The Besties - One huge indie and one tiny one [The Resties]

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

We are being bombarded by awesome games. This week, we brought two must-try adventures. The first, Somerville, is the spiritual sequel to indie mega-hits Limbo and Inside. The second is Dave the Diver, a game we hadn't heard about until scuba fishing/sushi serving/business management sim skyrocketed up the Steam Charts. The quirky cocktail is one of the most memorable roleplaying experiences in a long, long time. This episode's lineup may be the closest we've come to "you will find something to love, guaranteed." Hope y'all enjoy! 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!

Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Ross Froschek. Welcome to the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week we are talking about two video games. Two for the price of one. Up first, Somerville. The spiritual sequel to Limbo and Inside. Up second,

Dave the Diver. Which I can only describe as the greatest Game Boy Advance game never released on the Game Boy Advance. What a time to be alive. So many great video games. I'll tell you. Can I tell you one other thing yes please last

night i got my first tattoo wow i for the audience fresh dick has not even seen it i didn't even know it was happening i know i don't keep secrets it's i don't worry nobody knew the only people who knew i hope your wife knew well she steffy knew yeah and uh polygons anime slack room knew because it is an anime tattoo oh my god i am surprised it's not a near tattoo i'll be honest wow that's a good point i like i thought though what's the fate the weird uh face in a meal yeah i think it's time for me to get my second tattoo i made it all of one day spring to mind immediately i it here's the thing the the guy was like hey just so you know it's gonna hurt and i was like i'm not actually too worried about it needles don't

really bother me uh you know i've had a where'd you get surgeries as a kid where is it like on the inside of my forearm kind kind of near my arm. Oh, that seems like a sensitive spot. And yeah, he was like, no, the issue isn't the needle. It's that your arm is going to fall asleep and that is going to hurt the most. Oh, yeah. I was like, what, really? And he's like, just wait.

And sure enough, two hours in, oh my, it felt miserable. Yeah. And sure enough, two hours in, oh my, it felt miserable. It felt like my elbow was like going the opposite direction. Like in that movie, The Arrival, where their knees go inwards. Yeah, sure. Everybody knows The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen. Oh, wait. Oh, I thought you were talking about The Heptapods. What movie is that?

That's Arrival. Yeah, that's also, I think, yeah, it's the same. There's only so many things you can do for an alien movie. The Charlie Sheen movie. Anyway, do you want to say what it's of? Yeah, it's of, it's from the movie The Wind Rises. Oh, you love that. That's your favorite

Miyazaki movie. I know. It's a delight. I probably will never post it anywhere publicly, but if you ever see me in person, I'll show it to you. I'm very excited. I'm guessing there's a plane. I'm not saying anything. Some secrets are just for me, baby.

Yeah. Despite me putting it on my skin where everybody can see it. I guess I would probably, if I did one, I'd probably, well, I mean, I'm in a Miyazaki headspace now,

but Totoro would spring to mind. Sure. Yeah, probably Totoro. I feel like you should get the food from a Miyazaki movie, like the sizzling eggs. Like the talking eggs? Yeah, that feels like very you. You can get it right on your neck or your forehead. Or I could get Gudetama.

Ooh, now we're cooking with fire. Yeah. Speaking of cooking with fire let's talk about fire in the sky which is an alien reference to a video alien southern mid 90s alien movie oh here we go okay so we're going to talk about somerville but i'm going to set some parameters for us number one no spoilies and also i haven't played it that's why i didn't care about you i was a tiny bit resentful when you said we were going to talk about this game because a couple weeks ago when i knew you were playing it i was like hey you should see if you can get me a code and you're

like yeah i'll try didn't happen so i haven't played it at all and honestly i adore both limbo and inside there's some of my favorite games ever and i guess right there was a limbo too wasn't there well there's only one limbo oh i guess it's just limbo and inside yeah and um i love those games and with the second i heard that somerville was similar and from at least one member of those team that that team i was like super jazzed of it to the point where i kind of didn't want to know anything so i guess we're going to be very light on spoilers because otherwise it can make me angry yeah we're gonna talk about like stuff that you would see in the trailer okay also just kind of how the game works. Okay. I would never watch the trailer for this game for what it's worth,

but I will stomach the idea that we need to entertain the audience with content, so I will, through my teeth, play through this segment. Here's the great thing. War of the Worlds, done in the style of Limbo. Wow. That's the game. That is the game so it's funny because inside kind of has that vibe too it does so the premise of the game is you are there's a man his wife and his little little baby okay and in the middle of the night, an alien invasion attacks the planet.

