The Besties - Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Starts the Year Out Strong

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

We're only a couple weeks into 2024, and already, we think we've got a bonafide GOTY contender on our hands: Ubisoft's new Metroidvania reimagining of the Prince of Persia franchise! Also, we're not calling them Metroidvanias anymore. Also discussed: The Rest of the Prince of Persia series, Fleishman is in Trouble, Traitors, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Threads 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!

For reasons that will become apparent for Adventure Zone listeners in the future, I have been listening to MIDI versions of songs from the Cats musical this morning. I love MIDI's, man. And they keep randomly- Does it capture the majesty of the Winter Garden Theater when you're listening to it? I didn't see Cats, period. I saw the movie, and it was so fucking funny and sexy. And that was a surprise.

But I keep getting just jump scared by fucking mini renditions of the Jellicle Ball. It's really put me on edge. Kids, minis are what we used to have to deal with before there were mp3 files it was like imagine if uh you had a friend who kind of knew how to play piano and you'd invite him over with a synthesizer and tell him your favorite song and he would give you a rendition of it like a like a player piano i mean the kids know because they made their theme songs in animal crossing they're like village tunes or basically okay yeah but That's true. Okay, yeah. But we used to only have that. Do you understand?

Yeah. Sometimes you would load up somebody's personal webpage, and they would be like, do you want to hire me as your wedding photographer in the 1990s? And then it would start playing a midi version of A Simple Plan. And we loved it. Play it on a recorder. It was a recorder version of Sum 41, and we loved it. We didn't know any better. That was all we had, and we liked it. Played it on a recorder. It was a recorder version of Sum 41, and we loved it.

We didn't know any better. That was all we had, and we liked it. We were happy that way. You can drag and drop that shit into GarageBand and then change it so that the music is, you know, samples of your favorite South Park quotes or whatever. You have infinite power at your disposal in 2024. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week, y'all. My name is Christopher Thomas Flan and I know the best Metroidvania of the week. My name is Ross Froschig and I know 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 and just by listening, you, my friend, are now a member of our illustrious ranks. Today we are talking about Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. Chris Plant, what is that?

Prince of Persia is back after a long, long time away from the world. Maybe you were a fan at the beginning when Jordan Mechner was taking photos of his brother and painting over him and throwing him inside of a computer. Or maybe you joined later on because you loved Jake Gyllenhaal in that film. Either way, what you're going to play this time is brand new. We're talking about a 2D Metroidvania riff on the Prince of Persia series. And let me tell you, it's something special.

And we're going to talk about that and so much more right after this. This game slaps ass. Kudos to Ubisoft for making me care about Prince of Persia again. Y'all have outdone yourselves this time. It is like, I mean, kind of out of nowhere. It's fucking phenomenal. I didn't have high, super duper high hopes i thought maybe it's like a novelty you know what i mean like i see what y'all are doing here and then

move on with my life but uh yeah prince of persia kind of came out of absolutely nowhere from downtown it it is if it is really very metroidvania e i was not i was expecting a more sort of traditional 2d sort of prince of persia inspired by the classics e i was not i was expecting a more sort of traditional 2d sort of prince of persia inspired by the classics which i was not looking forward to because i do not enjoy those games at all uh instead it is a fast and fluid and just really fun game to play and explore and i'm excited to talk about it yeah i was thinking about it like there are so few triple a 2d metroidvanias it's like would you guys be open to a pitch on search action would you be open to hearing me in our friends in japan in the land of the rising sun they they

call it search action games what do y'all think about that? Maybe we're gonna go. Wait, wait, what? Yes. So Metroidvanias are called search action games? Search action. Oh, because it's like an action game but you're searching for stuff? Yes.

I like that. It's a search action game. I like that. That is good. I kind of do like that. I just, I think Metroidvania is like very kind of

outdated and clumsy and is not the most, I feel like it's not the most accessible term. you know what I mean? And like search action is like an action game where you're searching for shit. Okay. It kind of sounds like you're describing Guess Who though. Yeah, but Metroidvania sounds like you're describing

a self-insert fan fiction, you know what I mean? That's true. What if Simon Belmont and Santa Kidd. It only doesn't sound terrible because you've said it so many times and that hasn't fixed Mario, you know? And I don't know why Metroid would be any different. I like search action.

We'll go with it. So it does, I think, some really clever stuff to set itself apart. First, there's a ton of shit to find. I thought it was going to do the classic, you know, Metroid thing of you start off as uh sargon who is not the prince of persia confusingly uh and but he knows the prince of persia which isn't bad he's close buddies with him but he is your your character and he uh he's got two swords and that's very exciting uh he's super there's so much shit you can do at the beginning of the game. Like, you know, you can wall jump and combo attack

and you have this like special finisher. And I was like, wow, I feel pretty strong. They're probably, a big man is probably going to kick me in a hole and make all my power-ups go away. And it doesn't do that. So that's the first thing I like about this game is you start off and it's already- You do get kicked in a hole.

