The Besties - Prosecuting Kirby's Crimes with The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

This week on The Besties, we're OBJECTION! talking about the latest entry in the Ace Attorney series, and also OBJECTION! deciding if Kirby is a murderer. Other games discussed on the show include: Ender Lillies, SNKRX, Final Fantasy XIV, and Out of the Loop. 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!

Did one of you guys have a bit you wanted to try? For the opening, for the cold opening. Something you wanted to try, anything? No. I mean, I got... I mean, you know... Call it! What happened?

Objection! Oh, okay. Well, I had this new character named Dr... Call it! Dr. Cheat Codes. Objection! You know what you've been talking about. I didn't have enough characters,

and I was going to do Dr. Cheat Codes, who gives all You know, you've been talking about I didn't have enough characters and I was going to do Dr. Cheat Codes who gives all the cheat codes for the greatest videos. Hold it! For the best, for the one thing. Hold it! People got so angry when I would do all the yelling

and now Justin's going to get all that hate. Yeah, especially because he's kind of- I'm actually, but the difference is I'm beloved. I'm working from a position of beloved. You know, is the difference. People are much more indulgent. If you want infinite bullets in Halo, hold down the X button.

Objection! Fuck. It's, fuck. He's sort of like the pepper of the show. Yeah. It's a flavor enhancer, you see. Every character needs struggle, you know? Needs drama, needs struggle, needs conflict.

A Moriarty, if you will. Yeah, if you will. Or in this game's parlance, a Rory Marty. And if you want the super jump in Detroit become human, that's, you hold, you press the square button and the x button together this has been dr cheat codes so My name is Justin McElroy and I know the... My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best... Objection! My name is Ross Frosch and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in uh home interactive semi-interactive entertainment uh because this week we're talking about the ace attorney chronicles it's the gotta be at least the third or fourth fiend game in the phoenix right and let me just mention it is the great ace attorney chronicles we don't go crazy, Russ, but okay. This is the, I don't know, this is like what, the bajillionth of the Phoenix Wright game?

It's been a grip though, right? It's been a while since, was that Apollo Wright? Was it the last one? Yeah, he was the last main character. This is a compilation and translation of two games that came out in Japan that never came here. So while those games were dropping there we kind of had a a drought that this is uh remedying yes yeah it's kind of like uh if if you haven't seen it it's new to you yeah it's one of them uh what what is but but plant the question on everyone's mind what is the great ace attorney chronicles it's a legal simulation game set in a courtroom

where you play a lawyer and you try to do the legal stuff. You have evidence. I think that sums it up quite nice. I'm about to fucking kick everybody else off this. It's a badass game where you do courtroom stuff and Sherlock Holmes is in it, but he's a big dumb... Real quick, before we get into this, because I think it's an important contextualization,

because I read some reviews after I sort of like, you know, felt I was comfortable with where I was on it. And I feel like there was a pretty big split between people who had a familiarity with this franchise going in and people who were kind of starting fresh. So where are you guys on the ace attorney sort of uh fandom i've only played the very first phoenix right ace attorney game and that's it i

absolutely loved it but it was also a lot of reading and it made me sleepy to read that much so i haven't played the other ones but i really really like that game so that's really it for me uh i played the original trilogy uh and a couple other ones sort of here and there there was a spirit of justice i think is maybe the most recent one that came out in the states in 2016 um i definitely missed a few in there i missed the the apollo justice era um but yeah i i love this series. So that's my, my relationship with it. I'm fresh. I'm so fresh.

I, I, I. That's interesting. I don't know how you miss these. See, I saw screenshots of it before, you know, I, I know that I have to hold it in objection. Yes. That's about it. Okay. Uh.

Juice, what about you? Man, I don't know. I kind of go in and out. there's some that i played to completion um i have not for a little bit uh i think i checked out that phoenix right crossover with uh professor layton professor layton yeah which by the way professor layton i if you're comparing these two franchises which i feel like it is sort of endemic to them, Professor Layton, we can all at least agree, whips Ace Attorney's ass all over town, right? Professor Layton games are great. I mean, they're very good games, but I actually think it is more competitive than that.