And it is like bad. Like it is War of the Worlds Steven Spielberg movie type. Yeah, things did not go great. It wasn't like the cutesy radio play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's playing with like similar to Spielberg, like very like post 9-11 type of. Yeah, sure. But the art style is Kentucky Routeucky route zero oh i know right i'm just gonna say a lot of tasty flavors so it's like polygonal you're saying like

low poly yeah yeah yeah and your job is effectively to hey you've been separated from your wife and child you need to go find them and you're just a normal person but and here's the twist you early on come in contact with like an alien soldier person thing and when you uh touch them they give you a power that sticks to your arm and whenever you uh walk up to a light bulb you can touch that light with your arm and it will kind of change the power of light so you could pulse blue light through the light bulb and that will make uh any kind of like alien architecture dissolve into goo oh and you can pulse red light through it and that makes it like harden and firm up like volcanic rock cool yeah so then the puzzles are you kind of melting and for like firming up the materials throughout this world is the is the melting is it like fluid dynamics

or is it just like basically like a light switch on and off it's somewhere in the middle yeah like it it's not like you're doing a lot of like fluid dynamic puzzles yeah but it's making it look like you are does that make sense yeah like it's kind of predetermined yeah but it looks it looks dynamic i mean that is same same with limbo where like it's physics-based, right? But effectively, there's really one, generally one answer to how to solve this thing. And you get the sense that as long as you do it vaguely right, it's going to automatically play out to make sure that you aren't getting confused. Right. Is it still side-scrolling? It is.

So here's kind of the trickiness with it. I like this game a lot. The two big changes it makes from its predecessors is, one, the story is just far more on the nose. It's not to say it's, like, mega clear, but Limbo and Inside are, you know, kind of like fractured fairy tales, a little bit, like, nightmarish, right? Yeah. I'm not quite sure what any of it means until you is there talking in this there's not okay because i was gonna say like that's one thing limbo and inside have basically literally no talking and you would just surmise based on the environment

what's going on no same same here but again because it's war of the worlds and it's clear that like go find your family yeah just off the bat you know what the story is sure the other change is it is it's like 2.5d platforming so you can in a lot of areas go like forward and backward okay just left to right sure and on one hand that's quite cool there are times where you're like you are able to kind of go into the background and discover kind of like side areas at the other side you can get like kind of stuck on like dumb objects yeah like there are a number of times where i i knew what to do but i would get stuck on like a little rock sticking out the wrong place yeah and for a game that has like it's so much of it is about just flow and being in the moment, knowing how to do a puzzle, but not knowing exactly how you need to line up with the geometry is like, kind of irritating.

Yeah, it can be annoying to know exactly where you are. Like if you're in line with that box or not, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. box or not basically yeah yeah yeah and i think the game knows this because i i feel comfortable talking about the puzzles early on because it does the puzzles for a little bit but once it really gets you into the kind of the story and the momentum of the game it's really just like a ride yeah like experiential yeah like it's much there are kind of puzzles in the back half of the game but it's much more about a vibe and the kind of interesting things it wants to do to um go much further than or the world stories might go typically yeah so one of the things i remember from limbo inside and

more recently the little nightmares games you die like a lot like there's a lot of death and trial and error and stuff like that. Is that still the case here? You can die. I would say there are maybe three moments in the game where I did die. Yeah. One where it became, like, frustrating because I knew what I needed to do. Sure, yeah. I was doing a stupid thing over and over again.

But, again, for this type of game, not bad. Like, you know, hit to miss ratio. I mean, usually like trial and error, like deaths are part of the game design of these games. Yeah, and I think that's a mistake. I wish that that wasn't the case. And again, I think that this game knows that. There's kind of an elliptical nature to the game

where it's less about, you know in a lot of puzzle games, they teach you how to to do the puzzle and then it's easier for you to do variations of the puzzle later on yeah this game it's almost like they teach you how to navigate the world and then they want you to re-enact it's hard to talk about without spoiling it but they want you to rethink space in a way so that when you do get into that back half you're kind of just naturally flowing through it okay and like that's i mean again i don't want to spoil a lot i wanted to keep this this section somewhat brief but what i love about this game is it's very short like very short like i don't know maybe four or five hours yeah basically in line with the other stuff right inside yeah and after playing

it the first time i immediately i never do this restarted it huh and played it through more like a movie where it's like hey i know how to do everything in here i i know how to get around i know where kind of all the little hiccups are in the geometry. I know what the puzzles are. And it was awesome. It was so much better. The first time was good. It was like a very good whatever, you know, it was fun walking around. But if you have the opportunity to play this on the biggest screen possible, even though it's not the world's fanciest graphics, I played it the first time through on Steam

