The Besties - Ranking Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's Nastiest Little Mustaches

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor brings back Cal Kestis for another interstellar romp, blending Souls-like combat and Uncharted-like exploration in great measures. How has his Jedi technique evolved in the intervening years since Fallen Order? And what's like, the grossest facial hair you can unlock?Also discussed: Meet Your Maker, Are You There God It's Me Margaret, Have a Nice Death, Psychonauts 2 Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I'm jealous of my son. Why? Sometimes I get congested, especially- Because he's got a great dad. Yeah, precisely right. But also, especially during hay fever season, I get very congested. And like a fucking pleb,

I have to take a piece of paper and blow everything in my lungs out through my nose to try to attempt to get a slightest amount of congestion out of my nose. It's terrible. get a slightest amount of congestion out of my nose it's terrible my son fucking king that he is has a device a futuristic star wars-esque device that i jam up there listen pal and it does all the work i come here to this podcast to not think about the nose Frida for a little bit. Is that the device you're talking about?

There's two approaches here. There's the nose Frida, which is a manual device, which requires basically like pumping, like you were getting free gas during the apocalypse, like trying to like siphon it up a tube. Yeah. That's the nose Frida. I did that for a while.

Let's be clear, with your mouth from their nose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you loved him, that's what you would use. You use a sort of, you've got a sort of mechanical. I upgraded. A digital? To a device, which is digital. And man, this thing.

Digital? This thing does great work. It is automated. Does it have like an artificial mouth that's sucking it out the nose? This might actually be too gross i don't know that the audience would i love that russ was like no one's gonna have tolerance for you guys trying to make me do new york giraffe so i'm gonna talk about um sucking the snot out of another human being's nose let me try my intro this one's gonna be great okay i love when i play star wars games and they let me do a lightsaber and they're like pick your

color and then the color of your lightsaber i think tells you a lot about you oh obviously like what kind of person you are obviously you'd be red bad dude pretty bad dude not an option in this game you can't be red and i think that's closed-minded me too because not just and that sucks just because you have read your evil i know i said that like a second ago but it's just a color That's closed-minded. Me too. Because not, just, and that sucks. Just because you have red, you're evil? I know I said that like a second ago, but it's just a color. Like, what about Santa? Raphael was red.

What did you say, Justin? What about Santa? What about Santa Claus? He is red. You think Santa uses a red lightsaber? Is that what you're getting at? No, but he wears red clothes. But I was just curious what color.

It's like a candy cane. I'm just curious what color you guys picked for your lightsabers and what went into that decision, how you looked inside and saw the force inside yourself and how to express that. Mine's magenta. Okay. Why?

I liked it. No, come on. I have a slightly more useful reason. I went with white because this game is very dark and real-time ray tracing. That is true. You can use your lightsaber as a flashlight. Yeah, I use it a lot.

Which is good. I chose green because usually people with a lot of force use a green lightsaber. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. How do you measure how much force is in a person? Midichlorians. You just take a blood sample

and then measure the midichlorians. Got it. Yeah, the tricky part is I can't, I mean, my magenta is different from everyone else's magenta. So like my magenta looks fucking awesome. Like you would pay $6 in DLC currency just to use my material.

To get the rest fresh dick lightsaber. Yeah. I'll be real. I think that the color is just in the head of, you know, main character Cal Kestis. Oh, that's cool. It's all red lightsabers. Yeah.

He's a bad... He kills, like, a trillion people. A trillion dudes, yeah, for sure. And, like, in really nasty ways. Yeah. You know. So, that's the color. And then I was curious about what length you guys went with for your lights mine was sort of i did go with a kind of like a sort of a chode i guess is what the game you like

a thick one right and then it was and then at one point darth maul did come up from a spaceship and he was like what's up choda and i was like damn it's good he was like yeah it's good oh okay yeah mine is double-sided what does that mean uh you're nasty yeah the weasel you're nasty My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and the force be with you. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and it's a day after May the 4th, so see you next year. My name is Ross Pershing, and I'm going to be

with you. Hello, everybody, and 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, have become a member. You've joined our illustrious ranks, and we're thrilled to be with you once again to talk about star wars jedi survivor star wars jedi survivor this one's a star wars

jedi star wars jedi it's colin's favorite video game franchise star wars jedi that is one of the franchises that is popular that has two games in it star wars jedi outcast right no what what what what is this one glad you asked thank you star wars jedi colon survivor is by respawn it is a sequel to star wars jedi colon fallen order and it continues that story it's a mix of like some light dark souls combat some metroidvania exploration it is bigger than the last one it is i think much easier prettier and a good fair bit messier especially if you're playing on anything be any device it's pretty messy yeah i'm gonna sorry just to clarify star wars jedi outcast is part of the Star Wars Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast franchise.

