The Besties - Monster Hunter Rise and Shine

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Just when you thought it was safe to buy property in Kamura Village, all these monsters show up and wreck the joint! Justin and Russ team up after a last-minute bug fells Chris Plante (and Griffin deals with a new human child situation). Is this finally the Monster Hunter game to not make you hate Monster Hunter games? Hmm ... hard to say, but worth a shot! 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!

Justin, it is just you and I today. Two friends. It's barely even a podcast with two people. I think it's just two friends. Yeah, at this point, we're now two weeks into doing two-person podcasts for a variety of reasons. Griffin, it should be noted,

just had a human child, so his absence is pretty much understandable. Chris Plant, on the other hand had horrible um food poisoning this morning and i mean it kind of begs the question what was he what what yielded such a result that he's making such irresponsible food choices with regards to the podcast yeah uh you should you think you'd be a little smarter about his guts if something like that's going to happen, you know? Yeah, I'm going to speculate.

I do know he's got family, his wife and small child are visiting family this week, and it's possible that he went and made some bachelor boy decisions with his stomach. Yeah, we've all been there. Get a few wangs watch hunt for red

october we've all been there is that your go-to wings um it's been uh the last time i had time to myself hunt for red october was in the theaters so it's hard for me to remember gotta get that hunky alec baldwin time. Yeah. I still remember. Russ, the last time that something like that happened to me, it's such a rarity that it's crystallized in my mind. The last time I had two hours to myself where my family was not in the house, I watched Tenet on TV.

I remember it. I remember this as an event. I remember what I ate. It can't have been that long ago then. It just, you know, when did it hit TV? No, it was several months. But like, Russ, imagine a life where those things are notable. Russ, imagine an existence where it's notable that you have time to spend however you see fit.

Military school is starting to sound a little good at this point. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Perchkin, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Perkins, and I know the best game of the week. Cue silence. I should mention that, like, it was very weird to do that first last week. Very weird. Why did you let, why did that happen? Why didn't you get to go second?

There were at least two people. Yeah, I don't know. I was doing the, like, your interest stuff stuff last week so it was a little more complicated but um and and here we are again as we discussed in the cold open it's just just you and me or we're just hanging out we're gonna talk about just the two of us again it takes two yes it takes two um no we're gonna we're not gonna talk about that russ come on bud we're not going to talk about that, Russ. Come on, bud. We're going to talk about Monster Hunter Rise, which is a new Switch. And the people who care the most about it

are not present. Well, it's pretty funny, because we've been talking a lot about, this year obviously has not been necessarily gangbusters for big releases. And we finally get one. Yeah. And Griffin goes and has a goddamn baby and plant goes and gets all poopy and barfy.

And here we are left to pick up the scraps. But you know what? There are, I think it's fine, because think about how much harder this would be if the game was a big nothing burger that nobody cared about, and then we had to try to make a show out of it. There's plenty to talk about.

This week we're going to be talking about Monster Hunter Rise. It's the latest entry in this franchise that just exploded with the last one. Monster Hunter World was a massive success, and this is the follow-up on Nintendo Switch. We're going to get into that and talk about Monster Hunter Rise. Cool.

So Monster Hunter is a long-running franchise. Justin, I know you're familiar with it. You've played the last few. This is the latest one. As you mentioned, this is on Switch. It is actually exclusive to Switch. And this is a weird, I mean, the core of the franchise, if you're not familiar with the Monster Hunter games,

what exactly are you doing in these games, Justin? Well, bud, you're hunting the monsters. You're doing other things. You're cooking and eating and living and loving in this world. I don't think there's a lot of loving, to be honest.

The main thing is that you're hunting monsters. Yeah. I would love, Russ, if we could both take a moment to talk about, I feel like this is a franchise, sort of like the Souls games or Madden. Yeah. Where you have to kind of walk in your history with it. Or fighting games, I like this too. Where you have to kind of walk in your history with it

to let people understand where you're coming from. Yeah, totally. So tell me about you and Monster Hunter Rise. Sure. So Monster Hunter, you know, I've been in games media for a very, very long time. And before Monster Hunter World came out, which was the game that came out before this,

which was like a big deal, I had been in a number of like meetings where Capcom would come and they'd be like, hey, we've got this new Monster Hunter game. And they put it in front of me and my eyes would fill with menus and numbers and chaos. And I was never able to understand why this is an appealing product. It's like such an overwhelming thing that it never really clicked for me. Until Monster Hunter Rise came out, which was about two years ago.

