I guess it's kind of similar to how Diablo II did it with charms. But it's a super dope game. The art is amazing, great music, just really cool aesthetic to it. The studio is called pun intended. They're based in the Netherlands out of, um, uh, kind of an indie game workshop studio,

um, in Utrecht, I believe. And, um, fuck man, if you have a steam deck or if you don't have a steam deck, you just have a PC really no excuse.

You should download this immediately. It scratches every part of russ furshtick's brain and uh you should also have your brain scratched is it early access or is it like no it's just out it's just like a full-on free game that is one of the weirdest i feel like it has to have yeah some legal issue i think there might be an aspect of like this was students working on this so they couldn't like part of the stipulation was they couldn't put a price on it i don't know again i don't know the story but take advantage of these poor uh people from holland and uh enjoy their game yeah and whatever that they make next i am definitely gonna like try to throw some money

their way i mean yeah yeah it is bizarrely generous yeah so i picked up the destiny 2 expansion it just dropped yesterday while we're recording this so uh i i did have a bit of a it's called light fall i believe it's called light fall uh i pulled a bit of an all-nighter last night just sort of diving into it. Before you get into the gameplay, can you quickly summarize the overall plot of Destiny? Yeah, so there's this bad guy called the Witness. No, no, not just the DLC. I mean, like, across the board. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, the Darkness is the Witness. Okay, so you know the Darkness? Yeah, at the band. That's the Witness. Okay. And the Traveler is the... The Ball is the band. That's the witness. Okay. And the traveler is the- The ball is the light. And you have to go to Neptune to this fucking wild new wave cyberpunk city to find the thing you need to, I guess, kill the witness.

Also, Kallus is back. He's a big sort of hedonistic fella. He used to be a robot. Well, he was a guy, but he made his robots. But now he's like pretty evil. Yeah. And that's fun. That's it.

That's all you need to know. Go play. Have fun. No, I said this last week. I just played Witch Queen like at launch last year. Loved it, but then didn't play it after I finished the campaign. And I'm getting into Lightfall and all I've done so far is the campaign,

which they've done the same thing they did with the Witch Queen launch, which is there's a legendary difficulty. And it very smartly caps like the maximum amount of your power level that you can bring into it which makes it in a weird way more accessible because it's like i didn't feel like my power level was nowhere near the cap when the last season finished yeah but it bumps everybody up automatically to like 1600 or something like that and then you can tackle this hard mode difficulty uh campaign and if you can

finish it you get like dope gear that's at like the the cap already and it gives you an exotic and like all of this cool stuff uh it's still some of the most fun i've had playing destiny these legendary campaigns it really reminds me of when i used to push myself playing halo to like see how many of the skulls I could activate and still finish a level. Yeah. It is challenging in a way that is, I think, some of the best tuning that this game has ever seen. The big thing that this adds, and it's been a bit controversial, they have simplified

a lot of the like armor mods, which are sort of the things that you can equip to customize your build, right? They do things like, you know, if you pick up this power up, then it boosts weapons of this type for a while, or it gives you some grenade. They have simplified and streamlined a lot of that stuff. And the community is pretty torn about that because a lot of people's like builds don't work anymore. And, you know know people think that

it's going to silo people off into these like handful of specific builds there's a loadout manager in the game now last night i probably spent like an hour or so just sort of goofing around making different builds and then with the press of a button like you switch your armor aesthetics your equipped armor your equipped weapons the mods that you have equipped on every making different builds and then with the press of a button like you switch your armor aesthetics your equipped armor your equipped weapons the mods that you have equipped on every single thing the shaders that you have equipped on uh and so just at any time with like two button presses i can change my whole load out it is uh i think the most exciting thing that destiny has done in a long time because it's so it's i cannot so much of this game is

about having the right build right yeah and can i can i ask you that i'll tell you what's like keeping me from even like yeah sure the the anxiety is very simple i have i don't know 600 things in my vault from three years ago when i can i just delete them all so i think i would feel better what you should do is first of all a lot of those have been sunset a lot of those got sunset honestly probably before i think before witch queen i think actually around beyond light they started to sunset weapons which basically means but then i know they got rid of sunsetting they like walked it back a little bit a little bit they haven't i don't think sunset more like you can't use your recluse

and mountaintop that you're using in season one but like everything that's come after that is is pretty fine honestly uh they're you know i i love the in-game loadout manager destiny item item manager and other sort of like third-party platforms like that are pretty great at like going through your inventory and seeing which weapons in your vault are like secret god rolls. Oh, they'll tell you that. Oh, that's cool. There's like a little thumbs up icon when you use Destiny Item Manager.