Oh, no, that helps. And hey, here's a little bonus cool thing about this game. A weirdly decent starting point for folks who are like, how do I get into the High Republic? Because I know you're out there. You do exist. There are people who want to know about the High Republic and haven't read the books. And this, my friends, this is your time. This is it.

Let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk more about this video game. I think the most important thing is that you can change Cal Kessler's facial hair in this one. You can give him the nastiest, dirtiest little mustache, the nastiest, perviousvious little tiny little skeezy mustache that ever did exist and i think when you wear this one the jedi see you they're like no the sith see you they're like no fucking way man and that's because he looks like he's gonna

storm the capital yeah like he does not look like a good hang you know he does mullet in his like i mean you guys pick that that was your choice yeah as soon as i unlocked it i was like here we go i wear nothing else um that's a weird place to start the conversation but it's just top of mind for me uh okay well first all of us liked the the past star wars game right well here's what i'm gonna say about the past one real quick okay the past one i think and this share a ton of dna obviously this is a direct sequel um they're both like exploration heavy mobility heavy metroidvanias with as plant mentioned dark souls combat um i think this one is an overall better game like the core game of it yeah um but but i think in the case of both of them they take a lot of

warming up like i think the latter halves of both of these games are much better than the beginning halves of both i would say i would say this one definitely still has a bit of a slow start um but it i for me it did pick up faster than the first i did not actually love i didn't enjoy it enough yeah for sure let's talk about the start because i i maybe i'm bringing too many bad memories from the very beginning of the first one the beginning of the first star wars jedi is a form of torture reserved for only the worst padawan uh it is what you're like on a junk yeah you're a junk or something it's a tutorial level. Yeah, it's like bad Uncharted. And then they're like, hey, we know that that wasn't super fun.

So now we're going to be in a kind of Metroidvania-y open world level. And it is effectively a desert canyon. It's like swampy. There's like nothing to see. There's like no level. They forgot to make the level. And then it does get, I think, way, way better. I really enjoyed that game once you get past that. This game, I liked the opening. level they forgot to make the level right and then it gets it does get i think way way better i really

enjoyed that game once you get past that this game i liked the opening yeah the opening is you're in coruscant you're doing you're like you start on a somewhat somewhat metroidvaney level but but you're surrounded by characters who like i'm pretty sure you've never met until this point no and the game's just like hey hey, you know Ted and Linda. I would. You've been hanging out with them for a while, right? I would take issue with the Metroid of anything. I don't think there's really much here that is.

There's a little bit. I mean, every once in a while you'll get a thing that'll let you go back and get an unlockable, but by and large, it's fairly. That element is way reduced in this game, mostly because they don't do the metroid thing of like samus gets hit by a dinosaur and her suit breaks and now you have to go learn how to turn into a morph again let me let me say as you get deeper into the game it becomes more and more and

more metroidvania i agree with justin the first level has like one item that you can go off the beaten path for in once you're like five hours into the game, you can go in about 50 different directions. I played at least nine hours. Yeah, but are you good? Are you good? Is that a great question? I think the Souls-like aspect is way bigger in this one.

The first game, basically you were either finding those powers that let you explore the world a little bit better or 99.9 of the time you were finding a different color palette that you can apply to your little droid buddy um and in this game there's like unlockable perks that you can find and equip and uh they they definitely went a bit harder on the rpge stuff this time around too i would say great effect i think that they i am usually the first person to kind of uh criticize a game for having like unnecessary and unrewarding kind of rpg mechanics sort of tacked on but i actually i this game has a few flaws in my mind but this is not

one of them i actually really like that that part of it and it made me feel like it made me feel like exploring the world was rewarding in a way the first game never was because like i didn't give a shit about the loot cycle or whatever that there was to to find there in this one it feels like genuinely pretty impactful yeah they also speaking of souls have a hub area in the second planet you arrive to and that hub area will like very much like a souls game you'll find npcs in the world and they'll be like i'm looking for a home can i come back to your place and they just like chill in your place and maybe they'll give you quests and stuff so yeah you could like there's also like a gardening mini game you can do that it's yeah it's it's it's pretty wild um i don't know how much of that stuff i care to engage with um yeah it's all optional yeah sure yeah um i man i don't

know i don't know with these i played a lot of it and i still don't know i I don't know with these. I played a lot of it, and I still don't know. So I guess the question, Justin, when you say you played a lot of it, how much of that time was you just doing main story stuff versus going on side stuff? I mean, how much side stuff are we talking about here? I mean, there's a ton of side stuff. So the main story quests are pretty well marked as go to this icon, out here like going i mean there's a there's a ton of side stuff so i like it there you know the main story quests are pretty well marked as like go to this icon and that's a main story quest and then the side stuff is like everything else there just seems to be a lot of stuff in this game