Deck, second time through on the TV. Yeah. I really recommend that because your character, a thing that they do that's so cool and so like plays into the strengths of the war the world's vibe is small like very very very small on the screen yeah and the way that it plays with space again if you just know how to navigate it you're not thinking about it and you're just kind of like watching it it it rules yeah i really i'm always drawn to games that do like really tiny protagonists like far long low in sales did that yeah that tomb raider game um the multiplayer tomb raider game oh the isometric one yeah yeah that game was great yeah um yeah i i again this is kind of like a tease i'm sure we will talk

about it once everybody's had a chance to play it it comes out i think like today yeah people are listening to this yeah um and i'm pretty sure it's on game pass correct it is on game pass i mean talk about like the perfect type of game pass I mean, it is a play it in the weekend, enjoy it. It feels like watching a movie. Yeah. And probably honestly a good game to like play with somebody else on the couch. Because the few times that there is a hiccup with a puzzle, having somebody else there to encourage you or at the very least, you know, talk to while you bash your head against it yeah you think is a good idea yeah i played inside with my wife we would trade off and it was like a really fun experience

um i think yeah i will i will say not only will we talk about the cider we'll do a spoiler talk at some point because i i do really want to talk about where the game goes but again we'll save that for the backup do Do you have any other... Oh, here's one thing I should add. This game's going to get a ton of comparisons to Inside and Limbo, and that's warranted on the style and the play alone. But the weird thing is,

the actual pedigree connection is the studio's co-founder who was the executive producer on those games. So the director of this game and the writer of this game is not somebody who worked on Limbo or Inside, which I think is really interesting. I kind of assumed, oh, they brought in the story person, right? Yeah, sure.

Or the visual person, and that's not really the case. I guess it depends. Different studios, the executive producer might be more involved or less involved. So you look at like Miyazaki at From Software, he is the president of From Software, but also like the executive game director and touches every single aspect of the game. So I wouldn't necessarily say just because it was a senior person they wouldn't necessarily have some impact but i'm sure obviously the game director had a lot of say and impact as well um but it kind of just varies from studio to studio how much yeah yeah i i think that's right and especially with the studio this size i can't imagine it's humongous um i imagine a lot of

people are wearing multiple hats yeah anyway. Anyway, it's great. It's been in development since 2017. Wow. These games. Yeah, I think each of these games was six years. I think it was six years between Limbo and Inside and six years between Inside and Somerville, which is just... Yeah, it doesn't feel like that.

Is Playdead still around, the Limbo Inside developer? I believe so. Or have they been scattered to the west? I am looking at their Wikipedia right now, and it says yes. It says they have 50 employees. Wow. Playdead and Epic Games announced in March 2020

that Epic Games will publish a title. That's exciting. Yeah, great. I mean, hey, this means we get two sets of these studios making stuff yeah i'm in it for it um cool now we can talk about the meat well how about we take let's take a quick break and then we can talk about dave the diver you threw this on my plate you said here's a a little snack for you just let me know what you think and i thought oh okay you must really like this game if you like it i'll i trust you i'll put some time into it and then i proceeded to put all of the time

and then i reached back to you i'm like like, man, that wasn't a snack, that was a delicious meal. And you're like, yeah, I haven't had a bite. Well, this was like a week ago. It was a while ago, yeah. And yeah, I hadn't had a chance to play it yet. I honestly like, I don't even know how I started. I think I was just clicking around on Steam,

and I saw this game that had, like, 98% reviews with, like, 1,500, like, Steam reviewers, which is, like, absurdly good. Not only that, it's in early access, which is very rare to see a game that's that praised in early access. And then I read the synopsis, which is it is a diving roguelike

mixed with a sushi restaurant simulator and i was like okay this seems pretty dope and then i saw the screenshots and like it all looks like very enticing and up my alley and uh yeah so that's how we came upon it i i don't think that synopsis is right like at all you don't think so no because one i don't think it's a roguelike i mean i don't think here's how i think this early access is for this game at least in my experience sure i think what they did is they effectually just made a full single player game a very traditional single player game in which like events happen as predicted you know the game has like a very careful rhythm and pacing to it that's true yeah it's introducing

specific stuff to you every time you go to a new level right and then i get the sense that oh i bet when this gets out of early access there's probably a rogue like version that comes after it i i mean i would say the the rogue aspects of it are at least my understanding i haven't really seen this in the game but early on they're like each time you dive i i've let me let me take a step back and sort of explain what this game is the loop is sure so you are surprisingly dave the diver you're a diver and your job is basically during the day you go diving into the the Hole, which is like a big diving spot. Beautiful, tropical water. What you would expect from like a really nice scuba diving spot.