Okay, you do get kicked in a hole, but you don't lose your power ups and that is great because uh the game starts off already pretty pretty fun to play um but the amount of stuff there is to uh find and new abilities that there are to unlock is uh it really has kept me coming back coming back for more can i blow through the history real quick just to catch people up to where we're at if you didn't live through all this so uh i i think of it in terms of like in kind of like three different movements i guess you'd say the first sort of like iteration i would say prince of purge was the original jordan mechner uh it was a more straightforward like 2d action adventure game uh perhaps most notable for the fact that the animations were all rotoscoped

so he jordan mechner videoed his his brother and other people doing the actions and then he animated over it um and there were it should also be noted that the original prince of Persia was like a blonde guy and like a white romper? Yes. Interesting choice. Sure. Yes, kind of. Yeah, interesting. And then there was like three of those,

Prince of Persia 1, 2, and 3D. And then in... Sands of Time. Sands of Time is 2003. Twin, Kings, Twin... I'm not going to remember the other names of the games. Anyway, that's like yeah kings twin i'm not gonna remember the other names of the games anyway that's the i actually added them to the rundown so we actually scroll down but it was let's see we had the original prince of persia warrior i'm doing that why is everyone doing warrior with ten and two thrones because we wanted to say the names we're not there yet

though prince of persia stands of time you have to establish that that's sort of the second iteration of the franchise. Oh, I see. I got it. And that is the one that introduces like time mechanics. The big hook with that one was you could play and then just like on the fly rewind time through the things you've done and try it again, use that in puzzles. That was like super revolutionary at the time. It was like massive and there was a few of those sands of time uh

warrior within two thrones just prince of persia which is pretty different it's a different reboot that's another reboot in 2000 oh that was like the quick time action one it was a lot of it was kind of open worldy yeah sort of that was yeah. Yeah, so that was in 2008, and then there is, yeah. There was Forgotten Sands in 2010. Great title, because I don't fucking remember that game at all. I don't remember it as existing. We also have the film in 2010 starring my favorite person, Jake Gyllenhaal, and my favorite person. Did you guyshaal, and my favorite Persian.

Did you guys ever see that? Yeah, sure. I love that sitcom. And that was sort of the last big thing from Prince of Persia, like 2010, right? I mean, there's been some mobile stuff, but this is like a big new reintroduction of the franchise here in 2024, some 14 odd years later. Yeah, it's been a bit of a quiet period and i don't know man if this becomes prince of persia moving forward like maybe they realized hey we could make a relatively budget game like insofar as like this didn't cost

as much as like a fully 3d experience, like maybe this is the solve for Ubisoft and this franchise moving forward, and I'd be thrilled. In what world is Ubisoft going to say, you know what, this is enough? No, it's very classic. They're known for their restraint. Yeah, you get people re-energized for the series,

and then they're still trying to do the remake of Sands of Time and they moved out to the Ubisoft Montreal offices which I would imagine means it's going to be a much fancier remake and then you go big. I mean I would love if you were right I would not say

there's any reason to believe that this particular publisher would take that path. But I'm glad we got this in the meantime. Stuff that I thought was really cool about The Lost Crown that I really dug that goes beyond other Metroidvania games. I believe you mean Search Action Games, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a trick, and you fell right into it.

Or I did. went or i did uh the thing that i think kind of separates us from other search action games is the the the difficulty like the actual like action part of the search action is like a lot more skill based i think than you see in a lot of these a lot of these search action games it's like if you get the right weapon then the battle that you're supposed to win with it is sort of trivialized um and this is like surprisingly, there's a lot of parts that are like surprisingly challenging. Like they want you to run them a lot, like tricky platforming, some tricky action stuff.

And it stretches out the checkpoints and saves in such a way that exploring, sometimes I felt closer to a Dark Souls game than I have from a lot of games that are modeled on dark souls right that sense and i don't really get these so much with like the the souls type games where it's like i am way out of my depth i shouldn't be here but i don't have any other options and prince of personal lost ground does that really really well where you'll be way out in some place you've never explored before and you haven't found the little trees that serve as checkpoints. And you know what a pain it would be to get back here.

So it's just like, how long can I stay alive and should I keep pushing forward or should I backtrack? And that's something I don't – I'm not used to getting from these sorts of games. sorts of games uh and and i think really uh made a lot of the like search parts of it and the navigation a lot more fun because of the the the challenge and the danger i wanted to talk about two specific features that were introduced in this game that i have not seen in any other search action game before and i would love if it just became the norm feature a i think they're called memory shards. Here's the thing. If you've ever played a search action game before, and you have, even though you've never heard it called that, as you're exploring, you'll invariably get to the moment where, oh, no, there's a jump that's too high or there's a jump that's too far or I don't have the right upgrade for this thing to progress.

And then you'll try to make a mental note. Or maybe if you're really careful, you'll, like, write it down down somewhere and say i need to go back here once i have the blah in this game you have memory shards that you can place anywhere and effectively what they are is just screenshots that you're pinning to the map so if you're like oh i just got this upgrade can i access that moment that i saw previously and all you have to do is just scrub on the map to that screenshot that you already took and you'll be like oh right i have an air dash now so i can cross that pit of spikes where i couldn't do that previously that is so fucking smart and smooth and like totally integrates into the game and i fucking love it i think it's kind of weird that it's a resource that you can like use, use and collect more of. That seems kind of strange to me.

