The Besties - Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is Infinite Fun

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Yakuza's back for like the eighth time, and it's never looked better! Join us as we discuss Ichiban and Kiryu's tropical vacation, and also the finer points of goose breeding.Also discussed: Tingus Goose: Weird Idle Game, Taskmaster, Cobalt Core, Football, Only Weird Games, Super Mario Odyssey, The Traitors 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!

Griffin, you're a Pokémaniac, right? Oh, freak for it, yeah. Okay, so given the fact that you have a lot of experience in this franchise, I kind of wonder whether you know this. There are certain Pokémon that have secrets hidden in the name of the Pokémon. Okay, that's interesting. Can you elucidate some of that? So, for example, Ekans. You know Ekans?

Yeah, sure. Everyone knows Ekans. Okay, so within Ekans' name, there is a secret hiding the true nature of Ekans. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. It is snake backwards. It's snake backwards, right. So Ekans is not the only character character the only pokemon that has that secret there's also arboc did you know about arboc the evolution of eckins it makes sense that it follows the same sort of yeah man what's the what's the what's the nut here hold on hold on he's he's

revving up give me the nut russ you're making me wait so long. Let him cook. As we know, he's Cobra backwards. There's actually one more Pokemon that has a secret name, and it's Muk. Here comes the theme. Here's the theme song. The theme song has started playing. What is the secret?

I'm going to come in to start playing the theme song for us. No, no, no. This is me. I'm putting the cape on Russ as he's acting like he's collapsing but he's about to like break out. Oh shit, Russ has like a flop sweat, like a dripping sweat happening right

now. The delivery of that joke shaved a couple of years off his life. That was the joke? What was the Yeah, what's the name back? Yeah, I'm sorry. There's a secret in Oh god oh god russ this is stupid this is stupid this is you know what made it worth it is how long it took justin to figure that one you know it's good it's a good joke now that's a thinker that's a thinker that's one

that's like a dennis miller like it like three days later in the car and you're like, oh! It's come! My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the fucking year, maybe. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I am right there with Griffin. My name is Russ Frosch, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties. This is a video game club, and just by listening, you, my beloved friend, have become a member of said club. We're so happy to have you in our illustrious ranks.

Thanks for joining us yet again. We have a really exciting one for you. A long-running franchise split several times off of itself, like a Cerberus, like a Hydra, I guess. Chris Plant, what is, like a dragon, infinite wealth? a Hydra, I guess. Chris Plant, what is Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth? Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. It seems it's quite obvious by the name. It's the eighth entry in the Yakuza series, which has now changed its name to Like a Dragon

and changed its genre to a more traditional turn-based role-playing game. And this time it's set in Hawaiiaii with a new-ish hero but also an old-ish hero and it fucking rules and we are going to talk about it very soon yes let's do that in fact right after this plant i was hoping just for historical purposes, because I know that you have a familiarity with this. You said that, and I think I misunderstood the sort of direction. You said that this is the direction of the franchise. I kind of felt like this and the other Like a Dragon games were, I was having the impression these were more like spinoffs of the main franchise. So this is the direction of the series

formerly known as Yakuza. Correct. The name change kind of makes it seem like a spinoff, but the reality is Like a Dragon is just a translation of the Japanese name for these games. They were not called Yakuza. So I think it is standardization

across the entire series. Does the word Yakuza mean like a dragon? No. No, but they didn't call the games Yakuza, the word Yakuza, mean like a dragon? No. No, but they didn't call the games Yakuza in Japan. They called them like a dragon in Japanese. Got it. Understood. Got it.

Legally, maybe? It's a different language. Yeah. I thought Plant was about to drop the Nihonga. No, every time I do it, I i'm embarrassed so i'm not going to the name of the the name of the developer of this series is ryu gagotoku which is like a drag so so to further confuse things the name of the developer is like a dragon the series is now called like a dragon it used to be called yakuza and the first of these role-playing game spin-offs was called Yakuza Like a Dragon.

So just fucking strap yourselves in for the wild ride, folks. You gotta, this game asks a lot of you, but it gives a lot in return, I will say. It's like Bungie Halo is what you're saying. It's like if they called, if the name of Bungie was called Halo and they made Halo, yes.

