The Besties - Picking the Best GTA Game Ever

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

You find yourself in a city. Your only option? Crime! This week we have special guest Jordan Morris (@Jordan_Morris) filling in for Griffin as we attempt to tackle a tough question: What is the greatest Grand Theft Auto game of all time? And yes, the randomized bracket has returned with a vengeance! 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!

are you guys ready for this i was in the shower today and i good start i something came to me are you ready for it okay pawn stars you know this show pawn stars oh sure yes uh-huh yeah that's a play on porn stars i saw the i saw russ saw Russ's reaction at least one other person this had not occurred wait no this is like this is a goof right like I saw the reaction don't I mean I am this was genuinely a surprise to me I had never even considered that it was a play on porn stars is it on stars is a play on porn stars that's why is it definitely yeah yeah it's like that i imagine that it was pitched by somebody in boston and they're like it's a show about pawn stars and they're like show about pawn stars that sounds great and they're like no pawn stars and where

are we gonna shoot it at a pawn shop what okay i guess a porn shop yeah a pawn shop What? Okay, I guess. A porn shop? Yeah, a porn shop. Now, have you been watching reruns of History Channel at 2am? Why did this come to you, Justin? What is the timely news that brought this to you? Listen, I still have a private life. I'm allowed to have a private life outside this podcast. Okay?

Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll allow it. I can offer you $12 for that anecdote. Maybe off mic. But your card's right. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the... Well, okay. I know a good game. Full of bad people.

My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best series of the last two decades my name is Russ Frosch and I'm the best game of the week welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment it is a video game club

for friends if you're listening you're in the club congratulations welcome to the club and I am so excited to, you know, I don't have a lot of friends in the industry. I'm kind of a bad boy. I'm kind of a rebel who plays by his own rules. And I've burned down a lot of people to get to the point that I'm at now. But if I have a friend in the biz, it's the man who has joined us here today it's uh from from jordan jesse go he's the author and of both the podcast and the graphic novel upcoming july 13th of bubble he is a writer on midnight at

midnight yes that came to me many other tv shows he's jordan morris welcome to i don't know why i listed a canceled program hi jordan jordan morris number one besties super fans signing on reporting for duty so happy to have you a person who actually non-ironically listens to the besties which should have been his first credit honestly it's a great credit it's on my imdb guy who enjoys the besties thank you No I've been listening to the show In all its iterations I've even gotten to the point where I kind of enjoy the giraffe now So yeah

Unikitty That was what I was Unikitty Yeah there you go Unikitty on Cartoon Network Earth to Net on Disney Plus That's about it That's such a wonderful guy.

He's a true sweetheart. And I'm so happy to have him here because today we're going to be talking about, now Plant, what is this Grand Theft Auto? Oh, so there were these video games called Body Harvest, right? And they were like, what if we made this game more fun for people?

And they're like, sure, what would that look like? And they're like, you go around a city instead of a 1950s matinee sci-fi thriller and you shoot people. And immediately the video game gods were like, let me get this right. You shoot innocent people? And they're like, yes.

And they're like, we're gonna get rich. And then they did. That's the history of Grand Theft Auto in a nutshell. So we're gonna get deep into it. We're going to talk about all of the franchise. And we're going to pick, through our scientific process, the best Grand Theft Auto game of all time. Yeah, so we should mention at this point,

and we've done this before. We did this with the Zelda bracket, deciding the very best Zelda game of all time, which was Link to the Past, if I recall. We're doing it again with GTA. We have once again returned to the randomized bracket format. I should mention, GTA is kind of weird because whereas with Zelda,

there were like tons and tons of games to pick from gta obviously doesn't have quite as deep of a canon but we have picked from eight of the basically main games uh plus chinatown wars which is a great game but eight of the main games which i think you'll understand are are major iterations rather than like say a dlc pack or something like that to give us a nice round even bracket i think fresh is lying to us because i don't think there's a way that this bracket is random this is a perfect grand theft auto bracket i just want to i want to i want to run through it very quickly because i mean it's kind of incredible up first we're gonna have gta 5 versus gta 1 the original versus the mod like the most modern version right boom there's a

narrative right there after that we've got gta 4 versus gta 2 the two evolutions the 2d evolution the 3d evolution after that we got san andreas versus chinatown wars the two best games against each other right up top and then we got gta3 versus vice city which is uh basically been an argument ever since vice city came out which is which is better the game like set the mold or the game that is like the refinement that everybody loves, right? Is it better to have like Call of Duty 1 or Call of Duty 2? This is a killer bracket matchup. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

We are going to, in this episode, run through this first round and we'll basically narrow it down to the top four. And then next week, we're going to decide the top one. basically narrow it down to the top four and then next week we're going to decide the top one but let's narrow down these top four which are incredibly as plant said uh hard to decide and i think we should start with gta5 versus gta1 i want to do the cousin brucey voice but i can't do it so we're just gonna say gta5 versus gta1 broadly speaking real quick uh i would like to talk about this series and just like 30 second takes, so we understood where we're coming from

individually, if that's okay. Can we set the stage with that? I feel like there's an interesting so Grand Theft Auto 4 comes out, I start like game journalism in 2007, so like for Joystick, I start like game journalism in 2007.

