The Besties - Metroid Prime Remastered Proves that Metroid Prime Still Rules

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Just one week after our episode about surprise game releases, Nintendo went ahead and stealth-dropped a remastered version of the classic GameCube Space Pirate-slaying Simulator, Metroid Prime. But is it still fun after almost 20 years and an intensive graphical spit shine? I mean, yeah, we said as much in the title.Also discussed: PSVR2, Forward: Escape the Fold, 20 Minutes Until Dawn, Knotwords, Dick Tracy  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!

Okay, everyone, I have a very important piece of media that I think we should play right now for the people at home to just maybe look inward and think about themselves and what they've believed all these many years. Oh, that's nice. Juice, hit it. We're the Mario Brothers and plumbing's a game. We're not like the others who get all the fame. When you think you're in trouble, you can call us on the double. We're faster than the others. You'll be hooked on the brothers. Huh! Thank you, Super Mario Bros.

It seems like the only thing you haven't drained is my bank account. For super service, call or text Super Mario Bros. Plumbing today at 929-55-MARIO or reach us on the World Wide Web at smbplumbing.com. 955 Mario or reach us on the worldwide web at smbplumbing.com. Okay. Now for further context, this was a official commercial for the super Mario brothers movie, which is coming out quite soon. And it's basically like an animated presentation,

reaffirming that the Mario brothers live in New York city and their plumbers. And, but there's an important thing that maybe you noticed while watching this commercial twice in this officially released nintendo approved commercial they are called the mario brothers no that's it doesn't sound like that i was gonna say she sounds like an imposter hey guys hey guys hey guys yeah I'm calling the number. Oh, shit. Thank you for calling Super Mario Brothers Plumbing. It's the mini Luigi. If you need service, please text us at the same number.

You just call 929-55-MARIO. That's 929-556-2746. Message us about any issues wherever you live. House, condo, mansion. And we'll be sure to text you back right away because at Super Mario Brothers Plumbing

we don't say, let's-a wait. We say, let's-a go. Oh, and check our website. SMBPlumbing.com we're still working on it so more updates to come bye-bye okay so to be clear we are not sponsored by this movie but uh it seems like there's disagreement even within the approved nintendo canon of how to say mario brothers because the woman who says it, says Mario.

No, she does. They're trying to have it both ways. She says it, it's like, Mario. No, she says Mario. It's like if you merge the two. Oh, yeah. It's not like a shrawl. You gotta call Mario, like you say it. She's like, oh no, my

egg steamer's broken, you gotta get Mario. my egg steamer's broken you gotta get mario like no it's flaring up mario here's what i would add and say that if the mario brothers within the canon of the universe approved this woman to do the ad read not only not only once but twice they must have no problem with her saying mario repeatedly to the point where i think it's okay so we can all move on with our lives and say that nintendo agrees that it's mario and officially approved there you go wait you know nobody can't like you were not we're not persecuting you i get mario i'm trying my best i am i am i get tweets every fucking day over this. Every day.

Well, there's worse things people can tweet at you about. That's fair. Yeah, that's true. You should be happy that they've clung on to that. That's a good point. It says that, okay, so now Mario says he wants me to sign up. We're a family-owned and operated business providing white glove plumbing services to Brooklyn and Queens. Please click the link to sign up to get exclusive updates, service offerings, and more.

I'm not positive that this will help me with my plumbing problems. I feel like this isn't even like a good, I actually think guys, I don't want to freak you out, but I think they're just trying to get me on a mailing list. Well, honestly, it won't help you because you don't live in Brooklyn and Queens. So obviously it's not going to be. That's true. They're not going to track the West Virginia to fix their, I don't know, toilet.

Why do you guys think that comments are disabled on this video? That's weird. That is weird. There's so many people that are hooked on the brothers that just want to share their love. 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 Ross Frosch, 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 ross rushkin i know the best game of the week welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest in home interactive entertainment it's game of the year club and just by listening

you are a member you uh your contributions are valued here but we are going to be the ones talking mainly on on this episode and we're gonna talk back you can leave some space for you uh but today we're going to be talking about metroid prime remastered what's that metroid prime remastered is a remaster of metroid prime which originally premiered on the gamecube like a long, long time ago. It's first-person Metroid, and it's maybe the first Metroid that I think I really love. So let's go talk about it, please. Okay.

I mean, yeah, okay. Yeah. This is... Let's get the awkwardness out of the way first. I made this game yeah by saying that i wanted it and then a week later nintendo gave it to me yeah it was actually later that the day we recorded the besties episode later that day is when the the uh the nintendo direct happened this was surprise dropped and And Justin was so certain this would happen that he didn't

one, watch the Nintendo Direct or read anything about it. So that when we decided to do this as the episode, he said, I'm sorry what? Why? I said, why are we doing Metroid Prime? Because I'm not in the daily grind anymore.

I'm not out there on the front lines of the console wars. You didn't hear about the PS6 that also got announced that day? What? The PS6 that got announced that day, you didn't hear about that? It's bigger and better. I'm not a child. Let's not pretend that a reissue of a Metroid Prime

is on the level of a major news story, okay? Confirm. Y'all, so did all of you play this game yes yeah i assume that's right i mean you mean the new game of the year well no i mean i mean the original like when it came out you did you all have a gamecube here's the thing uh i i didn't have a gamecube it's like one of the only game consoles that I did not commit serious time to. It is my big gap. That's not true. You didn't have a, did you have a Super Nintendo?

