The Besties - Nintendo Dares You to Become a Speedrunner

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

This week, Nintendo challenges the Besties to become elite speedrunners. Can they beat Mario in minutes? Will they transform into a morph ball in mere seconds? Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition helps the crew test the limits of their skills. Plus, Dungeons of Hinterberg blends Persona hangout session with Zelda’s dungeon-crawling combat.NOTE: This episode of the Besties was recorded before the announcement of the SAG-AFTRA strike against major video game publishers. 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!

I have an announcement, guys. I am gonna use this episode to... announce my retirement from podcasting. Wow. That sucks for me. Yeah, it is hard for you. I have decided that I'm gonna devote my life to... being a professional guy that helps Samus get the morph ball

as fast as possible, guys. Wow. I have achieved an S-rank in getting the morph ball as fast as possible, guys. Wow. I have achieved an S rank in getting the morph ball very fast, and I feel like if I really drill down by the fall, I could be in worlds of helping Samus get the morph ball so fast. Have you gotten to the kill screen yet? I haven't.

I think I've shaved it down. We've got it really low, but there is some fucking Russian guy who's getting in there edging out my times. Is it Putin? It's Putin, man. Putin Jr., his son. He's even worse in some ways,

because he's got a bad haircut, and is good at video games, especially helping Samus get the morph ball as fast as possible. I was gonna devote myself to getting all the coins from the warp screen of Super Mario 1-1. When you go down the pipe, I can get those coins in an unreal amount of time, guys.

Holy shit, dude. Yeah, like, S-rank. And was that just too competitive? Like, was there too many players in that category? Can I tell you, Rust, and don't laugh at me, but there was no art to it. No? There was no art.

The curve of Samus as she does the roll down and try to get the ball so good, that's art. There's an art to that. Jumping around getting coins, don't worry anything about it. Someone didn't say anything about being a person on Earth. No. I don't wanna do this to you. You're a friend anything about being a person on earth. No. I don't want to do this to you.

You're a friend, but I got to put on my journalist hat. Is it true that you're just doing this for the money and not the passion? Yeah. Are you Carrie Elwes in Twister? I have been. That is maybe the craziest poll. It's such a crazy poll, Russ. I'm trying to figure out how to respond but

Just pulling Carrie Ellis and twister is like so wild no one's ever thinking about that It's not like top of mind no one is even sure if he was in it man. Are you sure Carrie Ellis and twister? Fuck all right. I'm back in podcasting cuz that's where the art is Families finances That's where the art is. You got him, right? You got me back, Russ. You got me. You saved my life and my family's finances. ["Summer's Ending Theme"] My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the pastest games of the week.

My name is Ross Frosch and I know the best games of the week. Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening my friend, you are a member. We got a big double header for you. Nintendo World Championships NES Edition and Dungeons of Hinterburg. What are those, Chris Plant?

The first one is a game that will teach you the love of speed running through video game classics of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And the second one is a modern indie game that will teach you the pleasure of going on vacation And also killing things in dungeons while you're there Fantastic, there's gonna be that and so much more just hang with us right after this quick break Well, this is one of the weirder things anybody's released in quite some time a guy I would agree what a

some time, hey guys? I would agree. What a, what an odd little package this is. End of a Nintendo console life cycle video game, you know, where they're like, what else do we got? It does have that thing of like, they're reaching up for a light bulb and knock this off the shelf. They're like, fuck, right.

God, we have it back there. What are we doing with this? Before we get into the game itself, I want everyone to raise their hands and say who has been to a Nintendo championship. This is just pure brag. Just say it. I get it.

You're the king. As a competitor or as a journalist? Neither. I was a seven-year-old boy. Oh, okay. Okay, so I competed in the Nintendo World Championships. Did you? Yes, at Toys R Us. I was in the qualifying rounds.

Oh, that's an offshoot. That's like a branch of the championship. No, that's the roll-up. That's real champion. You would qualify at a Toys R Us. This is the actual Nintendo World Championships, which is the actual thing that happened, because we're old men, we remember it.

And it was a tape that was not publicly released. They had qualifying rounds at local Toys R Uses. You could play in the Nintendo World Championships and maybe, I think it was like an entry system, actually, with those where it's like, if you did good enough, maybe get an entrant to come up to participate. But you're basically, like, you're saying you were in the US Open, but actually,

you just played nine rounds in Nashville, and like, that doesn't count. You were seven and you were just in the building. So I don't want to hear it. I was in the Javits Center. Let's be clear. It was not these games, right? The Nintendo World Championships were not these games.

Some of them were. Yeah, there were several different generations. I qualified playing at Blockbuster with the Star Fox Donkey Kong Country cassette. And then I was like, oh hell yeah, I qualified. And to go to like the regionals, you had to pay your own way. And I was like, oh well no, I'm 10, so I can't do that. What did you have to do?

Like what was the challenge? I mean, I think it, so I can't do that. What did you have to do? What was the challenge? I mean, I think it was just the first level of both games, and you had to do them as fast as you could. I had a fractured jaw at the time due to a tragic accident that had occurred during a rehearsal for the music man. I tripped backwards over a chair, but I played through the pain and I qualified,

but then I didn't end up actually doing it. So we had a sub step in. Well, let me just say to close this out, as someone who actually was at the NES championships, sure, sure, sure, yeah. It was an amazing experience and really like set me on a path that would lead me to my future career. That's all you have to share?

