The Besties - Mario and Rabbids and Marvel and Sonic and Minions

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Mario and Rabbids, two distinguished IPs operating on identical levels of critical acclaim, have been squished together once again in the turn-based stratgizer, Sparks of Hope. Join us as we examine their japes, and also get really into a Marvel-based TCG. 2022's just full of surprises. Also discussed: God of War: Ragnarok, Resident Evil 8 DLC, Case of the Golden Idol, The Hidden, Willie's Wonderland, Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders 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!

Guys, I did a mess up. Uh-oh. Oh. Whoa, what'd you do? I did a pretty big mess up over here, and it's one I'm embarrassed about, and I'm also scared to talk about it, because what if I get fired?

Wow. From the besties. Yeah, so I got messed up and twisted around. I ended up playing Sonic plus Minions, the power of Groove. Oh, no. This week, for this episode. That's not what we're doing.

No, I figured if you want me to do a B segment on Sonic plus Minions, The Power of Gru, not The Rise of Gru, that's the film that just came out, but if you guys did want me to talk about it in the B segment, I could probably carry the show because I know you guys didn't play it because you're scared of the Minions. I mean, maybe we should just do it now.

Oh, in the intro? Yeah, I mean. Yeah, why not? Let's break the intro yeah i mean yeah why not it's let's let's break the form a little bit oh sure can i ask you a question uh yeah i'll accept any questions right now what would you say is like kind of like an iconic bit of dialogue from that game so there's the bit where sonic and knuckles are talking about dr robotnik's robot army and one of the minions pulls out a fart gun and shoots it into another minion's mouth, and he blows up big like a balloon.

And then a third huge strong minion squeezes him until the fart gas from the gun comes out of his butt and mouth, and that hits two other minions who start barfing. Yeah. Wait, is that dialogue? What's that? Was there any dialogue in there? Well the dialogue is like, the Master Emerald

has gone from Angel Island. Knuckles, why didn't you come to me sooner with this? And then it's like And then And then Wow And then... Yeah, so tremendous disrespect to the Sonic brand. And for this one, we're going to give it

two rings out of five. 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 Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best games of the year. My name is Ross Frosch, and I know the best game of the week. Hello and welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year show, and just by listening, you, my friend, have joined our club.

And we're happy. There's a little bit of jazz in that intro. There's always a little bit of jazz. happy there's a little bit of jazz in that intro there's always a little bit of jazz there's always a little bit of jazz the premise of the show is it's been strained beyond the limits of credulity uh but this uh this week we're going to be talking about um mario plus. The new one. I messed y'all up with my great bit about the power of Groove. Griffin, I Googled the game you were discussing. I was like, hell yeah. It's so exciting.

It makes a lot of sense. Sparks of Hope is the subtitle for this one. What's that? Chris, play it. Marvel plus Rabbids, Sparks of Hope. Three. I'm gonna take you for a ride. Hey, can we just talk about Marvel versus Capcom

two in this episode? Wait, should I tell people what it is? Yeah, probably. Oh yeah, Marvel plus Rabbids, Sparks of Hope. It's the sequel. So just one more time. Mario plus Rabbids, Sparks of Hope, it's a sequel. You said Marvel again, so just one more time. Oh, no. Mario plus Rabbids, Sparks of Hope. Wow.

There's an energy in the room, and I think this is going to be a great episode. Yeah, it sounds like maybe we've sparked up a little. Wow. That's not what I'm saying. Think of like XCOM, but now Mario has a gun instead. Mario has two guns. Mario has two guns and he crosses them across his shoulders. Like he's the coolest kid in a Nerf commercial.

Yeah. And yeah, it's like XCOM, but with Mario and Rabbids. You remember Rabbids? They were like really popular on the Wii. And they can actually get on Wii in this video game, which we will talk about right after the break. Did you say that the Rabbids

get on Wii in the game? Because that doesn't seem like a feeling that the Rabbids are capable of experiencing. Can you get on Wii, or do you feel it? Well, I'm probably a little bit of both, but yes, I believe there is a move in here called ennui. Oh, yeah.

Because we should mention, it's a game made by Ubisoft, who are French-Canadian and French. Yeah. So naturally, they would have ennui. Not to be confused with its creator, Henri. Yeah. What are we doing? Here's the thing. I'll put this up top. This game is fantastic.

It's really good. It's really fantastic. I liked the first one but never finished it. It had so many good ideas. If you weren't paying attention to games when Kingdom Battle came out,

that was like 2017, 2018, right? That was right around the launch. Switch launch, yeah. Yeah. And it was like, oh fuck, Ubisoft is making a game with Mario in it? This is gonna be garbage. And then it was really fun and well-made.

And this one fixes so many things that I didn't even realize were kind of broken with the first game yeah it feels like not just a oh they made one of those but much more of a like oh you kind of reinvented how this works like a big a big step forward that like for me somebody who's always been so you know what before let's talk about what's how it has evolved because can i like because i think our initial description was maybe a little surface sorry plant it was a good setup but maybe let's talk about what this actual game is and then we'll talk about how it's sort of been yeah can you can

you do that i'd be i'd love to so mario everyone knows mario and his friends his cavalcade and then the rabbits as plant mentioned they were popular on the way they're just these weird rabbits that are basically the minions um and in the first game they basically fuse join forces to fight a greater evil whatever but in function it just played out like a turn based strategy game where you're using cover and special abilities and tactics, effectively, to win battles. And that was like the bulk of the game was that. And that really hasn't changed. It's still at its core.