It takes some work, right? I can't imagine what it would be like to try to start getting into Destiny 2 now, but I was feeling like, you know, going a year without playing and missing all those seasons, like I'm going to be so lost if I get in. And it's been pretty fun.

There's a great recap video, actually, at the top of the campaign, which I also really appreciated. So there's a new subclass. There's a new element type that adds grappling hook, basically, mechanics to the game, which is, I've not unlocked it, but I've gotten some moments in the campaign

where you get little teasers of the power, and it's pretty fun to just sort of zip all around um should i should i talk about maybe next week we'll say because i've been reading i was like just curious and i was reading the subreddit about specifically that power and it sounds like post campaign there are some pretty serious issues with it but maybe i'll save that for the next week discussion. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. Okay.

I guess you'll find out. Yeah, I haven't beaten the campaign I'm nowhere close because it's fucking hard, but it is rewarding and I'm really, really digging it. Yeah. Maybe I'll try it.

I've been playing Paranorma Site, The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. This sounds made up. This sounds like a game you would make up. It does. To be like a Chris Plant game. It does, right? In like new me, not old me,

because I would have never ever played this shit a few years ago, but I'm a change man. Okay, so first, this is a preview. I'm not reviewing this game because I can talk about it as a preview and not a review oh that's hysterical i'm just i'm just saying right now that i have not finished the game not final opinions just how i'm reacting not giving a score not giving it a score maybe um it's a visual novel obviously uh it is apparently developed by square enix not just

published but like developed which i don't know what's going on at square right now but i love that they are just putting out a bonkers amount of video games every year um that i don't know who the target audience is at least in in the states i'm in japan i think they have a better idea of who they're who they're making games for um but i'm so glad all of this stuff is getting uh brought over here because this game is like a pretty great delight the it's like a horror game uh built around um japanese folk horror but it's set in the 1990s and you are like oh that's fun ordinary office worker who is meeting up with your friend in this like

abandoned park in the middle of the night to talk about like a local ghost story and to figure out this mystery right and things go bad um but what's pretty neat about it is they um they went to the actual neighborhood in uh samit award and they like worked with the uh the tourism division and like all these local businesses or whatever and uh took 360 degree photographs on location and then converted them into the art like you know drew over them or whatever um so it has just this really cool feel to it. And you look around the 360 photographs to find things to click on to learn more about them, which is very clever for a horror version of this type of game. Because to look around, you have to look away from different areas. So you'll look back and suddenly something is right behind you. Oh, that's scary.

Yeah, it's really neat. I'm really, really enjoying it. I'm probably not going to continue playing it on my Steam Deck, which is where I'm playing it right now because it's going to be available, I think, the Wednesday after this episode airs on Steam Deck and Switch. But it's supposed to come out either at the exact same time or very soon on iOS and Android and android and this feels perfect for

like an ipad um so i'm i'm hoping that i'm i can finish it out on ipad where it feels like a bit more of a natural fit um kind of you know just looking around and reading uh but yeah i it's also i think it's gonna be like bucks, maybe like 15 bucks at launch, which you know I love, like a cheaper, shorter, cool game. Yeah, and what would you score this? I'm going to get canceled. Okay, cool. Wow, that's a lot of good games.

Yeah, so let's recap what we talked about right now that's wait i want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts okay i wanted to thank uh eric sigurdson actual sam harris and jlc1234567890 thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcasts. And thank you to everyone else who has talked about the show or shared the show or done great things about the show. And now we can recap plant. Go ahead.

Yeah. I'm just going to emphasize that. Hey, if you like the show, you should share it with a friend. You know, it's a free show. And the,

the, if you know, like I love the show, how can I help them? Number one way, share it. There's a number two way as well yeah if you hear us say an ad on here and there's like a link just go to that link i have to spend money

there but you could go to it and i'll up it and i'll just say tell 16 friends and then tell them to tell 16 friends that's gonna really change things for us guys it will i think that's a good idea um this week we talked about kirby's return to dreamland deluxe we talked about pokemon sleep we talked about uh bloody hell which is on steam and is free talked about destiny lightfall and paranormal site and next week i think we got a twofer next week we're going to be doing woe long fallen destiny which is a try it again did i get the name wrong woe long fallen dynasty oh yeah that was my bad i had destiny lightfall next to it okay so woe long fallen dynasty and we're also talking about

destiny lightfall which i believe justin and griffin will be playing quite a bit of and maybe me we'll see we'll see what happens you should be i do like grappling grappling hooks like anytime Lightfall, which I believe Justin and Griffin will be playing quite a bit of. And maybe me. We'll see. We'll see what happens. You should, man. I do like grappling hooks. Like, anytime there's a grappling hook, I'm into it. Sure.

So, all that and more next week on The Besties. Thanks for listening this time, though. I sure do appreciate it. And join us again next week for The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!