All right, can I start? Can I begin? Please, please. low um yes uh all right can i can i start can i please please i've i loved the first of these rpg uh spinoffs which came out in i believe 2020 it's called uh yakuza like a dragon it introduces us to ichiban kasuga who is a new protagonist for uh the yakuza series. You see a lot of familiar faces from the prior, whatever, six or seven Yakuza games that came before it. Folks like Kazuma Kiryu,

who is the protagonist of most of the Yakuza games, among other folks. But for the most part, it is a standalone thing that you really can play without having much prior knowledge of the series and enjoy it as evidenced by the fact that I had not played any of the other Yakuza games before I

played Yakuza Like a Dragon. It kicks ass, that one does, and Infinite Wealth is, I will say, a pretty dramatic improvement on so many of the things that the the first like a dragon rpg introduced you still got ichiban kasuga now you got kazuma kiryu the again former protagonist now sort of a deuteragonist i don't know man he's the co-star he is half the game is is also playing uh sort of as as him uh and, you get sort of two worlds, Hawaii and Japan to explore. There's a billion things to do. There's a bunch of mini games that are all wild

and a plot that is as dense as is imaginable, but in a way that is not entirely unpleasant. That's sort of groundwork for what this game is if you are completely new to the to the series uh and i actually i worried based on sort of the first i don't know uh 10 hours of this game that you guys were going to fucking hate it because it seems to me like if you have not played uh the first yakuza like Dragon, that there is a lot that is going to kind of leave you cold. Because it really hits the ground running and summarizes some of the major beats of the first game

in a pretty hasty order. I'm going to speak early, because I played the least out of anyone here. And I felt the strongest about the Yakuza franchise before this, maybe out of everyone here, just on the negative side because I haven't really played one that has grabbed me and even though I'm very early in this game still I will say that I was immediately and remain immediately charmed by this game in ways that I have not experienced in this sort of RPG maybe ever I am like immediately entertained by the main

character all the side characters that you're meeting have like a tone and a like goofy uh i guess cheeriness to it that makes what was otherwise in the other yakuza games i've played have been very dour i think driven by the other protagonist. I forget his name. What is his name? Kazuma Kiryu. Kazuma Kiryu is just like kind of a like very serious, stoic, straight man kind of character. And I understand that like the side characters kind of make them goofy. Here you have Ichiban who is like a total fucking goofball. And it like levitates everything around him in ways that I was like immediately grabbed.

I think he is one of the best video game characters i i think he he is amazing in the way that he is like a like a i don't know an excited dog most of the time but he also like he has a sort of stoicism and honor that is like uh i don't know it feels like it is not just a lot of people to to go back to um uh garl from sea of stars right a lot of people gave that character kind of shit because it was just like he's just constantly optimistic and unerring sweetness and a little saccharine and it feels like Ichiban has a lot more kind of going on under,

underneath the hood. Um, and yeah. Yeah. My immediate thought was like a Mr. Peanut butter kind of vibes to him, but obviously, you know,

from, uh, Bojack, Bojack, of course, of course, man. Oh no,

I'm sorry. Not familiar. Uh, but I do think that the, I'm sure later on there's, there's more depth to it. But I was just like immediately taken for a ride. And as Griffin said, like these are characters I have no association with characters that were in the previous like a dragon game that like I don't know who these two older guys are.

I don't know who this woman is, but I think I had enough of the context clues to know. Obviously, they had a past. They were criminals and they worked together on their buddies or whatever it was. is but i think i had enough of the context clues to know obviously they had a past they were criminals and they worked together on their buddies or whatever it was and i was i immediately cared about the what was going on in their lives so like that is a really hard lift to pull off in it also helps i did not play i played like maybe 10 hours at the last one like i definitely played some of it but not not a ton uh i feel like what this game does is it thrusts Ichiban into a quest

where he has to go to Japan to try to find his mom. That's Hawaii, sorry. He lives in Japan. He has to go from Japan to Hawaii to find his mom. And part of what works really well about that is that, first of all, it's a clean slate. It doesn't imagine, it gets you away

from a lot of the politics of the Yakuza, which is like, I think, what slowed down a lot of the last Like a Dragon for me. Really, every Like a Dragon I played, that's where I always like lose interest is when they go into the like hierarchy stuff. Right, and I think if you're deeply into that, I could see how you would maybe be into it,

but it always left me kind of cold. What is cool is by moving to Hawaii, it kind of resets that and you know, right? So it's having to introduce all these new characters. And, you know, a couple of times they'll be like new people. But, you know, return characters. One sort of plot beat that is very heavily focused on in the last Yakuza Like a Dragon RPG is sort of the dissolution of the Yakuza. is sort of the dissolution of the Yakuza and former Yakuza members moving on from that life and the difficulties that they face. That is very much what this game is about, which is, to me, what makes it work

in why I have played other Yakuza games before and none of them have clicked for me for the same reason where it's like, as soon as you start getting into like, well, this one is a subsidiary of the Tojo clan and their fourth chairman is this. But you've got to remember that he was married to it. Like that shit is beyond me. But a bunch of like former Yakuza members who are unable to find work because they have this, you know, branding of having been former Yakuza members and the incredible like societal difficulties that that introduces,

being like the focus instead, that shit is solid gold. That is incredibly good. Good and thought-provoking and, I don't know, meaningful stuff. I think this is just a defense of how good and how important structure is in a story. Because y'all are getting slow-boiled like a lobster into thinking this is different than any other yakuza game it is as complicated if not more complicated than any of them and on top of that it digs into the entire history of the series by the end of this game even if you played zero yakuza games you will know a profound amount about what has happened in every single one of them including the spin-offs um it is thorough in educating you

making you a phd in in the yakuza series i think the big difference is as y'all are saying it doesn't start there it very gradually works its way up. And it does a really thoughtful job of everything that it's teaching you, making it seem like it's new information to you. Oftentimes, you are learning about things about Kiryu through the eyes of Ichiban, or you're learning about things that happen in Ichiban's life through the eyes of Kiryu. And that creates a sense of like, oh, I guess this is just all original to this game, when in reality, it is really the culmination of, I mean, what it does in video games. I felt, I felt, I love, I adore this game.