I had a Super Nintendo, but that's not Metroid Prime. Where would you have been at in your life when GameCube was like, was out? Because it was definitely a lesser, like, I didn't do much GameCube. High school going into college. Okay. Which was also like peak, like I didn't play many video games. Too cool for school. Anyway, I thought this game looked like extremely ugly.

And I was like, why is Metroid first person? I don't need this. Man, I was wrong on both accounts. Pretty, pretty, pretty bad. The art design of this game is extremely clever. And it turns out that Metroid feels a lot more natural for first person for me. And I'm trying to piece together why. But before we do that, can one of you tell people what this game actually is?

Yeah. I mean, it takes a lot of the concepts of the Metroid series, a lot of, you know, gear gating, collecting the sort of standard Metroid power-ups. Yeah, I call them Metroidvania is the genre that I have created to describe that.

That's really cool. That's badass, actually. You got your, your Varia suit. You got your super missiles, et cetera. Only it puts it in

a first-person shooter package. There's some other sort of unique stuff. There's a series of visors that you can get that kind of change the gameplay, like a thermal visor or a scan visor that lets you learn about enemies' weaknesses or more about sort of world history.

And it is a very, I would say it's a more puzzly affair than you might expect at first blush. There's a lot more solve solving puzzles in the environment uh as a focus rather than uh just straight up and down you know first person and exploration i mean exploration is a huge component of it more so than the enemies are just as often as they're like a challenge to fight it's more a challenge to figure out how like just the solution to what's the best way to to take them down as they impede your progress through right through the world yeah and i remember when the gamecube version was announced

and they're like oh the next metroid is going to be a first person shooter game and i was like fuck that that sounds terrible i adore super metroid i just want that why are you turning it into doom whatever and the fact that they were able to port over the like core juice that is the metroid franchise into a firstperson format such that it elevates the whole thing rather than just kind of tacking on to the latest popular genre. Such a huge accomplishment. And the fact that this game, outside of the graphics and a control change,

is almost untouched, like gameplay-wise, is almost spot-on exactly what it was previously, shows you just how much they nailed it the first time around. It is pretty remarkable. I think it is also very hilarious, if you look at the timeline of this, just to talk about fan reaction. They dropped Metroid Prime in 2002. Everyone's like, ugh, how could you? And then they turned it into a first-person shooter. Everybody loves it. Just a few years later, they're like, hey, how could you? And then they turn it into a first-person shooter. Everybody loves it. Just a few years later, they're like,

hey, what about this? What if it's pinball? How about Metroid Prime pinball? You thought you were upset about first-person. Now it's pinball. Well, they also had Metroid Prime Hunters, a first-person shooter on the Nintendo DS that had its own special little thumb strap

attachment, little nubbin that you put on your thumb so that you could control uh so it could simulate a second stick um i i think that we talk about sort of the big things about this game i would say the the biggest kind of thing that sets it apart from a lot of other first person shooters is that the morph ball power up is is in the game which allows you to essentially at will switch to a third person perspective where you're this little ball and there's a whole suite of neat sort of additions onto that that you find throughout the game like one that lets you sort of stick to these magnetic traps or or tracks or one that lets you do sort of a speed boost that

all of a sudden becomes like your fastest way of navigating the world. That trick is still really fucking cool. It still makes it unlike any other sort of exploration-based first-person game that I've ever played. Yeah. side if you compare like a room in super metroid to a room in metroid prime because of the nature of it being first person because the you know frame of view is very narrow comparatively uh there's so much they can they can hide within these worlds that you just can't in a 2d game like you could hide you know whatever you could have like a secret block or something like that but beyond that there's not like nooks and crannies that you really have to dig into so what it ends up feeling like in prime

is you're really like getting up into these rooms and environments in a way that feels very intimate and and uh just like you you know you feel like you're role-playing as samus in ways that the other games don't even come close to how how much do y'all feel that this game feels of its time because i mean we are right now we are further from the original release of metroid prime than metroid prime was from the original metroid yeah like a fair amount that's scary um yeah it's quite a bit and i and i there's a lot of this that i do think feels very modern, but there were bits and pieces here and there where I'm like, oh yeah, this is early days of this sort of game.

This feels, to contextualize your, to answer your question through context, I feel like this is a lot, and this is probably not up for debate, it's probably a hard fact, this is a lot more slavish to the original than Dead Space is. This seems very, very close. And I think because of that, in Dead Space you saw a lot of mechanical changes that are sort of like quality of life things.

And there's definitely some of that with the controls. I will say that Metroid Primary Mastered has some areas by extension Metroid Prime has some areas where you're like they really don't have the rails on sometimes like in a way that modern games won't let you fuck up

super super bad and lose a lot of time this definitely there are places where you're like you go off the wrong ledge and it's like oh damn why'd you do that that's so bad for you you just died and lost like 15 minutes of progress yeah there's no auto save in in the game which is um i i am torn about because on one hand like that kept the tension pretty pretty high i would say throughout the game especially if like i had just beaten a boss and had been playing for a long time and then had to navigate like a lava filled corridor knowing that like if i fall in that fucking lava i'm gonna lose

everything i definitely lost huge chunks of time uh because the the the save points are um a bit spread out yeah i i would say i i agree with that it can be punishing at times. The other area that I think is difficult, but to the point where I'm kind of into it, is even with Metroid Dread, I think they gave you more of an indication of where you should be going next. locks you can access now that you have this upgrade you yeah so you don't get any of that in this except if you stumble around for like 30 to 45 minutes eventually be like oh yeah you're you're a dumbass just go get a dummy yeah maybe go over here some things there's a bit more than that so like the rooms you haven't um been in are a different color. That's true. There are door colors, I believe, that show if you've been in, but it's very, very small. Yeah, if you've opened them and what beam you need and stuff. And very briefly, it will flash when you open a map. It'll be like, bing, bing.