But, like. Yeah, I guess they didn't want people, like, drowning the map in them. But you can also, even if you're not, like, dropping the screenshot, you can still, like, drop custom markers. And you have, like, a hundred of those. So you can really kind of cover the map and stuff if you wanted to. You can also, when you start the game, it lets you choose between a sort of exploration mode right you have to use these tools a lot more and then there is a guided mode where it will put like waypoints on the map for you for like quest objectives or checkpoints or you know whatever it gives you a little bit more uh guidance which i am not ashamed

to say that i turned on because oh interesting yeah and and you found it very smooth yeah i mean i just i i found it uh not it doesn't give everything away it doesn't show you where all the treasure is it doesn't show you where all like the the secret stuff is it really is just as far as i can tell just like quest quest objectives it's very gentle like at the at the beginning of the game fresh this is the lightest of possible spoilers you have to go eastward and on the map very far away even though you have a fog of war and you can't see anything on the map there's a marker so i think i got that too though i like when i was playing without the exploration mode i think i still got markers but they were very vague ah okay but uh no i i

think that's great the other feature that i want to call out is when you get close to a save room it there's like a ethereal like glowing wave of energy whatever that kind of directs you to where it is which is like an amazing feeling because previously you'd have that moment in a search action game where you're just playing around and you're like oh no i have one health and i'm like just like opening random doors hoping to god there's a save room here yeah and this totally alleviates that and feels like really good when you finally get to the spot yeah there is also a badge system which is very i mean it's basically hollow knights yeah badge system where you have like a limit that you can expand by finding like certain upgrades and then you get all these little

trinkets that you can equip which give you different sort of boosts whether it's like this one increases your attack damage in midair this one lets you recover health after a parry uh there's a parry system in the game too and it's great um and there's also one that gives you a little bird that flies around with you and then if you get close to something invisible the bird freaks out yeah uh which is which is also the bird seems to freak out all the time well that's because there's a lot of fucking treasure in this game i do i do appreciate the bird yeah and a lot of that treasure i say, is one man's trash and also my trash. There's a lot of, the perks are interesting.

Perks, amulets, they call them, I think. The amulets are kind of cool because at first I was frustrated because I was getting so many of them, and they're not, like, I tend to look for, in perks like these, I tend to look for, like, the most useful, accessible, like, makes your swords hit harder, right? Like, makes it so you have one shield. And these are all a lot more, most of at least are a lot more specific it's stuff like you can make a little uh well i don't know spoil that i'm trying to think of a good example that's like uh oh one's like you get a little bit of extra health when you save at a checkpoint and

it's like uh and but it's temporary and if you get hit it doesn't come back and a lot of them are more targeted at abilities. Like I have, Griffin mentioned the parry, right? I have two amulets. One heals me when I'm parry, and one creates a time bubble that slows down enemies when I parry. So like I can build around like, just lure them in for a parry,

and then I've got a whole series of things. So it really lets you customize to the way that you like playing. You also unlock the ability you also unlock the ability to upgrade yeah your amp there's like a currency that you get for exploring and killing bad guys and all that jazz and so it further lets you kind of like drill down into the the you know the the loadout that works for you, which I really like. In terms of scale, I do not think any game apart from Hollow Knight comes close to the scale of this

game for the search action genre. Maybe Symphony of the Night? Maybe. But even that, I think, is not quite... I mean, this game is... How far? I have not gotten terribly far in the game. I haven't finished it. I'm like 20 hours into it. I don't know how to say how far.

And when I scrub back through the map i'm like astounded by a how big the map is and b the fact that i have quest markers that are like way outside of the map that i've revealed yeah it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and i'm looking at my completion percentage which i think right now is like 40 percent jeez and i'm sure some of that is collectibles granted but like there's a ton still left to go and that is like pretty amazing to see a metroidvania damn search action game so big uh and and and really exciting you keep saying search action game do you mean tansaku action game stop it so the uh uh and all the environments uh i like that they look very different but they're very clean and distinct like there's not a lot of effort to like making this a coherent like world like you know it's more about like the environments are coherent to themselves.

And when you go into it, the art design completely changes. The enemies look different. It feels very distinct. It all looks so good. It's beautiful. All the powers look great. When you do all your different effects,

I should say, at least as far as I've discovered the classic mechanic of prince of persia like the idea that you can run something and then run it back and rewind time basically i have not found that like that is not sort of the basis of this it's more like uh spins on that ability, like abilities that you get that let you create a duplicate, for example, and use that to hit additional switches, things like that. But I've not found like to say straight up time rewind. I mean, the narrative is like very time centric. Right, yes.

There are events that you're trying to like reverse or whatever you're doing. I do think later on- But it's not that idea of like repeating platform segments because you didn't get them right like there's accountability in the in the actions one thing that doesn't work so well for me is that the game starts and introduces a dozen characters at the same time yeah and it felt i felt hard to kind of get a foothold on like what i was supposed to give a shit about narrative I think narrative is the big failing for this. I don't care about any of these characters.