And for that game, because everyone was so over the moon about it, I was like, no, I'm going to figure out what the draw is for Monster Hunter games, why people like this franchise. It felt like homework to me, but I was going to do it. I played five hours of that game and enjoyed it. I liked it. But it was such an exhausting prospect to learn what a monster hunter game was that after five hours and i had like an epic fight with a monster i was like you know what i'm good and i just like pulled the ripcord at that point so that is sort of leading

up to where we are now and i think in a lot of ways monster hunter world primed the pump for me such that I didn't need to relearn the like core core of it and I could kind of jump in and just experience it what about you um I had I had made several attempts inspirational attempts at uh uh getting this franchise going for me uh because it seemed like i hated missing out like it makes you mad that that like a bunch of people were uh um getting in you know enjoying this and i couldn't be uh one of them it made me sad so i wanted to uh be be amongst their numbers um so i uh i tried, I don't even know, you're going to have to, maybe you know better than me. Maybe. The other

ones, I tried with the DS one. I remember you were playing with Griffin during E3 one year. Is that right, Abel? Yes, that sounds right. I don't know if that was when it clicked for you or it was much later, but. And then, yeah,

Pat Gill, uh, of Pogon tried. I mean, we, during an E3, we had an E3 where he would like, just basically,

uh, sit on my shoulder like a parrot. Um, and the series was a lot more complex. I think back then there's a lot more rough edges, but it didn't click for me until Rise, or sorry, World. World came out just like right before my second daughter was born. And her sleeping schedule was reversed.

So she was up all night and asleep during the day. And I would wake up at like midnight and sit and play Monster Hunter for hours while giving her mom a break. And it was like, it finally clicked for me. I don't know what it was. If I finally got in, I did not go back for Iceborne because there was like the ramp back up I was not down for.

I was not down to like relearn a lot of the stuff, but like played with friends, had fun with friends. Like it's i really dug it like and and so i was i was trepidatiously excited uh about this how's that yeah it feels like world was the turning point for a lot of people where they cut away the like insanely deep uh complex unnecessarily like scary elements of Monster Hunter games and cut more to the core of like, hey, you just want to fight big fucking monsters. And yet it's still and Rise is still pretty inundated with a lot of that like menu bullshit.

But I will say about Rise, where I played five hours of Monster Hunter World in total I have played easily double that since Rise came out a week ago and it is fully got its claws in me and I am fully on board finally with a Monster Hunter game that I see playing many many dozens of hours more. Okay, so what is it? How is this one different? Yeah, so I don't know enough. I didn't play enough of World to like really delineate the major differences. I think for me, the thing that did it for me was there's a demo.

I think it's still available on the eShop. And in the demo, there's no town. There's no like hub world. There's no no picking resources. You pick a weapon, and they just throw you into a map, and they're like, hey, fight this monster. And you've got all the gear you would possibly need for that map, and you've got the weapon you're using. And being able to play that demo and just sort of jump in was enough of a primer for me to be like, okay, I get this core that they were then able to stack on

the village stuff once the full game came out, that I was able to sort of absorb it. So there's that. I think the bigger thing is just the portability of it. I do not want to sit in front of a console screen and stare at menus for 60 hours, 100 hours, whatever. But if I'm watching Netflix or whatever, I can sit on the couch and like

grind away hey i need fucking honey or herbs and i don't feel like a recluse hunched over my screen collecting resources i can just like fit it in hey i've got 15 minutes here i can fit it on my couch i think that was probably the biggest differentiation but i do think the demo is really helpful for people i don't know how your what your take is how different this is from your experience with world yeah no i i don't it's again it was a while ago so i'm in a similar boat um where i don't i like um i don't know if i will stick with it as much there seems to be a lot of I feel like I have gone much deeper in Rise without having to

branch out my skill set or awareness of there's so much in these games and I think that is part of what puts people off because there's like I mean I've dozens of items that I have no idea what they are, what they would be used for.

Yeah. And like, if you're new to it, you can get hung up on it, but like, it really does. It's a game that really scales with your understanding of like, there's a version of this where it's like,

I got potions, I got two swords. I'm going to hit him with my two swords, get hurt, take a potion yep and it's like eventually like pretty quickly after that you have to layer on like okay my swords are dull gotta sharpen these bad boys up i'm out of stamina gonna eat a ration and with those if you can get those like and that has gotten me through like i feel like a lot in rise like i i am on uh just started to do like four star quests um and haven't had to like mix it up past then i haven't captured another monster you can capture

or kill monsters capture and get you more resources but it's trickier um i i haven't captured another monster since then like it's basically just been uh killing monsters but it is compared to my memory of world uh there's a lot less downtime you can hop on your doggy your palamute i think yeah there's a new dog there's a dog you can ride very quickly and you see exactly where it is you used to have to hit monsters with paintballs to be able to track them which sounds like a joke but no it's really how it was um but you but uh um it's very fast like that like it doesn't take long to get back to the monster like there's there's a lot going on it's happening very quickly it wants to to keep you busy there's also um i dig some some of the new locomotion in it where you have this thing called a wire.