Okay. Well, okay. You're right. Okay. I'll just, let me just like, just open it up here. Okay. This one's, I don't, it's been a little while since I played an Ace Attorney game. So I don't remember if this has always been the case.

But this game is very, very much a visual novel. Very, very much. More so, I feel like, at least in memory than the previous uh games were no yeah hard disagree really i mean you are right it is a visual novel but the other games are also very much didn't have that sort of like like that wasn't a phrase people used a lot back then i think that's i do feel like though okay i did the first two cases okay Okay. And the interaction, no, I feel pretty confident about the fact that there was a lot more investigative interaction and the cases had more interaction in them.

You mean in the older games? Yes. I feel confident that you would listen to testimony. There would be shorter gaps in between times that you could like there you would listen to testimony there would be less shorter gaps in between times that you would have cross-examine and cross-examine or interact and actually i could back this up somewhat because this game has an option to if this tells you the kind of game it is to not play you could do an option where it's like i don't actually want to do the game parts i just want to do like the reading and experience the tale, the story.

To give the listener a little something to hang on to here, if you haven't played the game or any of these games, the first case that you have, you have been accused of capital M murder and you must represent yourself in court. murder and you must represent yourself in court uh and you you have like a menu full of items that are the that have been entered into evidence and eventually you can examine them and then kind of apply them uh in how you talk with uh the really two i guess three accusers uh and and that that's the that's the game is that yeah basically they'll they'll like someone will make a statement that says like oh i saw him with the gun and then if you have something in your inventory that proves that you were not holding the gun just as an example uh you present that and it kind of moves the story forward so that's like the the core conceit of ace attorney games i i I really like this game.

I want to get my one frustration out of the way first because maybe you can tell me if I'm missing something here. What I didn't like about the game is right at the very top, there's a man who's been murdered, right? And they're like, hey, you know, they make all these arguments. And then you have one of the first pieces of evidence you have is a photo of the man being after he's been shot.

And he is facing away from his table, which suggests that he was not sitting at that table. So right away, I'm like, oh, well, this is open shut. Like, this is just a bad crime scene investigation. He was at a different table altogether. Somebody else was at this table which really breaks the entire argument i mean that's not what happened though i know and that's why i don't want to spoil it but because i kept trying to use that photo being like hey this is

clearly a problem and and they're like no like shut up why are you trying to bring this up it is possible to see something in a piece of evidence that you're like well that's something but like you will not be able to apply that contradiction that you found until like the one like part where it does contextually contradict the specific thing that's being right that has always been an issue with these games right is is that sometimes you can get you can outsmart it a bit and the game doesn't like that because it wants the very specific answer to the very specific thing but like i i i just to put in my two cents here because i feel like everybody's kind of doing that i think this is the best game in the series so far because i think it doesn't do that

very much i i have found i finished the first of the this is two games right i finished the first one entirely uh and have started in on the second one and i think that the cases are some of the best cases that have been in it uh we need to talk about herlock sholmes we have to discuss herlock sholmes because he's in this game this game is set during sort of uh turn of the 20th century victorian london and also like meiji era uh tokyo uh and so like first of all there's a lot of wild shit there about london and and japan having this sort of blossoming relationship that is large. Also like a pretty healthy amount of racism. So much constant racism.

Like constant, constant, constant racism. We should be clear that they are not, it is not a racist game. They are just constantly calling attention to the fact that racism was an element in the world at this time. And that really goes to like the quality of the writing, which I think is absolutely stellar. Just top notch, stellar. It's fucking fantastic. You don't think so, Justin? No.