And I felt guilty. I'm on the final chapter now, I still feel guilty about the fact that I haven't played the other Yakuza games, because a good half of it is about Kazumakiryu. And we won't get into spoilers or anything like that, but it's Kazumakiryu sort of like considering his life. He's been, you know, a lifelong Yakuza member and has had a lot of shit happen to him. And a lot of it is him reflecting on his past and running into these, you know shadows of his past and having to sort of confront that uh and i even i liked that shit even though it didn't sort of emotionally resonate with me i assume people who've played every yakuza game are going to flip shit many times while playing uh while playing this one in a good way or bad way good good good flip shit. Good flip shit. Like a great flip shit.

Because I got that from seeing like a dragon cast members who like come back and seeing Ichiban Kasuga kind of like meet a character who we met in the first game and be like, oh shit, it's that dude.

But you know, then you get that seven fold for Kiryu. Yeah. The comp for me is like Avengers Endgame where like every character that you've met after all of this work gets a, oh, now I feel good. Now I feel rewarded.

I put in all this time and there was a payoff at the end for everything. Have you finished it? I am very close. Okay, yeah. I think you and me are probably around the same part. Yes, it is such a reward but again like i said you can i don't want that to scare people off because griffin as you're saying like you're still enjoying this and yes i think you'll probably end at the same spot that griffin's at you're just gonna want to go play these games now i i will say

if this interests you play the the last Light of Dragon game. It introduces Ichiban Kasuga and focuses on him, and that shit is big. No, I disagree. If this interests you, play this game. Okay, that's fair, also. The combat is so much better. I'm the exact person you're talking to. It didn't work.

It didn't click for me. And I understand having the awareness of it helps. But what I'll say again about the Hawaii setting is, and it's kind of what clicked with me or part of what was cool about watching Terrace House Aloha State, is that you are seeing people who are thrust into your culture. Like into American culture. And in seeing a setting that I am familiar with, it's easier for me to understand the characters, right? Because I don't know how much of what is happening in the world is about like the nuances that escape me because I'm not familiar with the culture. me because I'm not familiar with the culture. So you're able, at least for me, I was able to like grok what was happening in the story a lot easier because I'm not having to understand like the world, right?

Like I'm not having to understand all these different stores and how the society is different and all that stuff. I will say it is, it is hilarious. is it is hilarious this the expediency with which this game uh dissolves the uh the language barrier issues there's like when you first get there he's like i don't understand anybody yo like i i don't speak english sorry ed do you speak japanese and like once in a while he'll find somebody who's japanese but mainly he's just like waving at people and it's like literally after two hours I don't know what happens but either he learns English or everybody learns Japanese because they don't

talk about it ever again. In this Fantasia, I know that there is absolutely like a large like Japanese population in Hawaii, right? Like that is known. This game is sort of a Fantasia where literally every person is Japanese.

Where the crooked white cop is bilingual. Fluid. Fluid. Perfect. Perfect Japanese. Yes. Everyone you meet happens to be Japanese. Like every store you go into when you leave,

they're like, It's like, okay. So cool. All right. I feel, they're like, It's like, okay, so cool. All right. I feel right at home here. It's great. There's so much to talk about with this game. I do want to circle back to talking about just sort of the combat of it.

Yeah. Okay, yeah. Because it is so fun. So it is still turn-based. You have different characters. You can customize their jobs, which unlock new skills. And then you can sort of build your own builds for those characters by selecting the skills from each job that you like to build a crazy damage-dealing behemoth. But now you can move your character around in a small radius in combat.

And there's all kinds of these like different context sensitive things that can happen whenever you are moving your character around. Like for example, if there's something on the ground, you can pick it up and use it as a weapon if you use like an attack and you're close to it. Once you start increasing your bonds with the other, your teammates, which has done really, really well, we'll get into that I think in a little bit uh they will start doing like follow-up attacks so like if you can knock an enemy down uh and get another attack off on them before they stand up it'll do like bonus damage there's combo attacks if you do an attack close to a teammate uh there's uh there's so much stuff that makes the combat feel very uh exciting and very fun like from minute one throughout the the whole of the game they

also do the thing that um mario rpg did which is for easy fights you can breeze through them in like three seconds it's insane yeah you can turn on auto combat yeah um there is every every fight i got it i never had a fight where i was like ah shit ah man i don't want to do a fight right now yeah because everyone is like pretty pretty enjoyable to do uh and it it is just uh i think just fighting what's that it's been a good 10 hours since i've got my old knuckles wet with blood, and I miss it. I do miss it hearing you say that. Not enough to go back to the hard life I left behind, but yeah, absolutely. Oh, yes.