And you go down there and unlike normal scuba divers who are not encouraged to do this, you basically pick the reef clean of all the tasty little morsels, fish, sharks, octopi, you name it. Anything that looks good you grab that stuff up you can also find like crafting materials and new blueprints and stuff like that and uh the idea is you basically bring that stuff back to the surface okay can i can i say the second half of the game sure so so yeah so you do all of those things right and that's the closest thing to kind of the roguelike that you're talking about. It's like...

They kind of indicate that the blue hole of the place where you're scuba diving changes every single time you dive. I haven't really seen that, but I also maybe haven't gotten far enough. I've gotten pretty far, and I haven't seen much of that. Yeah, maybe it might be an early access. They're going to add it later or something. So, yeah. So, that is the first tap of any given day. And you can usually dive like twice a day, I believe.

I think three times somewhere. Yes. Well, then you get to the later part of the day and the sushi restaurant in town opens. And then you go and you help serve sushi. Yeah. It's basically, you remember that game uh tapper or root beer tapper yes it's that like i mean it's slightly different but it is pretty close very close there are people who come to your sushi bar and they order different things that

you put on the menu and then you like sprint back and forth delivering them those food items. And then the game just keeps piling stuff on. Yeah, features. Yeah, so you can pour people's green tea, and that cuts to kind of like a WarioWare green tea game. You always have to keep the wasabi fresh, so there's like a kind of grating wasabi minigame. When you have the various fish that you want to sell you set your menu for the night yeah so you're guessing how many people are going to come

what quality of fish you want to make because if you you know put stuff on the menu and it doesn't sell then you have to effectively throw it away um you can hire and like recruit effectively new staff members to help you actually serve people. You get a cell phone that gets apps, kind of like an Instagram for food, where you increase your ratings. It's like a Yelp, basically. Yeah, Yelp.

And then the official Yelp people come and will give you a new level of restaurant tier, which then unlocks things like decorations for your restaurant i mean it is wild yeah how deep all of this stuff gets and what is best about it is it introduces all of this so incrementally um that it's very never felt overwhelming which is astonishing when i say it all out loud because it's so much shit yeah it's basically every day like you basically will be approached by a new npc and they'll be like hey i'm like you meet a gunsmith very early on and the gunsmith will be like hey i'll make guns for you if you

find the parts down in the blue hole and uh the game has uh the art style is traditional like chris plant early on described as like gba which i'd agree with like it feels very gba and there are these like ridiculous cut scenes where this like basically like a otaku guy who's your gunsmith like with a like a rsi like wrist uh brace for his carpal tunnel is like building you stuff while he's at the computer and there's like super hammed up like anime style cut scenes showing him like building you stuff uh yeah stylistically it's very cool and it all just sort of like eases you into what is as you said an astonishing amount of stuff especially for an early access game and it and it all just like feeds itself so the restaurant stuff feeds it back into the scuba diving stuff

and vice versa yeah you're getting more money from the restaurant which allows you to give upgrades to your like scuba gear so you can go deeper and then like you get into stuff like is there an underwater civilization or are there there are protesters who don't want you you know like having a negative impact on the coral reef yeah um there's there's like so much story that is good like like the story is like just charming enough you know not to wear out its welcome and that's what i mean when i say a gba game it really captures that um atlas era of gba kind of like action rpgs or even like mario golf in a weird way and that i don't know this like uh i this is gonna sound deranged people are gonna be like this is a bad plant take but like this is

what i want from a role-playing game where like i feel like i even though this doesn't look like a traditional role-playing game i feel like i am inhabiting this person's entire life yeah it is you know like if you think of the words role-playing game you know we have an image of like a jrpg and your whatever cloud strife whatever it is but like in a traditional sense role-playing is like living out the life of a person um another similar example of this was moonlighter where you like ran a fantasy shop similar idea here and i i love these sort of games yeah and i think what this does well is both sides of the coin are great like the fishing and all that stuff i have a blast while i'm doing it

and then the tapper game i also really enjoy doing that game there's not like um it's not lopsided and i think that's that's really hard to do because what you're being asked to do is make two, in this case, kind of three great games. You're making the underwater, you know, action game. You're making the Tapper kind of clone. And you're making a little bit of a management sim. It's kind of like the top layer. And then, yeah, to layer in a fun story, the kind of anime action sequences that you mentioned are cinematics they reminded me a lot of kind of elite beat agents oh yeah sure yeah people doing really mundane things but