No. What? You think it's a racist game? No. I'm not talking about the racism aspects of it. The writing. No. It's like you can make an argument that like,

no, guys, it's not. You read books and stuff too. I know that you have a reference for this. It's not. Points are repeated over and over and over again there's very little like in the way of clever dialogue people are more ciphers than they are human beings like let me can i can i jump in on this point this is just specific to something you mentioned earlier justin and i wanted to make this clear and and honestly it um i agree with this critique which is early in all of the games and this one included it is extremely railroad-y in terms of like holding your hand of what you do

at any given moment and constantly kind of over explains exactly what every little situation is and that can be very slow i think once they let the reins off and i really think that starts with case three um it becomes a much more fluid experience you don't feel like you're constantly being talked down to because you feel like you're in a comfortable comfortable enough scenario that you understand what's going on now again that is not to take away the critique of like it really does feel like it's talking down to you early in the game but i do think that eases up as you get deeper into it yeah i i come somewhere in the middle between hoops in in that in that i i think the writing can be quite clever at times

and i i find the characters really interesting there's a guy that is accusing you early on who wears a baby on his back because he can't afford a child care, which that just sounds sad, but it is portrayed in a real funny way. But I think the problem at the beginning is I found myself accidentally triggering repeats of dialogue a lot, and there's no like fast skip button. So it's like, oh, oops, you're gonna tell me this again. Okay, I'm just gonna spam the buttons to make this go away. And I, I wasn't sure how much of the game was it repeating itself, and me still learning how to avoid triggering it from telling me the same thing over and over again.

You know what you mentioned about the first case? In the first case, it sort of put on its heels from a standard Ace Attorney game where you are actually the one on trial for murder, right? So it's like, oh, wait, I'm on trial. I have to defend myself. This is... If we were in the hands of master storytellers, the exact same contrivance in the very next case would probably not be employed, but that is in fact what happens. In the exact next case, you are again mistakenly framed for murder.

Are you really? This is like good storytelling? You don't think that's funny? No, it's not played as a joke. It's just bad. I think it's kind of played as a joke. I mean, it's kind of funny. Okay, what actually frustrates me more about this

is that there are good beats that are with it, right? Like Griffin's alluding to the Herlock Sholmes. It's pretty funny. It's like a bad Sherlock Holmes who unveils the mystery by being, like, pretty bad, and then when you correct him, he's sort

of like, that's what I'm saying. Exactly. This guy gets it. It's so good. It's funny. It's fucking great. It's buried under so much tell not show, and so much cruft that you just have to like pound through and like reiterating points over and over and over again because they're so afraid that like you're gonna miss something and like yeah maybe the first two maybe it's a slow starter it took me so long i

mean to get through these first two cases just because I found it like so boring. The frustrating thing though is like the beats were like you did uncover like a, like it's pretty decent. The, the, the interactivity that is there about like finding this evidence and, you know, pointing it out to people. There's an interesting thing where you're like,

which is sort of like feels like where, why they introduced her lock shams, because there's like an element of looking for clues in an environment to like point out a contrivance. As you're talking to someone, you notice some little pieces of evidence and use that to counter their statement or whatever. And some of those beats are interesting. It's just like it takes so long to get through. And this is always my problem with visual novels, why I can't fuck around with most of them, is because when you do this, you have taken away, I feel like, the superpower of video games and are putting yourself in, like, compare. I have to then say, like, wouldn't I rather be, like, would I rather be reading a really good book than this if I'm just going to be reading a bunch of non-interactive stuff?

this if I'm just going to be reading a bunch of non-interactive stuff. So that is the challenge for me with visual novels. And I feel like this, with like a little bit more interactivity, I could get there, but it's just not, I can't get to that point with this. I completely feel that from years ago. And I'm curious where Griffin lands on this, because I know he's liked visual novels for a lot longer than obviously both of us. I think what finally made visual novels click for me is, one, you just have to like straight up be like, this is not going to be Don Quixote. You know, like we're not going to get that from this, you know, kind of nascent form.