I just realized I just said that. I've been farming for 10 hours, guys. I've been trying to get a resort off the ground. I don't have time for those Betty's bottles. Very quickly, before we go into the farm, because I want to get to the farm ASAP, I just want to say, with all the stuff that you're describing of being able to add all these bonus combat features and rallying your

team together, it ties so elegantly to the story and the writing itself. So the way that you're doing that is by getting to know your characters more, there are all these triggers across the map that we can learn about, like, what their favorite manga is, or what type of ramen or food they ate as a kid and then at a certain point you go back to the bar and have these like more intimate conversations that end up revealing like a

larger story about them like one of the guys that you meet very early in the game, has also been in jail for an extended time. He got set up. And while he was in jail, his spouse lost their pregnancy and ended up kind of like leaving Hawaii. And I mean, it's very heavy. It is compared to everything else we're going to talk about. That is a weird thing about these games is how they bounce back and forth from the very silly and the very heavy. There's a weird thing about these games is how they bounce back and forth from the very silly and the very heavy. But it ends up just being very sincere. And I don't know. I found it very touching, each of these stories.

And then at the end that you also are rewarded in the game, I don't know. I felt like I was being rewarded on every level. Everything that I could want made me feel better. I was getting infinite dopamine hits. Infinite wealth. Yeah, everything is... Do you want to talk about your farm? Oh, God, please. I've never seen anything like it in a video game.

Not in the scope. I'm saying the effect that it has had. Okay. At some point through the game, you meet a person and you get taken to an island. Do you have a sense of how many hours you need to play before this at minimum 10 hours 10 hours like it's it's in there yeah i think it's like chapter five or six it's it's pretty deep uh if this is like in the menus it's not i don't feel like i'm spoiled this is and this is after you've unlocked a pokemon stadium game

for context sure um you yeah where you make perverts fight um so the the the island you're taken to is this rundown resort and you are tasked with uh in the same like interfaces you've been using right except for there's no more turn-based combat you just have like a bat you are running around this island collecting resources and using those resources to harvest uh to to build facilities that you will invite people to this resort so it's basically they have done an animal crossing kind of thing with uh within this game it is like an animal crossing that they put into it except i like it better than animal crossing because it looks sick and you get to beat people up with a bat.

And they're like, two days in, they're like, okay man, we figured it out, we can get you back to Hawaii. Obviously the only way we could do it, we trained a dolphin because this is like a dragon, so we trained a dolphin, the dolphin will take you back. And I'm like, that is absolutely cool and I would love to find my mom, but if I just get a few more rocks rocks I'm gonna be able to build a vintage

film studio and I'm gonna go ahead and do that instead cause there's this one guest here who the things they really wanted were a firefly and watching old movies so I'm trying to help them out I will get back to that other quest I've now been here for 17 days

I literally yeah I unlocked Dondoko island and then beat it but without going back without going back so in the plot of the game they were like we have a lead on your mom but there's just some danger uh a connoissance in danger we have to get there as quick as possible it's like okay and then i went to donandoko Island for like 28 days and then came back and everyone was like, okay, we're ready. And I came back with like this with like hundreds of

thousands of dollars and like this completely like overpowered like ability and they were like, holy shit. It's like I had come down from the mountain and now I was the chosen one, but I had just become a sort of small time resort manager for a for a calendar month uh it fucking rules it's so unbelievably good i want a spinoff of don doco

island like yesterday there's tons of stuff like that there's a crazy taxi game where you're a delivery driver that is like a stunt spectacular on a bicycle where you're literally driving up fucking buildings like it's wild and so it's all so fun like it's all like it's all pleasurable none of what we're describing is like is vegetables like it's all fun the funniest shit to me is how they keep one-upping themselves with don doco island where you're like oh yeah i can i can like kind of farm it and clean it and whatever and like yeah yeah do you want to add like decorations sure do you want to add giant buildings sure do you want different types of buildings in different parts of the island definitely do you want to bring people in that you've met in the other part of the game and then chat with them here and give them gifts and

celebrate them definitely hey do you want multiplayer so that we can start connecting you to other people's islands like sure's like, sure, I guess. It's kind of like people on the team maybe didn't want to work on the main game and they kept begging to work on Dandoko Island. Y'all, okay. Just to give you an idea of what kind of game this is. You start in Japan, which is an island. And within this Japanese game,

they go to Hawaii. You go to a different island. And then while you're at this island, a mascot character comes up to you and they're like, hey, I got this other island you can go check out. And you're like, yeah, I would love to come check out this island.