Can you talk about the wire bug? Yeah. It's like it's more or less it's a grappling hook, but it's a grappling hook you can use anywhere. You actually don't even need to like latch on to something. It'll just attach in midair. And you've got two of those by default. And you can just like, hey, I'm on like a mountain ridge and i see another mountain ridge across the way i can like wire bug wire bug across and those are on a cool down you don't need to collect them you can get more like one more if you pick one up

but generally speaking you have those accessible at all times people are using them to like do crazy like midair stored slams on monsters and you can use it for like dodging attacks and stuff like that but just at a core what it felt like for me was that it just widely opened the map whereas before it felt like monster hunter like you'd go through these caverns that were like uh tunnels or corridors i should say in these maps where it was very limited where you could go and now there are areas of the starting map. It's called the Shrine, and it's just like the starting map. There are areas that didn't even occur to me to look into

to explore them that are fully explorable if you use these wire bugs. So it really does open things up a lot. And they're integrated into combat, too. There's some wire bug moves that you can only do with the wire bug. And you, when you fill a sphere, tell me about your, tell me what's your,

what's your default loadout. What's your, what's your main. Sure. So, so I know like one of the toughest decisions that people have is deciding weapon. I think there are like 16 main weapons and the weapon,

like there's so much depth within each weapon that picking one is kind of a big deal. I've stuck almost exclusively with the long sword i tried a few of the weapons in the demo and and that one felt the best to me and again just like learning that weapon alone has been like a i'm still learning new moves and i'm many many hours in so it feels like that's my like go-to. And then, yeah, I mean the rest of it, like I use potions. I use the thing that like increases your meat to increase my stamina. But generally speaking, I'm ignoring almost all the other items. And only now when I talk to like

hardcore people like Pat Gill or Griffin, are they like saying, oh, you can do this. The example is like item loadouts i had no idea that item loadouts were a thing so every time i would go to do a mission i'd be like hand by hand picking oh i need a trap for this mission i need potions i need bugs but you can just save a loadout that you always always use on missions and you just hit one button and suddenly that loadout is in your inventory there's so much quality of life stuff in that game and all monster games that is like buried beneath encyclopedic levels of depth that probably shouldn't be i think that is the detriment to the monster hunter games that make them so scary to people is that it's just like it should

start friendly and get more complex but it actually is the inverse of that, which seems very weird. Yeah. I'm a longsword guy. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, yeah. I'm a longsword guy. Yeah.

Have you always used longsword? I have. Yeah. I have mixed it up to where I will occasionally, like I've tried with the dual blades. Those are even like less complicated to use. And so I like it. It's fine.

But I actually missed some of the depth from the long sword. Once you get that rhythm going, it feels really good. Yeah. It felt like long sword was like a middle ground between like, oh, this is just a hammer and you run at people and you hit them with a hammer and the like switchblade complexity of like 16 different things you can do in any different scenario,

that Longsword felt like a middle ground between those two. I found it pretty welcoming, honestly, as like a newcomer. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think broadly speaking, it's just such a weird franchise, and I fully get why people have struggled so much getting into it,

is because it really did, like you look at like World and now Rise, whenever they make a more critically acclaimed one, it's because they took shit out, or they made stuff like more surface and easy to understand so they started with like the most complex like monster hunter one was the most complex and then with each game after that they've been like no we don't need that now we can take this out we can take this out until eventually i feel like they'll get to like

horizon zero dawn levels of approachability. Yeah. Which wouldn't be a bad thing. Because, honestly, the best part of the game is just hunting monsters. I don't need to fucking be digging through menus to know how many claws I need to upgrade this sword. Like, I don't understand them fighting against that urge to, like, simplify things. Yeah. Some of it feels willful like they they feel like i'm completely guessing i don't know maybe again but it feels like some of that cruft is like they believe it's endemic to what the franchise is

like people want that like level of fidelity um i just don't think it does a particularly good job of like walking you into it or saying like, don't worry about that. Like keep that out of your head. Don't sweat that. Don't worry about that. You'll figure it out later. It's not important right now. I wish that was communicated a little bit better.