This area is interesting. And then doesn't leave it there. And good luck remembering which of the amorphous blobs was the one you're supposed to go towards. The map is not, I don't know how they improve it, but it is not good. I think Dread was a good example of how you would modernize that a little bit. It's pretty good for its time,

but I agree that was an area that like could have used maybe a little bit more love. But I also, I would just, I would also add, I'm kind of into stumbling around blindly in this world. Cause I love moving around in the world and like, it's kind of fine. Like it didn't bother me that I spent 45 minutes figuring out where like the boost jump was or whatever.

Cause when I found it, I felt really fucking good about myself so there is so so much backtracking in the early hours of this like yeah and out out fucking outrageous amount of backtracking to the the the critical path at the beginning of this game is like you go through this first area to get to you know your morph ball your missiles and then you have to go through this lava area to get to, you know, your morph ball, your missiles. And then you have to go through this lava area to get to this ice area where you get one power up. And then you have to go all the fucking way back to the beginning of the game to get one power up. And then go all the way back to the lava area.

But there are elevators. There are shortcuts, certainly, that alleviate some of that. I mean, it doesn't take that long. I think it's more just jarring in that what I was doing, again, having not played this, I was like, this can't be right, can it? And I was like, no, no, I think it is. And it's funny because I played with that same mentality when I was playing Dread, where I'd get stuck and like, oh, maybe I have to go to the original area.

But Dread actually holds you by the nose much more. Yeah. So this is really like very, very true super metroid era of like good luck buddy i i don't i don't know man it it seemed crazy to me to have to essentially ping pong between these two kind of distant areas super metroid does that though there are definitely moments in super metroid that do that that's the whole game though no're right. We just wear jams. Like, it doesn't, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter. I don't know if this is, like, something that was intentionally designed it,

but a lot of the rough edges of this game are clearly rough edges, but they don't impede my enjoyment of it. And, like, that's the AI of the enemies, which is moronic at best, but doesn't matter because, like Justin said said earlier the fighting isn't really the point i think it's kind of weird like it's weird playing a nintendo game that lacks polish of pleasure because that is what nintendo games do so well and it like an example here is when you kill an enemy right it's doing the old school metroid thing where whatever item it dropped floats in that place today in a modern video game that would have like real physics it would drop it would clink on the floor it would feel

cool and it would be easy to then go get your reward well you can't get the reward you could suck it in using the charge beam but i understand the. The rest of it, I agree with you. Yes. And the visors, right? Like, switching around and scanning is, I think, like, a bit more, like, onerous than it needs to be. But I would say, like, I think moving—tell me if you disagree, but I think moving around the world feels fucking fantastic. Yeah, what I'm saying is—I'm not saying any of this to this to say like don't play this game by any stretch of the imagination i'm saying what's wild to me about the game in terms of like how can a game be timeless is every game has flaws sure most of the time those

flaws can be deal-breaking in video games right the style of video game making moves so far beyond it you go back and play it and it's just truly frustrating what's wild to me about this game is its flaws are honestly quite petty the like the the core of the game like the real muscle of it i i love and i was enjoying it so much that i i know i i again i kind of felt like i was rubbing up on this and i'd be like whatever it's you know any frustration i had was momentary because five seconds later, I was like zipping through these absolutely gorgeous environments. I mean, I keep thinking that we're going to get the new Switch. And then a game comes around like this or Fire Emblem. And I'm like, wait, how did they manage to get this out of this little console? Like, it looks much better than really any shooter I've played.

I think it's one of the best looking Switch games, definitely. Oh, well, I mean, that's, yeah. Yeah, but just any. I mean, it's not Dead Space, don't get me wrong, but like, it's quite impressive. And it runs at 60. I really wanted to get swept up in this i i i i really enjoyed like the the moment to moment is fine i i don't mind the combat i along those like weird quality of life wouldn't be a thing it is very annoying to clear a room and then come back and

have to do the same bogus fight again that you just did 10 seconds ago because you're backtracking and those monsters are back. That's that's really I did not enjoy that at all. It's the it's the lack of it's the lack of like direction. I feel like and this is probably more my current like life position is like I'm not looking to absolutely immerse myself in a world to the point where like, I learned the world so well that I don't need the map. Like, I just know I've been through these locations before I know it.