know kind of nascent form uh but the other thing is i i realized that the visuals of the visual novel really helped transport me into whatever the vibe was and i think it's something like 13 sentinels which i'll spare us having that long conversation uh all over again except for to say it's on sale right now i believe i dug i dug that one for whatever it's worth because of what you're talking about. Yeah. It felt very... Yeah, it pulls you in. And I think for this game, for me too, I really like the animation and I really like the vibe. Like your boy is,

he is so sweaty at the beginning of this. He really exhibits or exudes the energy of a bad standup comedian. Like every time he says something and gets reprimanded he looks like he's about to poo himself um oh because it's worth noting it's not phoenix right you're playing as yeah rionosuke naruhodo who is like not a lawyer but has to be a lawyer which i think makes him an incredibly endearing character because I am also, I am also not a lawyer. True. I think,

I think, I just think the game has a really good energy and that's such a, there's like, I wish I had more to say about it, but I think it's really colorful. I think all the character animations are really sweet and charming and likable. I think it is.

I'm curious how it gets later in the game because i i did wasn't able to play like more than like four hours but i think it's really sympathetic to its characters like i think of if that's there's a thing that i like about the writing it's that i i could feel it rounding off the edges of its characters um yeah that's that really charming me it's that's certainly a common trend uh i think in these games is they they build up these characters actually you know you think about like a final fantasy game for example four hours in for you to have affinity for six to eight characters is like unheard of right it takes like 10 to 15 hours for you to give a shit whether this white

mage does anything and now in this game for me you know this is an entirely new cast of characters there's no recurring returning characters and i was already like becoming attached to these characters and knowing because i played the other games that it's not just each case is a standalone thing the case is like interweave with one another. So events in one case might affect a case that happens 10 hours later and characters return and come back and all that stuff that kind of brings life

to a visual novel that like, I've talked about it. I didn't like 13 Sentinels. And one of the reasons is that it felt stiff to me. And what I think this brings to the table on that front it are these animations and these like characters that are like way in your face and pointing and slamming tables and stuff like that to make it feel like closer to a movie experience that's not it's not it doesn't feel like a book even though i realize it kind of splits the difference, it feels more engaging.

I just wanted to object to the 13 Sentinels. It's good! I think the rest is fine. Actually. I really liked this game, and I think, talking about it, I really do think it comes down to the characters, because, and this is maybe a bullshit sort of point,

since I know, like, I don't know if any of y'all got that far, but it really does come together in the third case. Like, the third case is where you have to do an investigation to find evidence to submit in court. There's new court mechanics that are really great, Juice, that I genuinely think would fix the thing. They introduce a jury in this game, right? They introduce a jury in this game, right? So there's six NPCs that sit in the courtroom and weigh in, and there will be times where they all go guilty and you're about to lose. But you get one last chance to have a summation argument where now you're playing the jurors off each other. So now it's not like I'm going to use my evidence to disprove the thing that this witness said.

It's these two jurors can't even get on the same fucking page about what they think. So this ruling cannot go forward. I will probably keep pushing through to see this stuff that you're talking about. Like I because also because I feel like it's I maybe did the most boring parts. Yeah. You know, I don't want to just bail before I get to the parts that seem, I will say though, I mean like, this is always subjective, right? And I don't want to hear, like if you disagree with what I'm saying and you love it, like you're just probably different. Like you have a different tolerance for this, this is fine, whatever.

whatever i'm just saying like if you are someone who gets frustrated when there's not a lot of interactivity then i will say concretely that early on in this game yeah that is definitely the case and it takes a very long time to get to a point where you are i mean from what i'm hearing maybe in the third case but like it takes a long time to get to a point where that's alleviated yeah i think the third case you know if you play through the third case and you're still not feeling it at all you can pull the plug at that point like i completely agree with you um and i agree as well on the interactivity thing i would have wanted more of that earlier on um i just wanted to like just to call back the writing like i don't know i play a lot a lot of games and i read a lot of written text and dialogue and

characters and and just I realize the bar is kind of low in terms of like video game narrative broadly speaking and I really do think the fact that they've crafted this story which really is like not only case to case but like across the board full of like wild turns and unexpected events and characters that you really care about. It is a pretty amazing accomplishment, not to mention the fact that it's like the seventh or eighth Ace Attorney game. So many times.