Yeah, you kind of need blinders or at least someone to tell you where your blinders should be. where your blinders should be. And I'm trying, you know, Plant, who is very sick right now, but I'll speak for him, has really struggled getting into this game, which is the first Monster Hunter game he's ever played. Because he doesn't know,

like you get dropped in this village and there's 16 different vendors and eight different areas and he has no idea where to go or what to do. So like, I'm like, no, just talk to the village person and do the tutorial quests and those will be a little grindy but it's fine and then there's going to be a big monster fight so you're like working to get to that monster fight but you need a human being it's

like running a raid in destiny you need another person to like ease you into it which yeah i don't get it i don't get why they keep doing that. I also feel like if they were, if they drilled down a little bit on some of those mechanics, they would have a little less, a little more room for like variety in the early fights against monsters. I mean, I have at this point, and I'm not, this is not me like bragging. I'm not good at this game. not me like bragging i'm not good at this game but like every monster i have fought i have beaten and every time it's just been the same long sword skills where i'm running up my spirit meter and then i do the helm splitter and you know rinse and repeat and i haven't had to vary it but you know there's some where like you, they'll throw poison at you. But if you – there's an item chest at the beginning every time you go into a mission that has, like, the stuff you really, really need.

And so I use the antidote, and then I go back to doing the same thing. Like, I haven't had to vary what I'm doing very much in fighting the monsters. And, like, I'm sure, like, late game that changes. But, like, I'm sure like late game that changes, but like, I know it does. Cause I mean, like that's how it wasn't in world. It just is taking like longer than,

I mean, I'm at like probably 10 hours into this thing. And like, it feels homogenous. It feels like the fights are going the same way. They're huge hulking monsters that you like get your hits on. Then you get away from, et cetera. Oh, you ride them. You can ride them now which is interesting in case you were

like controlling your character and your thought god this is just too smooth and responsive and arcadey i need to i need to chunk it up a little bit i'm going to hop on the back of this huge monster that basically treats what controls as uh uh suggestions and rumor it's very authentic uh yeah now it actually is easier than i thought it would be i thought it was going to be like very difficult i'm playing almost exclusively solo i've done like a tiny bit of multiplayer but generally i'm just solo and yeah i haven't struggled you know i'm a little bit further than you and I'm still not struggling with it. So I think it's just meant to like be a fun, hey, I'm going to do this fun,

hit this monster activity for 30 minutes. I don't think it's meant to be a Dark Souls boss fight, which is fine with me. Like that's cool with me. You know, the little multiplayer I did, I played a little bit with Griffin and then I just did like a random matchmaking mission. And that felt like,

uh, you know, like a round of golf, like just like chatting with someone. Cause it was like, it doesn't require a ton of brain power to like survive and do well in monster hunter games. So you can kind of like,

it's like a passive, like, Hey, I'm just hanging out with people kind of thing. Um, matchmaking was crazy though. There's just like four people just going absolutely ham on this one monster i yeah but for playing with friends i definitely recommend it i asked griffin to share some of his thoughts with me i'm going to

slack them to you because i feel like you would be able to uh so you can read them uh and give a little bit more context and color to them so i I'm just going to send them via Slack, okay? According to Griffin, and this is a direct quote and probably not a paraphrase, it kicks ass. So that's where Griffin's at on this one. It seems that he might not have a ton of time

to commit to actual full-on critique at this moment, but I think that does sort of summarize the gist of it um yeah i i think it fucking rocks um just as like a full like a wrap-up idea is this a like a game you would recommend to everyone probably not it's still not the approachable monster hunter game you want it to be, but it is incrementally more approachable, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that that's more than World.

Yes. I think it is. I struggle a little bit with that because I feel like one of the strengths that World had that Rise is a little less on is world looked so good sure so the fights that you would have had a little bit more verisimilitude it had a sense of like more of a sense of danger and scale and just the beauty of exploration this doesn't look bad but it doesn't look like a switch game right now i think it looks better than i thought it would for a switch game i think the i'm i was actually pretty surprised at how good yeah it and to be fair it loads

very quickly probably a world record for monster hunter uh uh games yeah especially with world which had a real bad habit of um man it's so hard it's just, everybody is waiting for like, everybody who loves Monster Hunter, and I would count myself among them at this point, right? Even though I'm nowhere near deep as some people. Everybody who loves the franchise talks in hushed tones about the one that's just going to absolutely unlock the franchise for everybody.

Yeah. It'll finally be the one. Be the Breath of the Wild or whatever it is. Yeah, it'll be like the one. And tell me, I'm not kidding. You can back me up. I've been doing this for 20 years at this point. Every time it came out, this was the conversation.

Like, is this the one? Right. Is this the one? This is not the one right is this the one that's this is not the one okay like it's i and i'm a world got closer than i think a lot of them did it got rid of a lot of cruft yeah and i think that you probably have more cruft removed here like i think that it's it's a chipping away it's not the huge step forward um did we talk about rampage no okay let me touch on that real quick. Okay. Because it's sort of like the biggest evolution with, I think, in the series.