that is like fun adjacent without actually being like. If I could give you an example of something that really chapped my ass pretty bad, you have a grappling hook. And it's already the bad kind of grappling, video game grappling hook, because it's the kind of grappling hook where it's like, hey, listen, man, there's like eight places. And here's the places you can use. You can use it right here and here and here. And so it's not really like adding a lot of dynamism to it it's more just like here's a way to get around um later on in the game say about eight hours or so you meet a character who has the ability to create grappling hook places right but the grappling hook places that she can create are only in very specific spots. So what you've done is you've added another button press to create the grappling hook in the exact

spot you want it. And then after that, I'll just do, then I'll go ahead and press the grappling hook button after that. It's like in no way adding anything. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable. It's not interesting. And there's a lot of It's not enjoyable. It's not interesting. And there's a lot of stuff in, in the game. Like, like you just talked about the, the gardening thing. I,

they don't, I mean, I know that's a very minor bit, but they also don't say like why that would, you know, they don't make it in any way like appealing or interesting. That's kind of how I feel about a lot of it. It just feels like close to enjoyable

without really like giving something that is actually fun. So I feel pretty dramatically different from that. And that's fine. We're here to politely disagree with one another. I think what I find about this game that's so appealing and again i would acknowledge like i think this is not an excuse like i think the game gets dramatically better as you get deeper but even before you know even in the early game there's

a few things that i find very compelling one i think the combat is like pretty fun and like countering what enemies and and doing super attacks and using force powers and all that stuff. The combat feels fun. It's not something that feels like a chore to me. Quick question on the, on the countering and the parrying. Sure. I felt like it felt,

and I think this is because of the weapons that everyone is using, right? Lightsabers and whatever weird like lances they give to the stormtroopers. It feels squishy to me. like it doesn't feel great to do those parries it feels a little bit um i don't know there's something about it that just doesn't feel great uh yeah i don't know i i i didn't feel that way personally but okay uh i guess yeah it's it's hard for me to say i just i that there was a moment where I saw a bunch of stormtroopers, I was excited about shooting them in the middle and fucking shot them.

I do agree about the combat. I think that's the best thing in the game. I think that it's a lot better when it's one-on-one because anytime they put you against a big creature, not one-on-one like you versus other humanoids. I think that's much better than a lot of other humanoids. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's much better than a lot of... Rancor fights. Yes, exactly.

They pit you up against a lot of bigger creatures that usually ends up with strafe around behind them and hit them from the back. Until you learn how to mind control them and turn them into a weapon in your glorious cause. That's good shit. They do give you a lot of tools. Just to address the other aspect,

in addition to the combat that I found really interesting. This game is jank as fuck. Like from like a, like visual standpoint, like I'm not even talking about performance. Like you will, there's like a lot of clipping and a little bit of jerkiness in terms of walking around the world.

It's, it's pretty jank as fuck. And yet moving around the world, I find way more enjoyable than a game like god of war ragnarok for example because they give you so much freedom in terms of where you can go and what you can do that i didn't feel like i was on rails you can feel the respawn in it like to me when i think of like respawn especially like with the titanfall era it's a lot of parkour mobility right with you and then also just some like fun silly gimmicks

here and there there are a lot of animals in this game that you can ride and and also a lot of animals you can murder but well okay so let's go on that that was my favorite part cutting things up in this game feels so good and they they just covered the world in stuff to cut up there are like vines and wires and metal pipes and a lot a lot of defenseless animals if you watched from a distance if you're like oh shit is that a jedi like yeah i think it is look at his laser swords and then he just like runs up to a bunch of like sheep analogs and starts beheading them like whoa is that jedi is that what they do i mean forget the defenseless animals you would say that when he attacks stormtroopers he's like oh good a jedi is here to save us and he's like oh oh oh my god oh my god like literally Oh, God. Literally, not a joke, Last of Us 2-level psycho murder.

Because they make, everybody in this game is always talking all the time, which you just kind of have to get used to. And it's usually like jokes. It's a lot of jokes. Yeah, they're always saying the worst last words they could possibly say. And there's so much,

in the first five hours of the game, you come across a lot of scripted sort of stormtrooper encounters or droid encounters, which, you know, those are soulless robots. Are they even conscious? Does it even matter when you chop one of those up? Who's to say? But they do say a lot of shit like, wow, what a beautiful view. I hope nothing.

