The Besties - Our Favorite Games to Bring on the Road (Including Xenoblade!)

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

How do you pack the perfect video game for a long trip? This week, we speak with resident gaming travel expert and Besties co-host Justin McElroy to learn his secrets to success. Will we mention clicker games? Just you wait! Plus, Plante loves Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Twist! 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, I, I... We've never talked. Who are you? We should mention Chris and I have never talked to each other directly, so this is a really weird episode. Yeah, we created Besties as a means of communicating with each other for work reasons. Safely. Yeah. In a safe, prescriptive environment.

Sure. Oh, people don't know know this that every episode of besties is scripted I said prescriptive like formatted no no no it is also scripted yes thank you for reminding me and we are not doing a show right now this is just us talking it's like in the cold hope

and how there's always accidentally audio left that's this is that part because we're just talking to each other don't you agree um well i'm like looking at my script of improv opportunities uh oh oh woodworking um how is that going i made a secret bookshelf wait what yeah you pull the book and you pull the book on the secret but it looks like a the book and you pull the book on the secret. It looks like a bookshelf. And you pull the book on the bookshelf, one certain book,

and it opens a secret door to Sidney's office. Is it a secret bookshelf if everyone in the family knows how to do it? Oh, I haven't told my kids. But we don't let them touch books. So they know the rule kind of across the board. So there's no worries there. Only leap pads. My kid's favorite book is Touch Buttons with this Dumb Frog. Till you learn, Matt.

They keep poking the front of the book waiting for something to happen. Yeah. It never changes. Yeah, yeah. And I said, get that book out of your hand right now. It doesn't have in-app purchases.

Anything you need to learn is on YouTube. I've told you this. Go watch this family pretend to have fun. Bon Bon the Baby Monkey is not going to have fun without you having eyeballs on him. People don't realize how much of YouTube is families pretending to have fun. It's dizzying.

My kids watch these videos constantly, and it's just families pretending to have fun. They're like, we're at Target today. We're going to eat only orange food. It's like, why are you filming this? Why are we watching it? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game to travel with. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I also know a good game for when you're on the road. And it's the summer, and that means you just got the two of us.

Russ Frushtick is out today. Griffin McElroy is in the process of moving to the beautiful East coast of America. Uh, we wish him all the best. And what you got with this one is me and you got Chris plant. And we're just going to be talking about games to travel with traveling a long trip.

How do you travel with games? Uh, and, uh, plant, I would, I guess I normally I'd ask you to explain that, but if you haven't gotten that. That has somehow escaped you. They're basically games when you're not at home. Yeah. I mean, you actually really nailed it.

You summarized it pretty well. I took a lot of meat off that bone, huh? Because it's just sort of that. When the big dog eats, Plant, sometimes he doesn't leave. Eat the whole meal. I'm just ambling up to the bowl and there ain't no kibble left. But we'll talk about all that right after this break. Plant and I, we have to travel for work a lot do you still travel for work a lot i well you know a little bit of a pause right now but normally on you know when things are not a global

pandemic and the economy is not uh you know on the threat of a recession i'm always in the plane what is your like when you're like, okay, I need to, for me, my stuff that I'm going to do games with is always on my purse and it's in my backpack. Sure. What are you loading up? Is it game dependent on what your setup is,

what you're bringing with you, or what's your rationale there? Yeah, I mean, for most of the time it was the Switch, but I fully switched over to the Steam Deck. Unless there is Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which we'll talk about later, some brand new Switch game, I'm just kind of bringing the Steam Deck

because it has so much of my backlog, and that's the thing that I like to do most of the time when I'm traveling. It's like, hey, you know what? I'm going to have 10, 20 more hours than usual to play video games this week. That's a perfect opportunity to go back and play something that I've never tried before. How about you? Yes. Sorry. Yes. Sorry, I was thinking about how jealous I am of you

that my Steam Deck is not... I don't have one. So that's very sad for me, as you can guess. But it's going to be here soon. It'll be here by the end of the year. Wait, did you not see the news? No, no, I didn't see the news. All Steam Deck orders are shipping before the end of the year.