And that's definitely the kind of exploration vibe that they're going for. I just, the, the occasional like lack of direction, the feeling like I want to explore, but I also know that it could fuck me up bad enough that the checkpoint thing will be an issue. That is a big problem for me. I wish I had like, it was auto-saving so I could feel more comfortable like poking around

and not, there was one area where I realized I missed a power up. So then I wanted to go back and check out. It was after the big plant boss guy. And when I tried to go back through that way like i trekked all the way back tracking to where i knew this power up was and when i got back to the door that went into his arena it was just randomly covered in vines like yeah i just couldn't go that way and it's for no reason it's just like no you can't go this way you gotta go back around the other way fuck that like i don't have i'm 42 i don't i don't

have time for it i can't do that and and for the listener this is like just critical consumption advice i think that's like really good feedback justin because for a lot of people they will hear that and everything that you don't like is exactly what they want i mean it's me like i didn't hear that like you might hear that and be like don't be upset about that if you hear that and that sounds good that all the more encouragement. Well, I definitely enjoyed this game enough when I was younger and in a different headspace. Right. Yeah.

That I wanted it to be like remastered and seeing it, seeing it like this. Like I, you know, I don't regret that. It's very cool seeing it. And a lot of it holds up like really beautifully. And I like the lock on combat. Like as somebody who, where that isn't a priority i dig it like being able to pop some enemies from half a room away i'm into that um i just wish it was a little bit easier to get around and right you have to worry you are looking for a more directed experience and the good news is there are more you know

dread is a more directed experience so like if you're looking for that in a Metroid game, you can get it. Hell, even like Prime 3, which isn't really playable right now, but when it eventually gets re-released, that is a more directed experience. So it really just depends on what you're looking for. There's also, for what it's worth,

a casual mode in this. I don't know that there was one when it first came out, but if you find the combat a little intimidating or you're dying a lot just put on casual and just experience it i don't know if you can actually switch difficulty mid yeah i don't know that you can but but if you if you're looking for literally a more casual laid-back experience you will still appreciate every aspect of this game whether the enemies are hitting twice as hard or not so So just fucking rock casual and enjoy it. Cause that seems pretty nice.

Real quick. I do want to talk about the visuals because I think, um, you know, this is the epitome of, in my memory, the game looked like this and, you know,

I watched the digital foundry video with a ton of side by sides and it is outrageous how simplistic the visuals were when it came out on gamecube but my brain was able to fill in thanks to the environment and the music and like the like visor fogging up and all those like little touches that like sold it and that video made me feel better about my initial snobbery. I felt vindicated that like it, the original one does kind of look a little, it does out of context, but once you're playing it,

it sells it pretty well. Oh yeah, for sure. I'm just saying as somebody who like saw it in passing and made my decision. I mean, they can't all be fucking chocobos and whatever you wanted. I didn't even like chocobos at that time. I hadn't my

third eye had not been opened but i would but i would say like this carries through that tradition insofar as yeah if you were playing this game on like a pc or whatever it is and you held it next to a game that's running at 4k with ray tracing on and whatever else dead space had going on granted this would look more simplistic but because the art design is so strong in this that's running at 4k with ray tracing on and whatever else dead space had going on granted this would look more simplistic but because the art design is so strong in this it sells this entire environment and and feels just fucking dope can i can i voice a gripe uh a lot of this game is exploration and platforming in 3d space and i think for the most part it does a really good job with that in a lot of the outdoor environments or like ruins that you explore sometimes it is not at all clear what is land honorable and what is just kind of like a decorative rocky outcropping

and so sometimes you'll be doing a platforming section and see like a ledge that you think you can hop up to and run across but then when you get up to it an invisible wall kind of stops you in midair before you can land on the thing you thought you could land on and you fall all the way down and it feels bad every every time you really have to start telling your brain you have to start filtering shit in your mind as you play of like okay well that is clearly not an intentional uh you know piece of piece of geometry that i can use to get where i need to go yeah i think they're really just the platforms that are you know fucking glowing that you know is is the the ones that you should be using yeah i think it's very much a design a nintendo design mentality of they are making they are not like hiding anything from

you they will make it very obvious they are like they accept that they wicked all like they wicked are like there are lots of things that you can't see unless you're using the right visor to scan no no no but i disagree with the idea that like the everything is uh you know evident at face value from the jump like i had a pretty tough time keeping the uh signal from blending in with the noise when i was just just playing the game in in any circumstance i think when you learn i don't know i feel like when you learn the design language of the game and what it's trying to tell you in terms of what's a platform versus not it becomes easier but again that might be a person-to-person thing i have really also been uh speaking of like the appearance of it i have uh been really it's been a a real lesson between this and dead space in the value of

you know we we have lived almost the entirety of our lives playing games in a sort of like graphical processing arms race yeah and it and it is really interesting to see these games that have gotten that a like processing wise have picked up. But like design, the design graphically like still lands and it still works. And that's really fascinating to me about the power of like having great design from the beginning. having great design from the beginning, both in terms of like levels anesthetics and like how, how much more powerful that is and enduring that is than just like how many polygons that you can put onto the screen. Cause a lot of this stuff looks wild and it looked wild before,

but it's like these environments, like single rooms tell entire stories where you see like that we, we set up computers here, but then the roots crashed in through the ceiling. And then, you know, it's really cool to look at. Just like Dead Space, like really interesting artistic choices that go beyond just like the processing power of the console. Yeah, 100%. I think this game is sick.