like being framed is like the most exciting thing imaginable um and then just yeah constant charm the i've mentioned the underwater hints of an underwater civilization there's just a lot of stuff there's just a lot of stuff that i i keep wanting to play another you know 30 minutes just to see where the hell the game is going to take me yeah were you playing on steam deck yeah yeah yeah yeah i think it might be a tiny bit small on steam deck there's like a lot of very small like fish and and it does that thing we were just talking about the first half of like having a very small protagonist and like a very big area um so there were a couple moments where i struggled a little bit it's still playable and everything like that um but that was the only

thing i noted but i certainly think on like a big tv or even on steam deck it's very playable but i think it's probably more ideal on like a decent size monitor um i don't know if that's going to change long term uh as it moves through early access but that was just one thing i noticed the the only other kind of like somewhat flag i would give to the game is like it it's characterizations they're not bad i don't think i don't know that there's like a few jokes where it seems like the joke is on obesity but i also don't i don't know if that's actually what it's going for like i i don't know it's david dave the main character is like a bigger guy but i didn't get the sense they were like making a ton of cracks about it necessarily. Yeah, there's like a point where there's a few lines of like,

I didn't know the diver could look like this. But I also don't know if it's kind of like, yeah, people can look different. Yeah. The game, it never feels mean. There are just a few points where I was waiting for, I guess like a lesser game would go further. It would go that extra step and make me cringe. And I felt myself a little on edge at first.

But that changed pretty rapidly just because, again, like an Elite Beat Agents, it has that kind of Elite Beat Agents, Fast and the Furious, Parks and Rec energy of like, oh, at the end of the day, all these people are nice people. Like even though they're all like, maybe all the characters here are not inherently good people, they at least are like people you want to be around. Yeah, there's a family vibe to it, which is a nice shift.

It's a delight. I mean, it like really has skyrocketed, is in my top 10 list, I bet, by the end of the year. Which is, I know. Yeah, bad news, news plant because you've said that i think about 20 different games this i know i know i know i well i mean the it's also weird because early access in it doesn't feel early access at all yeah i need to read more about what their plans are long term because you're right like you compare this early access to like rogue legacy 2 early access which was so early that it didn't

really feel like a full game and then there's kind of the middle ground of like i think gloom haven is gloomwood i always forget yeah it is but that that is like halfway fleshed out and halfway still waiting for a bunch of content so yeah i don't know what's going to be added, but right now we can confirm that there is enough here that you will be very satisfied. Yeah, I agree. I have one more thing that I thought we should probably do that you did not know I was going to bring up. Uh-oh. I think because we have a little bit of time here, should we go back and talk about where we're at with the Resties 2022 predictions? Oh, interesting.

Yeah, we could do a quick around the horn. I think a quick around the horn. I have been keeping an eye on it, and some of them have been decided, and some of them haven't. So just as a refresher for people that don't remember, back in probably January, when did we do this? Yeah, I think it was our first episode of the year.

Very early. Plant and I basically went back and forth and made some guesses about things that might happen in the coming year and we intentionally picked things that were uh not guaranteed like we tried to pick stuff that like you know we didn't know for sure was going to happen um and it should also be mentioned we directly and shamelessly stole this idea from the triple click podcast which is very good and you should listen to it um and they did this first so credit to them um with that said yes i don't think the results so far are promising for either of us that's true but we still have the game awards and that's why i want to talk about this now because i feel like the game awards could be the big disruptor for you're right there there is a lot that is kind of hanging

on the game awards but there are a few that like i think we know pretty pretty clearly are not going to happen so i'm gonna how about I will go through our predictions. Or do you want, should I say mine and you can say yours? Yeah, we'll do that because I have the list in front of me as well. Okay, okay. So my first one is that two new virtual reality headsets will ship from either Apple, Oculus, or PlayStation by end of the year. I came so close. Did you? Because zero. Well, actually. Oh, of the year. I came so close.

Did you? Because zero. Well, actually, you know what? Oh, I guess one. I'm sorry, one. At least one. The MetaQuest Pro, so Oculus shipped one, and PlayStation ships early next year.