This game is a turn-based strategy game, but they have refined so many of the little elements to make it feel way more fluid and fun and satisfying and great. I don't know that I'll ever be able to play another grid-based strategy game and enjoy it in the same way again, because the big thing that they changed for this one is they got rid of the grid, so when it's your character's turn to move, they are free running within a perimeter

that you can see, and as long as you stay in that perimeter, you get to take your couple of actions and then end your turn and cover uh and it's so much fun it's so much more fun to do that and there are team moves where you can like hop off a teammate's head and sort of fly through the air for a few seconds and get like a different vantage point if you want like this is a game all about positioning and outflanking your opponents and the work that they have put into making that system

like really fast. So when you do it for the thousandth time, it's still pretty fun and mentally enjoyable. But just like so fluid and clever and oh, I can't say enough about it. Yeah, I'm trying to think of another turn-based strategy game that has done the movement thing that this game does. So Valkyria Chronicles...

I was going to say, that was the one that jumps to mind. Yeah, it does that, where you... But it doesn't feel good to move around in that game, and I love that game. Right, it has... If memory serves, it has, like, a move meter, like a timer that sort of runs down as you move, and then you can take your shots.

This is not quite as free roaming as that, but it feels great. It makes movement not feel like a punishing, terrifying thing where it's like, oh man, if I end in the wrong square, I'm boned. You have to get out there and do dumb stuff and it makes it feel like what a turn-based strategy platformer would feel like. It's wild.

Yeah, I think – so most of these games you have to spend points to do pretty much anything, right? Like you're spending a point or half a point to move, or you're spending a point to shoot, or you're doing – whatever you do, it costs something. points to shoot or you're doing whatever you do it costs something and i think the smart thing about this game is that there is no cost for a lot of stuff that you want to do that's just the fun stuff so right you're free to move around and you can move around all you want and then you're free to like kind of alley-oop griffin mentioned the jump slash throws that you can do in this game see you could run around with mario get as far as you possibly could towards the enemies and then you can take a rabid have it run up to mario jump off him go deep into the enemy's encampment and start blasting people away and then switch back to mario

and you could move all the way back to the beginning of the map from wherever you were and you haven't spent a single point of anything yet. Your character is still free to use all of its options, despite you having done really a ton of stuff. A lot of shit, yeah. Yeah, and then the other game they would have been like, oh, I hope you had fun. That was your turn.

Yeah. What I think this game really drills down on is, like, what is the fun, the most fun thing you do in a tactical shooter is run around to the side of somebody and shoot them and have a very clean shot at them and blow them straight to hell and that is like that is this whole game feels like here let us help you we know that's the fun thing to do so like let us help you facilitate that as best we can it's like you want the fun thing in a tactical shooter is to get have the perfect spot and just blast somebody and

it and it when you when you level somebody in this with like all of your very generous with like the um uh there's like abilities you can use to tweak like you know you get your uh a fire shot or like uh increased critical or whatever but the cooldowns on those are very generous in a way that like normally in games like this i tend to sit on those things because like is this the perfect moment is this the perfect moment and this is like i don't know you can do it to get in two turns just go for it yeah i just i don't know just do it it'd be funny the combat really is like constant it It is the like random encounter system is you then load into one of these very, I would say breezy battles for the most part.

Yeah, they're pretty quick. They're not particularly difficult if I was to leverage them first. Not at first. I think maybe I did see first. And there's a ton of side quests. And each battle has a number on it versus your skill level or your

rank so you can you can kind of take on things that are more difficult than what you're supposed to be taking on what i was going to say is even though it's not like it hasn't been super difficult yet that doesn't mean that it's not like strategically taxing like there are there are a lot of ways that all of your team members can work together. Luigi is an expert sniper in this game. And you can, like, set him into, like, you know, snipe into Overwatch anytime, like, an enemy enters his line of sight. And then you can, like, outflank an enemy with Mario,

kick them way up in the air so that Luigi can shoot them like a clay pigeon. It has these pretty advanced maneuvers that are really, really rewarding. And frankly, seeing Mario and Luigi accomplish a murder, such a killer

sort of maneuver was shocking. I like the idea that Luigi this whole time has been an expert sniper. He just didn't want to talk about it. He has no career consistency. Does he have a vacuum for ghosts or is he an expert sniper? You could be both.

It's 2022. It's the gig economy. That's why he's so scared of ghosts because he's killed so many people. He's worried it's going to be one of his targets. The only thing that I was struggling with a little bit, I'd like to get your thoughts.

Right from the beginning, you have a wide array of characters you can choose from. Now, roughly half of them are Rabbids, so they're easy to exclude immediately. Some of the Rabbids are good. No, they're disgusting to exclude immediately some of the rabbits are good no they're disgusting little pudding pies and i don't like them at all so i that's easy get rid

of them but i don't know i wish those have been a little bit more gradually introduced because i know and i know that this is more of a taste thing but i don't necessarily want every option available to me open so quickly that i'm like i don't know what i like to do like i don't know what i have good news for you okay it it it does both so you're right it all of that all the people are available and to be clear like everybody's quite different like you not using rabid princess peach big mistake tremendous mistake rabid princess peach has a triple rocket launcher that they shoot directly into the sky and then it rains hell on anybody and then they pull out their phone and like go like as if i mean what a delight i'm a rabid god's greatest mistake

well you ignore that you ignore that i think of death like an erstwhile friend that i hope they return to me soon but then to answer the other part is, like, so after you complete the first, there's a lighthouse in the first main world. You're right, yeah. And completing it is, you know, like the main goal of the first stage. After you do that, you get thrown into a, quote, optional battle. And there, the game's like, hey, you know what? You really have to use Mario Rabbid and I think like regular Princess Peach for this one. So I hadn't used either of them yet. And I think it kind of like gives you matches where it's like, hey, we really want to make sure that you're at least trying these.