I don't know why I should care about them. It really, it gets into the story fast, I'll say. Like it gets into the game part of the game, which I thank you. In like an hour or two. And once you get past that, there's very little narrative. Right, it doesn't beat you over the head with it. I will say, as a counter to my own point, that there is, like,

the area that you are exploring, this world that you are exploring, time is super fucked up, and that is very interesting to me. Like, seeing all of the many ways that that kind of surfaces, like, that is the most interesting thing about the game to me. Not the... I don't know it always

annoys me when games are like here's a bunch of super fucking cool people and we love them and you might also but we're not going to give you a ton not a lot of uh feels like and i don't want to be rude but it feels like a bunch of like overwatch character reveal trailers you know like i you know what i mean it feels like people showing off their the the these are the these are the different and you'll learn all about them like i don't really want to i don't i i do agree with griffin that the side quest especially help with the time stuff that he's mentioning i think having these little beats where you meet a character who has been trapped in the time ordeal without spoiling anything um being able to understand what's going on within just one character rather than this

giant sprawling quest i found like very helpful because i agree after the first hour i was like i don't really know what my incentive is here um but i felt much more motivated when i was just dealing with one small one-off thing my understanding on the narrative specifically is that they were trying to integrate a ton of like actual persian myth and lore yes to this and that's where all the characters are being pulled from which is like a cool idea because it's a very untapped material in terms of video games. But yeah, no, I think they were just like too much too soon. And they could just went a little overboard. Yeah.

Compared to contrast it against like, again, Hollow Knight is the gold standard. There are characters in Hollow Knight that like you don't meet until quite a ways in and then they'll just pop up from time to time. And it is always kind of like, oh, it's that guy. I love that guy. I love that little weird map making beetle boy. I've not really had that experience playing this game. Much more subtle. There are a couple characters that are like that.

But for the most part, yeah, it's kind of in your face. But that really doesn't. That is a minor qualm, I think, compared to how I feel about this game't that is a that is a minor qualm i think compared to how i feel about this game which is that it is a a fun breath of fresh air that i i i cannot stop playing i think i've said this before but you can kind of judge the creativity of a search action game by how late you get the double jump right and this game in particular holds the double jump back a really long time because they keep giving you really interesting powers i mean justin mentioned the like make a duplicate one that is like one of the more straightforward powers compared to some

of the other shit you get in this game and i was always really impressed that they like constantly were giving me new interesting stuff um to explore the world with without just going like oh you could just double jump uh yeah the and the the clone thing that's not the duplicate thing since we already talked about that i guess we could use that as a good example i that's not something that i would like typically use in one of these games like i it's just not usually my thing, but they map everything to like the, you're not going in and like swapping these powers out or whatever, like they map it on there. So it becomes a very,

especially with as difficult as it is, it's a lot of fun to like leave a duplicate of yourself back in the corner. And then you can go and fight enemies. And if you get in trouble, you can press that button at any time and it'll zip you back to that point you were at. So it lets you get in, get a few hits, and you have an automatic escape if things get too hairy.

There are also boss fights that are incredibly involved, comparable to Metroid Dread if you played that. And some of those boss attacks can only be dodged if you're using that duplicate ability. So they fully integrate all that stuff into the combat as well, which is so smart. I am probably going to stop because I really would love to play this on Switch. I have realized I've been playing it on PC and it works great, but it is using Ubisoft's PC platform. So I can't Steam Deck it? Maybe I can. There might be some.

You can. It's just a little hinky. Yeah. That specifically, from what I've read, is a finicky. I didn't put the work into actually trying it because it seemed like enough people had a bad result. But as a handheld experience, I think I'm going to – this is going to be my whole shit for a while. Yeah, I wish I was playing it on deck i will say this though uh as much as i'm not a huge fan of ubisoft connect it does support cloud saves so if you wanted to switch platforms you can without restarting it does it in an interesting way it uh

it you do it manually so you can like choose what save you want to put in the cloud oh that's cool yeah and then it's just like there, which is kind of annoying. But honestly, I've been burned enough by Steam autosave that like having the control of it is I don't know. It's I kind of like it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm into it. I don't know that I really don't want to talk much more about it because I don't want to give away like a lot of the like cool stuff that sort of sets it apart. But I I would be shocked if this game doesn't repeatedly come back in our discussions over the course of the year for game of the year discussion.

I know it's fucking January. So like, yeah, it's really early. But like, holy cow, this game definitely would have been in competition last year had to come out last year. this game definitely would have been in competition last year had it come out last year and um i would love if more of these like out of nowhere games uh keep pounding out this great time of year for it too there's like lots of space in the year like there's lots of room for you know it's not getting inundated by a lot of other things i i kind of thought i had the in my head that this would be more of like a b game you know like more of like a uh uh b b size but honestly like playing it and the way it looks and sounds and feels like nothing about it feels small except for the fact that it's in two dimensions like everything else

feels very uh triple a very high gloss yeah i guess it's priced at 50 so that's probably why people might think it's like not a full-on thing but it's an interesting price point for this it's like a full-on thing but i don't know it's not a call of duty so we're charging 50 bucks i don't know that's random um i give ubisoft a hard time uh because they make a bunch of games that aren't very good, but they have made also a lot of really weird games that are very, very good. And I do enjoy that about Ubisoft, that sometimes they will throw a Grow Home at you or a Child of Light or just some weird out-of-left-field shit that you were not expecting. It is exciting to have sort of the zany uncle of the games sort of publishing world uh what if skull and bones is great you know well skull and bones might be fucking great it could be great if you're looking at the resources it takes to make the

classic the time definitely like they've had the time we We'll find out soon, February 16th. I mean, I like... No way. No way. I'd love to squeeze in one more delay if we could. Just one more. We have plenty of time to delay it again before February. Should we take a break and come back and talk about more great stuff? Let's do it.

Let's do it. Well, Griffin quit the show. Griffin quit the show. So now he's out. He's do it. Let's do it. Well, Griffin quit the show. Griffin, Griffin quit the show. So now he's out. Yeah. He's not on anymore. Good run.