Yeah, it really, you know, in terms of localization, I think is the best series for localization. There is right now. I can't think of another series that does better Japanese to English localization than this. Which is especially wild when you consider that the main hook of it,

and we mentioned the racism thing before, which I don't know that we clarified that specifically enough. In case three, you have gone to London, and everybody there thinks you're an idiot like everybody there thinks you are an uneducated dipshit because you are a japanese person because it is turn of the 20th century victorian london and watching like fighting back against that like seeing a character fight back against that like through the the context of this game is like one of the one of the i don't know one of the coolest things that i've seen in a in a visual novel game like this before i i i yeah i think the characters in this game sort of shine when they

when they wrestle with that stuff uh because it's it's not something that I think I've ever seen in a video game before. And Sherlock Holmes is so stupid. He's so dumb. He's such a big dum-dum. And they had to call him Herlock Sholmes because they couldn't get the rights?

Are you kidding me? I actually, like, am pretty sure that character's in the public domain. So, interesting little side note, part of him is the early Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain. So, interesting little side note, part of him is, the early Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain.

So if you do a Sherlock Holmes where he's just cold and calculating and doing heroin, that's fine. But if you make Sherlock Holmes somewhat likable, and this came up recently with the Enola Holmes movie, you need to get the rights from the Arthur Conan Doyle foundation in order to use it so

that's why they fully call him sherlock holmes right like they definitely could right no that that's what they're saying they didn't want to open themselves up to the liability in japan they just didn't want to follow that in japan he was called sherlock holmes when the game came out in like 2016 since then there's been legal cases that forced them to change the name. I wonder if that's, I don't understand the sort of dynamics between these two countries well enough, but like considering what we're talking about in this time period, I wonder if they're like, it's sort of a jab, like it's like taking a swing a bit, making Sherlock Holmes this great hero of British literature, kind of a dumb,

dumb. I wonder if it's like, he becomes more endearing, I think by, by the end of it, like, and he has befriended Naruhoto. Like it, it,

he is a genuinely great character. Who's like foolhardiness. Maybe it doesn't match up with the, the, the Doyle shit, but it's like, he is, he is,

he's not a complete boob. I think it has more to do with intellectual property law here versus there. In Japan, you have Hatsune Miku where the idea of open-sourced IPs is much more comfortable versus here where it's definitely not. I wish there was more...

I don't know if this is different between the localizations, but I wish there was more voice acting. In 2021, it feels pretty notable to not have it, especially when I just came off an Apple Arcade game that was fully voiced in a similar style. It just feels like... I mean, I know there's a lot of text, but even a little bit more,

I feel like would have gone a long way. Even in Japanese, I don't know if it... If we want to avoid the localization thing, like something like that. There's also a case, I think the fourth case, where a domestic violence incident is played up for larfs, for larfs and goofums in a way that hit pretty bad. Yeah.

The second case is also one of the saddest things I've ever heard. It's very weird, the expediency with which people move on from it. Yeah. Anyway, reader, listener, dear, you know with 100% certainty how you would feel about this game at this point. Hearing what we have said, I feel like we have given everyone the clues that they need. Now they just need to put all the evidence together. I feel like we have given everyone the clues that they need. Now they just need to put all the evidence together and you will have a complete case

as to how you would feel about, the mystery of how you would feel about Great Ace Attorney Chronicles will be solved. So I think we've earned with that, if I may be so bold, we've earned a break, you know? Let's be free. Okay, before we get into some reader mail,

I wanted to mention in case people aren't aware uh we have two the besties podcast t-shirts that are available on uh the dftba storefront i don't know what the what's the link what do you guys usually throw to for this mackler and merch.com mackler and merch.com lovely uh we'll make another point by the way we'll do another link that's like McElroy and Planting and Frosting Merch. And it'll just be the shirts. I wonder if BestiesBuys.com

is available. That's good. We've got the yellow looks like the podcast logo shirt. And also, we've got one that says, what is it? It's a video game book club podcast. Yeah, that's right.