Because I get that Rabbid Princess Peach is super fun. But Mario Rabbid punches so hard that the air actually combusts in front of him. You can make him go into over-punch mode, which is just like you plop him down somewhere, and if anyone gets close, he's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, get back here! these abilities what a concession they are what an abject like admission of failure on behalf of the rabbits are they have to give them triple rocket launchers and super fire punches just to like let you be a part of the conversation like just to get into the conversation to overcome their horrible horrible sounds and and appearance hoops i'm gonna i'm gonna give you advice from somebody that i i know you respect and that is christopher grant okay yeah i do thank you are you ready for this because i i had the same question i was messaging him i'm like i love this game i kind of like the rabbits but it does

feel like the one you know stain on the game and he's like no no no no no you have to think about what was accomplished here the the person who was responsible for rapids at ubisoft right went to nintendo the most protective company in the world and said hey pals here's what we're going to do first off you're going to give us your most important brand over over some of the most important brands in the world you're going to give us number one mario and they're like, yes. Do you agree with that? Okay, then we're going to give him guns. And they were like, oh, okay, okay. And they're like, okay, after that

we're only going to use him half the time. The other half of the time we're going to use rabbits. You remember rabbits? They're little porcelain trash bags that everybody hates. And Nintendo's like, right, right, right. And Nintendo's like, right, right, right.

And they're like, okay, one final thing. Half the Rabbids are going to be grotesque recreations of your most important characters. Horrible Buffalo Bill style. Yeah, sure. And reveal how utterly vacant

your actual characters are. And Nintendo is like, your actual characters are. And Nintendo is like, Yep, sounds good. Everything here makes perfect sense. They're like, Nintendo's like, one question, how is it online?

And you're just like, terrible. Okay, perfect. Will the terrible clones also have guns? Yes, of course, they will also have guns. Can we explore the writing for a second it's fine okay i'm not denying that it's fun i'm enjoying myself here's the question that

i have ubisoft when they have rabid peach say like vocalize hashtag winning do they think that's funny or do they think it's been like 10 years and it's ironic funny or has it come back around again and now it's cool what happened man listen to yourself yeah this is a rabbit this question this is a this is a cartoon rabbit that puts on a princess peach dress and inherits the powers of this of this royal of this monarch and you like, and then said like a four-year-old Charlie Sheen quote, and you're like, that's the line. It's 10 years. It's been 10 years.

It's been like four or five years. The fact that their flesh shell, as they call it, can even perambulate around the map is a real feat of engineering and demonic force. But you're like, can we get the memes a little more up to date? No, no, no. I think it's a bit of separate. Level three, please. We gotta separate the art

from the artist, you know? You know, like, did they intend for it to be cringe? Yeah, from the artist. That's what I'm saying. I think it's meant to be. They may have intended

for it to be sincere. I'm telling you, it's funny because... It's fucking funny. Because there is a rabid Princess Peach that murders people with the rocket launcher and then goes hashtag as if hashtag winning blah yeah you're

either with me or you're with the trolls blah i did try to play this i tried to play this one with henry and uh if you have a five-year-old that you want to get into the game with, I will say the strategy part, not great for him. Not enjoying that part where the Rabbids do memes, the best. Just that, please. Next time. That's my only critique is no strategy next time. I only want the thing Russ hates. I don't hate it.

I'm saying I think it's fascinating that they went to the depths you want more of the friendship i think it's funny or whether they were like no it'd be really funny if we went 10 years back and pulled from there i would i feel like if if they return to this this this series which if this one does well you know there's oh they will yeah i think um i would really like i feel I feel like the stumbling block, besides the character thing, which is like more of a taste issue, and I would really like to see them do away with the barrier between the overworld running around and the combat.

It feels so close to those being able to be one in the same. You know what i mean there and there's like a um everything in the combat is so like fun and fluid and good and there's like a 15 second like load when you go from or well describe describe what the overworld so the overworld is like i i'm it's like a mario game where you can't jump, basically, and you're running around and collecting coins. Truly wild decision, by the way. I mean, that was the first game was the same. I mean, that is exactly what it is.

I know, but like, it's Mario, let him jump. He's gotta jump. Or at the very least, don't make Mario run to pick up a box that's around that corner and then bring that back to put the box in a machine. And have fucking fun, guys. And PS, as long as we're nitpicking, I'm running with X?

I don't think so. Sorry. Sorry, not just for Mario. Any game ever, you want me to run with the X button? Yeah. No way. They had some fun. That was fun. I wish they could get rid of that and let it just be like a way.

So what happens is in the overworld, you're running around, you see a Goomba or something like that. You can, if you get the drop bomb, you can like slide into him basically. Slide tackle him. Yeah, a little bit. And then it's like a 10 second load. Yeah, a little bit. And then it's like a 10 second load. And then there's like an overview kind of screen where you can like, look at the situation that you find yourself in tactically. And like, I feel like that load, the going into it, and afterwards, the sort of like doling out coins and all that stuff. I would love to see a way for that to just be more fluid like one how do you design how do you do level design that is both the overworld and hey we've got cover pieces and like that seems that seems very difficult i i mean i it's not my job to make the game you know do you understand you know i thought i thought it was i

gotta i gotta fix for you are you ready for the fix? Just fix the load time. Keep it exactly how it was. Upgrade the damn switch to have an actually decent load time. I mean, you're 100% right. Of course, plant. That would be great. And they're not that bad, realistically speaking. I've seen way worse on this one. But I know you mean hoops.