I think it's, I mean, I don't know, man. think this game is sick i think it's i mean i don't know man i'm kind of it's fighting me as to whether i like this game better than dread which honestly dread was before this my favorite metro game and i think by um the addition of the dual stick controls definitely give this uh a fighting chance of of edging dread out for me. I just love, I mean, from a preservation perspective, like, more of the, like, just please, like, making it so that it's, like, easy to appreciate a classic like this and smoothing down some of the rough edges. And how much of that you smooth down, I think, is an interesting creative decision. You know, I think you see that in film restoration, right? You can definitely remove a level of grain to where it doesn't look right anymore.

It starts to look off. So there's choices people are making. But like, I love this sort of like, I think it's important historical work, like, honestly, and I think it's very cool to see. Yeah, agreed. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we got our frontline reporter scoops fresh deck uh giving us the the dirt on uh psvr2

it's actually pronounced pissver welcome to the pissverse too we got ratchet and clank in the pissverse do you guys have any psvrs no we have pissverseverse. Do you guys have any PSVRs? No, we have piss-verse. Is that what you mean? All right. Piss-verse. Jesus Christ.

Just waiting on you to start talking about it. I thought I was beginning of the segment. We're doing this great run about piss-verse, and I was suggesting you to pick up the ball and run with it. Yeah, you want to run on piss-verse? How comfortable is this headset? Okay, so the PSVR 2 comes out on February 22nd,

which is a few days after this episode drops. But the embargo lifted shortly before this episode dropped, so I can freely talk about it. Mike Mahardy did the full review for Polygon of PSVR 2. I did not write that. He did a great job, but I thought y'all might be interested in this

given that it is a pretty high end at least from a price point from a price point standpoint pretty high end vr headset it's not cheap i'm interested in it in the way i'm interested in you know ripley's believe it or not you know like the list is an oddity yeah it's an oddity um so the psvr2 just for people that aren't aware it is uh 549 including the headset and controllers and it is um basically just powered by your ps5 so everything runs through the ps5 There's a single cable that runs from the PS5 to the headset. You have to play it wired. There's no wireless option, which is something I'll come back to in a second. And it basically has a slate of games designed to make use of the PS5 hardware.

But it's worth noting there are very, very, very few fully exclusive games on the PSVR 2. The big one at launch is going to be the Horizon Call of the Mountain, which is like an exclusive VR experience within PSVR 2. And I believe the Resident Evil Village VR experience will also be exclusive probably for only a limited time, but it will be exclusive. And I don't know. I would say my first initial thought is the headset feels good. It's comfortable.

Feels good to put on. Being wired while in VR feels like a throwback to an age that i never ever ever want to go back to quest to like totally convince me that wireless vr is the future and even though this looks a lot better than quest 2 does in a lot of ways that um being tethered to a console even though the wire is very long feels just like just like another era and it doesn't really fit for me um in a lot of ways the benefit of it is the games do look better so if you care about like a visual you know higher visual fidelity uh this will be able to play games that look a lot better than you would on quest 2 natively but the quest 2 can also go

wired or even stream games wirelessly from your pc so it just feels like this fits in a weird place that i don't know where the market is also the the headphone thing is a big deal for me um yeah it's the with the quest 2 you're you're in the early days of vr what what turned me on like well the first time i was playing vr it's fucking like putting up the light towers and then you are finding a you know appropriately comfortable set of headphones that can plug into the unit while the unit plugs in with three cores it's a it's a nightmare with the quest 2 you just put it on the sound is in there and you don't need discrete headphones it's like one less thing to worry about and it's wild that that is not part of the equation here

well so it's worth noting in the box they do include headphones that do click into the headset um they're like in-ear earbuds that i i just don't like wearing those style earbuds so i actually ended up using my own headphones. But if you don't really care about the in-ear earbud thing, they are right there and not super inconvenient, though, Justin, I completely agree with you. I would much rather a slightly lower audio fidelity experience if they were just piped into the headset

because that's way more convenient for me. And I think that's the whole experience of PSVR 2 is at every turn they're picking they're opting for like high fidelity rather than necessarily convenience and that's why it's wired and that's why you know the headphone choice was like that um you know i guess it's it kind of depends on who who you are and what you're looking for from a vr experience if you want that super high-end, I don't know, man. I feel like you would have a high-end headset and connected to your gaming PC already. Here's the thing.

I think this is an example of someone seeing a number on a spreadsheet but not really digging into the reason behind it. And that is the PSVR 1 sold pretty well by all means, right? It did. So I guess the very blunt business logic would be, hey, we should go make a PSVR 2. Not asking, hey, does anybody who bought that, did they love it?

Are they going to want to spend that much money again to get something that's a bit iterative, better than what they already have lying around their house? And has it lying around the house actually hurt their opinion of VR? Yeah. Like having this thing that they threw in the closet, knowing that that is the end game for it. Are they going to go and buy this? And here's a clean example of it. The Nintendo Wii.

The Nintendoii sold a gajillion units nintendo did not go back and go hey you know what we should do we again uh because they kind of well arguably that would have been a better decision than what they did well well wii u led to the switch i mean wii u is clearly the switch they just made the mistake of tethering it to your tv sure um but i i yeah this feels to me just i don't know there's something so bizarre and misguided that there there's reports that there are over a hundred games in development for psvr2 and it's not that i don't think like sure a lot of those are probably ports i think i would say 90 based on what they've shared and

and the launch lineup i think they're 95% poor. Sure. And that's bad. That's the problem. Yeah. Because this is the early, early smartphone days where you go onto the store and all you see is junk. Yeah. And I still have that problem when I turn on Quest.