Well, we'll see about that. I'm not sure about all that. But I am distracted by the fact that I have not received my Steam Deck. I apparently got an email about a reservation at the end of June, just looking through my emails here, but I don't know what the story was with all that. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna get a Steam Deck or not,

but you know what, if I don't, that's okay, because I still got the Switch, which my own, Switch is the ideal for me, but a lot of times I don't have a game that I'm actively playing on the Switch, because I don't play it a lot at home. So a lot of times the night before I travel is going to be research to figure out

what games are on the Switch. And can I say, that's extremely hard. They do not make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff there. No, well, they make make polygon's existence really easy because you know by having a store that makes zero sense we know that people are going to be coming to polygon.com or somewhere else on the internet to be like what the hell do i play because it's it's like you know what it reminds me of is um the app Store at this point. Where most of the stuff, if you actually went to the App Store and you just searched games and did not have a specific thing that you wanted, oh my gosh, you would just be surfing through junk.

And that's, I mean, it'll be like Hentai Fighters 4 and it's a crossword puzzle game. That sounds good. I would download that for sure. I mean, yeah, true. Same. like, you know, crossword puzzle game in the Switch store. That sounds good. I would download that for sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah, true, same. Yeah, I mean, do you have trouble with that? You mentioned, like, not having something that you're playing actively. I have run into that problem before where I will be like,

you know what, I'm finally going to play the original Final Fantasy VII, and I download it, and then I, you know, go on my trip, I get on the airplane, and then I you know go on my trip I get on the airplane and then I start some big game and then I remember oh big games are slow for like the first three hours and the last thing I want to do when I'm on an airplane and don't want to think about being on an airplane is like a slow three-hour grind to like get through the tutorial of a JRPG. slow three-hour grind to like get through the tutorial of a jrpg yeah i uh i don't i don't blame you there that is that is tough so like what what do you what do you play then um i it's it's basically been serendipity lately you know what i played um at your recommendation, I played AI Somnium Files. Oh, how did that go?

I really liked it. Yeah? Now, I played the first one. Did you play the first one? No, I played Nirvana Initiative, but I've heard the first one is great. I really, see, I can get down with it while I'm traveling, especially, right? This is one of my, like, for me, what makes a travel game is it's, like, more specific. When I am traveling, or basically, I like visual novel type games sometimes if there's a hefty interactive element to it.

Which maybe that's not a visual novel anymore, I don't know. But still, I like those kinds of games. But I don't usually have the attention span for it when i'm at home like i i i can uh uh you know focus on something for a few minutes but usually if it's just like reading you know there's many other things to occupy my time so when i'm traveling it's usually the one time i have like focus to sit down and like actually do a visual novel type thing and this one has been like really it's really well voice acted there's tons of voice acting and it's really well done um and the plot points are like not these weird a lot of times with these games they get into like

weird sort of impersonal tangents about each of the characters in ways that you don't really care about. And this is very focused on like the central crime, like everything kind of ties back to that, the thing that you're trying to solve. And, and the, the back and forth on it is really nice of like, you're in a real world investigation where you're looking for clues and, and investigating people.

And, and then there's like these segments where you are brought into their mind basically and you have to it's very interesting it's a dream world where to get to the information you need you have to like do things in the puzzles they're kind of puzzles is like yeah puzzles yeah it's like not even you have to be down with like dream logic, right? Like it's not even like I put the, you know, maple syrup on the cat hair and it makes a mustache. It's like I pull the there's one where you like have to stop a lightning storm and you do it by pulling on this rod that's in the ground. And that makes a mast rise up above a cage. And then the lightning starts hitting that mast instead.

Right. a mast rise up above a cage and then the lightning starts hitting that mast instead right it's like we does not you do not know a lot of times like what the game wants you to do um and it's just sort of like uh a lot of like random surrealist guesswork which is a very strange game mechanic it is not something that i've like experienced before yeah it's like trying to find meaning in a in a haiku or something whatever muscle of your brain that is uh is is like that it's very sort of uh ephemeral yeah i mean it's inception meets persona is like the closest comparison i could think of and if i had to sell it to somebody who has no interest in visual novels or a game called AI Insomnium Files, Nirvana Initiative or whichever version, right? Right.