And when you're at that island, Dandaku Island for a few, fucking I swear to God, someone's like, there's another island. Because there's a farm it goes deeper come to the other island within the island within the island within the island and at the farm you can you can raise your perverts who you're fighting in the pokemon

they're like literal perverts right it's not like a kink shaming yes and you you go there and you pet them yeah they're not all sex perverts though it's just like degenerates if you've if you've played any of the more recent pokemon games i think it was introduced in x and y where it let you zoom in on your pokemon and like rub their tummy and then like sparkles come out and they're bonded with you. You can do that with the dudes. Okay, what's really cool though about this game. I feel like the Yakuza games have always been silly. But this game, and I don't know if it's the writing or the setting.

But this game has scenes that work as funny where I know I'm getting the joke. Like I know that I'm, there's one great, like tiny little sub story thing where this guy making a documentary about Japanese people in Hawaii wants to feature you in, in a program. And he keeps referring to you as like the samurai, the brave lone samurai. And they want to just interview, watch you in your like day-to-day life.

And the first thing that happens is they're like, oh, we've got some food for you. We want to film you choosing. And they have these two amazing Japanese, these two amazing Hawaiian style meals. Like, and then there is a bowl of rice. And they're like, so which one do you want? And you have to kind of go for the bowl of rice. And it keeps reaffirming, like, like you lose in darts

and they bring you a knife and a board so you can cut your finger off. And each one's like, guys, this is not it. You do not understand. With this experience, you do not understand the use of life. But it is like about that. Like it's about this dude being racist.

Like it is that scene. And it is like, I like it's about this dude being racist like it is that scene and it is like i know i'm getting it right like i know that i'm understanding it because it's not because it's set here and the writing is like so sharp and the performances are all so good did you guys did you guys do uh japanese voice actors or english voice actors i did english voice actors uh because that's how i played the the last game uh and i'm i i thought it was really really you know excellent they're all very good yeah i tried both but i thought they were both quite good um ichiban is is griffin mentioned how great of a character he is and that enthusiasm for things makes him like the perfect video game character

because when it gets like a little silly and irreverent he's game for it right it's not always about this like stoic like well i guess i'll deliver pizza or like eye rolling or anything like that right exactly he's like yeah you want me to work at your cafe because i kind of look like the guy that you thought you hired to work at the cafe. Yeah, I got an hour. Screw it. Yeah, absolutely. Let me in there. I just want to go back to something Griffin mentioned at the very beginning, because it still blows my mind. This game is fundamentally about recidivism and making room for reformed people who committed crimes and are now out of jail and are back in society and have like

served their punishment and how easy it is for people to look past that. And it's wild that we are talking about a game where you go to an island with an island to pet perverts. And ultimately, it is teaching you about making room for everyone, even people that you once found intimidating or frightening and realizing everybody has a place in society that is amazing that is it also just it's amazing this game has made me uh genuinely tear up last night i hit it with my first beat where i got genuinely uh teary at this game and also danny trejo is in it as like a crime the crime hawaiian crime lord is fucking it's outstanding does he look like danny trejo i feel like that's legally mandated that he has to

look like danny trejo yeah he has absolutely of course it i i it is not a it is not a flawless thing like i think that uh there is a little bit too much like, you know, character management in that at a certain point, like it kind of splits the party. And that is sort of annoying to me. And it has pacing issues. And it focuses a lot on Kiryu, which again, like doesn't really resonate with me as much as Ichiban. Like there are problems with this game, but it is also the most sort of generous and pleasant and fun and funny like rpgs i've maybe ever played and so like it is hard to uh to to really fault it for the the missteps that it makes i i think it is a very very special game i'm really glad that you guys resonated with it i was genuinely worried that this was going to be like me bloviating for a half hour about how great

uh this this game is but it's i am genuinely you guys are into it fully intending to play a lot more over the course of the many months because i'm guaranteed this will come up in game of the year discussion oh yeah which is like great on steam deck too flawless yeah i've been playing on steam deck everyone's great i'll tell you i mainly played on steam deck and then switched to desktop and i was really surprised by how good it like it looks incredibly good like it runs great on steam deck for sure but it looks like when you go into stores and stuff they're so richly detailed it's really like transported and uh no load times when you go into a store amazing which you wouldn't think in the year 2024 we'd have to worry about but i feel like I feel like this, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't have the familiarity, but

this reminds me of the Monster Hunter thing, right? Like. Yeah, I had the same thought. You're right. Every time you hear from somebody like, this is the Monster Hunter, where if you've never played Monster Hunter, you'll get it. And every Monster Hunter game, I feel like, is kind of this process of, like, the game getting out of its own way

to try to find the things that actually, like, sing. Yeah. And I feel like this feels to me like everything getting out of the way and just leaving the things that really work. Like, that you can, where you don't have to sort through as much craft. Don't let the turn-based combat scare you off. is like my number one big thing here because it is so interactive it is