It's a big change, yeah. Aside from the wire bug. There are a handful of missions. You can do more of them, I think, if you want to. I've only been forced to do one. Where basically, like, it turns into a sort of tower defense. Yeah. Kind of thing where you're setting up,

you have a gate that monsters are coming through. They're trying to get into your gate and you're setting up defenses to try to stop them. Cannons, ballistas, some of which you control, some of which you don't. I don't know how this grabbed you,

but I did not love the one time that I did it. Sure. So I agree. i agree very not great yeah so i agree i this is not my favorite mode but i would say i played one solo which i really didn't care for because there's a lot of just like you're blindly running around placing towers it's not super fun solo but i also played one with griffin that was the one multiplayer thing i did with griffin and i really think it fares a lot better in multiplayer because you essentially are assigning people to zones and it's like okay griffin's in this area and i'm in this area and i'm planning

towers and i'm taking like turrets and stuff like that while he's doing his thing and that cooperation felt actually really interesting and pretty fun so i totally understand like a lot of people will play this solo and that's fine and in solo rampage is kind of miserable i think i haven't finished the game or anything but there are as far as i'm aware two required rampage missions one you have to do solo and one you can do in multiplayer um i would definitely recommend doing the multiplayer one in multiplayer because uh yeah i think it's just designed for that i think it's much more fun that way but i wouldn't say it's like a huge chunk of the game it is a new mode but it doesn't feel like

it's an enormous percentage of the game maybe five percent of the missions you're doing or that yeah i think the thing that just didn't it just felt having more than one monster i think kind of like it it messes up the energy of monster hunter where it's like you against this this one giant thing and when there's like so many other factors um it starts to like there's a disconnect between the fight that you're having with the monster just like everything else that's going around where you feel like you're having to manage a bunch of stuff it feels it's also dumb because when you beat like defeat monsters in that mode um i did air quotes but i realized no one can see me um they just sort of run away they like vanish they like disappear whereas i think it'd be a lot more satisfying if there's just a giant

fucking pile of monster bodies at the end of that mode that you can then like pick i mean i think you can kill the last one but but most of them just like sort of disappear and that i don't know doesn't have the same panache that uh knocking a giant t-rex on its back does yeah yeah that's fair what well what do you think russ is this look i think you should play i think everyone should play the demo uh which is available on the e-shop you just download it if you've never played a monster game if you have if you liked world and you like the prospect of playing a game like that on the switch get this in a heartbeat i think if you liked world like this is a grand slam don't don't even not even it'll take you a little bit to get back into the the groove but um yeah it's you'll get there

but i think for um new people that have never played a monster in a game the demo is great for that because it really does cut away a lot of the bullshit and just leave you with the stuff of fighting monsters and um i think it's a good entry point and you can decide hey is this something i enjoy doing or not so that'd be my recommendation uh uh russ let's take good entry point and you can decide, hey, is this something I enjoy doing or not? So, that'd be my recommendation. Russ, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with so much more great fun with your friends Russ and Justin and no one

else. Okay, I want to do a thought experiment with you. Okay. I want you to add a weapon to Monster Hunter. You want me to add a weapon? Yeah. I know you're talking about making a monster. That, I think, is a great idea, and I'm just going to pivot off that a little bit.

Okay. What would you add? If you could add one thing, think about all the sick-ass monsters coming at you, and you're a Russ, and you reach into your holster, sheath, whatever. What are you pulling out that this franchise is not giving you? Man. Okay. So the issue right now is there's 16 or something weapons.

Too many. A lot of bases. You also get the opportunity to get rid of one. Can I get rid of eight? is that an option? hey guys there's a hunting horn in this game what are you doing?

stop it people seem to really like that hunting horn it just seems silly to me but I'm sure it's great what are we missing? you know I keep thinking bazooka would be nice but they have a heavy thing that's thinking like bazooka would be nice but they have like a heavy thing that's like a bazooka they have that and they have the light thing which is like a machine

gun uh the light bow gun and they have i just want a weapon i want a weapon where like when i hit stuff with it i'm not like making a picnic after i hit stuff with it like it doesn't take 16 hours for like the animation to play out that's all i want is that yeah too wrong i mean i guess the dual blades is is something like that but i don't know what are you thinking nunchucks baby i mean i don't even think that's dual blades just blunt dual blades are different they're not nunchucks. They're two swords. You sound so dumb right now, Russ.

It's nunchucks. It's completely different. Let me ask you another question. Yeah. Nunchucks. Yeah. Is nunchucks like the chain and the two wooden things on the sides? Or is that one nunchuck? I don't,

I actually am not positive about that. No, Russ, I shouldn't start talking out my ass about nunchucks. Like I know what I'm talking about. Okay. I'm just someone who grew up as a, as a young kid that loved nunchucks and I'm probably getting it all wrong.