And that makes me not want to use any vr thing because i associate it with trash i i i have i have always been somebody who enjoys vr conceptually i don't necessarily get like i i have not found myself super deep in any the the the thing i used my quest the most for was like a exercise like it is not something that I, I, I feel like though there are certain challenges that are endemic to VR that are just really, really tough to solve the, the,

the problem with these tethered solutions. And I don't think this is that unusual. My, the place where I play PlayStation five is set up to play video games seated in a dark room with like a table in front of like it's set up like a living area where you have people and then you you you play it is not i'm gonna need to move furniture and i bet a lot of people are in the same situation where like the nice tv that they use to play video games on, they don't necessarily want to be cavalierly bounding around the room trying to catch robot dinosaurs. It's a room that's a big empty room where you can use a Quest 2.

It just makes so much more sense. I still don't know if it can get past like – OK. One of the things you're talking about where there's so much noise versus signal in these app stores, the solution to that for mobile was everybody's got a fucking phone. So the cream would rise organically where it's like you hear on Twitter about 20 different people playing Flappy Wings or Flappy Bird or whatever. And then you get into it that way. I just don't feel like VR can get, certainly not like by individual hardware, get that sort of momentum or that inertia where, you know, the good stuff gets discovered. Well, I would say like the, so Horizon is like the 10 poll game for this platform. Like it is the one major exclusive they have at launch. And having played it, the crazy thing about Horizon Call the Mountain, I can't play for more than 10 minutes without getting motion sick. market of people that like just pick up vr just to try it out because there's no teleport movement

it's all like control like you're moving through the world like at every moment you're like climbing up walls and stuff like that and even though there are like vignetting settings and stuff like that like i turn on every accessibility setting they had and i still got motion sick after 10 minutes and this coming from someone who played hours of half-life alex hours of resident evil 4 on oculus quest and that is kind of inexcusable for your like this is the game that this is your mario 64 for the psvr 2 and most people will not be able to play it because they'll get motion sick and that's nuts to me so yeah i mean you know it's it's really really hard for me to know for me to say to someone oh this is a great fit for you because honestly if you are curious about vr just get a quest 2 that's it controllers i'm sorry how are the controllers they're fine i uh you know they've

got some what what are the controllers they've got like like the adaptive triggers of the DualSense and the haptic rumble stuff. So it like kind of helps a little bit in terms of like selling what you're doing. I did like when I was like using a ratchet in that Star Wars Galaxy's Edge game, like you could feel it and that's kind of cool. And there's like rumble in the helmet, which is kind of cool.

So they're fine, but like, I don i don't know it doesn't it's not enough to justify you know when when quest 2 launched it launched at 300 and this thing is 550 and i realized meadow was taking a big loss because they wanted to own the marketplace but like there's a lot of people that bought a 300 quest 2 and I cannot recommend to those people that they go out and get a PSVR 2. I did not understand that it was that much money. I mean, they're just not, I don't think they're selling it at a loss. I think that's the difference.

I think they are trying to make some money off them, which I get, reasonable, but this is what you have to pay for this level of experience, and yeah, no, there's just not, I mean. I guess manufacturing must, must i mean those kinks must be worked out the pipeline right because it seems wild that they would focus on this rather than trying to make more places well but keep in mind when did this get greenlit

this is probably greenlit in 2019 doesn't vr always feel like that like it feels like a ball rolling down a hill and no one knows quite how to stop it because they still have, well, I definitely want to stop doing this. No one wants it, but we do have this already six months down the road.

So let's go ahead and finish this up. I mean, there just aren't many companies that are still trying it though. It's really just like, like Valve is still dipping their toes into it

and Sony and Meta and that's it. And how can you look at, you know, Meta, one of the biggest companies in the world, literally destroying itself, cannibalizing itself in real time because of this? I mean, wild.

I mean, I know Apple is going to try it as well, so we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, just to your point on that, there's confusion around the production of this. I think it was Bloomberg reported that they had, like, halved production of it. And then that same day, Sony came back and was like, no, no, no, no, we're, you know, fully committed. of this i think it was bloomberg reported that they had like halved production of it and then that same day sony came back and was like no no no no we're you know fully committed um but it's always weird when you see a place like bloomberg report something like that well they i know they they said that the pre or based on pre-order numbers the uh revit expected revenue was

dramatically sliced back so not great. It's a bummer. It's, to me, I've played a lot of VR. I love my quests. I just started using it just a couple weeks ago because I wanted to play the Bone Lab game. Is that what it's called?

It's called Bone Lab, the new one, right? Yes, I forget. Bone Works was the original, right? Bone Lab is like the new one right yes i forget bone works was the original right bone lab is like the quest one uh and fucking rules for me it's it's i don't use the only like triple a game that i ever played like to to completion on vr was uh echo uh not echo arena but the single player oh the space one yeah where you're floating yeah uh shit i'll i'll google it at some point uh it should be called echo vr um that that game ruled right and it was based entirely around these like very vr focused interactions for the most part though like what i use it for is like modded Beat Saber or

Supernatural, that workout game that Justin mentioned earlier, or, you know, weird multiplayer social stuff. Not, you know, AAA gaming experiences where I have to plonk my ass down and just kind of look into a screen two inches away from my eyeballs for ground up vr stuff right and and that stuff i feel like is gonna is gonna happen not on a platform like psvr uh not not a platform that is sort of tied its fate is tied to a- A super expensive video game console. Yeah, or any video game console, right?