Not a joke. You climb a cliff and come up to see a droid looking out over the horizon like a beautiful day i love it here wow this is the best outpost i've ever been on and then you fucking stealth kill them and throw them off the cliff uh it's constant that you are and if you get into a group of uh enemies and you start fighting them the first time that happened to me the last survivor is like you may have killed them but you're not going to kill me like i am i am going to do that pal uh it's a it's a way of humanizing combat that i think was impactful in last of us 2 and maybe less impactful when you have a laser blade sword and no risk of doing the opposite though in last was too they're doing because they want you to think that these people are real.

Yeah. In this one, it's just like a goof. It's like dark comedy. Yeah, it's slapstick. The whole way through. Effectively. It's like Three Stooges shit. Yeah.

There's some really cool, like, puzzle rooms. Really cool ways of, like, using the Force that actually do take some thinking that are not, like, more mechanical. Like, you really actually kind of have to think through them, which I think is pretty neat. Very, very reminiscent of the- Very Breath of the Wild-y. There's a few like shrine type dungeons.

There aren't like hundreds of them, but- The Tomb Raider like tombs that you would find in the newer Tomb Raider games that were just like, hey, this is gonna be a big environmental puzzle, but if you solve it, you're gonna get like a pretty cool boon out of it. Those are very cool. I am enjoying this game a lot more than the first one.

I think I'm going to stick with it. I agree with a lot of the stuff that Juice said. I am so totally over environmental sort of navigation that feels kind of prescribed. Canned. Uncharted era. If you look like in the distance and it's like, well, there's the waypoint. And from where I'm standing, I can see the path of ivy and ropes that you want me to do.

For me, that doesn't feel like Reese, but to me, that doesn't feel like Titanfall or something that is a little bit more open in it. It feels like, okay, so you just want me to press those buttons. So here's what I'm going to say. And this is a spoiler. This is like a mid-game spoiler. But I think it's important specifically to this discussion. So if you want to skip ahead, that's totally fine.

I won't be offended. There's Area Jetto, which is like a very well-known star wars location um at the there's like a very big story sequence that happens throughout jetta at the end of that story sequence you unlock the ability again spoilers to air dash in the game you can double jump and then you can follow that up with an air dash. And then there are ways to get more air dashes while you're in air. And that was the turning point for me. That sounds very good to me. Because that totally solves what you're talking about by giving me, now whenever I go to Kobo, which is like the big giant open air area.

Like, you're right. Previously, it'd be like, oh, there's a rope there. I have to follow this route and whatever, whatever. Obviously, it'd be like, oh, there's a rope there. I have to follow this route and whatever, whatever. Now I can zoom across those areas like three times as fast using cliff sides that I'd never previously been able to reach. And everything after that you get that air dash is also a mobility increase so that you get something much later. That's an even doper way to get around the world. And so I agree with all the complaints, but i do think they were so aware of them and went

and and addressed them okay um not to plug my social but i did recently tweet a video that shows like a mid to late game optional side challenge that i think really exemplifies how wild the mobility gets. Yeah. So if you want to like see where things go, that might encourage you to like play more if you're kind of on the fence about it. But I think the second you unlock that, like that,

that Jetta sequence ends in a totally fucking buck wild, like one of the best video game moments of the last year for me. And, and you unlock this ability. Let's speak to Jha for a minute why would you call something something that sounds like someone saying jedi with a southern accent it's because i i'm pretty sure i don't don't hold me to this but i'm pretty sure that that is where the jedis get their name from is from that or vice versa or it was named for the Jedi that... There's an awkward conversation where she's like,

I hear that people on this planet were like really... The people of Jedha were big fans of the Jedi. And like neither of them mentioned anything about how those words are racist. And then they go about their day. Well, it's also worth noting that in Jedha, they say the word spammel about 67 times over the course of 10 minutes. Which are basically hyperdonkeys. And you just have to let it roll.

They're hyperdonkeys. The story of this game, I think, is more compelling than the first one. But it does this thing that Star Wars does sometimes. The new movies did this a lot, which is very sort of MacGuffin-centric. And any time it's like in, what is it, Rise of Skywalker? Was that the last movie where it was like, you got to find the dagger and the dagger has a magic map inside of it that that is just like okay then this is what what are we doing here i i would love a sort of more grounded more human or you know alien focused story and this game as soon as i hit the point where it's like okay so there's a set of compasses that you need to it feels it's like oh it's gonna be one of those star wars stories

then um okay i feel like my biggest problem my biggest problem with this entire franchise is i and i think it actually might be the source of like the disconnect on some what we're talking about when you say the franchise you mean star wars Wars? Or Star Wars Jedi? Sorry, Star Wars Jedi. These two games. I just think the main character is such a dork. He's just nothing, right? No, he's not nothing. That's like Kyle Katarn is like nothing. Dash Rendar.