So like for Joystick. So these are very like four and five are very much like part of my career as a game journalist. And I feel like broadly speaking, I didn't appreciate either of these games enough when they first came out. I feel like they were so massively successful

that there was a lot more chin stroking in those days. And I think we thought that games that big, like open world games that were that sort of expansive would become sort of like the standard rather than a truly like finite resource that we are getting, I think, increasingly few of. Because returning back to these games like i really these worlds still feel pretty vibrant yeah in a way that a lot of

open world games don't even now in the year of our lord 2021 jordan do you have a first gta memory that jumps to mind yeah i mean i associate uh these games with my college dorm. And going back and playing them, some of them are a little rough. Some of them, I would say, have aged like a Baconator in a trunk. I want to know, though, what was your, not to date you, but what was the college dorm GTA game for you? Oh, three. It was three.

And then I remember when Vice City came out and then I remember like going on, you know, gamespot.com and looking at photos of San Andreas or looking at teases of San Andreas. And yeah, I've played every game in this series. I've beaten most of them. And yeah, and have some like have do have some like gripes about them but um you know realized that they totally changed video games and you know without this

series there's no assassin's creed there's no horizon zero dawn um etc etc so um so yeah i i i recognize its influence i've had fun with the games in in the past, but I have some nits to pick. Yeah. My first, first experience was playing GTA 1 as a shareware game. Like I downloaded it and then fooling my mom into buying GTA 2 for me, even though I was probably 14 at the time.

It was called Grand Theft Auto. That must have been a very good grift it just said bta i mean that could mean a lot of things yeah sure time good times ahead but but as with jordan uh gta 3 was like a dorm room staple uh i remember like reading the ign review and seeing like whatever it was 9.7 or something ridiculous and being like, really, could it be that good? And yeah, it was a total mind blowing experience. Yeah, I had the most fun with these last night when I tried to recreate the dorm experience in my home.

So I hung up, you know, that Pink Floyd poster where all their albums are painted onto women's backs. I microwaved some bagel bites. I didn't put them in the oven. I microwaved them. Yeah. And I cracked a Miller High Life Tall Boy, and I'm like, okay, now I'm in the zone. While my roommate would get heartburn.

Did you sleep at 9.30 p.m. promptly? Yeah. 9.30 p.m. I sleep at 9.30. Right. I called my old roommate to try and hide the fact that he was masturbating in the next room. Just the perfect dorm experience. I started the series on GTA 1 also, and it was my favorite game.

Like, by far. I played so much of GTA 1 and both London expansions. I loved it so much that I endured the Game Boy Color port of GTA 1, which is heinous. It's real bad. But I just was absolutely obsessed with it. And despite being at a young age, when Grand Theft Auto 3 came out, I was extremely put off.

I avoided it for months because it did not have the top-down view. And I was like, they're getting rid of something special here. You know, you could like see so much of the world and it was so free. And we're trading that for like crappy 3D games. Like, what's the big deal? There's one hill that you can go down. Cool, you can see the moon. Congratulations, what a fun game.

Obviously, I've changed my opinion on that. I also bought similar to Frosh, I convinced my parents to get me Grand Theft Auto 2. Separate from Frosh, Grand Theft Auto 2 had a very fancy lighting technology that required a graphics card, which we did not have.

So it ran at roughly four frames per second, and I pretended that I enjoyed that for a year. We're not even talking about GTA 5 versus GTA 1. What are we doing here? Okay, this is the first matchup. GTA 5 versus GTA 1, holy cow. I'm going to start by about gta 1 a little bit uh for people that haven't played it uh good luck finding a place to play it it's extremely difficult um it was on steam a while ago and is now not on steam or not available to download or buy on steam anymore um but it is a top-down like literally top-down not isometric version of gta where you can run anywhere and steal any car you want and you basically drive

around the city um getting jobs from a beeper to seriously date the game and uh committing various crimes and going on quote rampage missions where you just slaughter a bunch of people with machine guns stuff like that it is definitely interesting to see this because it's like a very pure version of what the game would later become this cinematic super complex super emotion driven whatever but at its core that's all it was it was just you run around the city and you steal cars and you do these like simple fetch missions and sometimes the cops chase you like that was basically it but i played the fuck out of it i think it was the first game again that like offered that level of freedom like that idea that i could go anywhere in this map and they

weren't forcing me to to go to a certain area to do whatever, was really kind of thrilling to me. I think you're forgetting the most important part is that there's a fart button. I don't actually remember the fart button. There's a fart button on the PS1 version, at least. And some might say that the series series sense of humor never evolved from

that no that's true i'd actually say it got worse uh yeah i remember i remember the first two because three was the first one i played and then i remember thinking like oh my god this is three there's two more of these i haven't played and then kind of going back and uh revisiting them and uh yeah there's there's there's some fun stuff about those first two but i haven't played and then kind of going back and uh revisiting them and uh yeah there's there's there's some fun stuff about those first two but i don't really have a nostalgic attachment to them so uh they they they were never a ton of fun for me to play yeah i don't think that they have the like staying power that like of like the original zelda relinks the past has i think it's very much this like very narrow idea that they were executing

on and they do a pretty good, good job at that. But I don't think these are like, and plant might disagree with me. I know he feels strongly about these games. I don't think they hold up in modern game development era, but I do think it's very unfortunate that they're like, that such a similar part of gaming history is like, you can't get it to play it.