so yeah yeah spacing is big yeah yeah being your weapons like your placement near items in the environment that you can use that's not turn-based that's like timing based are you and you also have like um opportunities where enemies fall and if you get an attack on them when they're downed then you get more damage so there's like a a time you know a time crunch as well it feels like an evolution of like chrono triggers combat

which is has always been my favorite combat in any rpg like this and uh i yeah no i've i was immediately grabbed by it all right it's a good fucking game man good fucking game yeah this thing's got to be at least 13 or 14 hours long from what i've experienced so far maybe it's got to be is this the best january in video game history i mean we i feel like we've said something along those lines a lot but i will say is a strong

ass two back-to-back weeks of the besties for sure january is always so fucking dead and uh man this is this is starting off with some high heaters yeah high heaters indeed uh excellent well let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll you know you do you know how like entertainment works okay so uh i don't normally pay attention to instagram ads uh but i guess the algorithm has decided that i really really care about random indie games and i've been surprisingly seeing a bunch of stuff that i like was not on my radar but through these ads and one of the games i saw was a game called tingus goose weird idol game and someone else gets to summarize it for me i haven't played it so not it you're fucking kidding juice j-dog j-dog got on tingus goose nobody told me about it okay you didn't say hey we're gonna talk about this on the the besties

like no one said that to me so here we are it's a very very weird game told me about it. Okay. You didn't say, hey, we're gonna talk about this on the besties, like no one said that to me, so here we are. It's a very, very weird game that I'm going to try to summarize the main mechanic of to the best of my ability. In this game, you are a long goose that is constantly growing its long, long neck upwards to the heavens.

There is, your mate goose is somewhere in the sky. You've got to get your neck long enough to reach them, and you do that by paying money to water your goose. Also, the goose is coming out of a pregnant stomach. A pregnant stomach on the table. Yeah. Occasionally, your long up and down neck will blossom smaller geese usually off of the sides. And then the whole time, this goose reaching up into the heavens is spitting out babies.

The babies, as they hit the blossoms, they interact with them in different ways. Some of the blossoms will, for instance, like knock a baby back upwards. If three of the same type of baby combine, they form a different baby that gets you a lot more money. And so all of a sudden, this game basically becomes an incredibly complicated sort of marble run experience, where you have this vertical column of different features that you are bouncing these little tinguses off of to try to make them combine with each other and hit as much stuff on the way down as they possibly can. That's about it.

It is also an idle game, so you can turn it off and they will continue to earn you money. There is a lot more to it than that. it than that but just sort of the building the machinery of of your tingus goose uh to try to create the perfect tower where these tinguses are hitting as many things on the way down and bouncing back up and wait those are the tinguses pretty sure yeah okay fair enough i didn't know that uh yeah it's like mousetrap kind of, where you're making a really productive, I guess, Rube Goldbergian mashup of babies and geese and making money. And it is, yeah, fascinating. There is layers of monetization that I have, like, not dipped into, and I'm trying to hold off for as long as I can.

But just, like, visually speaking, and in terms of what you're doing, it is unlike any idle game I've ever played before, and I'm, like, very engaged with it. It's great. Yeah. I really thought we would get more mileage out of talking about Tenga Scooch.

They told me about it. We did. We talked about it in the Slack. No i mean but like you understand how hard it is to keep a resort running especially one is that has been abandoned for so long right like you know how little free time i have to help with your goose adventure goose pregnancy that is now justin you said in the bessie's room i can't believe how good this game is. This is the Baldur's Gate of 2024. Oh, yeah. That's what I meant.

Now, did you think I meant Tengu's Goose? I actually did. Okay. Because it came immediately after discussing about Tengu's Goose. Yeah, that should have been more red like, I can't believe how little time I have to worry about geese right now because if I don't get the frigging antique store opened, then this guy's going to leave the island and I need the money to, I don't know. I don't get the freaking antique store opened, then this guy's going to leave the island.

And I need the money to, I don't know. I don't know anymore. Actually, I don't know why I'm still doing it. I get, guys, while I'm in the island, I get these checks for like American money. You know what I mean? Because it's a different currency on the island. And every once in a while, I get these like gigantic checks for helping out. And it's in American money.

And I'm like, I don't even know what to do with it. What do you want me to do? $10,000? For what? I have no use for your dirty USD. I need no condo coins. That's it. Take a Scoot is great.