It says it's a video game book club podcast. Which is very good and funny. And I definitely don't get pissed off when I read the book club part. Good. But yeah, both of those are available. So check those out if you would. Y'all, I polled our listeners for some video game legal questions. And before I ask them, I'll remind everybody that the besties, we are not lawyers.

And please do not use our advice in a court of law. that I have from Paradigm Shaft is what Kirby does to his enemies legal or is it a war crime? It's not a war. Things can be illegal and also not a war crime. You know, there's a lot of littering. War crime and crimes are, as I understand it, two different.

War crimes is like the worst crimes you do. They're not great. They're bad crimes. The worst crimes you do. Let's talk about this. Kirby Superstars Saga, or whatever it's called, and onward, you eat the bad guy. Swallow to get the powers.

But then you can press the A button and create an AI companion from the power. So it's like they didn't really die. Like no harm, no foul. They didn't really die. No, I think that sounds like it's more like a prestige situation where you're creating a clone without their permission. This actually gets into something that's like kind of fucked up. Because if you can create an AI clone after eating someone, then what it presupposes is that when you eat them and don't do that their mortal soul is still kind of rattling around inside kirby's body and like fully aware

and present but also consumed which to me i feel like crosses a line for sure but then let's let's figure this out okay because now i'm now i'm fucked up you press the select button and you can spit the power out and turn back into regular kirby but it turns into like a bouncing star which if you don't suck it up before it bounces three times then it shatters and disappears and that's their soul that's death that's their soul that is death that's when the death happens not when you swallow not when you no no no no no you're fully aware fully wait wait wait wait wait. I think I'm onto something pretty big here. You remember at the end of that Men in Black movie where you realize that the entire galaxy

is on a marble, on like a kitty cat, right? Every movie should end that way, by the way. Oh, of course. Fucking cool. That's exactly how Age of Innocence should end. But all I'm saying is like, what if right now, and this is real life, what if Kirby is effectively a god king

and when we pass it is actually him he's so big that we can't realize that the galaxy is just his mouth and he's sucking up our souls God are you saying he's making new stars? This is how the stars are formed? And that's how the stars are made

It's as good a legend as any you know It's kind of a legend as any, you know? It's kind of like a Midgard sort of like Norse lore thing that I'm like fucking really into actually. Yeah. But I think we can all agree that Kirby does kill. Kirby does kill. Yeah, but like so do God Kings.

Sure. Related to that, which Nintendo protagonist is the biggest criminal this is coming from toff monster it's warrior is it protagonist yeah i guess he's the wario land he has his own games it's warrior yeah i guess so easy sort of an anti-hero i mean i was gonna say slippy toad from starfox like what would slippy toad do yeah i mean fucking look at him look at his look at him you're saying he's a smooth criminal i'm i wouldn't say that i wouldn't i wouldn't condone his his dark his dark deeds i'm just saying look at slippy toad and then okay so like ash ketchum

questionable pokemon morality is not something that we want to but if he's a criminal everybody's a criminal and if he's a criminal everybody there's no law that will prosecute right little mac just trying to make it right right i mean no no real issues there right mr game and watch may not have a soul we don't know yeah now now Now, Tom Nook. That is another great one. I don't, maybe, the protagonist thing is debatable, but like, Tom Nook. He's not a criminal. He's not paying taxes, for sure no taxes. Why are people so hard on him?

It is zero interest loans. Zero interest. I mean, if you want to get weird about about it Samus Aran is like a one Woman endangerment She is eradicating Species at a rate that is not Sustainable Diddy Kong just has some guns

And nobody really ever talks about that The guns he doesn't use He has guns he'll pop them He also has a hat that says nintendo on it which implies that nintendo exists in his universe yeah yeah i got one more nintendo question for y'all uh this one's from dan can we legally still call mario a plumber if he doesn't maintain his licensure and bonding do we know that we don't know that? We don't know that. I think it's pretty safe to say. That wouldn't make the game, right?

That wouldn't make it in the game. No, no, no. Here's how we know that. Because if we believe that Super Mario Brothers, the movie, is canon, then at some point, Mario got sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom, right? And has not been back to New York since then.