Like, that's so strange to me. I know as old, as old men, we consider like preservation probably a lot more than some people, but it is wild that you can't just like get these and play them. I also think that might be a piece of why it doesn't feel as enjoyable to go back in that by not being around i don't know it feels like there's just not a lot of games inspired by it like you know you go back and play a link to the past and it's like well all this feels natural they're still making 2d top-down zelda wannabes right like you Like, you feel like you see, like, many of those a year. Outside of, what is, like, Shakedown Hawaii,

Retro City Rampage, made by the same person, like, there's not a lot of these games. Plus, as you said, like, most people just aren't even trying this game. So I think there's, I don't know, maybe this is, like, kind of justifying it, but I think there's a weird thing here where when you go back and play this game, it just feels like of a different time

and it has its own language in a way that if you go back and play Zelda, it still feels so relevant. You can still feel like, hey, this game is rough around the edges in some ways, but it's still very vital and important. So I don't know. I think the defense that I give GTA 1 here i i i don't know i think like the the defense that i'll give gta1 here because i don't see it surviving this round is the game itself is like a mild miracle like this game i think like took two or three years to actually ship which at that time

was might as well have been a decade um it got like nearly canceled a gajillion times it was made by it wasn't made by rockstar it was made by dma design like which would then become that but it's like this studio was like a known commodity it really had everything against it and when you do go back and play the game so much of the game is here like the radio stations and the fetch questions missions and like you can get into any vehicle and they all actually feel quite different and for better and worse mostly for worse the sense of humor um like it's kind of shocking to me knowing how far the series has gone how much of it is in this very first version of the game um in the same way that I think we see that with Zelda.

Which I think is neat. Do I think that makes it the best game though? No, it's going up against GTA 5, which is like the best selling piece of commercial media like ever. And we're divorcing this conversation from GTA Online, right? I mean, I think it's worth mentioning

because I wanted to mention gta online in the context of gta 5 if only because effectively at this point they made two games in one package um one of them is like a value sure precisely one of them is a story-driven campaign uh in the main GTA V. And then GTA Online is this, to a certain extent, given how much value you get out of the main game, a free-to-play, online, weird, bizarre modes and this whole meta-universe of people cosplaying and performing one-acts inside the world of gta online is this like entire other thing so like yeah i think it's hard to sort of summarize what gta 5 is given those two

very disparate ideas but i think it's worth mentioning i think we should talk about gta online i think just to give other games a fighting chance i think we should cut it out because it is so different and and like i don't know about y'all, but like if GTA Online is part of it, it just wins automatically because it's like one of the most successful MMOs. It's changed a trillion things about monetization in games. And the roleplay community is like one of the coolest things happening in video games. But none of that has anything in common with the rest of Grand Theft Auto. And the coolest things happening in GTA Online weren't made by the creators of gta so like it just feels like a little bit of a separate thing but that that's jordan grand theft auto 5

what was your recollection of it when it first uh when it first hit yeah i uh you know it it's amazing the character swapping stuff is uh super cool and uh yeah i live in la and there there's such a there's such a a great like it's such a pleasure when you live in a place where a gta is set and they get something about your city right. There is so much great LA detail in GTA 5. Just like you drive by, you know, a bridge and you're like, oh my gosh, I've driven by that bridge and the sun is setting in the exact right place. There are so many great, you know, LA and Southern California in general details in gta5 and gosh it might have even come out after yeah i think i had maybe even kind of recently moved to la so there was that kind of you know pleasure in it too um yeah and just the fact that like when you uh drive you

know east out into the desert the people get a little meth-y you know it's like there's just so many cool uh little details like that um i hey gta why why is the shooting still not feel good hey gta why does the punching still not feel good there's that um you know so there's there's that thing about how you know it's this amazing world filled with wonderful detail but some of the video game shit still sucks which i'm always amazed it's better yeah that's totally true it's better yeah it's a ton better what's that was always the line with like a new grand theft auto would come out or be like they fixed the shooting it's like well in comparison to the one right before this they did

um there was like i was doing this sequence where i had it was like driving and i had to shoot somebody who was on a boat and i like had the most insane claw grip of like trying to hit six buttons at once yeah it's wild but um i'll tell you i played this on pc uh and the number one thing that jumped out of me is and i would suspect this is a result of them continuing to support grand theft auto online is that it looks great like it still looks fantastic it's from 2013 and it looks phenomenal yeah they've updated a few times yeah uh with for the playstation 4 what struck me about grand theft auto 5 and you could say this about I think most of the the big releases in this franchise is that the ambition is just off the charts and like the ambition of this of like telling a narrative with three main characters async like in an asynchronous sense that lets

you sort of control the pacing like and who you're hanging out with and who you're following and and stuff like that i don't even think that's been topped like now like i don't think anybody has done anything that i mean like you have things like watchdog legion right but those aren't really characters they're ciphers um i i i don't feel like it it has become like uh and and the way that you interact where your character is like, where you do heists together and you're switching between three different characters who are playing different roles and stuff. I don't feel like that's even been like attempted again,

which I think is pretty, I mean, a really wild tribute that here, you know, eight years after its initial release, I don't feel like there's many parts that aren't equaled. I think GTA 5 wins. We do need to move on because we have a lot of ground to cover. I think we'll talk a lot more about GTA 5

as the series goes on. Also, as one final point, it has night moves. It has night moves. Is there a radder song to go on a rampage to? I vote no. I vote night moves it has night moves and like is there a is there a radder song to go on a rampage too i vote no i vote night moves is the ultimate gta song that that is an interesting point what we should talk about sound soundtracks as we go through strong thoughts okay so next up gta 4 versus gta 2 i'll let me just give the gta 2 defense really quick and we'll make this round fast.