They're not. But it is this like, I had this slight pang of like, oh man, the fight's over. Just because running around the overworld is like, it's functional, right? It's fine, but it's not. It gets the job done, but yeah. It gets the job done, but it's not fun.

And it's like, I felt myself being a little sad when I would leave the combat thing and I wish that was just more fluid. Right now, before a fight, you basically just get the load screen, which is really just in the bottom right corner. It's like a little spaceship flying. It's nothing. It's like a black screen for 10 seconds.

But imagine if that was like a rabbit that was dabbing. Don't you think that alone would be better? That should fix it. That would fix it. Let me check. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's easy. We can hot patch that. Yeah, okay. Cool. Keep an eye out for that hot patch coming tomorrow.

Keep your eShop open. The story's incomprehensible. I mean, should I have said that? I mean, does it matter? It's me. I mean, it is beyond. I've never not cared. Like, I've never not cared more about how little the story mattered.

Like, the combat is fun. He's saying hashtag winning. That's the story of the game that's it i do i do want to give a special shout out to the progression hooks in the game yeah they're good really great you you collect these sparks that you can equip i think two of to each character uh and they give them special abilities that you can use in combat and they level up alongside your characters and it's like trying to figure out who goes best with what with what like uh build i did not expect this game to give me that and it and it does and they're the stars from mario galaxy but with ears because

they're rabbit stars yeah and that's yeah and that's good that's good that they love it anything else before we move on out of this i think i feel like it's fun i mean it's really good i i i wish there was not as i don't know if i'm necessarily gonna keep i'm gonna keep playing i think it's one of the best strategy games of the play i've played in the last five years like. I think it's one of the best games of this year by far. Here he goes. I'm just saying. I agree. I'm sorry. I like things.

And listen, and listen, Chris is allowed to do this. It's not like he's about to make the same exact pitch for a different game in the future. No, this one I said was one of the best, not the best. Oh, God. Okay. All right, we'll be back with that and so much more right after this quick break. Boom! Boom! Boom!

Boom! Boom! Okay. Oh, I see the comic pages swirling past. We've entered the MCU. Yeah. Oh, shit. Chris is wearing a really, really accurate Captain America cosplay right now. He's walking in the room really slow.

Gush! Gush! Gush! Captain America cosplay right now. He's walking in the room really slow. Gush, gush, gush. Captain America's classic walking noise. Yeah. You love it. And now I just slammed six cards on the table. I'm ready to snap. Y'all, let's talk about Marvel Snap. Who actually played it here besides me number one snap fan

i did i played it i took a little bit not too much but i turned it on okay how about this i'm gonna set up what this game is i i wrote down a concise explanation because i'm not good at this sort of thing despite me doing it every episode here's it marvel snap free to play card game by former hearthstone people right you put cards on the battlefields there are three battlefields or lanes if you want right and each lane holds up to four cards after six turns the total power of each lane is added up on both sides of the table and whoever has the most power in that lane wins the lane win two lanes out of the three and you win the game it's that's did you say you said six turns right six turns six turns these are bite-sized little these are tiktok length matches toilet length thank you i adore that they're there for the poopin yes you you have

cards cards are levels one through six because there are also six turns. Each turn, you get one more power to spend than you had the last turn, and you can't store power between turns. Yeah. So in theory, you want to have a lot of low-level cards because you're only going to get, barring weird exceptions, one shot to spend that level six. But here's where it gets complicated. Very simple rules up front uh but over time they're like hey now these lanes each of them have their own rules like okay in this lane every card gets plus three power or in this lane uh half the less spots are already filled up with rocks um in this lane you can use your abilities twice when

you drop a card on it and are those rules set at the beginning of the match or do they change this is actually really interesting this is clever griffin you want to take it so like chris said the three lanes have different properties that really affect like how you should place your cards down in them uh but when the game starts only one of the lanes special properties is is revealed and then i think another one drops at three and another one drops at five i believe it's two and three oh is it two and three yeah yeah yeah it's back to back to back and there's a card that you can get that also tells you oh what's on the lanes so you may you may play a card in one lane and only to have like the

information for another lane revealed that maybe they should have gone in there or alternatively you can play into a lane like without knowing what its property is and then when it is revealed it might it might help you out if you play into a lane like are you just sort of surmising based on what happens to that card what the rule is no uh does it just tell you the rule doesn't take effect until it unlocks yeah it does not apply so it's it is uh so there's so much strategy to it right because you could put a card down in this lane that you know it's gonna like rack up a bunch of power yeah but your opponent might also do the same thing right they may burn the next few turns just trying to conquer that lane and if that's the case go take over the other two even if the other one doesn't have that special

property even if it's not going to benefit you you can stake your claim to it because you don't have to you know brute force their whole team you just have to win two of the lanes. And at first, when you very start the game, your cards don't have any real special powers, but rapidly they get, you know, you get new cards with new abilities that complicate all this. So let's use that example of just a very simple lane where

hey, every turn a card here gets one additional power. So you want to get it there early because that's the opportunity to add six power to a card right you could put down a card but your opponent could put down a card that has an ability where if someone puts some lays down a card across from it on the same turn it gains a ton of power so they're basically like predicting where you're going to put your card and the reward is they get a massive power boost. So knowing that everybody's going to go for that lane,

you might think, you know what, I actually should put this somewhere else just because I don't want to accidentally boost their power. Or there's a card that you can lay down at the end of the game that just completely changes the rule of a lane. So a player could spend all of this time playing a lane to boost its power and then at the end you could drop down scarlet witch i think it is and it would be like you know what actually we're just changing this lane to the opposite now every card here has negative power oh yeah yeah it's it's all kind of variations on the same thing right that what i i forget the

term for uh for for the type of strategy where you're trying to guess what your opponent will do uh game theory yo yeah game theory right uh it's all about that right but the pace of the game is beautiful it is really, I've never played a card game like this that is so brief. And that really fits into my life in a major way right now. Griffin, what do you think about the gambling part of it? Because that's the other part that I find very clever. And to be clear, right up top, this is free to play. This is not real money that we're talking about with gambling whatsoever.