So, safe to say, when would he have had time well i i want to confirm one thing it's definitely not canon because this as we all know mario and luigi are brothers they're twin brothers they were born at the same time however in the movie one is played by bob hoskins yeah and one is played by john leguizamo they are not twins no they're not there's like 15 years between those people in new york the master plumber license renewal has to be done online right you can do it on the computer you just need some of your licensure stuff and your renewal fees which is like $150 for a license so I feel like that is something that Mario could bang out in

an afternoon a hassle for sure he's got better things to do but like if it's important to him to keep because there might be a point where he's like boy the Mushroom Kingdom hasn't needed help for a while and I probably should be doing something.

I cannot believe that Frustic mentioned John Leguizamo, and Justin didn't have the pest music cue just ready to go. Yeah, it's kind of, I'm disappointed. I used to have it saved on my soundboard. I don't anymore. Hey, has anybody been playing anything else that's been fun and cool and has good graphics and, like, cool gameplay? I've been playing ender lilies which is a game that griffin mentioned many moons ago in early access and i know it's

come up a few times over the last few months of people playing it i've been playing it on switch man that game is good there are not very many metroidvanias where the combat feels excellent like i you know maybe exploration feels really good or whatever but generally the combat kind of gets short shrift um one of the few exceptions of this is hollow knight where the combat feels amazing yeah ender lilies really does manage to match the vibe of the combat um in uh hollow Knight and feels excellent and has some like really cool upgrade system. Hard as hell too. And like a really satisfying.

What have you, have you, I don't know how far I got into the game, but there's this, like the second major boss is like this flying witch character that has like four phases and it's, it, it spikes pretty hard right there,

but it, it was genuinely thrilling when I managed to finally get the better of her. It's hard as hell. Yeah, it's super hard, but satisfying. It doesn't feel cheap. You constantly have to adjust your strategies based on who you're fighting

and your loadouts and stuff like that. Really super sick. If you're looking for a good way to pass the time before that Hollow Knight sequel comes out, jump on it. In 2067. Hey, I've been playing a game we talked about also a couple weeks ago.

SNKRX. It is the snake tower defense roguelike type game uh that yeah i've been playing on ios i don't know if it was on ios when we first did the segment on it uh but it is perfect because there's only two buttons and it's turned to the left and turned to the right those are the only two controls so like it is kind of perfect for ios it is really good in a way I don't think I really appreciated when we first talked about it. It has a lot of auto chess stuff going on, which is to say between rounds of combat, you draft heroes that you add to your chain, which is basically the snake from the snake game. But you can like purchase multiple copies of one of them to you know upgrade them each one also has like tags and if you have a certain number of heroes in your chain that share the same tag

then they all get certain bonuses like there's a mercenary tag and if you have enough characters of the mercenary tag suddenly enemies will start dropping extra gold and so you can sort of boost your gold reserves there's interest right so if you don't want to extra gold and so you can sort of boost your gold reserves there's interest right so if you don't want to spend all your money you can hold on to it and maybe accrue more wealth for you to spend in the next round are you using a controller for this no just touchscreen it's all genuinely all you need is you turn left and right by tapping the left and right side to the screen like it is totally called uh snkrx it is uh it is is it's fucking brilliant like i cannot stop playing it once you finish there's 25 rounds in each each

like match uh and once you finish it you unlock a new the next new game plus which just makes all the enemies harder and adds one like hero max that you can add to your chain. So like I'm on new game plus five or something now, and I cannot put it down. It's really cool. Also real quick, Final Fantasy 14 finally got to that near content and as good as fuck. It's really good. It's even,

I bet I'd enjoy it even more if I cared about near, but it's, it's, it's absolutely fantastic. Is that what your hot dark apocalypse is? Yes. That is the name of the content in, uh,

in FFXIV. But I knew if I put Final Fantasy XIV Your Hot Dark Apocalypse, you guys would... What's that noise? What is that? Oh. Oh, that's fucking Nier. It's the international sign for we're discussing near.