Dash Rendar is nothing. This guy is a dork. You look at him and he looks like Archie and he sounds like Archie and he sounds like archie and it's like archie it's not his fault he's a ginger yeah but it is the fault of whoever made a video game about him it just seems weird to me i feel like this would be working better honestly and this this there's actually like i think you could draw a lot of comparisons between this and mass effect 2 um structurally kind, it feels like Mass Effect 2.

Yeah, or like, what is the classic Western where they get all the guys back to, or the Seven Samurai. Right. Yeah. I think that there's definitely like that kind of aspect to it. I feel like it would have been a lot more successful if you had just been able to create your own character and gone that route. Because I just feel like the guy's such a dork

and he doesn't really have any distinguishing characteristics. Like from a first person. He does have red hair. He has red hair, that is true. Right, he does. He does have red hair. But he's like, when they're like,

you can really handle yourself in a fight. It's so weird to me that no one is ever like, for a dork. It does. He's obviously a dweeb really good at laser sources stuff there are glimpses i think of how the character has grown since the since the first game uh that are very promising but then it gets very that's it feels like they are not a saddle a beard is that what you're talking about like no no i'm a dork now that I have a beard this is not I guess it's kind of

a spoiler for like the towards the end of the first sort of mission you face off against what is it a ninth sister like a Sith that has been sort of pursuing you and your little rebel order here and

small spoiler so again again, skip ahead, but this is like, you know, a half hour into the game. You have this big rooftop fight with her. And as you like finish the fight, he like takes a beat and tells her, like reminds her what her real name was before she was sort of indoctrinated into the order when she was still a Jedi.

And it's a genuinely very chill, and then he kills her. He euthanizes her, essentially. It is a very chilling kind of moment that came after a lot of modern Star Wars goof-em-ups and goof-arounds that I was like, oh shit, okay. So this is Luke Skywalker

in Return of the Jedi. He's grown. This is a grown Jedi now. And I don't know that they necessarily adhere to that tone as much. Well, after that, he grows plants. After that, he grows plants. In another way, he grows.

Yeah, and a weird, gross, pencil-thin mustache. Yeah, you can just keep working. My number one hottest collectible in this game is, and it really was a good motivator to track down collectibles, because I kept looking for a haircut that didn't make him seem like a total dork. And every time I got a new haircut, I'm like, oh, nice. And then I eventually got one where it's slicked back. It's like, okay, you just look like a tier one operator.

Yeah, but no, okay, you're not leaning a tier one operator. Yeah, but no, okay. You're not leaning into it. Yeah, that's 100% right. You take, there are some office slacks that you can wear here. And there is a just straight up plain button up style shirt. I do have it dressed like a businessman. And there's a Silicon Valley vest. Yeah.

And you put all of that on him. And then he just walks around like a mid-tier manager. He's like a disruptor. Are you trying to make him cool? Because that's a big mistake. If this was the first Star Wars game, this is about like a dork. Like I would be into that, right?

Like if it was just like about how sometimes they let nerds be Jedis, but like I feel like that's not really touched on as much. It's falling down, but in a Star Wars game. God, really? you're not wrong. I think this game is fucking dope. I understand all the criticisms. I get it. I think the mobility stuff does get alleviated

in the latter parts of the game. You do have to get there. But I've had a blast. And for what it's worth, they did release a patch, which seems to have addressed some of the more dramatic problems with the launch. I do want to say, I'm playing on PC,

which has been, I mean, whenever a studio puts out a public apology a couple of days after the game comes out about the PC version, you know it's not great. The game has been working okay for me. I did, while we were on tour,

download it on Steam Deck and turned it on and then the opening logos were operating at about two frames per second and I just turned it off and deleted it. It looked like someone's like whiteboard demo for what they think the logo will look like. If you look over here

to this side of the screen. It was hysterical. But one of the first areas or maybe the second area that you get to in the game has this like contagion that's like a bunch of particle effects that are just kind of floating around and if you fall into them, you start taking damage, whatever.

And it's everywhere. And every time that I got into one of those areas, for whatever reason, my pretty high-end gaming PC would be like, eh, let's slow things down a little bit. Let's really enjoy this. Maybe that was the force you were using, force slow.

That was the force. That's exactly what it was. I would say, by the way, I feel like a lot of games of late are really conscious about not wanting to limit their audience at all. So if it's a sequel, it'll be like they will give you literally everything you need to enjoy it. I would say with this one, and I did not finish the first game, but Russ suggested suggested that i watched like a video recap and i'm really glad that i did um i think that it really i think you'll get a lot like you'll get it you won't be like lost but like you'll get a lot more out of it if you have justin yeah did you watch the video recap in the game at the beginning oh yeah it was that yeah so bad dude i couldn't believe that like i watched that because that's the introduction. And it is like, how can I describe it?