Can you explain how the snaps work? Yeah. So basically what happens is it's six turns, right? And then there's a little, like, whoever wins a round gets the special element that helps grant you a higher ranking, right? And any time in the game, you can snap. You have one opportunity to snap on your side. And that's you saying, you know what? I'm doubling it.

I'm effectively, you know, like raising the pot. So now it's two. And that will double at the very end. When you finish the game, whatever that number is, it also doubles. And your opponent could snap. So then it went from one to two to now four. And at the very end of the game, that would raise to eight. At any point, you can retreat and just say, you know what?

I'm not going to win this. I don't want to lose that element. I don't want to lose rank. So I'm just going to bail. So if you bailed right at top, you'd only lose one. If your opponent snapped and then you bailed, it's like, okay, you only lose two. But if you go all the way to the end of the game and both of you have snapped and then you bailed it's like okay you only lose two but if you go all the way to the end of the game and both of you have snapped and you both double down

somebody's gonna get a lot and somebody is gonna like get torched it's basically like you're playing poker and you're calling and calling or raising the other person and then you fold in the last hand effectively the same idea right yeah it's it has it so i will say this i got i mean i played hearthstone for forever and spent a lot of money on hearthstone bought a bunch of packs of shit uh and that desire is not quite i mean it's not nearly as strong yeah what is the this game i don't understand what the real money part of this game is you use the cubes to get into well drop new cards right well yeah so the real money part of this is okay so the way you get new cards in the game is by leveling up the cards you already have so you start with a bunch of cards right and then as you win you get

like a currency that lets you quote level up cards, which is just making them look visually cooler. They don't get more powerful. They're just prettier. No, the cards are the cards of the cards. Yeah, they go 2D and 3D, and then they're like animated cards, right? I like that part, by the way. I did want to touch on that. I never care about cosmetics, especially when you're dealing with something that's as visually rich as the Marvel Universe where there's like a bajillion different Hulks or whatever.

So I don't care if I just got gray suit Hulk, but seeing my cards that I already have, like look cooler, strong. Yeah. Like look cool. Like there's frame break is the first upgrade you get. They're like,

Oh, now Hulk's muscles are so big. The car can't contain them. That's cool. I like that. I'm a child. So, so you do that.

You upgrade visually, right? And each time you upgrade visually, that also upgrades. There's two separate ranks. There's your competitive rank, right, where you're doing it to players. And there's just like, I think they call it like your collector rank, which is how many times have you upgraded cards. And as you build that up, the game is like, hey, you're level 32. Here's another new card.

32 here's another new card and as the higher you go the more cards the game gives you which you can then upgrade which then eventually unlocks more cards right my guess is at a certain level that there comes a point where it's like hey i just don't have like enough cash to upgrade my i don't have enough in-game currency that they've been very generous with to upgrade my cards. And since I'm not upgrading my cards, I'm not upgrading my collector's rank. And since I'm not upgrading my collector's rank, I'm not getting new cards. Yeah. That said, I don't know.

I'm not actually sure that's what they care that much about, just the way they even frame the store. The top of the store is cosmetic variants of established cards that you already have. And that seems like where the money is. That's like more of a Fortnite, like, oh, I'm buying a, I don't know, a pair of pants for Ant-Man. I have a pixelized, like, 16-bit version of Wolverine. And I have a Rocket Raccoon. Yeah, my Rocket Raccoon is like Rocket Raccoon. He's like itty-bitty carrying a gun that's like 30 guns high and just looks awesome.

And again, total mark. I am just completely exhausted with the MCU. I thought I was exhausted with Marvel, and here I am being like, oh, you know? Is this the best use of the gold, the very limited gold that i have because i don't want my spend self-spend money on these games i don't know probably not a lot of these i have ducked into many of these games right and that is why i held off on this one there are a lot of other like just game loft designed yeah garbo on the App Store of like the crystals.

And I mean, there's match three games. There's, you know, card collecting games, not unlike this, idle games, whatever. So I was holding off. But like, this is actually fun. It's fun from the beginning. It requires you to think it isn't just like, well, I need to, to you know upgrade my cards and spend this time and spend this currency and oh they need another five bucks for me to keep having fun like it's just yeah it's good for the and what a blessing if i could say as somebody who has played a lot of

these sorts of like you know fourth tier you know right about canonically probably equal to the little golden books adaptation of spider-man no way home you know what i mean to not have be burdened with some like mid-level dude writing his fan fiction about like so anyway then nick fury is like there's seven hyperion shards yeah the the crawl has spread no it's just like hey you won't play you'll play a card game with me it's got spider-man right in it that is such a good point yeah and like also kind of like the weird i don't know if i can even call them stories but like bits that appear in the game based off the type of cards that you're playing so an example this is squirrel girl is a card right and when you play a squirrel

girl it drops squirrels on every other lane that that squirrel girl is not on right so you can fill up with squirrels and then sentinels from x-men but get more sentinels so if you play a sentinel you get another sentinel in your hand you can fill up a lane with that right and then there are things where like just certain lanes will have rocks appear on them or like ninjas that actually do negative damage. So now you have a lane that's full of like sentinels, rocks, and squirrels and a little girl. And you can play the carnage card, which eats everything and then just gains power from it. So just this idea of carnage, eating a whole bunch of rocks and little animals i just find like utterly hilarious and in

line with the characters like the the abilities are good versions of who the characters actually are not just like well you know it's a card game and then like we threw captain marvel on it it's so good it does sound really good i'm'm like genuinely interested now. Yeah. Good work. I've been looking for something else to enjoy. Any other games that everybody's done? I mean, we have some reader mail to jump into, and then I think we have like a quick, maybe what else we're playing? That sound good?