Oh, right. Yeah, it's good. The music is very good. Real quick, if I could talk about two things. Out of the Loop is an iOS game that is similar to, conceptually, a board game called Spyfall. Basically, in Out of the Loop, one person, there's a a category let's let's pick food to make this easy um the players pass the phone around and each look at the food and then one person will look and it says that they are out of the loop and basically the players take turns asking each

other questions that are also provided by the game like you know justin asked sydney when the last time she ate this was whatever and you have to use the person's answers to figure out who does not actually know what the food is uh so the the questions are all fairly general in nature but then at the end of the round everyone votes secretly on who they think does not actually know what the food they think does not actually know what the food is or does not actually know what the location is or whatever so you're trying to like cover up your ignorance um when you don't actually know what's going on is it kind of like faking it there's a jackbox game called faking it faking it yeah similar i think that yes similar

idea to faking it as well um but it's a really good like if you want something like low lift maybe you like are waiting for dinner to come out or something at the restaurant you just need like you know 10 minutes to kill it's not like something you'd plan an evening around but to just like whip out your phone and be like here's a you know a fun little way to pass the time um it's cool it's called out of the loop the other one is called pulse beast and this is like a i found on steam kind of randomly it's like a platformer i'm gonna have a hard time describing it but it's a platformer where you have a certain different set of abilities that are on a refresh and you use these abilities to like get through each of the levels which are dynamically generated and using them changes the uh when you use the abilities it sort of changes the background music

of the game that you're playing so with each like different ability you use you're also changing and sort of creating a soundtrack for your level so like each dynamically generated um soundtrack is is absolutely unique to your playthrough of that level um and you can actually export them and save them and you want to hear real quick one of mine just to get an idea so that um that sounded really good Yeah, it came out really good. I was really proud of that. Maybe throw some reverb on the mix. I'll throw a little reverb on the mix next time.

That'll make it. I've been playing more of The Ascent, which we'll talk about next week, but I want to recommend one thing. That game was made up, by the way. Please don't go looking for it. What? Pulse Beast does not exist,

so I just created it because I missed an opportunity to play the best soundtrack so i needed to create one okay you're the worst uh hey i recommend everybody listens to this show uh check out arthouse animation on the criterion channel it is a collection of like i don't know i think like 30 some animation animated films and I think the type of people who listen to our show would really dig this. It has stuff that you're probably familiar with, like Paprika and Millennium Actress and Persepolis. But it also has some stuff that I had never seen.

I finally saw Belladonna of Sadness, which is 18 plus. An Invention for Destruction, which is a great hangout vibe movie. And I think people should give it a look. I don't know any of the movies. They're all good. You should watch these. Are they like their animation? Are they like Sherlock Gnomes?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Because that's the last one I watched. They're just, it's basically just more Sherlock Gnomes. I wanted to take real quick I wanted to thank enlightening speed 10 of the people that left reviews for the podcast there were a ton more

than that but here's just 10 that I picked at random cube of soup meow mix 135 Darby Tron wet Josh governor 96 oatmeal bath bad with names bongo Gibbs, Organ Farmer, Lynn, and Sarah. Thank you very much for writing reviews. Thank you to everyone else who wrote reviews. Please keep them coming.

Really, they're great. And the best name of those, I think this can be like a fun segment. For me, it's WetJosh. WetJosh. With a full WetJosh. Love WetJosh. Yeah, WetJosh. Next, we're going to be talking about The Ascent.

So, look forward to that I believe it is it on game pass it is on game pass the game pass version is a little funky uh but like a fun widespread panic kind of way like it's missing some features like uh ray tracing that it shouldn't be missing um hopefully it'll get updated soon but it's also on steam but if you already pay for game pass the xbox version is there a version of xbox i can pay for that that i can get ray tracing no it's just pay for ray tracing and do it all the thing yeah it's it's uh game pass and steam so make your call that way uh all right well thank you so much for listening that is going to do it for us 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!