It's kind of like a trailer. It's like if it's AI. Yeah. If you've had an AI and you're like, I want a trailer in, I don't know, 20 quotes from the last game. Anything more specific? And you're like, no. Not really. I gave you two sentences.

Make something. And you watch it and it's like, well, that didn't help at all. And then when you get to the main screen, it's like there's an option on there for recap of Star Wars Jedi. What would you call it? Not Outcast. Outcast. Not Outcast. Jedi Fallen Order.

Jedi Fallen Order. Jedi Fallen Order. There's like trailer recap. Like, oh, thank goodness. And I click it. It's the exact same thing. Yeah, I did the same exact thing, man. Yeah.

Watch a video or something. GameSpot did a great job job a great video uh recapping the events of the last game uh let's uh let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about other things so jedi christ what is this fucking game called it is survivor jedi survivor survivor thank you um is obviously a triple-a game huge budget huge team worked on for i think three years was actually pretty short for a triple-a game these days um it's kind of become this dying breed and it's become clear if you're a long-time listener of the podcast like how much of this podcast is focused on like smaller indie games or mid and these sorts of huge

releases and these days these sorts of huge releases are like way more few and far between and i'm kind of curious like is this the like low point like like the the amount of releases we're seeing like on a year-to-year basis or are we just going to see even fewer moving forward? Yeah, this is the high point. Well, not the high point. The high point would have been 10 years ago. No, I mean, this is as high as it's getting, you know, for like right now. I think it's only downhill from here.

I can't imagine that, you know, we will see every studio putting – like just this week we had this in Redfall, right? Yeah. We have Zelda a week after that we have final fantasy 16 a couple weeks after that like this year is dense starfield triple a starfield yeah we were supposed to have that suicide squad game but no i completely agree with you especially after so many kind of public failures suicide squad is not even out yet and it feels like you can almost put it in that camp i mean red and red fall which i i believe i had on my most anticipated games of 2023 list

uh has that been how has that been received oh not really real boondoggle it seems like that one yeah but like i guess that's my question is what is a AAA game? Because this is one of the first third-party games that I played, and it felt not on the Sony first-party level, but it felt like, hey, this is a next-gen game. It looks really nice. It's really big and interesting. It's doing all this stuff. But Redfall, I feel like, was meant to be a smaller game than this by a fair amount.

Oh, sure. Yeah, no, there's no comparison. But, like, small is relative, right? Like, you look at a three-person indie studio, and, like, that's a difference between Redfall, which probably had over 100 at least people working on it. Right, but I think, like, that's the point, is that, like, this single-A, double-A, triple-A spectrum

used to be kind of useful, and that you knew what a triple kind of useful in that you knew what a triple-A game was, you knew what a double-A game was, you knew what an indie game was, right? Well, and it was scheduled out in a way that was very predictable. Like, when you went to E3 and you went to the EA press conference, you knew basically what you were going to be seeing. When you went to the Ubisoft press conference, you knew basically about what the slit,

like, they're going to have an Assassin's Creed, they're going to be seeing when you went to the ubisoft press conference you knew basically about what the slit like they're gonna have an assassin's creed they're gonna have yeah i mean like clancy bullshit literally in terms of scope of like three a's like there were three types of games yeah now the spectrum is is the full spectrum like you could get the game that is like well it's bigger than a mid-tier game but it's not this and, this isn't, you know, God of war. I don't know. It just feels like it's a lot more, it's a game could be kind of like any size at this. This feels like in the ballpark of a God of war. And what I'm saying is I think games that are of this size these days are

like, you're going to see like four or five a year kind of thing. Moving forward. And I, again, like my perspective, you're going to see like four or five a year kind of thing. The big bags. And again, like my perspective, I'm fine with it if only because A, part of it is I don't have time to play 60-hour games all day, every day. And B, the smaller games, when they hit, they hit so hard and I'm so obsessed with them.

Like Dredge is a perfect example of a game that i like absolutely loved made by a tiny team that came out of nowhere no franchise no ip behind it and the more of those that i say even from like bigger publishers doing those the more swings at the bat there are to like make cool experiences make cool ip that aren't tied to a new assassin's creed game or there's also just a ton of living games right so like it's not that there aren't big budget games they're even getting updates they just aren't new releases sure but i would also add that like you say a ton of living games like redfall arguably is a living game i think more and more people are realizing that there's a

a saturation in the living games in the the games of service market, why Suicide Squad had the reaction that it did is because the market for living games, let's say, can support five or ten games. No, let me be clear, because I think there's a huge difference. Honkai Star Rail is what I mean by a living game. Yeah, and I agree with that.