You were at this thing. I met fucking Mario, he was there, he had his fucking raccoon tail, and it was the greatest moment of my life. Have they announced new Mario yet? Well, Mario and Luigi Brothership. That doesn't. But who's the new Mario voice, I mean?

Who's taking the place? Oh yeah, they announced it. Okay, good. It's Chris Pratt. It's a him. It is a. It's Chris Pratt. It's a him. It is a him. You fucking got me. You knocked my camera off its auto tracking feature.

That's how bad it was. That's how, that's how you got me with that. But this is a, this is not that. It's different. This is a, this is a celebration of 13, I believe, NES games. Popular Nintendo first party releases, your Mario's, your Kirby's, your Zelda's. It's fair to say if you made a list

of your top 10 games on NES, they're probably in there. Mm, I wouldn't go crazy with that. I guess Punch-Out is missing. Are you Billy? Yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of the- It will let you list your favorite NES game on there and mine does say Superman. Fuck off! Wait, wait, wait, that is one of the weirdest mistakes of this game, is to start with a screen that's like a list of all of the NES games.

It's like, which one's your favorite? It is weird. Holy shit, look at all these games! And they're like, great, thanks for letting us know that. Here are 13. Yeah. Oh, a Kristis fan, I see. Oh man, they're good games though. They're pretty good games. They're all iconic. I feel like Ice Climber is like-

It's such a bad game. It's a bad game, but it is pretty iconic thanks to Smash at this point. So what you do is there's a speed, there's several modes. The first one that you start out with is speed run mode, but you're not speed running the whole game. You start out and there are challenges for each game, usually like 10 to 15 challenges.

You go through and you unlock, and the challenges are extremely, extremely bite-sized little cross-sections. Not quite Wario level, but like, within that range. Pretty close. I mean, there are some that are a little bit longer, some that are like, nail this jump, and some that are like, do this level. I think the longest one I played was like a minute long.

There's one, well, there's one where you play through all of Mario Brothers. That's like the last one you'll have to do. The master level, that's the last one you'll have to do. The master level, that's the last one I got to last night. I'm like, I'm not doing this, but they're like, just to speed run the entire game. Did you do it?

Of course you did. What was your time? I mean, not great. It was like seven, six and a half, seven minutes. Russ, it's a really cool thing if you didn't see it. But when you get to the master, that one, they say like, if you wanna compete in this, we're gonna have to give you some classified information.

If you click this button, you can see the classified information. And it's just about the fucking warp zones. It's like an Intento Power Breakdown. Yeah, it looks like an Intento Power Breakdown, the warp zones. It's so, the sense to me that I was loving about this, and it's like exemplified by that,

is I really enjoy the idea of like things that I know by heart Be experienced for the first time by people and just like seeing kind of what they they make of it I think that part is very very and in realizing how many of those little things that I have still like Yeah, I know how to do I know how to get to the warp zone. Like I know it in my muscles, in my hands, I know how to get there. But that's the last one in like the Super Mario Brothers

one category. The first one that you do is get to Super Mushroom and you run and you do it as fast as you can. I'm still working on that one by the way. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. I always forget which box it's in. That is like the level of granularity

that you are going for. And there's different- Which is actually, to address that, like they are comically, a lot of them are comically short, but it is interesting when you think of it from a speed running mindset, which obviously the championships are very focused on speed running,

because speed running is all about, here's this micro seven second moment that you need to fucking crush. And if you don't, you're gonna lose your chance at a world record. speed running is all about, here's this micro seven second moment that you need to fucking crush. And if you don't, you're gonna lose your chance at a world record. And it is not just content, like they're not difficult. Like we keep saying challenges is like, it's important.

Like, I don't think any of these are like hard in and of themselves. The difficulty is like, how much time are you gonna spend like winnowing it down? There is like a, there's sort of a break point with the rankings that I feel like is like implied. It's a letter grade thing. And it's sort of like, if you get an A or above,

you get the pin for it. And I think that's as close as the game gets to saying like, you beat it. Like you get it, you get the idea. Like you can do it again 100 times to try to get S, but you get it. So there's like 150 of these across the 13 different games. And then there's like a world championships mode

where they cycle in and like feature a number of these mini challenges that then when this like cycle is over, then they show you your ranking on like the world leaderboards. I think that the lack of persistent, easily accessible leaderboards, either on a global scale or on a what your friends have done scale,

is this game's biggest miss. The fact that when I complete, when I get the morph ball as fast as I possibly can, and it takes like three point wood seconds, and then I can't look and see like, well, Justin got it in 2.9. It's wild. It's fucking so, such a staggering missed opportunity.

It's a weird, it's a, I think that that's the weirdest thing about this like as a package, right? Like individually, I like the idea of it. I think it's really cool. I think it's a cool idea, honestly. And not every game has to be like a capital G game. I think that, especially if you're lowering the price, I think that's killer.