GTA 2 looks cool as hell at four frames a second. So the way the lighting worked in this game, and it's such a dorky thing, but it was like, it was a pixel looking game, but with like 3D lighting. So it just blew the mind at the time to see to go from gta1 where there is like all this like baked in lighting i mean it doesn't even look like lighting it looks like a cartoon and then you play gta2 and the cop cars would be chasing you and the red and blue light would be like spraying across the environment and it looked awesome when explosions happened like light bloomed across across the world and like so much of the game felt like it was set in night the downside of gta2 is gta2 is when it like really

takes a turn towards kind of like todd mcfarlane grimdark like sure we played uh as sweet tooth tooth and twisted metal ones um energy and uh not not great yeah i mean that's that there's basically two things i didn't like about gta2 that even though i convinced my mom to buy it for me uh came away after a week or two not really playing it anymore the grimdark thing totally agree with you um i and i think it's mostly just because it's a departure from the colorful like quote-unquote fun of the first game which is despite the themes are you know it's like a light game to play it feels it's a cartoon right and this is like oh dark and serious i also think the like the first game was set in modern day for all intents and purposes um the gta2 is set in like a near future kind of thing um and because of that the like car designs are like weird and

kind of inspired by like the 20s but also like not and it just there's like the fun of gta is sort of like feeling oh i'm in a universe that is familiar to me and I connect to, and this did not at all feel like that. So like, I just didn't have that connection to it. I do want to mention one other thing. There's a gang system that was introduced in GTA 2 where you get like, do missions for one gang

and the other gang gets pissed at you. This is not a fun system. You'd basically like accidentally drive into a neighborhood and get lit up because you did too many missions for one other group and that sucks. So, yeah, I don't know. I really don't care for GTA 2. I think

it's the low point. I think it's worth mentioning full motion video intro. Thank you. Yeah, that wins it in a walk. Yeah, Justin, how does this compare to, say, Mad Dog McCree? Yeah, well, Mad mccree is interactive and this is just a bad movie at the beginning of it so i mean mad dog mccree is a classic we can't take away for it didn't get disparage it by comparing it to this resident evil style fmv intro

does get bonus points but not enough jordan can you tell us your feelings about gta4 and yeah it rules or maybe does not roll i don't know or sucks those are the only two yeah as you know does it rule or does it suck weigh in in the comments uh rules are sex um so yeah so gta4 is definitely the game in the series i have played the least. Huh. Yeah, and for the purposes of this, I couldn't find it easily downloadable anywhere. So I am kind of going off memories.

And I think the things that led me to peace out of GTA 4 were, you know, I think the New York setting didn't grab me like the la setting would in the other game um imagine living in west virginia i mean yeah yeah nothing to let yeah where's gta west virginia redneck rampage i think is the only one we've had set here well no fallout 76 and that's even worse there you go um and know, and I think I remember playing the game and like, there's that thing where people call you to hang out. And one of my little buddies called me to hang out and to go bowling. And I went to the bowling alley and I'm like, wow, there's bowling in this game. It's not fun, but it's here.

it's not fun but it's here and i think that is that's a that's a you know that is that is a gripe i have about the series is that it's amazing that they made this but they they they didn't work on making it fun i think we'll talk about the exercising in san andreas oh my god i can't believe they did this is it fun not really uh so yeah that extends even like grand theft auto 5 just before we logged on i was like oh i forgot you can go what go to a movie theater you go to the movie theater it's impossibly boring like yeah it's not boring nothing is fun about it uh but i but like watching videos of it it still looks great it looks awesome and um and yeah and i i i have those gripes about it but i mean it it it seems to have aged so much better than like three and but i think it has the reputation of being the dark horse can any of you guys speak to that like why maybe fans don't like it as much as yeah i

think it basically did not find that perfect middle ground between like fun goofy that is emphasized that is really epitomized by like san andreas yeah and and then gta 5 after it it it tried to be this like life sim almost as you mentioned the like going on dates with your cousin to play bowling and doing all these other things occasionally it would dip into a michael mann style action movie there are heist missions in gta4 that are fun and exciting and obviously informed a lot of what they did in gta5 and when that worked but those missions are few and far between i would say though about gta4 you know you mentioned not really connecting to the new york setting being in new york and having that connection to it totally clicked for for me like there are those

areas for me like my neighborhood train station is represented in the game and it looks pretty damn good for being a game that came out fucking 15 years ago or whatever it is so cool when they do that yeah it's it's so cool when it matches really amazing especially since it's not obviously a one-to-one it is a uh extrapolation of what new york is but it so perfectly uh encapsulates new york that uh there's really no uh game that has done it better yeah i i agree for the same reason like living in new york liberty city is awesome as a game environment i think it's the weakest environment in the in the series because it just visually i mean it's well it's very striking that it's vertical the game doesn't have verticality you know it's not

like you're like can just go into skyscrapers and go all the way to the top. So yeah, I also think a lot more instruction in the driving too. There's a huge open freeways in GTA 5 that are actually fun to navigate and I feel like you can get choked up a lot easier on GTA 4 just like trying to drive around in a hurry. Grids are not fun, generally speaking,

for driving. Yeah, I guess that's why Spidey works so well in New York. Why is that the world's most fun open world game? Yeah, I guess that's why spidey works so well in new york like why is that the world's most fun open world game uh yeah yeah no i think that's true and i think um story-wise miami or vice city is like maximum goofy and liberty city is like maximum somber like you can just feel them you know trying to borrow from like scorsese and try to make this serious game. And San Andreas seems to be the happy medium

of like, okay, we can do a little bit of serious, we can do a little bit of goofy. It just seems to vibe better with their energy. So that said, I think we can say GTA 4 wins that round. Yeah, I would pick GTA 4.