Next year. So you were a little bit close. Not bad. Unlike you, who just a colossal whiff. What do you mean? What was your first one? What was my first what? Your first what your first prediction first prediction sorry yeah tom cruise will be in fortnite for mission impossible was my first prediction and i mean it's not my fault that the movie got delayed for the

third fucking time yeah also shortly after this i think we both learned that tom cruise like doesn't appear in anything yeah i'm i'm skeptical of that because that i actually did research into that uh i think someone tweeted at us and mentioned that tom cruise like refuses because of whatever religious reasons something did research the sourcing on it was not great and it was mostly from like the early to mid 2010s so very skeptical, there was a Mummy game based on his movie The Mummy. So just saying. But yeah, Tom Cruise, I can confirm, will not appear in Fortnite for Mission Impossible this year or any other Tom Cruise appearance. Next up, both of us have, I think, potential Game Awards appearances. Yeah, but I think at this point at this point, it could happen.

It could happen. Mine is a new Bioshock game is announced along with its setting. I feel still pretty bullish that that is possible. I think here's my guess. I would not be surprised if the Bioshock game was announced and we saw

just the title card at the game awards. Right, but that title card could show its setting it would have to be pretty explicit it will it'll be a title card and what we need to see like a picture of a city or something it can't just be like a weird icon next to a bioshock logo that we might guess this the setting i've heard so many rumors not even rumor i there have been so many variations of this game that have been in development that i can't remember what like the mod like the current thing is yeah um we'll see okay mine i'm pretty much screwed on for the

next one mine was a rebooted metroid prime prime 4 which very publicly got publicly got restarted in the middle of after several years of production, will be shown in a trailer with gameplay footage. And the trailer will announce a release date of 2023. I think there is a 0.3% chance of that happening. I think the problem is that prediction made a ton of sense when we thought Breath of the Wild 2 was coming out this year. And yeah, without that out, Nintendo's not going to show anything like that, which supports my next one. No new Mario platforming games are shown in 2022, aside from mobile games and expansions slash DLC. Yeah, I remember when you put that forward. And I remember thinking, eh, that feels a little bit like cheating, but you did make a good mathematical argument, which is to say, like, new Mario platform games do come out a pretty decent clip, and it has been a surprising amount of time since Odyssey, so it was not totally unreasonable. Both of our guesses were honestly about the Super Mario Brothers movie.

My guess was because they're a Super Mario Brothers movie, they're not going to put out Oh, yeah, I didn't think it was that. And yours was I mean, I just think they spaced those out a good amount, but you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think you're going to be right on that. Do you want to say your Super Mario movie guess? Oh'm sorry? Do you want to say your Super Mario movie guess? Oh, yeah. So my Mario movie guess was it will get under 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Obviously, it's not coming out this year, so it's sort of moot. But I went back and I looked, and I feel like you might have duped me because I looked through Illumination's Metacritic reviews or Rotten Tomatoes reviews,

and there's really only one movie that is under 55%. And it's Hop or Over the Hedge or something like that. I wonder if I was going off Metacritic. Yeah, maybe you're going off Metacritic. That seems much more likely. Well, we're going to have to do new picks for January. That's it. I mean, you lost this one anyway.

I mean, it's not lost. I don't think we're getting negative points for the ones we got wrong. Yeah, I mean, you're getting a goose egg. That to me is... It is a goose egg. Yeah, yeah. Okay. What was your next one?

yeah yeah okay so um what was your next one okay my next one is uh that microsoft was going to have uh standalone streaming hardware yep and that they would also have uh the like game pass app for smart tv okay well you got close i got half you got half of it so So do you think I'll get like a 0.5? No, no. Horseshoes and hand grenades. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Do I think that they will reveal the hardware? I would say that there's still a chance, but it seems like it's probably much more likely that we would see that at CES or GDC. Yeah, I would be surprised.

At this point, so Samsung had it built into their new TVs. Honestly, I think they're going to just keep doing that with different TV brands. Well, they'll just like partner with different TV brands to have it built into the software. Having hardware doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but I guess we'll find out. Next up for you, you have a game pack or you have a. Oh, yes. So, yeah, I got this one wrong. Pretty bad. you have a game pack or you have a uh oh yes so yeah i got this one wrong pretty bad uh okay so

this next one was sony will launch a game pass competitor to replace playstation now which was right i got that part right but there's a addendum to it which basically blows me out of the water and one exclusive first party title and one other triple a first party or exclusive title and also one more addendum if god of war ragnarok comes out in 2022 it has to be on it and basically the whole second half of that is not true because sony did replace playstation now with a new like playstation plus tier system but they were extremely clear in indicating that we would not be seeing big first party. That you should in fact not buy it.