It has that same thing that Persona has where you're trying to figure out what is the kind of bad thing that happened to this person that is motivating them to make their decisions in the real world? You know, like what is the subtext of their life? Yeah, now I really want to go back and try that one. Yeah, it's surprising. And I really do. This is not – I was actually rushing to try to make some progress on it before I left because I really had this sense of like once I get home I won't I won't have to focus for this anymore because it is not a a twitchy type thing it is very much a sit and read and and ponder but it's pretty good I gotta say it's it is it is well done

and also there's a very generous fast forward button. So you can kind of like, if you're getting the idea of the conversation, you just need to move things along a little bit. It's great. But yeah, I really was enjoying that. I also will tend to bring a laptop and because I end up stuck in hotel rooms a lot. Yeah. i end up stuck in hotel rooms a lot yeah um so i will bring a laptop with an hdmi cable uh where i can get like deep into something that i have been meaning to play but have not again like spent the time to actually make the jump like what would be like the most recent example of that i played plague tale oh yeah uh i think it's called innocence yeah and the sequel comes out like

in like two months soon yeah we'll be talking about it on the show get into it because like story-based games like this i normally play all of them and for some reason this one well it's not for some reason there's a lot of rats and i don't sure i don't enjoy i don't enjoy that were you waiting for like a mod that turns them on the caterpillars something like that right yeah what was the game that was like that oh oh um uh the there was the game that where you were in the backyard and it's like very honey i shrunk the kids on xbox the one where they had a no no spider mode and it just turned all the spiders into like big orbs yes okay good yes that is the one that i was thinking of yes um but this is internet like the the rats are so okay god um you play a sister and her brother who uh uh, for reasons, story reasons are thrust out of their home and forced on like kind of an

odyssey where everyone is trying to, to catch them, uh, for various reasons. And you don't have a lot of like weapons at your disposal. There is like, you have a sling that gets progressively better and you get like different little potions and stuff that you can put into the sling that like knock guards out or set them on fire or make their helmet melt or whatever.

And you're basically using that to get through. There's very few sequences where you're like where it's like kill them all. It's very much like I have to get out of here. It's very much like I have to get out of here. And that is the thrust of it is using these to like get past guards. But there's also this huge mechanic where there is this rat based plague. And when the rats are present, they will be anywhere that it is dark. there's a puzzle element to getting through these rat based segments that is like, can you,

um, like, uh, uh, you know, set a bale of hay on fire so you can have a place to run to where you'll be safe from the rats. Cause if you're in the dark with the rats,

they eat you game over. Yeah. And when you say rats, you don't mean like four or five rats. I don't mean eight. I mean like, think of it as like water. I mean,

it's like, it's like that many rats. It's's that many rats it's like so many it's like so many they could have done fewer rats I think there's so many rats but like if you knock out a guard's light source he'll be plunged into dark with your slaying he'll be plunged into darkness and then the rats

leave that kind of thing it's like really well performed really well written and these segments are like it's that great thing in games where like you don't really see a mechanic used the same way more than a couple times, right? Like it's not like you're methodically going through and like, OK, I melt that guy's face. Now I melt that guy's face. Now I melt that guy's face. You very much have to like – you know, it's puzzle game like in that sense where you're like having to bring in new mechanics constantly.

There's so many ways to kill people with rats. You would have never guessed. There really are. And we don't think about it or talk about it enough. It is also I have found, you know, if I'm at home and I have free time, there's usually like a bajillion things that I should be doing. If I am traveling, though, a lot of times I really don't have anything to do with that I should be doing. If I am traveling though, a lot of times I really don't have anything to do with that exact moment, right?