But there's like that thing, I did the championships and the fact that I couldn't get immediate feedback as to where I was is bizarre. It's really, it's like shows this lack of understanding of like what the, what the thing is. The other thing I'll say that was really, and maybe there's like a button that I missed and this will be really embarrassing, but like not having a single button to just restart a run when you know that it's not going to work. You have to quit out to the menu and then watch a three second countdown again. Now that's fine. Maybe if we're talking about like be a level in Kid Icarus, but when it's like nail this three second run and you're making me like back out to the menu to

retry it for a better time, it's really, it's just a big, it's like obviously not a fluid experience. It's like really weird. My favorite mode in this game, I forget what it's called, but there's like a knockout mode. I think it's survival. Survival, so you are up against seven other players, but it's like their ghost data,

going across again, these very micro challenges. And in the first round, there's eight micro challenges and in the first round there's eight players total in the first round the four players who are the slowest get knocked out and then it's final four and then from there the two slowest players get knocked out and then it's a one-on-one showdown I should mention by the way when there's eight players and you can change this but the default is fucking what you get one eighth of the switch screen to do the thing. You see everyone going at the same time. And you have one eighth of the screen

that you're trying to play on. It's so funny. Which is bonkers, like instead of having visible ghosts, like on one big screen, like you know, how every other game on like Everbade does it, you get like a tiny little window. I like that shit. I actually really like that.

Anytime you're doing any of the challenges, you're looking at half of the screen is like the play area. The other half of the screen is your ghost data for your personal best. I like that shit. I think that shit's kinda cool. And I like this knockout mode. I wish it was longer.

I wish it started you with like a hundred ghosts and you like had to race and then it knocked it down because you finished that mode again. It's like three rounds and you're over and done with it pretty well. And it doesn't really feel like that meaningful. It kind of feels like a random, like I had no idea at the end of it

if I was going to win or lose. I didn't feel like, oh, I nailed it. I ended up of course winning first on all of them. But because, you know, I'm like. You know how exciting that bike is. Well, and it's ghosts, right? It is not. Actual real time players. That's why it works really, really well.

Well, yeah, I guess I would want so much of this just feels like a rough draft to me. It's weird because it has all the Nintendo polish, it has like the very cutesy stuff that, um, hoops that you were talking about of like, oh wow, then you feel like this is kind of a recreation of the feeling of opening a Nintendo power. Like those are like little details.

And it's got like the jazzy 90s aesthetic. Yeah. And, and, and the like side by side of being able to watch yourself, all that feels good. But then at the same time, 13 games feels so small. It feels small like pretty much immediately in that main mode. And then this thing of like being able to play Ghost, that's cool. I love playing Ghost in Forza Horizon. I also love playing against real people. And like it just feels like it's missing large chunks of the game,

but maybe that's because again, they, it is being sold cheaper. Well, I do- I struggled because it's not, a lot of the like quote unquote challenges, a lot of them are like not that fun because they weren't designed to be fun. You know what I'm saying? And there was a lot of challenges

where I would get an A the first time, but then I would have to really think like, am I gonna spend the time? It's not like there was a layer built for me to find here. If I'm gonna find it, it's not like in a game like Celeste or a game like, I don't know, you name it. Modern games were like speed running as a thought, right? You're thinking about it.

In the design of the game. It's in the design of the game. This is not that, this is me saying like, can I sort of finagle it to get, and what's weirder is they show you how to do the thing in a demo box before you start the challenge. Like you can watch how to do it. Fairly poorly, I would say.

Yeah, usually it's. Those demos are not optimized at all. Yeah, obviously, but it's like, it feels, it's just another way in which it feels kind of not fully fleshed out or not fully thought out. It feels like a half thought. I do want to address one thing that Plant said, and that is you can play against real people.

There is a local multiplayer party mode, which I, look, I don't have 45 year old friends that would appreciate this in close proximity, but I could see if you had a bunch of old people gathered around a screen. I think that was great. I just think again, online functionality. I'm continuing problem for Nintendo.

Let me also address the second part. Cause I completely agree with you. Can I address that, the party mode thing real quick? Oh yeah. I thought that that, another thing that kind of like, is annoying to me about this is, I thought that that another thing that kind of like is annoying to me about this is I thought that it would be a fun way to sort of like show my kids like, but that party mode structurally, the way it's built, that's not gonna, if you have disparate levels of skill or like memory with these, it's not gonna be, it's not fun. Like it's not gonna be fun. It's not gonna be fun to play around with as a, like it's gotta be really evenly skilled people. On the online thing, what's really weird is that we're in this space, the year is 2024,

and the fact that I need a paid subscription to access asynchronous, basically leaderboard data is fucking crazy to me. Yeah. And the fact that you need a Nintendo Online basically leaderboard data is fucking crazy to me. And the fact that you need a Nintendo online plus subscription, it's not that expensive, but wild. But it's so like, that's basic, terrible shit. Like I would get it if there was simultaneous multiplayer,

fine, you're paying for the lives, whatever the nonsense they're gonna argue for the live server, but for an asynchronous leaderboard driven thing, totally no reason that you should require online for a subscription for this. I can't help but compare this to NES Remix, of which there were two on the Wii U, and then there was, I think, Ultimate NES Remix on the 3DS,

which had a similar number of games. I think the first one had like 16, and the second one had maybe a little bit fewer. I don't think I played those. What was the like gist of them? You didn't play them? Oh, holy shit, those were really cool. Oh man, really?

Because those were similar in that they were like these micro challenges of NES games, but like with weird shit mixed in. So like, you would be playing Super Mario Brothers, but the challenge would be like, everything was just in silhouette and you couldn't actually see the sprites or there would be weird weather effects.