Good run. A lot of fun. New bestie next week. I think Eddie's Ron's just waiting in the rings. He's this day has been coming for years. Um, y'all Prince of Persia, as we alluded alluded to earlier had a long storied history uh and i am curious where you think that some of the high watermarks are some of the low watermarks where

are you at with prince of persia leading to this point well we could start with low watermarks apparently there's a game called prince of persia harem adventures sorry what yeah it's called harem adventures what yeah it's called harem adventures it came out in 2002 no it is a mobile game okay and uh yeah it's it's something else oh wow the photos of it are... The full walkthrough on YouTube is 12 minutes long. It's a Gameloft game, if that fills in any blanks. But they could have picked any subtitle. But they went with Harem Adventures. That is so wild. What's interesting about it is it looks kind of like the classic...

I mean, it doesn't look kind of like. It looks almost identical to the classic Prince of Persia games. Like very, very old school 2D retro graphics. To the point I kind of wonder if maybe it is the original game. Except occasionally they have inserted just pixel art of sexy ladies. just pixel art of sexy ladies. Yes, those are the members of the titular harem in which Adventure is being had. Doing a scroll of the 12 minutes and 33 seconds playthrough on YouTube,

I can say that I think the harem Adventures accounts for maybe five seconds of the game. Yeah. Which feels like maybe a marketing decision more than anything else. Now, I know we've been having fun here on the besties. But IGN gave this game 8.5. Wow. Okay.

They love the sexy ladies over at IGN. Imagine Gals Network, is what they call. This is the verdict. This is a quote. Excellent. Gameloft is quickly making a reputation for producing some of the finest cell phone games,

and this port of Prince of Persia is Exhibit A. There you go. It's a port of Prince of Persia that they put sexy ladies into. Anyway, we got to move on from this. I loved, I had the, like, original Prince of Persia back when I was a youngster. And the, if you can dig up, like, some of those original versions of Prince of Persia, the animations really do feel, uh,

uh, still feel really great. Like they look great. While I was doing research to, uh, figure out all of the, like the full list of Prince of Persia games, I was like going through Google and I typed in Prince of Persia and like

accidentally the third link I clicked on and suddenly I was playing the original Prince of Persia. It took so little effort little effort uh i don't think it's like legit i don't think ubisoft approved of this use of the game but if you just want to like play it for three seconds in a browser i guess google is cool with that because it is like one of the top three uh things for prince of persia it looks gorgeous It really does hold up. Did you all get into these originally, or was it not until the later? I came to them later.

I remember playing games like Flashback first, which was like the next generation of these sort of side-scrolling platforming games, and then came to it later. I think it's great. I think considering the time it came out, which is 1989, which is like it's been quite a, I think considering the time it came out, which is 1989, which is like, it's been quite a while.

It has like the atmosphere. It has like the vibe. There's like some genuinely tensed like chase sequences. And yeah, no, I think there I think it really holds up, actually. Apart from like the blonde guy in the white romper that. Yeah, not so much. But everything else I think is quite good., actually. Apart from, like, the blonde guy and the white romper. That, yeah, not so much. But everything else, I think, is quite good. Yeah, I don't really enjoy the original Prince of Persia games. I think that they're, like, the controls are too fussy now.

And even then, they felt that way. But I get its historical importance. And it is a game I enjoy, enjoy like reading about more than i enjoy playing and that's largely because the creator jordan mechner uh kept a journal the entire time he was making the game and you can buy that journal now he will you can buy a copy of that journal and it includes like lots of photos of what he was doing at the time and original art. And you can see him discovering what would be a very important game and really just coming up with some like wildly ambitious ideas on his own. Yeah, it is great. It's also just a beautiful book.

I'll make sure to put it in besties.fan. make sure to put it in besties.fan but um yeah it's later on in the series is kind of when i started to actually enjoy my time with it rather than just kind of engage with it intellectually i was gonna say i think sansa's time is when the game like clicked for most modern people that aren't uh elders like us uh and and which makes total sense because it was a great third person action game great platforming great puzzle mechanics like it really brought everything together and i guess they sort of milked it through uh two more games i don't think i played the sequels really yeah but i really like sands of time i was in i'm trying to figure out if I was in the industry when, like where I would have been working at the time.

This is 2003 to 2005. Yeah, I was still like doing freelance stuff at newspapers. I think it wouldn't have been, yeah, it wouldn't have been until Prince of Persia, the remake came out that I was working and reviewing stuff. I have very little memory. Plank, you were saying you got into that 2008 version, right? Prince of Persia, the remake came out that I was working and reviewing stuff. I have very little memory. Plank, you were saying you got into that 2008 version, right? Yeah, the 2008 one I love. And that was partly because I had just gotten into doing this job. And I saw it at Tokyo Game Show in the summer of 2008.