I think that the VR future, it won't be like open source, but it'll certainly be a little bit more open than I think any gaming console manufacturer will manufacturer yeah i mean i think apple does if they decide to go into it they have the advantage for the same reason that justin said around the app store which is just if a lot of people have it already like if they can find a way to get the processing power to come from the phone that you already have in your pocket uh i don't know maybe that's the way because there yeah there needs to be a system for developers to experiment and iterate and like find out whatever the fun is

here i the the that horizon game that you're talking about fresh it reminds me of the infinity blade games yeah do you remember those epic games made that for... The sword swiping, like... Perfectly fine, right? But, like, weirdly kind of lost to time because the stuff that really has stuck, at least for me and I think for most people, from mobile has been stuff that was, like, mobile forward, whether that is Flappy Bird or Angry Birds

or all of the casual games that, you know, whether you like them or not, they're humongous. They make good use of what the system is. Yeah, I don't think you can get away from it at this point. I don't think you're ever going to solve that chicken and egg problem of does it make sense to release a AAA game? Does it make sense to fund a AAA game with the base here? And when you take into account the fact that the experiences that tend to click the best are not those like sit down on the couch for three hours and play a huge session. It that mobile is like a better comparison. I think those dip in dip out for 20 minutes. That's like the thing that works best on VR.

And it's hard. It seems like there is a reluctance or an inability to cobble together like a cogent business out of that. Like it. I also think that like thinking of a VR platform as a gaming first or gaming exclusive experience is a is like in and of itself a missed opportunity like i i i don't i think meta has made some big choices uh that has sort of sullied my my opinion on this but something like a uh a facebook horizon uh or whatever the fuck it was going to be called like that, that has, I think the kind of promise that could launch this as a platform that would have a pretty big install base. I think whatever Apple does could be fucking cool. Cause Apple certainly knows how to

make people have social experiences with their hardware. Uh, and I think once they have that, I, I think that the install base will be there and then the games will come come flooding right in and then that's that's not to say that there's not good vr games that that exist and that people haven't made like neat ways of of interacting in that space but um i don't think i just don't think psvr is to be it. I don't think it will happen until VR is as big as glasses. That is my, like, in terms of mainstream, like, adaptation. Even if that happens, I don't know that it'll happen mainstream. It's the same thing, though, right?

Because it's as big as glasses, that's really hard to immerse yourself. Well, you can have glasses that have blinders have blinders on like a horse blinds. And then headphones, and then you've got a helmet. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm sorry about our eyes and ears, but they're there. You can't just make them not there. They're there.

In terms of form, I think the Quest 2 is great. Like, I don't think there's anything bulky or off-putting about the Quest 2. Yeah, but you're, I think you are way more willing to do that like my mom's not gonna wear a quest 2 for more than five minutes you know what i mean yeah i don't know it's it's i don't think they have to be as big as glasses frankly i don't want to wear fucking vr glasses that small i feel like i would look like a fucking douchey cyber Ryan Phillippe if I tried that look off. You should, you wish.

I wish, yeah, I say that. That's the dream. You know, this is mainly, this is maybe just personal to me, but I feel like for me to play a game on VR, to use that headset, to use the iPhone comparison, rather, if you hear about something that's worth playing on ios you pull out your phone and you push a button and then you get it

to me for me where i'm at right now to play a vr game it not only has to be like worth the time and worth the money it has to be like oh well fuck i've moved my amp out to the middle of the room so now i've got to move my amp back and then oh they're not charged this just happened to me like this week like oh my god the battery on that one is dead so i need to go replace that like that's a real that's a big man game's gotta be really fun for for me to clear all these hurdles um i will say that there's an app a meta app on your phone that you can download games to your headset from i think that obviously and do i play the game on my phone then griffin or are you just being intentionally obtuse no i'm just saying you know you pull out your phone you download a game you can do that and

then you do i just play the but you understand then that i have to do all the other things that i just said right you understand yeah yeah but i would say it's not a big hurdle to touch sorry to eat a sandwich you have to pick it up and put it in your mouth and chew it. I'm saying the barrier to entry between playing a VR game and playing a game on your phone is much different. That's all I'm saying. Like, I've got the phone already. I've probably got it in my hand. I read about the game on my phone.

I'll just push a different button to make the game happen. I mean, Griffin has his VR sex dungeon already set up, so there's really no work for him that's yeah i mean it is my office but that just means that my workspace is has sort of vr sex dungeon sort of overtones to it um can we wrap this episode up do you think that was a good time to do that too yeah it honestly bums me out to talk about vr too much because i feel like it's it's always going to be in this oddity space and no one's ever going to be happy with that. They're just going to keep trying to push it forward. We got just a couple quick questions.