Or characters from one game would show up in another game. It really took it and made it very, very strange. A lot of the same games too, it's like pulling from a lot of the same. Clearly they're like doing a different thing here. But it just, the lack of being able to see what scores your friends got in the games in my book is enough for me to not recommend this

to basically anyone. It feels like that someone had the idea for the project and no one really had the follow through on how to make it enjoy. It feels like a half measure, you know what I mean? Because a lot of these things are not even more resources we're talking about. Like it's just the way it is structured, like having a button to quickly restart a run or whatever. It's just, it's, feels like it's just a half, half off. To have a game that is entirely based around

shaving off hundreds of seconds to achieve the best imaginable score and not allow you to compare that score against anyone but your own personal best is just like, is crazy to me. It's like, it's crazy to me. It's also, it's tough when we get into these services, right, where we're paying monthly to just have access to a thing. At what point, like when can we move away

from like the structural metaphor of like, this is a game you're buying, you're buying this game and it has these things on it and this feels like something if it was part of being a Nintendo online member. It does feel like that. A fun thing that they could just pop up. And they've done that.

They did that, right? Mario 30 and Tetris. But you're talking about reissues of free games, stuff like that. No, no, no, no, no. These are special challenge Battle Royale versions of Mario and, like stuff like that. Like I'm saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, these are, these are special challenge, like a battle Royale versions of Mario and Tetris and SRO. There's a 99 player FZRO game.

Okay, the 99 ones, yes, okay, yeah. That are included in Nintendo Switch Online, as are all of these games for the most part in their like entirety, you know, that you can go and just in the game essentially. And, and, and they're already kind of doing what you're talking about because there are on like the NES, whatever, what do they call it, the NES library?

There'll be things where it's like, oh, this is Super Mario Brothers 2 Lost Levels, but here is Super Mario Brothers 2 Lost Levels and you start at this point in the game and there's a challenge for you. So they actually are doing, it's not speed running, but they're doing variant versions of their own games in that space. All which is to say I completely agree with you hoops of like, this feels like a thing that we would

get some of these games at random or like intention like a new Super Mario is coming out and we get three Super Mario games of what these like little speed run challenges and we can play them for a limited time and it's part of that larger ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah. Compete against your friend's times in Mario 1.1. Like it?

Yeah. And this even feels like more of a halfway because I mean, I would be shocked if there are not more games that are going to be added to this at later dates. That's why I mean when I say it feels incomplete. It truly feels like somebody handed me a book and like had the back half is just white pages. And I don't want to get to that. Well, at this point, you're only paying, it's tough because you're not getting a lot of new stuff

game wise, what you're basically getting is you're paying for how it's served up to you. Right. You're paying how this is metered out. And I can almost guarantee you, most people listening to this will own some of these games. Like you don't, you're not re-buying the whole thing. You're basically just how it's like sliced up and structured. And that is so subpar.

If you have a Nintendo Switch Online membership, you do own all these games. You do own all these games. You're renting all of these games. I don't have a problem with that. And same way, like, I feel like I'm learning from this. And like if an academic book like sliced up a whole bunch of stuff and made a documentary out of it, I don't have a problem with that. And same way, like I feel like I'm learning from this. And like if an academic book like sliced up

a whole bunch of stuff and made a documentary out of it or made a book where they, you know, collected, I don't know. I get the idea of slicing out something and giving it to you in a different fashion. I bought the same Blu-rays and DVDs over the years a hundred times, right? Well, I'm just saying if you're gonna do that,

you gotta nail this other stuff. You got, well, yes, yes. And I think that's a problem. I do wanna say one nice thing about this before we wrap that I think is fantastic. I don't have a whole lot of interest in speed running and I certainly don't have an interest in getting good at speed running.

I vaguely thought I could admire it, but doing this, I am walking away with a intense appreciation of how hard speed running is. I really think it's fun. Like I think these are fun. I wish they were just a little bit, you know what I mean? I wish these hooks were set. I don't think they're fun at all,

which is why I think that they are, I think it's so impressive because I'm like, holy shit. Just getting this five seconds right makes me want to like take a long walk off of a short period. I find some of them more interesting than others. Like there are some where I'm like, I never want to do that again. Some of them are like,

oh, I bet I could do that a little bit better. But it is a perfect distillation of the speed running concept in a very, like it's a thesis on speed running. Yeah. So you walk away convinced of like where the interest is. I will also say if you're somebody who likes like from a historical perspective, another thing I think is interesting about it is that because there are a lot of games on here and they're pulling from like the entire swath of the game, while

there are these like, you know, the go get the sword in Zelda challenges that are very early. Some of the challenges are from parts of games that like, I bet you think you know extremely well like myself, and then you go in, you're like, what the fuck is this? Who's this lion guy running around the pool in Zelda? He's so angry.

I don't remember this because I played it one time when I was eight, you know what I mean? And not a hundred times on the first level like I do every time where I'm like, huh? I'd love to oh Zelda. This is a good well, I got the sword. I'm done you know what I mean like it's wild to see different snippets of it and some games that like You just don't play like Kid Icarus like yeah is hard It's really hard and it doesn't make sense. I had to watch the demo video on the very first Icarus challenge

because I kept going into a door and it's like, don't go that way. It's like, where else do you want me to go? It turns out they want you to go off the right side of the screen and appear on the left side of the screen. I feel like there is a way to fix this. I feel like just adding leaderboards for your friends would really genuinely rekindle my interest in this game,

adding more games to it, doing that stuff. My concern is that given the level of polish or I guess lack of consideration that kind of went into some of this really fundamental stuff about this game, I wonder whether or not they are going to actually invest any time or resources into fixing it up. But who knows, man.