And that was just like a wild falling in love with video games moment i mean obviously i already liked them um but where you saw that and what have you been at tgs be like now i get it okay now there it is this is big um but they yeah prince of persia this like wild reboot um uh far far cry 2 um mirror's edge the original dead space it was just like this like oh people are like taking risks and they're this prince of persia reboot there's a reason we didn't see more of it because it it was a risk it is a it's largely just navigation it's getting around this absolutely huge beautiful beautiful world um it's somewhat cel-shaded though it looks more like kind of a like graphic novel than a children's yeah i'm looking at footage right now this game's 15

years old and it looks phenomenal yeah yeah this was released today it would like no one would yes the the you have you have like an ai partner in this and you can never die in the game that's like one of the at the time that was oh right I forgot about that yeah and anytime you would be about to die your partner would come in to like lend you a hand and there's all sorts of animations like that we're like you jump over a canyon or jump over a hole I don't know and um when you double jump she like zips in and hurls you to the next spot or when you jump onto a cliff side she then jumps after you and you like sling her onto your back and then she lowers down and catches you but it's not like escort missiony i mean i guess it's an

escort mission where you're the one being escorted but like it's not you're not yeah you're not having to like worry about the ai character character. They're truly there to help. And honestly, it feels almost more like playing two characters at the same time than it does like having to worry about someone. And then the combat is, I believe, only one-on-one fights. I could be wrong there, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly limited to these kind of like big one-on-one showdowns. That's where like it probably doesn't hold up as well

because I'm pretty sure it's like quick time event heavy. But yeah, it's a really beautiful and kind of a special game. I remember at the time a lot of reviews were like, wow, I'm never going to forget about this game. And yet I don't think anybody's talked about it kind of since it came out. Yeah, but and then after that the series well there was the the forgotten sands but really the series kind of went dormant after that um which i think is partly because assassin's creed started as

kind of a prince of persia sequel i believe I think that they were like toying with some ideas from Sands of Time and they're like, hey, we should just make our own thing. And then that kind of spun off. And clearly that became much more of a priority for Ubisoft. Yeah, I could see them being concerned if they would like cannibalize each other. But this seems like a pretty good way to differentiate them

by making like the experience completely different from anything in Assassin's Creed. Yeah, and didn't they have some canceled Prince of Persia games? Well, they've been working on the Sands of Time remake forever, and it keeps getting bumped. Is that still happening? They fully rebooted it last year and moved it to Montreal, so it's a ways away again doesn't it feel like a weird

follow-up to this like i feel like the react if the reaction to this is what i think it'll be like i i think people are going to be wanting more of this version of prince of persia yeah i just think they don't i mean it'd be great to see if this does really well i don't think they look to this as being like a huge money maker necessarily yeah that's uh as much which i mean thank goodness right because if they did it might be a lot less pleasant to play that's probably true yeah maybe they just like let the team do their own shit i mean more in like the micro transaction types you know more monetization within yeah this might have the least amount

of ubisoft monetization game i've played in like 10 years yeah there's like they're not constantly approaching you being like hey don't you wish your horse had glowing eyes 15 bucks please so that's that's good they're growing uh i just wanted to say one other thing about the Lost Crown, because it was just popping back into my head. It's also so fun to get around this world. Like, when you first start running and jumping through, like, the mobility, especially as you unlock more powers, like, I didn't even mind the backtracking so much. Because just the movement and the getting around felt so good. Yeah, they did a fantastic job. I'm like really blown away by it.

And yeah, I just hope more studios look to this as an option for doing like a mid-sized game. Yeah. I will give one note for people who are not big Metroidvania fans before we kind of like begin the wrap-up process this is a metroidvania game and i if you've been listening to the show for uh a while you know my journey of thinking i love this genre to realizing this genre is not for me and i've put probably about like two and a

half three hours into this game so i'm not deep into it but I don't really have a desire to play a whole lot more because it's a really great Metroidvania game. And for whatever reason, the incentive structure built into these games just does not click with me, which is a shame because as I'm playing it, I admire it. I just think that I could be playing something else. Um, again, that is, you do need to be okay. I mean,

we talked about the narrative earlier. You need to be okay with there being almost no narrative whatsoever. Like it needs to be, it is like almost an entirely gameplay driven experience and you need to be cool with that. And yeah. Yeah. Narr narrative isn't like the only thing that i want from games by any means um it's what i want from like specific ones i think it's more just i don't know i think every type of genre of game is kind of like um i don't

know it's giving you those dopamine hits in different ways and the way that these games do that just for whatever reason it i never i never like in the session thinking like i can't wait to come back and play this um which i i wonder if it's also because i'm just not much of a completionist and fresh i know it like especially for you in the past like you would love like you know completing all the achievements and everything and metroidvanias as a genre feels like built for completionists it's not even a finding everything for me as much as it is the like feeling of seeing something you can't reach going out getting a power and then being able to finally reach that thing feels great to me and that you eventually have that moment where you have all the upgrades and you're going around like filling, you know, filling out every little part of the map

and getting everything like that feels great to me. So it's not so much the trophy as it is the like, the power fantasy finally, like having that like moment where everything clicks. I tell you what kind of, I sometimes am in the same position as you plan. These are very hit or miss for me. I think what clicked for me about this one

is the individual things that I was finding as I explored the world, like the individual beats, the fights, the platforming sequences, I found so just like enjoyable that I didn't feel, a lot of these games, you feel like you're spending all your time running to the end of a hallway and then realizing you don't have the red key and it's like well

fuck this was a big waste of time I feel like it's really good about not doing that to you so much like there's usually a uh a treasure a reward something fun like a fun fight or whatever uh that didn't make exploring feel as like as much drudgery just because i usually like enjoyed so much the things i was doing and i would also help too i would i would add to that point even if you do get to a dead end at some point when you're exploring because you can make a memory shard screenshot thing you feel like oh i at least i accomplished this because i know this thing is here and i can come back. Yeah, great point. Yeah, for sure. Dope game.