But I think there's a big gulf between that. I think the problem with a lot of these AAA games that you're mentioning, like Redfall or Suicide Squad, is they're trying to be both, right? They don't want to commit to one side or the other because, I don't know, because they're AAA games and they cost a lot of money. And the publishers are freaked out about how they make sure that they get their cash back. Kind of rightfully. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree's it's a weird time it's also kind of

a funny time to like have this conversation because i'm sure a lot of listeners are hearing this and thinking wow there are a ton of these games what are you talking about but this is the result of you know the pandemic kind of clog uh being unleashed upon us and yeah so few games the last two years next year is not gonna look anything like this this year's releases are bonkers it is it is wild to me how many the density of the fact that we are getting like in the same month like diablo 4 final fantasy 16 street fighter 6 uh i mean tears of the kingdom comes out in a fucking week uh it's it's kind of Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Street Fighter 6. I mean, Tears of the Kingdom comes out in a fucking week. It's kind of weird.

I think there's going to be some long gaps in the year sort of after the summertime where it's not quite so hot and heavy, but May to June, it's kind of wild, all of the huge games that are coming out. Yeah, and then Starfield comes out in September in theory. It is a bummer when you say that, though, that Redfall, you know, is not what we would hope it would be because it's like, oh, man,

I can't wait for all of these series from 1990. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, man. I mean, yeah, dog. There's a reason I put that game on my most anticipated 2023 list because it sounded so cool. Well, but I would also say that like the only reason for the most part that we know to like look at those games is because they

are established franchises there are so many smaller games that don't have acknowledged ip that like end up being game of the year quality hades is a game of the was you know game of the year and it came out of nowhere and no one would necessarily put that on their most anticipated list when that came out. It's only the games you would recognize. I don't want to brag, but I put a Hades 2 on my expected test game. I have a little

intuition. Whoever's got it, let me play it. Let Justin play it. Greg? Greg, call Justin. Here's his phone number. Here's my phone number. Hey, can we do honorable mentions? Yeah.

Yeah. Me and Justin spent a long time playing Meet Your Maker over this past week. And when we were on tour, we did a lot of hopping into co-op Meet Your Maker sessions. And man, that game beats ass. What a fun game. I think we've talked about it on the last three besties. No, they still won't play it. Oh, really? I have been busy.

No, you're not. I'll play it. There's other games. Did you play any Binding of Isaac this week, Russ? I didn't. Okay. What about last week? I've been playing Jedi Survivor. Okay. Got it. I mean, we've talked about it a lot it's the mario maker doom game but um it's it i don't like uh twitchy shooters and for me i don't really play

me your maker like that uh for me it is a a more sort of like cerebral game than that of trying to guess like where uh the people who have made these bespoke levels have hidden their traps and then taking those like little tricks that you see people implement in their levels and then trying to you know iterate upon them in your own creations that loop is fantastic and it's not exactly a like a new one like you know any game that is sort of user-generated content focused you see that loop in but it is it is very well executed in this one uh with like really great hooks like i'm always wanting to go back and play more and get more currency to upgrade my traps or my armor or my weapons um i could i couldn't i could not put it down uh especially when you're a level

creation stuff like i would i stayed up accidentally could not put it down uh especially when you're a level creation stuff like i would i stayed up accidentally like way later than i meant to one night while we were on tour because i was just so like dialed into the the level creation tools which are exceptional i mean you got obsessed with a little big planet right so sure yeah no i i-a-boy. This is a dormant thing that exists in my soul. And yeah, when Justin first described this game to me, I did not think it was going to click for me just because I am not like a Doom guy. But there's another-

It's like Doom and Meat Boy had a a baby it's sort of like that like it similar in the sense of like learning the course becomes important right and like repeated like attempts at it i mean you could go through it very slow and whatever but the more fun thing is to like have a wild wild run at it and see how it shakes out man especially in co-op where like juice and i would run into a level and then start just like taking our time but then inevitably we would turn a corner and a wall would disappear and some big hulking behemoth would show up and then we just start running and traps would be going off behind us or like if someone got too far ahead they would activate a trap that the next person would then run into. It gets very slapstick, very funny.

It's a very, very cool game, and I really hope they keep building on it. I think I'm hitting a point now of saturation where I feel like I've seen maybe the general shape of what people can accomplish in the levels. There is also a degree of difficulty that levels can hit where they are not fun anymore like it is not impossible to make a level that is just a a big unfair kill box and when you end up in one of those is the game encouraging you to do that well no because like whenever you build a level it applies a danger rating to it oh god and then whenever you pick a level you you can pick like normal, difficult, or brutal levels.