And for that reason, it is very essential to me to always have some sort of phone game. I have to have something on the phone that's like pick up, play it, don't have, I don't need to focus on it that much i just you know it's it's like kind of so when you say phone game i think of like three different types of ways this could go there's like the free to play um you know idle game there is the i don't know the addictive games Game Dev Story, you know, where it's like, okay, for three days, this is all I'm going to think about. And then there's like Hearthstone, right, where it's like a kind of traditional game, but it's on your phone and you can play it whenever you want.

Which of those three is your kind of go-to? Well, I want to avoid something that requires network connectivity. Okay. So I don't normally do that. What I tend to do is something that I've also – I do this a lot where it's like there's not enough of these games. So I end up playing the ones I've played before, right? Like you can only play You Must Build a Boat so many times, and I do do that pretty frequently. Like I'll just go back and do it again.

times and I do do that pretty frequently like I'll just go back and do it again um the but the ones that I got into this trip that I it's been a long time and I just wanted to is a dark room and the ensign have you okay so did you play candy box oh yeah I mean I love candy box love candy box dark room is sort of like it's based on the the, it's not based, it's inspired, I guess, in some ways by Candy Box. You can play both of these on your phone. And it's very much a game where you're like, you start with a fire and you light the fire and the fire, and it's all text-based and ASCII stuff. You light the fire and then someone is drawn to your fire and they start bringing wood. And then that wood builds a bigger fire and more people are drawn. And then you assign some of them to build traps.

And then some of those people build huts. So more people can come and you're like basically building a community, um, in, you know, it's tick based. So it's like every, you know, 10 seconds or whatever more wood comes through. And that is like the, you can imagine the arc from there, right? Yeah, yeah. You strike out from your village

and you have to go exploring in other places, find new weapons, new resources, all that stuff. But it's all like text-based and very chill. And then the Ensign is the sequel, maybe it's a like text based and very and very chill and then the ensign is the sequel maybe it's a prequel to a dark room um those are both on actually on browser too you can play on browser um or on on ios is where i i end up playing them but um i really love games like that it's a it's it's basically and i i'm not an idle game it's too interactive for that too much exploration but it's like it's the same

idea of like cumulative power in over time yeah did you you played universal paperclips right yeah absolutely i was gonna say that it sounds like that sort of game love that might have to get might have to give that one another run too yeah it's been a little bit oh my gosh there's a ios app version of it now that supposedly does not destroy your battery. But when I tried it, it definitely did. Well, literally, I did that terrible thing where I was about to travel for an entire day. I was in New York, saw that the app came out,

downloaded it, and was like, oh, great, it doesn't eat your battery? I'm going to play it all day today. And then it was like halfway through my day and my phone was suddenly dying. Yeah, those games. Yeah, I mean, I love idle games that are not tied to in-app purchases where it's like, hey, this actually the mechanic itself is quite fun. We're not going to make you, you know, try to buy extra gems to make it go faster because like i don't want it to go faster i want to i want to enjoy its rhythm yeah for sure yeah i mean for me i i am not very good

about always having an ios game it used to be drop seven but that kind of faded and i have some stuff that i pick up now and then but i don't know like I have a lot of trouble if I pull out my phone I feel like I'll end up like looking at work stuff or like some other distraction um but I do keep kind of my go-to travel games on my switch so I have you know I mean we've talked about Spelunky a million times on this show we don't have to talk about it more but that is my favorite of those sorts of games i used to literally bring my vita around until um spunky came out on the switch just because it was it was such a good game to have if i had 30 minutes to kill you know on a cab ride or something like

that um do you have any games like that that are your like defaults for for being on the go uh i have i uh slay the spire is the other one for me like that where it's like you can jump back into that um whenever uh and it is just as fun as the first time you played it and yeah i yeah i actually had a there's a new fan made expansion which is so cool what a cool idea it's called downfall and it's like a free fan expansion to slay the spire that you can just get and play um it's got and it lets you play as the bosses it also also like, um, gives you a, uh, a new character class called the hermit that it would get to into slay the

spire mechanics to explain, but it's cool. Um, but I was like, you know, I need to refresh on slay the spire real quick before I hop into this expansion. And you can guess how that went.