It's also on Android for everyone that gets grumpy when we only talk about iOS stuff. And it's free. But obviously, there's a lot of monetization once you get past the first level. Honestly, play the first level, and you can get a lot of the experience kind of distilled. They do add a ton more after that,

but I do think it shows its hand pretty early, and I've really, really enjoyed it. Yeah. We have some reader mail. Okay, great. How can I help? Okay, first question comes from shelby mongan i have been told that uh in at least one of the yakuza like a like a dragon yakuza games you can put a grenade launcher in the mouth of a marlin and use it as a weapon i wish to play

this i wish to play this game where the hell I start? Does that ring a bell for anyone? That's, I believe, Yakuza Kiwami. I have not played it, but I know that it has a fish cannon in it. So I wish I could tell you more about it. I think you could do something like that in Zero also. Does this game have any very bizarre weapons in it? Oh, I mean, yeah, man. I mean, yeah, you get a dildo really early. You get a dildo pretty much right away.

This game gives you a dildo bat for free. Saints of Hermitage, you earn it. I will say, I just looked it up. It is in Yakuza Kiwami. It is a DLC weapon. I will say, I love this game. I love Dragon Infinite. Well, the DLC for it is kind

of gross uh because if you want to do new game plus uh in uh in in infinite wealth i'm pretty sure that is locked behind like a paywall which is which is you know i i think pretty shitty yeah do we know how much that paywall is i don't know that it matters but it's the Which is, you know, I think pretty shitty. Yeah. Do we know how much that paywall is? I don't know that it matters, but it's still... $15. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that's a lot to ask. Yeah.

We have another question. This comes from Josh. I've never played a Metroidvania slash search action game before, but I've heard good things about them. Would Prince of Persia be a good starting point? If not not how would you recommend entering the genre i think the prince of persia might be a great starting point it's a great it is a hard game but it also has a lot of accessibility features that like kind of smooth

out the rough edges of a metroidvania yeah so both mechanical and not some kind of worked into it you know through the mechanics it's not all just like menus right yeah but there is also like menu stuff to make the combat much easier and you can really tweak the experience to what feels good to you yeah that seems like a really good option i'm trying to think of another one i wouldn't say that's not just like punishing hard yeah um i mean i love metroid dread but similarly i think also pretty hard pretty hard. Yeah, this might be... I mean, can you still play Shadow Complex? I think there is a version on EGS if you want to go down that road. But I think this might be the starting Metroidvania if you've never played one. It seems like a good option.

You just need to get over the... You know, Ori might not be the worst. Ori and the Blind Forest is like cinematic and narrative and that's true beautiful it's it's that's not easy either i mean yeah that has some really good uh really tough platforming sequences so but i guess it kind of depends on what you're looking for but if you're looking for like a really strong narrative visual stuff like that i think or he probably checks all those boxes and there's a great sequel to it as well i will say the castlevania advanced collection is out on switch and it has um one of my favorites which is uh oh shit what was the game

aria of sorrow aria of sorrow um it's it's that one is phenomenal yeah that one i think that would not also not be a bad starting point okay we have one more question this is another yakuza question and it comes from joe pain since you'll be discussing like a dragon next week which obviously we just did i was wondering if we could get a small movie segment from plant at the end recommending some japanese films that might have similar vibes to the series yes so there are all sorts of vibes to the series you can have the serious stuff you can have the silly stuff you can have the style so i'm going to give you a mix uh first up i got tokyo drifter from uh 1966 it's uh seijun suzuki and this is a very like low budget very stylish

very cool very neon drenched um yak is a movie. I don't think you could do like any of these lists without doing Hanabi or Fireworks, which is a film from the 90s. It's Takeshi Kitano. And it is kind of maybe the quintessential Yakuza movie uh especially of a slightly more modern era and then uh yakuza graveyard which is a movie i watched last year it's from the mid 70s and it is just extremely cool as hell um kiryu would love this movie uh ichiban would be intimidated by this movie um and there's a new Release of it by I think a studio Called Radiance that you could check out

That I recommend Cool I kind of dug the first season of Tokyo Vice On HBO Max which is in a similar World like I don't think tonally it's as much like Yakuza but it's in that same setting And the idea of like a fish out of water Like new season is like next month

right cool i don't know yeah i just kind of let the algorithm give me what it thinks i need okay uh i think we did it do we have any honorable mentions to discuss who's got the time i i have been playing uh mario odyssey Henry, uh, in the two player mode, uh, where I, I do, I play as Mario and he is Cappy. And,

uh, I've, I, you know, I played the shit out of that game when it first came out. I think I got every single one of the power moons or whatever. Uh, and,

uh, coming back to it, it is the, just the best platformer, uh, ever, man. It's,

it's really, really solid, but you know, it also came out seven ever, man. It's really, really solid. But, you know, it also came out seven years ago now. So not much untread ground. I think we might be due. I would love to, man. I would love it. Please, anything. I think we're due.