Okay, what do we have next? Next matchup is GTA San Andreas versus GTA Chinatown Wars. This, I think, is going to be the most intense of the battles, but we'll see. Put on a pot of coffee, fellas. We're going to be here all night

litigating this one. Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars returns to the isometric point of view that we saw in GTA 1 and 2 and the London ones. It is part, however, of the

3D universe which includes... Did you guys know about this, by the way? Sorry, it's part of the HD universe. Did you guys know that there's three different universes? No god i love continuity shit so there's three different continuities three different um there's the 2d universe the 3d universe the hd universe 2d is like gta gta 2 and the london ones the 3d universe is gta3 vice city san andreas and and a couple others there and then the hd universe starts with four and includes uh four five chinatown wars and gt online so even though

they share names the continuity of the universe is there's actually three different continuities that makes sense and really they haven't gone backwards like once they shifted into the hd universe they haven't made games in the previous generation it also explains like they don't have to deal with oh we mentioned this character in three and whatever like that's all like a lot of work so they can kind of start from scratch with each city um chinatown wars uh i did not have huge expectations for at all they had done um several gta games uh gta liberty what is it liberty city stories vice city stories they had done those that followed that same sort of mentality of you know just recreating what the console games

were chinatown wars is not that as justin mentioned it's top down um and i will say this about chinatown wars and i really adore this game it is the best version of run away from the cops that gta has ever done ever none of the console games even compare uh it turns the game into like a burnout style like knock knock cops off the road which is just like a total blast i think it is it is excellent i really hope that they experiment more with this format because i think it feels more arcadey and more quick than the console versions are but still is able to tell like an interesting story using uh i think they use like graphic novel style artwork um it's it's really spectacular if you get a chance to play it i'd sell shaded it looks pretty good still yeah it does it's on the i played

it on the ios for a while and was really surprised how much fun i had with it it's the ios isn't the greatest way to control it, but like it is, it's a, yeah, it's a total blast and it has a great little thing that no other game in the series has, I don't think. It's when you're carrying a weapon,

there's still an option to melee attack. You have a separate, you have a kick, which is something I always, that always kind of ruffled my feathers about the other ones is when you have a gun you can't melee oh yeah yeah it's great it's this little thing that makes a ton of difference and

yeah i totally agree with you the driving is super fun uh yeah they should do it have a little developer just make a top-down gta once every couple years to complement whatever game they're making it'd be super fun also surprisingly cute touch controls like you uh hotwire a car with touch and you like break your window and that's fun it's fun yeah it's just enough that you're like yeah that's nice it doesn't get in the way but it adds it adds a little bit of fun you know and there's a there's a there's a hacking mechanism to where you plug in a USB to like a car's security system and plugging in the USB is a little bit hard. It's like it is in real life. Yeah, Chinatown Wars is fun.

Do you have to do the thing where you turn around and look at it like, I know this is the right way up. Look at it. Yeah, is it dirty? Do I need to clean it? Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the third of the trilogy of GTA 3 main entries. Is that a fair way of like, that's how I think about it at least. GTA 3 main entries.

Is that a fair way of, that's how I think about it at least. GTA 3 Vice City San Andreas, yeah. Right. That's all we have to say about it. That's all we have to say about it. That's remarkable. That's all you had, Justin?

I thought you were leading into something. I downloaded this on the PS5 to play for these purposes, and it is fun. This game i thought was a blast it like yeah i think it it's it's aged pretty well i mean you know obviously it has some sense of humor stuff that kind of sucks but like um shooting is a little bit better than it is in the other games the driving's a little bit better uh yeah i i really had a good time with it this game gets it takes a little while i don't know how much you played when you were replaying it takes a little while before the game really like kind of shows its hand

once you basically leave uh the main city los santos is like the starting city and you realize just how big this fucking game is it's pretty mind-blowing because it's like the starting city. And you realize just how big this fucking game is. It's pretty mind-blowing because it's got the three cities. It's got Los Santos, which is Los Angeles. It's got San Francisco. I forget what they call it in San Andreas world. And it's got Las Vegas. And as you explore, they start giving you like fucking Harrier jets and jet packs and like all sorts of wild shit that

really hasn't gone that wild until GTA five and GTA online, where they've started reintroducing that level of like one-upsmanship with the tools and the fun stuff they give you. But it's weird to pair that stuff with like a game that is like, you know, about the riots and about uh you know uh the cia or was it the cia i believe it was shooting your uh brother it's been a little while since i remember the story but yeah like very grim and dark story paired with like

james woods giving you a rocket launcher it's you know the actual james woods now actually has a rocket oh 100 no i'm sure he had one then too he's like i got a great idea for my character and what if he's awful on twitter i think san andreas is like the porridgeridge is Just Right of the GTA universe, where it's not as over-the-top serious and ambitious to a fault as GTA 4, but it does feel like the polished version of the GTA 3 type of game, where it is reaching further. I mean, if you go back and you play GTA 3 and you play San Andreas, it's bonkers how much of a gap there is in terms of quality between GTA 3 and San Andreas.

GTA 3 is an incredible technological accomplishment. We'll talk about it in just a second. It is not a fun video game. By like any stretch of the imagination, is it pleasurable to go back and play that game? And that they are part of the same kind of trilogy is something else. Yeah, here's my take on this matchup.