Yep. All right, sure. Let's do it. Okay, let's do it. Very quick, right off the top, just building off of what we said, from Halloween Shudder, is Marvel Snap enjoyable without paying for any of it?

For the first few hours, it sure as hell is. This one is for Fresh and Griffin, I think. I guess for everybody. From Deez, do you have any roguelite recommendations? I adore Hades and Dead Cells, and would love to try more in the genre. I know. I mean, yeah.

Talk about that whole episode. This is for me and Fresh specifically, I think, because we both have the Isaac bug. I would really like to try to get into that. I feel like I would really enjoy it. I just don't. It seems hard to start. and I just don't, it seems hard to start. We could, honest to God,

one of the things I enjoy about Isaac is that Russ has sort of led me, guided me through the process with a tender hand. And that is, I mean, I always like that part of games when somebody can be very into a game and sort of spread that around. I think this is a great game for it because there is a lot to learn but it also like has a infinite array of rewards for people who like put the time into it um yeah i mean the only hesitation i have with binding of isaac you know the the person here

mentioned hades and dead cells and both of those games are very much about like getting more powerful the more you play and binding of isaac is while you're unlocking stuff you really are starting from scratch to some extent at the beginning i disagree with the notion though because the stuff that you unlock just by like you know beating a certain boss is a certain character or doing one of the in-game challenges like those are huge and transformative that's true run carrying items that like binding of isaac i think is at its hardest when you start playing and haven't like unlocked those those things yet yeah i would i would reiterate the thing we talked about a couple weeks ago which is if you're playing binding of isaac on, you happen to be playing on Steam, go to the workshop, download external item descriptions.

That like is a total game changing. It just teaches you exactly what every single, it tells you exactly what every item is before you pick it up. And I think that is like a really great introduction to all the systems that are at work. So yeah, highly recommend that. And then, I mean, Slay the Spy.

Once you get out of the sort of like action genre i worry that like we're talking about a different thing yeah yeah i mean enter the dungeon is also very good for what it's worth this one's from charles do you think we'll ever see a day where services like game pass or ps plus extra will be available on other platforms. Will a console war ever end? I mean, do you count Game Pass being just on your TV without needing an Xbox? Yeah, I think that's the thing is like we're already there, right? Game Pass is available on screens. It's on pretty much every screen except for like a closed garden screen like a nintendo switch so i think that kind of already is coming to pass i also just i don't know i kind of i kind of just assume that

sony's heading the way of sega over the next 10 to 15 years and will be like an amazing software publisher but it's hard for me to imagine sony competing once everything moves towards streaming just because the company like sony the company is not built to compete with a company like microsoft or you know you say that but i still don't have like remote play on for xbox like i i have they have some solutions for some games but it's not the way you can just straight up control your, your PlayStation. Oh yeah. I mean,

I don't think remote play for Xbox definitely exists for what it's worth. Yeah. I also just don't think like that's the, again, the future that I think anybody's talking about. I mean, not all games are not all games work with it. Like with the, with the Xbox remote play. Right.

But I mean, remote play 10 years from now is like the least important thing. Right. Yeah. But I'm saying it in terms of like having the the wherewithal like that's not an institutional thing that you just like have oh no i i see what you mean i guess what i'm saying is like microsoft owns azure which is like one of the most powerful cloud computing and distribution systems on the planet and it owns the means of turning that data into marketing data that it can sell which will make it extremely cheap for it to like make games and game pass because it could

just make money off of all of that we're like sony like makes tvs and headphones which is like a humongous business they have certainly done a better job than xbox in in for the past i would say like five years of like hanging their hat on a bunch of different like really developing and investing in ip and franchises in a way that like microsoft absolutely is not but microsoft is just investing in it by buying companies right they bought bethesda they bought you know all these studios yeah and i'm not saying i don't think sony's going anywhere i'm actually saying what with the investment in ip i think that's smart because if they are not

going to be making consoles in the future which honestly who knows if anybody's making consoles in the future the best thing that you could have is ip do you feel like you could get the Sony higher ups to sign off on like a version of the PlayStation brand that isn't tied to hardware because it feels like such a hardware first company it makes you it makes you wonder if they could like hang in that ecosystem

I don't think there's there yet I think I think if you look at like their PlayStation plus offering right now everyone was expecting hey they'd throw god of war ragnarok right at launch like that makes perfect sense of course they want a lot of subscribers like what game pass did and i don't i mean they've publicly said we can't make the numbers work if we do that the only way we can continue making these high-end single-player experiences is if we charge people the full price for them so it would require like i think a

few years of them looking at the numbers and seeing this is the only way we can get subscribers to our thing um because we're competing with game pass which is like throwing a dozen games out a week uh i think it'll be a while before they get there you know i think we have one more at least one more console cycle after this console cycle after that who fucking knows i don't think the cloud computing stuff is there yet um i think we're at least three to four years away from it being like spot on great for a lot of people um and then after that the way of nintendo which is like you know where sony's like who knows if we're even going to have third-party developers on our, if like that's even what we're competing for.