And I just, I usually just don't play the brutal levels because, not because they're too hard, but because that is where levels that people make

that are just not fun to play kind of get siloed off a lot of the time. But if you stick to that middle difficulty, like that's, for me, like I could, man, I could genuinely play that all day and i sort of did um so and even making your own level is a lot more fun i never get into that kind of thing and i really enjoyed

it in this in this game i really like making a making a level and and watching people you know play it and try to work it out and it's very cool i got on i got deep into like the youtube community which is pretty small for this game like this is not i i don't actually know because i don't have my finger on the pulse exactly but like there's not that many like content creators out there making meet your maker videos uh but i do like going on there to see like okay so here's a new sort of uh trap that i came up with you want to put this wall here and then have this guy activate by sound and then when the guy turns the corner on the second wave it'll like it's it's really um it's a really special game i'm really enjoying it a lot and i think it's going to be

one that i come back to especially as they add you know more more stuff onto the list cool uh a couple weeks ago i finished um finished psychonauts 2 i just want to say it's really good and i i don't know why i stopped playing it it's great yeah but don't you i did you start from scratch this time or did you uh yeah yeah i started from the beginning again because i had i made it i didn't make it super far last time like a couple brains in um but after watching the documentary um about it like i really was able to appreciate it on a different level and it just really added a cool layer to to playing through it but it's also just like really excellent um and i and i feel i don't know why i bounced off it i think it was one of those times where there was like a lot going coming

out at once and i think i just got distracted by something else, but, um, I really, uh, I really enjoyed that. Um, and I wanted to one other,

uh, it's called have a nice death. Um, and at Russ and plan, I recommended to you guys, if you, you try that yet, I did actually play that.

Okay. Um, it's how would you describe it then uh it's basically yeah i mean you've said this before but it's a two it's like 2d hades where you're sort of zipping from uh arena battle to arena battle and picking up various upgrades in like a roguelike uh environment that feel it felt at least a little bit like a hollow knight for me at least yeah and that combat feels the kind of hollow knight that i'll tell you that i thought visually it's fantastic the animation is fantastic uh i needed personally i needed a little more to

have a more grippiness for me like from a exploration or just like other hooks whereas this is like pretty much just like arena battle arena battle and there just wasn't a ton of other stuff that might happen later when i spend more time with it but that was you know a game like um dead cells uh obviously has like a ton of focus on exploration in addition to the combat yeah yeah and that wasn't quite here for me but it was dope i liked it crush you got anything uh no why don't you talk about the movie oh i i just think people should go see are you there god it's me margaret because nobody went and saw it this past weekend and it's really good and i i you know you want mainstream movies that are really good to do well so they keep making them not that there's any pressure on anybody to spend their money to

do that they can do whatever they want but if you enjoy good movies you should go see it that's all i'm saying go see it a coming of age 1970s story about, I won't spoil it. The trailers do a really good job of not talking about what this movie is actually about, probably because it would not sell a single ticket in the Midwest if they tried. And it was sort of a huge book, I want to say like for kids in the 80s growing up,

it was like the book that they read, and I guess in the 90s as well, for a lot of kids. And so it's interesting to see it sort of revived at this moment when I'm sure a lot of those kids grew up and were like, oh, this made a huge impact. I'm going to make a whole movie about it. Rachel McAdams in it, A+. Benny Safdie. You watched Uncut Gems, and you're like, I wonder what one of the co-creators of this would be like in just a chill family drama.

Here's your chance. You get what you asked for. Wild. Do we do it? Do we do it? Do we make it to the end of the episode? We did a whole show. Wait, we didn't because we didn't thank people.

Yeah, I was going to do that. And that's what we're here to do. I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts, Lux1984, MrMoose11, and Like Bart. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Chris Plant, recap those games. This week, we talked about Star Wars Jedi, colon, Fallen Order. No, we didn't.

We talked about Star Wars Jedi, colon, Survivor. And then we talked about the current state of AAA games, Psychonauts 2, Have a Nice Death, Meet Your Maker in the film, Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret. Excellent.

Well, do we know what we're doing next week? So here's full disclosure. Next week, the episode will come out on May 12th, which, as some of you might know, is Zelda Day. The problem is we will be playing Zelda the second that you are playing Zelda which is on launch day

which is to say we will not have an episode about Zelda. That could be fun. That could be our first live episode where we're like okay guys so I just turned it on. Holy shit. Ganon's here. What? You guys get the sword yet? It's sick. People are going to be asking specifically for that. I don't think we're going to be doing that. We will

figure out something else and then we will do Zeldathon the following week and probably for like two weeks. Mega episode. We'll probably do two weeks of Zelda if I had to guess. But yeah, we'll figure out what we're doing next week. I don't know what it is. That's going to do it for us, folks.

Until next time. We did it. Thank you for joining us for the besties and 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!