And I'm embarrassed of that. Yeah. That is surprising as someone who loved nunchucks that you wouldn't actually know what a single nunchuck looks even whether if that's plural or not nunchaku okay it looks like is the is the is the is the weapon it's a wet is the weapon that is two sticks connected by a chain got Got it. Okay. Nunchucks, I think, is gross, maybe Americanization. Yeah, that sounds... But nunchaku, I think, is plural, if I know my limited... Yes, I believe that is correct. And you're going to need plural nunchaku for how much you're going to love using the nunchaku

in Monster Hunter Rise 2. Nunchaku is this ascendant. How do we specify if you want to Nunchaku? Well, that would be wild, but it is an option. Is that not what you were talking about? Because that's what I pictured. You just have to hunt the laser dragons that we are adding. Sure.

To the game. If you get out, okay, we got two weapons. What about a monster? Give me a monster. Visual about a monster give me a like you like visualize a monster for me okay the monster hunter well here's the thing about monster hunter people should know that all of the monsters in monster hunter are basically like take one monster well i'm sorry take like a normal animal and then take another normal animal and then a third normal animal and sort of jam them together like a manticore situation right uh-huh so it's difficult because like there's already in the game a bunny like

honey badger enormous like elephant mashup so again we're asking ourselves what animals are not taken care of i do think platypus probably underrepresented, although there is a platypus. There's like that big water guy, the green guy that has all the moss on him. Fuck. What about giraffe? Is there a giraffe?

I don't think so. And that sounds really good because that would be like a big target, but also hard to reach that giant. You gotta get up there. You gotta really get up there. You have to bring your own ladder with you. Or wire you can wire bug up there wire bug up there i like giraffe i think uh okay so let's let me pick a few animals so like horse let's say horse face

right like a horse face and uh like the tail would be also a horse and also like that's so smart and the body too that's huge i mean that's so smart but but it makes a ton of sense but you would but you would make it like it's slightly bigger than a normal horse um okay so it's basically the scary part is that it's a horse that's slightly bigger than a regular horse. Yeah, like, you know, I would say like 80 percentile in terms of horse size. It's probably like that. Oh, so it's like not even bigger than the biggest horse. It's just sort of like a fairly big horse. It's pretty big.

Let's not get around. It's a pretty big horse. What about the eyes? I think we've gone a little heavy on the horse side. So maybe let's pull it back and go with... Human eye. Soulful human eye. I mean, horses already have that.

So maybe we have to go with something like a deer's eyes. Okay. Okay. I love it. Horses are already too soulful for human. Like, you might as well have human eyes right now. So like a deer's eye, you know, deers have no soul. So, we know you look into them. Or,

like, a sheep eye, maybe. A sheep eye. That's actually pretty frightening. Any sort of talons? Are you at Vis-a-vis talons? Sure, sure. Yeah, they're very good at running. Hmm. I didn't say talons. Oh. I said talons. Oh, sorry.

Eating hay. They're very good at that. I said talons. Oh, sorry. Eating hay. They're very good at that. With their talons. Okay, so I think normal hooves for three of the hooves, and then maybe one talon for the fourth one, but it's like surfboard-shaped. Surfboard-shaped talon. And sized, like a surfboard.

So, like, you could have some- Wow have wow that's uncomfortable that's an uncomfortable running experience just to conceive of well no no they do a lot of surfing is the thing so it's actually not uncomfortable so it's actually essential to their development yeah that makes that makes so much it's so smart right um what is the uh what about what's the armor situation? What do you mean? They're naked. Any armor? They're a monster. They're naked.

Okay. Do you know any monsters that wear clothes? I don't. No, that's a good, that's a really good point. Right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Russ. I love this animal, by the way.

I'm assuming you can give that. I want to say it's for free. Yeah. Take it. Yeah. Take it. Monster Hunter Rise 2 DLC, baby go go wild um we have some reader mail uh this is this is great this is from ragsy i've never played a monster hunter and every

game that's come out recently has been described as a decent place for beginners which one is truly the best mon hun starting point um i would say, I actually can say that the, much like investing, the best time to start Monster Hunter is yesterday. So you, there's going to be a learning curve. I've given up on that.

But if you hop on where everybody else is, you are going to have, it's going to be easier to like rise with that tide, right? There's going to be YouTube videos, like so much documentation on all this stuff. You're going to have people who are actively playing. So it's like fresh in their mind. Um, and, and that, like, I think that is the best time to hop off one of these is when someone can like help you right then and is incentivized to do so yeah you need a tutor if you have a viable tutor that can walk you through the like first few hours that's what you're looking for um you know i'll

say for me i think this one's pretty good but still not a beginner's game by any stretch yeah i don't think they're gonna make it that one i don't think that's ever gonna happen because i don't think it would necessarily be monster hunter um Did any of you, I guess they mean did either of you, because there's only two of us, they should know that, play it single player? Was it fun that way? Is it possible to beat the game that way? This is from Xavier Perez TU.