I watched Taskmaster for the first time. Hell yeah. I watched the first episode of Series 5, and it was great. I had so much fun. And it really makes me sad that we don't really have an American version of this. Not even just, like, the format of it. Just the, like, tone, the, like, more casual, very uplifting uh friendly tone among everyone without it being without it feeling like super rushed like taylor tomlinson just lost launched a show called after midnight

and they're like i can see they're trying she's enormously talented and they have great people on the show but it's so rigid in terms of like you could tell that they're trying to shoot in under two hours or whatever it is. And it just kind of loses some of that magic. And but yeah, Taskmaster freaking great. Awesome. So they did do an American version of Taskmaster. I found that out after that. And not only did they do one friend of the show, honorary bestie Ronunchess, was one of the people on that show.

He was very, very good, but they only did one season of it, and it did not take off. Justin, I did have a question for you. Yes, sir. There's a game called Cobalt Core. Wait, we didn't really say what Taskmaster was, but you can watch all of it on YouTube.

It's free. There's a bajillion episodes. Oh, yeah. It shows its hand really quickly. You'll know immediately what this thing is. And it's hilarious. And it's great. It's, like, just really warm and, like, a great – I watched it over lunch.

Great lunch watch if you just, like – It's also a good one, like, if you have slightly older kids. Like, it's a really good family – I mean, it gets a little grown up in the humor. But, like, kids love, like, the talking about talking about like how you would solve the challenges and things like that it's we get a kick out of it yeah it kind of has a little bit of a mythbusters thing going on without the yeah for sure yeah it's a good crowd pleaser too if you need to just turn something on while people are hanging out like it's hard to not enjoy this justin cobalt core is a game that i recommended to you a few weeks ago uh-huh uh we proceeded to talk about it on resties very cool but i'm very very curious

about what you thought about it uh yeah so man i really i love deck building like roguelikes like this this is like a one of my favorite things i spend a bajillion hours in things like Slay the Spire or what have you. This is a really smart one where you are piloting a ship and you're sort of operating on a 2D plane so you can move your ship back and forth against the enemy ship.

It's like a one-on-one fight. And the size of your ship changes and where the weapons and stuff on your ship change. But you're basically playing cards that allow you to use the weapons on the ship to playing cards that let you move, playing cards that use shields. The big sort of difference is it's very sort of uh

directional like it's a placement in the world is very important in a way these games aren't so you can actually move out of the way of an attack uh rather than like take it on the chin and you have crew members as you play through repeatedly that um different sorts of skill sets. So some people focus on like moving things back and forth. Some characters create mines they can use to block shots or whatever. If you like if you remember FTL, if you like

FTL and any sort of like deck building things, it's sort of like FTL meets Slay the Spire. I think I heard someone audibly yawn. I can't beire. I think I heard someone audibly yawn. I can't be sure. I thought I heard an audible yawn. Anyone else can confirm for me a fucking audible yawn.

Someone heard it, right? It wasn't just me. Rachel, playback enhance. Let's get this freaking culprit. It's called Cobalt Core. It's great. It is. Game rules.

I'm really fond of it. I don't care if you do or not, honestly. Plant, you have anything? Yeah, the Kansas City Chiefs are playing in the AFC Conference Championship game this weekend. Extremely excited about it. And I just want to shout out my favorite Chiefs podcast once again. They actually were called Time's Hours, I believe, last time that we did this. Now they're called Only Weird Games because The Athletic doesn't always know what it's doing.

And you should check out the show, Only Weird Games. Even if you are not a huge football person, just a delight of a show from people who talk about everything from football to VeggieTales. A real, real delight. And that's it. I forgot. I wanted to mention. I forgot we talked about stuff that's not just games on the show. The second season of The Traitors is out.

That's the sort of werewolf-style reality show featuring former reality show stars. And it kicks uh kicks ass it's real good it's on peacock yeah justin mentioned that he was very fond of it i think last week so oh okay word is spreading cool uh thank you so much for listening anybody review the show this week we did but a plant if you could just recap the games we talked about briefly. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We talked about Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth. We talked about Tengus Goose, the

Weird Idol game. We talked about Cobalt Core. We talked about Super Mario Odyssey. And then we talked about some TV with Taskmaster, Season 5, Season 2 of The Traitors. And I mentioned one of my favorite football podcasts, Only Weird Games. Cool.

I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for Besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Ryan Arnett. We have Yard Drack and Mark A. Rogers Jr. Thank you for reviewing the Besties. Thank you for talking about the show. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter, which is great. It reviewing the besties. Thank you for talking about the show. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter, which is great. It's at besties.fan.

All our questions come from the newsletter comments, by the way. So if you have questions that came up on this episode or any other questions that might pop into your head, pop them down in the comments and we will try to address them. Next week, we are doing pal world a game that apparently is pokemon with guns i have not played it yet but that's pretty much checks the box not at all but it's not pokemon

with guns no it's like what the actual game is is totally different it presents one thing it's another thing it's a delight wow well that's exciting uh we might also be talking about tekken 8 we'll see tbd on that but certainly power world for sure uh and i think that does it excellent well thank you so much for listening uh we really appreciate you here he goes uh that is fun it's a fun energy that's gonna do it for us this week on the besties be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games Besties!