Nintendo is so unpredictable on what it's going to invest. They're still putting out fucking Mario Golf Switch updates, like you never know. It's cool, man, we're only sounding frustrated, I think, because it is cool. Like it's cool that they did it. It's cool, man, we're only sounding frustrated, I think, because it is cool. Like it's cool that they did it. It's on the cusp of being the right thing. It's only annoying because it is like this different,

like there is a version of this that is not just great, but it's like, obsesses everybody. And that's what's weird with Nintendo, is they get these and it's like, it's all there. Just make it a little bit good. Let one person who knows about this stuff into the room where you're doing it. Just let them talk.

I do wonder if it's the first game problem for Nintendo because we were so spoiled. You know, we have these franchises that have been around for decades and they nail them. And sometimes we forget when they go about it for the very first time, I'm looking at you, Arms, Splatoon. Yeah, man, I mean, Arms 2 really blew us all away.

Splatoon got better and better. You know, did Arms 2 ever happen? Arms didn't, Arms 2 didn't get a chance to happen because Arms 1 was such a turd. I mean, I think they have the luxury of saying like, I don't know, we'll barely put it out. And if people beg us, we'll like put more of it out, I guess, in a month, we'll fix the thing

that should have been in there from the beginning. And we'll make a whole direct about it. And they'll be like, thank you, Nintendo. Don't have your kids play this as the first time they experience Legend of Zelda, please. I tried with Henry, Henry saw me playing it and he was like, let me dip into that. I was like, oh yeah, precious memories.

And he fucking hated it. This is the worst way for kids. This is the most annoying adult way to play video games, period, no question. No kids allowed on this one. Frush, tell the listeners the one thing you told me about this game, the one thing. Oh yeah, I did say, well, I was curious.

I wanted your son to try the party mode. Oh, okay. So, so just to confirm, kids should not play this. The one thing that you told me about this game. Oh yeah, bring your kid to the room. No, no, no, no. You'll have a blast. Sorry.

Let me clarify. Let me clarify my note. I was more referring to if your child has never played the Legend of Zelda, which I, is that true? He's never played the Legend of Zelda? Probably. Yeah. Okay.

For the people that have never played it, this is not the experience to have your first Legend of Zelda experience. Don't do it like this. I tried to do, I tried to, this is a sidebar, but I tried to do a little like history of video games for Cooper tracking it through Spider-Man. So I had like an emulator box up and I'm like,

we're gonna start at like the very first Spider-Man game and I'm gonna show you like how they progress through time. And I open Atari 2600 and I couldn't make the little asshole shoot out his web and we sat there for 30 seconds while I tried to make the dipshit shoot webs in this terrible trash and eventually Cooper goes, what the fuck is this? And then she leaves the room.

And that was her experience with like the- If you wanna ensure that your children never play video games again, just show them this. Piece of cake. Let's take a break and we'll talk about another video game if that's okay. Yeah. Now, Justin, last week, you took some issue

with the fact that none of us played your very special video game, which was, I don't even remember the title of it. You never fail to disappoint. Flintlock was the game and we're all still loving it over here. But we have moved on to Greeter Pastries. We have moved on and we did play your very special game this time. So a bit of a change.

I thought this one was exciting and I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think about it because I think it's really interesting. But let me give a pitch that isn't like, I'm trying not to give like a just cross referential pitch, but basically Dungeons of Hinterburg imagines a world where these like monster filled dungeons mysteriously appeared in this alpine resort community, like three years ago, and people have started taking up, like, coming here as the next extreme sort of vacation adventure where they are coming here to fight monsters in dungeons with other monster slayers, sort of like build a reputation and do a whole, like, vacation of monster slayers, sort of like build a reputation and do a whole like vacation of monster slayings. You play a character who is, she is like taking a break from her legal career and she is here

for like a trip she has always wanted to do and she's interacting with the other slayers in the resort. So the game is you sometimes clearing dungeons, sometimes you have like a fixed amount of time in this vacation, so it's like a persona structure. You're going and playing in dungeons, or you can hang out with people. There are some times when the shops are open, you can go shopping, but at other times you gotta hang out

and different hangouts build different staffs, open different opportunities. For example, there are a couple of local kids from Hinterberg that are like hanging out and hate the tourists, different stats, different opportunities. For example, there are a couple local kids from Hinterburg that are like hanging out and hate the tourists. But if you spend a couple of afternoons with them, they'll teach you how to unlock treasure chests that you encounter in the thing.

Just as like a setup, I did really like the fact that this world exists where there are lawyers and there are also like Kobolds haunting a vacation village. I really do enjoy how much it focuses on how fucked up that is. Like everybody that you talk to is like, this is fucking crazy. There's dungeons in magic. That's crazy.

It really kind of reminded me of Bubble, Jordan Morris's book, which was about slayers in, it's more of like a gig economy thing rather than a resort thing, but a similar idea. So that's the game, you go in and it has a really lovely sort of like hand drawn animation style shaded, I think is fair animation style, cell shaded. I would, I think it's fair, uh, animation style.