But we make three to five killer games a year. And it doesn't matter. You should buy our console anyway, even if it no longer makes sense. Right, but Nintendo's been making a ton of money on third party now as well. No, that's true. They do both. But I mean, they've survived in the past without it. That's true.

I feel like we've been having a version of this conversation for many years, right? And it makes so much sense to me. Like, and it's not unlike the, I mean, it is basically the same conversation of like,

why do we have games on discs anymore? I gotta say though, like in a world where PlayStation and supply chain is a huge part of this, but like in a world

where PlayStation is increasing the prices in some territories and still can't keep PlayStation 5s on shelves, it doesn't feel like we've had that big whiff on console sales that would prompt people to abandon the business. Like people are still wanting to buy them. Oh, no, of course. I mean we're talking like 10 to 15 years from now. I know, but that goes quicker than you think. to buy them like oh no of course i mean we're talking like 10 to 15 years i mean right i know but i know i that's because quicker than you think i mean they're probably deeply into development on the one that will start in you know what i don't know three years three or four years yeah like what we need is for a cloud console to come out and not be a clown fart from minute one yeah if we hadn't if we had instead of a uya

or a stadia if one of those could come out but not fail instantly uh we might have it we might have a shot at this gang i i will also i mean we won't have a cloud console like i i think again this kind of already exists there are people who play game pass just on a tv or on a phone or on whatever app they want and like that's that's fine enough for them and and i think consoles aren't going to disappear like the hardcore pc gaming like get the metal in your house like that still exists and i think both microsoft and sony are getting closer and closer to that like i it's i don't think it's a surprise that sony's games are appearing on pc right like yeah i think everybody sees that if you are going to be

a hardware like if you're going to be playing the hardware game pc or something that looks like pc is where where that's at so you know we'll have very hardcore looks like PC is where that's at. So, you know, we'll have very hardcore people like us who have that, and then a bunch of people who are just like, whatever, I can stream it, and it's totally fine. All of which is to say, yes and no for both of these. Like, I think PS Plus Extra could just be Hulu to Game Pass's Netflix, right? Like, I don't think either of these companies are going anywhere. I just think that they're accomplishing different things. This is fascinating.

I could keep talking about it for a much longer time, and I don't think we can. I got one. You know, I'm going to save the next question for later. We should talk about honorable mentions because we have a little bit to talk about before we wrap this thing up. What all are you playing i'll do mine real quick because y'all have talked about it to death already but uh i started playing case of the golden idol last thursday and finished it last friday uh because i could not put that shit down give me

love it give me one of these monthly i said the same thing after obra den came out where i was like this is the cleverest this scratches an itch that games don't scratch for me can't scratch for me and and i all i want is more of this like logic and deduction using like visual cues and exploration and and just trying to feel like the smartest motherfucker who ever lived. That game made me feel like that. Case of the Golden Idol makes me feel like that. And it's hard because when Griffin said,

give me one of these monthly to Lucas Pope, Lucas Pope, I remember this, when Obra Dinn came out, gave Griffin two thumbs up. I remember him sending a picture like, two thumbs up every month, no problem. Yeah, there's gonna be the re-return of the Obra Dinn. There is gonna be,

look who's coming to nautical dinner. It's Obra Dinn. And all of these, yeah, he lied. What a lying sack of crap. Look who's coming to Obra Dinner? Is that what you meant to say? That is what I meant to say. Thanks, Justin.

Yeah, Case of the Golden Eyeball. It's cool it has like a great weird sort of gothic uh fantasy tone almost that is surprising uh and the puzzles that it produces are are truly truly clever and and spectacular and um i i tore through that shit. It is a great game. Unrelated thing, but just because we mentioned Lucas Pope, I did want to say. I recently found out that the first thing that he did professionally was make a – worked with other modders to make an Anaconda mod for Quake that was officially licensed by Sony to to promote the the john voight

star anaconda that's amazing good it's so good uh i wanted to mention i've been playing god of war ragnarok actually i think we all have to some extent um there's uh very little that we can talk about it but plant and i uh talked about or we'll talk about the first three to four hours on resties on tuesday um it's you know we won't go into story or anything like that but if you're just like kind of curious about what it feels like to play we do just dip into the very beginning of it um and then obviously when the game comes out in a couple weeks we'll do a big old splashy besties episode diving into the whole thing yeah lead boy which way right into entertainment that's

what we're going to be delivering for you uh i've been playing the resident evil 8 expansion and i don't think any of us need to play it it's kind of my takeaway it's not yeah it's pretty it's a pretty big bummer considering resident evil 8 is one of my favorite games uh it's yeah it it just feels like a lot more of old school resident evil like you walk around as rose i i was playing it in third person because i think that might be the only option for that. It adds third-person mode to regular Resident Evil 8 too. And what I've realized about... This game has helped me come to something... I don't know, like a big conclusion about why I love Resident Evil and why I don't.

I like when a Resident Evil game starts as like you're in a regular world and slowly real creepy evil stuff, you know, like sneaks in around the edges. And by the end, you're like, oh, around the edges and by the end you're like oh wow i thought i was in my planet but now i'm in some different universe i don't like resident evil when it starts out as like you're in a horror mindscape and like you're like scrambling for pieces of reality and this is quite literally that you are in a mental recreation of the castle lady d's castle from resident evil 8 and you're fighting like mind zombies with your telekinetic mold powers it's just like it kind of seems like sci-fi stuff i don't like it kind of seems like what they did

with the alan wake dlc where the main game started it's like oh you're there's a pacific northwest town and then blah blah and then all the dlc for that game was like you're in alan wake's dream scenario and yeah not what i was there for necessarily yeah also a weird thing about the third person mode you can't see the character's face if you turn the camera what do you the character's face if you turn the camera. What do you see? If you turn the camera and you get to a point, you can get halfway there, and once you would start to see their face, the character just turns around.