Yeah, I mean, they're just, they're going a completely different direction than Game Pass is going, which is they want to keep their big first party exclusives and whatever major AAA games off of that so that they can get those sales. So it's essentially just a totally different strategy

from Game Pass. I don't know that it's been tremendously successful. I think if anything, it's just been very confusing, but I was definitely wrong on that. Yeah. Next up, I have Disney will announce two video games for individual superheroes who have not had previous games. Yes.

I think you're wrong on this one. No. I'm actually right about this. Okay. Let's hear it. Oh, damn. Okay. I should have been more clear when I made this.

I think you were extremely clear in the language. when I made this. I think you were extremely clear in the language. It says Disney announces two video games focusing on individual Marvel heroes who haven't appeared in other video games. And my gut says there's been one announced. Okay, which one has been announced? There was a duo game that was announced.

I think it was a Black Panther game. Yes, yes. Okay, there you go. That's one. Damn. There was a duo game that was announced. I think it was a Black Panther game? Yes. Yes. Okay. There you go. That's one. Damn.

I mean, do you have another argument? I mean, there's also an Iron Man game. But Iron Man's been in video games. Quite a number of them, including his own video game, was a vr game i think i still have a shot at this i don't think i'm down but not out is what i will say yeah but damn it's not looking great yeah i um i need ea to announce any of its other Marvel projects. Because they have, like, what, four or five of these damn things coming up? Yeah. The one that they chose to announce is Iron Man.

Come on. Like, you're killing me here, guys. I had a real shot at this. I mean, let's see. Uh-oh. Here we go. uh let's see oh here we go um the the skydance game it stars uh uh black panther but it also stars other characters oh interesting black panther so and how many games is it damn um yeah okay so i i was totally i've still got a way to go is what i'm hearing well you've just got do you only need one more game and i can't like marvel snap count no marvel stuff does not count

why because devil dinosaurs in it yeah exactly and i love devil dinosaur and moon girl um okay so yeah i have a little ways to go yeah you know game awards again my you might pull out a little hail mary pass there okay how about? Mine is a total toss up, but I'm feeling decently confident. So this is an indie game. No one has ever really heard of. I mean, that's subjective,

but you know, essentially a game that we weren't all like super aware of will be at the game or will be in the game awards nominees for game of the year. And it can't be published by EA, Ubisoft, or Activision. So it can't be an indie game with a huge publisher associated with it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know immediately what indie game it will be, but there have been a lot of strong indie games this year.

I think it could be the cult game that I'm now blanking on. This is a guaranteed yes. And I hate to give you credit. It's a guaranteed yes. Vampire Survivors. Oh, yeah, of course. Vampire Survivors is maybe the game of the year in certain circles. It will definitely be a strong competitor for besties game of the year, 100%.

So you're completely right. And i have real issues with it and i i still think i have never been more against and for a game at the same time i am truly of two brains about that game and i cannot wait to talk more about it i god that game makes my brain like spiral in a trillion different directions which is hilarious because that game has nothing to say. Um, it will be incredible. If vampire survivors goes up against like Elden ring, like that is extremely amazing to me. Unquestionably.

I think there's a very, very, very, very, very real chance that that happens. Neither of those are necessarily my game of the year, but I think there's a real chance that that happens neither of those are necessarily my game of the year but i think there's a real chance that happens so i'm feeling pretty confident on that one um chris plant i think you are officially wrong on the next oh uh uh uh uh really are you are you

ready so i checked this the other day and you were definitely under. It depends on where you look, my friend. And we were not specific about which platform you had to look at. Oh, give me a break. Right now, Sonic Frontiers on PC with one review has 80. No, horseshit. Horseshit. Maybe you should be a little more careful next time and hey let's go with the user score 9.0 no we're not going with the fucking user score 9.0 baby 9.0 9.0 i will give you if you average all of the versions i'll give you the average even though really i'm holding you to

this no no no you said it you said it out loud but you need to factor in how many reviews are for each version you can't give no no no way to the xbox version and the pc version it's no no no no that'll take too long too long we're gonna do we're gonna do each version plus user scores um there's really not an overall page for sonic frontiers on metacritic yeah no it just takes you like to one of the games i don't i don't know how metacritic works it's not great um the one review is from wccf tech on the pc review i mean you're getting that wrong i'm sorry there's no way I'm going to buy it. Can you admit I got really close?

You got closer than I thought you were going to get. I should have. This is my bad. I should have said a 70. I think we maybe even talked about that and you pushed me up. Yeah, I think you're right. And because a 70 would have still been like

historically good for a Sonic game. I don't know about that. The last Sonic game to get above a 70 would have still been like historically good for a Sonic game. I don't know. The last Sonic game to get above a 70 was in 2011. Was it Colors? It was Generations. Oh, Generations. Which is a great game. Yeah.