Loved it. It's so good. It's really good. Chris Pine, do you have any reader mail? I do. One second. Let me open the bag. Okay, here we go. First up from Tiller.

Hi, have you all heard of the game cobalt core i know you've mentioned slay the spire a few times and this functions very similarly in that it's a deck building roguelike but i think the changes they made make things interesting and add on some new challenges and allow for a wider variety of strategies and approaches also has a great sense of humor and it's got animals in space i'd be curious to see how y'all like it okay here's the deal yes i've heard of it yes i've played it and we're gonna talk about it extensively on resties this coming tuesday so i'm extremely excited to talk about it i justin can attest i actually recommended it to him because i knew it was totally his kind of jam

but i have a lot to say about it. It's so rude. It's so rude that you'd get me into a game and be like, it's all for me. You can talk about it next week. It's all for me. It's on my show that Justin's not on. It's very rude.

Next week you can talk about it. It's very rude. You can talk about it right now if I felt like it. Stinker. That's true. There's nothing I could do to stop you. Stinker. I've got another one here from Qualt.

Have you all tried playing God of War Valhalla yet? I loved Ragnarok, though I agree with your points about the pacing. Valhalla felt like it took all the best parts of God of War and put it in a free bite-sized package. Wow. One of us probably should. I was not. I don't know.

I love both of those games. I did not. I don't know. Valhalla did not seem interesting to me. I actually haven't played it yet. I keep meaning to, but I haven't know. I love both of those games. I did not. I don't know. I actually haven't played it yet. I keep meaning to, but I haven't had time. Valhalla, for those that don't recall, is the free update that was added to God of War Ragnarok that basically added a roguelike mode.

And given the fact that I love the combat in Ragnarok, but didn't necessarily care for the heavy-handed narrative bits. This seems very much my kind of jam. I just haven't had the time. It is on my list. I will play it, but I have not done it yet. I'm in the same boat. I definitely want to check this out.

It looks great. Everybody I know who plays it loves it. I'm also curious about the Last of Us roguelike mode but you have to pay for that one i believe i think that's well you have to only so if you already own so the last of us 2 is getting remade for playstation 5 natively if you already own it on ps4 you have to i think pay 10 to like upgrade the version to the PS5 version, or you need to buy it, I guess, exclusively for PS5 to play that mode. So it is not a free update.

I think their argument is that it adds a bunch of other stuff to the main thing. $10 doesn't seem too high a cost, but yeah, it's not free. Yeah, I am not a big fan of Last of Us 2, especially its story but um a game that's just all of the action that sounds pretty good i yeah i could potentially get into that i didn't think i didn't know if i would want to go back through like learning all the mechanics uh forgot because there's so many different things to keep track of i feel like i it's so out of my head i don't know how how much i want to like try to relearn all that i think the big question is do you start maybe teach you yeah is there like a ramp up process

where they like give you like you only have one or two weapons and then as you play with a roguelike you're you know often unlocking more stuff so maybe that's how it works yeah you could also you know thanks to the accessibility features of these games, like make things a lot easier for yourself and probably see much more of it more quickly, which I've certainly done in the past. Got one last question. And this one is from Daniel.

And it is a question for you guys. What is it about games like Lethal Company and Among Us that lend them to having these meteoric rises in popularity and make them so prolific amongst YouTubers and streamers? Yeah, that's a great question. It's funny the way that was phrased because of the order in which that was phrased. Because I think it's the YouTube streamers that come first and then they have the meteoric rise. come first and then they have the meteoric rise because these games demonstrate so well that if one person with a decent size following starts streaming it and they have like an amazing time which in both of those games like frequently people have amazing multiplayer experiences

then those games just like go everywhere because everyone wants to have that same experience i i hear you fresh i i mean i think it's a chicken or the egg in terms of order there but i i think the reason these specific types of games click with streamers versus even something like fortnite is that they leave room for performance in video games and i think performance is like the great differentiator in the quality of a streamer and by performance i mean when you watch a streamer who's really great do lethal company it feels almost like watching like a tv episode there's like tension to it and are they going to make it and then they kind of like heighten uh their their character if you will and they make choices that are interesting to be seen on stream and the game allows for all that

it allows for a ton of creativity and kind of like bring your own storytelling to the game and that that type of game i just think is going to get more and more popular um you're also with becomes more dominant you're also with those games um especially where there's any element of like duplicity or anything like that you're creating a third role in the game, right? Like if you think about Among Us, no one except the person watching the stream is going to have the experience of knowing who all the people are and like enjoying that sense of knowledge and discovery and seeing the other players discover it. Like that's a new role that doesn't exist in the game.

And I think that like those games that have that duplicity or have the, the, that sort of like drama on the, on the metal layer is, are always going to be more fun to watch because you are the only person having that experience where like a lot of these single player games, you, they look great,

but the first time you watch someone stream the opening cinematic of resident evil 4 right you don't want to go back and see that happen again that doesn't it doesn't do anything for you i think that's it for the mailbag i think we did it do you want to y'all want to talk about some honorable mentions i wish i could but i'm not allowed to talk about Cobalt Core. So I'll mention that. I just want to know if you liked it, Justin. Did you like it? Oh, you'll never know.