It's kind of what Fortnite does, sort of. What? Fortnite kind of does that, where you can't quite fully rotate the camera around. Is that what you mean? Resident evil is fortnite now basically yeah i mean they've already done that crossover so yeah um but yeah a little bit of a bummer that said revisited resident evil 8 because i was like hey i'm not feeling this i should go check that game out again just see how it hits still still good turns out i can better still absolutely

great do you like it better in third person um no but i do like it better not on stadia sure that has been a pretty noticeable change it looks you know what this game looks really good i didn't i didn't get that experience really the 800p on stadia wasn't doing it for you i i completely forgot about how I could not get past the very beginning of that game where you're walking through snow and you have to go under a chain fence. And I couldn't do it

because I could not distinguish what was a fence. Yeah, it was... So pretty cool this time. I still think Stadia is going to make it happen, though. I know they've had some struggles. You think they're going to turn it around? I think they're going to turn it around. There's this time. I still think Stadia is going to make it happen, though. I know they've had some struggles. You think they're going to turn it around? I think they're going to turn it around. There's still time.

Justin has a bunch of stuff he wanted to talk about. Yeah, sorry, just real quick. Sid and I like to watch horror or thrillers throughout October, and I just wanted to highlight three real quick in order of quality. The Hidden, which Plant plant recommended is on the criterion channel this is what they call it criterion yeah criterion collection or yeah no criterion channel you're right criterion channel it's outrageous that this is not a gigantic movie that people i watched it it's from 87 it's about kyle mclaughlin and and a police officer hunting down aliens. It's frigging great.

It's so good and funny and cool. And you, and unbelievable. This is not a big thing. Please go watch that movie. You will love it. Second. I watched last night,

Sid and I watched Willie's Wonderland, which features a silent Nicholas Cage killing a restaurant full of creepy animatronics that want to eat him. And he never speaks the entire film. And I mean, if you need more pushing from me, I wonder if they got that good, you know,

union, right. Were they doing that? Yeah. Yeah. I'll work for points on the backend. That, and I did want to highlight one that's so unbelievably bad,

and it was not a disappointment because it is exactly what I wanted it to be, is Dangerous Game, The Legacy Murders. Whoa. Which you have never heard of before, and that's fantastic. I'm about to send you all the poster for this movie, and I will tell you a little bit about it. Dangerous Game was that story where they hunt man, right? Okay, so this has nothing to do with that.

Oh my God, the poster. It's a thriller about a rich family on an island that starts playing a board game and then they start getting killed yeah and no one knows who it is the rich family includes jonathan reese myers john voight allowed to be back in the mix apparently and of course will sasso as an as it exists. Oh, no! Guys, this movie, you will not... It is unfathomable where this movie decides that it is going to go

with this movie. It is unbelievable. I want to say, just to talk about the poster real quick, I have never seen so many heads jammed into the reflection of a knife than this poster. Yeah, it's like this killer is about to get

like the fucking nuke kill streak because it's like you got them all lined up all on there also just google image search it the first image only has four people and and they're like no no no we should try that again we need 30 if this image is to be believed then john voight and jonathan reese myers are about eight times the size of the people at the bottom of the knife yes they are they are titans yeah poor dylan playfair of uh of descendants fame is getting very he's like right near the tip yeah um it's amazing it's really an amazing film if you want to, like, really just lose it for two hours. Because Sidney and I were, like, repeatedly staring at each other, like, how is this what this movie is? I'm always looking for a movie that's trying something and doesn't get there, but is still putting so much out on the table.

You're like, I don't know. There's something I can pick at here. Let me see. Oh, you got roles? I'll be fine. I like these roles. that's dangerous game the legacy murders it's available i don't know just go find google it and just watch it and the director of that movie sean mcnamara best known for the being the producer of hoovey it's just called Hoovy. Hoovy? Fresh. Who are we thanking this episode? We're thanking Hoovy.

We're also thanking the following people for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for writing reviews. We have Agarden Gnome, Podcast Listener 14, Harls G, and Mace Window is a Cat. Thank you for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. Thank you to everyone else you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast

thank you to everyone else who has written reviews for the besties on apple podcast it is awesome of you we appreciate it the um the the most recent films that this man has directed before this were the king's daughter sister swap christmas in the city sister swap a hometown holiday and jl family ranch 2 and then cats and dogs 3, Paws Unite, and then Aliens Stole My Body, Christmas in Evergreen, Tidings of Joy. This movie rules. Dude's getting work. He's working. Everybody, grab your pencils, grab your paper.

Here are the things we talked about this week. Mario plus Rabbids, Sparks of Hope. We talked about Marvel, Snap, we talked about God of War Ragnarok, Resident Evil 8, Winter's Expansion, Case of the Golden Idol,

The Hidden, Willy's Wonderland, and my favorite hidden object game, Dangerous Game, The Legacy Murders. It does sound like that big fish games. Next week, we're going to be talking about Bayonetta three, a game I'm,

I'm looking forward to chatting about like the first two can't imagine that anything will be controversial about this one. And, and I think that's it. Any, anything else? Anybody? No, I'm just thrilled to be here. and I think that's it anything else anybody? no I'm just thrilled to be here

I'm thrilled we had such a good time hope you did too thanks for joining us for the besties and be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends get the world's best games Besties!