Now, as I understand it, eventually you do start having to take on the hub quests. Is that correct? That is correct. So I played all the village quests solo which you have to do it's solo only and and i had a lot of fun doing that the hub quests are harder uh but you could actually play those solo as well and i've done a few of them in solo and it's been fine so i actually think if you're just gonna play in solo that's totally fine the only annoying part

is the rampage stuff which again is not a huge percentage of the game but if you're just going to play in solo, that's totally fine. The only annoying part is the rampage stuff, which again is not a huge percentage of the game. But if you're just looking for a single player game where you want to feel more and more powerful, totally viable. I've been fine doing that. Okay. What is your favorite monster in the game? Alternatively, is there a monster in the game

that you feel bad for hunting? That is a question from Big Arongriff. Big Arongriff. Big Arongriff, probably. Probably Aaron. Sounds right. What is your favorite monster in the game? I really like, I don't know if you're familiar with him.

I think it's pronounced Poo-kay Poo-kay. I don't know Poo-kay Poo-kay. He's like a lizard guy, and he bounces around, and he spits poison at you, and he's got giant lizard, like gecko eyes. And he's just sort of like goofy. He kind of looks like the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon. Oh, yeah. I see Pukei Pukei.

He's cute. Yeah, he's cute. He's got a big tail that's easy to cut off. I'm sorry, but I like cutting off the tails. And so, and I think that's the same answer for the second part. Which monster do you feel bad about hunting I feel kind of bad about pukei pukei I like kulu yaku which looks like a big chicken oh yeah like a big chicken monster with a mohawk yeah it does feel like there are a few

too many like here's a big rock dinosaur and not enough goofy here's a chicken with a mohawk which I love them because like I roll up him like, I'm going to beat you. I feel very confident about this. I feel good about this. I'm going to beat you. You're a big chicken with a mohawk. I'm going to take you down. No problem.

Yeah. Please tell us how you customize your dogs and cats. I want to know about your good buddies. That's from Asteroid Era. So I have two. I have a cat named CJ after my cat that passed away. It looks basically like my cat that passed away. And then I have a dog named Woofadoofa.

And he's just the first dog I picked because I don't like dogs. You didn't customize the dog at all? Don't care. You just randomized it. Absolutely not. Woofadoofa. Yeah, no. I customized.

I spent like a good hour making sure that I was happy with my dog and cat at the beginning of the game. There's a staggering number of options to like really go wild on them. I pay zero attention to them in the midst of gameplay. I barely even know they're there. No, they're, oh, God, they're so cute. And they dance sometimes their their menu and the things that you can do with them in the village that is to me the point where i'm like don't know don't care can't get into it not doing it there's too much yeah the funny thing is the

stuff you can do with them in the village is so useful because you can use them to like go get items that you don't want to actually have to farm for but it's so buried in menus that it's worthless i will say like all of that village stuff comes with hilarious cut scenes of like cats and dogs doing various things and whenever i show my wife you just subscribe youtube but go sure but in a game uh and i've never seen a dog in a submarine on youtube for what it's worth i every time i show my wife these cut scenes she's like i should play this game this seems like the game for me and then three seconds later she realizes that it's absolutely not because the rest of the game

is the least welcoming thing possible so i do think there's probably a version of this game that is just hanging around with cats and dogs in the monster hunter universe please make that that would be something if I was managing them, like managing the village for the animals. You want an idle game set in Monster Hunter World. That would be actually very good. Don't mind if I do. I mean, you could send them on missions.

That's basically an idle game. They ride kites. It's amazing. Hey, are you playing anything else? I don't think so. I got one, if not. What? Travis got me on to Dead by Daylight. Did you ever anything else? I don't think so. I got one, if not. What? Travis got me on to Dead by Daylight.

Did you ever play that? Isn't that the horror game on PlayStation? It is a horror game. Made by the people that did. We talked about their game earlier this year, didn't we? The horror game with the teens, and they're like, you have to select. No, no, no. You're thinking of the man from madan uh super

massive yeah sorry they made theirs is something else and sounds like that it's gonna irritate me because until dawn oh is that is the one you're thinking of which i yeah dead by daylight it's very cool uh it is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one person is a killer. Oh, yes. And the other four are survivors. Yes, yes, yes. And basically, the flow is the survivors are trying to start these five generators and escape. Don't really have anything in the way of weapons or combat.