I think Chinatown Wars really succeeds at everything it tries to do. I think San Andreas is not that consistent. You know, Jordan mentioned earlier the, like, exercise shit. There's, like, a lot of Sims stuff. It sucks. There's a lot of Sims stuff, like, eating burgers, and you get fat, and then you, whatever.

Like, there's a lot of Sims stuff in San Andreas that is not super fun. It brings to mind a lot of the sim stuff in red dead redemption 2 that is not super fun that i'd rather just not be in the game quite honestly um and so i i think overall i still think back on chinatown wars more fondly than i do san andreas even though i think obviously san andreas much more ambitious effort but i think they um there's some missteps in there that you know doesn't fully land for me anymore i love chinatown wars one thing that we haven't said i have no idea like how this game holds up in terms of representation. It was written by Dan Houser, looking at the Wikipedia.

So I'm... And by a bunch of other people, but mainly Dan Houser. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As much as I really enjoy Chinatown Wars, GTA San Andreas just feels like a cultural touchstone. It feels like, when I think of GTA, it is

the game that I picture in my head. And I do agree that it, like, it does not deliver on everything it accomplishes. But, I mean, if that's, like, the metric for GTA games and, like, Chinatown Wars is unquestionably the best because that is the nature of the series is to, series, is to overreach. I also think it is just fun. I think it's a fun GTA game. And again, you can't say that about every GTA. I don't think you can say that about three or four. So I would lean towards San Andreas, but I'm curious what Jordan and Justin think.

Yeah, I'd grant towards San Andreas, but I'm curious what Jordan and Justin think. Yeah, I'd grant you San Andreas. I think Chinatown Wars is very fun, but I don't think, I think scope-wise, I think it's tough to compare the two. And it also, as somebody who was, again, covering games at this time, without commenting on whether or not Dan Houser's life experience positioned him well to write the characters in San Andreas, it was notable at that point to have a black leading character in a game of this like size and scope.

It wasn't that common, especially back then, um, to, to have a game that was like was so far outside of of like white culture now again were the housers the best people positioned to like write and make that story i don't know the team i don't know who who all was on the team i i don't know but i i do think like in terms of uh some amount of representation i think that that was uh notable it should be noted also that for what it's worth chinatown wars also had an asian lead so like true yeah for sure but but i completely agree with you on the representation part i do not think the team had the required uh diversity to really tell those stories from a personal standpoint and And I think two points for San Andreas, uh, one,

it contains love roller coaster, which is another awesome song to do a rampage to. Great soundtrack. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, have you,

have you, have you seen our guys neck muscles in this? The necks, the necks in this game are so defined. There's so many neck. There's like bulging neck sinews in this game i'm like some pro wrestler necks yes yes everyone has a wrestler neck in this uh yeah i i think both of these are really fun games and it's it's cool that chinatown wars is so gettable um but yeah i

i think i'm i'm going san andreas on this i think it's just totally the best of that era of gta i think also very quick thing since we're saying goodbye to chinatown wars i remember um being with fresh stick at the preview at rockstar when they showed it to us for the first time and we didn't know what it would be it was was a total, it was like, hey, just come over, take a look. We have something to show you. And like, I have never been happier at a video game preview. It was like, oh, I loved these 2D games. I never thought I would ever see something like this again

because obviously the 3D games were making so much money. And I was just ecstatic. And I was like, great great they'll make one of these kind of like you said jordan's like why not make one every few years it's free money um but i they don't want it i'm actually surprised that they haven't gone back to the well to like revamp seeing how well a lot of these still like play and feel and like considering how much of the heavy lifting of like story creation is already done i'm surprised they haven't like spruced up some of these older ones and gotten back out there. Yeah.

No, I agree. Okay. San Andreas wins. Final matchup for this round is GTA 3 versus Vice City. I'll talk about GTA 3 real quick because I don't think it's going to survive this. Okay. It is very difficult to understand that this invented a genre. This was the invention of a you are in a city like that is a believable city and you can go anywhere you want and you could fuck with like whoever you want and punch people and commit crimes and just like that level of freedom make crimes what you can make crimes all right fellas i've called you here today because we're gonna make some crimes cooking up a good crime you make

a money crime you make a gun crime I put the crime on the pot. We got a crime on. How many lumps of sugar in your crime, love? Where are these characters? This sketch is falling off the rails. I do not know. But I love them. It's a sketch directed by Guy Ritchie.

And it is not that funny. guy richie and it is not that funny that uh that holds uh that's why gta3 remains this like touchstone is because it invented this genre but because they've just iterated on it so many times and vice city we'll talk about in a second is such a huge leap ahead in terms of the genre um that gta3 really gets left in the dust very quickly um so it really just becomes more of a historical piece than it does like oh this is a great video game um so that's sort of my overall thoughts on it i played a shitload of gta3 when it came out um as i mentioned dorm room staple but yeah vice city i think just totally blows it out of the water yeah i mean it's tough it's tough to we always struggle with these because i want to give credit to like the the transformative power of a game even if it was iterated on

before and like this is one of those where you cannot overstate how important it was to like the decade and a half i mean the 15 years following in terms of of video games like the everybody was playing in the shadow of this uh of gta3 um i mean it built that studio more or less like they you know obviously they had some success, but Rockstar would not be Rockstar without GTA 3. Quite literally, it was DMA design until after GTA 3 was a success. And they're like, hey, we should turn this into a label. We have money now. We got to go make Manhunt.