Yeah, the last few Sonic games were looking at like high 50s, low 60s. No, no, people like the 2D, what was it called? No, I'm talking about 3D Sonic. Oh, of 3D Sonic, sure. Yeah, let's be honest with ourselves. Yeah, I damn, I really should, I feel like I should have won this one. I really should have. Very close,

very close. What was I thinking? I think we're gonna be, it's gonna be down to the wire, because I think right now we're sort of sitting at a one and one, right? Are we? Do I even have one? You're going to get the Mario one, right? The platforming Mario one.

And I'm going to get the indie game one, right? Okay. But there's still a couple that could break the tie. Yeah. Well, do you want to say your last one? Because you didn't get that. Yeah. Yes. The last one is one didn't get that yeah yes the last

one is one second let me pull it up um it relates to steam deck competitors specifically alienware or razor will announce a steam deck competitor before september of 2022 and you want to talk about close this came very close to being right because i want to say in either i think it was late september i want to say razor came forward and announced that they were working on something now i feel good about my sonic guess like that you kind of tweaked it in a way where i couldn't win because i think we kind of did that to each other here yeah so in this case i'm i pulled it up razor steam deck competitor revealed this was on september 29th 2022 and uh yeah i mean they're working with verizon and qualcomm to uh make a steam deck competitor but it was revealed in late September.

So, rip. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. On one hand, this is humiliating because we got so little right. Is it, though? Because I feel like a lot of...

That's the whole point. It's like to pick stuff that we don't know for sure. On the other hand, I think it's good because we got a lot of stuff close. We did get stuff close. A lot of it is like we got part of it right and then we pushed each other to go a little bit further to make it a bit of a risk yeah and that's the part that we got wrong right you know like the x cloud stuff with versus playstation now we got part of that right the marvel stuff we got a little there's like a lot of this that we kind of got right yeah except for tom cruise yeah yeah we really blew that um uh cool well i think that's the show do you have any any

recommendations or anything else that you've been enjoying finding of isaac i don't want to talk about that some more people are bored of me talking about how great that game is me oh you should pick it up though i think you i think it's time justin and griffin are so on it now it's not gonna it's not gonna happen i feel i feel bad i really want i know it's just the art stuff i just yeah i can't get past it and yeah and that's a uh that's a taste thing you can't really surmise. But as a gameplay game. I would love it. Man, super good. And maybe you'll dig Mugenics.

We've talked about Mugenics. That I think I will really be. And they both at their core work under the same mentality. They're kind of inspired by Magic the Gathering, which is to say like, you're building these incredible combinations that like pair together such that you kind of make these super powered characters.

And so, yeah, I like that. You keep trying to find new ways to get me in. You're like, I know that you're into Marvel snap right now. Did I mention that binding of Isaac is kind of like a collectible card game? I mean,

like, yeah, it kind of is. I respect the hustle. It's good. Stuff for me, there's a new collection of short stories from George Saunders out called Liberation Day. And the first story, the titular story, is fantastic. And I recommend people read it.

It's got a little bit of sci-fi to it. And I think people who like video games especially and the idea of like, what does it mean to control characters will find something there for them. So yeah, I think that's my recommendation this week. And getting a tattoo, as long as you're of legal age,

you're not gonna get a tattoo. And your a tattoo, as long as you're of legal age. You're not going to get a tattoo. And your wife won't kill you, which my wife would kill me if I got one. That is true. Get permission from your family members. They need to be cool with it. Not be a mitzvah. Anything else before we wrap?

No, I think we did it. Cool. We did it. Thank you, everyone, for else for your app? No, I think we did it. Cool. We did it. Thank you everyone for listening to the show. Uh, this has been another, Oh, I forgot to just one more time. Say what we played this week. Oh yeah. We played Somerville, the new limbo inside type of game.

We played Dave the diver, uh, which is available in early access on Steam. You recommended... God, my brain is fried. You literally just said it. Binding of Isaac. Yeah. And I recommended George Saunders' new book. And that's it.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Besties. Or The Resties, whichever show we're doing. Holy shit. It's it. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Besties. Or The Resties, whichever show we're doing. Holy shit. It's fine, I'll find a new co-host. It's not a big deal. You ever feel it where it's like, you're kind of going downhill, and then like, uh-oh,

one foot's out from underneath. Oh, that's okay, and then the other one goes, and now you're rolling down the hill, and now you're, it's really good. You've got that tattoo ink on the brain, maybe. That's been another episode of the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest resties