Right. It's basically just like the risk reward of of is it worth running at this point um you know to you could set like traps and stuff to slow the murderer down right you can throw like they have like pallets you can throw while they're chasing you you can hide in a locker and you get the great moment of like uh you know them coming in after you. And what's interesting is the killer is very powerful, but has to, can't like directly kill you. It has to sacrifice you,

which means taking you to a hook and hanging you on the hook in a very violent fashion. And then after that happens a couple of times, you're sacrificed. But it does, it puts more of a, like, it's not just they kill you and that's it. There's this thing of, like, killer has to weigh of, like, should I pick them up and take them, sacrifice them now because other people are doing other things. And it is, like, it really does capture this, that feeling of, like, for instance, I had one where the gates were opened and i saw the killer go after one of my teammates and like i i i can't fight them sure right so all i could do is like hide and then because somebody has to take you off the hook if you get put on one of these

meat hooks someone has to take you off right so. So all I can do is like hide, hope the killer ran away, get them off the hook. And then we escaped together. I don't want to do that. I want to escape and get my, my points or whatever, but there's permanent progress. So like you earn a bunch of points every time you play and you use those to

like level up your, your character, which lets you gives you access to more items. You can use like healing things or tool chests or other perks like that. They'll let you see where the killer is or things like that. And then there's the same progression system for the killer. But there's just one pool of those so you can use them to upgrade different survivors. And there are licensed characters for both the killers and the survivors. So like, some of the

kids from Stranger Things are survivors so like some of the kids from stranger things are survivors like nancy wheeler and and and the other kid uh ash from evil dead is one of the survivors and then on the killer side the shade is there freddy krueger is there uh texas chainsaw massacre it's like fortnight at this point no it's not like fortnight because it's just horror characters oh bill from left for Dead is one of the survivors. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I've missed Bill. Yeah, so he's in it.

Yeah, I've heard people really love that game. It seems a little intimidating to me to play those games because I feel like at this point the community is so settled in with strats and stuff that I feel like I'd get worked. So as somebody who's new to to it I will say it is but the the asterisk on that is because the point of the game is a horror game the moments when you are like playing a bit of cat and mouse and you are being hunted and you do get wrecked and then you do get saved but then you do get killed it feels like the genre so like even if you're doing a bad job you have this sense of

like wow there's this terrifying thing on the menu that like are on the map that we are all trying to hide from and it's just one person and then you play what's what's funny is starting as a survivor which is really how you should start uh i played a lot i was like this game is unbalanced it's just one person and then you play what's what's funny is starting as a survivor which is really how you should start uh i played a lot i was like this game is unbalanced it's too easy for the killer i'm getting wrecked every time i never win and so i decided to play as the killer once it's so hard to tell where they are because if they're not running you don't know like you don't know where they are so it's it's me it gave me the insight of like i should stop being such a dipshit yeah because like that is harder to find me than i

think it is yeah it's like learning how to drive after you've been a pedestrian for many years and it's like oh i understand why people are yeah okay that's that's cool that's cool though yeah yeah it's an interesting thing i don't think i've actually played anything because monster hunter is just, like, my entire weekend was just, like, sucked into Monster Hunter, which I was not expecting. Obviously, more cash solitaire, too, I should say. Low stakes cash solitaire. Yeah, okay. We're still a little suspicious of that situation, but we'll let it go. That's fine.

Yeah, so next week, I think we're going to be doing outriders which is a game that uh i i'm looking at justin's face um yes yeah okay i know what this is okay so our writers is the bullet storm people is it really the boat storm people yeah i think so oh people can fly oh awesome i didn't realize they made it the cool thing about this game is that it is coming to game pass like this week. So the week before our episode comes out. So if you happen to subscribe to Game Pass and once you play it before you listen to the episode, you can do that for, you know, the cost of your Game Pass subscription. So that's pretty cool.

I think it's on other platforms as well, but that seems to be the easiest way to try it out. That's how I'll be playing it. So, yeah, that'll be next week hopefully plant uh will be back uh griffin's gonna be out for a little bit because he's got again the human child um yes but uh yeah i think that that about does it right juice yeah i'm looking forward to that um uh can i get it now russ uh when's the game out i mean i'm asking you if I think the game is out now. I'm talking to you privately in the podcast about can I go download it

after I'm done with this? I think it's out today when we're recording. So I think you can go ahead and download it. Sounds good. Thank you so much for listening to our show.

We very much appreciate you being here, especially when it's just me and Russ, just two old friends chatting. What other duo will we have next week who knows what

we're running out of we're running out of pairings I'm sure we'll have some special guests coming up real soon and we'll mix it up while Griffin's on his paternity leave but that's going to do it for us so until next time for Russ Fresh Take my name is Justin McElroy and be sure for us so until next time uh for us fresh take my name is

justin mcelroy and be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!