Table tennis. State of emergency. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. table tennis state of emergency yeah um yeah i i uh i agree gta 3 once i i got over my um my snobbiness and finally played it at the time it was incredible like just being able to just move around a 3d space like that felt i just just felt like... In the same way that playing Mario felt like Wilder, when it's like, you mean I can go right?

And the screen just keeps moving? It was one of those, like, it breaks your brain moments. Then again, I had played a lot of Body Harvest, so it wasn't so unfamiliar to me. But, you know, not everybody had had that experience,

and I understood and appreciated that i will say uh something i like that's just like mythology about gta3 again because it probably won't survive this when you go back and read the previews for this game or you just talk to uh people in the games press who were around during that time the stuff you hear about what was originally in the game and didn't make the cut is wild and i think a lot of it is bullshit whether it was like they you know the studio just promised things that were like never going to happen or um you know game press people's memories like warp over time but for context the game was supposed to come out, I think like a week after nine 11. Um,

and it got delayed till October 22nd of that year of 2001. Um, I remember cause it was right after my birthday. Um, and they changed like a few things because of that. Like the cop cars were, uh, like the blue New York cop cars and they made them like look more generic and

they had to change the cover art and again I don't know if this is apocryphal there was like a plane in the sky that would like pass behind a skyscraper and they had like changed the flight path of it well there was actually a flyable plane in the game that they actually removed the ability to fly

the plane because of this yeah but one of the other things that I heard was like the the game had kids in it at some point as like characters and you also have the option to like pop when you shot people in the head like their heads exploded um but again that's still that would have been cool yeah no no that's the head explode thing is definitely still in the game yeah but i i think it was like yeah uh but again the weird thing about this is it's been so long that it's hard for me to understand like how much of this is really in the game and also like at the time gta 3 came out their pr team was like seeding stuff and tabloids to like build kind of toxic press because it was going to be good for the game so i i just i love i love the backstory of gta3 like there would be there's a you know a great

movie in the story of this game and like these like bonkers like people who wanted to be like uh like def jam effectively making video games listen i gave my gta3 spiel that's it i think it's an important game there's no way in hell it's gonna win this vice city was just staggeringly fun when it came out yeah yeah it's just it's grant grant gta vice city is grand theft auto three on cocaine and i mean that literally and metaphorically it is it is transports the entire thing down to uh vice city which is sort of a standard for miami if three was sort of uh channeling um you know goodfellas uh then this is channeling like scarface and miami vice like that that era and that world. And it's just, it's really fun.

And it's colorful in a way that three isn't. The soundtrack absolutely whips ass. It's got two minutes to midnight and that's the best driving song, I think in the entire franchise. It's just so fun. It also, I think that it is on the right wavelength with those comparisons of like scarface right like i feel like the the creators are like creatively in a

position to imitate scarface and like miami vice in a way that like the series just isn't for imitating goodfellas and the godfather i don't mean that as like a dig they're just different types of films but it it just it makes so much more sense um embracing its inner cocaine uh manic attitude yeah the 80s is a perfect era for this franchise and i hope they do more in that era just because it it does that perfect balance we've talked about it before of like occasionally serious but generally speaking totally fucking outrageous bizarre like you know hawaiian shirts uh jet uh ski dues and uh like yeah it just really nailed it and i and again i i still listen to that soundtrack on spotify like almost every other week because it holds up so goddamn well it's probably my favorite game soundtrack um spectacular game i i think of

this era it is unquestionably my favorite um although i do appreciate this andres was more ambitious again i think this goes to vice city really nailing every single thing that it attempts to do okay we have to move on. Vice City, congratulations, right? Fair? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it definitely cannot be said enough what a huge part that licensed music is of Grand Theft Auto and what a huge jump that was to have that licensed music instead of the free-use PowerPoint music that was in the other ones.

So yeah, vice city rules um i want to take a moment just to slow down here and for a couple minutes just sit with our guest jordan morris and ask him this question jordan morris what is your favorite video game oh boy so my i am my i'm i'm a huge street fighter guy like that series to me i will play every game i will watch every evo on twitch um yeah like that's my series um you know i am not good at it anymore um you someone mentioned earlier being um old men um and i am uh i am no longer uh competitive at the game but um i i will i will always love it and this just sounds like you building to one last one last run right like coming out one more time rocky five style you know i bought myself i bought myself an italian

restaurant and i'm chopping garlic and then there's a knock at the door and it's blanca taking pictures uh taking pictures with guests to your restaurant where you're pertaining to the hideook in them right exactly come on do the hot duke i don't really do the hot duke come on just do it once for me jordan uh yeah so street fighter is like you know the the franchise that i will i will always love um but yeah but now i am a souls guy uh souls is the only genre of video game i really want to play when i'm playing a game i'm like why isn't this more souls like um so yeah i think those are think those are my two key interests these days. What's your peak Souls game?