That's very pretty. Um, I think, uh, some of the writing is really good. Some of it is like, okay. Um, the other thing that is interesting is the dungeons are split into like these different like lands. So there's a four different, I think lands that each have a set number of dungeons on that you have to uncover of different difficulty, but in each land, you get a specific magic power that you learn, and everybody in that land has that power, but it's different in each area. So like one, you can summon a tornado, another you can like drop a big bomb,

but it's all about like navigating that particular environment, but it helps to vary it when you're in the different areas. I thought it was really fun. I really dug the, I think conceptually, I really dug it. I really like the setting. I like the writing. I like the characters. It has a really good persona, social link style thing where you can spend your, uh, like day times hanging out with the different characters that you encounter. You get a little journal showing you like all the characters you can hang out with

and the different sort of like benefits they provide as you increase your rank with them. And it's like very clever stuff. It's like, well, I can hang out with this guy and it'll give me an extra bar of stamina or something like that. And again, I find the concept of the game so amazing. Like the concept of what does it mean to have a world

where magic has suddenly become real in this one very specific place. The setting is also really cool. I think it's like set in like Austria or something like that, which is not a place I've played a video game in before. And so there's like a lot of parts of the world and culture that are very unique. I find the dungeons and like the exploration

and kind of the puzzle solving that you do with the magic I liked, the combat is a little simplistic for me, like it- This is where I wanted to get you guys to weigh in, because this is obviously not something that I'm, I like decent, you know what I mean? I'm not the most exacting critic when it comes to this kind of thing.

So I'm curious how that hit you off. It feels a bit, it doesn't feel great. It doesn't have a great feel. That was my takeaway too. It feels sort of floaty and when you hit an enemy, it just doesn't feel great. And I know that that's like- Not even just the combat,

just like moving through the world feels like very stilted, which- It's got like Zelda Ocarina of Time auto jumps as you, I think so, am I remembering that correctly? I might be confusing with that. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes. It was more just like literally walking,

like even Ocarina of Time, like walking through the world doesn't feel as like stiff as this did to me. I didn't get that as much, but I do know what you're saying. Persona has the same problem for what it's worth. For example, when you use the tornado spell, the camera like doesn't quite know how to react to it.

Cause it's like, it wants to go out in front of of you and a lot of times when you're using that spell, you can actually you're using it to pick yourself up and move around. So the camera like follows the tornado and then the very first thing you have to do is like scoot the camera back and the tornado back to pick yourself up and then there is like a little bit of a lack of fluidity. I think I think it was just not necessarily their focus. It's very clear that the team's very focused on narrative, very focused on visual, and knew that they needed, obviously, combat mechanics and exploration, puzzle-solving stuff, but it just didn't seem like their core skill set. The puzzles are really interesting. Once you get through the dungeon, several of them have like some really cool

ways of using the central mechanics and things like that. But you're right, that isn't like the main focus, which like you're talking about with persona though, like I try to skip it as well. It's like very, you know, I like the different interactions. There's like a lot of, I like the idea that I'm actually choosing how to spend time versus just like ticking off boxes. Cause there's some characters that like, I actually care more about. There's a one like local sword enchanter that is being run out of business by Garen Moore, like the big name soulless sword company around the corner.

So you're like trying to help her figure out how to stay in business. Like a George Amort kind of thing. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to stick with it, if I'm being honest, which is a shame because I like so much of it. And like I'm glad I bought it.

And it's a type of game that I would definitely, definitely root for. It runs great on Steam Deck, which is- Really good, yeah. I got it on the OLED is one of the first things that I played definitely, definitely root for. It runs great on Steam Deck, which is- Really, yeah. I got it on the OLED is one of the first things that I played on the OLED. Which is ideal, but I played through a few dungeons. There's 25 dungeons, I think, total,

and they all have a lot of character. But I found myself enjoying the free time character building stuff a lot more than I was enjoying the actual game, like the combat and dungeoneering side of things. Makes sense. It's not bad, like that part of it isn't bad, it just doesn't feel, it never feels like awesome.

We're in a distinction, we don't have to limit ourselves to such binary terms as good and bad. All games exist in the spectrum between the two, right? It's their art. The game is on Game Pass, by the way, if you happen to subscribe to Game Pass. Oh, fuck, then yeah. So fucking, what are you fucking complaining about, Poindexter? Just play it.

Is it art? I don't know. Download it. That's a good point. You have Game Pass X3-7 console tier green, right? That allows you temporary access to day three releases when it's not a full moon. That's Dungeons of Hinterburg.

It's also kind of difficult to remember the name. Dungeons of Hinterburg, I have trouble remembering the name often. That's Flintlock. Don't be reductive, okay? Do we have any honorable mentions we want to talk about? I mean, yeah, I do. Remember when we were... So I promised a while ago that I would talk about Earth Depends Forrest 6,

Zenless Zone Zero. I promised this like, let's say last week. And then- You might've promised an episode about it. Yeah, but then I was supposed to travel and then IHE issues ruined all planes. So I didn't do that and I'm here. But I did still play some Earth Defense Force 6 and I just wanna tell y'all,

Earth Defense Force is back, baby. Y'all are probably just crushed that you did not play it this week. I know that you're sad. I know that you feel like you really missed out. You miss playing 35 to 45 minute levels where you kill the same bugs over and over again. The levels take 45 minutes to be? They probably take about 25 to 30. It just feels like 45. It's still long. I'm writing about it from Halyan and like, my take is you need a good podcast

if you're gonna play this game. Wow. It's a game that you listen to a podcast while you play it and then that like really balances everything out. So fucking crazy to me because structurally you would think, oh, of course we'd make five minute arcadey levels where you fight giant ants. Perfect. Perfect.