Fast forward to 20 hours later like fucking slay the spire is the greatest game i don't know why i ever stopped playing this i love the game is absolutely the best i love slay the spire and it is so fun i eventually did get into downfall and it is excellent too but like i there was also a new character in slay the spire that hadn't beaten it with before uh so i had to i had to do that first but um new character in Slay the Spire that I hadn't beaten it with before. So I had to do that first. But I love Slay the Spire. I would turn to that constantly.

I just, I remember the one phone game that I want to put in your brain, in everyone's brain. And I think we maybe talked about it briefly on the show, but have you tried Point P? No, I don't think so. Do you remember that game Downwell yeah that like yeah the mobile game so that developer made a new game called point p that is a netflix game so already you know brace yourself but it's so worth actually downloading and then wait what how did how do you spell it? P-O-I-N-P-Y. Point P. Point P.

Point P. That's a bad name. So I said that at first, but then saying it out loud, saying point P over and over again feels good. Feels real good. Point P. point p um it it's like reverse down well in that it's you know a vertical platformer but you are going up and you kind of shoot yourself at enemies uh almost bust a move style you can see the arc of your character before you actually fire it and you just climb and your goal is to get to a point where you uh basically can climb all the way up the tower without ever touching the ground.

A little bit of the floor is lava-ishness to it, too. And while you're doing this, you're collecting fruits to feed a giant cat that is perpetually underneath you trying to eat you alive. And it's just very cute. It's very colorful. And it's effectively free if you already have a Netflix subscription. The way Netflix's mobile games work is you download the app, and then before it lets you play, you just sign into your Netflix account, and then you're off to the races. I believe that they just did this with – Into the Breach.

Yeah, Into the Breach. Into the Breach just got this. Yes, I downloaded that. Griffin was playing that a lot on tour, so I downloaded that as well. Also, still very good. Yeah. What a great game. Hey, before we wrap the segment, I want to go back to the question I had from the beginning.

What makes a good travel game for you? I think it's something that is really attention- that doesn't like that, that very much like locks you in. I think it needs to lock you in with that like addictive central loop. And if it has that, I feel like that it is a true worthy time killer, which is not normally something I look for. But there are times when you're stuck on the tarmac and you definitely do need that because it's a long flight and you're going crazy. Otherwise. Yeah.

I think that's a great way to describe it. Shall we go to the other side and talk about Xenoblade Chronicles? Yes. Three. Let me get a drink. A stiff one for this incredible discussion. We'll talk about that game, the name of which I remember, right

after this. Xenogrind Final Fates 4. It's finally here, and Plant is the only person who's played it, so he's the perfect person to talk about it. I downloaded this, and I was like, you know what? Somebody on this show should give it a try.

And that person was you. The first one to think that is the one that has to do it. Well, you know, I thought I would do that. I thought I'd play for an hour or two, and that I probably would bounce off, and then we would not talk about it. And here I am, six or seven hours into into the game and I'm having a great time. And we've talked about, you know, like weed games on this show.

My friends, we found the ultimate weed game. It does exist and it is here. Why is it a weed game? Because there are two parts to the game, as far as I can tell. There are the cut scenes that go on interminably long, but are interesting. But, oh, my gosh. You think, hey, this cut scene started five minutes ago.

Surely we're getting to the point, right? No. There's more that's going to come after it. In suddenly 15 minutes 20 minutes or whatever has passed you're still just chilling out learning about an endless war between two factions that kill each other for their precious life force that turns into fire in their eyeballs and you really start to you know disassociate from time and space um and then the other part of the game is a big open world rpg where you effectively out in the easiest mode do not need to do anything other than walk up

to the enemies and then everybody just way lays on uh the characters while you watch um there are fighting options you you have like they're called arts so there's the automatic fighting that's mostly about like positioning yourself if you are playing on the normal mode it's like hey i want to be in a healing circle very mmo like um and then you launch your your specials effectively which you can select and switch between characters at a certain point all of that if it sounds complicated, don't worry. You're probably not going to get to it for the first five or six hours anyway. Fantastic.