How about that? I have some frigging hot takes, by the way, and you are going to be denied all of them. Oh, no. What I will say instead is that Traders is back for season two, one of the wilder reality type games out there. It's almost defined by the fact that there is not much of a game there. It's just a bunch of people being angry at each other and Alan Cumming looking fabulous.

The other thing I'll mention that I watched this week that really dug romeo and michelle's high school reunion oh never saw it before but they're talking about it since talking about it with their siblings on still buffering this week and i had never seen it before it is so much fun i really enjoyed it it's it's surprisingly kind of like dark and really funny and like really well observed. And I really enjoyed it. I'd never seen it before. It's like, I don't know. If you haven't seen Romeo and Michelle's High School Reunion, there you go.

It holds up really well. It holds up really well. It reminds me of, it makes me think of this like sub-genre that I was talking with Sydney about. talking with Sydney about this sub genre of like women fronted comedies that maybe didn't get the respect or commercial success they deserved or like fell to an audience that wasn't ready for them yet that I think that are that are playing to a different sense of humor than a lot of movies at the time but like on when you revisit them you know you see how well made and well constructed and still like super relevant they are choosing the pussycats being the other one i guess alan coming has to be in the movie for it to

for it to count but uh i really really dug it uh fresh how about you i watched feichman is in trouble which is uh i think it was originally on fx it's it streams on Hulu. It's like an eight episode miniseries based on a book that came out in 2019, I believe. Um, yeah, I'm in, I'm sorry. So far I'm in.

Yeah. I don't even know how to pitch this show in a way that would make someone want to watch it. Although I do think the pilot is quite good. Um, it just like is about, uh, a 40 year old jewish guy in new york city so i had some analog to that although most of his problems are not problems that i am personally

dealing with but i was engaged with it and i i thought it uh had some pretty amazing performances production wise i thought was very good uh still kind of digesting how i feel about how it wrapped up but yeah if you're interested in uh any of what i just talked about feichman is in trouble is on hulu um on the flight to new york for a work trip last week i was just looking for something you know to kind of pass the time and criterion hasiterion has a apocalypse movie collection right now. There's a movie called Threads on it, which, Justin, have you ever heard of Threads? It feels like something you would know.

Yeah, it sounds familiar for sure. It's a BBC 1984 apocalyptic drama. And I was like, great, TV, 1984. This seems like it couldn't be all that bad. I can watch it here. No, it's the darkest thing imaginable. It is shot like documentary, and very committed to the bit. It does not have really much story whatsoever. And it's just about the days leading up to a nuclear bomb being dropped on sheffield and um and then the kind of like days months years after that and unlike it what i'd say is it makes things like the last of us seem exceptionally optimistic um in a way i didn't know you could um it last of us you know the the kind of beating heart of all popular uh post-apocalypse right now is that despite how bad things get we

will always have family and community and love and that is not the case in threads um does that sound like an endorsement uh if it does you should should go check it out. And if it doesn't, you should probably not watch it on an airplane with the person next to you eyeballing you the whole time wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Why do you do this to yourself, Plant? That sounds exceptionally unpleasant. Have you watched, like, old school, you know? Have you watched, like watched like the santa claus like the same have you watched like get

smart the movie okay like have you watched that like trailer looked the trailer for this like series of post-apocalypse movies looked fun and what i realized was all the other movies are like 1998 the comet has hit earth and we are going to rock. And I was like, that sounds great. I'm ready to rock. Let's rock on the free world. Let's rock on the plane. And then I hit play on this one, and I didn't realize I was picking the one that is not about partying in the free world.

It's about, like, you know, harvesting grain in the post-apocalypse and then eating, you know, like toxic grain. Now, listen. Okay. Now, I now fully remember this film because I definitely have read the description of this before thinking maybe I'd enjoy this. And the description, if I remember it verbatim, is like, y'all, I don't know about this one, dog. This one goes pretty raw. If I remember, that is the full text of the description of this film that is all this provided the viewer vulture hound called it the most terrifying film of all

time unsettlingly powerful says new york times a great plane watch and the trailer the trailer that we're talking about the trailer is all just sad British people in like Like walking around in mud Carrying puppies Hey I heard This movie won 8 planties British people walking around in mud

You just got an honorary planty It was between this and bringing A three and a half hour French movie And I thought this would be nice What about bring it on very planty. It was between this and bringing a three and a half hour French movie and I thought this would be nice. What about Bring It On? Like, have you seen Bring It On?

Okay. I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Bessus Fafoun, NZ,

and Lunar Backbone. thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast thank you to everyone else for sharing the show talking about the show keeping the show going and alive we love doing it um we love it for you guys as well we have a big week next week we have a game coming at you what game is it it, Chris Plant? Next week, it's here, y'all. We're talking about Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. We are playing it. I know that some people are worried. They're like, you're not going to play enough to be able to talk about this game.

These games are huge. You've got to play all the side stuff. I don't want to hear a word about that. Maybe, maybe I have. I don't know if i can legally say if i have but let's just say by the time that episode comes out i will have played an awful lot of this game and we will be ready to talk about it exciting uh that is fresh cannot wait fresh is can't wait so excited static he has. He has been texting me every day saying, when do I get to play more like a drag?

When do I get to submit a sick day request? So I can just play like a drag. I haven't started it. I might like it. I like the last one. Okay. I just didn't necessarily get super into it. Yeah.

We'll see. We'll see. That'll be next week. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!