It's Bloodborne for me, I think. Yeah, but I love them all. They're all my nasty little family. And I can't wait to hug them and kiss them. But yeah, for me, it's Bloodborne. Yeah. Well, there you have it. I feel like I understand you a little bit better

thank you yeah i think we've all we've all learned a lot today yeah um i think we should maybe preserve email since we have been running long i think you're right very quick honorable mentions yeah let's do quick honorable mentions is anybody playing anything else uh that they wanted to plug yeah i want to mention terrible name the game is called clap hands golf uh hands is spelled h-a-n-z um this is uh basically a hot shots golf game like literally because it's the same studio who's been making hot shots golf forever on playstation devices uh that studio is called clap hands so that's why it's called clap hands golf um but i guess they wanted to divorce themselves from the sony connection so now they're making their own games under clap hands golf and this one is out on apple

arcade so if you have to be a subscriber on apple arcade apple arcade for what it's worth just recently added a shitload of new games as well as like a bunch of classics uh from the apple ios canon um so it's actually you know if you sort of unsubscribed might be a good time to try it again for a few months and see if you dig it but clap hands golf if you dig like rpg style golf games like mario golf and stuff like that uh definitely follows in that same mold uh I I've been playing a ton of it it's great hey you know what's fun Streets of Rage 4 oh yeah I uh I took a chance on that I love those games uh on the Genesis as a kid and um kind of had the opinion that maybe beat-em-ups couldn't be fun anymore just because it's you know such a dated genre but

yeah man this thing's a blast they really added enough modern stuff to where it um it doesn't feel super super dated but it still feels like the old game yeah streets of rage 4 is a hoot uh i ducked into pac-man 99 on the switch um that is a wild thing and i have you guys played it even once no i it drops you in with no like no instruction as to what is happening and it is the most baffling visual inputs like you're playing pac-man but then you eat there's like eight white pac-man in a row and you eat them and then there's a rainbow train of pac-Man from another ghost. And then they all turn into other ghosts. And there's like, you can change to hunter or knockout or there's, and there's the wild,

there's no, there is no help given or instruction on any of it. It's just like play Pac-Man motherfucker. Stay alive. Like that's the message of Pac-Man 99 is like, yeah, there's some other stuff you could do. But right now you can't learn that because you have to play fucking Pac-Man motherfucker. Stay alive. Like that's the message of Pac-Man 99 is like, yeah, there's some other stuff you could do, but right now you can't learn that because you have to play fucking Pac-Man. Why are you Pac-Manning?

Pac-Man more. You're basically sending, I mean, the basic thrust is you're eating ghosts to send hunters, which are like Pac-Men that can slow down your opponent's pac-man if they run over them and that's the basic idea is like the more ghosts you eat the more those you send out and slowing your opponents and then you know it's one kill elimination you know you get caught you're out and last person standing wins um but it i i want to continue i kind of like impulsively

pay it for a while I tried to look up guides there are a couple of little like uh different modes you can use where people still don't know it's like guesswork like I don't we're not exactly sure what this is but because it doesn't explain anything um but it is a it is a wild thing uh I I'm playing a game still that I can't talk about so uh once again I'm going to recommend that everybody watch For All Mankind. Caught up on the episodes. You can't do it twice. Yeah, you can't do it twice.

What a great show. I'm also going to recommend people read Milk, Blood, Heat. If you're looking for a collection of sad short stories set in Florida, have I got the book for you. It's called Milk, Blood, Heat, and I'm really enjoying it. And I promise that I will be able to talk about what I'm playing next week. I think. Yeah, that's true.

You know, the book I think everybody should check out is Bubble. It's coming July 13th. It's a graphic novel. And if you listen to the podcast or even if you didn't, you're going to love this book. Jordan, who should avoid this one? And who should buy it and read it for sure? Well, people who are like, I hate fun. I only like homework and church.

If you're one of those lamos. That does sound like me, to be honest. Oh, I love my mommy and encyclopedias yeah yeah real poindexters like that uh no so yeah it is a graphic novel it is sci-fi comedy maybe the uh elevator pitch would be uh it's search party meets guardians of the galaxy it's a bunch of kind of goofy hipsters who uh live in kind of a near future bubble city and they have to who live in kind of a near future bubble city and they have to bow to the gig economy if they want to survive.

Yeah, it's got a bunch of jokes. It's got gore. It's got monsters. It's got robots. I co-wrote the script with the great comedy writer, Sarah Morgan, and the great Tony Cliff does the art. Natalie Reese of the Dungeon Critters series

does the colors. And yeah, it's a graphic novel. And I think you'll enjoy it if you like funny stuff and sci-fi stuff and gory stuff and sex jokes. Yeah, it's based on a podcast. I think if you have already heard the podcast, you'll like it. But it's not a requisite for enjoying uh the podcast uh and the the book feature cameos uh from our very own juice mcelroy oh that's true and i'm saying our now i know that's a little too familiar i know i'm just a guest but uh yeah justin uh justin and griffin both do voices

in the podcast and they're both uh in the book, you know, drawn. They're not personally in the book. That would be exhausting. No, I don't come and read it to you. No. It's a bad use of your time, probably. Yeah. But yeah, it's coming out July 13th,

same day as the new Adventure Zone book. But you can pre-order it. If you can pre-order it, that'd be really cool and helps the book, helps your local indie bookstore, and everybody wins. It's called Bubble. Excellent. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for joining us. Gosh, thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is a blast. I love this show. So being on it, this is a treat. I feel like the luckiest boy in Liberty City. If you want to co-host on the Bestiesies the first step as jordan has already proven is to listen and subscribe because you can't get anywhere without that and that's really step one if you want to get it on the ground floor so please do that and recommend our show to anybody that likes video games or even if they hate video games because a lot of times we don't like the

video games so it's kind of a perfect recommendation to anybody who likes or doesn't like video games. Next week, we're going to be pitting these four titans. I'm going to have to get deeper on these. I feel like I'm going to have to go because I feel like the distinctions get a lot more difficult at this point. I'm going to have to spend some more time with them. But that is what we'll be doing next time.

And if you have more thoughts on that, you can, I guess, tweet them at us or send them a mail at besties.fan. But that is going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, for all the besties, 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!