You're mostly just going to be going around this open world. And here's the part that I think would get you interested, Justin. The open world is full of glowing, colorful orbs. And you can see them from very far away. colorful orbs and you can see them from very far away and if you have a part of your body that cannot resist walking towards the colorful orb collecting it and then seeing another one about 100 yards away and then going and getting that one and then just doing that until you've again completely lost track of time then this game is for you um i i don't know there's there's something about this it's like connecting with my lizard brain gameplay wise and that like you truly can just zone and

grind in this game in a way that is i don't know like really pleasant i think it was um euro gamer that compared it to like just letting a slot machine run in front of you. Where it's just like you're just getting, you know, new fruit popping on and wondering if it's going to reward you this time. There's a little bit of that. And then very quickly, the story. Do you even want to know, Justin? No. No?

Okay. Go for it here here it is you um okay so i mentioned that there are two effectively like i don't know families clans that are in a constant war with each other yeah um soldiers live for 10 years before they get like effectively killed by their own army so they can use that life force to start anew. And you play as, at first, a flutist who plays... When people die, their souls get stuck in their corpses unless a flutist comes and plays a song that sends them to, like, space heaven. And you play as one of those flutists.

And sure, you go around fighting but the other thing that you do in this game i mentioned going around the open world finding colorful things some of those colorful things are dead bodies whoa and you go and you play your flute to send them to space heaven um amazing which is i i like that you're really muscling to care about this I'm trying my best no I mean that sincerely you're trying I'm trying the only problem with this game being like

a weed game is I just said all of this out loud and I feel like I am stoned it's hard to talk about this game in a way that I don't know, that resonates without being

a little bit out there. I don't know. It's good. I am liking it a lot. I promise because I know that there are very diehard Xenoblade fans out there. I will come back to this game.

I want to play a lot more before I get into like what the game actually is. Because right now I again seven hours in. I think I'm still probably another seven hours six seven hours from where the game starts. Because right now I just learned about this like steven universe merging power where a character is combined to form like giant mech creatures okay and you know when that's happening and you're you're not really out of the tutorial so that's a huge it's a huge thing to just jump on dump like that. It is. So thank you. Thank you, Justin. What does it look like?

What are the graphics? You know, the art design is awesome. The art direction is great. But it has that problem that I feel like we're starting to see on the Switch as it gets later into its life. Where a big open world kind of just looks muddy. No matter how great the art direction is, it's doing the thing that was cool with Breath of the Wild, but now after all these years,

I would like some of this open world to have textures. Right. So the actual art is really cool. The world is kind of Pandora-esque going off Avatar mixed with these really awesome giant mech designs, like spaceship designs. But yeah, it just suffers. Pokemon Legends Arceus earlier this year kind of had that same thing, you know, where it's like, wait, what actually is this world?

Is it just like a series of like colors against flat surfaces? So this doesn't sound like something that's going to bring someone into this who does not already care about this genre. Is that fair? I think if you don't care about the genre no if you care about the genre but have bounced off previous xenoblade games like me i think yes it feels much more welcoming and accommodating than the previous xenoblade games but no this is like a jrpg ass jrpg i mean this is all of the things that you're familiar with, like an obtuse combat system, very, very long

cutscenes, especially at the beginning of the game, a very, you know, anime story. That said, if you like those things, it's great versions of all of that. I mean, why I like just kind of zoning out and playing this game is it's so refreshing to play a story

that is optimistic. And, I mean, this is weird because it's so refreshing to play a story that is optimistic and i mean this is weird because it's a game about you know two factions stuck in endless war but i mean it's just an anti-war video game which is cool as hell that you play as effectively a pseudo-pacifist who is a bard who wants to send people to heaven. Yeah. It's cool. It is cool. Sounds like a good vibe. That's it. You've been playing anything else?

I mean, a lot of multiverses. I'm big into multiverses. Have you not downloaded it? Justin, it's so good. It's so good. I've been listening to everything I've played for you in the last two weeks. You know I haven't played it.