This one's from Patrick. What should we expect first, Metroid Prime 4 or the heat death of the universe? Good question. Metroid Prime 4, probably. Yeah, probably Metroidroid prime four i'm confident um i think it's going to be a switch to launch game oh um this one is from grayson wait if i can answer that real quick i think that uh my answer is a lot different considering they

didn't release the entire trilogy as a remaster all at once they released the first one as a remaster so that definitely gives them a runway if they want to do you know annual two three and then four you know well jeff grubb has reported that the other two are coming just as hd like re-releases and not as full remasters so we'll see if if the grub is correct in this scenario i mean mean, regardless, right? The point is that they have that. If they want to keep Metroid going, those releases could be in the pipeline before Metroid 4

and it would keep the franchise. That is true. Yeah. This one's from Grayson. My question is, are we going to get an episode dedicated to Wanted Dead? The trailer is so buck wild, I need to know more. I still haven't played.

I have that downloaded. I still haven't played i have that downloaded i still haven't we're gonna fresh and i are gonna talk about it i think on on a resty's i i can't subject you all to it i mean y'all can bring it if you want it's a lot it's it's it's a mess and i y'all it's a mess you gotta try it though it's a mess you gotta try you gotta try it though try it's a real debacle. You won't believe it. It's the closest you'll get to being legally hooked on the brothers. That's the box quote. It's unbelievable. It's just a matter of it's a mess.

And did y'all see this image I dropped in the Google Doc? Is it Lady Gaga and Joaquin? Because that's all I care about right now. No, no. look at this image. Oh, it's Hi-Fi Russ. It's Hi-Fi Russ. Oh, wow. Yeah, isn't that great?

That's awesome. Look in the episode notes. Frush, can you describe what you're seeing? Yeah, well, it's me in glasses and a robot arm and a cool scarf, and I'm kind of hitting people with a giant pan of eggs. That's so good. From an accuracy standpoint, I make scrambled eggs,

not sunny side up, but otherwise very spot on. Yeah, but draw scrambled eggs. It looks like nothing. You know what I mean? It doesn't read. Jared Schwartz did this. Yeah. Very well done.

It is awesome. I'll make sure that it gets shared from our Twitter. Any honorable mentions from y'all? I'm still playing 20 Minutes Till Dawn. It's really good. If you like Vampire Survivors, it is really open-ended in the way it allows you to stack your um uh upgrades and there's a uh an upgrade tree where you use skill points you accumulate after runs but you can only take one it's not where like in vampire survivors where you unlock all of them and juice them up

you choose between different like perks when you go in so you can kind of create a build that's like geared towards close range combat and or geared towards you know doing a lot of elemental damage or whatever and it's very cool to like mix those uh different upgrades and weapons and stuff like that and and come up with like interesting ways of approaching it i'm still really enjoying it so you're playing that on mobile you're playing it on steam i'm playing it on steam yes okay there is there is an ios version as well that seems pretty well reviewed so um i just started dipping into my uh february puzzle books and not words uh that game is never going to leave my phone ever ever ever ever i will pick

that shit up every month to just dip dip into some some good puzzles i'll also say football season's over i know a lot people are fiending may i introduce you to my friend hockey i've been watching a lot just i watched every hockey game of the st louis blues for for a long time and they're in a place where if they lose one more game basically they're not going to make the playoff so they have to win like the next 30 and so they've got two in a row, baby. It's been thrilling, thrilling to watch. Hockey is too stressful for me. It's just every second has a potential to go wrong and it's just too much.

Oh, I want to echo Griffin's recommendation last time at Forward on the iOS. It is a absolutely like as condensed deck building experience as you could have. It's like hyper Slay the Spire or what have you. It's great. Great, great, great, great, great. It's Forward Escape the Fold is the full name of that

if you're looking for it. Yeah, it's fucking dope. I'm still playing that a little bit too. I went back and watched Dick Tracy after watching Warren Beatty secure those rights. Jesus Christ. This past weekend. For anybody who doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, I can't fit it into this episode.

You should Google Polygon Dick Tracy Warren Beatty. But basically, Warren Beatty dresses up as Dick Tracy and does interviews and throws him on TV at random hours every decade to ensure that he retains the rights to Dick Tracy. Despite them, I'm pretty sure going public domain in like five years he did a new one dick tracy really dick tracy zooming in and uh and yep i i don't want to spoil an ounce of it for you it is cinema um anyway i went back and watched the original movie what a great movie that movie that's a blast uh i thought no i think warren baity directs it too i think so triple threat what about you no i know i've been too busy with work it's original dick tracy content i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcasts.

Uh, try fingers, butthole classic Elden ring nod there. Thank you for writing a review. We also have badger X two badger X two, maybe as how it's, it's spelled slightly differently, but okay.

And Mr. Moose 11, thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We always greatly appreciate it, and we appreciate it from everyone else who does it. So thank you. Here is what we talked about this week. Metroid Prime Remastered, PSVR 2,

and a slew of games coming out for it, including a new Horizon spinoff thing. And that's pretty much it i mean we just you just heard us say it 20 minutes till dawn forward escape the fold not words and dick tracy uh you can't save it wait until we're done you have to wrap up the show, Justin. You have to do your thing. Next week, we are talking about Atomic Heart.

And if you join us on Resties, the one coming up, we are talking about Like a Dragon, formerly known as Yakuza Isshin. I'm looking at a four-way screen. A four-way Zoom. And one of them is Leonard Malt zoom. And one of them is Leonard Maltin and one of them is Warren Beatty. And another one is Warren Beatty

dressed as Daydreams. I can't believe it. Modern technology, baby. How did they do it? That's going to do it for us this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week on the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!