Yeah. Like that's, that's true. Um, there are a lot of things that could be better about it. They, they like just letting you have all the weapons if you want them. Um, but it's still fun as hell. And it, they always do just enough that gets me

back in like now, like the first two or three levels, you're fighting giant frog people that are the size of like your house. They can climb skyscrapers and you can shoot their arms and legs off. And then you do that, you shoot their legs out from underneath them, they fall off the skyscraper, they go into like a prone position and shoot at you

like they're in like fucking point break. It is, it's good. Like the good, the highs are so high. Unfortunately, the lows are what continue to keep people who are healthy and not like me out of the series. This series needs it's like Monster Hunter world moment. Do you remember that they tried to do this? They made a like, what if we tried to like really prestige this up and make a like targeting

a Western audience version? What was that called? Oh, I can't remember. It came and it went. They tried to do like a variety of different series. They also have a kind of Minecraft looking one. Yeah, the pixel one, world police, whatever it's called. Yeah, it was just like

moment where they're like we're really gonna go hard on this earth defense force iron rain sure was the one that was like didn't didn't happen to be it was it was good but it kind of ended up having a lot of the same problems it just looked more realistic which you know what here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna i'm gonna save the franchise for everyone. I know there's some fans I'm not saving it for you. I'm saving for everyone else. Okay. Oh Start from scratch EDF one cool and you make it as a top-down auto shooter that blows up in the way the vampire survivors blew up and Then from there you just build it back to being a 3d game What the hell are you talking about?

That's my plan for relaunching this brand. So you're just saying write a current trend, make a lot of money, and then make a perfect game. Bingo. I mean, I can't argue with it. You know, it is a sound business plan. It's a proven track record. Sure. Okay.

Here's my thing. Change it to Earth Defense Militia. EDM EDM. It's an EDM focused. Music is the weapon. Yeah. Revolution X EDM. DJ Chesto there or is he like DLC? He is the bugs and he is the guns and he's the bullets.

So I don't want to. I don't know. That's enough. He has the bugs, and he has the guns, and he's the bullets. So I don't wanna, I don't know, that's enough. I've said it, yeah, they're already, they're getting on my case, sorry guys. Can I have a brief segue? Sure. When I was working for MTV, I was invited to a DJ Hero event in Ibiza. Nice.

And so Russ Frushtick went to Ibiza, went to a DJ Tiesto EDM concert, and then interviewed DJ Tiesto. Do you have any photographic or video evidence of this? Can you find it? Probably not, because they wiped all of MTV's archives. You cowards. I'm Russ Frushtick for MTV. That's great to think about, isn't it? This is still rock and roll to me, baby. I'm Russ Freshton, rock and roller. I had to Google his name so many times.

So many times. Tiesta, tiesta, tiesta, tiesta, tiesta. Do do do do do do. Hades 2 update. We gotta, I just wanna look. That was a Hades 2 update. I gotta keep you guys updated. I made a deal with you all

that I would keep you updated so you don't have to check the Hades. I missed one, but we're on to Patch 4 now. This dropped July 16th. So if you haven't dropped in, we do have a Hades 2 update for you. Not gonna tell you about all the things in it, but let's just say we're all stoked over here.

Still loving Hades 2. It's better all the time in it, but let's just say we're all stoked over here. Still loving Hades 2. It's better all the time. Getting better all the time. I have an honorable mention to call out. It's called Port Master. And if you happen to be one of the people that in recent years has picked up one of those fancy Linux handheld devices, a lot of them these days support this thing called port master which is basically allowing newer games to run on these devices that like ordinarily a lot of people play like NES shit on there

But now you can run things like Stardew Valley Celeste assuming your handheld is powerful enough GTA 3 things like that. What's cool about it is that you actually need the files to run these games, so it's not like a haven for piracy, but they do all the other heavy lifting. So you basically install the backend that lets it work, and then they're like, OK, drag these two files over from your installed Steam folder, and then you're done, and it suddenly works on your handheld.

So there's like 500 working ports right now. A bunch of them are like free to play right off the jump. If you wanna play the original Spelunky classic, you can play that boom, right off the jump, you don't need any files. It's really cool. So if you have one of those handheld, check out Port Master.

Cool. I wanna give an actual recommendation, not just my Hades update. And this is kind of like, a lot of y'all probably blow this off, but if you want something to watch that's nice to watch and is having some interesting conversations that movies don't have a lot, I watched Thelma with Sydney a couple days ago.

It is a movie about a woman in her 90s, her early 90s, whose husband passed away a couple years ago. It is a movie about a woman in her 90s, her early 90s, whose husband passed away a couple years ago. And she gets taken advantage of by like a junk mail fraud scam. And her family, which is Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, along with her grandson, well, her her, her son and his wife decide that this is an example that maybe she needs to be, uh, in an assisted living facility. So, um, this really upsets Thelma, the grandma. So what she decides is to convince them that she doesn't need to do that.