No, you should download it, and we can play together. I play as LeBron James. Okay, yeah, one of my favorite fighters. And he is great. I love playing. So, you know, it's like Smash Brothers, but there is team modes where it's 2v2. And when you can get two LeBron Jameses going up against, I don't know, the Iron Giant and Batman,

you're in for a treat. I mean, it sounds wild. It is absolutely wild. And LeBron James, all of his moves are kind of like Charles Barkley's Shut Up and Jam, where he's hitting people with his basketball. So you had to dunking or shooting

long-distance th threes and the arc will like hit some iron giant until you know oblivion um but yeah with two lebrons you can actually pass the basketballs back and forth so you'll have like three or four basketballs ricocheting around the court or the stage uh knocking aria stark into into the death of hell. It's pretty great. Oh, God. I don't know. I guess I should.

Is it free? Let's try it. It's free. I think it's like- How many shaggies can I buy? I mean, there's at least, there's a special shaggy that you can get with the Battle Pass where he's wearing a smoke,

like a, what is it? A smoke room? Cigar room? Smoking room jacket? Sm nice he looks nice he looks very cool he goes super saiyan that's his special power hey you gotta love that yeah i mean it's it's a great game i mean and the iron giant kills people like were you surprised at how how much you enjoyed it? Yeah, I thought I would be kind of tickled by it because the idea of playing as LeBron James and breaking Bugs Bunny's neck. The Fortnite effect. Yeah, yeah.

But then it ended up just being really good. And now I'm, I don't know, I'm probably going to complete the first battle pass in the next day or two, which I have not done for a video game ever. Yeah, I can't think of the last time. Yeah, it's great. I think he will be maybe a Tom and Jerry main.

I could see that. Maybe a Harley Quinn. You know, it's kind of – I can't really tell. What character do you like in Smash Brothers? I wouldn't play Smash Brothers with my worst enemies. Okay, then. So I guess that makes me a solid think. I don't know.

I think it's a good pick. Have you been watching anything? Oh, man, just some old John Carpenter movies. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a lot of them. It's a thing. I'm going to blank check, and there's a lot that I hadn't seen. So I saw this trip for the first time.

I saw The Thing and Christine. What's the other one? Escape from New York. I saw all three of those for the first time. Never seen them before. Wow. Which was your favorite? The Thing was great. I can't believe I've never seen that before. The. Which was your favorite? The Thing

was great. I can't believe I've never seen that before. The movie whips ass. Did you watch Assault on Precinct 13 yet? Yes. That was the second I guess. But it was great. That was a great film too. I've been really enjoying going through his movies.

Pretty good. Pretty good at making movies. Yeah. Good at making movies for not a lot movies. Pretty good. Pretty good at making movies. Yeah, good at making movies for not a lot of money. Yeah, and great at making soundtracks. Great scores. But that's what I've been into. What are we doing next week, bud? Next week we're going to do an anniversary episode

for Mortal Kombat. We're going to talk about the best fatalities, the best babalities, the best friendships. We're going to talk about the best fatalities, the best babalities, the best friendships. We're going to talk about what it was like to actually be alive when that first game launched. Do you remember? What was it? Mortal Monday? Yeah.

Oh, man. I remember being at a friend's house and they had the wrong version. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. It was so embarrassing. I spent weeks planning to manipulate my grandma and grandpa into how they were going to buy it for me. And let me tell you, it worked. And it was.

I'm sure we'll hear that harrowing tale. Norbin Pat, you'll finally learn the truth. It is their like end of the serial killer movie. You're like, wait a minute, this entire time? So what did we, what did, did you want to list all the games? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we talked about, you know, we just talked about a bunch of games. And then we talked about Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I think that's it.

Which is more than a game. It's a lifestyle. At this point, yeah. Yeah, so next week's Mortal Kombat. And we'll have probably some more people than us. But I don't actually care. I've had a great time talking to you. This is so nice.

The first time that we've ever spoken with each other it was pretty good yeah good vibes all around uh that is gonna do it for us be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!