She's going to track down the guys that stole her money and get it back. Whoa. That's her plan. She has very little mobility. She can't drive. And what the movie is, is basically how does a woman with limited mobility who can't drive con her way into like taking these guys down. So it's kind of like a,

it's like a hugely low stakes action movie that takes itself seriously, but is also using that to have conversations about like aging and like what role older people play in our lives and what their place is. And like, she basically partners up with a friend of hers who she wasn't close to, but is like the only person she knows that's still alive. And he has a mobility scooter and she thinks that that would be a really primo edition. So she brings him onto her crew and it's the two of them trying to track down these, uh, uh, uh, scam artists. It's really, really good.

And it's having some like, uh, it's true to itself. It's not making the older characters the punch line. Um, but it is really funny and it has a really good heart and interesting thing is to say is called Thelma. It's not going to change your life, but I really enjoyed it. You squib, a dynamite squib. She's great. Did you, uh, did you watch the beekeeper this year?b. She's great. Fantastic. Did you watch The Beekeeper this year?

Okay, it's a perfect companion piece to The Beekeeper. It is, what if we centered the elderly in the narrative of The Beekeeper, and that is what... She doesn't have a statham coming to help her. The elderly need our protection. No one stands up for them, it's like babies. In fact, it's worse than babies because people look after babies.

No one looks out for the elderly. Except for the fucking Peackeeper, which was the best movie. If you didn't see it, you really should watch this and the Peackeeper back there. You'll have a good night. I'll guarantee you'll have a good night.

Did I talk about the boyfriend last week? Yes. On the besties? Yeah. Okay. We've watched more. Are you watching? Oh yeah.

Dog, it's fucking great. It's only 10 episodes and I think- Drama moves fast, a lot faster than a terrorist house. Well, I'll tell you why. It's cause everyone is sort of a romanceable option for everyone else. The vector of drama increases sort of logarithmically when everyone in the house can kind of pursue everyone,

although everybody just goes after Kazuto, because like, I mean, come on, how can you not? That one's still hitting so good. I have also been replaying Cyberpunk 2077. Weird, I just uninstalled that game. I was looking for something to play on Steam Deck that was a little bit- Takes up so much space. A little bit meatier.

When we did Phantom Liberty last year, I guess, I just did that, I didn't play all the rest of the game, but I really enjoyed it, and so I was like, I wonder if I would enjoy going back and playing it with all the 2.0 changes, and the answer is yes. I've been playing it as And so I was like, I wonder if I would enjoy going back and playing it with all the 2.0 changes. And the answer is yes. I've been playing it as a net runner build, just like sneak it around and fucking shit up with my mind.

And it's fucking great, guys. It's one of the best open world games ever made. It's hard, man. It's really, really exceptional. I feel like the story on that game would be so much different if the launch of it. Cause you return to it and you're like, you return to it now and you're like, this is fucking great. Why did I ever not play this? This is fantastic. But it's like I find myself

I find myself doing shit that I don't normally do in open world games now Which is like I'll be running around and then I'll get some like, you know instant radial quest That's like hey steal this fucking car for me And I'm like, yes, because it feels really good to drive around this city now and like just cruise around to some house beats while I, you know, make cars explode that are chasing me with my mind.

Like, it's really, really, really good. So that's been my jam. Excellent, thank you, Griffin. Thanks for sharing that, I appreciate it. You're welcome, that's a my jam. Excellent, thank you Griffin, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. You're welcome, that's a weird energy to, it's isn't a support group. I appreciate it man, thanks for being open about that.

A lot of people don't admit to playing old busted down broken joints, they wanna be playing the newest shit. That's gonna do it I think, for the besties. I want to thank the following patrons Over at the besties by the way, we have a new episode of the resties which is live playing a particularly cool game called conscript Which is like a resident evil meets world war one kind of game Uh, so that episode is live right now. Uh, it's over at patreon.com slash the besties

It's over at patreon.com slash the besties thanking the following patrons. We have the usual topology Asher septimus severance package and Amanda Panda. Thank you for being patrons Thank you to everyone else for being patrons and supporting the show We greatly appreciate it. We have a New bracket episode coming at you in early August Thanks to your voting. We're gonna be doing the best mascots. So stay tuned for that in early August. Catch it. Hey, before we go,

I meant to tell you about something. Yeah, what's up? You gonna play the operator? The operator. Do you know what the operator is? Let me look. What if I told you SpyCraft is back? And I left this.

Yeah, I probably, yeah, I wish list hanging out Oh, yeah, it's ready everyone go play the operator I don't know if we'll talk about on this main show because spycraft not the biggest hey, baby I know we're gonna talk about it on the I have heard comparisons to case of the golden idol. Oh, fuck joy Wow So that that might just be the Spycraft fans, you know, out there building the hype, but I am ready for it.

Holy shit, this is fantastic. Thank you so much, Chris Plant, for bringing me joy so late in the episode. I really appreciate it. That's gonna do it, friends. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Oh, what are we doing next week? What are you guys doing next week?

Steam World Heist 2 coming at you next week. I can't wait to talk about this game. Oh, good. we doing next week? What do you guys do next week? Steam World Heist 2. Oh shit, coming at you next week. I can't talk about this game. Oh good. Alright, good. Thanks so much for listening to Besties and be sure to join us again next time for the Besties!